Before thinking about how to send high-performing emails, you need to look at your contact management and segmentation. Your contact database (CRM) is actually your most powerful tool for you to successfully send high-performing emails. You gather explicit data (name, phone number, email address, etc) via landing page forms but where you really get the interesting stuff is in the implicit data you gather on your contacts. Implicit data is things like email engagement behaviour, website behaviour, what time of day they are engaging with email or purchase behaviour. Finding these behaviours and trends will allow you to group these contacts together in a specific segment and apply buyer personas. You might have contacts in different stages of the marketing lifecycle for example in the context of Careers Australia, you have:
- Leads who have not converted,
- students going through the enrolment process,
- current active students
- current inactive students
- and graduated students.
This makes up the 5 main target segments of Careers Australia for email campaigns. Now that you have some basic level segmentation of your database you are sending:
The right message, to the right person at the right time.
Determining the goal of your email
If you can answer these 6 questions, you will have a solid foundation for sending a high performing email:
Who is getting the email? Consider what was mentioned above about segmentation (habits, demographics and behaviours).
What is the reason for your email. A clear action you can quantify for example register for a webinar, download a resource or subscribe to your blog
When should the email be sent? Consider where your contact is in the buyer journey.
Where is your segment going to read your email? Are they more inclined to read email on a mobile device?
Why is this message being sent? Is it mostly for the business benefit or for the customer? If it is for just the companies benefit then the strategy should be reconsidered.
Optimising for email opens
With the goal of your email in mind, you will need to think about sending profiles, subject line and preview text. For the reader to click, they need to have wanted to open the email in the first place, so subject line and who is sending the email is critical.
Here is a good example of a solid email from the team at InVision.
When crafting an email consider these elements for increased levels of success with open rates
- Shorter subject line is better (6 – 10 words)
- Front-load important words or key phrases
- Avoid sales language (not to mention spam filters can pick these up and send your email to junk)
- Keep it straightforward
- Personalise when appropriate. There have been studies that prove emails sent from a person (like Clark from Invision above) has an increased chance of email open rate because of the human element.
- Mix it up, check what works and what doesn’t.
The reply-to email address attached to the sender name should be a company address, don’t use no-reply email address. Use multiple email accounts depending on the type of email for example a payment email should be from [email protected].
The preview text is an excellent chance to give readers a chance to see what is inside your email. The example above says “Plus 192 free icons from Swifticons, the first in our new advice column, and more!”. This demonstrates value for the reader because it clearly states at the start of the email that you can download a resource that may be of value to you.
Compel your reader
The goal of an email once opened, is for the reader to click. The way to compel your readers is through great copy.
Write for scan-ability. Readers are time poor and will generally skim an email so focus on typography to get your message across. Use bold large fonts for captivating headings, use a bolder less, less obvious font weight for subheadings and lastly an easily readable font weight for paragraphs and larger amounts of text. You only have a short amount of time to get the message across
Use the right tone. There is only a short amount of time to get your message across, so use the right tone for the right person.
Personalisation. Use personalisation where appropriate. At a minus use their first name in the copy but this can be extended to a number of personalisation fields in your contact database. For example use dynamic content based on the users location, interests, behaviours and content downloaded. This will make the email feel like a 1:1 conversation.
Proofread. Send tests to colleagues to proofread an email. Mistakes can be embarrassing and make your company like unprofessional.
Testing. Make sure you take the time to test your email across devices, browsers, email clients and its legacy versions. Here is a post I did that goes into more depth on this topic.
Call to Action
The call to action (CTA) is the conversion closer. What is going to get the reader to click that button?
In most emails, you want one CTA. One email, one purpose. All of the links on the EDM should go to the same landing page and make sure all of the content on the EDM can be found on the landing page. CTA buttons should stand out and contrast from the rest of the content. I wrote a post about Data Driven Design and there is some cool info about conversion rates between varying CTA styled buttons . One important thing to note about CTA buttons is that they should always be HTML coded and not images. The reason for this is that a lot of email clients by default will have images turned off for speed so emails only show their plain text form. If a reader has their settings to ’no images’, then your buttons will not show if they were created as images.
These are examples of a couple of EDMs I made for Careers Australia that have CTA’s that really stand out.
With all of these factors in mind, you will be sending high-performing emails in no time!