Internet Marketing Checklists

Sending a Marketing E-Mail

E-mail marketing is one of the most effective ways of connecting with customers, when you do it right. Each time you embark on an e-mail campaign, think about the steps you want to follow.

Design Your Campaign

Successful e-mail campaigns start with a good design. You can think about many factors in a campaign's design, but here are the key ones:

• Choose your list. Pick an opt-in e-mail list that follows all anti-spam regulations and one that is pertinent to your offer. If you're using the same list each time, you might want to rethink that—targeted offers are the most relevant.
• Design your message. Who is the audience? What language do they respond to? What problems do they have? Think carefully about how you communicate from the title (to get it opened) to the message inside the e-mail (to get it clicked).
• Design your Web experience. The purpose of your message is to convert prospects into customers, so make sure that you've designed your Web site to promote follow-through. Ensure that your Web design looks like the e-mail design, so customers know they are in the right place. Take care to deliver the Web site messaging using the same care you put into the e-mail, so customers don't drop out of converting along the way.
• Design your metrics. Ensure that your e-mail system can count how many e-mails bounce versus those that are delivered. Make sure that you've applied the right dollops of JavaScript code to track which e-mails are opened and which are clicked through to your Web site. (And be sure you can track how many convert, also.)

But campaign design is only one aspect of a successful e-mail campaign.

Make Sure It Is Delivered

All the creative content in the world won't matter if your customer never sees your marketing e-mail. You must design your campaign to get your content in front of your customer, passing several hurdles:

• Bounces. E-mail addresses are notorious for changing without notice. In Chapter 6, we'll discuss how you can get software to carry the bulk of load through list management functions. But you can prevent many bounces with a "double opt-in process"-requesting subscribers to opt in at your Web site and to click the confirmation link in an e-mail you send them.
• Spam Filters. Many bounces have nothing to do with bad addresses, but rather are caused by spam filters. Most e-mails must run two spam gauntlets, the mail server's spam detector and the one in your individual customer's e-mail program. Test your e-mail messages against popular server filters, such as SpamAssasin, to make sure they get through. In addition, consider authenticating your e-mail so that you are identified as a trusted sender. To beat each customer's spam filter, provide instructions during your opt-in process for customers to specify that your e-mail from your address is allowed to pass through.
• Image Blockers. Many e-mail providers routinely block all images from being shown in e-mail, to thwart those sending pornographic offers. That could seriously affect the persuasiveness of your message. Consider using an e-mail delivery service such as Goodmail to get your pictures through.

Delivering e-mail is much tougher than delivering direct mail letters to snail mailboxes, but luckily it is far cheaper. It's worth the time to analyze these tools and techniques to get more of your mail through.

Test Your Campaign

The great thing about Internet marketing is you can always tell when you have it right, because you can test it. Make sure you test every e-mail campiagn you conduct:

• Test your experience. Make sure that your links are properly formatted in several e-mail programs and that the links open to the right places on your Web site. Ensure that your Web experience also works from that opening landing page through conversion.
• Test your delivery. Send your e-mail to several test e-mail systems to see how many of them are blocked as spam and how many get through.
• Test your response. Develop several versions of your e-mail message (and possibly of your Web site also) and send them to small subsets of the list. See which one gets the highest response rate—that is probably your best choice to send to the entire list.

Now you're ready to send it out. Good luck.

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