Digital Marketing Best Practices

Use Email Marketing Best Practices

Practice Makes Perfect

Email Icon for Best Pratices

What does a decade’s worth of experience in email marketing get you? Vast numbers of best practices (so many . . . you’d think we were the IRS–not!) to help campaigns reach the maximum number of their intended recipients. Here are some of the rules we recommend using during your campaigns:

mobileStorm lives by following both email marketing best practices and SMS best practices:

Email Best Practices Checklist

  1. Do NOT buy or rent lists. Build your own.
  2. Please have an Opt-In or preferably a Double Opt-In mechanism for your site.
  3. Try to do mailings at night from 1 a.m to 6 a.m. This is the time when there is the least amount of mail traffic for ISPs.
  4. Try not to have a “spammy” FROM domain like bulkmailer.com. Also, don’t use a gmail or hotmail address.
  5. Avoid FROM address with unique identifiers; i.e., bounce-9683564@domain.com.
  6. Make sure your emails state the purpose either in the subject or body ASAP.
  7. Know your target customers. This is one of the simplest yet most important of the email marketing best practices you can follow.
  8. Make sure your HTML email validates. Use this tool.
  9. Never use 100% picture-based campaigns. Always have a 50/50 blend of images and text.

SMS Best Practices Checklist

  1. Don’t send SMTP, only SMPP!
  2. The first few words are your subject line so make them count.
  3. Always include STOP, HELP, and an email address in every message.
  4. Only double opt-in by making them reply “YES.”
  5. Save on room by shortening words like “2” for “Go 2.”
  6. Mind your frequency. Too many messages might upset your subscribers.
  7. Always test internally before sending out a real message.
  8. Follow MMA Guidelines (http://www.mmaglobal.com/documents/us-consumer-best-practices).
  9. Use a shared or dedicated code. Find out what solution works best for you by downloading our Guide to Common Short Codes.