We've all been there before. We've planned out new email marketing campaign and need to start pulling things together to execute in a timely manner. Everyone approaches the implementation of their email campaigns differently, and in the process people tend to forget some important pieces that have a large impact on timing, budget and resources. At this point a lot of clients ask me what the best practices are behind email campaigns.

This is a loaded question that leads to questions of my own.

• How experienced are you with email?
• Have you thought about your messaging?
• Have you been tracking your previous emails?

• Have you thought about your segmentation?
• Do you have a large enough population to justify the campaign?
• Are you renting a list, or using an internal database?

• Do you need to comply with branding guidelines?
• Do you have any existing templates to leverage?
• What resources do you have available to you?

• Have you thought about follow-up emails, reminder emails, or possible update emails?
• Will you need landing pages customized for each email?
• Are you trying to use a single landing page for multiple mediums(banner ads, organic traffic, emails, etc)?

• Which email clients does your segment use?
• Do they prefer HTML or text based emails?
• Are you targeting desktop email or mobile email?

The list of questions goes on and on, but we want to start simple.

Remember that the purpose of any email is to drive traffic to a specific source. This source might be a company blog, a website, a webinar or a white paper offering. There really are no restrictions on that ultimate goal, just remember that you want to take the extra effort to ensure everything can be tracked. Without a complete picture it is hard to decide if an email campaign was successful or not. Email marketing is becoming more and more acceptable across industries and we don't want to waste any opportunity to gather data that can help guide future campaigns.

Know your segment.

Take some time to pin down your target audience before you get started with your email campaign. Make sure your marketing or sales database has a sufficient amount of people for this campaign to be worth the investment. If it doesn't you might look into renting a list for the campaign. As an agency sometimes we don't get insight into segmentation details until it's too late. Don't waste your money or time, do your research before executing.

Email Best Practices Series

I'll be working on a series of posts that discuss the fine art of email marketing. We'll discuss layouts, template management, segmenting, coding practices, increasing deliverability, messaging design and offer ideas. When we finish this in-depth conversation you will know the right questions to ask to get your marketing campaign finished quickly and efficiently.

What are your biggest questions about email marketing?

Let's discuss.