THE DEFINITIVE GUIDE TO OPTIMIZE YOUR EMAIL MARKETING Mailrelay.com
KEYS TO OPTIMIZE YOUR E-MAIL MARKETING 01 WHAT TO INCLUDE IN YOUR NEWSLETTERS? 02 HOW TO ACHIEVE A HIGH AVERAGE OF VIEWS? 03 HOW OFTEN SHOULD YOU SEND YOUR CAMPAIGNS? 04 HOW TO INCREASE THE PROFIT OF YOUR CAMPAIGN?
Subject BUY NOW 01 WHAT TO INCLUDE IN YOUR NEWSLETTERS? Selling is what we want our email marketing campaigns to do. Sending newsletters only to be read is not our goal. Therefore, to help you create better emails, we have created a basic guide with the points you should include in your newsletter to design more effective campaigns. It is based in classic advices for the elaboration of texts. The first thing you must have clear is how you will transmit the message to your subscribers. The structure that you will use to design your newsletter is very important, as by having a clear structure for your email, will help the recipient to understand your message. Creating a clear message will be essential for your customers to decide purchasing from you. We hope these tips will be very useful in your email marketing campaigns, for when you have to create your newsletters.
CONCEPTS YOU SHOULD INCLUDE IN YOUR SALES NEWSLETTERS 1 3 CLEARLY DEFINE WHAT IS THE PROBLEM What can you help the subscriber to solve. Either by offering services or products. EXPRESS WHAT YOU CAN DO FOR YOUR SUBSCRIBER How can you solve his problem, or how your product will help to solve it. 2 4 OUTLINE ALL THE FUNDAMENTAL DIFFERENCES Between your solution or product and other similar services or products. 5 EXPLAIN TO YOUR SUBSCRIBERS THE REASON Why so far it was not possible to solve the problem, if it was too expensive, or if the existing solutions had gaps. CLEARLY DIRECT YOUR SUBSCRIBER INDICATING What to do from that point, either call, fill in a form or any other form of contact.! Do not forget to mix these points with something very important: emotion. If you do not show emotion for your product or service you can hardly expect the subscriber or purchaser to fill it. WHAT TO INCLUDE IN YOUR NEWSLETTERS? 04
ITEMS TO ENHANCE READING AND TRUST Now that we have clear the concepts that you should include in your newsletter we will see how to present the message. There are graphic elements and structures that can help your newsletter to be more clear and compelling, such as: Quoted and bold text Use it carefully to highlight key concepts. Compare your product With other products with symbolic value. FOR LESS THAN YOU WOULD PAY FOR A COFFEE highlight warranty This can help you to convince your customer. Buy now! 100% Guarantee A list using points or numbers Most of your subscribers will read the most important points. 1 2 Use a minimum of buttons and calls Many buttons can be confusing for your subscriber. Include testimonials Buy now! Testimonials must be real and credible. Add elements of credibility As the logo of any Secure payment, PayPal or any entity trusted you are working with. WHAT TO INCLUDE IN YOUR NEWSLETTERS? 05
SOME TIPS FOR THE SUBJECT OF YOUR EMAILS Like the rest of the newsletter, in the subject, you can work with certain elements that can increase open rates: IS IT ALL ABOUT CREATING A GOOD SUBJECT LINE? SUBJECT 1: 1 Use an ellipsis at the end of the subject..., this will help increase the curiosity of the subscriber. 2 By using incomplete subjects you can try to increase the curiosity so that your subscriber will open the email. 3 Use the word This, for instance, Peter, this is what we got for you... 4 Use the words because or why for example Do you know why you should read this email?. 5 Avoid the use of period, as it may seem as if you have finished a concept and its use can be negative. 6 Try to create a subject directly related to the content of your email, so the subscriber will find what I was expecting when decided to read your newsletter. Subject: Flash Offer of wireless drills Recently I purchased a pair of bonsai in an online store. A few weeks later, I received an email with this subject. The product had nothing to do with the purchases he had made. In these cases it is very difficult that the subscriber will be interested in the product. SUBJECT 2 Subject: New ebooks in online marketing This is the subject of an email from Amazon, where I usually buy books related to online marketing. Although the subject is not particularly interesting and very general, it is very likely I will open this email, as I usually purchase these products. SUBJECT 3 Subject: New book by Seth Godin Here, the segmentation is perfect, not just the gender, marketing, but as I already purchased books by this author, I will be interested in this email. SEGMENTATION IS THE KEY Without a correct segmentation of the database, it is impossible to create interesting subjects, it is impossible to please everyone or to please all your subscribers. WHAT TO INCLUDE IN YOUR NEWSLETTERS? 06
02 HOW TO ACHIEVE A HIGH AVERAGE OF VIEWS? It is impossible to reach ratios of 100%, in fact, open rates exceeding 30% usually require much effort. Mainly this is so because you are sending commercial emails. Keep in mind that just because someone is subscribed to your list, it does not mean that this subscriber will be interested in everything you are sending, it is very possible that after viewing the subject, the user decides that he is not interested, and even after opening the email, he decide not to click on display images. If the user doesn t click the button to display images, the system will not register the view. Some studies have concluded that an overall average of 20% is a good open rate. However, this doesn t mean that if your campaigns have less than 20% you are using the wrong strategy. Most likely, you cannot get a successful conclusion, because it is an overall average, it doesn t mean it have to be your target. You have to remember that these studies, as they are general, are not taking into account important information, such as the source of the database, which is undoubtedly the most important aspect. A database generated with spiders or purchased, will not have the same quality as a single or double opt-in mailing. It is not the same thing to receive emails sent by someone you don t know, than to receive emails from a website you subscribed voluntarily to.
FACTORS THAT CAN AFFECT YOUR OPEN RATES THE QUALITY OF YOUR DATABASE If the database of subscribers is low quality, the results will be lower than if you send to a high quality mailing list. Depending on the origin of the database, you can get different open rates: UP TO 60% UP TO 12% UP TO 5% database DOBLE OPT-IN database CREATED USING SEGMENTATION database PURCHASED Of course in addition to using an opt-in database, it is important to keep it clean of bounces, SPAM accounts, spam-traps, etc. This is something that Mailrelay does automatically, when you import your list or send a campaign. We must also consider that the databases also suffer from the called churn rate, as some accounts will be disabled, or some users will unsubscribe from your list. This churn rate could be around 30% a year, so if your database has 1.000 subscribers, after one year you wold have around 700 subscribers, therefore your strategy should always go towards attracting new subscribers. DESIGNING YOUR NEWSLETTER Is another factor to consider, not only so that your email does not go to the SPAM folder, but to increase the chances that once opened, it encourages the subscriber to click to display the images. If your newsletter consists of a single image is quite likely that the user, not seeing anything when he opens the email, delete it and therefore the system will not register the view. It would be similar to the concept of bounce ratio in the web world, it just does not count as such. OPT-OUTS It s strange to many people, who think it is better not to add an unsubscribe link, because opportunities could be lost. In my opinion, It is not worth keeping someone on the list that would like to unsubscribe. However, there s a great possibility that the user will mark your email as SPAM, so as to stop receiving your newsletters. It is best to indicate a direct unsubscribe link, without confirmation by email, in a visible part of your newsletter. Other points to consider when improving the performance of your email marketing campaigns. You could try to change the frequency of your campaigns, to see if you get more clicks when sending several campaigns a week or just one. You can measure the results using the Mailrelay advanced statistics menu. HOW TO ACHIEVE A HIGH AVERAGE OF VIEWS? 08
SEGMENT YOUR SUBSCRIBERS BY THEIR STATUS It is important to segment your database regularly, to separate active and inactive subscribers. Send your newsletters first to the active list and later to the inactive subscribers. This action will help you to improve your open rate due to several reasons that we will explain: YOU WILL IMPROVE THE INITIAL INTERACTION IN SPAM FILTERS SUCH AS SMARTSCREEN: According to Microsoft SmartScreen technology determines how to distinguish between legitimate email messages and spam by using extensive user input from hundreds of thousands of Windows Live Hotmail users. What does this mean? Basically that Microsoft uses the users to optimize all the spam filter rules to increase or decrease the spam score your sender domain will get, based on whether your subscribers open the emails, click on the links, if the newsletters are not marked as spam, etc. By sending the campaign first to the active subscribers, the score will improve for this type of filter and the rest of the campaign will have a better delivery rate to the inbox. ACTIVE SUBSCRIBERS Those who have interacted with your campaigns or your company in the past 6 months. That is, subscribers who viewed a newsletter, clicked on any link or contacted you using any available method. POSSIBLE PROBLEMS WITH INACTIVE SUBSCRIBERS WILL NOT HAVE ANY INPACT FOR YOUR ACTIVE MAILING: By sending the newsletter first to the active mailing, the possible problems that inactive subscribers could cause for your domain, by not interacting with your newsletter or mark it as spam, will not affect the segmentation of active subscribers, as you have sent the campaign first to these contacts. With this segmentation you will get the best results in terms of delivery to the inbox, response and ROI. YOU WILL USE THE LIMIT OF EMAILS ALLOWED BY THE ISP FOR THE ACTIVE SUBSCRIBERS : If one of the ISP you send to allows only a fix number of emails per hour or per day that could affect your campaign, as you are sending first to the active subscribers, you would be taking advantage of this limit and spend it for users who will return better results and if later, the server locks the emails, due to the number of messages, this would only affect the general subscribers.! Don t forget that with Mailrelay: You can segment the active subscribers! automatically. HOW TO ACHIEVE A HIGH AVERAGE OF VIEWS? 09
IMPROVE THE RESULT OF NEWSLETTERS TESTING THE CAMPAIGNS In online marketing there are two key activities that we must consider, analyze the results of our actions and test them. Analyze the results is very important to know what has happened and how you can improve your online marketing actions. By testing your strategies you can compare various options and know which is more effective to develop it and use it as your standard strategy. STRATEGY FOR TESTING YOUR CAMPAIGNS 1 5% 5% 5% 5% 80% 2 5% 5% Subject 1 Subject 2 = CREATE GROUPS OF SUBSCRIBERS If you had 1.000 subscribers (correctly segmented), you would create 4 groups with 50 (5%) subscribers each, and a general group of 800 (80%) subscribers. SEND THE CAMPAIGN USING DIFFERENT SUBJECTS To the first group with 50 subscribers (or 5% of your database) you would send a newsletter using one subject. To the second group with 50 subscribers, you would send a newsletter using a different subject. 3 5% 5% Buy now! = Don t miss it! 4 SEND CAMPAIGNS WITH DIFFERENT CONTENTS To the third group, you would send a newsletter, paying special attention to the call to action and the content of the email. To the fourth group, you would send another newsletter with different content, especially changing the call to action. WAIT FOR A DAY To allow time for all emails to be open, so that you can draw conclusions from the collected data. You will be able to see which subject had more views, which call to action got more clicks.! Don t forget that with this information You can get the best results by sending the winning combination to the fifth group. HOW TO ACHIEVE A HIGH AVERAGE OF VIEWS? 10
03 HOW OFTEN SHOULD YOU SEND YOUR CAMPAIGNS? I think the only cause that affects and induce our subscribers to unsubscribe is definitely the quality of content you send, not the frequency of the campaigns. At the end of the day Who would be tired of receiving interesting and useful things? Obviously most of us would not like to receive emails about products, services or traveling offers. You would not have a budget to purchase all these things. It all depends on your product and your subscribers, do not listen to empty statistics and evaluate what is best in your case, what good is a statistic that tells you that You have to send a weekly newsletter, if it turns out you can only send useful contents once a month.
HOW MANY TIMES A MONTH SHOULD YOU SEND YOUR CAMPAIGNS? 1 EJEMPLO: ENVÍO DIARIO DE OFERTAS Companies such as : Groupon - Groupalia - Letsbonus Send a daily email with the latest news and offers, a daily email, that is too much, is it not? Yet it must be so, due to the type of product and promotion these companies work with, it is necessary to send newsletters daily to get as many sales as possible. In this case what is clear is that users know that they will receive an email every day, yes, variety and novelty can play an important role here. You must take into account the fact that many subscribers want to see these newsletters just out of curiosity, to see the new products, even though they will not purchase anything. 2 EXAMPLE: FUNDRAISING CAMPAIGN The fundraiser campaign for Obama s political campaign, it was necessary to send countless newsletters and still most subscribers did not unsubscribe, even though the content, on more than one occasion was of poor quality and did not offer anything new. How could they send so many campaigns without losing subscribers? Very easy, these people actually wanted to receive those emails. Due to the fact that they wanted to receive every sent email, they would not unsubscribe, no matter how many emails they received. Does that mean you can do the same and send newsletters daily? Frankly, I do not recommend it, as it is unlikely that products or normal causes can achieve that level of tolerance. It is simply an example to illustrate that the problem is not the frequency without further analysis, but a set of variables, such as quality of content, engagement of your subscribers with your brand or products. HOW OFTEN SHOULD YOU SEND YOUR CAMPAIGNS? 12
3 EXAMPLE: DAILY CAMPAIGNS WITH PRODUCTS We can see it in The New Inbox in the book the author gives the following example. For seven days, he received the same newsletter, the only thing that changed as the subject: Subject: A $100 Gift Certificate to Shop Our Fall Collection Subject: Save $100 on Every $500 You Spend. Limited time. Subject: Save $100 on Every $500 You Spend. Includes Sale. Subject: Save $100 on Every $500 You Spend. In Store and Online. Subject: Save $100 on Every $500 You Spend. Only 2 days left. Subject: SLast Day to Save $100 on Every $500 You Spend. Subject: Extended 1 day Only: Save $100 on Every $500 You Spend. That is too much, every day for seven days receiving the same email, changing only the subject, it can be tedious for anyone. It would be acceptable, to send the first email and another message to inform that there are only two days left, or even only one day left. This would have been less invasive. Many users would open the first email and the second would be sent for those who had not seen the first message. 4 EXAMPLE: FUNDRAISING CAMPAIGN Before starting the Christmas campaign, as the company had planned to send many more emails than usual, they decided as a first step to warn their subscribers by sending an email indicating the new frequency, when the campaign would start and for how long it would last. The subscriber had the option to unsubscribe during that period and resume receiving newsletters, as usual, after the end of the campaign. They could also receive a single email during the campaign. Perhaps the most important part of this strategy is the warning, due to the fact that they explained to their subscribers it was something that was not going to be that way forever and the reasons for sending more newsletters than they normally send. It is very important to be honest with your subscribers, so they will know what is going on, and as you see, this example shows that creating your email marketing campaign takes planning, you have to think about all possibilities, to create engagement with the subscriber who will receive your newsletters. HOW OFTEN SHOULD YOU SEND YOUR CAMPAIGNS? 13
REMEMBER, EVERY TIME YOU SEND A NEWSLETTER 1 2 3 4 Do not think that because they have subscribed, your contacts are interested in receiving all your emails. The problem is not the frequency of campaigns, but the contents you are sending. Each subscriber can withstand receive a number of emails that are not interesting. Each time you send something that they don t wish to receive, is a step more to the moment when they will decide to opt-out. HOW OFTEN SHOULD YOU SEND YOUR CAMPAIGNS? 14
04 HOW TO INCREASE THE PROFIT OF YOUR CAMPAIGN? Once your subscribers have read your email, most likely they will finish the action on your website. For instance, if you are promoting a course, a book or a service. You can provide the basic information through the newsletter, but ultimately your customers will have to go to your website to purchase your product. That is why it is vital to show a proper landing page, as it is usually not advisable to direct potential customers to your homepage. Mailrelay is using landing pages to improve our conversion ratio for a long time. In some cases we have improved conversion rates by 20% or more, so if you calculate, it is easy to see how profitable this strategy is.
UNBOUNCE A HIGHLY RECOMMENDED TOOL We tested several tools including Visual Website Optimizer, but certainly today we are working with Unbounce, due to its simplicity, low price and effectiveness. Unbounce is an A/B testing tool, not multivariable, but you can duplicate pages and make minor changes between them. If you don t know the concept of tests A/B, it is very simple, it s about having multiple versions of the same page. Each of these versions will be shown randomly for your visitors, to study the results of the test. Sounds complex? You will understand it better with an example, imagine this page: http://mailrelay.com/alta VERSION 1 VERSION 2 Test A/B Totally different from the previous one. As each visitor will see it one version or the other, over time it is possible to see which of the two versions works best, which of the two versions can generate more leads. For Mailrelay, the second image worked better, with more users creating accounts, the conversion rates increased, with more than 20% accounts. If you use landing pages for your mailings, I am sure you will improve the results of your campaigns, by 10% to 30% as we mentioned in the example. You could get 20 more customers for every 100 visits. That is very important, you should take advantage of these tools.! Do not forget that the landing page should not have links to other pages or menus. The aim is to give the user only two options: register and abandon the page. If you add several menus, the user could go to another page, perhaps never to return to the landing. HOW TO INCREASE THE PROFIT OF YOUR CAMPAIGN? 16
LET S STUDY THE MOST IMPORTANT ASPECTS OF THIS LANDING First headline: large Where you will add the most interesting aspect of your product. Logo: visible It is important for the brand to be associated with the message. Item: to guide Second headline: small Where you can explain more about your product. Image: striking Depending on the product or service you work with, some images will work best than ther. Item: security Visitors should be sure that this is a real service. Information: organized You can offer more details about your service or product. Testimonials: to convince So that you direct the visitor in the direction you want. Form: visible The ultimate goal is that the user decides to register. Button: visible You can try several different buttons, changing the color, the text, the size. Item: to persuade A discount, how much he can save, or other things to help the potential customer to take the final step. People tend to rely more on something if it has already been tested by others. VARIOUS PATTERNS OF DESIGN If you look again at the page with our example, you will see that the design was created in the form of a Z, starting from the top on the left, the headline, moves to the right, then down to the image, go to the right for the key points and end with the form. Again it is not a coincidence, that is the usual pattern of reading, from left to right. Other design patterns could be in the form of N. HOW TO INCREASE THE PROFIT OF YOUR CAMPAIGN? 17
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