Email Marketing Facts

Email marketing can be one of the most valuable tools you have at your disposal when it comes to promoting your products, converting potential customers and retaining current customers. As with any other field, there are best practices that should be followed and things to avoid if you want to maximize your success.

Build a Permission Based List

You have to build a permission based list of people who have signed up to receive your emails. You can acquire their addresses through a form on your website or in person at your store or at events.

Never Buy Email Addresses

Avoid buying email addresses or copying email addresses from other sources. You'll get marked as SPAM, you'll destroy your credibility and you won't see any success from disinterested recipients of your messages.

Quality Over Quantity

When you are building your email list remember that quality is more important than quantity. A list of 100 highly interested people will produce better results than a list of 1,000 random names.

Address Your Email Appropriately

Recipients should immediately recognize and know who is sending them email. The "From" field should be your business name, or your name if everyone knows you.

Keep the Subject Short and Informative

The subject line should contain no more than 40 to 50 characters and should quickly get your message across. Follow all usual grammatical and punctuation guidelines and avoid using all caps, excessive exclamation points or repeated words such as "free free free."

Statistical Measures

Email campaigns are sometimes judged on open rates, or the percentage of people that opened the email. Keep in mind however that this tracking method requires recipients to have images turned on, and will not track those who view the email without images. A more effective measure is click-through rate or conversions.