Last week I talked about the reasons for changing stale email campaign practices. If your numbers are underperforming, look to your newsletters and emails. Are you using the same layout as last week? The same copy? The same greeting? Let your campaigns grow and breathe. Today we’ll discuss emails that satisfy the minimum standard of aesthetic competence.

What you DO want:

1. A healthy balance of text, image and code.
2. Relevant pictures that represent the theme of your message.
3. Hyperlinks embedded within the text, not the full URL. (For example, Welcome to Benchmark Email!)
4. Text that matches the content of the images.
5. Correct grammar!

What you DON’T want:

1. A marketing email that’s just text.
2. A marketing email that’s just an image (also a sure way to get snagged by the spam filter).
3. An email with nothing but code. (How can you have an email with just code? Yes, I have actually seen these.)
4. Your message to contain any of the Seven Dirty Words.
5. Incorrect grammar. You do not want to look like a fool. Physically hearing incorrect grammar is much more forgivable than reading it.

This will be a good starting point for your newly refined campaign. After a while this will become second nature and you should see a better response to your marketing practices. Next week we’ll tackle lists and talk about why you should segment your contact lists to hone in on your target demographic. Stay tuned.