Download Everything You Need to Know

The “Everything You Need to Know”
Guide to Email Marketing
Table of Contents
Introduction
2
Getting Started with Email Marketing
3
How to Build a Successful Email List
8
Part Art, Part Science: Writing
the Perfect Email
10
Maintaining Your Email Marketing List
14
Measuring Email Marketing Efforts
17
Increasing Email Conversion Rates
with List Segmentation
20
Taking Email Marketing to Infinity
and Beyond
25
Ready to Hit “Send” on Your
Strategic Campaign?
28
Introduction
Have you heard? Email marketing is more powerful than ever!
Despite the constant changes with the devices we use and the ways we communicate,
email is a marketing tactic that’s here to stay.
DID YOU KNOW?
Email has one of the highest ROIs in marketing, returning
$1 spent.
(DIRECT MARKETING ASSOCIATION)
$44.25 for every
73% of enterprise companies say that email marketing is the top marketing channel
(RELEVANCY GROUP)
The email marketing industry is expected to grow to $12
than 192 billion emails sent
rate of 10% (THE RADICATI GROUP, INC.)
billion by 2016, with more
every day by then. This is an annual growth
But, as with all successful marketing channels, you must figure out how to stand out from the crowd
and rise above the noise.
Now is the time to become a skilled email marketer.
You know this, and that’s why you’re here.
This is The “Everything You Need to Know” Guide to Email Marketing. From identifying goals
to building your list, maintaining it, measuring it and setting it up for the future, it’s all right here.
Let us walk you through the process of becoming a skilled email marketer.
It’s easier than you think.
2
Getting Started with Email Marketing
Email is a proven marketing channel.
The complexity of email is simplified by the functionality of the leading service providers, making
it inexpensive to run and the ROI huge! You recognize that, and you’re eager to achieve similar ROI
for your business.
What you want to know is:
•
Where do I begin?
•
How do I make it work for my business?
•
How do I get started with email marketing?
If “crafting an email marketing strategy” sounds too intimidating to touch, know you’re not alone.
But remember, email works because it’s personal and it’s relevant. Let that guide you as you build
a plan around four simple questions.
YOUR AUDIENCE
CONTENT TYPES
EMAIL FREQUENCY
YOUR VOICE
3
Who Is Your Audience?
You have visions of email marketing success in your head.
But whom do you envision reading your messages?
If you don’t have a current email list, consider who you want to attract. How do you envision using
email marketing to grow your business? You’re starting fresh ­— that’s a great position.
If you do have a current email subscriber list, who are these subscribers and how did they opt in? Are
they past customers? Or are they new subscribers who provided an email address in exchange for a
downloadable resource or contest entry?
If your email subscribers match up with real customers, you can use your current prospect or email
list to get a clearer understanding of who your audience is. To get started, all you need are the
names and physical addresses of your prospects. This will allow you to craft more targeted messaging.
Customer Analysis Reports or Portrait Reports are designed to analyze hundreds of different variables
and elements, giving you the demographics and psychographics of your target audience, while also
appending new data. This provides a whole new understanding of the consumers you’re trying to reach!
4
Below are some of the reports businesses have at their disposal:
Look-Alike Report: A look-alike report usually applies approximately 20 important demographic
elements including age, gender, race, education, income, marital status, family size, presence of
children, and home ownership.
Segmentation Report: Often using a specific segmentation framework, this type of report will
break your audience into identifiable segments, homing in on your best customers. Often marketers
use this type of report to put names to a set of behaviors.
Data Portrait Analysis: A data portrait analysis provides a detailed view to help you learn about
the demographic and lifestyle elements that best contrast, define and describe your customers.
Later, we’ll show you how to use this information to generate more advanced
customer segmentation. By identifying who your audience members are, you
also identify their motivations for subscribing and the type of messages that
will keep them engaged.
What Content Types Will You Use?
Once you’ve identified your audience, how will you use email
marketing to engage them?
Obviously, you’ll want to send emails about new offers and content that inspires past customers
to return. But what else can you send?
5
Types of Content may include:
Customer
success stories
Media mentions
Event recaps
New product
information
Product hacks
Content published
on your blog
“How to” articles
Branded videos
(fun ways to use old
products better)
Industry trend
insights
Founder/employee
profiles
Deals, discounts,
promotions!
The opportunities for content types are endless, but don’t pick just one!
Keep your subscribers interested by rotating content types during your
email cycle. Maybe it’s a video every month or a trend report every quarter.
Give them something to look forward to and something fresh to read that
is relevant to them.
6
How Often Will Emails Go Out?
You know “who” and “what,” but how about “when”?
There’s no perfect frequency for email marketing. If you have a highly relevant email, then frequency
is not always a factor because people want to read what you’re sending. Instead, you’ll want to test
what works best for your audience and focus on providing value. You may find you can comfortably
share a weekly Friday message to send subscribers into the weekend with hot deals. Or, you may
opt to send a monthly email that touches on industry news or presents your promotions for the
next month.
That’s okay!
As a general rule, aim to send something at least once per week to maintain top-of-mind awareness.
Strive to be the always helpful, always informative friend in their inbox. Be the email they can’t wait
to read.
What Is Your Voice?
Is your brand happy or serious? Are you conservative or do you live
on the edge? Do customers find you warm and personable,
or authoritative and reserved?
Just like people, businesses have distinct voices and personalities. These elements help brands
become recognizable and familiar to customers. Think of your favorite song. How many notes do you
need before you can identify it? Not many, right? Close your eyes and imagine your grandmother’s
apple pie. Can you smell it?
This “emotional DNA” is essential to your brand and should be maintained through all customer touch
points. You can’t expect to write a quirky email newsletter if your website is super corporate and straightlaced. You’ll send mixed messages to your audience and fragment your brand persona in their mind.
By understanding your audience, your messaging, your frequency and your voice, you’ll begin
building the framework for email marketing success.
7
How to Build a Successful Email List
Building your email list takes time, strategy and dedication. Below are some
tips to help you build a successful email list from the ground up.
Enable Your Website To Attract Subscribers For You
8
1
Use Strategic, Obvious Sign-up Locations
This makes sense, right? If gaining subscribers is a priority, the sign-up to do so should
be in a prominent location, on prominent pages.
2
Keep the Form Simple
Remove roadblocks! Encourage email subscriptions by making it easy for visitors to get
on your list. When designing your sign-up form, only ask for information you absolutely
need — first name, last name and email address. Additional information can be collected
later. If you want to ask more questions, keep them brief with 3-5 questions that are
contextual. If you’re an automotive dealer, don’t ask for shoe size but ask for a timeline on
when they might make a purchase. Consumers will answer questions as they deem
necessary for you to drive relevant content. So, if you ask it … use it.
3
Highlight Benefits
Attract more email subscribers by not only providing a prominent sign-up location, but by
providing an enticing reason for them to sign up. Let them know they will receive special
offers, they’ll hear about news first or they’ll have access to a special resource section
on your site. Treating your visitors as VIPs is a smart strategy and provides reasons to not
only subscribe but to remain a subscriber for the long term.
4
Be Upfront
Explain generally how often subscribers can expect emails and what types of communications
they’ll receive. You don’t need to state your frequency but give consumers an idea.
5
Use Contests and Promotions
Having periodic contests is a great way to increase your subscriber list. Remember customers
who sign up for contests may not be as responsive as “normal” subscribers, as they may
have joined under the lure of a free iPad and only supplied an email address for the prize.
Because of this difference, they may warrant a different email strategy.
6
Consider Pop-ups
Yes, pop-ups may be obtrusive. Yes, they may turn off some of your audience. However,
pop-ups are also really effective and can provide that much-needed nudge to encourage
someone to take action. Variations in size, location and triggering action of the pop-up can
all be tested to find the best combination to generate results.
7
Use a Welcome Email
A welcome email is like a face-to-face interview with your prospective new customer, and as
with interviews, you only get one chance to make a first impression. Welcome emails get
high open rates, so make the most of the opportunity by presenting attractive offers.
This initial communication in the email relationship should confirm the subscription and
say thank you! The from name and overall look and feel should reflect your brand and set
up recognition for future emails. Be sure to outline the benefits of being a subscriber, and
inform and set expectations about the frequency, timing and content of your email program.
There is a lot your new prospect may not know about your site or your brand. Welcome
emails should be sent in real time, shortly after the customer signs up.
8
Make It Part of the Sales Cycle
A prominent email sign-up box is important, but it shouldn’t be the only way in which you
are collecting email addresses from your audience. Ask customers to provide an email address
at checkout to opt into special deals and promotions, link to a form in your email signature, offer
freebies or use direct mail marketing to encourage new prospects to join your list.
Leverage Off-Line List Building Opportunities
If your business has retail or brick-and-mortar locations, use strategies to
encourage shoppers to subscribe at the point-of-purchase. This may include
a sales associate requesting an email address to follow up with coupons
and offers or sweepstakes and contest entries.
9
Part Art, Part Science:
Writing the Perfect Email
On the one hand, email messages must be
succinct. They’re only a few sentences.
Easy, right?
On the other hand, email messages must be succinct.
The right few sentences must compel someone to open them, read them and act on them.
Not so easy, right?
In fact, it takes practice, and strong copywriting skills. Craft the perfect marketing message
by following these five steps:
1. Write to the Medium and Audience
Email, more than other marketing channels, is intimate.
When you send an email to a subscriber, you’re contacting them via a very personal place — their
inbox. You’re mixed in with other important messages from friends, family members and colleagues.
Respect that relationship.
Respect your recipients by keeping their uniqueness and interests top of mind.
Ask yourself:
•
•
•
•
•
•
How did they opt in to your list? Are they subscribers only or have they made
a purchase in the past?
What are their interests?
What motivates them?
What are they likely to be doing when they receive your message?
What would make them stop what they’re doing to open your message?
What pains are they experiencing, and how can you portray yourself as the solution?
Use the Customer Analysis Reports, or Portrait Reports outlined earlier to gain a deeper understanding
of your subscribers’ demographics, interests and behaviors. The more you can keep these elements
top-of-mind in your messaging, the more effective your email will be.
10
2. Write a Killer Subject Line
We cannot overstate the importance of a finely crafted email subject line.
Your email subject line determines whether your message is opened and read or immediately deleted
and ignored. Because of that importance, spend an equal amount of time writing your subject line
as the rest of your email marketing message.
Make it count.
64
33
64% of people say they
open an email because
of the subject line.
33% of email recipients
open email based
on subject line alone.
Personalized subject lines
are 22.2% more likely
to be opened.
(CHADWICK MARTIN BAILEY)
(CONVINCEANDCONVERT.COM)
(ADESTRA JULY 2012 REPORT).
%
%
22.2
%
The most effective email subject lines are short and descriptive. They provide the reader with a reason
to open the message and explore further. Find the balance between being engaging enough to stand
out in someone’s inbox and not being so overly cheesy you are ignored.
3. Write a Succinct Message
The body of your email should be as direct, succinct and compelling as the
subject line you’ve paired with it.
Think of how you read emails. You don’t read them at all. You scan them looking for the benefit,
the offer, the “so what.”
Your audience behaves the same.
11
Craft emails to be scannable, using bullets, icons, pictures, headings, subheadings, and additional
formatting elements to allow a reader to get the gist of your message without focusing on every word.
Be clever enough to grab attention but don’t get stuck there. Too many attempts at humor, or too
many puns, will cause your audience to lose interest or get confused. Catch their eye, but use
simple, descriptive and direct language to convey your message.
When writing, be conscious of the voice and personality being used. As discussed earlier, the voice
and personality should reflect your brand. Will it be personal or formal? Will it be serious
or playful? Will it sound like it’s coming from a friend or will it read like an urgent message? The voice
you choose will be deliberate based on the audience for the piece and the relationship they have
with your brand.
4. Present the Call to Action
It’s not enough to simply present the offer — compel the reader to act
with a strong call to action.
This is where you get readers to download that ebook, to subscribe to that newsletter or to click the
button you want them to click.
Tell readers what it is you want them to do — whether it is to register, to call, to subscribe, to join,
to visit … whatever it is. If you don’t tell them, they don’t know what to do with the rest of the
information you’re providing.
5. Control Your Triggered and Transactional Messages
A transactional message is one that may be thought of as system-generated,
and, unfortunately, that is all too often the case.
Take control of these communications back from IT! When a user takes a desired action on your site,
such as making a purchase or downloading a white paper or case study, the email they receive to
confirm their action or deliver their materials should reflect the same voice and look and feel as your
regular marketing communications. These behavior-driven automated campaigns have the potential
for huge ROI, so don’t be afraid of utilizing up to 20 percent of the email for cross- or up-sell content.
12
Anatomy of an Email
From: Acxiom
1
To: [email protected]
Subject: Hate Telemarketers? Be a Marketer Who Segments
2
3
TIPS & TRICKS to
Segmenting Your Marketing Campaign
4
Susan, do you ever wonder why telemarketers
frustrate you so much?
It’s not just because they always call during dinner
(which they do). It’s because they’re not actually talking
5
to you. They’re reading from a script, the same script
they’ve read off countless times before. And you can tell.
So don’t do the same to your customers. Use customer
segmentation to always send the right message
to the right person at the right time.
6
How can you make customer segmentation work for you?
Keep reading!
7
HELP ME REACH THE RIGHT PEOPLE!
© 2015 Acxiom | 601 E. Third Street, P.O. Box 8190 | Little Rock, AR 72203-8190 | 888.3ACXIOM
unsubscribe | privacy policy
8
1
From Name
3
Headline
5
Voice
7
Call to Action
2
Subject Line
4
Personalization
6
Images
8
Social Integration
13
Maintaining Your Email Marketing List
The success of your email marketing program
depends on a quality list.
Without proper maintenance, your list will become stagnant and stale, resulting in fewer
opens, lower click rates and less engagement from an unstimulated audience.
You can’t afford this. Maintain your email marketing list by following five steps.
1. Process Change-of-Address Notifications
You send an email. It bounces back.
You send it again. It comes back even harder.
Welcome to life. People change jobs. They change names. Heck, they even change email clients.
Set up your email system to receive these address-change notifications or give the consumer
a place to change their information. When you receive them, process them by continually updating
your database to keep it healthy and up to date. If you aren’t continually updating your database
with these changes, over time you will lose a significant percentage of your files.
2. Verify Email Addresses
Email verification services can help ensure you’re only sending emails to address that are valid and
still in use. This not only helps you maintain a positive reputation with email service providers, but it
also saves you money as you avoid paying for invalid or outdated email addresses.
How does it work? Simply upload your customer database with a third-party data provider and have
them scrub it for you. They will flag old or outdated email addresses. They can also help identify bad
domain names, spam trap email addresses, bad extensions or email addresses that are not formatted
correctly. To keep your email reputation high, the application also flags addresses of people who
often complain about the email they receive, leaving it up to you to decide whether or not you’d like to
include them in your list.
14
What Is My Email Reputation?
Good question! Your email reputation, or delivery score, is a trust
indicator used by email service providers (like Gmail or Outlook)
to determine whether your message lands safely in your prospect’s
inbox, or if it’s filtered and identified as spam.
Your email reputation is influenced
by many things, including complaints
from recipients, the number of emails
you send per week, your bounce rate,
the rate at which people unsubscribe,
and more.
Another vital element to consider in
regards to reputation is engagement.
You can be a reputable sender with a
legitimate message, but if your audience
consistently ignores or deletes your
emails without opening or clicking,
you run the risk of landing in the bulk
or spam folder.
15
3. Remove Inactive Email Addresses
Do you obsessively check your analytics? Hit “publish” on an email campaign and immediately check
to see who opened it, who deleted it and where people are clicking? We do, too.
There are many factors you can use to determine whether your audience is engaged. Look at the last
time a recipient opened or clicked an email. Or the last time they purchased a product or visited your
site. Identify what an “engaged” subscriber looks like to you, and then determine a removal formula
for subscribers who routinely don’t meet that criteria. This could be subscribers who haven’t opened
or clicked in six months or have not purchased in over a year. Then, target those subscribers with
a reactivation or re-engagement message.
Having a smaller, more responsive list will allow you to better gauge the success of your ongoing
email promotions by eliminating non-responsive emails. In addition, you will likely save money on
your email service provider fees. These costs may be minor but over time they add up.
4. Don’t Permanently Delete Inactive Subscribers
It’s good to clean up your file and market only to those subscribers who are active and engaged.
However, keep the removed email addresses in a separate database. Email them occasionally with
an offer that may reengage them. For those who respond, add them back into your “active” file.
Consider slowly reintroducing previously inactive subscribers to your program. Create a stream of
two or three messages targeted specifically at this group before returning them to your larger email
list and normal messaging cadence.
5. Never Stop Building
Maintaining your list means you never stop building it. Develop an ongoing
strategy to attract new subscribers, whether it’s through regular contests,
creating helpful resources or content assets, storytelling or killer offers
and VIP experiences.
16
Measuring Email Marketing Efforts
Establish Goals
You’re pretty far into this best practice guide. Can you remember how it began? What did we say was
the first thing you had to know?
It was your audience and what it is you want them to do with the email marketing messages
you send them.
Do you want them to sign up for something?
Do you want them to purchase more of Product X?
Do you want them to share your newsletter and increase brand awareness?
These things get down to the goal of your email marketing. As with any marketing campaign, you want
to set measurable goals for what it is you want to achieve. For example, if the goal of your email
marketing is to increase brand awareness, then you’re going to want to measure things like new
inquiries, increased brand sentiment and increased mentions of brand. These are signs your email
marketing is working and that awareness about your brand is growing. Your goals may differ for each
program you execute. Newsletters may aim to increase brand awareness as measured by new inquires
while a content series may be measured by the number of case study or white paper downloads.
Identify your goals for email marketing to determine whether
or not you are hitting them.
Track Online Analytics
There are many benefits to using email marketing. We’ve already discussed several of them —
it’s cost-effective, it’s easy to get started and the ROI is high. Another is that email, like other digital
marketing efforts, is super trackable.
17
Below are some of the specific metrics you want to look at.
Open Rate: This tells you how many people opened your email and can generally be attributed
to brand recognition (the From name) or a well-crafted subject line. While somewhat of a faulty
metric (an “open” can sometimes be triggered even if the recipient didn’t open the email —
for example, if it is “opened” in their inbox preview pane but not actually read), it is useful when
benchmarking emails are sent to the same list.
Click-Through Rate: This tells you how many people clicked through to your website. This gives
a good indication that people perceive your content as valuable and engaging.
Conversion Rate: This tells you how many people received your email and then took the
action you laid out for them, whether that’s making a purchase, downloading something or
registering for an event. Measuring conversion rate depends on having web analytics installed
on your web site, such as Omniture or Google Analytics.
List Growth Rate: This tells you at what percentage your email list is growing. Keep in mind
that some churn (people unsubscribing or falling into an inactive status) is inevitable and expected.
Maintaining a healthy list requires equal focus on both acquisition of new subscribers and
engagement and retention of existing ones.
Email Forwarding: This tells you the rate at which your subscribers share or forward the
emails you send them. This is important to note because it shows your subscribers are engaging
with and enjoying the emails they are receiving. It’s also how you attract new subscribers,
as friends, family members and colleagues of current subscribers refer them to you!
Bounce Rate: This tells you the percentage of your emails that could not be delivered to the
recipients’ inbox. A hard bounce signifies the email address is no longer active. A soft bounce
indicates there may have been a temporary problem with the recipient’s server — perhaps it was
full or down when you sent the email.
18
Track Offline
Sometimes your email campaign may not be intended to drive subscribers toward an online action.
Sometimes the email will be about an exciting winter promotion or an in-store event. Or, perhaps
a subscriber received your email about your winter sales event but decided to go into your store to
make a purchase. You want to be able to track these events as well.
One way to do that is to offer promotional codes in your email that are not available anywhere else.
Then, if a subscriber visits your site via the email campaign but converts later on a different device
or in-store, you can still tie the purchase to the email campaign when they enter, or give you,
the unique code.
Matchback Techniques?
Another way to test the true effectiveness of driving offline sales is through a match-back report.
This report allows you to tie new sales or orders with a promotion or timeframe and match them back
to the original recipients of the marketing message. Once your sales can be tied back to specific
promotions, you’re able to see just how influential the email campaign was.
TRACK
OFFLINE
19
Increasing Email Conversion Rates
with List Segmentation
Earlier we showed you how to use the Customer Analysis Reports, or Portrait Reports, to learn
more about your audiences’ interests, hobbies and lifestyle. This information can also be used
for advanced segmentation.
List segmentation allows you to send the right message to the right consumer
at the right time. It allows you to take a broad list and create segments based
on a common characteristic. By segmenting your subscribers into different
subcategories, you can create a more targeted experience for them.
20
How should you segment your email marketing?
PREFERENCES INTEREST GROUP PERSONA BEST CUSTOMERS GEOGRAPHY
By Stated Preferences
Part of your onboarding process should include directing subscribers
to your preference center.
A preference center gives the subscriber choice and control. Most subscribers are willing to share
information about their interests and preferences, but you must provide meaningful options. Only
collect information you actually intend to use and be transparent in how you will use the information
gathered. Sending highly relevant campaigns based on a subscriber’s explicitly stated preferences
will increase engagement over the long term.
21
By Interest Group
Segmenting your list by interest allows you to personalize your email
marketing efforts and add greater relevance.
Portrait Reports analyze hundreds of different variables about your audience to aid segmentation.
For example, Segmentation Reports can help you by breaking customers down into interest clusters
like Career Building and Rolling Stones. Once you have a few clusters to work with, craft customized
messaging that is directly relevant to their interests. That means sending warm-weather vacations
to your customers who prefer the tropics, and ski packages to your customers who identify as ski
enthusiasts. By segmenting your audience by clusters, you can use deliberate messaging and
verbiage more likely to resonate and convert.
Or, a Look-Alike Report will present you with a demographic portrait of your audience to help you
understand who they are and what they look like, noting the markets where you are likely to be most
successful. It can also break out approximately 20 demographic elements including age, gender,
race, education, income, marital status, family size, children, and home ownership to help you
understand your success in reaching these people. Once you’ve identified the elements that make
up your audience, utilize them to create better messaging.
By Persona
A persona is a detailed representation of a segment of your audience, which
allows you to provide more relevant marketing by focusing in on their likes,
desires and motivations.
Personas can be built based on your own research of your subscribers, by using the Portrait
Reports mentioned above or by taking advantage of propensity data.
Propensity data gives you access to pre-built consumer behavior models to build personas
around psychographic data. You will learn not only who that customer is but predict what they
are likely to do.
22
For example, propensity data has the ability to identify customers who purchase Nike footwear and
may be interested in products related to fitness monitoring or health. Or, customers who have a home
equity loan and may be interested in refinance offers or services to improve the “curb appeal” of their
house. Use this data to identify what your customers will be in the market for next or complementary
products or services you may want to offer them.
By Your Best Customers
Your best customers are the customers you want more of. They’re the customers
who convert higher and at less cost than other customers in your database.
Mine your customer database looking at factors like lifetime value, purchase value and social value
to find the common characteristics that make up your “best” customer set.
To learn more about how to identify your best customers and attract more like them, download
“Your Comprehensive Guide to New Leads & Better Customers.”
http://www.acxiom.com/resources/comprehensive-guide-new-leads-better-customers/
By Geography
Segmenting your email list by geographic region allows you to target your
list by specific climate, lifestyle or even language factors.
For example, an e-commerce store selling women’s fashions may use geographic segmentation
to market the right “must have” accessories to the right audience — advertising winter coats and
scarves to one batch of email addresses, while marketing bathing suits and beach towels to another.
Or, a sports retailer may use geographic segmentation to tease a New York Yankees vs. Boston Red
Sox game to one email list and a Los Angeles Angels vs. Oakland A’s game to another.
23
15 Ways to Segment Your Email List
AGE
GENDER
INTERESTS
PERSONA
GEOGRAPHY
INDUSTRY
PAST PURCHASES
BUYING FREQUENCY
BUYING LEVEL
BUYING STAGE
EMAIL CLIENT
SOCIAL PROMINENCE
IN-STORE ONLY
24
WEB-ONLY
SHOPPING CART
ABANDONERS
You can use all of this
easily accessible
information to send
more relevant email
campaigns, speaking
to your audience’s
most likely interests
and wants.
Taking Email Marketing to Infinity
and Beyond
The desktop computer in their home office.
The laptop at work.
The tablet on the couch while watching the game.
The smartphone while grabbing an afternoon coffee.
The television while they work out.
From any device while in bed.
Due to the diversity and flexibility of today’s devices, it’s impossible to know
how a subscriber will first receive your message.
In fact, nearly half of all emails (48%) are now opened on a mobile
48
device (Litmus)*. Half! Now more than ever, you need to make your
%
message easy to read, from anywhere and from any device.
*https://litmus.com/blog/48-of-emails-are-opened-on-mobile-gmail-opens-down-20-since-tabs
25
How can you make your email strategy mobile-friendly?
Go for responsive design. A responsively designed email will adapt to any screen size. Layouts
can be altered so that content is swapped or hidden, and text, image and button sizes are changed
depending on the device on which the email is being viewed.
Test your template to see how it looks on various mobile devices. You can create a testing seed
list with addresses at multiple email clients, or use a tool such as Litmus for real-time inbox previews.
Offer HTML and plain-text emails.
Use short subject lines, paying special attention to the first four or five words. Ensure they are
written to spark interest and clearly communicate the purpose of the email. They may be the only
words a reader can see from a smaller screen.
Be “mobile aware” at a minimum. This means using ample white space, making clickable
areas prominent, larger and with enough padding, and increasing font sizes to be easily read on
a mobile device. You should also pay attention to how links are being distributed, avoiding placing
multiple links near one another to encourage ease-of-use and lower possible frustration of clicking
on the wrong link.
Pack light: Your mobile-optimized email should be as “light” as possible to make it easy to download
on a smartphone or other mobile device. Experts recommend keeping emails under 20kb and also
including a text-only version for users who may only be able to view (or may opt to view) text-only
mobile emails.
Optimize the landing page associated with the email. If a user clicks through from his or her
inbox, what page will be seen next?
Test, Test, Test: Back to our first bullet point, because it’s that important. See how your message
looks and acts on mobile. Can you click on the links, or are you pinching your screen in frustration?
Do the images work? Does the text read correctly?
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Of course, mobile isn’t the only consideration when integrating email into the rest of your
marketing efforts. We also have to think about social media and how we can make our emails
socially friendly.
Below are some tips to help you do that.
Add Social Sharing Buttons to Your Emails
Adding social sharing buttons to your emails will extend the reach
of your emails by encouraging recipients to share your content
with their networks.
If subscribers are loving your content (and we’re sure they are!), they’ll want to share it. Make it
easy for them to do so and generate new prospects.
Grow Your Email List Through Social Networks
Leverage your social media presence to give followers a reason
to subscribe to your email list and advance their relationship
with your brand.
For example, consider placing a call-to-action on your Facebook page, or embed an opt-in form
so they can sign up directly from their favorite network. Make sure you determine and highlight
clear benefits of email subscription so that you can turn your social media followers
into subscribers.
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Ready to Hit “Send” on Your Strategic Campaign?
Email marketing provides a direct, intimate connection with your audience.
It allows you to send personalized messages at the right time, with one
of the highest ROIs in marketing.
These are just some of the reasons email marketing works and why it’s become a proven marketing
channel. Whether you’re just getting started with email marketing or are looking to generate more
revenue from email, Acxiom can help maximize your impact by adding more subscribers to your
database and providing the insight you need to send them more relevant emails.
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