It never ceases to amaze me how many people claim to be great email marketers – yet everyday I see emails landing in my inbox that don’t pay attention to the guidelines.
With so many seminars, blogs, books, etc out there, how does someone ignore these things?
Here’s a few reminders for those of you out there who really want to create an effective email campaign and not waste your money.
Rule 1. Images are not the be all and end all of email. Don’t make your email creative either one big image, or multiple images with no html text. With almost every email client out there offering readers the option of choosing whether or not to view images – how do you expect anyone to know if they want to read your email, if they can’t see it?
Rule 2. Use the top 4-6 inches of your email wisely. Don’t block it up with large graphics. If your reader has to scroll to understand what is in the email, chances are they will find it too much work and give up. This is especially important if you are renting an email list, as most list owners will have a header that identifies why someone is receiving the email.
Rule 3. Tell people why they are getting the email – it’s okay to remind them up front – it gives credibility to you. Again, making a reader scroll to remember why they are receiving the email is more work than most people want to do.
Rule 4. Don’t say everything in the email. The email is meant to be a teaser to entice someone to click through to your landing page and/or website. If you tell them everything in the email – why would they visit your website?
Rule 5. Keep your subject lines short and compelling. 50 characters or less with spaces. I once was told a great line about a company who sold shitake mushrooms who thought they used a great subject line with the name of their mushrooms at the end… Where do you think the line got cut off? I really love that line and wish I could remember who told it to me so I could quote them appropriately. There are many great tools out there that will help you see where your subject line might get cut off.. EmailLabs has a great one of these. Don’t forget to make sure you entice your reader to open that subect line. You can read more rants about how to do that in a previous post of mine, I won’t repeat those again.
Rule 6. TEST.. Check to see how your email looks in various web browsers. Outlook is not the only email client in the world. Every email client renders your templates differently and there are many a guideline for how to address designing for each email client. Card Communications made a point of notifying their subscribers of these issues and providing tips on how to avoid these design pitfalls in their January Newsletter. If you haven’t printed it out and given it to your designer, I suggest you take a read.
I could go on and on (and those of you who know me, know I’m not kidding) about these things as effective email campaigns are both an art and a science. However, I think you might get tired of scrolling, so I thought I might just point out the most common mistakes I see on a daily basis.
Rebecca Atkinson (Muller) is a freelance web marketing/analytics consultant with more than seven years of direct experience helping businesses create and implement online marketing and communications strategies. Her clients come from all industries including finance, technology and not-for-profit. She specializes in helping her clients determine how to improve their advertising programs, focusing on visitor behaviour – beyond the inital click-through. Full bio available