The 5 principles of successful email marketing

1. Sign-up best practice

Strategic email marketing continues to be one of the highest return on investment methods you have at your disposal. Yet the single biggest impact on email ROI comes from economies of scale. 85% of marketing cost is in the creation of your email. Therefore the primary objective of your email marketing programme initially should be to increase volume – get customers to opt-in and dissuade them from opting-out.

The sign-up process should be quick, simple and above all transparent. It’s also a good idea to employ the following best practice procedures:

• Put a sign-up box – or preferably two – above the fold on the homepage and throughout the site
• Spell out the benefits of signing-up clearly and concisely
• Disclose how frequently you will be emailing
• Offer a guarantee of privacy
• Show a subscription confirmation including examples of the types of emails the customer will receive
• Optimize the confirming page with immediate reasons to click
• Prompt the customer to add you to their address book

2. A Rich And Varied Inbox

A successful email marketing campaign means delivering highly relevant content to your target audience on a regular basis. Consumers are far more likely to respond to email marketing communications that are content rich. But of course, your content must always be relevant and fresh. This is where great copy and superb design work together, ensuring the recipient’s interest turns into clicks.

Email marketing copy should have a personality and a warm tone, be relevant and employ topical references to engage the recipient. At the same time, the design needs to guides the recipient’s eye to key messages and click points, utilising angled lines and graphics to encourage scrolling and eye-movement from one point to the next.

Red C’s email marketing services can help create you an email programme that recipients will welcome, utilising outstanding email design and copy to give you the edge in the inbox.

3. Determining frequency in email marketing

It’s a question that email marketing specialists ask themselves on a regular basis: how often should we email our customers? Our answer is simple: push frequency as high as you dare. You see really, the question is less about volume and frequency and more about value and relevance. If your email marketing campaign offers a rich and varied programme of activity that offers genuine value and enhancesyour customer’s brand experience, those customers will come to appreciate and even value your communications

4. Exploiting navigation in email marketing

It’s as true in email marketing as it is in direct mail. The more opportunities you give your recipients to respond, the more likely you are to hear from them. That’s why good navigation is the backbone of successful email marketing, accounting for anywhere between 30% and 50% of clicks. Utilising a navigation bar at the top of your email can generate a large number of click-throughs, by acting as a window on your website. You’ll often find these clicks convert better too.

5. Email marketing and regular analysis

One of the main benefits of an email marketing campaign is the data it generates. This is data that can be constantly tracked, analysed and reported on, giving you a comprehensive insight into campaign performance. It’ll help you evolve your email marketing strategy and set benchmarks. And of course, continuously improving campaign performance should be a permanent objective. However, the sheer volume of data produced, if not properly harvested, can seem daunting.

Red C’s email marketing services routinely test all elements of your email campaign, from subject lines, calls to action, layout and images, to the time of day or day of the week sent, personalization and body copy. We understand the importance of delivery, open and click-through rates, as well as post-click conversion rates. And we utilise heat map analysis to help clients understand exactly how a customer or prospect interacts with their email marketing campaign.

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