Email Marketing: How to Do It Right

Make sure the content appears correctly on all devices

The same email would be displayed differently with different email clients such as Gmail, Yahoo! or Outlook. And there would still be differences based on whether the email on viewed on a desktop monitor or mobile device.

You can’t test your email on all the devices and email clients in the market, but you can optimize it for the majority. You should already be able to see how it displays on your PC. Have another look at how it would appear on a laptop with a smaller screen size – sometimes you would see that what should ideally be on one line gets part of it moved to the following line, downgrading the effect. Most Android phones have a screen size of 5 – 5.5 inches, while the iPhone’s screen size is 4.7 inches. Have one of each, plus a tablet of around 10-inch screen size.

If you use a custom font, you can be 100% sure it won’t display correctly. Something like Arial or Times New Roman that can be found across all devices works best.

Don’t email everyone on your mailing list

You should segment those on your mailing list by say, new users (those who haven’t bought your product or subscribed to your service), customers (those who have bought/purchased from you at least once), and returning customers. The more classifications you have, the better. You should send out emails by segment. Those who have bought/purchased from you more than once are your best customers and most likely to buy from you again. It makes a lot of sense to spend extra effort on customizing special emails for this segment.

Be professional

Make sure you have proofread your email and that it is free from all errors. Ensure that all the links work. Don’t ever mislead email recipients into opening your emails by way of titles that aren’t relevant or are only loosely related to the contents.

Respect the privacy of others. Don’t email them without their permission.

Offer an option to unsubscribe from the mailing list at the bottom. If they mark your email address as spam, that means they wouldn’t see it even if they were interested in your product/service at a later time – your emails would go straight to their Junk folder. And no one really ever checks this email folder out.

Use images correctly

Don’t put all your text into an image. Email clients by default block images. Not many recipients would have the patience to right click on the blank space so that the image can be displayed correctly. On the same note, don’t have too many images – with some email clients, users have to individually right click on every image and explicitly grant permission for the image to be displayed. Can you imagine how frustrating and consuming that can be? At best, have one image that supplements the text.

Track your email marketing metrics

Find out what kind of emails strike a chord with your audience. Sometimes sending two out in a week might have better open or click-through rates than once in a week. Sometimes once a month might be what works best. 

You might also find that your emails are more successful on certain days of the week. Sometimes even certain times of the day.  There are no hard and fast rules – only by trial and error can you zero in on what is best for your business.

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