Email Marketing Best Practice Tips

I recently ran a workshop on ‘Email Marketing with Mailchimp’ for local small businesses at the Holiday Inn Aylesbury. During the morning, we cover strategy, data protection, list building, social media integration and obviously design.

Here’s a summary of my best practice tips if you’re looking to produce your own email marketing campaigns:

Data

  • Think how you’ll collect your data and actively encourage people to sign up to receive your news – existing clients and customers, people you meet at networking, visitors to your shop, attendance at your events and exhibitions. You can do this automatically via the website, via email, Facebook and manually if any individual signs or ticks a box to accept this.

Content

  • If it’s a newsletter style, then I would suggest an introductory paragraph to set the scene plus a maximum of say four key topics, each with a sub-heading and a couple of short paragraphs with a link through to your website for the full article.
  • If you’re including an offer, support it with either the growth in customers or a really great testimonial, and perhaps end with a guarantee or a free trial.
  • Your email should have a relevant and meaningful headline, nothing too long and avoid the use of exclamation marks, which can be picked up as spam. Sometimes I find it easier to write my headline at the end, when it becomes clearer, otherwise it can be easy to spend too long on it at the front end!
  • Continue the theme and tone of voice throughout. Use language that your customers will understand and associate with.
  • Include images to add interest and break up the content – which can be your own, purchased from somewhere like iStock, or equally Microsoft Clipart, have some great images under a whole range of categories, which of course are free for you to use.
  • Include a call to action, explaining to your recipients what to do next, for example how to claim your offer or to contact you directly for more information.
  • Remember to include the mechanics for social media and google tracking.

Preview and Test

  • Do check your email thoroughly before you hit the send button. You can use the Preview facility and send yourself an email to check the spelling and grammar and any links too.

Sharing your message

  • Maximise the reach of your campaign by sharing it across multiple platforms.

Review the results

  • Learn from the campaigns that you send in order to improve them for future and use the reports to cleanse your database.

If you’d like to send your clients an e-Christmas Card during December, then now is the time to start planning! If you decide not to progress your own, we offer a variety of formats, from bespoke html to Mailchimp templated; a single image overlaid with thanks for your customers and suppliers’ support and your Christmas opening hours, to a more lengthy newsletter. We offer full design, copywriting and formatting to meet your needs.

If you would like to have a chat about your marketing requirements, please call Alison Page on tel: 07963 002065 or email: hello@alisonpagemarketing.co.uk. You can of course browse our website to see what our existing clients have to say about our work.