By Madison Howard
Open rates, click-through, unsubscribes – oh my! There are so many different pieces of data to pay attention to when using email marketing. The one that can cause the most harm?
Unsubscribes. If you lose your audience, you miss out on the opportunity to personalize and interact. Emails are one of the number one ways to communicate with attendees. Don't miss out on the opportunity to gather key information about attendees. Information is the key to personalization.
Frequency
This is the big one. If you send ten emails a day to the same contact list about the same things, you’re asking for an unsubscribe. A good rule of thumb is to think about how often you would want to receive an email from the same organization. A good cadence is to send an invitation, send a reminder if they haven’t registered, and send a second reminder if they still haven’t registered. These emails should be spaced out. For those that did register, an email once a week updating them about event details or getting them excited about the event shouldn’t be a cause for an unsubscribe. The closer the event is the more reminder and information update emails you can send.
Length
Long emails don’t get read. Your emails should be easy to read and brief. If they aren’t, your attendees might miss a big piece of information that’s buried in the long email. Keep your emails to the point and use as little text as possible. The main purpose of the email should be to drive the reader to a website or a landing page that has additional information.
Errors
Proofread! Have someone else proofread! Spelling and grammatical errors make you look less credible and affect your brand. When you look at something for a long period of time, it’s easy not to see that you used the wrong “your” or missed a period. Find someone who hasn’t seen the email to take a look. This will give you the chance to fix basic errors and see if there are major layout errors on different computers and phones.
Design
Let your event and company brand shine. Your emails are an extension of your organization and email marketing tools make it easy to design emails that align with your company brand. A logo adds credibility to your email and will let attendees know you’re not a random spammer. User personalization – have their names in the greeting or the subject line.
Subject Lines
Don’t use clickbait. You know what I’m talking about. Subject lines that have a title that may or may not relate to the information in the email but make it almost impossible not to click. Who wouldn’t open an email with the subject line – You won’t believe how cute this puppy is? Yes, you do want your subject line to grab your attention, but it MUST align with the content. A great way to increase opens is to personalize the subject line and use the attendee's name.
Madison Howard A graduate of the College of William and Mary, my passion for writing began before I could read, with a nightly verbal diary dictation transcribed by my obliging parents. When I'm not writing, you can find me binge-watching TV shows, baking elaborate desserts, and memorizing pop culture facts.