Email Marketing

Items to consider when performing Email Marketing:

  • Ensure emails are readable on mobile devices (responsive design)
  • 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, 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 on open rates, click rates, conversion rates
    • Test with a sample of the full list and compare results
    • Test subject lines, email snippets, email creative, call to actions, ‘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
  • Do not tag each link in an email with a different Google Analytics campaign code as that will cause a spike in sessions (each link click will be treated a different session – which is inaccurate)
  • 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.