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

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The drag’n’drop revolution

Drag and Drop does exactly what it says on the tin.  It enables users to move a particular element from one location to another by simply selecting the item, dragging, then dropping it into it’s new location. Most Internet users have probably used it in some capacity by now, possibly without even realising it!

For example when:

  • Uploading images or albums on social media platforms

  • Placing files in relevant folders on your PC

  • Placing products in a basket when online shopping

  • Rearranging tasks in project management programmes

 

If any of those sound familiar, then you have already partaken in a spot of drag and drop fun.

Over the years, this handy feature has successfully dragged its way into email marketing, and with it dropped the ability to create sophisticated email campaigns with ease. Rather than having to rely on programming languages, marketeers (and your regular Joe) can now build email templates in just a few minutes by dragging structure and content blocks into place to form your email layout. Depending on your campaign, there are a multitude of clever content components that can be dragged into your structure, including text, imagery, video, social media buttons, CTA buttons and dividers, helping you build slick-looking, interactive emails without needing to know a single line of code.

 

Due to its simplicity, this method of building is used on a daily basis by businesses around the globe. No longer does one need to be an expert in HTML or CSS, instead drag and drop templates gives users the freedom and convenience of going off and preparing an email campaign without necessarily needing anyone else’s help.

One of the main advantages of using drag and drop templates is that the user can instantly see what’s been created, and amend the content and design layout straightaway if required. That means building a template using drag and drop functionality is much quicker and (almost) hassle free.

Another advantage is that the drag and drop template can be prepared in a relatively short period of time in comparison to any HTML template. In order to prepare such a template, all the user has to do is think about how they would like their template to look, and start dragging and dropping relevant building blocks into place.  Not sure about the way you’ve laid it out?  No worries!  Simply drag the content around until you get a result you’re happy with. Once all the blocks are in place, the user simply has to save the design and voila, you’re ready to send!

If you prefer coding elements of your emails, never fear as some drag and drop systems, including Enabler’s email marketing software, give you the option of adding in HTML content blocks, allowing you to build more complex components of your template with a developer. Once the code is dropped into the HTML container within your template, it will seamlessly work in conjunction with the rest of the drag and drop template.

There are, however some limitations to Drag and Drop templates. One of them is the fact that there are a limited number of modules to choose from and so the template layout is limited by the software provider you choose. For that reason, drag and drop templates may be more useful for a small businesses without a with limited coding resources rather than corporations that deploy complex email campaigns.

Another limitation of the feature is that even though, in theory, drag and drop templates are mobile responsive, the software will either stack the content modules or just shrink the template down when displaying on mobile devices. When stacking content modules, the software usually places the modules on top of one another, taking the email content in a sequence from left to right and stacking it to enable the recipient to easily view all the content on their mobile device.  However, this results in giving you little or no control over how the email stacks the content on your mobile device, meaning some content that might not be suitable for viewing on mobile still gets stacked, and you’re unable to swap content around within the stack itself. For more information on the different ways you can make your templates mobile responsive, take a look here.

Working with a designer has the potential to both help your work with drag and drop templates, however they can be a hinder if your designer is not fully briefed on the expectations and limitations of the drag and drop software in use. For example, in the Enabler team, we make sure our designers are fully versed in the functionality of our drag and drop system, but this won’t be the case everywhere, so the best thing to do is to check with the designer before starting work to find out how familiar they are with the drag and drop system you’re using.

Let’s face it, drag and drop templates won’t work for everyone; and that’s fine. These templates are best applied when used as an alternative way to build your emails, for instance when you don’t have the luxury of an in-house designer or experience in HTML or CSS. If you need to prepare and deploy emails with good functionality, ease of use and quick turnaround, then drag and drop is a great solution for you, especially if you are a small businesses with limited resources and have only just started to explore the world of email.

Most of the time, drag and drop is the easiest way to build templates, so do get in touch with our Enabler team for a quick chat on 020 7099 6370 to find out how our email experts and designers can help your build more complex, mobile responsive templates and campaign management for your next email campaign.

Happy dragging and dropping!

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The new Nokia 3310 – what’s all the hype about?

The Nokia 3310’s official comeback conquered the news around the world last month, but what’s all the hype about?  My initial observations would say it is all down to one thing: nostalgia. People dreaming of simpler times when the mobile phone was only used for calls and texts, and you didn’t need to charge your phone more than once a week. Basically, a time when Zuckerberg was still at school and a tweet was a noise a bird made.

The Nokia 3310 seemed to be the perfect phone… in 2000. However, because most of us are NOT living in a hipster village where everything nostalgic is instantly better.  In 2017, what we do need is a phone that assists us in performing daily tasks in this fast-paced smart world. Here are some facts to consider if you are thinking of falling into this retro trend of nostalgia.

According to a report published by Radicati Group, on average business individuals receive up to 88 emails a day, and are expected to react to some of them immediately; an interaction which smartphones handle beautifully. The Nokia 3310, on the other hand, can only be used for making and receiving calls, texting, playing Snakes (yes, I loved it too!) and taking pictures (on a 2 MP camera and assuming you have an SD card).  So straight away, it means the 3310 user is out of touch with the online world, unable to check their emails, incapable of searching the internet and cut off from social media platforms.  All the dozens if not hundreds of daily online interactions you make, suddenly gone.

To illustrate the percentage of recipients who currently open email on their mobile device, we’ve run some browser analysis reports in our email marketing platform, Enabler*. The report reflects campaigns that have been sent in the past 12 months, between March 2016 and March 2017.

Here are the findings: 

(Enabler statistics from two separate insurance companies)

In just 12 months, emails have seen a 64% increase in opens on a mobile device, up from 31.7% (Figure 1) to 52% (Figure 2)… so imagine what the increase has been since the 3310 was alive and kicking?!

Interestingly, if we break down the Mobile Device Analysis further, we can see that 99.5% recipients opened the email via Apple iOS devices which includes iPhones and Tablets.*

(*Please note, this is just an example and devices may vary depending on the target audience and or industry.)

So, let’s assume that your customers have decided to stick with their handy smartphone rather than switching back to the stone ages of a not-so-smart phone (sorry Nokia).

 

What can be done to ensure emails are well received on any device, and that the overall user experience meets recipients’ expectations? 

The good news is that there are quite a few software providers that enable you to preview your email templates to see how they would display on a recipient’s’ mobile device, thus enabling you to optimize your emails for the apps and devices your subscribers use.

Example below illustrates how an email campaign displays across different devices. 

And now here’s an example of how that same email would display on Nokia….

Oh, wait… it won’t.

Joking aside, here are some more ways you can make sure your emails look great on a smart mobile device:

 

Stacked modules

Another important mobile optimisation tactic is stacking modules into single- column templates. If a desktop version email is simply shrunk into a smaller mobile version, a recipient would have difficulties reading email content, and this impacts engagement/clicks. Modules allow the email content to stack on top of one another so that the desktop version rearranges and resizes into a mobile -friendly version that delivers a better user experience.

However, you may find that the modules sequence is different to the one in desktop version. That’s when the developers step in with their programming skills, ensuring that the modules’ logical order is from left to the right, and the email width is decreased. There is also reverse stack order option where the columns go right to left, depending on content hierarchy.

For more information on stacking modules, see our blog on Top 10 Email Coding Tips.

 

Subject lines

The reports we ran in Enabler indicate that subject lines under 50 characters long get the highest percentage of both open and click-through rates. The reason for that is two-fold; firstly, as famous psychologist, George Loewnstein said once, the short subject lines generate curiosity. The second one is that most recipients’ mobile devices only display 50 first characters of the subject line. Here’s an example of what you’d see if you tried to see a subject line of an email on a Nokia.

 

Font sizes

Making sure your copy is legible is one of the main things to concern yourself with when creating emails for mobile. You’ve probably noticed that this experience varies from email to email. For instance if the font is smaller than approx. 13 pixels it will not display large enough on smart phones for anyone to be able to read it, especially not your tech-forward granny.

In fact, some devices will automatically increase any font size that is below 13px. You can set the font size to display differently on mobile than it does on desktop in your code. Nokia is actually pretty good at letting you set font sizes… but unfortunately this is only on the phone itself… as it doesn’t support email.

 

Taking all the above into consideration, it seems a no-brainer that the Nokia 3310, or any other non-smartphone would not be of much use to the vast majority of mobile users in 2017. 

Obviously I’m coming from an email perspective here, but it’s not just email that suffers without a smartphone. The importance of receiving and reacting instantly to internet-based communications such as calendars, project updates, social media, apps, GPS and a good quality camera, to mention just a few, seem far more relevant than just having the nostalgia of a Nokia 3310 and Snakes. I predict that the Nokia comeback will only be as one-off addition to a smartphone, and will most likely be just a fleeting fad – but hey, what’s life without fun fads right (that’s right Flappy Bird, I’m talking to you).

There is, however, one plus-side to the Nokia 3310 that beats the smartphone hands down… you will probably need to take a sledgehammer to it to crack the screen!

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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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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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The power of dynamic content in email marketing

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Email is constantly evolving. As email marketers, part of the fun of what we do is exploring new ways to engage audiences with email. It can also be a struggle at times. Email inboxes are increasingly crowded with promotional emails as more and more companies use email to communicate.

To help the end user, organisations like Google have customised their inbox layouts to include the segregation of promotional emails from the primary inbox, social media emails and general updates. These updates make it trickier for your emails to get noticed in subscriber’s inboxes, so it’s important to make your campaign attention-grabbing. One of the best methods we’ve seen over the years is by introducing dynamic content into email campaigns.

Dynamic content is essentially using what you know about your customers to provide them with content that is relevant to them. This can be anything from knowing the gender of your users and using the information to show them female/male specific products, to using birthday information to create a personalised birthday message for them each year. This technique allows you to send highly targeted information to your subscribers, and the best part is you can do it all through one email.

What are the benefits?

Higher levels of engagement
It might seem simple, but it also makes a lot of sense. Why would subscribers be interested in your campaign if it’s not relevant to them? To engage people, you need to provide content they find useful or enjoyable (or hopefully both!).

Saves time
Before dynamic content existed, companies would spend unbelievable amounts of time creating separate emails for the same campaign. It was the only way to do it if you wanted to try and personalise. Now, the only bit which takes any time is the creation of the main email and then positioning your content in a dynamic setting.

Shorter emails
This might seem like an odd one but many users don’t actually scroll all the way down to the end of an email; they scan for a couple of seconds and if they don’t find what they want they close the email. Goodbye to your click thru rates. Dynamic content enables emails to be shorter as you’re not trying to squeeze everything into one email in the hope that everyone on your database will find something interesting.

It’s technically interesting!
One for the front-end nerds out there. Dynamic coding is pretty fun (this is system dependent, of course). We’re very lucky with Enabler because it makes coding really easy to do. Enabler, like some other systems, will allow you to view the email in situ as anyone in your database would. This means no messy test emails, and no time wasting!

How can you get started?

The number one thing you need for dynamic content to work is information about your subscribers. There are lots of types of data you can use to make it work and you can even be inspired by your data:

Behavioural data – what have your users done before? What have they bought or read? When they were last on your website, what caught their eye? This data is incredibly useful when planning your campaigns. It can allow you to distinguish marketing to your leads and to your existing customers. It can influence what call to actions you use, where you use them, and other content placement decisions. It can also be used to influence pre-emptive emails based on previously purchased content.Groupon

Transactional data – what did your customers spend their money on? How often do they do this? Are they abandoning their baskets at checkout? Transactional data gives you incredible insight into the buying potential of your customers. Using this information, you could send reminder emails to customers who have left products in their baskets, remind customers of special offers based on content they’ve viewed, and provide buying recommendation emails based on previous purchases.

Demographic data – what gender or age are your subscribers? Where are they based? Knowing a customer’s gender can be really useful for something like fashion based emails, knowing their location can help with events promotions or deals in shops local to them. One of the best examples I’ve seen of this is Groupon:

They send out daily emails which are targeted by region. All the offers in their emails actually contain deals which are near to the post code I provided them with, and the copy reflects this. Check out this ‘Afternoon tea for two’ offer (right). It tells me how far from me it is, what the discount is, mentions the word Londoners and it really pushes the personalisation of the email in the top banner.

If you want to take all of this a step further, once you have completed your dynamic campaign you can also do some reporting on the campaign to find out what worked, then tailor your next campaign based on this information. Remember, with all of these options, testing is key.

The final checklist for dynamic content success

1. Accurate data – there’s no point trying without this. Why use information about your database if it’s not correct?

2. An Email Service Provider that supports dynamic content (if you want more information about Enabler, get in touch)

3. Knowledge of your customer database – what sort of targeting do you think will work on your list? For fashion brands, the key one is gender, for insurance we’re looking at regions and preference based sending, but what will work for your brand?

4. Testing – keep trying new things, A/B test to your hearts content. Never stop testing your email campaigns!

In today’s market, there is no better way to improve results of your campaigns than through dynamic content. Dynamic content is to the email marketing world what Dumbledore is to the wizarding world. Pure brilliance.

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