What Can You Do To Help Ensure Excellent Delivery on your Email Marketing Campaigns
1) Keep Your List Healthy
Be sure everyone on your list has specifically requested info from or about your company. If they opted in, just make sure you’re not mailing previously unsubscribed or bounced addresses.
And remember that permission is not forever. If someone gave you their business card at a tradeshow two years ago, it’s not a good idea to send them their first email today. Don’t wait more than a 2 weeks to mail a new contact, otherwise large segments of your list will begin to forget their interaction with your company. This will lead to a lower open rate and cause some people to unwittingly report your email as spam.
2) Design With Delivery in Mind
Don’t just put a big image together in Illustrator and think you’re good to go. Make sure the email is easy to read (consider paragraph length and fonts), that images are being used only to enhance the HTML / text content (not as the sole content), and that the email is something that the subscriber would expect to receive based upon their sign-up.
If you use a template from an email marketing service provider like VerticalResponse – then you’re probably just fine here. However, if you write your own HTML you’ll need to make sure it’s validated and that you’re using code that is supported by all the various email clients out there (email clients are not as capable as web browsers when it comes to rendering HTML). Need more tips on design, check out VerticalResponse’s tutorials and webinars.
3) Treat Subscribers with Respect
Don’t mail subscribers too often and clutter their inbox with mail they don’t want. Set expectations at the time of sign-up: “This is what we’re going to send you. And we’re going to send it to you this often.” Also try to maintain a relationship with the subscriber. Don’t mail them sporadically once or twice a year and expect them to take action with your emails. How often is too often? How sporadic is too sporadic? I would say once a week to once a months is a good range to keep in mind, depending on the type of messages you’re sending out.
