The Anatomy of an Effective Email Marketing Campaign

This process has taken us a few years to master, but we are finally there. After many years of split testing, experimenting with layouts and key features, we are able to share with you our recipe for the perfect anatomy of an effective email marketing campaign.

#1 — Send your message from an actual person

Back in the day, we experimented with a variety of email addresses that we were sending from. From info@ to newsletter@ — but we found that email addresses with actual names create much better click-through rates and encourage engagement. Our Friday email roundups are sent from Christina.Robinson@green-umbrella.biz and the Monday coaching club emails are sent from my personal account.

The main deadly sin for send from email addresses is noreply@ addresses. This says “we will send you a message and expect you to read it, but if you have any questions or queries then do not expect us to respond” — that is not a great way to engage your audience.

#2 — Always Use a Clear Attention-Grabbing Subject Line

Ideally, a subject line should be no more than 80 characters in length and should avoid spam trigger words. Your subject line should have the customer in mind, rather than selling your wares.

A few examples for this blog or email marketing subject could have been:-

• 10 Secret Strategies to Improve Your Email Marketing Today
• Build Your First Email Marketing Masterpiece with This Simple System

We use a few tools to help us generate similar titles to the above. The first tool is a Google Chrome extension called Headlinr. The free version will give you lots of ideas. The second tool is a book called Advertising Headlines That Make You Rich by David Garfinkle. I know that the title is very cheesy, but the content is excellent and you can easily manipulate the ideas to fit with your own topics and email marketing ideas. Both of these tools can be used to help you create effective blog titles.

If you want to avoid your email landing in junk boxes then you will find this spam trigger word list very helpful.

#3 — Ensure your branding is consistent

We highly recommend adding a top and tail to your email marketing campaigns as a minimum, but branding is not just about a pretty logo. Branding can mean tone of voice, the fonts that you use and of course consistency in your publications. All of the above helps with increased brand awareness. I do not think we have missed a week in the last five years. People rely on our content each week and we see our subscription rates increase.

To the right, you will see an email marketing campaign that we designed for Brunton Bid. It is a simple design using the logo but encompasses her fonts, colours and corporate branding.

#4 — Personalise the content

There is nothing more impersonal than receiving an email that is addressed to “Dear sir or madam”. Nowadays, with merge tags and field merges it is easy to personalise an email. If you do not have the first name, then you should really not be sending the email in the first place. According to a recent MailChimp report, personalisation increases click-throughs by 14%.

A word of warning though, please do not overuse personal tags. Most people will appreciate that you are using technology to pull through data to personalise an email. If you go overboard with the use of the recipient’s name or company then this will have the opposite effect. Use the golden rule of no more than two personal merge tags in an email.

#5 — Content, Value, Proposition and Context

Your email content should immediately address what your offer is. Get straight to the point rather than keeping the recipient hanging on. As salespeople, we tend to leave the actual sale until the last minute, but with the email, you need to make sure that you are telling people what the content is about up front.

Your content needs to eliminate waffle, and have a good readability factor. We are all time-starved, so please make sure that your emails are scannable. No long paragraphs. Can you use bullet points?

Email campaigns that work well can be lists or numbers. For example, “download this free 10 point checklist”, or “find out the top 20 ideas of things to post”. Above all, keep the content clean and clutter free

My hot tip for the content of an email is to read the email out loud. You will be amazed how many mistakes you will pick up if you read it out loud to yourself. Reading an email back to yourself inside your head does not have the same effect. Alternatively, ask someone else to proofread your email for you.

One tool that I could not live without that helps with spelling and grammar is Grammarly. A free grammar checker that instantly eliminates grammatical errors and enhances your writing. Grammarly is trusted by millions every day. PS — there is now an app for your iPhone for Grammarly!

#6 — Be Obvious, Focused on a Strong Call to Action

As mentioned in number five, it is important to get to the point asap. The email needs to be obvious and highly focused. It is super important to make sure that you are not adding multiple calls to action within your email. For example, do NOT try to sell more than one thing within your email campaign. Too many choices results in no choice made by the recipient. Keep it simple with one very strong call to action. By all means, repeat the same call to action within the email, but do not mix up your messages.

Tip: Avoid words such as “submit”. The word submit generates negative thoughts such as “are they going to start spamming me?” or “Is this company going to abuse my date?”. ‘Submit’ also impacts conversion rate. Unbounce found that using the word “Submit” on landing pages decreases conversion by 3%.

Alternatively, consider using words that create a sense of urgency such as now, today etc.

#7 — Always add a relevant image

If you are creating an email newsletter that derives from your blogs, then always create custom images for your blogs. In January 2016 we experimented with adding our blog titles as text within the images. Within two months we were seeing an increase in conversion rates by 12%. We now recommend adding text over your images when producing blogs.

Text on your images increases conversion rates

As a reminder, please do not get your images from “Google Images”. I was personally fined £895 for one of my staff doing exactly this about 4 years ago. I learned the hard way! Some great sites for free stock images and free video content can be downloaded safely from www.pexels.com or www.pixabay.com

For those of you who like your stats, did you know that 65% of people prefer emails with mostly images rather than text? Also, 90% of information transmitted to the brain is visual, and visuals are processed 60,000 X faster in the brain than text. Use images in your emails and blogs to increase conversions — a no-brainer.

#8 — Do you have social sharing tools in your email?

If you want your campaign to grow then give your audience the tools to share your content with their audience. Most people will add social sharing tools to their blogs, or other pages on their website, however, emails tend to get missed. Do you have sharing tools on your email template?

Apparently, 78% of companies integrate their email campaigns with their social media strategies. Are you part of that 78%?

#9 — Do you have a link to your Privacy Policy?

As many of you will know, we have new data protection regulations (known as GDPR) being introduced to the UK in May 2018. As time moves on, we are more an more wary of sharing our personal information. Adding a privacy policy link to your email campaigns shows that you are a credible company that will not abuse people’s data. If you do not have a privacy policy on your website that you can link to then I strongly urge you to consider getting this sorted asap.

#10 — Respect people’s inboxes

When I receive an email that does not have an unsubscribe function then it is highly frustrating. Please do not be that person. Not only does this give you negative sender credibility, but it also decreases the conversion rates. If you are using email marketing software such as MailChimp, Infusionsoft or Aweber then this function will automatically be allocated for you.

Summary

Email marketing is still the top form of marketing for businesses. Social media is closely following, however, you will find that email will still be the highest conversion tool for your offers and to build traffic to your website. I hope that these tips have helped, but if you have any of your own tips then please share in the comments below.

Originally published at www.green-umbrella.biz on December 14, 2017.