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Email Marketing Best Practices 2010

In this overview on email marketing best practice, set up and general guidelines I will be covering:

• Why use email marketing?
• The basics of email marketing and why you ought to use it.
• Email is more than just selling.
• Email isn’t dead with the rise of social media.
• Current best practices.
• How to avoid spam and increase deliverablity.

What you know about email marketing and why you ought to use it!

• Why use email marketing? Setting up and tracking demographics i.e. known data of a user vs social media [data is kept often private unless you already have grabbed this data from another source] allows your campaigns to be very targeted.

Here’s 5 reasons why I believe email marketing ought to be at the forefront of your integrated on-line marketing strategies.

Email Marketing Best Practices

Pre Campaign Planning: Achieve what and with whom? Would you like to receive it?

• Probably this is the most important part. You need to understand the needs of the business.
• Mix this with the objectives of any present communication need and then formulate the email marketing strategy plan.
• This document ought to state expected ROI, segments and types of communication, as I have outlined above in email is more than selling.
• Finally, you need to put yourself in the shoes of your client/recipient. Would you be happy to receive this? If so – why, if not, then why not. This is the final sanity check of your campaign foundation.

Set Up Site With Opt-in, privacy & terms & conditions:

• Any ESP will ask you where did you get the data from. You will need to place on your site and potentially on all your sites email opt-in functionality.
• You ought to already have a privacy policy as a legal requirement of handling any data. You will need to put one up now.
• The terms and conditions often outline the basis of all legal trade on the site, not individual terms for campaigns.

Start Segmenting From Point Zero:

• When you set up the opt-in and opt-out functionality, from your email marketing plan you need to start segmenting not only subjects and interests for the user, but where they are located, what format they wish the email in e.g. html, rtf or text but when they wish to receive it e.g: weekly, monthly, etc.

Allow Email Preference:

• Many people believe that once an email is captured, the recipients just love to hear from you about everything!
• From the above point you will be wrong! This is a slide down a ruinous path of spoiling your data, ruining your brand name and potentially being labeled a spammer.
• From your segmentation when someone signs up, you need to simply ask: what subjects, how often, format.

Manage Expectation:

Simply put, once you say you will email once a month on certain subjects then stick to it.

If you have a new product/service then suggest it somewhere in your email as a call to action. Simple.

Give Reasons Why To Join, the 80-20 Law, 1 mail opt-in, email examples and Sign Up!

To opt-in on your website you need to give me at least 2-3 good reasons what I get out of giving you my data. Great examples are: Exclusive news or offers, be one of the first to get free webinars, whitepapers, digest of best questions sent to X company personality etc.

If you don’t have an email list but wish people to join up, if you send an order you can invite someone to join up to your email list. This cannot be the main call to action. It is best put under the order details. In effect 80 percent is normal communication. The other 20% is other information. Another cool way is to invite feedback on a product and service and then include details how to sign up for a newsletter. Other more crafty ways are reminders for birthdays and other special events. This is an information only email and needs to be short and sweet. It depends on your brand, I would exercise this one with caution!

Another great way is to make a footer for the company adding an opt-in to email marketing list per communication.

Don’t forget to add a short sign up URL in all other forms of relevant communication. For example on Facebook, Twitter, microsites, whitepapers, advertising, SEM etc.

SEO your sign up page. Add email examples to your sign up page to manage expectations!

For B2B communications is it legal at the time of writing to invite people to OPT-IN once! For B2C it is a lot trickier.

Testing: How the recipient sees it

Before starting any email campaign you need to find an expert in email marketing. If not, someone can learn.

• I highly recommend reading data found on MailChimps website. It goes through ALL the best practice principles.
• It is advisable to test in all the major browsers [recent and past versions] and email clients. Some such as Lotus Notes and Blackberry are always fraught with errors.  You may wish to segment these campaigns to provide RTF only versions.
• You can tweak code on the fly in a browser using a FireFox plug-in called Firebug. This helps for Mozilla clients. Internet Explorer is a different deal altogether.

Best Email Practice on Campaign Day!

How to Avoid being classed a Spammer?

1. Get Robinson + Global Suppression lists before ANY campaign
   • Most decent ESPS have Robinson lists included in their system. Global Supression Lists are an added bonus. I say use these from day to make sure your data is clean.
     • This keeps up the health of the domain for sending emails. It stops you being classed as a spammer.
     • In effect people who have said they never wish to be emailed have complained. Best to root out these emails to improve your campaign delieverability.
     • Your first campaign will probably have a high bounce rate.
     • From experience from 6-25% depending on the quality of your data. ISPs will notice if a large proportion of your emails are not going to people on their domain.
     • If so… then they might next ask, and what about supressed emails!
   • If you happen to know of a list of persons who are valued clients who appear on this list, I recommend asking them to OPT-IN on your site if the data came from any third party. This quite often happens with people sending emails direct to a representative of the company and asking to be added and data taken from trade shows.

Easy Opt in & Out, but focus on killing emails via changing frequency

Say where and when a recipient opted in per email!

• State in each email you send where [which website] and when [actual dates] they opted in.
• This clarifies to not only the ISP if you can prove it that they did opt-in but to job the memory of the recipient where they signed up.

Always include best practice communications to your company

Link to Privacy,  Data Policy,  ebusiness terms and conditions and include any specific terms and conditions IN THE EMAIL itself.

• Your landing page ought to again state the terms of a particular offer, or incentive.

Always clean and re-segment databases per campaign.

• It is inevitable you will loose subscribers along the way.
  • Many firms seem to tremble at this. I perceive it differently.
  • You are cultivating more profitable business partners, who will bring future ROI.
  • You will need to understand why recipients do not enjoy your communications.
  • Check if certain domains are never being read, delivered or opened. Chances are they have blocked you. Stop sending to these domains. Contact these individuals personally if they are high value and contact the firms IT department. Send them a copy of the communication and state where to find your privacy, t&c’s and how often they are sent. 8 in 10 times they will clear your domain for communications!
• I suggest you mark your database in terms of ROI and objectives. If a segment is NOT responding, I recommend calling up the person who had opted out and asking them.
  • In a few seconds you will understand what you are doing wrong. 9 times in 10, it’s an email redirect from a predecessor.
  • Sometimes you can get receive great ideas for your campaigns.
  • Once a client suggested I add a certain subject that interested him. I found out that it was really interesting and something which we had not considered. We added this subject to our communications, it was one of the most profitable branding campaigns ever!
• Cross reference with other calls. Once you have found where you are falling down and you said ‘I listened’, I’d call them up and say ‘we fixed it’, can I send you an opt-in? Nice retention move! You also showed to a great decision maker your company listens. Expect from this brief networking some great compliments in the future. This simple action for me, was remembered months later by this individual who actually helped me along with my career!
• I would NOT, send an unsolicited email asking them to join up again. I would put a task force to call people if the campaign attracted hugely negative responses. I would NOT email these individuals.

Deliverability

Email Marketing Best Practice Conclusions

• What you have learned is that Email Marketing is more than the 4 generic p’s of marketing.
• Email Marketing creates correct, trusting and profitable relationships.
• Email marketing understands how to get the right message to the right person at right place at the right time.
• Always test your email frequently and per campaign. Put yourself in the recipients shoes and think: Would I like to receive this? Give each campaign this sanity check for best results!
• Plan, test, execute and analyse each campaign to get results.
• Always solicit feedback from your most profitable markets. Give them a call, you never know how profitable it might become!
• Best data practice is easy and it avoids spam
• Never be afraid of un-subscribing someone. Best to keep your data clean, efficient, ISP and spam friendly and relevant!