Nail your email marketing

HOW TO … Nail your email marketing

By Sonal Dack, Email Marketing Expert-in-Residence at Imperial Enterprise Lab

1

Figure out what you can manage

Put together a campaign plan based on the resources you have available (including your time!). You can always ramp up your activity as your business grows, and you can see how much you need to invest in email. And speaking of plans...

Whether you’re selling products, generating/ nurturing leads or pushing traffic to your website, email’s where it’s at. Want to develop brand awareness, grow your community and keep people up to date on how your plans are going? Email’s an essential. Last year, businesses that invested in email received £26 worth of business for every £1 spent.

And yet, the number one problem I come across when I first meet a client is that their email marketing started with a bang and then fizzled out to almost nothing. Such a shame when you consider what a difference it can make to your business!

It’s easy to see why. Startup life involves A LOT of plate spinning. There’s so much to do and it feels like there’s just not enough time or pairs of hands to do everything! Sound familiar? If you’re nodding your head vigorously, help is at hand! I have a few tips to help you send great campaigns and make emailing a regular part of your marketing plan without it taking more time than it needs to.

Sonal Dack is the Founder of MailPimps, and specialises in helping organisations craft engaging email campaigns. She believes that any business can use email to build a relationship with their audience, gain customers and grow their business, and can help you get started and develop your own strategy.

2

Create a schedule

Once you know what you can manage, build a schedule around it. This doesn’t mean you have to be a slave to a spreadsheet, but having dates to aim for gives you some structure. Include the different items you want to feature – for example, your progress, product updates, offers and helpful information for your customers.

3

Make the most of your existing content

You don’t have to produce new content for every part of an email campaign. You can use your social media and blog posts, as well as interesting and relevant things you’ve found while browsing the internet. Just make sure you keep things organised and cross reference all items against your schedule. I constantly save and clip interesting articles and posts to a Trello board. It takes seconds to do, but has saved me hours of head scratching when planning a campaign.

4

Keep your emails simple

Some of the best emails out there use a very basic layout and Some of the best emails out there use a very basic layout and almost all email service providers (ESPs) offer a number of simple templates that you can adapt without too much effort. simple templates that you can adapt without too much effort. Just take some time to make sure your graphics and images Just take some time to make sure your graphics and images have the correct dimensions and the text formats are right. Once have the correct dimensions and the text formats are right. Once everything’s set up, you can reuse your template until it’s time for everything’s set up, you can reuse your template until it’s time for a review and maybe an upgrade. Simple templates are also more a review and maybe an upgrade. Simple templates are also more likely to look equally good on mobile and desktop, which means you won’t have to spend ages faffing around trying to fix a glitch.

5

Have a pre-send checklist!

Checking your campaign before pressing send is an absolute must. Having a list means you can go through your campaign systematically, which saves time. It also means you could delegate certain tasks to a colleague or helpful friend who hasn’t been staring at the same campaign draft on screen for ages, and they’ll know what to look for. Here are some ‘must check’ items you can use to start your own checklist: • Have you proofread and checked for typos (including subject lines and preview text)? Printing the email out can help you spot any gremlins you might’ve missed due to screen fatigue. • Have you checked the image rights on your visuals? • Does the email look right on both desktop and mobile views? • Are all the links working? • Are you sending the campaign to the right list and is it up to date? There’s, of course, plenty more to email marketing, but if you’re just getting started and have a million and one things to think about, why make life more complicated than it needs to be? By keeping things as streamlined as possible, you can get into the swing of it, learn what works, and then adapt and grow your activity accordingly. You might even end up loving email as much as I do!*

*OK that might be pushing it!