Atlanta Email Marketing Tips
Atlanta Email Marketing Tips:
10 Points to Keep Your Campaigns Humming
With all the focus on list building and email content development, it’s easy to forget that maintenance of your email marketing mechanics is one of the most important things you can do for your email programs. You wouldn’t drive your car for 12,000 miles without changing the oil and checking the tires.
So if you’ve let an entire year go by without ‘getting under the hood’ of your email marketing programs, you may not know what’s working and what’s about to break down the next time you deploy an email campaign. Find out how well your email programs are performing – and how to optimize performance – by using these essential diagnostics:
Top 10 Email Marketing Check-up Points
1. Test your opt-in process to make sure it works properly and to see how it functions from the user’s point of view. Take a minute to walk yourself through your opt-in process, especially if it has been a year or more since it was last designed or refined.
Use this checklist to test your opt-in process:
❏ Do all of the links work?
❏ Do the links send you to the pages you expect, such as a registration, subscription preferences or a confirmation page?
❏ Do you receive everything that is promised in the opt-in process? For instance, if the subscription page promises that you will receive a confirmation email, did you receive it? Did it go to your spam folder or your Inbox?
❏ How did the email render when it was delivered to your email account?
❏ How many clicks does it take to complete the opt-in process, including clicking a confirmation link in the follow-up email? Usability best practices indicate the fewer clicks required, the more likely the user will complete the process. Two clicks is ideal, three is reasonable, and four or more means you’re more likely to see higher abandonment rates in the opt-in process. Be sure you run through this checklist for all working opt-in points including your main opt-in subscription page and all landing pages that are active on your site.
2. Monitor all incoming mailboxes.
It makes sense to automate your email marketing or newsletter program as much as you can, with little need to supervise opt-ins, opt-outs, registration or preference changes, targeting and segmentation, etc. However, don’t forget that there’s a human being behind every email address on your opt-in list, and they’re capable of just about anything, That includes not following even the most explicit directions for opting in, opting out, sending feedback or otherwise contacting you. That’s why you need to designate someone, either in your department or in your company’s IT department, to monitor all email mailboxes associated with your outgoing messages. This person will need to watch for misdirected opt-outs, complaints and comments.
No matter how many times you tell people not to reply to messages or how easy your feedback or unsubscribe process is, many of them are going to hit “reply” instead. Someone must monitor those mailboxes to catch and route personal replies. If you haven’t designated someone, now is the time to do so. If you have, check-in with them and find out what type of traffic and feedback is coming in, and how it’s being handled.
Some best practices to consider:
❏ Establish an internal Service Level Agreement (SLA) for inbound replies to your email marketing campaigns and stick to it. The SLA should include agreements about how quickly someone will respond to an inbound email from a subscriber (within 24 hours is usually best), how different types of responses will be handled (for instance, do you route the email to Customer Service or reply yourself ) and how to handle unsubscribes that are submitted outside of your standard unsubscribe process or form.
❏ Develop some standard replies for the most common types of email responses. This will make it easy to reply to subscribers both efficiently and with consistency, and it will also helps maintain the polished, professional image that your company has worked so hard to establish.
❏ Create ‘From’ names that reinforce your brand and the customer experience. Even if the email address from which you are responding isn’t exactly beautiful – maybe it’s do_not_reply_21538@yourcompany.com – be sure to create a ‘From’ name that your recipient will immediately associate with your company. You may want to create a multi-purpose ‘From’ name such as Your Company Customer Service or something very specific such as Your Company Cares.
3. Review message content, design and performance across platforms and email clients.
The way your email is received has definitely changed in the last 12 months and it will continue to do so in the future. When was the last time you tested your email message to make sure it renders correctly across all email clients? You may regularly check test messages in your own Inbox, but have you checked them in Outlook, on a Mac, in AOL, Yahoo!, Hotmail and Gmail? And what about checking how your email renders on mobile devices like iPhones, Blackberries and other smart phones that don’t handle HTML and rich text well?
If you use an email solution to manage your email programs, it might automatically check how your messages render across all platforms, and offer solutions to any rendering issues. If not, take the time to check them yourself. If your emails don’t look exactly like you want, change your designs so they work more effectively.
4. Evaluate message design for blocked images and preview panes.
Take a look at your test email message without images. Does it still work? Does the visible content provide you with enough information to make the message valuable to you? Blocked images and preview panes are often a challenge for email marketers. Users of Yahoo! Mail, Hotmail and other Web-based email services, not to mention Outlook 2007, probably use some sort of preview pane that blocks or limits certain types of images in email messages. If you have not already done so, do an assessment of your current email design to determine if it’s optimized to render across the most common email platforms. Some of the most critical elements to check include:
❏ Is the most important content well represented in the first 2 to 4 inches at the top of the message?
❏ Does you design use HTML, fonts and colors, while relying less on images that ISPs or recipients’ email clients might block?
❏ Do the ALT tags describe an image or the call-to-action associated with that image so that the recipient can take action even if their email client blocks images? Use three to five words, or more if the image is large, to describe the action desired, the image or the offer.
5. Optimize both ends of the email relationship.
While it’s important to manage the front-end of the email relationship – that is, the relationship that is established when a subscriber opts-in – it’s equally important to manage the back-end of the relationship. The back-end is comprised of everything that happens after the ‘honeymoon period’ – or, the first few weeks after opt-in. This includes everything from each email you send as part of the subscription, to how you allow subscribers to manage their subscription preferences and how you handle unsubscribes. Let’s discuss both ends of the mail relationship and how to optimize them.
Start at the end
When was the last time you looked at your unsubscribe rate – and the reasons for unsubscribes? This type of information can tell you a great deal about how to keep people from unsubscribing in the first place. For instance, if you see that your unsubscribe rate tends to spike disproportionately after the fourth newsletter, it may be time to look at the content of the fourth newsletter or, more likely, at the overall content of your newsletter to see if it truly engages readers over time. Or if you see a pattern in the reasons people unsubscribe, it may be time to act on that feedback to reduce the unsubscribe rates.
Nurture your newcomers
New names grow old quickly on the typical mailing list. Interest, as judged by opens and clicks, can start to drop off as early as the first couple of weeks after opt-in. The first few weeks are a critical time for new subscribers because it’s when they truly experience what you have to offer. It’s during this time that they make a determination about whether you provide value to them, and whether or not you meet the expectations that were established when they opted-in. You need to act quickly to keep subscribers engaged so that they continue to open your email messages and click on your offers.
If it’s time to say goodbye, do it well
It isn’t enough to nurture newcomers, though. You also need to manage the process of people leaving your list, especially if they take the time to unsubscribe properly instead of merely fading away or hitting the spam complaint button in a misguided attempt to stop receiving emails from your company. Although you must stop sending email messages to subscribers when they opt-out, you should confirm that their unsubscribe request has been processed on the landing page that is served up after they complete your opt-out form. You may also want to include the following on that landing page:
❏ A link to a short exit survey that asks about their experience as a subscriber
❏ Directions on how to re-subscribe if the unsubscribe was a mistake
❏ And perhaps an offer to sweeten the pot
The feedback provided in the unsubscribe process will help you refine your future contact strategy.
6. Review all co-registration sources, and monitor by source to see how they perform.
Co-registration – a process by which you cross-promote your offerings via trusted third parties – can be an efficient and inexpensive way to build your opt-in list, especially if you don’t have a lot of resources. However, co- registration has two potential down sides:
1. You can’t always control the actions of other businesses listed along with you in the co-registration deal.
2. The people who sign up for your program may not be as motivated as the ones who sign up directly. How long has it been since you ran an audit of the co-registration programs in which your company participates? Here are some areas to check when conducting a regular audit:
❏ Examine the opt-in page to see what other companies and offers are being listed alongside yours.
❏ Make sure the subscription page still works as it should. It should also represent your brand accurately.
❏ Ensure that all subscriptions are being properly fed into your database.
You also need to monitor how well offers from subscribers via third party perform. Are they responsible for more than their share of business or problems such as bad addresses and spam complaints? Segment these subscribers into their own sub-list and compare them with your general database on key metrics. If the numbers are bad, look for ways to optimize the co-registration program or discontinue it altogether.
7. Test all links in all email messages, transactional as well as commercial, especially your unsubscribe link.
One of the key provisions in CAN-SPAM (the U.S. law regulating commercial email) is that email marketers must include a working mechanism for capturing unsubscribe requests in each message. Do you know if your unsubscribe process is compliant and working? There’s a good chance it might not be, especially since the CAN-SPAM laws change regularly.
Don’t get lulled into a false sense of compliance. The consequences are very real and can tarnish a company’s online reputation. For instance, the Federal Trade Commission, which enforces CAN-SPAM, charged email service provider Yesmail with failing to honor unsubscribe requests within 10 days as mandated by the law. The company paid a $50,717 fine to settle the case.
The best practice is to test every link in every email message and to test your unsubscribe process before each email deployment to make sure they work properly. Use a seed address (one that’s on your list specifically to track rendering and deliverability), unsubscribe the address and take every required step to complete the unsubscribe process. Then, check the database to make sure the address has been either deleted or moved to an internal do- not-email list. All it takes is one email deployment with a broken unsubscribe process for your company to be in potential legal and marketing peril.
8. Audit and optimize your email deliverability.
Deliverability is the backbone to any good email marketing program. Even the best emails – ones that are well targeted with great creative and compelling offers – don’t do your company any good unless they are actually delivered to the intended recipients.
Be sure to audit and then optimize your email deliverability regularly. Follow these key steps to get started:
• Test your content against spam filters before deploying each email to find out where and why it may be blocked. The Lyris ContentChecker™ for Email is a good resource….and it’s free!
• Make the changes to your content as indicated by the spam filter. Some simple ways to optimize your email for inbox delivery include:
- Creating good headers
- Writing content that doesn’t look like spam
- Cultivating good ISP relations.
If your current email solution doesn’t include a tool that can analyze your content and help you improve deliverability, consider finding one that does. It can save you a lot of time and money to get your content right the first time.
9. Review message frequency and sending schedule.
Are you sending too frequently, or not often enough? This is a hard call to make. It’s not clear whether you would gain ROI by increasing the frequency of mailings, or if it would do more harm because you would aggravate recipients. For most email marketers, opt-in list growth is an ongoing goal….which nonoptimized frequency of email sends can jeopardize.
Here’s how to review your email program’s performance over the last 12 months based on the frequency of deployments:
If you’re sending less frequently than weekly or even bi-weekly, your list might be going to sleep in-between sends. Consider stepping up your frequency by one or two mailings within a cycle to see if it will bring you additional results you weren’t getting previously. While you don’t want to lose subscribers, you also don’t want to leave money on the table.
Understand that you have to be careful when you move the frequency of mailings beyond the level you promised subscribers. Moving from a weekly to a daily schedule could create havoc, but moving from a monthly schedule to bi-weekly ight not have the same effect. How will you know? Test first and watch both the positive indicators – opens, clicks, conversions, sales, order size per sales, etc. – and the negative ones, including spam complaints and unsubscribes. If your unsubscribe rate remains relatively flat and your response rate increases, stick with the new cadence and keep an eye on the metrics.
10. Keep your list clean with periodic removal of inactive addresses.
It’s true: Half of your mailing list, maybe even more if you don’t email to it often enough, will likely become inactive on you. They’re still out there, but they aren’t opening, clicking or buying. You need to either clean out the dead wood or find a way to wake them up.
First, find out how many subscribers have not responded in a certain time period. For instance, you may want to segment your database by subscribers that generated no clicks or opens in the last six months. Then, create a special message inviting recipients to opt-in again, update preferences or take advantage of a special offer. After a week or so, go back into the segment and parse out the addresses of anyone who hasn’t yet responded. Don’t delete them – as you may want to send them another re-engagement campaign in a few months to test the theory that they may be more responsive after 90 days of inactivity.
Conclusion
It may seem like a lot of work, but if you take the time to give your email marketing campaigns a regular tune-up, they will continue to perform well for you. Just like a car that gets an oil change every 3,000 miles, your email campaigns will usually require very little in terms of repair if they are well maintained.
Don’t take chances. Use the online-marketing tools you should rely on – email marketing, deliverability tools, content creation, Web analytics, search marketing, social marketing and mobile marketing – and combined them into a first-class integrated marketing program.
Contact me anytime for more help on this topic and please feel free to comment here anytime!
Oh, by the way, I’d like to give my thanks to the folks at Lyris for most of the text here, although I already knew all this stuff, it really saved me a whole bunch of time to use the white paper the gave me for most of the text provided here. CUDOS!