People make quick judgements, whether you like to think you’re open minded or not, you will still make an initial judgement on something/someone new within the first few seconds of seeing it/them.

Bearing this in mind, you should really look at the impact of your email when someone first opens it. A judgement will be made almost instantaneously when the email is first opened.

You need to firstly make sure that the campaign looks professional. The best thing to do is look through your inbox and find an email you like, then set that as the benchmark for your campaigns standard. The worst thing you can possibly do is construct an email that ultimately looks no better than the junk that you receive. If your camapaign lacks that air of professionalism about it, it will ultimately fail.

Secondly, the branding of the email can have an influential effect on the success of your campaign. There is still apprehension on trusting online services (need quote from recent survey) and if you have a different branded email to your website, a recipient can be (and rightly so) untrusting of the email authenticity. Always use your own website as a base of what your campaign should be constructed around. I’m not saying copy your website, but make sure that the campaign has a familiarity about it.

A lot of people will also scan read something and not pay full attention to it. What your email design needs to do is ensure that the things they do scan over are what you want them to pay attention to the most. If there is an offer on, or you want someone to take note of a certain area of interest in the email, make sure it is prominent to a scan reader. The best thing to do is to place your main points at the top of the page, and then go into further details further down the page.

This also works well for my next point; the preview pane. This should also be thought about as you should be trying to ensure that your email fits neatly within this preview pane. There are obviously different sized preview panes, depending on the email client but a general rule is no longer than 650px wide. This should allow the whole width of the email to be viewed in the pane, meaning you can get your whole message across to them before they open. Further to this point, I tend to find myself not bother with emails when they come into my outlook and I can’t view the full width of the campaign in my preview pane.

Though most design is down to personal taste, if you follow these rules, then you will at least have a good solid foundation to work from.

As more and more companies turn to email marketing, it’s probably best to return back to the main factors in email marketing that need to be considered for a successful campaign.

So many companies come into email marketing hoping for a quick fix that will boost their sales and then very quickly stop the email campaign as they put no real thought into their emails. 

Whats the Objective of Your Campaign?

Probably the best thing to start off with is assessing what your overall plan is with this campaign.  Are you looking to increase sales? Build your brand up? Keep users in touch with latest happenings?

Once decided, you will be able to make better decisions for your campaign.  For instance, if your main goal is to increase sales, probably best to keep the latest developments in your company to a minimum and focus on the main goal.

Design and Layout

This can make the difference from someone opening your campaign, to clicking through to your website and making a purchase.  The first thing a recipient will see is the design of the email as they open it and as we all know, we make quick judgements.  If you send a poorly designed email that looks quite amateurish, then your recipients will see this as that. 

Remember that it is quite likely that these recipients get quite a few promotional emails, some from well-respected companies with good quality emails and yours must be comparable to them for your campaign to work.

The layout of your campaign can also determine how successful your campaign is.  You must make sure that if there is something you particularly want them to click on, that it is clear and obvious for them to click on.  This is otherwise known as the call to action.

Call to Action

Making your call to action prominent in the email is something that shouldn’t be an afterthought in your designing process.  This small part of the design process is also a major factor in your conversion rate, so put a lot of thought into how you want it to look and be placed.  You can try different methods, wording, graphics to get the most out of it.

Subject Line

Obviously this design thought will all be pointless if no-one is opening the email in the first place.  The subject line should be encouraging opens whilst at the same time summarising what is in the email itself.  Try and remember not to make it too long as you want your message to get across to your recipients without it truncating.  Try experimenting with your subject lines to see what factors change open rates.

Experimenting

There really is no definitive formula to making your campaign a success as every industry and recipient is different.  Though you can get the best practices in place, this may not necessarily mean you get instantly high responses.  The best thing to do is experiment with all aspects of your campaign and see which works best.  One of the most common methods is A/B split testing.  This way you can view for yourself which factors are working and which aren’t.  By experimenting for yourself, you’ll be guaranteed a happy and prosperous future in email marketing.

After a recent dispute with someone I started to think about the different factors you need to consider when sending to business addresses.

With webmail addresses it basically comes down to authentication and reputation; with business addresses it’s a completely different game.

You basically have to make a decision. You either:

Accept that some of your emails are going to bounce and not go over the top on compromising on your design and tracking capabilities.

Or

Concentrate your campaign on deliverability and strip out as much as you can. Remove tracking and send a text email.

Okay, so it’s not as black and white as that but you get the idea. And before you ask, there really is no right and wrong answer. I’ve seen customers of ours have success with both methods so it really does depend on what the content is and what you’re trying to achieve from your campaign.

You’ve also got to look at which stage of your email marketing campaigns life you’re in. Are you starting up and generally just looking for exposure? Do you need to gage the success of your campaign to see where you can improve? Is it more the case that you have an amazing offer on at present that you want everyone to see? Is it your companies newsletter that is just updating people on recent events? Are you concerned about really putting your companies branding across?

These questions really have to be brought up at the beginning of your campaign planning so that you have a clear idea of what your goals are.

Unfortunately there is no general rule for business address as each organisation has different rules for what can and can’t get through the filter so don’t be shy to test the water.

This article will have links to previous posts I have created throughout it that go into further depth about certain subjects.  I hope this helps!

1. Your open rate is low

Okay, so your campaign is stumbling at the first hurdle.  You need to ask yourself the following questions:

How was my recipient list created? 
If the answer to that question was “it was bought” then you can’t be expecting miracles.  If you’re receiving opens of around 10 – 15% I wouldn’t be that surprised.  If your list was self built, I’d expect your open rate to be between 15 – 30% as a minimum. 

Is your email subject enticing them in?
It’s all well and good having amazing offers and content in the email, but not letting the world know about it in the subject line is a cardinal sin.  The subject line needs to be a very short summary of what they can expect inside.  Scrap the “March 2008 issue #1” and go for “15% off of selected items with this email” or “deliverability articles and tips”.  That way you can entice people who are interested in the content in. 

If you are doing this but are still receiving low opens you have to ask yourself “am I putting in subject lines that might be specialised to only a group of my recipients?”  By no means is this a bad thing. In fact, it could improve your eventual sales as you’re targeting areas of your list.  Just because you’re getting an open rate of 15% doesn’t mean that the same people are opening your emails; you may have an active readership of 30% but your emails don’t appeal to all of them.  Just remember not to stick to one area though or the other subscribers will switch off.  The best thing to do would be to segment your list into several lists and then send targeted emails to each of them.

Are you receiving a high level of bounced emails?
This could be a deliverability issue.  Firstly, is there a large amount coming from a certain server?  If so, you could have been blacklisted by them.  You will need to contact the postmaster there and sort out the issue with them before sending again.  To prevent this from ever happening though, make sure you have a decent list hygiene routine in place.

If your list is predominantly business addresses opposed to webmail addresses, the likelihood is it is your content that is causing the blocking.  The problem with business addresses  is that there is no standardised reason for getting blocked by them, some filters block tracking links within the email, some block it because of words within the email and some just don’t get along with html altogether.  It really will be a case of trial and error.  Be prepared to compromise on your design and content though.  You may have to lose your tracking facilities to increase the success of your campaign.
 

2.  My link click-through rate is poor

Your open rate seems fine but your click-through isn’t.  The good news is your list are at least still listening to your message but for how long we don’t know.  This can be attributed to the content of your email.

Content
You need to be clear and to the point.  Don’t go over the top with content or you risk losing the recipients attention.  IT could be that the recipient just isn’t interested in what you’re writing about.  In which case you need to look at what you have previously promised, or done.  That subscriber may have initially signed up as you promised to give away special offers exclusively to your email subscribers.  Now though, you’re just updating them on developments about your company and informing them of new lines of clothing….but where’s the offer? 

Design
Maybe you’re keeping to your promise of content but you’re still not getting those click-throughs you desperately want.  Well the finger can be firmly pointed towards your design and layout.  Is your offer tucked away near the bottom of the email?  Is it bold and stand out enough?  You need to make sure that your recipients eyes are directed to wherever your “call to actions” are.  Do this and you will see those click-throughs rocket.   It could though, be that your email just doesn’t look that nice.  People make judgements within the first few seconds of looking at an email and if they don’t like the look of it, they will not even bother with the content (which is also another reason for having your call to action in an eye catching place).

3. My Conversion Rate is Poor

This is probably the most important indicator of your campaign.  If you have so far followed the advice on this article (and the rest of my blog) you should be seeing a good level of conversions now.  If that is still not the case then there could still be a couple of issues that need resolving. 

Firstly, are you directing your recipients to the exact page they wanted to go to.  If they wanted to see the offers on some of your products don’t go and send them to your index page.  Having to look for the product they want will turn them off of the idea. 

Secondly, make sure that your campaign matches your websites branding.  There is a lot of spam on the internet (you may have noticed) that is still hindering people’s confidence in e-business.  It is your job to minimise this, and the best way to do so is by having a consistent branding throughout your communications with the public.

Well, that should have your campaign back in working order now.  If you’re still having problems, email me with your problem and I’ll try and give you a hand.

It wasn’t too long ago that social networks didn’t exist.  You actually had to speak to one another, in person.  The quickest, cheapest (and well, best) way of keeping in touch with people who had moved away was via the old and trusted method of email.  No longer is this the case.  People don’t want to speak to one person anymore; they want the whole world to know that they’re staying in and having Spaghetti Bolognese for dinner tonight.

Tonight’s dinner aside, this is something which needs to be paid attention too.  I have read blogs recently from people who are saying that they are turning back to email in protest to social networking and stating that email is still king.  These people also happen to be in the email marketing field.  Unfortunately, the world of email marketing can’t exist just because there are stubborn email marketers out there who are refusing to change over.  Email marketing will still work with the younger generations; we just have to remember that the concentration on their inbox is probably going to be considerably lower than the older generations of email users.

I’m lucky enough to be in a situation where I a) have brothers and sisters who are full social network addicts; and b) Am at an age where I once used email and converted to social networking, so have knowledge of my own changing attitude towards email.

So when are the younger generation going to use their email inboxes?  I read somewhere that 91% of internet users still read and send emails.  I find this quite a crude generalisation in favour of the effectiveness of email.  Don’t get me wrong though, I do believe email does still work effectively.  What has to be considered is the age generations that read email, read them with different drives.

Okay, so that really isn’t a revelation.  Marketing 101 would tell you that different age generations have different motivators. This though, is about a generation actually changing their motivation from the pre-defined one.  Social Networking has basically drawn the attention away from the inbox and towards them in terms of personal communication.  Though I haven’t read any data to back up this claim, this must mean that the time actually spent looking at their inbox has drastically reduced.

So it comes down to how exactly to grab their attention in that shorter time frame you have.  From personal experience, I don’t really bother with any of the newsletters.  If I’m going to open an email it’s because it says something like 75% off - end of season sale.  I basically don’t want lots of content; I want deals and plenty of them.  I also pay absolutely no attention to emails that have come from 3rd party sources so being on an email list is pretty pointless with me.

Now I know I’m only using a very small group of people as my test subjects (me, my family and close friends) but there was a general consensus that this was the case with the rest of them as well.

What’s even worse is that the emails I do actually bother to open are what I advise our customers not to do in terms of design.  They are just one giant image with clickable links in the image itself.  This has led me to think that content filtering will become even less important in the future of email deliverability and that emphasis will be further placed upon whitelisting and sender reputation.

Why not also consider when these recipients are most likely to concentrate harder on their online email accounts.  Working hours are probably the best time to send your email marketing campaigns.  As most work places have blocked facebook and myspace, the concentration will have shifted towards email during working hours (providing that email hasn’t also been blocked), especially seeing that you can actually view facebook posts from your email account now.

So the future for email marketing will pretty much stay the same in all honesty.  A few things will have to change.  I can see the lure of buying or renting lists diminishing in some areas of the business world as the effectiveness of them decreases.  I can also see us stepping back a bit in terms of content and design.  I think people have already, and will continue to care less about the content and how they word their emails and focus more on the sending reputation they carry.

I would love to hear your thoughts on what I’ve said.  Whether you agree or disagree, it’d be great to let me know what you think.

When analysing your companies’ latest email campaigns performance you have a number of factors to look at that will determine how much of a success it has been.  The obvious indicator of ultimate campaign success is the recipients actually going back to your company and purchasing from you.  But that really is the final link in the email marketing campaign.

So, to diagnose how your campaign is doing you must assess what your statistics tell you.

The first step is to look at your open rates.  Even if you’re getting decent traffic through to your site, you could still be receiving low open rates.  This could be for a number of reasons which you will have to ask yourself.  One of the main reasons for poor open rates is the list quality.  It may be that you have purchased or rented a list and therefore you will not have the same level of interest as a company that have self-built their list.  It could also be down to the age of your list, maybe you’ve had the same list for a long time and haven’t actually cleaned up the list from inactive or uninterested subscribers (find good articles on list hygiene here, here and here).

It could also be attributed to the subject line; something that I have previously outlined as a major factor in why open rates can be low.  If you don’t have a subject line that stands out from the other bulk of emails that are in your recipients inbox, you can’t expect high open rates.  This will become increasingly important in 2008 as more companies start to turn to email marketing (find useful articles and the do’s and don’ts on subject lines here, here, here and here).

Maybe, it is in fact your deliverability.  If you are not incredibly vigilant with your reputation monitoring, then you could be falling foul of your email dropping into the dreaded junk folder, or worse, not even getting to the recipient at all.  This subject is vast and can’t really be summarised in this article as there are so many factors to take into consideration (sender reputation articles here ,here and here).  If you take the time, read as many articles on my blog as possible, most of them are based around deliverability and improving sending reputation.

If open rates isn’t your problem, it’s time to start looking at click through rates.  Basically, your campaign is being delivered and recipients are opening your newsletter but for some reason they are not going to your call to action.

Okay, so for those of you who are only making newsletters that are there to inform, this isn’t as much of a problem, it is more for the promotional campaigners out there.

The problem could lie within your email design.  If you have a poorly designed and amateurish looking email, your recipients are unlikely to take you very seriously.  They will have seen hundreds and thousands of below average emails, and they’ve predominantly been spam.  When they open yours, you only have a few seconds to make an impression on them and if it looks vaguely like spam, your email will be closed and never be looked at again.

Maybe your email isn’t spammy looking, but in fact wonderment to the human eye; a masterclass in HTML design.  Problem is, you’ve not being pay attention to the email marketing world for several months and haven’t noticed that ISP’s have different rules regarding how emails will now render in their browsers. Silly you.  Your once amazing email looks like a whole lot of grey with some words sporadically dotted around the place.  Who’s going to even bother with that as far as first impressions go?  It’s time to move on from that age of image heavy emails into the brave new world of HTML lite.  Try to keep your companies branding and layouts professional but cut down on the imagery and embrace background colours to keep the email looking bright.

Another issue that could hinder your click throughs is the layout of your campaign.  If you’re looking to get recipients to click through to your site somewhere, make sure it is clearly obvious where they need to click, it needs to stand out.

Also making sure that the subject line corresponds with the email content is vital too.  If they’ve opened your email from reading the subject line, and found that the content is different or is misleading, you’ll lose your click throughs.  Once again, make sure everything is clear and accessible (read a blog on this here).

Finally, I go back to email design for one more piece of advice.  There is still a lot of scepticism around online shopping, it’s getting better but there are still areas that are concerned about transferring their bank information over the internet (article here).  It is your duty to try and ease those fears.  The best thing to do is offer your customers an all-over branding of all communications with them.  Try to match your newsletter to your website, and in particular, the landing page that they will be directed to from the email.  This way confidence can be instilled in your communications and actual money conversions will increase (find articles on landing pages here and here).   

After another busy week at mailingmanager towers, we were left wondering what we should base this week’s newsletter on.  “Why don’t we do something different and offer them advice on how to better their email campaign?” one bright spark said.  And here it is…. 

Don’t just hard sell to them 

Though obviously you want to sell your products by using email marketing, if you only sell you will find that users will start to switch off.  If you offer a bit more than just what products you have, you will see a constant reader base that will come to expect your email and will be more receptive to your messages.  By doing this you’re laying the foundations for a successful, long-term campaign. 

Let the customer get to know you 

So you’re no longer just hard selling to them, good.  But hold off from giving yourself that well deserved pat on the back just yet, there’s still some work to do.  Try to introduce your company’s personality into your newsletters.  Don’t just write in a formal manner and state facts; be friendly.  This will bring you closer to the customer as you will go beyond just visual branding and customers will be able to relate to the company on a whole. 

Be Consistent   

The last thing you want to do is let the customer forget about you and your company.  If you leave massive gaps in between your campaigns your recipients will have either lost interest in your product or will have forgotten that they signed up for your newsletter in the first place.  Either way, it will lead to a higher complaint rate which will have an adverse effect on your sending reputation, and ultimately deliverability.   

Make it more interactive 

If you want to keep your recipients attention, try to do it by having different forms of interaction in the newsletter.  Small things such as a quick survey can keep their minds focused on the whole newsletter opposed to a quick skim read.  This will also allow you to grab some much needed information about your service or your customers habits that can help to shape future campaigns.  “How do I get them to fill out the survey?” I hear you ask. Read on….. 

Give them something 

Everyone loves free stuff, and people will be much more inclined to spend a couple of minutes filling out a questionnaire if they have a golden carrot of “prizes” at the end of the questionnaire.  Also if you keep offering prizes as a regular feature (perhaps not every issue), then you are guaranteed of repeat opens.Another helpful tip is to include the winner of any prize in the next newsletter.  Not only does it validate that people can win your prizes, but also adds extra content to your newsletter.  And you can be sure of some positive comments about your company from the winner. 

Keep it short 

No-one wants a newsletter to scroll down for what seems like an eternity, so try to keep your message short and clear.  If you have articles for your newsletter, just put an extract of it in your newsletter and then link back to your site for the whole article.  Doing this not only keeps your newsletter short, but also drives recipients to your website.  What’s even more useful is that you will also be inadvertently adding content to your site, which will get picked up in the search engines, and improve your ranking. 

Matching Design with web site branding 

With parts of the population still unsure about trusting e-commerce, you must do everything to alleviate their fears.  With one of the most recent scams being phishing, the recipients will be wary about trusting newsletters that may or may not be from the actual company.  One of the best ways to maintain trust in the newsletter is to have it branded to match your website.  Not only does it maintain trust in the validity of the sender but also that you are a professional company.  Branding is always important. 

Subject Line Tweaking 

Though I have gone on about this in my blog quite a few times, I cannot stress how important a decent subject line is.  If you’re receiving low open rates you have to look at why, and if you’re not receiving massive amounts of bounce emails, then the problem is probably stemming from your subject line.  I have posted a couple of blogs on subject lines here and here. 

mailingmanager is a full e-marketing solutions company that also offers spam filter analysis on its customers email campaigns.  Visit the website or contact the company on info@mailingmanager.co.uk

And I started to catch up on the latest blog posts from the email marketing world.  I found a great article which highlighted the advantages of a combined format email campaign.  Though the case study used is a sports team, I’m sure you can think of how you can adopt the ideas for your own company.  Find it here.