Email marketing - Getting started & Best practices

What is Email marketing & why should I adopt it? What happens to an email when you click SEND Email Marketing – Getting Started Best practices for Email marketing activities Examples of Good & Bad Emails Good Email marketing tools What are the common challenges faced? Common mistakes made by Email Marketers Why Emails land in SPAM? Advanced Email Marketing practices Q&A

Email marketing is the act of sending a commercial message, typically to a group of people, using email. In its broadest sense, every email sent to a potential or current customer could be considered email marketing.

Reference: Wikipedia

Let’s view some quick stats

Three-quarters (75%) of companies agree that email offers "excellent" to "good" ROI.

For every $1 spent, email marketing generates $38 in ROI. – Campaign Monitor

86% of consumers would like to receive promotional emails from companies they do business with at least monthly, and 15% would like to get them daily.

Email is 40 times more effective at acquiring new customers than Facebook or Twitter. – McKinsey

Email subscribers are 3 times more likely to share your content via social media than visitors from other sources. – QuickSprout

72% people prefer to receive promotional content through email, compared to 17% who prefer social media. – MarketingSherpa

Send Email

Mail Server

OK to email?

Security Policy

SENDER RECEIVER

Get MX Record for Destination domain

DNS Server

Public DNS –get Destination domain MX record

Public DNS –get SPF record of sender domain

Server SPF record valid?

Establish SMTP Connection & send email

1

2

34

5

Security Policy

Is the Email content OK?

6

Does User exist?

7

8

Email is delivered

Create lists of contacts Remove invalid emails from the list Segment the customers

(source, geography, interests, services offered, etc.)

Create an email engagement planner Prepare content, Design emails Use a good tool & you are ready to go Don’t forget to track how you are doing!

You should create a quarterly emailengagement planner focusing on

Content

Segmented customer list &

Frequency of communication

Marketing Activities Content of Emails SSC (All students) SSC App Download SSC Prospects SSC Leads

SSC

Customers

SSC Past

Students MBA Sublist

Banking

Sublist

Email Campaign

Launch of SSC App -

Download

5 uses of the SSC App

New features released

Upsell of other features

Email Campaign

Reminder - App Download

(to those who haven't

downloaded)

Free Educational Guide (1

day)

Open Workshop - Career

Counselling (4 days)

Case Study/Testimonials

Personal Counselling

Session

Offer to attend Free Class

Referral Request Email Refer & Earn Rewards

Upsell to other programs Bank Test Series Launch

MBA Classes

Announcement

Drip - Launching SSC App

Drip to convert Prospects to

Leads

Drip to convert Leads to

Customers

Personalize your emails

Maintain brand consistency (look & feel in email)

Don’t make them think – Email should have a clear goal & ideally a single CTA

Provide easy option for customer to unsubscribe

Introduce urgency in emails (timers)

Ensure the email is mobile friendly

•Brand consistency

• Main focus of the email highlighted clearly

• Single goal –reiterated (to Shop)

Reference: Hubspot

• Smart way to use GIF image & stand out

•Good use of background colors to divide a long email

•Clear Well defined CTA blocks

Reference: Hubspot

This email is to highlight new product introduction

•Look at the real estate given to the product! –the heart of the email

Email space has been very wisely used

Reference: VerticalResponse

Be Consistent in messaging – Don’t use Click Baits

The subject line is a Click BAIT –You’re fired. The content is very different.You will get opens, but also a lot of unhappy customers

Reference: Zapier

• No clear difference between content of the email & the CTA buttons

•The viewer is likely to be lost looking at this email

Reference: Econsultancy

Ideally, you should personalize the emails. But if you do not personalize, you should definitely not club multiple event follow-ups in a single email

Reference: Hubspot

Unique Opens Is normal to see this in 10-20% for a valid contact database 30% & above consistently is a very good open rate

Unique Clicks Is generally 10% of the open rate If the open rate is 20%, click rate will be ~2%

Bounces Anything more than 15% is a red flag

Unsubscribes Anything more than 5% is a red flag

SPAM Complaints Anything more than 0.1%

Of course, these numbers are general numbers & vary based on industry & geography, but are good metrics to track your performance

Mailchimp Firecart.io AWeber SendgridThere are a lot more…

How to identify if a tool is good?

Gives an easy drag & drop HTML designer?

Does it give open/click/other email stats?

Do they maintain suppressed lists?

What is the reputation of the servers it uses?

Does it provide auto responders /rule based email

automation?

Supports easy segmentation of contact lists

A/B testing?

Customer lists are not digitized or ready

Hard to create content

Designing emails is hard

Have tried, got very poor results & unable to quantify it

Unable to send to all customers at same time

Emails landing in SPAM

Email marketing provider has blocked account

Even my regular emails are not getting delivered

Getting Blacklisted by Spam authorities

1. Using Bought / Purchased Contact Lists SPAM traps Invalid email addresses

2. Mass Mail practice – Same email to everyone 42% of marketers do not send targeted email

messages; only 4% use layered targeting.

3. Ignoring Mobile Friendly Email designs Two-thirds of emails are read on either smart phones

or tablets. (Marketing Land, 2015)

1. Continue sending emails to suppressed lists

78% of consumers have unsubscribed from emails because a brand was sending too many emails

2. Send one single image or large attachments to everyone

3. Not tracking damage to IP/Domain reputation

4. Using same email domain for transactional & promotional emails

5. No segmentation on basis of engagement

IP Reputation of email sending server

Domain reputation of sender

Presence on Email Reputation tracking Blacklists

Inconsistent Email sending practices

IP Warm up, Sudden bursts, Unknown addresses, etc.

Content of Email

Image to Text Ratio

Attachments in email

Promotional/SPAM score of words & phrases used in email

Including Unsubscribe options in promotional emails

Email authenticated properly?

SPF – Sender Policy Framework (Mailed by valid sender)

DKIM – DomainKeys Identified Mail (Signed by valid sender)

DMARC – Domain Based Authentication, Reporting & Conformance (Framework to ensure SPF & DKIM are followed)

Email Headers correctly highlighted

Bulk/Transactional/etc.

User Email engagement History

Past Opens/Clicks/Engagement history with sender

Engagement history with similar content

& a lot more …

Returnpath/ Senderscore Your server senderscore should be monitored

regularly & should be above 80 (ideally 90+)

Mxtools Blacklist checker Check if your IP has been blacklisted by global email

reputation authorities

Spam assassin ( Try isnotspam.com)

Spam assassin is a great tool to monitor if your email content is good & not having any issues

Email Automation (Email Marketing on Nitro)

Drip Marketing

Demographic & Behavioral Targeting

Registered but not purchased handling

Abandoned cart handling

Date based automation, etc.

Dynamic Content on Emails

A/B testing

Canvass Products

Firecart (firecart.io)-Ecommerce Marketing Automation Software

InboundLeads (inboundleads.io)-Inbound Lead Generation Widgets for Marketing Agencies

Ankur NanduCOO, Canvass Inc (http://canvass.in)

[email protected]://www.linkedin.com/in/ankurnandu

Questions?