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Presented by:

SurveyGizmo Online Academy

Overview

•  Writing effective subject lines

•  Creating good body copy

•  Choosing HTML vs. Plain Text emails

•  Reducing spam complaints

•  Managing email lists

•  Testing emails

•  Writing follow-up emails

Effective Subject Lines

Good subject lines increase response rates!

Basic Rules:

•  Limit characters to 50 or less – short and concise

enough to display on mobile devices

•  Don’t over-capitalize

•  Identify the sender

•  Describe the content, but don’t overpromise

What makes someone open an email?

•  Importance (work, financial)

•  Curiosity

•  Interest or personal investment in the topic

•  Emotional hot buttons

Effective Subject Lines

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Remember to: •  Tell respondents why it matters to them or will bring

them value. •  Know your audience – appeal to their current

interests, needs and challenges

Effective Subject Lines Tips for Good Body Copy

•  Start with a greeting

•  Only personalize the greeting if appropriate

Tips for Good Body Copy

•  First sentence should explain value to the reader

•  The body should be as brief as possible

•  Summarize qualifications to avoid disqualifications •  Survey link – no more than 70 characters

Tips for Good Body Copy

•  Put a paragraph break before and after the survey link to make it stand out.

•  Ideally the link should include several keywords showing the survey subject.

Andrew, Please take a moment to provide us with your suggestions for our online training program. http://www.surveygizmo.com/s3/999531/TrainingSuggestions Thank you for your time, your opinion is very important to us. Regards, The SurveyGizmo Training Team

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Tips for Good Body Copy

•  Finish with a kind and sincere signature. •  Bring in the personality of the brand. •  Thank the respondent.

HTML vs. Plain Text emails

HTML vs. Plain Text emails

•  HTML emails may be seen as marketing emails

•  Text feels more like a personal email as opposed to

mass communication

•  Deliverability may drop a bit when using HTML

•  Only use HTML when needed

HTML vs. Plain Text emails

Exceptions to this may be: •  A really talented design team

•  The brand is so powerful that adhering to brand guidelines will get a greater response

Because there’s always an exception…

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Reducing SPAM Scores

•  Know the applicable laws – CAN-SPAM in the United States and is relevant for all commercial messages.

•  FTC site – business.ftc.gov

Tips to Avoid Spam Filters

•  Have permission to email to the address – double

opt-in is the best standard

•  Identify yourself to the respondent

•  Good subject lines can help here

Reducing SPAM Scores

SpamAssassin •  Uses a wide variety of local network tests to

identify spam signatures. •  Assigns a spam score to an email.

http://spamassassin.apache.org/

Reducing SPAM Scores

What does spam look like? •  Lots of punctuation or symbols •  Excessive capitalization •  Words like “free”, “percent off”

Subject: COMPUTERS 99% OFF and FREE PHONES!!!!

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Reducing SPAM Scores

Check your spam folder – It’s a treasure trove about what not to do.

Track what gets delivered and what does not.

Good List Management

List Management: •  Use a list management system so that you can track

which emails were sent to which addresses. •  Don’t send more than one survey per month to

each respondent.

Good List Management

List Management: •  Schedule survey emails to coordinate with other

campaigns. •  Let people know of your privacy policy, and that you

will not sell their information to a third party.

Good List Management

•  Make sure that names and company names are correct and stay that way.

•  A typo in a person’s name or company name can have a big impact, but not a positive one.

  

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Good List Management

Add opt in requests to your list quickly!

When people opt in to your list, they expect to receive

a communication fairly quickly. This will confirm that

the address is valid, and your first email can set the

tone for your ongoing relationship.   

Tips for Good List Management

•  Always remove duplicate addresses. •  Consider removing inactive addresses if they have

not responded to attempts to re-engage. •  Make updates when you are notified of an email

address that has changed. •  Respond to unsubscribe requests quickly to avoid

offending respondents or possible legal issues. •  Bounced addresses should be removed, unless the

bounce is a temporary. Ex. Overloaded inbox.  

Tips for Good List Management

A good list is an organized list!

•  Segmenting your list into smaller, specific groups, will allow you to send more effective messaging.

•  If lists are old, confirm the addresses before using them in a campaign.

 

Good List Management

Where’d ya get that email address? •  Purchasing lists from anyone other than a panel

company is questionable. •  Don’t scrape lists from the web. The listing of an

address online does not give permission.  

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Good List Management

•  Offer sign up forms on your web site and blog and build sign up opportunities into other events, like webinar registration, product purchases, or survey completions.

•  Encourage list sign ups via social media.

Collect email addresses; don’t “find” or purchase.

Good List Management

Food for thought:

•  Consider offering the choice of text only or html

emails, and allowing choice of how often people

want to hear from you. If you don’t want to allow

choice of frequency, let them know how often you’ll

send messages.

•  Group email addresses should be removed from

your list, and any email addresses with “spam”.

Testing Emails

Schedule time for testing in the project timeline. Look at the email in various browsers: •  Internet Explorer •  Chrome •  Firefox

Don’t forget to test on mobile devices!

Testing Emails

Test the email as carefully as the survey itself and engage others to test as well!

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Follow-up Emails

Reminder Emails:

•  Reminder emails can be sent to boost participation in a survey, however, only a few should be used.

•  After the first reminder, any successive ones should contain only a few sentences.

Testing Emails

Thank You Emails •  Thank you emails can be set up as well, or you can

just use the final survey page for a thank you message.

Incentives •  If you are giving out an incentive for participation,

make sure you follow up and get that done relatively quickly after the close of the project.

Introduction

Components of a good email campaign:

ü  Effective subject line

ü  Good email body

ü  The right email type

ü  Avoiding markers of spam

ü  List Management

ü  Test, Test, Test

Thank you for watching!

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