Best Practices - E-Blasts

Mass Marketing – Nationwide or State Specific email campaigns designed to inform a large audience of a specific market/service.

Remarketing – Targeted email marketing towards an audience that has shown interest in some or all markets/services. Often the Views/Clicks from a Mass Marketing campaign.

Drip Marketing – Consistent marketing campaigns to a very targeted group. Can be done through, email marketing, blog posting, press releases, creation of new storefronts, new articles, new group postings. All followers of a company profile are notified when a company update occurs.

SENDING YOUR E-MAIL AS ONE IMAGE is definitely not recommended. Having smaller images in your e-mail is fine; often it helps provide the reader a quick visual as to the topic of your e-mail. This also applies to the size or dimensions of the image. If the birds-eye view of your e-mail is mostly one large image then you are flagged as having a "LOW RATIO OF TEXT TO IMAGE" in the area of the e-mail. So keep your image dimensions small and provide more text than images.

SPAM filters cannot read images so the "HIGH IMAGE TO TEXT RATIO" means your message is likely to be flagged as spam.

Think about the e-mails sitting in your SPAM folder. Stay away from SPAM words like:

"FREE"
Words in ALL CAPS
Referencing MONEY (in any denomination)
Don't use to many exclamation marks!!!!!!

Do NOT use programs like MICROSOFT WORD to compose your HTML. SPAM filters look for badly written HTML code, so if you aren't confident in creating the HTML, send us the PDF file and we can help you!

There are many free websites that allow you to test your e-mail HTML and subject lines BEFORE YOU SEND. They aren't 100% accurate but they will give you a good idea on what to watch out for.

HERE ARE A FEW YOU CAN USE FOR FREE!

http://www.E-mailspamtest.com/
http://www.mail-tester.com/

How to Get Subscribers to OPEN Your E-Mail

See guidelines above on "E-MAIL TIPS AND TRICKS ON HOW TO AVOID SPAM FILTERS" to help get you delivered to the Inbox.

Don't try and fool your reader with your subject line.

CONSIDER YOUR AUDIENCE.

You are targeting a busy professional during work hours. They don't have time to fool around with silly subject lines. Tell them what you have and why it is great. "Nationwide Professional Liability"

Keep the subject line SHORT.

This is for more than one reason. The number of characters shown in the subject line depends on the e-mail client. Keep it short and to the point so it will be visible and it won't cause the agent to be confused about the e-mail topic.

Do not include your company name in the subject line.

Your e-mail already comes from your company name, aka your "From Name" which looks like COMPANY NAME so it is unnecessary to repeat your company name in the subject line and can also cause it to become too long.

CONSIDER THE CONTENT.

If you are sending an e-mail on a market that you know isn't popular, it is likely your audience will REACT THE IN THE SAME FASHION. Consider talking about your top selling product to gain the attention of the agent. Then, use your wonderful sales skills to cross-sell them on your different products.

Make sure that your content is both well written and is the content that your subscribers actually want, not what you think they want! Your Content Layout.

PLACEMENT of Content in Your E-mails.

When your subscribers open their E-mails from you, do they see content that will IMMEDIATELY ENGAGE THEM? You may be taking up too much room at the top of your email or high visibility areas of your email with hard sells, images, or meaningless introductory copy. Making sure that your subscribers see the content that interest them will keep them ACTIVE AND ENGAGED with your E-mails and your brand for longer.

VISIBILITY OF ALL CONTENT in Your E-mails.

Much like the most important content should be immediately visible, the remaining content in your email SHOULD BE EASY TO FIND. Is there an easy-to-see table of contents or listing of what's in the email near the top? Are you using too many images and people can't see the value of your email content?

QUALITY of the Content in Your E-mails.

Of course, at the end of the day, what it all comes down to is the quality of your content. They say that "Content is King" for a reason. If your email is too sales-driven for your users, is full of grammar and spelling errors, uses boring, "content-farm" style content, or just isn't interesting, users will eventually unsubscribe. Or worse, they may mark you as spam. You need to deliver a product that your USERS WILL WANT in their crowded inboxes.

Provide EASY ACCESS to You.

Don't bury your contact information at the bottom of your e-mail. This causes the agent to "search" for the easiest way to contact you. MAKE IT EASY FOR THEM and provide your call to action at the very top of your e-mail as well as the bottom.

Consider sending a "TEXT-ONLY" e-mail.

How many times do you receive a flyer in your e-mail marketing/selling a product? How many times do you read and act upon that e-mail? Put yourself in the reader's shoes for just a moment. WOULD YOU DELETE YOUR E-MAILS? Interested in trying something new? Try sending a text-only e-mail. Sit down and write a letter to your reader, we can insert the contacts first name for you so it can be personalized. Don't get stuck on the fancy fliers that worked for print advertising. That isn't always the most effective piece for e-mail marketing.

And remember; lean on us for direction and collaboration. We are an extension of your team so let us help you. If you are interested in getting feedback on your marketing piece please send your content to your account manager 3 weeks prior to your scheduled send date as your final content is due to the designer 2 weeks prior to send so we need time to review and allow you to make changes.