Email is among the most flexible and cost effective tools at a marketers disposal. However, before diving in and sending emails to your customers and prospects, there are several things that should be taken into account. In this month's email clinic, email marketing experts Pure provide a round up of the ten things you should be thinking about before sending emails for marketing.
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.
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.
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.
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:
For a more in depth look at how to stay legal read email marketing and the law.
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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
About the author
Award-winning Pure is one of the top email and SMS marketing companies in the UK, and the eleventh fastest growing new media company in the country. Pure provide email marketing solutions to
small, medium and large companies and their software used by over 1000 marketers worldwide. Founded in 2001, the same dedicated team of highly skilled developers and designers remain today,
shaping the company's market-leading technology. Brighton-based Pure counts Levis Europe, innocent drinks, Thomas Pink, Truprint, EMAP and the FT among its stable of 500 clients. Find out more
at www.pure360.com.
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