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Today, I’ve got a couple of quick tips for ya. They’re not related (other than all of them being email marketing issues, obviously), but they’re all equally important things to keep in mind. Here we go:
Make sure to include an unsubscribe link where people expect it
People who want to leave you, will leave you. There’s no use in making it difficult for them to sign out. It’s not only the law that requires you to include an unsubscribe linke, it’s ethics too. And basically, common sense just as well.
So where should you put this unsubscribe link? Some people are overly eager to allow their subscribers to sign out, and they put the unsubscribe link in the header of their email. Even though this may seem like a polite gesture, actually you’re not helping subscribers who want to sign out. Unsubscribe links are supposed to be at the bottom of yiour emails. That’s where people expect them, so that’s where you should put them. If you really want, you can include one in the header as well, but then again, you don’t want people signing out by mistake.
Take a personal approach to your email campaign
Do you ever open an envelop that says “Resident”? I know I don’t, and I doubt you do. So why would anybody want to open an email message starting with “Dear customer”, or even worse: “Dear reader”? It’s not even that hard to address your subscriber personally. Just use the MailChimp merge tags (like *|FIRSTNAME|*). Of course, you need to make sure that your list has a column named “First name” and that there are actual first names in it. If you don’t have the first names of all your subscribers, you can go into nerd mode and do something like:
Hi *|IF:FIRSTNAME|**|FIRSTNAME|**|ELSE:|*Mailman Fan*|END:IF|*
This will result in either “Hi ” or “Hi Mailman Fan”, depending on whether or not the subscriber’s first name is available.
Implement a double opt in policy and stick to it
Basically a no brainer, just like the unsubscribe link mentioned above. Double opt in means people have to sign up and then click on a confirmation link in an email that you’ll send them. Only after clicking on the confirmation link, they are subscribed. This guarantees the following:
- Your subscribers actually have access to the email addresses they entered.
- You have proof of their subscription (most ESPs log the IP address that confirms the subscription).
- Your subscribers are genuinely interested in you, since they didn’t just “wind up” on your list through some third party list or whatever.
