Clever tips for your e-mail marketing campaign

Are your e-mails flagged as spam, meaning they don’t reach their recipients? And when they do reach their recipients, are they moved straight to the trash? A few clever tricks could help...

E-mail marketing is still one of the best ways of reaching your customers directly and keeping them posted on promotions or special deals. But your e-mail has to overcome many an obstacle before users can open and read it.

For starters, it may be that spam filters – applied by the user’s provider or by the user’s own e-mail client – flag your e-mail as spam and automatically remove it. The first thing you can do to prevent this is to scrupulously monitor your “e-reputation”, or more precisely the reputation of the IP address that you use to send your e-mails.

Moreover, when composing the message itself, there are certain rules to follow, which will reduce the risk of getting flagged as spam. For instance, you have to avoid ending a sentence with exclamation marks (‘!!!’), putting THE ENTIRE TEXT IN CAPS, or using green or red to write your message in. It is also important that you clean up the HTML code: messy HTML code (which is often the result of transposing a Microsoft Word file into an HTML e-mail) is mercilessly penalized. And finally, avoid messages that contain only one large image and no text, because spam filters cannot “read” images, and this technique is thus very often used by spammers.

Has the e-mail landed safely in the recipient’s inbox? Then, the next challenge is to persuade him to read it. Here are some more tips…

You have to take into account the pre-header. Many (web) mail programs not only show the subject line in the list of incoming mails, but also the beginning of the first paragraph. Polish that text, and arouse the curiosity of the user. Evidently, you also have to compose a striking text for the subject line – it has to be powerful, efficient and coherent with the content of the message itself. Several mail programs also provide a preview of the message, when the user moves his cursor above the subject line in the list of e-mails. It is your task to make this preview tempting enough for the reader to click the message and open it. Also, take care of the address mentioned as sender, because it’s one of the key factors that will motivate the reader to open the message. Next to the real e-mail address (info@supermarket.be), use a clear alias like “Neighbourhood Supermarket Weekly Offers”; it’s that alias that appears as the sender in most e-mail programs.

You will notice that, with these simple tips, you will achieve a better open rate for your mailings. And, last but not least: don’t forget that nowadays, many users read their e-mail while on the road. So we advise you to use responsive design for your e-mails, so people can also read them on their smartphone. And repeat the test on several devices!