E-mail marketing remains one of the most efficient ways to spread your message and improve your brand awareness. Due to its low cost and ability to reach your clients directly, email campaign  can be a powerful tool if designed and managed correctly.

According to some conservative estimates, there are over 300 million active email accounts in China and this doesn’t include corporate emails. Email is the first thing people look at it in the morning, often before they brush their teeth. Being able to put your message in front of a potential customer before your competitors do could make all the difference in the world.

The biggest problem with email marketing is, of course, the spam. 20-50% of email correspondence is typically mass mailing campaigns that can be classified as spam. In absence of proper legislation, in China, this problem is particularly serious as spam is quickly reaching endemic proportions.This makes Chinese email users to be quite distrustful and annoyed by such messages. As a result,  if it wasn’t filtered out automatically, your email may end up in the trash bin after just a quick scan.

According to some conservative estimates, there are over 300 million active email accounts in China and this doesn’t include corporate emails.

There are ways to increase your chances to get past the hurdles and get your message across by following some simple rules:

1. Keep it short and add an eye catching image  at the top. Be original and avoid cliches such as “free”, “special offer” etc.;
2. Include “unsubscribe” link that allows the recipient to get herself removed from your mailing list. First, it helps bypass the automatic spam filters, second it keep good quality of your mailing list;
3. Put your message in the header and in the first 2 lines of  the text. Assume that very few recipients will read it through. Note that the images may not be downloaded automatically unless right clicked, so the header must be in text and not graphics;
4. Make sure your proof read the text. If it contains any errors or poorly worded sentences, it will be deleted and your brand image will come across as sloppy and unprofessional;
5. Design your email in a mobile-friendly way. Most people in China would use their phones to read emails;
6. Use one of the web based email marketing services such as MailChimp or ConstantContact. They allow you to manage your campaigns at very low cost (or free) and have great templates as well. I will be reviewing some of those services in the upcoming posts.

There are, of course more tips and tricks that help improve efficiency of your email marketing campaign. Some are more technical, others have to do with proper timing by taking advantage of SEO trends. I will discuss those in subsequent posts.