This deck was used as part of a webinar talking about best practices of Email Marketing conducted by co-founder & COO Ankur Nandu - https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=YIh7CIPNYEs

2.  What is Email marketing & why should I adopt it?
 What happens to an email when you click SEND
 Email Marketing – Getting Started
 Best practices for Email marketing activities
 Examples of Good & Bad Emails
 Good Email marketing tools
 What are the common challenges faced?
 Common mistakes made by Email Marketers
 Why Emails land in SPAM?
 Advanced Email Marketing practices
 Q&A

3.  Email marketing is the act of sending a
commercial message, typically to a group of
people, using email. In its broadest sense,
every email sent to a potential or current
customer could be considered email
marketing.
Reference:Wikipedia

4. Let’s view some quick stats

5.  Three-quarters (75%) of companies agree that
email offers "excellent" to "good" ROI.
 For every $1 spent, email marketing generates $38
in ROI. – Campaign Monitor
 86% of consumers would like to receive promotional
emails from companies they do business with at
least monthly, and 15% would like to get them daily.

6.  Email is 40 times more effective at acquiring new
customers than Facebook orTwitter. – McKinsey
 Email subscribers are 3 times more likely to share
your content via social media than visitors from
other sources. – QuickSprout
 72% people prefer to receive promotional content
through email, compared to 17% who prefer social
media. – MarketingSherpa

8. Send Email
Mail Server
OK to
email?
Security Policy
SENDER RECEIVER
Get MX
Record for
Destinatio
n domain
DNS
Server
Public DNS –
get Destination
domain MX
record
Public DNS –
get SPF record
of sender
domain
Server SPF
record valid?
Establish
SMTP
Connection &
send email
1
2
3
4
5
Security Policy
Is the
Email
content
OK?
6
Does User
exist?
7
8
Email is
delivered

9.  Create lists of contacts
 Remove invalid emails from the list
 Segment the customers
 (source, geography, interests, services offered,
etc.)
 Create an email engagement planner
 Prepare content, Design emails
 Use a good tool & you are ready to go
 Don’t forget to track how you are doing!

10. You should create a quarterly email
engagement planner focusing on
 Content
 Segmented customer list &
 Frequency of communication

11. Marketing Activities Content of Emails SSC (All students) SSC App Download SSC Prospects SSC Leads
SSC
Customers
SSC Past
Students MBA Sublist
Banking
Sublist
Email Campaign
Launch of SSC App -
Download
5 uses of the SSC App
New features released
Upsell of other features
Email Campaign
Reminder - App Download
(to those who haven't
downloaded)
Free Educational Guide (1
day)
Open Workshop - Career
Counselling (4 days)
Case Study/Testimonials
Personal Counselling
Session
Offer to attend Free Class
Referral Request Email Refer & Earn Rewards
Upsell to other programs Bank Test Series Launch
MBA Classes
Announcement
Drip - Launching SSC App
Drip to convert Prospects to
Leads
Drip to convert Leads to
Customers

12.  Personalize your emails
 Maintain brand consistency (look & feel in
email)
 Don’t make them think – Email should have a
clear goal & ideally a single CTA
 Provide easy option for customer to
unsubscribe
 Introduce urgency in emails (timers)
 Ensure the email is mobile friendly

13. •Brand consistency
• Main focus of the
email highlighted
clearly
• Single goal –
reiterated (to Shop)
Reference: Hubspot

14. • Smart way to use GIF
image & stand out
• Good use of background
colors to divide a long
email
• ClearWell defined CTA
blocks
Reference: Hubspot

15. This email is to highlight
new product introduction
•Look at the real estate
given to the product! –
the heart of the email
Email space has been
very wisely used
Reference:VerticalResponse

16. Be Consistent in
messaging – Don’t use
Click Baits
The subject line is a Click
BAIT –You’re fired.The
content is very different.
You will get opens, but
also a lot of unhappy
customers
Reference: Zapier

17. • No clear difference
between content of the
email & the CTA buttons
•The viewer is likely to be
lost looking at this email
Reference: Econsultancy

18. Ideally, you should personalize the emails. But if you
do not personalize, you should definitely not club
multiple event follow-ups in a single email
Reference: Hubspot

19.  Unique Opens
 Is normal to see this in 10-20% for a valid contact database
 30% & above consistently is a very good open rate
 Unique Clicks
 Is generally 10% of the open rate
 If the open rate is 20%, click rate will be ~2%
 Bounces
 Anything more than 15% is a red flag
 Unsubscribes
 Anything more than 5% is a red flag
 SPAM Complaints
 Anything more than 0.1%
Of course, these numbers are general numbers & vary based on industry & geography, but are good metrics to track your performance

20.  Mailchimp
 Firecart.io
 AWeber
 Sendgrid
There are a lot more…
How to identify if a tool is good?

21.  Gives an easy drag & drop HTML designer?
 Does it give open/click/other email stats?
 Do they maintain suppressed lists?
 What is the reputation of the servers it uses?
 Does it provide auto responders /rule based email
automation?
 Supports easy segmentation of contact lists
 A/B testing?

22.  Customer lists are not digitized or ready
 Hard to create content
 Designing emails is hard
 Have tried, got very poor results & unable to
quantify it

23.  Unable to send to all customers at same time
 Emails landing in SPAM
 Email marketing provider has blocked account
 Even my regular emails are not getting delivered
 Getting Blacklisted by Spam authorities

24. 1. Using Bought / Purchased Contact Lists
 SPAM traps
 Invalid email addresses
2. Mass Mail practice – Same email to everyone
 42% of marketers do not send targeted email
messages; only 4% use layered targeting.
3. Ignoring Mobile Friendly Email designs
 Two-thirds of emails are read on either smart phones
or tablets. (Marketing Land, 2015)

25. 1. Continue sending emails to suppressed lists
 78% of consumers have unsubscribed from emails
because a brand was sending too many emails
2. Send one single image or large attachments to
everyone
3. Not tracking damage to IP/Domain reputation
4. Using same email domain for transactional &
promotional emails
5. No segmentation on basis of engagement

26.  IP Reputation of email sending server
 Domain reputation of sender
 Presence on Email Reputation tracking Blacklists
 Inconsistent Email sending practices
 IPWarm up, Sudden bursts, Unknown addresses, etc.
 Content of Email
 Image toText Ratio
 Attachments in email
 Promotional/SPAM score of words & phrases used in email
 Including Unsubscribe options in promotional emails

27.  Email authenticated properly?
 SPF – Sender Policy Framework (Mailed by valid sender)
 DKIM – DomainKeys Identified Mail (Signed by valid sender)
 DMARC – Domain Based Authentication, Reporting &
Conformance (Framework to ensure SPF & DKIM are followed)
 Email Headers correctly highlighted
 Bulk/Transactional/etc.
 User Email engagement History
 Past Opens/Clicks/Engagement history with sender
 Engagement history with similar content
& a lot more …

28.  Returnpath/ Senderscore
 Your server senderscore should be monitored
regularly & should be above 80 (ideally 90+)
 Mxtools Blacklist checker
 Check if your IP has been blacklisted by global email
reputation authorities
 Spam assassin (Try isnotspam.com)
 Spam assassin is a great tool to monitor if your email
content is good & not having any issues

29.  EmailAutomation (Email Marketing on Nitro)
 Drip Marketing
 Demographic & BehavioralTargeting
 Registered but not purchased handling
 Abandoned cart handling
 Date based automation, etc.
 Dynamic Content on Emails
 A/B testing

30. Canvass Products
Firecart (firecart.io)
-Ecommerce Marketing Automation Software
InboundLeads (inboundleads.io)
-Inbound Lead Generation Widgets for Marketing Agencies
Ankur Nandu
COO, Canvass Inc (http://canvass.in)
ankur@canvass.in
http://www.linkedin.com/in/ankurnandu

31. Questions?