Gulf Email Marketing - Targeted Direct Marketing

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Email Campaign Checklist:

A grand marketing plan underway! It's time to grow your business with email marketing.

What exactly does it take to get an email campaign out? And not just any campaign, but one that drives revenue with increased website traffic, higher response rates and greater brand recognition?

Here's a handy, step-by-step checklist of what users of our email marketing services think it takes to put together an effective email campaign.

Use it as your own email marketing roadmap.

- Brainstorm: Find your "big idea" for a campaign (or a series of campaigns)

- Create a master plan. Take time up front to define:

	What you want to accomplish (goals)
	What you want to say (message)
	How you want to say it (email format)
	Who's going to receive your message (audience)
	When to deliver your message (timing)
	How you'll measure your success (results tracking)

- Rent the list of your choice from www.gulfemailmarketing.com

- Write/Design your email message. Make sure your message has:

	An enticing subject line (less than 50 characters)
	A "from" name your readers will recognize and trust (2 words or less)
	Informative main body copy
	Compelling calls-to-action (Hopefully your email tracks click-through rates on any links you've included in the message - a key measure of campaign success.)
	A "forward to a friend" message (with a note or link telling new readers how to get on your mailing list)
	Copyright information, if needed
	Contact information (phone, fax, email, website, etc.)
	A table of contents, especially if people will have to scroll to read your entire message
	Instructions on how contacts can remove themselves from your list

- Make sure your website will deliver any information promised in your email. Create special "landing" pages if necessary.

- Format the HTML/Text version of your message:

	Limit each line to 60 characters in length
	Place hard returns ('Enter') at the end of each line
	Format your text by using spaces, CAPS, asterisks, tildes or extra line breaks where appropriate

- Personalize your message when appropriate - but don't overdo it.

- Test your campaign, as many times as necessary to ensure:

	Your message looks good across platforms (Mac/PC, Netscape/IE, etc.)
	Fonts, formatting, images and colors appear correctly.
	There are no spelling or grammatical errors.
	Personalized content appears correctly.
	Your contact information is correct - check website URLs, phone/fax numbers and email addresses.
	All links are working properly. Check both image and text links, including email ("mailto:") links and table of contents links ("anchors").

- Send your campaign in the (Text or HTML) email format. Your email should automatically detect who can open HTML and who can't, and then deliver the right format.

- Update your contact list: remove those contacts that unsubscribed; double-check bounced email addresses and either remove invalid ones or try to re-send.

- Evaluate your campaign's success and contact list's performance. Understand what worked and what didn't - and then start planning your next email campaign.

Now, if you're looking at this checklist and thinking, "I don't have time to do all that!" — think again. Once you've got your plan, content and list together, it can take less than a day to get an email campaign out. Users think that HTML (with a text version as back-up) is the way to go, but the format of any campaign will depend on the message and audience.