Best Practices for Email Marketing? Don't Make Your Email a Maze

Based on my morning, I say let’s add this to best practices for email marketing: Don’t let creative rule.

As we just discussed in this email marketing blog, roughly 20% of the success of your email marketing campaign comes from the creative. So why do so many email marketing departments let creative drive the emails?

As part of our job here in teaching best practices for email marketing, I just reviewed two client emails to make suggested improvements. One needed primarily email copywriting changes. The other needed a complete design overhaul before copywriting could even be considered. In fact, the poor design contributed to the copywriting problems!

I think the main problem this email design faced was an identity crisis. It was treated, by the email design team, as a promotional email, heavy on visual impact, with a narrow width and huge photograph right in the middle that took up far too much valuable real estate. But in reality, it was supposed to be an informative, email newsletter type email.

The narrow width put the table of contents at the top, taking up that precious real estate we know as the Preview Pane.

The huge photo spread across the entire width of the template, plus it was square so that made it tall as well, and was such a usability problem that the designer felt compelled to use the words “Read more below” to let the email recipient know there was more to the email than only what appeared above the photo!

The narrow width also made a lot of scrolling necessary, and pretty much guaranteed that the information and links at the end of the email would probably never see the light of day.

In short, we’re looking at all kinds of best practices for email marketing ignored.

My advice? Widen the template and treat the email design like a newsletter. Put the table of contents in the upper left corner where people are used to seeing it. Drastically reduce the size of the photo (and, by the way, make the photo relevant to the content and audience, not just pretty). Then take out the extraneous text that was added to try and help the recipient through the maze of an email. Finally, take all the buried info and add it to the left sidebar.

Only after those changes take place can the content itself be reviewed.

And if all that has to happen for an email marketing expert to make sense of the content, just think how the recipient will struggle with that email design! Oh, wait. He won’t. He’ll take one quick look, get confused, and click delete.

Definitely not the result we want, and definitely a reason for implementing some best practices for email marketing!

And, of course, you always want to test, test, test any changes you make, because in the end, what you want is what works.

Want your email design or message reviewed? Say the word!

Email Marketing Best Practices: Be Targeted and Specific in Every Little Detail

You’ve seen countless references to being relevant and targeted as an email marketing best practice. Do we always know what that means?

When I talk to clients about being targeted and specific in their messaging to their prospects and customers, I use this favorite example: If I tell you to picture a car, you could picture any type and color of car. I have no idea what you’re picturing. But if I tell you to picture a red convertible, I have a pretty good idea what you’re envisioning.

When we are telling our story via email marketing, our messaging needs to be specific and targeted, in order to get the result we want. The more vague we are, the less focused the message we try to give to our audience.

This is true for every element of your email campaign or newsletter, not just the words. This applies to your links and graphics too. For example, see this ExactTarget blog on the placement of social media icons within an email newsletter.

When they tested having the ShareThis link at the top of the newsletter vs. right after an article, they found they had a 42% increase in click throughs with the latter. That makes sense. That is targeted. Here’s how:

The ShareThis link at the top of the newsletter is essentially saying “share this email newsletter.” But the recipient hasn’t even seen the content yet, so how do they know they want to share it? And sharing the whole newsletter isn’t very targeted. Plus, by the time they’ve scrolled down to see the content, they’re not likely to even remember seeing the ShareThis link, nor to scroll back up to use it.

But placing the ShareThis link just after the article makes sense. Then you’re asking them to share this specific content, and because they just read it, they are more likely to act on it.

This is a little thing but a big thing at the same time. Where you place your buttons and linked text is every bit as important as what they say, the colors you choose, and what you link to. Like this example listed above, you must test to find out. But you can refine your testing if you think targeted first, and if you think like the recipient, not like the marketer.

Would you like a review of your current email marketing template to ensure you’re adhering to email marketing best practices? We’d be glad to take a look and give you feedback. Simply contact us at blog@clickmailmarketing.com.

Dion’s direct marketing training and expertise spans over 10 years. A former US Army Special Operations Veteran in Psychological Operations, Dion later went on to become an events marketing manager, project manager and lead generation specialist. His career path led him to managing email marketing projects for numerous B2B and B2C campaigns.

His current role as Technical Product Service Manager for email marketing vendor ClickMail means he helps the sales team get new email marketing clients up to speed, addressing each new clients’ specific issues and allowing for a seamless transition from the sales team to the account management team. Dion also serves as an ongoing resource for our email marketing clients in email design and consulting, as well as platform training and problem troubleshooting. Dion enjoys email design and looking for new techniques to achieve the requested look and feel without compromising the overall email marketing message.

Dion is intimately familiar with the major ESP platforms, including:

• LyrisHQ
• Silverpop – Engage
• Bluehornet
• ExactTarget

It is with in this capacity that Dion’s expertise has been utilized for companies such as Apple, Borland, Contiki, Data Domain, PetSmart, SNOCAP / imeem, SEMA and Wind River.

Put Dion’s experience to work for your email marketing results. Make ClickMail your email marketing vendor.

Email can also be pretty, flashy and showy, but it’s the words that drive the action. And the whole reason you do email marketing is to get email marketing results! So driving action, i.e. conversions, is critical. Making your email copywriting critical, even on your buttons.

As a follow up to our recent blog post on which words will encourage the most sign ups  to your email marketing or email newsletter campaign, let’s tackle the words on your buttons next.

“Buttons? We don’t need no stinkin’ buttons.”

Yes you do. For those email recipients with images turned on, the button can offer a strong call to action. But not if you’re email marketing ingenuity is lacking and your buttons say only “Click Here” or “Submit.”

Your button text can be a strong motivator by being urgent, relevant and/or specific. Consider these possible word choices:

• Start saving now
• Get the latest issue
• Join the club
• Don’t miss the discount
• Sign me up

But two caveats about using buttons in your email marketing:
1.    Don’t rely on buttons alone. Remember that most people have images turned off in their emails, meaning your button won’t even show up, no matter how snazzy your email design.
2.    Include more than one call to action. Usually a mix of buttons and text works. You can include text calls to action within the body text of the email, and in other places as standalone text.

Have you used button text that outperformed boring words and brought better email marketing results? If so, let us know at blog@clickmailmarketing.com! As an email solutions provider, we love to learn from and share your success stories.

Get some email design peace of mind! Download email solutions provider ExactTarget’s new email design checklist and make sure your email design works on screen, in the inbox, and no matter the email client. From brand to engagement to response, it’s a handy one pager you can review while designing and then refining your next email campaign.

Plus there’s a quick little reminder about the order in which someone views your email and tips for improving each component:

1.    From name
2.    Subject line
3.    Preview pane
4.    Opened email
5.    Full email

Download the one-age email design checklist from email solutions provider ExactTarget here and feel free to contact us if you want some input on your email design at blog@clickmailmarketing.com.

With 43 inspiring email marketing award winners’ examples and descriptions, you could consider this an email marketing best practices tutorial. Seriously. Take some time to skim it, then go back through and learn from tried-and-true techniques for:

• Testing
• Auto responders
• Opt-in campaigns
• Lead generation
• Relaunch
• Welcome emails
• Triggered emails
• Email newsletters
• List growth
• Email for internal promotions
• Email contests

Email marketing ROI can always be improved even a little by tweaking your email marketing best practices. Take advantage of the lessons learned by other email marketers to get better email marketing results. MarketingSherpa does a fabulous job of explaining each campaign and why it was a winner. Perusing the winners’ samples will inspire you to improve your email copywriting and email design too.

See the winners’ email marketing results by clicking here

…including email design.

With a list like that, you can see why we as an email marketing vendor keep talking about all the moving parts. Even your email design has loads of parts to pay attention to and modify for best email marketing results. The challenge is, marketers are often at the mercy of their designers to do the email design, and it might look great, but that doesn’t necessarily mean it’s going to work great, i.e. translate into email marketing ROI.

Now Lyris has a guide that can help. The paper called “Email Design No-No’s Guide for Non-Designers” includes the top 10 things both you and your designer need to know about email design. Don’t worry, it’s not complicated information. It will help you and your designer avoid the all-too-common trap of approaching email design like print design.

And don’t think it’s going to be blue works better than green. This guide goes into just enough depth to help you get what you need from your designer, and even gives you some input into the parts you control, like the email address and From line.

Download this guide to email best practices in design.

The webinar pointed out that as concerned as email marketers are with maximizing their email delivery rates, they still aren’t paying enough attention to reputation.

According to the webinar, actions taken by email marketers to improve email delivery in 2008 included:

·    Modifying the email design template
·    Use of a third-party accreditation/reputation service
·    Adopting authentication (SPF, SenderID, DomainKeys)
·    Switching from a shared to a dedicated IP address
·    13% switched from in-house to an email service provider (ESP)
·    Another 13% switched ESPs

All of these can help improve your email delivery, but reputation is king in the world of email marketing. And that makes the webinar a preview to our February ClickMail Marketer newsletter on taking care of your sender reputation to increase your email delivery rate .

Keeping your reputation clean will increase the likelihood that ISPs will let your email through. But managing that reputation can be complicated. There are several critical factors that ISPs consider when determining your sender reputation. This month’s newsletter goes over some of those factors and what you can do about each to make sure you look good to the ISPs.

Read the latest ClickMail Marketer by clicking here.

• A top tier ESP, such as BlueHornet, Silverpop or ExactTarget
• A subject line test tool
• A rendering test tool like Pivotal Veracity’s eDesign Optimizer
• An email designer or email design team that can design emails effective even with image blockers on, who know email HTML vs. HTML used for the Web, and the limitations of email clients such as Outlook 2007
• An email copywriter or email copywriting team that understands best practices for copywriting emails and landing pages
• Web analytics
• An email marketing consultant or vendor/partner like ClickMail Marketing, to help you stay compliant, aware of best practices, and current with email marketing trends
• An email testing strategy to learn, over time, what your audience responds to (e.g. subject line, email copywriting, email design layout, timing, etc.)

If your email marketing toolbox is missing any of these items, start looking around now to make your toolbox as complete as can be. Because the better your tools and the more complete your toolbox, the higher your email marketing ROI. And in the end, isn’t the ROI what you’re striving to create?

Video email is one of those new technologies that might or might not make sense for your email marketing initiatives. Video has become easier to do and easier to disseminate. But just because you can doesn’t mean you should.

We turned to our own email design guru to ask what email marketers should consider when exploring video email. Cameron gave us the following points to consider:

Video email makes sense if you have a complicated product. It also makes sense if you can tailor your video to the person watching it, as opposed to doing batch and blast, which is sadly still a rampant email marketing practice. Yes, there are ways to segment even your video email content! When personalized, video email response rates increase.

Similar to including alt text to make up for blocked images, use text to describe your video, including a call to action to get people to click through and watch it. Write it as a mini sales pitch, not just a description. It doesn’t work to put any rich media inside the email, including video. Your recipients will have to open the email and click through to watch it. Encourage them to do so.

Video email might involve follow up to make it work. Cameron calls it high tech followed by high touch: You have a mechanism to alert you when someone has viewed the video, then that person gets a follow up email or phone call from your sales team.

Make sure it works seamlessly, because unless you’re offering “can’t miss” content, your customers won’t wait for a slow video to load, or sit through a clunky one that’s painful to watch.

As with all email marketing campaigns, make sure your video email is relevant to the target audience. And, as always, test, test, test to make sure it’s worth your effort and your customer’s time to include the video in the first place!

P.S. Email Marketing Reports just posted some new information about video email, and the pros and cons of different ways of putting video into email. It’s definitely worth a look.

If you need some help exploring video email, feel free to contact us at blog@clickmailmarketing.com.