‘Email marketing’ is all about using email to promote products and/or services. However, a better definition of email marketing is about using email to cultivate relationships with potential customers in addition to clients.
Email marketing is one segment of digital marketing. This form of marketing looks at, for example, promotions using websites, social media and blogs. It is the same as the traditional direct mail except that instead of sending messages through the post, mail is sent electronically via email.
Here is a method that is helping world-class digital marketers master e-mail marketing
Email marketing best practices
Test the Content of Your Email
Test your content before you send your campaign. This is so you don’t send emails with data that is missing or broken links. It’s best practice to send a few test emails to yourself. This is to ensure everything works and looks the way you want it to.
Track the Clicks and Open Rates Your Emails get
Tracking these metrics gives you an idea of the kinds of content your subscribers respond to. This can inform future campaign decisions.
Avoid Content That is Considered to be Spammy
As an email and digital marketer, it is your goal to send campaigns that prompt subscribers to engage with your company and brand. Ensure that your content remains relevant. Most importantly, as a digital marketer you need to make sure that it remains consistent with your brand. Make use of your subject line in order to inform your subscribers about what’s in your email.
Spam filters are always on the look-out for certain types of content. This means that you need to avoid using words that are all in capital letters. Also, you need to avoid using too many exclamation points as well as words or phrases that could be considered to be gimmicky.
Build an Email List That is Clean
If you’ve been accumulating email addresses for a while, but haven’t sent anything to your subscribers yet, it’s a good practice to send a quick reminder campaign. This is to make sure they still want to receive emails from you. Although you may have collected addresses through an opt-in form on your website, we recommend you confirm their interest in receiving messaging from you before you send out your first campaign.
Provide an unsubscribe link in every email campaign that you send. This is to comply with anti-spam laws.
Avoid Inserting Excess Code Into Your Emails
Email makes use of HTML for content structure. However, it doesn’t support JavaScript and CSS in the manner that pages on your website do.
Many email applications will block JavaScript. This is as a security measure to prevent viruses. Thus, we recommend that you avoid JavaScript elements, such as form submit buttons and pop-up windows in your campaigns. If you copy HTML code from an existing web page, remember to remove all the JavaScript.
Usually, CSS is placed in HTML <head> tags. However, most e-mail clients take the <head> and <body> tags out of your e-mail’s HTML. If you use CSS, make sure that it is inline with your HTML code.
URLs and image files are an exemption to the rule of no excess code. When you code your email marketing template, include the following:
- Absolute paths,
- The full URLs that link back to your server for image sources and
- Click-through URLs.
The three most important stats in email marketing
These are:
- Open Rate which is the percentage of people who open an email.
- Response Rate which is the percentage of prospects who respond to an email.
- Conversion Rate which looks at the percentage of responding prospects who subsequently buy for your company.
Most email marketers focus on Open Rate. This is because it’s by far the easiest metric to measure. Very focus on Conversion Rate. This is because it’s very difficult to rate. However, it’s the Conversion Rate metric that’s most important because the more people who covert from your email – in other words, those people who make a purchase because of your email – means the more money you make.
Get in touch with the Digital School of Marketing
Want to learn more about email marketing and digital marketing? The Digital School of Marketing’s Digital Marketing Course will help you to do this! For more information about this and our additional online digital marketing courses, please visit our website.
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