Email Marketing Why Bother?
• A well-targeted email marketing campaign is an extremely responsive way of raising awareness or prompting any given action. Open rates and response rates can vary, anything from 10 - 50% are not uncommon depending on degree of targeting
• It allows you to send very targeted messages to specific customer groups
• It allows you to reach very large numbers of people very quickly
• It allows you to take advantage of other “media” owners email lists through placing your content onto a well-known and trusted media portal’s newsletter or outbound email
• It is very easy to track open and response rates as well as resulting behaviour e.g. which web pages were visited and for how long, what content a visitor interacted with etc.
Email Staying on the Right Side of the Law
• Email campaigns must comply with Data Protection and Anti Spam Law
• Websites must use a Data Protection Notice when collecting personal information such as email addresses.
• You cannot send unsolicited marketing communications by email to individual subscribers unless the recipient has given his prior consent.
• Websites should obtain prior consent by including an opt-out tick box as a part of the data protection notice.
• All marketing emails should provide an easy way for users to opt-out or unsubscribe from receiving future email.
Email Lists and where to get them
• Email works best when it is relevant and timely - campaigns should always be segmented.
• Outsourced email lists are expensive but if well targeted can provide high response rates.
• Response rates vary between 2-5 % from outsourced lists to 3-40% for own customer lists
• Your own customer email list can be built organically using traditional marketing to attract customers to your website
• Make sure the email list you do use is permission based
Top Tip: Email works best when it is relevant. Relevant campaigns drive 9 times more revenue and deliver 18 times more net profit than broadcast email. Jupiter Research.
Email Marketing - How To Not Get Lost In The Spam
• 40% of all email is considered to be spam – 12.4 billion spam emails are sent everyday.
• Filtering out spam from genuine email is achieved using content filters by ISPs and individual users.
• Content Filters differentiate spam by identifying spam techniques or “spam signatures” with in email. Increase delivery rates by ensuring that your emails do not contain these signatures by mistake.
• White lists and Safe Sender Lists are compiled by Internet Service Providers and by email clients such as Microsoft Outlook 2003. Messages from white lists will always be allowed through.
• Emails where delivery has not been possible are said to have been bounced – bounce rates should be monitored as they are a measure of the quality of your email list.
Email Filters and How To Get Past Them
• Make sure your HTML code confirms to W3C standards - broken code will trigger email filters.• Avoid using inappropriate punctuation such as @ and ! with in words.
• Do not use phrases such as for free! and order today in the message body.
• Do not use white as a text colour.
• Marketers can encourage recipients to add you to their safe sender lists by including an Add To Contacts button on all emails.
• Make sure your emails are always relevant and timely so that recipients do not add you to their Junk Folder.
Email Marketing - Bounces & How to Minimize Them
• Monitor email bounce rates - if your rate continually rises above 5 percent, you may have list input or quality issues.
• Add an e-mail address update link to your e-mail and a profile update form to your web site.
Email Marketing - Designing An Effective Email
• Emails can be sent as HTML or plain text - most newsletter subscribers today prefer the attractive nature and usability of HTML emails.
• HTML creates well branded, usable and attractive email messages that have much higher click through rates.
• Email promotions seek to get the recipient to take an immediate action.
• Email newsletters are about building long-term relationships with customers
• In the commercial environment Microsoft Outlook has a penetration of 75% and Lotus Notes a further 5 to 10% of the market.
• In a consumer environment AOL, Yahoo, Hotmail/MSN comprise almost 66% of email recipients.
Email Marketing - HTML Design Issues
• Keep emails between 500-600 pixels wide
• Use fonts such as Arial and Times New Roman
• Do not use white as a font colour.
• Include a link to a profile update that allows recipients to update their format preference.
• Message file size – aim to keep message size down to 40-50Kb
HTML Dos:
• Code emails as a single web page
• Make sure your HTML code confirms to W3C standards. Check your code as broken code will be picked up email filters.
• Keep emails between 500-600 pixels wide – the message windows of popular web based email services such as MSN/Hotmail, Yahoo Mail and Gmail are 500-600 pixels in width. Wider emails will force the recipient to scroll horizontally.
• Use universally supported fonts such as Arial and Times New Roman.
• Use a font point size no smaller than 10
• Cascading File Sheets (CSS) – avoid using css if possible as many email clients do not render css correctly. If you have to use CSS then choose embedded styles known as inline. This means that the link to the style sheet is placed inside the HTML body tags.
• Include a link to a profile update that allows recipients to update their format preference.
• Message file size – aim to keep message size down to 40-50Kb
HTML Don’ts
• Do not include scripting
• Do not embed images in emails – images should be hosted this ensures proper rendering and minimises file size.
• Avoid using forms as these are stripped out by MSN/Hotmail
• Beware of using white as a font colour as many spam filters are suspicious of the white font tag as spammers often use white on a white background to hide information from recipients.
• Phishing is the online industry nickname for the effort to collect sensitive personal and financial information by sending forged emails that purport to be from authorised agencies such as a bank. Mozilla Thunderbird and AOL 9.0 feature phishing scam detection that will effect how your email is treated. These email clients look for where the display text is a URL. If the displayed text is different from the actual url then the recipient is alerted. Most email providers encode urls for essential tracking of clickthroughs therefore always use a word or phrase as the hyperlink anchor text.
The Subject line
Top Tip: Subject lines should be branded, brief and convey urgency
The Sender Line
Top Tip: Configure the Sender or “From” line to show the company or brand name
Email Marketing - The Message Body
• Always put the most important information at the top left.
• Place hyperlinks throughout the email and make sure that all images especially logos are clickable links – the more hyperlinks the better!
• Use images with strong calls to actions to encourage recipients to click through to the website.
• Use image Alt Tags so that recipients on dial up can see the information during loading.
• Make sure you have a balance of text and image links in case images are disabled.
Email Marketing - Measuring My Return on Investment
• Integrate your email campaigns with your web analytics programme so that you can track return on investment.
• Marketers who integrate web analytics with their email marketing programs improve the results of their campaigns.
• Campaigns that are integrated with web analytics on average produced much higher open rates, click-through rates and conversion rates.
Track the following metrics:
• E-mails sent
• E-mails delivered
• E-mails bounced (hard bounces, soft bounces)
• E-mails undelivered
• E-mail forwards
• HTML open rate
• HTML click through rate
• Text only click through rate
• Time and day of responses (as a chart)
• Unsubscribe requests
Email Marketing - Testing & Optimisation
• Time of email delivery is an important driver to campaign success. Avoid weekends when most spam email is sent.
• Wednesday is the most popular day for opening emails.
• A well-targeted email marketing campaign is an extremely responsive way of raising awareness or prompting any given action. Open rates and response rates can vary, anything from 10 - 50% are not uncommon depending on degree of targeting
• It allows you to send very targeted messages to specific customer groups
• It allows you to reach very large numbers of people very quickly
• It allows you to take advantage of other “media” owners email lists through placing your content onto a well-known and trusted media portal’s newsletter or outbound email
• It is very easy to track open and response rates as well as resulting behaviour e.g. which web pages were visited and for how long, what content a visitor interacted with etc.
Email Staying on the Right Side of the Law
• Email campaigns must comply with Data Protection and Anti Spam Law
• Websites must use a Data Protection Notice when collecting personal information such as email addresses.
• You cannot send unsolicited marketing communications by email to individual subscribers unless the recipient has given his prior consent.
• Websites should obtain prior consent by including an opt-out tick box as a part of the data protection notice.
• All marketing emails should provide an easy way for users to opt-out or unsubscribe from receiving future email.
Email Lists and where to get them
• Email works best when it is relevant and timely - campaigns should always be segmented.
• Outsourced email lists are expensive but if well targeted can provide high response rates.
• Response rates vary between 2-5 % from outsourced lists to 3-40% for own customer lists
• Your own customer email list can be built organically using traditional marketing to attract customers to your website
• Make sure the email list you do use is permission based
Top Tip: Email works best when it is relevant. Relevant campaigns drive 9 times more revenue and deliver 18 times more net profit than broadcast email. Jupiter Research.
Email Marketing - How To Not Get Lost In The Spam
• 40% of all email is considered to be spam – 12.4 billion spam emails are sent everyday.
• Filtering out spam from genuine email is achieved using content filters by ISPs and individual users.
• Content Filters differentiate spam by identifying spam techniques or “spam signatures” with in email. Increase delivery rates by ensuring that your emails do not contain these signatures by mistake.
• White lists and Safe Sender Lists are compiled by Internet Service Providers and by email clients such as Microsoft Outlook 2003. Messages from white lists will always be allowed through.
• Emails where delivery has not been possible are said to have been bounced – bounce rates should be monitored as they are a measure of the quality of your email list.
Email Filters and How To Get Past Them
• Make sure your HTML code confirms to W3C standards - broken code will trigger email filters.• Avoid using inappropriate punctuation such as @ and ! with in words.
• Do not use phrases such as for free! and order today in the message body.
• Do not use white as a text colour.
• Marketers can encourage recipients to add you to their safe sender lists by including an Add To Contacts button on all emails.
• Make sure your emails are always relevant and timely so that recipients do not add you to their Junk Folder.
Email Marketing - Bounces & How to Minimize Them
• Monitor email bounce rates - if your rate continually rises above 5 percent, you may have list input or quality issues.
• Add an e-mail address update link to your e-mail and a profile update form to your web site.
Email Marketing - Designing An Effective Email
• Emails can be sent as HTML or plain text - most newsletter subscribers today prefer the attractive nature and usability of HTML emails.
• HTML creates well branded, usable and attractive email messages that have much higher click through rates.
• Email promotions seek to get the recipient to take an immediate action.
• Email newsletters are about building long-term relationships with customers
• In the commercial environment Microsoft Outlook has a penetration of 75% and Lotus Notes a further 5 to 10% of the market.
• In a consumer environment AOL, Yahoo, Hotmail/MSN comprise almost 66% of email recipients.
Email Marketing - HTML Design Issues
• Keep emails between 500-600 pixels wide
• Use fonts such as Arial and Times New Roman
• Do not use white as a font colour.
• Include a link to a profile update that allows recipients to update their format preference.
• Message file size – aim to keep message size down to 40-50Kb
HTML Dos:
• Code emails as a single web page
• Make sure your HTML code confirms to W3C standards. Check your code as broken code will be picked up email filters.
• Keep emails between 500-600 pixels wide – the message windows of popular web based email services such as MSN/Hotmail, Yahoo Mail and Gmail are 500-600 pixels in width. Wider emails will force the recipient to scroll horizontally.
• Use universally supported fonts such as Arial and Times New Roman.
• Use a font point size no smaller than 10
• Cascading File Sheets (CSS) – avoid using css if possible as many email clients do not render css correctly. If you have to use CSS then choose embedded styles known as inline. This means that the link to the style sheet is placed inside the HTML body tags.
• Include a link to a profile update that allows recipients to update their format preference.
• Message file size – aim to keep message size down to 40-50Kb
HTML Don’ts
• Do not include scripting
• Do not embed images in emails – images should be hosted this ensures proper rendering and minimises file size.
• Avoid using forms as these are stripped out by MSN/Hotmail
• Beware of using white as a font colour as many spam filters are suspicious of the white font tag as spammers often use white on a white background to hide information from recipients.
• Phishing is the online industry nickname for the effort to collect sensitive personal and financial information by sending forged emails that purport to be from authorised agencies such as a bank. Mozilla Thunderbird and AOL 9.0 feature phishing scam detection that will effect how your email is treated. These email clients look for where the display text is a URL. If the displayed text is different from the actual url then the recipient is alerted. Most email providers encode urls for essential tracking of clickthroughs therefore always use a word or phrase as the hyperlink anchor text.
The Subject line
Top Tip: Subject lines should be branded, brief and convey urgency
The Sender Line
Top Tip: Configure the Sender or “From” line to show the company or brand name
Email Marketing - The Message Body
• Always put the most important information at the top left.
• Place hyperlinks throughout the email and make sure that all images especially logos are clickable links – the more hyperlinks the better!
• Use images with strong calls to actions to encourage recipients to click through to the website.
• Use image Alt Tags so that recipients on dial up can see the information during loading.
• Make sure you have a balance of text and image links in case images are disabled.
Email Marketing - Measuring My Return on Investment
• Integrate your email campaigns with your web analytics programme so that you can track return on investment.
• Marketers who integrate web analytics with their email marketing programs improve the results of their campaigns.
• Campaigns that are integrated with web analytics on average produced much higher open rates, click-through rates and conversion rates.
Track the following metrics:
• E-mails sent
• E-mails delivered
• E-mails bounced (hard bounces, soft bounces)
• E-mails undelivered
• E-mail forwards
• HTML open rate
• HTML click through rate
• Text only click through rate
• Time and day of responses (as a chart)
• Unsubscribe requests
Email Marketing - Testing & Optimisation
• Time of email delivery is an important driver to campaign success. Avoid weekends when most spam email is sent.
• Wednesday is the most popular day for opening emails.
posted by Jim at 12:02 PM
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