EBizInsider

E-mail marketing is underrated by its practitioners, despite its promise. Internet Retailer reports that nearly half of online retailers rate e-mail as the most effective marketing. But that means more than half of online retailers don’t think e-mail marketing works. It does.

Real or Spam?

Jacob Nielsen, the guru of usability, said “E-mail newsletters are the best customer relationship mechanism the internet offers, and every single mailing must strengthen the relationship between the company and its customers.” But he warns that more e-mail is not necessarily better e-mail. “Having your low-quality messages deleted is certainly an unfortunate fate. But the long-term impact of such clueless internet marketing is: your future messages may not even be opened. Once users are trained to expect such uselessness, they stop paying attention to your e-mail.”

Be Believable

You must convince your customers that you are a viable provider of information and savings. Only then can you pursue growth of orders and sales.

Among many factors to
the success of e-mail marketing:

• Choosing a marketing company who has established relationships with
most (if not all) e-mail providers and hosting companies

• Design effective e-mail messages

• The method of collecting an e-mail address

• Deciding how often to use e-mails

• The offers and benefits to the customer receiving e-mail

Many e-mail marketing companies provide do-it-yourself services to quickly and easily establish a marketing program. Some tie directly into your shopping cart, making it easier to capture e-mail addresses. Establish your list then decide how to best communicate with your customers.

Be Patient

Don’t get frustrated if your first few e-mails don’t have a high open rate or click through rate. Marketing is tweaking, so try different combinations of elements.

Testing, One, Two

Top e-mail marketing company Silverpop tested the following e-mail elements:

• Content of the “From” line

• Subject line content

• Location of logo

• Ratio of text to images

• Various design layouts

• Number of links

• Type of links (text vs. image)

• Presence and location of navigation

• Inclusion of lifestyle photography

• Feature offers

• Location of call-to-action

Each of these elements had a significant impact on the e-mail open rate, which hovers around 20-30%. Test these elements in different combinations to learn what your customers want to hear and which format works best.

Inside the Numbers

Surprisingly, Silverpop’s study concluded that putting your company name clearly in the “From” line did not have the impact on open rates that has long been considered best practice. Instead, they found that using a person’s name improved open rates 3 percentage points more than a business name.

The data suggests using a person’s name in the e-mail address, but beware. If they’re expecting a personal message and instead they see a sales pitch, this could be perceived as a bait-and-switch. If you use a person’s name in the “From” line, use some type of personalization in the content.

The study also found that including the company name & product name in your subject line improves open rates by 32% to 60% over a subject line without the company or product name. It was also higher when it contained either the product or company name only. Like an ad headline or the title in the search engine results, the subject line must be clear, concise and give the customer an idea of what’s inside the e-mail.

Most e-mail marketing efforts use a “postcard” format containing an image with an offer. But Silverpop found that the “newsletter” format had a higher click rate than the “postcard” format. The newsletter format included text and images to clearly communicate the message and brand.

Click through rates increase when there were more links in the e-mail, but start to decrease once there were more than ten links. Image-only and mixed format (images and text) also increased click through rates. Images drive more attention to your offer and the call-to-action even though most e-mail providers block images initially.

Successful e-mail marketing involves finding the right format and wrapping your arms around it and making a commitment to it. Now, put these things into practice and make your company some money!

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