13 vital tips for successful email campaigns

This post forms part of our Science of Hosting campaign. 

One of the most established forms of online marketing, email is an inexpensive and proven method for increasing sales and brand support when done properly. It’s hard to get right, but here are some essential tips for increasing the success of your email and eshot campaigns.

1.Keep text to a minimum

Unless you’re sending something designed to be informative (like a newsletter), keep information to a minimum. All emails benefit from teasers, and don’t post whole blog articles or give an exhaustive list of information about a product or service – you want to give the reader a reason to click through to your website. Your landing page should have all the information the reader needs to make a decision – think of the email as the trailer, and the landing page as the full-length movie.

2.Target recipients as closely as possible

A well-targeted database will help you direct your emails at the right people and boost your click-through rates and conversions as well as reducing your unsubscribes. Divide your customer base up into areas of interest, and send each group of customers a specifically targeted email. This is easy to do if you have customers who buy a particular product or service. If you cover multiple areas of interest and have a mixed customer base, then create a sign up page where customers can choose which areas they’re interested in to determine which emails they receive.

3. Track, track and re-track

The more stats you have at your fingertips, the easier it is to improve your email campaigns. Have a look into software or services to help you track email opens, clicks, unsubscribes and so on. Are you getting a relatively high amount of opens? Then you’re doing a great job with your subject lines.Do you have a low click-through rate? Then assess your content – maybe the reader is feeling overwhelmed, confused or bored. Experimenting is crucial, so try A/B testing with different subject lines, content or text to see which styles are the most popular. You can try sending two different emails to a small sample of people and see which generates the most response before sending it to the rest.

4.Timing is everything

Send out emails within traditional working hours. It’s also a good idea to avoid lunchtime (12-2pm) and after 3pm, particularly if your database consists mainly of people’s work email addresses. A lot of companies also avoid Fridays completely. If you have the time and resources, do a series of tests at different times of day to see what works well for you.

5.Use emails sparingly

Everyone hates spammers, so avoid bombarding your recipients with emails. The more frequently you send out emails, the higher your unsubscribe rate is likely to get. A good way to test if you’re sending the right number of emails is to get a friend to register for your mailing list, and get their feedback on whether you’re sending too many or too few.

6.Keep your database up to date

If emails bounce, then it’s a good time to review contact details. If you’re working with a huge number of subscribers, then remove bouncing email addresses from your list. If you’re working with a relatively small number of clients, then it’s probably time to follow up on their change of contact details, particularly if the same email address is used for important notices or payments. Leaving your database for long periods of time is an easy thing to do, but it will become less useful to you over time if you don’t cultivate it.

7.Proof read emails carefully

Customers are quick to spot mistakes in emails, so proof read carefully! It’s always best to get someone who hasn’t read it before to give it a thorough checking before you send it. Don’t forget to check all the links carefully as well, particularly if you’ve gone through several different revisions or have built the email using local or internal links.

8.Use attention-grabbing subject lines

More specifically, use relevant attention-grabbing subject lines. Whilst the title is the first factor in determining a reader’s interest, it’s useless to ‘trick’ people into opening your emails through using unrelated, crazy titles. They’ll just feel disappointed when they read the email and find out that you’re actually promoting hard drives instead of pet unicorns. Depending on your customer base, you may also end up with a very confused and/or disgruntled set of clients!

Also avoid spammy-looking headlines, e.g. all caps, multiple exclamation marks, ‘££££’. Get the theme of your email across quickly and succinctly, and use teasers carefully.

9.Give your readers options

Offer different versions of emails for your recipients – plain text, HTML, and browser versions provide plenty of choice and make life easier for readers. If you run a regular or timeless feature, then think about putting copies of past emails in an online archive for people/customers to access when they wish (be careful how you promote this as you may find people unsubscribe).

However, don’t use alternative viewing methods as a reason to cut cross-browser and cross-client compatibility checking – your email is a reflection on you and your company, so always test as much as you can across all the big clients to avoid embarrassment!

10. Provide clear calls to action

What do you want your reader to do? Don’t send them in too many different directions by including lots of links/messages, particularly if you’re sending an email to promote a single product or service. It’s too confusing and overwhelming. For single-focus emails, include a clear link or button fairly near the top to grab the more impatient readers, and one at the bottom so people reading to the end don’t have to scroll back up. If you can get away with only a few sentences that don’t go below the fold of the page or screen, then take that approach.

Use clear, instructional text such as ‘Click here’ or ‘Find out more’ to direct readers to your landing page/website. Buttons and large text are more eye-catching, but use sparingly for best results.

11. Place your unsubscribe link carefully

An unsubscribe link at the top of your email makes it easy for recipients to unsubscribe without even thinking about it. Get them to at least give the content a glance by placing your unsubscribe link at the bottom of your email.

12. Streamline the design process

Design and develop a template (or two) which you can easily modify for your emails. One of the biggest problems with sending emails is cross-client compatibility, so having a template that you don’t need to extensively test every time will help you avoid major headaches. It will also help your emails look more consistent. If this is something you’ve been putting off because it’s a lot of work, now’s the time to do it – it will save you a lot of time and hassle in the long run.

A useful foundation for a basic email template is to make good use of space and coding, so that you can simply replace banners, buttons, colours and images for a completely different look without too much effort.

13. Get feedback

Ask a few friends to register for your mailing list, then get their feedback on what they thought. If they can’t even remember that you sent them an email, then it’s time to work on your subject lines! You may also want to ask what they liked and didn’t like about the content and presentation. This is a particularly useful exercise to carry out over a long period if you have multiple mailing lists and/or groups, because it’s easy to neglect one without realising.

Have you got any tips or experience of using mailing lists and email campaigns? Let us know in the comments!