Don't be scared of pushing the send button when you email thousands of people! Here I talk about creating an email signoff process and checklist in place to stop making major email errors. This presentation was given at Dialogkonferansen 2014 - Scandinavia's largest marketing conference. #dk14

1. Email phobia and preventing
@becskr
THE FEAR
Becs Rivett

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Who am I?
• Worked with emails for 6 years
• Freelance email marketer
• Email campaign manager for Yorkshire
Building Society

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I’m going to cover
• Why we need a signoff process
• Preparing for success
• Testing and signoff
• What happens post-send

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Why do we need a
signoff process?
• Getting buy in from your key stakeholders
• Setting expectations for deadlines and
signoff
• Ensuring someone else can do the job
• Preventing the fear

10. What is email phobia?
The crippling fear.
@becskr

11. What is email phobia?
The crippling fear that can only come from
sending hundreds of thousands of people an
email with a broken link or a typo in the subject
line and not being able to fix it no matter how
much you Google “change email after sent”.
@becskr

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Like this…

13. I remember once
sending an email to
myself 25,000 times.
@becskr
@danbarker

14. I sent the wrong
email to about 3500
on my second week
in a job... Doh.
@becskr
@maxray

15. I've had a few where I've
immediately paused a
send after hitting the
button, just to triple check
things.
@becskr
@iamacyborg

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Rushing = mistakes

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Be prepared…
with a schedule
• Plan around seasons, sale,
peaks and troughs
• It’s not set in stone, be
prepared to update it
• Bank content ideas

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Work out who’s
involved…
• Talk to your team!
• Do they know their role?
• Set some dates and deadlines

19. That designer/developer
@becskr
relationship
• Will it blend build?
• Don’t promise what you can’t deliver…
• If in doubt, test it out!

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Don’t wait until just
before the send

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Test that email!
• Try some live results, especially for mobile
• Run your code through a validator
• Check some live customer versions too -
especially with variations!
• Two pairs of eyes are better than one!

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Test that email!
• Chek yor splling
• Check the links
• Look at your subject line

23. Get the email signed off
@becskr

24. Get the email signed off
@becskr

25. Oh. And save the signoffs
@becskr
(You never know
when you’ll
need them)

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Can you just change
that…?

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Ch-ch-ch-changes
• Try to reduce last minute changes - your
campaign checklist will help!
• If changes are made
• Run through your tests again
• Think about how you can prevent this in
future

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Regular reporting
• Create a consistent reporting schedule
• I use 24 hour and 7 day results
• If you work with a team, show them your
findings
• Remember, one swallow doesn’t make a
summer

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Post-send actions
• Review your results, but not just the stats
• Feed them back into the process
• Tidy up your files, store them together
• Have a sensible naming system!

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Rinse and repeat
• Don’t re-code what you don’t need to
• Build yourself an asset library
• Email templates
• Code snippets
• Basic images like spacers and logos

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Versioning
• Saves time and helps locate issues and old
copy
• Old school: newsletter-v1.html, newsletter-v2.
html
• New school: Using GIT

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Incremental
improvements
• Sign up to lots of different emails
• Save copies of your favourites
• Take tips from the experts
• Anna Yeaman (Style Campaign) often
shares testing results

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To summarise
• Create a campaign schedule
• Make an asset library
• Create a signoff checklist
• Test your emails and get someone else to do
it too
• Create a consistent reporting schedule
• Remember...

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You’re not a robot
Source: Design Bern

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Tak for listening!