Best practices for your campaigns

Sending a campaign is easy. Getting it opened, clicked and turned into ticket sales is what makes the difference. This guide brings together the best practices that have the biggest impact on your results, ordered by importance.

Send to the right audience, not to everyone

The most common mistake is sending everything to your whole database. A generic message for everyone performs worse than a relevant message for the right group.

Before creating the campaign, think about who’s actually interested. Fans of a specific music genre? People who bought tickets for your last event? People who opened your last emails but didn’t buy? Create a segment for each case.

Get the subject line right: it decides whether you get opened

The subject line is the first thing, and sometimes the only thing, your contact sees. It’s the factor that most influences the open rate.

A few guidelines:

Be clear and specific. “Early Bird for Demo Fest, only 48 hours” works better than “News”.
Create curiosity or real urgency, without overdoing it.
Watch the length: on mobile only around 40 characters show, so put the important part first.
Personalise with the name when it makes sense. Subject lines with the recipient’s name tend to get opened more.

Choose the right time to send

Don’t send when it’s convenient for you, send when your audience is active.

Every event has its own pattern. Check the time-pattern section in your event’s analytics: it tells you the day of the week and the time slot when your audience buys the most. Schedule the send right before that moment.

Don’t overdo it: frequency matters

Sending too much tires your audience out and drives up unsubscribes. Sending too little makes them forget about you.

There’s no magic number, but if you notice unsubscribes climbing after several sends in a row, slow down. One relevant email a week beats three irrelevant ones.

Always test before sending

Before launching, send the campaign to yourself using the test button. Check that the subject line reads well, that images load, that links work and that it looks good on mobile.

Keep your list clean

A list with a lot of bouncing addresses damages your ability to reach the inbox, even for your valid contacts. Review the bounces on your campaigns and clean up your database regularly.

Learn to read them in How to check the bounces on your campaigns.

Measure and learn from every campaign

Every send leaves you data. After each campaign, go into its report and look at what worked: opens, clicks, unsubscribes and attributed sales. Use those numbers to improve the next one.

Start with How to interpret your campaign results.

Quick summary

Segment before you send.
Spend time on the subject line.
Send at the best moment for your audience.
Don’t overdo it.
Always test before launching.
Clean your list and respect unsubscribes.
Review the report and apply what you learn.