E-mailing and newsletters are excellent communication tools…provided you know how to write them with talent and knowledge of web writing, and use them wisely.
10 rules for successful e-mailing and respect for your newsletter
1. Focus energy on database quality. It provides the possibility to qualify the profile as ideally as possible.
2. Prioritize targeted emails. To do this, create segments in your database.
3. Focus on the quality of your message. It must create added value to motivate the Internet user to act.
4. Test and optimize the sent message. Your campaign results will be beneficial.
5. Ensure better delivery of your campaigns. This will increase the reputation of your business.
6. Create “Scenarios” to send targeted offers automatically.
7. Analyze feedback from your campaigns and tackle problem areas directly.
8. Prefer a dedicated offer that reactivates the contact.
9. Optimize customer knowledge for greater efficiency and relevance. To do this, develop one-to-one communication with your customers.
10. Unsubscribe facility.
Optimize the quality of your e-mailing and delivery of your newsletter
You will improve the delivery of your email marketing campaigns by taking care of 6 aspects:
1. Technical Plan
Some tips to effectively fight blocking and filtering of your email:
The first step is to set up all authentication protocols and DNS configuration (IP address, SIDF, DKIM, feedback loop). With respect to the Internet service providers that represent your email database, it is important to proceed with each of them to register you on their “whitelist” or whitelist and send servers respecting their respective standards and limits. It is important to configure. Number of messages sent per hour.
2. Data Quality
To keep up with the times and improve the quality and richness of data in your own right, you must implement a series of processes:
- Incorrect email addresses (soft and hard bounce) should be quarantined and removed from shipment,
- Complaints received on your misbehavior/postmaster addresses and feedback loops should be dealt with promptly and treated as unsubscribe,
- The exchange of information between your email marketing solution and all internal solutions (CRM, data-mining, web analytics, SFA, etc.) should be facilitated by regular integration or synchronization.
3. Message quality
Enforcing the exact opposite of what spammers can do requires implementing a certain number of good practices!
some suggestions :
- Not designing your creative as a single image
- Respect the ratio between text and image where the text content should represent at least 50% of the weight of the message.
- Develop clean HTML code that meets W3C standards.
- Don’t use scripts or style sheets.
- Avoid using words that could be construed as spam (in subject and message content).
It is also strongly recommended to personalize your message by including the recipient’s first and/or last name and by offering dynamic content related to your customer’s centers of interest.
Mandatory: Put a simple unsubscribe link in each of your messages and guarantee your Internet user that it will be taken care of quickly.
To strengthen this direct link with your customers, suggest that they save the sender’s address of your message in their address book.
And before starting your campaign on the targeted segment of your base, don’t hesitate to send tests to your test mailbox to check their good delivery and graphic rendering (create mailbox with main suppliers or to preview your messages Use dedicated solutions).
4. Supervision
To continuously monitor the correct delivery of your campaigns, act quickly when problems arise. The key elements of monitoring are bounce rate (misaddressed, idle, technical issue, blacklisting), unsubscribe rate, complaint rate and all this per household and per ISP.
5. Whitelist
Specialized companies (Return Path, Goodmail Systems) offer paid validation solutions, allowing you to register on the whitelist of certain ISPs, thus guaranteeing delivery to your customers’ inboxes.
6. Marketing Pressure and Relevance
Hence it is necessary to trend more and more towards targeted and relevant one-to-one communication that brings value to your customer so that he can actively participate in strengthening your good reputation on the web. Give him access to his profile through a preference center, where he can tell you the days and frequency at which he wants to receive your information, his centers of interest. This will create a lasting relationship of trust that will build customer loyalty.
trap to escape
French companies lose many customers due to basic errors in their email marketing campaigns. To do this, you will find below pitfalls to avoid.
1. Complex Messages
Building an email with highly detailed content like a website. Intense use of Flash or Java Script often impedes the rendering of the message. Design a simple and airy email, and redirect the recipient to a website with more detailed content.
2. Lack of reply address
Many emails do not have a reply address or incorrect address. However, response emails can provide valuable information (problems receiving emails, changes in email addresses). If you do not wish to receive these responses or error messages directly, create a dedicated return email address to check on regularly.
3. Missing Information
There’s nothing worse than receiving an email that begins with “Dear __” because the first name was not entered in the database. Having a rich and fragmented database is essential to ensure quality email marketing campaigns. In the previous example, it is better to insert “Dear Customer”. Take advantage of qualified files to ensure effective personalization of your messages.
4. Too many pictures, too little text
Many Internet service providers do not load images automatically: recipients only see a white frame. In this situation, it is difficult to track the response rates. Make sure the images/text ratio is respected, or use a solution that allows you to test rendering with the main ISP.
5. Email Blocked Because Identified as Spam
This is the most common mistake and the easiest to fix. Words used in the subject line such as Win the Grand Prize Draw will not pass spam filters. Your customers have signed up to receive emails, so make sure they get them! Pay the most attention to the choice of titles of your messages and don’t hesitate to test them out to make sure they reach their goals.
What are the essential obligations?
CNIL recommends that the right of prior consent or protest be collected through a checkbox. Use of pre-marked boxes is prohibited as it is against the law.
The contravention of these provisions is likely to be sanctioned by CNIL.
You will find below the principles established by CNIL.
For Professionals (B to B)
Principle: Right to Prior Information and Protest
The person must at the time of collection of his e-mail address
1. Be informed that their email address will be used for prospecting purposes,
2. To be able to object to this experiment in a simple and free way.
The subject of the solicitation must be related to the profession of the person promoted (Example: Message presenting the merits of the software to paul.toto@nomdelasociété, IT Director.)
Types of general professional addresses (info@nomsociete.fr, contact@nomsociete.fr, commande@nomsociete.fr) are contact details for legal entities. They are not subject to the principles of consent and the right to object.
in all cases
Each e-mail message should:
- specify the identity of the advertiser,
- Propose an easy way to counteract receipt of new requests (eg link to unsubscribe at the end of the message)