This guest post is part of our ongoing Small Business Perspectives series, and is written by Cathlyn Driscoll, co-founder of Best Business Mastery in New Jersey.
During the holidays, my email gets bombarded with a significant number of emails, newsletters and promotions. What I did not expect this year was the number of “false starts” or “testing” emails from what I considered ‘professional companies.’
Several emails I received actually had the subject header, “testing” or “testing email blast.” These were followed by sketchy, half done, un-proofed emails for their products or services. Within a day however, I received the actual email from these companies, which, to be honest, I didn’t have the time for or inclination to open the second time around.
My time is valuable. Companies are lucky if I even open their email blast at all and take a quick peek inside, let alone click on one of their ‘valuable offers’ for the season. (Unless it includes a WHOPPER of a coupon.)
What my dismay was over was the lack of proper testing for these companies. Test emails are supposed to go to a carefully selected, targeted list of employees, proofreaders, and link testers, NOT the targeted list I was on. I wondered how many other people like me received the un-proofed version as well. 10? 200? 3,000? Ugh. I shudder to think of how many of them just clicked the “SPAM” button after that.
Email blasts account for one of the best possible ways for a company to reach out and stay in touch with clients or potential clients, with open rates averaging almost 13.2% with click rates of 2.73% in 2008. (According to eMarketer.com’s November 2008 study) Since the Return on Investment (ROI) of producing and delivering email blasts are still high, it’s a wonder so many are mismanaged with ‘testing’ false starts which are sure to bring down opens, customer click through rates, and ultimately low ROI.
Select your email service carefully. Mail services like Vista Print make managing your lists easy. Make sure that they allow several lists to be selected so you can proper label and fill your data base with TESTING ONLY lists to your targeted testers. Make sure your testers click on each and every link in the email blast. How many times have we gotten a “Page 404 not found” after clicking on an untested link? Get a countdown to eBlast list together to verify you’ve done all the proper testing prior to sending to your targeted list. If you don’t have one, you can fine one here: http://bestbusinessmastery.com/BBM_extras/BBMemailchecklist.pdf
Remember, though testing can take a bit of time, it’s definitely worth it not to lose or alienate customers and have them avoid sending your newsletters to the SPAM junk yard forever.
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