BravoMail

1. Mind maps

As with any channel, working with email starts with building a strategy. All user segments are identified:

• those that already exist;
• those that may arise in the future.

Each segment has its own message chain. A specialist can do this in his head. But for visualization, the client needs a visual example. The service of building mind maps helps me in this.

So the first service is MindMeisten.

Fig. 1 – Example of a user journey map

The service supports sharing for multiple users and allows you to upload your own images.

2. Sources of inspiration

During the day, you have to come up with 3 or more letters on different topics. And sometimes for the same, as, for example, on Black Friday. Moreover, all letters must be interesting and unique.
Really Good Emails helps me a lot in this. The service provides many examples of foreign mailings. This is an English-speaking service, but there are Email Competitors for the Russian-speaking community. They run contests among mailing lists in different categories (structure, creativity, copywriting, etc.). The archive contains hundreds of beautiful letters that you can look at for hours.

Examples of email templates:

Fig. 2 – Temporary Tattoo, Clothing Store & Ice Cream Letter Template

Fig. 3 – Newsletter from Victoria s Secret and domestic examples

It is on such aggregators that I am charged with inspiration for further work.

3. Mailing list constructor

The service I use to create emails is stripo. It offers email templates for different niches and the ability to create AMP emails. If you have any questions about using the service, stripo maintains a blog in which it shares in detail instructions for working with the service, new products.

Examples of templates made by me in the service:

Fig. 3 – Templates in Stripо

You can also see the final result in the service, and the letter itself will be adaptive, which will ensure its correct display on any device.

4. Checking syntax and grammar

No mistakes are allowed in the text of the newsletter. Readers will definitely notice and wonder if they want to receive your letters further.
But proofreading large volumes of text can be quite difficult, especially at the end of the working day.

For proofreading I use text.ru and Glavred. The first helps to find syntax and grammatical errors.

Fig. 5 – text.ru

Glavred helps to assess the level of readability of the text.

Fig. 6 – Glavred

To check texts in Ukrainian, I use LanguageTool and ukr-mova. The first can be installed as an extension to the browser, and then errors will be automatically highlighted on the pages of Google documents.

Fig. 7 – LanguageTool

The LanguageTool extension works for free for Russian. and ukr. languages.

Ginger is suitable for testing English.

5. Image processing

Services for mailing do not accept photos larger than 3MB, so that the letter is not heavy (that is, it loads quickly). For example, Google truncates messages larger than 100 kb, which negatively affects conversion rates. To avoid this, you have to reduce the weight of the image. For this purpose I use onlineconvertfree.

The service can process not only images, but also video, audio, documents, helping to quickly convert files from one format to another. In the converter, you can also change the size of the image itself.

6. Email validator (from Atomic Mail)

Many clients come to the maintenance with their own collected database of contacts. If the database did not work, you need to check it for validity. Validators check the spelling of addresses and mail domains. The service finds all inactive addresses to which mailing should not take place. Before mailing, you need to make sure that the contacts belong to real people who agreed to receive the newsletter.

Checking the database is mandatory if it took a long time to collect and contains 5000+ addresses.
My personal choice is ePoshta. The validator performs a three-level check, payment for a year allows unlimited checks.

To prevent emails from ending up in the Spam folder, you need to warm up the IP address. This is relevant for the first mailings to the database. You can split the database into groups of 500-1000 people and send a letter until all contacts receive a notification.

7. Checking for spam

Mailboxes have learned to fight spam by implementing multiple filters. The mailing letter will have to pass spam filters. You can check the letter quickly and without registration in the mail-tester. We send our test mailing to the service address and see the result.

Fig. 8 – Example of test result

The service will assess your letter on a 10-point scale, indicate possible errors.

8. Analytics

So, you launched the mailing list, all letters were sent. And then the work does not end. It is necessary to evaluate the effectiveness of the mailing list. This can be done using the analytics program. For example, Google Analytics helps you track the following metrics:

• the conversion rate of emails, that is, how many emails led to a purchase;
• find out the total income of the channel for a specific period of time;
• change the offer to increase the average check amount.

Fig. 9 – Analytics tracks the email channel automatically without any additional settings

It is imperative to conduct analytics on the emails themselves in order to understand which topics, visuals and content work best for the target audience. Analytics and split tests will give you an understanding of how often and at what time of the day it is best to send your newsletter.

conclusions

This is not the whole list of services that I use in my work. But they are the most frequent and help me in preparing each letter.

Regardless of whether you have layout designers and designers on your staff, these services will help you quickly prepare a newsletter and analyze its success afterwards.