Best Practices for Association Email Marketing

- Consider subject lines first. This is often one of the biggest determining factors as to whether the recipient opens the email or not. Subject lines should be short, explain what the content is about, and include who it is from. A/B testing is an excellent tool to figure out exactly which subject lines produce the highest open rates.

- Do not be tempted to send too many emails. A good benchmark to follow is two emails per week. Business professionals are bombarded with email after email and they are much more likely to open a couple of emails per week with all of the information they are looking for rather than daily emails with fragmented information.

- Focus on what is important to the reader. Many professionals joined the organization to stay up to date on industry information and news and to gain access to events with other professionals in their industry. Giving the recipient what they are looking for will lead to higher open and click through rates in the future.

- Keep the emails consistent with the brand. It is easy to take a template from the ESP and write ad copy quickly to send the email as fast as possible. Spend a little more time tweaking the template to stay consistent with the brand image from the website and print materials, and use verbiage similar to that on previous promotional materials.

- Plan a schedule. Association members appreciate knowing when to expect their industry update. Choose a day of the week that works best for your association and commit to sending it the same day every week. Consistency is key for creating a following that looks forward to reading your content.