For an email marketing campaign to be effective, many things must go right. Missteps and oversights can sabotage what would otherwise be a powerful, successful effort.

The following are three key precautions marketers should focus their attention on when crafting email campaigns:

1. Test
Testing is a very basic, essential component of email campaigns, yet it is one that many marketers overlook or undervalue. Without testing, it is entirely possible that a given message will have some sort of flaw that makes it difficult or impossible to read on certain devices or browsers. If this happens, the recipient will undoubtedly have a negative reaction.

Writing for Forbes, Kate Kiefer Lee recently pointed out that untested email marketing messages may end up being filtered into recipients’ spam folders. Many email service providers have advanced algorithms aimed at preventing unwanted messages from reaching an individual’s inbox. These rely on key phrases, words and other subtleties contained the emails. Without testing, an email campaign may inadvertently contain such instances, resulting in fewer subscribers actually receiving the messages.

2. Edit 

Lee also highlighted the importance of editing when it comes to email marketing efforts. Many marketers tend to undervalue the need for editing and revising their messages. But as Lee noted, a poorly written newsletter or other form of marketing will reflect very badly on the organization. It demonstrates that the firm does not care sufficiently about the product it is putting forward.

As Lee pointed out, editing takes time. If email marketers do not devote sufficient time to this effort, the editing process will be rushed and the results will be unsatisfactory.

3. Cleanse
One of the most important precautions that email marketers must take regards list management. In order to achieve CAN-SPAM compliance, email marketing campaigns must provide subscribers with an easy means of opting out of future messages and honor such requests quickly. Without an email list cleansing tool, firms, especially large organizations, may struggle to meet these requirements. The results of such failures may include fines from the Federal Communications Commission (FCC) as well as damage to the business’s reputation.