12 Strategies for Effective Email Marketing Campaigns

Most people do not send effective email messages. I know. I
spend a lot of time analyzing email messages for our
clients, and measuring and tracking their effectiveness.

Whether you send large email newsletters or just use email
to communicate with friends, colleagues and customers,
following these twelve strategies will make your email more
effective. So, here's my list, compiled and crafted from
years of experience and quantitative analysis of tens of
millions of messages we've sent out for our clients:

1. One Main Message Per Email:

The most effective email messages have one main idea or
concept. I spent a summer as an intern at the White House,
helping to read and answer the mail. The writing staff
taught that the strongest messages were ones that didn't
distract people with extraneous information. Before you
start writing a message, write down what you're trying to
communicate. Or at least think about your message before
you start writing.

The most effective messages are ones that are crisp, clear
and concise.

2. Keep it Short:

If you're like me, the phone rings off the hook, people
walk over to your desk to ask you a question, and other
people are instant messaging you. And then your cell phone
starts ringing. It's enough to make anyone a bit crazy and
give you Attention Deficit Disorder. Our collective
attention spans are very short. People simply have too many
distractions to wade through a really long email.

You might think they need all of the information. But when
people are faced with dense blocks of text, many people's
eyes glaze over. And then they ignore the entire message.
And thus, the most effective email messages are short. Two
or three short sentences in length. Perhaps a couple of
bullet points. And perhaps the short message is followed by
supporting material, an attachment or a link to more
information on a website. Enough said. I'll try to keep
this section short.

3. Keep it Relevant:

I believe that attention is the most important asset of any
business or organization. What do I mean by this? If your
messages are relevant, your recipients will pay attention
to what you are trying to say. If you send email that isn't
relevant — they will quickly stop paying attention to
your messages.

It's easy to get into a mentality where you want to send
everything to everyone. And with email newsletters or mass
broadcasts, it's not that expensive to do. However, once
someone feels your messages aren't that important, they
will simply stop reading them.

4. Reply Early & Reply Often:

With the huge volume of spam, it's tough to know if your
message got through. Right now, four out of every five
emails sent over the Internet today is spam. With so much
junk, it's easy for your message to get lost, trapped in a
junk mail filter, or simply piled up in someone's
ever-expanding inbox. So you start to worry when you
haven't heard back from someone that you emailed a couple
of days ago. Hmmmm, you say. Did that person get my
message? Should I send it again? If I do, will that bug
them? Am I being too pushy?

So when you're on the other side of the email message, it's
really important to reply early and reply often. What
you're doing is letting them know you (a) received the
message and (b) that you care.

5. From Line:

The single most important part of an email message is the
From line. If the person you're sending to doesn't
recognize your name, your message will be at best skipped
over. At worst, it will be simply deleted without opening.
Most email programs show a friendly display name instead of
the plain email address.

The From line of your email (friendly display name) should
have your full name and organization in it. The culprit is
that many people have only their first names listed in the
friendly From display line. Most of the time the messages
aren't too racy, but with email programs that automatically
fill in an email address when you start to type a first
name, it's easy to email the wrong person something that
could be seriously career limiting.

6. Subject Line:

After the From line, the subject line is the second most
important part of an effective email. If you forget to
include a subject line, your message is much more likely to
go into a junk mail folder, or just not be opened.

Email marketing professionals live and die by subject
lines. A good subject line will sum up what the message is
all about, but still entice someone to open the message,
read it, and take action. Including the company name in the
subject line can increase open rates by up to 32 percent to
60 percent over a subject line without branding. (Jupiter
Research)

7. Personalize Each Message:

Except when being called into the principal's office,
everyone likes being called by their name. In this
impersonal world of email messages, people like to know
that you know who they are, and that you care about them as
a person.

Nothing is worse than a highly demanding email that is sent
without being addressed to someone by name and is out of
context. I'm much more willing to help someone who
personalizes the message to me, and gives me a
non-threatening reason why this needs to really be done by
tomorrow.

8. Always include your contact information:

I can't tell you how many times I've not returned a call
promptly because I didn't have someone's contact
information readily available. In this age of iPhones,
Blackberries and cellphones, it's rare that I have a phone
number memorized. So many people rush through their phone
number, making it virtually impossible to write down the
number without having to go back and listen to their
message a couple of extra times.

Ideally, you should always give your phone number, say it
slowly, and repeat it twice so that someone can write it
down and then make sure it's correct. Effective emails
always include a signature line with contact information.
You should include your contact information in every new
message or every message you reply to.

9. Strong Call to Action:

In direct marketing or email correspondence, most of the
time you want someone to take a specific action when they
receive your message. The most effective email messages
always have a strong call to action, telling the recipient
what you want them to do.

Email is a low context medium. It doesn't transmit
behavioral clues like voice inflection that might otherwise
indicate what you want a person to do. So it's important to
be direct and ask what you want the other person to do. It
sounds basic, but it's a key to effective email.

10. Paste Links & Get on the Same Page:

How many times have you felt that the person receiving your
email just isn't on the same page as you? A lot of times
it's literally true. You might be thinking that they are
looking at one page on a website, when in fact they are
looking at something completely different.

I know I've been frustrated by this in the past. Simple
pasting a link into an email is the best strategy. Again,
it seems simple, but it can mean the difference between
confusion and clarity. Sending someone the exact link to
the website page you are discussing gets everyone on the
same page.

11. Use Folders & Filters:

If you're like me and you receive a lot of email, you can
use folders to store messages from different people or
clients. In most email programs, you can set up automatic
rules (often called filters) that will place all messages
from Joe into a specific folder. That way you can review
all of the messages Joe sends over to you, reply to the
ones that need attention, and not have to spend the time
moving the messages from the inbox to another folder when
you're finished.

This one strategy has made me amazingly more efficient at
dealing with the large volume of email I receive each day
(usually about 950 messages per day).

12. Know when email doesn't work:

Pick up the phone instead... Email remains one of the
primary ways that businesses communicate internally among
their staff, and externally with their customers, suppliers
and other stakeholders. However, make sure you recognize
when email is losing its effectiveness.

It's easy to hide behind email when we don't want to speak
to a scary client or team member. I've been guilty of that
as well when I have a million things going on. But
sometimes a three minute conversation can clear up the
confusion inherent in five days of back-and-forth email
messages.

----------------------------------------------------
Most people do not send effective email messages. I know. I
spend a lot of time analyzing email messages for clients,
and measuring and tracking their effectiveness. Whether you
send large email newsletters or just use email to
communicate with friends, colleagues and customers,
following these strategies will make your email more
effective.
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