- Stay within the law — The EU issued a formal “Privacy and Electronic Communications” Directive in 2002, specifically covering the sending of unsolicited commercial email.
- Is your design tested? — It’s the only way to be confident about your design working with all email clients.
- Grab attention from the start — An email inbox is a busy place, you will probably have enough attention on your email till the next one arrives in your readers inbox.
- Make sure you have permission — You need permission to email people, but it helps to remind them of how they gave you permission, it’s all about trust, trust that you are not spam.
- Relevance is the key to success — The content you are sending must also be relevant to what the reader signed up to receive.
- Is unsubscribing easy? — There’s no point emailing people who are not interested, you will only frustrate them if make it hard for them to unsubscribe.
- Don’t rely on images — You can’t rely on people actually seeing your images.
- Include a plain text version — Some people don’t use email clients that render HTML or keep images turned off by default. Blocks of text can be more readable with relevant information.
- Track and follow up — Having the ability to track and follow up on recipients that show an interest in your campaign is essential to making sure you narrow down what you want to say.
Stay within the law
Despite the standard established in the EU document. The directive leaves it up to each country to choose their preferred approach on some issues. For example, B2B emails require a mandatory opt-in in Austria, but may be sent to some companies on an opt-out basis in the UK. Countries also differ in how they interpret the wording of the directive. To date I am not sure that the Maltese government have outlined an approach so I would advise following the UK laws to the letter on this, it’s also polite to make sure that you only deliver the information in the correct way to the people that really want to receive it.
To meet those requirements:
- Use double opt-in subscriber lists
- Use a legitimate from name and from email address
- Use accurate and descriptive subject headings
- Use a valid reply-to address that can function as an unsubscribe mechanism if required
- Always include the full address and contact information of your company
For more information visit the following links:
Unsolicited communications – Fighting Spam
Page from the EU with information and links on EU anti-spam legislation and activities. Check the news section for updates on relevant EU policy and projects.
Directive 2002/58/EC on data protection and privacy (from 31/10/2003)
http://www.ico.gov.uk
The Information Commissioner’s Office is the UK’s independent authority set up to promote access to official information and to protect personal information
Is your template design tested?
Email clients these days differ in how HTML emails are rendered. So its of paramount importance to make sure that all your email templates are tested as many email clients as you can find. Some web designers are able to do this for you and provide screen shots that help you to both eliminate these issues.
Don’t waste your readers’ time
If you look at how the standard Microsoft Office Outlook inbox is structured, you will see that it’s a very busy interface with calendars, notes and folders all competing with the actual emails for space. Given that a reader may only ever see your subject line before deciding whether to read your email, you can’t afford to waste time.
Make sure that your emails catch attention and show right away why they are worth reading. One good approach is to start with a table of contents to help decide whether they should read on.
Permission matters
There are many different laws that apply to commercial email in different locations. One rule that applies almost everywhere is that you absolutely must have permission to send people bulk email. In most cases, it also makes sense to remind people about how they gave you that permission.
Particularly if you don’t send emails very often, or the signup was for a competition (for example) people can forget that they actually asked to receive email. A short message at the top of your email can help people remember, and make them more likely to read on.
Relevance is the key to success
It is vital that what you are sending is valuable and relevant information to your subscribers. That means not sending information to everyone on your list just because you can. Consider carefully whether the information is both useful to them, and what they are expecting from you.
Make unsubscribing easy
With the rate of emails that people in a busy office environment tend to receive them, the negative effects of a reader not being able to unsubscribe will out way everything else, remember there’s no point emailing people who are not interested in your content any more. If what you are marketing is no longer relevant to them, let them just unsubscribe easily. Forcing people to play ‘hunt the unsubscribe link’ will only irritate them, and is likely to end up with spam complaints.
Sometimes your readers may not want to fully unsubscribe, or just update their email address or just change their preferences. It’s a good idea to include all these features in your website so as to keep people interested in the relevant information that you are offering, it not only narrows down the change of someone unsubscribing but shows that the reader has a genuine interest in what you are marketing.
Image blocking in email clients
In many of the major email clients, your images will not be shown by default. Your readers will have to click another link or button to make them download and display. Your readers will initially see the text content of the email and through study I have found that people tend to skim the text before deciding if that extra step of downloading the images is really necessary.
So no matter how perfectly you choose your imagery, it may have no impact on the success of your email. Never design an email using all images, chances are this will end up in the junk mail folder anyway.
To ensure your emails still work even without the images showing, you can make a few simple improvements:
- Never use images for important content like headlines, links and any calls to action.
- Add a text-based link to a web version of your design at the top of your email.
- Get added to your recipient’s address book or white list.
- Use alt text for all images for a better experience in Gmail.
- Always add the height and width to the image to ensure that the blank placeholder image doesn’t throw your design out.
- Test your design with images turned off before you send it.
Don’t forget your plain text version
However, although that shiny happy HTML version may be beautiful, not everyone can view HTML emails, or wants to. Blackberry users,for example, will mostly see your plain text version. We’ve made it easy for you by providing a quick start to your plain text version. With just the click of a link the text from your HTML email will be carried over to the plain text version.
Don’t stop there though. Make sure you review your plain text version. Although our import is pretty slick it’s not perfect. Your plain text version needs a human set of eyes on it to make sure the formatting is perfect and all the content you want to include is included.
Don’t forget to checkout our plain text templates and tips for more ways to make your plain text more effective.
Track and follow up
This really is the time you can see the benefits of your hard work producing your campaign.
Most email campaign management applications have built in analytical sections that allow you tract the progress of your email campaign in real time. It will show you the percentages of received and opened newsletters as well as any clicks made on any of your links. Drilling down to the individual emails allow you to then target the specific reader with further relevant information.
Case Study of client campaign
Example of campagin analytical information for an e-marketing campaign
