Email Marketing- Best Practices

What Is Email Marketing?

‘The use of email within your marketing efforts to promote a business’s products and services, as well as incentivize customer loyalty. Email marketing is a form of marketing that can make the customers on your email list aware of new products, discounts, and other services. It can also be a softer sell to educate your audience on the value of your brand or keep them engaged between purchases (MailChimp, n.d)’.

The first good practice of email marketing is making sure the emails that are sent are all compatible on many, if not all devices. It is very important that text, images, and links are all well visible and fast at loading for visitors to keep attention and retention. ‘The percentage of emails opened on mobile in 2018 depends on several factors such as age, geolocation, industry, type of email, and many others. Despite these discrepancies, reports always seem to conclude that at least 50% of emails were opened on mobile in 2018 (Campaign monitor, 2020)’

Another practice of email marketing is personalization, this means that using personal information like names of the customer visiting the email will be much more likely to be engaged in the email that was received. Rather than a generic address at the start of the email, this will build more of a relationship and conversation. ‘Personalizing user experience increases sales thanks to a more targeted approach. 58% of all revenue is generated by targeted and segmented emails.Transaction rates increase six times due to personalized emails delivery (Send Pulse, 2021)’.

Opt-in and opt-out are very important in email marketing, as it is a permission-based form of marketing. In order to opt-in, the customer needs to give the company permission first to send out information. ‘Email marketing has a set of laws that govern what you can and cannot do. This law is called the CAN-SPAM Act, and it spells out in great detail what sort of emails (and under what circumstances) you’re allowed to send to customers (Varriano, 2018). The choice to opt-out is also good practice in email marketing, as it gives an option for the customers to stop receiving emails and shared personal information. This needs to be included in every email that's sent and action needs to be taken within days. Reasons for wanting to opt-out often are, ‘People don’t realize they subscribed, they are overwhelmed with your email campaigns, Your emails are not displayed correctly, Irrelevant content, You’re too pushy with promotions' (Send Pulse, 2021)’.

Data protection is also very important as a good practice of email marketing. As personal data needs to be protected either that's physical or online data. ‘GDPR (EU General Data Protection Regulation) handles the personal data for  European Union residents. This means that nearly every company in the world needs to comply with this regulation (absolute, 2021) ’. A record of information can only be kept with consent, any type of data that is related to an individual is considered to be personal data. 

Finally, when composing the email make sure your business is known and obvious to the customer. For example include relevant brandings like a logo, colour, and text throughout. Keep the amount of text that's used to be concise and to the point. ‘ A good subject line should contain between 30 and 50 characters (including spaces). Your email subject line should also create a sense of urgency while giving readers some indication of what to expect once they open the email  (Vaughan, 2021)’. Including images in the email, will make it more engaging and eye-catching. Contact details also need to be obvious to the customer with the website, address, phone number included this could be put in the banner or footer of the email. 

Email Marketing Mistakes To Avoid

The first email marketing mistake to avoid is buying email lists. This is to be avoided for many reasons, firstly it will ruin the company reputation. These contacts often don't know who you or the company areas they haven't signed up to receive the emails. Finally, ‘Buying email lists doesn't just damage your deliverability and brand reputation -- it can also put your email account at risk. Email clients like Gmail, Yahoo!, and Outlook don't want to be associated with accounts that recipients repeatedly flag as spam (Wainwright, 2018)’.

Another mistake to avoid is the large number of emails that are sent to the customer. Even though email marketing is a cost and time-effective method. Too many emails and too much emphasis on sales will end up annoying customers who want to opt-out of the email. This could even be before they are converted into paying customers.

The final mistake that can happen from email marketing is using a ‘no-reply email address. ‘Using a no-reply email address tells people you’re only interested in a one-sided relationship. You want their email address so you can sell to them but you don’t care about them and don’t want to make time to field any replies (Bourn, 2019)’. Having direct contact between the customer and business will build more of a trusted relationship.   

References:

 Mail Chimp (n.d) ‘Email Marketing’ In Mailchimp  [online] available at: https://mailchimp.com/marketing-glossary/email-marketing/ [accessed 29th June 2021] 

Campaign Monitor ( 2020) ‘Email Trends Report: Mobile vs. Desktop’  In Campaign Monitor [online] Available at: https://www.campaignmonitor.com/resources/guides/email-marketing-trends/ [accessed 29th June 2021] 

Send Pulse ( 2021) ‘What is Email Personalization? - Guide’  In Send Pulse [online] Available at:  https://sendpulse.com/support/glossary/newsletter-personalization [accessed 29th June 2021]

 Absolute (2021) ‘Are Email Addresses Confidential Data?’ In Absolute [online] Available at: https://www.absolute.com/blog/are-email-addresses-confidential-data/ [accessed 29th June 2021] 

Varriano, F (2018) ‘How To Do Opt-In Email Marketing The Right Way (Examples Included)’ In Rare Logic [online] Available at: https://coherentpath.com/rarelogic/blog/opt-email-marketing/ [accessed 29th June 2021] 

Send Pulse (2021) ‘What is an Email Opt-Out? - Definition and Tips’ In Send Pulse  [online] Available at: https://sendpulse.com/support/glossary/email-opt-out [accessed 29th June 2021] 

Vaughan, P (2021) ‘17 Email Marketing Best Practices That Actually Drive Results’ In Hubspot [online] Available at: https://blog.hubspot.com/blog/tabid/6307/bid/23965/9-email-marketing-best-practices-to-generate-more-leads.aspx [accessed 29th June 2021]

Wainwright, C (2018) ‘Why Buying Email Lists Is Always a Bad Idea (And How to Build Yours for Free)’ In Hubspot  [online] Available at: https://blog.hubspot.com/blog/tabid/6307/bid/32892/why-purchasing-email-lists-is-always-a-bad-idea.aspx  [accessed 30th June 2021]

 Bourn, J (2019) ‘What Not To Do When Using Email Marketing To Grow Your Freelance Business’ In Jennifer Bourn [online]  Available at: https://jenniferbourn.com/email-marketing-mistakes/ [accessed 9th July]