Six Steps to Sending Success - How to Design, Test and Measure the Perfect Email Campaign
The ‘batch and blast’ mentality of times gone by has been pushed aside and attention is turning towards targeted, personalised, segmented, relevant, well tested and proven email marketing. In this day and age it’s increasingly difficult to get noticed in a crowded inbox, especially thanks to the advent of web 2.0 and all the associated issues which come with it. You need to be more targeted and more relevant than ever. In our latest whitepaper “Six Steps to Sending Success” we cover each and every area you need to consider when re-designing your emails. From initial designs and HTML tips to testing and measuring, if you follow our simple words of advice you will be well on your way to engaging and effective email marketing.
1. Email Design Best Practice
Adhering to best practice won’t automatically guarantee higher open rates but it will mean you’re more likely to see better results if the email is opened.
Use your company name as addressee. That way you are legally on the safe side and of course you catch the recipient’s eye with your email.
Subject line as teaser: Use concise subject lines, emphasising the recipient’s benefit and prompt him/her to take action.
Relevant images for a higher performance: Pictures can enhance the performance of your newsletters – but only if they are relevant to the newsletter content. Therefore choose the pictures carefully and make sure that the newsletter content will also make sense without images so you don’t need to worry about automatic image suppression.
Plenty of ways to get in touch: You should give readers the chance to get in touch with you via the channel of their choice.
Forwarding feature: Provide your recipients with the possibility to forward the newsletter directly from the newsletter template, allowing you to track the number of forwards.
Opportunity to subscribe: If a person receives a forwarded newsletter he/she should immediately have the opportunity to subscribe to it, so make sure you offer the possibility to subscribe after the obligatory unsubscribe link.
Clear and easy unsubscribe: Make this easy to find otherwise you run the risk of people simply clicking the ‘report as spam’ link which is dangerous. Make the process as easy as possible with just one or two clicks.
2. Hints and Tips for Email Programming and Layout
Your email lands in an inbox, so whatever is displayed in the preview pane or written in the subject line is what is going to prompt the recipient to open your email and start dialogue with your organisation.
HTML emails: HTML design for emails is very different to websites and designers must take email limitations into account. Here are a few basic hints and tips for HTML design for email:
- Do not use Javascript or Flash as most email clients don’t accept it
- Using forms in HTML emails should be avoided – include a link to a website form instead.
- Use background colours which will render automatically
- Avoid all unnecessary embedded tables, rows or columns
Email rendering: Here are a few hints when thinking about how emails will be viewed in a preview pane:
- Ensure your logo is prominent
- Keep important content ‘above the fold‘
- Use Alt tags for images to explain content if image is blocked
Graphics vs Text: Images are important for branding purposes, not to mention studies that prove that we read more text when images are present
- Try and avoid using an image at the top of your email as otherwise your email may make no sense in certain email clients
- Make sure your headers or titles are not images
- Always host the images rather embed them, then link to the images within the HTML code
Email Viewed in Mobile Devices: More and more people are accessing their emails via ‘Smart phones’ such as BlackBerry’s or iPhone therefore it’s becoming more and more important that businesses adapt emails accordingly:
- Ensure you send a multi-part message so people viewing their email on their desktop can view the HTML version, and mobile users can view a text version
- The average screen size of a ‘smart phone’ is 320 pixels so messages should be no longer than 50 characters per line
Heatmap and email layout: To a great extent a well designed email should be able to trump image blocking.
3. Email Copy
Your email will be scanned rather than read, however don’t make the mistake of thinking email copy isn’t important – it is:
First things first: Think about what actions you want the recipient of your email to take and ensure that the option to make these choices is the first thing they see in the email.
Call to action: Don’t wait until the end of the email to put a call to action as this isn’t traditional direct mail. Don’t assume that your recipients will click simply where there’s a link. Prompt them to click! Include call to actions throughout email in various formats (buttons, click throughs on images etc).
Manage the length of email copy with links: You don’t want your recipient to be scrolling down through reams of text. Give them a snapshot of the most important information and include a link to a hosted version of the complete article.
4. Email Subject Lines
Writing successful subject lines is extremely important and should not be an after thought. This is the first impression a recipient will get so it’s imperative to get it right:
Subject line length: With 50-60 characters to play with you have around 6-10 words to get your message across so you need to get to the point straightaway. Studies have shown a link between shorter subject lines and higher open rates.
The whole truth and nothing but the truth: It’s vital to focus on appropriate subject headings. Only raise expectations you are able to fulfill! Nothing causes more harm to your business than a dissatisfied, disappointed customer.
Personalising the subject heading and sender’s address: A personalised subject heading is definitely an eye-catcher.
Example: “A special offer for Lucy Hudson"
Words not to use in subject lines: Don’t use too many exclamation marks or punctuation. Avoid using words associated with spam such as ‘lose weight’, ‘low mortgage rates’ or anything to do with pharmaceutical items, medication or sex.
5. Testing the Email
Testing testing testing is the motto of successful email marketing. Even the smallest changes can have a huge effect on the results and without doing so, you could be throwing money away.
Day and time of send out and contact frequency: best time to send your emails out varies according to the sender as well as the products you’re advertising. Generally speaking, Tuesdays to Thursdays are the favourite weekdays amongst marketers.
Segmentation: The more you analyse your database and segment it, the more effective your email campaigns will be and therefore you’ll generate more sales.
A/B split test: This is a quick and easy way of testing your email or campaign, allowing you to learn more about your subscribers and how they react to different messages or designs.
Content: Find out whether your customers prefer mono- or multi-thematic campaigns or informative content or pure sales content. Will your clients cope better with many or few links?
Demographics and geography: Find out if you can describe your best customers by demographic or geographic attributes and contact them in a second step with offers tailored to their profiles.
6. Measuring Performance
There are many ways to analyse the results of an email campaign, but which ones actually show how successful it has been?
Opening Rate (OR): Open rates work by embedding a tiny invisible graphic into an email which displays once the email is opened. The ‘OR’ is the ratio between opened and sent emails so you can monitor these as the campaign goes live, monitoring their development each minute, hour or day. If these are compared on a weekly/monthly basis, this is a good indicator for the progress of interest in your emails, and in 2008 the average open rate was 23% .
Click Through Rate (CTR): This is calculated from the number of clicked links in an email in proportion to the number of sent emails.
Bounce Rate: This is obtained by dividing the number of blocked emails by the total number of sent messages. In the B2B sector approximately one fifth of all messages are blocked. In 2008 the top reason for emails bouncing was that the email address did not exist so it’s imperative to keep your lists clean.
Conversion Rate: This is the number of addressees who reacted in a certain way, e.g. purchase; download; registration, etc in proportion to the number of sent emails. Last year the average conversion rate for most campaigns was lower than 2%.
Click Through Rate to Opening Rate Ratio: If you divide the click through rate by the opening rate, you’ll gain insight into the success of your campaign from the addressees who opened the email.
Author: Simon Bowker, UK MD of Europe’s largest email marketing provider, eCircle