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Successful Email Marketing

Email communications are a key element to nearly every marketer's marketing program. Nearly every U.S. business, and 97% of households, use email regularly. Here are a few tips to successfully deliver your email broadcasts and achieve high conversion rates.

Increasing Your Delivery Rate

  1. Make Sure It Gets Delivered - Ensure your email addresses are opt-in and purchased or gathered from a reputable source.
  2. Avoid spam filters - Don't misrepresent the content of your email. Follow some of these guidelines to avoid SPAM filters:
    • Be sure your textual content to image ratio is appropriate. SPAM filters want to cut out Viagra and Cialis-type ads, so image-only emails perform poorly.
    • Be sure your subject line is optimized.
    • Avoid SPAM words
    • Avoid SPAM practices
  3. Testing, 1, 2, 3 - Send email proofs before sending to ensure accuracy and deliverability. Create accounts with different email providers such as Gmail®, Yahoo!®, Hotmail® and AOL®. Take note of problems with spam filters as well as how your email is displayed.

Increasing your open rate

  1. Craft a quality subject line - Create a compelling subject line that demands to be opened. One method is to call attention to your email by including a time restriction in your subject line. The subject line should not be misleading or vague and should correlate directly to the content of the message. Limit your subject line to 35 to 50 characters or some of it may be cut off in some clients.
  2. Send email on the right day - The best days to send emails are Tuesday, Wednesday and Thursday. The worst? Friday afternoon. Most people don't check their email as much over the weekend and when they do, there are going to be plenty other emails competing for their attention. This is especially true for business emails; the first thing many people do on Monday is clean out their email inbox.
  3. Send email regularly but on too frequently - While the hallmark of a good campaign is repetition, too much of a good thing is, well, a bad thing. Receiving multiple emails from the same company in one week can be annoying and lead to lower open rates.

Get the most out of email that are opened

  1. Make sure all email clients can read it - Send a text version of your email along with the HTML. Some people set up their email preferences to avoid images and HTML versions of email. Make sure the text is well organized and readable.
  2. Place your call to action "above the fold" - Use the top two to four inches of your email effectively. Include the: call to action, headline, logo and website navigation. Items that do not appear in this window may not be seen by the recipient, causing the campaign to perform poorly. Your call to action can be a form for people to fill out, a button to take them to your website or phone number for them to call.
  3. Write compelling copy - Give people a reason to respond to your offer. People should not read your email and ask themselves, "What's in it for me?" Make it clear upfront what your offer is and why they should respond.
  4. Backup your content with good graphics - Most good emails contain some type of graphical element. Consider Web 2.0 concepts when designing your email.

Preplanning goes a long way

  1. Know what you want to achieve - Before writing any copy or drafting a layout, first outline your objective for this email.
  2. Write scanable text - Just like websites, people tend to skip over text in emails. Keep your text short and concise. Limit paragraphs to 1 – 3 short sentences and use bullets points when possible. Above all, remember you only have a few seconds to grab your audience's attention.
  3. Proofread your work - Check for mistakes in spelling or grammar. Re‐read your message or have a someone eles proofread your copy.

Practices to Avoid

  • Do not repeat words
  • Do not use ALL CAPS
  • Do not use !, $, or 100%

Words to Avoid

  • affordable
  • Bargain or best prices
  • click here
  • congratulations
  • debt
  • financing
  • free! for free?, for free!
  • guaranteed
  • insurance
  • investment
  • just released
  • loan
  • low interest
  • new car
  • opportunity
  • paying too much
  • permanent low interest
  • pre-approved
  • refinancing
  • special invitation
  • unbelievable
  • ! or multiple !!!!
  • $ or multiple $$$
  • Win a
  • save $
  • please read
  • Free or FREE
  • One time
  • Order Now
  • Urgent

Use a Professional

Expert email technicians can help your conversion rate significantly. Contact us to help you launch a successful email campaign today.

 

 

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