An Introduction to EMAIL MARKETING

Author
1. Maggie Georgieva
2. Twitter: @MGIEVA
3. an inbound marketing manager
5 email marketing challenges & solutions
1. How to get them
  1. 2012 Email Marketing benchmark
  2. BenchmarkMarketingSherpa surveyed 2,735 companies
  3. Every company ranks the significance of 12 common challenges.
  4. Here we focus on top 5, and suggest some ideas.
  5. BTW, the top 1 challenge in 2011 survey is, targeting recipients with highly relevant content
2. 1. Integrating email data with other data systems
  1. To amass valuable data across different channels
    1. relationship between landing page and email
    2. email marketing performance and social media activities
    3. others data systems
      1. form submissions
      2. activities on site
      3. ...
  2. Solution
    1. Get your hands on the right tool
    2. Think segmentation
    3. Develop content
3. 2. Improving deliverability
  1. message delivered to recipients' inboxs / total number of sent message
  2. Low deliverability rate means
    1. blocked by ISPs
    2. marked as spam
    3. wasting money in sending messages
  3. Solutions
    1. Regular maintenance
    2. A stricter opt-in process
    3. Preference center
4. 3. Growing & retaining subscribers
  1. Increasing email list size and Keeping contacts engaged are not easy
  2. Two common responses
    1. Purchase lists to grow email database
      1. This will surely get you into trouble
      2. some invalid addresses
      3. new recipients may most likely not be interested in yr content
    2. Send fewer emails to retain subscribers
      1. Rarity of emails means Special? Wrong!
      2. Frequency of emailing doesn't necessarily negatively impact subscriber retention.
  3. Solution: to Earn subscribers
    1. Clear value proposition in email opt-in
      1. Don't purchase email lists, but earn subscribers!
      2. Be clear to target market about what they'll get out of subscribing.
      3. Give subscribers a clear description of what the value proposition is.
    2. Segment lists to match your priorities
      1. Concerning emailing subscribers too often?
      2. Ask if you're emailing the Right people with Right message instead!
      3. Make sure segmenting based on knowledge you hv about recipients.
    3. Optimize & Test
      1. Don't limit email testing to subject lines.
      2. Embrace testing of various elements in email marketing effort to optimize email performance.
5. 4. Achieving measurable ROI
  1. this is tightly connected with challenge one
  2. generate new leads from other channels.
  3. Solution: Closed-loop marketing
    1. track leads from beginning to becoming customer
    2. help us to identify the most powerful channel
6. 5. Using email for funnel optimization
  1. Email can strengthen other initiatives
  2. The real power comes from achieving a strong marketing mix.
  3. Solution
    1. Nurture your leads (Lead nurturing)
    2. Aka, marketing automation, drip marketing, auto-responders
    3. If taking leads a month to make purchase decision, then make sure spreading out communications to keep them engaged throughout the month
6 types of marketing emails
1. Different types of email formats have different goals and advantages.
2. 1. Email Newsletter
  1. Define your goal, What is you want the email newsletter to achieve?
  2. The metrics to trace progress
    1. Advantages
      1. Brand awareness
      2. Re-purpose content
      3. Diverse content
    2. Disadvantages
      1. Diluted call-to-action
      2. Design
    3. Prospects & Customers
  3. Stay focused on the goal
3. 2. Digest
  1. Provide summaries of existing information, and Offer a snapshot of a specific time frame.
  2. Easier to consume than newsletter
  3. Help subscribers scan emails quickly & Click on the parts that they're most interested in.
  4. Place the most important call-to-action at the top & Measure clickthrough rate and conversions
4. 3. Dedicated Email
  1. also known as Stand-alone email
  2. Advantages
    1. Focused on call-to-action
    2. Easy to build
    3. Fast to measure
  3. Disadvantages
    1. Less consistent
      1. newsletter has fixed schedule
      2. dedicated email is less clear
      3. subscribers may not realize or expect it.
    2. Homogenous content
5. 4. Lead Nurturing
  1. About understanding the nuances of leads' timing and needs.
  2. Advantages
    1. It's timely
    2. It's automated
    3. It's targeted
  3. Disadvantages
    1. Generates less concurrent buzz
    2. Passive tracking
6. 5. Sponsorship emails
  1. Current status
    1. $1.51 billion are spent on email marketing in US 2011.
    2. a component to paid media strategy.
    3. Design own email copy/ad in html and plain text.
    4. Evaluate the vender, should be crediable
  2. Advantages
    1. Highly targeted
    2. Exact ROI
  3. Disavantages
    1. It's paid.
    2. Dedicated resources
7. 6. Transactional emails
  1. What
    1. the messages that get triggered by a specific action your contacts have taken and enable them to complete that action.
    2. Also the message you receive from eCoomerce site that confirm the order and give shipment info. or others.
  2. Advantages
    1. High CTR
  3. Disadvantages
    1. Creates an obstacle
9 email marketing metrics
1. To assess email marketing performance, you must conduct ongoing trend analysis of several key metrics.
  1. compare against yr own averages
  2. Email service provider(ESP) provides a wealth of reporting.
2. 1. Bounce rate
  1. The percentage of total sent emails could not be delivered, known as Bounce.
  2. How to use
    1. uncover potential problems with email list
    2. "Hard" bounces
    3. "Soft" bounces
3. 2. Delivery rate
  1. The percentage of emails that were actually delivered to inboxes.
  2. How to use
    1. Delivery rate sets the stage for email success or failure.
    2. If slipping over time, means problem with email list.
    3. If a particular campaign has lower rate, examine the subject line and content.
4. 3. List growth rate
  1. A measurement of how fast email list is growing
  2. why important: a healthy email marketing program needs to be continually refreshed with new names.
5. 4. CTR
  1. The proportion of audience who clicked on one more links in email
  2. Is a cornerstone of email marketing analytics
  3. CTR can vary widely by the type of message sent.
6. 5. Email sharing
  1. The percentage of recipients who click on a "share this" button to post email content to a social network or "forward xxx" button.
  2. How to use
    1. The indicator of value and relevance of email messages.
    2. Watch sharing rate carefully to discover which type message gets the most shared.
7. 6. Conversion rate
  1. The percentage of recipients, who clicked link within email and completed a desired action.
  2. How to use
    1. the ultimate measure of email compaign's effectiveness.
    2. is also dependent on factors beyond the original email, such as landing page quality
    3. To measure it, require integration between email platform and web analytics
8. 7. Revenue per email sent
  1. A measure of the ROI of a particular email campaign
  2. How to use
    1. ideal for e-commerce marketers
    2. requires integration between ESP and e-commerce or web analytics platform
9. 8. Open rate
  1. a metric to measure the success of campaigns.
  2. but unreliable
    1. if an important image in email, but blocked, but email is opened!
    2. can be manipulated by writing catchy
  3. It will be better to focus on click-through rate
10. 9. Unsubscribe rate
  1. also isn't a reliable gauge of health of email list
  2. People tired of receiving email won't bother your product
  3. tracking click-through rate and conversion rate is better
  4. checking this rate monthly is helpful
    1. for calculating overall list growth rate.
    2. to watch for sudden spikes after a particular email campaign.
Conclusion & Additional resources
1. Email marketing is a powerful channel for
  1. driving real business results.
  2. achieving measurable ROI.
2. Integrate email marketing program with other channels and start achieving measurable ROI.