HTML Email Marketing

Sending out stylish emails to your potential and existing customers is a great way to keep in touch and let them know of any important news updates, product offers and other information that you wish to communicate with them. This can be done using just your email editor or online software such as Mailchimp.

What is an HTML Email and how is it different to a normal email.

An HTML email simply is styled more attractively than a normal plain text email, and includes things like: Styled titles, Font Colouring, Images,  attractive layouts, Links to your website, and more.

A plain text (Standard) email is just text without and click-able links or pictures embedded in the email and the colouring of the text is just plain black.

Should I used my email software to send out HTML Email

Whilst, most email software today is capable of sending out HTML emails – They are more suited to just sending to a few people or one-offs, where you may have wanted to make a link click-able or make certain words/titles bolded, italicised etc. If you are looking to send out HTML emails regularly and/or to a large group of people, then there are many reasons to use one of the many available online email marketing solutions such as Mailchimp.

What are the advantages of using software like Mailchimp

Mailchimp and others like it are extremely well-developed to improve the chances of your email being received and also monitoring its success. For example using Mailchimp will do the following:

• Send out Emails that look the same in every email client/webmail client – Sending from your own email client often results in the HTML design being broken or interpreted differently when the recipient receives it.
• Ensures that email addresses are carefully managed to make sure Unsubscribes are dealt with correctly and in accordance with the relevant SPAM acts and Policies.
• Reduces the chance of your email getting blocked by the recipients SPAM filter and avoids your email address from getting blacklisted.
• Provides a full report that included statistics on when your email was read, how many were delivered, how many bounced, how many unsubscribed and lots more. The report can also be shared with your colleagues for analysis

Other benefits from using Mailchimp

• The technology to make sure the software works most efficiently and effectively for you is automatically updated regularly.
• You have many option to managed your email address such as: Individual lists for certain types of customer, Update lists based on performance.
• See a history of who subscribed/unsubscribed and when. They can also leave a reason if they unsubscribe which may be of value to you.
• You can segment your list any way you want. For example, Mailchimp offer you a star rating for each person on the list which instantly shows whether that person is actively opening your emails or not
• Knowledge of more active subscribers means that you can target special offers towards these people knowing that are more likely to get a positive response from this subgroup.
• You can schedule delivery of emails and you can also setup auto-responder emails for fully automated email marketing
• A comprehensive choice of Free to use HTML templates are available to you.

Disadvantages of sending bulk emails from your own computer

• The template may look correct in your email software, but it’s more than likely it won’t in the rest, i.e. Hotmail, Gmail, Thunderbird, etc.
• Managing unsubscribes becomes a manual time-consuming process and often results in requests being missed
• You run the risk of sending emails to people who have unsubscribed and therefore increase your changes of your email address and possibly domain name getting blacklisted.

Email Marketing is something that every business should do, for more information on Marketing your business please call 0844 357 4539 or email us at sales@dzined.co.uk