TABLE OF CONTENTS


Email marketing can be difficult to perfect. Below we have outlined some useful tips to help you follow best practices when sending out email campaigns! If you need further advice on using the EIT Food MailChimp account specifically, head over to this article.

Deliverability

The most important objective is to ensure emails are received by recipients, and with their consent. Even average delivery rates of 97.9% do not constitute success! If the email frequency is weekly and there is a 2% bounce rate this will churn (how many of your existing customers are unlikely to make another purchase from your business) an entire email list in less than a year. 

Monitoring delivery but ignoring inbox placement is short-sighted. Emails have no value if they are placed in subscribers’ spam junk folders.

 

Good non-spam signals include: 

  • Users frequently open your campaigns
  • People respond to your email campaigns (via reply email)
  • People move your email out of the junk folder
  • Recipients move your emails into inbox folders add to address book.


Here are tips to avoid spam filters and improve delivery rate: 

  • Only email people who have given you permission
  • Use a familiar ‘From’ name and have a real reply-to address in your campaigns
  • Use segmentation/tagging to send targeted, relevant campaigns
  • Avoid phrases like “Click here!” or all caps
  • Avoid link shorteners 


DODON'T
  • Have a double opt-in. 
  • Identify the likely reasons why audiences/ campaigns have high bounce rates.
  • Ensure your emails have a clear call to action, which results in a click.
  • Tackle list hygiene through email validation and get unengaged subscribers to take action. 
  • Include a clear link to unsubscribe. 
  • Review how lists were created – do they comply with GDPR? Are they high quality? Have they been de-duped?
  • Leverage great tagging and segmentation to send highly targeted emails. 
  • Drive engagement via interactivity 
  • Test results and make unsubscribing easy
  • Send repeated emails to non-engaged recipients
  • Send emails with bad, broken or incorrect links 
  • Continue sending emails to an audience with a high unsubscribe rate. Identify what could be wrong and adapt your strategy accordingly. 

 

Accessibility

Improving the accessibility of emails is crucial to be inclusive and to increase engagement. 

  • Alt text - add image descriptions to make images more 'readable' by screen readers, search engines and more (unless the image is decorative).
  • Responsive design - ensure content formats correctly, regardless of device.
  • Text formatting - use heading styles like you would for a web page. Make sure your text is at least 12pt in size and there is enough spacing between lines and paragraphs.
  • Colour - test whether your colours pass the minimum contrast ratio using WebAIM’s colour contrast checker. Using black on white for important information is a safe bet.
  • Emojis and punctuation - emojis and punctuation (such as ‘&’) should never replace an actual word.
  • Plain language - use accessible language for your audiences and avoid unnecessary jargon, such as acronyms. For example, some people do not know expressions such as ’EOD’ (end of day) and they can sound like nonsense when read by screenreaders.

 

Subject lines

Subject lines are the first thing someone sees when receiving an email. Therefore, they play an important role in increasing the open rate!

  • Add personalisation - Use ‘merge tags’ to personalise subject lines with each recipient's name or location. 
  • Be descriptive - try to communicate the benefits of what you are promoting to the audience. 
  • Keep it short ) Keep subject lines short and snappy. Use no more than 9 words and 60 characters. Best practice for all devices is to keep to around 7 words (no more than 43 characters are visible in mobile view).
  • Limit punctuation - It’s best to use no more than 3 punctuation marks per subject line. 
  • Use emojis carefully - Use no more than 1 emoji at a time – these should supplement words rather than replace them. 
  • Test subject lines - Learn from previous subject line performance and use an A/B or Multivariate testing campaign to see if different subject lines affect open rates.

 

Copy and call to actions (CTAs)

Within the email, copy and CTAs need to: 

  • Contextualise - consider the audience(s), how to communicate with them and how they joined your database/community.
  • Have a clear and concise purpose - provide recipients with useful and relevant information/content and make it clear what you want them to do. 
  • Be short and snappy where possible. 
  • Speak to the audience - Writing to the reader is key e.g. 'you, your, you're, we’.
  • Use EIT Food’s voice and language – a consistency of style – and learning from previous top performing campaigns – is key to building a relationship with the audience, building their trust. When they get an email from you they know what to expect.

 

Imagery and design

Always use imagery that is: 

  • Attention-grabbing, inclusive, relevant, relatable & aesthetically pleasing.
  • Accessible and simple. It’s important to keep it clutter free, so it is easy to read with only the essential information. 
  • On brand: incorporate brand colours and fonts, logos, relevant images and visual elements. The header reinforces the “from” field, so the reader won’t doubt who sent the email. Use real imagery and avoid stock, where possible.
  • Carefully selected: too much designed content in one email can cause loading issues, especially on mobile. 
  • Consistent and updated email signature design.

 

Where can I find further help regarding MailChimp?

The MailChimp & Co blog includes a series of useful how-to guides and step-by-step techniques for improving emails. This could be a great place to start. 

 

If you’re still stuck, feel free to reach out to [email protected] and we’ll do our best to help you!