Marketing Automation - Top 10 Email Marketing Tips from SalesCatalysts.com
  1. Send with Permission
    Be sure to only email people who have really shown interests in receiving your email. Sending unsolicited emails, which also called spamming, not only damages your company image, creates angry customers, ruins your campaign effectiveness, but is also law breaking in most countries. Be careful to companies who claim to offer email address lists for your email campaigns (Imagine one who receives tons of advertisement emails every day, spend an hour to move all these junk mails to the trash box on a day to day basis. Will he/she be happy to receive the next email from you if he/she does not know you in advance.)

  2. Put Your Name in the From: field with a Real Return Email Address.
    Put your name in the From: field of the message; it can be you own name, your department and/or your company name, but it must be a real one, and the same for your return email address. Doing these gives three benefits: 1. it lets the readers recognize you and really read your message as people nowadays tend to read emails only from whom they can recognize, and they read these first; 2. it minimizes the triggering of false positives (false spamming alarm) of Anti-SPAM softwares; 3. to be compliant with law – countries like the US, Australia, have specific regulations & penalties governing the sending of legitimate email, especially on the requirements of stating real and accurate contact information.

  3. Give a Meaningful Subject
    A meaningful subject not only gets your audience attention instantly but also differentiates your email from spams. It is also a requirement in law in some countries (US – CAN SPAM Act 2003). A meaningful subject is one with real relevancy with the message content. Another hint is to make it within 30 - 50 characters only, which is long enough for a meaningful headline while short enough to get it fully displayed in most email programs.

  4. Targeted Marketing: Segment your List and Send Relevant Information Only
    Segment your audience database based on demographics data, interests and subscription preferences; and send content where each reader group is really interested in. Sending relevant information maximize readers’ reading interest and action rate while blindnessly broadcast message just jeopardizing your relationship with the customers and their interests in reading your future emails.

  5. Keep Message Short – link to your website for details
    As a marketer you surely have lots to tell. Be reminded on the habit of email reading, the use of Internet nowadays, which is fast and simple. People will not read long emails. If they want to know more, they will simply read it elsewhere such as your website. So keep your messages short, allow them to identify your key topics within 30 seconds and to finish the whole email within 3 minutes. Put words like “……. more” at the end of the long stories and a hyperlink to the web copy is just perfect to everyone.

  6. Keep Message Personal
    Keep your message personal, from salutations, greetings, content details to message tone. Get them linked with you and your company. People love warm, personal messages which look as if you are writing them personally instead of cold marketing messages like PUBLIC NOTICES. Greetings like “Dear sir/madam” are no longer acceptable in today’s marketing. So if you can convert your PUBLIC NOTICE into a personal message, you are successful.

  7. Minimize False Positive – words you should avoid
    False positives are false alarms of spamming from anti-spamming softwares where the sender has no intention on spamming at all. Spam filters generally use scoring matrix which counts the occurrences of high risk words like “Free, XX% Discount, XX% Off, Act Now, Call” in the message content, or the use of fully capitalized subject, or excessive use of punctuations like multiple exclamation marks “!!!!” anywhere, where spammers love to use. So try to avoid these common mistakes which minimize false positives but maximize your email deliverability.

  8. Send with Consistency
    Do everything with consistency, from design style, From: field, message tone, subject format to mailing frequency; do with consistency. Consistency matches readers’ expectation allows them to recognize your message instantly, easily, increase the readership and help reinforcing your corporate image.

  9. Send in Smart Hours and Days
    Smart hours are times where your readers can read your message freely, comfortably and happily. For business readers, send in at least an hour after they arrive at office and an hour before they leave the office. Researches shown that people tends to have a glimpse on the emails only which are received over night when they first arrive at office but will read new emails one by one in more detail later on. And people lose their concentration on email reading too when they are thinking to leave the office. Similarly, avoid Monday and Friday. This is bad especially if your message is asking them to take action. While for consumer readers, the opposite may apply. So to maximize your reading rate and action rate, do find, try and send your emails in smart hours and days.

  10. Send with a Smart Frequency
    If you do not send enough, you are just giving up relationship building and marketing opportunities. If you send too frequently, people will lose interest on reading and may just ignore them. So do send with a smart frequency; a smart frequency can be one which a reader specify when he signs up your newsletter (for example, a bi-weekly newsletter, a weekly review, or a daily market information update) or one which is generally accepted by the public, say once each month. A general principle is not to send more than twice a month.
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