Sharaf Atakhanov, Senior Media Developer at Temple University presented a very interesting session today in Baltimore: “Email Campaigns That Work.†He even shared the PDF file of his presentation online.
Drew Stephens, web designer at the University of Arkansas at Little Rock, is one of the six very nice people who agreed to share their notes with all of us who couldn’t attend the EduWeb conference this year. This is Drew’s first scheduled post.
Sharaf had many insights into the possibilities and pitfalls of university email campaigns. A good portion of his presentation documented specific examples of poorly constructed, cluttered attempts at email communication that failed to render properly in various email clients.
What’s wrong with email marketing today?
- Poorly Designed
- Too Much Noise
- Untargeted
- Poorly Scheduled
10 steps for success:
1. Get permission
2. Setup a Privacy Policy
3. Use an Email Publishing Tool
Campaign Monitor, Mail Chimp, Topica, Newsweaver, Get Active, Emma, Constant Contact, Bronto
4. Segment your list
5. Design HTML & Text Email
6. Make it CANSPAM Compliant
7. Send it to your boss
8. Test your campaign
Yahoo, gmail, hotmail, AOL, MS Outlook 2000-07, Thunderbird, Eudora, Entourage, Apple Mail
It’s good practice to limit the width of html email to 600px
9. Set a schedule for your campaign.
10. Measure campaign performance
Then nice thing about the campaign tools above is that they feature analytics and metrics tools.
Additional Reading (not referenced in Sharaf’s presentation):
E-mail is not a platform for design and also Eight points for better e-mail relationships by Jeffrey Zeldman
Become an email marketing expert by Campaign Monitor.