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Email Marketing Rules

Designing email newsletter marketing campaigns can be difficult. Coming up with content, promotions, subject lines and enticing copy can be time consuming, but email direct marketing can ensure your business stays on the radar of both your customers and potential customers. The CAN-SPAM Act gives guidelines for collecting email addresses legally as well as sending email newsletters appropriately.

Email marketing allows you to be creative, but that doesn’t necessarily mean that you should. In terms of your content, follow these simple rules so your email doesn’t end up in the trash.

1. Sender address: Don’t send newsletter emails from an unfamiliar address. Most consumers will look right at the From line before the Subject line to determine whether they know the person and if they should open the email. Clearly identify yourself or your company in a way that’s familiar to your consumers.

2. Subject lines: The Subject line is a very important piece of the puzzle. Email marketing should include enticing copy. Use exciting headlines and give your audience a reason to open the email newsletter. Something simple like “October Newsletter” won’t draw much attention.

3. Organized layout: Hopefully when you follow the first two rules, your audience will open the email newsletter. Okay, you’ve caught their attention, now don’t lose it with a cluttered layout. Make sure to organize content symmetrically and break up articles with empty space or images. Group related content together and don’t confuse your reader.

4. Punctuation: Don’t excessively use punctuation in your email newsletter Subject line or in your content. Not only will these emails run the risk of appearing as spam, but your audience may misinterpret your emotion. Keep your punctuation to a minimum.

5. Images: Don’t distract your reader with images. Make sure all your images relate to your email direct marketing theme. Your images should help tell the story and enhance the content. Don’t use busy images or clip art images that are distracting. Limit the amount of imagery and be sure to support the text.

These guidelines will help keep your email marketing campaigns focused. Creativity is important, but over the top distracting features won’t help, they’ll hurt.

Opt in Email Marketing Campaigns

  Email marketing rules may seem extensive sometimes, but with the amount of spam making its way through Inboxes, the guidelines should be met. Whether your business is blasting out email marketing newsletters or building an email direct marketing campaign, you should keep these tips in mind. Creativity is important and you want your audience to open your emails, so in addition to enticing subject lines, a familiar sender address, an organized layout, complimenting images and correct punctuation, these rules will help guide your newsletter email into your audience’s inbox.

6. Extensive articles and content: Your readers are more likely to open your newsletter email and read through a short, concise article or blog rather than a long article. Instead of including an entire article in your email, use some teaser text, give a brief overview and summarize the text to highlight the important areas.

7. Repetitive messages: If you continuously include respective information in your emails, it’s most likely your readers will stop opening them altogether. If your audience won’t take action without repetition, make sure you include new content in each email newsletter.

8. Links in your newsletter: Links are attention grabbers in email newsletters. For those that scan emails, keep your headlines and links interesting. Try and avoid the “click here” and use customized text and hyperlink.

9. Misleading links: If you include links in any email marketing newsletter, don’t send the reader somewhere they don’t expect to be. Your links should give the audience exactly what they’re expecting. If you want the user to download a video, don’t make it a surprise. Instead, warm them in the email newsletter by saying something like “For more information, click here to view our video.”

10. Including ads in your newsletter: If you’re going to include advertising or sponsors in your email marketing, keep it related to your business, don’t use more that 20% space on ads, don’t give them the main focus on the email.

All these guidelines will help you email direct marketing strategies or newsletter emails a better chance on hitting the inbox. Consumers expect a certain layout and construction on their emails and will expect that your emails follow their guidelines.