Are you concerned about how Apple Mail Privacy Protection will affect your open rates? Has it been a while since you last sent a campaign? Or do you need support to fill a layout or list management skill gap? Get what help you need with preparing your email marketing campaigns and with managing your lists.
Best practices
The look
When it comes to design and layout, we expect your email to be opened on multiple devices, with varying screen sizes. In B2C markets, especially, mobile often is the first or only form factor in which your subscribers will see the message. For that matter, the message window or reading pane on desktop/laptop users' screens may vary in size. So we use responsive layout techniques to ensure your message looks its best in most any inbox. (We even can fine-tune, with open/click statistics from your email service provider, as available.)
Want to see how your email will look in email clients across smartphone, tablet, and computers? We'll share previews during the review-and-feedback process.
The list
Nurture your list. They're people who have expressed an interest in you. Send campaigns on a schedule and, ideally, set the expectations for frequency at the point where someone makes the decision to opt into your email marketing. How often you send is up to you, and you also can give your subscribers a choice. They should get used to seeing your messages in their inboxes and even look forward to each new message.
If your list is "stale" (i.e., more than six months have elapsed since your last campaign), consider sending a re-engagement campaign to make sure subscribers still are interested. But first, let's scrub the list for undeliverable addresses—before they bounce, affecting your sender reputation and your account.
We can experiment with segmentation and automation, to target and follow up on specific interests within your marketing list. If you have names, let's personalize your messaging further, for greater lift.
Compliance
CAN-SPAM. CASL. GDPR. Privacy laws in the U.S. and abroad are an alphabet soup of acronyms. Fortunately, the email service providers (ESPs) and prospecting providers with which we typically work keep up with the many opt-in/opt-out and other regulations, and codify them into their terms of service. As a best practice, SMBworks' terms regarding email marketing mirror those providers' terms.
As a Mailchimp partner agency, SMBworks abides by their terms for audience (list) and campaign management on client accounts with that platform. If you already have an account with another, preferred ESP, we'll make sure we follow the applicable terms. (Yes, we really do read those.)
Customer and transactional messaging
In addition to marketing, SMBworks offers assistance with messaging to your customers (or, in the case of a web app, your users). Have a Shopify store and want to upgrade the default order and account message templates to be consistent with your branding? We have experience in using Liquid with HTML to customize all customer-facing email templates, as well as the order notifications that get delivered to your team. If your web app users would benefit from an onboarding series of automated messages, we can help with that, too.
Selected work
Campaign hub for agency client
Send Photoshop or PDF files, get deploy-ready HTML email files. Here, there were six variations in a single campaign (two shown), with client acceptance previews collected in a hub with links.
Campaign hub for agency client
We can include personalization and campaign-specific variables in text and links, and produce variations for review and A/B/n testing.
Campaign hub for agency client
Here, the client needed to link the email to a page with a Spanish version of the message, similar to the "View in browser" option. SMBworks hosted this interstitial page.
Q & A
When provided an Adobe Photoshop (PSD) file as creative source, we can deliver a draft HTML layout for review as soon as the next business day. Don't have a PSD? Send a PDF or a snapshot of the ad/marketing creative you want adapted for email. Or send the copy so we can design the message for you. Timing will depend on the source material.
Your email service provider (ESP) likely offers storage for your campaign images, which we will include in the package with the finalized HTML. Either you or we can edit the HTML to refer to your ESP-specific image URLs. For review and feedback, SMBworks uses cloud storage for images and refers to those source URLs. Your campaign deployment may continue to refer to our cloud storage.
The simplest, most straightforward answer: Don't. Granted, CAN-SPAM in the U.S. requires only functional opt-out, while CASL in Canada and similar regulations in other countries require opt-in. Your ESP may be more restrictive in its terms of use. Furthermore, bulk-emailing people who haven't granted you permission almost universally yields abysmally low open and click-through rates, while increasing the risk of being flagged for spam. Don't degrade your sender reputation. If you want to prospect via email, let's work with a privacy-compliant provider to select an audience with a propensity to respond—favorably—to your campaign.
Check the terms that (hopefully) accompany the list and, if unclear, ask if the contacts on the list were made aware they would be contacted by association members or event sponsors, as applicable. Or ask about an opportunity to sponsor one of their upcoming email campaigns, sent to their opt-in list. Your ESP probably still will disallow sending to these contacts obtained from a third party so you may be better off making contact through a CRM or direct, one-to-one email. If you have mailing addresses, consider sending a direct mail campaign with a value proposition for joining your email marketing list.