10 Steps to a Successful Email Marketing Campaign

1www.cobbdigital.com
10 steps to a successful
email marketing campaign

Email marketing for 2015
In this white-paper we examine how every business can create
more powerful email marketing campaigns. Employed correctly,
email marketing will contribute significant ROI to any business.
Enjoy!
James Dempster
Managing Director of Cobb Digital

1. Start with your end game
The first thing you need to realise about your email marketing campaign is
that it is a campaign. Just as the dictionary defines it, it is a series of military
operations intended to achieve a goal. Without a clearly defined goal and a
well-conceived strategy in place to reach it, you’re essentially firing blind. Your
campaign doesn’t know where it’s going, who it’s targeting or what the end
game is. Furthermore, it will be impossible to measure the success of your
campaign when you don’t have targets to set against actual results.
So that’s the first part of planning your email marketing campaign; setting out
a clear quantifiable goal. Say you want to acquire 500 magazine
subscriptions. Having the goal in sight allows you to see the forest through the
trees. So even if click through rates are falling below expectation, there is no
need to worry. They are just trees. The total number of subscriptions you’ve
attained- they’re your forest. They are your sole indicators of a successful
email campaign.
The second part of planning your email marketing campaign is to integrate it
into your wider strategy. Statistics show that an email campaign in
conjunction with a direct mail campaign increases its effectiveness by up to
40%. Combining an email campaign with a sales call can make that email up
to 70% more effective. An SMS campaign can further support your email
marketing.

2. Optimise for mobile - it’s no
longer optional
Nearly half the people in the UK use a smartphone.
That’s around 30 million. And it’s estimated that around 51% use
that smartphone to check their emails. If those emails are not
designed for mobile consumption, they will be promptly deleted.
By 80% of users, according to Litmus mobile open statistics.
So how do you ensure that your emails are not discarded quicker
than spam? Mobile optimisation.
Not only is it increasingly vital to the success of your email
campaign but 58% of email marketers are not designing for it,
giving you an automatic advantage over your competitors. The
brands who succeed are not just the ones who listen to what their
consumer wants; they listen to what they do.

Mobile optimisation guidelines
1. Fonts should be larger so as to facilitate legibility; 14px minimum for body copy and an 18px
minimum for headlines.
2. Use ‘safe’ fonts that will be available on all mobile devices such as Arial, Helvetica, Courier,
Georgia, Times New Roman, Verdana, Tahoma or Trebuchet MS.
3. Not all devices fix the screen to fit your email so it’s important that you adjust the width accordingly. 320px
to 500px is recommended, although this should be tested on alternate smartphones to ensure the email is received
coherently in both.
4. To avoid slow loading of emails, keep images to a minimum. All images that are used should be the smallest
possible file size.
5. Use a single column layout for ease of reading.
6. Keep enough space between buttons and hyperlinks so that users won’t suffer the fate of ‘fat finger’ and click
onto the wrong links.
7. The number of characters shown on the subject line of an email varies from 27 characters on an android to 41
on an iPhone and 42 on a windows phone so try to keep your subject line below 50 characters.
8. Keep email copy clear, concise and to the point.
9. Maximise the impact of your CTAs by using buttons rather than hyperlinks which are more user friendly for
touchscreen devices. Bold text in white space will highlight them further.
10. Use your ESP to monitor and analyse the number of email opens from a mobile device. You should be able to
see the percentage of email opens from a mobile, and the mobile devices which were used to open them; iPhone,
Android, etc.

3. If At Once You Don’t Succeed…
Resend to Non-Opens
In life, you don’t get a second chance at a first impression. But in the world
of email marketing, you do. It’s called the resend to non-opens tool. And it
can help you reach the goals you set out at the start of your campaign. If you
didn’t hit your targets with the first round, all you need is a little persistence
and the value of hindsight. There are myriad reasons as to why recipients
failed to open your email.
Possible Reasons include:
• Bad timing: It stands to reason that emails sent between Friday-
Sunday are the most likely to be ignored. But sending out an email on a
Monday can be equally as damaging. People are already inundated with
emails from the weekend and will likely be too busy to respond or even listen
to what you have to offer them. Midweek days have the best open rates, as
do daytime hours.
• Lost in the mail: If your email has got hedged in between twenty
others, there is every chance it will be missed. But it doesn’t mean the
second one is destined for the same fate.
• Unappealing subject line: Revise your subject line and ask yourself, is
it clear? Is it concise? Does it offer something of value?

4. Copy- Short & Sweet
Email open rates mean next to nothing without click through rates
to push conversions home. If you’re getting high open rates but
aren’t succeeding in converting, the problem is likely in your email
copy.
Consumers are not looking to be wined and dined in an email. They
don’t have the time. They want to know how opening your email
benefits them and they want it revealed after a brief scan, not a
200-word product description.
Say you want to promote bikinis for summer. You start an email
campaign to boost sales.

‘Get a head start on summer with 20% off this season’s bikinis’ is likely to be
much more effective than ‘We have a wide range of bikinis at 20% off in a variety of
shapes, colours and sizes to suit all tastes and body shapes.’
The actionable ‘Get a head start’ in the first sentence creates a sense of urgency that’s
missing in the second. Also, it implies benefit rather than blandly stating features. You’re
saying by taking advantage of this early-bird offer, you are making a smart financial
choice. You are saving on something you’re going to need soon anyway. Checking out
these bikinis is worth your time. You can take the call to action further by installing a
highlighted CTA button, especially effective for mobile recipients. The CTA button should
be obvious on the page. Make it stand out by using a bright, contrasting colour. It should
be large, but not garish.
Finally, give your email a personal touch. Talk to the recipient directly, in second person.
‘You’ is not only a powerfully persuasive word. It’s a humanising one. You won’t under-
mine your professionalism by talking to recipients like real life human beings. On the
contrary, this is how you earn their trust. Imagine you’re looking for positive customer
feedback on an eBook. Beginning the email ‘Hi Mark, You recently bought our eBook
series on Do’s and Don’ts of Content marketing. How was it?’ is significantly more
inviting and engaging than one that reads
‘Dear Sir, We are aware of your recent eBook purchase of the six part series: The
Do’s and Don’ts of Content Marketing. Please review your purchase by following
the link below. ’

Relevancy is also important. The more relevant you can make your email to the
recipient, the more likely you are to hold their attention. Email list segmentation targets
specific brackets of your email list based on what you know about them. So an estate
agency might send out an email about an open house in St Albans to only those who have
expressed an interest in living there. Targeted emails had an impressive 39% open rate
according to an emarketer performance review.
So to summarise:
• Clear, concise copy that gets to the point
• Strong CTA
• Personal, relevant copy

5. Subject Line- Get to the point!
Subject lines directly affect open rates, which affect click through rates, which
affect conversions. So that small line of text, those 50 characters or less (if you’re
doing it right) are equally as important as any other step on your campaign trail.
But don’t pin all your hopes on one line. Try out a few different ones using the
tools available to you, such as subject line selector and subject line tester. These
tools will analyse open rates to gauge the most popular one. With regards to the
copy itself, avoid using spammy words like ‘free’ ‘limited time’ ‘Act now’ words
that sound like they come from an infomercial at 3 a.m. Overuse of Cap locks,
symbols , emoticons and exclamation points have the same undesirable effect.
Choose actionable words instead, words that indicate to the reader what they
can expect to get from the email.
‘Make a full Sunday roast for under a tenner.’ ‘Show her you’re sorry with WINE.
Lots of it.’ ‘Get a sneek peek of Kate Moss’s new Topshop collection.’
It’s clear from the above what you are getting from the email. Tricking your au-
dience into opening an email with a misleading bait offer like offering 50% off
footwear only to reveal later that it only applies to last season’s espadrilles will
only convert into unsubscribes. Another mistake some marketers make is to try
too hard to be witty or clever. If you can be witty without sacrificing clarity, test it
out but if there is a shadow of doubt in your mind as to whether the message will
be clear or not, the chances are it’s not clear enough.

6. Testing…1, 2, 3…
Tin openers work well. I mean, they serve their purpose. But
there’s a reason why you pay a little more in the supermarket for
a tin of beans with a pull tab. Because the pull tab works better
than a tin opener. It outperforms the tin-opener in almost every
respect. You know where I’m going with this, right? Without
continually testing for alternative ways of optimising performance,
we would spend our whole lives thinking tin-openers were the
best solution to opening a can of beans.
If we conduct email marketing campaigns without testing different
approaches, we assume, either out of arrogance or laziness, that
the route we’ve taken is the best one. And more often than not, it
will prove untrue. Testing plays a central role in creating the most
effective email marketing campaigns; making the money spent on
them more than worth it.

Means of testing
• Use the Inbox Preview tool as a preparation test to see how your
email will look in every format before sending to recipients. By taking this
step, you can rectify any mistakes until all emails look as intended.
• Create two messages, each with a different call to action and use
your ESP’s A/B split content testing tool to gather information on which
message is proving more successful.
• Never forget to use a Spam Checker before sending your email.
This will warn you of any content in your email that could be construed
as spam (an instant killer of your campaign if ever there was one.) Delay
sending until all warnings have been heeded.
• Enable analytics to monitor your recipient’s actions once they’ve
read your email, ultimately showing you where you went right and where
you need to improve.

7. Expand your Social Circle
Social media and email needn’t be mutually exclusive marketing
strategies. In fact, they work best as a team. Integrating your social
media strategy into your email campaign can be an effective way of
increasing subscriptions and building a strong social media presence.
You can do better than installing social media icons on all your email
headers. Offer your email list an incentive to like your page on
Facebook. Airport transfer company Clicktransfers asked their email
subscribers to like and share their Facebook page to be entered into
a draw for a 3 day trip to Iceland. The winner would be announced
once the page had reached 10,000 likes. It was such a success, they
reopened the competition, this time announcing a winner when they
reached 20, 000.
Facebook and twitter are traditionally the best channels for growing
email subscriptions.
Share your newsletter with fans and followers and use Facebook’s data
capture forms to collect data on your followers, data which can be fed
into your ESP and used to grow your lists. Information is power in
marketing and nowhere is it more readily available than on social media.

8. Alt Text
Text and imagery usually go hand in hand in advertising and marketing, but
email is decidedly different. Because images are sometimes disabled, in
some cases by default, marketers must always remember to include alt text.
So even when the email recipient can’t see the image, they can read the
message it is trying to convey. There is more you can do to optimise your alt
text than blandly describing what is in the image.
• Persuade recipients that the images in your email are worth enabling
e.g.‘Enable images to see what Vogue called ‘the IT dress of summer.’
• Use styled alt text for more captivating headlines
• Use coloured boxes to break up images (or blank columns as the case
will be.)
• Avoid emails which solely depend on images to get the message
across.

9. Reporting
It’s baffling that so many marketers are clueless when it comes
to the results of their email marketing campaign. 42% couldn’t
even tell you the return on investment achieved through their
campaigns, according to a report carried out by Econsultancy. It’s
like we were saying earlier about testing; unless we are willing to
entertain the possibility that there may be a way we can improve
upon our past performance, we’ll never execute the most
successful campaigns. We’ll never learn from our mistakes or find
new innovative ways to market better. Reports are your hindsight.
They’re your 20/20. So look at them, and look at them often.
Reporting tools at your disposal:
• Heat Maps
• Device Reporting
• Google Analytics

10. Integrate your software
Integrating email marketing with all other software like your CRM system
strengthens your campaign and gives it a better chance at success.
Compartmentalising serves an important purpose in any company,
maintaining structure and organisation. But while departments are split
between specialised roles, they are united by common ones. So when
integration serves the common goal, all departments openly collaborate and
share information.
This sharing of information in email marketing allows marketers to gather
more data on their customers, thus providing the information necessary to
create more relevant, personalised emails that recipients will be more likely
to open and respond to.

Thank you!
Well that’s email marketing in a nutshell.
If you follow all of the advice in this white paper you should get
some cracking results.
If you’d like to discuss this, or any online issue get in touch with
me or the team by emailing marketing@cobbdigital.com or calling
01273 208 913.
Thanks again
James

10 Steps to a Successful Email Marketing Campaign

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