Subscription forms are the foundation of opt-in email marketing.  In order to send out an email marketing campaign you need to have a list of subscribers who have granted their permission to receive your mailings – this process is referred to as “opt-in”.  Subcription forms are not just about adding an email address to a list. 

Industry best practice favours double opt-in.  You can set this up through your subscription form, so that when someone subscribes they are automatically sent an email requesting them to click on a verification link to confirm their opt-in.  It’s become standard practice for most email marketing campaigns. 

You use email marketing because you want to market your product to the masses.  It follows that in order to get optimum exposure you need a large, healthy mailing list – one that keeps growing.  In order to do so your subscription form needs to be visible.  A prominently placed subscription form is a must for every email marketer’s website, but why post it on only one page?  Place it on as many pages of your site as possible, or simply link to your subscription form from every page on your site.
Adding a subscription form to your blog and Facebook page or profile can also extend your newsletter reach to include your social network followers. 

The most useful (and overlooked) function of the subscription form, however, is that it’s an introduction to your subscribers.  Relevancy has become a strong focus point for email marketers.  Subscribers are more responsive when the information in your email is of interest and valuable to them.  But how do you know whether or not it’s relevant?  Your subscription form can help you capture information on your subscriber base – whether it’s geographical, demographical, how often they want to receive mailings, or whether they’d prefer receiving promotional emails or emails containing industry news.
Customize your subscription form by inserting information fields that could be relevant and useful to your business.

Subscription forms may be a basic email marketing tool, but in order to maximize your mailing list management some thought needs to be put into where your place it and how you use it.

I have a lot to say about what to do in your email marketing campaigns – tips, best practices, that kind of thing - but I thought it might be a good idea to share with you some of the biggest mistakes I find our clients making in their campaigns.

1.    Neglecting to manage your mailing list

Ensuring that your mailing list is always up to date is vital for a healthy campaign.  Sending to outdated email addresses waves a red flag at spam filters, so it’s important to make sure that you regularly remind your subscribers to update their profile.

It’s surprising how many email marketers simply don’t delete unsubscribes from their mailing list!  Not only is that illegal, but it disrespects the subscriber’s request.  Why not stay on good footing with those unsubscribers?  There’s always a chance that they might subscribe again at a later date.  Perhaps they signed up for your real estate emails because they were in the market – then they found the perfect nest through you and unsubscribed as they no longer need to receive your emails.  That doesn’t mean they won’t be moving again in a few years…  Make use of our automated mailing list management tools to ensure that unsubscribes are removed from your mailing list and spam complaints are added to your block list.

2.     Not sending targeted, relevant emails

As I pointed out last week, relevancy is one of the make-or-break elements of your campaign.  If your content isnt’ relevant to your subscribers, they won’t read your emails, won’t click on your links and will, eventually, unsubscribe.  According to this chart by Emarketer, 55% of email recipients said their reason for not opening marketing emails was because the content didn’t interest them.  (The survey is about how subscribers respond better to targeted emails, so it’s worth your while to have a look.)

Targeted sends mean the content is more relevant to the person receiving the email, making it much more likely that they’ll follow your call to action – whether it’s clicking through to your site or donating to your cause.  How to target your list?  Segmentation and automated responses (TriggerMail).  To find out how, read this article recently posted on our US blog on how one company increased their email generated revenue by 322%, simply through segmenting their mailing list, and this one on how you can implement TriggerMail to target your sends.

3.    Overlooking the importance of testing

Subscribers are a whimsical bunch; their preferences and topical interests are constantly changing.  Your email campaign needs to evolve with them, or you’ll risk becoming irrelevant (I won’t bore you by repeating myself – see point 1!).  Using our A/B split testing tool gives you the ability to constantly test how variations of different campaigns perform against each other.  Test with a clear objective in mind:  If you want to see how recipients respond to longer or shorter subject lines, or a subject line that contains your brand name against one that doesn’t, test it.  You can test longer versus shorter newsletters, one that contains more or fewer  images, or even test different placements for your logo. 

Testing ensures that you send out only the most effective newsletters with every send.

4.     Not considering timing

Some days are proven to yield higher open and click-through rates than others.  There’s no point in sending out a newsletter late on a Friday afternoon when most of your subscribers have already knocked off for the weekend.  Midweek (Tuesday, Wednesday and Thursday) are generally considered the best sending times, but this might differ depending on your business.  I’ve given more tips on send times a previous article, but the most important thing to keep in mind (as always) is the subscriber.  What time best suits them?  When will they be most likely to sit back with a cup of coffee and read your email – and when are they likely to be most responsive?  If you’re trying to get them to make a purchase, why are you sending a week before pay day?

5.    Disregarding social media

I’ve written a lot this year about the rise of social media – and you’ve probably noticed the social versus email debate.  The general consensus is that social media, when implemented properly, can complement your email marketing very well.  Email is more personal, but social has the ability to expand your audience drastically.  It’s time to make use of this quality to grow your email marketing reach.  Add social widgets and forward to a friend links to your footer and make use of our new social share tool which allows you to share your newsletter with your friends and followers on Facebook and Twitter.

Some of these may seem obvious or clichéd, but unfortunately that’s because these mistakes happen.  I suspect it’s because often clients think that these measures are difficult to implement, or that it doesn’t apply to them.  GraphicMail offers you the tools you need to avoid these mistakes at no extra charge.  They’re part of the service we provide and without fail they’re easy to use.