power up your business
EMAIL
MARKETING
power up your business
2 – Email Marketing
BUSINESS GATEWAY
DIGITALBOOST
DigitalBoost is delivered by Business Gateway in partnership
with Scottish Enterprise and Highlands & Islands Enterprise
on behalf of Digital Scotland. DigitalBoost is designed to help
Scottish businesses:
1. Understand the benefits of using Digital Technologies
2. Introduce, or improve their use of, Digital
Technologies to help grow their business
Visit www.bgateway.com/driving-growth/digitalboost for
information on other services and a Digital ‘Health Check’
for your business. This will gauge your strengths and
opportunities, and recommend services we can oer to help.
power up your business
TABLE OF CONTENTS
1 Introduction
2 The Role of Email within a Digital
Marketing Strategy
3 Email Marketing Strategy
Your audience
Your goals
Your email content
4 Email Marketing Tools
4.1 In-house vs Outsourcing
5 Integrating Email
Your Blog
Social Media
6 Database Growth & Management
6.1 Capturing Quality Data
6.2 Segmentation
7 Developing an Eective Campaign
7.1 Types of Email
7.2 Image Design Tools
7.3 Email Design Tools
7.4 Composing Eective Emails & Case Study
7.5 Maximising Click-through Rates
7.6 Automated Email Campaigns
7.7 Best Times to Send an Email
3 – Email Marketing
power up your business
4 – Email Marketing
8 Database Growth & Management
8.1 Optimisation Checklist
8.2 A/B Testing
8.3 Preview Testing
9 Monitoring Campaigns
9.1 Tracking Email Campaignst
9.2 Key Performance Metrics
9.3 Analysing Results & Testing
9.4 Industry Benchmarks
10 Next Steps
10.2 Follow-up Campaigns
11 Legal Requirements
power up your business
5 – Email Marketing
Section 1 – Introduction
SECTION 1
INTRODUCTION
This guide will provide a comprehensive overview of Email
Marketing, and guidance on how you can successfully utilise
Email Marketing to achieve your business objectives. The
key stages in executing Email Marketing Campaigns will
be covered, with advice on how to complete each stage
eectively.
The content of this guide will help you:
• Understand the role email has in your overall Digital
Marketing Strategy, and the essential components of
an Email Marketing Strategy
• Identify the most suitable Email Marketing platform
and tools to run an Email Marketing Campaign
• Integrate Email Campaigns with other marketing
activities
• Learn how to grow and manage a database of
relevant, high quality subscribers that are likely
to engage and take action as a result of your Email
Campaigns
• Develop eective Email Campaigns, and get more
familiar with the planning and delivery process
• Measure and analyse results in order to improve future
campaigns
• Understand the legal requirements of Email Marketing
power up your business
6 – Email Marketing
Section 2 – The Role of Email within a Digital Marketing Strategy
Email Marketing can play a vital role within your overall
marketing strategy.
At its core, Email Marketing allows you to target dierent
segments of your audience on a 1-to-1 basis, with carefully
tailored and personalised messaging.
Until more ephemeral media, such as Social newsfeed
where content is only visible for short periods, Emails
exist in recipients’ inboxes until they take an action on it;
hopefully by reading it, click the link(s) within the email, and
proceeding to your chosen website or webpage.
Key dierentiators/advantages of Email as a marketing
channel are:
• Emails directly communicate with audiences on a
1-2-1 basis
• Emails are permanent until acted upon, and so they
can be used to amplify and prolong social media &
website content
• Email campaigns can target various audiences,
eectively & eciently, with personalised
messaging
• Analytical data on Email performance can be used
across all marketing eorts
SECTION 2
THE ROLE OF EMAIL
WITHIN A DIGITAL
MARKETING STRATEGY
power up your business
7 – Email Marketing
Section 3 – Email Marketing Strategy
When developing an Email Marketing Strategy, it is
important to spend a good amount of time giving careful
thought and consideration to 3 crucial areas:
1. Your Audience(s) – who are they, and what do they
want to know?
2. Your Goals – what do you want from your
audience(s)? what would benefit your business?
3. Your Email Content – what content tells your
audience what they want to know, and sets them
on a journey towards completing one (or more) of
your goals
The keys to success in Email Marketing are similar to those
of most other online marketing mediums. It is vital to
understand 1) who you are trying to reach and their needs,
2) how you want them to interact with your business,
and 3) what content will both meet their needs whilst
encouraging your desired interactions.
YOUR AUDIENCE
Firstly, when planning your Email Marketing Campaigns,
establish who your recipients should be.
Basis dierentiating characteristics can be simple
demographic information like age, gender, geographic
location, and interests.
On a more detailed level, advanced demographic
information such as purchasing habits, or an individual’s
stage in the buying cycle can significantly impact who
companies choose market to.
SECTION 3
EMAIL MARKETING
STRATEGY
power up your business
8 – Email Marketing
Section 3 – Email Marketing Strategy
For example:
Online retailers such as eBay often select audiences based on
their purchasing habits. i.e. emailing promotions on car care
products to individuals who have previously purchased car
care products on their site.
Insurers often select audiences for their Email Marketing based
on their stage in the buying cycle. i.e. focusing on Emailing
people whose insurance renewal dates are coming up shortly,
rather than people 4 months into a 12 month policy, because
the former are likely to be considering purchasing a policy in
the near future and the latter are not.
YOUR GOALS
Secondly, you need to ask “What action(s) do I want my Email
Marketing activity inspire from my audience?”
Immediate actions will typically be visiting your website.
However, the eventual goal is generating something that is of
benefit to your business.
For example:
• Product sales
• Service subscriptions or renewals
• Phonecalls
• Event or webinar attendance
• Contact form submissions
power up your business
9 – Email Marketing
Section 3 – Email Marketing Strategy
YOUR EMAIL CONTENT
Once you understand who your audience are, and what
actions you hope to generate as a result of your email
marketing, you need to make an informed choice as to the
content they may want to receive.
Consider what content your audience is likely to take an
interest in, and how that content can be leveraged to set your
audience on a path towards your website, and eventually
towards completing one of your chosen goals.
This will be something you that becomes clearer over time
once you have tested a variety of content with your audience.
Campaigns are likely to take place over more than 1 email,
with a mix of dierent content and visuals etc.
Create Email Marketing Goals & Objectives
1. Outline your email marketing goals, what do
you want to achieve? (increase sales by %,
gain % more subscribers by a specific date e.g.)
2. Outline any new products/services to promote
3. Outline any upcoming events you have
planned to promote
power up your business
10 – Email Marketing
Section 4 – Email Marketing Tools
4.1 IN-HOUSE VS OUTSOURCING
IN-HOUSE VS OUTSOURCING
Pros
• Cost eective
• Control
• Team that knows the
company’s values & brand
• Full time team
Cons
• Time
• Costly to hire marketing
experts
Pros
• Access to a wide range of
marketing experts
• Fixed monthly cost
• Reliable platform
• Less expensive than
building an email marketing
team
Cons
• Lack of control
• Risk of choosing a company
which isn’t a great fit
There are numerous benefits in using an in-house team, and
there are also benefits to the alternative of outsourcing your
email marketing.
In-house means having your company manage your email
marketing eorts from within your organisation.
Outsourcing, means to have your email marketing eorts
managed by a third party sender.
Third party senders can develop your email marketing strategy
to suit your goals, create and design the emails, include
techniques and analyse your emails to improve your reach,
engagement and return on investment.
By managing your email marketing in house, it’s cost eective
and your organisation has absolute control over what emails
are created and to who. As your organisation knows your
SECTION 4
EMAIL MARKETING
TOOLS
power up your business
11 – Email Marketing
Section 4 – Email Marketing Tools
values and brand more than an outsourced team, having an
in-house team creating emails increases the likelihood that the
correct brand voice and values will be used. Your employees
can also use email marketing to cohere with the rest of their
marketing eorts.
A downfall of using your in-house team for email marketing
is that is can be extremely time consuming and costly to hire
marketing experts to carry out your email marketing eorts.
Outsourcing your email marketing eorts often results in to
ongoing fees, or a fixed monthly cost, being incurred. It’s less
expensive than building an email marketing team, but usually
means you have less control over your email marketing
content, and you risk choosing a company which isn’t a great
fit your brand.
4.2 EMAIL CLIENTS & KEY FEATURES
Features
• Lists
• Schedule campaigns
• Connect your store
• Email Campaign Templates
• Automation
• Advanced segmentation
Price
• Starting Up - Free Plan
• Up to 2,000 subscribers and 12,000 emails per month
power up your business
12 – Email Marketing
Section 4 – Email Marketing Tools
Features
• Infinite lists
• Postcode Plotter
• Subscriber management systems
• Free web forms
Price
• Unlimited free support
• Unlimited lists/contacts
• Pay for the amount of emails per month
Features
• Dedicated account manager
• best-of-breed platforms
• Training webinars
• Surveys & Forms
Price
• Start at £250 p/m
Features
• Marketing automation tool
• Personalize each email using rich data
• Test, track & optimise tools
Price
• Start at £9 p/m
power up your business
13 – Email Marketing
Section 4 – Email Marketing Tools
Features
• Customisable templates
• Email Tracking
• Image Library
• List Building Tools
Price
• Start at $20 p/m
There are lots of dierent Email Marketing platforms. Each has
dierent features for various needs, as well as multiple price
ranges.
MailChimp is simple to use, has hundreds of email campaign
templates, flexible design features, advanced analytics,
A/B testing and automation options, as well as hundreds
of integrations with popular CRM systems like Facebook
and Capsule. MailChimp also provides various features for
eCommerce businesses, like the ability to ‘connect your store’,
as well as multi user accounts to ensure your team can work
seamlessly through your email marketing eorts. MailChimp
provides a free plan with a limit of Up to 2,000 subscribers and
12,000 emails per month. Pricing can alter if your subscribers
grow and the number of emails you send monthly increases.
These packages start at $25 per month.
Little Green Plane is also relatively easy to use. With Little
Green Plane you can have an infinite lists of subscribers, and
other useful features including, do not mail lists, free web
forms, export inactive and active contacts, as well as a post
code plotter. Little Green Plane accounts include free support,
and unlimited lists and contacts, but the cost of the platform
varies as it is based on the number of emails you send per
month. For example: 1,000 emails would cost ~£12.95 p/m,
2,500 emails would cost ~£19.95 p/m, 25,000 emails would
cost ~£115.00 p/m.
power up your business
14 – Email Marketing
Section 4 – Email Marketing Tools
dotMailer provides you with a dedicated account manager to
support you through the creation of your campaigns, and has
lots of toolkits and templates. Further benefits include training
webinars and high ease-of-use. The cost to use dotMailer
varies, but it starts at £250 p/m.
Campaign Monitor focuses more on the customer journey,
and optimising emails to each customer type. Various
features like a marketing automation tool to trigger dierent
emails depending on customer spend, and the products
they purchase can be highly eective. Testing, tracking and
optimising tools to measure your emails success and improve
performance over time are also available. Prices range from
£9p/m for their basic package to £129p/m for their premium
package.
Constant Contact is simple to use, and has lots of features
similar to the other email tools available. One of the great
features of Constant Contact is that it has a free image library,
as well as list building tools and customisable tools. Constant
Contact starts at $20p/m.
Which of the 5 tools best suits your business
at this stage?
power up your business
15 – Email Marketing
Section 5 – Integrating Email
YOUR BLOG
People like to consume content in various ways; some like
to read blogs directly from a website, some prefer to be sent
a roundup of content directly to their email account, and
others stumble across content on social media channels. It’s
extremely important to make sure you have the capability to
meet all of your readers (and potential readers’) requirements.
Your job is to make it as easy as possible for your audience
to read your blogs and engage with you. Email marketing
can play a major part in this, as part of an overall marketing
strategy, which would also include sharing of the same
content across social channels.
There are various ways to do this including setting up an RSS
feed, to automatically send your blogs via an email campaign
to your subscribers who have opted in.
What content could you send out through
an automated RSS campaign?
SECTION 5
INTEGRATING EMAIL
power up your business
16 – Email Marketing
Section 5 – Integrating Email
SOCIAL MEDIA
• Add share/follow buttons to Email Campaigns
• Add a Subscription call-to-action to your website pages and
on branded Facebook Pages
• Add ‘Retweet this’ options in Email Campaigns to allow
recipients to easily share content on Twitter
power up your business
17 – Email Marketing
Section 6 – Database Growth & Management
6.1 CAPTURING QUALITY DATA
• Opt- In
• Tailored information
• Regularly update & clean your data
• EU Data Compliance
Quality email marketing lists are businesses no.1 asset. When
customers sign up to receive emails they have demonstrated a
commitment to your brand and a level of trust.
However, building quality lists takes time. You need to provide
tailored information for each list you have. What did they sign
up to? What do they want to receive? Make sure you stick
by what you promised to deliver to ensure your customers
continue to engage with your emails.
The most common consequences of poor email deliverability
are the inability to communicate with subscribers (41 percent)
and poor customer service (24 percent). However, poor email
deliverability also results in missed opportunities from lost
opens and impressions, as well as cascading negative eects
on sender reputation, list health and ultimately sales. These
deliverability issues can indicate that an organization is having
trouble fulfilling consumer expectations.
SECTION 6
DATABASE GROWTH &
MANAGEMENT
power up your business
18 – Email Marketing
Section 6 – Database Growth & Management
To maintain a healthy list and optimize deliverability, you must
continually manage your email database. Eective database
management can be achieved by:
1. Validating new email addresses
2. Regularly removing hard bounces, along with checks
for duplications and honor opt-outs
3. Monitoring and tracking deliverability metrics to address
any ISP or database issues proactively
4. Developing a strategy for contacting inactive subscribers
that includes data-driven reactivation campaigns.
5. Following all local laws and governances as well as CAN-
SPAM best practices.
The emails you collect during the holiday rush and throughout
the year represent new opportunities to engage and connect
with consumers. A healthy, well-managed email database will
boost deliverability and the subsequent profitability of all of
your email marketing eorts. However, following laws around
the data collected is essential, knowing what data you can
collect and what is not within the EU is vital. MailChimp is US
based, you must check the legalities around this.
6.2 SEGMENTATION
By narrowing your focus and sending messages to targeted
groups within your lists, your recipients will find your
campaigns more relevant — and relevant campaigns get better
results.
Divide your email lists into categories to easily create engaging
content that is most relevant to them, to achieve the outcome
and goals of your email marketing eorts. For example,
categorising your lists by location, business type, industry, job
title, past purchases etc. will ensure your content is specifically
aimed at those audiences.
power up your business
19 – Email Marketing
Section 6 – Database Growth & Management
Create Email Marketing Goals & Objectives
1. Define who your customers are - what do
they want to know?
2. Categorise your lists depending on your
customers needs
3. How will you encourage your audience to
subscribe to your lists?
power up your business
20 – Email Marketing
Section 7 – Developing an Eective Campaign
Choosing the right format & design tools
7.1 TYPES OF EMAIL
PLAIN TEXT & RICH TEXT EMAILS
Plain text emails have just text, they have no formatting, no
hyperlinks and if you want to include images they need to
be sent as attachments. One of the great benefits of sending
plain text emails is that they are unlikely to get picked up my
SPAM detectors, unlike HTML emails. Another reason why
people send plain text emails is that some email clients do
not support or display HTML properly, but plain text emails
will display correctly. You will also find some people just
prefer receiving plain text emails. By sending plain text emails
within MailChimp, you can send a personal email to look like
an everyday email to mass marketing. It has functionality of
MailChimp, familiarity of a normal day to day email. To make
plain text emails easier to read, use lots of whitespace to
avoid having a huge grey blob of text. Leave space between
paragraphs and after headings, and aim for paragraphs of four
to five lines. Use short URLs wherever possible. Again, longer
URLs can break up and become hard to click on, or copy and
paste. Make your copy easy to scan by dividing it with clear
headings. Sometimes though a plain-text style* email can
actually perform better. If you have a very specific audience
and a short, highly targeted message with a clear call to action
then a simple email which focusses the reader on the message
(rather than the branding) and emphasises the call to action
can have dramatic results.
Rich text emails give you more flexibility than plain text emails,
you can change the colour of text, make it bold, italic and
change the size and font. But there are a few limitations, URL
SECTION 7
DEVELOPING AN
EFFECTIVE CAMPAIGN
power up your business
21 – Email Marketing
Section 7 – Developing an Eective Campaign
Links need to be inserted fully into the content, and images need to
be sent as attachments. Rich text emails lifts restrictions of plain text
emails, to allow you to be more creative with your designs.
www.campaignmonitor.com/dev-resources/guides/design/
HTML EMAILS
HTML emails are the most creative and flexible email types, every part
of the email can be designed to a style that suits your brand, you can
have a header, footer, logos, background colours and images can be
displayed within your emails rather than attachments. HTML emails
require lots of coding, but MailChimp provides templates that are
already coded which you can edit. HTML emails are not a good idea
for conversational emails as it can be dicult to get the formatting
within your email server and the conversation gets extremely messy
once the email is replied to. The best use of using HTML emails is
single use emails. You can create strong marketing emails, that include
call to action buttons, straplines, footers with your details in and it can
be branded.
power up your business
22 – Email Marketing
Section 7 – Developing an Eective Campaign
Modern Henchman created a HTML newsletter which looks
engaging and is easy to navigate.
power up your business
23 – Email Marketing
Section 7 – Developing an Eective Campaign
Rip Curl drives sales with emails that show surf loving
customers the content they want. This Bombshell Series email
campaign showcases Rip Curl’s incredible surfers, as well
as the must-have styles from their Bombshell wetsuit line,
encouraging subscribers to “shop now”.
power up your business
24 – Email Marketing
Section 7 – Developing an Eective Campaign
Birchbox uses HTML campaigns to showcase their monthly
beauty box, engage with subscribers and promote their online
shop.
power up your business
25 – Email Marketing
Section 7 – Developing an Eective Campaign
Jaybird creates email campaigns with vibrant, edge-to-edge
imagery to help Jaybird showcase the dierentiating design of
their earbuds, giving subscribers a larger-than-life look at how
the products work in action.
power up your business
26 – Email Marketing
Section 7 – Developing an Eective Campaign
BuzzFeed has developed over 20 email newsletters that
are catered to subscribers’ specific interests, like Health and
Beauty. Email is one of the top 5 referrers of website trac and
visitors from email spend 3 minutes longer on their website
than visitors from other channels.
HTML emails are very popular with big brands and businesses
that need to visually engage their audience to tell a story. But,
a lot of professional individuals use plain-text emails because
they believe that text, not images, get straight to the point
on the issue that they are addressing and send their core
message.
www.campaignmonitor.com/best-email-marketing-
campaigns/
power up your business
27 – Email Marketing
Section 7 – Developing an Eective Campaign
Best Uses of HTML Emails:
Single use emails; Group emails; Marketing Emails;
Newsletters; Track opens/clicks; Clickable links
MIME
Multi- part MIME is emails that send both HTML and plain text
versions, once the email client receive the MIME it renders the
HTML version but if it can’t it will display the plain text version.
Sending both types of emails suggests you will reach your
maximum audience, by giving the email client receiver an
alternative if it cannot render HTML.
7.2 IMAGE DESIGN TOOLS
There are lots of tools available to help you create and design
professional emails.
Canva: Canva is a free design tool, with various templates
including social media header’s. Simply edit a template within
Canva or upload your own images, the tool also allows you to
use your own brand colours. You can also use Canva to create
images to add into your campaigns too and throughout the
rest of your marketing eorts.
power up your business
28 – Email Marketing
Section 7 – Developing an Eective Campaign
placeit.net: Place It, allows you to upload your own images on
to mobile phones, desktop computers for example, it’s free and
will make a big dierence in the design of your emails.
power up your business
29 – Email Marketing
Section 7 – Developing an Eective Campaign
pixabay.com/: It’s against the law to use images without your
permission, including within your emails, but by using Pixabay,
they provide royalty free images which you can include within
your email campaigns legally.
mailchimp.com/: MailChimp provides hundreds of email
templates for you to use for various types of businesses and
events that you can edit and personalise
power up your business
30 – Email Marketing
Section 7 – Developing an Eective Campaign
7.3 EMAIL DESIGN TOOLS
Templates: Email marketing tools have various options of
email templates for you to customise for the dierent types
of emails you could send, from events to newsletters. These
templates are usually very simple to customise and use a drag
and drop format, using these templates will ensure your email
campaigns are structured in the right way and they are very
simple to customise. Alternatively, most platforms have the
opportunity to add your own coded web page which you may
be able to get help from a web developer.
power up your business
31 – Email Marketing
Section 7 – Developing an Eective Campaign
Call to Action: keep the Call To Action above the fold. Your
subscriber shouldn’t have to scroll to see it. Use a dierent
colour to draw attention to it.
power up your business
32 – Email Marketing
Section 7 – Developing an Eective Campaign
power up your business
33 – Email Marketing
Section 7 – Developing an Eective Campaign
7.4 COMPOSING EFFECTIVE EMAILS & CASE STUDY
Once you begin sending email campaigns, you will understand
what works and what doesn’t depending on your audience.
An email may be extremely successful for one type of industry,
but it might completely fail for another. However, there are a
few pointers to follow. People are extremely busy; whether
it’s a B2B or B2C email, people want to know what the email
entails quickly. They need to absorb the information as quickly
as possible and to do this emails should have light content,
your subject line must align with your email content and your
email needs to be straight to the point.
So, three top tips for composing eective emails are:
1. Get straight to the point – keep messaging
concise and direct. Avoid lengthy messaging and unclear
messaging that may leave the recipient trying to work out
what the point of the email is and what to do next.
2. Use light content – limit the number of words use.
Generally speaking, the less words used the better,
and as a rough guide anything >400 words is likely too
lengthy and few recipients will read the entire email.
Using too many calls-to-action (buttons or links) in
an email, often referred to in Email Marketing as ‘click
opportunities’, can reduce the eectiveness of an
email too. As with the word count, the fewer click
opportunities there is in an email, the more you are giving
the recipient a clear indication of what they should do
next i.e. one choice of button to click, rather than ten that
each link to dierent places.
3. Align subject line & content – Get o on the right
foot with your recipients. Make sure the messaging and
expectations set by your email subject line matches
up with the contents of the email. Subject lines that
deceptive, or only relate very loosely to the content of the
email are likely to confuse or even irritate recipients.
power up your business
34 – Email Marketing
Section 7 – Developing an Eective Campaign
Case Study:
Hammock is a creative agency serving mainly B2B audience,
which means they have their work cut out for them if they
want to connect with subscribers via email. B2B clients already
get a plethora of inbox-stung material from other creatives,
account managers, project managers, etc. Such targets need a
pretty compelling reason to read more.
Despite that barrier, Hammock managed to increase open
rates by 48%.
Traditionally, Hammock focused on providing helpful value-
driven content to their audience. They asked themselves
every day, “is our email content authentically helping our
customers?”
They wanted to show clients and prospects how to use things
to solve problems and then present them with the solution to
do that. I 100% agree that’s the right approach.
However, Hammock admits that their newsletters were
content heavy, and regular content-heavy emails will fatigue
your contacts.
The team at Hammock wanted to continue that focus on
helping subscribers solve problems while starting discussions,
so they turned that content-heavy newsletter into what they
called an “un-newsletter” and coined it their “!dea Email.”
It would be super light on content with just one helpful
marketing idea featuring suggestions on how to best utilize
that idea.
The team simplified design and content and customized the
preheader to make everything less crowded.
Additionally, the team at Hammock wrote 3 headlines for each
newsletter and conducted A/B testing. Whichever headline
had the highest open rate in the first hour was used for the
remainder of their subscriber list.
power up your business
35 – Email Marketing
Section 7 – Developing an Eective Campaign
The result was that 48% increase in open rates.
Giving people too much info can be a disservice, especially
in an email. You’re almost drowning the prospect if you feed
them 20+ ideas with links to take action.
Instead, cut it down. Reduce it to 1 or 3 ideas they can do
something with. That makes it memorable, valuable and more
actionable.
blog.crazyegg.com/2016/04/18/4-shocking-email-case-studies/
To help subscribers to solve problems while starting
discussions, the team turned their traditional, content-heavy
email newsletter into what they refer to as an “un-newsletter.”
This provides subscribers with just one helpful marketing idea,
alongside suggestions of how to best utilize that idea.
The team simplified email content and design, and customized
the email preheader text in order to meet their goal of a more
helpful, less crowded newsletter. To bring focus to these
changes, they decided to rename it “The Idea Email.”
www.marketingsherpa.com/article/case-study/simplifying-
email-content-increase-opens
power up your business
36 – Email Marketing
Section 7 – Developing an Eective Campaign
In the previous newsletter, the standard
was five to seven articles, a blurb and
a small thumbnail image encouraging
people to click to see more information.
The current version of the newsletter
prominently features the new name,
“The Idea Email,” and is made up of one
landscaped image, a headline and the
350 words of copy.
power up your business
37 – Email Marketing
Section 7 – Developing an Eective Campaign
7.5 MAXIMISING CLICK-THROUGH RATES
Altering your email campaigns to maximise click through
rates is a must, always create clear and relevant headlines to
grab the reader’s attention, grabbing their attention as soon as
possible is absolutely critical to ensure your reader keeps on
reading your email.
To keep your reader focused, paragraphs should be kept short
to keep them interested but make sure you have included
all the relevant information that they require. Try adding a
deadline to your email. This will hurry your customers into
buying and clicking through to your products/services, this
could be a discount code for a limited time.
If your email contains lots of images, they may have trouble
uploading. Keep images to a minimum and make sure you
don’t include any essential copy on images in case they don’t
load. Try to avoid over using spammy words and get more
personal within your emails, you don’t want to be too sales
orientated and put o your readers. Don’t over use copy
that you have sent out in previous emails your readers will
get bored of the same copy. Try to gain trust by including
testimonials within your emails, keeping them close to the
click can be an added bonus too. Reading emails on the go is
how lots of people now read their emails, always check what
your email campaigns looks like on a mobile device, your
email might look clear and concise within a desktop but it may
look completely dierent within a mobile device! Also, testing
your email campaigns is essential! Test your subject lines,
headers and content regularly to ensure your email campaigns
are created to maximize click throughs.
7.6 AUTOMATED EMAIL CAMPAIGNS
“Companies who send automated emails are 133% more likely
to send relevant messages that correspond with a customer’s
purchase cycle. – http://www.lenskold.com/content/
LeadGenStudy_2013.html ”
power up your business
38 – Email Marketing
Section 7 – Developing an Eective Campaign
An automated email campaign is created once, and
automatically sends to the recipient when specific options are
activated by that person. Once created, there is no need to do
anything, the automated email will continue to send to those
people meeting the specific requirements. Automated email
campaigns ensure you don’t miss sending important emails to
new subscribers for example, and they save you a lot of time.
MailChimp provides lots of various automations from welcome
emails to new subscribers, appointment reminders, gaining
customer feedback, blog feed there are lots of options available
to reach out to new and existing clients without having to
constantly create and send emails to each individual.
WHEN MIGHT YOU USE AN AUTOMATED EMAIL?
Automated emails should take into account what stage
customers are at. They could be a new subscriber, they could
have abandoned their shopping cart on your website, or they
may already have purchased a product. The key is to provide
power up your business
39 – Email Marketing
Section 7 – Developing an Eective Campaign
your customers with relevant information to purchase or
purchase again. You will need to target each customer within
their specific journey and build a strategy to target each
customer.
You might use an automated email to....
New Subscriber: Send personalised emails to your new
subscribers, welcoming them and even send helpful blog posts
and discounts to make them feel welcome, which may lead
into purchasing your products/services.
You want to provide your new subscribers with the best
opinion of your brand, they have already built trust with you
by subscribing to you, but you will need to keep on building
your relationship to turn your subscriber into a purchasing
customer.
Cart: Send automated emails to remind customers of the
products they’ve left in their cart and encourage them to
complete their transaction.
Birthdays: Send automated emails to subscribers who have
birthdays coming up, provide them with a birthday present in
the form of a discount code for example to spend within your
company.
Purchase: Automatically follow up with customers after a
purchase and recommend other products that they’ll love.
Surprise your best customers with a coupon triggered by their
shopping behavior. Once they have purchased a product, you
want to persuade them to buy from you again and keep them
interested in your products/services.
Consider automated campaigns your
business could potentially send, and select
two to add to your planned
email activity.
power up your business
40 – Email Marketing
Section 7 – Developing an Eective Campaign
7.7 BEST TIMES TO SEND AN EMAIL
Identify when the best time to post will be for your business,
bearing in mind your oering and customer base. The best
practice is to use your analytics to determine the best times for
your audience.
Sources:
http://www.smartinsights.com/email-marketing/email-
communications-strategy/best-times-send-email-2016-
infographic/
http://www.webmarketinggroup.co.uk/blog/when-is-the-best-
time-to-send-out-email-marketing-campaigns/
Seasonal Triggers:
There are lots of dierent industry statistics for the best times
to publish content. If your email contains actionable messages,
the best time to send is at the end of the week or the weekend,
people have time to read their emails as they have the lowest
volume of emails coming through. The best time for people to
open your emails is between 12pm- 4pm, the main reason for
this is because they have less emails coming through on an
afternoon, which suggests they have more time to read your
power up your business
41 – Email Marketing
Section 7 – Developing an Eective Campaign
emails. The best time to receive responses from your email
marketing eorts is early morning and late evening, simply
because people have less emails coming through at these
times and more time to reply. BUT, the best practice is to use
your analytics to determine the best times for your audience,
all audiences are dierent for dierent industries and markets
and just relying on industry statistics can be damaging.
The right timing is critical for B2B email marketing success.
Look at the data to identify what makes sense for your
customers. Data can help uncover the best day of the week or
time of day that’s most eective. While there are dierences
of opinion as to the best time to communicate through email
with customers, relying on analytics and email operational
reporting is the most accurate way to collect information to
inform your campaign.
Timing also has to do with recognizing where in the customer
journey the recipient happens to be to trigger appropriate
follow-up email. For instance, if someone downloads a white
paper or takes some action that shows interest, a timely
follow-up phone call or email sent in response is a smart
strategy. https://blogs.adobe.com/digitalmarketing/email/6-
best-practices-for-b2b-email-marketing/
Identify when the best time to post will be
for your business, bearing in mind your
oering and customer base
power up your business
42 – Email Marketing
Section 8 – Optimising Your Campaigns
Once an Email Marketing Campaign has been composed,
ensuring it is optimised for peak performance is essential.
Follow the processes outlined in this section as they apply to
your Email Marketing to optimised your campaigns.
8.1 OPTIMISATION CHECKLIST
Check each item on this optimisation check list is either
correct, set up correctly, or has been carried out:
1. Spelling/Grammar – make sure your copy does not have
any spelling or grammar mistakes.
2. Hyperlinks – hyperlinks links have been used in the correct
place within the email, and all links used are active and will
take recipients through to the intended website page (i.e. no
broken links to 404 pages.) Before sending your campaign,
ensure all of your hyperlinks and call-to-action buttons work
on all devices.
3. Mobile Friendly - 53% of emails are opened on mobile
devices
(https://www.campaignmonitor.com/resources/guides/
email-marketing-new-rules/) and 23% of readers who open
an email on a mobile device open it again later (https://
www.campaignmonitor.com/resources/guides/email-
marketing-new-rules/.) Making sure your email campaigns
are optimised for mobile devices is hugely advantageous.
Within your emails stay concise in both your content and
design, mobile devices screens means content needs to be
limited to focus on the essentials of the email. Use a simple
one column template, so the user does not need to zoom in
and out of content they can continually scroll through out
your email. Add one clear call to action, this needs to be as
SECTION 8
OPTIMISING YOUR
CAMPAIGNS
power up your business
43 – Email Marketing
Section 8 – Optimising Your Campaigns
simple as possible to find. Strong contrasting colours are also a bonus to add,
due to people changing their brightness within the phone, contrasting colours
can easily be read. Always preview what your email looks like within a mobile
device before sending.
4. Images - Images within your email campaigns need to be sized correctly
to display within your emails, before sending ensure your images display
correctly across all devices.
5. Appropriate Language - Ensure your language within your emails coheres
with your emails goal, for example using persuasive language is appropriate
for sales emails.
8.2 A/B TESTING
Testing email campaigns is vital for trying new layouts, content and techniques.
A/B testing options allow you to test numerous variables within your email
campaigns, to ensure your campaigns are optimised eectively to reach your
goals.
Before you start A/B Testing, it’s extremely important to understand what variable
you will test and how you will measure it’s success.
For example, by testing your email subject line you could measure its success by
how many people opened the email and the winner of your campaign would be
the email with the most opens.
You could also look back at your past campaigns open rate percentage and aim
to increase your open rate by a certain percentage, this would be an indicator
of how successful your campaign is compared to past campaigns. Test large
number of recipients and one variable at a time for best results and test often!
The first step in setting up an eective A/B test is to decide what you’ll test. While
you may want to test more than one thing, it’s important to only test one thing
at a time to get accurate results. Things you might consider testing include:
power up your business
44 – Email Marketing
Section 8 – Optimising Your Campaigns
Call to action
(Example: “Buy Now!” vs. “See Plans & Pricing”)
Subject line
(Example: “Product XYZ on Sale” vs. “Discounts on Product XYZ”)
Testimonials to include
(or whether to include them at all)
The layout of the message
(Example: single column vs. two column, or dierent
placement for dierent elements)
Personalization
(Example: “Mr. Smith” vs. “Joe”)
Body text
Headline
Closing text
Images
The specific oer
(Example: “Save 20%” vs. “Get free shipping”)
8.3 PREVIEW TESTING
It’s extremely important to preview your email before sending,
within marketing campaign managers, you are able to preview
your campaign in desktop, mobile and inbox mode, to know
how your email will appear within various formats.
This is essential, an email may look and read great within a
desktop email but it might be hard to read within a mobile
device, in this case you will need to edit your email so that the
email works consistently throughout the dierent formats.
power up your business
45 – Email Marketing
Section 8 – Optimising Your Campaigns
Always check each ‘Call to Action’ are they clear to the
recipient, are they in the best place within the email, are they
easy to locate? Check each link within the email to make sure
they work, as well as making sure any image or video displays
correctly within all the formats.
power up your business
46 – Email Marketing
Section 9 – Optimising Your Campaigns
Measuring results & making improvements to Email Marketing
Campaigns will allow you to ensure your Email Marketing becomes
more eective over time, and your business is drawing the maximum
benefit possible from Email as a marketing channel.
9.1 TRACKING EMAIL CAMPAIGNS
Tracking email campaigns is absolutely essential to know if your email
marketing eorts are achieving your objectives and goals. There are
lots of dierent options within email marketing tools to track your
campaigns.
As an example, MailChimp provides each campaign with various
options to include within your campaigns, and provides you with a
report after the email campaign has been delivered.
Track opens by selecting the Track opens option, MailChimp will track
how many of your subscribers have opened your email, this is a great
indicator in knowing whether your subject line is engaging enough for
your subscribers to open your email.
SECTION 9
MONITORING
CAMPAIGNS
power up your business
47 – Email Marketing
Section 9 – Optimising Your Campaigns
Track clicks by selecting the Track clicks option this enables
MailChimp to track which links were clicked within your
emails, how many times and who they were clicked by.
Track plain text within plain text emails you need to include
full URLs within your campaigns, by choosing the track plain
text options, MailChimp will replace all the links with trackable
URLs, to know which links your audience clicks on most.
Google Analytics link tracking to enable this feature, it
requires Google Analytics on your website
E-Commerce link tracking Track visitors to your website from
your MailChimp campaigns, capture order information, and
pass that information back to MailChimp. Then you can view
purchase details, conversions, and total sales on the reports
page. You can also set up segments based on your subscribers’
purchase activity.
ClickTale link tracking Gain insight to how subscribers
interact with your email content. From the instant visitors
click on the links within your emails, you can literally follow
their every mouse move, click and scroll. By watching the
recordings of these visitors, you will be able to follow them
all the way through to their online conversion or checkout.
Likewise, you can learn from Clicktale Heatmaps and other
behavioral reports, aggregating thousands of browsing
sessions, to reveal what this segment of visitors are collectively
doing within a webpage.
Goal Track Track where subscribers go on your site, then
trigger automations or segment your list based on what pages
they’ve visited.
First, enable goal in Account > Integrations.
power up your business
48 – Email Marketing
Section 9 – Optimising Your Campaigns
Capsule integration feature, Capsule:Track member activity
if you use the CRM system Capsule, MailChimp integrates with
the system. By selecting the option, MailChimp will attach a
note to the contacts reached out to via email which includes
whether they have opened or clicked through within the
email.
Urchin Tracker If you are using UTMs to track your
campaigns, make sure you use the UTM links when inserting
content into your email marketing campaigns.
This example is based on MailChimp but this is also available
through other email marketing tools such as DotMailer,
Constant Contact etc.
9.2 KEY PERFORMANCE METRICS
Metrics are used to measure and analyse how successful an
email campaign is, the information collected can then be used
to edit and alter email campaigns layout, content and calls
to action options for example, to optimise campaigns in the
future to achieve your goals.
Bounces refers to the amount of email addresses within
your list that did not receive your email. Bounces aect your
deliverability and campaign results dramatically. If the same
addresses are constantly bouncing, the best practice is to
move them to an inactive list.
power up your business
49 – Email Marketing
Section 9 – Optimising Your Campaigns
Open Rate is the amount of people that have actually
opened your email from your list. Open Rate (% of recipients
that opened the Email) can be used to gauge how well
your subject line performed. When high Open Rates give
no indication of how well your email performed in regards
to sending recipients through to your website, it is a great
indicator as to your subject line and its eectiveness.
Clicks is the combined number of clicks on any link within
your email content. As an extension of clicks as an indicator
of performance, Clickthrough Rate (% of recipients that clicked
1 or more links in a given campaign) is the best indicator to
understand how successful the email campaign is. A high
Clickthrough Rate means your content is highly relevant.
If your Clickthrough Rate is low, it could suggest that your
content isn’t relevant to your audience.
9.3 ANALYSING RESULTS & TESTING
Once your campaign is finished, you will need to analyse the
results. The specific metrics that it is most important to analyse
will be influenced by the factors you are testing. The main
factors are the Open Rate, Clickthrough Rate and Conversion
Rate.
Comparisons that are commonly carried out are comparisons
of one version of an Email vs another of the same email
(previously covered in the A/B testing section), or a
comparison of an Email compared to a previous Email in a
sequence.
By comparing factors such Open Rate and Clickthrough Rate,
platforms like MailChimp, DotMailer and Constant Contact
can automatically provide you with the ‘winner’ of the
campaign. However, such comparisons can easily be carried
out manually, and it’s essential to understand why a particular
Email performed better than another in order to optimise your
future campaigns.
power up your business
50 – Email Marketing
Section 9 – Optimising Your Campaigns
9.4 INDUSTRY BENCHMARKS
When analysing your Email Marketing eorts it is important to
understand how your Email stats compare to other businesses
in the same industry.
As an example, MailChimp provides an industry benchmark
tool, which is a tool MailChimp uses to track millions of email
data per month.
A great variety of businesses use MailChimp to send hundreds
of emails every day. MailChimp’s industry benchmark tools
tracks the insights for all of the dierent types of industries
using MailChimp, so that you can compare your data to others
in your industry.
There are a lot of dierent factors for how successful Email
Campaigns are, but one could aect your entire industry. It’s
a great tool to dierentiate whether your success is due to
industry factors, or down to your email marketing eorts.
To access the industry benchmark tool, navigate to your
account and then settings, find your industry within the drop
down bar.
power up your business
51 – Email Marketing
Section 10 – Next Steps
After sending campaigns (or an individual campaign),
analysing your metrics to inform your next follow up emails is
a must.
Analyse Campaign Metrics > Assess the Trackable Links
within your campaigns > Use campaign date to create follow
up campaigns
10.2 FOLLOW-UP CAMPAIGNS
One example of a follow-up campaign would be: for
subscribers who haven’t opened the email, send the email
again, but change the subject line.
Another example would be including trackable links within
your campaigns to assess the recipients journey, their next
steps, and what their interests are, then using that information
to create follow up campaigns for certain audience segments’
interests.
For example, subscribers may have clicked through to a blog
article link. It might be worth sending these subscribers a
tailored campaign of other blog articles. Subscribers may have
clicked through to a specific product; their next follow up
email could be a campaign all about this product to remind
recipients of the product, and further persuade them towards
purchasing the product.
SECTION 10
NEXT STEPS
power up your business
52 – Email Marketing
Section 11 – Legal Requirements
On a practical level, the key steps that must be fulfilled in order
to conduct legally compliant Email Marketing activity are:
• Must check if your customers want to be contacted by
email
• Must receive permission if you want to send your
clients other oers or promotions
• Must ask your customers if you want to share their
information with other organisations
• Must allow your customers to opt out easily
• Emails must clearly state: Who you are, that you’re
selling something, what the promotions are
• Emails must give the option to opt out of further
emails: Unsubscribe
The law within email marketing is extremely strict. By law you
must give the option to opt-out of further emails. MailChimp,
DotMailer, and other Email Clients typically provide templates
that include an unsubscribe button as default. If you create a
custom template within an Email Client, you must include an
unsubscribe option to stay within legal requirements.
Within your Email Campaigns you must clearly state who you
are, that you’re selling something (if applicable), and what the
promotions are (again, if applicable.) If using MailChimp, Lists
also make it simple to state how you know the recipient, and
why they receive your emails, as these fields are a requirement
when creating a MailChimp list.
Finally, prior to any Email Campaigns you must have some
stage asked your customer if they want to be contacted by
Email, and only if they confirm should you send an email to
them. Again, only sending Emails to customers who have
opted-in to your Email list is best practice, and ensures you are
within legal requirements.
SECTION 11
LEGAL REQUIREMENTS
power up your business
53 – Email Marketing
Section 11 – Legal Requirements
A customer may sign-up to your Email list, but sending Email
Campaigns that the user has not subscribed to is also illegal
without their permission. Always gain permission first if you want
to send your users other oers and promotions.
DATA PROTECTION
Data protection is highly strict and you must ask your customers if
you want to share their information with other organisations.
Privacy Shield: The new Privacy Shield framework introduced in
July 2016, protects the fundamental rights of anyone in the EU
whose personal data is transferred to the United States as well as
bringing legal clarity for businesses relying on transatlantic data
transfers. This new framework protects the fundamental rights of
anyone in the EU whose personal data is transferred to the United
States as well as bringing legal clarity for businesses relying on
transatlantic data transfers.
The new Privacy Shield laws include:
1. Strong obligations on companies handling data
2. Clear safeguards and transparency obligations on U.S.
government access
3. Eective protection of individual rights
4. Annual joint review mechanisms
Privacy Shield
The EU General Data Protection Regulation has been adopted this
year also, however it will not apply until May 2018. But preparing
for the new legislation is recommended. You must...
1. Prepare for data security breaches
2. Establish a framework for accountability
3. Embrace privacy by design
4. Analyse the legal basis on which you use personal data
5. Check your privacy notices and policies
6. Bear in mind the rights of data subjects
7. If you are a supplier to others, consider whether you have
new obligations as a processor
8. Cross-border data transfers
power up your business
54 – Email Marketing
Section 11 – Legal Requirements
EU General Data Protection Regulation
STOP SPAM
Emails are generally classed as spam if they containing
advertisements and are sent on a large scale to receivers that
have no interest in the email.
There are lots of dierent tools Email recipients can use to
block spam, including Spam filters and automated spam
detection within their Email servers.
Automated spam detectors, scan the emails before they
reach the recipient and check numerous indicators and give
each Email a score. If the score is too high, the Email will be
flagged as spam. Email recipients can also flag Emails as spam
themselves.
However, this can be an issue for many Email Campaign
managers as spam filters often detect non-spam Emails as
spam by various variables, and then send the Email directly to
the recipient’s Junk folder.
There are several techniques you can use to reduce the
chances of your Emails landing in Junk folders. Building great
lists is the most important, and knowing what content each
list wants is essential in creating relevant content that your
audience engages with.
Using white/light backgrounds, avoiding red fonts, using large
headline sizes, including a large unsubscribe link (which is a
legal requirement anyway), and using minimum images are all
great ways to avoid being detected as spam.
Showing how you are connected to the recipient by including
merge tags within your campaigns is also good practice.
Further ways to prevent your Emails automatically being sent
to a recipient’s Junk folder are asking the recipients to add you
to their address book, always including your mailing address,
and never using misleading reply-to addresses.
power up your business
55 – Email Marketing
Section 11 – Legal Requirements
An important factor to remember is that if anyone sharing
the same IP address has been reported as spam before, some
filters will automatically flag your campaign too.
Using lots of embed code will increase the likelihood of an
Email being flagged as spam, as well as copy and pasted text
from Microsoft Word. To avoid this, use Email templates that
are already formatted in your chosen Email client.
Finally, always test your Emails. Check your content and
formatting, questioning whether or not it is likely to achieve
the best possible engagement and delivery.
CONTACT YOUR LOCAL BUSINESS GATEWAY OFFICE
Get expert advice on this and a wide range of topics for free
at your local Business Gateway oce.
bgateway.com/local-oces
