This document discusses 5 ways to improve email campaigns and get better results. It recommends segmenting email lists, using trustworthy from names and relevant subject lines, designing emails for mobile by making them responsive, adding simple touches like styled alt text and buttons, and keeping content concise with a clear call-to-action. Overall it emphasizes the importance of personalization, deliverability and a good user experience across all devices to maximize results from email marketing.
6. EMAIL delivers
the highest ROI
for Marketers
@johnethies | @EmailonAcid*According to VentureBeat, email is the channel generating the highest ROI for marketers.
7. @johnethies | @EmailonAcid
68%OF TEENS OF MILLENNIALS
Prefer to receive communication from a business via email.
Source: Adestra
73%
10. $40 return for every $1
spent in Email Marketing…
@johnethies | @EmailonAcid*According to VentureBeat, email is the channel generating the highest ROI for marketers.
21. @johnethies | @EmailonAcid*According to VentureBeat, email is the channel generating the highest ROI for marketers.
Whether or not a recipient accepts your message.
DELIVERY
22. Where the message ends up once its accepted: inbox, spam folder or
another folder.
DELIVERABILITY
@johnethies | @EmailonAcid
56. of users view email
with images off
Styled ALT TEXT
43%
@johnethies | @EmailonAcid
57. Free shipping
No styling or background color
Free shipping
Background color
Free shipping
Styled alt text
Free shipping
Background color + styled alt text
Styled
ALT TEXT
[continued]
62. Outlook 2007+ shows the 1st frame Other programs show the animation
Animated GIFS
@johnethies | @EmailonAcid
[continued]
63. NOT supported in
Outlook 2007,
2010, 2013, 2016
for Windows
First frame
should include
crucial info & CTA
Animated
GIFS
[continued]
64. Rounded cornersI am a button ➝
I am a button ➝
I am a button ➝I am a button ➝ Borders
I am a button ➝ Gradients
I am a button ➝ Web fonts
Hover effects
Button ENHANCEMENTS
@johnethies | @EmailonAcid
65. I am a button ➝
Progressively enhanced: Apple Mail
I am a button ➝
Graceful degradation: Outlook 2010
I am a button ➝
Lotus Notes
I am a button ➝
Scale to fit: iPhone
Button ENHANCEMENTS [continued]
@johnethies | @EmailonAcid
70. You have approximately 8.25 seconds
to capture someone’s attention.
Emails are open, on average, 5-15 seconds.
@johnethies | @EmailonAcid
Keep it SIMPLE
email marketing is going to remain a top priority for companies in 2016
68 percent of teens and 73 percent of Millennials said they prefer to receive communication from a business via email.
In addition, more than half rely on email to buy things online.
71.8 percent) say they are planning to spend more time on email production and more than four out of five (86.7 percent) report that they will increase email marketing budgets this year.
Additionally, of the 86.7 percent of the survey's respondents said they would spend more money on email marketing this year. The increased budget is expected to be spent on:
lead to more spam complaints
legally obliged to use a monitored email address
makes you look arrogant
Always provide a way for a subscriber to unsubscribe
Falsify contact information or subject line
Adestra kicked thim out of their platform
Due to SPAM complaints
Not testing an email prior to sending out a campaign
research shows that segmented emaildoes outperform general, untargeted sends.
34% of marketers who segmented their email lists subscribers experienced better email relevance, 28% experienced lower unsubscribe rates, and 24% experienced better deliverability and greater revenue.
In the midst of content overload
Always find a way to be relevant
Marketers and subscribers often define spam differently. Subscribers don’t think in terms of spam filter testing or algorithms , but in terms of relevance.
Are you sending content that matters to them? This is ultimately the most important question to ask yourself before hitting "send" on any email.
Making it into the inbox is one of the more ambiguous, misunderstood elements of sending great email.
Marketers often mix up a key distinction: delivery vs. deliverability.
Though the terms are often used interchangeably, they have very different meanings.
By surveying your audience, you can tap into what motivates them or “analyze the psychographic makeup” of your audience and segment from there.
Keep it simple: start with what you know such as age, gender, etc.
Never underestimate how a slight change, like the one above, could impact your ROI.
In order to dig deeper, find out what makes them tick. Send an email with a survey.
Example: FitforMe switched out images of people used in email based on age to better resonate.
Knowing where your contacts live can be powerful information.
A company called S-Digital used geolocation and routing services to create dedicated travel directions to an upcoming event in an email campaign for each recipient.
A company called Skymosity can track weather patterns and it allows you to create automated email campaigns that are deployed by weather-based email triggers.
Brooks, an athletic shoe company, made fantastic use of this data by creating multiple campaigns, based on weather condition and temperature range that were triggered by Skymosity’s weather logic.
To track where someone is in the buying journey, you have to look at their digital behavior: which pages of yours they visited, how long they stayed on your website and how you obtained their email.
A great example of segmenting by purchase cycle is seen in cart abandonment emails.
so it’s smart to trigger a card abandonment email 24 hours after they left the shopping cart.
Reengagement campaigns are your opportunity to remind your inactive subscribers why they were attracted to your brand in the first place.
Subscribers who have stopped opening your emails can have negative implications on your deliverability.
Analyze your existing subscriber history. Use past data to determine the average amount of time between when subscribers sign up and when they stop engaging with emails, and strategize your reengagement program around that window of time.
Return Path, 65 characters seems to be a sweet spot for email subject lines, which is about 15 characters more than the average subject line.
When subject lines are 61-70 characters long, they tend to get read. However, most email subject lines are between 41 and 50 characters.
Does your email include a special offer? Let your audience know in the preheader text what awaits them upon opening the email. The Honest Company also does a nice job of referencing a non-sale related incentive in their preheader tex
Increased opens by 26%
PetCareRx does a really nice job with this subject line + preheader text combination. They’ve personalized the message (with my dog’s name, Fenway), let me know about the 75% off discount being offered and referenced the classic Baha Men earworm, Who Let the Dogs Out.
Keep it simple
Single column layout is most-readable on mobile
Keep important information at the top
Get your “call to action” across quickly
Scalable design can be defined as any design that works well across both desktop and mobile without using code to adjust table or image sizes, or display or hide content between the two platforms.
typically the easiest to implement. Since scalable emails don’t adjust the widths of tables or images between devices, and don’t use CSS media queries
Fluid emails use percentage-based sizing to make the width of tables and images adapt to the screen size on which they are viewed
fluid designs typically work best for text-heavy layouts since there’s less control over how copy and images relate to each other.
Fluid tables and elements by default
Max-width CSS to constrain widths on desktop
MSO conditional comments to constrain widths in Outlook
support and how-to
as your content is brief, entertaining, and fresh, Millennials very well might even share it with their friend group.
This Clinique email is an excellent example of the Rule of One at work. It is clearly targeted at one audience, men, who are interested in one goal, getting their "skin in shape for summer." Not to mention, the CTAs are strong and actionable.
Take a look at an example from GetResponse on how a landing page SHOULD look on your desktop and your mobile.
This suggests smartphones are more of browse or research platform rather than a buy platform since many of the
Smartphone experiences should be personalized to show this different form of usage.
Lead generation and acquisition
Revisit on Desktop
Below is a headline pulled from AirBnb that leverages the tips above to create a crystal clear headline that sets their readers expectations in seconds:
Split test your headline to see which opener gets better conversion rates.
Tell what’s inside instead of selling what’s inside.
Clarity trumps cleverness, so make your headline is clear and concise.
Ensure your headline refers directly to the place from which your visitor came or the ad copy that drove the click.
Squareup’s landing page below is a great example of encompassing a singular, centered CTA that allows the visitor to jump into the copy with ease.
Explicit directional cues could be seen with fingers or arrows pointing to the CTA. They want your eyes to move to where the finger or arrow is pointing to move your attention to the form or CTA. An implicit directional cue is less direct, for example a person on the landing page looking at the CTA. This is a more casual and subtle visual cue but still will get the job done! Below is a great example of an implicit directional cue as the woman’s eyes push you toward the form.