Best Practices: Sending Out a Great Email

Alright, so you have your email campaign all set to go. You have made sure that your content is simple, your subject line grabs attention without being too “salesy” and you have your social media icons included at the bottom. Ready to hit send, right?  Well, you should take a minute to consider a few more things. We wanted to post one more blog about email communications to help you can become a smarter email communicator.

First, think about when your email will hit inboxes. Be smart about what time of day and what day of the week you are sending your communications. (When we say “be smart” we mean that you should be sending out your emails when they are going to be most effective. You are probably not going to know that unless you test out various combinations.) As a general rule of thumb, mornings are better and mid-week emails tend to get noticed more frequently. Also, you want to make sure that you aren’t hitting your customers with too many emails. We are big advocates for doing a consistent, monthly e-newsletter and limiting the number of promotional emails that you send out.

Once you have your communications plan in place, don’t just send out an email as soon as you have it ready to go. Make sure that you send yourself (and someone with fresh eyes) a test to double check the links, correct any typos and to ensure that at least most of your email is above the fold.

When we talk to people about their email campaigns they often feel that as soon as you hit the send button they are done. Well, we want to make sure that you are taking advantage of the data that email platforms produce. Make sure you are clicking on the reports for each email campaign to get insights into what happens after you send out your email.

To begin, pay attention to bounces. (Sometimes you will get two bounce reports – one for hard bounces and one for soft bounces. Just in case you are unaware, hard bounces happen when you have a bad or incorrect email address. Soft bounces occur when there is a technical issue like a down server.) Make note of the hard bounces and make sure that you remove/update any incorrect email addresses in your database. Second, make sure you are making note of opt-outs. You will want to update your customer database if you manage it outside of your email platform. (There is nothing wrong with getting a few opt-outs with every email campaign but note that when you start to see more opt-outs it is probably because you are emailing your database too much!) Finally, take a look at the number of people who opened your email. Don’t be discouraged if less than half or even a quarter of your database opens your email. (That is normal.) What you should pay attention to is dramatic increases or decreases in open rates. Those are going to be affected by your subject line and what you are communicating. In a nutshell, leverage what works and ditch what doesn’t.

Coming up in our next blog post we will compare and contrast a list of email solutions for you and your business.