Cross-Channel Email Marketing Campaigns for Higher ROI – Part 2

In Part 1 of this article, we focused on the importance of developing a proper strategy before starting an email marketing campaign. In Part 2, we focus on tactics and explain the importance and the mechanics behind developing an effective content and the visual design for an email campaign. In the final Part 3 of this series we will discuss email marketing for mobile devices and integration of social media and email marketing.

Design and Content Development

Before deciding on the messaging and the content of the email marketing campaign, we recommend developing a marketing foundation. The marketing foundation is the cornerstone of the email marketing campaign because it provides direction for the campaign messaging, visual design and copy writing and establishes a benchmark for measuring success. The marketing foundation includes the following:

• Determine email marketing campaign goals and objectives
• Set marketing goals, for example, branding, direct response marketing, customer retention
• Determine target audience(s)
• Identify target devices – desktop computer and mobile devices
• Establish geographic focus
• Establish primary and secondary calls-to-action
• Determine unique selling proposition

Branding

For brand consistency it is important to plan the email newsletter or commercial email communication as a companion of the web site with the same design. This means using the same banner and logo as used for the web site. This way the recipient recognizes the identity when the message activates in the pre-view pane of his or her email box. If you have recently redesigned your web site, make sure to make adjustments to your existing email template layout and match the new design.

Copy and Messaging

In an environment where people quickly scan their email boxes and are looking for a reason to delete email messages or hit the spam button, your email message must present a good value or be relevant to their interest. Copy for a promotional email message must be easily scan-able, include user benefits and a strong call to action, e.g., “Buy Now” or “Read the full story” in the case of email newsletters, to persuade readers to ‘click-through.’

Template Design and HTML Coding

Internet users more often click on links within well-designed newsletter and email communications that offer useful and interesting information. To improve the click-through rate, include multiple links to several relevant landing pages. More links on a email newsletter or commercial email communication often means more clicks into the web site or landing page.

Email Message Design

Design combinations of email messages using HTML and text and avoid all-image email messages because those are often identified as spam by the spam filters. A promotional email message must be designed for scan-ability. Important factors to consider are placing the user benefits prominently placed “above the fold” on the page and the call-to-action fall within the path of the eye. Key selling points must also be promoted “above the fold” and higher on the page to take advantage of the preview pane on desktop computers. You may also consider using graphical elements that draw the eye and reader in, e.g. animated gifs or irresistible subject lines.

The preview pane on desktop computers allows viewers with Outlook, Eudora, Lotus Notes and Yahoo and other email clients to view email messages through a narrow 2 x 4 inch window without actually opening the message. The preview pane gives viewers a clear choice: open or delete; and even the most loyal subscribers may choose the latter if you don’t give them a good reason to dig deeper. With images blocked – as often is the case these days, it becomes even harder to give the recipient a compelling reason to open your email when viewed in the preview pane. So it is important to design the email message with the 2 x 4 inch preview pane in mind, which means putting the most important information in the upper left corner of the message.

In the end, you need to test your email creative to see how it performs. This can be accomplished by splitting your email list in two and perform A/B testing with two separate messages.

Message Rendering

Most desktop email clients disable images by default so it is important for you to design an email message with image blocking in mind to make sure that the message looks and functions properly in many desktop email client browsers. The fact that images are blocked does not have to lead to a disaster, as long as the integrity of the message is retained when images are disabled and there is enough copy to engage the reader.

One-way of dealing with blocked images is to include Alt tags for images. Alt tags are text phrases that are placed in the HTML code as part of the IMG tag. They appear in the email message or email newsletter as text phrases next to the red “x” in blocked images. If the image is about the Nikon D80, the Alt tag could read “Nikon D80 digital camera”.

To retain the integrity of email messages when images are blocked, we recommend:

• Placing the most compelling message in the upper left corner in text, if possible.
• Providing a link at the top of the message to an alternate HTML version of the message so that it can be viewed in a regular web browser with all images turned on. An example of this is. “Can’t see any images – Click to view.”
• If you use animations use animated gifs to avoid rendering issues and make sure the first frame of the animation contains useful information in case subsequent frames are blocked.
• Keep image file sizes small (under 50K) to minimize hard bounces.
• Use basic HTML with tables for coding the message. Avoid CSS style sheets because they are causing rendering problems with some email clients. Also, avoid DIV tags or layers. Some email clients do not read them.
• We recommend testing and adjusting the email message or email newsletter across many email clients and on small mobile devices to ensure that the message renders correctly.
• Clean up copy delivered in MS Word files from embedded MS Word coding in Notepad or other text editor, before pasting it into the email broadcast program. Run a spell checker through the copy before starting with HTML coding.
• Run the HTML email message through the W3C HTML validation filter (http://validator.W3.org) to ensure that the HTML is coded according to standard and rendered correctly across various email clients.
• Perform cross-email client testing on an email testing platform like Litmus.

Subject Line

The most important factors that influence whether someone will open an email message are the subject line and the “from” address. Subject lines must be eye-catching, informative and brief. A subject line that reads like spam is often considered spam. To increase the open rates of an email message, keep the subject line to 70 characters or fewer, (35 characters seem to work the best.) The reader won’t see subject lines that are longer than 70 characters.

We also recommend scanning your inbox and junk folder to see what spammers are using for subject lines and message content, and then steer clear of these in your own copy. If you have to use a particular popular word, use it only in message content, not in the subject line.

Make sure your company, brand or product name or newsletter title shows up clearly in the subject line as a further guarantee to recipients that the e-mail is from a trusted source, not from a spammer. For example, for a newsletter, you could use your brand name in the subject line: “Brand name/company name/newsletter title, then title of newsletter issue”.

Recent studies have shown that the majority of recipients of commercial email messages or newsletters look at the sender name and addresses first before deciding whether or not to open the email. Branding in the sender address is therefore critical. The most effective way of doing this is to include the brand name before and after the @ sign (targetnewsletter@target.com) or at least after @-sign.

Message Delivery

Message delivery means taking the necessary steps to insure that email messages are reaching the recipients inbox. Email blocking at the ISP or email service level is one of the biggest obstacles an email marketing campaign can be confronted with. The number one reason of email blocking is customer complaints where a few complaints per thousand email addresses can cause a commercial sender’s, IP address to get blocked.

The latter can be avoided by taking the following steps:

• Make sure that the content of the message is relevant to the recipients interests
• Provide recipients with an easy way to unsubscribe from the list and remove them immediately
• Notify recipients upfront about the send frequency of the campaign, e.g. in the welcome message
• Make sure that the brand name or company name are in the subject line and “from address” so that the recipient can recognize the email sender

Blocking by the top ISP’s and email services can also happen when there are many invalid emails in the list. Therefore, it is important to “clean” the list after each broadcast or at least once a month. At the minimum, invalid email addresses or “bounce backs” must be removed.

Absence of authentication, which identifies the sender and helps with battling forged email, can harm will sender reputation and email delivery. SPF, Sender ID and DomainKeys are the protocols that have gained approval from major ISP’s and email services such as AOL, Hotmail, and Yahoo, so it important that your email broadcast systems supports these protocols.

One effective way to insure that an email newsletter or commercial message passes through the email filters is to test the message on an inexpensive self-serve email delivery platform like Litmus (www.litmus.com).

Tracking and Testing

Through ongoing testing of every aspect of an email campaign, including subject lines, email creative, the offer or editorial, the landing page and delivery, you can truly lift the overall performance and ROI of an email marketing campaign until it shows big returns in the revenue growth of your business!