The Ultimate Guide to Email Marketing Strategy

Email Marketing Solutions

Among so many new communication channels, email might seem a bit old fashioned. The first emails were sent in 1971; the first email from space came 20 years later and the movie “You’ve Got Mail” was released in 1998. Compared to Facebook (hatched in February 2004), Instagram (first photo posted in July 2010), and multimedia messaging app Snapchat (live in 2012), email is the great-grandfather of online communication.

No wonder there are some people who have claimed “email is dead” or at least sounded its death knell.

However, according to a 2019 survey by the West Corp., 82% of customers prefer email for company notifications, and 77% prefer email as the option for questions and issues. And, in a 2018 Narvar survey about online shopping, 83% of respondents said they expect regular email updates about their purchases.

Combined with the surge in content marketing, inbound marketing and marketing automation, email marketing has proved beyond a reasonable doubt that it is a critical marketing tool to communicate with and nurture leads as well as to retain and educate customers.

However, with the noise, incredible volume of spam and more advanced email filters, creating messages that reach a recipient’s inbox – and are read – is becoming more difficult. A successful email marketing strategy must be carefully planned, executed and measured.

At its most basic, effective email marketing solutions considers your target audience, their preferences and their needs, and also attempt to persuade recipients to take action to help you achieve your overall marketing and business goals.

Types of Emails Your Business Could Send

Verify your email sends

One way to check your email list health and clean your list is using an email verification service, such as NeverBounce or BrightVerify, where you can test the validity of an email address without actually sending an email to it.

ClickBack compares your email list against known email lists, and also pings servers to verify whether email addresses are valid.

Savoir Faire works with a service-oriented client that has a large email database. Their services aren’t designed to be used regularly, so some of these addresses have not been emailed in years. While the list accumulated new emails over the years, the client rarely used the list for email marketing/nurturing purposes.

If they don’t verify those addresses before sending their next email, they risk high bounce rates if emails go bad. They also risk high abuse reports or spam complaints if people don’t remember they signed up – or simply don’t like the contents of the email. Both of these can lead the service provider to limit their ability to send email.

Once a limit has been imposed on your account, your email service provider can even manually review your campaign sends, slowing the process.

List verification services flag generic or role-based email addresses, which are used to manage generic inquiries and are overseen by several people across departments, because they often result in high complaint rates and have low open rates. Email list verification services will provide you with a report of invalid and risky email addresses that you can remove from your list.

Use permission reminders

Have you ever received an email from a business, but don’t remember how the heck you ended up on their email list? It happens all the time. Permission reminders are exactly what they sound like. They help people remember why they are receiving an email from a business.

It is usually located in the footer of an email, and can help prevent businesses from getting reported for spam. Keep them short and to the point. You may also want to link your permission reminders to unsubscribe/manage your subscription links, so your readers know that they are in full control.

Just follow the rules

When done right, email marketing campaigns can be an extremely successful method for generating and nurturing leads throughout the buyer’s journey. According to the DMA, “When it comes to purchases made as a result of receiving a marketing message, email has the highest conversion rate (66%), when compared to social, direct mail and more.” If you can consistently deliver great content to those who are truly interested in what you have to say, then it will be hard to fail.

Reconnect with inactive email subscribers — or drop them from your list

Bigger isn’t always better, especially when describing your subscriber count. Of course, you want to be actively growing your email list; but you also want to be sure your list encompasses people who are interested in your email content and are engaged with you rather than “dead” subscribers, names on your list who have not engaged with (opened, responded or clicked) any of your emails in at least six months.

Subscribers could have become unengaged for a variety of reason:

• They are no longer interested in emails from your company but have not yet unsubscribed from your list
• They no longer check the email address with which they used to subscribe
• They are interested in your content and emails but have become too busy to engage
• Your emails have found their way into a spam or junk folder
• The timing of your emails doesn’t coincide with their expectations
• Your content or offers no longer resonate
• They completed a transaction or made a purchase elsewhere a no longer need your service/product

Having a large number of unengaged or inactive subscribers can affect email deliverability. Internet Service Providers (ISPs) monitor metrics associated with engagement and may divert emails to spam or delay delivery if those metrics are not compelling. While delayed delivery may not be as concerning as being flagged as a spammer or having emails relegated to junk mail, these delays could affect ROI especially if an email is time-sensitive.

Even worse, an email address among your unengaged subscribers could become classified as a spam trap and sending to this email address could land you on a blacklist. Spam traps are usually email addresses set up by a company or individual for the purpose of fighting spam. 

These email addresses are not actively used but might be used for subscriptions. Spam traps can also be expired email addresses that a company reactivates as a spam trap; expired domains purchased by an anti-spam organization to set up as a trap; or traps set up by organizations selling email lists. Unfortunately, these spam traps can make their way onto your list, putting your email reputation at risk.

Saying goodbye

Dropping email subscribers can be difficult. You’ve worked hard to grow your list and watching the subscriber number go down can feel like defeat. But sometimes, cleaning your list is the best way to improve your performance and your deliverability.

Just like with plants, regular pruning can correct irregularities and improve health, but it must be done at the right time using the right techniques. Examine your email list periodically for inactive subscribers, attempt to re-engage them and then, if they remain inactive, remove them.

Email Layout Design

Though statistics vary for different industries, on average, 46% of emails are now opened on mobile devices (Hubspot) and 54% are opened on mobile first (Cynthia Price), making it very likely your readers are viewing your email on a smartphone rather than desktop device.

However, it is still important to design your emails for all devices, using responsive layouts to increase the likelihood your email will be read and clicked rather than abandoned.

• Watch your use of background images. Some email clients such as Outlook, will not display them.
• Include a pre-header or preview text if your email uses a header image or logo which would take up a large portion of a mobile screen.
• Try to keep your header less than 150 pixels high so that your main content is more likely to display on smaller devices.
• Break up large chunks of text with images and consider linking to longer content hosted on your website. Remember to include “alt text” on your email images just as you would on a website to help identify images that might not be downloaded or displayed.
• Balance your images and text. An email that is overly image-heavy can be flagged as spam.

Seven tips to create email subject lines that work

There are a number of factors that can impact your email open rate. Some of these; who the email is sent from, the cleanliness of your list, and the day/time the email was sent, can be manipulated and controlled to a degree. There are however, external factors and limitations sometimes imposed by the email sending provider that limit your control.

On the other hand, you have complete control over your subject line and it can make the biggest impact on the success or failure of your campaign. You can choose the general format, the words, length and the inclusion of personalization as appropriate.

Consider the volume of emails you receive per day. Now think about how you clean out your inbox on a daily basis. Do you delete based on a quick perusal of senders and subject lines, deleting anything that sounds spammy without even a glance at the content?

Based on the report by Adestra, which analyzed information from over 3 billion attempted email sends, “thank you” (or variation of this) had the highest above average rates whereas “early bird,” “white paper” and other words that might be found in offer-based emails had the lowest rates. This occurs because transactional emails often include “thank you” in the subject. Whereas offer emails are unsolicited and are likely to receive less engagement.

Keep in mind however, that no single keyword guarantees results. Context plays a key role and can elicit a response that is different than what you intended. It can be tricky to navigate through this successfully.

As Adestra illustrates, while many sales can be affected by discount rates, the discounts can have the opposite effect on the email effectiveness. While buyers might purchase something that is on sale for 50% off, including “50% off” in an email subject line can turn people off, either because they think the offer is bogus or because the email is viewed as spam. However these emails, if they pass the open test, have lower unsubscribe rates and higher click rates.

Here are some tips for compelling email subject lines:

However, creating great email isn’t the only important step. Once you have crafted an email people want to read, you need a way to send it. If you are using a content management system (CMS) such as WordPress or Joomla, you might be aware of plugins and extensions that will add newsletter functionality to your site, some of which include jNews, Acymailing, RSMail, and SendPress. If you aren’t using a CMS, you might consider utilizing an open source system that uses your website’s PHP mail function.

Newsletter add-ons such as these are attractive because they allow you to manage your newsletters and subscribers right within your CMS. But beware, using systems that leverage your website’s php mail function can affect your overall email deliverability and your website reputation. 

Third-party systems protect your website and work to maintain the highest possible delivery rates. Additionally, they provide integrations for your CMS and website allowing you to display easy subscription and sign up forms for your visitors. These systems also offer robust reporting and analysis tools that are lacking in many of the plugins/extensions.

Using the proper email marketing solution provider that best suits your needs in terms of functionality, features, security, design capabilities, etc. can have a huge impact on the success of your email marketing strategy as a whole.

Email Marketing Solutions Providers Comparison

Among so many new social media channels, email marketing might seem a bit old-fashioned. But this tactic, the old tool in the marketing toolbox, plays an important part in building a strong content marketing or inbound marketing plan. Email allows you to nurture new leads as well as communicate in a timely manner with existing customers. And, in general, email marketing, compared to the cost of print and broadcast advertising is extremely cost effective.

According to eMarketer, email is also the preferred method of communicating with businesses, according to 69.7% of U.S. internet users. AND, people who receive product offers through emails spend 138% more than people who don’t receive email offers. (Source: Convince and Convert)

But even if users want your emails, you must still create emails they want to read.

Social media integration improves your click-through rate. According to MarketingLand, adding a way to share your emailed content can double your click-through-rate (CTR) when read by users of Facebook and Twitter.

That’s a lot to think about when creating your email marketing strategy.

Fortunately, email marketing service providers offer features that help address the above challenges. Many offer free customizable, mobile-friendly templates, A/B testing of subject lines and other content, list management and segmentation tools, social media integration and, finally, reporting tools to analyze it all.

We compared the features of several services, and for the most part, as you can see in the comparison chart, these all offer many of the same basic features.

Constant Contact and iContact do not offer a Free level of pricing. And, some of the more advanced features such as Drip Campaigns/Workflows and Event Management are part of their “pro” or “plus” systems that are more costly.

MailChimp, Zoho and Vertical Response all offer Free plans for accounts with a limited number of subscribers and limited number of monthly emails. Advanced features in these plans have additional fees or require upgrades.

The least robust of the systems is Vertical Response unless you purchase their “Classic” addition, which has been in existence for the past 13 years and is a more fully developed email marketing solution.

Zoho and MailChimp are nearly identical in their features and integrations. However, a great feature in MailChimp is their image editing tools. MailChimp’s integration with Aviary allows users to crop, resize and rotate images easily while creating their emails rather than switching to PhotoShop or other image editing software. There are also more advanced tools for image enhancement and photo effects.

As with many services and software solutions, your needs must be carefully evaluated against features and pricing. And even, at times, your comfort level with a particular interface. The nice thing about the free services and the trial for Constant Contact and iContact is that you can test drive each without any financial commitment.

Email Marketing Analysis and Stats

Email Marketing Analysis

Email is an integral part of today’s content marketing and marketing automation strategies, and contributes greatly to the success of each by maintaining customer relationships, nurturing leads and even attracting new contacts through sharing.

As such, you want to be sure you are sending the right content, at the right time to the right people while walking the fine line between too many and too few emails and interactions and simultaneously avoid spammy subject lines and content, and regularly prune your list of bad addresses.

Engagement

Engagement can be measured with open rates and click rates, which are fairly easy to track and view. The open rate indicates how many recipients opened your email. But take this number with a grain of salt; open rates can be affected by preview panes (typically used in Outlook) in an email client or recipients who do not download images. The click-through rate is the percentage of clicks compared to the number of emails delivered.

High open rates can indicate that your subject lines were compelling or that your business or brand is a trusted or reputable sender. High click rates can let you know a particular piece of content or an offer resonated with or interested recipients.

If an email has a high open rate but low click through rate, there is an indication the content may have missed the mark… this time. This is where the click to open rate may be valuable. This measures the percentage of recipients who clicked a link divided by the number of opens.

You should also measure these metrics over time versus individual emails or campaigns. If your opens and clicks are declining with each email, you might conclude that you are sending emails too often resulting in email fatigue.

Engagement can also be measured using the unsubscribe rate and spam reports. These lost contacts indicate contact churn or the rate at which users opt-out of your mailings. While 0% contact churn would be ideal, it is unlikely. However, of the two methods a recipient can choose to stop receiving your emails, it is better for him/her to unsubscribe than to mark your email as spam thus impacting your email reputation.

Unsubscribe rates can be deceptively low as many will simply mark an email as spam rather than taking time to unsubscribe. To avoid high numbers of spam reports, make the unsubscribe process easy.

Going Deeper: Analyzing Conversions and Revenue

The above metrics give you a good sense overall about the performance of your email marketing. But to dive deeper, you can also look at conversion rates and revenue per email.

A conversion is not the same as a click. Conversion rates are tied to specific actions such as signing up, completing a form or making a purchase. If recipients repeatedly arrive from your email to your landing page and fail to convert, then it might be time to review the landing page for issues or inconsistencies in messaging or user experience barriers.

Revenue per email is the ROI of your email marketing. Simply, this is the revenue directly earned as a result of the email divided by the number of emails sent. The analysis of email marketing programs and strategy beyond what is outlined herein can take a number of different directions. You can measure on the provider’s platform, through integration with analytics like Google and also via integration with a customer relationship marketing system or CRM.

Unfortunately, marketers often think little, if at all, about transactional emails, beyond delivering the necessary facts to the recipient. Worse, they are often plain text emails that were pre-written as part of an e-commerce solution or written by the IT or development department.

Alternatively, we invest a lot of time in crafting the perfect bulk email messages to nurture segmented leads, seeking ways to further engagement and conversion as well as relationships. We A/B test, we measure, and we refine in an attempt to improve performance and grow click and open rates.

But don’t our transactional emails deserve the same love, attention and measurement?

Good open rates for bulk emails range between 15% and 20%. But transactional emails can have “8x the open and engagement rate of traditional marketing emails,” according to Campaign Monitor. These emails contain information that a user is expecting and very interested in. Recipients may even interact with the email several times and save it to reference at a later date.

Transactional emails are a great opportunity to build trust and create more engagement and drive additional purchases.

Branding and user experience

Transactional should use the same fonts, colors, imagery and voice as other marketing emails as well as the website from which they originated rather than plain text, generic, downright blah emails. Using the same templates as other promotional emails and digital assets allows you to deliver a consistent brand experience to users, which according to Forrester, is a prime contributor to establishing trust, which in turn drives loyalty and revenue.

Transactional emails should be given as much consideration as other promotional emails. With high open rates, these emails are a great opportunity to increase trust, engagement and conversions.

As with all digital marketing tactics, transactional email marketing should be measured, tested and refined to produce the best results and work harder for your business.