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Email Marketing is an effective way for businesses and organisations to communicate directly with their audiences, with the potential of being a very personal medium for delivering your marketing messages. However, without having a firm grasp on the basics of Email Marketing, your campaigns may be left unopened, lost in spam filters, or even worse they could damage your business's reputation as a trusted email source. At Together Digital we have compiled a simple guide to help you navigate the medium of Email Marketing.
Subject Line
Your subject line is one of the most important parts of email marketing and should be intriguing enough to get your subscribers to open the email. There are several different styles of subject lines that you can try out, including:
The Informational: Importance of Customer Reviews - Infographic
The Personal: Thanks for joining our newsletter, Jack.
The List: 5 Easy Steps to Improve your Facebook Campaigns
The Question: Why should you Advertise on Bing?
However, there are limitations when it comes to writing up a creative and attractive subject line:
You are limited to roughly 50 characters. This would be on average 7-12 words devoted to the message you wish to convey. Your subject line should serve as an intriguing introduction to reflect the content of the email, therefore it’s important to be creative but not deceptive with your subject line.
Feel free to add a call to action or use various adverbs in your subject line to encourage interaction between the recipient and your business. For example - Watch, Hurry, Check out, etc. The use of numbers, alliterations and even emojis can also help draw attention to your email in the recipient's inbox. Many different approaches can be taken so be sure to write several potential subject lines and then choose the best one!
Preheader Text
Preheader text is just as important as the subject line of your email, as the two work in tandem with the other and play a crucial part in encouraging subscribers to open your email. It serves as a form of an excerpt to the content of the email itself and is used as a prescreening tool for your users. They’ll read this and see if the email is worth opening or sending straight into the bin. Preheader text also features prominently on many mobile email clients so its importance cannot be underestimated.
Some of our tips for optimising the preheader text are to try and keep it short so that it doesn’t cut off on different devices and email platforms, It is important to make sure your message is heard. We also suggest using it as an extension to the subject line of the email, to further convey your message. Including a call to action in the preheader text also works well to encourage interaction with your email Preheader texts and the subject lines are the Batman and Robin of the Email Marketing world, so it's important they work perfectly together to achieve results
From Name
The 'from' name in an email is usually the first thing your subscribers see when they have received an email from you. The ‘from’ name must represent your company, your goal is to build reputation and trust as a branded email sender. Usually, putting a person’s name as a 'from' name is a bad idea unless that person represents your brand, has a direct relationship with the recipient, or is a recognisable name - even then try to follow it with the company or organisation’s name.
A few things to keep in mind when deciding on a ‘from’ name for your email campaign are:
Keeping the name as short as possible while still representing the brand,
Not using an email address as your ‘from’ name as it’s seen as poor branding and has a higher chance of being marked as spam
Being aware of truncation, for example, Gmail typically cuts off names at around 20 characters, which could leave you with a partial ‘from’ name.
From Address
Another important thing when it comes to adding to your email credibility is the ’From Address’ Some tips on what to do and don’t when it comes to 'from' address are as follows:
Don’t use a “no reply” email address, as this discourages customer engagement with your company.
Don’t a webmail address from a free provider such as - @gmail.com or @yahoo.com, instead use your company’s own email domain name (e.g. @TogetherDigital.ie). This represents your brand in a more professional light.
Do personalise the address to show the purpose. For example - support@... jobs@... Alex@..., this helps your subscribers know exactly who to contact to respond to their queries.
Make sure to sign up for our email alerts to keep posted as we walk through the different steps of building an email marketing campaign that gets opened.
