FIVE BEST PRACTICES
Because of its potential to reach a wide range of people in a short period of time, e-mail is an attractive option for marketing professionals. But as e-mail marketing has matured, the rules of engagement have changed significantly.

Here are five factors to consider when creating an e-mail campaign…

(1) Consider Your Audience
It takes an extraordinary communication to captivate audiences these days. Sometimes it takes more than a great design or exciting copy to get noticed. Readers expect to see attractive HTML messages and even Flash animation. But, e-mail is only as good as the software your audience uses to read the message. Ensuring e-mail renders properly on various e-mail applications comes down to testing and applying tried and true design methods.

(2) Let Your Recepients Exercise Their Freedom of Choice
Invite your audience to subscribe or ask if they want to stay in your communication loop. If you have something worthwhile they value, you are sure to build a strong following and generate loyalty for your cause. Be discriminating with the amount of information you ask for up front. It’s a delicate relationship of give and take – if they appreciate what you have to offer, it’s easier to give up the information you request. Also, offer the preference of HTML or text-based messages.

(3) Assume Nothing, Test Everything
Aside from testing the technical aspects of e-mails, a major key to knowing audiences better is to compare response rates and analyze why one campaign did better than another. With sophisticated analysis tools, it is now possible to determine not only open rates but forwards and subscribes - which offer more insight into how the message was received. Consider everything including subject lines, placement of page elements, colors, copy, and images. Validate what you think your audience wants by having evidence to support it.

(4) Stay on the “A” List with Your Customer Base
When it comes to running a successful campaign, the list is equally as important as the e-mail. To have an accurate measurement of your campaign success, it is critical to purge your list of dead weight so you have reliable data. The best way to maintain a good list is to analyze it and remove the inactive and duplicate accounts. One highly effective strategy is to provide administrative tools so subscribers can update their own account status and by all means provide a way to forward your message to acquaintances.

(5) Run a Clean Campaign
Besides purging the list, it is imperative that your message comply with industry-standard e-mail protocol - otherwise it may never get out of the gate. “Whitelisting” is a popular spam-blocking strategy where communications from accounts not included within a recipient’s address book are blocked. To be sure your message is received from audiences employing whitelists, it is important to request your address be added to a recipient’s address book when signing up for your communication. IP addresses or e-mail accounts of known spammers are “blacklisted” and such lists are used by e-mail applications to filter out unwanted communications. Inherent uses independent IP addresses when sending communications as a safeguard to ensure that e-mails can still be sent if one e-mail campaign is reported as spam and blacklisted.

There are many factors to consider when implementing an e-mail marketing campaign. While experimentation is one way of achieving results, the fastest way to get proven success is to work with a partner who has gained this experience. Inherent has helped several clients develop e-mail marketing programs and offers flexible services to suit wide ranging business needs.