Archive for the ‘Email Marketing’ Category

Few of the selling points of email marketing are as seductive as its scale: for the price of a single high-value AdWords click, a merchant can send hundreds of emails, and those hundreds of emails are going to contacts that come pre-qualified – they’ve given out their email address already, either to subscribe to email updates, enter a contest, get a free download or actually buy something.

How many people on your mailing list truly want the marketing emails they receive each day? Think about the emails you receive each day – how many of them do you open? How many of those do you read? How many of those do you act on? How many do you trash or archive without much thought? I make email campaigns for a living, I have a hobbyist interest in them, and I still end up ignoring 30-50% of the marketing emails I get in a given day. Compared to how easy it is to delete an email, store it for ‘later’ or mark it as spam, the process to unsubscribe from most mailing lists is downright arcane; it’s easier to ignore email than to ask it to stop, and so merchants prone to treating their lists indiscriminately are throwing ad spend away without even realizing it.

Sending a reconfirmation campaign to your list is a great way to ‘right-size’ your mailing list. In addition to saving money (if your ESP throttles the amount of email you can send based on credits), reconfirming your list is good for your list’s performance in the long-run: weeding out contacts that don’t want to receive your campaigns is good for your sending reputation and gives you a more realistic picture of your true open and clickthrough rates (and better marketing intelligence as a result). Being transparent with your contacts can also be a powerful trust signal for responsible members of your list.

It’s not uncommon for merchants to want to send an email blast to every possible recipient on their list. It’s smarter to target your list based on who your best, most responsive customers are.

“I really just want the soda…”

When I was in college, there was a comic book shop across the street from campus. In addition to comics, books and board games, it also had a cooler stocked with snacks and drinks. The shop had customers like myself that came in every Wednesday, customers from out of town who might come in less frequently but spent more when they did, and a smattering of pedestrians who came in just to grab a soda.

Not all of those customers are equal, though they’re all people who come into a store and make a purchase. But that doesn’t mean their acceptance of the shop’s email campaigns are equal. If the shop is sending weekly, time-sensitive emails, only the first customer is likely to get value from its campaigns every week. The second customer might only need to read those emails once in awhile, but they’re still valuable to her when she does. The third customer, the one who just wanted a Pepsi, isn’t likely to ever care which issue of Batman is coming out this week. He’s a risk for reporting those emails as spam at least, and getting so annoyed that he stops coming into the store at most.

It’s easy to perform a reconfirmation campaign; many ESPs will dynamically insert an opt-in link into your email. If you’re ESP doesn’t, you can send a simple email directing users to click through to a thank-you page on your site and track clicks on the email to segment out your responses. The people who don’t reconfirm haven’t technically opted out, but you should email them with significantly less frequency – for major announcements, absolutely vital calls to action, or major sales (like your Black Friday deals). Your customers will thank you for it.

Building a great email can take a lot of time and effort, and that’s why it’s so shocking to discover that only about half of email recipients see HTML messages the way they’re meant to be displayed. The culprit is image blocking, and it’s not likely to go away any time soon.

Email clients block images in messages as a security precaution. On mobile clients, image blocking also saves data consumption, so it’s the default on most smartphones (the iPhone is a notable exception, however; Apple doesn’t block images by default in any of its mail environments – desktop, tablet, or phone).

When your images are blocked, there are a few tricks you can pull out to preserve the experience you want your reader to have.  If you’ve got a lot of time and dedication, you can even approximate something as complex as your original images in some cases (but we’re not going to get that in depth right now). Here are three great tricks to use to get around image blocking.

1. Define the height and width of your images

Defining image dimensions will do wonders for preserving the intended layout of your email.  Getting a good sense of what the message they’re seeing should look like can also entice some readers to enable images.

Gmail blocked the images, but the layout is still there.

2. ALWAYS remember ALT text

Even with your image dimensions defined, you’ll still be displaying blank boxes to your customers. Adding alt text on every important image in your email messages should be mandatory if you’re serious about reaching your customers through the inbox.

A vast majority of email clients will even recognize inline CSS properties on your <img> tags, so you can change the font, size, color and style of your text by adding a “style” property to your images.  Your ALT text doesn’t have to be boring, either.  Unlike images on a website, the alt text you use here won’t influence search, so take advantage of that freedom to be creative.  Instead of “Featured Sale Items”, try “Enable images to see what you’re missing!”

Alt Text for the Hero Image is shown in blue, inline CSS shows the main message in green, even with images disabled.

3. Add a dash of color

If you’re using a background image with your email template, you probably know it’s a good idea to also set a background color to provide a fallback for those instances where the background image doesn’t show up (thankfully fewer than there used to be, now that Gmail finally supports background-image). You can do the same with cells that contain images to add some vibrance to your email even when your images are shut off.  You can even use a table (in conjunction with an expertly sliced image) to use multiple colors to approximate the color palette of your image.

Another way around image blocking in many email clients is to ask your subscribers to whitelist you (add you to their address book). It’s important not lose sight of this important fact: even customers who don’t whitelist your “From address” are important; in fact, their user experience is probably more important. They need to commit to at least one extra step (turning images  on) on the way to converting.

Here’s an example of a portion of an email fully rendered with images and with Gmail disabling images. You can see how these tips make it understandable, even with the troublesome image block.

Gmail disabling the images, but still quite readable.

Email with images enabled, but remember nearly 50% won’t see it this way!

Side by side view. Notice some of the color remains, the layout encourages enabling images, and the messaging isn’t lost.

So when constructing those beautiful emails, always remember the nearly 50% of viewers with images turned off! You will see the increase in conversions for the extra effort.

Offer Overload?

When we create an email strategy for our customers, we usually try to create a few broadcasts that aren’t hard-sell, eCommerce-driven messages. Sharing recipes, showing some popular Pins on a merchant’s Pinterest Boards, linking to blog posts – any way we can think of, really.

Sometimes, email marketers look at these emails as missed sales opportunities, since the immediate conversion rate of these messages is lower than average. While that is to be expected because the call to action is not to “click and buy”, email blasts like these are a vital part of long term campaigns.  Keep in mind the goal is to increase engagement.

How do they do that? First, they provide a respite from consistent marketing “calls-to-action”, and therefore extend the life of your contacts. Second, encouraging more social interaction with your customers increases the value they see in being on your mailing list.

Email strategy isn’t always about sales, coupons and cross-sells. A well-built email campaign should be asking customers to do more than come back and spend more. The more you engage your list, the more loyal your customers become.

Email is all about relationships. That’s the real reason that email is such a successful marketing channel for merchants who know how to use it correctly. Email leverages the relationship that already exists between a merchant and a customer and uses it to create a response.

You can do this by reinforcing the trust relationship that exists between you and your customer, holding contests, or by reminding them that your site is a definitive resource for their interest. At some point they chose to sign up for your emails.

Why did they choose you? What would make them choose you again? Can you increase that bond by reinforcing your common interests with them simply by sharing news, updates, blog posts, and insights? If you can do that in between sales offers, expect the conversion of your offer emails to go up.

What’s the best way to get more social with email?

• Devote at least 25% of your email output to non-sales messaging designed to engage customers.

• Invite customers to follow/friend you on your social media accounts. Time these as best you can to account for your business’s seasonality.

• Cross-promote! If you’re planning a new social initiative, think about how email can support it by getting the word out to your mailing list. Again, when social promotions are close to their end date, think about using email to build urgency and, in turn, generate more last-minute participation.

• Don’t sell – give value.  You’ll eventually get it back in the form of conversions.

Here’s a great example that ties it all together. This is an email from OVitaminPro.com late last year. It includes a contest incorporating a Special Guest blog post, and reinforces the common interest with the recipient in a Healthy Lifestyle.

Too late for the contest, but it’s never too late for Optimum Adventures in Health!

In our last installment, we talked about the importance of applying targeting to your actual email messaging. Today, let’s take a look at how to stay on track with Subject Lines and Copy.

Writing Targeted Subject Lines

Writing target specific subject lines takes practice, so let’s look at an example.

Let’s say you are about to place an order for a hot new product and want to accept pre-orders to help gauge how much inventory you’ll need to order. You want to get the word out by sending an email, and the goal is to encourage pre-orders.

Choose a concise subject line that is up-front about the offer contained in the email. Unless you have a cute subject line in mind that will be a surefire hit with your customers, or you’ve crafted a question that will have your readers on the edge of their seats until they open your message, being direct tends to be the best way to go.

You can be direct and still create urgency and excitement! Here are just a few examples.

SUBJECT: Pre-order the Hot New [PRODUCT] From [BRAND]!
SUBJECT: Get Your [PRODUCT] on Launch Day – Preorder Now
SUBJECT: 10% Off With Your [PRODUCT] Pre-order
SUBJECT: [PRODUCT] is Coming. Pre-order Today.

Remember to A/B test so you can repeat what works best next time!

Writing Target Supportive Copy

Once a customer has opened the email, it is vital to support the topic of your subject  and carry the message through from the subject line.

The copy in your email should support only the main topic of the email. In this instance, give concrete details about the product available for pre-order, such as price, relevant coupon codes, and an anticipated delivery date. Always give your customers a relevant link to click on especially if hyperlinked images will be disabled in some email platforms.  Always provide a working contact phone number as well.

If you are going to feature other products in the email, select only a few that are related to the main product. Cross-sell items, higher-price and lower-price entries in the same product line, competitors’ products from the same niche – they all have a relationship with the main thrust of the message. If incorporated well, they reinforce the overall message.  Please remember that grammar and spelling DO matter!  Check and double-check your email BEFORE you hit send.

The main message for each email communication is the keystone element, the hub that the other major components of your message revolve compliment. Take some extra time to create a more coherent, unified email message for your customers, and you’re sure to see engagement with your messages increase – and that’s going to lead to more conversions!

Define The Bulls-Eye

Remember to define your target before you hit send. What is the goal and how are you going to measure it? It may sound silly at first. Defining the success criteria has two purposes. First, it can be the ideal time to review your creative and make sure it is going to drive the behavior you wanted when you started.  Second, it helps you get better over time. Were you shooting for 20 pre-orders? Make sure you go back and check the results! If you are disciplined in reviewing your successes (and failures) you will be much more likely to build on the successes instead of repeating the failures.

Bulls-eye! Opens that matter!

Talk email marketing with anyone who knows their stuff and the subject of targeting is going to come up, usually in relation to a segment of your mailing list.

In Part 1 of our series, we talked about list segmentation. While it is key to getting a good response from your email broadcasts, carrying the target through to the message itself is equally important when designing a conversion-optimized email for your email subscribers. In a tight economy, designing a clear, unified message for your email is the key to gaining click throughs.

While there are hundreds of valid behaviors to target in an an email, from buying to “Liking” your store, it’s important to focus on one main action you want to encourage. You’ve probably seen “kitchen-sink” email campaigns that want you to buy something, enter this contest, Like us, Pin this, Instagram this, and then watch this video.

Those are all perfectly valid reasons to email your customers, but a shotgun blast of options isn’t going to hit the bulls-eye except by pure chance. Laser focusing means finding that one thing that is most important to communicate. There are only a few precious seconds separating an open and a click. The key to turning opens into clicks is giving the reader a single, clear message.

Before you do anything else, ask this question the next time you plan an email…

What do I want my customers to do after they open this?

Every element of your broadcast should be in service to this goal, from your subject line to your copy.

Some of you may be thinking that such precise subject lines could lower your open rates.  If you are using shotgun blasts, you could very well get less opens with a targeted subject line. While you might be seeing bigger opens with a “kitchen-sink” email strategy, you’re also going to see mediocre-to-poor click through to your valuable landing pages.  Since your goal was probably to encourage action after the open, qualifying your readers minimizes both abandoned funnels on your site and spam complaints against your mail-server.

Remember these tips when thinking about your message:

• Not every customer is going to engage with every email so be sure you have picked the right list segment
• Subject line clarity will help subscribers quickly decide if they want more info
• The copy in the email should support the subject line

In Part 3 of our series, we’ll take a look at how to stay on target with subject lines and copy! Look for Laser Focused Email Marketing: Subject Lines And Copy coming next week!