Summary: Want to start email marketing, but not sure where to start? Here is your email marketing 101!
It starts with a plan…
As with any marketing activity it is important to plan your email campaign. You need to give yourself enough time to design it, create the content and run test sends all before the official send date.
During the early planning process you need to consider the following:
Who you are targeting – make your email relevant to your receiver, identify and understand their needs and tailor your design and content to meet them. Your email design needs to be created in a way that will encourage them to engage and respond. If you identify that you have more than one target audience because of their different needs you may need to design different emails to meet their different needs.
What your objectives are for sending emails – identify your main aim for sending your emails. Examples of aims are: to increase your website traffic, to increase your Facebook fans, to increase awareness of your products/services or brand, to increase enquiries and/or sales.
What your budget is – consider how much you have to spend. If you have agreed a budget it is important to stay within it. Work out your campaign budget, consider your expected return – is it worth you undertaking a large campaign, if a small campaign brings you the same return?
How you’ll develop and track the campaign – consider the time and skills needed to design your email campaign. You may need to contact outside sources – this could be to design, send or track your emails. Angel SEO can help you with all of these things.
Some tips to consider when creating your email:
- Avoid spam filters stay away from spam words including ‘Free’, ‘discount’, ‘coupon’, etc.
- Avoid using one big image – this can be seen as spam and can reduce your delivery rate.
- Help maximise your click-through rates, by including terms relating to the reader’s interest/industry.
- Personalise your emails, so the receiver doesn’t feel like they are getting the same one as everyone else – including their name goes along way and it is simple to do.
- When someone has signed up, send them a confirmation email/welcome email
- Send on time, every time – if you send your emails out on a Wednesday at 2pm, then send them every Wednesday at 2pm – your receiver will be expecting it.
- Past studies have proven that emails sent on Tuesday and Wednesday have an increased chance of being opened or getting a response than other days of the week. It’s worth testing a little though – for example by sending out batches on different days of the week – because your open rates and response rates may relate to your target audience and their lifestyle.
- Consistency – use the same design, logo, colours each time (and preferably as your website) so your receiver knows it is from you.
- Remember the few seconds rule, make your title line catch your receiver in a few seconds, otherwise your email will end up in the deleted box, just like all the rest.
Moving on to branding and design…
Branding
It is important to keep your branding consistent, not just throughout your email campaigns but for your business in general. So, if your company colours are blue and white, have blue and white as your email colours as well. Every email you send out need to have the same brand identity, with standard company info, logos, slogan, contact details, etc. This makes it easy for the receiver to identify that the email is from you.
Your email needs to have a proposal, a reason for sending. Don’t use emails to just push products – your emails will end up in the junk folder very quickly . Give away free information, free postage, etc (something of value to the reader) in your emails, make it worth their time to read your emails.
Branding points to consider:
- Always include your brand identity – logo, slogan etc
- Consider using or integrating your company colours, for brand consistency
- Simple and clean is always best
Remember branding doesn’t just come in the form of colours and style – it all comes in the form of writing style as well. If you are a fun, funky company, come across this way in how you promote your company – sometimes corporate is not the best way to get your message across.
Design
When designing your email template it is best to stick to conventions with the main elements, like the header, main content and calls to action. Give the customer what they expect to see – don’t mess with the design formats that people expect. They like things to stay the same.
Design elements to think about:
- Keep the branding consistent, so the receiver knows it is from you and can instantly recognise your business.
- Ideally keep the same sort of format, i.e. if you include a promotional offer every time, keep it in the same place so the receiver knows where to look.
- Don’t use lots of different colours and fonts – ideally keep to company colours and styles.
- Make both images and text clickable.
- Don’t use one big image – this can be seen as spam and can impact the number of mails delivered to peoples’ inboxes.
- Make your email is scannable – users don’t want to have to read every word. A good way is to ensure that your headings tell a story on their own.
- Make title stand out and include descriptive and interesting copy.
Design order to follow –
Unsubscribe link – have an unsubscribe link at the start of your email, make it prominent enough so users can find it easily. You don’t want to be seen to hide it, as this makes users more likely look for it and more than likely use it.
Subject line – most say this is the most important part of your email – these few words are the key to getting users to read you email. Remember this is the part that readers see before even clicking on your email. You need your subject engaging and enticing to make the receiver open your email. If you spell out the offer too clearly, they may reject it before they open the mail and get chance to read your pitch – but make sure they know there is an offer!
Logo – easily visible. Convention says to have your company logo in the top left of your emails – this is a prominent position and always seen by the reader. You don’t need to stick to this but do ensure it’s ‘above the fold’, i.e. high up and therefore easily visible in the preview pane of the reader’s email software.
Header – one of the most important parts of your email after the subject line. In this section your own company branding needs to be prominent so that it’s clear to the reader who you are, what you do and why they need to remain on your mailing list.
Introduction – brief of the email content. This is the section that enables the reader to decide if they wish to carry on reading or delete your email. You could list the titles of each section of the email and make them clickable, so the reader can jump to sections they are interested in.
Main story – copy and image – this is your main story/promotion, i.e. your reason for sending out the email. You may want to have a bit of text, some bullet points and a click through. Keep your message short (minimum scrolling is appealing).
Call to action – this call to action relates to your main story/promotion – you may wish to include this in the main story section.
Secondary and third stories/promotions – in this part of the email you may wish to include monthly promotions, seasonal specials, etc. You need some text and an image, and clear calls to action buttons.
Footer – this is the last part readers will see of your email, so a common convention is to have a call to action to your website, which goes directly to your home page. You also need to ensure any legal requirements are met, and this is usually in the footer. Here’s an example of these:
“You received this email because you registered and opted to receive mailings from [COMPANY NAME] through one of its websites such as [MAIN COMPANY WEBSITE]. If you prefer not to receive emails from [COMPANY NAME] please click here to unsubscibe. If you wish to speak to a Customer Services Representative, please call [TELEPHONE NUMBER]. [TRADING NAMES] are trading names of [COMPANY NAME], a company registered in England and Wales under Company Registration No: XXXXXXX, VAT Registration No: XXXXXXXXX. Licensed under the Consumer Credit Act under Licence No: XXXXXXX. Registered Data Controller No: XXXXXXXX. Registered office: [REGISTERED OFFICE ADDRESS]“.
Obviously this would need to be adjusted to apply to your company – you may not have trading names, a VAT number and so on.
Subject line strategy
When crafting your subject line, consider that subject lines which increase open rates:
- Show value within the first few words. e.g. 10 tips to increase your website traffic, How to use Twitter for Business
- Find the right trigger words for your target audience e.g. Business, Google, etc.
- Avoid the hard sell i.e. You must do this to increase your website traffic
- Include hot brands – they work across sectors e.g. Google, Facebook.
Testing
When you have finished creating your email it is important to test it.
Elements you need to test include:
View – you should always check what your email looks like in the most favoured email clients e.g. Outlook, Hotmail, Yahoo, Gmail, Thunderbird.
Links – make sure they go to the right landing pages and are properly tracked.
Images – make sure they show when you have sent the email or if the receiver has to download them check how long it takes.
Spam – make sure your email will not be considered as spam/junk and doesn’t filter straight to the junk folder.
Unsubscribe link – make sure it works and does delete the receiver from your list.
At Angel we use specialist software to ensure maximum deliverability and all of our emails are fully tracked so we can see open rates, click through rates and bounce rates. We carefully test campaigns and monitor results for Angel clients.
Results
After sending your email campaign, it is important to track and view your results.
Find out how many people have opened your email, how many people clicked on one of the links – which links proved popular.
Did you receive any enquiries or sales as a result of the email campaign?
Things to measure:
- Number of emails delivered
- v Number opened
- v Number of click-through
- v Number of enquiries /sign-ups
As with everything new you aren’t going to get things right first time – it is important you use your results to improve your campaign for next time. Analyse your findings and see if you notice any parts that can be/need to be improved.
So, there you have it, the steps to follow to create a successful email campaign. Don’t forget that the Angel team can help you with everything from planning and designing your campaign, through to building, testing, delivering and tracking.
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