American Name Services is committed to the highest standards of email marketing best practices and overall effective ROI. Our clients trust us to provide them with superior service, results, brand name development, and the highest ROI. Because the world of email marketing is fast-paced and constantly changing, we want our clients are kept up-to-date on the best practices of email marketing. If you are not a client already, this information is still relevant to you, and we hope to earn your business through our commitment to these standards.

Email Marketing Best Practices

• Mail on verified, opt-in data only. This means that at the point of signing up and providing email information, the email user understood and opted to receive further email contact. For this reason, it is best to avoid renting or buying lists from unknown sources.
• Each email user in your database should have the following information associated with their email address:
  • Verified opt-in acknowledgement
  • Sign-up site URL
  • Date/Time stamp
  • IP
  • First/Last name
• Avoid over-mailing to an email list. Don’t rent or sell the data to multiple mailers. Lay out in your privacy policy on your website how often and for what purposes a user can expect future email from you.
• Use a “Friendly From” name that will be familiar to the user. Avoid using a “spammy” email from address.
• Avoid FROM addresses with unique identifiers; i.e., bounce-9683564@domain.com.
  Make it clear in the subject line and/or early in the body of the email what message or offer is being sent.
• Know the end user. Every interaction with someone on your email list tells something about the user; track it all and deliver relevant content. Use results of past email campaigns when possible to determine future efforts. BillboardEmail provides a suite of email analytics that provides a window into your email list for this purpose.
• Never use 100% picture-based campaigns. A 50/50 blend of images and text and a plain text version of the email body is recommended.
• Have a delivery strategy for each email campaign sent. Know when to deliver, how often, which domains, etc.
• A/B test as often as possible to weed out less effective email strategies.
• Never mail without putting data through a hygiene process. Click here to learn more about data hygiene.
• Don’t mail to data over a year old unless it is a verified opener/clicker. Remember, it’s better to have a smaller, valid email list than a large list with a lot of bounces.
• Play by the rules of ISP’s and email filtering companies.
• Only use creative that is designed FOR email. Creative designed for emails have specific design requirements that other types of creative don’t have to adhere to.
• Stay CAN-SPAM compliant. Process unsubscribed users immediately.
• Keep emails short and to the point.