W H I T E P A P E R

EMAIL MARKETING

REFRESHES7

The success of an email campaign can be determined by a variety of key performance indicators (KPIs): open ratio, click through ratio, conversion ratio, sales, unsubscribe ratio, etc. Email marketing success truly depends on your business objectives as well as overall customer engagement. Email programs that grow stale and stagnant are not going to entice and engage your most valuable assets – your email subscribers. Savvy email marketers are always pushing to evolve their campaigns and wisely incorporate the following seven proven email strategies. By doing so, they garner the strongest KPIs by capturing their subscribers’ attention time and time again.

These seven strategies and tactics outlined below will assist you in maximizing your email marketing Return on Advertising Spend (ROAS):

1. The Basics

2. List Growth

3. Design Impact

4. Relevancy

5. Interactive Elements

6. Analytics

7. Automation

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EMAIL MARKETING

REFRESHES7

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#1 The BasicsSubject LinesWhy is it that we may spend a week crafting content and creating a compelling design, but falter on the subject line? The subject line is the first and possibly the only introduction to your campaign that your subscribers may ever see. Take the time and effort to create a truly relevant, engaging subject line that entices subscribers to open. For instance, if you are going to promote a percentage discount or free shipping, it’s critical to communicate the offer to your subscribers immediately. It’s surprising how many companies miss the mark on clearly stating the offer within. For example, if you want to promote $25 off a purchase of $100 or more, the subject line that is going to initiate the subscriber to open is “$25 Off Your Next Purchase,” not “Preview our Fall Inventory.”

If you are in the B2B marketing world, it’s equally as critical to engage your subscribers by using a compelling subject line. Promoting new features, services or products may be very appealing to B2B subscribers who yearn to learn more about your offering. For instance, if you are a linen company who works with hotels and have new offerings within your linen lines, a persuasive subject line may be “Orders Available Now for our New Linen Line” versus “Follow up Regarding New Linens.” The previous subject line creates urgency as well as reinforces the new line.

Alt TagsWhy do email marketers continue to neglect alt tags? Alt tags are truly one of the easiest email elements to leverage when optimizing templates, yet this brilliant element continues to be excluded from most marketers’ html. An alt tag is the text content that appears when a subscriber’s email client doesn’t render images. For those online retailers who create their html as image slices (and there are plenty of you out there), be certain to include the alt tags. This simple email tool can entice subscribers to open and click with a savvy text call to action without a single image displayed. As more and more email clients, or more importantly subscribers, trend towards turning off images, it’s important to use alt tags in every email template. Take the time to create strong calls to action via alt tags. Instead of saying “picture of red shoes” for the alt tag consider the offer that you are promoting and include it within the alt tag. For example, “25% off your next shoe purchase,” will engage the recipient and urge them to download images to learn more about your promotional offer. Even if you have a good balance of text to images, it’s still worth the additional effort to include alt tags in your email messages.

Pre-Header TextPre-header text can be an email marketer’s best friend. Think of this email element as pre-content that can tout your promotional offers, new products, product features or services. Most marketers use it today to offer a web version for those that may have rendering issues, and yet it’s the most valuable real estate in your email message. So instead of using the standard “If you are having difficulty viewing this email, click here” leverage this prime real estate to promote a strong call to action linking directly to the highlighted offer:

• Save Now During our Preview Sale, 25% Off

• Version 17.1 Just Released, Quantities Limited, Order Now

A pre-header provides subscribers with immediate gratification without having to download a single image.

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#2 List GrowthList growth is a critical aspect of your email marketing program that should always be top of mind. If your list has been static over the last year, it’s time to implement alternative tactics to grow your opt-in list. It’s also important to emphasize the word “opt-in” when discussing list growth. The benefits of growing your list organically are very clear: higher retention rate, more engaged audience, more profitability and a strong and stable sender reputation. The reality is that if someone has requested to receive communications from you, they are much more likely to interact with your email campaigns and ultimately convert.

Here are several key fundamentals to follow when growing your email opt-in list:

Easy to Find Opt-InCustomers should not have to search your site to sign up for your email marketing efforts. Place your subscribe banner on your homepage and within your universal navigation bar so customers can find it with ease. Give your subscribe banner the valuable homepage real estate it deserves. Don’t hide it deep within pages of content, requiring the visitor to dig to locate it. Offering your subscription in a highly trafficked area will enable you to further engage an audience you may have previously been missing.

Make It Easy to JoinThe easier it is for subscribers to join, the more likely they will. So, limit the form fields required to join your email program.Requesting multiple fields, including preferences, may cause a significant amount of form abandonment. Instead, get what you need to begin the dialogue and collect additional information over time through pointed drip campaigns or a smart “manage preferences” call to action.

The Right Call to Action“Subscribe” and “Register,” while often used, can denote an additional commitment from the subscriber. Consider a “Join Now” or “Sign-Up” on your homepage or other areas where you promote your opt-in to increase conversions. It’s also important to continually test your proven champion call to action against new challengers.

Embrace New SubscribersThank and welcome new subscribers immediately with a Welcome email highlighting the big wins of your email program. Build a robust Welcome series that touches new subscribers consistently by bringing your brand to life with personal triggers geared towards building a strong relationship with each new subscriber.

#3 Design ImpactSeeking ways to boost your click-through and conversion rates? The design of your email templates may have more impact than you realize. If you are creating an all image html campaign, chances are many of your subscribers may not see it. A 2010 MarketingSherpa survey found that “only 33 percent of those surveyed have images turned on by default in their email client.” Thus, consider using a reasonable text to image ratio. Text is every email marketer’s friend, always pepper text elements throughout your email templates. In addition, have you experimented with your call to action, footer components, header height or even dynamic content use? If not, you should. Your campaign will only be as successful as you allow it to be. Experiment with your design to see what engages your subscribers.

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#4 Relevancy “Untargeted email programs increase costs by as much as 3.6 times the cost of targeted programs,” per the Relevancy Group in 2010. Yet email marketers struggle to be relevant. According to eMarketer, “44% of marketers surveyed believe the biggest challenge in email is providing relevant content.” Delivering your email campaign to the right person, with the right message, at the right time is critical to your overall email marketing success. So how does one successfully create relevancy in their email marketing program?

Applying the Right MetricsHow can you elevate the value of your communications, reference a recipient’s purchase history or preference profile? Your success lies within your filed data and your ability to segment. Leveraging a sophisticated segmentation tool against strong customer field data will enable you to serve timely and pointed lifecycle campaigns based on a subscriber’s affinity and purchase behavior. Take the time to plan and build an integrated application programming interface (API) between your e-commerce platform and your email service provider (ESP) – this endeavor will glean incremental revenue streams via endless segmentation opportunities.

TimingTiming is critical when ensuring relevance. Think back to your subscriber segments. If you created a segment of customers that have purchased shampoo in the past 30-45 days, an appropriate campaign would include a discount off of their next shampoo purchase, or a buy one get one free combo for shampoo and conditioner. Sending a campaign that speaks to their purchase behavior and preferences, as well as creating campaigns that are sent at the most appropriate time, will yield a stronger ROI overall.

#5 Interactive ElementsIn a web 2.0 savvy world, the need for email marketers to be smarter with their email marketing tactics becomes even more of a necessity than it once was. Using strategies that incorporate engaging elements such as share with your network (SWYN), videos, polls, and conversion paths allow you to enhance your email marketing program with components that encourage the subscriber to interact. Of the many interactive elements, here are two that are easy to implement:

SWYNLeverage the power of social media within your email template. Enable subscriber’s to become stronger brand advocates by providing a SWYN feature in each and ev-ery email. Make it easy for subscriber’s to promote your email offers through Facebook and Twitter. According to MarketingSherpa’s “Email Marketing Benchmark Survey” (2010), “Roughly 80% of marketers say that social sharing “extends the reach of email content to new markets” (81%) and “increases brand reputation and awareness” (78%). If you haven’t incorporated this social feature into your email program do so before your next send.

VideosVideos are everywhere. YouTube is a testament to how much people enjoy viewing anything from the mundane to the highly entertaining. Think about how you would like to reinforce your brand through video. To include video within your email marketing program, here are just a few rules to live by:

• Always have the video stored outside of the email, and link to it.

• Use text to describe the video.

• List the file size, length of video and formats supported.

• Offer multiple video format choices to accommodate all users.

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#6 AnalyticsTo create impactful email marketing, you need the ability to overlay your web analytics data with your email marketing KPIs. You need the ability to take your email marketing/web analytics integration beyond traffic analysis in an effort to gather specific data in real-time on your prospects and customers. Having access to this data will enable you to build true relationship email marketing. But how do you make it actionable? By gathering valuable insight into your customer behavior, you can create segmented lists and lifecycle campaigns that will significantly increase retention ratios. Dig deeper into your data by combing audience segment identification, conversion analysis, path analysis, and behavior tracking/metrics. This data can help you create a closed-loop measurement of your email marketing program. To get started, identify your business goals and objectives and then create segments based on those. They could include promoting a repeat purchase, encouraging a first time purchase or increasing customer retention. The opportunities to entice and engage are endless.

#7 AutomationTrigger based email marketing is extremely effective because it provides a one-to-one touch based on the relationship between you and your subscriber. To be successful though, you must be certain to define your business rules, set frequency limits and remember the importance of recency. Automated campaigns can trigger timely and relevant messaging that a subscriber is often excited to receive. Here are three types of trigger based email campaigns that you should incorporate into your current program:

• Transactional Triggers

• Recurring Triggers

• Threshold Triggers

These trigger based campaigns can include:

Cross-Sell/Up-Sell ProgramsYou can create effective cross-sell and up-sell email campaigns using trigger based actions from your customer’s purchase profile.

Lead Nurture Programs Create action based email triggers for your prospects that speaks to their interests and affinity.

Customer Satisfaction ProgramsConsider creating an automated message that will be triggered when a customer makes a big item purchase to gauge their satisfaction with the process.

Abandonment ProgramsWhen a customer abandons their shopping cart, trigger a message highlighting their abandoned items and similar product email recommendations to garner a higher conversion ratio.

Win-Back ProgramsIf you haven’t had a customer return to your site or make a purchase in six months or more, integrate a win-back email that entices the customer.

Pursue these seven strategies within your email marketing program to reap a higher overall engagement with your subscribers and create additional ROI in the months to come.

About Bronto

Bronto Software provides the leading marketing platform for online and multi-channel retailers to drive revenue through email, mobile, and social campaigns. Over 1000 organizations including Party City, Etsy, Gander Mountain, Dean & Deluca, and Trek Bikes rely on Bronto to increase revenue through interactive marketing. The company won the Stevie Award for Best Customer Service in 2009 and 2010 and was named a CODiE Award Finalist for Best Marketing Solution in 2011. For more information, visit bronto.com or call 888-BRONTO-1.