No matter what level of email marketing experience you have, failing to follow these simple email marketing best practices can affect your email campaigns’ success.

By sticking to this checklist, you can help guarantee more opens, clicks, responses and ultimately sales, (if that’s your goal?)

Branding:

• Does your email feature your logo, corporate branding and colours?
• Does the branding on your email match the same style and feel as your website?

Content:

• Does your message contain the benefits to the reader? How will they benefit from your offer, latest news or new product or service etc?
• Does your email include well-placed, clear and compelling call-to-actions? Is it obvious what you want them to do next?
• Is your email well structured and have an even balance between text, images and links?
• Have you avoided using spammy words in your subject line and body text?
• Is your subject line intriguing and persuasive enough to make the recipient want to read on?

Personalisation:

• Have you tried personalising your email with the customer’s name, yet without over-personalising the email?
• Is your ‘From Name’ a named person or just a generic one such as info, sales or support? Using a name can help make it feel friendlier.

Data Management:

• Have you recently checked to see how up to date your email address data and contact groups are?
• Is your sign-up process as easy as it can possibly be? Have you personally tested it recently?

Legal Bits:

• Does your email contain any of your corporate details? Full company name, head office address, a contact number?
• Is your unsubscribe link clearly visible, simple and straightforward?

Technical Design & Testing:

• Have you tested the your email to see how it renders in different mail clients and web browsers? Outlook, Hotmail, Yahoo etc?
• Have you included a link for the email to be viewed in a new web browser page?
• Do your images have alt text so that content will still appear even if the images cannot due to certain mail client settings?
• Have you kept the resolution size of your images and logos small and checked that they load properly and quickly?

If you can tick all these boxes, you’re ready to go!

For many email marketing campaigns, it is all about trying to increase your click rates and drive more customers to your website.  A simple tip to help you achieve this is to try using visual ‘buttons’ for your call-to-actions instead of words and sentences with links.  A well placed, compelling and persuasive button may just help you drive more traffic to your website.

Actionable buttons like ‘Sign Up Now’, ‘Buy Now’ or ‘Download Now’ will help customers easily identify what you want them to do next.

As always, test your email campaigns to see what kind of responses your emails with button links receive, and whether your customers use them more.

For more information or help setting up your button links, please call Mark on 0845 313 0912 or email enquiries@26.co.uk

Whenever you create your HTML email campaign in Suite26 or download your own predesigned email template, always make sure you have a plain text version created as a backup.

Why create a plain text version?

1. Mail Client spam filters are much more likely to filter an email that does not include a plain text version as well as the HTML version.
2. Some people prefer plain text and have their mail client settings configured to only display plain text. No plain text version = blank email.
3. Some mail clients and mobile devices cannot display HTML emails.

How it works

When you create both an HTML version and a plain text version of an email, Suite26 will automatically send the email as one combined email. If a recipients’ email client can read HTML, they receive the HTML version, but if the recipient’s email client cannot read HTML, then they receive the plain text version and not a blank email.

How to create your plain text version

After you have finished putting the finishing touches to your HTML version of the email, simply highlight all the content (select All) and press copy. Then click on the Plain Text Content tab, and paste it in. This will insert all the text content in a plain text version without your graphics and using minimal formatting.

For more information or help with creating your plain text version, please call 0845 313 0912.

It has been bane of email marketing for designers and marketers for years, but it has just been revealed that background images can now finally display in Outlook 2007.

With a few modifications to the code, here is how to set it up:

First you have to add xmlns: v=“urn:schemas-microsoft-com:vml” to your html tag.

Secondly, within your style tag, add the following selector:

v\:* {
behavior: url(#default#VML);
display:inline-block;

Then finally, within your table cell, you must add:

<td width="600" height="402" valign="top" bgcolor="#000000" background="images/yourimage.gif">
<!—[if gte mso 9]>
<v:image id="image" style='position:absolute; height:402px; width:600px;top:0;left:0;border:0;z-index:1;' src="images/yourimage.gif"/>
<v:shape id="text" style='position:absolute; height:402px; width:600px;top:0;left:0;border:0;z-index:2;'>
<![endif]—>
<p align="center" style="font-family:Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif; color:#ffffff; font-size:18px;">This is the text in front of the background image.</p>
<!—[if gte mso 9]>
</v:shape>
<![endif]—>

Carrying straight on from where we left off at Internet World, our stand in the Online Marketing Show at Olympia was once again a hot spot for small businesses interested in our powerful, entry-level email application and how it can help grow their business.

Thanks to all the visitors to our stand at Online Marketing Show, part of Marketing Week Live. It was great to meet and chat with you all. We hope you enjoyed the demonstrations, information and advice we provided as well as the free email credits, so you can now seriously test drive the power of this application!

For more information on Suite26, please call 0845 313 0912 or email enquiries@26.co.uk.

A few photos of Suite26 at Marketing Week Live, Olympia, 29-30th June:

Take a look at this interesting article on the differences between Email and Email Marketing when it comes to permission based emails.

Email Insider has raised some very useful points when commenting on the hot topic in a LinkedIn group on ‘whether collecting business cards at a networking events, meetings, social functions, etc, gives people/companies the right to add someone’s details to their database and start sending them their e-newsletter?’

The article first clarifies what Email and Email Marketing are, and then defines the differences between them and whether the above form of data capture is permission based or not for the sending of future emails/email campaigns.

http://www.mediapost.com/publications/?fa=Articles.showArticle&art_aid=130082

Following our successful outing at Internet World in April, we are spreading our wings further by deciding to strut our stuff at The Online Marketing Show in 2 weeks.

If you didn’t get to see us before at Internet World (or you want to see us again), you can now come and meet us for a chat and receive:

- One-to-one demonstrations
- Free email marketing advice and support
- Free email credits for visiting.

Plus there’s the chance to put a face to a name and voice.

So if you’re looking for guidance to help you connect and engage with your customers cost effectively, and can’t get to our Harlow offices, The Online Marketing Show at Olympia might be the best place to meet.

If you want to arrange a specific time to meet us just call us on 0845 313 0912 or email sales@26.co.uk with your preferred date and time.

Look forward to seeing you there.

Event details:

Where: Grand Hall, Olympia

Dates: 29th and 30th June 2010

Cost: Free! Register today

When selecting your subject lines always remember: the shorter you keep your subject lines, the more deliveries you’ll receive and the higher open rates you’ll achieve.

Before you send your next campaign, take a look at the link between the length of the subject lines from previous email campaigns and the number of unique opens and total clicks they received.

You should also carefully consider that subject line word choice, word order and recipient awareness are also vital factors in receiving more deliveries and opens.

We recommend that you stick to these points when writing your next subject lines:

1) Keep the subject line as short as possible
2) Avoid using ‘Spammy’ words such as; Urgent, Free, Buy Now and symbols like !!, ££, **
3) Only use longer subject lines when there is considerable reason to do so
4) Whenever you’re unsure, always test your emails.

The number 1 rule to remember when creating your email campaign: simplicity is the key.

When it comes to the design of your email campaign, keep the content and layout simple.  The design of your email is important, from a readability, usability and branding viewpoint, but in the end the design is not the main element that will get you conversions.  Always remember the basics (your subject line, main heading, the width of the email, how it looks in the preview pane, etc.)  Avoid making the email look 'too busy' by not having too many messages or offers on there.

Be original

There’s a good chance that your recipients receive plenty of emails on a daily basis, so you need to distance yours from other emails by being original and different.  Making your email stand out you will help lead to increased attention.  Of course, this doesn’t mean you should forget the basics.

Gain attention

The initial purpose of your email template design is not to impress your recipients, but to grab their attention. Once you have caught their eye, it is the job of your content to do the rest.  Do not let your email design become too excessive: keep to a simple, effective design and make sure your content is visible and engaging.

Remember it’s the copy that sells, not the design.

It appears that a recent change to Gmail has automatically started adding margins around images.

Most people will not notice the change, but if you sending an email which requires to images to  be placed right next to each other you will may see a gap between them.

This can be remedied by adding a simple "display: block;" to your images like so:

<img src="image.png" style="display: block;" />