Quick Tips for Successful E-mail Marketing
E-mail is a great communication tool but with CAN-SPAM regulations, SPAM filters and the technical requirements of various e-mail browsers you need to make sure you follow a few simple rules to ensure your message gets delivered and acted upon.
Subject Lines
- Keep your subject lines short and to the point. A subject line is not a headline in an ad so be clear and direct rather than cute and catchy. If you can reference a pain point, grade or subject, do so. The more relevant the subject line is to the recipient the more likely she is to open it and read it.
- The rule of thumb is 5-6 words or 30-50 characters in length
- Test subject lines. It is the best way to determine what works and what doesn’t
- Avoid using punctuation – it can be a SPAM filter trigger
- Avoid SPAM trigger words such as FREE (in all caps), new, %, increase, boost, and offer. If you follow our advice in #1 – keep it clear and direct – you’ll likely avoid using trigger words.
Content
- Keep your message focused on a single message with a single call to action. People spend about 3-5 seconds with an e-mail so they need to be able to quickly know what you’re offering and what you want them to do.
- Make your message relevant. Reference grades and subject taught, key times of year, and any other information that makes it important that someone read and act on your message now.
- Segment your messages. Send separate messages to classroom teachers versus school or district personnel. The concerns of these groups are different. If you want your message to be compelling and relevant it’s important to tailor it to specific audiences and their specific areas of interest.
- Personalize your message. Using someone’s first name and/or school name is a simple way to grab people’s attention. Take personalization to the next level with Personalized URLs (PURLs). Ask your Agile Account Executive for details about how PURLs can dramatically improve your response rates.
CAN-SPAM
Complying with the CAN-SPAM Act is quite easy.
- Don’t use false or misleading header information. Your “From,” “To,” “Reply-To,” and routing information must be accurate and identify the person or business who initiated the message.
Don’t use deceptive subject lines. The subject line must accurately reflect the content of the message.
- Include a physical address. Your message must include your valid physical postal address. This can be your current street address, a post office box you’ve registered with the U.S. Postal Service, or a private mailbox you’ve registered with a commercial mail receiving agency established under Postal Service regulations.
- Identify the message as an ad. The law gives you a lot of leeway in how to do this, but you must disclose clearly and conspicuously that your message is an advertisement.
- Tell recipients how to opt out of receiving future e-mail from you. Your message must include a clear and conspicuous explanation of how the recipient can opt out of getting e-mail from you in the future. When you use Agile to send your e-mail we will insert this opt-out language and link for you.
- Honor opt-out requests promptly. Any opt-out mechanism you offer must be able to process opt-out requests for at least 30 days after you send your message. You must honor a recipient’s opt-out request within 10 business days. You can’t charge a fee, require the recipient to give you any personally identifying information beyond an e-mail address, or make the recipient take any step other than sending a reply e-mail or visiting a single page on an Internet website as a condition for honoring an opt-out request. Once people have told you they don’t want to receive more messages from you, you can’t sell or transfer their e-mail addresses, even in the form of a mailing list. The only exception is that you may transfer the addresses to a company you’ve hired to help you comply with the CAN-SPAM Act.
Technical Elements
- Keep your HTML message 600 pixels wide to fit comfortably within most e-mail browsers.
- Keep your text message 80 characters wide for easiest reading.
- Include multiple links to your web site or landing page so that people have many access points. Be sure to include your first link “above the fold” so that if people do not read or scroll through your message they can still click through.
- Include a link to a web version of your e-mail such as “View the e-mail in a web browser”. If people have trouble downloading images or are viewing the e-mail on a mobile device that doesn’t render HTML e-mails very well this will give them an easy way to view your message.
- Do not put key content – such as offers or headlines – in images. Many e-mail browsers today block images and require that users download them so most people will first see your message with no images. Make sure your message is compelling with no visuals.
- Be sure to use Alt tags with your images – this is good real estate for reiterating your offer or key messages. (Alt tags display text where images are prior to the images being downloaded.)
- Keep the number of images you use low – no more than 3. A high image to HTML text ratio is a SPAM filter trigger.
- Keep the size of your images small - The combined image size should be less than 60 KB.
- Images cannot be embedded within the e-mail. All images must be hosted on a server and pointed to within the HTML code.
(ex. <img src: http://www.agile-ed.com/images/schoolboy.jpg>).
- Inline coding of fonts and styles is preferable – Outlook 2007, 2010 and many web-based e-mail programs strip out style sheets.
- If using style sheets they must be embedded within the code. If style sheets are placed at the end of the code (rather than the beginning where they typically appear on web pages) they are less likely to be stripped out by e-mail programs.
- Populate the Title field within the HTML code. A blank Title field is a SPAM trigger.
- Close all of your tags. Make sure all of your HTML tags – Body, Table, P Styles, etc. – are closed. Open tags are SPAM filter triggers.
If you’d like assistance with creating a CAN-SPAM compliant e-mail that is SPAM filter friendly, please contact your Agile Account Executive for more information about our e-mail design and development services.