This might seem pretty obvious but there are actually a lot of ways you can go wrong with this, even if you have only one mailing list that you never segment in any way. The most common problem is when you send a test or targeted message to your entire list.

Check twice before you click the send button. When you send duplicate or irrelevant messages, you increase the chance that you’ll annoy your audience and that they will report you as spam or simply click on the Unsubscribe option.

If you have taken the trouble to segment your lists, then the risk of getting it wrong increases in line with the degree of segmentation.

So, why is segmentation important? If you can identify groups within your data, then you can start to tailor the messages that they receive, making your offer or story appear more relevant to them.

The first challenge is to get past the spam filters. Nearly everyone is using some type of filter, many of these are using a set of parameters based around the content of the email. So, you need to make sure that you write your message with the filters in mind. Two words to avoid like the plague are:

1. free - as in ‘register for your free place’
2. click - as in ‘click on this link….’

You should also avoid the following:

WORDS IN CAPITAL LETTERS

You might want to check out this resource for more words to avoid: spam alternatives

Having read the full report, here is my take on the key findings.

1. 74% of all opens occur within the first 24 hours
Whilst this is great for measuring an instant response, don’t fall into the trap of removing relevant links, images and landing pages from your site, some recipients will still save your email for reading at a later date.

2. Best days to send are Mondays and Tuesdays
Try and plan your communications activity around these solid facts. Rather than force out a mailing on a Friday afternoon, it’s better to hold off until the following Monday. We are also seeing from our own stats that emails sent out in the afternoon have a better response rate than those sent in the morning. Therefore, try and plan your campaigns to run in the early afternoon and ideally at the beginning of the week.

3. Subject lines less than 35 characters long significantly outperform emails with longer subject lines
Previous best practice advice was to put the company name at the beginning of the subject line. This latest research shows that there is a marked difference in the response rates of emails with shorter subject lines (see below) so, try putting your company name in the From box. This will leave you with 35 characters to play with for the compelling, benefit laced, subject line.

4. Personalised emails receive higher click and open rates.
Personalising the email is good, and we have the ability to do this qucikly and easily, but avoid personalisation in the subject line as this is seen by many as a sign of a spammer, and subsequently will affect your open and click rates.

5. Emails sent to fewer people are clicked on and opened more.
Size doesn’t always matter. A mailing to a smaller list is more likely to be better targetted, contain more relevant content and use a more focussed call to action. So think about your data segmentation and how you can use this to your benefit.

Email statistics

Unique Open Rates = 15.045%

Click Rates = 3.04%

Opens by subject line length

less than 35 characters = 20.10%
more than 35 characters = 15.28%

Clicks by subject line length

less than 35 characters = 3.28%
more than 35 characters = 2.05%

If you need a little bit of bedtime reading, the full report can read online here:

MailerMailer report available here>>

I hope this helps you in planning your future email activities.