jammmedia’s top html email marketing tips
03. Mar, 2010
jammmedia's top ten html email marketing tips
You may or may not be aware that we at jammmedia have the pleasure of editing the Creative Boom website for Reading. We are a web and graphic design studio based just outside of Reading centre.
We will be bringing you lots of helpful tips in the coming months, starting with our top tips for getting email marketing right!
If there is anything you would like us to cover in the coming months, please just comment below or email us at reading@creativeboom.co.uk.
1. Avoid spamming
To make sure your emails don’t end up in spam land - avoid using words such as '£££', 'DISCOUNT', '!!!', 'FREE' (and naughty words!!) in the subject line and the content of your email. Most email marketing software give you a spam rating for your email before you send it out so that you can amend the content if you need to.
2. Make your click throughs bold and clear
Make sure your links and call to actions are bold and obvious. This means bolding, underlining and/or using a contrasting colour for links to distinguish from normal static text. Try to include text links as well as a graphical buttons just in case your subscriber has their images disabled by default.
3. Keep it personal
By simply starting your email with “Hi [subscriber_name]” instead of the general “Hi there”, you can increase both your reading and click-thru rates by vast amount.* If you want to try and run your own test on this, try segmenting your email send, one half with no personalisation, and the other half with personalisation. Look at your reports a week after the send and see what works best ... and run with it ...
4. Pick your send day wisely
Online research analysts have said that the best days to send email to your subscribers are Tuesday and Wednesday, as this is when people are more receptive to communication. If you have a normal 9-5 job, think about how stressed, busy and tired you are on a Monday, and how excited you are on a Friday to get out of the office. Best avoid those days to send an email. But again, test it and see what works for you. You may find your particular readers open their emails on a weekend, theres no reason why you can't send an email on a Sunday if it works!
5. Consistency is key for strengthening your brand
Make sure you keep the look and feel consistent from issue to issue. This will help to maintain and strengthen your brand. Have a graphic designer come up with a striking template that you can use time and time again, that small cost at the beginning of your campaign really does make the difference.
6. On time, every time
After time, your subscribers will come to expect your email to arrive in their inbox on the same day and time, meaning that they are generally more receptive to any special offers or promotions you may include.
7. Grab attention quickly with your subject line
You have about half a second to catch your subscribers attention with the subject line of your email. Try to specify a benefit that the subscriber can expect by reading your email. Give them a bit of money off or entice them in to entering an exciting competition, this tends to works wonders!
8. The Preview Pane
Email clients such as Outlook show a preview of an email when it’s selected in your inbox. Try to include some interesting content at the very top of your email to grab your readers attention. Having a list of contents at the top of the email will help the reader establish which parts they would like to read, having the link click straight through to the coresponding part in the email will be really helpful for the reader and stop them getting overwhelmed, especially with a text heavy email. Help them choose the content they are most interested in.
9. Find out what works for you - test, test and test again
The key to email marketing is to TEST, TEST, and TEST again! Get to know what works for you, test positions of links, test graphical links versus text links, test subject lines. Email marketing software will help you create tests and report on them.
10. Some interesting statistics
The average open rate, based on studies in 2009 is 22.2% and the average click-through rate is 5.9%.*
At jammmedia, we have years of valuable experience designing, building and sending email communications to and for clients big and small, so if you need any help or advice, just give us a call, visit our website or email on info@jammmedia.co.uk.
*Further reading:
mailchimp.com - resources and charts
campaignmonitor.com - email clients stats
Author
11.
Organizations seem to ignore the single largest online advertising venue available: their own regular external emails.
You have a website.
You send emails.
Why not make every email and every sender part of your marketing effort?
No other marketing or advertising medium is as trusted as an email between people that know each other (as opposed to mass emails). These emails are always read and typically kept.
WrapMail offers a solution that is server-based (i.e. compatible with all email clients), has a complete back-office with a WrapMaker, reporting etc and only charge $5 per user per month.
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This is all very new to me and this article really opened my eyes.Many thanks for sharing with us your wisdom.