Email (Mailchimp) Best Practices

Consider what overarching goal is trying to be reached or what needs to be accomplished in a general sense. This can guide the achievement of more specific goals and objectives.

E.g. The purpose for a LIFE Leadership College email may be to increase the number of students in the upcoming intake.

Consider what specific and measurable goal would be achieved from this email.

E.g. The desired result for a LIFE Leadership College email could be Info Night Registrations or Applications.

There may be instances where a department wants to promote their initiative on every channel possible. It is important to consider whether email is the best channel available to produce the desired results.

Consider whether this type of email has performed well in the past. Strong indicators a different channel should be used include: low engagement rates, high unsubscribe rates and negative feedback.

When setting the audience for your marketing emails, avoid targeting a too narrow or too broad audience. Instead, focus on a specific but not overly restrictive audience that is relevant to your product or service and has the potential to generate meaningful engagement and conversions.

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Do NOT personalise the “To” field on LRM Sync Master Contact List

Some contacts share email addresses and can result in emails being addressed to the wrong person.

For custom lists (With First Name and Last Name fields):

• Click Edit Recipients

• Set Audience: to the custom list

• Tick Personalize the “Send To” field

• Select desired Merge tag

• Save!

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Rate and analyse your subjects here:

• https://sendcheckit.com/email-subject-line-tester

• https://mailmeteor.com/email-subject-line-tester

• https://www.contentrow.com/tools/headline-analyzer

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Use a grammer checker:

https://quillbot.com/grammar-check

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Compress images here:

https://tinyjpg.com/

Please note it is unnecessary for images to be over 1200px wide.

What is Alt Text?

Alt text (alternative text), also known as “alt attributes”, “alt descriptions”, or “alt tags,” are used within an HTML code to describe the appearance and function of an image on a page.

Alt text uses:

1. Adding alternative text to photos is first and foremost a principle of web accessibility. Visually impaired users using screen readers will be read an alt attribute to better understand an on-page image.

2. Alt text will be displayed in place of an image if an image file cannot be loaded.

3. Alt text provide better image context/descriptions to search engine crawlers, helping them to index an image properly.

The best format for alt text is sufficiently descriptive but doesn’t contain any spammy attempts at keyword stuffing. If you can close your eyes, have someone read the alt text to you, and imagine a reasonably accurate version of the image, you’re on the right track.

Some email clients don’t load images so a button is always a better option.

Common mistakes are:

• Copyright Date

• LIFE Address

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Based on Mailchimps metrics it appears the majority of our audiences open emails on mobile.

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1. Click Preview

2. Tick Enable live merge tag info

3. Check merge tags in copy and To: field

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Test the spammyness of your emails here:

https://www.mail-tester.com

• Click Add Send Time

• Tick Schedule a time

• Set Delivery Date

• Tick Send Time Optimization

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Reasons NOT to use image only emails:

• Not accessible for subscribers that use screen readers.

• May not load without a good internet connection.

• Some subscribers have their images turned off.

• Subscribers can’t search for something in your email in the future.

• Higher risk of being marked as spam.

A/B testing involves sending two different versions of an email to two randomly segmented halves of the same list to measure how one change affects performance.

This change can be in the subject line or the body of the email. Once the test has concluded and the winning version has been found, it’ll automatically send the winning version to the rest of the list.