How to Make Email Marketing a Success For Your Business

Email marketing is one of the fastest, easiest and most successful ways to market or advertise your product or service. Email marketing is one of the most preferred types of marketing in all kinds of industries, from MNC’s to small restaurants and B&B’s.

Unlike some forms of marketing where you have to analyse whether your target audience is receptive to that form of marketing, email is a world-wide phenomenon with there being an estimated 1.2 Billion email users, growing to 1.6 Billion in 2011. During 2006, approximately 66,795,000,000,000 (66 Trillion) emails were sent, this is equal to 183 Billion emails send daily.

So, with such large volumes of email users and emails sent daily, if you are not using email marketing to its full potential, I can guarantee that your competitors are!

With so many emails sent daily, how can I stand out from the rest?

Of these 183 Billion emails sent daily, a large majority will bounce immediately, never get to a users inbox or simply lie dormant in individual’s inbox’s. Getting into your prospective clients inbox and then subsequently getting opened and read is your first and hardest challenge.

Personalised and Targeted Email Campaigns

If you know personal information about your email target, include this in the email. This shows that you are not sending out one spam email to a whole purchased client database. The personal information will also create intrigue in the users mind about what information the email holds. If your personal name or your business name is familiar to the email target, include these in the subject line and/or sender information. If the email target knows and trusts the send they are 1000 times more likely to open the email than if it comes from someone they have never heard off.

One small trick you could use to increase open rates is test different subject titles and sender information. Through our initial research, male business men are more likely to open an email from a female sender than a male sender. Therefore, change the sender email address to a female name and watch your male businessmen open rates increase. Similarly the general working individual does not always have time to read all of their emails every day. To increase open rates included trigger words that will subconsciously make them open the email. For example included terms like ‘last chance’ and ‘special offer’ as this makes them think they are going to miss out on something if they do not open the email. A note of caution, if you use the trigger terms, you must have a valid ‘special offer’ or people will lose trust in your email subject titles.

Keep the design simple

High graphical and image based emails may look stunning but are mistakes. The more images and graphics included in your email the larger the email becomes in size, increasing the download time in individual’s inbox’s. Many email clients also automatically ban images from being downloaded; this means your email’s first impression could be a collection of rectangles with red crosses in top corner, not as aesthetically pleasing as you had hoped. Similarly many email clients do not render images the same, therefore meaning the image positioning of your emails may appear differently in different email clients.
For example Microsoft Outlook 2007, does not render background images, therefore any background images can not be displayed in Microsoft Outlook 2007.

Promote your best deals in the most viewed areas



It may seem simple, but many businesses continue to promote irrelevant company information before the scroll and hide important promotions at the foot of the email. If you are promoting a 25% off sale, or a big event you are holding, it MUST be;

• Above the scroll
• Eye catching
• Relevant to the email subject, and
• Contain a call-to-action (book now, call now, more information etc.)

If you are not following these guidelines you are potential devaluating a major promotion and/or event, but unintentionally promoting less relevant information first.

Analyse feedback and use it to improve future campaigns

Once the email has been designed and sent out, you MUST analyse your data to help you improve your future email campaigns. Can open rates be improved? Can click through rates be improved? Has your email had the expected/desired affect?

Most good email marketing platforms offer high quality post-send feedback, from this analysis you can decided upon the perfect email subject and sender information, as well as working out which area of the emails are the most successful for converting.

You can also then analyse the data by email client to calculate if a certain email client is struggling to render your emails. To solve this problem you could create an email purely for the customers using that email client.

Neil Hancock is a Search Marketing Manager at Silverbean, a leading digitial agency, specialising in Affiliate Marketing and a full ethical SEO Newcastle service