Here are the top ten tips to ensure you can get the most bang for your buck with permission-based email marketing.
1. Only send email to people who have requested it.
2. Only include content relevant to the type of content the person has requested.
3. Be consistent with your sending frequency. Pick a schedule, whether it’s weekly, bi-weekly, or monthly, and stick to it as often as you can.
4. In most cases, it’s best to send business-to-business emails Tuesday through Thursday. We found that the best times of the day to send are just after the start of the day, around 9:30 am, or right after lunch, around 1:30 pm It’s best to avoid sending business-to-business emails after 4 pm or on weekends.
5. In most cases, it is best to send commercial emails to consumers between the hours of 5:00 pm and 8:00 pm Tuesday through Thursday or between Friday night and Sunday afternoon.
6. To improve deliverability, add a message to the top of your emails that says something like: “To ensure receipt of our emails, please add [email protected] to your address book.”
7. Make the Sender Name for your messages your company name or the name of a person at your company. Once you choose a Sender Name, keep it constant. During the split-second decision that subscribers make to open your email, the most important factor in their decision is whether the sender’s name is familiar to them.
8. Be sure to include a plain text and HTML version of your newsletter. IntelliContact Pro will automatically detect which subscribers can view the HTML message and which can only view the plain text message. If you don’t include a plain text message, about 5% of your recipients will see a message with nothing.
9. Do not use capital letters or multiple exclamation points in the subject line or body. Doing this will activate spam filters. Check out our best practices whitepaper for additional words to avoid.
10. Build your list every chance you get. If you have a retail store, add a point of sale registration form. At conferences or events, ask everyone you talk to if you can add them to your list after exchanging business cards. Finally, add your newsletter signup form on every page of your website. You can use the registration form builder within IntelliContact Pro to automatically generate the code you need.
We hope these tips have been helpful!