8 Things to Check Before Sending Your Email Marketing Campaign

Make sure that your email lands in the right inbox. Your customers and leads are all at different stages of your marketing funnel. Because of this, you can’t send out the same messages to all your contacts.

This is where segmenting your mailing list comes in. List segmentation improves the success of your email campaigns because you split up your contact list into smaller segments. This allows you to send the right people the most relevant content at the best time.

You may also decrease the risk of unsubscribes or your emails getting deleted straight away because of irrelevant messaging. Make sure to collect enough data from your subscribers so you can do this.

The first two things you see when you receive an email is the sender name and subject line. When it comes to your email marketing checklist, these are critical for your open rates. Optimize, optimize, optimize.

• The sender name: As much as 42% of people use the sender’s name to decide if they want to open an email or not. This is because subscribers usually respond better to personal sender names compared to company names.

A/B test some emails with the names of individuals from your business to identify which sender names get the most opens. You can sign off emails as them too. Doing this is more inviting and helps your subscribers to connect with your messaging and your business.

• The subject line: This is your chance to convince the subscriber to open your email. Since subject lines only give you a limited number of characters to work with, it’s important to be brief and to the point – aim for 60 characters for desktop and under 30 for mobile. Make sure they also offer value and pique interest.

If you’re using personalization tags like FIRSTNAME or LASTNAME, be certain that they’re functioning properly and pulling in the correct data. Always use a clean, up-to-date list and use tags that everyone on your list has information for. For instance, if you’re trying to pull a subscriber’s Instagram handle into your email, the contacts on the list you’re sending to must have provided you with that information.

If you don’t have that specific data, some email platforms offer fall-back options that use replacement terms to fill in the blanks. These fall-back options can be anything you’d like. Here is an example of how this is done in the Everlytic platform:

One of the biggest mistakes you can make is to send an email with a broken link, especially if lead generation and nurturing is the goal of your campaign. This may damage your brand reputation and subscribers may be less likely to open your future emails.

Manually check every link before you hit the send button and fix any errors before moving forward with your email.

If you use images to direct users to your website, test those links too. Images should be labeled with relevant ALT text in case images don’t download – that way, at least the reader knows what the image is about.

Another thing to look out for is how your images are displayed. Are they stretched or pixelated? Extremely large? They should display the way you want them to, and if not, adjust accordingly.

This is a given, no matter what type of content you’re publishing. Spelling and grammar errors are embarrassing, for you and your business. Always proofread your emails at least twice, giving yourself some time in between so you take a fresh look. Be sure to spell-check too. Or you can use a good online spell checker to double-check any phrases you’re unsure of.

To be extra safe, send a test email to your copywriter / copy editor or to the biggest grammar geek on your team.

Make sure that your email can be received and understood by all your subscribers, regardless of any disabilities, assistive devices, or browsers they may be using. According to stats, 42.3 percent of mobile users will delete an email if it’s not displaying correctly.

The World Health Organization says about 2.2 billion people globally have a vision impairment. Read more to understand how crucial email accessibility is.

To understand how different browsers and devices display your email, try testing a few options across the most popular devices and browsers. Then maybe create a template to use for each email you send using the winning test version.

Everlytic’s email builder and templates adapts to different-sized screens automatically. No matter which device your recipients use, your emails will display sensibly. You can also use our inbox preview feature to check how your emails will be viewed across various email clients before sending.

Most marketers include their business address, contact information, and an unsubscribe link in the footer. The latter makes it easy for users to unsubscribe and helps you to comply with privacy regulations.

If you’re active on social media, including social links to your profiles is also a good idea. There are best practices you can follow to ensure that you are optimizing your email footer in the best way possible.

High quality email marketing campaigns can boost your revenue. Use this email marketing checklist to avoid mistakes and improve your campaign results.