First, let me get this out of the way… Sending marketing emails through Outlook is not an ideal solution. Keeping your list clean and de-dupped is time consuming, sending mass emails through your company’s email servers endangers the SPAM blacklist rating of your whole company, and most importantly, there is no way to get metrics on the emails you send. And mama always said: “Sending out a marketing email when you can’t view deliverability, open and click-through rates is like throwing a box of chocolates out the window… you never know who you’re going to hit.”

All that being said, there are still plenty of you out there who chose or are told you must send out marketing emails for your company through Outlook (or a similar desktop email program). If that’s you, here are some best practices tips to make the most out of your efforts.

Blind Copy
– The most important tip on this page is ALWAYS blind copy an email to a large group of recipients. If you do a regular CC, it doesn’t take anything more than a “copy and paste” for an unscrupulous person to steal your client list and start SPAMing them.

Avoid sending an email that is just one big JPG.
- SPAM filters hate this and you will increase your chances of getting sent to junk mail
- Many people have images turned off on incoming messages so if all you have is one jpg, all they will see is a box with a red “x” in it. Not much incentive for enabling images.
- You can send an email that is primarily one big JPG, but be sure to put any text from the JPG in regular writing underneath the jpg. Better yet, use a horizontal header with an image and put all the copy in regular text below the image.
- Review each email assuming that 25%-50% of your audience will view it with no images. Will they know what your email is about?

Optimize your Images.
- Try not to use images wider than 700 pixel.
- Read this article on optimizing the file size of your images

Follow CAN-SPAM laws.
- You MUST include the street address of your business somewhere in the email. (Though it’s not required by law, I also suggest putting your phone number in the email incase someone is ready to call you right then to place an order or ask a question.)
- You MUST include instructions for unsubscribing from future marketing emails from your company.

Give a clear call to action and a link to your website.
- If your email is primarily one big jpg, be sure to make that image a link. Also, include a link/call to action that is text based.
- If you want readers to, for example, register for an event, make the link from your email go directly to that registration page. Don’t link readers to your homepage and make them find their way to the registration page. Generally, each time you make someone click from page to page, you lose about 1/2 your audience, so start your first link as close as possible to where you want readers to be.

Set the alternate text on your images.
- How to:
        - Insert image in email
        - Right click the image
        - Choose “Format Picture”
        - Click the “Web” tab
        - Enter Alternative Text and click “OK”
- This text should appear with the red “x“ if someone has images turned off. You can use this to entice them to turn the image on or visit your site ”CrimeFighters.com is offering 20% off capes and tights.“

Clean your lists.
- SPAM filters can tell how many email addresses on an email bounce. If your percentage is too high, you will get caught in SPAM filters.

Break up your email addresses into groups of 50-100 and send out to one group per hour.
- Many email systems put a limit on the number of emails that can be sent per hour. I’ve heard of that number being set as low as 250 emails per hour for the whole company. If you send out an email that is CC’d to 1000 recipients, you can lock up the ability for your whole company to send emails for 4 hours.

Hope this helped! But seriously, please consider upgrading to an Email Service Provider that has metrics, their own servers and a staff that fights for their servers to be whitelisted. At the very least, read this article about the pros and cons of the different delivery solutions available.

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Katie Hawkey Categories: Marketing, Social Media, Technology, Web