It’s no secret that email marketing is a powerful tool for communicating with visitors, customers and prospects, but like other marketing mediums, you have to uphold a certain set of rules or best practices to ensure a compliant and successful campaign.

Two of the most important aspects of successful email marketing campaigns are adhering to certain codes of conduct regarding unsubscribing and signup confirmation.  In certain countries, there’s actually laws in place that mandate an unsubscribe link in all marketing emails, so it’s always a good practice to include your link at the bottom of each email and direct users to a courteous page that removes them from your mailing list quickly.  Making this a “one-click” process is also a good idea.

In terms of signup confirmation, you should always use a double opt-in confirmation process.  This means that after your visitor initially enters their email address to subscribe to your list, you should then send a “confirmation” email.  This email should contain a special link back to your email-marketing program, which will then verify that this visitor did indeed sign up to your mailing list.  This ensures you don’t come off as “spammy,” which could be detrimental to your email marketing campaign.

Speaking of spam, try to avoid using keywords such as ‘free,’ ‘save,’ ‘discount,’ etc. in both your subject line and content to avoid getting caught in your users spam filters- which have become very complex in recent years.

The concept of personalization is key in email marketing campaigns as well.  Instead of using the common “Hi there,” or “Dear Subscriber,” you should use individual subscriber names to create a more personable relationship with your readers.  It’s estimated that by simply starting your email with “Hi [subscriber_name]” instead of the boring “Hi there”, you can increase both your reading and click-thru rates by up to 650%.  Why?  Put simply, it’s because your subscribers feel like they already have a relationship with you as you’ve addressed them by their first name.

To maximize click-thru rates, which is most likely the goal of any email marketing campaign, it’s good practice to include clear,  concise  links that ensure your readers don’t get confused by a design filled with graphics, text, buttons and more.  There’s been numerous research papers that prove that the majority of Internet users respond better to a plain, bold, blue text link as opposed to a banner or button.  If you’re going to include links in your emails, make sure they’re bold, blue and underlined.  This will mean more subscribers click through and subsequently more conversions/sales for you.

In terms of the best days to send your emails, studies conducted by online research analysts have shown the best days are Tuesday and Wednesday, as this is when people are more receptive to communication.  This means that they are more likely to read your content and click on links, meaning more sales.

On Mondays, everyone is still recovering from a hectic weekend.  On Thursday and Friday, people are already too busy looking forward to the weekend.  This has been heavily experimented with, and the best results were achieved by sending out emails at around 2-3pm (American Pacific Time) on a Wednesday, studies have proved.

These are just a few simply rules, best practices and tips to ensure your email marketing campaigns remain successful.  Of course, it always takes testing and a trial and error approach to determine what the best strategy is for your particular campaign, but certain aspects and un-spoken rules must always be applied to ensure you don’t upset your readers and to make sure you don’t violate any of the most simplest of rules regarding the sending of mass marketing emails.

Since there’s a lot that goes into an email marketing campaign, it’s sometimes best to leave it up to the professionals to worry about the boring technical and compliance issues.  Check out MobileStorm’s PRO offering for an all-inclusive digital marketing platform that will  allow you to focus solely on the outcome of your campaign.