If your business is considering, or already practices email marketing, you’ll know how very small things can make a big difference to response rates and how users interact.

In a recent benchmarking report (December 2009), one of Australia’s leading email marketing agencies, Returnity, outlined some key findings from their experience over the year. Three of their top findings included the following:

• A short, sharp subject line of 30 characters or less generates a 24% better open rate than longer subject lines (50 characters or more) within the B2C sector.
• The only keyword to drive higher than average open rates was ‘exclusive’, with ‘free’, ‘win’, ‘$’ and ‘!’ all showing open rates lower than the benchmark.
• The ’stickiness’ of an email was directly proportional to the size of the list it was sent to, indicating that segmentation and content targeting are still the key drivers of high performance.

When it comes to email marketing, it’s very important to get it right first time. If not, you risk alienating your users and encouraging countless people to unsubscribe.

Here are a few important things to keep in mind:

• Promote your brand. The design of your email should look professional and it should match your website design and your brand. Make sure you engage a specialist agency such as Big Click Studios to design your email templates for you. Similarly, if your email clicks through to any landing pages, make sure the design of these pages is consistent also.
• Always be brief. People won’t read too much content in an email. Use headings, bullets and short sections of text. Include lots of links so that people can click through to your website if they are interested in finding out more. They won’t read it in the email.
• Don’t bore people. Only send an email if you have something relevant to say – or don’t send anything at all. Otherwise, when you do have something valuable, you may well be ignored.
• Segment your database. Make sure that you’re sending people information that’s specifically relevant to them. There’s no point sending a 16 year old boy information about walking frames – or sending an 80 year old grandmother information about upcoming hip hop gigs (unless she’s specifically requested the info, of course!). As Returnity’s findings indicate, this data segmentation is very important.
• Your subject line is very important. Avoid using words such as ‘free’ or ‘win’ or using exclamation marks or dollar signs in your subject line – as this might encourage email security systems to classify you as spam.
• Include privacy and unsubscribe information. Besides the fact that this is a legal requirement, you risk damaging your brand if you don’t provide users with the opportunity to unsubscribe from your email.
• Be personal. If you have a user’s name in your database, address them directly. This makes the email seem more targeted.
• Send when the timing’s right. Don’t send email during holidays (such as over Christmas or long weekends) when most people won’t be in front of their computers.
• Create clear calls to action. Always be very clear about what you want people to do. If the call to action is particularly important (such as entering a competition or downloading a document), enter it a few times in the email.
• Structure is important. Put the most important information at the top of your email – where it will immediately be viewed, and put less important information at the bottom. This will give users a chance to view the email in their email preview pane before necessarily opening it. If the offer or information is good, they might take further action.
• Review your statistics. On a regular basis, determine what’s working and what’s not. Don’t continue to blindly send out emails to your customers if you’re not getting any traction. If something does work (such as a special offer or a particular article) pay attention and ask yourself why it did work. If you’re not sure how to interpret email statistics, speak to the team at Big Click Studios. We can help.
• Encourage refer a friend. Give incentives for people to refer a friend (for instance – if they encourage a friend to sign up to your newsletter, they get an extra entry in a competition) so as to grow your database.
• Make it easy for subscribers to change their details. If someone changes their job, and changes their email address, it’s important that you give them a quick and easy option to update their details. Include a link on the bottom of your emails.
• Send at the right time. There has been considerable research done into the best times to send emails, and when people are most responsive. Typically, it’s agreed that the optimal time is on a Wednesday or Thursday.

Want help with your email marketing, or with email marketing design services? Contact us.