Email Marketing: The Guide to Best Practices

Whether used to mark a special occasion or to convey information, mass-mailing is an essential component of marketing practices. Fortunately, there is no shortage of good practices for using this tool effectively and avoid the “spam” box.

Let’s not take a detour: email has completely changed the way we correspond, especially in the professional context. It is very simple: among those who still remember how the world turned before the arrival of the “@”, how many will seriously argue that they would be able to return to a method of business in which email does not exist? 

Immediacy, ease, free (to a certain point) … e-mail is to office work what electricity has brought to households: progress. However, among the different forms that an email can take, we will now focus on marketing email.

Email Marketing: Why Would I Need It?

Email marketing is defined as the regular sending of personalized emails to a set of contacts who are either customers or prospects. Depending on the recipient, the email will therefore fulfill a different objective (we speak of target segmentation):

• Inform your customers of new products or offers from which they can benefit.
   
• Make your business known to prospects and convince them of their interest in doing business with you. 

It is the ability to combine a personalized message with massive outgoing volume that makes email marketing so popular, as documented in all the research on the subject. 

If these figures are enough to make you dizzy, they are also cause for questioning: 
 

• If so many emails are sent each year, how can I be sure mine will be opened? 
   
• If 90% of marketing managers use the same method, how do I stand out? 
   
• If email is effective for my marketing strategy, what about when I want to deliver an informational message?

Here are some tips and best practices to ensure effective and ethical email marketing. 

How can I improve my email open rate? 5 tips to avoid falling into the junk box. 

• Check your recipient list: before sending your email, be sure to clean your contact database. Above all, be sure to only distribute your email campaign to “opt-in” contacts who have explicitly indicated that they are interested in receiving offers and communications from you. This is even more important as it is a legal imperative. 

• Carefully choose your title: avoid words that may make your email appear to be spam. The title is indeed, with the name of the recipient, the first element of contact with your reader. Know how to get their attention without making false promises and while avoiding using vocabulary that directly sends your email to the junk list, such as “free” or “promo”.

• Take spam filters into consideration: as these are not able to “read” an image, they will automatically block or redirect any email containing a single large image. Instead, stick to the recommended average ratio: 60% text for 40% visual. 
   
• Choose the right time to send your email. It goes without saying that office hours are preferred, even more so than for social media campaigns. But beyond this obviousness, it is also important to consider the time of the day as much as the week. Avoid Monday morning, which you prefer the middle of the week. Likewise, while countless studies all show different results, almost all of them are suitable for targeting the effectiveness of an email sent in the morning. 

• Keep a reasonable frequency: the frequency of sending emails can be interpreted as spam. If, once again, the science is not exact, the studies still agree on an ideal frequency of 2 to emails per month. 

How do I stand out from the crowd? 5 tips for impactful emails. 

• Segmentation: divide to communicate better. Segmenting your database is at least as important as checking its mailing lists. The Data & Marketing Association (DMA) has shown that segmentation represents 77% of the return on investment of an email marketing campaign. How to do it? For example, group your contacts by geographic location, customer type or even their seniority in your customer base. 

• Quality of content: guaranteed results. Prefer a short and effective text to an argumentative block: even if you have an innate talent for prose, favor short sentences and get straight to the point. Because your reader’s attention time is precious, it is important that they be able to understand your message in less than a minute.

• A picture is worth a thousand words: include visuals, which will mechanically draw the reader’s attention to the areas you want to highlight. Many copyright-free image banks thus allow you to air your email. 

• Adapt your email to mobile format: you would not want to have invested your time and energy in composing the perfect email if it does not display correctly on a smartphone screen! The adaptability of your email must therefore be a concern that justifies the use of a few test mailings before distributing your work. 
  
  
• Speak directly to the reader and invite them to action. The personalization of the email is an asset that it would be a shame to do without. Likewise, why not capitalize on the attention the reader has given you to invite them to act? In fact, getting your reader to engage, view your offers or contact you will convert the effect of your email marketing campaign. 

Clients or candidates: different methods for different objectives. 

Promoting the benefits of an email campaign should not obscure the fact that there are other means of communication. In this sense, there are many comparisons to try to define once and for all which, email or SMS, is the best tool. For my part, I think that it is not a question of opposing these two methods, but of seeing how they can be complementary. 

Indeed, if email campaigns remain a pillar of marketing strategies, statistics related to mobile use are disrupting beliefs when they are used to transmit an informative message, for example a replacement offer or an interview confirmation. This is where the SMS sending platforms come out on top. 

The 3 advantages of SMS over email: 

• Accessibility: An average user checks their smartphone 94 times in a day, according to Tecmark
   
• The SMS open rate is phenomenal! While email rates stagnate at 20%, SMS open rates are 98%, according to a Gartner study published in 2016.
    
• Deliverability: Unless you have been specifically reported by the user as an unwanted correspondent, and – of course – have the correct phone number, your SMS will always reach its destination. On the other hand, we realize that every second email sent in mass falls directly into the Junk mailbox and therefore loses a huge chance of being consulted in time 

In conclusion, use email when you want to reach your customers or conduct a marketing campaign. But when your goal is purely informational, feel free to use other methods. For example, do you want to quickly propose a replacement to several candidates or validate an assignment with peace of mind?

Think about sending SMS!

Did you know that PRIM Logix allows the sending of SMS directly from the software? This functionality requires having been configured beforehand, to synchronize PRIM Logix with your SMS sending provider. Contact PRIM Logix support for more information.

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