Must-Have Email Marketing Checklist

Email can be a very effective and budget-friendly part of small business’s online marketing strategy, yet most small business owners don’t take advantage of all that email marketing has to offer.

Why? Well, it can be a little intimidating. It requires some content to be written—and then there is the fear of hitting the ‘send campaign’ button with a glaring error that has been overlooked. Nothing like emailing a couple thousand people an email with an invalid offer code or embarrassing error, right?

Email Checklist

As such, we thought it might be helpful to provide a general checklist to help you avoid some common email campaign errors. Here they are:

• Be sure not to send an email using a donotreply@yourdomain.com email sender address. Instead go with your domain address or something like contact@yourdomain.com so readers can reply to you if they want to. 
• Check the heading for spelling, capitalization, and relevancy to the content of your email. 
• Check the subject line of your email campaign for spelling errors and relevancy. Be sure not to over-hype your subject line. Also, avoid using all CAPS or a lot of symbols so you don’t trigger spam filters. 
• Check preview text (pre-header) for spelling and grammar. (This is typically pulled from the first line of your email text, but with some programs you can add it manually.) 
• Check to be sure you applied the right mailing list to the email if you segment your email lists. 
• If you are featuring an online coupon code, voucher, or similar offer, double-check that the code is correct and the coupon is functioning as it should when the customer uses it. 
• Make sure the email copy is offering something of value—whether it is helpful advice, a special offer, or something else. Avoid cold sales within your email and focus on relationship building. 
• Add a call-to-action to the body of your email, like a link to a landing page, but avoid adding several so readers can stay focused on what the email is trying to accomplish. 
• Keep your email copy short and sweet. 
• Check for grammar and punctuation within the body of the email. 
• Be sure to include an image to make your content more engaging (but don’t make the email just one large image). 
• Be sure that your email is personalized. It should not say something like “Dear [Full Name]” in the greeting. Set up a test mailing list to make sure everything is looking good before sending it out to your subscribers. 
• Once you have completed your email masterpiece, send yourself and a trusty friend a test email. Scan all elements for grammar and punctuation and be sure links are going where they are supposed to. Look at your email on your smartphone to ensure that everything looks good in mobile. 

So there you have it. If you need help getting started with your email campaigns, don’t hesitate to get in touch with us. Our Website Developers in Dillon, CO can help you craft effective email campaigns that get results.