On a scale of 1 to 10, how do you rank your email campaigns? Do you believe they are in the top ten and should have an excellent rating or do you rank them on the bottom of the scale, poorly rated with only a sometime average ranking? It’s interesting to note that according to online sources only %5 of email marketers give themselves an excellent rating while most fall in the average or poor category.

If you’re in the majority (average or poor) do you rate your campaigns lower because of the responses you get are not what you expected. Even if you use all the information available on how to compose and send a killer email campaign, a low response rate could be caused by something as simple as overlooking the technicalities’ of email marketing.

The technicalities of email marketing are just a matter of paying attention to detail with some common sense added in.

For example, you may think a campaign needs to be colorful, with additional (but meaningful) graphics and maybe a little music to set the buying mood.  Sounds good but in reality most recipients have several online connected devices at their disposal. A well-executed email with additional graphics may suffer from Law of Diminishing Returns, especially when your recipient decides to open your email with their cell phone.  Even with the best responsive design, there are going to be issues on some devices.

And what about those who disable images (email provider to the discriminating recipient) as a default setting, which only results in a broken looking email from you. Too many broken looking images may translate into SPAM, and you don’t want that. Bottom- line, limit the use of graphics.

And just as it is important to limit the amount of graphics contained in your email message, you should limit the amount of words you use: most recipients will not even attempt to read your message if it appears too lengthy.

Create messages for your email campaigns that are short enough to read or at least scan quickly, concise enough to bring value and interesting enough to prompt a call to action (click on the link). Keep it simple.

How often should you be sending out these email campaigns? As with most email marketing, there are no set rules, continue to perform due diligence for each mailing by checking the opens, opted-outs, and clickthrough rates. Adjust your mailing frequency by your findings, eventually you may achieve the optimal numbers you’re looking for. Adjustments never stop so keep examining your results.

And what is the point for your email campaigns: to engage your recipients. Do this by offering useful information they can pass on and act on. Once your recipients realize there is value reading your email your relationship with them will flourish: your open rates should increase and your click-through rates will climb.

Speaking of click-through rates resist the urge to include too many links that you believe are applicable to your marketing message, too many links may set off SPAM filters and it has been our experience, on rare occasions that an outside link you included in your message may be associated with a blacklist. So not only verify what you’re linking too, limit the amount you include.

While I’m on the subject of SPAM, to avoid your email campaigns triggering warnings like this (for some)“Links and other functionality has been disabled in this message . . . the message was marked as SPAM … This message was converted to plain text.”

Follow the lead of most email marketers who typically remind their recipients to add their address to their whitelist, thereby avoiding the spam filters and/or junk folder. Simply include a statement in the beginning of your email message such as:

“To ensure delivery to your inbox (not bulk or junk folders); please add
dundee.list@mailinglistservices.com to your address book.” Easy to do, with good results.

To summarize, limit:

Graphics (keep it reasonable)
Words (don’t write a book)
Links (are they relevant to your message)
Frequency (don’t send too often but enough to keep them engaged)

Just a few technicalities to get your email delivered where it’s meant to be and you’ll move up on the rating scale in no time.

Needs help with technicalities or other email marketing issues?  Contact Dundee Internet Services today!