Your checklist of Do’s & Don’ts before Sending out your Email Campaign

Your checklist of Do’s & Don’ts before Sending out your Email Campaign 

Welcome to your new favorite checklist before you send out your email campaign 

Whether you’ve used email as a marketing tool before or this is your first – it doesn’t matter. This list will come in handy whenever you feel like double-checking your campaign before you press “SEND NOW”.  

Let’s get to it: 
 

Look before you leap  

• Determine the goal(s) of the email campaign 

• Lead generation, sales, education: you’ll never know what you’re doing if you don’t know where you’re going! 

• Define clear KPIs for your campaign 

• When it’s time to report, you’ll know where you need to tweak.  

• Make sure your recipient list is up-to-date and only contains subscribers #GDPRproof  
• Use a naming convention for every asset in this campaign 

• This way, you easily find your assets if you need to make changes.  

Be as appealing as possible  

• Use an active and inviting reply-to address 

• No one wants to be greeted by Negative Nancy (AKA no-reply@example.com). Plus, many email clients will recognize them immediately and blow the spam whistle. 

• Create a captivating subject line  

• Your audience will be more likely to open your email if your subject line is attractive.  

• Test different subject lines  

• This way, you learn which one works best for your business and is in line with your service.  

• Optimize your preview text 

• With only 50 characters, we’ve got to make them count!  

Functionality over design  

• Make sure the design of your email is aligned with the style guidelines of your brand 
• Test your template design in different mail clients 

• Make sure to take your time to test your template design on desktop and mobile, and don’t forget Outlook!  

• Test your plain-text version 

• Even if your mail ends up in a spam folder, a well-designed plain text email can make the difference!  

• Choose the placement of your call-to-actions wisely 

• A well-placed button can make a big difference when it comes to engagement and conversions, and increased engagement means more winning(s).  

• Use alternative text for every image in your email 

• If a contact can’t see your image, at least he or she will have an idea what it’s about. 

Insert content with caution  

• Make sure all placeholder text is replaced with actual content 

• While lorem ipsum might be interesting to a Latin major, most people in your contact list will not care for Caesar’s words, nor will they even understand any of it.  

• Don’t spread fake news 

• Verify that your message is factual and accurate.  

• Respect the placeholder images 

• Use reliable tools to resize or crop your images to the exact format of the template. Different email clients may react rather unpredictably to deviating sizes. For example, Image Resizer provides an easy-to-use tool for cropping and resizing images.  

• Have multiple colleagues read and re-read your content  

• They can check for grammar, style and spelling mistakes because nothing is more embarrassing than sending an email with typos.  

• Always include company contact information  

• Add it in the footer with working links to both your website and your subscription center, as well as a physical mailing address. 

Report in order to reap the benefits  

• Using the KPIs set before you created your campaign 

• Define the most important metrics you would like to analyze in your report.  

• Set the period which you’d like reporting stats for 

• Make sure to leave enough time between sending out your campaign and reporting, so you don’t miss out on any data.  

• Make changes for future success 

• If one of your goals isn’t achieved, find out what you can do to fix the issues and make changes to your strategy for future campaigns. Even a failed campaign is a great campaign, because it will teach you how to get better each time!  

• Make a comparison of the results  

• Compare this report to the previous one and assess whether you have improved or not, and why. 

It can be tempting to rush through this checklist and quickly get your campaign out the door. But taking the time to structure your campaigns now will pay off in the long run, and it will help you reduce your future workload and get you closer to your goals. Good luck!