Monday, 22 July 2013

The Do's and Don’ts of Email Marketing

Posted by Unknown at 3:23 pm Labels: , , , , ,
In email marketing it's important to make sure you are doing everything possible to accommodate your subscribers especially as the environment they are viewing your emails in is rapidly changing. 

As it is always changing this makes the need to test your emails in different email clients and devices become more and more valuable, but as always sometimes it is hard to keep track of what you should be doing. 

To help you stay on the right track we have listed the do’s and don’ts of email marketing:
You should:
  • Alt Text - Add Alt text to all of your images, this will let the recipient know they haven’t downloaded the images and also give them a good indication on what each image will display.  
  • Be Social – Include hyperlinks to your social network pages so people can follow your company on them. Also if the email is a promotional one then you may want to allow the recipients to share it on their own social network pages or even forward it to a friend. Those options are all available within the email footer.
  • View in Browser link – As there are so many different email clients and devices out there it’s almost impossible to make sure your email works perfectly in all of them. Due to this it is always a good idea to provide an escape for the recipient. By adding a “view in browser” link at the top of your email it allows them to view the email outside of the email client which will most likely display the email as intended. 
  • Provide Buttons – As more and more people are viewing emails on mobile devices the email is no longer being controlled by a mouse. As people are moving around the email with their fingertips its best to respond to that and make it easier for them. Add buttons rather than linked text to allow users to tap them, the advisable button size is at least 44px by 44px.
  • Mobile Friendly - You also can make some simple changes to your email design to make it more mobile friendly. Allow more space, keep content to a minimum and don't include large images as they may take too long to download and take too much space in your email. You can easily include media queries to hide images or content by applying styles such as "display:none!important;".
  • Reports & Statistics – View your Reports & Statistics to see how your previous email campaigns have done. This allows you to reflect on what has gone well in the past and of course what didn't so you can constantly improve your future campaigns. 
  • Data Collection – Use the data you have collected from your subscribers so you can segment your mailing list into more targeted groups. By doing this you will be able to send specific emails to those groups making them more relevant which will help to increase your open and click-through rate.
You shouldn't:
  • Mailto: Hyperlinks - Some people tend to hide email addresses in a mailto: link such as having a hyperlink with text “email us” in your email. This is not a good idea as outlook.com ignores it; it is best to display the email address you are asking the recipients to send to such as info@graphicmail.co.uk. By doing this even if the mailto: link doesn't work the recipient can still see the email address so they know who they should send to.
  • Long Images – We have found that Outlook Desktop has limitations on the size of any one image it will display. So if you are using very large images and it is not fully showing in outlook then you will likely need to slice the image into 2 so it is no longer 1 big image. If you do this it is also advisable to use this code <img src="image.jpg" style="display:block;"> to ensure it keeps the sliced images together giving the illusion that it is still 1 image.
  • Click Here - As many people are now viewing emails on mobiles and devices the action to “click” a mouse is no longer possible as people are using their fingertips to move around the email. As that is mostly the case it is a good idea to change the hyperlinked text or buttons from “click here” to “view and register” or similar so you are no longer telling them to take an action they won't be doing.
  • Subscribe Process – Make the subscribing process as easy as possible; if you ask for too much information then you may put your potential subscribers off. You can create as many subscription forms as you would like via your account so don’t cram all of the questions into one form as you always have the option to collect more data at a later date.
These are some of the important actions we believe you should consider when setting up your email campaign. If you have any of your own that you would like to share with us then please add them in the comments below.
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