If you are marketing through email, following are some of the best practices to ensure optimum results.

Subject Lines

The subject line should pertain to the email and be informative enough to encourage the reader to open it. The subject line shouldn't be too long, in all caps or contain many exclamation marks or dollar signs. You should also steer away from using words such as "free," "guaranteed" or "approved" within your subject lines, as these may end up in spam folders.

From Lines

From lines should clearly identify where the email is coming from. It should be your company name, your name, or the advertiser's name. It should not be a marketing message or a sales pitch.

Creative

It is important to know what kind of email message works best for you and more importantly, for your target audience. Surveys show that most consumers respond better to HTML emails. Complicated e-mails can fail to render properly to some users, while overused creative may be blocked by the individual's Internet service provider. Text, although not blocked as often and completely supported by all the users of the Internet, may sometimes prove to be a viable option.

Landing pages

Do you control the branding of your landing pages and the destinations to which you are sending responders? These pages should reflect your brand as much as the email message itself.

Call for action

Provide a definite call for action. It can be a telephone number to call, print to redeem a voucher, fill a form or refer to friend. Design for disabled images and preview panes

You will find your audiences are increasingly looking at your messages without images turned on. (It may not be their choice, but rather the default of their email client.) Make sure your messages are still readable and compelling without images.

Variable content

Are you providing different segments with different content? Variable content will provide more relevancy and stronger actionable items.

Opt-Out Method

An email address or another Internet based response mechanism, such as an opt-out link, must clearly be provided in order to allow a recipient to request that you not send any future email messages to that address. This feature must remain active up to 30 days after the email has been sent. These requests must be honored, and you must stop sending all emails to any address requesting removal within 10 business days of the request.

Sender Name and Mailing Address

The sender's name and a valid physical mailing address must be included with any and all mailings.

Advertisements

If you are mailing any type of advertisement, it must clearly be stated within the email that it is an advertisement.

Suppression List

If any email advertisement has been sent in the past, then there must be a suppression list of recipients requesting to never receive that advertisement again. This list must be compared to your master emails list to ensure that those individuals are removed and do not receive this advertisement again.

Audience Segmentation

Breaking an audience into distinct, more manageable segments that are likely to behave in a similar manner has long been a fundamental principle of marketing. Email enables some incredible segmentation power, as well as the ability to truly take advantage of small audience segments that might otherwise be financially difficult to communicate with.

Sending Frequency

You should be consistent in the frequency with which you send your emails. You should determine a schedule and stick to it, whether it is once a day, once a week or once a month. The more consistent you are in your mailings, the more familiar your clients will become with receiving them.

Privacy policy

Have you reviewed your privacy policy for accuracy? Are you confident it is up to date? Has it been audited by legal counsel?

Authentication

Are you making use of the latest authentication technologies, such as Domain Keys, Sender Policy Framework (SPF) and Sender ID?

Technical Compliance

There are already many technologies that exist to separate spam from legitimate email. It is important to make sure your email is being delivered with the proper configuration. This can include proper DNS topology and up-to-date email software that implements common international standards.

Test, test and test

Because of the immediacy of email data, testing should become an integral part of your email efforts. Knowing what to test, how to test it and what to glean from the results will make your email initiatives perform to their fullest.

Rethink tired campaigns

Rethink campaigns that have run for a while, and look at reports to uncover new avenues of content or functionality that your audiences will respond to. Email offers a unique platform to quickly and cost effectively change campaigns for the better.

The key to email success is developing, reviewing and continuously refining a comprehensive email marketing strategy.

For more information, contact: Sharad Agarwal, CEO, Cyber Gear LLC

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