Chapter 14

Email Marketing

IN THIS CHAPTER

check Keeping your email address off spam lists

check Setting goals for your email marketing campaigns

check Creating a well-populated mailing list

check Crafting email messages that catch and hold your readers’ interests

check Choosing and using a dedicated email marketing platform

Email marketing combines the power of direct-mail marketing and the Internet, enabling you to send an email blast to thousands of recipients with a click. If you’ve ever wondered why you receive so much spam, that’s because email marketing works. In one study conducted by the Direct Marketing Association in the United Kingdom, every dollar spent on email marketing generated an average return on investment of $38.

Every brand should include email marketing as one of its regular promotional activities. You can use it to lead people through the sales process, drive traffic to your blog or social media accounts, distribute an electronic newsletter, announce new products and services, offer customers suggestions on how to get the most out of the products or services they ordered, and more. You can even segment your email distribution to target users by demographic, by where they are in the sales process, or by nearly any other criteria.

Email marketing, however, is only as effective as you make it. In this chapter, I explain how to do it right so that your email campaigns strengthen the bond between your customers and your brand.

Remember For a complete guide to email marketing, check out Digital Marketing For Dummies, 2nd Edition, by Ryan Diess (John Wiley & Sons, Inc.).

Becoming a Trusted Sender

Nobody likes spam, and most people have some sort of spam filter built into their email client to automatically route any spammy-looking email messages to their spam or junk folder, so they won’t even see it. For your email marketing messages to be effective, they must show up in the recipient’s inbox, and that’ll happen only if you’re a trusted sender — someone who hasn’t been identified as a spam source.

Here are some suggestions for becoming a trusted sender and preventing your outgoing messages from being blacklisted (flagged as spam):

  • Don’t buy email lists. If you purchase email addresses, you’ll get some that are valid and some that aren’t. Also, owners of most email addresses you purchase will know they did not sign up for your list and will mark you as spam.

    Remember Include in your mailing list only people who choose to be in it. Otherwise, recipients will be more likely to report your email as spam, which will get you blacklisted. I share some ideas for getting people to opt in to your email list in “Building a Quality Email List” later in this chapter.

  • Avoid typing anything in your message or message description that’s spammy, including the following:
    • ALL CAPS
    • Exclamation points, dollar signs, and words such as free and bargain
    • Phrases such as increase traffic and lose weight fast

  • Add an unsubscribe link to the bottom of every outgoing message so that recipients can opt out quickly and easily. It’s better that they opt out than report you as a spammer.

    Warning In the United States, federal antispam laws require you to give people a way to unsubscribe from your list in every email message you send.

  • Deliver content that people find useful and is less likely to be reported as spam.
  • Segment your contacts and remove unengaged contacts — recipients who aren’t opening your email messages or responding in any way. If you keep sending messages to people who aren’t interested in it, you’re more likely to get reported as a spammer. Read about tracking metrics related to your email campaigns in “Tracking Results: Email Metrics” later in this chapter.
  • Send bulk email from an email marketing service, such as Mailchimp (https://mailchimp.com), Constant Contact (https://www.constantcontact.com), or HubSpot (https://www.hubspot.com). These services can help you maintain compliance with spam rules and regulations and keep you from getting blacklisted.

Hosting providers commonly feature shared email servers, so if anyone on the server is identified as a spammer, everyone using that server gets blacklisted. If you’re using your hosting provider’s email server (as opposed to a dedicated email marketing platform), check with your hosting provider for additional ways to keep your email address from being blacklisted or to get it removed from blacklists.

Tip To see whether your domain has been blacklisted, visit MXToolbox (https://mxtoolbox.com), type your domain name in the search box, and click Blacklist Check. The site checks your domain against nearly 100 spam blacklists and indicates whether it appears on any of the lists. If your domain is blacklisted, the site indicates the reason. The MXToolbox delivery system can help you fix any issues that are causing your address to be blacklisted and monitor your email address for any future problems.

Defining Your Objectives

Before you launch any new branding initiative, you should have a clear objective in mind. An objective provides direction and enables you to gauge your success. Following are some common objectives for email marketing campaigns:

  • Upselling and cross-selling: Whenever a customer shows interest in a product or service you’re selling, you have an opportunity to increase the total order amount through upselling, cross-selling, or both. Upselling involves encouraging the customer to buy a more expensive version of a product, such as the X21 deluxe smartphone instead of the X21 standard edition. Cross-selling involves persuading the customer to buy related products, such as a wireless charger and a protective case for that X21 deluxe smartphone.

  • Increasing brand awareness: You can use email marketing to keep your brand in the minds of customers and increase their understanding of what it offers and stands for. To increase brand awareness, send existing and prospective customers information they’ll find valuable regularly — once a week.

    Warning Don’t get into any heavy sales pitches via email or send email too frequently (more than once a week). Approach email marketing the same way you’d write to a friend to provide helpful information and guidance.

  • Finding out more about your customers: Engage your customers in a conversation about their interests and the challenges or problems they face. In addition to demonstrating that you value their opinion and genuinely care about them, conversations like these can serve as valuable sources of insight and innovation. You can be far more effective serving people when you know what they need and want.

  • Soliciting customer reviews and ratings: Customer reviews and ratings can make or break a brand. Positive reviews and high ratings increase trust and break down the barriers that make people hesitant to place an order. On the other hand, negative reviews and low ratings can drive potential customers to competing brands. When you have a satisfied customer, don’t be afraid to request a review or rating.

    Remember Negative reviews and low ratings aren’t necessarily bad for business. They can be valuable, though painful, learning experiences. In addition, you can turn a negative into a positive by following up with the customer to resolve the issue that prompted the negative feedback. By going above and beyond to satisfy the customer, you may inspire them to remove or change their review or rating. They may even sing the praises of your brand’s customer service.

  • Issuing announcements: Email is a great tool for keeping customers posted about important changes or events related to your brand, such as an upcoming webinar or podcast, a change in leadership, an exclusive sale, or an in-person event. One reason why people register to receive email from businesses is that they want to be the first to hear any news.
  • Introducing a new product or service: Whenever you introduce a new product or service, send an email blast to everyone on your email list. Even better, offer them an exclusive discount or free trial. Give your recipients a reason to spread the word about your brand (and not unsubscribe from your mailing list).
  • Promoting your website or social media offerings: If you’re launching a new website or blog or establishing a presence on a new social media platform, let everyone on your mailing list know. Send them an invitation to visit and to post a question or comment.
  • Delivering customer service: With email, you can take a more proactive approach to customer service by delivering information that enables customers to make the most of your products and services and by letting them know about any issues (such as product recalls) before they find out from other sources.
  • Reducing the number of abandoned shopping carts: If you have an online store, and shoppers are frequently adding items to their shopping cart but leaving without buying anything, consider setting up an automated messaging system that reminds customers of the items in their cart. They’re close to making a purchase; they may just need a little nudge.
  • Distributing invitations to special events: If you’re hosting a physical or virtual event, email is a great way to send invitations; collect information about who’s attending; and distribute details, such as the date, the time, the location, places to stay, and a schedule or itinerary.

Building a Quality Email List

Search the web for “buy email lists,” and you’ll find dozens of businesses that specialize in gathering email addresses and selling them to companies. Sounds like a great idea, right? Why go through the trouble of collecting email addresses when you can buy them for a few cents each? Some companies even offer specialized lists, such as consumer lists, business lists, and lists of people and families who recently moved into a specific market.

The big drawback to buying email lists is that the people on the list haven’t agreed to receive email from you. As a result, they’re more likely to flag any email messages coming from you as spam, which could get you blacklisted, bringing your email marketing campaign to a screeching halt. Many marketing email servers, such as Mailchimp, prohibit the use of purchased email lists for this very reason.

To create a quality email list of your own, persuade people to opt in to receiving email messages from you. Here are a few suggestions for doing just that:

  • Include a call to action at the end of every blog post and on all web pages, encouraging people to sign up to receive email messages. At the end of a post, you might say something like this: “To be the first to find out about our latest designs, sign up for email notices.”

  • Create pop-ups on your website and blog prompting visitors to sign up to receive email messages. Most website and blogging platforms have pop-up generators available as plug-ins. If you use an email marketing platform, it may provide a form you can use on your site to collect email addresses. See “Exploring Email Marketing Platforms (Free and Paid)” later in this chapter for details.

    Tip Tie your pop-ups to certain behaviors or events. If a visitor looks at three pages on your site, for example, have a message such as this one pop up: “You seem interested in what we offer. Would you like to subscribe to our e-newsletter?” Or if a person tries to leave your site, you might have pop-up says “Leaving so soon? We can keep you looped in via your inbox.”

  • Be creative in your call-to-action options. Instead of offering a basic Yes or Subscribe option, for example, use something like Access Our Exclusive Offers or Download Our Free e-Book, with fields for the person’s name and email address.

    Tip Consider taking a humorous approach to your call-to-action options (assuming that humor fits with your brand’s personality). Instead of Yes and No options, you may want to use something like Yeah, Sign Me Up! and Are You Kidding Me?

  • Recruit subscribers through your social media accounts. People who choose to follow you on a social media platform are more likely than others to want content from you delivered to their inboxes.
  • Include an invitation to subscribe to email notifications on all written communications with customers, such as customer service email messages.
  • Bring a signup sheet to all live events, and encourage people to provide their names, email addresses, and other contact info. You may even want to sponsor a drawing and have people write their email address on the back of their tickets so that you can notify the winner (and grow your mailing list). See Chapter 11 for more about using in-person events to promote your brand.

Tip Consider removing email addresses from your mailing list when people on the list stop engaging with your brand. Why? Because they’re increasingly more likely to report any messages coming from you as spam. In addition, if they haven’t opened or responded to an email message from you for several months, they’re probably not interested in your brand. Focus your efforts on motivated customers.

Composing Effective Email Messages

The success of any email message or campaign hinges on the quality of its content. You need to offer something that appeals to the target audience and is written in an engaging, error-free way. You must pay close attention to everything from the Subject line to the message itself and the way you present it in words and images. In this section, I guide you through the process.

Remember At some point in the course of your education, you probably encountered the four essential elements of good writing. If you didn’t, or if you need a refresher, here they are. Be sure you’re clear about them before you start writing, and keep them in mind as you compose your email messages:

  • Audience: Imagine the people you’re addressing sitting across from you. Identify their interests, needs, desires, challenges, and personalities. Why did they opt to receive email messages from you? What do they hope and expect to gain in exchange for giving you access to their inbox? See “Sizing up your audience” later in this chapter for details.
  • Purpose: Define the purpose of your message or email campaign. Is your purpose to sell, entertain, inform or educate, or drive traffic to your website or blog? Refer to the earlier section “Defining Your Objectives.”
  • Tone: Choose the attitude, emotion, or personality you want to covey through your writing. Are you serious, lighthearted, concerned, assertive, or nostalgic? What emotion do you want your audience to feel? See Chapter 6 for more about tone.
  • Content: Describe the content type. Are you announcing an upcoming event or a new product, delivering news about your industry or business, following up with a customer about a concern or complaint, offering a discount, or requesting participation in a survey?

Remember Content is the raw material. Audience, purpose, and tone influence how that content is expressed (see Figure 14-1).

Schematic illustration of audience, purpose, and tone influence how content is presented.

FIGURE 14-1: Audience, purpose, and tone influence how content is presented.

Sizing up your audience

Before writing anything, you must determine who your audience is. You’re likely to write very differently depending on whether your audience is young or old, male or female, consumers or people in business, those seeking entertainment or those trying to overcome a difficult challenge. Imagine that you’re a TV executive. Who’s your audience, and why are those people tuning into your station? These are also known as your customer avatars, which we discuss in detail in Chapter 5. Conducting an effective email campaign is all about meeting or exceeding your audience’s expectations.

The challenge of sizing up your audience is compounded when your audience is fragmented in some way. My husband targets his Color Me Book brand to both consumers and to business owners who want to use the custom coloring books to promote their brands, for example. He takes a much different approach depending on whether we’re writing to consumers or to business owners. Consumers are usually buying a Color Me Book as a gift for a loved one, whereas business owners are using them as a marketing tool and want to know how effective they are for that purpose. Your audience may be fragmented in other ways as well, including demographics, where they are in making a purchase decision, their specific interests and needs, and whether they’re influencers.

Tip As you collect email addresses, organize recipients into groups so that you can easily send targeted email messages to people in different groups. If you’re using a dedicated email marketing platform, it may provide additional tools for targeting specific segments of your audience.

Offering something of value

People need a good reason to let you add them to your email list, to open and read the email messages when they arrive in their inbox and to respond favorably to your call to action. Before a person does just about anything, they consciously or subconsciously answer the all-important question “What’s in it for me?” Are people that self-centered? You betcha. So you’d better deliver something valuable enough to get them to do what you want them to.

Make a list of what you can offer your target audience to compel them to follow your call to action. Here’s a short list to spark your creativity:

  • Valuable information that can improve their lives in some way — make their lives easier or more enjoyable, save them time or money, or help them overcome a specific challenge
  • Announcements of upcoming events (online or in-person) that may interest them
  • News and insights (who doesn’t like being the first to know something?)
  • Previews of new products or services
  • Gift ideas
  • Tips for getting more out of the products or services they bought
  • Information about contests or drawings
  • Case studies or success stories — examples of how other customers benefit from the products and services you offer
  • Product videos
  • New-product updates and releases
  • Deals, discounts, and freebies
  • A survey or poll
  • Links to blog or social media posts that may interest them
  • An advice column
  • Free resources, such as e-books or newsletters

Creating From and Subject lines that grab people’s attention

One of the most important metrics in any email marketing campaign is its open rate — the percentage of recipients who open the message. (Read more about email metrics in “Tracking Results: Email Metrics” later in this chapter.) You can launch an awesome email campaign, but it will fall flat if nobody opens the message. The first things people see when they receive an email message are the From and Subject lines, so do what little you can to make those items compelling.

The first order of business is changing the entry in the From line to your brand name. On dedicated email marketing platforms, changing the From line is easy; you do it when you’re creating your email campaign. In personal email clients, you may be able to make the change through the client’s account or profile settings. Check your email client’s help system or online support for specific instructions.

Entering a Subject line is easy. Just type a brief phrase that’s likely to entice the recipient to open and read the message. Here are a few example Subject lines to get your creative juices flowing:

  • Top 10 Fashion Secrets
  • Top 20 Kayak Adventures in the United States
  • Work Less, Earn More
  • Be Your Family’s MVP
  • Join Our 5-Day Challenge
  • When’s the Last Time You … ?
  • Stop Working So Hard!

Tip Depending on your target audience, consider adding a relevant emoji to the beginning or end of your Subject line to make it stand out. You can copy and paste an emoji from a site such as Emojipedia (https://emojipedia.org) or use a shortcut key combination on a Mac or Windows PC. On a Mac, click the Subject line and press Control+⌘  +space bar. On a Windows PC, press the Windows key and either the period or semicolon key.

Warning Don’t overuse emojis, ALL CAPS, dollar signs, or exclamation points, all of which can make your subject stand out in a bad way.

Writing a clear call to action

The purpose of every email message you send is to persuade the recipient to respond favorably in some way — to order a product or service, download an eBook, take a survey, claim a discount, you name it. At the end of every email message, include a clear call to action, telling the person what you want them to do, even if it’s something relatively passive, such as “Keep an eye out for next week’s email, when we’ll present 52 uses for our new product.”

Writing a clear call to action at this point in the process may seem to be premature, but I recommend writing with the end in mind. This approach clarifies the purpose of the email, inspiring you to write a message that builds up to the call to action.

Remember If you’re not good about asking for what you want, get good at it. People can’t read minds. If you tell people exactly what you need or want them to do, you significantly increase the odds that they’ll do it.

Write your call to action as a command, starting with a strong, descriptive verb such as buy, order, subscribe, support, volunteer, download, claim, or register. Make sure that your value proposition is enticing enough to get recipients to follow your call to action. Here are a few examples to get you thinking in the right direction:

  • Buy now and get 50% off.
  • Spend your next vacation with us.
  • Snuggle up to our pillows and sheets.
  • Lose inches, gain muscle.
  • Breathe easy, eliminate allergies for good.
  • Enroll now to start your journey.
  • Join the world’s top-selling language app.
  • Subscribe to our weekly tips for digital nomads.
  • Stop overpaying for insurance.
  • Eliminate distractions.

Remember In most cases, present your call to action as a live link or button or as a text message followed by a link or button. In some cases, plain text may be more fitting.

Composing your message

I have one piece of advice for writing compelling email messages: Make them good, or keep them short. People have short attention spans these days. They’re constantly being driven to be more productive, and they don’t want their day interrupted by anything that’s not interesting, informative, helpful, hilarious, or entertaining.

Here are some additional pointers for writing email messages that compel recipients to follow your call to action:

  • Address readers personally. Use each person’s name (if you know it) at the beginning of every email message. The sweetest sound in the world to most people is the sound of their name. According to a study by Bluecore, personalizing email messages increases click-through rates by as much as 139 percent. (The click-through rate is the percentage of recipients who click something in your email message to respond to your call to action.)
  • Be succinct. If you have something really engaging to say, feel free to provide more detail. Otherwise, get to the point in as few words as possible.
  • Inject some energy and personality. Your brand has a personality, as explained in Chapter 6, so let it show through in your email marketing. Nobody likes to read flat, lifeless writing. Adopt a more conversational, lively tone.
  • Keep it light. Use headings, brief paragraphs, and lists to make your message easier to skim.
  • Use FOMO (fear of missing out) to your advantage. People don’t want to miss out on a good thing, so use scarcity and urgency to compel them to act now.

Researching emails in your industry

Become a student of email marketing. Get your name on the email lists of your competitors and other brands in your industry. Store great marketing messages in a folder, and use them for inspiration.

Tip Instead of subscribing to receive email and then having to unsubscribe later, head to Milled.com (https://milled.com), where you can research email marketing campaigns from thousands of retailers and brands on demand. Use the search box near the top of the opening page to find popular brands; then click a brand in the search results or scroll down to view marketing emails that are the best match. These examples are great for getting inspiration, finding ways to stand out, and seeing how other brands engage with their subscribers.

Including images

Including images in your email messages makes them more visually appealing and increases click-through rates significantly. According to a study of more than 5,000 email campaigns conducted by Vero, those with images had, on average, a 42 percent higher click-through rate than those without images. Mailchimp conducted a similar study of 5 billion campaigns and had nearly the same results. Specifically, email messages with more than ten images performed best.

When incorporating images into your email campaigns, keep the following suggestions in mind:

  • Use images to create context. Show products and services in natural settings to illustrate their functionality. If you sell swimming pools, for example, include images of people enjoying their pools.
  • Adhere to your branding guidelines. Your branding guidelines specify colors, along with sizing and quality standards for images. See Chapter 6 for details.
  • Be sensitive to image size, resolution, file size, and file format.
    • Image size: Generally speaking, aim for image widths of 600 to 800 pixels. Anything smaller is likely to look blurry on a wide display, and anything larger may get cut off in the email viewer. Larger images often mean bigger files, which can slow the transmission speed of email messages.
    • Resolution: Save a copy of the original image (so you don’t overwrite the original) at 72 dots per inch (dpi), which is good enough quality for onscreen viewing but reduces the file size.

    • File size: Try to limit the size of each image to 5 megabytes (MB).

      Tip If your image consists of two or more layers, flatten the layers before saving the image to reduce its file size.

    • File format: Use GIF, JPG, or PNG. PNG offers the highest quality of the three but results in the largest files.
  • Use relevant images. Your Subject line, message, call to action, and any images you use should align.
  • Make your images clickable. If your call-to-action button doesn’t appear on the recipient’s page, the person should be able to click an image to go to your website, blog, or landing page (a single web page to which the user is directed).
  • Test the email message before sending it. Send the message to yourself, view it on different devices (such as desktop and tablet computers and smartphones), check its quality, and make adjustments if necessary.

A/B testing email copy

A/B testing is a user-experience research method that involves testing two versions of something on randomly selected users to see which version is more successful. You can use A/B testing on a small sample of recipients before distributing your message more broadly, or you can send one message to half the people on your list and the other message to the other half. Either way, you can track metrics such as open rates and click-through rates to find out which message is more effective. See “Tracking Results: Email Metrics” later in this chapter for details.

When conducting A/B testing on marketing email, you can change one or more of the following elements:

  • From line
  • Subject line
  • Value proposition (what you’re offering)
  • Personalization (add, remove, or modify)
  • Message
  • Images
  • Timing

In other words, you can change just about everything except your call to action, because success is measured by how effective the message is in persuading the recipient to follow the call to action. (Changing one element at a time is usually best, because if you change more than one thing, you won’t know which change was responsible for making the message more or less effective.)

Remember A/B testing enables you to find out what works and what doesn’t for different audience segments. Keep a record of results to guide future email campaigns.

Exploring Email Marketing Platforms (Free and Paid)

If you’re going to do email marketing, I strongly recommend using a dedicated email marketing platform instead of just sending email through a traditional email client, such as Gmail or whatever your Internet service provider offers. Dedicated email marketing platforms offer the following benefits:

  • Customizable email templates to simplify design: All you do is select the desired colors and fonts and supply your own images.
  • Automated mailing list management: When people subscribe, their email addresses are added to your list, and when they unsubscribe, they’re removed from the list.
  • Simplified compliance with antispam laws: Your email marketing platform helps you abide by the rules and can prevent you from getting blacklisted. See the earlier section “Becoming a Trusted Sender.”
  • Support: Most email marketing platforms have articles, tutorials, and tech support staff to answer questions, address any issues you encounter, and help you find out more about email marketing.
  • Analytics: Email marketing platforms keep track of important metrics, such as open, click-through, and conversion rates, so you can easily see what’s working and what’s not. See the next section for details.
  • Free trials: When you’re getting started, most platforms are free. Mailchimp, for example, gives you a free account as long as your email list has fewer than 2,000 addresses and you send fewer than 12,000 email messages per month.

Here are a few popular email marketing platforms to check out:

  • Mailchimp (https://mailchimp.com) is user-friendly, packed with powerful features, and has app integrations for major e-commerce platforms. They have a free plan and upgrades depending on the size of your mailing list and the volume of email messages you send.
  • Constant Contact (https://www.constantcontact.com/) is very similar to MailChimp but focuses on enabling you to manage all your points of contact with customers online. You can create branded emails, sell products, build a website, and manage your social media accounts from this platform.
  • HubSpot (https://www.hubspot.com) is more of a customer relationship management platform that has an email marketing component. It includes Marketing Hub, Sales Hub, Service Hub, CMS Hub (for content management), and Operations Hub.
  • ConvertKit (https://convertkit.com) is an integrated package for managing all points of contact with customers. It features landing pages, email sign-up forms, email marketing, and e-commerce integrations so you can sell products on a variety of platforms.

Tracking Results: Email Metrics

Tracking the results of your campaign provides insight into what’s working, what’s not, what you should do more of, and what you need to change. Here are the most important email marketing metrics you need to track through the platform you choose for sending your emails:

  • Bounce rate: The percentage of intended recipients who didn’t receive the email message. This number may indicate that you need to remove some email addresses from your mailing list.
  • Open rate: The percentage of recipients who open a specific message.
  • Click-through rate: The percentage of recipients who click a link in response to your call to action.
  • Conversion rate: The percentage of recipients who follow through on your call to action. If your call to action is to buy a specific product, for example, the percentage of recipients who ordered the product is the conversion rate.
  • Return on investment (ROI): The profit gained by the email campaign minus the money spent on the campaign divided by the money spent. If you spent $10 on a campaign that generated $2,500, your ROI would be ($2,500 – $10) / $10 = 2,400 percent.
  • Unsubscribe rate: The percentage of recipients who opened the message and clicked the link to be removed from your mailing list. A high unsubscribe rate may indicate a problem with your mailing list or your messaging. You’re either sending the right message to the wrong people or the wrong message to the right people.
  • Forward/share rate: The percentage of recipients who forwarded your message to someone they know. A high forward/share rate is great, because it shows that you’re expanding your brand’s reach beyond the contacts you already have.
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