The Whitelist

As summer weather winds down and the mornings get chillier, we find ourselves wearing sweaters and jackets, layering for the cool morning, but ready to peel off that extra clothing when the afternoon heats up.

This is an effective way to moderate one’s comfort via clothing, but an ineffective way to “dress” your email. Your email should be scantily clad, no matter the weather or temperature.

Is your email dressed in layers? Do you have multiple calls to action? Are you trying to cram all your information into one promotional email rather than enticing people to click through to a landing page? Is your email design overly busy? Is your email marketing message unclear?
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Think August is too early for holiday email marketing to begin? As a consumer and procrastinator, I say yes, but as an email marketer, I know many retailers think it’s just the right time to get top of mind in the customer’s mind.

But even if you aren’t sending out those first “think of us for gifts” type email marketing messages, there’s plenty of prep work you can do right now to make your holiday email marketing campaign more effective so you achieve better email marketing results.
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For retailers using email marketing, Christmas really does begin in July. That’s when we begin planning, preparing for–and hoping for–great email marketing results.

It’s not a new concept. I once read that the idea of Christmas in July came from Victorian times, when women would start making gifts in July, giving them several months to get their projects done. (Makes you wonder what they’d think of our Christmas shopping these days, on the Internet on December 20th, shelling out an extra $25 for rush shipping charges to guarantee delivery by Christmas Eve!) But it translates wonderfully from needlepoint on a pillowcase to email marketing campaigns because they both take planning and time, and the more you have of both, the better your results.
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An often asked question for this email marketing vendor is, how do my email marketing results compare to the average? By this, our email marketing clients typically mean delivery rates, open rates and click throughs, the big triad of email marketing metrics.

It’s not an easy question to answer because it depends on your business, industry and more. But eMarketer’s Monday report on email marketing and click-through rates helps, so take a look and maybe even keep a copy so you can benchmark against these industry standards.
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Email best practices are those practices that improve your email marketing results, whether you’re improving your email delivery rate or your email copywriting or how your emails render in various email clients. As an email solutions provider, we at ClickMail are probably much more aware of how numerous these email best practices are, as we strive to make sure our email marketing clients learn them and use them.
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What is it about copywriting, and even email copywriting, that makes people change the way they communicate? Our in-house copywriter is constantly preaching “write like you talk,” but quite often, people don’t.

There’s something about picking up a pen or sitting at a keyboard that brings out another persona, it seems, even in the email marketing world. But in email marketing, we’re not interested in pretty prose or stuffy statements. We want results. Period. And if you’re not careful, your email copywriting can decrease your email marketing results.
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Are you measuring the right email marketing metrics the right way? As much as we as an email marketing vendor love metrics and share that love with our email marketing clients, we also see the danger in how easy measuring can seem to be.

That’s because email marketing serves up plenty of numbers, whether you’re doing a good job or a poor one. And as with politics, these numbers can be skewed if you’re not sure what you’re measuring and why.
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The following is definitely not an email best practice: Collecting business cards at an event, then adding all those names to your in-house email list. (Even if you haven’t done it, you know you’ve been a victim of it!)

That’s not opt in. It’s not even legal. But it’s so very tempting!
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Next week Lyris sponsors a critical email marketing webinar featuring our own Michael Kelly. Titled “Reaching the Inbox – E-mail Reputation and Deliverability,” the one-hour webinar will take on email delivery and how your email marketing reputation affects your deliverability. The panel will cover:
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According to a recent eMarketer article on email unsubscribes, only 5% of respondents said they never unsubscribe. That means 95% do! That’s something to think about if you work in email marketing.

And some subscribe quite often. The article states 55% of email subscribers in North America unsubscribe occasionally and 14% frequently. Again, another high number.
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