email marketing what you dont know can hurt you

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Turning cold leads into hot prospects Turning cold leads into hot prospects What You Don’t Know Can What You Don’t Know Can Hurt You. Hurt You.

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20 slides on email marketing basics and some ideas on how to improve your email marketing practices. Presented by Red Ember Marketing at the Boston Internet Marketing MeetUp.

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Page 1: Email Marketing What You Dont Know Can Hurt You

Turning cold leads into hot prospectsTurning cold leads into hot prospects

What You Don’t Know Can What You Don’t Know Can Hurt You.Hurt You.

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Turning cold leads into hot prospects

About this presentation

This presentation contains:A quick review of issues that can affect effective email marketing.Some guidelines to improve your email communication strategy.A source of some ideas to try with your existing or future email marketing tools.

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This presentation is not:A comprehensive guide to all email marketing tools or email clientsA technical guide for designing HTML emails.An evaluation or critique of HTML email aesthetics/designs.

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Isn’t email marketing so… 1998?

• Why are we still talking about the nuances of email marketing?

• Email marketing still provides an incredible ROI: – More than $50 for every $1 spent

(Direct Marketing Association)

• There is a lack of standardization across email clients, and there are social, ethical and psychological issues at play

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Trust, Reputation, & Permission

• Your contacts are taking a leap of faith when they sign up for communications from you.Don’t let them down!

• Relevance trumps permissionUse time and context to continuously clean your contacts list.

• Consider other mediumsfor your message.

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Email user behaviorHow Do Online Consumers Spend Their Time?87%: Read email70%: Search for information64%: Do search60%: Shop37%: Use instant messaging

Email Usage274: Average number of personal emails weekly304: Average number of business emails weekly26%: Opt-in email campaigns as percentage of total inbox email74%: Email users with 2 email accounts18%: Email users who use mobile devices to sort email

Unsubscribing Behavior53% Say email is irrelevant40% Say email comes too often26% Unsubscribe using spam button

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2007 Consumer Email SnapshotEmail statistics presented by Jupiter Research VP, David Daniels, at the Email Insider Summit, Dec. 2007

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Turn down the volume.

How Subscribers Dealt with the2008 Holiday Email Flood 76.8% said they got more email than usual, but only 13% said that the amount was overwhelming. How they dealt with the volume speaks, well… volumes: 45.6% Deleted the excess mail22.3% Reported the sender as a spammer to the ISP!24.8% Unsubscribed from the sender’s list41.8% Said the email had no effect on their habits9.1% Spent more time on email overall9.5% Spent less time with each message

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Fourth Annual Holiday Email Consumer Survey 2008, published by Return Path

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Browsers vs. Email Clients

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Firefox Safari

Chrome Internet Explorer

vs.

Four More than 20!

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Browser Market Share Statistics

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Data Source: Market Share by Net Applications

Browsers adhere to better, more established standards, and are spread across a smaller number of applications.

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Email Client Statistics

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Email client selection varies across consumer and business recipients.

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Why standards matter:

What happens when CSS is not supported:

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Without inline styles With inline styles

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Design ConsiderationsDesign for the preview pane and the fold:Email clients usually provide a snippet, preview or window to display your email. The content at the top of your design/message should entice the viewer.

What if images are turned off?Many clients have images turned off by default, and some don’t support background images at all. Using alt and title tags can help get your intended message across even if your images aren’t displayed. Also take into consideration whether your design/layout will be compromised without images.

What if margins and padding aren’t supported? Outlook has taking some serious steps in the wrong direction when it comes to CSS support.

What to do?Break out those tables… currently, good email design for deliverability is actually heavily dependent on tables to maintain structure across clients.

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Tips: Preview pane is about 160 pixels.

Subject lines should be limited to around 50 characters.

Tables can often help maintain the intended layout/design across multiple clients.

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Email Deliverability Testing

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CSS Support across email clients can be complex!

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Email Deliverability TestingUse an email service provider that can help you test your emails before they are sent.Services are becoming more popular that enable senders to see what their email design will look like in many email clients at once .[wow, what a time saver!]

They often provide controls to see the preview pane or full window and turn images on and off.

Armed with that kind of information, you can go back and adjust your design for optimal rendering.

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Ok Einstein, tell us something we don’t know.

• What are SPF Records, Domain Keys, and Sender ID’s?These are records you can set on your domain to improve email deliverability. They are used to authorize an email service to send messages on your behalf. SPF Records are sometimes set by the ESP.

• What is a Feedback Loop?A feedback loop (FBL), or complaint feedback loop, is an inter-organizational form of feedback by which an internet service provider (ISP) forwards the complaints originating from their users to the sender's organizations. The most common methods of communication in a feedback loop is the use of report spam buttons on webmail pages, in email clients, or via help desks.

• What is a Whitelist / Blacklist?These lists are maintained by ISP’s and spam filters. Unfortunately just a few spam reports is all it takes to land yourself on a list.(1 spam report per 5,000 emails is an industry acceptable norm)

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Hard and Soft Bounces

Soft bounce:Your email message reaches the recipient's mail server but is bounced back undelivered before it gets to the intended recipient.Possible causes:The recipient's mailbox is full, the server is down, the message is too large or the user has abandoned the mailbox. Since delivery of your email will be attempted regularly for a few days, it may take time for it to officially become a hard bounce.

Hard bounce:Your email message has been returned as permanently undeliverable.Possible causes:Invalid addresses (domain name doesn't exist, typos, changed address, etc.) or the email recipient's mail server has blocked your server. Note that servers can interpret bounces differently, so a soft bounce on one server may be classified as a hard bounce on another.

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ReportingGeneral E-mail Metrics:Delivery RateOpen RateClick Through RateChurn rate (% unsubscribe/opt out/undeliverable) Viral Rate (Forwarded)Compare Campaigns to each other!

Other Metrics: Sales attributable to campaignProfit/margin per e-mail sentAverage Order Value (AOV) Number of orders Conversion rate (Click, then call to action)Cost per visitorAverage page views from campaignLength of site visit from campaign

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Tip: Integrate your email campaigns with your analytics package to measure traffic source, conversion rates and more.

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Crunching the numbersEmail Marketing FormulasDeliverability = ((Number of Email Addresses Sent - Number of Email Addresses Bounced) /Number of Email Addresses Sent) * 100%Open Rate = (Number of Emails Opened /(Number of Emails Sent - Number of Emails Bounced)) * 100%CTR = (Number of unique Emails clicked /(Number of Emails Sent - Number of Emails Bounced)) * 100%Conversion Rate = (Number of unique Emails resulting in a Conversion /(Number of Emails Sent - Number of Emails Bounced)) * 100%Unsubscribe Rate = (Number of Email Addresses who unsubscribed /(Number of Email Addresses Sent - Number of Email Addresses Bounced)) * 100%Viral Rate = (Number of Emails forwarded /(Number of Emails Sent - Number of Emails Bounced)) * 100%ROMI = (Revenue obtained from Email Campaign / ((Cost per Email * Total Emails Sent) + Human Resources + Incentive Cost))) * 100%Value of a Subscriber = (Annual Email Revenue - Annual Email Marketing Costs) / Total Number of Email Addresses * Annual Retention Rate

Source: Email Marketing by the Numbers, by Chris Baggott &Ali Sales.

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The answer to most questions: Test, test, test.

• What works best, text based email or HTML?A: it depends – test various designs on your contact list.

• What types of subject lines work best?A: try teasers, offers, questions to see what works for you.

• Run one or more A/B Tests Compare campaign results by changing only one parameter at a time (image, subject line, day of the week, etc.)Some email providers offer this service, butyou can always run 2 campaigns and compare

18Experiment with your emails.

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Segmentation: Beyond the name game.

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Personalization is nice, but go beyond “Dear Mr. Smith,”

Try improving your message targeting:

Segments can be used to separate contacts by geographic location, communication preferences, interests, gender, etc. Craft segment-specific messages and designs to improve campaign performance.

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Tick Tock, Tick Tock… More Ideas.

Try improving your message targeting with better list segmentation.

While video in email is not a good idea, try animated gif’s or images that look like the first frame of a video, etc.

Prospect Profiling: Don’t ask for all of your contact’s information at once – get a name and an email and offer incentives slowly for them to provide more information.

Add segment-specific coupon codes to your contact list / database for easier variable data in your emails.

Consider variable data printing for a direct mail campaign that uses data generated by your email campaign reports.

Add appointment date information to your contacts record and send emails to people reminding them to stop by in person.

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Getting Fancy: Behavior-based campaigns

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Marketing Automation allows organizations to plan out campaigns in advance. Define steps that include emails, direct mail, phone calls, demos, etc.Depending on prospect behavior or response, the communications strategy is adjusted in an effort to close deals faster.Examples: Eloqua, Marketo, Manticore Technology, Silverpop / VTrenz, CampaignerPro, Market2Lead, etc.

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Contact information:Eric SalernoRedEmberMarketing.comesalerno@RedEmberMarketing.com781.492.0928