The Science of Email Marketing
The most important thing in improving the impact of your marketing emails is to know when to make changes to your emails as well as understanding what changes to make. You may think what you have written is masterful and one of the best pieces of literature ever composed but you have to understand that the writing of successful marketing emails sits somewhere between art and science, so while you may have some of the art down, the actual science may be escaping you. The truth is that a little extra thought about the contents of your marketing emails can and will increase your sales online in the long run.
It is for this reason, we have created a checklist for you to use when writing your marketing emails, to check some of the scientific ways to increase some of your sales. Use the guide below as you write your marketing emails, constantly asking yourself: “Why would my subscribers be interested in reading this?”. Only when your email answers positively to all the below is it ready to be sent to the inbox of your subscribers.
Follow the guide below and you will find that your emails are more successful and attract more sales.
1. What is the ultimate goal of your marketing email? Which of the below things am I trying to achieve with this email? Am I achieving them?
- Strengthen my relationships with my existing subscribers?
- Sell a product or service?
- Collect new subscribers by giving my readers content they’ll want to share?
- Offer my readers new and/or exclusive information?
- Drive traffic to my website?
Your marketing emails must have a point, a reason for being and they must have definite goals. If they have no real goal at all then they should not be sent out at all. Ideally, your marketing email should aim to do all of the above but then again even just doing one or two of the above will increase the exposure of your enterprise and can be considered successful marketing of your business.
2. What action do I want my readers to take? Have I offered them too many choices? Have I given them a reason to act this very second?
You must write a marketing email that gets its readers to do what you want. I bet you know exactly what you DON’T want … You don’t want a reader to take one look at your marketing email and delete it without pause.
Okay then, so you must also know what you DO want to happen. Most likely you want your readers to click a link … Tell them to do it then and really do not make your marketing e-mail any more difficult or complex than that. If you are sending out information regarding a promotion that you are offering, you can put an end-date on the promotion … that will get you readers acting now!
Also, your marketing email should not offer too many choices; ideally it should be about one subject and at the end, suggests to your readers that they should do one thing alone. Too much choice is highly detrimental and actually confuses your readers; a confused reader will most likely not buy anything from you.
3. Have I been sure to include my brand or company name in the “From” field of the marketing email or the Subject line?
Your marketing emails are not only marketing your website and your products & services … they are also marketing your brand and company, to increase awareness of it. You will not only be interested in selling your particular product or service, you will also be interested in people remembering the name of your company. That way, any customers who do not have access to the email that you have sent them may be able to find your website from memory. They may also be able to tell their friends about it.
Adding your company or brand name to the “from” or subject line is essential. This also makes it easier for the user to create a message filter to send your e-mail to a special place in their emails so that they can keep track of your messages.
4. Is my subject line concise, compelling and straightforward?
It has to be, because people attention spans are not that long and easily distracted. Certain studies show that people give around 51 seconds of their attention to emails, so the subject line must grab them, reel them in and convince them to read the rest of it. Make it exciting and enticing but do not bend the truth of what your are offering or make it too fantastical.
5. Have I asked my subscribers to whitelist me to make sure they get my e-mails?
Making sure that your users whitelist you is a very good idea. Your prospective clients may have email filtering in place which automatically deletes mail from unknown individuals; they may not even know that it is in place if someone else set it up for them. You should try to make the aware that they should whitelist you. If your subscribers enjoy and like the content you are driving them too then they should be happy to do this for you.
6. Does my first paragraph compel my readers to read the second? And the next?
Keeping people reading is so very important. Even though the studies tell us that the average person doesn’t spend more than about 51 seconds looking at a marketing email you can increase this by making sure that your text is compelling or exciting to the reader. With great text you can keep your readers reading for longer ; good writing is part skill and part talent. If you know someone with a knack for writing good copy then you should get them to write your marketing material. Just remember that marketing email writing should never be style over substance and to check their writing against this checklist !
7. Is my most important information “above the fold” in case readers don’t scroll
down?
Readers may not want to devote the effort to scrolling. That’s the truth and you can’t really expect it of them … They are doing you a service already by letting you into their email inbox and that is really very kind of them. There is a simple work-around to this though. Put your most important information up at the top of your e-mail so that it is read straight away. Then you needn’t ask any more favors.
8. Is everything linked that should be linked? Product names, images? Do all of the links work?
In your marketing email on the web, links are how you get people to go wherever you want. A link to your website, blog or a product page on your website is the main reason that you are promoting your website in this way. If you do not take the time to check that each and every link on your email and website work, then you may not discover a mistake that you have made and a link won’t work. Given that you are now advertising your company and brand, a mistake like this could mean that your readers may find that they can’t click on the link that you want them to. This will appears massively un-professional and could be disastrous to your marketing efforts.
9. If my message includes images, do I use the standard standard 60% to 40% text-to-image ratio or the “F” viewing pattern? Does it make sense to do otherwise?
It is text that is compelling and not really images. The emails you send out must have substance and this substance comes from the text you write and not from the images you add with HTML. Studies have shown that people read things in strange ways too. First, they pay a lot more attention to the top of the text than further down and they tend to scan the image in an F-shape…
If you can tweak your email so that important text is where you might theorize a reader would look first you will be giving yourself an advantage.
10. Have I been wise with my use of HTML when writing my marketing emails?
Generally the most efficient, simple and straightforward way to write your marketing emails is in plain text but you may also wish to use HTML formatting in your marketing emails. Using HTML allows you to provide nice, pretty formatting to your message… Using HTML gives you several more things to consider, however:
- Have I included a plain text version for subscribers reading on a mobile device or with images turned off?
- How does the HTML version look with images off?
- Have I included an ALT image tag on each graphic?
- When I choose to display the images, do they load correctly and quickly?
- Does the message render properly in Gmail, Outlook, Yahoo, iPhone, Hotmail and Apple Mail?
If you can do some research to see how your marketing e-mail appears in the mail clients of your readers then it is a very good idea to do so. Writing HTML emails do mean formatting headaches; you should stick to plain text if you can.
11. Do personalization fields fill in correctly?
You certainly don’t want your messages being address to “Dear {!first-name}” (or something like this); your readers will find this very impersonal. You should make sure that all the personalization fields in your email fill out correctly and you can check this by sending a test email to yourself.
12. What is this message’s spam score? Is there anything I should change to lower it?
Our recommended auto-responder, AWeber, provides a utility called SpamAssassin which assigns a spam score (0-10) to your e-mail message before you send it out. It will show you if your e-mail is safe to send (any score up to 5 is OK), how it decided what to score your email and what you can do to improve your message so that it does not end up, unread, in Spam folders around the globe. If you are using AWeber you should always check the spam score of your message before you send it out.
13. When is the best time to send this out? Are any days of the week or times of the day particularly appropriate for the content here?
Depending on the subject of your email and your intended readers, you must make sure that your email is reaching them at the right time. You wouldn’t want to send a business email to a business man on a Sunday morning, for example and you possible wouldn’t send out an email about recreational activities at 9 am on a Monday morning when the majority of people are just getting back to work after the weekend. You must find the time of day that is right for your marketing email and stick to it… There will always be those of your potential clients who do not follow the standard week … but the majority will, depending on your niche of course.
You may also want to consider the time zones around the world and find a time that best suits all of them allowing a few hours either way with. For example, if your plan to have your potential clients read their emails in the morning, pick a time to send the message so that even the latest time zone receives the message at, say 7am. Some people will get their emails in the middle of the night but statistics suggest that they will be asleep and will check their email in the morning. Also, you are not catering for ever time zone around the world but the ones that, in general, speak the same language as you as a rule, not an exception.
14. Have I proofread the email for spelling and grammar mistakes?
This is perhaps the most basic mistake anyone can make. If you send out a marketing email that contains spelling mistakes or other typographic errors then you can be pretty sure that it will not be taken seriously. It’s rare that people part with their money to finance operations that have not even the consideration for their customers to spell properly. Bad grammar and bad spelling is the biggest mistake you can make and it will hurt you. If you are at all unsure, it helps to get someone to read over it for you. They will quicky point out any mistakes that you may have made.
15. Is everything in order?
If it is, congratulations!; your marketing email is ready to send. If you’re not perfectly happy or if your email does not hit all the marks that it should, then it is time to make some changes. The extra time you spend on this is worth it if your marketing email is more professional in nature and attracts more customers.
Be sure to check your emails against this list in the future, maybe for your next few emails. In time and with a little further practice, you’ll find that you are making these changes on your own, automatically.
Suggested reading: “The Secrets to Promoting Your Website Online” by VodaHost web hosting – Contains further useful information on autoresponders and writing marketing emails.
