Email marketing best practices workshop walter penfold

Editor's Notes

• #3: I am Walter Penfold, Managing Director of Everlytic, an global email marketing software platform for emerging markets based out of South AfricaToday we will talk about email marketing best practiceEmail marketing has been around for a long time, but because of the changing landscape of email and email delivery, the way we execute email marketing campaigns is changing. In this workshop I will share some insights into methods of getting the best ROI out of your campaigns.The statistics and insights in this workshop were gained out of analysing the last billion emails we sent in South Africa and other emerging markets
• #4: Email marketing is no different to other forms of marketingBecause it is relatively cheap to do, people don’t spend enough time on email marketing and drop the ballWe encourage people to look at email marketing a necessary channel in your marketing mix and to approach it in the same way you would other marketing activitiesToday we will talk about the five key elements of email marketing, Building and managing a database of contacts, ensuring your content is relevant to the target audience, designing emails that look great and get the necessary attention, making sure your emails get to the inbox and tracking and measuring your results to continually optimise your campaigns. Throughout the presentation I will illustrate some of the principles with case studies we have done and statistics from our own experience sending for some of the top brands in the countries we are in
• #5: Typical email marketing used to start by buying a database of email addresses and broadcasting messages to themThis method of building a database is old school and no longer worksToday you need to build your database organically and proactively to get engaged subscribers.Remember, when you interact with people via email your brand is at stakeHow you respect them and there personal information is important for your brand reputationIf you spam them you damage your brand
• #6: So the bottom line is you shouldn’t buy databases, unless you are 100% sure that these people have given their permission to receive email from youAssuming your have permission is not enough, you have to get specific consent from them to send.There are also other problems with buying databases like spamtraps which I will go into in more detail later
• #7: We did research which is representative of the entire online population of South Africa and then compared this to our experience in other emerging markets.The results showed that people are generally scared, or couldn’t be bothered to unsubscribe from a nesletter. Most will just ignore or delete the emailThis means that a large proportion of your subscribers could actually not be interested in the content your are sending outThe problem with this is that you create negative brand association with these people which could be damaging to your brandIn addition to this you could get complaints from these people which will affect the delivery of emails, especiually in web-based clients such as gmail and yahoo who have built in feedback loops for spamThe other reason, of course, is that you pay for these emails to be delivered, but are getting no ROI out of those people who are not engaged.These days email marketing is more about quality than quantity
• #8: Start internally building your databaseSingle vs double opt in – submit and you are automatically subscribed – double opt in a confirmation mail goes to your inbox (double is better)Always send an invitation first and get them to opt inAll the people that you interact with as an organisation could be potential subscribers
• #9: Most email service providers will do this for you or provide tools to do this – abuse@% (wild cards)Doesn’t go to one specific person, and those people haven’t specifically signed up for those communicationsIncorrectly spelt email addresses will bounce – esp will take bounces off automaticallyEsps will dedupe for you but if they don’t make sure you clean these off first
• #10: Proactice – advertising, competitions, etc.
• #11: Health magazineEveryone ate to much ice cream and food over holidays4 week program with exercise and health tipsExtended an invite to all subscribers, fans and followers to get them to opt in Highest unique read rate was 79% which is way above average
• #12: Don’t sent to entire base because of brand reputation, and it will cost you money (IOL – culled there database – better return on investment)Everyone who hasn’t read a mail in the last 6 months was sent a reconfirmation mail
• #16: Amazon of South AfricaCoupons (you get all three, choose which one you want)Valuable insights about recipient needs
• #19: Don’t send PDF (many ISP’s will block pdf’s, it is not a great experience for the user having to open an attachment, and emails tend to be too big)The best emails these days are designed in HTMLMake sure width fits preview pane with logo and nice portion of mailOpen mails don’t want to be scrollingProperties of table in wiziwig
• #20: Images as images and text as text (needs to be a balance – 60% text 40% images)Compatibility with receiving clientsWeb clients – event forms not always compatibleCascading Style Sheet – every heading has to be this font, etc. (convert to inline styles) – gmail trips style sheets out
• #21: What about videos? Not a problem sending it out but the receiving server can’t render it (outlook uses words – can’t render animated gifs, videos)Have an image in your email and take them online to let them view itKeep size small - When images don’t want to download it is unprofessional (100 kb for total message max – ideally 30-60 kb)Include plain text because certain organisations don’t allow HTML and people may have HTML switched off in clientReference to fetch image (absolute path – http:) Use alt text – if image doesn’t display then text describes itSome clients strip background imagesEmbedding images – not a good idea – triples size of mail and doubles spam score – mails go out slower and load slowerNot everyone will understand but designers will understand
• #22: Location, where is it can people see itImage and text should have links (if images don’t display then text can still be clicked)Links should be a different colourImportant – view message online, unsubscribe, update profile
• #23: Landing pages very important – what is a landing page?Where are they sending people to once they click on a linkBrand consistency so they don’t fee lossTransparency – don’t change the offer or alter a message from email to landing pageRedundant – have the whole article in email and onlineCorrect landing pages: Click on camera
• #24: Send me directly to the landing page relevant to the image you clicked onIf you send me to the home page then I will get lost trying to find the camera on the websote
• #25: Who is the mail coming from and what is the subject line (trusted source) – content has some relation to subject lineScan through content (pluses and minuses for good and bad) – higher score the more likely you will be rejectedEach receiving server works differently but these are generic tipsProblem with mail – whole email is one image (no content to read – we don’t trust it)
• #27: Not too technical – but how do you get it into the inboxAuthentication (SPF and DKIM) – name must be associated with IP address (Sender Policy Framework) – Prevents spoofing: create a SPF record on the DNS which identifies which domains can end from which IP addresses – recently in the news a guy stole the identity of Larry Page and sent an email on his behalf to Sergey Brin – google quickly picked this up and increased their email securityDomain Keys Identified Mail (encrypts header and content with private key which receiver decrypts with public key on DNS – ensures that the message was not altered during transit and that the sender is the actual originator)Most email service providers will have the tools in their product to allow you to set this upLet’s talk about reputation – this refers to your sender reputation and especially how ISP’s trust your IP address and domain name which the emails were sent fromIf you have poor quality data with bad email addresses in them or if you get too many complaints your sender reputation will diminish and ISP’s will block your emails – what they call blacklistingOne of the sure fire ways to get blacklisted is too hit a spam trap – explain spam trapsContent filtering – spam looking mails
• #29: Snowball effect
• #32: News publications – daily mails – but high engagement rateEcommerce – conversion will be higher
• #35: Engagement rate – period of 3 months
• #36: When we talk about measurement, the one thing you mustn’t forget is to track ROI – this is especially true for ecommerce customersWorked it out on profit not revenueClearly defined objectivesTrack the whole sales funnelSpecial discounts and exclusive content
• #38: Email marketing has the highest ROI of all marketing channels – but only if you do it rightCompanies such as Groupon would not exist without email marketing – their entire strategy revolves around it
• #39: Targeting mails – perfume to femalesAutomating – triggersSubscriber behaviour – series of mail second mail doesn’t go to anyone who didn’t open mail (based on whoever clicked on toyota – send them more info on that topic)
• #40: Financial content sight – can compare products with each otherContent advice on financeA/B split testing over 3 weeksNewsletter A had articles at the topNewsletter B best buy at the topPeople are interested in content first, and sales secondNewsletter A people read the entire mail