As part of my continuing series called re-posting the blog entries from the old version of www.travislarson.net, here is a few thoughts about email marketing
A quick look at the small things that can help make or break an email marketing campaign.
- The “From” line: If you look at all the top direct marketers, they almost always put a name in the from line. The reason is simple - people prefer to hear from people. So even if you work for a big faceless corporation, I would try and convince them to try and use a name (of a real person) in the company. Split test this in your next direct mail, and start checking the results. If it works, stick with it.
- Sender’s email address: here is the place to do your branding and use the company name loud and proud. You might also consider adding the words “no-reply” (so the email address is something like “no-reply@companyname.com". Why? Because then you have a much better case when some asswipe tries to sue the company because he tried to unsubscribe from the newsletter by hitting the “reply” button instead of clicking your “unsubscribe here” link. Sounds crazy? I’ve seen it happen. Never underestimate the appeal of suing.
- The subject line: do not repeat the name of your newsletter here. Do not put the date. Do not put anything irrelevant here. The subject line is for one thing only: an interesting appeal that will make people want to open the mail. As always, you should try at least 2 different appeals in your test mail, and choose the one with the best results when you scale up to a full mail. And if you aren’t sending test mails (about 10% of your total email list is a good rule of thumb), start immediately!
