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5 Things You MUST Know About Email Marketing

Looking to begin email marketing and wondering how to start?

1. Manage inhouse or hire outside help. First, decide if you have the resources to manage email marketing inhouse. You may be surprised at how easy and user-friendly some of the ESPs (email marketing service providers) are. With an investment of maybe 30 minutes each day watching the tutorials generally provided by these ESPs, you can be up and running in no time and make incremental improvements along the way.

If you have the budget to hire a contractor or consultant to run your email marketing, a good place to start is to find an ESP you like then ask if they have a partner program that enables customers to find a seasoned email marketer to assist them. They are generally listed on the ESP's site. Check out how much social media costs in 2011 by Mack Collier.

My favorite recommendation for an all-around robust program that is exceptionally user friendly, affordable, humorous training that sinks in quickly, and has more bells and whistles than many of its competitors is MailChimp.com. With over 1M users, MailChimp also offers robust reporting, google analytics tie-in, and automated social media integration, which will help you continuously maximize your email's reach in addition to having the necessary data to make continual improvements. Remember that Email marketing, like most internet marketing, is a work in progress. Once you get it up and running, it's similar to a new car that must be maintained and serviced to keep it operating at optimal efficiency. [NOTE: I do not receive any financial gain from endorsing MailChimp.com; I'm just a big, sappy fan of theirs.] After using other programs, like Vertical Response, Election Mall, Paramount Communications and Marketo, I think that MailChimp gives the most bang for the buck and is an awesomely fun program to use as well. If you want a good laugh in your work day, MailChimp will not disappoint you. I'm convinced that the employees were all stand-up comedians in their past lives.

2. Test, test and test. Never rest on your laurels with email marketing. Make sure you are test, test, test your emails

testing subject lines, images, image placement, offers, signup form content and length, design, send times, send days, video, and more... one at a time so you can know what's affecting any change. Start out using A/B testing so that it quickly becomes a habit for you to test. When you find out what works better for each email, you'll soon be making incremental improvements that, over time, will give you better results.

3. Always include a text version of your email. Another reason I am smitten over MailChimp is the ease with which it creates a text version of your html email. With just a click, your text version is complete with links in place. It's important to always include text versions so you can increase your deliverability. Some folks do not have images turned on in their inbox and in many email programs, like Gmail for example, a recipient must activate a link in order to view the images in an email. Programs like Vertical Response also offer this easy text version creation; however, Vertical Response falls extremely short on the reporting side of the equation. In that system, you cannot know what the actual deliverability is because their setup does not allow customers to view SPAM, invalids, or a bounce breakdown. I'm a bit stumped by this as most ESPs allow this transparency and there is no way to determine ROI if you do not know deliverability. At best, it is a guesstimate in Vertical Response. Paramount Communication offers fantastic reporting; however, in every other aspect, the program is a dinosaur.

4. Include 'ALT Text' for all images. Don't even think of including an image without linking it to a relevant landing page and putting in the Alt Text ("alternative text" that details the image and its offer using relevant keywords). This is super important, especially as you'll recall, text versions will not show images. This way, a recipient can read what the image is about. Ever receive an email from a catalog company or similar that, in text form, is a bunch of small boxes with an "x" in them and nothing else? This is lazy! The email person should have added Alt Text for each image so that when the image doesn''t appear, the alt text description of it would. Don't let this one slip by. Alt Text is also searchable in organic search, so it's equally important from that standpoint, especially as you're wanting your emails to be shared.

5. Standard Header and Footer items. In the header, it's a good practice to include a link to view the email in a browser as well as a concise summary of your content so that inboxes that show snippets will display this copy. Consider adding an unsubscribe link in your header as well as in your footer. Your best results will come from people who want to be on your list so don't worry about losing people by making it easy for them to unsubscribe. Rather, this will save you from being marked as SPAM in many cases because many readers are in a hurry and if they want off your list, they'll use the path of least resistance. For the footer, ensure you put company name, address, URL and telephone number. The more transparent you are, the more trust and credibility you'll instill in your readership. Include one-click unsubscribe links and a link to change email preferences as well. If you can, always include "share with a friend" link.

Happy Marketing!

Teresa