Email Best Practices: Part 1 - Governance

Posted by Adam Peck on 5 June 2009 | 7 Comments

Tags: email marketing

Email has become every marketer’s magic bullet during the recession. It’s really hard to imagine a more efficient way to reach new prospects and customers.

Although email marketing has proven to be a strong direct response tactic, it does have its limitations. As consumers, we are inundated with an over abundance of email every day; is it any wonder email open and click-through rates are declining? Also, email providers have raised the intensity of their spam filters to the point that often the desired, opt-in emails are mistakenly blocked as well.

Have no fear. By following some proven best practices, you can be assured that you have maximized your potential for return on investment.

There are five key elements to master, each of which is a critical contributor to email marketing success:

1. GOVERNANCE: Establishing a central strategic infrastructure to adhere to organizational email standards.
2. PERMISSION: Strategies to help maximize your number of quality opt-ins for your email communications.
3. DELIVERY: Best practices to set up your email to make it through spam filters to reach your audience.
4. ENTICEMENT: Recommended approach to improve open rates.
5. ENGAGEMENT: Development of design and content to help promote higher click-through rates.

This first post will focus on Governance.

GOVERNANCE
To ensure a positive customer experience, it is important to establish email governance guidelines for your organization. Basically, the rules of the road that you will utilize across the company:

Frequency — how often should or can we email?

• To prevent opt-outs and ensure a positive experience for your customers or prospects, you must respect their preferences, including their desired email frequency. This should be captured up front during your e-newsletter registration process.
• If desired email frequency is not captured up front, it is best to establish official organizational guidelines for frequency (i.e. not emailing individuals more than once per day, week, etc.)

Limitations on how captured email addresses can be used.

• If the user only wanted to receive information about a certain vertical market, you should respect this request by only emailing them with their requested, relevant information.
• If your customer or prospect did not ask to be contacted by a sales person, respect this request.

Third party list policies.

• Purchased lists usually have specific rules regarding how the names can be used. For example, if your list was purchased from an online magazine, typically the online publisher will need to send the email on your company’s behalf.
• Some purchased lists may only be used for a set period of time. For example, some email lists may allow for unlimited usage for one year, etc.

Opt-out management and CAN-SPAM compliance.

• Respect your users’ desire to be removed from your emails or e-newsletters. For example, during the opt-out process, allow users to only opt-out for certain content or newsletters.
• Without adhering to CAN-SPAM compliance, there is a risk you will be black listed and blocked from certain email providers. This will obviously negatively impact deliverability in the future.

Coordination with other channels.

• Set up timing of your email communications to be synced with other marketing communication channels for maximum impact.
• Ensure that the content of your email is in line with other online content (i.e. online destinations of clickable areas on emails look like your email).

Brand standards.

• Ensure that your email communications meet your basic brand guidelines.

Tip: Appoint an email channel “owner” to oversee governance adherence.

Governance is the foundation of email best practices. It is the first step towards the goal of maximizing your company’s email performance.

Check back for the next post in this series where we will cover strategies to improve email opt-in acquisition.