Many factors affect how recipients view email from your company, such as frequency, sender, and the nature of the message. Nevertheless, there are tested principles for getting the most from the effort and money your company invests in email marketing.

Following are five basic tips to get better results from your email marketing. Implementing just a few of these tips will improve the percentage of your emails that reach your audience and get them to open your message.

1. Write anti-SPAM. People only have the opportunity to open emails that first get past spam filters.  Spam filters zap some 10-20% of emails even when people have given you permission to send email.  Avoid using spammy keywords, ALL CAPS and multiple exclamation points!!! This advice goes for both subject line and message. If you use an agency, make sure they run emails through a SPAM check before sending them.
2. Pay attention to subject lines. Write your subject line to tell what’s inside vs. trying to hard sell with an advertising headline. Unless people signed up with an expectation of getting sales promotions via email, they will tune out, turn off and delete blatant advertising from your company.
3. Identify yourself. When recipients click the “This is spam” button in their email programs, it usually means they don’t recognize you. Make sure your “From” and “Subject” contain your company or brand name. Use your personal name if that’s what the person would remember.
4. Keep your email list fresh. Too many hard bounces are a sure sign of a stale list. Hard bounces mean your email could not be delivered. The best fix is to keep in touch with your list regularly, at least once a quarter. Soft bounces usually mean the recipient is “temporarily unavailable, e.g., their mailbox is full. Also check your bounce reasons. Hard bounces could mean an address failed because it no longer exists. It could have been incorrectly typed when the person opted in to your list. But hard bounces might also be spam filter rejections. If you use an email campaign service (or agency), records will identify a bad address vs. a spam rejection.
5. Be timely and relevant. Email delivery technology keeps advancing, but people don’t change. All the research we have seen confirms these principles: Personal messages are at the top of the interest scale, followed by affiliations and timely news. Most people are not interested in stale news, requests for money and offers that are too good to be true.

Email doesn’t work unless the recipient gets the message AND opens it. Sounds simplistic, but poor email open rates can prevent achieving your business goals even if you have great list. One of the busiest email service providers recently analyzed over 200 million emails sent from their customers. They found open rates ranged from 93% to a dismal 0.5%.

Why such a big disparity between the best and worst? To answer that question, researchers scrutinized the subject lines from a subset of the highest and the lowest performing emails. All of the emails had been sent to at least 100 recipients.  Here’s what they discovered:

• Subject Lines with Highest Open Rates: Of the emails with the highest open rates, 100% subject lines included the company name, 65% indicated a newsletter, 20% indicated an invitation or event and 15% described specific information for staff as the content of the message. (See examples below.)
• Subject Lines with Lowest Open Rates: Among the worst performing email subjects lines, 90% were blatantly promotional, like headlines from advertisements. The other 10% were described as boring or confusing. (See examples below.)
• Three words to avoid. Email marketers are familiar with avoiding words such as “free” that tend to trigger spam filters. However, researchers have also identified seemingly harmless words that won’t trigger a spam filter, but will negatively affect your open rates. The three worst offenders are: Help, Reminder, and Percent Off (or % Off).

Conclusion: When it comes to email marketing, the best subject lines tell what’s inside, and the worst subject lines sell what’s inside.

Best Open Rates (60%-87%)*

1. Eye on the [Company Name] Update (Oct 31 – Nov 4)
2. [Company Name] Staff Shirts & Photos
3. [Company Name] May News Bulletin!
4. [Company Name] Newsletter – February
5. Happy Holidays from [Company Name]
6. ATTENTION [Company Name] Staff!
7. Invitation from [Company Name]
8. [Company Name] Jan/Feb Newsletter
9. Upcoming Events at [Company Name]
10. We’re Throwing a Party

Worst Open Rates (1%-14%)*

1. Last Minute Gift – We Have The Answer
2. Valentines – Shop Early & Save 10%
3. Give a Gift Certificate this Holiday
4. [Company Name] Moves You Home for the Holidays
5. Renewal
6. It’s still summer in Tahoe!
7. [Company Name] endorses [Company Name] as successor
8. [Company Name] Holiday Sales Event
9. [Company Name] for your next dream home.
10. You Asked For More…

*Source: MailChimp email study

Nowadays, email and websites are touted as the best ways to get new business. The traditional means of attracting leads or customers using print advertising or direct (snail) mail seem to have fallen by the wayside. While it may be true that online advertising can be a cost-effective way to attract customers, don’t forget about print campaigns to augment your online promotion activities. Magazines, in particular, can boost effectiveness of a marketing campaign. Research shows that magazine ads drive people to the web more than email or online ads. The Retail Advertising and Marketing Association (RAMA) and BIG research surveyed over 15,000 consumers and found the top 10 media that trigger an online search (Adults 18+) are:

51.6% Magazine
47.7% Read an Article
44.2% TV / Broadcast
41.3% Newspaper
35.6% Cable TV
35.3% Face-to-Face Communication
33.8% Coupons
30.3% Email Advertising
29.3% Direct Mail
28.2% Radio

Why are magazines so effective? Remember, many magazines are highly specialized. There are magazines devoted to the not-for-profit industry, like The Non-Profit Quarterly. What if your client base is local? As an example, in New Jersey, you can reach women over 40 with Silk Purse Women or people interested in organic foods by advertising in Edible Jersey. You might be able to find a local, national, or even international publication that reaches your target audience very cost-effectively.

Here are some questions to ask when considering magazine advertising as part of your marketing campaign:

1. What are their subscribers interested in?
2. Where are their subscribers?
3. How many subscribers do they have and when was that last counted?
4. Does the editorial style of the magazine fit my product?
5. How will the ad fit into the overall campaign? Will it drive people to a website, to make a phone call, etc.?
6. Can I afford to advertise more than once?
7. What is cost per conversion/sale? Can the campaign be profitable?

More interesting statistics and case studies are available for free from the Magazine Publishers Association.