Enabler provide best practice advice within B2B email marketing, from a multi award-winning email marketing agency, offering top tip advice.

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Top tips for an irresistible subject line

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Inboxes around the world are bombarded by around 205 billion emails every day, so a strong subject line will make or break your email’s chances of being noticed, let alone opened. Discover how an irresistible subject line can help command the attention of your recipient and maximise your chance for engagement.

Write for mobile – short and sweet

On average, over 54%* of emails are opened on a mobile device, and a smaller screen means less space to display your subject line, which puts it in danger of being cut short. To avoid this, always ensure your subject line is no longer than 50 characters. This gives you approximately eight words to play with, which should be plenty to get your key info across, and grab the attention of your recipient’s interest.

 

Let’s get personal… Use their name

Okay, so this isn’t strictly a subject line tip, but it will certainly help improve your open rates. People are more likely to open an email sent from another person than from a company, so put their name in your message and get people curious about what you’ve sent them.
See our previous blog post dedicated to personalisation to find out more.

 

Make the most of the preview text

Most Email Service Providers (ESPs) allow you to edit the preview text that displays next to your subject line, and many recipients use this text as a quick screening tool to decide whether or not they want to open your email. If you begin your email with some interesting facts or an intriguing premise, you could mirror this in the preview text to hook the reader into opening the email. Alternatively, you could do more exciting things with your preview text, such as:

  1. Ask a question in your subject line and answer it in the preview text, e.g. “How Will Your Customers Find Your Website?” or “We’ll let you in on our secret tips…”

  2. Elaborate on the subject line, e.g. “Holiday Deals from £99” or “Go to Spain, Italy or Greece for a Bargain Price.”

  3. Give an incentive to open the email, e.g. “Valentine’s Day Sale” or “Up to 80% off Candles and Scents”

 

Make the recipient feel special

If you haven’t the data, never fear – you don’t just have to rely on the recipient’ name to make your emails stand out with personalisation. Emphasising “you” within your subject lines is a proven way to attract the attention of the reader, with phrases like “Exclusively for You” and “Your Special Selection” to give your subject lines the feel of a personalised message rather than a generic sales email. Done right, your recipient should feel appreciated as a customer and should spark enough intrigue to make them more likely to open the email to find out what you’ve chosen for them.

 

Be like-minded… Help readers to identify with your emails

People like to self-identify and belong to a group – that’s why all of those Buzzfeed quizzes about your favourite Game of Thrones character, or questionnaires about which Hogwarts House you are most likely to get Sorted into are so popular and effective at driving engagement. By segmenting your audience data into relevant categories, you can start identifying different demographics and audience interests that will help you shape your email copy and subject lines. For example, you could target your 18 – 22 year olds at university with “The Broke Student Guide to a Luxury Holiday.”

 

Inject some humour

If you make someone chuckle with your subject line, they are much more inclined to open your email to see what other giggles are in store. A classic pun is often a good choice, or you could take your recipient totally by surprise like Groupon did: “Best of Groupon: The Deals That Make Us Proud (Unlike Our Nephew, Steve)” Cheeky old Groupon did break the 50-characters-maximum rule here, but hats off to them for the wit!

 

Drive action by creating a sense of urgency

People check their email while on the go, and often see a message they intend to come back to, yet promptly forget about it. Don’t let this happen to your emails. By using targeted verbs (action words) in your subject line, you can help drive the recipient to do what you want them to do.  By instilling a sense of urgency, they are more likely to open your email as soon as they see it. Good examples could be “Go On, Treat Yourself”, or “Blink And You Might Miss Out…”

 

Use reverse psychology

‘Trick’ people into opening your email by setting them a challenge, such as “Bet You Didn’t Know This About…” or simply by telling them not to, like Manicube did: “Don’t Open This Email.”  Human nature means that most people will see this and be curious enough to have a nose – just make sure your content is actually worth the trickery, and maintain consistency between the subject line message and your email content so readers don’t actually feel tricked. One of the simplest (but rather unimaginative ways) of linking the subject line and email copy is by saying “Now that we’ve got your attention…” We won’t judge if you want to use it!

 

Incentives drive opens

If all else fails, offer an incentive in your subject line to encourage people to open your email. This might be the promise of a product sample, discount offer, prize draw, mystery surprise or anything else you can offer to get people to open your email (short of blackmail. Don’t do that.) Just try and avoid features which can trigger the dreaded spam filters – words like “Free,” “Click,” “Sale,” writing in ALL CAPITALS, and excessive punctuation “!!! <3”
See our blog on avoiding spam filters for more useful tips on this.

Hopefully this has given you some ideas to run away with. If you fancy a few of them but aren’t sure which would suit your business, try several different subject lines and perform a split-test to find the one that performs best.

If you’ve got a subject line in mind but you’re worried about potentially triggering spam filters, there are some free testing tools online that will give your subject line a score basenabled on how many spam-like elements it has. Subjectline.com is a useful one we would recommend.

If your mind insists on going blank whenever you look at the box for your subject line, give an automatic subject line generator a go. This one is really handy – just pop in your keywords, and it will generate loads of potential subject lines for you to choose from or tweak.

However you decide to formulate your subject line, a key thing to remember is that the tone and language should suit both your audience and the organisation you work for. . If it sounds drastically different from your usual brand voice, the effect will be jarring and strange; you don’t want people to think you’ve been hacked or have started sending spam.  If you’d like to start reaching out to your customers differently, consider it as part of a broader branding shift.

*According to report by Litmus in their 2017 State of Email Report.
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Does one size really fit all?

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In 2016 email marketing has become greater than ever before, and with such high volumes being sent it means it is now more difficult for your emails to reach its final destination – top of your recipient’s inbox.  Although there are some businesses that still align their digital marketing strategy with a ‘one size fits all’ notion, luckily most of our clients at Enabler know that when it comes to successful delivery and making sure your emails stand out from the inbox crowd, their email campaigns need to be composed differently.

We’ll show you what to pay attention to when preparing your email campaigns to ensure that you connect with your audiences, composing optimised content that’s engaging, relevant and looks great.

 

Are you talking to me?

In email marketing, having the right tone of voice to suit your target audience is crucial to a successful campaign.  There are varying factors you need to take into account when it comes to what tone to use, which will depend on things like gender, industry, job-role, subject matter etc.  If the email campaign is designed to be sent to a decision maker within the engineering industry, for example, they would probably respond better to a factual, technically focused email that’s straight to the point.  However, it’s a totally different ball game if you’re in the food industry where your email communications can’t always be direct product promotions. You need to keep your audience regularly engaged with different content, so thinking-outside-the-box provides a welcome distraction to just pushing your product, otherwise your audience will just switch off.

You also need to carefully think about the vocabulary that you use.  You need to know your audience and understand the sort of words they are more likely to connect with and respond to.  Don’t get too clever – using big sophisticated words might look good on an essay, but in an email it can make some people stop reading, especially if your audience is unsure of what the word means.

Innocent Drinks illustrate perfectly how to keep customers intrigued with their Friday morning email newsletter. In addition to sneaking in product-related information, there are always plenty of interesting, entertaining articles and sometimes a humorous take on recent affairs that’ll make even the grumpiest person smile on a Friday morning. Plus, with plenty of freebies hidden within the campaign, Innocent Drinks have managed to promote their brand/product with an indirect, fun email that keeps their consumers engaged and generates great response rates.

Why?  It’s relatable to their target audience.
If the same style of email was sent to engineers within the aviation industry, the response rate would be much-lower as the tone is completely wrong for that audience, which would have meant the amount of ‘unsubscribe’ requests would have been greater, which inevitably affects future deliverability.
The best advice is to know your audience, get to understand how they respond and choose your content and vocabulary appropriately to suit them.

 

 

B2B or B2C?  That is the question

Although both consumers, the main difference between B2B and B2C customers is the buying cycle, and this difference means your emails need to be targeted differently also.

B2B customers tend to take more time to make purchasing decisions due to the fact that there are usually several decision-makers involved in the process. Thus, your email content needs to be informative and consist of enough facts and key details to help all those decision-makers make a decision, and providing them with extra information which they can pass on is a great way to do that; such as whitepapers, case studies or findings from company surveys which in turn enable your company to be seen as an industry leader.

B2C customers usually make quick, impulsive and emotion-based purchasing decisions and they usually do not have to consult anyone prior to making a purchase.
One of the key differences between B2B and B2C emails is Send Time, and if you get this wrong it can have a huge impact on your response rates and ROI.  B2B customers are working customers.  Despite the workaholics who check their work emails at the weekends, most B2B customers are more likely to respond to email marketing campaigns sent during working hours.  B2C customers on the other hand will be checking their emails outside of work hours, which means the best time for response rates are during their commute (before or after work), lunch breaks, evenings and weekends. All of this means your send days and times will vary widely depending on whether you are sending to a B2B or B2C consumer, so again, know your audience and change your content and send times accordingly to maximise your response rates.

 

 

Prospective, New or Existing?   No two customers are the same…

Defining what sort of customer you are communicating with is a crucial factor that many marketers can sometimes forget when composing their email campaigns.  Prospective, new and existing customers all behave very differently towards the email content they receive, and the way that you communicate with them should also be different.  Think of it like a journey you want your customers to take; your emails need to be targeted appropriately with the right tone, vocabulary and content that will connect with your audience, encouraging your prospects to turn into new customers, and in turn (hopefully) they will continue the journey to becoming loyal existing customers.  Your tone of voice will change as your customers progress through the email journey and you start to build a relationship of trust and familiarity between yourself and your customers.  What you don’t want to do is send them email communications that stop the journey in its tracks with content that is irrelevant or inappropriately depending on the type of customer they are and the kind of relationship you have with them.  Any relationship you build you should look to maintain and develop further with your email communications, so compose your messages carefully depending on what stage of the ‘journey’ your customer is at.

Another key thing to bear in mind is that prospective customers will need winning over, so you don’t want to send them content that’s going to make them want to unsubscribe straight away.  If a prospect has approached you by subscribing to your emails, most customers would expect to receive a welcome or brand introductory email, so if you offer some incentive as a ‘thank you for subscribing’ – such as a white-paper, voucher or event invitation that would be of interested to the new customer and make them feel appreciated and start to build that relationship.  As they say… you never get a second chance to make a first impression so make sure you get the right message aimed at the right person first time.

Existing customers already know your brand and are actively doing business with you, but that does not mean you can rest on your laurels when it comes to your emails.  It is extremely important not to spam your customers by resending emails with identical content (which is a sure-fire way to get yourself spammed). Most email software allows you to segment customers into groups or categories meaning you can organise your customers and ensure you are delivering the right content to the right people.

 

 

Let’s Get Optimised – sizing up your emails for mobile

So we’ve talked a lot about the importance of using varying tones of voice, vocabulary and content to connect with your different customer groups, but another factor that is also important to consider is mobile optimisation.  ‘One size fits all’ doesn’t work for your customers, and it doesn’t work for their devices either.  Sending an email that looks great on desktop but is misaligned or poorly engaging on mobile or tablets can sometimes be disastrous for your campaign depending on how your users interact with your email communications.  Just because you designed your email on a desktop PC doesn’t mean your customers are going to view the email on desktop.  More and more consumers (both B2B and B2C) are engaging with emails on their mobile devices, so you need to make sure your content layout and calls-to-action are clear, engaging and correctly placed when viewed on a mobile device.  Most email software providers will allow you to view and amend the mobile version of your email campaign, and more sophisticated email software will even allow you to add or omit content solely on the mobile version while still retaining the original content on the desktop version.  This is a great way to ensure your emails look uncluttered on mobile and stay concise.

Understanding how your customers interact with your emails is vital.  Most email software providers will allow you to gather analytics on what devices your customers are using to view your email campaigns.  By looking at this data and learning what device-preference your customers have is really helpful in building effective, engaging email campaigns targeted at your customer base.  If over 70% of your customers have a preference for mobile, make sure you include mobile-friendly features such as ‘click to call’ links, and vis versa if their preference is for desktop don’t add too many features that are mobile-only accessible. Don’t disengaging your customers with an email that doesn’t suit the way they interact with your comms.

The key to your email comms is understanding your customer, what words and content they will respond to, understanding what relationship you currently have with them (and what future relationship you hope to achieve), and learning how your customers interact with and view your emails.

We are a race of individuals, so make sure your email communications reflect that.  Stand out from the inbox crowd with original content that also treats the customer as an individual.  Don’t be generic, be personable and relevant to your audience.  Once you understand your audience, you are more likely to create amazing content that will grab their attention and generate a successful campaign ROI.

Track your campaigns and learn from how your customers behave and interact with your communications. Remember, your data is the key to building better campaigns and better relationships with your customers.

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Optimising your email campaigns for mobile

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Email opens and click-through rates on mobile and tablets have been increasing consistently in recent years. We’re a generation of smart device users, as shown by the recent statistics of mobile users: 51.7% of all marketing emails are opened on mobile, with a click thru rate of 43.9%. With these statistics it’s imperative, now more than ever, to optimise email for mobile and tablet.

It’s also important to remember that results will be different based on the audience. For example, many B2B emails have lower open rates on mobile and tablet because their end users will be sitting at their desks during the work days and are more likely to open emails on desktop. This will, understandably, change the importance of responsive emails per company.

 

Responsive design email example

Research also shows that email is the best way to reach millennials  and that 80% of millennials sleep with their smartphones by their bedside – so if you’re not optimising email for mobile, you could be alienating key audiences. The main benefit of designing your emails responsively is improving the user journey for your customers. So how do you go about preparing for this?

 

Mobile-first design

This concept was first developed in 2009, to adapt for the increasing amount of users who were interacting with content on smaller devices than their desktop computer. It’s an approach focused around designing for smaller screens first and optimising that experience, then adding more features and content for bigger screens. There are pros and cons to this approach:

Pro #1: The disappointment factor – imagine you’ve spent your time designing a stunning email that does all sorts of fancy things… only to try scaling down for mobile and realising that all the tricks that worked so wonderfully on desktop, don’t translate into mobile. Disappointing. Mobile-first design eliminates this and ensures that your email is cohesive across all devices.

Con #1: Crushing creativity – the problem with mobile-first is that you immediately discard some of your great ideas, just because they won’t work on mobile. Isn’t it better to be as creative as possible for the people who will experience it, rather than limiting yourself?

Pro #2: Selective content – When designing for mobile-first, you have to whittle your content down to its most vital elements. Now you’ve selected the content you most want your users to see, when it comes to the desktop version, you get to figure out how to make it more exciting instead of facing the ‘what to cut’ dilemma.

Con #2: Demoralising – It can be really difficult to get into your design if you are completely restricted from the get-go. It can also be a different design experience, even for little things, like the difference between targeting your email for people to click on, or tap on.

 

As you can see, there are different positives and drawbacks to using mobile-first design, however even if you choose not to go down that route, you can still prepare in other ways:

Font considerations

Think about your font style and size. A key thing to remember when designing for mobile is that the minimum font size displayed on devices such as iPhones is 13 pixels. If you have any font sizes smaller than this in your desktop version, many mobile devices will upscale this and it could make your design look very strange. There is a way around this, which involves adding a small bit of CSS to your code which will override this occurring on the iPhone and keep your text at the font size you want.

 

To scroll or not to scroll?

Think about how far your users have to scroll. Scrolling on a touch-screen is much harder than with a mouse wheel. The best way to avoid unnecessary scrolling is to make sure you’re placing the information you most want users to see at the top of the email.

The other way you can keep your email shorter is to use the ‘hideonmobile’ CSS class, which can be used to hide extra spacing and even images. This will help you display the information your users need to see nearer the top of the email and keep the email relevant, without them losing interest before they’ve got to the good bit.

Where possible, use the tag ‘display:none;’ to hide extraneous elements in your mobile design. For example, social sharing links. These can often be really tricky for users to interact with on mobile (as clicking is easier than specific pixel tapping) even if they are a must- have on desktop.

Keep your single column layouts no wider than 600 pixels. It works the best for mobile devices as your copy is easier to read.
If you’re going to include things like social sharing links, or any buttons in general, try giving them a minimum area of 44 x 44 pixels. These are part of the guidelines Apple sets, and definitely worth adhering to. Fingers were not meant for tiny buttons on mobile.

 

Get creative with your images

Think about how you slice up your images. Is your entire image really something your mobile viewers need to see? You can get creative with how different parts of your images will display on mobile. For example, you may have a header which has text on the left and image on the right. You could slice the header in half and hide the right hand side on mobile. This would reduce the length of your email on mobile. Alternatively you may have a large image on desktop that you only need a part of in order to still get the same effect on mobile.

 

Consider every element

Make sure everything about your campaign works well on mobile. There’s no point sending a beautifully designed, mobile friendly email if the form/survey/landing page users are clicking through to isn’t also responsive. There’s nothing more frustrating as a user than clicking through to a teeny tiny form and having to do the awkward two finger zoom, and select the exact part of the form that you want to fill in, only to miss and end up with your name in the email field and your address as your first name.

A huge percentage of your audience now open their emails on mobile every day, so responsive email isn’t a ‘nice to have’ any more, it’s a must-have. Make sure you’re not missing out on one of the biggest trends email has seen in the last decade and make your emails responsive!

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How to avoid email marketing mistakes

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Email is a huge part of most companies’ marketing mix but many brands are still swinging and missing when it comes to delivering great campaigns. Email is an integral part of many marketing campaigns. We use it every single day. The first thing I do when I sit down at my desk in the morning is check my email and it’s also the last thing I do before I leave. It’s the one thing that stays up on my screen for the whole day.

When we’re dealing with something that impacts so many people day to day, we can’t afford to be getting it wrong. So, what are the challenges of email and how do we overcome them?

1. Getting noticed in peoples inboxes

  • Subject line testing
    Every data list is different, so there’s no magic solution to email subject lines. The best way to achieve results is to test subject lines through A/B testing and then roll out to the rest of your list. For example, send 20% of your emails to one subject line and 20% to another. Leave it 24 hours, assess the results and send the winning subject line to the rest of your list. Over time you’ll get a sense of what engages your audience and what bores them to tears.

  • Do something a little different
    Emojis in email subject lines can work really well when used cleverly and sparingly.

  • Know when to send
    Different databases respond to different send times. At Enabler, we find that 9am, 11am and 2pm work really well as send times for B2B. This enables you to catch people as they start work, on their morning coffee break and during the post-lunch slump. Again, the way to find out what works best for you is testing. Split-send to your list at different times of day and compare the results.

  • Know how often to send
    No-one wants to be spammed with emails after they’ve signed up for a newsletter. With the introduction of Gmail’s inbox tab system, which separates everything into primary, promotions, social and updates you don’t want to be stuck in the junk section! A way to deal with this is to ask your users what they want; find out what they’re interested in and send them that.

 

2. Ensure your emails are rendering correctly

There is nothing worse in the world of email than opening up your inbox to find an email that hasn’t rendered correctly. Maybe you’re missing half an image, maybe you can’t see images at all. Maybe you’re missing half a call to action button on your Outlook client because a lazy developer didn’t run the email through an email testing client before sending it to your inbox. The key to making sure you get it right is to test on each email client before hitting the send button. I prefer Litmus because it allows you to email your HTML directly to the program and shows you how your email will render on both mobile clients and desktop clients. It also shows you all the versions of the clients rather than just the latest ones. Top tip: Outlook 2007 and 2010 basically support nothing.

 

3. Keeping up with trends

  • Mobile vs desktop
    Know what percentage of your list are opening your emails on mobile. I generally work to the rule that if it’s more than 10% you should definitely be using responsive design and if it’s anything over 2% you should definitely be at least considering using it. We’re a society of mobile users, and that’s only going to grow. With that in mind, email marketers can’t afford to delay making their content accessible to mobile users.

  • Dynamic content
    Gone are the days of building 30 emails, one for every category you have in your database. It’s all about building one email, and using conditional content conditions to ensure each user sees what you want them to see upon opening your email. All decent ESPs will have this functionality built in, so what are you waiting for?

  • Rich media
    Knowing how to make your emails stand out is more important than ever. Emails can drive sales and brand awareness as well as provide platforms for event attendance. Explore GIFS, Video, Twitter feeds, Social sharing and more to support your email campaigns. With technology developing so rapidly, it’s important to be creative to ensure you stay on top of your game.

  • Be practical
    This is a big one, there’s no point sending great content to your database if they won’t be able to see it, and the email therefore loses all meaning to them. It’s imperative to know, for example, that Outlook won’t support your animated GIF and will freeze it on the first frame. Or that Gmail won’t display emojis in your subject line and show them as little boxes instead. Make sure you do your research and find out what will and won’t work, before you get creative.

 

4. Managing your data correctly

  • You can’t have good email without good data
    Understanding what you can do with your data is every bit as important as keeping up with the latest front end coding trends. You can segment your data by age, region, gender or anything you know about them – all you need is the right tools to collect that data and the right tools to use it to code a great email. Never miss an opportunity for data capture and always employ the Pokémon tag line ‘Gotta catch ‘em all’. (‘em all being the bits of data).

  • Know what to do with that data within an email.
    Personalisation is key but get it right – no one wants to see ‘Hi First Name’ at the start of an email. There’s no point personalising if your data isn’t correct. I’ve seen brands put the wrong merge code into an email so the policy renewal ID was swapped with the recipient first name. This gave the effect that the company was referring to one of its customers as a number, not a name.

  • Be creative
    You’d be surprised how many people actually miss this out of campaigns. It seems like common sense, until you sit down in front of a computer and start trying to plan, at which point your brain might give you… nothing. So how do we get around those creative email mind blocks? First work out what you are trying to achieve. Do you want people to buy from your site?Do you want to increase brand awareness? Do you want to encourage people to enter a competition or play a game or simply visit your site?

 

Once you’ve worked this out you can start working out how you’re going to achieve it. Don’t be scared of doing some competitor research to get you started. Most importantly, have fun – email is great, you should be enjoying yourself!

Is email a dying channel?

In short, no! Email has been around since 1971 when Ray Tomlinson sent the first one on the ARPANET system. It was the first system that was able to send mail between users on different hosts connected to the ARPANET. Since then we have seen the evolution of email as a channel to the point where many of the functionalities mirror what you can do with websites – which is remarkable when you think about it. Considering everything you code into email has to sit within tables… within tables – the amount it has and continues to achieve is outstanding.

Think about how many other internet based fads email has remained a constant throughout. Email saw the birth of MSN, Myspace, Facebook, Twitter, YouTube, Mobile apps… and it’s still going, still developing, still adapting. There are conferences all around the world dedicated purely to email and how we can keep developing email.

Online sales have skyrocketed in the last few years and now remain at a consistent high. A huge part of what drives these online sales is email. Email drives people to websites. Email makes sales. Email is awesome.

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Email marketing in the age of perpetual promotions

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Since email began, the retail industry has been constantly changing. Gone are the days when one had to physically enter a shop and interact with another human in order to receive a discount. Now all you need is internet access and a bank card. With this change, online shopping has become huge. According to the Financial Times, consumers in the UK are spending five times more online than offline. This makes ecommerce more of an opportunity than ever.

Along with this has come a change in the frequency of online promotional sales, making the way in which we communicate them to consumers especially important. When online sales made their first appearances, it was easy to make your email stand out among others because your brand was doing something that others weren’t, and the chances you’d both be running an email sale offer at the same time as a competitor was slim. Now, every brand is taking advantage of promoting their sales online, and this makes email marketing an even greater challenge for marketers.

The January sales are an especially important time to be promoting sales – everyone is broke from spending huge amounts around Christmas, so encouraging them to buy your products is a harder sell. Add to this the culture change (the fact that sales happen all year round) and you’ve got a marketing challenge on your hands. As a colleague of mine said: ‘DFS have had a sale on since I was born’.

So how can you adapt your emails to have maximum impact during the January sales period?

 

Keep to the point

Don’t throw everything you have on offer into the email. Focus on one thing you know will interest your customers. If you have data rich enough, segment your email, and make use of dynamic content to ensure you’re sending customers content that is relevant to them. If your data isn’t up to scratch, here are some work-arounds you can capitalise on.

The New Year has just arrived, which means resolutions, resolutions, resolutions. Focus on your products which will interest people who might have made resolutions to get healthy, do something new, save money, travel, be less stressed. TIME magazine made a useful list of the top 10 most commonly broken new year’s resolutions – a great insight into areas your customers may be focusing their attentions on in January.

One company that used this tactic really well was Pen Heaven (below), who capitalised on

the start of a new year by promoting diaries and planners. Who doesn’t need a new diary at the start of the year?! Their subject line, ‘25% off 2016 Diaries + Limited Stock Left on Seasonal Offers’ was clever for several reasons:

1. They clearly pushed the discount.
2. They made reference to the relevance of the New Year.
3. They mentioned what the product was to get customers interested.
4. They instilled a sense of urgency; suggesting the diaries were in short supply.
5. The email was clean, clear, aesthetically pleasing and offered a discount code.

 

 

Have a strategy

Don’t just send one email and then tick the ‘January Sales’ box on your ‘things-to-accomplish-in-January’ list. According to the Office for National Statistics, online sales in January 2015 increased by 12% compared with January 2014. January Sales are a whole month of opportunity, and not a month to miss out on.

Sainsburys

One company who had a brilliant strategy this year were Sainsbury’s. Their subject line was ‘Anna, up to £58 off to kick-start your New Year’. They also had a great pre-header; ‘Healthy savings for a happier New Year’. By doing this, they specified the discount available, made reference to the event and also triggered the ‘new year-new me’ health response in their customers. A powerful trio, carefully constructed to gain their target’s attention. Within the email, they also had a clever double offer: ‘£18 off your first shop’ and ‘£10 off your next four orders’. This is really smart of them – not only are they capitalising on the January Sales period but they’re also improving customer retention while they do it.

Sainsbury’s went a step further by making the process easier for their customers (right). The email contained a section which actually looked like the sort of voucher you’d print off and use in store. They clearly outlined the steps for voucher redemption and gave a clear deadline. Another gem from this email was the part just under the voucher which encouraged people to sign up to more Sainsbury’s communications using the incentive of helpful voucher reminder emails.

This is a great strategy; people have busy lives and don’t always remember they have a voucher sitting in an old email somewhere in their inbox. Sainsbury’s are making sure that those customers are continuing to shop with them and not another provider. This is exceptionally smart, as internet shoppers tend to be more loyal than in-store buyers – take Tesco as an example, where online shoppers spend 46% of their total grocery budget with the retailer while the average offline Tesco shopper spends only 29%.

 

 

Have an attention grabbing subject line

With the amount of emails flooding into people’s inboxes it’s imperative that yours stands out. A few things you can focus on are:

How much is the discount you’re offering?
There is a science behind the wording used to communicate the discount in your subject line. If you’re offering anything over a £100 discount, use a pound sign – if you’re offering anything below, use a percentage. For example, if you’ve got a pair of trousers and you’re offering 30% off, it sounds a lot better to say 30% off than it does to say £4 off. Equally, if you’re selling a high price item, saying £1,000 off sounds a lot better than 10% off.

Have you made what’s on sale obvious?
Getting people to open your email can be tricky, make sure whatever you’re putting in your subject line is going to interest them enough to open the email. A great way to do this is to use your data – putting a piece of dynamic content into your subject line is every bit as useful as in the email itself. If Joe likes suits and Sunil likes t-shirts, there’s no point putting an offer for t-shirts into both their subject lines. Dynamic fields can help you with this problem. Send Joe a subject line with suits, Sunil one with t-shirts and everyone is happy.

Be a little quirky
There’s nothing wrong with doing something different. One really fun subject line I’ve seen this January was from Very; ‘It’s SALE time… Ready, Set, SHOP!’ This grabbed my eye and I even opened the email. Why not try something of your own?

Make it fun
This should go for any email you send but applies to a greater extent during busy sales periods. Whether it’s an eye-catching gif, a game or a super quirky way to present your content within the email, make sure it’s engaging and entertaining. One brand that did something slightly different with their campaign was Lowbrow Customs (right) who used the following subject line:

Save up to 80% with our year end 🔥 Sale!! Bring it on 2016! 🎉

While those emoticons will not show up on all email clients (we can just hope they segmented their data based on email client before sending) they did get my attention and it added something different to their email that not many other companies used. I particularly enjoyed that they used the fire emoticon to replace the word fire. It’s the little things in life!

Good luck with the rest of your January Sales emails campaigns – we’ll see you soon!

/by

Are you ready for Christmas?

The Christmas email campaigns have been in full swing since November. Fran, one of our email campaign managers, gives us her analysis of the festive emails.

I’ve been berating the early arrival of ‘Christmas’ into our lives for a while now. Not in an Ebenezer Scrooge-esque, bah humbug way but in a ‘this is ludicrously early’ way.

It seems that Halloween is barely over before the Christmas references start creeping into marketing messages. Plus, email – my joie de vivre – has been filling my inbox with uninterestingly designed, completely impersonal content and, most importantly, subject lines that aren’t even a little bit enticing for the festive season. Here are a few of the different areas that demonstrate how people are overthinking the minor details but not engaging the necessary focus – especially when it comes to content.

So, Halloween is over, the fireworks have finished, and now as the days get darker and begin disappearing rapidly without warning, we seem to be propelling ourselves head first into winter. That being said, it would seem that this year it’s beginning to go a little too far, just about everyone and everything has become about Christmas – even the toilet bleach:

Yet, although the decks have been ready for purchase as early as July this year (thanks Selfridge’s), it’s not hard to get confused with the recent mild weather that it might still be September – but alas the shops, the background noise, the lights, and – dare I say it – our email inboxes are a daily reminder that we are getting closer to the big festive day.

Can we honestly say that the world of email is hitting the nail on the head and drawing in those festive consumers? Taking evidence from my own inbox – I think not!

Let’s take a look at two of the key areas that campaigns are still struggling with this year, and a few handy tips for fabulously festive emails that perform.

Most unenticing subject line:

‘Francesca, it’s the season for 25% off 6 bottles of wine’

Now, don’t get me wrong, I love wine. It’s a staple in my fridge so they’ve got my attention. However, ‘season’? Does this rather large high street supermarket chain realise that there are four of them? In my humble opinion, every day (let alone season) should have 25% off 6 bottles of wine.

As an email professional, I highlight this key point for increasing user engagement: your subject line should be the prime area of focus in any campaign, at any time of the year.

As a rule of thumb you shouldn’t use any sales based words such as, ‘offer’, ‘free’, ‘sale’, ‘deals’ or icons like !, ?, £, or % in your subject line, as spam filters are highly likely to pick them up and throw the mail straight into the junk folder (hence I found the above one in my spam folder).

Keep it punchy, make it unique and create intrigue. When writing subject lines, consider the recipient – will it entice them? If there’s any doubt, then you need to rewrite it. Finally, if you’re going for a theme then go all in. The email feels half-hearted when you do it half hearted, and I don’t think you can ever over eggnog the Christmas pudding (sorry – had to).

Here are a few more subject lines that have found their way into my inbox/spam box that are lacking a little bit of get up and go:

  • ‘Shh…Keep this to yourself…’
     

  • ‘Make Christmas Your Own: Personalised Christmas Story Book £2, Santa Cutlery Holder
     

  • Sets, Luxury Santa Sack, LED Candles and More’
     

  • ‘Alert! 3 For £18 Christmas Gifts [3 Hours Only]’
     

  • ‘Is your home ready for the holidays?’ (Received the beginning of November… bit early?!)

Content that’s stuck in the dark ages (and also has no tact):

I don’t even think I need to explain why this spa wins the least personalised, most unresponsive template award and – more importantly – most contradictory Christmas theme of any winter themed email I’ve ever read.  This seems to be more the sort of email you might expect when detox season kicks off in January.

This brings me to my next point: if you manage to entice a reader to click into your email then you need attractive, interesting and relevant email content that’s going to get them reading, clicking through and opening up again next time. In my opinion, there are three main areas:

Personalisation: whether this is personal details or content based on consumer analysis (see Sophie’s blog the other week for hints and tips).
Short copy: less is always more when it comes to words in emails. Short is good.

Beautiful visuals: images should relate to the copy and be high-quality and eye-catching.
Email marketing is still one of the most successful ways to reach your audience, with evidence showing it’s the number one way to reach millennials.

To be successful you need to make sure your campaigns are carefully considered and relevant. There are so many different and wonderful things you can do with content now, yet I regularly receive emails that are stuck in the dark ages.

​​A festive email campaign that really caught my eye this year came from Watergate Bay Hotel, a spa hotel in Cornwall. Their festive email campaign had a simple concept, on-point branding, and excellent integration. They used wintery graphics and a snowshaker concept to create a daily competition with cleverly chosen prizes from local or partnership brands that fit with their brand.

The competition runs through the whole of December with a different prize each day and three chances to win. If you’re not successful after ‘shaking’ the snowglobe three times, you receive a discount code to use in their online shop. This is a nice touch that will encourage users to purchase Christmas gifts from their online store.

Sign up is required to enter the competition, a great method for data capture and for driving users back with follow-up emails (particularly as the prizes change every day, maintaining interest). Watergate Bay also reinforce their brand and persona through the choice of graphics and the companies they have partnered with to offer prizes.

The entire effect gives you a sense of what the hotel is about, it’s festive without being cheesy and also places the hotel in their potential customer’s minds at the right time to be considered for their 2016 holiday.

Watergate Bay hotel have nailed the three areas we highlighted earlier: personalisation, short copy and beautiful visuals – plus they continued their theme throughout every element, from the original email to the landing page.

So, when it comes to creating email campaigns – think outside the box. Don’t just stick to the norm or the drab, do something that will get you noticed. All this takes is having the baubles to commit to the theme and be creative!

Top tips for email campaign success

1.    Commit to your design. If you’re using a theme – use it, don’t only use a tiny bit of it.

2.    Limit content headers/links. That way you shouldn’t have an email that means lots of scrolling – especially on a mobile device.

3.    Have clear calls to action.

4.    Make sure you’re using a mobile responsive template.

5.    Try not to repeat a story/product/event etc, try something new.

6.    Use behavioural data – you have access to all of the data you could ever want. Data analysis is key to creating the most engaging content for your audience.

7.    Testing – always test different things in your emails. Subject lines. Content copy. Images. CTAs. Design… you should never stop testing. There are always new things to try and with it consumer behavioural data to be analysed.

8.    Use beautiful, engaging and relevant images, or create simple and effective infographics.

9.    Be personal.

10.    Make sure you’re branded correctly, effectively and in a memorable way – no matter what you do.

/by