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.
After all these years, Facebook is still the king of all social media platforms. People still spend a ridiculous amount of time of their day on the platform. As of the end of 2021, there are still more than 2.9 BILLION active users. BILLION! On top of that, people on average spend 33 minutes a day on the platform. And these numbers aren’t going anywhere.
Every business should be advertising on Facebook. Here’s why Facebook Ads should be an important part of your marketing budget.
Facebook Ads are Cheap
For most businesses and industries, a typical ad on Facebook will run you about $.50 to $2.00 per click. Instagram, Youtube, and Pinterest are all much higher than Facebook.
Facebook Ads Increase Brand Awareness
Out of all social media platforms, Facebook has the highest monthly users. There are more users on Facebook per month than Youtube, Instagram, Twitter, and SnapChat.
Targeting
Facebook makes it extremely easy to target your ads to a very specific audience. You can advertise to people by their age, location, gender, and interests.
Facebook Lookalike Audiences
Facebook has a feature called lookalike audiences. What this does is allow to reach new people who are likely to be interested in your business because they are similar to your existing fans. This allows you to expand your potential audience dramatically without spending a lot of time gathering new fans. Pretty slick!
Don’t Forget About Instagram
For many businesses, it is critical to be using multiple social media platforms to spread your message. Instagram continues to experience major user growth.
See, while people generally log on Facebook to learn about a company, people actually purchase on Instagram. This is what makes Instagram ads are extremely valuable for retail.
You can do many different types of ads on Instagram. Your ad could be a regular photo, a video, a carousel (a combination of pictures, or pictures and videos), even stories.
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.
You’ve probably heard the phrase “Content is king” a million times by now. It’s a phrase coined by Bill Gates in 1996. He was referring to the Internet as a marketplace for content, which is still true. According to recent data, more than 200 billion emails are sent every day. Just like a magazine, once you get the reader inside, your goal is to get them to engage with the content. Unlike a magazine, you can tell immediately which content they like the best and least based on the number of clicks. Here are some ways to use content to get the results you’re after.
Make New Content But Use The Old
When creating your email campaigns, keep in mind that for some subscribers, this is their first email from you. So, when you are creating a content strategy, don’t forget that you can publish older existing content or products. Also, existing subscribers don’t open every email, the content may be brand new to them even if it wasn’t recently published. A good mix of new and old offers a variety for readers and revives older content, which could be very impactful on your bottom line.
Use All Kinds of Content Formats
Content comes in all shapes and sizes, you want to vary the types you are sending – some people prefer video, some prefer images, and some prefer just text. With a variety, you’ll determine the types of content your subscribers prefer and see which ones result in the most traffic or sales. Try marketing video content as an image and not disclosing that the link leads to a video versus labeling it a video to test which format your subscribers respond to best. It’s the same content, but delivered in a different format.
Be Clear In The Action You Want
Some email campaigns are jam packed with valuable information but the action that you want your subscribers to take is unclear. For example, if you have links in your email campaign but they are not obviously hyperlinks with a blue color and underline, then readers may not know that they can click on them, especially on mobile since there is no hovering over text. It seems silly but consumers are still programmed to know that the blue text and underline means you can click for more information. Think about what you want your readers to do when they are reading your campaign. Can you use buttons in place of hyperlinked text to draw attention? Are your hyperlinks a call to action or are you just linking sentences? Test these and when you review your data look at which types of links your subscribers clicked most.
Don’t Overwhelm With Too Much
Imagine you are at a store. You ask the salesperson, “Which of these is the best light bulb?” The salesperson gives you every detail about every light bulb they sell. You probably won’t remember most of the details after the first couple. It’s the same with email. You want to communicate with readers, not overwhelm them. If you have an overload of information, consider creating separate campaigns for each important message. Keep in mind that almost 50% of consumers are reading their emails on a mobile device limiting screen width and making emails even longer. Shorter messages will resonate more effectively.
When planning your campaigns, think of them as mini magazines. You want to inform and entertain with each “issue”. The content should be exactly what they expect when they open the email based on the subject line and it should be easy to access either through the campaign itself or with a click to your website. A subscriber should have no problem navigating the campaign and see how to access more of the same type of content. Experiment with what works for your subscribers and learn what content is king in their kingdom.
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.
Your subject line is the key to getting your readers to open your emails. Without an eye-catching subject line, all your hard work is bound to end up in the trash bin. Of course, guessing what the best email subject lines are can be almost impossible. Luckily, lots of brands test this all the time and research has found that there are certain keywords that just stand out among the rest. If you start incorporating these killer words in your email marketing plan, you’re going to start seeing from increasing open rates.
Of course, we always say it’s best to test! Start by replacing some words in your upcoming email campaigns with these and doing an A/B subject line split test to see which one performs better. You can judge them for yourself!
To get your free, downloadable list of all the best words to use in email subject lines, just sign up for our mailing list! You’ll get your free download immediately and get fun, informational articles for us once a month.
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Automation has quickly become an email marker’s best friend. By being able to segment lists into targeted groups and schedule precise messaging, the whole email marketing world has changed to one that says no more to mass, generic messaging. If you haven’t started with email automation yet, one of the easiest and most effective types of campaigns you can set up is the birthday email.
Make Your Audience Feel Special
There are a lot of reasons why birthday emails are a valuable addition to your email marketing campaigns, like the automation. Once you get your form fields, email, and triggers set up, you don’t have to think about it again until you’re reporting or updating your offer.
Of course, the main reason is that it’s a highly effective email marketing strategy. Just look at some of these statistics from an Experian study:
Birthday emails have 481% higher transaction rates than promotional emails
Birthday emails get 342% higher revenue per email
Birthday emails also average 179% higher unique clicks than promotional emails
Don’t those stats make you want to create an automated birthday email campaign right now? The numbers aren’t lying, birthday emails just work. On top of amazing analytics, birthday emails can also help you keep customers engaged and re-engage inactive subscribers since everyone loves a deal. You’re doing your business a disservice by not starting these types of targeted email campaigns.
Before you get started creating Happy Birthday graphics, read our best practices and tips. We’ve seen a lot of birthday emails and you could be sending high performing and high converting emails in no time.
Collecting the Data
If you’re not collecting your readers birthday, you can’t start sending out birthday emails. The way that this type of targeting messaging works best is by sending a coupon code or offer to your readers during the month of their birthday. However, if you don’t have that data, you can’t segment your list properly to set it up.
If you didn’t think to set up a birthday or birth month field, don’t panic! There are a couple solutions. Make sure that you add a birthday or birth month (this depends on how targeted you want to get) field to your email sign up forms ASAP so that you capture everyone’s information moving forward.
If you haven’t been asking for birthdays already, you can send an Update Your Account email. This email can be effective in getting some of your list to provide additional details if set up correctly. However, it doesn’t guarantee that you’ll get your whole list to update. The best way to entice people to update their account information, including birthday, is to offer a prize. It can be as simple as a $25 gift card to Starbucks or Amazon to one lucky winner. They are entered into the drawing by updating their account. It’s amazing what people will do for the chance to win $25!
Of course, the most effective way to ensure that you are collecting birthday information is to add it as a required field on your sign up forms.
Now, I know what you’re thinking: “But best practice says to keep the forms simple.” This is true, but requesting Name, Email, and Birthday is still a very simple form. There are also ways to create a two-part form, depending on the email sign-up form that you use. You can create the first half of the form to be just an email address field that it looks really simple, but when the customer hits submit a second part of the form pops up that asks for name and birthday. Again, keeping it streamlined but asking for a little bit more information.
The Birthday Offer
It’s their special day! An effective birthday email automation has to offer something to your customer to make them feel special and encourage them to buy. This can be a simple coupon code or discount or a freebie. The freebie can be premium content that you created specifically for the birthday list or one you already have on your site. However, reusing premium content that is available elsewhere isn’t as effective as creating a birthday specific freebie.
Discounts and coupons always work well, but surprisingly the biggest draw is a mystery birthday offer. Mystery birthday offers had the highest revenue at 502.4% compared to other promos like discounts and free shipping.
Don’t have anything to offer? Even sending a simple Happy Birthday message is a great way to build customer loyalty and stay top of mind during a time customers are likely to spend.
Keep the Subject Line Simple
Before your customers can take advantage of your offer, they have to open the email. Keep your subject line short, simple, and straight to the point. People look to open birthday emails because they know there will be something of value to them inside, so make it easy for them to recognize a birthday email in their inbox! Here are some great examples we’ve come across:
Happy Birthday, [Name]!
Why this works: It’s simple, straight to the point, and it’s personalized.
We have a birthday SURPRISE for you!
A special gift for your Birthday
Your Special Birthday Gift
Birthday Bonus on us
Why these works: Playing on a sense of mystery makes readers want to click.
[Name], is it your Birthday?
Why it works: There will be a ton of happy birthday emails, asking a question stands out among them.
Any variation using the tricks of the trade in the subject line – you, birthday, or recipients name – is a winning tactic. We always recommend testing to all our clients. Even if you’ve been running successful birthday campaigns for a year, you should be testing your subject lines to improve open rates. A/B test some of these against each other and see which ones your audience responds to the best. Don’t forget to get our free Percent Change Worksheet to help you calculate the effectiveness of your tests!
Best Email Layouts
The birthday email should be short and easy to read. Your offer needs to stand out right away to grab their attention. Remember, you won’t be the only birthday offer in their inbox. If they opened your email, it means they are interested in spending money with you. Don’t make them work for it. Keep the offer details above the fold and eye-catching.
Repeat the Success
You’ve seen how successful a campaign like this is, repeat the success with similar types of campaigns! Send your readers a special discount code for being a member of your site for a year or celebrate a business anniversary by including your readers. Any chance you see to set up an automation that will make your readers feel special is a opportunity for success!
