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Email Marketing Guide

Complete guide for successful email marketing

Welcome to your one-stop resource for everything you wanted to know about email marketing. This handy email marketing guide will help you to get the most out of your email marketing. From your very first campaign for small business email marketing, all the way through to using powerful email marketing software features to analyse and fine-tune your campaigns.

From small business email marketing, through to blue chip and public sector email marketing, this email marketing guide will cover all of the key areas to make your marketing consistently successful.

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Top 15 email marketing questions in 2023 answered

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    Is email marketing still effective?

    Yes, now more than ever, if it’s done correctly with one of the best email marketing platforms. This is a question that gets asked all the time. If you are sending out emails to people who have asked to receive them then yes, email marketing still offers the best return of any marketing medium.

    What we have seen in recent years is the spam filters getting much together with people who are sending unsolicited emails, or emails to purchased/third party lists. This type of email marketing is fast becoming a thing of the past thankfully.

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    How should I grow my subscriber list?

    There are many great ways that you can grow your list of email marketing subscribers. With a decent plan and a methodical approach, you should have no shortage of new subscribers.

    The key here is to offer your potential new subscribers something in return, this could be a sales incentive or sharing of knowledge relevant to their interest. Social media and your company websites are great places to publicise your sign up forms.

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    How often should I send marketing emails?

    The frequency of your email marketing campaigns very much depends on how often you have fresh and valuable content to send your subscribers. The rule is only send out your email marketing campaigns when you have something fresh to say.

    For most businesses, a newsletter once a fortnight is generally ample. However, for businesses where stock turns over quickly or markets change frequently, then sometimes daily sends can be vital to generate quick sales.

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    What is the best day to send out my email marketing?

    The best time of day to send out your email marketing really can vary from business to business. It used to be the case that shortly after lunch returned some of the strongest results.

    With the advent of mobile internet, we are all checking emails at various times of day, often outside of regular office hours. Our tip is to try split testing your sends and comparing the results at various send times, this will establish a clear winner.

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    How can I stop my emails from going into junk?

    Junk filters have definitely become much stricter over the past few years, this means that the chances are much higher that your emails may be filtered to your email recipient’s junk filter.

    To maximise your deliverability, you should cleanse your data of recipients who aren’t engaging with your emails. You should also try Email Blaster’s spam checker to analyse your emails for spam phrases.

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    Can I use purchased email marketing lists?

    There’s really no grey area here, in every instance, the answer is no, purchased lists in 2021 are a really big no go. Mail filtering companies will routinely blacklist anyone sending unsolicited email to their networks.

    As well as the high likelyhood of a blacklisting, they just don’t work for email marketing. They are typically old and padded out with bad data, spam traps and duplicates. These lists should be best avoided.

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    How can I increase my click-through rate?

    Increasing your click-through rate vital is vital for converting email viewers into buyers. Increasing this click through rate is typically done by using a call to action, this is an instruction for your email viewers to do something.

    Typically this takes the form of a button, it must be clear and fairly high up in position so that viewers don’t have to scroll to see it. It’s important to only use one call to action also, email marketing can fail because of an unclear call to action.

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    Which is the best email marketing software in 2023?

    When you are looking for a new email marketing software platform, there are a few important factors to take into consideration. The main one, is are they UK based?, as a UK company, GDPR requires you to store your data in the UK.

    Lots of companies look like they are offering free email marketing software, there’s always a hidden cost though. Great support is also important, a UK company will be available by phone during UK office hours also.

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    How do I write a great email subject header?

    Successful email marketing often lives and dies by the subject header line, this is the first part that you viewers will see and often their decision to read or delete is based purely on this email subject header.

    Strong email subject headers will be able to hold the interest and spark interest in opening the email. A great way to do this is asking a question, this will often tempt the viewer to open the email to find the answer.

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    What is an email marketing bounce?

    An email marketing bounce is a failure, bounces are split into two distinct categories; a hard bounce and a soft bounce. It’s really important to delete these from your email marketing lists as bounces will cause reputation damage.

    A hard bounce is a permanent failure, this could be that the domain name doesn’t exist anymore. A soft bounce is a temporary failure, this could be that the email recipient’s inbox was full at the time of sending.

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    Do my email lists have to be opted-in?

    Yes, they do. Any email marketing software provider is going to require that everybody who you email has opted in to receive your email marketing campaigns. All of your email contacts will also have to have opted in with you directly.

    It’s also worth using double opt in. Using this method helps to keep your email lists clean, it effectively verifies the email address by asking the recipient to respond to an email in order to confirm their subscription to your email list.

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    How do I create an HTML email design?

    Nowadays, it’s really easy to create a great looking email marketing design. These templates are put together using HTML, it used to be the case that to do this you needed to have a working knowledge of HTML.

    Most decent email marketing software will have a drag and drop email template designer. This means that you can simply drag images and text elements into place without needing any knowledge of HTML - it’s all done for you on the fly.

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    Where can I get free email marketing templates?

    Whilst it’s really easy to create an email marketing design, not all of us are designers. This is where it’s handy to have access to a library of free email marketing pre-designed templates.

    Any decent email marketing software will have a library of pro designed free email marketing templates, ready for you to use. You can use these as a springboard for your own email marketing, making it really easy to create great email marketing.

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    What does GDPR say about email marketing?

    GDPR does say that you can email business email addresses without asking them to opt-in first. This is done under the banner of ‘legitimate interests’, under GDPR it is perfectly legal to do this.

    However, all email marketing software providers, us included, will not permit you to email anyone who has not opted-in directly with you prior to sending. We have a strict anti-spam policy and don’t permit cold email marketing.

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    Should I re-opt my customers into my email lists?

    When GDPR was first launched, lots of email marketers conducted email campaigns to re-opt in their existing email marketing contacts. There was a degree of confusion at the time about GDPR requiring everyone to re-opt in.

    The short answer is no, you don’t need to do this. It is perfectly ok to continue to email your own customers and contacts with whom you already have a working relationship. We would define this as ‘legitimate interests’.

Does email marketing work?

Email marketing is really quick and easy to do, modern email marketing software makes it very easy to create, send and track professional looking email campaigns to your subscribers.

The big question is will it work though? - Email Marketing is the most profitable marketing channel, offering an average of £32.28 return on investment for every £1 spent. The Email Marketing stats produced each year point to this being incredibly successful.

In this email marketing guide, we'll outline how to get started and how to create email marketing campaigns that deliver great results.

A brief history of email marketing

Emails have come a long way since first used in the late 1970's as a method of electronic communication between the first computer network administrators. In the 1990's, they started to become used outside of the I.T industry. It was at this point that companies started trying it as a method to communicate with customers.

As internet speeds have increased, along with the growth in mobile devices, email marketing has grown hugely every year. With easy to use email marketing software readily available, businesses of all shapes and sizes rely on email marketing as the number one method to build customer loyalty and gain new business.

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Areas covered by the Complete Guide to Email Marketing

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Why use a UK company?
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Using a UK based email marketing software provider means that (if their sending servers are based in the UK) your email data never leaves the protection of GDPR.

Having this assurance gives you total peace of mind that not only are you GDPR compliant, but your data is not at risk of being misused by another party in a country where GDPR laws don’t apply.

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2023 email marketing trends

Email marketing has seen some really significant developments in technology over the last few years. In this section of the guide, we'll take a look at some of the new and emerging email marketing trends fo 2023.

From innovations in smart automation, to data management & the impact of GDPR. This section will give you everything you need to make sure that your email marketing is both successful and adheres to the latest data privacy and protection regulations.

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Support when you need it

If you are a UK based company, sometimes it can be really frustrating if you need some help with your email marketing and your software supplier is based in the U.S.

We appreciate that it’s nice to get quick answers to quick questions. Here at Email Blaster, friendly knowledgeable help and support is only a click or a phone call away.

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Switching to Email Blaster

If you are looking to switch to Email Blaster, we make the whole process very easy. You can easily import a list of your previous unsubscribers, so that when you port your email data over, it’ll be screened first against your list of previous unsubscribes.

With our drag and drop designer, you can quickly and easily recreate any email marketing designs that you may want to continue using.

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Beginner resources

This is a great place to start if you are new to email marketing, this beginner’s resources section covers everything you need to know about getting started with email marketing.

Starting with how email marketing works, how much it costs and structuring your first email marketing sends. Everything contained within this section should help to identify the numerous advantages of email marketing and how to make it work for you.

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Email marketing tips

If you are looking for some inspiration to help to take your email marketing to the next level, then the tips section of the email marketing guide is a great resource. It’s a great place to learn how to grow your email marketing list, or how to track and analyse the results of your digital marketing campaigns.

In this section of the email marketing guide, you can also explore how easy it is to create great looking email marketing campaigns, by using the drag and drop email template designer.

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Video guides and tips

This section of the email marketing guide contains a comprehensive library of great, easy to follow email marketing videos. These will cover the main subject areas to help give you all of the skills to take your email marketing to the next level.

Covering areas such as optimising your email marketing for great inbox placement, through to how to write great email marketing copy text that will help to maximise email marketing clicks and conversions.

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Types of email design

If you are looking for some fresh inspiration with your email marketing templates designs, then this section of the email marketing guide should give you plenty. Choosing the right type of email design can be tricky, something that looks great may not necessarily convert your email marketing viewers into clicks and seals leads.

There is quite a bit to take into consideration when design a new email. This section of the email marketing guide covers all of the main types of design - employing tried and tested design and layout techniques that will convert your email marketing viewers.

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GDPR and email marketing

Since GDPR was launched in the summer of 2018, this has really affected email marketing. As email marketers, it’s important to be aware of what GDPR says about the collection and storing of email data and also the sending of your marketing communications to your email subscribers

This section of the email marketing guide will help to understand how GDPR works and what processes need to be followed when working with your contacts private data, such as their email address.

If you are a UK company, then it’s important that you choose a supplier who is based within the protection of GDPR and fully compliant. This section of the email marketing guide is a handy resource to make sure that your email marketing is fully GDPR compliant.

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Free email templates

The Email Blaster email marketing software has a full library of pro-designed free email templates. If you are looking for some design inspiration, then this is a great section of the email marketing guide to look at a variety of templates and designs styles.

From fun to formal, this section has everything you need to create your next email design. Following some of the design styles in this section of the email marketing guide will really help to create designs that not only look great, but also help to maximise those all-important email reads, clicks and conversions.

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Anatomy of an email

Successful email marketing campaigns will, generally all adhere to a proven standard of both layout and content, whilst the email designs may looks different - there are elements of successful email marketing that will be present in any campaign.

This section of the email marketing guide will share some of the secrets of successful email marketers. With a detailed analysis of the structure of a successful email design, the guide will explain why different elements of email marketing design are present and why they live in specific parts of the design.

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Frequently asked questions

If you are new to email marketing or an experienced email marketing professional, then this section of the email marketing guide contains all of the popular questions that people of all levels of experience have asked over the years. It’s a handy resource to find answers to the hot topics.

This section covers everything from how to grow your list of email subscribers, why you should not purchase lists of email addresses and how to optimise your send for consistently great results.

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How much does email marketing cost?

When planning out your next email marketing campaign, it's worth having an idea of how many email campaigns you want to send, at what frequency to how many people. Preparing this information will give you an accurate idea of how much email marketing you want to send in a given period.

It is also worth giving consideration to what time period you want to send your email marketing over; are you looking just do a few email broadcasts to market a specific product launch or new service? - or are you looking to send out email newsletters regularly each week or each month?

Once you have an idea of the specific requirements of your email marketing, both in terms of your sending volume and send frequency, you then have all the information that you need to get a clear picture of how much your email marketing is likely to cost.

Your email marketing service provider should be able to offer pricing based around the specific requirements of either a one-off email marketing broadcast or a regular series of email campaigns.

Here at Email Blaster we offer two email marketing pricing models; Monthly subscription and Pay As You Go. These are designed to cater for the email marketing requirements of both regular senders and infrequent senders of email marketing.

Monthly subscription

If you are sending out your email marketing newsletters on a regular basis, even if it's just once a month, then a monthly subscription is the best email marketing payment plan for you.

Here at Email Blaster, our monthly payment plans are based on a 30-day rolling subscription, so no long time commitments, just 30 days. There are no setup or admin fee's, just a clear and simple pricing structure; simply purchase a monthly email marketing sending volume that fits your requirements. If your circumstances change, you are welcome to change your email marketing subscription up or down in terms of volume accordingly.

Your monthly email marketing subscription comes with all of the great software features to make your email marketing as successful as possible:

We offer email marketing monthly subscriptions from £12.99 for 1,000 email sends, up to 200,000 email sends for £249.99 and all volumes imbetween. All monthly email marketing subscriptions are based on a 30-day rolling contract, prices are all plus VAT. there is no admin or set up fee to pay.

View monthly email marketing plans
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Pay As You Go Email Marketing

Pay As You Go offers a simple 'pick it and drop it' email marketing solution for companies of all shapes and sizes. If you are looking just just use email marketing to communicate with your email subscribers at varying times or intervals throughout the year, then Pay As You Go is a good option to consider.

With Pay As You Go, all you need to do is open a free account (open your free email marketing account here), upload your list of email subscriber's email addresses, design your mailer, buy the amount of credits you need and send. Each email credit represents one email address, so if you have a list of 2,000 email contacts and want to send to this list once, then you'd need to buy 2,000 email send credits.

Buying email credits is quick and easy, it can be done via the upgrade's store from inside your Email Blaster email marketing account. Credits are added immediately and are ready to use.

  • Free library of email templates
  • Drag and drop email template designer
  • Double opt-in web forms
  • UK Sending network & support
  • Fully GDPR compliant
  • Data Cleansing
  • Unsubscribe management
View Pay As You Go Prices

What is email marketing?

Unlike traditional printed media, the advantages of email marketing are clear. Email marketing offers complete transparency over your marketing activities: allowing you to automatically monitor who received your email newsletter, who clicked on it and most of all, who is interacting with your email marketing campaign.

With Email Blaster’s easy to use email marketing system, your business can be up and running in no time at all, no previous experience is required. The cloud based platform incorporates an easy to use drag and drop email designer, allowing you to create beautiful email, quickly and easily.

Whether you are running a promotion to boost your sales, providing a what’s on guide, or announcing a special offer; Email Blaster’s intuitive easy to use platform provides the best email marketing solution for your business.

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Email marketing videos

Whether you are new to email marketing, or an experienced pro, the Email Blaster video library is a great resource to learn and pick up new email marketing tips.

With hundreds of easy to digest informative videos, covering everything from how to start email marketing and planning your strategy, through to understanding how email marketing law works with GDPR.

Below is a small selection, covering some of the popular email marketing topics. Please feel free to visit the email marketing videos page for the full library of email marketing tips and resources.

What is email blaster?

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All about spam filters

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Get more clicks and sales

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Top email marketing hacks for 2021

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What is email marketing?

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How much does Email Blaster cost?

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How to avoid the junk filter

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Email marketing jargon phrases

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Complete email marketing guide

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How to boost your delivery rates

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The secret to great subject headers

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Top 10 email marketing mistakes

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Top 10 GDPR FAQ's

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GDPR survival guide

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All about purchased email data

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Building your email list the right way

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Why use email marketing?

Email marketing is a great way to stay in contact with your customers and to generate conversions from new ones. When looking at email marketing and evaluating it against against other marketing mediums, such as direct mail, telephone marketing, social media marketing or face to face marketing then there are really a few main criteria to take into account. These criteria present a strong case why it’s best to use email marketing as the primary method to grow your business.

  • #1 Cost

    Email marketing is very cost effective indeed - if compared to direct mail for example, the cost to send one email is, on average around a penny (or one cent if you are from the U.S). Currently in the U.K the cost of a stamp alone is around 65 pence. This is before you also factor in the price of paper, printing and the time it takes to prepare the send and send it.

    The cost effective pricing of email marketing compares incredibly favourable to every other form of marketing. When looking at cost, it is by far the cheapest way to contact your subscribers and prospects.

  • #2 Ease of use to create email marketing

    Modern email marketing marketing software is incredibly easy to use, whether you are a first timer or an experienced marketing manager, email marketing software is intuitive and has everything within easy reach.

    Email Marketing software will also have lots of free email marketing templates for you to use, these are a great way to get you off to a flying start with a design that really works. Often these free email marketing templates included with your software will be based on designs that adhere to proven principles for email marketing success.

    Creating really professional looking email marketing can therefore be really easily produced without investing lots of time, or requiring lots of email marketing experience.

    Good cloud based based email marketing software will also have lots of inbuilt features that provide everything you need to ensure that your email marketing is as successful as possible. These features will include: List cleaning services, email marketing automation, social media integration, analytics, GDPR compliant opt in forms and data segmentation, to name but a few.

  • #3 Get your email marketing out quickly

    The great thing about email marketing software is that it gives you the ability to create and send your marketing out quickly. This is great when you are up against the clock and need to send out your campaign quickly. It’s also a real bonus when you have a time based offer and want to get your email marketing out before the competition does.

    Closely tied to the last point, because cloud based email marketing software is easy to use, this means that you don’t need to engage the services of a marketing or design company to prepare your email marketing for you you. Often adding a third party to the mix means that you can lose valuable time in getting your offering out to your email subscribers.

  • #4 Lots of powerful email marketing tools

    Email marketing software will give you the ability to see how your subscribers are interacting with your send. If your email marketing company has analytics, then you can see how many people are reading your mailer, clicking on links or even how many emails are failing to get through. This means that you can fine tune your email marketing to get the best possible results.

    When compared to other forms of marketing such as direct mail - email marketing gives you a degree of visibility that direct mail cannot match. With direct mail, when your mailer lands on the door mat, you don’t know how people are reacting to what you’ve sent - do they read it, keep it to read later or just throw it away. With email marketing, you have access to all of this information, at your fingertips.

    Email marketing software will also have a whole host of associated features and tools to help you react to these open statistics (contained within analytics). You may start to see trends in how your subscribers are reacting to what you are sending - so you may, for example want to segment these people into different lists. Alternatively, you may see that your open rates are highest outside of office hours.

    Your email marketing software should have a comprehensive set of tools including data segmentation and email automation of sends (allowing you to send email marketing when you are not in the office).

How to start email marketing

From selling your stuff to promoting your brand, sending email marketing can help make a success of your business. Email Blaster provides the right tools to get started and most of all make a success of your digital marketing.

Email Blaster is based entirely on the cloud, this means that there are no complicated setups or installs. The easy to use software can be accessed right from your web browser - the perfect email marketing solution.

The Email Blaster email marketing system, provides a feature rich experience helping to bring your vision alive:

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Your mailing list

The software incorporates an easy to use drag and drop uploader allowing you to quickly import your customer and subscriber list. Automatic tools check for and remove: dead addresses, typos, duplicate subscribers and other erroneous mistakes that could cause your email broadcast to fail.

Use your own design

Have your own HTML email template? Not a problem. If you have had your own email newsletter setup, you can use the integrated drag and drop uploader to import your pre-made email template. No need to mess with HTML code, simply drag and drop your pre-made template into the software, your Email Blaster email marketing system will have you ready to send your first email campaign in no time.

Sending platform

Email Blaster provides the best email marketing software solution by removing the need for you to get your hands dirty, no need to: configure servers, install SMTP gateways, setup complicated DKIM and SPF authentication. The UK based email marketing team at Email Blaster take care of the technical side, leaving you to get creative building your brand. Offering automatic DKIM and SPF signing, dedicated UK email gateways (based in our GDPR compliant data centre in Milton Keynes) and friendly UK based technical support.

Email Blaster’s email marketing solutions help you stay connected with your customers - without the hassle, without the fuss.

Drag and drop email template designer

Competition for your email marketing subscriber’s inbox is fierce, this means it’s really important to make sure that your email marketing really stands out from the crowd.

When designing your email marketing, it’s really handy to have access to a builder that makes it easy to produce a really great looking email marketing design. It should be possible with any decent builder to achieve this without having to get involved with coding HTML or requiring previous design experience.

If you are using Email Blaster, then you will have access to a class leading email newsletter designer, with lots of pro-designed free email marketing templates that you can use as a springboard for your email marketing design.

Email Blaster makes it really easy to produce professional looking designs without any prior design experience or technical know how. Your email marketing design can be built using drag and drop, meaning that you work to a wire frame or grid based system, simply dropping your logo and images into the appropriate box inside the design.

You can also use the design editor's boxes to enter text, simply by putting your cursor in the correct location and clicking, you can free type all of your copy text. You are also able to cut and paste from a word document, this is really handy if you’ve pre-written your copy text externally.

Using drag and drop, makes it incredibly easy to create something that looks professionally designed. This will really help to maximise the effect of your email marketing when it lands in your subscribers inbox.

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Email Blaster’s drag and drop designer will also give you access to lots of additional cool features such as:

  • YouTube video integration
  • Automatic creation of a web version of your email marketing
  • Animated countdown timer, to announce sales events
  • Image editor for editing images without the need of an external editor such as photoshop
  • Access to a library of millions of royalty free images to use
  • A full library of free email marketing templates
  • Full social media integration and the ability to control what images/text are shared
  • Preview screen for desktop and mobile device
  • Automatic scaling and optimization for mobile screens
  • Button builder - to create great looking buttons, linking to your website

Free email templates

With Email Blaster’s email designer, it’s easy to find the right template to promote your brand. Including a full library of professionally designed pre-made email marketing templates, you can quickly customise any design to fit your brand. Checkout a few of our free email marketing templates in the gallery.

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Anatomy of an email

There are many different elements to a successful email marketing design. Getting all of the elements correct can make a huge difference to the success or failure of your campaign. In this section we are going to outline the key elements of an email design and how you can impliment these into your next camapign.

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#1

Subject Header Line

The subject header line is probably one of the most important parts to your email marketing. This is the part that your viewers see first, if this sparked their interest, they will open your email, if not, they’ll delete it without reading.

It’s worth really investing some time into trying different subject header lines to see which ones get the best reaction from your email marketing subscribers. A popular approach for trialing different subject header lines is split testing, this involves sending different variants of your email marketing to smaller sample lists from your list of email subscribers. This is a great way to thoroughly market test your different subject header lines, before sending out to your whole database of email subscribers.

There are a few tips and tricks that are worth trying with your subject header lines, small tweaks can have a huge impact on your email marketing success rates.

Here’s a few ideas to try:

  • Ask a question

    this can pique the viewer's interest as they want to find the answer.

  • Use emojis

    Using an emoji inside your subject header line can help your email to stand out in your viewer’s inbox. Email Blaster makes this really easy for you to do by providing a library of popular emojis that can be inserted automatically into your subject header line.

  • Keep it brief

    Most email readers will truncate a subject header line after 78 characters, so in order for your subject header to be previewed in your recipient's browser without being cut in half, it’s advisable to keep it under 78 characters.

  • Avoid spam phrases

    When your recipient's mail server checks your email marketing for spam content, the first area it looks at is the subject header line. If this contains phrases deemed as spam (FREE, special offer, discount & promotion etc), then your email marketing could end up in the spam.

    If you are an Email Blaster user, then our spam checker app will take care of all of this for you.

#2

Logo and contact info (top)

It’s really important to have your branding and contact information as visible as possible for your recipient. It really works best if these are one of the first things that the eye falls on.

Lots of designs use a logo in the top left slot and brief contact information (such as an email address) in the top right section. This doesn’t take up too much screen real estate and gives the viewer everything they need in terms of quickly digesting key information such as who is it from and appropriate contact info.

#3

Main Graphic with strap line

Underneath the logo and contact info, lots of mailers have a main graphic, this graphic really helps to add some visual wow and spark the viewer’s interest. This image can then be supported with a text overlay, this text box can contain the strap line of you campaign. This strapline would highlight the main purpose of your mailer, for example:

“Countdown to our big sales event”

An image supported with a strong strapline really helps to grab and hold your viewer’s interest for those vital first few seconds.

#4

Sub heading and detail Text

This section will typically follow on from the main visual element of your mailer, by this stage your viewer has hopefully committed the time to read a few more details leading on from your opening strapline.

In this part of your email marketing template you can expand on your opening line. It’s worth keeping the text to no more than two or three short paragraphs, this is generally enough to provide more details, but not too much that their interest starts to subside.

#5

Call To Action Button

Every email marketing campaign needs to have a purpose - what are you asking your viewers to do?, buy a product?, clink on a web link or contact you are some of the more popular goals.

These ‘goals’ are called ‘Call To Action’ (often shortened to CTA), this call to action is where you are asking your viewer do something, this action needs to be very clear. A large button is often the best way to present this to your viewers. A button really stands out and is often the clearest way to communicate that an action is required.

When a button is clicked, this action can be tracked via your email marketing software’s analytics. This means that even if the viewer didn’t complete the purchase, their details are recorded and can still be tracked - having access to this data is an invaluable sales tool for following up all leads.

It’s a good idea just to have one call to action though, often the temptation is to put quite a bit of information in a mailer. With each having it’s own call to action, this can be confusing to your viewers as it doesn’t give them one clear instruction of what to do next.

When we look at emails, we are all in a hurry to get the information we need and move on to the next one, this is why the best approach is always to keep it simple. Your viewer needs to get the info they need quickly and clearly. Lots of mailers fail to hit the mark because their purpose or goal is not clearly defined for the viewer enough to act upon it.

#6

Contact Information

After the main content of your mailer, it’s a good idea to add full contact information. Adding a mix of different contact methods helps build trust with your viewer. It gives them sufficient comfort that you are who you say you are.

Adding your office postal address really helps. Letting your viewer see that you are a bonafide company with registered offices really helps to build trust. Trust ultimately gives the viewer the comfort that they need in order to make a purchase.

#7

Social Media Links

Email marketing and social media work really well, using links for both your email marketing and social media across all of your digital channels really helps to add more reach to your marketing.

Adding social media links to the bottom of your mailer is a great way to help your viewer learn more about your business in a more informal setting than via your website. Following on from the previous section, greater email marketing conversions are achieved by building trust with your viewer. Adding social media links is a great way to do this.

Different types of email marketing template design

When designing your email marketing, it’s worth giving some consideration to what type of mailer you are looking to design. There are several different types of email marketing messages that you could be looking to communicate, are you looking to generate sales, or make an announcement, or send company news.

For each type of message, there are differing sets of design and layout types that are optimised for each subject area. Each one employs a layout that works best for each type of message.

Let’s take a look at some of the main types of email marketing and some of the design principles that are typically employed to increase conversions and interactions

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Sales Offer

A sales offer is all about creating a visual ‘wow’; enticing the viewer to make an enquiry with you, or to make a purchase. With this in mind, sales offers are typically more image than text based.

The lead image at the top should really showcase your products or services with a well taken photograph or image. Give some thought to the best possible way to showcase your products. If your product is not something that is not particularly visual, then what elements can be added to both compliment the product and add the ‘wow’ factor needed.

Another important feature of a sales offer is a large clear call to action button. This should be very easy to see and have a clear instruction to ‘buy now’. Large buttons have excellent conversion rates.

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Announcement

An announcement style email is a great way to let your customers know about the introduction of a new product or service. Email marketing done in this style typically has a very large text header that leads the document. This should be simple, clear and straight to the point.

This is then generally supported with some images, these are typically used in very much a supporting role though. The main feature of the announcement style of email marketing is the heading.

The head section is then generally supported by a few brief paragraphs of text that provide a little more detail.

The call to action is typically a button directing the viewer to a page on your website to read further information. The recommended approach is to keep your text fairly brief inside the mailer, if your announcement needs further reading then it’s a good idea to point people towards a page on your website where they can read it at leisure - away from the distractions of the inbox.

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Newsletter

A newsletter is a great way to cover a few different topics that your viewers may want to read about your company, industry or product news.

The strategy here is to approach it a little like a magazine article, again keeping the text as brief as possible and using links to point to further reading on your website.

A modular design works very well, with each article being in it’s own box. This format is similar to the way that a magazine would be laid out, it’s a proven design for creating a structure that is easy for the viewer to visually navigate and read.

Each article generally leads with a small picture, a heading, introductory text, then a link through to further reading or a required action.

As the focus of this type of email marketing is purely to announce news and topical information, then it’s ok not to have just one large call to action. This type of email will generally have quite a few links.

These types of email are a great way of gauging what kind of content your viewer wants to read about. By viewing the clicks for each link, your email marketing analytics can give you a very clear picture of which articles perform the best. This is an invaluable tool in helping to qualify the interests and preferences of your target audience.

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Formal Letter

Modern email marketing software makes it very easy to create really great looking email designs, but sometimes a simple formal letter works really well.

A formal layout ‘letter’ type design is an approach that lot’s of recipient’s favour, it can be seen as a much more personal approach, it helps build trust and lets your recipient know that it has been sent by a person - not a faceless large marketing department.

Your email marketing software will make it easy for you to create a great looking formal letter design, it’s a nice touch to include your signature at the top and an electronic copy of your signature.

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Event Countdown

In recent years, it’s been possible to start using simple animations with your email marketing, bring a little bit of movement into your design really helps to capture the attention of your viewers.

A great application of animation in email marketing is a countdown timer. This is an animated timer that is used to count down to either the launch or the end of an event. This is a live timer that will animate down to a pre-set point inside your vewier’s inbox.

This is a great way of creating an impetus for the viewer to do something by a certain date/time. A countdown timer really helps to reinforce your call to action, if the CTA is asking the viewer to make a purchase, the countdown timer creates a timescale to do it within.

How to personalise your email marketing

Personalising your email marketing is a tried and tested way to increase your interactions and conversions. It really helps to build trust if your mailer is personalised, nobody likes to feel that they are part of a large scale marketing campaign. If your mailer arrives with sections of it personalised to the viewer, then this really helps to build a trust flow.

In this next section, we’ll take a look at some of the ways that you can personalise different parts of your email marketing. Following these guidelines will really help to maximize interactions for your email subscribers.

  • Salutation & first name

    The best place to start with personalising your email marketing is adding a salutation and name, the obvious place to do this at the head of your opening text. Starting with this really helps.

    You can also mail merge your recipient’s name into sections of the body text where it is relevant, this works extremely well in drawing your viewer’s attention to a particular piece of text that is important.

  • Subject Header Line

    Personalising the subject header line is often overlooked, but it’s really worth considering as this part of your mailer is typically the first thing that your recipient sees. If the subject header line does not grab their interest, then they could delete it without reading.

    By inserting your recipient’s name, along with a well researched subject header, this can really have a big positive impact on your viewer engagements.

  • Body Text

    As we’ve touched on before, adding personalisation to the body text really helps to emphasise sections of your text that are important. This doesn’t have to be limited to just using the recipient's name though.

    Using other key information such as company name, or the name of a product that the recipient has previously demonstrated an interest in. When you import your list, your email marketing software will allow you to import columns of data, unique to each recipient that can be used to mail merge into you email marketing template design.

How to structure an email marketing campaign

Email marketing achieves great results when used as part of a campaign of sequential sends. As we’ve previously discussed viewer engagements and conversions are much stronger when the recipient has built trust with the sender.

Your recipient starts to build trust when your email starts to become a familiar presence in their inbox. It’s also important to carry out other activities that support the reach and success of your email marketing.

In this section, we are going to take a look at the key elements involved in structuring an email marketing campaign and maximising it’s success by carrying out supporting activities.

  • Who to Send it to

    The first stage of any campaign is to decide who to send your email marketing to. It’s well worth taking the time to build your own database of opted in subscribers. Often the temptation is to buy a large list of email addresses, as a marketing form, this really doesn’t work, so it’s definitely best avoided, these unqualified lists of random addresses can often cause more harm that good.

    As your campaign of email marketing sends progresses, you can also start to segment your data based on the different ways that people have engaged with your sends.

  • What to Send

    The key here is to try different types of design and see which works the best for your target audience. It may be that it’s best to try a sequence of different type of email marketing design.

    Some campaigns have lots of success with mixing a well designed HTML sales offer type email, with a formal letter type. If these are sent at regular intervals, alternating between the two email design types, then this can work really well.

    One of the frequently made mistakes as part of an email marketing campaign is to keep sending the same design. If your design worked really well on the first send, then the temptation is to then send it again, assuming that the good results of the first send will be repeated.

  • How frequently to send

    This can often be a tough one to get right - how frequently does your recipient want to see you mailer inside their inbox?

    It really varies from business to business and/or how frequently you have new information or products to share with your email marketing subscribers. If your business has a very fast stock turnover, then it may be ok to send everyday, if you have fresh content to offer every day.

    For most businesses, send email marketing every two weeks seems to offer a good balance between sending enough to remain on your viewer’s radar and not too much that it becomes too frequent.

    It’s worth keeping a close on on your campaign analytics to gauge how frequently your email subscribers want to receive emails from you. If your viewers feel that your emails are too frequent then they will start to unsubscribe. So, it’s worth keeping a close eye on the amount on unsubscribes when you are trying different time gaps between your email marketing.

  • Using social media to spread your reach

    Social media is a great tool to use alongside your email marketing campaigns, the two marketing methods compliment each other very well.

    When you send out your email marketing, it’s worth putting links to all of your social media feeds either at the top , or at the bottom. By including your social media links it gives viewers the opportunity to learn more about your company in the more informal setting of a social media feed. Social media can be used to let people know about the culture and ethos of your company, this really helps to build that all important trust factor with your email marketing subscribers.

    You can also post a copy of your email marketing to your social media feeds, this really helps to lengthen the reach of your email marketing. It’s a great way of converting your social media followers into email subscribers; if they like your content, they will join your mailing list.

  • Analysing your stats

    Your email marketing software will have a suite of campaign analytics, this will give you access to lots of really powerful information to help you fine tune your future sends.

    Analytics will tell you how many of your emails were successfully delivered, how many failed, clicks, reads and unsubscribes. This information is really handy to have, by looking for trends in your opens, clicks and unsubscribes you can tweak different elements of your design accordingly.

    You can use analytics to look at the results of a split test. As we’ve discussed earlier, split testing involves sending a different email marketing template to small sections of your database and observing the results through analytics.

    The depth of information available via your email marketing analytics means that you can look at so much more than the number of opens and clicks etc. For all of this data you can also see the times of the interactions from each user and the geographic location of each subscriber. So you can see trends in the average time of day that people open your email and where abouts in the world they are based.

    Having access to this depth of information is an extremely powerful tool to have at your disposal. By looking at this data, you can fine tune your email marketing for peak performance

  • Follow up activity

    The success of any email marketing campaign can be significantly boosted if the initial contact is followed up. After looking at your campaign analytics, you can build sub lists of people who either did or did not open your mailer.

    With this information you can follow these sub groups up with a secondary campaign that is based on the way that they engaged (or didn’t engage) with the email marketing send.

How to measure your email marketing results

When you have sent your email marketing campaign, as we’ve previously discussed the success of your send can be boosted by analysing the results of this send. You can then carry out further activity based on the initial results.

The challenge though is what metrics to look at with your campaign stats and how to interpret that data. The common problem when you have access to lots of data is that it’s easy to feel a bit bewildered and extracting useful info is a problem.

In this next section, we are going to look at the import areas to look at and how to react to that data with your further email marketing sends.

  • Different send times

    Try sending your email marketing at different times and then look for changes in the open rates for each of those times. The popular theory is that Tuesday & Wednesday, shortly after lunch are the optimum times in terms of viewer engagement. It’s a good idea to try different times tough and see which performs the best for your target audience.

  • Number of emails not opened

    The first port of call for most people is to look at the number of opens, but the category that is really important here is the one that is most overlooked; the number of people who did not open your email. This category is really important, as it represents potential viewers who may convert into sales if they can see your email marketing.

    A sound strategy here is to then create a new list made up of these ‘non opens’. Email Blaster makes it really to automatically do this for you. The app; List Builder can create these lists on the fly for you.

    Once you have this data, you can then try sending with a different subject header line, different content, or a different time. Sometimes sending the same mailer to these non opens at a different time can work wonders.

  • Opens versus clicks

    After looking at the split between opens and non opens. The next stage to look at is what your email subscribers are doing once they have read your email - are they engaging with it by clicking on your links? (this could be a call to action button for example).

    These people can then be followed up in two groups - people who did click on a link and people who didn’t. The people who didn’t may respond to a different layout, so you could try sending them different content with an alternative call to action.

    When looking at the people who did click through to your website, what did they do then? If they didn’t convert into sales, perhaps look at making some changes to the layout/features of your website?

  • Opens versus unsubscribes

    Once they had opened your email - what percentage of people then chose to opt out from further communications from you?

    This category is very important is it determines how people reacted to the design and layout of your email. If it didn’t capture their interest - or they could find what they were looking for in the layout, they may unsubscribe.

    Email marketing recipients may also opt out if they feel that your emails are too frequent, or conversely, not frequent enough and therefore unfamiliar to them. If you’ve had good success with the first mailer and then resent the same mailer to the same people, you may also see a rise in the numbers of unsubscribes. This is because typically, people don’t react well to repeated sends of the same email marketing design.

  • Bounces

    A bounce is a failure, these are split into two different types, a hard bounce and a soft bounce. A hard bounce is a permanent failure, this could be that the domain name doesn’t exist any more. A soft bounce is a temporary failure, this could be that the mailbox is full for example.

    It’s important to keep an eye on your bounces, make sure that they are removed. If your email marketing campaigns have a high bounce rate, then this will affect the delivery of your future campaigns.

    At Email Blaster, yor bounces are all dealt with automatically, hard bounces are removed after one failed attempt and soft bounces after two.

  • Spam complaints

    If your recipients feel that they didn’t ask to receive your mailer, they can mark it as spam inside their email browser. The email browse remembers this selection and then delivers all future emails to spam. If enough people do this, then this could cause your sending domain name to be blocked by the email service provider.

    What can happen, is if your subscribers lose interest in your mailer, they can mark it as spam. It’s not uncommon for recipients to do this instead of unsubscribing.

    Email Blaster notifies you every time that you get a spam complaint, so you can track these. If you notice these starting to creep up, it’s a sure sign that your campaign needs to change, as it is no longer holding the interest of your email subscribers.

  • Most popular devices for reading your email marketing

    Your email marketing analytics will show you which type of device your viewer used to open your email. Now that most of us have 4G enabled mobile devices, more and more of us are opting to open emails on mobile phones instead of the traditional; route of an office based desktop computer.

    Inside your analytics, this is a really important metric to track. If you find that more of your recipients are using mobile than desktop, then it’s a good idea to tailor your design accordingly.

    Designs for mobile achieve better conversions if they use larger font sizes and keep the text as brief as possible. If you design for a small screen, then email marketing conversions and interactions will be higher if your target audience are mainly using mobiles.

    The Email Blaster click and drag design builder takes things a stage further, as well as all of the free email marketing templates being fully responsive for mobile, the builder lets you specify what os shown on a mobile.

    With the design editor you can choose which blocks to show on mobile and which on desktop, this means that for viewers using mobile devices, the software will automatically show them a version that you have designed specifically for mobile. This could be with less text in it for example.

    This is an important metric to track and with the tools available it’s easy to ensure that your email marketing recipients receive a mailer specifically tailored for their device.

Email marketing case study

In this section of the email marketing guide, we are going to take a look at a client case study. The client was fairly new to email marketing, they had tried it before with inconsistent results.

Using the Email Blaster software and with some ideas and help from the Email Blaster team, they were able to maximise their results and put tgoether camapign that has been successfull in broadening thier marketing reach.

  • The Client

    The client makes and sells promotional branded items, these include branded office stationary, such as pens, desk organisers and flash drive storage. They are an established company with quite a large customer base of existing customers.

    They have been making and selling their range of products for over 30 years, their base of clients and products available continue to grow but have showed signs of plateauing over the last few years.

  • Current marketing activities

    The client employs a variety of marketing methods and channels. Historically they have always majored on traditional print media and exhibitions rather than digital marketing.

    Trade shows have always played a major part, as their product range is very tactile, product sales have always boosted when the end user can see/feel the product. Through attending trade shows at key points during the year, new contacts have been made in decent numbers.

    Follow ups to new contacts have generally taken place via a formal printed letter sent through the post. A printed letter has also been supplemented with a product pack, containing a brochure of the full range and a sample product. Sales conversions using this method have always been quite variable.

    Over recent years, the client has started to use digital marketing, this has comprised of both email marketing and social media. Email marketing has been used on an intermittent basis for new contacts and for individual follow up of existing leads.

    Social media has been used to publish images of successful trade shows and products. Engagement with these has typically been pretty low and they remain to be convinced that social media is a worthwhile marketing medium for a business such as theirs.

  • Current results

    Whilst the client employs a good mix of marketing, both traditional and digital, these have not really followed a plan and tend to be quite sporadic. Marketing activity has increased during periods where the order take is lower. As soon as the order take increases, levels of marketing activity then decrease.

    Digital marketing doesn’t have any coordination with print marketing and as such conversion rates can be quite low as an average. Digital campaigns don’t have a clear objective also, this has resulted in some campaigns lacking a focus or decent call to action.

    The major problem facing the business is maintaining a high marketing spend, when the amount of new customers coming on board has not really increased at a sustainable rate. Whilst the conversion rate has been really good when posting out brochures and samples, it is very expensive to do this in any kind of volume.

    In short, growth has slowed, marketing spend is too high and does not have any clear objectives.

  • Email Blaster plan

    The objective for Email Blaster was to come up with a plan that reduced spend, helped coordinate all activities, made sure that all marketing was planned and email marketing was measurable with clear goals It should also increase conversations when used to support other channels.

    The first step was to get a good up to date database containing the email addresses of all customers and contacts. Currently the company CRM system doesn’t have email addresses for everybody and lots were invalid, owing to not being kept up to date.

    Like most companies, the client has lots of contacts, generated through existing business, sales enquiries trade shows and other marketing activities. Lot’s of these don’t have email addresses recorded, so working through this list and obtaining up to date email addresses is an exercise well worth doing. Often, the healthiest conversion rates are achieved by contacting people with whom you already have a relationship.

    Once the database was updated, the next step was to set up automated chains of emails. These emails would contain subscriber only offers, this helps to build loyalty as the viewer feels valued. Using automation means that email can use decision based triggers to send different emails based on user interaction.

    The use of automation also means that marketing can be sent regularly at timed intervals. This tackled the problem that marketing was only done when the business was not very busy.

    The use of email marketing also allowed a thorough process of qualification, before printed brochures were sent out. Email marketing analytics means that levels of user engagement can be recorded - this means that brochures and sample packs can be sent out to qualified leads. It used to be the case that all leads were sent out brochure packs, as these leads were not qualified, the financial investment was quite large.

    Social media is also now used to collect subscribers to opt-in to email marketing. The client runs competitions for social media followers; who then enter their email addresses to join the mailing list and enter the competition.

    Email marketing is now used to bring all of the elements of the marketing mix together. Traditional print media and social media now work to compliment email marketing and vice versa. Data mining has greatly increased the size of the subscriber list, automation of all send means that activity follows a strict timetable.

  • The outcome

    By employing all of the elements outlined, marketing spend has been decreased significantly and conversions have been increased.

    By employing a more diverse range of techniques to opt in new subscribers, the rate of new business conversions has increased. This means that the plateau effect has started to show signs of stopping. Growth in new sales have now started to appear.

    The new plan has been successfully implemented and healthy results have been recorded.

2021 email marketing tips

In this section of the email marketing guide, we are going to take a look at the top ten email marketing hacks for 2021. Each of these are really easy to follow and implement, which if followed can really bring some big wins to you email marketing.

  • 1. Big Buttons

    Big buttons really work - if you want your recipients to do something after having received your mailer, a big button is the best possible way to do this. It could be a click through to your online shop, or a link to phone or email you - whatever it is, wrap it in a big button and more people will see, leading to more people acting on it.

    As we are all mainly using mobile devices to view emails now, these large buttons really work on a small screen. If people can easily see it and select with their finger, this really helps to give your interactions a real boost.

  • 2. Use less text

    Again, this is linked to the first point. Always make sure that your email is designed to work on mobile devices. Nothing is more frustrating than having to outward pinch small text on your phone to try and expand it to make it readable. In most instances, people just won’t do that.

    If your email looks like it is difficult to read or there is too much text, people will just skip it or delete it. So, as part of the proofing process before you send, take a good look at your text and work out how you can cut out anything that isn’t completely necessary, then, when you’ve slimmed it down’ increase the font size to at least 16px. Anything smaller than 16 is just too small for little screens.

  • 3. Data Segmentation

    The aim of email marketing is to send the right email to the right people at the right time. Once you’ve hit this holy grail that’s when your marketing really starts paying off in a big way. Data segmentation is how you do that.

    Look to see how different groups of people are interacting with your mailer, this could be different times or days that people prefer to open an email - or different subject matter or different content. By looking at these stats, you’ll start to see groups of people that fit into each group.

    You can then segment your mailing list into smaller sets and send out different email marketing campaigns to these people - based on their previous viewing characteristics. Segmentation really pays off, big time.

  • 4. Automation

    Automation is a really big deal with email marketing - it does all of the heavy lifting for you and makes sure that you have a regular timed flow of messages going out to your target audience. With automation, you can create a flow of timed campaigns that start sending when a new subscriber joins your list. This means that right from the word go - they are getting your messages.

    Automation can also include dynamic content - so different mailers can be sent out depending on how people interact differently with each send. This means that people who stress an interest in product ‘A’ can then be sent campaigns that are geared towards their exact requirements. With Automation, you can cope with send volumes and campaign variants that don’t require a whole marketing team to administer.

  • 5. Get rid of the sleepers

    Big lists of email addresses can be more trouble than they are worth, all of the really successful email marketers know that digital marketing is not about shotgun blasts to a large number of people. This is why you should delete the sleepers - these are people who are not interacting with your sends if you have a list of email addresses where a percentage of them are not reading your emails, then delete them.

    These addresses serve no purpose other than bulking your count of data. Low interactions mean that your sender score can go down, affecting future deliveries and real conversations can often get lost in the mix.

  • 6. Use social media to repost your email marketing

    Social Media and email marketing complement each other so well. When you send out your email marketing - always share a copy to your social media feeds, this really increases the reach of your message. It also really helps to grow your list of new subscribers.

    By quite simply posting a copy to your social media, you can really achieve some big wins. This is a great hack for 2021.

  • 7. Optimise your layout for mobiles

    Let’s go one further than that, don’t just optimise your current design for mobiles, let’s create a design that is primarily built for mobiles. Most of us are using mobiles now as the default and sometimes the only device for viewing emails. This means that we should be thinking about making sure that our email looks great, is easy to read and has a clear call to action on a small screen. Putting a bit of time into making your design work for small screens really does help to bring some big gains.

  • 8. Send emails at regular intervals

    Email marketing is all about drip drip pressure, if people see your emails at regular intervals then it helps to establish you as a trusted source and increase the chance of your email being viewed at the right time.

    By maintaining a steady presence in the inbox, your email marketing really helps to establish consistently business and customer loyalty. You can establish what are the right intervals for your marketing by keeping a close eye on your stats and viewing how opens and clicks fluctuate over different intervals. This will help to identify the best performing frequency for your marketing.

  • 9. A/B test

    A/B testing really takes the guesswork out of your marketing. You can try out different elements, wording or design with small samples of your subscriber database - yo can then see which version got the best opens or clicks.

    With this super powerful information, you can then send the best performing variant to the main bulk of your database. Taking the time to A/B test before hitting the ‘send’ button really helps to keep you in front of the competition. I gives you a level of visibility that has never before been available.

  • 10. Personalise everything

    This one has been in the email marketing charts for a while now - and it continues to grow in significance year after year. In this digital age, email marketing is the most popular method for companies to use to contact us to try and sell a product or service.

    As we all receive quite a bit of digital marketing, we are used to receiving large scale blanket campaigns - this makes us feel undervalued as a customer. As a digital marketer, the fix for this is to personalise at every opportunity - import your email list into your software with people’s names, details of a previous purchase, company names and any other information unique to them.

    This means that when you design your email, by using mail merge you can recall this personalised information inside an email. When your recipients receive your email marketing - their message will have been personalised to them. This will really help to make your recipients feel valued.

How to make email marketing work for you

The common mistake with email marketing is not to plan your campaigns out properly. As it’s very quick and easy to send email marketing, the common pitfall is to do it quickly, without sufficient planing.

Sending out campaigns in this way often leads to duplication or emails that don’t really engage with your target audience. As much as it’s very easy to make email marketing work for you, it’s also equally easy that fall into the pitfalls that mean your marketing falls flat and fails to engage with your target audience - this means fewer sales conversions and a high rate of unsubscribes.

Having seen thousands of email marketing campaigns, we’ve put together a handy selection of points to help make sure that your email marketing campaigns really work for you, achieving good viewer engagement and ultimately consistently high sales conversions. We also have a full guide to avoiding email marketing mistakes.

  • #1 Avoid using purchased lists

    As it’s quick and easy to send out email marketing, often the temptation is to send out as many emails as possible and purchasing email lists offers a way off adding lots of addresses to your lists.

    Often, though, these lists cause more harm than good. None of the addresses contained within these lists will have asked to receive your email, this means that when they receive your email marketing, they will (in high numbers) often unsubscribe. If they click on unsubscribe, this causes your sender reputation to decrease - ultimately resulting in poor delivery of all of your other email marketing.

    These lists often have very high instances of dead addresses and duplicates - sending to dead addresses can also cause reputation damage, these delivery failures are called ‘bounces’, they are split into hard bounces and soft bounces (permanent and temporary delivery failure). If your email marketing software doesn't have a de-dupe tool, then you may miss duplicate email addresses contained within your purchased lists, sending the same email to the same person multiple times is a sure fire way to generate complaints from your mailing list.

    Purchased lists really are best avoided as they are fraught with issues. This is why pretty much all email marketing software providers nowadays will not permit their usage. Whilst these lists lists may seem like a shortcut to increase your data - they are best avoided. Only send emails to people who have asked to receive them.

  • #2 Segment your data

    Segmenting your data is the most effective way to ensure that you are sending the right email to the right people. When you send out email marketing, if you look at your campaign analytics you’ll start to see trends. This could be in terms of groups of people registering as ‘reads’ within different time windows. So, by segmenting your data you could split these people into groups that may prefer to read in the evening and groups that prefer to read during the day. This really helps to ensure that you are hitting these inboxes at times when these groups are most receptive to reading.

    If your company markets more than one product, you’ll also see trends in terms of different groups looking at different products. By segmenting your data, you can then market similar products to people based on their preferences.

    Another trend that you could see is a split between subscribers that react more to information based email marketing, rather than sales/offer focused. This is a great way of ensuring that future email marketing campaigns use a tone and language that has shown to work well for each group.

  • #3 Use automation with your email marketing

    Good email marketing will provide an automation app, this will give you the ability to automate the sending of your email marketing, based on a trigger such as a specific date/time or when a new subscriber joins your list.

    Using automation ensures consistency with your email marketing, if you’ve got an automated chain of emails set up, this means that they will go out at predetermined times no matter what. This is really advantageous for small business, it means that if your resources are stretched (as they often are for small businesses), then no matter how busy you become, your email marketing will still go out at the perfect times/intervals.

    Email marketing automation also means that you can create dynamic campaigns that can be geared towards the click decisions that your subscribers are making. This means that for the people that click on product ‘A’ rather than ‘B’, they can be sent further email marketing based on their previous choices.

  • #4 Cleanse your email database regularly

    At the heart of any successful email marketing campaign is good deliverability, as we’ve discussed previously, good deliverability is achieved through maintaining a positive sender reputation.

    Your email marketing sender reputation can be damaged by high bounces and poor interactions. You should ensure that any send failures are removed from your list of email subscribers, your email marketing software should be able to automate this for you - removing any hard bounces in their first instance and soft bounces after two failed attempts.

    If subscribers aren’t opening, reading or clicking on your email marketing consistently, then they should be removed. Low interactions will also cause harm to your sender reputation. So it’s good practice to regularly audit your email marketing data and remove subscribers who are not interacting.

  • #5 Use a Double Optin method to collect new subscribers

    Ensuring that your email marketing database is full of people who have genuinely asked to be there is one of the key cornerstones to email marketing success. Double opt in ensures that your web sign up form is not polluted by automated bots and bad data.

    So what exactly is ‘double opt in’? - If you use a form on your website for people to enter their details to join your mailing list and you are using a two step procedure, then this is double opt in. It means that when they enter their details, they will then be sent an email asking them to confirm their email address in order to be added to your email subscribers database.

    By using this two step verification, it stops your data becoming polluted with bad data, it means that only genuine opted in subscribers will be opted in. Double opt in ensures that your email bounces are minimised dramatically.

  • #6 Personalize your email marketing

    When your recipients receive your email marketing, they want to feel like you are familiar with them and valued. In it’s simplest form, personalizing your email marketing means making sure that each email is addressed to the recipient by name.

    Email marketing software will offer the ability to use a mail merge feature to ensure that each email goes out, addressing the recipient by name. As recipients, none of us like to feel that we are part of a huge blanket email marketing send.

    In this digital age, it’s easy to forget that ‘people buy from people’, so always ensure that your marketing addresses each recipient by name and it’s sent from a real person - not a faceless marketing department. So always send your email marketing form your own email address i.e john@ - as opposed to marketing@. Personalizing your email marketing really helps to increase both engagements and sales conversions.

How to get an email database?

When getting started with an email marketing service, the best place to start is by putting together a list of subscribers who want to receive your email newsletter. The best ROI comes from taking the time putting together a list of customers and subscribers who know you and are expecting your email newsletter.

We would strongly urge against buying or renting an email list. 3rd party lists are often padded out with users who don’t want to be there and will mark your email as spam, this will damage your delivery and overall success of your email marketing service.

Taking the time to put together a list of your own subscribers will always achieve the best results. Smaller well targeted lists will always achieve better email marketing results than purchased or rented lists of email addresses.

To help get started with email marketing, we would recommend taking the following steps:

Use your customers

The best email marketing campaigns start off by putting together a list of customers who have purchased from you previously. Under the new GDPR legislation, the ICO permit companies to maintain a marketing relationship with those customers who have purchased from you previously.

Sending email marketing to previous customers is a great way to maintain a relationship with your customer base, along with helping to boost repeat purchases.

Use your website

A1WebStats report that the average website gets over 1,000 unique visitors a month. When a web visitor likes what they see, they will want a way to stay in-touch with your brand and receive the latest updates, by using an email marketing service you can easily add a subscribe widget to your website, allowing web visitors to automatically join your mailing list.

Email Blaster features an intuitive drag and drop builder, allowing you to easily create a beautiful newsletter signup widget or popup window that enables web visitors to join your mailing list.

Use social media

A fantastic way to connect with potential customers and grow your email marketing database. Email Blaster’s newsletter signup tool can be used to design stunning landing pages, shareable on social media. If your business has an engaged social media following, this approach can be used to exponentially grow your email marketing distribution list.

Use paper forms

If you run a traditional bricks and mortar type business, such as a shop or restaurant (where you are regularly meeting face to face with your customers). We would recommend offering a signup sheet or similar next to your payment point or at the entrance to your store.

Sign Up sheets allow customers (and potential customers!) who are already engaging with your business to join your regular email distribution list. Using a traditional paper signup option is an extremely effective way to grow your email marketing list - plus fully compliant with new GDPR regulations.

How to grow your email list

The most successful email marketeers work to grow their email marketing lists organically (as opposed to renting or buying email addresses). The Subscribe app inside your Email Blaster is a fantastic tool to help gain new subscribed contacts who want to be on your email marketing distribution list. Via the Subscribe app, visitors to your; website, social media or blog can be given the option automatically join your email marketing list.

Email Blaster provides a rich set of tools to grow your distribution list organically. To turbo charge your list, we are huge fans of offering subscribers an incentive to join your list.

Via the Subscribe app and landing page builder, when a subscriber joins your mailing list, Email Blaster’s powerful email marketing service can automatically issue new subscribers with a coupon or discount from a purchase inside your store.

The DMA report that 60% of users sign up to an email newsletter to receive an exclusive offer or discount. Adopting the incentive approach is a hugely successful proven route to quickly grow your email marketing list - so remember, push it, push it good!

Advanced email marketing tools

Whether you are just getting started with email marketing, or are a seasoned email marketer, Email Blaster offers a wide range of email marketing solutions to make a success of your digital marketing strategy - from advanced analytics to email marketing automation. Email Blaster is ready to work for your business:

Powerful automation tools

Email Blaster’s powerful email marketing automation tools leave you and your team free to get creative by fully automating your email marketing campaigns.

When a subscriber has their birthday, your Email Blaster can wish that subscriber a happy birthday. When a subscriber joins your mailing list, Email Blaster’s automate can automatically send a timed series of welcome emails - depending on how your subscribers interact with your email, automate can even send personalised follow up emails.

Achieving a truly bespoke email marketing experience for your subscribers can be used to great success, boosting both engagement and responses.

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List cleaning

Bounces are a natural part of any email marketing list: a subscriber may move jobs, a company may cease trading. As reported by Litmus, high bounce percentages will impact your overall sender score and as such delivery and ROI of an email marketing campaign.

To maintain great delivery, Email Blaster’s List Ai will automatically clean and verify mailing lists before use. List Ai automatically detects typos, Bounces, duplicates and dead addresses. Removing harmful data before sending helps maintain great delivery and protect your sender reputation.

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Newsletter spam score check

The Integrated spam score tester let’s you check the inbox friendliness of your email marketing newsletter before sending. Giving helpful feedback and advice to help ensure your lovingly created email marketing reaches your subscriber every time.

Schedule email marketing sends

Schedule email marketing sends for a time and date of your choosing. Email Blaster’s powerful scheduler ensures that your email marketing newsletter reaches your subscribers at the perfect time. Pick your desired send time and date - your Email Blaster takes care of the rest. Email Blaster gives you the right email marketing solutions to build a successful brand.

Custom mailing lists

Email Blaster’s list builder helps build a smart email marketing service. List builder creates custom mailing lists based upon your own criteria. Automatically generate a list of subscribers who read your last email, or perhaps clicked on a specific web link. List builder’s email marketing tools help make a success of your digital marketing.

Email analytics data

Offering an email marketing service with complete visibility. The integrated analytics suite automatically tracks every interaction from inside your email newsletter. Monitoring; subscribers who read your email marketing, those that clicked through to your website or just those that unsubscribed. Analytics provides an unparalleled representation of exactly how your email marketing campaign performed.

Featuring pre-formatted one click exportable results, Email Blaster’s analytics suite provides the right email marketing tools to build your brand.

Control send from settings

Email Blaster’s sender profiles gives you complete control over the send from settings used on any email newsletter send. For marketing companies and organisations needing to send on behalf of multiple users, sender profiles offer an unparalleled level of flexibility to effectively manage your email marketing services.

Email Blaster aims to be completely transparent, giving you ultimate control over the; name, email address and reply-to address that your lovingly created email newsletter originates from. Integrated DKIM and SPF validation allow you to achieve the best email marketing delivery.

Social media integration

Offering true social media integration the Email Blaster email marketing system, lets you seamlessly sync with your favourite social networks. When hitting send, Email Blaster can optionally post a copy of your email newsletter to both your Facebook wall and Twitter feed. Giving you and your team the ability to share your lovingly created email marketing with your social media followers.

Newsletter subscribe forms and landing pages

Subscribe by Email Blaster lets you easily create stunning newsletter signup forms and landing pages - perfect for capturing new subscribers and growing your email distribution list. Regardless of the type of website you own: WordPress, Wix or a bespoke solution, Subscribe forms can be embedded on any platform - quickly and easily.

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How to use video in your email marketing

In recent years, video has proven to be an excellent channel for marketing. Videos are easy to make and most companies nowadays have a selection of videos featuring company news, products reviews and more informal topics.

  • Why video works really well

    Video works really well, as for your viewers it’s much easier to watch a 2 minute video than read a 2,000 word email. When we are reading emails, large text articles can be off putting as we don’t have the time. This can prompt your email marketing viewers to unsubscribe.

  • Limitations of email browsers

    Whilst video is perfect for email marketing, the real kicker is that most email browsers don’t support the direct playing of video inside an email, there are quite a few limitations with most email browsers. As far as the capabilities of email readers are increasing, they still have yet to catch up with web browser in terms of play video.

    This means that to include video with your email marketing you need to link to a web based version of your email.

  • The best way to render video with your email marketing

    The best way to include video with your email marketing is to host your video on one of the popular video sharing sites such as YouTube and then link to it inside your email marketing design.

    Email Blaster makes it very easy to do this, with the click and drag email marketing template designer, you can drag across a video block. All you need to do is copy the video sharing code from YouTube (or similar) and past inside the video block inside Email Blaster.

    The design editor will then display a copy of your YouTube video thumb nail image, offer you a choice of play buttons to overlay and then automatically link to the source video.

    This is a really effective and easy to use way to use video with your email marketing. If you don’t already have a company video, it’s really worth considering as it’s an incredible popular and successful marketing channel to employ.

GDPR compliant email marketing service

GDPR is a European Union law that came into force on the 25th May 2018. The General Data Protection Regulation replaces and is an evolution of the previous data protection act which has been in existence since 1998.

GDPR regulates how companies treat or use personal data (such as a subscribers email address). If your organisation collects data on EU citizens, since the 25th May 2018 new regulations require businesses to process data as set out by the new legislation. The ICO provides further information on GDPR and it’s requirements, as your service provider Email Blaster and categorised as the “data processor” and is proud to be a fully compliant service provider:

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Security

As your email marketing agency, Email Blaster is obliged to store and process your data securely and in accordance with your instructions. The Email Blaster cloud is protected by enterprise class hardware firewalls running on our own purpose built Dell PowerEdge server platform. All software data is kept inside our GDPR compliant tier 4 specification data centre.

The state of the art tier 4 facilities represent the highest data centre specification, offering full redundancy of critical network and hardware components. Offering 24/7 monitoring and bespoke intrusion prevention systems, we are proud of offer outstanding levels of uptime, reliability and security for your email marketing services.

Location

GDPR requires that companies holding person data on EU citizens keep that data inside the European Union. Data can only be imported outside the European Economic Area with explicit consent from each and every customer whom your organisation holds information on.

Email Blaster’s secure email marketing cloud is located exclusively inside in the UK. When using Email Blaster, all data is stored in our Tier 4 specification datacenter located in Milton Keynes. We own and operate all our own cloud infrastructure, no element is outsourced to a 3rd party - providing you and your business with a secure email marketing service that your business can rely on every day.

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Email Marketing versus Social Media

Social media and email marketing are great ways to promote your products and services digitally. The question is often asked “Is email marketing better than social media for marketing your business?” - the answer really is that you should be using both, as they both compliment one another and work really well in conjunction with each other.

Social media is best employed as a method to attract social media viewers to opt in to your mailing list. As outlined elsewhere in this article, social media is a great way to gain more email marketing subscribers.

Social media can also be used to extend the reach of your email marketing. Most email marketing software will give you the ability to sync your social media and email marketing accounts together. This means that when you send your email marketing newsletter, your cloud based software can also post a copy directly to your Twitter and Facebook feeds.

Using your email marketing software in this way really helps to maximise the impact of your digital marketing.

So, really asking the question “which is best” doesn’t really have an answer, the correct approach is to use both to compliment each other.

By looking at each at working out how you can best employ all forms of marketing to fit inside a larger 360 degree digital marketing strategy is the most effective way to create a digital strategy that really works.

How to improve your email marketing open rates

Email marketing, if used correctly can be a cost effective way to generate sales for your business. In order to achieve strong engagement with your email subscribers, you’ll need to achieve and maintain good open rates - if people aren’t reading your email marketing, then they aren't going to be buying from you.

There are many ideas and theories out there as to the best way to achieve good open rates. Here at Email Blaster, we see thousands of email marketing campaigns each week. Great successful campaigns all follow as set of guidelines that achieve consistently good email marketing open rates.

  • #1 Verify your sending domain

    Verifying your sending domain is very important if you are using third party email marketing software. When using email marketing software, your email will appear to your recipients as being from you, but it is being sent via the network of your email marketing software company. This can cause spam filters to class it as spam, because it looks like it is from one person, but is really from someone else.

    This is why it’s very important to verify your sending domain, verifying your domain, means adding a seal of authentication to effectively ‘tell’ your recipients that it’s ok to accept your email. Verifying your sending domain is dome by adding an SPF record and a DKIM signature to your company domain. It’s very easy to do this and should only take a few minutes. Here at Email Blaster, we have a handy guide explaining how to do this.

  • #2 Split test your email marketing

    You can split test your email marketing by sending different variants of it to small groups of recipients - and then evaluating the results to see which variant performed the best.

    The most effective way to do this is with variants of the subject header line. The subject header line is the first thing that your recipients see and as such is hugely influential on improving your email marketing open rates. This is because if the subject header line doesn’t grab your email subscribers, then they won’t engage with it. Under performing subject header lines are one of the most common reasons for poor email marketing open rates.

    Different variants can have hugely varying results - so it’s always a good idea to split test your email marketing before you send it out to your entire subscriber database.

  • #3 Ensure that your email database is cleansed regularly

    As we’ve previously discussed, poor engagement and delivery results in a poor sender reputation. A poor sender reputation means that delivery rates and subsequently email marketing open rates will be very low.

    It’s worth double checking that your email marketing software company has a good list cleaning engine that will delete any bad data from your database. Here at Email Blaster, we have an inbuilt app called “List Ai” that auto scans every database as it’s imported and removes any bad data. Removing bad data before you send any emails really has a huge impact on delivery rates. Good delivery rates put you a step closer to achieving good email open rates.

  • #4 Only send your email marketing so qualified, oped in email subscribers

    Making sure that your recipients are the right demographic and they have asked to receive your marketing is very important when it comes to maintaining strong email marketing delivery rates.

    So, again, it’s really important to make sure that everybody on your list is there because they have asked to be there. Always avoid the temptation to purchase a lists, unqualified, un-opted in data is the fastest route to poor email open rates.

How to avoid the junk filter

Another important factor in achieving email marketing success is avoiding your email marketing from being classified as junk by your recipient's spam filter.

Spam filters will scan your email, prior to letting it through to the inbox, if it contains the elements that they class as spam - then it’ll be delivered to the spam box and chances are that your recipient will never see your lovingly crafted email marketing.

It’s really worth taking the time to check your email marketing before pressing the send button. Any decent email marketing software will have a spam checker app, here at Email Blaster, we have a great app that will run all of the necessary checks on your mailer required to achieve good inbox placement. Some of the areas to consider when checking your email marketing newsletter for good inbox placement are as follows:

  • #1 Spam phrases

    Your recipient’s spam filter, will scan your subject header line and body text. It will scan everything, looking for the presence of spam phrases, typically these are sales related words or phrases, such as: discount, promotion, click here, special offer or free. Your spam checking app will highlight these phrases so that you can revert to your text and make changes accordingly.

    Sometimes, it’s impossible to word your email marketing in such a way that it doesn’t include any spam phrases. Good email inbox placement is about achieving a balance, it isn’t necessary to remove every instance - just enough so that it passes the various checks.

  • #2 Verifying your sending domain

    As we’ve mentioned earlier, verifying your email marketing sending domain plays a central role in where your email marketing will be delivered; inbox or spam box. If your sending domain isn’t verified, then this can really cause major delivery issues. Please refer to our guide for instruction on how to do this: verify your sending domain.

  • #3 Maintain a positive email marketing sender reputation

    Your previous email marketing activity will record a sender score, this sender score is available for your recipient's spam filter to see when evaluating your send for inbox placement.

    • A positive reputation is maintained by only sending to people that have opted in to your email marketing, not receiving spam complaints, hitting spam traps or recording a high number of hard and soft bounces.

Why use a UK based email marketing company?

When choosing a new email marketing company - it’s important to select the right one. There are lots out there, both household names and smaller providers, so there’s no shortage of choice. With that in mind we’ve put together a handy checklist to be aware of when you are looking to change email marketing companies.

  • #1 Are they based in the same time zone as you?

    Sometimes, you may want to be able to get a quick reply to an email or simply pick up the telephone and talk to someone. So if you are based in the U.K, it’s a good idea to choose a U.K based email marketing supplier.

    This means that when you need some help or guidance, you don't have to wait 24 hours to get a reply. Sometimes, it’s just nice to know that help is on hand when you need it.

  • #2 Are their sending servers based in the U.K?

    With the advent of GDPR, this one is quite a big deal. If you are a U.K based company, emailing to U.K based email subscribers, then GDPR says that you must keep you contacts data in the U.K. If you are intending to use an overseas supplier, such as in the U.S for example, then GDPR requires that you obtain permission form everybody to export their private data outside of the protection of GDPR (outside of the E.U)

  • #3 Are they GDPR compliant?

    As Well as having servers based in the U.K, GDPR requires that you make sure that the company processing your email data is fully complaint in terms of how that data is stored. They should also have an appointed DPO (Data Protection Officer).

  • #4 Is their software easy to use?

    With email marketing software, it’s important to be able to do what you want quickly. Successful email marketing is all about being first out to market with products and time based offers. Email marketing software that is hard to use can be really frustrating and can delay time sensitive offers reach your email subscribers quickly enough to have an impact.

  • #5 Do they offer telephone support?

    Sometimes, it’s just nice to be able to pick up the phone and talk to somebody, that's when it's really handy to have UK based support. Even if it’s just asking for another set of eyes to look at your mailer, it’s reassuring to know that expert help or guidance is at the end of the telephone when you need it.

  • #6 Does the software have free email marketing templates?

    Having a library of free email marketing templates for you to use as a base for your campaign is a great feature to have access to. It can really save time to select a design that works for your products and services, rather than create something from scratch.

    These email marketing templates are often based on designs that are tried and tested to be successful layouts. Using these as a base can help to ensure that your email marketing ticks the boxes in terms of the principles of successful design.

  • #7 Does the software have analytics?

    With email marketing - in order to fine tune your campaigns, it is vital to be able to see the results of what you are sending. With analytics, you can see exactly how you viewers are engaging with what you are sending, with access to this information you can make small changes and see how your email subscribers react to them. This is a powerful addition to your email marketing strategy.

  • #8 Is the email marketing software cloud based?

    In a modern working environment, we are very rarely rooted to the same place. It’s therefore important to have access to email marketing software that you can access from anywhere without having to download and install.

    This is especially important for checking campaign analytics if you are out of the office. If you can access your email marketing software from a mobile device then this is really handy for keeping on top of your marketing.

Email marketing frequently asked questions

If you are new to email marketing, this section contains all of the most frequently asked questions relating to digital marketing and email campaigns. We take a look at everything from what types of email data it's ok to use, thorugh to GDPR and how it effects your email marketing activities.

  • Q: Is is o.k to use purchased lists of email addresses?

    Whilst it isn’t in breach of GDPR to use purchased lists of business email addresses, pretty much all email marketing software suppliers will not let you use them. This is because they are typically fraught with issues and cause reputation damage to your company domain name and your email marketing software company’s sending network.

  • Q: How do I grow my email subscriber list?

    There are a number of ways to grow your email marketing subscribers list, these methods include the following: web based opt in forms, making sure you collect email addresses from everyone that you deal with, contacting prospective companies and asking for their email address, using social media or Pay Per Click (such as Google Ads or Bing)

  • Q:How do I get more people to open my emails?

    Getting more people to open your emails is the holy grail for email marketers. It’s important to spot trends in your email marketing analytics, this will give you a good idea what day/time your email subscribe like to receive your email.

    You should also split test your marketing (as we’ve discussed earlier in this article), split testing will let you know which of your email marketing campaign variants perform the best.

    It is also worth running your send through a spam checker app and making sure that your sending domain is verified. This will help to decrease the chances if hitting the spam box

  • Q:What is GPDR?

    GDPR (General Data Protection Regulation) came into force on the 25 May 2018. It applies to UK companies how collect, store and use private data (such as email addresses) of their contacts.

  • Q: Who does GDPR apply to?

    In short, everybody. There are no exceptions to GDPR, it applies to every type of person or company who is collecting, storing and using their contacts private information.

  • Q: Under GDPR can a UK company use a U.S based email marketing software company

    Yes, you can, As GDPR is an E.U law that protects the rights of E.U citizens. The law requires that if you are going to export your contacts private information outside of the protection of the law that you ask their permission first.

    If you are intending to use a U.S based email marketing software company, then it’s fine to do this, if you have the permission of all of your email marketing subscribers first.

  • Q: Does my email marketing have to have an unsubscribe option?
    Yes, it does. Any email marketing that you send out is required by law to include an option for your email contacts to unsubscribe from any future mailings.

  • Q: Can I email anybody under ‘Legitimate Interests’?

    There has been a certain amount of confusion over this over the last 12 months. The ICO (Information Commissioner’s Office) has updated GDPR to state that you can email any business who may have a legitimate interest in your products.

    Although it is technically legal to do this, sending an email to someone who has not asked for it is classed as unsolicited (spam). Spam filters will block any sender who is sending spam and will block them from further sends. This is why pretty much all email marketing software providers will (in the interests of protecting your company domain name), not allow you to send unsolicited emails via their software service.

  • Q: When is the best day to send email marketing?

    It always used to be considered Tuesday or Wednesday, early afternoon. What then happened is everybody sent their email marketing strictly adhering to these times, this meant that competition for your email subscriber’s inbox was fierce at this time.

    The best approach here is to try your sends at different times and see which time/day gets the best open rates. In recent years, campaigns send outside of office ours have had really great open rates. This is because we all check emails on our mobiles nowadays and lots of people check their work emails on a Sunday evening, before going into the office on Monday morning.

  • Q: How often should I send emails to my email marketing subscribers?

    The most important factor here is to send emails when you have fresh content and new things to say. So if your company has a fast stick turn, then it’s ok to send as frequently as every few days. If your content doesn’t hugely change, then it’;s not a good idea to send more than once a week.

    Keeping a close eye on the number of unsubscribes that you receive via your email marketing software will give you a good idea of the frequency that your subscribers like to be contacted.

  • Q: What type of open rate will I get from email marketing?

    This is pretty much entirely down to you, if your subscribers like what you are sending and they are expecting your email then it could be a ghi as upwards of 50%. However, if you list is old or purchased, or your email marketing doesn’t strike a chord with your subscribers then it could be as low as 3 or 4%.

    The rule of thumb here is that well designed, well researched marketing sent to people who want to receive it will always work really well.

  • Q: Can I personalize my sends?

    Yes, you can. It’s strongly advisable to do this as email marketing that is personalized receives much better open and click through rates. When importing your data into your email marketing software, if you import the email address and the persons name - you can take advantage of your software’s mail merge feature to recall this info when sending your email marketing campaign.

  • Q: What is a 'Click Through'

    A click through - or CTR (click through rate) is the number of people that clicked on a link inside your email marketing, this could be a link through to your company website for example.

  • Q: What is a ‘Call to Action’

    A ‘Call to Action’ (CTA) is the part in your email marketing that asks your email subscriber to do something after they have read your email newsletter. It could for example: “Visit our online shop to view our full range”

  • Q: How do I make sure my email marketing doesn’t land in the spam folder?

    There are a few simple rules to follow here to help minimise the risk that your email marketing won’t end up in the spam box:

    • Don’t use purchased lists - they cause reputation damage
    • Verify your sending domain name
    • Use a spam checker app to check your subject header line and body content for spam phrases
    • Clean any old dead addresses off of your list (high bounces cause reputation damage)
    • Never send from a generic mailbox, such as sales@, marketing@ or offers@ for example. Always send from yourself….john@ or Karen@

  • Q: What is a ‘Hard Bounce’?

    A hard bounce is a permanent delivery failure - meaning that no matter how many times you send to this address it will fail. This is generally the case with an old domain name that doesn't exist anymore.

  • Q: What is a ‘Soft Bounce’?

    A Soft Bounce is a temporary failure, this means that the domain name exists, but at the time of sending your mail did not get through. Reasons could be that the mailbox is full or currently not accepting emails, sometimes soft bounces can go through if sent to again.

  • Q: Will my company domain name get blacklisted if I send email marketing?

    This is down to the list of email addresses that you are sending to. If these addresses are not opted in, your recipients may class what you are sending as spam, then yes, eventually your company domain name will be blacklisted. This is quite common with purchased lists.

    If you are sending emails to a good clean list of people who have asked to receive your communications, then no you will not be blacklisted.

  • Q: What is a ‘Spam Trap’?

    Spam traps are addresses floated on the internet by a spam filtering companies, these addresses are typically harvested from the internet by list sellers and sold on as part of a database. If you email one of these spam traps, your company domain name could be blacklisted.

  • Q: What are the main metrics that I should track with email marketing?

    The main areas that you want to look are the open/read rate and the clickthrough rate. These are, respectively, the number of people who read your email and the the number of people who clicked on a link.

    You should also compare then open rate to the clickthrough rate (CTR), look at the amount of people who read your mailer and then either did or didn’t click on a link.

  • Q: What is ana A/B or a ‘Split Test’

    This refers to testing two variants of the same campaign to small groups of people. This is a great way of finding which campaign (A or B) performa the best, prior to sending to your whole email subscribers database.

  • Q: Should I send HTML or plain text emails?

    Different things work for different businesses, so don’t be afraid to experiment with both or even alternate between the two. Your campaign analytics will show you which works best for your email subscribers.

    • For further reading, please see our related article on "common email marketing mistakes"

Why use a UK based email marketing company?

When choosing a new email marketing company - it’s important to select the right one. There are lots out there, both household names and smaller providers, so there’s no shortage of choice. With that in mind we’ve put together a handy checklist to be aware of when you are looking to change email marketing companies.

  • #1 Are they based in the same time zone as you?

    Sometimes, you may want to be able to get a quick reply to an email or simply pick up the telephone and talk to someone. So if you are based in the U.K, it’s a good idea to choose a U.K based email marketing supplier.

    This means that when you need some help or guidance, you don't have to wait 24 hours to get a reply. Sometimes, it’s just nice to know that help is on hand when you need it.

  • #2 Are their sending servers based in the U.K?

    With the advent of GDPR, this one is quite a big deal. If you are a U.K based company, emailing to U.K based email subscribers, then GDPR says that you must keep you contacts data in the U.K. If you are intending to use an overseas supplier, such as in the U.S for example, then GDPR requires that you obtain permission form everybody to export their private data outside of the protection of GDPR (outside of the E.U)

  • #3 Are they GDPR compliant?

    As Well as having servers based in the U.K, GDPR requires that you make sure that the company processing your email data is fully complaint in terms of how that data is stored. They should also have an appointed DPO (Data Protection Officer).

  • #4 Is their software easy to use?

    With email marketing software, it’s important to be able to do what you want quickly. Successful email marketing is all about being first out to market with products and time based offers. Email marketing software that is hard to use can be really frustrating and can delay time sensitive offers reach your email subscribers quickly enough to have an impact.

  • #5 Do they offer telephone support?

    Sometimes, it’s just nice to be able to pick up the phone and talk to somebody, that's when it's really handy to have UK based support. Even if it’s just asking for another set of eyes to look at your mailer, it’s reassuring to know that expert help or guidance is at the end of the telephone when you need it.

  • #6 Does the software have free email marketing templates?

    Having a library of free email marketing templates for you to use as a base for your campaign is a great feature to have access to. It can really save time to select a design that works for your products and services, rather than create something from scratch.

    These email marketing templates are often based on designs that are tried and tested to be successful layouts. Using these as a base can help to ensure that your email marketing ticks the boxes in terms of the principles of successful design.

  • #7 Does the software have analytics?

    With email marketing - in order to fine tune your campaigns, it is vital to be able to see the results of what you are sending. With analytics, you can see exactly how you viewers are engaging with what you are sending, with access to this information you can make small changes and see how your email subscribers react to them. This is a powerful addition to your email marketing strategy.

  • #8 Is the email marketing software cloud based?

    In a modern working environment, we are very rarely rooted to the same place. It’s therefore important to have access to email marketing software that you can access from anywhere without having to download and install.

    This is especially important for checking campaign analytics if you are out of the office. If you can access your email marketing software from a mobile device then this is really handy for keeping on top of your marketing.

2023 email marketing trends

Here's our rundown of the top email marketing trends to look out for in 2023. Email marketing continues to grow and evolve, this section has some great ideas to incorporate with your digital marketing campaigns in 2023.

  • #1 Hyper Segmentation

    Segmentation isn’t really that new when it comes to email marketing, however, in recent years it’s become a key element in developing successful email marketing campaigns.

    Data segmentation refers to splitting your data into smaller sets or subsets, based on how subscribers are reacting to your email marketing campaigns. This could mean that everybody who clicked on a link contained within your mailer to product number one is then put into their own list. You then end up with smaller lists containing groups of people who all engaged with your emailer in the same way.

    In 2023, this trend of looking to identify and group engagement trends will develop still further. Lots of email marketers have had a lot of success with this approach and are continuing to take this concept further with hyper segmentation. This involves looking for more trends and patterns, creating more data sets of smaller groups of members.

    One of the popular hyper segmentation groupings is to create subsets based on which day’s or times people typically open and engage with emails. This grouping would be derived from an existing set of all of the people who had previously clicked on product number one.

    Using hyper segmentation means that you are targeting the right people with the right product offering at the right time. This approach really boosts conversions, whilst employing this email marketing technique may appear as being quite labour intensive, any decent email marketing software, such as email blaster for example will do all of the heavy lifting for you with automation.

  • #2 Omnichannel digital marketing

    Email marketing trends for 2023 are all about the further development of techniques and strategies that have seen great results over the last few years.

    Omnichannel marketing is a further extension of multichannel marketing. For quite a while now, digital marketing has incorporated email marketing, SMS and social media. With campaigns being sent out via all three channels.

    Historically, whilst used together, there was little interaction between these channels, multichannel digital marketing just referred to sending out your email marketing message via all three. Omnichannel develops this basic concept and increases sales conversion by allowing these channels to support and interact with each other.

    A great example of this is using an abandoned shopping cart on your website as a trigger. With automation, leaving the cart could be used to trigger an email, or an SMS reminding the viewer that they have products in the cart still.

    This can also include targeted social media advertisements, based on product interests first identified by an abandoned basket or clicks in an email marketing campaign. These highly targeted social media advertisements can be presented to the viewer when they visit their social media feeds.

  • #3 Dynamic email campaigns

    Dynamic email campaigns can be created with email marketing automation tools, any decent email marketing software, such as Email Blaster will contain an automation campaign builder.

    Dynamic campaigns will listen to how your viewers are interacting with your sends and serve them a new email based on their previous interactions. A typical usage for this could be which calls to action or product links your viewers clicked on. If, for example, people clicked on product number one, they would then be sent a timed campaign of email marketing templates based around this product - these are typically further information and eventually an offer based email.

    2023 will see the continued growth of this area. The development of sophisticated email marketing software over the last few years has given email marketers access to a powerful set of tools that automate the process of presenting the right product to the right viewer at the right time.

  • #4 Mobile-first optimisation

    Over the last few years, mobile devices have really accelerated past desktop as the preferred device for viewing emails. 2023 should see continued growth in this margin between the two. In 2021 we saw email opens on mobile devices growing to 60% as the preferred primary device.

    This email marketing trend is quite significant and will continue and grow in 2023. This means that when it comes to designing email marketing campaigns, email marketers should design for mobile first and desktop second.

    When designing for smaller screens, it’s important to use larger fonts, less text and larger buttons. You should also make sure that the file size of any images that you use is kept as small as possible. As mobile viewers may be accessing your email on slower cellular data networks, download speeds will be critical. Email marketing campaigns with large image file sizes often gets deleted without reading.

  • #5 Increased importance of Data Privacy

    GDPR has continued to have a large impact on how email marketers collect, store and use data. The security of your recipient’s private data must be protected by the data controller (the owner of the list), the data controller is also responsible for making sure that the Data Processor (the owner of the email marketing software in this instance) is storing the data in a safe and responsible way.

    Over the past few years, people have become more and more aware of the protection of GDPR and how it works. This means that in 2023 you can expect your target audience to be very cautious about supplying you with their private data unless you make them feel comfortable that you have adequate security in place to safeguard their private information.

    In 2023, we can expect to see email marketers giving increased visibility to their privacy policy. This email marketing trend will continue to merit a front and centre position in the strategy of more and more email marketers. People will only sign up to receive your email marketing if they feel it is safe to do so.

    As GDPR is a UK (and EU) law, more and more email marketers are choosing UK based email marketing software as their preferred choice. GDPR offers people the protection that they are looking for, if you are using US-based email marketing software, this means that you are uploading your contact’s private data outside of the protection of GDPR. In 2023, UK based software is really important to all responsible email marketers.

  • #6 Total subscriber journey metrics

    Email marketing has really seen some major steps forward in terms of the tools available to email marketers over the last few years. One of the really important ones in 2023 will be increased visibility over the total journey of your email marketing interactions.

    Pretty much all software will present you with an email marketing analytics package to see how many reads, clicks and other interactions your campaign received. Typically though, this visibility had stopped there - it didn’t show you what those interactions then went on to do when they visited your company website.

    2023 has already been a real game-changer regarding this visibility though. Email marketing software such as Email Blaster will allow you to install a small line of code into your company website that then opens the door to seeing what those viewers did when they visited your website. This means that you then have visibility over the complete journey, from email open all the way through to a successful purchase (or conversely an abandoned cart).

    Total journey metrics will enable you to directly identify the exact amount of sales revenue that your email campaigns are generating. This is marketing gold for email marketers as it really helps to fine-tune the complete journey that your email subscribers are taking.

  • #7 Strict data cleansing

    Over the past few years, mail filters have got much more strict with penalising senders for receiving high bounces, unsubscribes and low rates of engagement. Your email marketing sending server will carry with it a sender score - this is a percentage score that moves up or down depending on your previous campaigns.

    This means that if you had previously recorded high bounces and low email marketing viewer engagement then your score will decrease. A low score dramatically increases the chances that your future sends would be classed as spam or could even be blocked by your recipient’s email filter.

    So, in 2023 it’s more important than ever to keep your email marketing databases as clean as possible. This means deleting any bounces and people who haven’t engaged with your email marketing for a while, doing this regular housekeeping will help to ensure that your sender score remains high and your future email marketing campaigns receive great stats and conversions.

    The good news is that any decent email marketing software, such as Email Blaster will automatically remove bounces and unsubscribes, this means that housekeeping your data is mainly automated and requires very little of your time.

  • #8 The end of purchased lists

    The writing has been on the wall for quite a while with this one but in 2023 all major email marketing software suppliers have blocked the use of purchased lists from their networks. Unsolicited email is something that none of us wants to receive and email marketing software companies don’t want their platforms used to send this kind of traffic.

    Over recent years, spam filters have also updated their algorithms to become much more adept at looking for the typical characteristics of a purchased list. In 2023 they will continue to become more adept at blocking lists of this nature.

    This means that using email marketing broadcasts to send out to purchased email lists in 2023 will be something that will be even harder to do. The results achieved will make it untenable as a marketing medium.

  • #9 Less copy

    Following on from the growth in the use of mobile devices to view emails, the direct effect of this is that in 2023 the amount of copy text used in email marketing be much less than it had been in previous years.

    Email marketers have seen much better conversion rates when using less text and more direct succinct copy. As well as the frustrations of reading lots of text on smaller screens, we are also spending less time on each email. As the volume of emails continues to increase, we are all spending less time skim reading each email.

    2023 is set to see this trend for less copy continue, successful email marketers, are getting better and better and getting their point across with fewer words.

  • #10 Transparency with user-generated content

    User-generated content is a relatively new one. For years we’ve all had user content such as reviews on our websites. In recent years though, digital marketers have started to incorporate this into their marketing channels such as email marketing.

    As the amount of online purchases that we all make has dramatically increased in recent years, we have all become very accustomed to researching our next potential purchase by looking for user reviews.

    Digital marketers have seen this trend develop and are incorporating it into their email marketing. The objective is to give your viewer everything that they need inside your email broadcast to make a purchase. If your viewer receives your digital marketing and then visits the search engines to look for user-generated reviews then this means that they could then easily become drawn to competitor offerings instead of yours.

    In 2023 this trend will continue to increase as more and more savvy email marketers learn to incorporate user-generated content into their email marketing campaigns.

Email marketing support

Amazing support is at the heart of what we do

The team at Email Blaster take pride in providing fantastic customer support that you can rely on. Email Blaster is a software company, but not run like a software company - we are firm believers that business is about relationships between real people.

At every opportunity, through day to day support and the weekly email marketing tips and tricks video channel, we aim to build relationships with our community, this helps Email Blaster become a better platform, positioned at the heart of your email marketing strategy.

Every line of code that makes up the Email Blaster platform is written by hand in-house. We do not outsource anything, from development to support. With a firm belief in this approach, this helps us maintain a great email marketing service which you will want to use every day.

Email marketing support is provided in house (often by the team people that write the software), when contacting the team at Email Blaster we aim to respond right away without the need to wait hours or days for assistance (long waits frustrate us too!).

Standard monthly accounts automatically include account management and telephone support, no call centres or hours waiting on hold, a simple traditional approach to business relationships means that we aim to be on hand to assist right away.

Email Blaster’s email marketing service is free to try - offering both pay as you go accounts for irregular senders and standard monthly accounts for regular users. There are no setup fees, long contracts or hidden costs, offering a simple clear approach to help your company develop a successful email marketing strategy. We believe Email Blaster is a fantastic platform, supported by friendly UK based help when you need it. Open a free account to find out how email Email Blaster’s email marketing tools can help your company sell more stuff and build a successful brand.

Switching to Email Blaster

When you are ready to move, we make the whole process easy

Switching to Email Blaster is simple, our UK based email marketing team are on hand to help at every stage of the way. Based on the cloud, Email Blaster can be accessed directly from any major web browser - with no complicated setup’s or installs, Email Blaster is at home on Mac, Windows and Linux.

Importing subscriber lists

Migrating away from a previous supplier does not need to be a daunting task. Email Blaster’s email marketing system features the easy to use drag and drop subscriber list import wizard.

When using Email Blaster, you can quickly drag and drop your mailing list directly from your computer into the software - Email Blaster takes care of the complicated leaving you and your team free to run your email marketing.

Importing a pre-built email

When moving away from a previous email marketing supplier, you may have had an HTML template designed - or a specific layout which you have been happily using for years.

There is no need to throw away your lovingly created mailer - Email Blaster features our easy to use drag and drop email marketing campaign import wizard - quickly drag and drop your previously designed HTML mailer directly into the Email Blaster email marketing cloud, ready to use - it’s as simple as that.

Christmas Email Marketing

Seasonal holiday periods such as Christmas are typically great times to increase your email marketing activities. These are times when your viewers are more receptive to making either planned or spontaneous purchases.

With everyone so wrapped up (excuse the pun!) in sales promotions though, an area that is often overlooked by most email marketers is sending a Christmas eCard. It’s a great opportunity to thank your contacts for their business and support throughout the year. Using this approach really helps to make your email subscribers feel that their business is very much appreciated and valued, this really helps to increase loyalty and repeat business from your subscriber base.

It also offers the additional benefit that Christmas eCards offer something visually very different from the other contents of your subscriber’s inbox, this really helps your email to stand out from the competition. This ability to stand out is further enhanced by the fact that a Christmas eCard offers an entirely different tone, unlike other email marketing that your viewer may be receiving - your Christmas eCard isn’t selling anything, it’s intent is merely just pass on season’s greetings and to thank your viewers for their business throughout the year.

You could also personalise your Christmas eCard with a festive photograph of your team. In this age of digital marketing, it’s easy to overlook the human element. We all like to deal with real people. Christmas is an ideal time to introduce the faces of your staff who may be managing your client’s orders and enquiries all year. Adding this personal touch really helps to build loyalty and trust with your email subscribers.

Here at Email Blaster, our library of free email marketing templates contains a whole section dedicated to seasonal designs, many of these Christmas eCards. We add fresh email marketing designs at the beginning of each December, these cover all styles from formal to fun. Some of the fun styles include animation - this really helps to grab the attention of your email subscribers.

These email marketing templates are all loaded into our easy to use drag and drop editor. Customising these is a breeze, you can quickly and easily import your company logo, branding and personalised Christmas message.

The gallery below shows a selection of these templates. If you don’t already have a free Email Blaster account, then please click here to open your free email marketing account.

Free Christmas email marketing templates

email-marketing-template-12 email-marketing-template-13 email-marketing-template-14 email-marketing-template-15 email-marketing-template-16 email-marketing-template-17 email-marketing-template-18 email-marketing-template-19 email-marketing-template-20

Email Marketing Guide

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Why use a UK company?
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2023 email marketing trends
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Support when you need it
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Switching to Email Blaster
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Beginner resources
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Email marketing tips
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Email marketing tools
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Video guides and tips
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Types of email design
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GDPR and email marketing
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