Sending Awesome Email
Despite the ballooning of social platforms and the relative ease of targeted adverts, to this day email is still widely considered the holy grail of marketing.
It’s personal, reaches business-minded people of all ages and – once safely in the sanctum of someone’s inbox – generally receives a lot more attention. When done right, it’s also a very credible form of communication. But a lot of brands, companies and agencies have failed to develop their email strategy since its inception.
There’s a lot of advice out there for optimizing email, some of it incredibly in-depth, some of it tongue-in-cheek. My absolute favourite has to be this gem from Dan Munz: “How to write a good email: 1. Write your email. 2. Delete most of it. 3. Send.”
For anyone who uses email on a regular basis it probably strikes a chord. But thinking things through is only part of how you get the most out of email. Once you’ve pulled together a customer list and set your KPIs, you need to set about building something that amplifies your brand without degenerating into spam.
So here are five top tips for sending awesome email.
1. Invest in an email marketing service. This is essential – long gone are the days of ‘mail merge’. MailChimp is great and very intuitive for first-timers, but if you have the budget go with Campaign Monitor for a more robust email marketing solution. As you’d expect, you can create and save templates, analyse metrics, generate reports, manage subscriber lists, carry out A/B testing and so on. All the designs are completely responsive too; an absolute must in the age of smartphones.
2. Personalise your messages. Email gives you something other channels don’t – the ability to create personal touches on a large scale. Modern software makes personalised greetings incredibly easy, and they go a long way. Always make your subject line short, sweet and to the point – try and cap it at 50 characters. It’s difficult to get used to at first, but it’s very effective for getting those all-important opens.
3. Make your content engaging. Once the recipient has opened your email, capture their attention with a tasteful, clean design in line with your brand guidelines. Bring the email to life with striking imagery. Keep text concise and to a minimum – people have busy lives. Don’t use ten words when half as many gets your point across. Signpost weblinks and other calls to action clearly.
Bonus tip. Image size needs to be kept as small as possible, especially if people are looking at emails on their smart phones on 3G/4G. Nobody’s going to wait more than a second for an image to appear, so if it loads slowly your email probably wont get read at all.
We recommend TinyPNG for resizing your images.
4. Give your recipients value. You can ensure your content looks and sounds good, and make it easy to consume. But consider why you’re sending it out in the first place. Only email when you have something of value to offer. Roundup news into one digest. Give people information they need. Highlight competitions as part of a wider package. Otherwise you’ll find yourself with a ton of unhappy unsubscribers on your hands.
5. Create a schedule and stick to it. Frequency is important – it’s up to you to decide what works best for your subscribers. Ideally, you should aim to send an email at least once a month, but feel free to skip a month if you don’t have anything truly useful to say. Be mindful of upcoming holidays where people will be out of the office, or special events you can tap into.