Email Marketing
Collecting email addresses is relatively easy. Getting people to open the sent emails is the hard part.
Email marketing is about using emails as the marketing medium.
Email marketing is about trust. If you become a self-promoting spam bot, people will most definitely unsubscribe. Create real content to share in emails or do not use email marketing.
Here are the usual topics you can use email for:
- News
- Announcements
- Reminders
- Confirmations
- Post-purchase marketing e.g. re-inviting inactive users
Avoid unnecessary emails. Only send email notifications when you have something useful to say and prefer including the information in the email.
# bad
You have new notifications!
# good
Lastest activity:
* 2 new messages from John Doe and Annie Smith
* 5 new comments
Prefer opt-in over out-out in periodic email noficications. Don't automatically send daily email nofications.
Emails must provide value. When in doubt, think what is valuable to the customer. Customers are your greatest asset and customers should want to subscribe to your email notifications.
Title is the most important part. Most people will only see the title. You need to get their attention by punching them in the face in that 2 seconds. More about creating headlines and titles in copywriting notes
How to Make a Best-Selling Product -> 17% opened.
Make Your Product Sexier than Nicole Kidman -> 33% opened.
Avoid long email titles. People will see only a part of the title on mobile devices. Plan titles so that they seem interesting if people only sees first 20 characters or so. Try to keep them under 60 characters.
Use HTML. It is usually better to use HTML so you can include pictures in your marketing emails. You may consider using plain text if you want to appear more personal. Make sure you email works well without the images though.
Don't make user feel less important. Never include links to parts of the product that the recipient cannot access.
Personalize each message for the receiver. Being personal and warm gives better response from the receiver. Should be automated but look at the user attributes and construct your message. Talk like a person, not like a company.
// bad
Dear Sir/Madam
// ok
Hi Jthere
// good
Hey John,
Hey Tommi, Warrior of the Frozen Finland
First few words of the email are also important. Those are frequently shown in the email reader as a preview.
// Title
Production Tips from Moz’s Whiteboard Friday
// First when lines shown in preview
Tips and tricks for making great video consistently.
Continue to wake up their interest. Refer to their interests, not yours.
I'll keep this quick.
I'll bet you 1 month of free messaging app access that we can boost your
visitor count.
If you lose, you get 1 free month, if you win, you get 2 free months.
[Give it a try.]
Get to the point. Keep your messages short and sweet.
Get it right. Avoid miss spelling and wrong names.
Give exact times and dates. No just "tomorrow" or "soon", use tomorrow with exact date.
Keep consistent tone and voice. Check MailChimp and Buffer tone guides and make your own.
Consider receiver cultural and regional differences. Avoid slang that will get lost into in translation.
Make one final remark in PS. P.S. is the most read part of an email after the title. Best place for a call-to-action link.
P.S. You can get one free month if you want to [give it a try].
Sending emails can be done anytime. It does not matter what the clock is or what day it is.
Best email frequency depends on your target audience. You are building a relationship between your clients. Like in human relationships, you can go too fast.
Send anywhere between 1 and 4 emails a month.
The more the better, but you must always have content.
Follow local email marketing laws. For example, following are simplified email marketing laws of Finland. You must always offer a way to deny future emails.
You may send marketing emails to:
- A person that has agreed to receive marketing email.
- You may send marketing emails to past customers, but only limiting
to the product group user brought from.
- A person that has a role in an organization or company, and the role
is related to the goods being marketed.
Measure everything. More about analytics in web analytics notes. Here is a list of things you should measure and improve.
Open Rate (% of people that opened the email)
Click Through Rate (% of people that click a link in the email)
Open to Click Rate (% of people that click a link of those who opened it)
Conversion Rate (% of people that did the action you were specifying)
Unsubscribe Rate (% of people that unsubscribed)
Bounce Rate (# of emails that were returned to the sender)
Revenue (How much money did you generate from this wave of emails)
Use tools. Do not even think about sending all marketing emails yourself. You may send a few more personal feedback mails by hand though.
Best big scale email service providers:
Mailchimp
Campaign Monitor
Constant Contact
Aweber
iContact
Emma
Create a messaging checklist for everybody. Especially for everybody involved in community, social media, marketing and customer support.