By Elmer on March 9, 2009

BeansBox offers e-mail marketing services and management of Electronic Direct Marketing (EDM) campaigns. We care about the performance of each of our campaigns and want to ensure optimal deliverability of every e-mail messages we send. However, success of every e-mail marketing camapaign doesn’t depend only on BeansBox or any other agency tasked to manage lists, design creatives and deploy campaigns.

It also requires cooperation of clients who need to provide us with quality content, meaningful message subjects (we can recommend if we think there are better ones, anyway), and other best practices to bear in mind when trying to reach to potential customers via e-mail.

Advantages of E-mail Marketing
Why do we do e-mail marketing? Here some of the reasons why we do:

1. Global reach. Due to the nature of e-mail communication, messages get to targeted audience and traditional borders pose no obstacle to this objective.
2. Low cost. Running e-mails cost almost 80% less than when doing 5,000 direct mail campaign. Which also means it is more eco-friendly marketing campaign.

3. Less resources required. You don’t have to exert effort asking someone to fold the letters and go to the post office. A click of a button bypasses all the hassles of direct mail marketing.

4. Measurable results. Using appropriate email tracking tools, we know what part of our email content interests our targeted audience, who clicked what, and determine possible reasons why others don’t even bother to open their messages.

5. Faster audience response. A letter with promotional message could end up in trash almost after it reaches the mailbox. Emails may also be deleted or get caught by spam folders but messages who successfully reach intended recipients could elicit faster turnaround time.

So what are the best practice methods of managing successful e-mail marketing campaigns?

Best Practice E-mail Marketing Guidelines

1. Make registrations easy. But also make it reasonable. Don’t ask unneccessary questions although more information generated from a subscriber is good. It is advisable to implement double opt-in policy in order to avoid accidental or malicious registrations while maintaining a clean mailing list.
2. Create web based content that people can visit once they can’t see email content within an email message.

3. Use Alt text content for your images.  Some email clients disable images and if yours don’t have alternate text, they would never be recognized at first glance. Also, take advantage of snippets provided by e-mail systems like Gmail.

4. Avoid instances that may tag an email as spam. Don’t use IP addresses as hyperlinks. Don’t use words (free, casino or debt) or characters (multiple exclamation points, dollar signs) that trigger spam alerts.

5. Regularly clean your mailing list. A list with high instance of bounce mails (misspelled or inactive email addresses) is more likely to get mail server alerts.

6. Segment your audience. Allow subscribers to choose specific topics of newsletters to receive. This helps us ensure that messages we send are for those who ask for them and not those who don’t.

7. Provide well designed newsletters. This translates to cross-browser and multiple e-mail client compatibility as well as adhering to usability standards such as limit of links per email and content placement.

8. Test e-mail campaigns. Testing should be an integral part of regular e-mail marketing efforts. Compare two different designs, content or even message subjects and determine which one yields better results. Identify what went wrong in the previous campaign and make necessary resolutions.

10. Determine which time/day is optimal when sending messages. Days and times can vary from one campaign to another, so having a survey would be a better option. This can be asked during registration or on a separate e-mail message.

I hope these guidelines help us yield more meaningful results on our next e-mail marketing or EDM campaigns.

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