Things To Check Before Starting Your Email Campaign
From Email Marketing Wiki
You’ve got your text prepared. You’ve segmented your mailing list. Your e-mail program is open and you’ve cut and paste all the information into the body of the e-mail. You’re ready to hit the send button.
Are you?
Before you send out your e-mail campaign, you may want to look over the following list of items. You want your e-mail marketing campaign to show that you are a professional business and not some fly-by-night company. The last thing you want to do is send out an e-mail chock full of typos, and missing information. Or – heaven forbid – send it to the wrong group of people.
Here are some things you should check before hitting that send button and sending off your e-mails.
Contents |
Verify your e-mail list
- Make sure you are sending the right text to the right people. If you are testing your e-mail to see how it will look, make sure you are sending it to your test list and not your live list.
- Confirm that every person on your e-mail list has given your permission to send them e-mails.
Look closely at your header
- Check to see if your brand or company name is in the ‘From’ line.
- Ensure that your subject line is appealing to the customer and will entice them to open the e-mail within the first 45 characters. Rewrite it if you have to.
- Make sure you send the e-mail during a time of day when they will be most likely to read your e-mail.
Check the body of your e-mail carefully
- Did you remember to include a link to view the e-mail online?
- Did you include the title or headline prominently?
- Make sure you personalize the recipient by ensuring that your e-mail merge fields are working correctly.
- Confirm that your opening paragraph is interesting and enticing to the reader
- Read through your copy and make sure it sounds conversational and not mechanical
- Include benefit oriented information that engages the reader
- Make sure your call to action is clearly defined so the reader knows what you want them to do. Include it in numerous places in the e-mail body.
- Links all of your call to actions in both text and graphics.
- Is your e-mail easy to read and can the reader skim it and know what you’re conveying?
- Ensure that the e-mail isn’t too long and can be read easily online.
- Don’t include too many topics. If you have a lot, separated it into two e-mails.
- Check for spelling mistakes.
Make sure your layout is easy to use
- Do not use a lot of graphics and make sure they load quickly if you do.
- Verify that all of your links works – both text and graphic – and make sure the pages all your links lead to work.
- Look at your e-mail in the different e-mail clients to make sure it displays properly.
- Is your e-mail template the correct one for the marketing campaign your promoting and did you make a plain-text version as well?
Double check the footer
- Make sure you include a working unsubscribe link so that customers can stop your e-mails if they wish.
- Include your physical snail mail address.
- Don’t forget to protect your content with a copyright notice.
Once you have made sure that you have fixed all of these items, feel free to send your e-mails to the recipients on your list assured that you are presenting your information in the most professional manner in possible.
