Open rates looking good?  Click throughs’ quite high?  Still wondering why you’re not converting enough of these into sales?  It might be worth assessing the landing page.

One of the main goals in email marketing is to drive people onto the site.  Whilst the email side will do the leg work and entice people to your site, you must make sure that the landing page delivers what the email promises and not just confuse the recipient, or as they should really be called now, potential customer.

I say potential customer as they are genuinely interested in the product/service you have offered and are looking further into it; this is where the landing page enters the equation.

If you have offered your customer a certain product in the email, the last thing they want is to be taken to the home page of your site.  They want to view that particular product in greater detail.

To give you a helping hand, use the following list as a checklist for your own landing pages:

Is the product/service/article that they clicked on in the email on the landing page?

Does this look interesting enough to spend more time here and look around?

Now if you look further into the landing page itself, and depending on what you are offering, does it clearly answer these questions from your now potential customers:

How do I learn more about this?

What if I have more questions?

As an example, let’s take a landing page from the newsletter we regularly send out.  We advertise our template design services in these newsletters and link through the page to here.

If you go through the checklist I’ve outlined you’ll see that everything is there that a potential customer could need to learn more, and ultimately, sign up.

This leads me nicely onto the final point.  Though we want our potential customers to learn as much about our system as possible, our main goal is to get them to take on a trial or sign up.  If you take another look at the site, you will see how we’ve made that a priority.  When creating your landing pages, make sure that you still keep your main goal in mind and make that the nucleus of your landing page planning.  As long as you keep that in mind, your landing page should piece together very nicely.

1.  Planning

Putting in the effort pre-campaign can be the dividing line between a successful and an ineffective campaign.

Make sure you have meticulously planned out all aspects of what you want from your campaign as you will save yourself a lot of work and frustration in the long run.  Just consider how much extra work it will be if a couple of months down the line you decide you need to segment your list but have a detailed autoresponse campaign set up.

2. Be Objective 

Make sure that when you’re planning your campaign that you know exactly what you want from it.  By always baring this in mind you can always revert back to it when decisions have to be made.

Is your campaign to get sales? Drive people to your website? Keep your branding in their mind?  Make sure you know this before any more decisions are made as this is will shape your forthcoming campaign.

3. Keep to Your Word

Subscribers signed up to your emails as you promised them something; make sure you keep to that.

No-one appreciates the informative newsletter they signed up for suddenly turning into a pure sales email.  This is a guaranteed way to lose your recipients trust and their interest.

4. Be consistent

Very much like the previous point, your recipients will have signed up knowing that they will receive a certain level of communication from you.  By changing the volume of messages either way can harm your messages impact.

If you start bombarding them massive amounts of emails during a certain period, they will become tired and annoyed of you and you run the risk of them unsubscribing.

If you hold off from sending to them for a few months and then start again, you run the risk of them forgetting who you are and once again, unsubscribing.

5. Subject Lines

This is the first point of contact with the recipient and is often an overlooked area.  It doesn’t matter how much effort you have made putting together an amazing looking email with a truly fantastic offer if your recipient isn’t even enticed to open the email.

Subject lines shouldn’t be too long (approx 50 characters max) so that the recipient can read the whole message.  The subject line should describe what’s inside whilst making an effort to encouraging the recipient to open the email.

6. Design

Once the recipient has opened the email, you have to make a good impression.  People will usually make a judgement before reading the bulk of the content so your email must look professional.

Things to consider when creating your template:

Professional Appearance

Clear Call to Action

Branding To Website

Balance between image and text (approx 70% text 30% image)

7. Timing is everything

Make sure your email is sent at an appropriate time.  If it is sent at the wrong time, it will fall upon deaf ears. 

Email is one of those fantastic communications which when sent at the right time can be a marketing message that is lasting, can be referred too and is without other communications getting in the way.

Sent at the wrong time though and it is just an annoyance to the recipient.

Want to know the best time to send?  See point 10.

8. Unsubscribing doesn’t have to be the end

In the past, just letting a subscriber unsubscribe was the end for them.  The thing is, they may have only unsubscribed because they didn’t like a certain aspect of your communications.

The modern practice now is to give them options before they finally say goodbye to your emails.  It could be that they don’t like the frequency of your emails or that they only want to know about upcoming sales.  Either way, let them have the option to choose what they receive so that you can send them what they want to receive.

9. Understand the Results

The results of your campaign can tell you everything about its success.  Different results can tell you a bigger story of where your shortcomings or moments on marketing brilliance have come from.  Here’s a basic rule to follow:

• Open Rates – this will tell you either how deliverable your email was (inbox or junk folder).  This can also show you whether your subject line was effective in pushing for the open.
• Click Through Rate – This will represent the design of the email.  It will show whether the call to action was prominent enough or if your content was interesting to your recipients.
• Bounce Rate – Use this in conjunction with the open stats.  If your open rate is low and bounce rate high, you probably have a deliverability issue.

10. Test Test Test

There is no set rule to success.  Every companies mailing list is different and you must constantly test to see what different factors make your recipients react.  Subject line, design, call to action and timing can all be fine tuned by split testing your mailing list.

This is going to keep carrying on throughout your campaigns life.  No campaign will ever be the perfect campaign.  There will always be room for improvement, and your mailing list will change in habits as time goes on so always re-assess every aspect of your campaign.

Please add your own golden rules below to this list…I’d love to see a definitive list!

I’ve read a couple of blog posts recently that turned out to be a bit of an eye opener and have really helped me to look at email marketing in a new light (look at the bottom of the page for links).

Now, I can hold my hand up and admit that I may have spent too much time getting obsessed with the strategic side of email marketing and not offering some more inspiration for creativity.

Don’t get me wrong, I think a well thought about and well maintained email marketing campaign can really work wonders for you.  The problem lies in the fact that more and more companies are taking on email marketing and soon enough there will be many well maintained email marketing campaigns and yours will not be standing out from that crowd as much.

As well as having a stand out campaign, the main goal in todays climate is to not only grow the recipient list but to make sure that these recipients are attentive to your messages.  With that in mind I started to think about email campaigns and the holy grail of viral-ability (yes, I have just made that up, but if Ian Dowie can do it….).

In a previous post I pointed out how H&M had exceeded my expectations by giving me a £10 voucher when I signed up, which I then subsequently told my friends about who also signed up.  Though this was an expensive technique that most companies can’t really afford, the idea of it is still worth some heavy thought. 

Yes, I know, it’s easier said than done but if you can get something that has that forwarding on effect, you can guarantee yourself some serious, cheap exposure.

You have your usual just for laughs viral campaign that will guarantee forwarding during those long office hours (such as reggae irie name generator). 

But it doesn’t have to just be the usual type of viral campaign.  The H&M one was just such a good offer, it would be rude not to tell your friends about free money.  Another great example of this is from one of our own customers, The Urban Shop. They offer 15% off to anyone who forwards the email to their friends, plus another 10% for the person who gets the forwarded message.  Both people benefit from the forward whilst at the same time encouraging the recipient to sign up to the list to receive greater discount in the future.

Another thing you’ll have to remember is to not leave it to the customer to forward this email on.  Treat the link like you would a call-to-action (which it is really), and make sure that a well-placed forward button is present for them to click on.

So when you’re next creating an email make sure that you think long and hard about your forward link, it could be a fantastic way to not only re-ignite or maintain your recipients interest in your campaign, but may prove to be a successful way to increase your mailing list size in the process.

Useful Related Articles:

BeRelevant: How To Make Your Email Marketing Campaign Stand Out From The Rest

No Man is an iland: Take a design risk and get animated? I was dubious about this idea until I read the post and then was left with a head-nodding hmmm at the end

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).