For this post, we're going to focus on email deliverability and email blast tips. If you want to know how to send an email blast successfully and efficiently to your subscribers, you will need to know about spam regulations, best practices and email list management.
But there are so many rules and guidelines! How do I know what to do? SimplyCast is here to help you sort it all out. You could read a whole book about email deliverability (and you may want to!) but for now, here are some of the most important points to keep in mind when you're sending out your blasts. These email blast tips will help you improve your email deliverability and avoid spam marketing traps.
Don't Use Spam Techniques for Your Email Blasts
1. We always put these email blast tips at the top of our lists. Always ensure that every contact on your email send list is an opt-in subscriber. If you send email blasts to people who have not subscribed to receive your emails, you can quickly be labeled as a spam email marketer. No one wants that. Don't rent or buy any email lists.
2. Use a double opt-in process for your email blast subscribers. This means that once someone signs up to receive your email blasts they will receive a confirmation email asking them to confirm their email address. The person must then click a button to confirm that they wish to sign up, which ensures that you get more valid subscribers and active email addresses.
3. Always include a "click here to unsubscribe" link in every email blast you send. Your email subscribers should be able to easily remove themselves from your email blast list if they want to. The unsubscribe link should be at the top or the bottom of your email blast, where readers can easily find it.
4. Keep your email blast lists clean. You should regularly clean your lists (if your email blast program doesn't automatically do it for you) and anyone who unsubscribes should be removed as soon as possible. Maintaining clean email send lists also means updating old lists. You should regularly ask your subscribers to re-subscribe and confirm that they still want to receive your email blasts. Most email marketers do this at least once or twice a year. This process helps you to remove old and inactive email addresses, and also provides the opportunity for your subscribers to update their email address to a new one that they wish to use.
5. Be careful what you put in your subject lines. Subject lines can tip off email programs that an email blast might be spam. Using and overusing words such as "free," "money," "guarantee" and so on. Be direct in your subject lines. You want people to be interested and also to know what is in the email blast before they click on it. Subject lines walk a tightrope between boring (don't get opened) and overly dramatic (spam). Let's check out some examples.
Not Good: FREE COUPON for you!!! All That Money in Your Pocket
Better: You Deserve More: 25% Off Special for Our Loyal Customers
Not Good: Win this Easy, Effective and Amazing Weight Loss Product
Better: 5 Things You Need to Know About Our Health Product Contest
Email Blast Tips For Selecting the Best Service for Your Needs
6. Select an email blast service that offers top notch deliverability. If your email blast service sends out your emails quickly, cleanly and efficiently, you're already well on your way. If your email blast service has a great reputation, chances are they have great email deliverability but you will want to research it before you select a service to go with.
7. Choose an email blast service that automatically cleans your email lists for you. It will save you the time and hassle of manually cleaning your email lists and it will help to keep your lists spam compliant.
8. Ask your subscribers to whitelist you by adding your sender address to their list of recognized and trusted senders in their email program. This means that your email blasts have a much easier time reaching your subscribers' inboxes and will gracefully avoid their spam folder. If your subscribers are engaged and want to receive your email blasts, most will not have a problem whitelisting your email address. And if they're not engaged, you need to improve your email blasts.
9. Send out your email blasts at a consistent time and day. This helps to build a trusted routine with your subscribers. They will come to expect your email blasts, which will make them more likely to open and read them (as long as your email blasts remain interesting and offer value). How do you find the best time to send out your email blasts? Test! Each email subscriber list will be different. You may find that your emails get the highest open rates on the weekends or early in the mornings. There is no one time that works for every business.
10. Provide a web-hosted version of your email blast for subscribers who can't view it properly in their email programs. That way, if an email subscriber has difficulty seeing images, links or anything else, they can simply click to view the web version and still gain the important information contained in your email blast.
11. Always test your email blasts before you send them out. You may spot issues that you didn't see while you were creating the email blast.
Email Blast Tips For After You Send
12. Analyze the data from each email blast report after you send. This is a great way to see if the emails being sent are being successfully delivered. You can see who unsubscribed, which emails were bounced and much more essential data.
13. Once you have a bit of data about your email subscribers, their preferences, purchase history, email blast open rate and so on, you can create targeted email blast lists. Targeted lists outperform mass lists every time when it comes to open and response rates. Here's why: instead of a subscriber receiving all kinds of emails about different topics, which are intended to appeal to a wide audience, the subscriber now receives email blasts that are tailored to his or her individual needs and interests.
Picture this: you have signed up to receive emails from a kitchen store. You have a well-stocked kitchen, but you need some new knives and want to wait until they go on sale to purchase them.
Mass Email Blasts: You receive email blasts about pots and pans, dish sets and everything else in the store. Your knife email gets lost in the mix and you may even stop opening all these emails or even unsubscribe.
Targeted Email Blasts: You receive email blasts whenever there is a knife sale or special, so you stay up to date on the product that you want to purchase. You also receive other emails that are relevant to you, such as when the store is having a tax-free event. You may even receive a special discount on knives if you haven't opened your email blasts in a while and the business wants to get you engaged again.
You can also learn more about your customers by using a simple online survey and asking them to select their preferences so they can receive better-targeted email blasts. Allow your customers to easily update their preferences if they wish. Just include a link in each email blast you send that says "Click Here to Update Your Preferences!"
Want More Email Blast Tips?
These email blast tips should help you avoid spam filters and keep your subscribers active and engaged, but we always have been up our sleeve. Sign up for a free SimplyCast demo or give our sales team a call at 1-866-323-6572 ext. 1 to start sending email blasts (with our email blast tips) today!
