3 best practices for email marketing

E-mailBest PracticesFriday Explorer Session 3Ankita Sinha

An Introduction to E-mail Marketing

• A digital marketing tool

• Communicate on a personal level with the TG

• Cheaper and faster medium

• Evolved from mere communication tool to a

marketing tool- Awareness>>Reminder>>Conversion>>Loyalty

Emailer Journey

Sender Name

Subject line

Pre-header Body Interacti

on Closing

Best Practices

Permission Based

Unsolicited

Opt-in

Double Opt-in

Send mails only to those who give consent

‘From’ Names & Subject Line

• Recognizable and consistent ‘Sender’ name• Subject Line:

– Should indicate what the message is all about– Avoid ALL CAPS, punctuation symbols– Less Characters (preferably between 20-50)– Certain Set of Words to be avoided

Free You are a winner! Earn MoneyDon’t Delete Stop You have been selected Double your income Discount Get Paid etc

• Building your list of subscribers, prospects and customers

(Events, Prospect calls, Lead forms on web, Point-of-sale sign up

forms etc)

• Personalization can be done by inserting mail-merge fields into the

message

• Targeted mail with valuable and relevant content works the best

(it starts at stage if sign up)

• Relevance and Frequency of sending mails

Segmenting and targeting

Mail Body• Focus on ‘above the fold’ i.e. top of the mail

• Cover main message in the 1st scroll

• Avoid including any attachments, flash or video

• Content should not be image dependent

– Use ALT tags to describe the images (in case images don’t load)

• Maintain good balance between text and images

• Use commonly supported fonts

• Design should reflect your corporate identity and branding

• Links should always be underlined and highlighted in different color

• Social Media Links to be included upfront

• Rounded buttons/gradient to be avoided

Email design – Main Components

• Branding• Main Message• Social media links• CTA• Web links• Unsubscribe Link

HTML or Plain Text or Both?

• Plain Text- no formatting• Rich Text- Can format text and allows access to web links• HTML

With an internet standard called MIME (Multipurpose Internet Mail Extensions), messages can go in ‘multipart’ format

Always create a text version of every newsletter that is sent out. Without a text version, the message will either show up blank or show up as garbled HTML code for the percentage of recipients who cannot view HTML messages

Deliverability Challenge

• FALSE POSTIVE– Owing to stringent spam filters, ISPs sometimes spam /block

the legitimate Permission-based mailers

• Get added to Recipient’s Address BookTo ensure receipt of our emails, please add something@yourcompany.com to your Address Book. Thank you!

• Understanding SPAM, anti-spam legislation, blacklisting

• Maintaining an ‘opt-out’ list is of utmost importance

• Keep your IP Address off the black-list

• Use ESPs-

– Send through their white-listed servers

– Enhance inbox placement

How to avoid Spam

Key Provisions of CAN-SPAM

1. The email message must not have misleading of falsified header

information.

2. The message must not have a misleading subject line.

3. Senders must remove all unsubscribe requests within 10 business

days.

4. Commercial email must display the physical postal address of the

sender.

5. Any unsolicited emails must clearly identify that it’s an advertising

message, and contain a prominent notice that gives the recipient

the opportunity to decline further emails from you.

Bouncing mails

• Reasons:– The recipient inbox is full.

– The recipient email address does not exist or is spelled incorrectly

– The mail server at the ISP of the end recipient is temporarily down or unreachable

– The mail server is blocking the message due to content-based spam filter or blacklist-filtering

How to Reduce Bounce Rates?

• Includes subscription management links in your emails and encourage subscribers to update their information if it ever changes

• Use the mail or phone to update the email address of anyone who is repeatedly bouncing.

ISPs

Whitelists- List of IP Addresses those have maintained email standards

Blacklists- Lists of domains and IP addresses that have been reported or accused of sending spam

Feedback loops- Set up with Internet Service Providers. Once a feedback loop is set up, the ISPs will contact you and ask you to deal with the complaint. If a feedback loop is not set up, the ISPs may blacklist you without giving a chance to defend yourself.

SPAM Control by some leading ISPs

• AOL- Sender Policy Framework (SPF) records

• Microsoft: (MSN / Hotmail)– Sender ID Framework (SIDF)– SmartScreen- content filtering technology – Brightmail to filter junk email

• Yahoo– SpamGuard.- Content Filter SpamGuard – “Spam” button located above the message that members can

use to manually report spam messages.

• Does not provide feedback loops• Has list-unsubscribe header • No Whitelist• Does not disclose use of public blacklists• Uses its community of users to determine whether email is spam

or not

ISPsChallenges Faced

Recommendations

• Consistently send from the same IP address(es)

• Use the same “From:” domain based on the type of email

• Authenticate sending domains with DKIM and SPF

• Gmail advises the best way to reach the inbox is by complying

with their Bulk Sender Guidelines

– Publish an Sender ID record and sign with DKIM

– Have an Unsubscribe link prominent

Gmail InboxTab categories

Gmail users have the ability to influence how messages are labeled by:

• Starring a message• Right-clicking and selecting the desired tab from the• “Move to tab” menu• Dragging and dropping a message into the primary folder

• Microsoft’s patented SmartScreen anti-spam filtering technology

• Sender Reputation Data- filters the spams on the basis of SRD Network

(votes from selected user telling whetehr e-mailer is spam or not)

• Junk Mail Reporting Progra m (JMRP) – A Feedback loop service to

alleviate false complainers from the list

• Microsoft does not maintain an internal proprietary whitelist

• Unsubscribe methods1. Similar to gmail- Unsubscribe header

Too many newsletters? Unsubscribe.

2. If the List-Unsubscribe header is not included

3. Sweep Feature- unsubscribe from the mail in question

Other Features

• Scheduled Cleanup:Scheduled cleanup allows users to set rules to automatically delete old emails,and only keep the latest from a sender. Thus senders that send multiple times a day, a different From: addresses for each mail stream may be needed.

• Categorization: Similar to Google Tab inbox- but customizable

Mobile E-mail

Optimize your email for mobile

With CSS Without stylesheet

• With use of Mobile specific CSS, design skinnier layout that lacks visual clutter

•  Shorter, more concise emails+ narrow layouts specifically designed (max width 500-600 px)• Avoid single column layout as zooming in on text on a mobile device can be tricky.

• Big thumb friendly clickable social media icons

• Adding progressive disclosure (for heavy content)

• Building fluid layouts Applies a percentage width to elements that gracefully adapts to the width of the viewport

http://preview.smartfocusdigital.com/go.asp?/mPJSB64F/bEST001

Parameters to gauge E-mailer Performance

• Open Rate- Number of mails opened• Bounce Rate• Click Through Rate- number of customers clicking on links in the

mailer• Un-subscription Rate

Examples

Transactional Mailer

‘Forward to a Friend’ CTA button

right on top

CTA is featured above and below the fold to take the

same action

Discussion

Thank You