Here are some additional information:

• Go hold school with html

You’ll need to keep your email designs nice and simple. Avoid complicated layouts, too many embedded tables, and tables with too many rows and columns. A simple two column table with a row across the top is about as complex as you can get. There are lots of email applications that don’t cooperate when you code tables with colspans (table cells that “span” across multiple columns) in them.

Use separate tables for the header, body, then footer of our emails. Better to go with more “simple” tables, than one big “complex” table.

CSS ( cascading style sheet) is very handy for websites. However stay away from them when creating an email in html. Yahoo mail, Gmail, hotmail will not read your CSS and they will even delete them. Therefore your readers won’t see your email properly. It can do more damage than good.

• Don’t rely on using background image

If your email is only composed of one background image, the chance are that it will be doing poorly. Background images were heavily used in the past specially by US companies. However it is causing a big problem as if your recipient does not have the images option turn on in their email account, they will only see one blank email.

In addition, if you want to use a background colour, you’ll need to create a big, 100% wide “table wrap” around your email. Set yourbackground color in that table.

• Provide a link to a web-based version of your email near the top of your message.

This will become very helpful if your recipient cannot see the email properly in their email account.

• Use alternate text for important images.

When inserting your images, make sure to add your alternate text behind your images. This will help in case the recipient does not have the images turn on in their email account. They will still be able to what is the image about.

In addition, make sure to not use an image as your main call to action. For instance, if you have a buy now button in your email, I recommend you code it in plain html instead of inserting an image.

• Place the main click to action above the fold of the email.

Email success can be very simple if you follow some important rule. For instance, the call to action should always be at the top of the email, one in the header and one in the body. This is due to the fact that many email recipients are using the preview pan to see emails nowdays and therefore you need to let them very quickly find out what your email is about if you want them to take action.

• Test designs in different browsers.

I recently read a study made by a well known marketing company and it was written than around 40% of email marketers don’t test their emails before they send them out. This is a big mistake. You should always test your emails with different email account to make sure they will random properly. It might be seen as time wasting but believe me it can only do you some goods as you will find out that some emails might random properly with gmail and not in yahoo mail or vice versa.

• Go hold school with html.
• Don’t rely on using background image
• Provide a link to a web-based version of your email near the top of your message.
• Use alternate text for important images.
• Place the main click to action above the fold of the email.
• Test designs in different browsers.
• Send out test emails to test accounts from a number of different email services before you blast to your entire list.

I will explain each point in my next note. I will also add more guidelines related to email design in the next note.

Email is a very powerful tool. However you only have few seconds to convince your prospects or customers to open your email and take action.

We will review in a next note how to write powerful subject line. In this note, I am going to concentrate on the content of an email.

An email can be divided into the following part for content:

1. Headline
2. Subheadline
3. Body copy
4. Call to action ( the call to action should not be put in the end of the email. We will discuss that in the next post when we will talk about the design of the email). However we are just talking about the content.

Let’s look at each part in details:

• Headline

The headline should contain a summary of your entire message. It should be not more than 10 words. Generally speaking, it will be the first line that the reader of your email will see. You will need to grab their attention and generate curiosity to make them read the content below.

For instance, you can talk about the biggest benefits of your product if you are trying to sell a product

• Subheadline

The subheadline draws the attention for those that like to scan the email for what is appealing to them. So you would want to avoid subheadlines that are too simple. Your sub headline  should be following your headline while introducing a specific part of your copy.

Where headlines can be very generic and broad in scope, a sub headline can not. A sub headline needs to be specific and pointed. It should be relevant to the following section of text.

• Body copy

The body copy will need to be descriptive. However don’t make it too long. The goal is to encourage the reader to act on the call to action. The content need to be clear. It is also recommended to use personalization if possible on the greetings or or throughout the message. Make sure you state the benefits. Make sure you center your message on the reader and their needs. Try to not mention too much yourself (I, our, ours) but concentrate more on the reader (you, your, yours).

• Call to action

The call to action needs to be very short ( don’t take a sentence to make your call to action). It will be a button or an hyperlink. Call to action can go from “buy now”, “learn more”, “subscribe now”, “forward to my friend”,etc. Your call to action will be linked to the main objective of your email.

Below you will find some of the questions that you might want to answer when you decide to send an email:

• Is it an acquisition email or a retention email that you want to send?

Acquistion marketing is the fact to market to to those who are NOT existing customers. It can be your prospects for instance. The goal will be to add them as new clients/customers.

Retention marketing is the fact to market to your existing customer base, to customers that have already purchased from your company. Customer retention occurs when a customer is loyal to a company, brand, or to a specific product or service, expressing long-term commitment and refusing to purchase from competitors.

As you probably noticed, acquistion is very different from retention and therefore the messaging of your email and the strategy need to be different if you talk to a prospect or if you talk to an existing customer.

• If you want to send an acquistion email, what do you want to do?

There are different objectives for an acquisition email. Here are some of the questions you might want to answer:

1. Are you trying to convert prospects into existing customers?
2. Are you trying to send them an informative email to make them know your company and services better?
3. Are you trying to follow up in relation to an action that they took on your website?

• If you want to send a retention email, what do you want to do?

When sending a retention email, keep in mind that you are talking to existing customers, therefore your objectives will be different than for an acquistion email.

1. Are you trying to upsell your existing customers?
2. Are you trying to crossell your existing customers?
3. Are you trying to acquire new customers through your existing customers?
4. Are you trying to increase their loyalty and customer engagement by sending them informative content such as a newsletter?

Once you know your objective, it is advise to put a forecast together. In relation to email campaign and if you are a beginner, I advise you to calculate your forecast based on industry standard at the start. Then when you will gather more data related to your email campaign, I will advise you to base your forecast on past email campaigns.

Setting up your clear objective will also help you better target your email campaign and therefore it will help you when you will be preparing your email list.

A forecast could look at the one below:

I will write another post at a later stage in relation to industry standard email metrics. Please note that for the example above, all figures are fake.

The net sales have been calculated by taking the volume multiplied by the conversion rate multiplied by the average order value ( this is in the case of you want to sell a product/service in an email).

The return on investment ( $1:$7 in this case), means that for every $1 that you invested, you get $7 back. It is calculated by divided your net sales by your spending.

Once the forecast prepared, keep it near you so that you can refer to it at the end of the email campaign and compare your forecast with your results.

In my opinion, this famous quote can also be applied to email marketing. People often tend to think that it is very simple in practise to send an email and get results out of  it. However if not planned and done properly, an email can do more damage to your company and branding than it can help them. Therefore it is very important to follow simple guidelines if you want to become a master at email marketing and get great results.

First of all, let’s look at the email marketing cycle:

• Objectives
• List development
• Copywriting
• Design
• Distribution
• Metrics and analysis

And then it starts over again.

I will go through each steps of the cycle in the upcoming posts.

Opening sentence:

The first complete sentence of the email communication.

Opt-in:

Opt-In is the action a person takes when he or she actively agrees, by email or other means, to receive communications. It requires tactics and mechanisms to encourage and allow people to become recipients.

Opt-out:

Opt-Out is the action a person takes when he or she chooses not to receive communications.

Open rate:

The number of emails opened divided by the total number of emails sent, multiplied by 100.

So let’s take an example here:

Number of email sent= 1000

Number of email opened= 300

Open rate= (300/1000)*100

Opt-out rate:

The number of requests for opt-out or removal divided by the total number of emails sent, multiplied by 100.

So let’s take an example:

Total email sent=1000

Total of opt-out request=10

Opt out rate= (10/1000)*100= 1%

Personalization:

The practice of writing the email to make the recipient feel that it is more personal and was sent with him or her in mind. This might include using the recipient’s name in the salutation or subject line, referring to previous purchases or correspondence, or offering recommendations based on previous buying patterns.

Subject line:

The title of the email communication. This is the first (and hopefully not last) element of the communication recipients will see when they access their email. It has to grab attention and be credible or the email will not get opened.

Targeting:

Sending the right message to the right recipient at the right time.

Up-selling/ Cross-Selling:

Presenting customers with an opportunity to purchase related products, services or accessories to products they have shown an interest in or previously purchased.

There is more to come at a later stage.

So back to terminology, here are some important terms to understand:

A/B/C Testing:

When the list is divided into three segments, each of which is tested for different offers, different subject lines, different call to actions.I will write a post at a later stage explaining how to proceed with A/B/C testing to get a very efficient results and cost effective.

Above the fold:

The part of an email or web page that is visible without scrolling. It is generally recommended to have your email call to action placed in this area.

Call to action:

Words that offer the opportunity and encourage the prospect or the customer  to take action. For example, \”Buy now\”, \”Add this product to your wish list\”, \”Learn more\”

Campaign:

A coordinated set of individual email marketing messages delivered at intervals and with an overall objective in mind. A campaign allows each new message to build on previous success.

Cell Testing:

When the list is divided into a number of discrete cells to allow for a robust test across multiple variables. To determine optimum response, conversion rate is measured for each cell.
 

Click-through:

When a prospect or a customer takes an action and clicks on a link.

Unique Click-through rate:

To determine the unique click-through rate, divide the number of responses by the number of emails opened (multiple this number by 100 to express the result as a percentage). 
So let\’s take an example here:

Number of emails opened once: 1000

Number of unique clicks: 500

So your unique click-through rate in this case will be: (100/1000)*100 = 10%

Closing sentence:

The last sentence of the communication, which must reinforce desire to take action.

Conversion rate:

In order to find out your conversion rate, you will need to define your key metric for the email campaign. So the key metric can be different depending on what is the purpose of your email campaign. You can decide to deploy an email campaign to sell a product,  to make potential customers subscribe to a new free service, to direct customers to visit a new website,etc.  Once you decide the purpose of your campaign, you will calculate the conversion rate based on this purpose. To sum up, the conversion rate is the number of people who take an action divided by the total number of people who received the email. (Multiply these numbers by 100 to express the results as percentages.)

Let\’s take a practical example when the goal of the campaign was to sell a new product to existing customers:

Number of emails delivered= 2000

Number of sales= 100

Conversion rate = (100/2000)*100= 5%

CPM ( cost per thousand)

CPM commonly refers to the cost per 1000 names on a given rental list. For example, a rental list priced at 250 EUR CPM would mean that the list owner charges 0.25  EUR per e-mail address.

Frequency

The intervals at which email marketing efforts are repeated: weekly, bi-weekly, monthly, bi-monthly, etc

Goal ( objective) of emailing:

The coherent, defined purpose, which allows targeting recipients appropriately, creating a unified and effective message and measuring the results. Each email, as well as the overall campaign, should have a clear goal.

Hard bounce:

A hard bounce is the permanent failed delivery of an email due non-existent email address for instance.

Soft bounce:

A soft bounce is the temporary failed delivery of an email due to issue such as full mailbox or unaivalable server.

Headline:

The opening announcement that greets recipients once they have opened the email. This is a very important part of the email as it should encourage the email receiver to read the email further down.

Landing page:

The page to which the email directs the email receiver via a link.

There is more to come later.

What does it mean?

It means that you will need to get the authorization from the consumer to use their email address to contact them.  This can be done in different ways:

                                               a) You can use an “opt-in”: it generally refers to a tick box which, if fill in by the user, indicates that this user wants to receive a particular form of communication from your company.

This is in contrast with an “opt-out” policy which is currently in place in the US , where the default position is that the user will be contacted by that form of marketing, unless they tick the box to indicate that they would prefer not to be.

It is definitely shown that the opt-out policy is bringing much more email addresses. However this can be a waste as well as consumers might not be really interested by your communication knowing that they did not opt-in themselves. They were automatically opted in.

                                                              b) Collect customer’s details while presenting them with a data protection notice . This notice will need to state that by providing their details the user consents to the receipt of marketing . This notice needs to be written in a positive way, the effect of which is to be considered as positive consent by the user.  If you choose this option, you will need to make sure that you include an opt-out box in the data protection notice.

In part 2 I will be looking at the various tools that can be used to collect email addresses. I will provide you with a best practises list.

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