Although social media is enjoying massive popularity around the world, with 3.5 billion people using these platforms every day, email is far from dead. In fact, HubSpot revealed that 99% of consumers check their emails every day. Now, this figure alone proves that you shouldn’t abandon the idea of investing in email marketing campaigns. Sure, focusing your marketing efforts on social media platforms is imperative, but other marketing mediums shouldn’t suffer.
Of course, those of you already relying on this tool know how dreadful those moments before hitting send are. But they shouldn’t be. The key with email marketing is that you need to ensure your message is professional and welcoming. Not only that, but you also need to check and double-check your emails before sending them. It’s crucial to avoid any embarrassing mistakes that would drive your customers away instead of pulling them in.
With billions of emails being sent every day (293.6 billion to be exact), how can you stand out from the crowd? Well, one way to achieve this is by delivering error-free emails that won’t cause headaches for your readers.
So, if you’re about to hit send, stop! Have you sent yourself a test email first? Have you ensured that you don’t have any broken links? If you haven’t, do that and also the following things on our email marketing checklist.
Check the Subject Line
The first item on our email marketing checklist is not to underestimate the power of an effective subject line! Indeed, 56% of businesses using an emoji in their subject line have reported a higher open rate than those that haven’t included it. This just goes to show that, although email content is important, other aspects shouldn’t take second place.
After all, the subject line is the first thing your consumers will see when they open their inboxes. So, it goes without saying that it should capture their attention and encourage them to open the email. Therefore, before sending anything, check if your subject line is both clear and compelling.
Furthermore, unless you want to decrease open rates, ensure that you’ve avoided all caps and words like ‘last chance,’ ‘free,’ ‘X percent off,’ and ‘help’ because all of them exert a negative influence on open rates. Also, avoid too many characters. Because of the small screen size, mobile phones won’t show the entire subject line. And, with 46% of emails opened on smartphones, this is an issue that you can’t turn a blind eye to.
Review Dynamic Tags
Here’s another important item on our email marketing checklist: don’t press send if you haven’t reviewed dynamics tags. Dynamic tags are placeholders brands use to personalize email content, using information they already have about their contacts. These tags can be:
- First name
- Last name
- Location
- Reward points
- Total number of orders
Now, personalization connects you with your consumers so much so that 52% of them say they would turn their back on your brand if sent emails aren’t personalized. Additionally, companies that personalize their promotional marketing emails report 27% higher click rates and 11% higher open rates than those that decide to go without personalization.
Therefore, marketing teams are going above and beyond to provide that personalized experience customers crave. And they start by including dynamics tags. Here, you should be aware that there’s nothing worse than getting an email that says “Hi [First Name].” Your audience would feel estranged from you and would probably ignore your email, no matter what you offer.
Make Sure Your Emails Are Authenticated
Ensuring you authenticate your email before launching a campaign is crucial to ensure maximum delivery rates. But what is email authentication?
In short, email authentication is the process that verifies whether you’re the actual sender of that email. In other words, it validates your email’s legitimacy.
The main reason you want to do this process is to avoid seeming suspicious. The online world is a dangerous place, and email security is often an issue. If you don’t authenticate your emails, you run the risk of email providers filtering your campaigns out as spam and untrustworthy. And that’s something you don’t want!
Examine Call to Action
Marketers are the first to speak highly of call-to-action (CTA). In fact, most of them would say that CTAs are their secret weapon. Regardless of whether you want to drive more traffic or increase conversions or leads, CTAs are your answer. Indeed, emails with a single call-to-action can increase clicks by 371%.
So, next on our email marketing checklist is this: make sure you have a CTA. Without a specific objective in mind, you won’t know whether your email marketing campaign was successful or not. And if you have CTAs, before you send emails, check the links to ensure they’re working. But don’t stop there. For every email, review your landing page and see if it’s functioning properly.
Go Over Your Content
We think you’d agree with us when we say that nothing spells ‘unprofessional’ more than an email riddled with mistakes. Now, imagine how your target audience would react if they were to open your email and see basic spelling mistakes and sentences that just don’t make any sense. Obviously, they wouldn’t be impressed with you or the way you conduct your business. Take a minute then to reread your content so you can be confident that grammar, spelling, and sentence structure are on a level your audience expects from you.
While it’s crucial that you check the above-mentioned things, it’s also wise to examine your language in the email. Confirm that you’re using actionable language and vibrant vocabulary that will awaken your reader’s interest. Another piece of advice would be to write in the second person because the email will come across as natural and conversational.
Lastly, be brief. Get your message across in as fewer words as you can.
Check Your Email List
Effective email marketing relies heavily on proper segmentation. The better you segment your customers, the higher you can expect your return on investment to be. In fact, back in 2013, segmented emails resulted in a 760% increase in email revenue.
Segmentation entails using filters to divide your subscribers into smaller segments based on certain criteria. For instance, you can divide them based on their location, purchase history, and interests. Basically, segmentation helps you create separate email lists that will include consumers that have something in common.
So, before hitting send, follow this tip on our email marketing checklist: check whether you’ve segmented your email list to target the right group of customers. We’re sure you don’t want to lose your subscribers. And this would happen if you accidentally send the email to the wrong group of customers.
Examine Your Design Across Devices
Of course, emails don’t appear the same on different devices. With this in mind, you should test your content across a wide range of platforms and devices before you press send. Naturally, we understand that it’s not possible to test it across every existing platform but focus on the most popular ones. This will narrow your scope and still give you peace of mind.
Check the Plain Text Version
The email client you rely on should allow you to create a plain text version of your email. Some marketing teams overlook this option, but they shouldn’t. Namely, there are those email clients and devices that don’t render HTML. This, in turn, could mean that your email will appear confusing to some readers as you haven’t formatted the plain text version.
Press Send!
And so we come to the last item on our email marketing checklist! After sending a test email to your inbox and ensuring everything is up to standard, you’re ready to share your email with your subscribers! But don’t forget, your email will always be a reflection of you and your brand. So, it’s paramount that you remain professional in all forms of communication, especially in this one. Once you master email etiquette, your customers will definitely hold you in high regard!
