Top 10 email tips to help you hit your targets

01 Target your customers One size does not fit all – know your customers; understand your audience; segment your database in line with their needs. Just sending mass emails is not good enough and is a quick route to annoying your customers. Target your email content to the relevant customer segment and offer them a personalised offer based on their interests and previous purchasing behaviour.

02 Get the look and feel right Appreciate the relationship between design and content. Create a strong template that allows flexibility of messages whilst presenting a polished and professional branded image to your customers in each email.

03 Make sure your emails know where they are going Use the right technology to maximise your email deliverability. If your emails don’t reach the inbox you’ve wasted your time, money and negatively impacted on your brand and sender reputation. It is important to have a deliverability strategy in place. Even simple data management steps such as removal of unsubscribes, double opt-ins, bounce removals and consistent sender information will see you deliverability rates soar.

04 Refer a friend Simple advice - use refer a friend functionality on all your emails. Make them viral. Spread out your marketing communication messages. Utilise this simple and cost effective approach to increase positive word-of-mouth and word-of-web referrals about your brand.

05 Make unsubscribing simple Keep the unsubscribing process simple for your customers. Provide a clear opt-out link in your email and keep it to a minimal number of steps. A complicated unsubscribe process will infuriate your customers, turn the experience into an instant negative, and increase spam reporting; ultimately impacting on your sender reputation. If they don’t want your emails what is the point of sending them.

06 Don’t ignore the ongoing customer journey The email is just the beginning. Think about the whole journey from the first click to the very last. Is it relevant? Simple to follow? Easy to understand? Whatever the purpose of the email, be it to drive traffic to the site, purchase a product or download information make sure you signpost clearly the calls to action. Guide your customers through each stage: state the obvious, keep it simple, if not you will lose some of them along the way.

07 Testing Testing 1,2,3 Throughout the whole process, test, test and then test again. Emails can look different depending on which programme is used to view them. View your emails in each one otherwise they could look awful when they land in a customers’ inbox. Run a small campaign first, test different content, subject lines, deliverability. By learning from which emails received the best results you can avoid major mistakes in your full list campaigns. Be over cautious, otherwise you could end up confusing your customers and relegating your marketing messages to the Spam box.

08 Never forget the subject line Remember the subject line of your email is critical. In the age of spam, people make quick decisions whether on or not to read emails and the subject line is a key filter. Keep it short, to the point and avoid being generic. And make sure people know instantly which company or brand the email is from. People simply prefer to open emails from someone they know.

09 Variety is the spice of life Don’t just push the same products and messages time after time. Your customers will get bored, your products will look stale and people will switch off. Make it different: use offers, make announcements and keep content fresh. Variety keeps people opening emails.

10 Only send emails when you have something to say Send an email when you have something relevant to say. Otherwise you are wasting money on pointless communications that will leave your customers thinking you have nothing interesting to say at all. Remember, quality over quantity will make your email marketing campaigns more successful.

If you would like further information on how you can improve your email marketing campaigns talk to a member of our eMarketing team today on 0845 863 0520.