Four Things To Do Before You Press Send: Tips To Maximize Your Next Marketing Email  

Chances are, if you’re reading this, you’ve sent one or two emails in your life, be it to a colleague, client or a whole list of marketing contacts. This means you’re aware that when you press send on an email, it’s gone. There’s no pulling it back. Given this reality, the stakes for sending edited, accurate and relevant emails to your contacts are quite high—especially in an age where inboxes are full of companies vying for attention! 

For these reasons, the marketing automation team at AdFarm places a high priority on pre-send email quality assurance. 

It’s easy to think that once an email is written and designed, all that’s left to do is press send. If only it were so straightforward! An extensive pre-send checklist is necessary to ensure mistakes are caught before you press send on your next email marketing campaign. 

That’s why we’ve outlined these four steps to add to your email marketing checklist. 

Complete These Steps Before Sending Your Next Marketing Email

1. Test Your Email in Litmus

Not to scare you, but did you know there are more than 300,000 ways an email could render in your contact’s inbox? There are so many factors that go into how an email looks to the person receiving it, including: 

• What operating system they’re using 

• App vs. web-based email clients 

• Screen size 

• Light mode vs. dark mode 

• Firewalls 

And that’s just the tip of the iceberg! 

This is why we run emails through Litmus, a service that allows our marketing automation team to see how an email will display across 100+ email clients. 

Litmus allows us to make sure that across the most popular operating systems, inbox providers and devices, your email looks like it should, so nothing distracts from the important message you’re trying to share with the contacts on your list.

2. Send a Test Email

No email newsletter should be sent to your contact list without first being sent as a test to a trusted editor.  

Better yet, you should have a small group of trusted editors—the more eyes on your email, the better! 

To further improve the quality of emails and eliminate the possibility for mistakes, send live (not test) versions of emails to a list of internal and external stakeholders to make sure everything in the email works as it should and that there are no spelling or grammar errors, broken links or wonky formatting. This live version is typically sent to that list anywhere between one hour to one day before the email is sent to the greater audience. 

3. Segment Your Audience

The ‘spray and pray’ approach to email marketing might’ve been a strategy that worked in the past, but with more sophisticated spam filters, over-cluttered inboxes and email service providers prompting users to unsubscribe from lists they don’t engage with, it’s important to segment your audience. 

In the agricultural industry, some popular segmentations include:

• Geography: East vs. west, Canada vs. USA

• Vocation: Growers vs. retailers

• Type: Crops planted

• Purchasing History: Products purchased

• Actions: Email engagement vs. non-engagement

Consider curating emails that speak directly to a specific audience rather than trying to speak to everyone. In today’s world of email marketing, it pays to focus content and get personal.

4. Schedule for an Optimal Time

There’s an instinct to send an email newsletter the moment it’s been approved. While that may be appropriate for timely notices or updates, it’s best to send emails at optimal times. 

Broadly speaking, Mondays and Thursdays are the two best-performing days of the week, and emails sent between 11 a.m. and 12 p.m. get the most engagement. 

However, sending an email on a holiday Monday doesn’t make much sense, right? Nor does sending an email at noon if you’re noticing below-average engagement. 

You need to find out what the optimal time for your business is. 

Always Be Testing 

The major takeaway here is that email marketing is no different than other marketing mediums in that you must always be testing and trying new things. 

Test your emails. Test your audience. Test your delivery. 

While industry averages and other such marketing guideposts are helpful, especially when starting out, your audience is unique, and the relationship you’ve developed with each contact on your list is unique. They’ve come to expect certain types of communications with your company, and they interact with those communications in their own way. 

So long as you’ve adopted foolproof quality assurance measures and are always keen on learning new ways to increase engagement with your audience, email marketing can be a key marketing medium in helping your business reach its goals. 

Interested in learning more about marketing automation? Get in touch with AdFarm’s team of experts who can help you take your email campaigns to the next level.