19 Apr 10 Email Marketing Best Practices

Utilizing Email Marketing Best Practices include:

- Ensuring that your prospects have agreed to receive offers from your company, also know as Opt in Email Marketing .

- Confirm how the Email Marketing list was gathered and how it has been managed since then. For instance, how are opt-out requests and bounce backs handled?

- Confirm that opt-out requests from previous use have been processed appropriately

- Subject line ( by law ) must not mislead the recipient about the topic matter or contents of the email. Additionally, to steer clear of being filtered as SPAM, don’t use the words ‘win’,'prize’,’sweepstakes’ or have a dollar value ( i.e. ‘$1000′ ) in the subject line. Do include the topic of the survey and survey sponsor whenever it’s possible

- The From and reply To addresses ( by law ) must be accurate and identify the person that sent the e-mail

The body of the message for Targeted Email Marketing ( by law ) must include the following :

- Opt-out info. A convincing email address or other strategy for recipient to be removed from mail list. As an example, ‘To be removed from future mailings of this type, please send an answer to this e-mail and include in the topic line – ‘Remove from XYZ Study’

- Sender’s physical street address

The body of the message should include all of the following :

- the first sentence should be fascinating and it should communicate the reason why taking the survey is worthwhile . Be as explicit as practicable

- Name of company or individual who is sponsoring the survey

- short explanation of the goal of the study

- period of time it should take the respondent to complete the survey. Be truthful ; a time range is okay

- clarification of where/how the recipient’s email was obtained

- Clear instruction on the way to access the survey

- If there are screeners within the survey, include a statement around how the respondent must fully qualify and complete the survey. This is especially critical if an inducement is offered. For instance, ‘We are looking for a specific target market. ‘

- inducement information ( if applicable ). Info must be clear. Sweepstakes rules or link to the guidelines should be included ( if applicable )

For Permission Email Marketing the body of the email message shouldn’t :

- State it is’not SPAM’ ( or use the word SPAM at all )

- Sound anonymous or imprecise

- Have lengthy text explaining the way in which the data will be used

- Use pressure language such as’must’ or’hurry now’

- Use’scam’ type of language or offering

Reminder emails should :

- NOT be sent to people who opted out of the first mailing

- Have the word’ Reminder’ in the topic line

- Be an abbreviated version of the first email