Enabler provide best practice advice within email marketing for B2B and B2C communications, from a multi award-winning email marketing agency.

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What is marketing automation, and why you should be using it

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With so much going on in a Marketing team, you will often find you don’t have enough time to get everything done.  You will have had days where you’re in back-to-back meetings, and still have a whole hoard of tasks to do by the end of the day.  This is where an automated system would be super useful!

Luckily, there’s a little thing called Marketing Automation that can step in.  The basic idea of marketing automation is to set up a system to perform actions based on triggers (i.e. if a customer clicks an email link it triggers a second personalised email being sent several days later).  Once the email automation is set up, it then runs in the background without any additional work required, making your life and workload a lot easier.

There are many people that would benefit from having a Marketing Automation solution, but from a sales perspective, here are the top three reasons to start implementing automated emails campaigns right now:

  1. You can have pre-defined marketing programmes cultivating leads for you, while you’re off doing tasks that require more face-to-face contact.

  2. It allows you to optimise your time efficiently and achieve your goals without missing a beat.

  3. It allows you to be at the forefront of email marketing trends, bringing your business into the 21st Century.

 

So how would you put a Marketing Automation plan together?

Here is a useful Marketing Automation Workflow for you to refer to when setting up your campaign programme:

 (Click image to download)

 

What you need to think about:

Planning is exceptionally important in the world of marketing automation, for many reasons. Firstly, the term ‘marketing automation’ has, unfortunately, become somewhat of a buzzword, where marketeers seek out automation software under the misguided impression that it provides them with the digital marketing wizardry to automatically generate new leads. This misconception leaves many marketeers with sophisticated tools to automate the middle of their campaign funnel, but no solution that actually generates new leads at the beginning of the funnel.

In your planning phase, you should get to know the system you’re using and plug any holes in your lead generation funnel, allowing you to get your automated ducks in a row.

Secondly, planning helps to prevent you from making mistakes when you set your programme live.  It will ensure you have fully thought through every possible step / action your customer may take, thoroughly planning out what components you will need in order to make your campaign run successfully as an automated system.  Sounds complicated, but its far from it (and if you get stuck you can always check with us).

For example, email templates, forms, surveys and website content – make sure the right links are in place, and test that the right automation is being trigger when an action occurs (i.e. a link is clicked).  There’s nothing worse than getting a beautiful automation programme set up, only to find your customers aren’t ending up where you want them to go because you’ve missed a step in your automation set-up.

You might think that I’m going overboard and stating the obvious when I say you need to plan out every step of your marketing automation, but if you really want it to run successfully with seamless automation, then planning really is the key.

To help you along, I’ve set up an example workflow of a functional marketing automation programme.  The example below demonstrates a ‘Welcome Programme’ for a new customer being added to a contact database, taking you through every automated step for every action or inaction the customer may take within the programme, including time delays.

 

 

Now you have had a look at how a Marketing Automation programme could work, I’m going to take you through some does and don’ts of the automation world:

Does:

  • Integrate your inbound marketing strategy with your marketing automation. Inbound strategy is all about providing valuable, aligned content, and this should not change at all if you start using marketing automation.  If anything, it should be enhancing your communications, as you will be able to provide the content your customer’s need, at the exact time they need it, without any manual input during the process.

  • Send relevant content to your customers, and make sure you are providing them with what they are looking for.  People make the mistake of trying to drive business objectives without actually considering the customer who is going through the journey.  This is arising trend within the industry, with many companies providing workshops detailing how to achieve a customer driven strategy.

  • Set up engagement and retention campaigns to keep your current customers coming back for more.  After all, it’s much easier to sell to someone who has previously bought from you.  Content marketing is an essential part of making sales, and automation can help you do this.  Make sure you’re keeping on top of your content and constantly improving it, making sure it’s more relevant to your customer’s as they progress on their automated journey.

Don’ts:

  • Set up Automation without planning first or thinking about what you want to achieve. There is no point setting up a complex automated programme without getting the strategy right first.  Don’t be that person.

  • Mass email customers.  This is literally the worst.  I have unsubscribed from so may brands over the years because they are emailing too much, and none of the content was relevant.  If nothing else, you will end up having your emails marked as spam, so just avoid bulk emailing.

  • Start before planning.  So I know I harped on about this, but it’s seriously important.  Don’t spend days or weeks of your life setting up an automation programme before you have taken the time to properly research and plan every step and action.  Plan – you won’t regret it!

I think you’ve got enough there to start you on your Marketing Automation journey.  If you want to discuss how Marketing Automation could work for your business, our Enabler team would be happy to chat you through our Automation software and how it could help deliver you deliver on your goals.

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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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Looking beyond the clicks: analytics – chapter two

If you read our first Reporting and Analytics blog, you’ll already know the importance of tracking your email campaigns, and what key metrics you should be recording.

So now you’ve got the basics covered, we’re going to delve deeper into email reporting metrics, more specifically looking at link tracking and Google Analytics integration. Excited?

You should be, because these metrics could help you turn clicks into conversions… now that’s exciting.

 

Why do we look beyond the click?

Every good marketer knows that ‘click thru’ rates are an essential metric that tell you how many people clicked on the links within your email, giving you a good indication of how engaged your customers were with your content. However, click thru rates do not give you the full picture of what happened past the initial click… did the customer make a purchase… did they drop off your website?

In order to find out how your customers are behaving once they land on your website, you need to put some tracking in place within your links and on your website.  This helps to unlock your customers’ behaviour beyond the click, and for that, we need Google Analytics…

 

How to track your customers using Google Analytics

Now this might get a bit technical, but bear with us as it’s worth it…

Google Analytics tracking works using something called the Urchin Tracking Module (UTM). You will be able to see this in action in this link:

http://www.enablermail.com/?utm_campaign=march-marketing-email1&utm_content=group1&utm_medium=email&utm_source=enabler&utm_term=offer-link

Everything after the first “?” in the link is the UTM, and it can be broken down into the following:

  • utm_campaign: Refers to the campaign name (in this instance we would be referring to the March marketing email.

  • utm_content: Content is used to track an individual or segments response. This could be based on any field in your database, for example user-id. For this example we have used a rather generic “group 1”, because who knows what data you hold! (Your options are endless). It’s important to note that this, like term, is an optional field.

  • utm_medium:  Tells analytics the medium used for marketing, (in this instance we would be talking about email).

  • utm_source: This is usually the media owner, but for email marketing it can be used to specify the source of email list or type of email, e.g. houselist, welcome-email, abandoned-basket. For the purposes of the link above we are using Enabler (the greatest email product on the planet… of course 😉 ).

  • utm_term: In AdWords, term is used to identify the keyword used to trigger the ad, but it can be used in email marketing to identify individual links e.g. offer-link. It is important to note that this is an optional field in email campaigns if your email provider lets you set up trackable links.

 

 

How do you create your own UTM codes?

There are three main ways you can create UTM codes.

1. Through your Email Service Provider (ESP)

Many ESP’s will have in-system methods of creating UTM codes. Enabler, for example, does it through its Web Links section, allowing you to fully customise your the tracking of your links.

2. Manually writing them

This is the long way of doing it, but there’s nothing to stop you manually adding tracking to the end of your link. All you need do is take my little template here:

?utm_campaign=xxx&utm_content=xxx&utm_medium=email&utm_source=xxx&utm_term=xxx

Just update the ‘xxx’ with your own tracking information, then add it onto the end of your link. Simples.

3. Using the URL builder in Google Analytics

Let Google create a custom URL which you can track through Analytics.  The URL builder tracking is limited in that it only allows you to enter the values for the parameters, for example, the campaign name and keywords, but this useful tool is a handy of generating a custom URL quickly.

 

 

Is there any best practice advice?

Link tracking is there to best used to suit your reporting purposes, so there’s no wrong way to do it, but here are some suggestions which should help point you in the right direction:

  • Naming conventions: Consider standardising this. Remember, each URL will have multiple parameters, you will want to keep it as clean as possible, and having a standard naming convention across the board will make this easier to manage for reporting purposes.

  • Type case:– Keep it lowercase.

  • Remember – Customers can see the URL too! This is one that people often forget, whatever your parameters are, your customers will be able to see in the link in their browser. Make sure whatever naming you use, is something you don’t mind being visible.

  • Use what you need: only use parameters that are 100% necessary to your campaign.

  • Shorten it: UTM codes can make links incredibly long. It’s always worth considering using a link shortening service like bitly or goo.gl to manage this.

 

How can you tell which traffic came from emails?

The best way to do this is to set up an Advanced Segment in Google Analytics which will report solely on your email traffic.

To set this up, select the Advanced Segment option using the down arrow at the top left above the reports in Google Analytics, then choose “Create New Segment” and set the Medium to “Email”. The Advanced segment will now be based on all visits to the site with a medium of ‘email’ set, provided that this is how you have labelled your links by tagging them.

Before you send out an email campaign, make sure you’ve tested the tracking by sending yourself (and preferably a few colleagues) the email, and clicked through to your website. Then log into Analytics to check you can see that the clicks are being registered by your new Advanced Segment in Analytics.

 

 

Can you see who is converting based on my email campaigns?

I’m glad you asked!  There are a few ways you can do this, but the ways we have found most successful is the use of Event Tracking and Page Tracking in Google Analytics.

Event Tracking essentially works by embedding an image tag within your email with information that Google can use to track customers from email clicks through to conversion. (See Google Developers for more detailed information on how to set up your Events). Once you have your Event set up, you will need to add the URL into your email. It would need to be positioned within your email like this:

<html>

<head>

…some other head contents…

</head>

<body>

…some other body contents…

<img src=”URL GOES HERE”/>

</body>

</html>

and the link would look something like this:

http://www.google-analytics.com/collect?v=1&tid=UA-12345678-1&cid=CLIENT_ID_NUMBER&t=event&ec=email&ea=open&el=recipient_id&cs=newsletter&cm=email&cn=Campaign_Name

This link will tell Google everything it needs to know to track your conversions.

Page Tracking works slightly differently, but is similar in concept. Each email service provider will have a slightly different way of doing this, but the idea is the same. On Enabler, your dashboard report will have a line in the report which feeds back information about revenue generated.

It does this by working in conjunction with your tracked links and your website. In order to track the pages that your audience visit after they’ve landed on your site, the site needs to send some information to Enabler. In this regard Enabler works in the same way as Google Analytics and requires that each page you wish to track contains a small snippet of code.

Some of this may sound complicated, but trust me when I say that the initial leg work is worth it.  So many of us have problems justifying the email campaigns we want to deploy, and in-depth tracking helps demonstrate how valuable a channel email really is.

Additionally, I don’t know about you, but I’m a sucker for watching the sales pour in after a campaign has gone out. That’s right, analytics is fun.  Happy tracking!

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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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Top five email tools

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As email marketers, we are always trying to find the best ways to make sure our emails are the very best they can be.  Gone are the days where you could send a test email to your inbox, sign it off and send it out.  Now more than ever, we have to be extra vigilant with our emails, making sure get into our customer’s inboxes, and that they look good when they arrive there. But with so many tools available and more cropping up all the time, how do we separate out the good from the… not so good. Luckily, the Enabler team are here to provide you with our expert opinions on the tools on the market now.

Our Top Five Email Tools to help you get the most out of your campaigns:

 

1). Adobe Photoshop

Photoshop is design software that falls under the Adobe Creative Cloud – which means if you already have a creative cloud log in, you can access all of your assets and imagery from inside Photoshop. The programme itself is very intuitive and provides a host of different ways to achieve your goals. It enables email designers to produce beautiful creatives and maximise their potential.

Adobe are always updating the product (you can check out their update timeline here). Photoshop allows you to work across desktop and mobile devices to create the best looking emails you can, making it probably the best software out there for creating great email design.

Price-wise, you can get the full 20+ creative desktop and mobile apps in Adobe Creative Cloud for £45 per month or you can just go for Photoshop which is £17.15 a month.

View the full breakdown of pricing here.

Photoshop is a creative tool we highly recommend investing in if you want to create visually stunning, engaging emails that drive clicks.

 

2). Adobe Dreamweaver

Dreamweaver is a fast, flexible coding engine designed to give developers the freedom to code emails that look brilliant on any size screen.  Dreamweaver is extremely intuitive, and is a suitable choice for any email marketer, whether you are new to coding or have years of experience.  The coding engine offers code ‘hints’ for new users and works with the developer to keep code clean, reduce errors and improve readability.  It has three main view screens, code, design and side-by-side.  This is incredibly useful as it allows you o see how your code is affecting the design.

A new feature we love is ‘snippets‘.  Snippets are sections of code (e.e. headers, footers or images with text) which you code once, then save for use later.  When you next have a template that needs that snippet in it, you can easily drop it in, making development faster and more accurate.

Dreamweaver has the same pricing structure as the rest fo the Adobe Creative Cloud, so you can own it for just £17.15 a month.

 

 

 

​​3). Litmus ​​

Litmus is an email testing tool which allows you to check how your emails will look across a wide variety of email clients and apps.  The main thing we love about Litmus is that it saves you from having to create test email accounts across all email clients, allowing you to test everything in one central place.

You can test everything from link tracking to email load time.  They even have a section of the tool called ‘checklist’, which is essentially your pre-flight check before sending your email.  It will help you catch broken links, optimise loading speed and check how your email works with images on and off.  This section is fantastic – especially as it allows you to choose which browsers and clients you want to see.  It covers desktop, mobile and tablet – we couldn’t recommend it more.

Litmus also has its Community Area, where you can ask questions to hundreds of other developers and share in each other’s  experiences to make your emails even better.  They also produce emails themselves which keep you up-to-date with the latest email trends.

Litmus does offer a free 7 day trial, but after that prices range from $79 a month to $399 a month (for the Brits out there, that’s approx £63 – £320 a month).  They do have a pricing option where can tailor your package, so it only contains what you actually need; like an email pick’n’mix.

 

 

 

 4). Send Forensics

Send Forensics is an email deliverability tool that focuses specifically on making sure your emails hit your customer’s inboxes. It’s very advanced, and works to safeguard your email reputation and boost engagement.

You can run a free email deliverability test that will score your email and tell you the percentage will end up in spam, however to get the full features it costs $49 a month.

Once you sign up to the full features version, the software not only gives you a deliverability score, but what elements of your emails are trigger spam – whether its due to your content or the technical makeup of your email, for example if there is no SFP set up.

(Here’s some tips on avoiding spam filters)

It will mark your vocabulary and copywriting, judging words you’ve used and highlighting any negative one that are hindering your deliverability, and offers you alternative phrases to use instead.  It also highlights any positive keywords to demonstrate the phrases helping your email deliverability.  Send Forensics will even rate your copywriting tone of voice in determining whether you are being overly promotional or conversational in your tone.

 

One of the really standout aspects of Send Forensics are all the technical checks it undertakes when examining your email.  Not only will it check the image:text ratio, and inspect the quality of the links you provide, it will also dive under the skin of your email set-up, domain authority and IP address to check your sending reputation, noting any sites that have blacklisted your IP or technical problems that might be hindering you reaching the inbox.

All this might sound very technical, but Send Forensics is anything but.  The software is exceptionally user friendly, and offers advice on how to undertake any actions it suggests, making it an ideal solution for email newbies.

5). Email on Acid

Email on Acid is another email testing tool that will help you make sure your emails look great across devices and clients.  It provides coding tips and marketing guides via their blog, and also has a forum where you can post techniques and questions to other email developers – however if this is one of your main uses, we would probably recommend going with Litmus as they tend to provide answers faster.

It comes in cheaper than Litmus at $45 – $295 per month, however unlike Litmus they don’t provide a custom tailored option, meaning you have to take everything in each package.  Both LItmus and Email on Acid’s basic package come with one user, but Litmus’ most popular package comes with five users, whereas Email on Acid only has the one user account.  E

Email on Acid is a cheaper alternative if you are a small business with only one users, but if you’re a bigger business, definitely opt for Litmus.

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Top ten email coding tips

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Say the words “Build me an email” to a developer and watch the expression on their face drop. Yes, HTML emails are old school, but there’s no need to don a loin cloth and start chipping out code from a stone tablet.

Email has come on leaps and bounds within the last few years, and with open rates frequently increasing on mobile devices, there are a few tips and tricks you can use for responsive emails.

 

Here are a few favourites to keep you building successful, responsive emails:

 1). Keep inline

If you have tried building an email before, you have probably heard of this one. This is basically adding any style changes you make to the containing table of your content.

For example:

<td style=”font-family:Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif; font-size:11px; color:#000000;”>Hello World</td>

The main benefit behind using this styling is that some email clients will strip out embedded CSS in the <head>, leaving your email with as much style as socks and sandals.

Email developers have already started trialing emails with no inline CSS, which are not 100% foolproof yet, but with a large percentage of global email clients supporting embedded CSS, there is hope for cleaner emails in the future.

 

2). Query your media

Let’s say you want that image smaller, or a different font for that block of text, or you need that column to stack on mobile… not a problem! Media query to the rescue.  Media queries are the CSS3 commands that allow you to change your viewpoint depending on your screen resolution,  meaning that your imagery and content will display differently on different devices… thus making your content fully responsive.

Within the <head> of any email there will be a minimum width set, for instance 480px which will control and sometimes constrain how your media is displayed.  But, if you add a media query to your style command, any styles that you set within that media query will take over when the screen resolution drops below the minimum width.

For example:

<style type=”text/css”>

    body {width: 680px;  background-color:#000000;}

    @media only screen and (max-width:480px) {
        body {width:100% !important;  background-color:#ffffff !important;}
    }

</style>

This means your image can be any size, the font family can styled differently for each resolution, and you can stack your columns all day long. Happy days!

 

3). Stacking

 We briefly mentioned stacking columns in the last tip.  As you’d expect, this coding command allows you to stack columns on top of one another by setting them as .stackonmobile {display:block;} for mobile. This coding tip helps with mobile optimisation by making sections of your email more visible and legible on smaller screen resolutions, instead of trying to squash them into one column.

The default for stacking was left to right for a long time, however more recently we can now reverse stack, by setting the containing tables text direction as right to left.

For example:

<table width=“600” dir=“rtl”>
    <tr>
        <th width=“300” dir=“ltr” class=“stackonmobile”>World</th>
        <th width=“300” dir=“ltr” class=“stackonmobile”>Hello</th>
    </tr>
</table>

Note that we need to redirect the sub-tables back to left to right for text alignment. Also the html layout will be reversed, right column first, which is why ‘World’ is before ‘Hello’ in the example above.
Also note that we have used <th> instead of <td> for Android compatibility, as they dropped the use of display:block on td’s.

 

4). Min vs Max

With screen resolutions getting bigger and bigger, is it a good idea to make our emails wider?
When I started in email builds (back in the dark ages of blackboards and chalk written HTML), the width was 585px. This slowly grew to a standard 600px, which seems to still be the acceptable size. Most of the emails we produce today are anywhere between 600px & 720px. Occasionally a 1000px email rears it’s oversized head, but these are usually for big occasions with large hero images for impact.

What we need to remember is that emails will still be framed by the email clients furniture i.e. the inbox list, the search and edit tools, sender details etc. So an oversized email might end up stretching beyond the width of the screen, which results in an ugly horizontal scroll bar at the bottom… and nobody wants that.

So remember, size does matter.  Always aim for the optimal image size depending on the platform or device being used to ensure your emails remain mobile responsive.

 

5). Bring it to the Table

With email development, it’s all about the tables. Below you’ll find an example of an email HTML table.

Example:
<table width=“100%”>
    <tr>
    <td align=”center”>
        <table width=“700”>
            <tr>
            <td align=”center”>
                <table width=“100%”>
                    <tr>
                    <td align=“center”>Hello</td>
                    </tr>
                </table>
            </td>
            </tr>
        </table>
    </td>
    </tr>
</table>            

The first outer table is set at 100% width to ensure the table is centred within the main body of the email itself.  Then the body table is set at your desired email width (i.e. 700px as above) with a 100% media query class.  By setting the tables within the body to 100%, this helps to ensure the content flows responsively when scaled down to a smaller screen resolution.

 

Handy tip: When building emails using tables, make sure you repeat your inline styles.  A table within a table will lose styling in some email clients, especially background colour and font attributes.
And another handy tip: Try and make sure you nest your tables, and avoid using colspans in your email code. Outlook has a nasty habit of ignoring colspans and rowspans, so nesting your tables will give you more control over your code, making you a happier developer.

 

6). A font by any other name

Be on the lookout in Outlook, your font might not be the font you wanted! 
Having a backup or fallback font within your email code is exceptionally useful to ensure your emails always look the way you want them to, even if the email provider doesn’t have your first choice font.

However… Outlook 2007/10/13 has other ideas, and will automatically apply their own fallback font or Times New Roman. Even if you set fallback fonts in your code, Outlook ignores them. Cheers Outlook.

But wait, there is a fix.. phew!
<!–[if mso]>
<style type=”text/css”>
    body, table, td {font-family: Arial, sans-serif, Helvetica !important;}
</style>
<![endif]–>

Drop this code into the <head> of an email and Outlook will pick up the web safe fonts first, so you can safely steer clear of Times New Roman.
Font-astic!

 

7). Does my article look big in this?

A bit of extra padding never did anyone any harm, but adding Padding and Margins to your table styles could harm the way your email looks, as some email clients might ignore them.

Spacer images used to be the way to use padding in emails. Developers would use transparent 12px x 12px gifs and fit them into every nook and cranny of their emails… sounds tedious doesn’t it?

Luckily there is an alternative which is much more efficient to implement, and works across all email clients successfully… A non-breaking space (&nbsp;) – just add font size, line height and a width/height depending on the space you require:

 

<td style=”font-size:20px; line-height:20px;” height=”20″>&nbsp;</td>

So now your emails and tables will always be lean and evenly spaced…no padding required.

 

8). The (Alt)ernative

 When your emails load quickly, you get to display every image and aspect of you email in all its glory. But what happens when you’re a slow connection speed or your email client is blocking images by default?

You could end up with empty spaces where your images used to be, but hopefully you will see the Alt text – the alternative text that’s displayed when an image can’t display.

Some email clients won’t load images automatically, so without any Alt text you could get a blank looking email. 🙁

Example Alt text:
<img src=“images/hello-world-title.jpg” width=”200″ height=”40″ alt=“Hello World”/>

Another alternative is to actually style your Alt text so that it’s less bland if it gets displayed. Add a font-family, font-size, font-colour or text-decoration, so you try and match the image style, and get your email looking good if the images don’t load.

Example stylised Alt text:
<img src=“images/hello-world-title.jpg” width=”200″ height=”40″ alt=“Hello World” style=“font-size:16px; font-weight: bold; font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif; color:#ffffff;”/>

 

9). Hamburger to go please

Now that emails have further CSS3 support, it’s allowed many developers to start introducing some great responsive features to their email code.

The Hamburger Menu (so called because it looks like a little burger between a bun) is one example of this.

Those long menus on an email don’t need to be stacked half way down your mobile screen anymore, they can be tucked away neatly in a clickable, drop down menu, making your email more mobile-friendly and more visually appealing.  Just need the fries to go with it now!

 

 

 

10). Give yourself a fighting chance

Make sure you are putting yourself in the best possible position for email building. One of the ways you can do this is to get the right software. Lucky for you, we’ve put together a list of our favourite email development tools, from design right through to deployment.

Check them our Email Tools blog and start getting the best results out of your emails.

Whatever you do, keep experimenting with your HTML/CSS emails, even if you end up with Frankenstein’s monster there might be a small part that works really well, or another that will give you a further understanding of where to go next.

Happy coding!

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Planning your editorial calendar – get ahead of your marketing comms

As a marketer, there’s nothing worse than the frantic last-minute creation of new content or scrambling for a topic to post about. From erratic emails to hurried hashtags, when it comes to your marketing communications sometimes being reactive isn’t always the best philosophy. Proactively planning your communications ahead of time means that you will always have relevant reading at the ready. More importantly, your business objectives and marketing goals will benefit from having more focused communications that deliver you both richer content and quality results.

Sound good?  Then you need an editorial calendar! Allow me to give you an overview of what exactly editorial calendars are, how to create and use them, and a few tips for generating that sometimes-elusive content…

 

What is an editorial calendar?

Providing a bird’s eye view of your content, an editorial calendar is a fantastic tool to help plan your marketing communications for the year ahead.  It is hugely beneficial when it comes to planning cross-channel promotions as it enables you to consolidate your content planning in one place and maintain a consistent tone across your content. Upcoming industry events, public holidays and topics of audience interest will help inspire your content generation, and allow you to set up a posting schedule for your communications.

Your editorial calendar provides you with a clear overview of your communications, ensuring you maintain a regular active presence across all your communication channels, as well as allowing you to spot any gaps or missed opportunities ahead of time. Build a familiar identity through your calendar content by maintaining a consistent tone of voice, post frequency and choice of topics. By being savvy and planning in advance, you can get your content ‘in the bag’ ahead of time more efficiently, delegating content creation or research amongst your team so you don’t have to single handedly build your calendar.  Be creative and make sure you are using every suitable marketing channel available (social, email, blogs etc) to really maximise your communications effectiveness and achieving your marketing goals.  All-in-all, an editorial calendar ensures your marketing communications remain as time-efficient and engaging as possible.

 

 

Creating your editorial calendar

Start by deciding how you want to set your calendar up; some people swear by spreadsheets, whereas others like to use one of the dedicated tools available (more on these later.)
When you’ve got your format sorted, start by looking ahead and plotting in any industry events such as exhibitions or conferences, as well as internal events such as promotions, seminars, product launches, training or networking sessions your company is looking to deliver. Make notes of any content creation opportunities around these events, such as topics for articles, blogs, email campaigns, photo opportunities or subjects for videos.  Try to ensure you plan your content to suit a range of channels (e.g. social media, website, blog, email) and formats (e.g. article, infographic, video) in mind, so that your communications stay consistent without ending up in a rut with lots of duplicate content.
At this early stage, be sure to meet with others to share ideas, begin to delegate tasks and set deadlines, and keep each other up-to-date with progress going forward.

 

 

Tips for content generation

It’s important to establish the fundamentals of your content before you get posting to ensure that it’s all meaningful – your audience will be able to tell if you’re just posting for the sake of it.

  • Consider the purpose of your content. For example, do you want it to drive lead generation, increase sales, or present your company as a thought leader or raise brand awareness?

  • What sort of audience and customers are you looking to attract?  Think about their possible demographics and how to appeal to them in terms of topics of interest so that the content you post is directly relevant to them, and your time of posting and tone of voice are targeted appropriately.

  • Pin down the resources and skills at your disposal in the office; you may have copywriters, photographers, and designers who would be happy to get on-board and help boost the quality of your content…use them!

Now that you know where you’re going and what you’ve got to work with, you can start to plan your topics…

  • Link your products and services to seasonal holidays and events; ideally you should aim to produce more than just a generic “Merry Christmas” greeting message. For example, if you’re in the property industry link it to successfully selling your house in the winter, if you’re in retail highlight some amazing gifts you sell, and if you’re in the travel industry showcase some amazing holiday destinations for the winter.

  • Not everything has to be an article – remember that content “snippets” are great too – a series of ‘top tips’, for example, or an interesting fact of the week. A balance of light-hearted and informative will make your content well-rounded and broadly appealing.

  • Stuck for content ideas?  You can use HubSpot’s blog topic generator. Enter up to three nouns and let it generate related blog titles for you – it’s great for some quick inspiration!  For something more in-depth, you can use Buzzsumo to see the topics generating the most engagement in your industry and plan your content accordingly.

 

 

Tools and templates to get you ahead

For something simple, you could use an Outlook or Google calendar visible to everyone who will be working on content creation, or an Excel sheet (download HubSpot’s free Excel editorial calendar template – just fill in a quick form). There are however many excellent free or inexpensive tools available online that could help you be even more efficient and create something a bit more special:

 

CoSchedule – Editorial Calendar

This one has been developed by the guys at WordPress, so if you’re already using WordPress as your CRM you can add their editorial calendar as a plug-in and keep everything together. No need to fret if you don’t use WordPress – you can just access your calendar through the CoSchedule website instead. You can start by signing up for a free trial to see if you like it, and will benefit from a helpful tutorial that guides you through the set-up. The interface looks just like a calendar, and it’s very easy to use with drag and drop flexibility. To continue after the free trial, CoSchedule costs from $30 per month.*

 

Trello

This simple platform starts you off with ​​an empty board, to which you need to add ‘sticky note’ like lists and add your content information (topic, deadlines etc). As you begin to build up your lists you will see a calendar start to form, and you can easily shuffle things round by dragging and dropping if you rethink your strategy. It’s also fun and personalisable with different background colours, stickers and colour-coding. The basic version of Trello is free to use, though you can upgrade to a paid version from $9.99 per month.* if you need the extra bells and whistles, which include unlimited “Power-Ups” for your boards, a higher limit on the size of attachments, more personalisation options, greater security, and priority email support

 

Asana

Asana is a project management ​tool​​ which can be used for editorial calendars too. Start by setting up a project and titling it something gloriously imaginative, like “Editorial calendar”, then assign each member of the team their tasks/content to create, grouping each one under the project as you go.  Asana is great fun if you like ticking off lists, has a range of seasonal themes you can select from, and is very straightforward to use.

 

 

 

Hootsuite & SproutSocial

These fantastic social media tools allow you to plot in your posts into a calendar with all your links, images and copy well in advance, so that your posts always go out at the exact time you want, creating hassle-free social media management.  Both platforms allow you to view all your social streams in one place, allowing you to view and respond to engagement quickly and efficiently. By planning your content in advance, these platforms allow you to be reactive where it counts, by identifying key influencers and potential leads, and turning them into customers. Gain valuable insight into your audience demographic and interests using the indepth analysis dashboards on both platforms, and helping you tailor future content more effectively to drive further engagement.

 

 

 

Whichever tool you choose, taking the time to set up your editorial calendar will equip you with a valuable asset in your marketing communications. It will allow you to tailor your content to your products and business objectives, and help drive consistent audience engagement. Even better, posting regular interesting content will help to raise your brand awareness, which in turn is likely to lead to more customers and boost your ROI.  This blog should help you get your editorial calendar off the ground, so now all you need to do is source your content and you’re away!

Happy planning! 

/by

Spam filters: what are they and how to avoid them

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Spam filter problems are something you’ll probably come across during your time as an email marketer.  At present just 79%* of permission-based emails actually reach customer inboxes, as ISPs (Internet Service Providers) and spam filters constantly try to find better ways to reduce the amount of irrelevant content in users’ inboxes. So with almost a quarter of emails being earmarked as spam, how do you ensure you reach the inbox? It’s therefore never been more important to understand how spam filters work, which is why we’re here to help build your knowledgebase so you that can confidently create and send emails that should avoid being flagged as spam.

 

First things first…

To begin to understand how to avoid the spam-filters, we firstly need to tackle the question ‘What is spam?’. There are hundreds of different definitions of spam out there, but the most comprehensive one is that spam is unsolicited, irrelevant email, sent in bulk to a list of people. For example, if you bought a list of data and started to send emails to the people on that list, although you think you are sending these people content you believe to be relevant or beneficial to them, you are in fact contacting people who have not opted in to receive your emails. Because you have not been given explicit permission to market to these people, your emails would be considered ‘spam’ by these individuals. (Note to self – only ever email opted-in customers).

 

Being marked as ‘Spam’ – what does it mean for your emails?

Spam might seem like just an annoyance in the inbox, but when individuals actively start marking your emails as ‘spam’ or ‘junk’, Email Service Providers (ESPs) will start to take notice. Having your emails flagged as spam will negatively impact your reputation as a sender, and if poor sending practices continue Email Service Providers will start filtering your emails directly into the spam folder to ensure you never reach people’s inboxes. So to maintain good email deliverability and avoid being flagged as spam, it’s worth understanding the laws and regulations that ESPs abide by. Different countries have different regulations regarding spam, for example the UK uses the 2003 Privacy and Electronic Communications Regulations, USA has the CAN-SPAM Act of 2003 and Canada has its own Anti-Spam Legislation (CASL), but every country / ESP has common regulations which all email marketers must abide by, including:

  • Always providing an unsubscribe link which work for at least 30 days post-send

  • Not using deceptive headers, from names and addresses or subject lines. 

(You can find a comprehensive list of laws by country at the end of this article).

Failure to comply with these regulations can result in costly penalties which differ per country. For example, violating the CAN-SPAM Act could see you fined $11,000 per offense… which translates to $11,000 for every email address you sent to. To ensure you don’t fall foul, it’s definitely worth having a read of the legislation before using any new data source.

 

Spam Filters – How do they work?  

It can be rather tricky when it comes to judging how spam filters determine how ‘spammy’ an email is. To put it simply, they’ll systematically weigh up each component of your email and assign each part a spam rating. For the purposes of this we’ll call the rating 1-10, 1 =‘not spammy’ and 10= ‘very spammy’. Once every email component has been rated the email will then be given a spam score which will decide whether an email can pass through the filter. If the score exceeds a threshold (let’s call it 5 for this example) then the email will get flagged as spam, will not pass go and heads straight to the spam folder or is completely blocked from being delivered.

 

 

Avoiding the filters

The tricky part is that each spam filter works differently, with some having stricter ‘pass’ thresholds determined by their server administrations. So while your email might receive a score of 4 for one spam filter, another one might mark it as an 8. The list of spammy criteria is forever evolving as email users continue to identify and mark new email content / senders as spam in their inbox. Spam filters often share this information with each other to help identify new emerging spam. Unfortunately for us marketers, this means there’s no easy or definitive checklist to ensure our emails don’t end up in the spam folder. We do, however, know that there are some key factors to keep an eye on when sending emails.

1. Coding in your campaign. Some spam filters will be triggered by sloppy code, tags which don’t need to be there or code that has been pulled in directly from MS Word. To avoid this being an issue in your campaigns, make sure you are using templates that have been reviewed by a developer, or have a developer build you one from scratch for you. Many ESP’s will provide tools such as HTML or drag and drop editors which will help you avoid these issues.

2. Campaign metadata. Spam filters want to see that you know the people you’re sending to. Personalising your emails is a great way to demonstrate this; it shows the spam filter that you hold information about the recipient other than their email address. You can also ask recipients to add you to their list of trusted mailers.

3. Your IP address. Some spam filters will block or mark an email as spam if it has come from an IP address that has been flagged as having sent spam in the past or been blacklisted, so you need to ensure the IP address you’re emailing from has a good sender reputation. Try to avoid IP pools with poor reputations, where you share sending IP addresses with other senders, as their poor sending behaviour can impact on your deliverability / sender reputation. This usually won’t cause problems if the ESP is taking correct precautions to make sure all emails have unsubscribe links etc, however if you see your deliverability rates drop, it might be worth contacting your ESP to make sure it’s definitely your emails that are causing the drop in deliverability. Sending reputation is incredibly important, so make sure yours is good by sticking to good sending practices.

 

 

Content is key

Why words are a big influencer in avoiding the spam filters

Although content and formatting can be a bit of a hazy subject because there’s no specific content that is always guaranteed to be flagged as spam in an email, I can recommend a few best-practices to make sure you’re doing everything you can to not trigger spam filters and get your email safely to the inbox.

1. Never stop testing.  It’s a great way to find out how different content in your email impacts your deliverability. If you don’t make it into the inbox, it could be something in your content i.e. a negative keyword, too many links or images, or overall tone that is trigger the spam filter. Test and retest the content.

2. Clear unsubscribe links are a must. Don’t try to hide your unsubscribe links within your email – it’s a sure-fire way to get marked as spam if people can’t find the link easily. Think about it from the perspective of the user, you receive an email and you think the content isn’t relevant to you. If you can’t find an unsubscribe link, what do you do? Some people might try and contact the company sending the emails, but most people won’t bother and will just mark the email as spam. Don’t let it happen to you!

3. Be consistent. If your customers are used to a particular type of content / branding from your emails, don’t make a sudden change without warning. Straying from the normal messaging of your brand could trigger people to mark it as spam if they don’t think it’s a genuine email from yourselves.

4. Avoid trigger words. Now although there is no definitive list of words and phrases to avoid, spam filters are already looking out for certain negative keywords which have been previously identified as spam and proven to trigger filters. Using any of these words/phrases in your subject line or email is almost certain to get you a higher spam score and trigger a filter. We can’t list them all, but some simple ones to avoid are:

  • the word Free

  • Exclamation marks (big no-no!), and other symbols such as $ £ %

  • ALL CAPS words

 

For a more comprehensive list of words to avoid, see HubSpot’s ‘Ultimate List of Email Spam Trigger Words’.  

So there you have it, some useful ways you can keep yourself out of spam. With any emails you send make sure you’re really thinking about your opt-in method, how you’re acquiring your data, setting customer’s expectations, where you put your unsubscribe link, and what keywords you use in your email content. By keeping on top of all these you should be able to maintain a good sender reputation and prevent your spam score from triggering any filters.

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Tracking your email campaigns – the key metrics for reporting and analytics

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So much information is available about email campaigns now that it can be hard to separate out what’s useful and what’s not, and sometimes even harder to know how to use the data you have to inform and improve your future campaigns.

Don’t worry though, I’m here to help!  I’ll talk you through which metrics are important and how you can use these metrics to improve your results.

 

Firstly, tracking your email performance is super important. There are three key reasons why you should make tracking your campaigns a priority:

Three Reasons to Track Your Email Campaigns:

1. Moving on up

Without tracking your emails, you’re not going to know how they are performing or be able to compare what works and what doesn’t. This means that in future sends, you’ll have no way of making them better, or even knowing what content you should or shouldn’t be using. With tracking in place you can get to know your customers better and, in turn, give them more of what they want.

2. The proof is in the tracking

Marketing budgets can be tight, and the higher-ups in your business may be looking for areas to make cuts in. Having the stats which prove the ROI of your efforts can be the difference between you being able to send effective emails and missing out on a key area of digital revenue.

3. Focus pocus

You’re a busy person, you’ve probably got a million and one things on your plate. Having metrics available that show you where you’re performing well will help you drive more focus to the areas that need help, and allow you to nurture the areas that are already doing well. It gives you a comprehensive overview of how to split your time, and in the marketing world, it’s imperative to success.

 

 

Now we know why we’re tracking, let’s take a closer look at what we’re tracking. These are the key metrics that you absolutely 100% of the time want to focus your attention on:

Open rate

Open rate measures how many people on your email list opened up your campaign and is usually expressed as a percentage. Let’s say that you sent your email to 100 people and you got an open rate of 30%.  This means 30 people out of the 100 you sent to opened your email.

Open rates will vary hugely, dependent on anything from list size to method of data acquisition.  Here is a list of average open rates split out by industry to give you an idea of what to benchmark your open rates against.  If you’re an Enabler customer, you’ll be able to find your open rate quickly in the dashboard report.

 

Knowing whether you have a high or low open rate is a good gauge of how effective your subject line has been at engaging people and driving them to open the email.  If you have a consistently low open rate, it could mean that your email might have ended up in the recipient’s junk/spam folder, which hardly anyone checks.  If you have a low open rate, it’s worth taking a look at your email deliverability.

 

Click-through rate (CTR)

Click-through rate measures how many people clicked on the links within your email and, like open rate, is usually expressed as a percentage. It’s calculated by the amount of people who clicked on your email, divided by the number of people who opened it. Let’s say you sent that same email to the 100 people. A CTR of 30% in that instance would mean that for every 10 people who opened the campaign, 3 went on to click a link.

Your CTR will vary based on a number of factors, including email content and list size. You can find a list of average click through rates by industry here. If you’re an Enabler customer, the click throughs for your campaigns can be found in the dashboard report.

Knowing your CTR is vital, as not only does it tell you how engaging your customers found your email content, but it will also show you want content they found the most or least engaging and if your calls-to-action worked.  This information is vital in making content improvements for future campaigns.

 

Unsubscribe rate

Unsubscribe rate measures how many people unsubscribed from your email list for a particular email or set of emails.  It’s expressed as a percentage (are you seeing a theme yet?) and is calculated by the amount of people who unsubscribed from your campaign divided by the amount of people who received it.  For example, a 2% unsubscribe rate would mean that for every 100 people who received your campaign, 2 people unsubscribed.

If your unsubscribe rate is below 2%, you’re within industry norms, however I’d always be looking to see an unsubscribe rate under 1% to truly know you’re sending the most relevant content to your customers. The only time I’d expect an unsubscribe rate to be higher is if you’re sending to a list you haven’t sent to in a while, or if the data is very new, as they tend to unsubscribe more if you haven’t been communicating with them regularly.

Now although no one like to think of people unsubscribing from their emails, it’s actually bad practice to not include an unsubscribe link – so best practice is to make it clearly visible (preferably at the top of your email).  Many email providers like Google could penalise your email domain for not having an unsubscribe link, and send (any future emails) to the junk folder – so always include the unsubscribe link.

 

Bounce rate

You might notice that sometimes when you send an email, the amount of people you send to isn’t always the same amount as the people who receive it. This is due to bounces. Bounce rate measures the percentage (here we go again) of email addresses you tried to send to, who didn’t receive your message.

Bounces can occur for any number of reasons, including the recipients email inbox being full, the email address no longer existing or because the recipients mail provider marked you as spam.  Generally speaking, a bounce rate is healthy if it’s less than 3%. Anything higher and I’d check your data for problems. If you’re an Enabler client you can see your bounce rate in the dashboard report.

 

Email Visits

Email visits will measure how many people visited your site by clicking through from your email marketing campaigns.  It’s a fantastic way of comparing how your email campaigns are performing against other channels like social media and search. It’s an especially important one if driving traffic to your website is important (and I’m going to go ahead and guess it is!).

Tracking your email visits helps you gauge how relevant the links from your emails were and how the site content performed.  The most important things to look at as well as tracking the number of visits is looking at Average Session Duration (time on site), Page/Session Views(how many pages they viewed) and Bounce Rate.  Bounce rate is especially important to note because if people are clicking through from your emails then leaving your site straight away, it could mean the page you’re linking to either isn’t engaging, relevant or isn’t correct.  Having a high bounce rate can affect how Google perceives and lists your site on search engines, so try to keep bounce rates to below 40% for all channels.

If you’re an Enabler client you can add Google Analytics tracking to each of your links in your campaign under the weblinks section. This will enable you to see each individual campaign and how it’s performing when you log into your Analytics and watch your stats build.

 

Email Conversions

Email conversions will measure the number of customers who converted, (e.g. made a purchase, signed up for a product, etc), that were directly driven by your email marketing campaign.  With the majority of marketers, the aim is ultimately to drive sales for your business – which makes this metric incredibly useful. It can give you quantifiable data with which to justify all your upcoming email marketing decisions. This very much goes back to the proof point of ‘why track?’.

 

So there you have it.  Three reasons to track and six metrics you should be tracking.

Each one of these metrics should help you to make decisions about the next campaign you do, and give you the data you need to make your campaigns as successful as they can be.

Happy tracking!

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Email marketing: back to basics

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Email marketing traditionally has the highest ROI of any digital channel and is one of the most effective tactics to use within an integrated marketing mix.

In an era when existing and potential customers are accessible 24/7 via a smartphone, not optimising your email campaigns for mobile devices could mean you might be missing out on some great opportunities.

You might be surprised to hear that the average adult spends over 20 hours online per week – more than doubling in a decade.  As well as having on average three social media profiles to maintain, your potential customers are browsing online for almost everything. From grocery shopping to booking flights, streaming their favourite programmes or making bank transfers – your customers are doing anything and everything online – so having a strong digital presence is vital.  Although I’d suggest using an integrated marketing mix to target your customers using at least three channels, I’d like to focus on the benefits of one of those core channels: Email Marketing.

Email campaigns are not only designed to generate sales but also to inform, increase brand awareness, advocacy and trust. The most common forms of email marketing are newsletters, lead nurturing, paid email and so called ‘triggered’ email to mention just a few. All of these campaign formats come down to creating content that is of interest to your target audience.
Simple!  Or is it?  It all depends how well you know your target audience.

 

Before you press send: Set your goals

I can’t stress strongly enough the importance of setting campaign specific goals. This helps you to keep your campaign on track, gain meaningful analytics and gauge return on investment.
Before you start planning your email campaign, ask yourself: what do you want to achieve? You may want to drive traffic to your website or social media channels, or promote a product or service. Whatever your goal, setting targets helps you to measure engagement and ROI, draw conclusions, and implement any necessary changes to help improve future campaign performance.
Once you have set clear goals for the campaign, you can start planning content. Although it seems that content is king, there are still many companies out there who do not target their content effectively. There’s nothing more off-putting than wasting a customer’s time by offering them content of no interest to them. It’s also the quickest and most effective way of losing some great prospects by prompting them to press the ‘unsubscribe’ button.

 

Content: Be relevant and be informative

‘What’s relevant content?’  I hear you ask… Well, it depends on factors such as industry, data available, creativity or the abilities of your agency. There are many ways of creating great content.
For the fashion industry it could be all about seasonal trends, latest collaborations or ‘dress to impress’ tips. A company that operates within the steel industry could send their customers a useful guide to different steel grades, examining steel’s strength, parameters and the heat resistance of steel components for relevant industries.  Other ideas for relevant content could be recent changes in legislation that could affect your customers or advising customers about your new products and services.

The simple rule is to do some research on your target audience, via customer satisfaction surveys, seminars, social media monitoring and so on, so they can tell you what content they are likely to engage with.

 

Testing, testing…

Once the email content is finished and the campaign is ready to be sent, it’s time for testing. There are two ways of testing and I suggest you use both methods. The first one is to enter preview mode from the menu to get an overall idea of what the campaign will look like. The second and most accurate method is to send a test email to yourself and your colleagues. You should ask them to proofread it and give feedback on:

•    Subject line
•    Images/ design/ font
•    Links and call to action

When testing, inbox rendering should also be taken into account and that doesn’t mean just sending a test to your smartphone and email. Most customers don’t use the same device as you and as so the HTML will display differently on their device. It is a good idea to send a test to an email rendering service website that enables you to preview how it will display with different email providers such as Outlook, Android, iPhone etc.

Other aspects of email testing are dynamic and personalised content. It’s a good idea to do test sends to ensure all the merge fields like firstname display correctly when sent, and even better to preview test the different data your dynamic content is centred on, i.e. gender, industry etc, to see how the template responds and if it requires adjustment. Once you are satisfied everything looks great, all the links and CTA work, and everything renders correctly, you’re good to go and send your campaign!

 

Time to send

Timing is everything they say and your email campaign is no exception. Depending on your customer base, industry and the time of year, there will be certain times when your email campaign should be sent out in order to be most effective in terms of open rates and responsiveness. There’s numerous blogs out there, each giving you different days and times of when you ‘should’ send your campaign, but the best practice is to track your own campaign data.  Send customers your emails on different days of the week and different times of day, track when the open and click through rates are at their highest – your own data will tell you when’s the best time to send your campaign.

 

Bounce Backs or Unsubscribes?  What to do next…

So you’ve created the right content, chosen the right software and sent the email campaign. But you received an ‘undelivered’ message and your email bounces back. If this happens, common practice is to investigate why the email address is not valid and update it.  The ‘unsubscribed’ list should also be updated after each email campaign. Although it is a shame to see a customer opting out of email communications, it’s essential to update our customers’ preferences after each campaign in line with their request.

 

Tracking is vital

Your email marketing software will have a tracking tool built into it so you can work out what happened once you hit the send button.  As with any other marketing activity, tracking is crucial for measuring campaign success. The most relevant data to capture is delivery rate, open rate and click-through rate.  If you’ve got trackable links, then you should also be recording the traffic and leads your email campaigns have generated to really gauge their ROI effectiveness. Consequently, the more attention you pay to tracking your current campaigns and implementing changes, the greater the chance of future campaign success.

 

Don’t leave it with an email – Follow up

Follow up activities are crucial, especially for product-related, sales-orientated campaigns. Some organisations will gather the list of customers who opened and engaged with the email and follow it up with an additional piece of comms via email, a phone call, snail mail etc to discuss if the customer would like some more information or place an order.

 By contacting those customers who engaged with your initial campaign content, you can start to build relationships with your potential customers and generate new leads.

Moreover, following up enables you to put a voice to your brand that reinforces your campaign message, which should give you more trust with your customers, making them more likely to respond to any future emails you send them and therefore less likely to unsubscribe.

Using these simple tools, you’re sure to build targeted campaigns with content that’s engaging.

Email is just one string in the digital marketer’s bow, but it is probably one of the most vital in helping you build and maintain relationships with your customers and generate revenue.

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