We all know how important email marketing is to businesses great and small but even if you are building email campaigns on a regular schedule, you may not be taking the necessary steps to ensure that they will perform as well as they can. You know the email marketing basics, but do you know what to do once the campaign is built? After you’ve built your campaign in your email service provider, be sure to run through this checklist step by step.
1. Check Every Link
This sounds so simple and obvious but I am always amazed at the number of campaigns I see in my inbox that have broken or missing links. The easiest way to check the links yourself is send yourself a test and starting at the bottom of the campaign and work your way upward, clicking each and every link. Leave every tab open that resulted from clicking a link. When you’re done, count the number of hyperlinks in your campaign and the number of open tabs – these should match. Any hyperlinks that are incorrect, just fix. Simple but a common mistake that I see almost every week.
2. Review on Your Smartphone
Now, I know what you’re going to say, “But, my email service provider has a preview and it’s faster to just check there.” Well, it’s been my experience that the preview option on most platforms is not 100% accurate. Most times what I see on my iPhone does not match the preview. So, because most websites are seeing 60% or more of their traffic coming from mobile, it’s best to take this extra step and just open your test on your phone and review.
3. Check Your Grammar
When you are reading the email you wrote, it’s easy to read the copy in the way you intended and not exactly how it is in the campaign. An easy way to check your grammar and ensure there are no typos is to run through a checker. We love using Grammarly for all of our copy. They even have extensions for most browsers to make it more versatile in your process.
4. Click Your Images
Most people now believe that images on websites and emails link to something. So, click on every image in your campaign test to make sure that they are hyperlinked to content.
5. Review Your Merge Tags
Did you add some personalization to your campaign? Be sure that you send a campaign to yourself to ensure that the merge tags are working properly. Sometimes test preview campaigns don’t show the merged data, so you can always send only yourself a campaign to double-check these settings. It’s important because if the merge tags are set up incorrectly, it can make your copy wrong or pull the wrong data into the wrong spot.
Time To Schedule
Now that you’ve run through the checklist to make sure that you didn’t miss any errors while you were building your campaign, you are ready to schedule. Be sure to pick the best time to send your email campaign, and schedule it for the correct audience list or segment. Once I schedule my campaign, always go back and check the setup one more time on the dashboard of my account to make sure it’s correct. Then, once your email campaign is sent, don’t forget to go into your account and check to make sure it was delivered correctly. Email marketing always requires the important follow-up step.
Email marketing is the most powerful tool in your online marketing arsenal. According to industry data, the average expected ROI is $42 for every $1 you spend on email marketing. This should put email marketing into the top spot of your digital marketing strategy.
Learn some of the basics of email marketing so that you are getting the most out of your efforts. From choosing the best subject lines to choosing the best times to send, we have your fundamentals covered in this series.
Drip campaigns, email series, sales funnels – no matter what you call them, they are a great way to engage with your subscribers automatically. These types of campaigns usually have a higher conversion rate, engage your readers instantly, and run without you even thinking about them. How? Drip campaigns are emails that are automated to send when a subscriber meets specific criteria, like signing up for your list or buying a product. This way the campaign can target a specific audience. By understanding your audience and segmenting them into interest groups based on activity or purchase history, you can deliver content that will really resonate with them. Creating a plan for drip campaigns is easy with these basic steps.
Decide on a Goal
With any marketing strategy, it is important to establish a goal and email marketing is no different. With a drip campaign, your goal could be engagement or product sales. Setting the goal will help determine the campaigns necessary and the timing for the best chance of success.
Determine the Content
Split your message into a few campaigns so that you don’t overwhelm your audience but do convince them to take the action you desire. If you are trying to sell a product, there are probably several reasons that make this product awesome. Don’t load them all into one campaign. Instead, spoon feed them to the audience in manageable bites, all the while reminding them of the product and convincing them to buy.
Keep the Message Consistent
If your drip campaign is to educate your subscribers about a product in order to get them to make a purchase, make sure that the entire series of campaigns includes educational pieces as well as the option to buy. That way they are always learning more information which encourages continued email opens and increases chances of more purchases. Since you are targeting a specific audience, make sure to stay consistent to their interests. This will help you have continued engagement throughout the series.
Frequency and Scheduling
There is no set rule on the timing of drip campaigns. The general rule is to start at a high frequency and decrease the interval slowly. For instance, you can schedule emails to send daily, then once a week, then once a month and so on. You don’t want to annoy a subscriber but you also want to stay top of mind. The number of campaigns depends on the goal and the amount of content you have to convey. Again, there is no set rule but a good drip has at least three to five campaigns minimum.
Drip campaigns can be as simple as a way to educate your subscriber list about your brand or can be as elaborate as a 30 day challenge for your readers that also involves social media posts and giveaways. Welcome series, which are a form of a drip campaign, increase the long term subscriber engagement by 33%. These types of email marketing strategies build brand loyalty for much longer than the standard email schedule. Because they are targeted to specific people with specific content, they are better received by the subscriber and in turn makes those subscribers more willing to engage.
Creating a drip campaign is simple and should be a part of any email marketing plan. Well thought out strategies can be set to deliver on schedule and become a set and forget part of your marketing that will have enormous return for your initial investment.
After you design the perfect subject line and pick the best content, you need to consider what format will garner the highest click rate. The layout should make it easy for readers to find the content they are looking for from the subject line or discover new content. Simple layouts with clearly defined ways to get to the content are the most successful for any type of email campaign.
Keep it Short and Simple
Skip the short novella and stick to a simple and sweet content plan. Sadly, subscribers aren’t reading long articles within emails so spending time writing out long paragraphs won’t increase your click rate or site traffic. Keep the length of the email as short as possible while still providing value. As a rule of thumb, your intro or letter should be 100 words or less. Remember, you can always break down a longer email into two separate campaigns so that you don’t overwhelm your subscriber.
Mobile First Format
Over 50% of all email is opened on a smartphone. While people are busy with their day, they take small breaks to check email with their phone. In order to make the email campaigns optimal on mobile, it is imperative that it is easy to read and click on a phone. The ideal font size for mobile is 16pt or more. The layout should be clean and simple with options to click or click to buy high in the campaign, within the first swipe. Most email marketing programs have responsive designs which means that they stack the content instead of side by side as it is on desktop. Test your campaigns on your smartphone before sending to ensure that it is functioning properly.
Link Love
The goals of email marketing are usually to gain sales, increase website traffic, or inform customers. In order to achieve these goals, you probably want your readers to click back to your website. Making your links easy to select whether on desktop or mobile is important. When you test your campaign on mobile, can you easily click one link if located close to another? Sometimes the spacing of links can make it difficult for your finger to select one item. Using buttons can eliminate this problem and makes it very obvious to the reader where she should click to receive the content. Even though most people know that blue underlined text is a link, buttons make it even more obvious and garners more clicks than text.
Colors in Campaigns
When it comes to colors, be careful when picking colors to use in campaigns. The easiest text to read on desktop and mobile is still a plain font with white background and black text. Using white fonts on lightly colored backgrounds can be very difficult for most people to decipher, even on desktop. For increased attention, using callouts in red or orange can draw in the eye and make those links more likely to be clicked. Colors can work in campaigns, it’s just important to make sure that your content is still readable and effective.
Formatting an email campaign is like laying out a good magazine article, it should make your content more desirable to the reader while giving them the content they expect. The best layouts are short and simple which makes creating winning campaigns less of a burden on your weekly schedule. To ensure that you’ve created the best campaign sometimes asking a friend to review it with fresh eyes on a mobile device will give you the best feedback.
There are many avenues of digital marketing but email marketing is still considered the most effective. How do I know? Consider the last time you looked at your inbox, you probably went through and made decisions to either delete, read, or save for later for each email that came in since the last time you checked. When looking through your social media accounts, you are served content from people and brands you follow based on the algorithm of the platform you are using. You may not see whatever your high school friend posted since the last time you logged on. If your friend had sent an email, you would have definitely seen that message in your inbox marked as new.
The most recent data reports that 85% of people use email but only 60% use social media. Using email to communicate with your customers or fans is the best way to ensure they receive the message you want to get out. Email marketing can show you the biggest return on investment, especially working within a marketing budget.
Email marketing is hugely dependent on people opening your email – making a great subject line is key. This small detail has a huge impact on the success of your campaign. It is similar to the blurbs on the cover of a magazine. People buy the magazine or pull it off the rack because something on the cover caught their eye. By composing a great subject line, you are going to get better results with your campaigns. Here are three easy ways to create a killer subject line.
Write Directly To The Reader
Try to grab your subscriber’s attention by “talking” right to them. People love when something is created just for them or with them in mind. Consider using words like you, your, you’re in the subject line. It is pretty simple to implement this idea after you’ve come up with a great subject line idea. Just add one of these to your existing idea. If you wanted to use “The 4 Tools for Success”, you would just change it to “4 Tools for Your Success”. This subject line speaks directly to me and I am more inclined to want to invest time into the opening and reading it.
Make Every Word Count
Keep your subject lines on the shorter side. Since most people are reading email on their smartphones these days, keeping them shorter ensures that your entire subject line will be displayed. You don’t want your customers or fans to miss part of your message, especially a word that you know would really grab them. The average number of characters that display on a smartphone in a vertical position, which is how most people view email, is 35 characters. If your subject line read “The Best Ever Ideas You Have Never Seen For How To Decorate Your Home Yourself”, the subscriber would probably only see “The Best Ever Ideas You Have Never…” and miss what the email is about.
Try To Appeal To The Widest Audience
Don’t limit yourself with your very specific subject lines. Remember, people are deciding whether to open an email almost solely on the subject line. You want to appeal to the most people possible. If you wrote a subject line that read “New Watercoloring Supplies Just In”, you are telling me exactly what is in your email and if I have never watercolored, I’m probably marking this one straight for the trash bin. If you reword it as “New Spring Supplies Just In”, you will have a higher open rate. You also expose people to content that might appeal to them once they open the email and see more details.
When you are thinking about how to write better subject lines, just ask yourself, “What was the subject line of the last email I read from a business or brand?” Take note of really killer subject lines you see in your own inbox or great magazine cover blurbs and find ways to use those ideas for your own marketing. Since the subject line is such an important piece of this entire digital marketing strategy spend time mulling over your ideas before you settle on the best one. “Crafting a great subject line is very important but it’s just one piece of a tool that can make a huge impact on your digital marketing.”
Running split tests on your email list is the key to creating effective email marketing campaigns. You always have to be testing! However, what do you do with all those numbers after you’ve run your tests? How do you determine if something was effective or not? Looking at two simple percents, you might think that a subject line split didn’t yield statistically significant results if the open rates were 10% and 11%. A one percentage difference isn’t much, right? Wrong.
The one thing people get wrong all the time when looking at email analytics is percent change. Since most of us aren’t math majors (guilty!), it’s easy to make this mistake. Unfortunately, simple subtraction isn’t how you find the difference in percentages. That comes with the percent change formula.
The formula works like this: ((y2 – y1) / y1)*100 = your percentage change. Y1(1st Value) Y2(2nd Value). Looking at the example above, we would take ((11-10))/10*100 to get 10%. The percent difference between these two open rates wasn’t 1% after all, it was a whopping 10%! Since anything over 5% is considered statistically significant (meaning you can take action on this data), you would absolutely consider the 11% open rate a winner.
See? More complicated than you thought, but still not that complicated. Basically, you’ve been making your email marketing decisions on incorrect data. So let’s fix that!
We put together a simple Google worksheet with the formulas already plugged in. All you have to do is put in your percentages and it’ll spit out the percent difference for you. Keep it handy any time you’re calculating the success of your A/B tests and never miss out on a statistically significant result again!
Since this is a public doc, just go to File>Make a copy to save it to your Google Drive and get all editing capabilities.
