SimplyCast: Email Marketing Blog

The team at SimplyCast wants to make life a little easier during these lazy days of summer by providing a handy checklist to use when creating your first email marketing campaign.

For those who create email marketing campaigns on a regular basis, think of this post as a quick refresher that could improve your efforts even more.

The list below will outline some of the most important factors to consider when planning your first message.

By focusing on these questions before creating a campaign, you will avoid many of the common pitfalls that email marketers can fall into.

Who is the message for?

• What are the particular characteristics of your intended group of subscribers and how are you going to interest or engage them?

• Where are you going to get their email addresses from? We highly recommend growing your own list and here is why.

• Does your list comply with current regulations? (CAN-SPAM compliant)

• Is your list up to date? Hence, when was the last time your cleansed your list?

What is the goal of the message?

• Do you want people to click through to your website/landing page or to call you on the phone.

• Do you want to create customer loyalty?

What is the content of your message?

• What title will you give the email to ensure as many people as possible open it? (see post on subject lines)

• How are you going to word the message to ensure that the most important parts get read? Remember you don’t have long to draw a reader in once they open the email.

• How are you going to attract your recipients to click through to your website or landing page? Call to Action phrases or images?

How should your message look?

• Are you going to create a HTML message, text only or both? How should you decide?

• How can you make your message visually attractive to your target audience?

How are you going to measure the success of your message?

• What are your targets in terms of clickthroughs, open rates and other metrics?

• What information will you need in order to determine how successful you have been and where are you going to get this information?

How often are you going to mail out to your list?

• Are you going to send out a regular email campaign or newsletter and if so, how often?

• Are you going to send out company updates, and if so, what kind of information will you send?

By asking yourself these questions before sending out your first campaign, you will avoid many of the common pitfalls that other email marketers can encounter.

Contact your SimplyCast account manager for more information or help with your campaign.