Top 10 tips for maximising your email campaigns
Do your bad habits die hard?
If you know that sometimes you can be guilty of bad practice, there’s no better time to change your ways than at the start of a new year.
So as another year passes why not put into practice what you’ve learnt in 2007 to make sure you get the most from your email marketing over the forthcoming year.
Here's a round up of the top 10 things you ought to be thinking about.
1. First impressions count
Despite saying this throughout 2007 we’re still seeing a large volume of emails that are simply not preview pane friendly.
Large images and a lack of explanatory or trust earning text at the top of an email mean that the preview pane of popular email clients such as Outlook appears blank.
This results in a large amount of emails being junked or deleted, so make sure your email designs don't fall foul of the preview window.
2. Retarget, retarget!
Earlier in the year we featured a ‘real results’ story by Truprint in which they increased sales revenue by 30% by simply retargeting non-responders.
There are massive benefits in retargeting old campaigns, focusing on the people who didn’t respond the first time round.
Look at who hasn’t opened your email and create more appealing subject lines, analyse the time at which you sent the email out, try a different creative or more attractive offer.
Your data is your most valuable asset so drill down into your results and retarget to get the most from every person on your list. Recording the results also enables you to create accurate profiles of customers and leads.
3. It’s all in the timing
If you don’t experiment with the time you send out your campaigns, you’ll never really know when will bring the best results.
Industry surveys give a general indication for when email marketing is most successful but these may not be relevant to the demographics of your data or your industry sector.
Until recently we believed that the Email Marketing Manual was likely to be more successful on a Tuesday but after investigation, we discovered that it achieved higher open and click-through rates on a Friday!
Forward thinking email service providers supply Intelligent Time Sending tools which send out your emails at the time they’re most likely to be read by each individual recipient, taking the guess work out of your delivery times.
4. Stay legal
In 2007 there were important changes to the laws concerning email marketing. Surprisingly these changes still haven’t been adopted by all marketers. Here are a few key reminders:
• Ensure your company details are included in all of your emails e.g. full registered company name, office address and country of registration.
• Provide a clear 'unsubscribe' option for the recipient.
• Never disclose recipients’ details on your emails.
• Ensure you have consent from the recipient to email them.
For a more in depth look at how to stay legal read email marketing and the law.
5. Looks are everything
Emails may not display exactly as you intended them to, so it's important to test them in various email clients such as Hotmail, Outlook 2007, Gmail or Yahoo.
Most reputable email service providers will provide you with a testing mechanism which allows you to send test emails to the various clients – make use of this functionality.
As we’ve learnt from Outlook 2007, email clients are constantly being developed so test every email you create to stay ahead of the game.
6. Testing times
Don't just stick to the same old subject lines, experiment with personalisation, tone or just by including your company’s name to retain your recipients' interest.
Like timing, the industry has produced a lot of research on subject lines. This has suggested that personalisation results in the best open rates.
Our experiments with timing have shown us that including information on the identity of the sender improves open rates as it reinforces a sense of trust.
Test and compare your subject line’s success with a subject line selector tool.
7. Keep it relevant
The buzz word for today’s email marketers is relevancy. Targeted email marketing, tailored to the interests of each recipient can receive up to 4-8 times higher response rates to that of static campaigns*.
With the advent of dynamic content it’s quick and easy to create relevant emails – just make sure you gather the required information on your recipients to discover what is relevant to them.
8. Ask the right questions
If you want to achieve the above, you need to glean as much information from people as possible when they sign up to your website.
Include questions on their interests and ask them what they’d like to receive from you!
You can even stage your questions. Instead of presenting each user with a lengthy form, gather the essential information from them first (such as their contact details) and then ask more specific questions once they’ve signed-up.
To make this easier, you can also use a list building tool to automatically capture information entered on your website and add it to your email marketing database.
9. It’s not just sell, sell, sell
Email marketing should be thought of as a series of structured and targeted campaigns rather than a one-off hit.
What your recipients receive dictates what they think of you so rather than just sending out acquisitional email marketing, look at circulating welcome messages, customer feedback opportunities and retention marketing to legacy customers.
You may not be overtly selling in every email but good customer contact is key to ensuring that first-time customers become longstanding clients.
10. Look beyond the email
Remember that your campaign goes beyond the email! There’s no point creating an enticing email if the recipient clicks through to a generic page that has no relevancy to what they were initially interested in.
Make sure that your landing pages reflect the content of your email and funnel recipients who have clicked through into completing a call to action.
Clear navigation, relevant content and task orientated instructions such as signing up for a newsletter, free trial, offer or call back will grow your database and ensure you capture the details of every lead.
To increase conversion rates even more you can use event notifications which will alert you via email the moment an individual clicks on your email, allowing you to make contact straight away.
* Forrester research 2006
