It’s incredibly easy to set up email marketing campaigns today. With online services like Mailchimp or Constant Contact, you can create mailing lists, do A/B testing and fire off content to thousands of recipients (or more, depending on the size of your list) with just a few clicks of a button. However, where there’s convenience… sloppiness and laziness usually lurk nearby.
Even if you conduct email campaigns without an online service, a simple mistake could cost you audience engagement and even subscriptions! If you’re new to email marketing or just want to make sure you’ve done your due diligence, Wordsmith has some quality tips to improve your next email campaign!
Quality control, anyone?
Have you ever sent out an email and then suddenly wished that you hadn’t? The reasons could be many – a faulty link, an incorrect figure or even something as simple as misspelling “Jonathan” as “Johnathan”.
Nathan Littleton, the author of Opened: Great Subject Lines for Higher Email Open Rates, comments that he sees these types of mistakes all too often. “They made a mistake in their email because they didn’t take the time to test it or send themselves a preview before sending it out to their list,” he critiques.
To err is human, but for an email marketer… these mistakes are a death sentence (or at least for their hopes of scoring positive audience engagement). We’ve grown to expect a certain level of accuracy as consumers, and if we receive a faulty pitch from this marketer, we can always count on the competing Toms, Dicks and Harrys to shoot us a more precise pitch.
In addition to the usual proofreading, check the names, links, tags, grammar, spelling and merge tags (more on this later). It may take a while to go through everything, but even the simplest mistake can trigger an adverse reaction in a customer!
Questionable subject lines
We all want high open rates for our emails, but achieving them through deception or fraud is a marketing sin.
“There’s more to a great subject line than just the subject line itself,” explains Littleton. “The context of your email, especially the first line, should bring some context to the subject line you’ve used so that the two make sense together.”
For example, if this was our subject line:
Don’t miss out on Boggart Pie Co’s October-only selections
Then this would be an accurate extension in the opening line:
To Mrs. Lindsey,
We hope you didn’t have to wait too long, because Jacksonville’s favourite pumpkin and pecan pies are back on the shelves!
“Think about the subject line you’ve chosen and ask yourself what question your readers are likely to have when they see it. Then make sure you answer that question in the body of your email,” continues Littleton. Peculiar and unique subject lines are fantastic for attracting clicks, but they are most effective when they link back to your content – otherwise, it’s just clickbait!
Watch those merge tags
Merge tags are a handy tool that help us to save time. In particular, you won’t have to manually personalise every message ever again! Through a service like Mailchimp, each addressee on our mailing list has a number of tags associated with them:
If “jason.grisham@gmail.com” was a subscribed email address, Mailchimp would detect “Jason” and “Grisham” under the “First name” and “Last name” tag respectively.
So if we wanted to personalise our campaign email, instead of having to manually type each person’s first name into the message, we can use *|FNAME|* to automate the process.
Easy right? However, what happens if an email address does not include a detectable first name like with “fluffyunicorn21@gmail.com”? This happens quite frequently, especially when you have people who sign up with only their email address. If you were to proceed with the *|FNAME|* merge tag while the field is empty, this recipient would receive a blank “to line” – which wouldn’t be a very nice greeting at all!
This can be remedied in two ways:
1. By checking and correcting the fields of each person on the mailing list, which is manageable if your list is small, but very tedious for big lists, or;
2. Setting up default merge tags in your campaign (eg. if *|FNAME|* is unavailable, you could set the default to show “valued customer” instead)
There are many more ways you can play around with merge tags – for a complete cheat sheet on using Mailchimp more efficiently, click here.
It’s us, your friendly neighbourhood *blank*
When we receive an email from a business, it’s common to see “Air Express Customer Service” or “Message Bot from Chef Gourmet” as the sender. In some rare instances, we receive emails from senders like “asd3ewasfa3ddg@totallyrealmail.com”… Even if the message is from a legitimate business, seeing any email from a bizarre or unrecognised address immediately triggers fraud or scammer alarms – which not only risks your message getting trashed, but your email address getting blocked as well.
“Chances are, [your audience will] remember your name rather than your company name,” explains Littleton. “Plus, it’s much more personal if the message appears from a living person rather than a faceless corporate identity.”
It’s definitely true that we prefer receiving an email from “jeff@chefgourmet.com” instead of a generic “info@chefgourmet.com”. Combine this with a personalised greeting and you have a significantly better chance of getting people to open your email.
The power of previews
“In many email applications, across desktops and mobile devices, the subject line is accompanied by the first line of text from the message itself,” points out Littleton. “Some applications display more of this text than others, but it’s usually between 15-20 words.”
Although preview texts are often neglected, they can and will influence how people react when they check through their message inbox. If your email has a header with something like “To view this email online, click here” – it’ll take precedence over your greeting and detract from our efforts to personalise the message. The easiest way to prevent this is to set up a customised preview blurb prior to sending out any emails.
“Remember, you can send yourself a test message to see how it appears in your inbox,” adds Littleton.
The evolution of online marketing technology has simplified the creation and distribution of our content. However, there will always be complacency and neglect alongside innovation. Give your marketing emails the attention they deserve, especially the little details like merge tags and message previews – you’ll not only score more audience engagement, but also distinguish yourself as a professional!