1 An introduction to email Marketing
www.Hubspot.com Share This Ebook!
EMAIL MARKETING
Introductory content is for marketers who are new to the subject.
This content typically includes step-by-step instructions on how to get started
with this aspect of inbound marketing and learn its fundamentals. After reading
it, you will be able to execute basic marketing tactics related to the
topic.
INTRODUCTORY IS THIS BOOK RIGHT FOR ME? Not quite sure if this
ebook is right for you? See the below description to determine if your level
matches the content you are about to read. Intermediate content is for
marketers who are familiar with the subject but have only basic experience in
executing strategies and tactics on the topic. This content typically covers
the fundamentals and moves on to reveal more complex functions and examples.
For more advanced content, view our webinar The Science of Email
Marketing.
INTERMEDIATE Advanced content is for marketers who are, or want to
be, experts on the subject. In it, we walk you through advanced features of
this aspect of inbound marketing and help you develop complete mastery of the
subject. After reading it, you will feel ready not only to execute strategies
and tactics, but also to teach others how to be successful.
ADVANCED This ebook! 3 An introduction to email Marketing brings
your whole marketing world together in one, powerful, integrated system.
HubSpot’s All-in-One Marketing Software Get Found: Help prospects find you
online Convert: Nurture your leads and drive conversions Analyze: Measure and
improve your marketing Plus more apps and integrations Video Overview Lead Gene
U ration blogging & social media q Email & Autom M ation Search
optimization s Marketing analytics Lead Y m g management Request A Demo 4 An
introduction to email Marketing www.Hubspot.com Share This Ebook! an
introduction to email marketing By Magdalena Georgieva Maggie Georgieva is an
inbound marketing manager at HubSpot responsible for creating new offers,
including ebooks and webinars. She has previously helped with HubSpot’s email
marketing program and the company’s landing page creation and optimization.
Maggie is a prolific marketing blogger and has also written for publications
like BostInnovation.com and The St. Petersburg Times. Follow me on twitter
@Mgieva 5 An introduction to email Marketing Contents 5 email marketing
challenges & solutions /8 6 types of marketing emails /21 9 email marketing
metrics /41 conclusion & additional resources /52 6 An introduction to Quick
email marketing facts Email opens on mobile devices increased by 34% from April
2011 through September 2011 as compared to the previous six-month period.
Mobile email usage is at its lowest on Monday, desktop email usage is at its
lowest on Sunday, and webmail email usage is at its lowest on Wednesday.
“Finance” and “shopping” show above average webmail views as compared to other
industries, at 49% and 48%, respectively.
The industries leading the way in mobile email views are, not
surprisingly, “social networking” (27%), “publishing” (26%), and
“entertainment” (27%). Source: Return Path Report
7 Your email marketing campaigns should be part of a holistic “approach
to educate your contacts.” Companies often list email as one of their most
powerful marketing channels. To this day, the size of your email list is a
demonstration of your reach and thought leadership. However, your email
marketing campaigns should be part of a holistic approach to educate your
contacts about your company.
Your marketing emails need to be complimented by other efforts,
such as search engine optimization, content creation, social media engagement
and behavior-based nurturing. So when reading this ebook on email marketing,
keep the big picture in mind. In the following pages you will read about the
top challenges email marketers face and how you can combat them. You will also
learn about the types of communications you can send to your contacts. Use the
best practices shared here as a roadmap to your email marketing success.
8 An introduction to email Marketing
CHAPTER 15 email marketing challenges & solutions
9 An introduction to Email marketing is a powerful channel but
also one that presents many questions and difficulties. In their 2012 Email
Marketing benchmark, MarketingSherpa surveyed 2,735 companies and asked them to
rank the significance of 12 common email marketing challenges. In this chapter,
we will focus on the top five challenges and suggest some ideas through which
you can address these issues. 1 2 3 4 5 Integrating email data with other data
systems Improving deliverability
Growing & retaining subscribers Achieving measurable ROI Using
email for funnel optimization 10 An introduction to email Marketing
www.Hubspot.com Share This Ebook! 0% 10% 20% 30% 40% 50% 60% Integrating email
data with other data systems Improving email deliverability Growing and
retaining subscribers Achieving or increasing measurable ROI Using email for
funnel optimization Very Significant Somewhat Significant Not significant 1 2 3
4 5 The survey respondents ranked these five challenges as “very significant.”
What is even more interesting about this data is that it seemingly contradicts
the survey responses in MarketingSherpa’s 2011 Email Marketing Benchmark. The
number one challenge for email marketers in 2011 was “targeting recipients with
highly relevant content.” While differently phrased, this challenge basically
overlaps with the idea of integrating data systems in order to allow for
powerful segmentation. Let’s dive into each one of these challenges individually.
11 An introduction to email Marketing
1 Integrating email data with other data systems Marketers want to
amass valuable data across their different channels. For instance, they might
like to see the possible relationships between landing pages and emails or to
track the sales process of an email conversion. In addition to the obvious
reporting benefits such integration provides, it also opens the door to a much
more enjoyable experience for email subscribers. Just think about it--if you
could bridge the gap between email marketing performance and social media
activities, landing page conversions or new customer acquisitions, you are that
much closer to optimizing your sales funnel and delivering content that your community
loves. “Other data systems,” including form submissions and activities on site,
can point you to the resources your recipients are truly interested in. In that
way, you have a clear understanding of how to further engage them through
careful targeting and segmentation.
Challenge 12 An introduction to email Marketing Get Your Hands on
The Right Tools In order to integrate your email marketing with your other data
systems, you need to use marketing software that allows for that integration to
take place. In fact, integration is the foundation on which HubSpot’s software
was built as it connects SEO, blogging, lead management and reporting with
email marketing and lead nurturing. Think Segmentation Combining your different
marketing databases allows for clear segmentation and ability to better target
your customers and prospects with relevant email messages. Once you have access
to an integrated marketing system, keep your buyer persona in mind and focus on
the opportunity to target the right audience with the right message. Develop
Content The more targeted your email campaigns, the more content you’ll need.
Key to promoting relevant content in email is to provide an offer that is
connected to the initial request. What action have your contacts taken on (or
even off) your website? Offer them content that fits with their intent and
their needs. 1 Integrate your data systems solution 13 An introduction to email
Marketing www.Hubspot.com Share This Ebook! 2 Improving deliverability
challenge Deliverability rate is the percentage of email messages delivered to
your recipients’ inboxes versus the total number of messages sent. It tells you
how many of the emails bounced back and if that number is high, it’s a sure
sign of inactivity. There are soft bounces and hard bounces. The soft bounce is
temporary and occurs when an email server rejects an incoming message. For
instance, when your recipients’ inboxes are full. A hard bounce, on the other
hand, is less benign and represents a permanent error to deliver an email. This
generally occurs when the addresses you send to are bad or don’t exist. Low
deliverabilty rate might get you blocked by ISPs (internet service providers).
If your list is loaded with inactive emails, you don’t have a sense of your
true complaint rate. While many marketers just look at total complaints over
total list size, ISPs are actually looking at total complaints over number of
active email users. ISPs can also mark abandoned email addresses as spam traps.
This means that, even if you acquired emails in a legitimate manner, the
abandoned addresses may have morphed into spam traps. Aside from all the ISP
problems, low deliveravility rate also means you are wasting money sending
messages to nonexistent addresses. ? Why are marketers so afraid of low
deliverability rates? 14 An introduction to email Marketing www.Hubspot.com
Share This Ebook! 2 Practice good email list hygiene solution Regular
maintanance Clean up your email list by removing those addresses that are no
longer engaged. You can identify these addresses with metrics such as opens,
clicks, or website activity. A stricter opt-in process If you have a really
serious problem with deliverability, you might want to redefine your opt-in
process to prevent invalid emails from getting on your list. Either ask people
to enter their email twice or experiment with double opt-in. preference center
Make sure your recipients have an opportunity to update their email addresses.
Invite them to your preference center from every email you send. That might
also help you with segmentation and achieving higher engagement overall. 15 An
introduction to email Marketing www.Hubspot.com Share This Ebook! 3 Growing
& retaining subscribers challenge In MarketingSherpa’s survey, marketing
professionals shared that their third most serious challenge in respect to
email marketing is growing and retaining subscribers. No wonder! Increasing the
size of your email list and keeping your contacts engaged in your messages is
no easy task. These challenges receive two common responses: To grow their
email database, marketers sometimes purchase lists. This practice will surely
get you into trouble: it might add invalid addresses to your list and thus
pollute your entire database. Even if the addresses you acquired are valid, the
new recipients will most likely not be interested in your content and either
unsubscribe or not engage with your emails altogether. Both of these
alternatives are undesirable. To retain subscribers, a lot of companies send
fewer emails, thinking that the communication frequency might in some way
define engagement. Rarity of emails means they are more special, right? Wrong.
Frequency of emailing, as we have established in our Science of Email Marketing
research, doesn’t necessarily negatively impact subscriber retention. g 16 An
introduction to email Marketing www.Hubspot.com Share This Ebook! 3 Earn your
email subscribers solution CLear value proposition in email opt-in Don’t
purchase email lists, but earn your subscribers. Be clear to your target market
about what they will get out of subscribing to your emails. Give them a clear
description of what the value proposition is. For example, will your emails
offer: (1) tips and tools on how to run their business more efficiently, (2)
product updates from your company, or (3) special offers via email? Your
audience will want to know “why” they should subscribe before they decide to
clutter their inbox with even more emails. Segment Lists to Match Your
Priorities Are you concerned that you are emailing your subscribers too often?
Give this thought a break and instead ask yourself if you are emailing the
right people with the right message. In order to retain your email subscribers,
you’ll need to provide them with ongoing value that is targeted to their needs.
Make sure you are segmenting based on knowledge you have about your recipients.
optimize & test Don’t limit your email testing to subject lines. Embrace
testing of various elements in your email marketing efforts to optimize email
performance. For instance, you can do A/B testing of landing pages. 17 An
introduction to email Marketing www.Hubspot.com Share This Ebook! 4 Achieving
Measurable ROI challenge Achieving measurable ROI (return on investment) is
another challenge that marketing professionals face in the land of email
marketing. In other words, it’s difficult for them to connect the dots between
the messages they send out to prospective customers and the moment when these
subscribers get further engaged and turn into customers. Interestingly enough,
this problem is tightly connected to challenge number one - integrating email
marketing with other data systems. When your marketing channels are not
speaking to one another, it’s hard to identify how they affect conversions. For
instance, you might see that your email blast got a 3.4% click-through rate
(CTR), but can you also see if that communication contributed to generating new
leads? What is more, do you see if it resulted in any new customers? 18 An
introduction to email Marketing www.Hubspot.com Share This Ebook! 4 Close the
marketing loop solution closed-loop marketing The solution to achieving
measurable ROI from your email marketing campaigns is to practice closed-loop
marketing. Follow a contact from the point of visiting your website through
getting further engaged (viewing other web pages, downloading resources,
clicking on your emails) to her final conversion into a customer. Implementing
closed-loop marketing empowers you to track leads from their initial channel
through a first conversion all the way to becoming a customer. Such
intelligence, in turn, enables you to identify your most powerful marketing
channels and assign clear value to each of them. In this way, you will be able
to measure the ROI not only of your emails, but also of your other efforts,
which might include social media and blogging. C marketing initiatives. about
Hub loop marketing system. lose the loop between your Spot’s closedLearn 0 19
An introduction to email Marketing www.Hubspot.com Share This Ebook! 5 Using
email for funnel optimization challenge As mentioned in the introduction of
this ebook, email campaigns should be only part of your holistic marketing
approach. Email cannot be truly fruitful just by itself, but can strengthen
your other initiatives. (Just like you cannot use social media in vacuum, or
only rely on blogging, or trust that search engines optimization is enough to
meet your goals.) The real power comes from achieving a strong marketing mix.
This, however, seems to be a challenge for marketers. How do you optimize your
sales and marketing funnel with emails? Most marketing professionals are
accustomed to sending one-time email blasts that are not necessarily related to
the actions of their email subscribers, their interests or needs. Such a
practice doesn’t help push leads down the sales funnel, but can alienate them.
y 20 An introduction to email Marketing www.Hubspot.com Share This Ebook! 5
Nurture your leads solution Lead nurturing Lead nurturing sometimes goes by
other names: marketing automation, drip marketing, auto-responders, etc. Simply
put, lead nurturing is a system that allows you to send an automated series of
emails to an early stage lead in order to pre-qualify them before handing them
over to your sales team. If it typically takes your leads a month to make a
purchasing decision, then make sure you’re spreading out your communications to
keep them engaged throughout the month. By taking this approach, you save your
sales organizations time because you educate and qualify the lead overtime.
Among some of the key benefits of lead nurturing is that it enables marketers
to establish contact with their fresh leads fast and stay top of mind for
potential, and even current, customers. In comparison to email marketing, lead
nurturing is also relatively easy to set up because it is automated and doesn’t
need a ton of maintenance over time. Become effective at nurturing your leads.
Learn about HubSpot’s lead nurturing program. 21 An introduction to email
Marketing www.Hubspot.com Share This Ebook! CHAPTER 2 6 types of marketing
emails 22 An introduction to email Marketing www.Hubspot.com Share This Ebook!
Different types of email formats have different goals and “ advantages.”
Whether you are just starting with email marketing or you have some experience
sending marketing emails, you have probably asked yourself about the types of
communications you can send out. Should you nurture your subscribers with
weekly newsletters? Are dedicated sends better at optimizing your sales and
marketing funnel? What about email digests? These are all valid questions that
marketing professionals should consider when selecting the right format that
meets their email marketing goals. In this chapter, we will discuss the
different types of marketing communications and their respective advantages and
disadvantages. This information should help you make an educated decision about
picking the most appropriate email format and how to go about using it. ? 23 An
introduction to email Marketing www.Hubspot.com Share This Ebook! Many business
and organizations send email newsletters in order to stay top of mind for their
recipients. In this section we will cover some general guidelines for using
newsletters as the foundation of your email marketing program. Email newsletter
N Define your goal Before we get into the nitty-gritty details of creating
email newsletters, you will need to determine your goal. What is it that you
want your email newsletter to achieve? You might want to nurture your existing
contacts and become the first brand they think of when they need a product or
service in your industry. This would be a fantastic goal if you are a B2C
company. Or your goal might be to increase sharing so that you attract new
people to your list. As you define your goal, think about what metrics you can
use to track your progress. 1 24 An introduction to email Marketing
www.Hubspot.com Share This Ebook! Brand Awareness Similar to newspapers,
newsletters create a certain anticipation in readers. Whether it is a daily
newsletter or a weekend communication, you get into the habit of receiving it.
If you enjoy the content, you will most likely stay subscribed to the
newsletter and look forward to getting the next email. By building a habit in
your email subscribers, you enable them to recognize your brand and associate
it with a positive sentiment. repurpose content Newsletters generally contain
information that you have already published. Many companies do quick summaries
of their most popular blog posts and link to the articles from their
newsletter. In this way, they bring subscribers back to the company website and
engage them with more company content. diverse content Email newsletters give
you the freedom to include different types of content that might be important
to your organization. For instance, the same newsletter can contain a popular
blog post, a new offer, an announcement of an upcoming event, information about
a discount and a link to a survey. advantages + 25 An introduction to email
Marketing www.Hubspot.com Share This Ebook! diluted call-to-action Due to their
format--a compilation of information--newsletters can be overwhelming and
ignorant of a specific call-to-action. If you include a series of blurbs or
article summaries, the attention of your recipients will most likely be spread
across these tidbits of information as opposed to staying focused on a certain
element. Of course, you can address this by prioritizing the most important
information at the top of the newsletter and include a clear call-toaction
after/alongside each block of text. Design With newsletters, the layout becomes
a much more complicated task than it is with dedicated email sends. You’ll have
to spend some time deciding on the right placement of images and text,
alignment and prioritization of information. Thankfully, there are a bunch of
websites out there to help you with these efforts. MailChimp, for instance,
offers a package of 36 basic, flexible templates you can use to get started.
disadvantages - 26 An introduction to email Marketing www.Hubspot.com Share
This Ebook! prospects customers newsletter Newsletters are great not only for
marketing to prospects, but also for nurturing your existing customers with
company news and events, product announcements and feedback requests. Such
ongoing communication will help you retain happy customers and collect valuable
insights about them. What are the tidbits of information they click on the
most? Can you upsell to them at all? Don’t forget that your existing customer
base can also spread the word about your company and share resources that you
publish with their network. 27 An introduction to email Marketing
www.Hubspot.com Share This Ebook! Stay focused on the goal As you work on your
newsletter layout and content creation, stay mindful of your goal and make sure
you are working towards meeting it by prioritizing calls-to-actions at the top
of the email. The two examples above are of Brain Pickings’ weekend newsletter
(to the left) and Fast Company’s design daily newsletter (to the right). These
emails are always packed with useful and entertaining information, a sure sign
of high clickthrough rates and an engaged audience. On the top of each
newsletter, you will spot a call-to-action which invites people to either
donate or subscribe. 28 An introduction to email Marketing www.Hubspot.com
Share This Ebook! Similar to newsletters, email digests provide summaries of
existing information and offer a snapshot of a specific time frame, e.g. a week
or a month. Traditionally, digests highlight the most popular pieces of content
that new readers will also gravitate towards. For instance, you can receive a
digest of top books to read or movies to see. Some software companies send
digests of usage data (e.g. HubSpot’s monthly performance digest). Digests
should be easier to consume than newsletters because they generally consist of
lists and links. That helps subscribers scan the email quickly and click on the
parts that they are most interested in. The goals of a digest and a newsletter
will most likely overlap. Remember to place the most important call-to-action
at the top and measure clickthrough rate and conversions. If your goal is to
drive traffic to specific pages, monitor CTR closely and don’t forget to
optimize the pages to which you are sending visitors. digest l 2 29 An
introduction to email Marketing www.Hubspot.com Share This Ebook! Here is an
example of Copyblogger’s email digest that includes links to important articles
and short blurbs describing what the reader will learn about after they click.
The digest’s design can be much simpler than that of newsletters. Of course,
you can build a few different versions and test which one receives more
engagement from subscribers. Like newsletters and based on the goal you’ve set
for them, email digests can be sent to different target audiences. One popular
option is the blog digest which collects notifications about the articles you
publish throughout a certain time frame and releases an email with the links.
If you are blogging using HubSpot’s platform, your subscribers will have the
opportunity to set up this type of digest. 30 An introduction to email
Marketing www.Hubspot.com Share This Ebook! Dedicated emails, or also known as
stand-alone emails, contain information about only one offer. For instance, you
can be notifying your target audience about a new whitepaper you have released
or invite them to attend an event that you are hosting. Dedicated emails help
you set up the context to introduce the main call-to-action. In this sense, they
are similar to landing pages. Dedicated sends are generally used to reach out
to your entire email database, a practice that is not necessarily efficient in
optimizing conversions and minimizing unsubscribes. While there are instances
when all of your subscribers should be notified about a specific marketing
campaign, such as a timely new offer or an upcoming event, in most cases you
would want to segment heavily based on your subscribers’ different behaviors
and interests. More on that, in the Lead Nurturing section of this chapter!
dedicated email M 3 31 An introduction to email Marketing www.Hubspot.com Share
This Ebook! focused call-to-action Unlike newsletters, dedicated sends can
focus on really driving results for one call-to-action. As a MarketingSherpa
case study of Kodak’s successful list growth tactic explains, “These
calls-to-action were not stuffed at the end of a newsletter or tacked onto
another message. They were the focus of a dedicated email, which gave them much
more impact.” Easy to Build Once you have your email template in place,
building dedicated sends should be easy. You will generally grab some of the
information already on the landing page, make a few tweaks to it and spend most
time on nailing down the subject line. Unlike newsletters, dedicated emails
don’t need to include many graphical elements to separate the different blocks
of text and prioritize information. Here, the entire email revolves around a
single message. fast to measure Naturally, if you have one main message and call-to-action
in your dedicated send, it will be easy for you to track progress. You can
quickly check the email CTR, landing page views and conversions, and follow the
long-term ROI. advantages + 32 An introduction to email Marketing
www.Hubspot.com Share This Ebook! less consistent With newsletters, marketers
generally stick to a specific schedule. For instance, you might create a weekly
newsletter that goes out on Tuesday mornings. Or your company might be sending
a weekend newsletter summarizing information published throughout the week.
With dedicated sends, the schedule is less clear and, potentially, less
consistent. You might use dedicated emails when you have published a new offer
(which might be sporadic). Even if you decide to maintain a specific schedule,
your subscribers might not realize it or expect communication from you because
there is no clear connection between the separate sends. Homogenous content As
dedicated sends contain one message, it’s tough to include a shout-out about
some other campaign that might also be important to your organization. The
workaround is to utilize the P.S. or to decrease the list size and use part of
it for the second call-to-action you want to introduce. disadvantages - 33 An
introduction to email Marketing www.Hubspot.com Share This Ebook! lead
nurturing As an inbound marketing tactic, lead nurturing is all about
understanding the nuances of your leads’ timing and needs. By getting these
details right, you set yourself up for success. Lead nurturing introduces a tightly
connected series of emails with a coherent purpose and full of useful content.
In this context, lead nurturing offers more advantages than just an individual
email blast. it’s timely Study after study shows that email response rates
decline over the age of the lead. In his Science of Timing research Dan
Zarrella, HubSpot’s Social Media Scientist, discovered that there is a positive
correlation between subscriber recency and CTR, one of the key metrics of
engagement. You need to use lead nurturing campaigns to take advantage of this
dynamic. advantages + 4 34 An introduction to email Marketing www.Hubspot.com
Share This Ebook! it’s automated Once you set up lead nurturing, emails are
sent out automatically according to your schedule as new leads come in. This
leads to a high return on a low investment. You might launch the campaigns and
forget about them, but the emails will be doing the work for you, helping you
qualify leads and push them down the sales funnel faster. It’s targeted Studies
show that targeted and segmented emails perform better than mass email
communications. Lead nurturing enables you to tie a series of emails to a
specific activity or conversion event. You can craft your follow-up email based
on the action a lead has taken on your website, thus showing that you are aware
of their interests in the topic and what they might need next. Based on this
information, lead nurturing emails can highlight reconversion opportunities
that tie back to their earlier interests. Effect of Subscriber Recency on
Clickthrough Rate (CTR) 35 An introduction to email Marketing www.Hubspot.com
Share This Ebook! generates less concurrent buzz With dedicated sends to your
entire email database, you can generate a lot of buzz around your brand. There
is an explosion of engagement resulting from the simultaneous forwarding and
social media sharing (especially if you have Twitter, LinkedIn and Facebook
sharing links in your email). Lead nurturing cannot quite achieve the same buzz
effect because it is programmed to schedule fewer emails to segmented
audiences. So while there will still be sharing, you won’t see a huge spike in
traffic and conversions on a specific day. Rather, the visits and leads will
trickle in. passive tracking Because lead nurturing is automated and marketers
often forget about it after they’ve set it up, it also tends to be under
reported. Make sure your lead nurturing campaigns include unique tracking
tokens and revisit your marketing analytics to evaluate performance and prove
the ROI of your efforts. disadvantages - 36 An introduction to email Marketing
www.Hubspot.com Share This Ebook! sponsorship emails All the types of marketing
email we have discussed so far assume that you are sending communications to
your own email database. If you want to reach a different audience and gain new
leads, you might want to try out sponsorship emails. You pay for including your
copy in another vendor’s newsletter or dedicated send. Research shows that US
firms alone spent $1.51 billion on email marketing in 2011. Sponsorship email
campaigns are one component to a paid media strategy, which could also include
pay-per-click (PPC), display advertising, mobile advertising, affiliate
advertising, etc. In this paid media universe you have the benefit of being specific
when describing the target audience you want to reach. For instance, you might
want to focus only on Asian American females in the 30 to 40 years-old range.
Generally, you’ll have to design your email copy or ad placement in alignment
with the specifications listed by the vendor. Check if the partner has any size
restrictions or image suggestions. Provide them with both the HTML and plain
text version of the copy in advance. The key element in sponsorship emails is
to evaluate the vendor. Make sure you trust that they are a credible partner
before you proceed with the relationship. !
5 37 An introduction to email Marketing www.Hubspot.com Share This
Ebook! highly targeted The biggest advantage of sponsorship emails is that you
can be specific in defining the segment you want to reach. Get granular in
identifying the different characteristics of your target audience--number of
employees, geographic location, their interests and challenges, etc. exact roi
There is a very specific investment in sponsorship emails--you know how much
you are paying the vendor. Now you only need to track the results you are
getting (visits, leads, sales) in order to determine what is your return on the
cost you have paid. Knowledge of the exact ROI will help you fit in your marketing
budget and build accurate marketing reports at the end of the quarter.
advantages + 38 An introduction to email Marketing www.Hubspot.com Share This
Ebook! it’s paid Sponsorship emails are being sent to people who you haven’t
earned as subscribers (they didn’t opt-in to your list). In this context, you
have to pay in order to get content in front of them.
Vendors offer different payment packages and here you enter the
land of negotiation. Some of the most popular options are paying a flat free,
paying based on a CPM (cost per thousand impressions) model or paying per new
lead acquired. dedicated resources Sponsorship emails and management of the
vendor relationship require a big marketing effort and tight control.
“For this style of sponsorship to be successful there needs to be
a dedicated team behind it that understands data, brand synergies, and the
ability to unearth unseen cobranding opportunities,” writes Jackie Fast,
Managing Director at Slingshot Sponsorship. If you have a small marketing team,
it might be tough to take full advantage of sponsorship emails. disadvantages -
39 An introduction to email Marketing www.Hubspot.com Share This Ebook!
transactional emails Transactional emails are the messages that get triggered
by a specific action your contacts have taken and enable them to complete that
action.
For instance, if you are signing up for a webinar, you will fill
out a form and then receive a transactional (thank-you) email, which gives you
login information in order to join. If you are using a double opt-in, people
will receive an email asking them to click on a link in order to confirm their
registration. $ 6 Transactional are also the messages you receive from
eCommerce sites like Amazon that confirm your order and give you shipment information
and other details. 40 An introduction to email Marketing www.Hubspot.com Share
This Ebook! high ctr Recipients anticipate transactional emails because they
help them complete an action. That is why they open them and click on them.
Take advantage of this dynamic and include a highly customized call-to-action
(maybe even as a P.S.) to leverage the fact that the subscriber is fresh and
very actively engaged with your email communication.
A 2008 Jupiter research showed that marketing content in transactional
messages helped increased revenue and brand recognition. advantages + creates
an obstacle Sometimes the idea of taking yet another action discourages
contacts from completing their activity altogether because it seems to them
like they are jumping through hoops. disadvantages - CHAPTER 39 email marketing
metrics
To assess your email marketing performance, you must conduct ongoing trend analysis of several key metrics. That way, you can compare each campaign’s performance against your own averages to know whether a specific campaign outperformed or under-performed your internal email benchmarks. Your email service provider (ESP) should provide a wealth of reporting on each campaign and on your ongoing email performance. In this chapter we will cover the most important email metrics to measure and how you can use them to improve the performance of your email marketing program overall.
1 bounce rate DEFinition The percentage of total emails sent that could not be delivered to the recipient’s inbox, known as a “bounce.” how to use Use this metric to uncover potential problems with your email list. There are two kinds of bounces to track: “hard” bounces and “soft” bounces. Soft bounces are the result of a temporary problem with a valid email address, such as a full inbox or a problem with the recipient’s server. The recipient’s server may hold these emails for delivery once the problem clears up, or you may try resending your email message to soft bounces. Hard bounces are the result of an invalid, closed, or non-existent email address, and these emails will never be successfully delivered.
2 delivery rate Definition The percentage of emails that were actually delivered to recipients’ inboxes, calculated by subtracting hard and soft bounces from the gross number of emails sent, then dividing that number by gross emails sent. how to use Your delivery rate sets the stage for email success or failure. To have any chance of engaging a customer or prospect with an email campaign, that message has to get delivered to their inbox. Look for a delivery rate of 95% or higher. If your delivery rate is slipping over time, you may have problems with your list (e.g. too many invalid addresses). If one particular campaign has a lower than average delivery rate, examine the subject line and content of that message. Perhaps there was some element that may have been flagged as spam by corporate firewalls or major ISPs, causing many more message than usual to be blocked. 4
3 list growth rate DEFinition A measurement of how fast your email list is growing. Calculate your growth rate by subtracting opt-outs and hard bounces from the number of new email subscribers gained in a given month. Then, divide that number by the original list size. how to use Email list growth rate is important because a healthy email marketing program needs to be continually refreshed with new names. Many of the addresses on your email list will naturally “go bad” over time, as people change jobs, switch ISPs or email programs, or just forget their passwords and create new accounts. According to the popular marketing resource MarketingSherpa, the natural churn rate of an email list can be 25% annually or higher, which is why you must continually work to add new contacts to your email database.
4 ctr Definition The proportion of the audience who clicked on one more
links contained in an email message. Organizations can calculate CTR either by
dividing unique clicks by the number of emails delivered, or by dividing total
clicks, including multiple clicks by the same recipient, by the number of
emails delivered. how to use Monitoring email CTR is a cornerstone of email
marketing analytics, because the CTR indicates whether the message was relevant
and the offer compelling enough to encourage recipients to action. But CTR can
vary widely by the type of message sent. For example, email newsletters often
have higher CTRs than promotional messages, and transactional messages – such
as emailed purchase receipts – often have the highest CTR of all the messages
your business sends. For that reason, it’s best to benchmark your CTRs
according to the different types of emails you send.
5 email sharing Definition The percentage of recipients who
clicked on a “share this” button to post email content to a social network
and/or who clicked on the “forward to a friend” button. how to use Sharing
rates are another indicator of the value and relevance of your email messages.
Email offers that get shared or forwarded outside of your own house list can
end up being your best performing campaigns, because you’ve drastically
increased the reach of that message by tapping into the viral nature of your
subscribers’ social networks. Watch your sharing rates carefully to discover
which types of articles and offers tend to get shared the most, and use that
knowledge when planning future campaigns.
6 conversion rate Definition The percentage of recipients who clicked on
a link within an email and completed a desired action, such as filling out a
lead generation form or purchasing a product. how to use Conversion rate is the
ultimate measure of an email campaign’s effectiveness. The higher your
conversion rate, the more relevant and compelling the offer was for your
audience. However, conversion rates are dependent on factors beyond the
original email message, such as the quality of your landing page. Measuring
conversion rate requires integration between your email platform and your web
analytics. You can perform this integration by creating unique tracking URLs
for your email links that identify the source of the click as coming from a
specific email campaign.
Revenue per 7 email sent DEFinition A measure of the ROI of a particular email campaign, calculated by dividing the total revenue generated from the campaign by the number of emails sent. how to use This metric is ideal for ecommerce marketers who generate a lot of direct sales from email campaigns. Again, it requires integration between your ESP and your ecommerce or web analytics platform. If you are already tracking conversion rates, you also can collect the order value for each conversion to perform this calculation.
8 open rate Open rate is a metric that many marketers use to measure the success of their campaigns, but it’s an unreliable gauge for several reasons. Most importantly, an email is only counted as ‘opened’ if the recipient also receives the images embedded in that message, and a large percentage of your email users likely have image-blocking enabled on their email client. This means that even if they open the email, they won’t be included in your open rate, making it an inaccurate and unreliable metric for marketers, as it underreports on your true numbers. The flipside of under-reporting is the fact that open rates can be manipulated by writing catchy, even sensational subject lines that get recipients to open a message but then leave them feeling mislead by the message’s content. For that reason, it’s better to focus on click-through rate as a better measurement of a successful email send. Open rate is an unreliable “gauge for several reasons.”
9 unsubscribe rate As with open rates, the unsubscribe rate isn’t a reliable picture of the health of your email list. Many subscribers who are tired of receiving email messages from your brand won’t bother to go through the formal unsubscribe process. They’ll just stop opening, reading, and clicking on your email messages. Again, tracking your click-through rates and conversion rates is a better way to monitor subscriber engagement and interest. But checking your monthly unsubscribe rate is helpful for calculating your overall list growth rate, and to watch for sudden spikes after a particular email campaign.
Conclusion & additional resources 53 An introduction to Email marketing is a powerful channel for driving real business results and “ achieving measurable ROI.” Email marketing is a powerful channel for driving real business results and achieving measurable ROI. In this ebook we discussed the top challenges you will most likely face in email marketing and suggested ways to solve these issues. We also covered six types of marketing emails, giving you some guidelines about the different formats you can create based on your individual goals and needs. Lastly, we talked about the metrics that you should monitor in order to define success.
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Science of Email Marketing. 54 An introduction to email Marketing www.Hubspot.com
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