eTravel Project

Most marketers struggle with their email campaigns. Still email remains one of the most powerful tools to stay in touch with your leads and communicate the value of your brand. Since the introduction of email marketing, advocates of the medium have been quite involved in stressing the importance of using the best practices in the industry. With the advent of web 2.0 even email needs a makeover in order not to lose its power. There are quite a few steps that marketers tend to overlook in their email blasts. Here is a checklist of what a good email marketing campaign should include:

1- Relevance
Is your message compelling to the very people you are trying to reach? Are you providing valuable information to them? If you hesitate to answer yes, it means that the email is more about your business rather than your customers’ needs. If you want to improve your conversion rate, consider to send something more relevant for your audience.

2- Permission
Are you using an opt-in email list? The best lists of emails are the ones you collect yourself on your company’s web site and make sure you always ask for permission to use those emails. It is good practice and it builds trust. You can partner with businesses you know and work with to send email blasts to a new audience with a similar profile of the customers you already have, but do not rent outside lists of emails. These are low quality lists. Their conversion rate is extremely low. It does not pay off at the end.

3- Deliverability
You should use a static IP address for your email marketing campaigns. A static IP address stays always the same and identifies your business. Make sure you are using a static IP address with your email hosting provider. Static IP addresses are affordable nowadays. Also your DNS should be correct and complete. Spammers forge their true identity by manipulating IP addresses and DNS entries. It is your business reputation at stake. You can run a DNS report of your site at www.dnsreport.com. Insert a simple line on the top of the body of your email asking your customers to add your email address to their address book to ensure deliverability.

4- SPF record
SPF stands for Sender Permitted Framework. It is a little piece of information that goes with your DNS and identifies which IP address is permitted to send email for your domain name. Refer to www.openspf.org for more information.

5- CAN-SPAM
You do not want to be listed as a spammer and be blocked from sending emails. You need to comply to the CAN-SPAM act scrupulously. The act states that the email needs to have a clear and easy unsubscribing process; opt-out requests must be honored within ten days; subject lines must be relevant to the content and not misleading; the email must have a physical mailing address.

6- Readibility
Your email looks great, but make sure that arrives the same way you see it to your intended audience. Lately, new email management programs offer the option to turn off images in people’s inbox. If made up of images only, your email risks being delivered as a blank message. Make sure that your email is not just images. Also, above the email body it is useful to specify the URL of the email where they can see the images (ie. If you cannot see the images, please visit “URL of the email blast”).

Use bullet points and just a few lines of text. Be brief, but compelling. People do not really read emails, but screen them. Highlight the most important features of your products/services, but not all of them. The idea is to use the email as a teaser and have people come to your site.

7- Header & footer
This is the most underutilized space on an email. Marketers do not pay much attention to the header and footer in their email marketing campaign losing opportunities. The header could integrate the basic navigation of your web site. If a customer is not interested in anything you are communicating in your message, he/she can always click on the tabs of the header and visit your site. The footer is the perfect to add your physical address, privacy policy and unsubscribe link.

8- Subject line
This is probably the most overlooked item of any email blast: usually left at the end and/or too general. After all that work you have gone through, it is a shame you do not spend some more time to come up with a perfect subject line. Wait a few extra moments to find a good subject line, brainstorm with your department and summarize in a few words a call to action. If you overlook at the subject line of your email body, you end up with another missed opportunity to further interact with your customers.

9- TEST, TEST, TEST
Send the email within your department: more eyes looking at it are always better. Be aware of any typo. Read it as many times as you can. Print it and see how it looks. Test your email with the main free email providers Hotmail, Aol, Yahoo, Gmail, etc. It is always safe to test.

You can also divide your database into clusters and test the subject line and/or the copy to measure the effectiveness of your message.

10- Information is power
It does not matter how much you know now. You always need to keep informed and to stay one pace ahead of the competition. There are numerous resources out there to get all the information you need. The good news is that you do not have to spend anything for this. Some good web sites are: www.emailexperience.org, www.emailstatcenter.com, www.emailmarketingreports.com, etc.