The Whitelist

Even permission-based email marketing can go awry if you deploy an incorrect email marketing campaign. Yes, those folks opted in to get your email promotions and email newsletter. But they won’t stay opted in if you send them an email with broken links, typos in the subject line, or irrelevant content.
As an email marketing vendor, we’ve put together a quick checklist for just before you send that email:

1.    Make sure your email promotion or newsletter renders correctly in different email clients. Use eDesign Optimizer from Pivotal Veracity or some other email marketing software to check.

2.    Proofread the HTML and the text versions. Don’t think because it’s right in one version, it’s right in the other!

3.    Check all the links to make sure they work. Actually do a test send and click on the links in the email. Go through the motions that your customers or subscribers will.

4.    Double-check your subject line for typos. Subject line mistakes can be embarrassing! Don’t just stop with spell check as it doesn’t take into account the wrong word being used.

5.    Test your subject line for spamminess.

6.    Check the list you’re sending too. (Do you know the saying about sawing wood: measure twice, cut once? That mentality applies email marketing too. Check the list twice, send the email once…meaning save yourself from sending a follow-up, apology email.

7.    Check any prices or dates to make sure they are correct and haven’t changed.

Of course a more comprehensive list is possible, but we want to make sure it’s an email marketing checklist you really use. These are the parts of your email marketing campaign that are most likely to be incorrect. Although double-checking all these won’t make up for poor data, out-of-date email lists, lackluster email template design or weak email copywriting, at least getting these seven parts right will help your email delivery rate and open rate.

Tags: Email copywriting, email delivery, email marketing vendor, Email newsletter, email template design, marketing campaign, Permission based email marketing

This entry was posted on Wednesday, December 17th, 2008 at 9:00 am and is filed under Email marketing. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.