Email Marketing (My personal Do's and Dont's)

Email. A vital tool for business. Less so now with the development of effective and efficient team collaboration and communications tools like Slack, HipChat, Moxtra, Skype, and Jottly to name just a few. Actually, Jottly isn't real. It's a student project that Bloc used to assign as part of the UX/UI curriculum. But because there are so many viable options, you probably believed it was real. Anyway, my point is, email has strong competition from savvy and technologically-minded companies. There are a lot of companies that do not fall into that category, and for them email remains the go-to communication tool, even in-house.

Now, email marketing. Sending emails to potential clients and customers in an effort to drive business. The digital equivalent of the coupon in the mailbox or the menu slipped under the front door. And usually equally useless and annoying. But it doesn't have to be. 

Here are a few ideas for making email campaigns slightly less annoying to your potential customers:

DO address people in a friendly manner and with their actual name if possible. NEVER 'Hello user! Buy this!'

DO say thank you! Say it often and be sincere. Someone agreed to receive your newsletter? Say thank you. Someone completed your one-click survey? Say thank you. Someone actually bought what you are selling? THANK YOU. 

DO ask people to opt in. Nothing annoys me more than receiving something from a company I have never done business with. And if I find out your company sold my email to someone else and they start blasting me with email too? I'll likely never do business with them or YOU ever again.

DO make it easy to opt out. Don't make me remember my password from when you forced me to sign up so I could buy something 5 years ago. It's aggravating. One click and an optional survey about why is all most people will put up with. 

That's four very easy fixes to any marketing campaign. Only two of the above deal with the actual content of your email. Let's expand on that:

DO add value. Share something newsworthy or educational. Offer a decent coupon or discount on goods and services. Invite me to see or do something before everyone else gets to. 

DO keep it short but more importantly, concise and relevant. If I have to scroll on my desktop, its probably too long.

These are just a few of the do's and the implied dont's that I think about when developing email marketing campaigns. There are plenty more, and I'll expand on the list as I think of them. When I create a campaign, and start crafting emails, I use this as a checklist and hit as many as I can with every email.

Thanks for reading!