#9 in Our 20 for 20 Series
How do you create amazing email marketing EVERY time?
Welcome to 20 for 20 where we share our 20 Best Tips for Email Marketing and Business to celebrate our 20th Anniversary.
Today I’m going to give you a gift. If you do email marketing, or have a company that relies on stellar email marketing, you’re going to want to stick around for the gift I’m about to give you.
But first I have a riddle. What do the world’s best surgeons, pilots, and email marketers have in common? They all use a checklist. That’s right, some things are so important, and consequences so extreme, that it pays to use a checklist. Trust me when I say that you REALLY want these people using a checklist when it’s your life or reputation on the line.
With email marketing driving 23% of revenue according to Adestra, and the recent uptick we’ve seen in the importance of email marketing—now more than ever, companies are counting on email to make the register ding.
Over the past 20 years, we’ve made about every mistake you can make in email from subject line mistakes to the dreaded “Hello First Name” to broken links and more. And each time that happened we refined our process for making perfect emails. Today our mistakes are few and far between. True story, but about three months ago we were horrified to realize that we had two spaces after a word in one of our client’s emails—we promptly called them to alert them. They thought it was cute that we cared so much, because we do.
No More Sleepless Nights
Maybe the biggest benefit of a checklist is that you can sleep at night. I remember early on in Email Broadcast’s history I used to toss and turn at night about a message that was going out the next day to 50,000 of our client’s customers. Had I double checked, triple checked everything? It would wear me out until I started using a checklist.
If you want your email to be one of the best in your customer’s inbox, you’ll need to do the same. Not only does it need to be technically flawless, mobile responsive, with every pixel in the right place—it needs to also be intentional, and part of a bigger strategy.
So I challenged my team to take our 20 years of experience and boil it down to a checklist on a single sheet of paper—and they failed. It’s two pages.
So my gift for you today is our QA (which stands for “quality assurance”) checklist on how to produce fantastic emails. We’re giving it to you today for being an awesome member of our audience.
What’s in the checklist you ask? First we give you some strategy questions to get your juices flowing and help you get out of the rut you might be in.
Write 10 Subject Lines
Next, we give you some reminders on how to prepare content IN ADVANCE, and one of our best secrets—make sure you write at LEAST 10 subject lines before you choose one. Seriously, that one tip is gold and worth your investment of time today.
Plus, there are 26 things you should check when building your message—some of these will be game-changers for you.
Then when you think you have a perfect message, send yourself proof, and use the QA Review part to make sure it’s perfect. Here’s a big tip that’s NOT on the checklist—do not quit this process until you have a perfect email in your inbox. One time I fixed “one last thing” 12 times before it was actually perfect. It’s amazing how this process works—there’s just something about doing it that helps you find ONE more thing you need to improve.
The final thing on the checklist is a check up from the neck up—is this something you really enjoy doing? Or should you finally book that appointment with Email Broadcast and consider outsourcing this IMPORTANT function to a team of experts.
In addition to this QA Checklist, for every 20 for 20 we’re giving away something special. This month’s winner is right here. Congratulations, Keith T. at dr***********@gmail.com—you’ve just won the best selling book: The Checklist Manifsto—How to Get Things Right. Just contact us to claim your prize.
Stay tuned for next time when I talk about Split Testing. What is it? How does it work? Find out by opening your next email.
In the meantime, be sure to sign up for our 20 for 20 campaign if you haven’t done so already. BONUS: You’ll also receive our Top 5 Mistakes Almost All Businesses Make with Their Email Marketing.
