Email Marketing

Email Marketing and Characteristics of E-mails

• E-mail marketing is the marketing activity undertaken by a brand/company
through the use of e-mails, which can be promotional or transactional in
nature:
• E-mail marketing is considered as a direct marketing activity.
• It is a type of communication technique that seeks to elicit an action on the
part of the user/consumer such an action includes placing an order,
clinking on a link inside the mail, visiting a store or website, signing
up for the subscriber list or obtaining further information.

Characteristics/Points of e-mails a marketer should remember:

• One of the fist things that an e-mail marketer needs to ensure is that an
e-mail is delivered to the user’s inbox.
• The user might not even open an e-mail and delete it, especially if the
e-mail is received from an unknown sender
• Most users of e-mails are likely to access them through
desktops/laptops/mobiles.
• There is likely to be a substantial time gap between receiving and
accessing an e-mail.
• The user is likely to access e-mails less frequently compared to SMSs.

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 Benefits of Email Marketing

• It has a highest conversion rate.

• It can be used to build up and retain customers.
• Cost effective.
• Less competition than social media.
• It helps to build a community and personalize.
• Cross-selling is one of crucial benefits of email marketing.
• It can help in market survey.

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E-mail Marketing Strategy-Things to be
Known
 E-mail Marketing Strategy: Things to be Known

• Objectives:
• The set of objectives may differ from one campaign to another. Some e-mails
may be sent as an acknowledgement for transactions, whereas others may be
promotional in nature.
• The overall goal, however, mostly, is to encourage customers to do something
after reading the mail like-click on the link(s) that is (are) included in the e-mail
etc.
• The general brand/company objectives may be about-customer acquisition,
customer retention, creating awareness, brand-building, or making a sale
etc.

• Target Segment:
• It is desirable that consumers who are targeted through e-mails sent by
companies/brands have indicated that they would wish to receive
communication from these companies/brands.

• Benefit/Value Offered:
• The e-mails can be transactional or promotional.
• Consumers are usually more likely to open transactional e-mails than
promotional e-mails.

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E-mail Marketing Strategy: Things to be Known

Commercial offers through transactional e-mails

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 E-mail Marketing Strategy: Things to Be Known

• Strategy:
• The purpose of sending e-mails to users is to encourage them to review
information and then act. Ex-The newsletters and communications sent to
users are meant to allow the user to make an informed choice, instead of
acting immediately.
• E-mails are information intensive, providing the user with a variety of
information that the user may require.
• Measuring Outcomes:
• The final step involves determining the extent to which the objectives of the
campaign have been achieved.
• The fulfilment of the various steps of an e-mail campaign can be captured
through achieving different stages which represent specific actions on the
part of the user.

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Various Components/Stages of E-mail
Marketing Campaign
 List Building and Maintenance
• List Building/Drive growth constantly:
• The list of customers that the brand/company has, needs to be constantly
monitored—(it needs to grow, but needs to consist of potential customers).
These customers have to be the ones that want to hear from the
brand/company.

• The marketer should provide various ways of engaging with the customer
so that they want to constantly hear from the company. In other words the
marketer should provide compelling reasons to the consumer for signing
up the subscription form for receiving e-mail newsletters or do other
activities. For Ex- The brand/marketer can start off with an offer to the
consumer for entering a contest/sweepstakes, or provide free study
materials, tickets for show or courses and in exchange get their email
ids for these services.

• The brand/company can begin by listing all promotions and touchpoints

that the brand/company shares with the customer and should try to provide
opportunities for customers to receive e-mail communication through all
these touchpoints

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 List Building and Maintenance
• List Building/Drive growth constantly:
• The marketer may also use web-analytics to see which pages are being
visited by customers the most and insert subscription forms which can
be the home page or check-out pages or any other pages as such.
• Offline efforts can contribute substantially to the initiative of growing the
opt-in e-mail list.
• Once the consumer has signed up for the newsletter, the marketer
needs to maintain an online dialogue with the target audience.
Presence on the top two or three social media where the target
audience is present, is desirable.
• The process of ‘opt-in’ is about obtaining permission from the user
that e-mail communication can be sent to the consumer. While a
single opt-in is required, a double opt-in is desirable. For B2B or for
consumer durables, the marketer could also ask consumers to
opt-in to receive a phone call. For consumer non-durables (e.g.,
fast-moving consumer goods), the marketer could follow the ‘double
opt-in’ procedure

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 List Building and Maintenance
• List Building/Drive growth constantly:
• A good opt-in campaign allows the marketer to (a) find the relevant target
segment, and drive traffic; (b) grow an organic permission based list;
(c) send relevant content to the users on the list; and (d) respect
confidentiality of the information.
• In the communication that is sent to consumers/users after they have
opted-in to receive these communications, it is important to include opt-out
options in the newsletters.
• Using third party e-mail lists contain risks including high damage to the
reputation of your business, high spam complaints, poor sender
reputation with ISPs, poor deliverability, poor response (open/CTR
rate), and poor or negative brand affinity.

• Maintain the List:

• Cleaning the list and checking whether the e-mail IDs on the list are
current is a necessary part of maintaining the list.

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 List Building and Maintenance
• A bad list is likely to depress campaign results. It is also likely to sully the
brand’s/company’s online and sender reputation, and waste the
company’s time and effort, and money too.
• The marketer can get an agency (or an in-house person) to check lists
regularly – depending on the frequency of sending e-mails.
• Minimize Churn Rate:
• Marketers should ensure that there is minimum churn from the list.
• The opt-in or double opt-in mechanism helps the marketer build trust
with the consumer by asking for permission to send the e-mail, which
minimizes the risk of the consumer leaving.
• The marketer needs to set expectations at the point of opt-in. The
expectations set, now need to be adhered to.
• Users can be given the option to opt-in again when the context, terms, and
conditions of use change in the offering.
• Provide control to the subscribers. Such control includes the ability to
forward/share the information, interact with the information, and contact the
brand/company for other things.
• Opting-out at any point of time from receiving a message is the user’s right.

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List Building and Maintenance

Provide the user control

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 Segmentation, Targeting & Engagement
• Users want to receive only relevant e-mails that speak directly to customer
needs and expectations. Non-adherence to this principle is the biggest
reason for consumers to opt-out of a newsletter programme.
• Segmenting the list of users and creating clusters of individuals who may
be interested in specific topics that do not appeal to the other users on the
list helps the marketer in serving. Preferences from users may be gathered
at the time of opt-in.
• Targeting can happen through personalization which needs to be based
on the recipient’s behaviour. Tracking life events of the user is a great way
of anticipating how to personalize content for users, and is good for building
a relationship with the customer.
• Providing recommendations is another way of keeping the engagement
with the user meaningful.
• Speaking with the customer regularly, helps to learn about the changing
needs to the user, and relevant materials can be created accordingly.

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 Messaging and Campaign Design
• Design for the In-Box:
• The messages that are sent out to users/consumers need to be designed for the
inbox. This e-mail has to stand out in a crowded inbox.
• Clicking anywhere on the body of the e-mail should take the user to the landing
page of the offer in the e-mail.
• Include sharing tools in the e-mail.
• Provide unsubscribing options in the e-mail.
• Another important consideration should be the subject line of the e-mail—too many
exclamation marks, asterisks, and use of specific words could once again land the
e-mail in the junk folder
• The content in the e-mail messages needs to be a mix of text and images. Often
users/consumers may keep the external image option turned off in their e-mails.
• In order to craft successful e-mails, personalize the content by addressing the
recipient directly

• When customers are using mobile phones:

• Many users check e-mails on their mobile devices, and depending on the mobile
device, it may display only text.
• Rendering on the mobile device should be taken into consideration.
• To make the e-mail render properly on a mobile device, keep the content short and
ensure that it renders above the fold.
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 Messaging and Campaign Design

• Confirm Proper Rendering on All E-Mail Clients or Platforms:

• After designing the message, it is important to ensure that the e-mail will
display properly on all e-mail clients: Gmail, Yahoo! Email, Outlook etc.
• Agencies have proprietary or other software that help them ensure this
before sending any newsletter.
• E-mailers can also be easily tested without software. This testing can be
done simply by creating accounts on different clients, sending e-mails to
these clients, and testing.
• E-mails need to be clean as it significantly increase deliverability and ROI.

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 Deliverability

• Managing Online and Sender Reputation:

• If the user/consumer is disillusioned by this newsletter, the user/consumer
may decide not to open the newsletter, and unsubscribe from the list or
worse, block the sender.
• Such actions are strictly evaluated by the Internet service providers
(ISPs). ISPs watch the logs of recipients closely. Unopened e-mails give
negative sender reputation. Marketers need to conduct regular online
audits to ensure proper deliverability for ex- the e-mailers to need to make
sure that their emails talk of expired offers are not sent out.
• The marketer needs to track the deliverability rates, which is likely to vary
depending on the accuracy of the e-mail list as well as characteristics of the
e-mail message itself.
• Some of the top factors that affect deliverability rates of e-mails sent by
companies in India are frequency/volume of e-mail sent ,content, sender
reputation, subject lines, and complaints from recipients.

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 Deliverability

• Managing Online and Sender Reputation:

• Testing improves deliverability. The marketer can test for rendering (e.g.,
across all major e-mail clients, across the major ISPs, mobile devices, major
domains, and major web browsers). Tests for deliverability and usability may
also be undertaken.

• A sender’s reputation is based on the following:

• Number of e-mails sent out per day.
• Number of people who complain.
• Spam trap e-mail addresses.
• High bounce rate.
• E-mail sender authenticity.

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 Legal Requirements

• Pay Attention to Legal Requirements:

• When sending e-mails it is necessary to be aware of the laws that govern
the realm of e-mails.
• As of the year 2016, the only law that India has formulated in the domain of
the Internet is the Information Technology Act
• The law in India does not have any definitive guidelines on sending
unsolicited e-mails (i.e., spam)
• Many countries have effective laws that hand out punishment to spammers
by the court of law in those countries.
• Some of these laws include the CAN-SPAM Act of 2003 (Controlling the
Assault of Non Solicited Pornography and Marketing Act) in the USA, and
the Privacy and Electronic Communications (EC Directive) Regulations
2003 in the United Kingdom.

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 Monitoring Success/Failure through Analytics

• Measure Success: Metrics for tracking e-mail campaign.

• Click-through-rate (CTR)
• Conversion rate
• List growth rate
• E-mail sharing/Forwarding rate
• Overall ROI
• If a company’s e-mail CTRs is consistently below the level of the industry
average, then among other things, the brand/company is probably providing
content of little value to the e-mail subscribers.
• It may be that most of the content is already provided within your e-mail, not
giving subscribers a reason or means to click-through to the website

(E-mail open rates are not a very good metric for evaluating e-mail marketing
performance. It is unreliable because, often, an e-mail is counted as being
opened, depending on whether the images embedded within the e-mail load
or not).

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Let’s See & Do some Practical