EMAIL MARKETING TIPS

Tuesday, 24 February 2009 03:39

Our top ten tips for maximising the effectiveness of emails Interested in email marketing but not sure where to begin?

Cambridge Creative Media have compiled the following top ten tips to make sure your email campaigns are sucessfully delivered and generate positive results.

Get consent (Opt in / Opt out)
To ensure compliance with Data Protection legislation make sure your email marketing is permission-based.
Which means when targeting B2C (business to consumer) you will need to make sure they have
opted in to receive emails. However if targeting B2B (business to business) no such opt in is required, but
you must give them the opportunity to opt out. Cambridge Creative Media have a wide selection of both consumer and business email addresses - visit www.cambridgecreativemedia.co.uk to find out more.

Plan your campaign
What end result do you want from your email campaign? If its an increase in sales, think about how
you are going to achieve this. Special offers could be designed to appeal to particular customers. Do you
want to invite customers to an exclusive shopping evening?

Call to action
A call to action is vital in every email you send, it could be inviting customers to download vouchers,
agreeing to attend an event or purchasing a discounted product online.

Traceable links
Links to your site are very important so customers have the option of finding out more on individual
offers. It’s also key to monitor customer click-throughs as this can be used to measure how successful the
campaign was.

Subject line
Another major influence on the opening and reading of the emails is the subject line. Avoid using words
such as free, and using CAPITALS and exclamation marks.

Designing the html
Make sure your design works! An HTML design will make your email look more professional, but if you
don’t get it right, it will fail to render correctly across all inboxes or will get caught in spam filters. If in
doubt, try using the free templates provided by email marketing solutions.

Targeting
Ensuring your email marketing is sent with the right content to the right potential customers and at the
right time requires targeting. By tailoring the email content to different customer groups will significantly
increase your success rate.

Trials
Find out what works best for your email campaign. Trials are important as it gives you the option to split
test, by sending slight variations of your email to different customer groups in order to work out what
works and what doesn't.

Deliverability
The biggest obstacle you will come across is getting your message into the inboxes of your customers.
Make sure you use an authorised email service provider with good deliverabilty rates.

Measuring the email campaign
Measuring and analysing your results is the key to future success. Finding out how many of the emails
you sent were delivered and opened, which of the links were the most successful. You can use all this
information to fine-tune and improve your next campaign. Also remember to ask those customers that
call in how they heard about you.

For more information on Email Marketing in and around Cambridge, Essex, Hertfordshire or to get help started marketing your business effectively then call us on 0800 077 60 35 or visit www.cambridgecreativemedia.co.uk