When using an email marketing campaign to prospects or
customers, there are plenty of issues to consider. The
primary consideration is how many emails actually make it
to the inbox. One poll conducted by a software company
revealed that 58% of email marketers indicated that they
had no idea what were their delivery rates. And of the
responders that indicated they knew 23% were using a
tracking tool to monitor and verify delivery rates. The
remainder we basing there delivery rates on guessing,
prospect/customer feedback or testing with their own email
address.
There are other issues that afflict email marketers such as
anti-spam compliance, single and double opt-in methods,
text vs. html formats, frequency of sending emails,
blacklisting/whitelisting, maintaining relationships with
ISP and content.
To increase your success as an email marketer and not get
tagged as a spammer, here are 10 things to remember:
1) Enhance the start of the relationship by focusing
special attention at the beginning because email
performance usually declines two months after responders
opt-in. Engage your new subscribers immediately in an
organized program that include a welcome letter, a copy of
the latest newsletter or promotion and emails offering a
set of best-newsletter articles or an email-exclusive offer
for new subscribers. It is important to manage the
subscriber's expectation from the start by adequately
explaining the email program's value proposition,
frequency, type of content and privacy policies.
2) Segmentation and personalization are probably the most
underutilized keys to email marketing. Your email is
competing with many others in your subscriber's inbox.
Personalized subject lines, offers, articles, products
showcased and follow up emails based on recipient activity,
are clear winners. It is critical that you begin this
process even if it is only personalizing the content of the
subject line.
3) Many email marketers spend plenty of time building
relationships with ISPs, and putting things in place so
their emails get to the inbox however in vain, because most
final gateway such as Hotmail, Yahoo, Outlook, Gmail, etc
have filters stopping unknown senders. To stop this, it is
important to get your recipient to add you to their safe
list.
4) Get and confirm permission from your subscribers is the
pinnacle to a successful email marketing campaign.
Capturing the opt-in and confirming it with a follow-up
email is the best practice and one which the email industry
is adopting.
5) As the inbox gets more crowded with spam, your users are
looking for relevant content. The age of email blasting is
over. Send valuable, informational content. Avoid
promotional words and phases, multiple exclamation points,
all capitol letters and text often used by spammers.
Nothing can trigger subscriber dissatisfaction like
continued emails that do not meet subscriber's expectations
in terms of content and frequency.
6) It is your responsibility as an email marketer for
handling unsubscribe requests promptly. You should also set
a process to enable your subscribers to update their
preferences and email address without having to jump
through a series of hoops.
7) Always test your email marketing campaign. A strategy
that worked six months ago, may not work today. You must
continuously tweak your format, design, copy style, calls
to action, subject lines segmentation content, days/times
sent, etc. Start with simple A/B split tests and repeat a
few times to verify your results.
Focus on what really matters when setting up your email
campaign. When you use these best practices within your
email marketing program, both you and your subscribers will
win.
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Kerry Johnson is webmaster http://www.skoshabizonline.com
your Online Business Ideas site.Sign up for his free home
business newsletter and receive free affiliate marketing
and home business related ebooks.
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