Blog - Archive for July, 2011

We’ve said it before; email marking is the good old trusty steed of online marketing, time and again delivering consistently good results and a high ROI. Although email has been declared ‘dead’ countless times over the past decade, it always makes a solid industry come-back. Each time, bringing with it better tools, greater functionality, bolder designs, new ways to get around spam filters and increased opportunities to engage with customers and subscribers on their terms (like via  their preferred social platforms and mobile devices.) I think by now, everyone can (if they haven’t already), accept that email marketing isn’t going anywhere soon.

This doesn’t mean we should be sitting back on our laurels though, far from it. Instead we should be constantly looking ahead and working pro-actively to ensure that we’re maximizing our email marketing ROI.

With this in mind, we look at a few steps that, if done on a regular basis, could help you to improve your email marketing results.

1. A/B Split Testing

Here are some interesting stats for you. Did you know that according to findings from the Marketing Sherpa 2011 Email Marketing Benchmark Report, 61% of marketers do not routinely test email campaigns to optimize performance. In a 2009 report by Forrester Research, results showed that marketers who test well and consistently earn up to 20 % more than those who don’t. Whilst the first stat is worrying to say the least, the latter should be motivation enough to get back on track with testing your campaigns before you send them. A/B Split testing allows you to test two different variables at the same time. Subject line, call to action, body content, landing pages, images, background colours and time of day can all be tested against each other. Winning combinations are then tested against new variables on an on-going basis, which is then known as champion/challenger testing. This ensures that you always have most effective combination at any given time. Yes, it might initially be time consuming, but if you want significant results then this is part of what you have to do.

2. Segmenting

It’s highly unlikely that your entire data base is homogenous. The broader your target audience, the more diluted your email newsletter results are going to be.  However, if you segment (and target) effectively, you have a much better chance of maintaining concentrated results. The beauty behind segmenting is that it can be as done as simply or advanced as you want or need it to be. Gender, age and location might be effective enough for what you want to achieve, but some email marketers take it much further and start segmenting according  to industry, income bracket (if this is disclosed in a preference centre), purchase history, buyer behaviour and customer loyalty.

3. Triggered Emails

Triggered emails are relatively simple to set up and can be used for a number of different purposes. Some of the most common uses include: abandoned cart messages, email newsletter sign up confirmations, event registration and confirmation details, transactional messages, subscribers birthdays, updated user profiles and surveys and friendly reminder (‘remember us?’) emails. Triggered emails keep your subscribers up to date with information they need to know and also gives you the opportunity to engage with them and show them how much you appreciate their loyalty.

4. Aligning content, subject lines and landing pages

It might seem simple enough to achieve this, but it doesn’t mean that everyone gets it right all the time. Your subject line needs to clearly (and honestly) state exactly what your subscriber can expect to find in the body of the email message. You certainly won’t win any friends (or new subscribers for that matter) by having an enticing subject line and then a completely unrelated or misleading offer in the content. Follow through on your promises. The same applies to your landing pages. If your button says: ‘Sign Up Here’, then make sure the link takes them to the sign up form on your website. ‘Buy now’ should equally take them to the purchase/checkout page. You get the idea, double check your links to make sure they’re taking your visitors to the right places. Giving your subscribers misleading information will only ensure that in the future they ignore or distrust any other emails you send.

5. Email List Cleansing

When was the last time you went through your email database and removed any inactive or invalid email addresses? It’s time to get tough. Firstly, remove (but don’t delete) any subscribers who haven’t clicked on or opened any of your email messages in the last 3 or 6 months, depending on how often you send emails. Next, go through your list and check for any typo’s that might be affecting your bounce rate. Commas instead of full stops are one of the most common errors and are easily corrected. You should also remove any role accounts from your list, on which your efforts are surely wasted. These include addresses such as admin@companyname.com, accounts@companyname.com. You might be pleasantly surprised to find that these simple steps make a significance difference to your overall bounce rate.

Really what it comes down to is that you should be focused on bettering your email marketing all the time. For sure, it’s an on-going and sometimes frustrating process having to test campaigns, monitor your subscribers and scrub your database lists, but there is no doubt that these steps will help you to better understand and target your customers, which is of course, the ultimate goal.

In previous posts we’ve looked at html vs. plain text emails and also shown you ways to optimize your plain text campaigns. The question of which converts better is an on-going debate and the fact is most email marketers have had success from using both types in their email newsletters. OK, maybe it’s not so much a debate.  After all, neither party can really bash the other’s preferred method if it’s getting desirable results, right?

However, does one actually out-perform the other in terms of converting? Unfortunately there isn’t a straight answer. Yes, plain text emails have an easier time of slipping through spam filters, but it also depends on your target market, segmentation and what message it is that you are trying to convey.

Perhaps first of all we need to determine what ‘conversion’ means for you. Your call to action could be:

• Clicking through to the desired landing page
• Downloading a report or white paper
• Subscribing to a newsletter
• Completing a survey
• Making an enquiry
• Ordering or purchasing a product or service or
• Requesting further information

Your specific call-to-action might determine the type of email message you send. Does your message rely heavily on visuals or images, or can you achieve similar results by directing subscribers to an external URL through a link in your plain text email message? Image heavy emails are considerably more difficult to get through to your subscribers. Spam filters zone in on them, they are often blocked by default, they can turn your once beautiful design into a something that looks like a two year child has drawn (read: messy and nonsensical) and the message can be lost completely if you haven’t bothered to include alt text.  If you’re going to go the image heavy route though, don’t embed them. This way, subscribers can at least decide whether they want to download them or not.

With the increasing difficulty that email marketers face in reaching their subscribers inbox, many find that plain text emails make it easier to slip through the spam filters. While they might not provide as much eye-candy as their html counterparts, if they’re getting through, it means you have a greater chance of engaging with your subscribers the way you intend. And if you’re engaging, you’re probably converting too.

Another thing we need to take into consideration is the increasing number of people who access their email on a mobile device. You might be surprised to find a significant percentage of your subscribers do this (if you haven’t already, you should do a short survey to find out which of them do, or add the option to your email preference centre and segment accordingly). Right now, there are still a few problems with html email rendering on mobiles. No doubt it’s gotten easier but for now, quite a few marketers prefer to still use plain text emails for their mobile subscribers. There’s less risk and it increases the chances of their messages being read and acted on. Plain text emails generally load faster (or seem to because they are image ‘free’) and if you’ve optimized your copy, they should be easier to read on the screen. If however, you’re intent on using html then stick to a single call-to-action image and make sure the message you want to get through is absolutely clear.

Because html and plain text conversion can depend on your target audience and segmentation you should experiment (sorry, I mean test) each version against each other. Be sure to also test different variables, notably subject line, calls-to-action, body content and landing pages, all of which can be changed in both plain text and html emails. This way, you can see for yourself which version converts better for each type of message and decide from there whether html or plain text is best for you.

When it comes down to it, there is no denying that a beautifully designed html email that renders correctly, has a clear call-to-action, links to all the right places and has the necessary bells and whistles sticks in people’s minds. However, if you’re still in the learning stages of creating email campaigns, then take your foot off the heavy html pedal and stick to content and a layout that you know will reach your subscribers. Don’t worry, email marketing is a long term ‘relationship’ and there’s plenty of time to impress them at a later stage with your awesome design skills.