…so you have just hit the “send” button. It may take a few minutes or even hours to send out your newsletter to your mailing list. Here is what you can do while waiting:
1. Check your email addresses
If you have added one or more email addresses that you own to your list (that’s a good practice!), verify what your emails look like on both webmail and email clients. Check junk/spam folders to make sure your emails do not end up in those folders. It may sound obvious but…be sure also to check your email subject line!
2. Inform your colleagues
It might also be useful to send your newsletter or DEM to team members, or to other company departments, in order to keep your colleagues updated on the campaign’s marketing activities.
This may avoid the risk of two or more corporate functions providing clients with different information.
3. Start monitoring bounces
Make sure bounces are limited (or, even better, that there are none) and that they represent a small percentage of the emails sent up to that point. This check may be very useful, since if the percentage of bounces is very high, clearly something is wrong.
4. Check delivery stats
If you have a dedicated smtp service, or any other service allowing you to monitor sent emails, you may want to check delivery status and speed. Some services will even alert you in real time when an email is opened.
5. Take a break
In all likelihood, the tension, stress, or fear of making mistakes you have accumulated in the past 5 minutes may overshadow the next 5 months…Well, it’s time to leave your desk and go look for that well-deserved cup of coffee. Or maybe this is the point where you realize you’ve made some awful blunder – in that case, the break will have to wait…
Related post: Stop and think before you hit “send”