5 Critical Email Marketing Rules To Separate You from the Masses

We all know the commandments of email marketing campaigns: Don’t Spam, Don’t Send too often, Only Send to Opt-Ins Subscribers, etc.  These are rules that, according to the CAN-SPAM Act, you must follow, for fear of legal recourse.  However, in order for an email campaign to be the most successful, you must do much more than just not break the laws of the 2003 CAN-SPAM Act.  So what are the 5 essential email marketing laws that will help provide you with the maximum results?

1) Use a Custom Email Template – Depending on your email software, many allow you to quickly create and store different templates, which can be used to visually customize your email.  Drawing attention through using relevant colors, layouts, and designs will usually increase interaction within the emails.  It will also provide a sense of faith if the email looks like the company’s website or other personalized emails.

Most email marketing software will also allow you to send a plain text version of emails.  This is useful because some people prefer to receive emails on mobile devices, or certain browsers which don’t support HTML emails.  So when sending a mass email, be sure to edit and revise your plain text email just as you do the HTML version.

2) Focus on Your Message(s) – For your regular emails (new products or services announcements, company changes, promotions, etc), don’t try to pack too many ideas into a single email.  This will make it difficult to focus on a single call to action.  This also can often lead to too much text, and we know most people skim, not read. Repeat your message a few times, especially in longer emails, to reinforce the idea behind the send.

However, company newsletters usually include more messages.  These ideas should be clearly separated by different content boxes, tables, images, lines, etc.  At TriMark Solutions, we often like to include short summaries of topics in newsletters, followed by a link to more information regarding the topics.   The bottom line is, don’t ever try to pack too much info into an email, because if you send out an email that looks like a college essay, I guarantee it will have terrible read through rates.

3) Make Your Message Unique – There are many ways to customize a message, including adding unique (relevant) images, adding the recipient’s name or company name, or presenting your message in an otherwise unique manner.   You want your emails to be different from the average mass email, to set yourself apart from the average sender.  A unique message will often lead to higher levels of recipient interactions (clicks, forwards, etc).

4) Provide a Clear Call to Action – In our TriMark Solutions mass emails, we usually include the Call to Action at least twice in the body of the email.  Once in the beginning to get the reader thinking about it, and again toward the end, strategically placed beside a link to the Call to Action form, page, etc.   Only include a single Call to Action message, as to not confuse readers.  Multiple Call to Actions will usually mean that only one gets clicked, making the other messages essentially useless.

5) Pay Attention to Your Tracking Results – Almost every email software service allows users to view an email send’s opens, bounces, clickthrough rates, and unsubscribes.  Over time, these specific results allow you to gain a deeper understanding of which methods work best for you.  You are also able to adjust your templates or layouts until you have found the best design options to match your subscribers’ preferences.

These are just some of the many concepts TriMark Solutions always focuses on when sending mass emails for our clients.  Experienced email marketers may find these tips somewhat elementary, but in our 5 years of mass email experience, we’ve found that a few things always hold true: Less is often more & Simpler is often better.