Answer our Email Marketing Quiz

Let’s play a little game, well not so much a game, but we thought we’d switch things up a bit through an educational quiz. Technically you won’t be scored or receive a score, but we’re sure you’ll learn some new and exciting things about email marketing along the way and be able to use the knowledge to improve your email campaigns.

You’re an e-commerce store selling shoes.

What sender name do you use?

If you answered A or B, you would be correct. Depending on the size of your business you will want to use a real name or a real name in combination with your company name.

This is a really important part of your email campaign set up as sender name is one of the biggest determinants that contribute towards whether your subscriber will open your email or not. It will also contribute to whether or not your subscriber marks your email as spam.

Using a more personalised form of a sender name has also been shown to bring you higher open rates and click-through rates. It boils down to the fact that people connect to people and receiving emails from a person makes it more likely that your subscriber will engage.

Which of the following elements are optional according to most email related legislation such as CAN-SPAM?

C) A permission reminder. Permission reminders are not required to let a subscriber know that they opted in. Most legislation related to email marketing does require you to add both a physical address and an unsubscribe link. A subscriber may request proof of when they opted in to receive email communication from you if they choose to do so.

___ is when an email impersonates a legitimate company or brand in the emails “from” line to trick people into opening the email and provide information

If you guessed C) Phishing you are right. Phishing is a practice that scammers use to send out malicious emails to people and try to scam them. There are many ways that you can protect your company servers from getting hijacked and also avoid brand reputation that could occur from these negative attacks. A good start would be to verify your domain for sending.

You can find out more about domain verification with Mail Blaze in our article: Verify your domain.

It’s a waste of your time to send out emails if you don’t have an offer or special to tell people about.

B) False. Only sending out promotional campaigns to your customers can be a complete waste of time. No one likes a pushy salesperson in a store, so why would they like a pushy salesperson in their emails?

When you send out email campaigns, it’s important to have a good mix in your messages. Whether the goal is to get subscribers to buy your product or services or just get information from the subscriber, you ultimately always want to ensure that your campaigns are designed according to one main thing: Adding value to your subscriber.

Adding value means you’re communicating what’s in it for them. So essentially if it’s a promotional email, it’s about communicating the savings they will get, if it’s a newsletter, you want to ensure that the content is relevant and specific. Above all, your subscriber should feel like you’ve given them a reason to spend time reading your email campaign.

What is the best way to go about compiling your email list?

If you said A) or C) - nooooo! Both buying a list and renting a list is a terrible idea. Subscribers on these lists don’t want to receive information from you or have expressed a desire to receive information from you.

Read more about why we don’t buy lists. It’s also important that you remember we do not allow people to send from our platform if they have non-opted in lists.

Building an email list is a much better way to build up a great reputation AND have success in the email marketing space.

An email campaign is most effective if it’s...

B) Clear. An email is most effective if it’s clear. It’s wonderful to have a colourful and creative email, but if your email is unclear you won’t be able to communicate your core message and get people to take action.

When you’re emailing people, you need to make sure that you use simple, clear messaging that makes your message easy to understand and to the point. You don’t want your subscribers to waste any time deciding whether or not your product or service is for them.

Don’t take this email learning as us saying you shouldn’t add your own creative or colourful spin to your email campaign design, but you should always choose clarity over creativity.