8 Essentials For An Effective Win-Back Email Campaign

For any marketer, we feel a sense of excitement when we are able to convert a visitor to a customer.
However, only the first half of the battle has been won. The other half is trying to retain those customers by probing them with email newsletters and offers over the span of a few months to a year.
This part is more difficult and usually results in them going inactive and not engaging with your brand as a whole.

The are many reasons why people would go inactive:

• They only bought your product as a gift (it was a one-time purchase)
• They had a bad experience
• You changed your product and they’re just not into the new thing
• Your emails may be getting sent to their junk mail inbox
• Circumstances have changed
• They took a great promotional deal you had on offer, but was never really into your brand

Retaining customers is an important yet challenging task. Don’t worry, many email marketers face this problem too.

Customers will naturally decrease by about 22.5% every year.

So why do we bother trying to retain customers when we can just find new customers?

1. First, it’s a lot easier to sell to existing customers than new ones – 50% easier to be exact. This is because your brand has already done the hard work of establishing a level of trust, so convincing them requires little work.
2. Second, it’s a lot cheaper. It costs between 4-10 times more to acquire a new customer than to keep an existing one.

This is why win-back email campaigns are so important. But how effective are they?

Effectiveness of win-back emails

ReturnPath conducted a study where they analyzed 33 different win-back email campaigns by different ecommerce stores to see how effective they were at turning a non-active customer into an active customer.
Results showed:

• 92% of the emails made it to the customer’s inbox – this means inactive users were receiving win-back emails
• Open rate was only 12% – A respectable number as customers have not interacted with the brand in a long time

However, results showed that slow and steady wins the race:

• 45% of recipients who received a win-back campaign read a subsequent message after the first email
• 75% of re-engaged subscribers had read a subsequent message within 89 days (after the first email), with the other 25% still opening emails 300 days after receiving the first win-back email

image: http://marketingland.com/email-win-back-programs-work-81574

Overall, three quarters of inactive customers could still re-engage with your brand within 90 days

8 Tips to creating an effective win-back email campaign

1. Personalize your emails

Personalization is a must in email marketing and here’s why

• Personalized email messages improve click-through rates by an average of 14% and conversions by 10% (Campaign Monitor)
• 74% of marketers say targeted personalization increases customer engagement (eConsultancy).

Customers will appreciate you using their name instead of “hey you”. It creates more of a personal connection than a retailer-customer interaction.
Here are some ways on how we can personalize our win-back emails:

• Say their name
• Show previous purchase history
• Personalized product recommendations (upsell and cross-sell) based on past purchases

Netflix does it right with their personalization: using the first name, effective copy (note how they use pronouns, e.g. “you” and “your”) and a list of devices they can view shows on. The email also includes a strong call-to-action personalized to the customer, “I’d like to come back”.

Source: allthatiknow

2. Provide a solution

There are many reasons why your customer hasn’t purchased from you in a long time.

Understanding your customer is super important in the world of ecommerce. If we do not understand why they are going lapse, we will just repeat the same mistake over and over again, hoping to get a different result every time.

So Instead of trying to guess the answer, a better way would be to ask them directly.

Inbound adopts for a personalized message request. Maybe Inbound is sending too many emails or irrelevant ones. They provide an opportunity to let the customers decide what kind of emails they want to receive so it’s more personal and targeted. They also send a feedback request at the end to learn what they could do better.

Source: Audienceops

Dollar Shave Club anticipates that customers may not want their razors every month. That’s why they ask their customer if receiving a razor every second month would be better and shows them how this could be done.

Source: Flexmail

3. Segmentation

It’s a fact that your customers will appreciate your emails if it’s related to them.
We can segment our email list to subcategories. This could include:

• How long since their last purchase
• Low, medium and high-value customers – average order value
• Number of orders per year
• Customers that had negative experiences

By segmenting your email list, you can deliver more relevant win-back email messages to each group.

4. Highlight the benefits

Win your customer’s back by reminding them of the value and benefits of your product
Here’s a win-back email by Dropbox to users that have not added or uploaded any files to their account. They remind users to start reusing their service by highlighting the features of their product.

Source: Betaout

Warby Parker sends out an email whenever someone places an item in their shopping cart but abandons it. They know the customer has enough interest to add the product to their shopping cart, so a simple email may be enough to make them purchase the product. They use the copy, “want a better look?” to let customers know the benefits of their glasses – looking great!

Source: essenceofemail

5. Send more than one email

There’s no magic email that will engage every inactive customer. That’s why you should develop a win-back email campaign comprising of several emails. Send different win-back emails over a period of time to try engage your inactive customer. Hitting them from different angles is better than relying on sole email – also great for split testing and gathering data!

Here’s Adidas’ third email in their 3-part win-back email series. They opt for the urgency tactic, reminding them that they have a limited time before the discount offer expires.

Source: Omertia

6. Give them an offer

Why not try to engage your customers by giving them something – maybe a discount or a gift.
Study shows that win-back emails that contained a “$ off” discount performed better than emails with “% off” discount.

A great way use this tactic is to include the discount in the subject line.

Tip: Don’t send your discounted emails in the first email of your win-back email campaign series (e.g. send on the second or third email). Sometimes customers are willing to purchase from emails with no discount so maximize your revenue by saving these for a later series.

If a customer doesn’t respond to your offers, you can maybe send them an even better offer than before. However, this may be risky as customers may catch on and wait intentionally for the better offer – so use it wisely!

Here’s Crocs’ win-back email containing a $10 off discount.

Source: wisepops

Here’s another discount offer – 100% free discount that is. Pinkberry, adds a free yogurt to customer’s account when they have not bought for a while. By offering a bonus or a free gift, you can encourage a person to come back to your store and start buying from you again.

Source: Business2Community

7. Know when to give up

It’s better to have a small but reliable mailing list than a large inactive list that delivers inconsistent results. That’s why part of the aim of our win-back emails are to opt out people that won’t buy from you.

If you tried everything, but your customer won’t budge, sometimes you just have to let them go. You don’t want to keep sending them emails over and over again as it may appear spam-like and may give your brand a bad reputation.

Here’s Fab’s unsubscribe email where they opt the customer out of their mailing list, but leaves them an option in case they still want to stay on. They know the receiver will never buy so there’s no point having them on their mailing list.

Source: Hubspot

Here’s the clothing company, Free People, acknowledging that their customer has not engaged with their emails in a long time and ask if they still want to receive them or not. This may encourage them to engage again, but also make the customer unsubscribe. Either way is fine as there’s no point having a customer that’s never going to buy. 

 

Source: Hubspot

8. A/B Test

Don’t assume one headline copy is going to be better than another. Let data guide your campaign instead of using your own opinion.

The best marketers are the ones that continuously test and optimize their campaigns based on data. Tests could include but not limited to:

• Design
• Copy
• Frequency
• Timing
• Offers

The 33 ecommerce stores that participated in ReturnPath’s study split tested different subject lines like, “we miss you” and “a note from the CEO”. These had read rates of 13%.

What to do next?

Trying to get your customers to re-engage with your brand is never easy as they stopped engaging for some reason. However, with these tactics, you will increase the odds of them re-engaging and buying from you again.

What success have you had with your win-back email campaigns? We’d love to hear in the comments below or if you have any other extra tips, pop it down below too!


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Affinity Content: The Key to Growing Your Community

This article is part of our series on the 4 Essential Types of Content Every Marketing Strategy Needs. Make sure to get your special free bonus at the end of the article.

Due to its potential to generate large amounts of traffic, but result in low conversion rates, bare-bones Attraction content is kind of like saying, “Let’s throw some spaghetti at the wall and see what sticks.”
It’s the spaghetti that sticks around that matters. (No, I’m not suggesting your readers are spaghetti. That’s where the analogy breaks down.)
But for those readers who do stick around, Affinity content is the content that keeps them sticking around. It gets them to like you. Even love you.
When you attract ideal visitors to your site, they hopefully click around and find Affinity articles that further endear them to you.
So, what is Affinity content? Here’s a definition:

Affinity content is content that attracts people who have the same values and beliefs as you. This content shares your beliefs, so people with similar beliefs feel like they belong in your community.

Read on to discover the value of Affinity content and how it works with Attraction content and Authority content.

Why you need to create Affinity content

Attraction content gets you attention, and Authority content builds your reputation.
But what distinguishes you from your competition? Why would a prospect choose you over them?
Well, it comes down to basic human psychology — what we call the know, like, and trust factor. It’s true that “liking” and “trusting” are subjective, but a lot of our decision-making is grounded in those fuzzy feelings.

In the end, we’re going to go with the person who makes us feel better. We feel better when we feel as if we share a mutual bond or similar worldview.

A company that has attracted an audience with value-added content — but is buttoned-up and remote — will have trouble competing with a person who produces the same content and who you feel a bond with because they seem to understand the way you view the world.
It’s about putting yourself in their shoes. Walking their paths — relating. That’s how you increase affinity.
But you will actually have to state what you believe in. You will need conviction. About something.

Examples of Affinity content

If you want an example of how this works, study Facebook. Facebook is largely a splintered, contentious, belief-based communication medium. It’s all about people’s beliefs and how they define themselves and find places where they belong, according to their preferences.
For your Affinity content, these shared beliefs can run the gamut. It can be anything from strictly pragmatic to plain silly.
Here are two examples of Affinity content from Copyblogger:

1. Digital Sharecropping: The Most Dangerous Threat to Your Content Marketing Strategy. In this post, Sonia Simone advises against building audiences on social media sites you don’t own. She then recommends the opposite: Build on your own property. That’s been a Copyblogger belief since day one.
2. The Inigo Montoya Guide to 27 Commonly Misused Words. For many of us, it’s posts like this one that endeared Brian Clark to us. Here was a guy sharing conventional writing advice by dropping a reference to a cult movie, The Princess Bride. By the way, Brian didn’t discover those 27 misused words. He repackaged them with personality and drew in readers who shared a love for the movie.

The risk you take with Affinity content

Here’s the deal:

The price of not standing for something is that you become generic and get ignored.

You have to occasionally speak out for things you believe in.
If you go after everyone, you get no one. And think about this: who really wants to follow someone who doesn’t believe in anything?
I can’t promise you that Affinity content won’t make you some enemies. But for every enemy you make, you’ll attract even more people who will go to war with you.
And keep in mind that Affinity content isn’t always contentious. Sometimes it’s just personal.

Affinity content gets personal

One of my favorite articles on Copyblogger is Brian Clark’s The Snowboard, The Subdural Hematoma, and The Secret of Life.
This is not a tutorial like How to Use the ‘Rule of Three’ to Create Engaging Content. Instead, the snowboard article is a personal story with a moral: live the life you want to live.
It’s a moment when Brian was being completely vulnerable. When you are vulnerable, people see who you are. And they realize you have weaknesses just like them.
That you are normal and approachable.
Another stellar example of Affinity content like Brian’s snowboard article is Jon Morrow’s How to Quit Your Job, Move to Paradise and Get Paid to Change the World. It’s an inspirational story that endears you to Jon.

Get comfortable in your own skin

To start creating your own Affinity content, answer worldview questions like:

• Are things ever handed to us? Is luck a part of success? Or is hard work the difference between success and failure?
• Can anyone succeed? How important is formal education?
• Do you view the world as one of abundance and opportunity? Or do you see the world as one of scarcity and competition? Or both?
• Is life a game? A war? An adventure? A cocktail party? A chess match? Meaningless?
• What truly matters in life? Is taking action pointless? Should we have it all? Or is that selfish?
• What virtues mean the most to you? Independence? Intelligence? Compassion? Duty?
• Are you practical or romantic? Are you a lover of literature? A lover of pop culture? Perhaps both? Do you love ideas? Do you love people?
• How do you view death? Is it something to be feared or embraced? Why?

Answering those questions will take some time. But you may find that hitting publish once you have written an affinity-style article is even more difficult.
We worry what people will think about us after we publish. When our truth is out there.
Here’s what you need to know: share as little or as much as you feel comfortable with.
If you look at Brian’s body of work, you’ll notice he doesn’t get personal very often. However, he’s very open about who he is, what he thinks, and what he likes.
In other words, he’s comfortable in his own skin.

Be who you are in pixels as you are in person. Open up, laugh, and don’t take yourself too seriously.

Quick case study: The Year of Falling Apart

I’ll close with a brief story.
Long ago, when I was frequently publishing on my personal website, I became tired of writing about web content. Basically, I needed to blow off some steam because I had exhausted myself after producing a long run of articles about writing. Sharing a good personal story was exactly what I needed.
The problem was, it didn’t fit within the category “web writing.” I was certain to lose readers. It was way beyond the blog’s focus — but I published the personal story anyway and it ended up becoming one of the most popular articles on the site: The Year of Falling Apart.
By giving myself permission to publish Affinity content, I also gave birth to a passel of ideas on web writing. It was a win-win.

Get your free ebook: 4 Essential Types of Content Every Marketing Strategy Needs

Build a content strategy based on the four content types in this series! Get your free ebook, 4 Essential Types of Content Every Marketing Strategy Needs.


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Over to you …

So, content marketer, are you ready to get comfortable in your own skin? Are you ready to share your beliefs? To let people know who you are? Are you ready to create some really good Affinity content?
Let us know in the comments.
Also let us know your favorite piece of Affinity content. It could be here on Copyblogger or on another site. It could even be something you wrote.

Looking forward to hearing from you!

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The ABCs of A/B testing | How to base your subject lines on science

 When time-starved customers are bombarded with emails every day, your subject lines can make an enormous difference in whether subscribers actually see your messages.

In fact, recent research shows 47 percent of email recipients quickly decide whether to open or ignore emails based on the subject line alone. Worse, 69 percent of readers who report email as spam are motivated to do so by how the subject line reads.

Of course, psychology plays a major role in that behavior, and researchers are continually trying to determine the parameters involved. For example, Experian last year found personalizing subject lines led to a 42 percent lift in unique open rates for the consumer products and services segment, an improvement that averaged out to 29 percent when applied across industries. However, personalization was completely ineffective in emails pitched to publishers, and it only improved opens by 1 percent when sent to media and entertainment representatives.

Because applying reader psychology to the email creation process is an inexact science, the only way to determine the most effective wording of your subject lines is often via A/B testing.

“There are limitless possible emotional combinations of language available,” observes Parry Malm on Econsultancy.com. “Knowing which work best for your audience is impossible without testing. The opportunity is to quantify emotion … then optimize based on the results … then profit from better subject lines.”

Fortunately, such testing is easy and convenient through the use of online tools.

VerticalResponse, for example, boasts an A/B testing feature that allows Pro Plan users to quickly and easily compare alternate email subject lines. Two different subject lines are sent to 25 percent of an address list, and within minutes of initiating the tests, the technology automatically sends the subject line that drew more opens to the remaining contacts, boosting the open rates for the entire campaign.

Testing options offer choices for better open rates

So how does A/B testing work? As its name implies, it helps you make decisions in your email campaign by temporarily presenting two different options to your audience, then gauging response rates to determine which option is better received. Here’s what the process generally entails:

1. Determine which factors you’d like to test. Before getting started, you need a good handle on the subject-line variables you’d like to compare. Industry research in that regard is valuable, but you often can’t determine what will work best for your specific audiences and circumstances without going directly to the source.  To think about elements to compare, consider the questions that have occurred to you as you’ve tried to finesse your subject lines in the past. For example, you may be wondering:

• Are short or long subject lines more appealing?
• How would my audience respond to numbers and dollar figures?
• How would recipients react to their names in the subject line?
• How much other customization is advisable?
• Should my subject line be phrased as a statement or question?
• Are exclamation points OK?
• Should I use industry jargon or more colloquial terms?
• Will humor be well received, or should I maintain a straightforward tone? Once you’ve established your most burning questions, you can create a spreadsheet allowing you to record and compare results.

2. Establish logistics. In designing your test structure, you must establish ground rules so results aren’t skewed; that way, you gain real, scientific insights. Aim to control as many extenuating variables as possible. For example:

• Your test groups should be equal in number.
• Your tests should run for an equal time interval.
• The tests should go out at the same time of day. Run your tests as frequently as you’d like. After the completion of each, you can fill in the results on your spreadsheet, after which you can take them up for consideration when crafting future emails.

Some common variables

As mentioned, you’ll need to decide which variables are most relevant to your campaign. However, you may want to be aware of research already conducted and how that might affect your own testing. You might also consider the following best practices in getting started:

• Question versus statement
  Sources differ on the advisability of incorporating question marks into your subject lines, but many recommend against it on the grounds the recipient may not open the email if his immediate mental answer to your question is negative. One source recommends instead making the subject line a statement, like “Question about your career,” which could prompt the reader to click to learn the nature of the question.
• Short versus long Brevity is of the essence when trying to appeal to busy consumers in a world vying for their attention. One study found subject lines of six to 10 words gleaned the most opens (21 percent), followed by those with zero to five words (16 percent) and 11 to 15 words (14 percent). Note 68 percent of emails are opened on mobile, and most mobile devices display only four to seven words of subject lines.
• Humorous versus straightforward That depends heavily on your target audience and whether it veers toward the conservative. Obviously you should stay away from anything that’s offensive, but in general, audiences respond positively to clever lines that are unexpected or make them smile. One study also points to much higher open rates for subject lines readers view as original. Still, overly ambiguous lines may lose you fans; one source points to 56 percent better open rates for messages that are very clear as to their intent.
• Emojis versus no emojis
  Salesforce reported last year on the increased use of characters and emojis in subject lines, estimating some 2 percent of B2C subject lines included them last year. “Using special characters and emojis in subject lines may seem gimmicky or silly,” advises Chad White in the report. “However, adding these visual elements to subject lines has proven quite effective for some brands, which should come as no surprise since adding images to tweets, blog posts or just about any other media also improves response.”
• Personalization versus no personalization
  Research differs on the extent to which personalization improves open rates. But most analysts believe it’s a good concept to embrace as consumers increasingly expect big data to help customize their business transactions. “Consumers expect their interactions with a brand to be dynamic and personally relevant,” notes Shelley Kessler on MarketingSherpa.com. “A brand that recognizes a subscriber by name in the subject line of an email is able to establish an immediate, personal connection with that subscriber, and that is reflected in our research.”

Recommended reading: Our Vice President of Product, Thomas Fanelli, gives readers five ways to to get started with personalization.

Also worth your consideration

Recent research points to the following other helpful information as you attempt to create meaningful subject lines for your emails. However, we still recommend testing these concepts on your own to determine whether they hold true for your audiences and circumstances.

• Email opens decrease 19 percent when the word “newsletter” is included in the subject line.
• Emails with no subject line are opened 8 percent more often than those with a subject line.
• Emails with “FW:” (denoting forwarding) in the subject line are opened 17 percent more often.
• Text that creates a sense of urgency and exclusivity improves open rates 22 percent.
• Using the words “daily” or “weekly” in subject lines boosts open rates, whereas the word “monthly” is detrimental.
• Subject lines that simply describe email content are more effective than those including a hard sell or call to action.
• Subject lines incorporating the word “free” are opened 10 percent more often.
• Other words that often perform well in subject lines include “content,” “video,” and “news.” Words that typically do more harm than good include “perfect,” “good,” “donate,” and “report.” 
• Certain words in subject lines are more likely than others to derail your email to spam; learn some of them here.
• Subject lines incorporating passive words perform up to 14 percent better than those with active words.
• Fewer than 1 percent of B2C subject lines include hashtags, which can deter opens but are nevertheless useful in pointing traffic toward social media campaigns. “Hashtags let you tap into big ideas and themes,” notes Chad White at Salesforce. 

Recommended reading: See more magic marketing words you should be using.

Ready to get started? A/B testing requires some thought, but it can help narrow down your email marketing strategy so you can take maximum advantage of one of the least expensive and most effective marketing tools available.

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8 Ways to “Fine-Tune” Your Email Engagement

AS the CEO of SendLane, having helped our customers deliver over 3.2 BILLION emails, I’ve learned a lot about email engagement and the best ways to keep customer interaction high with your list.

I want to share with you today, the 8 ways to help fine tune your email engagement with your email list.

1. Clarity over Creativity.

Yes, mysterious or “blind” emails will create bigger engagement. But at the same time, they lose trust.  And as an email list owner, you need to “keep trust”. Keep it relevant and obvious. This will keep your list more engaged with you for a longer time.

2. Find the perfect time and stay consistent.

Experts say 8 – 9am EST and 3 – 4pm EST are the best times to email. If your list is fresh, it would be wise to send a message at these times, using your autoresponder.

But here are facts: the BEST time to email them is based on the BEST time they listen to you. That means it’s also the best time that YOU like to email for your business.

3. Avoid the Spam Filter.

• Prominent calls to actions – saying “CLICK HERE FOR SAVINGS” will get you in trouble.
• Bad HTML code – Most autoresponder and email service platforms won’t allow this. But if you are self emailing, or self coding your HTML form, make sure it has GOOD form.
• AVOID using Microsoft Word. This is a big no no. Do not copy and paste from Word. It carries over bad HTML that will encourage spam.
• Using “Re:” and “FWD” in your subject lines. Not only is this ILLEGAL but it’s also very misleading AND will cause a higher rate of spam.
• Avoid single image emails. Yes, they look fancy, but using 1 image as the entire email including all text, will get you in trouble. Try creating a template and fill it with raw text.
• Never purchase an email list, use a purchased or found email list, or trust anyone that “GIVES YOU” subscribers.  First (and again), it’s ILLEGAL to buy an email list and email someone without their permission.  Remember, you are running a business, nothing is ever truly done for you. Each subscriber should cost $1-2, if not more. If it’s less than that, it’s probably junk.

4. Personalize your sender name.

I’m much more likely to open an email from “Jimmy” than if I saw “IMPORTANT MESSAGE” or “MEMBERS ONLY”. If you want, you can have it come from a company or brand, but don’t list it as the raw email either.

5. Avoid “Free, Help, Percent off, Reminder, Urgent”.

These are major spam trigger words…avoid them! These 5 are the worst offenders. Let’s stop using them and diluting the value of these words.

6. Beware of the same subject line blinds.

This is simple. Stop sending the same email subject line over and over. I get that it’s powerful. It worked in the past. But let’s face it: we all become blind to repetition.

7. Get to the point.

STOP with the super long emails. I know you are trying to pre-sell, share a story, get a message across, etc. but let’s look at Twitter: 140 characters…there’s a reason for that.

People have short attention spans. Take the first 50 characters or less and get your point across FAST. People spend less than 51 seconds in their inbox when on a mobile phone. 50% of email users use mobile phones. Hurry, get your message across ASAP!

8. HARD stop emails.

You’ve seen it before…

“Hey you there

Yes this is me.

You are about to learn

about taking better pictures”

The reason it was done in the past was to keep it “mobile friendly” but that was the past. With most email marketing tools, it automatically now adjusts your email messages to fit the mobile screen perfectly.

Now, when you do that, it looks like this:

“Hey you there

Yes this is me.

You are about to

learn

about taking better

pictures.”

This looks terrible.  STOP IT!

That’s all for today. I hope you can take these 8 tips and expand your email marketing!

Let me know what you think below and don’t forget to share with your friends!

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25 Proven Steps to Achieve Email Marketing Magic

If you’ve left email marketing out of the promotional mix for your business, you’re missing out on a method that has been shown to generate as much in revenue as all other types of digital advertising combined. Just how much revenue does email drive? Research last year found that such campaigns produce an average ROI of $38 for each dollar spent. To add to that, Econsultancy found email marketing was rated effective by more companies and agencies than any other channel.



If you haven’t been giving email marketing the focus it deserves, not to worry, this post is for you. Here are 25 proven steps you can start taking today to begin reaping magical rewards in no time.

1. Build Your List

Start by gathering email addresses from current and potential customers. Building your list can seem difficult and time-consuming, but it’s worth your while to limit it to those who choose to engage. Buying lists is a bad idea, since emailing anonymous contacts can seem invasive and often results in complaints, bounced addresses and unsubscribes. Gain trust by not sharing subscribers’ info with other companies, and by creating emails with useful or exclusive information and valuable offers, not just sales pitches. The options for growing your list are only bounded by your imagination. Some of the best ideas can be found here and here.

2. Segment Your List

Segment your audience so you can create targeted messages for different groups, leading to better open rates, lower opt-out and unsubscribe rates and improved deliverability. Check out our 2016 Complete Guide to List Segmentation. Segmenting allows you to separate your list according to geographic region, customer behavior patterns (buyers vs non-buyers, openers vs non-openers), age, area code, and more, so you can create content and offers most likely to generate responses.

3. Plan Your Content

Decide what range of content you’ll offer. Possible subject matter includes:

• Tutorials
• Recommendations
• Reports on industry trends or research
• Explanations of company functions
• Comments on current events
• FAQs
• Profiles of your clients or employees
• Surveys
• Contests
• Previews of coming events
• Descriptions/photos of new products
• Inspiring quotes
• Blogs
• News articles or humor

The medium might include copy, photos, infographics or videos. If you don’t want to generate the content yourself, source it from social media, business partners, online sources or content agencies.
In general, experts advise using a likable voice; employing sharp design; being different from competitors; incorporating snappy subject lines and offering discounts. A common mistake? Looking to your own preferences to determine what your audience would like. Perhaps most importantly, strive for a mix of 80 percent informational and 20 percent promotional content. Messages that aren’t sales-oriented may seem counterintuitive, but they work to develop brand awareness and customer relationships, paving the way for future purchases. Do recipients a favor by helping them solve a problem, providing inspiration, giving them direction toward a goal or quickly expanding their knowledge.

4. Analyze Your Competition

Study what competitors are doing. Sign up for other email campaigns and newsletters to compare your efforts with those of competitors and industry leaders. It’s OK to put your own spin on their ideas and techniques but always strive for original content that’s hard for your readers to find elsewhere.

5. Plan Your Email Campaigns

Devise a year-long email marketing plan that projects multiple messages, tying your content into holidays, special events, pop-culture happenings and current events when applicable. Work backward from preferred launch dates to set writing or sourcing deadlines. Shoot for three to five emails monthly.

6. Design with Mobile in Mind

Ensure your emails are mobile-friendly in design and content, since two-thirds of such messages are now read on mobile devices. That means limiting copy to 750 words or less.

7. Develop a Welcome Email Program

Create a series of follow-up emails to new subscribers introducing them to your company, products and website. Avoid the hard sell; start with a warm welcome for subscribing and follow with a reminder of the benefits, a thank you offer, helpful information about your products or services and links to your website and social media sites.

8. Implement Autoresponders

Use autoresponders that automatically trigger welcome emails, resend messages that were never opened, and send newsletters at regular intervals. Such a practice can increase your open rates by 30 to 40 percent. Other uses might include thank yous for purchases; reminders; polls; contests; or requests for comments, reviews or content submissions. Autoresponders are fairly crucial if you’re too busy to regularly monitor your email account.

9. Personalize Your Emails

Implement as much personalization as possible, using analytics and customer surveys to your advantage by recognizing birthdays and anniversaries, referring to previous purchases and shopping patterns, and otherwise making readers feel valued. Experts predict we’ll eventually have capability for highly optimized 1:1 emails within a single broadcast.

10. Track Performance

Track open and click rates, revenue and conversion, unsubscribes and bounces, and use your website’s analytics tools to gauge post-click through behavior. Note that services are available to fix bad data — incorrect or problematic addresses that increase bounce-backs.

11. Test and Optimize Your Campaigns

Continually test your campaign, and use the results to tweak further strategy. Consider a schedule for the testing of one campaign variable each month, such as copy length and content, time and day of the week, frequency, call to action, design and other elements.

12. Gather Customer Feedback

Listen closely to customer feedback about content, format and frequency, and respond quickly. To avoid being perceived as a spammer, be gracious and quick with those who ask to unsubscribe.

13.  Monitor Industry Trends

Email marketing is evolving so swiftly that business owners must be proactive to keep on top of important features and best practices. VerticalResponse helps you stay at the top of your email marketing game with its free and easy-to-use email marketing tool.

Once you’re on a roll with your campaign, consider elements that can improve your responses even more. Here are some ideas:

14. Use Visual Content

Gifs and videos can be powerful additions, since visuals are processed by the human brain in about one-tenth of a second.

15. Maintain Brand Voice

Develop a consistent voice, experimenting to determine which writing style and topics most appeal to your readers. An example of a defined voice is the tone of the informal and somewhat irreverent blogs posted on Groove HQ. “(The writer) addresses the recipient like human beings,” writes Jimmy Dala on Marketingland.com. “It sounds simple, but so many people lose the human touch when they are blasting bulk emails about Presidents’ Day sales.”

16. Use Humor When Appropriate

Devise fun and entertaining polls related to your industry, then record some of the best responses online. Cottonelle once staged a fun email survey asking consumers whether they rolled toilet paper over or under, incorporating results into video demonstrations, a U.S. map, social media and a website.

17. Socialize

Make sure widgets are installed into your emails allowing readers to instantly share your content on their social media sites.

18. Test Timing of Campaigns

Fine tune the timing of your email campaigns. Some report the highest open rates (leading to the highest conversions) are achieved in the evenings after the dinner hour. Others say those working are more likely to open an email sent just prior to the lunch hour. Experiment to find out what works best for you and your audience.

19. Use Email Sign Up Forms

In order to fuel continued and sustained list growth, it’s a no-brainer to have an email sign up form on your website, blog, and other digital properties like social media sites. Check out these three golden rules for sign up forms.

20. Give Incentives

Offer prizes as part of a contest on social media requiring entrants’ email addresses. Check out Social Sweepstakes to engage fans on Facebook and grow your email list.

21. Leverage Social Channels

Ask your social audience to stay connect via email. If Twitter is your primary channel, use a Twitter Ads account to glean more email addresses via Twitter lead-generation cards sent to Twitter users.

22. Incorporate Inspiration

Examine competitors’ emails more closely with the free tool Scope; it creates a web-based version, HTML source code and a view of how it appears on mobile, desktop and plain text.

23. Avoid the Spam Filter

Pre-empt being relegated to spam bins by running your emails through the Email Spam Test. A number of other tactics can also help you dodge the spam filter, which reportedly snags some 21 percent of all emails. Some have to do with coding, content and formatting, but you must also limit the repetition of seemingly benign words like “guaranteed” and “free.”

24. Test Your Subject Lines

Use SubjectLine.com to get viability scores on the subject lines of your email. The first query is free. Here are 50 all-time great retail subject lines for more inspiration.

25. Use Clear Calls to Action

One of the most important elements to your email campaign is the call to action (CTA). Subscribers typically read the first line, notice any images, and glance at your CTA. Eliminate any confusion by making your CTA obvious and compelling. Some are better than others, and here’s why.


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15 Must-Haves for a Solid Email Marketing Program

You’ve heard how a targeted email campaign can transform your marketing communications into a thing of beauty, bringing in new leads, increasing your revenue and creating customer loyalty.

Now, a month into the New Year and your 2016 planning, you have a chance to make a fresh start by launching a new campaign or even beefing up your old one in a medium that continues to be extremely effective.

Email marketing is both your entry point, leading new customers to your business – and your anchor, connecting all your other marketing together. Says Jayson DeMers in Forbes, “You can draw people to your blog by offering snippets of content, or you can drive up your following numbers by inviting people to share deals on social media. You can also use your other marketing channels to invite people to sign up for your email list, resulting in a closed, cohesive system that nurtures your overall customer base as one unit.”

Here are 15 ambitious steps you can take to transform your email marketing:
1. Vow to grow your email list to expand your marketing capabilities. The number of ways to do that boggles the imagination (check out these 50 and these 24). Some ideas include website and social media opt-in forms, collecting addresses at point of sale and incentivizing employees to gather them for you. Also, consider the use of a lightbox (an online data-storage function) to create pop-up invitations to enroll as the user scrolls to a browser or reaches a certain scroll depth.

2. To prevent falling behind on your campaign mid-year, create an email marketing plan that projects multiple messages, anticipating holidays and special events through 2016. Work backward from preferred launch dates to set deadlines for writing content. Shooting for three to five emails monthly is a good idea, as is creating how-to videos and tutorials about your business or website.

3. Ensure your emails are mobile-friendly in design and content, since nearly 60% are now read via mobile device. Analysts predict in the next five years marketing via smartphone will become even more sophisticated, with responsive design increasingly boosting smartphone conversion rates.

4. Segment your list, fine tuning which kinds of messages you’ll send to targeted groups. Thirty-nine percent of email marketers realize better open rates through segmentation, says research by eMarketer, while 28 percent see lower opt-out and unsubscribe rates, and 24 percent see better email deliverability along with increased sales leads and greater revenue.

5. Offer as much personalization as possible, using data-gathering tools and customer surveys to your advantage by recognizing birthdays and anniversaries, referring to previous purchases and shopping patterns, and otherwise making readers feel valued. Location demographics, for example, allow you to mention events, landmarks, or stores near the reader. In a 2016 study of marketing firms by Emailmonday.com, 76 percent of respondents predicted email communication will be completely personalized in the next five years. In the future, analysts expect even more highly optimized 1:1 emails that allow for customized communication for each recipient within a single email broadcast.

6. Develop a welcome program, a series of follow-up emails to new subscribers introducing them to your company, products, and website. The emails can be automated by interval or triggered by customer action. Let readers know they’re coming, differentiate them from other kinds of emails in the subject line, and avoid hard-sell techniques. The first email should contain a warm welcome and thank you for subscribing, while subsequent messages might include a reinforcement of the benefits of subscribing, a special thank you offer, helpful information about your products or services, or links to your social media sites. Clear calls to action and appealing images are recommended.

7. The truth can set you free, so it’s wise to monitor response rates so you can adjust future marketing plans. Track open and click rates, revenue and conversion, unsubscribes and bounces, and use your website’s analytics tools to gauge reader behavior after click through. Industry-wide, email marketing is increasingly providing data for the analytics that drive other marketing efforts.

8. Following up with automated emails when recipients don’t open initial emails can increase your open rates by 30 to 40 percent. They all should include different subject lines. The first should come three days after the original, be shorter than 500 words and reinstate the benefits of your product or service. Subsequent messages could mention why your product is necessary and how it’s used, offer testimonials or reviews, solicit questions, and/or include an FAQ section.

9. Continually test your campaign and use the results to tweak further strategy. Consider a schedule for the testing of one campaign variable each month; those could include copy length and content, time and day of the week, frequency, call to action, and/or design. Also consider a heat map test of your website, a graphic display showing which areas are most frequently scanned by visitors so you can strategize where to place calls to action.

10. Pay more attention to creating effective subject lines, since they’re the primary factor influencing whether your audience will actually open the email. In general, the subject copy should be short (40 to 50 characters) and as straightforward as possible; it should change each time; leave out all capital letters and exclamation points, and avoid words like “free” or “percent off” to keep from being weeded out by spam filters. What works best? A question, a call to action, a sense of urgency, the mention of a benefit to customers, and/or a mention of the recipient’s name or city. Don’t use the space to mention your company, since that’s apparent in the “from” line. Consider studying popular click-bait sites like Buzzfeed that lure readers in with fun, short and punchy subject lines and preview text. How might you incorporate some of those techniques into your own campaign?

11. Listen closely to customer feedback. Survey subscribers about likes and dislikes, using the data to create more effective content and up-front value propositions. Use preference centers on your website to allow customers to dictate their druthers when it comes to content, format, and frequency. Be gracious and quick with those who ask to unsubscribe, since the last thing you want is to be perceived as a spammer (perhaps ask them if you can decrease email frequency or limit the content to certain categories).

12. Include opt-in forms as well as forwarding options on all social media networks, including LinkedIn. You might even email those who mention your business on social media, inviting them to opt in.

13. Sign up for other email campaigns and newsletters to compare what your competitors and industry leaders are doing. Consider whether to adopt their ideas and techniques.

14. Pay attention to industry trends. For example, some marketers are beginning to use modular templates for email campaigns that allow for faster switching out and editing. Others are moving away from coded emails toward tools that put more design control in their hands, while some are trending toward kinetic email that includes more videos and sophisticated animation. A relatively new method known as “double opt in” allows a reader to simply send a company a blank email to receive an opt-in email in return.

15. Take a hard look at whether your content is offering enough value to recipients. Instead of a constant sales push, think in terms of “sticky” content — bits of useful, fun, and/or humorous information in small, easy-to-digest portions that might capture readers’ attention and keep them coming back for more. Messages that are less sales-oriented work to develop brand awareness and customer relationships, paving the way for possible purchases.Other tips: Strive for original content, not just a recap of what everyone else is already saying. Tie your content into holidays, pop-culture happenings, and current events when applicable. Don’t go overboard with too many links. And gifs and videos can be powerful additions, too, since visuals are processed by the human brain in about a tenth of a second.

Other tips: Here’s how to make content marketing, email, and social media work together in harmony.

“Modern email marketing isn’t about making a sales pitch or attracting as many clicks as possible — it’s about providing value to your users,” adds Demers. “It isn’t enough to send a simple promotional email or a short list of new content on your site. Serve them well with better designs, more appealing copy and better offers. Free giveaways, discounts, and special deals are all winners.”


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