Email Marketing

Guidelines for an Effective Email Campaign

An email campaign is a series of emails used to promote your business, products or services. While the purpose of an email campaign can vary from company to company or even from one campaign to another, there are some common features that can make email campaigns as effective as possible.

• Set a Goal. Pick a goal for your email campaign, which is the focus of each email written. For example, if the campaign is to launch a new product, each email in the campaign should focus of the product launch.

• Write a one-sentence introduction. Each email should start with an explanation of  what the rest of the message contains. This is usually one to two sentences and should be intriguing enough that it convinces readers to continue.

• Be clear and Approachable. Be very clear and approachable in your Campaign. Your customer should have the impression that he is dealing with the best. Don’t be over promising or don’t use extra ordinary phrases, use simple language. If you are not too good to write then ask someone else who can do better.

• Write email content wisely. Most of the people are not interested to read long and long email. They read few sentences and then decide whether or not to continue. So avoid huge paragraphs and long content .Write short and meaningful content on the main point else you have the more chances of deleting the email and it kills the sale.

• Make your email more Personalize. Adding a person's name into an email increases email open rates. Use some merge software, to generate personalized mass emails that can include person's name that should be relevant to your vision. Your message should convince that it is not a spam message instead it should say that I got to you because I know you and I think this specific offer meets your needs. Avoid using generic greetings such as "Dear Friends."

• Include an opt-out (unsubscribe) function in your email, even if that is just an email address where people can send a message to unsubscribe.

• It should have trustworthy and familiar preview. Most of the people judge if an email is trustworthy by previewing it, without opening it. They take this decision based on the sender's email address and email subject line. Most of them make the decision to click on the "report spam" or "junk" button using the subject line. To avoid this problems, work on basic fields of email i.e. sender’s name and Subject line. Make sure, your sender name should not be hidden it should be visible and easily     recognized. Make it    clear that the email is coming from someone your costumer knows or cares about, don’t make it a mystery. It’s very necessary to approach your customer. Avoid sending marketing emails from junk-looking email addresses.Send your marketing emails from an email address that creates the trustworthy impression. Knowing and trusting the sender is the primary reason for opening an email.
  
  
  Avoid subject lines that contain words that are popular on spam messages, such as "free" or "money".   Make the subject line appealing to the recipient so they’ll open the email .Use the subject line to sum up the email content. The subject line should describe the email purpose. Avoid long Subject lines make it short and meaningful. Keep your subject line to 50 characters or less. Avoid capital letters, promotional texts or exclamation marks in Subject line.
  
  Make the email content significant and relevant to the recipients. Avoid including images, scripts or any other content that is supposed to be downloaded from the web, when the email is rendered on screen.

• Your marketing emails should be clearly readable. Avoid large images in email and if possible then send your marketing emails as plain text. It will be smaller in size and readable on any email platform. If it needs to include images in your email content, make sure your email text content makes sense for readers, even if the images are not displayed. Avoid inserting email images that are supposed to be downloaded from the web, as they are automatically blocked by most email client software programs.

• Your email or newsletter must be the perfect balance of text, white space, images and links. Keep things short. Keep the message consistent from title throughout the email body; if you overwhelm customers with too much or too varied information, they are liable to just delete the whole thing and you've lost a golden opportunity.

• Collect Useful data only. Most of the email marketers are collecting personal data that makes no use for them. It has no sense to collect huge personal data from users at the time of sign up and then not using it. Collecting such a big data is really a barrier to getting people to sign up for your email list. So  make sure if you are collecting  data then actually put it to use.

• Add information about your company. Be sure that, in a sidebar or at the bottom of the email, you include this information. This may be a two- to three-sentence description of you or the business. It should contain contact information, such as a physical or mailing address, phone number, website address and email.

• Break up the copy with visual elements. Choose ways to break up the body copy of the email so that it doesn't look like one big mass of text. Using one or two different font styles, font colors, bold or italicized copy are a few options. Pictures and graphics are also helpful.

• Your email marketing strategy as a whole must be an integrate part of the overall marketing strategy. Similarly, the design (and the content) of your newsletter or email marketing campaign should reflect your corporate design.

Guidelines for an Effective Email Subject

Email subject lines are key in business emails, email marketing, and personal emails. When you write effective, relevant subject lines, people are more likely to open your email and receive the message you intend for them. Here are some tips for writing effective subject lines.

• Know your audience. Your subject line needs to appeal to your audience. It must contain information that will motivate the reader to open the email and take action.

• Show the reader what's in it for him or her. Make appropriate promises. If you overpromise, you may get the reader to open the email, but it can create backlash when the promises are not fulfilled.

• Give an overview of the email. The subject line should give the reader a preview of what the email contains.

• Put it short. Your subject line needs to contain 10 words or less. If it is longer, it takes too long to read and can get cut off.