Email marketing seems simple enough, right? You write some text and round up some photos, arrange them nicely, upload your list, and then … BOOM! Off it goes!

But as my Uncle Gene always said, “There’s a lot to it.”

There is a lot to email marketing — more than meets the eye — and it’s not always easy to get it right. If it were as simple as it seems on the surface, Katey Charles Communications would have closed up shop years ago! Email marketing success depends on your left brain, your right brain and some legal knowledge.

Right Brain? You Got This

Marketing emails should get the same amount of attention to detail as print publications. After all, every email is a mini-publication. Careful planning of your objectives and solid execution of creative content and design are key, of course. This is your right brain working on creative things, and these tasks come naturally to many marketers. But email success isn’t determined by creativity alone.

Left Brain? Help, Please!

Next, you have to account for the more technical aspects of email marketing. There are a few critical factors in the success of your email marketing efforts, including:

• Rendering across different platforms (how your email looks on mobile, web and desktop email apps)
• Mobile responsiveness (how your email design adapts to different mobile devices)
• Deliverability (whether your email actually makes it to the inbox)

And there’s more, if you want to take your marketing to the next level: segmentation, split and multi-variate testing, dynamic content, personalization and so much more.

These sorts of tasks are a little more natural for the analytical types in the marketing world, but they need to be balanced with the creativity to reach your audience.

Legal Brain? Head Thunk.

Now that you’ve got all this left-brain/right-brain expertise assimilated, your boss wants to know whether your emails comply with international spam laws. What?

I’ll say it again: “There’s a lot to it.”

Spam laws vary by country, and they’re based on the country that your subscribers are citizens of, even if you’re not actively seeking subscribers in that country. Even small companies in the United States can have global subscribers on their list, and that means compliance with each country’s laws surrounding email and data privacy.

Finding the Balance

So how do you balance the left brain, right brain and legal brain when it comes to your email marketing program? We’ve seen plenty of job postings from companies looking for that one unicorn employee who can do it all, but that’s a tall order. The better option is to think of it as a team approach, whether that’s multiple people on your in-house team or a combination of your in-house team plus a little outside help from an agency.