Great Expectations: Email Engagement Guide

We spend a lot of time talking about and counseling our clients on obtaining permission. Having a good, solid program to allow people to opt-in to your mailings is critical to the success of your campaigns. Email marketing has matured to the point that most people understand that concept and agree that permission is absolutely essential to keep complaints low and connect with those people who want to receive the mailings.

But permission isn't the only thing you need to consider. The most common problem I see is a failure to set proper expectations about the type or frequency of emails. A few simple steps when designing your subscribe process that can avoid problems down the road are:

Provide a link to the online version of a recent mailing (any item stored in our Delivra Content section can be linked to).
Let your subscribers know when or how often you'll be sending ("We'll send your newsletter on the first Monday of each month")
Let the user know what address you'll be sending from. ("Add newsletters@example.com to your address book"
Send a "hello" message automatically after sign-up thanking them and reiterating all of the above.
If you have multiple newsletters or options, allow your subscribers to choose at sign-up or modify their options down the road (Delivra can help create a profile form to do this.)

Setting the right expectations up-front can help avoid problems down the road.

Kris Dougherty | Deliverability & Operations