Editorial Articles

Email Marketing – The Beginners Guide

There are two main types of Email Marketing:

Permission – where people have opted in to receive emails from a company to keep them updated on products/services, they can opt-in in many different ways, web forms, telephone, signed contracts etc

Non-Permission – cold emails are being sent to a group of people to generate awareness etc for a product/service. There are laws around who you can send non-permission emails to. For B2B, emails can be sent to any employee of a Limited company, but you cannot send unsolicited emails to people who are sole traders or in a partnership. For B2C the recipient has to have opted in to receive commercial emails, which might have occurred through a third party (a mobile phone provider for example).

Why Email Marketing?

• Drive traffic to a website
• Build customer loyalty
• Increase brand awareness
• Create sales
• Increase profits

The ROI:

• Email campaigns have on average a 8-28% response rate.
• The response rate of opt in emails is 50 times greater than banner ads and 5 times greater than direct mail.
• 80% of responses to an email campaign occur within the first 3 days
• Email campaigns are fully trackable with up to the minute statistics
• You can test which message generates the best response and alter the campaign accordingly

Questions to ask before starting an email campaign

1. What are your goals?
• Brand awareness?
• Customer acquisition?
• Customer retention?
• New sales?
• Repeat sales?
• Customer feedback?

2. Do you have the resources?
• Time?
• Tracking capability?
• Copywriting skills?

3. Are you ready for a successful campaign?
• Can you cope with the large number of queries?
• Can you fulfill the orders?
• Are your staff aware of the campaign?
• Do you need to get extra staff in to help?

What is Spam?

Spam is unsolicited email, sending spam can:

1. damage your reputation
2. Result in connection to the internet being severed

You will be breaching the Acceptable Use Policy of the ISP’s
And be in breach of the Internet Industry Association Code of Practice.
The laws differ globally, so advice needs to be taken for each country you mail to.

Top email Mistakes

1. Not adding a greeting or salutation
2. Not adding a signature file
3. using HTML only
4. Sending large attachments
5. Not including previous message
6. Expecting an immediate reply
7. Replying to the wrong person
8. Not using a spell checker
9. Using capitals – SHOUTING!
10. Using CC rather than BCC – Blind Carbon Copy - if you are sending a message to multiple people this is the only legal way of doing it without breaching the Data Protection Act, or use a wizEmail account!
11. Marking emails as “urgent” when it is not
12. Not using http:// in URL links

Formatting your emails

From:

Send an email from a person
Keep it consistent
Do not use a free email account
Subject:
Grabs attention
Appeal to target audience
Keep it short
Avoid spam filters

To:

Use a person’s own email address

Body:

HTML or text
Limit your line length to 60 characters
In most cases short length is best
Call to action
Always use the full URL
Place links 2-3 times in your email
Use specific landing pages for each offer
Limit the use of capitals
Limit the use of punctuation
Write as if you are speaking to them
Keep the offer clear
Only use one offer/promotion per email
Clear easy unsubscribe instructions
Signature file
Use a fixed width font

Attachments:

Try to avoid attachments unless the recipient expects them
They increase download time
There is a risk of virus transmission

Welcome message:

Include a brief introduction and description of the newsletter
Include your contact information
Clear subscribe and unsubscribe instructions
Encourage forwarding/telling friends/colleagues
Cross promote any other newsletters you have
Send all welcome messages within 24 hours of subscription requests

Text or HTML?

Advantages of HTML emails

• Visually appealing
• Better control over link appearance
• You can track the number of emails opened
• Seamless click-through to your site
• Better response rate

Disadvantages of HTML emails

• Not viewable in all email programs
• Larger file size – longer download time
• Broken images if read off line
• Computer will try to connect to the internet if read offline
• AOL users are unable to view HTML emails unless they are using Version 6 or higher
• Some people prefer plain text emails – especially the IT techies!

Tips for HTML messaging

• Keep the design clean and simple
• Use a single column of text
• Use less than 3 paragraphs
• Keep file sizes small
• Keep image sizes small
• Keep main links above the fold
• Fit your promotion in the viewable window
• Use colour
• Use short URL’s with a call to action
• Make all graphics clickable
• Emphasis with bold
• Avoid italics or underlining
• Use 2-3 sentence paragraphs
• Use bullet points or asterisks
• Place your links 2-3 times though the message

Signature files

This is the minimum it needs to contain:
• Your company name
• Your contact details
• Your website address
• Your marketing tag line
Signatures not only help the person get back in contact with you, BUT as they appear at the end of the message, they are usually seen as an acceptable form of promotion without being considered spam.

Tracking replies

• Specify the return email address
• Use the subject line

Tracking click-throughs

• Create a specific landing page for each link
• Use specific link click-through tracking software
• Use site statistics/analysis software

Tracking read messages

Although you cannot really see if someone has “read” the email, unless you stand over them, it is possible to see if they have opened it. It is only possible to do this with HTML emails by embedding an image in the HTML. When the message is opened it will pull the image from a server so you can then see who and when opened the email. This could be the company logo or an invisible single pixel.

Terms and Definitions

API: Application Program Interface

ASP: Application Service Provider

CTR: Click through rate

HTML: HyperText Markup Language

NDN: non delivery notice

SMTP: Simple Mail Transfer Protocol is a protocol used to send and
Receive email.

POP 3: Post Office Protocol - a data format for delivery of emails across
the Internet

Basically POP3 / SMTP are protocols of how to send and receive emails, two types of the same thing.

W3C: World Wide Web Consortium

WYISWIG: What You See Is What You get

Attributes: message characteristics, subject line, from address

Click through: number of links clicked

Completion rate: % of recipients who go onto do the required action

Conversion rate: number of new sales/customers etc

Copy: wording including hyperlinks and style

Creative: design and wording in an email

Coherence: different communications are logically connected

Complementary: communications are synergistic, or the whole is greater than the sum of the parts

Consistency: multiple messages support and reinforce, and are not contradictory

Continuity: communications are connected and consistent through time

Drill down: any area within the reporting tool where you can find more information

House List: owned list (database) of email addresses

Incentive: offer to get the reader to do something

Integration: part of the whole marketing plan/campaign

Landing page: where the link takes them

Lists: database of email addresses

Microsite: where the link takes them

Opt in: positive reaction from customer allowing emails

Opt out: restriction by recipient not to receive any further emails

Relevance: does the email meet the needs of the recipient

ROI: stands for "return on investment," one of the great mysteries of online advertising, and indeed, advertising in general. ROI is trying to find out what the end of result of the expenditure (in this case, an ad campaign) is. A lot depends on the goal of the campaign, building brand awareness, increasing sales, etc. Early attempts at determining ROI in Internet advertising relied heavily on the click-rate of an ad.

RFM analysis: Recency, Frequency (seeing how customers interact with e-commerce sites), Monetary

SPAM: unsolicited commercial emails

Targeting: to whom

Testing: small % of list who have been sent a “test” email to monitor responses

Timing: when

Soft Bounce: email server not responding

Hard Bounce: an email is returned with address unknown

Black list: emails blocked

Whitelist: emails allowed to be sent

The Seven R’s:

Receipt Rate
Reader Rate
Click ThRough Rate
ConveRsion Rate
Response Rate
Rejects Rates
Referral Rates