EmailMarketing_Book_SI_030819

utomation and the rapid-fire advances that technology has
made in the realm of consumer interactions have made

Adata more vital than ever across all marketing formats, and

email marketing is no different. We’ve talked about data already in
this book, but after considering the other aspects of developing a
campaign, it’s important to look at it in a little more depth.

Increasingly, consumers demand as close as possible to a
one-on-one connection with the brands they engage with.
This is, of course, not practical; campaigns addressed to
just one person on a list of thousands of recipients would
be a waste of money as well as time, even if every single
one converted. But there are ways that innovations in
data analysis, automation, and more can give recipients a
personal touch while not requiring the mind-breaking work
of actually creating individual campaigns for each person
on the list.

THE FACTS ARE IN: SEGMENTATION
WORKS

Studies from the past year have demonstrated that
advanced segmentation comes with powerful rewards:
Campaign Monitor notes that marketers using more
specific segmentation see on average a 760% increase in
revenue. With constant demands for attention, segmented
campaigns allow marketers to cut through the noise and
offer consumers value-added communication, which leads
to more conversions.

44

Newer techniques include self-segmentation, which allows
subscribers to pre-select the kinds of emails they’re most
interested in. As an example, Penguin Random House
offers its subscribers the option to select the genres
they’re passionate about, in order to deliver emails to them
that are more relevant. Media sites like Buzzfeed allow
subscribers to opt-in for specific newsletters based on
their content preferences.
Behavioral segmentation is also on the rise and providing
a clear value both for marketers and consumers. Netflix,
Hulu, Amazon Prime Video, and more all take advantage
of the developing abilities to track user behavior across
a site and use the information that provides to offer up
suggestions for new series to watch or movies to check
out. These are capabilities that marketers can easily put
to use, tracking purchase history and consumer browsing
habits to target emails more accurately and get the word
out about particular products or services that those
consumers will be more likely to want and need.

45

If these new possibilities sound like a lot of work for
marketers, the rise of increased automation puts that
concern to bed easily. Within a few years of launching,
automation capabilities have revolutionized the planning
and deployment of email marketing campaigns; they make
it easy to use a little advance planning to keep in contact
with subscribers throughout the year and at any time of
the day or night.

By combining automation with data that you can collect
easily from your customers, it’s easy to set up campaigns
that run without the need for huge amounts of time-
consuming oversight; and as more data comes in, you can
tweak which recipients get which campaigns for maximum
effectiveness.

Behavioral triggered emails are becoming a much more
important aspect of the overall email marketing strategy
for brands of all sizes; what started as a trick to get
customers to complete an abandoned transaction is
becoming much more sophisticated and consumers are
responding. Welcome emails, reminders, and more can
all be set up in advance and through automation go out
to the subscribers they’re relevant to at the moment
they’re most relevant, increasing customer engagement
and maintaining a relationship that leads to more future
purchases.

46

WHERE TO START?

The most basic places to start with data strategies are at
the beginning; set up the framework, and the rest falls into
place easily. At first, you should establish a baseline set of
segments for your subscriber list to make choices from.
Allowing subscribers to self-identify can be a major benefit
in this so subscriber forms should have simple options to
categorize themselves. Some segments to consider as a
starting point include:

GEOGRAPHY

What’s relevant to someone in upstate New York is not
necessarily going to have the same resonance for someone
living in North Dakota, or someone living in southern
California. Separating recipients out to geographical
location enables you to market to them based on current
area events, weather, and their local needs and is vitally
important for companies that have brick-and-mortar
locations
47

AGE

● A 25-year-old man is necessarily going to have different
interests from a 50-year-old man, and the approach to
take with the two men will vary greatly. Age plays into
generational dynamics as well.

● Age also determines the best possible approach in
terms of tone and delivery; what will come across as
comfortable to one age group will seem inappropriate to
another or worse, fake.

PERSONA

● The things that are going on in a person’s life, in the
broad stokes, play a big role in their receptivity and what
will appeal to them.

● A single mother has different concerns from a career
woman with no children and this is true across all life
events and personal categories.

● Perspectives can vary greatly, and marketing approach
should vary just as much.

48

INTERESTS

● Knowing the interests of your recipients at least some
of them opens up opportunities to market products or
services to them that they may not otherwise consider.

● Interests help to granularize campaigns on a level that
feels more personal than mere demographic information
like age or geography.

HOUSEHOLD INCOME

● Buying power plays a major role in the decision to buy
any given item; what is affordable to someone who
makes $100,000/year can be unattainable for someone
making $50,000/year.

● Income segmentation allows marketers to offer relevant
items that are within a given customer’s price range,
tailoring promotions to what a recipient can afford.

● Income can also be a predictor of other factors that are
important to campaign planning like shopping frequency.

PURCHASE HISTORY

49

● Knowing what a given customer has bought in the past
can help tailor suggestions for future purchases.

● Comparative purchasing history is also a valuable tool; of
customers who bought product A, some may have also
liked product B and the rest might also like it, if they find
out about it.

BUYING FREQUENCY

● Knowing how often a subscriber makes purchases opens
up an opportunity to send timely, triggered emails to
remind them of your products or services at a good time.

● Customers frequently reward brands that keep track of
their habits by increased loyalty.

● Buying frequency also allows marketers to avoid sending
too many emails, to the extent that the subscriber
becomes alienated.

ENGAGEMENT LEVEL

● Engagement level plays strongly into brand reputation
with email providers, which is vital to maintaining the
ability to land in the inbox instead of the spam folder.

50

● Subscribers who are less engaged are more inclined to
delete or mark as spam emails they’re not interested in;
knowing their level of engagement allows marketers to
tone down the frequency and increase the relevancy of
future messages.

● Subscribers who are highly engaged respond positively
to “elite” rewards, increasing their lifetime value to the
brand.

● Overall, engagement level though a later factor in
segmentation can be a powerful modifier for planning
campaigns.

EDUCATION

● Education plays as powerful a role as many other
personality categories in buying habits; it should,
accordingly, play a role in campaign strategy.

● Current status as a student can inform factors from
budget and time to devote to purchases to willingness
to convert.

● Educational attainment also affects the approach that
should be taken; more or less formality, and the choice
of language that is most appropriate, can be strongly
affected by the level of education a customer has.

51

ENGAGEMENT WITH YOUR COMPETITION

● While a little trickier to get data on this factor, it can be a
very powerful tool for savvy marketers.

● Engagement with competition can inform additional
promotional offers, as well as buying frequency and
other metrics.

● Newer technology and consumer marketing have made
it easier than before to get the details marketers need to
know what level of engagement a consumer has with a
competitor’s brand.

Once you’ve got the initial segments established, you can
create emails that automated systems send out based
on behavior, time of year, and other factors all while
you sit back and reap the rewards of little research and
analytics. Appealing to the right audience is half the battle
when it comes to a successful email marketing campaign;
designing appropriately and communicating effectively
open the door to a great interaction. With these details
settled, you’re almost ready to pull the trigger and launch
your campaign!

 

52



nce the planning, development, design and strategizing is
done, there is one element of the process left to go before

Oyou launch your campaign: you need to do one final check.

Quality assurance and testing are every bit as vital as every other
aspect of planning and developing an email campaign; before you
pull the trigger, you need to be sure everything is how it should be.

Quality assurance and testing can seem tedious, but
without it, it’s inevitable that mistakes will make it to the
final product and that will reflect poorly on your brand.
While there is no way to predict every single factor that
can possibly cause issues, there are some main areas to
look at, to be as confident as possible.

TESTING OR QA?

Testing is a part of quality assurance, but not all of quality
assurance is checking. Testing is a vital component of
making sure that your recipients get the best quality
message from you, and it’s made up of a few key
components:

● Ensuring that the email renders properly across
platforms

● Making sure all links work

● Checking that the email works both on desktop and
mobile

● Verifying that the email renders both on Android and iOS
devices

54

The most straightforward way to do testing manually
involves creating fake email addresses for multiple email
providers and sending the email to the “test” list to verify
each of the important aspects for the testing. This may
seem like an onerous task, but every email provider both
mobile and desktop has its own idiosyncrasies, and it’s
important to make sure to account for all of them before
your email goes live.

THERE IS AN EASIER WAY…

If sending emails to a test list every time you want to
check things over seems like too much work, there are
other options available. Several email service providers
have functions within their platforms that allow you to
select different email platforms (both mobile and desktop)
and render your design and code for those platforms. Of
course, this doesn’t get rid of the need to test links, and
it can cost extra but it solves the problem of multiple
platforms readily. Alternatively, third party services like
Litmus and Return Path provide similar platform testing
55

functions for a monthly fee, leaving you with just link tests
to do manually.

DON’T FORGET YOUR A/BS

Another type of testing to do before a campaign goes fully
live is A/B testing; of course, many marketers put A/B
testing earlier in the development phase, rather than at the
end, but if there are for example multiple creative ideas to
utilize, it’s an excellent way to narrow down what works
and what does not. Any element of the design and copy
can come into play in A/B testing, from layout differences
to calls to action to subject lines and testing should be
done on as many elements as possible to determine the
best customer response. For this you will need more than
just a handful of email addresses; but A/B testing is fairly
easy to do, as long as everything is in order and it can save
money on the campaign itself by eliminating elements of
the creative or content that just don’t perform as well. It’s
well worth doing at various stages before launch.

56

QUALITY ASSURANCE IS MORE THAN
JUST TESTING

QA is not just testing but is the last troubleshooting step
to take before you launch the campaign. It’s like a pilot’s
checklist: it’s a final step-by-step look at everything in
the campaign to make sure you’ve got it set up just right
before you take off. In addition to testing that links work,
that the email renders properly, and that it isn’t rejected as
spam and all the design elements look the way you want
them to there is a final checklist of miscellaneous items to
go over before you send:

● Legalities: all marketing emails must contain a valid
unsubscribe link that is readily visible and easy to access,
in order to comply with the CAN-SPAM act as well as
the more recent EU GDPR restrictions. They must also
include the company’s name and address.

57

● Valid/correct identification: this is becoming more
important than ever with the launch of Google’s new
authentication systems, rolling out this year. Your emails
must have a correct “from” field as well as a reply-to
address.

● Google has recently begun the launch of a new system
that verifies and authenticates sender information, in an
effort to fight back against spoofing and other scams;
brands will be able to include their logo in the “sender”
field, and Google will provide assurance that the sender
has been verified. Therefore, it is extremely important
to make sure the information you provide in this field is
correct.

● Spelling and grammar check: few things will turn a
recipient off to whatever you have to say faster than
obvious spelling or grammar issues in your content;
they come across as unprofessional and can even set off
consumer’s mental alarms for spam and scams. One last
read-through can prevent a lot of problems

● Email rendering: the email you send could be brilliant,
but if it doesn’t render properly in as many contexts as
possible, it will fail. Testing takes care of a lot of this,
but it’s also a good idea to check the email with images
turned off, to make sure that the content doesn’t turn
into nonsense in the alternate format. This is also an

58

opportunity to make sure all tags are properly coded and
doing what they should.
● Check your links again: the whole point of an email
campaign is to get recipients to take some form of
action; if broken links prevent them from completing
that action, all the work to develop good content and
design a beautiful creative will have been for nothing.
● Complete the experience: make sure that when
recipients click on links, the landing page they go to
renders properly and quickly. Studies show that if a
landing page doesn’t load in a very short interval of time
(usually between 3 and 7 seconds), people will abandon
it. Once again: don’t put all that work into a gorgeous
campaign with great content, just to lose your customers
right at the point of them taking action.

Once you’ve gone through the checklist, you can be
confident that you’ve tackled the most common issues
that could possibly arise, and your campaign is ready for
launch! Cross your fingers and keep your hopes for the
results high.
59

 

s mentioned earlier in the book, every email marketing
campaign should have a specific, measurable goal right from

Athe beginning. Once the campaign is launched, the next step

becomes, obviously, seeing how it performs. There are a number of
methods for measuring the success of your campaign, depending
on what your particular goal for that campaign is. It’s important to
look at the categories and general data, to know what to look for
and we’ll also consider scenarios for how these measurements and
metrics can inform just how successful the campaign was at reaching
the goal you’ve set.

One of the major innovations to come to email marketing
as an industry has been the development of behavioral
metrics and the ability to collect information on them.
Initial attempts at email marketing were shots in the dark:
an individual or company would simply send out emails
and hope for the best. Of course, gradually more and more
aspects of response became available, and there are now
multiple ways to analyze how your recipients interact
with your email campaign. There are several very common
metrics to look at:
61

● Delivery rate: this is a straightforward metric; it is the
rate of emails that actually get delivered to the inboxes
of recipients, compared to the number of emails sent.

● This is important in part to help keep track of your
reputation with email providers; lower delivery rates can
indicate that certain providers have your sender address
marked as spam.

● Another possibility is that you have bad information in
your email list another issue that needs to be addressed
quickly.

● Open rate: The total number of times that an email is
opened/viewed. Not as good as the unique open rate
(see below) as it counts every single time someone
opens the email even if it’s the same person 20 times.

● When combined with the unique open rate and
compared, this can provide valuable insights as to
engagement.

● Unique open rate: more telling than the total open
rate, the unique opens only count the first time each
subscriber opens your email.

● Click rate: The total number of times that any of the 62
links in your email are clicked.

● Does not distinguish between one person clicking every
link five times versus five people clicking only the CTA.

● Can also be combined with “unique clicks,” which counts
the first time each link is clicked by each subscriber, to
provide some insights regarding layout and experience.

● Click-to-open rate: By far a more telling metric than
the click rates or even unique clicks; click-to-open (also
known as clicks per open) measures the percentage
of individuals that clicked on a link in the email as
compared to the individual or unique number of opens.
In other words, how many times a single person not only
opened the email but clicked the link.

● Unsubscribe rate: Simply put, the number of people who
responded to your email message to them by opting
out of their subscription. It isn’t a major area of concern
after all, there is a steady ebb and flow of subscribers
for a variety of reasons that have nothing to do with
the campaign itself but larger numbers, or consistent
patterns of people unsubscribing, can indicate an issue
with the campaign or strategies.

● “Hard” bounce rate: A “hard” bounce is an email that is
undeliverable, generally because of a bad email address
(one that doesn’t exist because it’s fake, or because the
subscriber accidentally included a typo). Most email

63

service providers automatically delete those email
addresses from the list, meaning that it won’t come up
as an issue with that particular email address again.

● “Soft” bounce rate: As opposed to a “hard” bounce, a
soft bounce indicates a temporary type of delivery issue:
a full inbox, a technical issue from the end of the email
provider, or other similar problems. Generally, email
marketing providers will attempt to resend the email to
these recipients after a specified time frame, based on
server settings.

● Subscribe rate: certain email service providers provide a
metric showing that certain email platforms or internet
service providers (ISPs) have blocked your emails. This
can help in troubleshooting to make sure that any
problems are addressed; after all, the last thing you want
is for your emails to become permanently undeliverable
to a wide swath of your subscribers.

64

WHAT DOES IT ALL MEAN?

Once you know what the most common metrics are, the
question remains: why are these factors relevant? How

CAN YOU USE THEM TO GAUGE THE
SUCCESS OF YOUR CAMPAIGN?

Of course, some of the metrics provide straightforward
answers: unique opens and open rates tell you who
is opening your emails, which is an obvious factor for
success. But cumulatively, the metrics tell a much larger,
more detailed story that help you understand how close
you’ve come to the specific, measurable goal you set in the
beginning.

Here are some examples of the stories your metrics can
tell you:

● Open rates: how engaging your subject line is

● Click-to-open rates: how strong your call to action is
65

as well as how good the value proposition is from the
consumer perspective

● Top links clicked: while not always available, many
providers give this information; this tells you clearly
which part of the creative and content appealed the
most to recipients, as well as whether your call to action
is effective for example, if the most commonly clicked
links are not your CTA, you can fairly surmise that the
CTA isn’t compelling enough.

● Bounce rates: “hard” bounces can indicate faulty data
or “bad” lists, while “soft” bounces can indicate issues
with your coding or creative or servers that are making it
more difficult for the ISPs/email platforms to route your
emails to the inboxes you’re sending to.

In addition to these basic metrics, there are a whole host
of other possibilities available based on newer technology,
including heat maps (a function that follows recipients’
scrolling and navigation through the creative to identify
the areas where they spend the most time), geographic
data showing where on the map people are more likely or
less likely to be opening your emails and other behavioral
metrics.

Ultimately, the metrics that are most important to you will
depend on what your goal is; but as long as you’ve set a

66

goal that is specific and measurable, there is a metric that
will help you gauge the success of your campaign.

 

So having planned, developed, targeted, launched, and analyzed
your campaign, you’re excited for the next one. You’ve looked
at all the reports, and you have all the data to know which
aspects of your campaign stand out as the biggest drivers of success.
There is still one final step to take before going from your first
campaign to your next campaign, however: Analyze your data.

The ongoing success of email marketing strategies
relies almost completely on not just having the data to
know whether or not a given campaign was successful,
but why it was successful and what that can mean for
future campaigns. Looking at the numbers, listening
metaphorically to what your subscribers have to say,
will help you to engage with them better and plan
improvements to your future campaigns, which will ensure
more revenue and more growth.

Earlier, we discussed the way that a variety of factors
including time of day, length of subject lines, and more
can impact email performance, and the data you collect
on your campaign’s performance is a key way to learn
important things about your subscribers to help you
market to them more effectively. All the predictive
information in the world doesn’t amount to much
compared to actual response, after all.

Taking a deeper delve into your metrics, you can begin
to distinguish patterns that apply specifically to your

67

recipients, as opposed to broad strokes assumptions
about their behavior based on surveys and demographic
information. Here are some examples of things that you
can apply strategy to, given the right data and a little
thought:

● Best time of day to reach out

● Different demographic groups tend to read emails at
different points in the day, and there are many useful
projections done by studies of open rates as well as
consumer reporting; but your own reports will give you a
more definitive idea of not just what time of day people
are opening your emails and engaging with them, but
also when they just don’t seem to be willing to give their
attention.

● Best day of week for recipient responses

● We all know that there are some days that we merely
skim subject lines in our inboxes and some days when
with a little more free time we actually delve into the
emails we get.

● Reports on open rates based on day of the week, along
with click rates and unique clicks, can paint a portrait of
which days your subscribers are more willing to engage

68

with your emails, versus those days when they might not
be as attentive.

● Revenue per email

● A fairly straightforward metric that you can find through
the number of emails sent, delivered, opened, and the
click rates compared to conversions on the site.

● The basic formula is: revenue generated/ (email quantity
sent-number of bounces).

● Over time, this can provide valuable insights as to how
to grow your list, how to change your strategies to
increase the amount of spend that people are willing
to commit to, and which promotions drive the most
revenue.

● Which types of offers work the best

● In the broad strokes, it’s good in general to categorize
your campaigns, just to keep a basic picture of how
different offers perform; but you can also delve a little
deeper to get more intricate insights

● By analyzing the types of campaigns you send out
(BOGO, % off, newsletters and so on) compared

69

to unique open rates and click-to-open rates, you
can discover which types of promotional value your
audience responds to the most, as well as over time
discovering which they might be getting tired of.

● Which devices are your recipients using?

● It’s already well-known in the industry that the majority
of emails are opened on mobile devices, but it’s not as
easy to know which devices in particular your recipients
are opening your emails on until after they’ve opened
them.

● Knowing which devices your audience favors can help
in design efforts, as well as narrowing down the focus
when it comes to responsive design or the need to make
sure your emails are supported on the right platforms.
Of course, this information has to remain up-to-date,
but it can make future campaigns easier to plan and
develop.

● What format do your subscribers respond the best to?

● There are a wide variety of format options when it
comes to email, and the options are only increasing.
Long-range analysis of metrics from your campaigns can
give you important insights as to what your audience
likes and doesn’t like.

70

● Newer functions like animation, embedded video, and
interactive content may appeal more to certain groups
on your subscriber list than to others and accordingly,
you should plan campaigns that include or don’t include
those features to appeal to each group.

● Where are the “pain points”?

● Complaints can show you where you’re going wrong,
which is important information for obvious reasons.

● Other metrics like “heat maps” can illustrate things even
when subscribers don’t take the time to lodge a formal
complaint, illustrating where people spend more and
less time, what they seem to respond to and what leaves
them cold.

● Use data on those areas where consumers either
complain or don’t respond to an element to refine future
designs, copy, calls to action and more.

The process of understanding what your recipients want,
don’t want, need, and don’t need is an ongoing one and
of course, you can’t just stop everything to gather those
details and meditate on them before you ever launch
another campaign. Take the initial reports and act on the
most obvious observations and deploy you next campaign;
over time starting week-over-week and moving on to
monthly, quarterly, and annually you can form a portrait

71

of who your subscribers are and what they like. This will
in turn make it easier and easier to market to them and
provide them with the value they seek.
With the right data, the right design, proper planning,
quality content, and a little work, email marketing can
remain easy even as consumers increasingly change and
adapt to new technologies. Marketers can and should
adapt right alongside their audiences, and armed with
some best practices, it’s possible to do just that.

HAPPY

EMAILING!

72