email marketing secrets that most marketers don't know
TRANSCRIPT
Email marketing secrets that most marketers don’t knowBy Elizabeth Yin, October 30, 2014
Who am I?● EIR at 500● CEO/co-founder LaunchBit
(adtech for SaaS, Batch 2, acq by BuySellAds ‘14)
● Xoogler product marketing● BSEE Stanford, MBA MIT
Sloan
Today’s talk is on● Overview of email marketing● Improving your open rate● Improving your click-through-rate
Email marketing means so many different things...
Newsletters are a great business...
...but only if you
● Can get signups specifically for your newsletter
● Have high engagement (open rate / CTR)● Get scale ● Have high value brand advertisers in your
industry
Here are the numbers:● $20-$50CPMs for email ads● $100-$300CPMs for dedicated emails
100k subscriber list w/ daily email (at ave $30CPM) -> $1M revenue per year
But use transactional emails for marketing
● Emails should be ○ Dynamic○ Personalized○ Differentiated
What can transactional emails be used for?
● Keeping your audience engaged● Nurturing leads via drip sequence● Thanking your audience
What “numbers” should I be aiming for?
Letter from a YC founder
A pretty good open rate is 20%
But open rates decline
You need to look at cohorts
What does average open rate mean?
A couple ways to increase your open rate
A/B test subject lines ONLY if...
● You are sending the same transactional/drip emails over and over
● AND you send 100k+ emails per month
Try different subject line formats
Send at a different time
A couple ways to increase your click-through-rate
We analyzed lots of emails...
Most people click on the first or second link (< 5 links)
Put your call to action upfront
Breakdown of the campaigns we analyzed
Doing the math...
People click “evenly” on 5+ link emails
So, reduce your links...
Digest emails “teach” people to click
Non-black fonts have a significant impact on click-through-rate
One-column newsletters have a low impact on click-through-rate
