Email Marketing Tips to Manage Your Emails
To professional email marketing people the tips I’m about to share will seem, well, “duh, who doesn’t know that?”
I find many clients who aren’t very techy tend to make some simple mistakes when creating and managing their email marketing systems. If you send a lot of emails, managing your sent emails, drafts and templates can be a challenge depending on the email marketing system you use.
One client has several different email templates used by both the owner and other volunteers. While I’ve trained the owner on the best practices when sending out emails and organizing his templates, I see the same mistakes cropping up when I go in to create his monthly newsletter.
Tip 1: Make a template and copy it. Don’t send it.
Yes, simple concept, but easy to forget. Create a template to use for all your emails related to that particular subject. Then save it as a template. If you send it, you won’t have a template to use the next time. Copying and updating a sent email will work the first time around, but after several iterations, links get corrupted, as well as formatting.
So, create your templates first and save them with names that include the message: COPY FIRST. DON’T SEND. This will serve as a reminder to yourself … provided you notice the template name and the message it implies.
Tip 2: Create a numbering system to easily track your templates
One particular client has several email templates for different purposes. You may as well. In Constant Contact, for example, it can be difficult to find the templates if you have a lot and they aren’t organized into folders but mixed in with sent and draft emails. While Constant Contact’s search function has improved over the years, it still takes time to find a specific email if you don’t recall the name. It’s not possible to search by date sent, but you can search by date scheduled or date modified or alphabetically forwards and backwards. When multiple people use the same account, getting everyone to use the same naming structure is challenging. Consequently, searching for a particular sent email can be time consuming.
At least for your templates, you can set up a system that’s organized using numbers for each one such as 01-name of template, 02-name of template. You can also use A-name of template, B-name of template, etc. Just don’t accidentally include spaces before the numbers and letters or before or after the dashes or in the template names on some but not all, since email systems, Constant Contact in particular, count those as part of the name. That will throw your organization out of whack.
Examples: 01-name of template vs. 01- nameoftemplate or 01 – name of template.
Consistency is the key when naming your templates in order to ensure they get organized properly. It is also key when creating your emails and sending them out. Unfortunately, it’s just too easy to copy that last email you sent out and update it instead of using a template.
Tip 3: Saving special content
But what if the last email had some information in it you want to share again which is not in the original template?
The best option is to save that content in a Word document for later use unless the email marketing platform you use allows copying of formatted blocks in one email template into another. The legacy version of Constant Contact’s email builder made it possible to view a block of content as html code, copy that, and then paste it into another email template or campaign. That feature disappeared with the new builder. I’m hoping they will bring that back.
Tip 4: Always update both the subject and the preheader text
My inbox is filled daily with emails that come in with the subject line “The latest news for you” and the preheader “you don’t want to miss this”. Sometimes the subject line is unique to the email but the preheader text hasn’t been changed.
These should always be changed. They are two of the most important areas of an email and help the recipient decide whether or not to open your email. After all, that is the objective, right? To increase both your open rate and your click through rate in emails.
Most email service providers such as Constant Contact, Mailchimp, MailerLite, and others, now have AI built in. I recommend using those tools to help you craft a compelling subject line and preheader text, as well as to write the article content in your emails.
Tip #5: Make heads and body text left justified
Many email marketing platforms (and website builders, too) default text to centered justification. I have no idea why since the standard reading format in the U.S. is left justified. Only short headlines or short paragraphs of no more than 3 lines should be centered. The human eye is not accustomed to reading a lot of centered text. Our brains weren’t trained that way. So when you leave all the text in your emails centered, it is harder for the recipient to read and comprehend. They won’t make the effort and will simply click away.
Headlines can be centered if they don’t fill the entire space above the body text. If possible, write headlines that stretch across the column but fill only one line. If the headline is too long and goes to two lines, re-write it so you have at least 2-3 words on the second line.
Bonus Tip #6: Use keywords in your heads and body text
If you’ve done your keyword research, you should have a list of keywords to use in each of your articles in your newsletters and for every email you send out. Choose one keyword as the primary focus for the email article and use it both in the headline and in the first paragraph of your body text. That helps to improve your SEO.
If you have questions about any of this, please contact me.
