Use email to drive traffic to your website

Email, as the 'other' web channel is often neglected as a means of generating targeted traffic to a website. Used correctly a regular email newsletter can be a great tool but there are potential pitfalls too.

On this page we look at the dos and don'ts for successful email communication.

DO

• Make sure the 'from' field in your emails indicates clearly who you are and your organisation. 60% of people say their decision to open an email is based on the from field
• Compose your subject line carefully and honestly, this will decide whether your mail gets opened, try to put yourself in the place of the recipient - what would make them want to open this mail?
• Write effective preheaders (the content in the top line of an e-mail message) - 8 tips for effective preheaders.
• Keep it brief and scannable - use the first paragraph carefully and keep it to the point
• Use calls to action as links to your website or other means of communication
• Target your mails carefully to a permission based list
• Monitor open rates and click through rates, adjust your content and timing of mails to optimise these
• Use a format which can be read either as plain text or html and still make sense
• Provide a simple mechanism for opting out of your list - and honour opt outs by using a fail-safe means to prevent inadvertent re listing

DON'T

• Break the law - when you hold personal information, including emails, on file you must comply with data protection regulations see Data Protection Website
• Send spam - defined as an unsolicited bulk email - if in doubt initiate contact through a personal individual email to gain permission to add a contact to an email list
• Use upper case, special symbols like ?! or anything else that might make your mail look like spam
• Mail people too often, once a month is believed to be the optimum frequency for newsletters
• Send important mail on Mondays or Fridays - it is statistically less likely to be read
• Use html templates in your email or word processing package to build email newsletters. They will not be readable if the recipient has limited emails to text only, and many default email settings now do not allow pictures to display
• Send attachments, use the body of your email to direct people to your website for further information

Want to know more? Then take advantage of our free trial offer on Constant Contact do it yourself email marketing tool build an online newsletter for free and take their webinair on effective email marketing.