Email March Madness

Is your email marketing game strategy keeping you ahead of the competition and producing wins? Here are some game plans to get your campaigns in top shape for a winning season.

This March, when the college players are hoping their hard work and practice will pay off in the form a NCAA title, let's take a look at the aspects of your game that could be improved to better your performance and make you a winner in the "Email Marketing" conference.

Study your competition beforehand
Research the email activity of other organizations in your industry. Some may not be sending email at all, giving you a significant competitive advantage. If they do have an email marketing program, what are they doing well that you could incorporate into your efforts? Alternatively, what aspects of their game need work that you could capitalize on? Maybe their signup is hard to find on their website; maybe the opt-in form is too long. Is their content any good? What's the value of your competitors' email offer vs. the value that you can offer your subscribers? Make sure you're offering a better value, and make sure you're clearly communicating that value.

Make sure your uniform is clean, and your shirt tucked in
We've said it many times before, but it bears repeating. You don't want to look sloppy to your prospects. Make sure you've tested your email in multiple email clients to ensure it looks good to everyone. If you're using images, make sure your message still comes through loud and clear in email clients where images are disabled. Be careful of fancy footwork and hook shots. If you're using Flash, video, form fields, or other rich media, be sure it's going to work in all email clients. And if it's not, maybe it's safer to just take the lay up. Include a link in the email that takes recipients to a landing page where they will be able to access these media.

Gotta make the free throws
There are shots in every game that you have to make because they're easy and they can make a big difference in the overall outcome of the game. Your welcome message is the message you really need to do right to ensure future emails are expected and welcome. This message should set the tone for your overall email marketing strategy: what emails should subscribers expect to receive from you and how often can they expect to receive them. It should also reaffirm that you do not share personal information, provide a link to your privacy policy, and provide an easy way for recipients to manage their mailing preferences. Also just as important, do it with a style that is concurrent with the rest of your email efforts - no granny shots! Too often welcome messages are text-based, poor attempts that barely bounce off the backboard.

Test a new play every game
Keep your strategy fresh by testing a different element of your message. It could be the subject line, landing page, offer, call to action, long vs. short copy, image-only design vs. text-and-image combo, etc. Don't blindly accept the latest report of what helped one organization's email efforts. Test it yourself to be sure your recipients will respond in a similar way. Maybe they will, but maybe they won't. Perhaps there is another element that will more significantly affect your results. Tests can be run as a simple A/B split or n-th level split if your list is large enough to create a statistically relevant test split. We recommend testing one element with every message. However, if that sounds harder than making a half-court buzzer-beater, start small and commit to practicing this technique at least once a month. Once you're a testing superstar, increase your testing frequency.

Stay out of foul trouble
CAN-SPAM is clear. Violations including not having a working opt-out mechanism or physical postal address can get you a seat on the bench, fined, or potentially thrown out the game entirely. But what about the inside jabs that CAN-SPAM doesn't mention? For example, the unsuspecting onslaught of emails that comes after a purchase or even after a true opt-in scenario if you forgot to mention how frequently your subscribers could expect to receive email from you. Make sure recipients have stated they would welcome email from your organization and take steps to ensure you don't wear out that welcome by only sending relevant content and keeping a close eye on frequency.


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