Bayshore Solutions' eMarketer, Kristin Vick, shares the 10 best practice email marketing strategies to help communicate and build relationships with your clients

1. 10 Tips to Improving Your
Email Marketing Strategy
Kristin Vick
Online Marketing Team

2. #1: Tell ‘Em What to Expect
• Before you send your emails, tell your customers how
many emails, and what type of emails will be coming
their way.
• Make this information available on any email
subscription forms so they know what exactly they are
signing up for.

3. #2: Make it Personal
• The more personal you can make an email the better.
• Using a greeting such as “Hi Kristin” or “Kristin, we
thought you’d like to know…” can increase your open
rate and lowers the chance of your email getting caught
in spam filters.
• A higher open rate can have a positive effect across the
rest of sales funnel: higher click-through’s and even
higher conversions.

4. #3: Keep It Simple
• Email text should be short and scan-able. Don’t bog your
intended reader with a lot of text.
• Give them a few bullet points, or a “summary” of what
you want to communicate.
• Remember, just because your reader has opened your
email does not mean that you have the readers
undivided attention

5. #4: Limit Images
• The more images you have the better chance that your
email message will not load properly or fast enough and
readers will delete the email before they get to
information you want to communicate to them.
• Additionally, try to keep calls to action outside of an
image so readers know the action you want them to
take.

6. #5: Maximize Your Email Template
• Keep emails around 600 pixels wide
• Remember, emails are intended to be quick information
bits that lead customers to your website for more and/or
deeper information.

7. #6: Make it Easy to Unsubscribe
• If you, as a sender, make it difficult to unsubscribe to
your readers then they can easily get annoyed that
they’re receiving unwanted emails and will start marking
your messages as spam.
• This could hurt your sender reputation, making it that
much more difficult to get your emails to the readers
inbox who do want your emails.

8. #7: Know Spam Rules
• You’re only allowed to send bulk email to people who
specifically asked to be on your mailing list.
Read up on CAN-SPAM Act for more details.

9. #8: Keep a Clean List
• Remove unsubscribed email requests from previous
sends and unformatted email addresses.
• “Pruning” your list each month or even after each send
may be more work, but it will keep you out of the spam
folder, and leave your sender reputation intact.

10. #9: Send a Test Email
• Make sure you know how your email is going to look
when it goes to your recipients. Do all of your links work?
Are there any broken images?
• Test with major email providers (Outlook, Gmail, Hotmail,
etc) and fix any bugs before you send your email to your
main list.
• Create a text version for readers who opt out of HTML
emails.

11. #10: Test. Rinse. Repeat.
• You test everything else in your online marketing mix and
emails should be included, too. There is always
something that can be optimized, whether it’s your copy,
call to actions, template designs, etc.
The key is to never stop improving!

12. Email can be a very effective piece of your marketing mix
when it is used correctly. Remember to consider your email
as an extension of your website, and you want your email
to match your brands.

13. These basics are a great guide to keep your email
marketing performing at its best.
For help on applying these online marketing tips to your
business, please visit: www.BayshoreSolutions.com.