Isn’t it interesting that with so much talk about email—some good, some bad—our inboxes have an endless stream pouring into them every day! The sheer volume of email traffic worldwide is expected to grow 4% in 2018 from 269.0 to 281.1 billion emails.
What does that mean for you? Your daily email inbox is going to grow from 121 emails to 140. That’s 35,140 emails that will hit your inbox this year! So now let’s flip the picture. If you are among the 82% of businesses that employ email marketing technology, then it makes sense to put in the extra effort to break through the noise cluttering everyone’s inboxes.
Use an Email Checklist
A great way to make yourself heard is by using a checklist. Creating your own email checklist is easy. It will take you less than an hour, but that simple investment will save you countless time and money for your email campaigns from that point on. A checklist that is utilized will put redundancy into your marketing planning which helps you ensure world class quality. There is a reason why pilots use preflight checklists.
We use this checklist here at ANS to ensure our campaigns have a successful launch and delivery. Feel free to use this checklist next time you create a campaign for your business.
Breaking it Down
Let me highlight a few important details of the email checklist. The steps of our checklist are in blue. We use these groups like checkpoints in our email creation process. Although all of the steps are important, there are a few that are vital.
Content
Deciding what to say, what images to use, and what CTA is the grunt work of the email. If done well, your email content will stand out to your audience. It is critical that when you create copy for your email, you have it thoroughly checked for grammar, punctuation, and spelling errors. It’s far too easy to make mistakes in written language. The way we handle this at ANS is by running our copy through a series of checks before it goes to the final product. First, we run all text through Grammarly. Grammarly is a great way to spell check as well as cut out simple grammar errors. Next, we have a member of our team peer review the piece. These two steps ensure that the message is clear and concise.
Make sure you have some system for checking your content in place. You don’t want to have a headache like this on your hands:
A/B Testing
It is commonplace in the industry to A/B test, but here is a reminder of why we do it. A/B testing is one of the best ways to systematically find solutions that work. The cool part about A/B testing with email is that you get to play the scientist in your own little email lab. Think back now to the scientific method:
Try going through this process as you make different versions of your email. Focus on changing one thing at a time (experimenting) so that you can get clear data on if your changes make a positive difference or not.
Analyze
Finally, always analyze your results. After each email campaign, make sure you have a way to pool information from your campaign. Track things such as open rate, click-through rate, and ROI. As you collect this information take time to look at the data for insights. See if the changes you made in your A/B test made a difference. If so, what was the difference? Should you keep using aspects of the better test for future campaigns? Learn from your campaigns, and you will see improvement in your email marketing over time.
Summary
As inboxes continue to fill up with increasing amounts of email, using an email checklist will help you put your best emails forward. A checklist will create more effective email campaigns. As you check off the steps in the creation process, be sure to pay close attention to content. Always A/B test your emails to increase deliverability. Analyze and learn from your campaigns.
Once again feel free use our email checklist. You can download a PDF here. If you want to expand your marketing reach through email, check out our data solutions. With access to over 200 million households across the country and 16 million business addresses, you can have a segmented campaign that will grow your business.
Written by Michael Peterson, social media marketer at ANS.