Tops and Flops in Email Marketing
Top: HTML
In the latest study by Mailjet, 38% of German marketers rated the HTML editor as the most frequently used tool for their email marketing - which is even higher than the global average. Even though programming and designing an email is much easier with a drag-and-drop editor, subsequent changes to the layout can lead to major problems: This is because the codes are usually not supported in the backend, which in turn can lead to incorrect displays in the various recipients' inboxes; for example, the mail provider Gmail does not support CSS tags in the header and footer. Designing exclusively in HTML therefore offers enormous advantages due to the flexibility of the format. Anyone who wants to program their emails in HTML in future is well advised to consult experts and developers, but can also acquire the necessary knowledge and tricks with the help of tools such as Code Academy.
Flop: Do not test design templates
With the increase in digital devices in everyday life, the flexibility of mailboxes is also increasing: emails are no longer only read on the usual computer screen, but also on smartphones or tablets. Even if marketing decision-makers are aware of this, emails without a so-called "responsive design" are a phenomenon that still occurs too frequently. Every mailing should be preceded by at least one comprehensive test run to ensure that all components are displayed correctly in the respective mailbox formats. This can either be done "manually" with a small mailing to test recipients in your own team, or carried out by special tools such as Litmus or Email on Acid. With manual tests, it is particularly important to ensure that all important email clients such as Gmail, Yahoo, Outlook, Hotmail or Apple Mail are included and that different display options are taken into account. A good example of this is emojis: they are recognized by many major email providers and displayed correctly even in the subject line, but not when using Outlook 2003. The habits of recipients when opening and reading their emails can be read very well in the course of various marketing campaigns and future content can be aligned accordingly.
Top: Personal touch
In France in particular, marketers rate personalization as their top tool for creating email campaigns with around 37%. In contrast, only just under a third of German colleagues use this feature for successful campaign design. In order to use personalization most effectively, it is important to segment recipients into specific groups: These smaller lists allow conclusions to be drawn about the recipients' usage behavior based on their mostly demographic aspects. And with success: according to a DMA study, sales generated by segmented emails increased by around 760 percent in 2013! Three basic factors are particularly suitable for segmentation: age, interests and use of the product or service. For example, customers who have visited plugins on the website can be summarized very well. In response, they can be written to in order to promote further integration of the product with customers. Marketers should always keep in mind the content that each group responds to and base their campaigns on these preferences.
Flop: Uniform content
At first glance, standardized e-mails are easy and quick to handle, but not very promising. E-commerce professionals such as Amazon or Gilt are already far ahead of this and are able to create personalized messages with individual content for each individual customer. Ultimately, this requires a special infrastructure and ties up a lot of resources, but it will become indispensable for your own future viability in online retail. If you want to take your first steps in email marketing, you should first divide up the campaigns using basic segmentation. Depending on how and in which direction the company develops, the list should be further divided into corresponding segments. If the segments exceed a certain upper limit due to steady growth, automated solutions can also be used to make further splits, which not only saves time but also costs on the bottom line.
Top: Tracking and optimization
Last year, US marketers used tracking and reporting tools around 10 times more frequently than German or French companies. Tracking as an analysis tool offers incredible potential for optimizing email campaigns: Customer reactions to different parts of the content can be understood much better and adjusted accordingly in new campaigns. Professional email service providers also automatically place tracking tags on the links in the campaigns and thus also make the recipients' interest in further content visible. If no automatic tracking tags are available, Google Analytics tools such as the URL builder can be used to manually mark the relevant links in order to measure and evaluate click rates. The role that emails play in the overall conversion process is also particularly important here: Does tracking perhaps reveal meaningful connections with other social media channels in order to convey a holistic picture of the brand, product or service?
Flop: Sporadic testing
Many marketers forego test mailings in favor of saving time and resources. But even small tests can achieve effective results. Some service providers even offer tools with which A/B tests can be carried out within a few minutes. These tests should be based on certain hypotheses that will later be used to optimize the campaign: Such as the hypothesis that certain target groups can be reached better at night than during the day.
Conclusion
Emails have adapted to the constantly evolving technological landscape far better than many other means of communication. However, this still presents hurdles and challenges for marketers to overcome. New ways of thinking, innovative tools and features help not only to increase the experience from campaign to campaign, but also to push the entire marketing program enormously to work smarter, not harder.
