Although you’d never know it by most of what you read online about the subject, interactive media is more than just websites (or social media). Integrating an email program into your marketing communications can be a highly effective way to communicate with your customers, drive actions, change perceptions and reach your strategic goals. Despite the fact that one 2008 study showed that 210 billion emails are sent every day (about 70% classified as spam), email remains a powerful tool.
Most marketing communications professionals are familar with the tried-and-true direct mail and know that the three most important components of a campaign are considered to be list, offer, and creative. E-mail marketing is very similar but it has a few unique challenges—such as getting recipients to open your e-mail, conveying your message to recipients who don’t accept HTML e-mail or whose e-mail software doesn’t display your pictures and avoiding having your mail categorized or reported as spam.
Here’s what we think you should know to maximize your e-mail campaign’s ROI:
Determine Your Goals
What do you want your email to accomplish? Is it a one-off promotion for a special event? Is it part of a subscription-based e-newsletter? Are you trying to drive traffic to your website? Knowing your goals will help you determine how you will measure success and ROI.
Choose an Opt-in vs. Opt-out List
With an opt-in list, recipients choose to receive your e-mails. This can lead to higher open and click-through rates because you know they want the information. It also results in fewer spam complaints. (If you are purchasing or renting a list, opt-in lists are always the better choice.) With an opt-out list, recipients did not choose to receive your message and are less likely to open or click on it. They may also report you as spam. Opt-in lists are typically smaller while opt-out lists cast a wider net. You can encourage people to opt-in to your e-mails by offering them something special in return, such as a discount for signing up, exclusive offers via the e-mail, etc.
Manage Your List
Once you have chosen your method of building your list and have the information, you will need to manage your list. This means removing “dead” e-mail addresses that bounce back (sending to too many dead addresses on a regular basis may lead to being flagged as a spammer), offering a one-click “Unsubscribe” option (required by regulations), and removing anyone who requests it via other means.
You might also want to segment your list by sending one message to prospects and another to existing customers, for example. Tracking and analyzing responses to individual emails and campaigns over time, and connecting your list with customer or prospect management software, can help you identify which emails get the best response from which customers.
Avoid Spam Triggers
Spam filters are increasingly sophisticated. Because being tagged as spam often means your message is never seen, crafting e-mails to pass spam filters is important. Your e-mail message sometimes needs to get past two filters—one residing on the server processing the e-mail and one residing in the recipient’s e-mail software (Outlook, Gmail, Yahoo Mail, etc.). Most spam filters are set to identify as spam any message that contains words such as “free,” “special offer,” “discount,” “vacation,” “amazing,” “opportunity,” “call now,” etc. Some design choices, such as extra-large type or using multiple font colors, can also contribute to being identified as spam. Spam filters will also flag messages that do not originate from a real person, such as from “offers@stephanbrady.com” or “sales@companyabc.com.”
It is nearly impossible to avoid all spam triggers in an e-mail. Most filters assign points for specific offenses. Keeping your total points as low as possible (under 4.0 or 5.0) should be sufficient. This information is often part of e-mail marketing software (and something you should look for when evaulating which software to use).
Build Creative That Gets Results
Creative needs to capture attention and lead to click-throughs. The most important creative element in an e-mail campaign is the subject line—without a clear, creative subject line, recipients will not open your e-mail. Good subject lines are short (less than 50 characters), informative and enticing.
Experiment with your subject lines until you learn what works for your audience. Email allows you to easily segment your list and your software should let you track the success rate of each subject line, both in terms of open and click-through rates. Continually refine your subject lines.
The core of the campaign is the copy. E-mail clients often automatically block images. Many recipients will not bother to download your images. E-mails should be designed so that they convey the necessary information and drive clicks even without images. Recipients can be encouraged to download images by the use of “alt image” tags, which provide copy descriptions of the images, and creative placement that makes recipients curious as to what they are missing.
The design should be clean and uncluttered, with a single point of focus. E-mails that are too busy or cluttered are difficult to read. HTML-formatted e-mails are read like web pages, in the shape of an “F,” so position your key points to take advantage of that pattern.
Ensure That Everyone Can Access Your Message
Every e-mail should also include a text version so recipients who cannot or choose not to receive HTML e-mails can view the e-mail. All HTML e-mails should include a text block at the top which says something like “Click here if you’re having problems viewing this message” with a link to an HTML version hosted online.
It’s also important to test your e-mail before you send it as every e-mail program displays differently. Analyze your list and see what the most common domains are. Are most of your e-mail recipients receiving at their business addresses or free e-mail accounts? Set up free e-mail accounts at Gmail, Yahoo, etc. and send tests. View on both Windows and Mac machines, and in both Explorer and Safari.
Promote Your Emails
One step that often gets missed is promotion. Let people know about your email promotions or newsletters. Let them sign up on your website, put information in your corporate email signature line, promote it on your blog, and include a “Forward to a Friend” feature.
Track Your Success
How did your email do? What was the open rate for your various target audiences? Which subject line performed best? What images and links led to the highest click-throughs? After your email is sent, the important work of analysis begins. Taking the time to analyze the information will help you refine future efforts and mazimize your ROI.
That brings up the $64,000 question: what are good open and click-through rates? The answer is, it depends on a variety of factors, including the type of email (promotion or enewsletter, for example), your target audience, the list you’re sending to, and the quality of the creative (subject line, copy, and design). Much of it depends on the perceived importance and relevance of what you’re sending to the audience. Provide relevant, timely and targeted information, attractively designed, to a well-screened and managed list, while complying with spam regulations, and open rates as high as 50%, 60%, or even 75% are within your grasp.
What’s your experience with email marketing? What was your most successful campaign?
Last night, I watched One, Two, Three the 1961 comedy directed by Billy Wilder and starring James Cagney, who took a 23-year break from films following completion of this movie. It probably took him that long to recover — frenetic doesn’t begin to describe the pace of this piece.
And so we’re back to One, Two, Three and our fast-talking Coca-Cola executive. Coke products have been in dozens (if not hundreds) of 
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