email must haves

January 18, 2011

We're doing a lot of email campaigns this season and more are coming down the pike. Email campaigns require planning ahead, and few site owners are prepared for the myriad of details that need to be addressed. So, I'm writing this blog post to discuss basic email must haves. This first list does not address style—just function, but subsequent lists will. Some of these requirements are provided by good email marketing software, but the rest are easy to address with a little foresight.

elements to include

• An unsubscribe link. Why? Compliance with CAN-Spam laws are designed to protect the public and are taken seriously by ISP's and reputable email marketing providers. Too many people are still exporting their computer address books into email marketing software and blasting away. Unfortunately, this practice hurts everyone— sender, hosting company, email software provider, recipient—and generally results in IP blacklisting.

• A link to an online version. Why? Webmail applications like gmail yahoo and hotmail routinely prevent images and flash content from loading and for good reason. Users automatically receive a warning that the images were prevented from downloading and prompted to respond by changing their settings for that contact. If you are spending time and money on good-looking newsletters, a link to view online helps protect your investment.

• A link back to your website. Why? Email browsers don't display everything a web browser can, and hardly two programs are alike. I get numerous marketing emails that don't link back to their site which is a mistake. I click on homepage links 90% of the time, especially if I like the content in the email.

• Links out to more information. Why? The most basic email marketing platforms measure the effectiveness of the email by tracking click thru rates for your outbound links. These statistics tell you which content items where of the most interest to your audience, and that makes it easier to improve your technique as you go along.

• A headline. Why? Readers immediately judge how interested they are in your material whether you have a headline or not. Headlines give them an instant a reason to open your email and read it.

• Carefully worded alternate text for all images in the email. Why? For HTML emails, some email clients prevent images from displaying appear after the email is opened. The "alternate text" shows up instead. It's easy to see how useful alternate text can be, but this is not an opportunity to load up keywords. Think about relating to another human being and insert meaningful descriptions of what the image is about.

• An engaging preheader. What's a preheader? The gurus will lead you to think this is programming code, it's not. A preheader is simply the first line of text in your email. Although for mobile email apps, it's worth making a fuss over because the first line of text, the preheader, is visible right after the subject. This line can say something advantageous like "Grab two shirts for the price of one," but it usually says something not so useful like, "View this email in browser."

• A true subject line. Today's email marketing software forces you to create a subject line. Some software requires you to assign a default subject line that can be edited later. Don't forget to check and double check it. Bad subject lines can result in unsubscribes and abuse complaints.

• Inline CSS. For HTML emails, there's no getting around this. In 2001, email programs are still behind when it comes to cascading style sheets. If you want "red" text in an email, you've got to spell it out everywhere it occurs with inline styles.