Email Marketing Rules5 Reasons External Email Benchmarks Are Less Useful Than You Think
Posted on July 30, 2015
Our competitive nature drives us to want to know how other email marketers are performing. But aggregated, averaged benchmark data can provide false comfort and false alarms.
I’m not saying benchmarks are completely unuseful, just that they’re usually only helpful in a very general way for the following reasons:
- Audience response is different depending on the subscribers’ country or region.
- Audience response is different depending on the industry vertical.
- Audience response is different depending on the industry sub-vertical.
- Audience response is different depending on the brand’s business strategy and email marketing goals.
- Audience response is different depending on how a brand manages their email list.
For a full discussion of these, plus four ways to use external email benchmarks wisely…
>> Read the entire article on Litmus.com
Win a Copy of “Email Marketing Rules” in MarketingSherpa’s Weekly Book Giveaway
Posted on July 27, 2015
MarketingSherpa has been giving away great marketing books since 2002 and this week I’m excited that they’ll be giving away copies of Email Marketing Rules.
>> Sign up by Aug. 2 for your chance to win
While you’re at it, sign up to receive MarketingSherpa’s Email Marketing newsletter, which will keep you up to date on all the latest trends and tips.
Good luck!
The Hierarchy of Subscriber Needs: Are You Satisfying All 4?
Posted on July 24, 2015
Everyone wants to send more “relevant” emails, right? That’s been the buzzword of the email industry for a few years now. However, typically relevance is discussed in narrow terms, generally in regards to content.
But relevance is much more than that. Just think about all the reasons that people mark your emails as spam or unsubscribe from them:
- I never subscribed.
- I received emails too often.
- The emails were too hard to read.
- The emails didn’t work well on my mobile device.
- The emails were frustrating because they had too many errors and bad links.
- I didn’t find the content valuable.
- The emails made me feel like a number rather than an individual.
- I can easily find the content elsewhere.
Spanning everything from permission to quality assurance, accessibility to legibility, and content to frequency, all of these speak to the quality of the subscriber experience and how relevant the messages were to the individual.
The Hierarchy of Subscriber Needs, which we debuted in The Viral Email report, provides this big picture view of relevance. In this guest post for Convince & Convert, I discuss all four subscriber needs, including how to fulfill them and how to measure them.
>> Read the entire post at ConvinceAndConvert.com
Infographic: 2015 Mobile-Friendly Email & Landing Page Trends
Posted on July 21, 2015
We’ve been beating the drum on the need to be more mobile-friendly for years as email reading has shifted from desktop and webmail to mobile devices.
According to data from Litmus Email Analytics, mobile email reading has plateaued at around 50%. However, new joint research from Litmus and Salesforce shows that marketers still have significant room to improve, despite advances over the past 12 months.
Our new infographic, 2015 Mobile-Friendly Email & Landing Page Trends, highlights where B2C brands are in terms of adjusting to the new mobile marketplace with their email and landing page designs. It also offers some advice on how to fix the disconnects that currently exist in the subscriber experience.
>> View the infographic on Salesforce.com
Tactics Used by the Top 1% of Viral Emails
Posted on July 15, 2015
“One of the key drivers of sharing is social capital. Sharing something of interest to our network is a way of showing that we’re in the know. It is a means to build our professional, cultural or social standing among our circles,” said Alfred Hermida, Associate Professor at the Graduate School of Journalism at the University of British Columbia and author of Tell Everyone: Why We Share and Why It Matters.
In this article, MarketingSherpa applies Prof. Hermida’s experiences to the findings of our Viral Email report, in addition to bringing their own sharp analysis of the research to bear. They ultimately distilled the report into four takeaways for creating viral emails:
Tip #1. Help your customers share their passions
Tip #2. Plan remarkable experiences in your email marketing calendar
Tip #3. Respect your subscribers and give them a functional experience
Tip #4. Measure success
>> Read the full article on MarketingSherpa.com
5 Secrets to Getting Subscribers to Forward Your Emails
Posted on July 14, 2015
Social sharing gets a lot of attention—in large part, because it’s relatively easy to measure—but the all but invisible email forward can be just as powerful for brands. Whereas social sharing is public, diffuse, and powerful at driving top-of-the-funnel awareness, email forwards are private, targeted, and excel at driving bottom-of-the-funnel action.
To better understand email forwarding behavior, Litmus used its Email Analytics tool to measure the forwarding activity from more than 400,000 email campaigns. We then analyzed more than 200 campaigns from the most forwarded 1% of emails and compared them to an equal number of campaigns from the middle-of-the-pack median, looking at differences in tactics and email topics.
The findings, detailed in The Viral Email report, sometimes reinforced common sense but other times revealed counterintuitive approaches. In my first monthly column for Marketing Land, I reveal five key tactics for spurring email forwards, including two not included in the report.
>> Read the entire article on MarketingLand.com
#Webinar: ‘How to Make Your Emails Go Viral’ on 7/14 at 11am ET
Posted on July 8, 2015
We tend to associate “going viral” with social media—in part because it’s relatively easy to see and measure the very public noise of social sharing in terms of likes, favorites, and retweets. However, the much quieter email forward is often a considerably more powerful influencer because its sharing is more targeted, personal, and urgent.
In this free webinar, Justine Jordan, Marketing Director at Litmus, and I will share insights gained from examining the forwards generated by more than 400,000 email sends. We’ll cover benchmarks for forward-to-open rates, discuss different email tactics for spurring email forwards, and share real-world examples of highly viral emails.
This webinar is ideal for email marketers and designers alike in need of inspiration for getting their emails shared—and how to properly measure viral success.
After registering, you will receive a confirmation email containing information about joining the webinar. The webinar will be recorded and all registrants will receive the slides and recording post-event.
“How to Make Your Emails Go Viral”
July 14, 2015 at 11am ET (8am PT)
With Chad White, Research Director, Litmus (@chadswhite)
And Justine Jordan, Marketing Director, Litmus (@meladorri)
>> Register for this Free Webinar
Shopping Cart Abandonment Gamesmanship
Posted on July 6, 2015
Consumers are smart. If you play games, they will figure them out, exploit them, and then tell their friends.
In this Internet Retailer article, Don Davis looks at the results of a Shop+ survey that shows that shoppers—especially millennials—are crafty deal-seekers. For instance, 47% of consumers ages 18-34, and 37% of all shoppers, intentionally leave items in an online shopping cart in hopes that the retailer will come back with a better offer.
I spoke with Don for that article, explaining why offering incentives in shopping cart abandonment emails is a bad practice:
“The biggest problems with including incentives in shopping cart abandonment emails is that they train customers to delay purchases and train them to be more price-sensitive,” I said. “The former causes you to lose sales to competitors, while the later causes you to give away margin needlessly.”
I recommend using cart abandonment emails as a service tool, rather than a promotional tool, in order to avoid teaching your customers bad habits that cost you money. For instance…
>> Read the full article on InternetRetailer.com
8 Keys to Making Your Emails Go Viral
Posted on June 23, 2015
“It’s the scatter shot of social versus that sniper bullet of the forward.” That’s how I described the difference between the reach-maximizing social share and the conversion-maximizing email forward in an interview with Elyse Dupré of Direct Marketing News about the findings of our Viral Email report.
We spoke at length about the report, which analyzed 400,000+ emails to uncover the secrets of email virality, and today Elyse shared her eight key takeaways for how to make your emails go viral:
- Start by taking a look at your email editorial calendar.
- Concentrate on subscribers’ hierarchy of needs.
- Know what kind of virality you’re hoping to achieve.
- Make it clear that you’re doing something special.
- Include a SWYN call-to-action button.
- Narrow down your audience.
- Keep your content simple.
- Know what types of email are most virality-prone.
>> Read the full article on DMNews.com
The Dangers of Not Regularly Reviewing Your Triggered Emails
Posted on June 19, 2015
Triggered emails have a reputation for being ‘set it and forget it” programs. Unfortunately, that’s just not true, and it’s becoming less and less true every day.
As we discuss in our recent “Designed for Success” webinar, there are two compelling reasons to regularly update your triggered emails: (1) quality assurance and (2) optimization.
Because email operates in a dynamic environment of email clients, browsers, and devices and because business goals and assets routinely change, you need to regularly review your emails to avoid:
- Broken links/redirects and old navigation links
- Out-of-date logo and branding
- Out-of-date messaging (benefits, options, etc.)
- Faulty trigger logic
- Broken rendering and functionality because of code support changes at ISPs
Optimization is always important, but it is particularly so right now with triggered emails because of the explosive trend of expanding single triggered emails into a series of emails. That means there’s now much more to test, optimize, and update, such as…
- The number of emails in the series
- The conditions in which the next email in the series is sent (or not sent)
- The timing of not only the first email in the series, but of all the subsequent ones
- The messaging in each email in the series and how they interact with each other
>> Read the entire post on Litmus.com
Welcome! Email Marketing Rules is your guide to understanding the best practices of this complex, often misunderstood channel as you craft the best executions for your brand. Every week, we’ll explore strategies and tactics, discuss tips and inspiration, and dig into industry news and trends.
Chad S. White
Head of Research
Oracle Digital Experience Agency
Author of Email Marketing Rules and nearly 4,000 articles about digital and email marketing
