"My First Email Campaign" Checklist for Beginners

• Decide how many lists you want. For example, you might want a "Newsletters" list, but also a separate "Press & Media Relations" list. Some people also setup "Weekly Specials" list, and "Internal Employee Newsletter" lists. The basic idea is that you don't want to send your weekly specials to an entire list of people, when someone on your list might have just been expecting an occasional newsletter. In euro.message LIVE, you can setup as many lists as you want, and we'll manage them free.
• Decide on your content and frequency. Will you be sending email newsletters every single month? Do you truly have the time to do that? What will the newsletter be about? Why would anybody want to subscribe to it? What will recipients gain from it?
• Decide on the "personality" or "brand" of your email campaigns. Are you sending lots of e-commerce specials? Or letters from the president? Personal? Corporate?
• Get permission. Ask the customers in your database for permission to send them email newsletters, offers, and promotions. Don't ever start "blasting" newsletters and email offers without permission.
• Make sure your privacy policy is in order. In particular, issues like "tracking personally identifiable information" or "marketing to children under 13." If you're tracking opens and clicks, and if it's possible for children to subscribe to your emails, you need to cover those topics in your privacy policy.
• Know the laws. Become familiar with the CAN-SPAM rules. Consult with your attorney.
• Setup email addresses that you can use as the "Reply-to:" for your campaigns. For our euro.message company newsletter, we use reachus@euromsg.com. For our euro.message LIVE newsletter, we use euromsg@.euromsg.com. You might use sales@ or email@. Whatever. Just be sure it works, and be sure a human checks that account. If you use jenny@yourcompany.com, what happens when Jenny leaves the company? You'll need to change names to the new guy, but spam filters will have already been trained to receive emails from Jenny. Setup that sales@ email address from the beginning.
• Setup an abuse@ email account. No matter how clean you keep your list, you will always get complaints. It is inevitable. People forget they opted in. People get tired of hearing from you. People get mad from some lost shipment, or bad customer service. When that happens, they sometimes report your email as spam. If they subscribe to anti-spam services, or if they report it to their ISP, those representatives will want to contact you via email. And the 1st place they'll try is abuse@your-company-domain.com. So make sure that abuse@ works. And while you're at it, you should register that abuse@ address online (go to http://www.abuse.net ), because if/when they receive complaints about your emails, anti-spam organizations often use this to gauge how responsible your company is.
• Setup "feedback loops" with major ISPs. If you're going to send lots of email marketing from your own company server, you should register your IP addresses with AOL, and MSN so that they can send you a report if/when their users report your emails as spam. Google the term, "AOL feedback loop" for more information on how this works. MSN and other ISPs are said to be implementing similar reporting mechanisms. You should also go ahead and register for reports at http://www.spamcop.net. If users on their system report your emails as spam, they'll send you automatic email alerts. If you use euro.message LIVE to send your campaigns, don't worry-we've already got this covered. All our IP addresses for all our servers are registered, so we can handle any deliverability problems as they arise. If you use another service besides euro.message LIVE, make sure they monitor this information too. Most reputable vendors do this.
• Setup test email accounts with Yahoo, Gmail, Hotmail, and AOL. Setup a test computer (or two) in the office, and download as many different email applications you can find, like Outlook, Mozilla Thunderbird, Lotus, Apple Mail, Entourage, and Eudora. You'll be doing tons of testing. Or, like we've said, try our built-in Inbox Inspector.
• Setup a double opt-in form on your website. Tip: create questions you might be able to use for future segmenting, like "industry" or "title" or "referral." Be sure to customize your confirmation screens and confirmation emails appropriately. Use them to set expectations about the emails they'll be receiving. After you get it set up, you can start inviting your customers to opt-in. Post links all over your website, your invoices, and in your email signature.
• Design your HTML Email template. If you're sending different kinds of communications (sales promotions, vs. monthly newsletters, vs. how-to's and tips), you may want to setup multiple templates for each occasion. If you're not the "design-it-yourself" type, you might want to try our built-in template designer. You can use it (free) to setup as many different email templates as you want, for any occasion.
• Insert real content into your test campaigns. Don't just use "lorem ipsum dummy text" when you test your campaigns. It's not accurate, plus spam filters often throw away emails with garbled, nonsensical text in them.
• Build your plain-text alternative email. Plain-text email has its own peculiarities, so you'll want to get a "template" for it refined from the beginning. Don't let plain-text be an afterthought.
• Test your templates. And we mean really test them like you've never tested before. Send them to friends, family, and colleagues. Try the templates in as many different email applications you can. Open your own emails, and click them like crazy. Now go check your reports. Make sure all the tracking works like it should. Hit the "reply" button and see if you get replies to your account. You want to uncover any embarrassing mistakes before sending to your real customers.
• Setup a test list. If you're like most people, you probably have about 3 or 4 email addresses. Why not setup a test list in euro.message LIVE, and send your full campaign to that list? That's the best way to simulate what your email will actually look like when you send to your real list.
• On the subject of lists, make sure that YOU are subscribed to your own list. Even though systems like euro.message LIVE allow you to send tests, it's best to be on the actual list, just like your customers.
• Prepare your website and landing pages for delivery. Before you send, you need to get everything in order. Did you create a copy/archive of the email for your website? Make sure that's all in place. Are all the landing or e-commerce pages that your email links to live, and working?
• Deliver the campaign (finally!).
• After the campaign, it's always fun to log into euro.message LIVE, because we provide stats in real time. You can virtually watch the opens and clicks as they happen! It's always shocking to see how many people open and click in the first few minutes after you send. Then, it trails off. You'll still get opens and clicks weeks after!
• Review performance. After a few days, go back and analyze your reports. How many opens? How many clicks? Compare it to your web traffic logs, and most importantly, to sales. Did the email generate leads or sales? What was the ROI on that campaign?
• Plan the next campaign. Use your campaign reports to understand what people clicked, and what they didn't. That should serve as the foundation for your next campaign. Maybe you'll split up your list and segment next time around, or test different subject lines or delivery schedules. Get scientific!