My Thoughts on Email Marketing

Email marketing is a touchy subject. Most marketers tend to use it as a technique rather than use it as a method. For example, in my experiences, email marketing is used to deploy a message to one audience rather than breaking the list apart, segmenting it, and sending relevant targeted messages at the right time. The most effective email marketing is when you integrate campaign planning, list hygiene, creative development/design, testing, and then deployment. In an ideal world, marketers would not take the actions of the consumers lightly, and would design the email so customers are instantly compelled to act.

Heavy testing is important to find out what works in an email and what does not work. Subject line testing has been found to be the easiest form of testing because customers’ reaction can be gauged quickly as a result of an email you’ve sent them. I’ve researched subject lines in depth and found that the most effective ones are those that inspire you to act immediately. Usually they start with “Action Required.” I have seen larger open rates when this subject line is used along with a branded name in the “From” line.

With A/B split testing, a little more of the creative process goes into play. In my testing, I’ve designed emails and placed the call to action in two different places. I have heavily relied upon MarketingSherpa’s heat-mapping study to decide where the content should go. True to form, when I’ve placed the call the action to the immediate left, I see that customers immediately click on the action. I’ve concluded that this is mainly because it is “above the fold.”

I’ve encountered reporting on both sides—I’ve had to develop a system manually, and I’ve had the opportunity to view metrics in real time using an email service application. With the manual process, a lot of development comes into play. I’ve developed a tracking process using WebTrends, where I added tracking codes on the end of URLs to determine what works best. I talk about this in two articles on my website:

How to develop an email marketing report using WebTrends: http://www.marketingmechanisms.com/MMinAction/Training_Materials/campaign_tracking_using_WebTrends.php

How to track electronic communications: http://www.marketingmechanisms.com/MMinAction/Thought_Leadership/how_to_track_ecomms.htm

Initially, this method did not work because I discovered that some publications had no call to action—they were merely good to see open rates. Once I discovered this, I designed HTML emails to always contain some sort of call to action. I did this by creating a landing page and seeing if customers/clients would go to the site—and they did.

Tracking your online media efforts

Banner ads are an excellent way to determine if your affiliate marketing efforts are paying off. In my opinion, the ideal way to track banner ads is to gather the number of metrics to the site before the banner ad is launched. First, the issue of content on the landing page from the banner ad should be discussed thoroughly. It should definitely answer the “so what?” question by giving the visitor the information they need at the right time. This landing page should also focus on cross-selling—finding out what other related information you can provide that could be relevant to the visitor. This will definitely keep the visitor engaged and motive them to peruse the site. The content on this page should be A/B split tested to see what engages customers the most. Google provides an excellent website optimizer to gauge what will keep customers clicking!

Second, it would be helpful to benchmark here. By gathering statistics (either from on-hand or online), you have a target goal in mind and should be able to monitor whether the tests are going successfully or if the tests are failing.

Once the ad debuts, gather the tracking to the landing page and track the bounce rate to see if the landing page was engaging enough to motivate the visitor to peruse the site further. If the landing page has a high bounce rate, then it is a good idea to review the content and really determine if the content is valuable. If the landing page has a low bounce rate, it is still a good idea to view the reports and see what links were clicked on the most. This helps the marketer know exactly what content to push out more.