Email marketing

Email marketing is key for eventually converting those who were not yet ready to convert – and to spur repeat business among those who already have. Not only that, email marketing keeps the brand top of mind among your customer base, and can be effectively leveraged to continue to build the relationship through useful and informative content.

Email marketing is typically the main channel for marketing automation. In this sense, relevant emails can be sent automatically based on the behaviour of the user.

Email marketing tips

  • Test emails for how they display on all relevant devices and platforms (yes, including Outlook)
  • Optimize ’email preview’ snippet, to help encourage opens (and consider schema markup for Gmail)
  • Utilize email as a retention tool: Email customers relevant/helpful information — product/support information, downloads, accessory discounts, new product releases or discounts, etc.
  • To encourage repeat purchases, schedule emails for the appropriate time (for example, when a repurchase would normally take place based on the life cycle of the original purchase); include a discount or special offer to encourage that repeat purchase
  • Test various messages to improve open rates, click rates, and conversion rates
    • Test with a subset of the full list and compare results
    • Test subject lines, email snippets, email creative, calls to action, ‘from’ lines, etc.
    • Test day of week and time of day
    • Test different offers and offer wording
    • Test personalization items
  • Segment list for more relevant email sends
  • Track email clicks with appropriate analytics tagging (for example, UTMs on all links)
  • Monitor unsubscribes and determine possible reasons for unsubscribes
  • Provide alternative options on unsubscribe page: types of emails, frequency of emails, etc. – in hopes of avoiding a complete unsubscribe
  • Note that increasing frequency of email sends can also increase unsubscribes, spam flagging and non-engagement; short term revenue gains from increased frequency could produce long term issues whereby extra revenues do not cover the cost to build back the email list
  • Reengage non-payers (or lowest engagers) with incentives based on time of last engagement (furthest out receives best incentive; closest out the least)
  • Reengage those who abandon the shopping cart (if possible): email prompt w/ items such as product info, product reviews, return policies, pricing guarantees, customer support numbers, etc.
  • When setting up email system, add domain authentication records to aid in deliverability – and note requirements that certain email providers (e.g. Gmail) have
  • Leverage marketing automation to help deliver relevant emails based on user behaviour (for example, when website frequency increases possibly indicating an increased intent to purchase)
  • Consider annotations, to optimize for the Gmail Promotions tab

Email marketing resources

  • Litmus PutsMail – send a test email to any email address (paste HTML source code) free
  • Litmus – displays email in multiple email programs from multiple devices; paid service
  • Email on Acid – displays email in multiple mail programs from multiple devices; paid service
  • BeeFree – online email designer; range of templates available as well; integrates with various popular email programs (e.g. Salesforce Marketing Cloud); free – pay for more features
  • Outlook conditional CSS – combat Outlookisms by adding HTML only ready by Outlook