Email Marketing Campaign Checklist

There are certain things that you should always check before sending out an email campaign.

The following is from the transcript of a presentation put together by Tamara Gielen of BeRelevant that you can use as a kind of “pre-flight” checklist for your email marketing campaigns. It’s quite extensive and extremely useful.

The Objective

• Who is your target audience?
• What message are you trying to convey?
• Which action do you want the recipient to take?
• How will you measure success?

The List

• Are you sending the campaign to the correct list?
• Are you sending it only to the interested targets?
• Do you have permission to send emails to the people on your list?

The Envelope

• Are you using a sender name that the recipient will recognize?
• Does your brand appear in the “from” line?
• Is the subject benefit-oriented instead of “selling”?
• Are you testing multiple subject lines to see which one works best?
• Are you sending the email at a time when the recipient is most likely to read it?

The Preview Pane

• Did you include a link to view the email online?
• Are you featuring your brand or logo prominently?
• Does the email include the newsletter title or strong headline?

The Copy

• Is it personalized with the recipient’s name?
• Do all the merge fields work properly?
• Did you include an opening paragraph that pulls readers in?
• Does the copy read like it comes from a person?
• Does the email include benefit-oriented information that is also engaging?
• Are you making it clear to the reader what you want him to do?
• Make the call-to-action link prominent, not only on top of the message, but in several additional places in the email as well. Do you have multiple calls to action?
• Both as text links and images?
• Can the email be easily skimmed?
• Did you use short paragraphs and bullet points?
• Is it a manageable length to read online?
• Did you not include too many topics in the email?
• Maybe it would be better to split the content over two emails?
• Did you check the copy one last time for spelling mistakes?
• Did you check the spam score of your email?
• Did you check how the email looks with images turned off?

The Creative

• Are you using images sparingly? (only when they advance the goals of the email)
• Are all your images loading and do they load quickly?
• Do all the links work? Don’t forget to check the links in the text version!
• Are all the images linked?
• Did you check what the email looks like in different email clients such as Gmail, Yahoo, Hotmail, Outlook, Windows Live Mail, Thunderbird, Entourage, Lotus Notes, etc?
• Are you using the correct email template for the campaign?
• Did you remember to create a plain-text version of the email?

The Footer

• Do you have a working unsubscribe link?
• Did you include your physical (USPS) address?
• Are you protecting your content with a copyright notice?

The Landing Page

• Is the landing page live?
• Is the content and the design on the landing page consistent?
• Is the content not too long? Is the call to action obvious?
• Is the landing page copy not too long?
• Is the registration form not too long? Ask only for the basic information you need. Long forms have a higher exit rate. You can always ask more questions later.

Check out the full presentation on Tamara’s website.