Email Marketing Basics

Introduction

This is how I would go review your email marketing to improve your email open rates and conversion rates.

There are three things you need to look at closely.

Configuration

Email software clients (Outlook, Gmail etc.), use a number of methods for identifying spam. All will check whether the server sending the email uses the same domain as the return email address. If the sending domain is different the return email address, the client software will usually put the email in the spam folder.

Because most businesses use systems to send bulk emails, then this is a common problem. It can be resolved using a number of different methods by which email clients can verify is a domain is authorised to send emails for given email address.

It is a technical change that requires some information being added to your email domain’s (i.e. “ecomevolve.co.uk”) DNS settings.

Measurement

It doesn’t matter how good you are at marketing, you never really know how well your emails perform unless you monitor what happens after they are sent.

To do this properly you need have visibility of the following:

1. The number of emails sent
2. The number of emails clicked on
3. The number of intermediate page landings (if this is necessary)
4. The number of payment page landings
5. The number of transactions completed
6. The value of transactions completed

Your email system should give you the figures for 1 and 2, but you will need Google Analytics to answer points 3 to 6.

You need access to both of these Google Analytics properties to make a start on this. This is very easy to configure, the Google Analytics Admin, just adds you as a user to the system.

Content optimisation

Once you have the ability to measure the performance of email, you have a lot of options moving forward.

To optimise you email marketing, there are three things you should focus on:

Targeting

You don’t want to avoid sending the same amil to everyone all of the time. Every time you send an email, you give people the opportunity to opt out. If you know what their specific interests are then use this knowledge to stop them being bombarded with information about things they aren’t interested in.

Personalising

Personalising emails improves response rates – “Hi Phil,” is a lot more engaging than “Hi”.

Testing

What you say in your email subject lines can have a substantial impact on clickthrough rates and conversion rates.

Experience has taught me that predicting how well any message will perform is impossible. The only way to know for sure is to a/b test different options.

Conclusion

There are quite a few more things you can do to improve your email marketing, but I would focus on the above to begin with. Unless you can measure the performance of your emails, then you are flying blind.