Email Marketing Guide Why should you read this guide? This Ebook offers you an introduction of email marketing. Learn the basic mailing steps and new strategies to achieve remarkable open rate and countable number of leads. This guide contains: ❖ ❖ ❖ ❖ ❖
Introduction Stepwise instructions Mailing strategies for experienced person How to do it right Your top email marketing questions are answered.
So, let’s get started !
Table Of Contents CHAPTER 1.An Introduction to Email CHAPTER 2.An Introduction to Email Marketing CHAPTER 3.Email Marketing Statistics CHAPTER 4. Types of Email CHAPTER 5.Best Email Marketing Practices CHAPTER 6.Tracking Factors
CONCLUSION
What is Email? “Email” almost everyone is familiar with this word. Email or E-mail (Electronic mail), an electronic message running on a system made for receiving, sending & storing messages that may contain decorated text with attachments containing files, images, documents etc. Email is very popular around the globe for both personal & corporate communication. If you have an email account, you can send your message to the other side within seconds. Email is like sending a letter; the only difference is instead of using pen & paper, you use keyboard to type a message on computer.
Pros of Email It is more personal & direct medium for communication Very fast; messages are delivered within seconds around the world. It allows to save & keep a record of your communication. Easy to send with no time boundation. Good example of One-To-Many communication You may attach files, documents, images, & other media to an email. You can access your email from anywhere with internet connection kept on. ❖ Activate your filters and receive only genuine mails. ❖ ❖ ❖ ❖ ❖ ❖ ❖
Cons of Email ❖ “Spam” is very big problem of email. These are unsolicited emails which are sent in bulk number. ❖ Hitting unknown contact list in bulk through a tool will mark your mail a spam. This will then affect your genuine mails too being landing in spam. ❖ Attachments can contain viruses which infect your computer. ❖ You need an internet connection to access your email. ❖ You have to check your mailbox regularly & manage it to stay updated.
How to Write an Email? 1. “To Field” Type a valid email address of person to whom you want to send the email. 2. “From Field” should contain sender’s email address. 3. “Subject” is the brief summary of your message. Write a short & accurate subject line. Make sure your subject line justify the content in your mail. 4. Message body is the location to type main message. 5. It's important to begin with a greeting Such as “Dear XYZ”, “Hello Sir/Madam”. 6. Introduce yourself in the first line or paragraph if you are sending the mail as an individual. But if you are sending the mail to a bulk of email address on behalf of an organization then keep your introduction limited to subject line. No need to give extra information by adding paragraphs. “Remember email is a way to share the information very briefly.” 7. Write your message & put your main points in opening sentences. Get to the point and don’t move in circles to explain a single point. 8. Be brief & polite. If your message is long then provide links or attachments in your message. 9. Say “Thank You” & add your signature with appropriate contact information. 10. Proofread or preview your message before sending it.
What are the sources to send email? There are some popular webmail providers- Yahoo!, Outlook.com & Gmail. These allow you to access email account from anywhere around the world just with an internet connection. Access your account, share your emails and keep the complete information within this account for the future references if required.
Yahoo! Yahoo is a fast, easy to use webmail with some great features.
1. The Inbox-Personalize your inbox with vibrant themes and organize your mail the way that makes sense to you. Quickly access the tools you use every day like your Calendar, Notepad, Contacts, Instant Messages, and Search. Message toolbar and quick actions makes it simple to sort, mark, and delete emails in a few clicks.
2. Search-Filter through hundreds of emails in seconds. Yahoo Mail's search tool makes it simple to find the exact message, document or photo you’re looking for, no matter how far back it was sent or received. It allows to search by name, & by relevant keyword.
3. Compose-Composing an email should be both personal and productive. With Yahoo Mail, our Compose lets you create and enhance your message with beautiful link previews and formatting options. Plus with Dropbox and Flickr integration you can attach files, documents and photos quicker than ever.
4. Calendar-Yahoo Calendar has the tools you need to help manage and organize your busy schedule. You will get reminders for anniversaries, birthdays, meetings & other important events.
5. Contacts-Keep in touch with your personal network. Yahoo's two-step import feature allows you to add contacts from your Facebook account or other e providers like Gmail or Outlook, making it simple to switch email accounts.
6. Storage-Yahoo Mail gives you the most free storage of any email provider. With 1TB of free space (that’s 1000 GB!), you’ll never have to worry about deleting emails to save space.
7. Security-Yahoo Mail uses the leading security technology to help keep you safe online. SSL encryption keeps your mail secure as it travels between your computer’s web browser and Yahoo’s servers. This means no matter where you are, whether you’re at home or browsing your mail in a coffee shop, your mail information is kept safe.
8. What's New-You can choose from a wide range of exclusive designs by Paperless Post and take your emails to a whole new level. Just compose, choose a look and make a lasting impression in an instant.
Source-https://overview.mail.yahoo.com/
Outlook.com ❖ Outlook.com is a free email service built to keep you connected across your devices with powerful organizational tools and a suite of Microsoft apps and services. ❖ One address for all your Microsoft apps and services. ❖ Your Outlook.com address connects you to more than just your inbox. Sign in to Skype, find your contacts and Calendar, and work in Office Online. ❖ Use your email address to access your messages, files, and other Microsoft apps on any device. ❖ Outlook.com makes organizing your communications easy so you see more of the messages you want to see and less of the junk you don't.
❖ Delete hundreds of emails from your inbox in seconds with Sweep. Manage rules to automatically delete unwanted email before it arrives.
Source-http://www.microsoft.com/en-us/outlook-com/
Gmail ❖ The best of Gmail is its availability and trust of millions of people using it with advanced features and filters saving your inbox from unnecessary mails. ❖ Hangouts bring conversations to life with photos, emoji, and even group video calls for free. Connect with friends across computers, tablets & mobile devices. ❖ The new inbox organizes email into five optional tabs: primary, social, promotion, updates and forums. These categories make it easy to read messages of the same type all at once, and keep track of your mail. ❖ With 15GB of free storage across Gmail, Google Drive and Google+ Photos, you won't need to delete emails to save space. ❖ Use Gmail for business. Create corporate email ids. Get custom email @your_company.com including calendar, docs, video meetings, and more with access from your phone or tablet.
Source-https://www.gmail.com/intl/en/mail/help/about.html
What is Email Marketing? E-mail marketing is the most powerful, attractive & cost effective, user friendly channel to promote any product or service online. It is a direct & simple way to communicate with your customers or users. This is one of the oldest & popular online marketing tools available. Examples of email marketing include newsletters, special offer messages, and instructional or automated emails.
Why Email Marketing? Any service or tool when adopted, it is associated with profit and easy management. So, here are some reasons to use email marketing to promote products, services, events & more.
Inexpensive Cost is one factor for which every organization is always concerned about, in one way or the other. So, why to leave mailing tool. It’s an affordable, easy & effective marketing way to reach millions of people. It is better choice for small business owners than other expensive traditional marketing channels like TV ads, Radio ads, Banner ads, Telemarketing & other channels. To target people around the globe it is a good option other than tele-calling. Also, manpower lesser as compared to other tools.
Engagement Stay connected with customers & keeps them informed. It helps to build close relationship between your business & customers. Personalize your email campaign and target double opt-in database. Regularly delivered email messages improve brand & product awareness. Keep yourself engaged with your customers at regular intervals by providing them informative content. You know who opened your mails and hence you may be engaged with only those who are really interested instead of contacting the complete contact list.
Measurable Another important reason, email is a measurable marketing tool; you can easily track Open Rate, Click Through Rate, Unsubscribes, Conversion Rate, Campaign Success, Sales& Growth. This measurement will help improve your future campaign strategies. There are many factors to test success of email: different subject lines, call to action buttons, dynamic content, varying email scheduling time intervals etc.
Return-on-Investment ROI is a metric which shows how much the return on your marketing investments are. In business worlds, the one thing that matters is, “result”. Email marketing is a channel which offers higher ROI than other marketing platforms.
“For every $1 spent, $44.25 is the average return on email marketing investment. This amazing ROI is the main reason that encourage investing in email marketing.”
Mobile Reach We live in mobile era, almost every person use mobile devices & email marketing is mobile friendly accessed through smartphones. Most of business owners access their emails from mobile devices. So, you can also use email marketing as mobile marketing. This will enhance the approach and open ratio as accessing emails is made easily anywhere, anytime.Get your team ready to create the mobile app in order to make your control panel open easily on smartphones.
Integration The beauty of email marketing is that this may integrate with other marketing tactics like social media (Friend of email). If you are not integrating your mailer, with social media, you are wasting opportunities. Email must contain social media channels like Facebook, Google+, Twitter, LinkedIn etc. It will improve click through rate (CTR). Social media can help you spread your message among global audience.
Risks of Email Marketing Now you are quite familiar with email marketing & why we should you use this service. Now, it’s time to know about risks. If you are using best email marketing practices & doing it right, it is an amazing marketing tool. But if you’re doing it wrong, it can be very risky for your business. Here, we’ll discuss about some risks:
Spamming Spam email is any email that was not requested by receiver but is delivered without the consent of the receiver. Spam is not only annoying but also pose risk for a running business. Email is marked as spam if you send it to people without their permission.
Marketers need to be careful when they’re implementing a campaign and make sure to send the campaign on the customers who subscribed for that product. The main reasons of spamming are: ❖ Easy option. Vendors are available online who sell database and is easily available ❖ New players choose the easy way as it takes time to collect opt-in database and there too the number is quite low ❖ The option is chosen to get the leads, which is a big Myth ❖ Sending mails to 1000 unknown person and 10 known person will yield equal results ❖ Unsolicited means it not requested by the recipients. ❖ Abuse report ratio will rise and mark your IP blacklist. This will then affect even your genuine mails which are sent to opt-in database.
Reputation If marketers don’t respect the wishes of their customers & subscribers, there is risk being blacklisted by mail service providers on the request of the email receivers. You have to be honest & place a unsubscribe link in your email, so they can may simply unsubscribe rather than flag your mail as spam. Unsubscription option is necessary even if you are sending mails to your opt-in list. Show some respect to your client and do not bother him after he/she unsubscribes your services. Segment your contact list and make multiple lists based on the products for which you have received the subscription. It can be embarrassing when wrong people receive the wrong emails. It shows that you don’t care about customers, so these kinds of mistakes are very dangerous to your business reputation.
Delivery Issue Deliverability is the number of email messages delivered to your recipients’ inbox. It tells you how many of the emails bounced back and if that number is high, it’s a sure sign of inactivity. Low deliverability rate might get you blocked by internet service providers. If your list is containing a lot of inactive emails, then it decreases your delivery rate. We’ll discuss email deliverability best practices in our Chapter 5.
Email Marketing: Past, Present & Future Email With new technologies introduced &practiced, it is must for the old ones to leave their position & retire. But, with a great pleasure the case is not the same with email. It is not only holding up, but is very much used by each and every person, starting from children, business person; small or big; students etc. No limit: Age, Work, Gender, Area etc.
How are newsletters helpful When you subscribe for some newsletter, your main aim is to get useful & limited information regularly. This saves your surfing time through unlimited data on internet. With newsletters, aggregate &summarized information will regularly reach you, keeping you aware of new developments, schedules, opportunities etc. Some free, some payable but worth enough paying attention to, instead of scrolling through unlimited online information.
Add more subscribers Publishing valuable articles on your blog will add viewers interested in specific topics. This will thus increase your subscriber’s number adding to your brand value too.
High inbox ratio You will get newsletter in your inbox. The surety lies in the fact that the receiver subscribed for the newsletter.
Fruitful approach “Email is dismissed as something old people use.”- Golden Lichfield” Is it true?? Not really. Number of technologies has increased but email marketing still holds its position & is used at a wide level. The technology has its own strength & weakness.
Continuity Newsletters are something with cannot seek a regular audience. People searching for information, do subscribe, get the relevant news & discontinue once the purpose is served. Audience may count to a small number but they’ll be dedicated & valuable ones.
“Email is 40 years old technology that is not going away for good reasons- it’s cockroach of the internet.”
When can you make email practices worth for all your subscribers? Let us assume your product is a software, which thus is not bound to be used by only a few persons. So, you’ll get subscriptions and all your subscribers cannot fit one category. All will be with a different persona. What is your strategy to be in touch with all your clients, keep them satisfied? Do you also make mistakes some of which are mentioned below? ❖ ❖ ❖ ❖ ❖
Respond to enquiries slowly? Inaccurate information? Little or no communication? Inaccurately tailored communication? Over familiar tone?
The above mentioned points, as per the survey, are enough to force a customer to switch the vendor without even thinking twice. Every company’s sales team need to approach its subscribers differently. It is not feasible to make few countable strategies & apply on all the customers. Filter your client list & segment it to make sure what kind of strategies will be required.
Everyday low prices Daily coupons, offers; customers are simply tired of these. Coupons, offers are not always attractive. There are certain business products which are good without offers. There was a period when offers were rare & thus attractive & new to grab. Offers means low price but also low quality & when quality is compromised, performance lowers dragging the brand to bottom. You’ll not get quality clients & the clients who’ll grab the offer do not stick to one provider for long. They continue to search for a vendor providing offer services. Do not collect garbage; focus on targeting valuable brands who do not believe in paying less for quality product. Your product will grow only when it runs without compromise in quality.
Build new strategies every now & then. It will help!!! Most of growing companies face one issue. They invest a lost to generate leads but are unable to mature even 10% of all. Where do you go wrong?? ❖ Inefficient sales team ❖ Product not worth enough ❖ Right product but wrong targeted clients ❖ You’re not approaching right audience. ❖ Is price a concern? Are they the one who love bargaining? ❖ Competitive product. ❖ Customer’s expectation, previous experience. Focus on all the above mentioned points. If your product is worth the price you’ve decided then be strict on No Bargain policy. The seller must be confident enough while deciding the price chart. Do not make it too high and not even too low. Balance the pricing which look genuine. Subscriber mailing will help you focus on the specific clients. This practice will help you approach the audience.
To remove the negative aspects a efficient and hardworking sale team is required who know how to strategize the selling plan and then proceed to hit the clients.
Run the research regularly ❖ Customer surveys ❖ Phone communication ❖ Use survey results to segment clients further ❖ Hit the clients as per their interest
Impress your visitors & win them Blog Articles for help & guidance not for selling & promotion Care about your readers & your clients. Regular guides will also help your customers learn basics Keep your blog restricted to the knowledge of products you provide. Be consistent. Regular posting of new articles will keep your blog young & attractive ❖ Focus on headlines ❖ Consider the opinions of your regular viewers ❖ Keep it simple & down to earth. Try to help your readers instead of writing controversial posts. You’re good &Be good! ❖ ❖ ❖ ❖ ❖
Social Media ❖
Engage yourself with your fans- When you post something on social media, you’ll receive the views through the comments, reply to these comments ASAP so that you don’t appear idle. Your interaction will help your fans interested for more posts.
❖ Open personally with your fans- There is big curiosity for the visitors to know personal side of a company. Every company have some personal moments
❖ & it is good to share those moments. This will make your customers feel closer to you. ❖ Don’t post anything at idle time. ❖ Don’t wander around every social media site-Choose the useful site where you may post article, information related to your business. Be focused. ❖ Never be rude ❖
Make a schedule-Make a regular schedule of posting, sharing on social media. Let your fans & followers wait for your next post.
Newsletters, Content Writing & Blogs What is weightage of articles & blogs to be published every now & then every week. What is the usage of spending a lot of time & writing the articles & after cross-checking it, publish it on blogs? The answer lies in the fact that when you share the article, you are attracting crowd towards your brand. This is surely increasing number of subscribers with countable subscriptions on every new article.
Strengths & Weakness May it be running a business or writing blog/article; awareness of strengths & weakness is very necessary. No need to describe your weakness as it is not a confession room, note down your weakness only to remove them & to convert them into strengths. Use your strong points to catch the viewers & visitors to make them your clients. No need to hide the weak points but there is a need to cover them with your strengths.
“Strength is to grab the visitors & make them permanent clients.” “Weakness is a topic to be discussed time & again by the management of industry.”
Slow & Steady The story of tortoise & rabbit is well known & followed to achieve a long lasting success. BUT HOW? The first & foremost need of an enterprise is to find out where to apply the rule. How to organize& when to expect the results.
“Patience is the key to success in email marketing industry.” A short path is faster & quicker but will never yield fruitful & long-lasting results. Better option is to be patience & wait for the result. It’ll definitely yield a permanent outcome. It’ll bring stability to your business. Promotion is very necessary to introduce your products to public. It is a process which requires continuous practice with creativity.
“Sales is a creative job” While introduction, focus must be on the fact that why one & should purchase your product, through there are no. of other stable providers. Mention your strengths & features you provide & where you stand high as compared to other providers.
“Keeping prices lower than others vendors; only this will not help attract customer for purchasing” As per the market experience it is very necessary to plan genuine charges for the packages & plans related to products. This will help you to remove the burden of bargaining by the clients. Bargaining is often faced by sales team of a newly launched company. Avoid such things as this will lead you to compromises in serving clients. Build trust in market instead of cheap services.
Unique twist in articles but only once Twist is something which develops interest of a reader. Keep your articles different & a little spicy article will give more readers. But make sure not to repeat it in every article.
“One cannot read more than 4 books having same plot, change is necessary.” The summary is to keep all your articles with different tastes. It will happen by building a big team in this field.
“A team is better than a single person in developing creative ideas & approach.”
Social media nice tool but not only tool Facebook, Twitter, LinkedIn etc. pose a strong impact on every business; be it small or big. Regularly updating the social media benefits a brand for sure. More & more people know you, share the details. This is done not for selling purpose but for reference & to become a Known Name. It is very necessary. But, a big but; it is not the only option to rely on solely. Don’t target social media as the only option of promotion. Open yourself to other areas too & utilize them fully. After using all the options for a fixed time, you may compare & find out which was beneficial.
“Competition is necessary; a single player can never be the winner.”
All your visitors cannot be your customers When a visitor first visits your website; 99% of them don’t buy. So, where we should focus to get these 99% returns for a second visit & perform transaction. You can’t trace your visitors but yes, you may impact to return.
How to Do This? Keep your website up to date. Keep it dynamic & change the designs on every festive season. This will make customers feel that the providers are associated with the visitors.
Ethical Email Marketing Email marketing is used as a great communication channel to reach prospective customers. Businesses can not only find new customers but also retain existing customers through email marketing. A series of emails help customers to be updated with the companies’ news, services or products. Let’s focus on how to do ethical email marketing. ❖ Email marketing has a great potential to boost any business. But some marketers take the shortcut for success, but there is no shortcut for success. Your email ID may be blocked due to a lot of spamming activities which include sending mails in bulk on a list which is not opt-in. Never buy an email list. Put your time & effort to build an email list. ❖ Convince users that their database will be secure and also mention it in your company policy. Describe them why they should subscribe to your email list. Choose double opt-in process to build powerful email list. Also, do not use optin list of one product to send the mails of a different product. ❖ Provide an opt-out option to your email. Users should have choice to unsubscribe from your email list. Unsubscribe process must be easy and single step. ❖ Always mention the relevant & brief subject line. Don't use lengthy subject line & spamming words like discount, free, buy etc. ❖ Message in your email should be clear & useful for customers or prospects. Write your main points in opening sentences. Don't send multiple emails in a day, it will irritate subscribers. Email frequency is very important.
❖ Marketers should be aware of email marketing laws. To avoid spamming, manage & segment your email list regularly. ❖ CAN-SPAM Act: ● ● ● ●
Don't use false or misleading header information Don't use deceptive subject line Message must include valid physical addresses Give an opt-out or unsubscribe option to recipients
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/CAN-SPAM_Act_of_2003
Email Marketing For Small Business Every business these days needs a website, which explains your work and reliability. Use an email id in your contact information so that you can be easily tracked. You will get the inquiries through mail and reply them tooon mail. This is one of the best process to start the communication where you may easily impress your clients and make them permanent.
Event Planning Email is a relationship based medium and so the people that sign up for your email are your best prospects for coming to your event. If you are planning a good event make sure that you’re collecting those involved persons contact information. Email marketing is especially helpful for event planners because you can directly connect with your audiences.
Computer & Electronics Repair Email marketing is very effective tool for your computer & electronics repair business. Establish yourself as an expert who can meet the needs of the personal computer users. You need to be prepared to have customers bring their repair issues to you. With email marketing service you can reach your users & communicate with them easily.
Interior Designers People purchasing new homes can often be overwhelmed with the choices and possibilities in home decorating. Email marketing is one of the most effective methods to market interior design services online. Email marketing has the potential to influence target audiences everywhere, anytime.
Wedding Planner This is very tough job because you need to be up-to-date on wedding trends and fads, dress styles, color trends--almost everything. You can send your previous successful projects in email marketing proposal to those who need a wedding planner. This will be easy and by viewing your previous projects you will be awarded the project.
Photographer There are niches you can explore for photography: portraits of people and their pets, families, and homes; holiday events, birthday parties or; the possibilities are endless. Photographers should have a blog to showcase their work & build credibility with potential clients. You can send weekly emails with your best images & links to blog to show more for quality & style of work..
Florist Florists can stay in customers’ minds and ahead of the competition through the use of email reminders, email newsletters and email coupons or announcements.Email marketing is very cost-effective way which can help retain existing customers while also reaching new customers.
Hairstylist Hairstyling is a very popular business. Email marketing is a great way to build customer retention and loyalty. The newsletter may include promotions, news and all the informative posts you've been adding to your website or blog.
Financial Advisors Financial advisors have a need to connect with large group of potential clients, and email marketing can be an effective way to do just that. This will help people choose you as their financial planner.
Consultant To be a consultant, you need to have an expertise in something so you can market yourself as an advisor to others looking to work in that area. You can use this experience to help others do similar things without making the same mistakes that you made along the way.
Personal Trainer Email marketing is a great way for personal trainers and fitness professionals to attract and pull in more clients from the community. It’s quick to send emails and it’s quick to see results with real time reports. email marketing campaigns will get you more leads, referrals, and clients, positioned you as the top fitness expert in your area.
Editorial services. Here are some of the editorial services you can provide- Copy Editing, Proofreading, Indexing, Book doctoring, Ghostwriting, Copywriting, Book writing, Magazine article writing, Web page content provider. You can offer some of your best editing works in email newsletters to your target audience.
Accountant Email marketing for accountants is the best and most direct way for accounting professionals to advertise themselves to clients old and new. It also allows for personalization of not only the message but the subject line, which makes it even more likely that the recipient will open and read it. Accounting work includes balance sheets, income statements, and other financial reports on a monthly, quarterly, and/or annual basis, depending on the needs of the business.
How to choose right email marketing service provider? To get positive results from email marketing channel, you have to make sure that you are choosing a right Email marketing service provider. This should match your needs perfectly. If you are new to email marketing, then you have to do research about Email service provider (ESP). You must choose a good service provider that offers solutions & services which are relevant to your business. Take a look at some points before choosing an email marketing service provider:
Define your requirements Before choosing any service provider you have to define your requirements. Make a list of all your concerns: ❖ ❖ ❖ ❖ ❖ ❖
What is your marketing goal? What your business need? What is your budget? What plan best suits you- monthly package or pay only for what you use? What does your business want to achieve with email marketing? What level of support should your business need?
Market Search Before selecting a service provider, always do market research. This would help you to save more money. ❖ Make a list of some email marketing service providers & their features. ❖ Compare features & track what features fit your needs. ❖ Make sure provider offer a professional support to your business. ❖ Check features like beautiful templates, easy to use platform, mobile responsive designs, social media integration, email scheduling, tracking etc. ❖ Service provider’s help to ensure email are legally compliant with CAN-SPAM act. ❖ Is a demo available before transaction?
Cost ❖ When you are looking an email marketing service provider, you must be clear about their services & packages. ❖ You should make sure that there are no hidden charges. ❖ Most of service providers charge monthly, annually & pay as you go basis for their services. ❖ Choose plan that fits into your budget.
Deliverability ❖ You should choose a service provider which is white listed with all major ISPs like: AOL, Gmail, Yahoo, and outlook etc. ❖ Your service provider must provide full report about email delivering & able to report you which emails were not delivered & why. ❖ You must also find out that service provider offers advanced delivery tools. ❖ They should respond to complaints quickly & revert in professional manner. ❖ Service provider must be reputable.
Support ❖ An email marketing service provider should provide 24/7/365 support. ❖ In case of any problem, their professional support team must be efficient enough to resolve problem. ❖ You should check what kind of support is provided by the company. ❖ Today service providers offer the support in many ways like phone support, email, ticket system & live chat etc. ❖ Knowledge of technical support team must be very good, so they can resolve your queries almost instantly.
For your industry success, you should send different emails for different purpos on regular basis. You must be aware about different type of emails, this knowledge will help you choose most appropriate format. Here, we’ll discuss the different types of email.
1. Email Newsletter Every business should use email newsletter in email marketing strategy. Newsletter is the best way to send company news & improve brand awareness. Email newsletters should be sent on regular basis- weekly, monthly & quarterly. You can schedule newsletters to subscribers, & promote news, events regularly. Newsletters are a great way to build a relationship with subscribers and customers. It helps you to achieve goals, regular interaction with subscribers enable them to recognize your brand. You can include different type of content in your newsletter such as popular blog post, information about new event, offer or discount etc. You should create an eye catchy newsletter which contains content, images, calls to action, contact information & social media channels. Content in your newsletter should be valuable and informative to subscribers or readers.
2. Promotional Email Promotional or marketing emails are sent to promote product & service. These emails contain offer, coupons & sales to acquire customers. They could be informational like newsletters or announcements of new product. Promotional email should be short & sweet, no need a lot of explanation. You must create offer clear & add special graphics because customers don’t have time to read your email. Create a sense of urgency in your mail & add clear call to action like, “Shop Now” or “Buy Now” etc.
3. Transactional Email Transactional emails are expected messages that are received after a specific action has taken place. When a customer makes purchase on your website, you send an email to confirm order & give them further details. If you fill out a form to register for an event, then you receive a thank you email which includes further information. Other examples of transactional emails are: welcome message, account information, order or purchase status, payment confirmation, invoices etc. Transactional emails have high click through rate (CTR) & subscribers actively engaged with these emails.
4. Notification Emails Notification emails (also called alert or auto responder) are sent to notify the users or subscribers when an event is happened. To build interest & encourage participation, you can create email which includes your previous popular events. These emails include invitations, alerts, reminders & thank you message (after the event).
5. Lead Nurturing Emails These emails help you to get leads. A research indicates that lead nurturing emails generate an 8% CTR, which is more than regular email marketing CTR. You must send an email which educates subscribers. You should not be focus on sales; you should focus on how your service can solve customer’s problems. You must send emails that contain invitation like subscribe to blog, connect on social media channels & other places. Because the more you & your subscribers or clients are connected, more are the chance of deal.
A successful Email marketing campaign is very important to communicate and build relationships with subscribers or customers, gather important data, and help improve marketing ROI. You need to focus on best practices, avoid self-promotional pitch & pay attention to your subscribers to build, and execute effective email marketing campaigns. Most business owners don’t know how to do it right. To get more visibility, recognition, leads, &returns, your email campaign must be effective. Here, we’ll discuss about best email marketing practices.
Get Subscribers No subscribers, no campaign. Getting subscribers & build email list is the most important concern for marketers. So, first we need to focus on getting subscribers. Here are some ways to get more subscribers. ❖ There are some casual visitors who visit your blog; you can turn these visitors into subscribers by put a smart CTA (call to action) button on your blog like “ Like our blog? Click here to subscribe”. ❖ On-site Surveys can be very helpful to get updated contact details of existing & regular customers. Give a description about your survey, so they could engage with your survey. ❖ Pop-up forms or Sign-up forms on your relevant pages. Place email newsletter sign-up forms like “enter your email for newsletter or updates” on every relevant page on your website. Don’t just say “Subscribe Here”, Describe them why they should subscribe. Make sign up forms easy. ❖ Lead capturing form on landing page to collect more contact information such as name, company name, job title, email id, phone number, website url etc. and provide some educational information like eBook, guides, product demo, video etc.
Segmentation You’ve got subscribers, now its time to segment your subscribers list. Segmentation is a powerful practice for increasing the effectiveness of an email campaign. ❖ Segmentation is most important to send right message to right people. ❖ Segmentation gives a better idea about your subscribers & their needs which will make your campaign effective. ❖ Segmentation helps to reduce the number of unsubscribes & complaints, and generate higher open rates, click- through rates and conversion rate from email. ❖ Use subscriber data that you collect during opt-in process. ❖ You can segment customers & subscribers as per their age, location, interests, demographic area, industries etc. ❖ Segment subscribers according to their behaviour such as how many times they
have purchased or used any service, and their last visit, length of time they spent on site, which type of offer they download etc.
Design ❖ Keep the width of email template under 600 pixels for desktop design to ensure subscribers won’t have to scroll. ❖ Create a consistent experience, look & feel for your email and the landing page or website. ❖ Place the most important information first because most of people have very less time to read your full message.
❖ Keep it short & simple. If you have more information to convey, just give link to a page on your website where subscribers can learn more. ❖ Use bullet points & heading, so that subscribers can easily understand your information. ❖ Make sure your email looks good with images & without images. Email must be mobile responsive. ❖ Provide a clickable preheader which summarize your message.
Subject Line Subject line is one of the most important elements of an successful email marketing campaign. Subject line is the first part of email which recipients will view in their mail box. The subject line tells what you offer in your email newsletter. Studies shows, approx64% of people open an email because of subject line. Here are some tips for subject line which can make your campaign effective & successful. ❖ Subject line should be eye-catchy & promising to get recipients attention. It has to make sense. ❖ You must keep it within 50 characters. Make it memorable & actionable. ❖ Never use recipients name & promotional words like “free”, “urgent”, “order now” “deal” or “discount” in your subject line. ❖ Don’t place your company name in subject, put this in “from address”. ❖ Don’t use punctuation, funky words, repetition & CAPITAL letters (only capitalize first letter of word).
Content ❖ An email is a way to communicate with your customers. You must deliver useful, informative & relevant content according your target audiences. Your content must keep “trust & context”. Customers engage easily with relevant, interesting & personalized content. You must offer right content to right people. ❖ Content of email newsletter should be concise & clear because readers have less time to view your message. Don’t use sales pitch,Do use valuable. Subscribers only purchase a product from you when they find it valuable for them. So, always offer a content which can solve subscribers problems or queries. ❖ Your message must contain text & images in proper manner, don’t use a lot of images ( 80% text & 20% images). Use Alt tag for your image which describes it. Your message must include an opt-out option or unsubscribe link and it should be one click process. Make it easy to find. ❖ Don’t follow “batch & blast” method for your email campaign. It can lead to high unsubscribe rate because subscribers may not be engage with your message. Put yourself in the role of subscriber. To make your campaign successful, there is only one weapon- “Valuable Content & Opt-in Database”.
Calls-to-Action (CTA) ❖ You must add an action oriented & relevant call-to-action (CTA) button in your email newsletter. ❖ Using of big, colourful CTA button can help you to get conversions. Linking CTA to relevant landing pages. So, subscribers know what they’ll get when to click the button.
❖ It is a way to invite subscribers to take an action which avoid spamming. ❖ Proper color decision for buttons and place them either at start or end of email message. ❖ Make sure calls-to-action are immediately noticeable when a user quickly looks your content. It must be visible, even with images turned off.
Social Media Channels We can’t avoid social media platform; we have to use power of social media & using them in right way will increase your reach & your brand loyalty. ❖ Social media buttons like Facebook, Linkedin, Twitter, and Google+ must be placed in your email newsletter. ❖ You should make your campaign sharable on social media channels. So, your customers can forward it to friends or colleagues and share it on social media. ❖ Only reliable way to get the promotion through sharing, with a bigger and bigger population. ❖ Give subscribers a reason to share your content by providing valuable & helpful information in email campaign. ❖ Studies shows that, email which include social media buttons have 158% higher CTR.
Email Deliverability Deliverability rate is the percentage of email messages delivered to your recipient’s inboxes versus the total number of messages sent. It shows how many emails are soft bounced& hard bounced. Every marketer wants a good deliverability. Here are some best practices to improve email deliverability rate: ❖ Maintain your email list regularly. Clean your list & remove hard bounce contacts. ❖ Use double opt-in process to add a subscriber into your email list (click the confirmation link after initial opt-in). With double opt-in, deliverability rate will be high & unsubscribe rate will be low. It is a way to build a strong email list. ❖ Make it a habit to update your contact list every 6 months. Contact list older than 6 month is considered stale and of little use. ❖ Welcome messages to new signups & increase engagement with subscribers. It builds long way relationship. ❖ Don’t use batch & blast method to avoid low email delivery. Perform bulk mailing with small chunks of contacts instead of shooting on a list of lakhs of email ids. ❖ Purge the emails that have not been used for long time. ❖ Don’t use attachments in your email, include links. ❖ Email message must contain an unsubscribe link.
Evaluate Campaign To achieve good results from email marketing campaign, campaign evaluation is required. Here are some elements to test & evaluate an email marketing campaign. ❖ Check the subject line ❖ Ensure that the content, images & media looks good
❖ Test CTA(Call To Action) ❖ A/B testing is good practice for better conversion ❖ Campaign should be mobile friendly & display clearly on different devices ❖ Don’t let the reader scroll to view the full mail. Try to keep it brief ❖ Preview testing is necessary for good email deliverability
Track Results After sending email campaign, it’s time to track your campaign. To track your results, there are some important factors such as opens, clicks, bounce rate, unsubscribers, deliverability rate & conversions etc. We’ll discuss all these factors in our next chapter. Use these details to understand prospect interaction, improve next campaigns & improve ROI.
To ensure your campaign success, you must track your results. There are some factors that play a key role in your campaign success. We’ll discuss about some factors which provide valuable information; it will help you to measure success.
Open Rate Open rate is percentage of recipients who opened email. It is calculated by dividing number of emails opened by total number of emails delivered. So, Open Rate = number of emails opened / number of emails delivered But, this is not a reliable factor for measuring campaign success. There are two types of opens- Unique opens & Total opens. Example: A open mail 3 times Bopen mail 7 times C open mail 1 time Total open = 11 Total unique open = 3
Click Through Rate It is calculated by dividing number of clicks (Links) by total number of emails delivered. There are two types of clicks- Unique & Total.
CTR = number of clicks / number of emails delivered CTR indicates how relevant your content is, high number of clicks indicates that your offer or message is relevant & engaging. CTR varies for different type of emails.
Delivery Rate Delivery rate is the percentage of emails delivered in recipient’s mailbox. It is calculated by subtracting bounces from total number of email sent then dividing it by total number of email sent.
Delivery Rate = (number of email sent - number of bounces) / no. of email sent Delivery rate is very important factor for measuring campaign success. If your delivery rate is very low then you must examine your email list, subject line of email & content of message. You should focus on delivery rate, because it decides your campaign success.
Bounce Rate Bounce rate is the percentage of number of emails that are not delivered to recipient’s inbox.
Bounce Rate = number of emails not delivered / no. of email sent
This factor is very useful to check problem with email list. There are two type of bounces - Soft bounce & Hard bounce Soft bounce is temporary problem. it happens when recipients inbox is full or server is temporarily unable to receive the mail or the mail is rejected by the recipient due to filters active.
Hard bounceis permanent failure to deliver an email. Emails never get delivered. It is due to invalid or non-existent email address. You must remove these type of email address from your list instantly. Some of the ESP help inactivate these addresses and the 2nd time the mails are scheduled, the mails are not delivered to the hard bounce email ids.
Conversion Rate It is calculated by number of conversions divided by number of email sent. A conversion could be filling out a lead generation form or place an order. Conversion rate determine
the effectiveness of an email campaign. High conversion rate depend on factors like actionable calls to action & quality landing page.
Conversion Rate = number of conversions / number of email sent
Unsubscribe Rate People who don’t want to receive emails from your brand can unsubscribe from your list anytime through an easy unsubscription process. To keep your unsubscribe rate low, send useful & engaging information that will interest subscribers. Bulk mailing practice may also contribute increasing unsubscribe rate. If your unsubscribe rate is increasing, find out why people leave & adjust your campaign accordingly subscribers.
Revenue Measurement Revenue or ROI measurement of an email campaign is calculated by dividing total revenue generated by number of email sent. This factor is best for ecommerce marketers.
Revenue per email sent = Total revenue / number of email sent
It is very important to track ROI. An email campaign which has high success rate, well open rate, & good CTR could have low ROI. There are two choices- first, batch & blast your campaign but there is a great possibility that your ROI will be low. But if you invest your time & effort to make your campaign more effective, it will surely help you to improve your ROI. So, these are the tracking factors which will help you to measure success of an email campaign. Tracking of click-through rates (CTR) and conversion rates is the best way to monitor subscriber or prospect engagement and interest. After your campaign you must check some question which can help you in your next campaign:
Which types of email drove the most people? Which CTA attracted the more visitors? Which links achieved more clicks? Which subject lines got more opens? Why people left from your email list? Which offer gained more conversions?
CONCLUSION Now you know a lot about email marketing! while practicing email marketing it is very necessary to follow all the basic rules and policies to receive a better result and conversion. Its not like we don’t know the rules, but we appear too lazy to apply these rules and then we have to suffer. Better approach is not to handle everything yourself, make a team and divide your work among the team. A dedicated team working in one direction gives fruitful results. Summary is prepare a complete professional mail and mail it only to your opt-in subscribers. No one likes uninvited guests and your mail when sent to a contact list which is not opt-in, your mail appears as uninvited guest. Forget this approach, never ever use this. Success never seeks shortcuts, so choose a long path.
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