Currently, there are more than 4 billion email users worldwide with the average individual looking through their emails approximately 15 times a day. So, what does this mean? It means that email marketing is one of the most unrivaled ways to reach and connect with potential and current customers. In fact, 78% of marketers said email marketing is important to overall company success and is one of the main sources of customer acquisition.
Although email marketing seems easy, many areas are often overlooked and can affect the overall effectiveness of an email marketing campaign. Email marketers must be aware of these areas when launching email campaigns to improve email performance and decrease unsubscribe rates. Below are 4 email marketing best practices that email marketers often overlook.
1. Maintain Compliance & Brand Protection
When it comes to email marketing best practices, the first thing to keep in mind is compliance. There are various laws that email marketers need to keep in mind to avoid complications and potential fines. The most popular compliance law is the CAN-SPAM Act. This law functionally sums up the national standards that any commercial email in the USA must follow. Failing to comply with its guidelines can result in large fines of up to $16,000 per individual email sent.
Unfortunately, non-compliance is very common in all industries, resulting in losses of thousands of dollars and damage to one’s brand image. Avoiding non-compliance is key to staying in business; and, the easiest way to avoid fines and penalties is by implementing an email compliance filter to your email systems. An email compliance filter allows users to scale their email campaign efforts by not needing to cross-reference their email opt-out lists, proactively protect their brand reputation by ensuring every email is going to the right person, and automate their compliance enforcement so there’s no need to add more steps to the workflow.
2. Create List Management Strategies
One of the most important aspects of email marketing is to ensure that each audience receives the right message at the right time. Email marketing is a powerful marketing channel, but sending messages to an uninterested audience or too many at once can cause those groups to lose interest. This is where email list management strategies can help.
Create email lists that are specific for prospects, leads, and customer segments to ensure every message is being delivered to the right audience. For example, build lists based on buyer personas, the lifecycle stage of the buyer, qualified vs. unqualified prospects, and more. By properly segmenting email data, email marketers can ensure the content of their emails will be more personalized for every type of customer or future customer in their pipeline.
3. Properly Manage Opt-Out Data
Opt-out data traditionally refers to a list of email addresses and clients that have willingly decided to unsubscribe from receiving content or participating in campaigns for a specific business. According to the CAN-SPAM Act, every person who has subscribed to emails can unsubscribe from a campaign at any time. When they unsubscribe, the business needs to follow through and not send any more emails to that specific user. However, sometimes, these opt-out addresses can still end up receiving emails they unsubscribed from. This results in heavy fines and penalties for non-compliance – even if it was just a one-time mistake.
For increased protection, it is essential to regularly remove and scrub opt-outs and inactive contacts from the campaigns they are on; however, this can be a taxing and time-consuming task. Enter suppression lists. Suppression lists are used to compile addresses you do not want to email. Although suppression lists are primarily used to block communication with users who choose to opt out of your marketing emails, there are many types of suppression lists that can be created based on specific needs. When done properly, these suppression lists not only protect businesses from penalties and fines but also reduce the negative impacts of deliverability rates and sender reputation.
4. Centralize Your Email Data
Because email data is so vast, it can get hard to keep track of and it can be even harder to monitor if it goes through multiple teams and silos. The more hands email data passes through, the easier it is to lose and accidentally delete information. That’s why it is critical to centralize your email data. This will help align sales and marketing teams with the right contacts, avoid complications, and improve efficiency and productivity. Storing email data in one location will allow the whole team to gain easy access to customer data and tailor that data to the business’s overall goals. On top of that, centralizing email data will help identify issues promptly, review the efficacy of email campaigns, and proactively monitor data. In short, it will allow all divisions of the company to stay compliant at all times.
Key Takeaways
Email marketing is one of the most effective channels for any marketer. But, to make the most out of an email campaign, compliance and data management must be a top priority to avoid potential fines and other legal issues. Brands that can follow through with these email marketing best practices will be able to protect their reputation, maintain compliance, optimize their email marketing campaign performance, and drive improved productivity and deliverability rates. UnsubCentral can help protect your brand by providing you with customizable solutions to generate more revenue from your email marketing efforts. Contact us for more information.