This humorous infographic from ReachMail, an email marketing software company, approaches email marketing optimization from a different point of view. Instead of understanding how to properly administer an effective email marketing campaign by finding out what you need to do right, it highlights all the wrong things an email marketer must do in order to fail at their job. As the infographic says, “If running a failed mobile email marketing campaign is your goal, follow these tips to make failure inevitable” LOL!
But seriously folks, this infographic makes some excellent points about email marketing performance and what you can do to make sure your campaign performs.
While the information presented here focuses more strongly on mobile email campaigns, it also introduces some overarching guidelines for any email campaign.
For example, the third rule touches upon something important we’ve talked about before: sending frequency. Following the ironic tone of this infographic, the author stresses that if you want your emails to remain buried at the bottom of your reader’s inbox, then send them at inconvenient times like midnight on Saturdays. However, since most of us are actually trying to get readers to open up emails, send them when they are most likely to be opened. Keep in mind that most emails are opened within the first hour of their being sent.
The fifth rule is also important enough to deserve some review. It highlights the need for render testing your email marketing campaigns which is the process of making sure that your emails are readable in all situations. This doesn’t just mean testing for different screen sizes. Rather, it includes testing your emails to make sure they are readable through different email providers and clients.
The sixth rule points out one of the major mistakes of any marketing campaign which is to have confusing calls to action (CTAs). The confusion can either be caused by hiding the CTA in your email or landing page or displaying a jumbled mess of too many CTAs on the email or landing page.
The other rules are mostly variations on the theme of mobile optimization. I know a lot of companies are still wondering whether they need to worry about a mobile audience. But consider this: According to ReachMail’s internal numbers “41% of emails are now opened via mobile devices and 91% of smartphone owners access the same email account on both mobile and desktop.” Make sure you are analyzing your traffic sources to see how many emails are accessed through mobile devices. If you see a growing trend of mobile readers, it is time to rethink your email marketing strategy.
