6 tips for building an efficient email campaign

If you use different electronic media such as email campaigns and blogs in connection with your website, you are not alone.  What can differentiate your efforts from those put forth by other businesses, however, is your recognition that the design of promotion emails is a process that is distinctly different from the work you do on your company’s website.

If you are familiar with the differences that exist between putting together an effective email campaign compared to designing and maintaining an attractive website, you may learn some tricks-of-the-trade by reviewing the following list of tips for designing an email appropriately.  If you are not familiar with how to design an email, you may want to consider to contact our marketing professionals at Visual Artistics.  They are experts at creating emails that your target audience will look forward to reading.

Incorporate a Sensible Ratio of Text vs. Images

Spam filters review an email’s ratio of text vs. images when determining if the email should be sent to a recipient’s inbox or spam folder.  So, if your email has too much text or too many images, a spam filter may send your message to a prospect’s spam folder.

Not only will including a sensible mix of text and images in an email keep your message out of a person’s spam folder, it has the added benefit of ensuring your email is easy and entertaining to read.

Know Embedded Images May Not Appear

If you decide to use embedded images in your email, you must know that there is a very good chance the images will not appear in your email in the way you intended, if they appear at all.  So, you must make sure that the information you want your audience to read is not embedded in an image.  You can do this by using HTML to communicate your main points to the recipients of your email.

Also, take precautionary steps against your email being skewed if an image does not appear.  By using size and alt features in your image tags, you will ensure that a missing image is replaced with an empty box that will preserve the original format of your message.

Have a Secondary Background

Certain mail servers such as Gmail do not support background images, so having an alternate one that is simpler, perhaps just colored, to take the place of your background image is important.  If you use HTML, you can code both a background image and a colored background in the same tag, meaning your secondary background will replace the background image if it’s not supported.

Remember Every Mail Client is Different

Because mail clients react differently to the codes you use in your emails and you don’t know which clients your audience members use to read their emails, you must keep in mind that not all mail clients will display your email the way you wanted.  Using HTML coding profusely will help ensure your emails are delivered the way you intended them to be by as many mail clients as possible.

Use a Table of Contents for Longer Emails

If your email is on the longer side, break it into manageable sections and create a table of contents to guide people through it.  Place your table of contents immediately below your company’s logo.  Make sure the information you want people to read is easily accessible to them by linking the subjects in your table of contents to the material that discusses them.

Don’t Bury Your Request for Action

If the purpose of your email is to get your audience members to so something like click a link to a new product description or mark their calendars for an upcoming event, don’t bury your request for action in, or at the bottom of, the rest of the information included in your email.  Instead, put your request at the beginning of your message where your audience is most like to see and respond to it.