Permission is Not Optional in Email Marketing
Permission is not an extra option, but a basic gadget in email marketing. Permission is a key component to gaining recipient trust, optimizing deliverability, and realizing ROI. This is practiced by all legitimate email marketers. But many aspiring email marketers, especially those with experience in print, television, radio, and direct mail, are reluctant to ask permission. They don’t realize that e-mail is different from the rest in that it is a personal medium, like a telephone. And the result of the decline of telemarketing is clear evidence of this bad practice.
Email marketing is not about sending email after email to a recipient, nor is it about the size of a list. Some get good results at first when they don’t ask permission. These types of marketers send email torrents to a list of email addresses collected at trade shows from attendees and white paper downloaders. But for most marketers, mediocre results are not the goal. When subscribers permit to send emails, you can see results such as higher response rates, better deliverability, and increased brand affinity and trust. It takes time to create a permission-based list and send appropriate messages to targeted readers. This list will get shorter day by day if it is an unsolicited list of email addresses. Simply put, permission helps you achieve better results and is the only way to build strong customer relationships through email.
Few marketers believe that their unauthorized programs are producing good results. But when they look at their open rate, click-through rate, and conversion rate, they can conclude that they could improve results by at least five times if they used a permission-based approach. Permission does not only mean that the subscriber agrees to receive company emails. It can be divided into explicit consent and implied consent. Express permission is what the subscriber provides when they fill out the subscription form or check the email permission box when filling out the registration form. Implicit permission is not actively granted but is the result of other actions, such as unchecking a previously checked email permission box. This practice is unhealthy and can affect the relationship with the client. So explicit permission is acceptable. Implied permission can also be expressed as a waiver.
In 2003, the United States passed the Business Email Act, also called CAN-SPAM. This law allows you to opt-out of marketing under certain conditions. Unsubscribe emails must include a working unsubscribe link. Commercial email must be marked as promotional email unless the recipient gives affirmative consent. This law has only legal criteria and does not encourage consent or best practices. Unsubscribing from emails instantly blacklists a business. This means that most of the money and time spent sending emails is wasted. In opt-out email marketing, there is a high chance that emails are sent to non-existent addresses or addresses that block messages.
Subscription email marketing comes in two types: single and double. In Single opt-in, a subscriber is automatically added after filling out a web form or sending an email request. In a dual subscription, also known as a confirmed subscription, an automated email is sent to the subscriber immediately after a request that the subscriber must respond to in order to confirm the subscription and be added to the mailing list.
Statistics and surveys have shown the benefits of using complementary email marketing. Instead of wasting resources on people who are not interested in the company’s services or products, a small fraction of those same resources can be effectively used to reach targeted customers.
Optimizing Holiday Email Marketing
The holiday email marketing season kicks into high gear with the onset of Halloween. Of course, now is not the time to develop a marketing program from scratch. But a few small tweaks can help increase deliverability by a few percent without having to switch to a completely new program. These fixes do not require a large investment of money or time.
Since they say that the first impression is the best impression, a very important aspect is to list the brand or company name as the sender and not an individual name or email address. The “from” string acts as a basis for readers to recognize and trust the sender. Therefore, it is better to use a brand name that is widely used by readers for recognition. Next comes the subject line. It also plays an important role in opening email. The subject of the message should be not only attractive, but also credible. There are many theme tools available on the Internet that can be of great use to you. The trick most people follow is to formulate the first twenty-eight characters with the most important information. As a rule, the first twenty-eight characters are of great importance in conveying the message to the buyer. Placing the brand name in the subject line helps make room for the important information, which is the core of the message, in the subject line. If an email is sent to a mobile phone, the brand name should be the first thing the reader sees. If there is a place, it is worth mentioning special offers.
The letter should contain a link to the full information posted on the site. The link should redirect the reader to the full article with a single click. The subscription and unsubscribe links should always work, and instructions should appear immediately. Failure to do so is a violation of the US Email Marketing Act. The email should also include the company name, address, and other contact information such as a phone number, a link to a contact website, and an email address. It is good to have links to other offers and services provided by the company. Effects from previous offerings and customer testimonials can also be included to draw attention.
An email should not look like a print ad with bright colors embedded with information. While most HTML designers love to create these types of emails, the other fact is that most readers will have the image blocking option enabled, which will prevent the image from loading and the recipient won’t be able to see any images. . message. Email should be broken into manageable chunks. One large image should be replaced with many smaller images, and important information should be placed in text boxes that will be displayed whether images are displayed or not. Alt tags can also be used to describe images or the sentences they contain. This information will be displayed if images are not displayed.
Coding and spelling errors are a big no-no. If there is, then this is a sure sign of a spammer. You can never forgive the misspelling of a brand or company name. It’s a good habit to have all email checked by a professional before it’s sent to readers. Links should be tested individually to see if they work or not. While this is a tedious task, it will prevent reader annoyance and loss of sales. Past results should not be relied upon and regular checks should be carried out continuously.
The most important thing is to be aware of the competing company and the offers it offers. Try to develop the best offer and test it on reader samples before committing. Since they all offer free shipping during the holiday season, try to come up with something that will make you stand out from the rest.
Monitor Feedback to Boost Deliverability
It’s a fact that monitoring or managing customer reviews is not among the top 10 priorities for email marketers to improve the deliverability of their emails. This is a really frustrating situation, as comment management allows email marketers to improve the most important quality of email, which is to provide a direct interface between customers and email marketers.
When a factor as important as this disables readers and makes your program vulnerable to threats like spam reports and leaves you with a list containing many invalid or dead addresses. Many email marketers forget that relevancy is critical to improving email deliverability, resulting in a missed opportunity to make email campaigns more relevant and relevant to subscribers.
Even if some email marketers are under the impression that they are doing an excellent job of receiving and responding to people’s comments and questions through means such as letters, phones, or websites. Email marketers sometimes overlook the few customers who put “do not reply” to their emails in the subject line because no one will see it or the email is being carefully monitored.
While the very thought of ending customer contact brings pain to the heart of many email marketers, there are some good email marketers who take both negative and positive feedback right and try to improve. It has been observed that a good email program always asks for feedback at the end with a link to a feedback or customer service form, or provides customer support phone numbers. Again, good managers tend to pay attention to feedback, no matter what channel it comes from.
Even though the email clearly says not to reply, it is a fact that some customers will always reply to an email. So restricting customers to only certain channels kills the relationship you’re trying to build in the long run. It also affects deliverability. Think of it this way: when you try to shut down a communication channel, you lose a channel for customer information that could help you improve your efforts.
Effective feedback management does not stop there. simply responding to customer comments, complaints, or questions you receive in response to your email, purchases, or any other interaction you have had with a customer. But effective feedback management involves extra effort and extra effort to reach customers who solicit feedback and surveys from your customers through offers, newsletters, web links, and email transactions.
When you search for testimonials or customer reviews, you get valuable information that can not only help you reach your market goals, but at the same time also address emails that cause customer dissatisfaction and affect your delivery ability. But you need to be careful not to overdo it with customer surveys. Rather, email marketers should pay attention to the 4 main touchpoints where they are most likely to receive valuable feedback. First, when customers subscribe to your email program. The second point of interaction is two or three months later when you need to contact your client to draw their attention to the email program, which may have been different from the email program. The third and very important moment of interaction is when customers contact you with complaints, regardless of the means of interaction. The fourth point of interaction is when customers contact you due to a sudden increase in spam emails; You can use this as an opportunity to survey clients.
Last but not least, an effective key to better feedback management is collaborating across departments in your company to share data and improve your email program overall.
Mistakes Made In Email Opt-In Usability
The reader needs the motivation to subscribe to emails from the company. This is the first step towards increasing the speed of receiving e-mail. The site should show the benefits of the subscription. The front page has simple, nondescript blocks that say “Subscribe to the company’s newsletter” and nothing more. There is no reason why a user should register if he does not already find the content of the website interesting. Many agree that content should be basic. But how fundamental is the question? Lonely log boxes are a big no-no. There should be at least one short promotional line that provides a specific benefit that motivates the reader to fill in the field with their email address and click the Register button. The advertising theme should answer questions such as “Why should the reader subscribe to the newsletter?”, “What solutions does the newsletter offer?” and “Is the newsletter focused and specific, concentrating on the needs of the reader?”
The same method will be used with the type of words and language used in the promotional text, or better yet, the entire website. Links should be clear and should not contain empty, vague, or general topics. The content should be able to solve the problem the reader hopes to solve. Readers should be offered back issues and samples to give them a good idea of what to expect from future newsletters they will receive.
Once a reader signs up, many of them will get a big “nothing”. They get great blackness and deathly silence. The subscriber wants something to happen in his mailbox immediately. So it’s a good idea to send a welcome email right away, which could include the latest newsletter or samples of the best newsletters. Try to include any special email offers. At the end of the message, tell them that they will be expecting such great deals and newsletter soon. A new subscriber should feel that he has joined the club and has already received some benefit. You should feel that the registration process is worth it. The welcome email also does the job of email verification, which checks the validity of the email address.
On the one hand, there are people who hardly have motivating information on the site, and on the other hand, there are people who have too much information on the site. Information is not organized and users are overwhelmed with myriad options. If a company has too many things to offer, it should narrow them down by grouping them into categories. Based on these categories, newsletters should also be sent. Newsletters must have specific content and any new material posted on the website must be linked and nothing more.
The last thing that scares a subscriber away is asking too many questions. On the registration page, they are only asked to provide an email address. They then link to the settings page, and then another twenty pages. This is truly a missed opportunity. It’s best to keep it simple and concise at first, asking for information such as first name, last name, and email address. Then send them a confirmation email where they can click on a link to select. Marketers need to know where to draw the line. A box that only asks for an email address is a great way to avoid getting subscriptions.
Making the Year End Email Marketing Review
At the end of the year, everyone should look back at their email marketing efforts to see how successful their program was and, if it wasn’t as successful as they hoped, what steps need to be taken to make the program a success.
The main points to be looked upon are:
- Key performance metrics
The first step in the annual review process is to record the annual outcome of the newsletter or campaign in a spreadsheet. All important statistics such as clicks, referrals, complaints, unsubscribes, bounces, spam, etc. should be included in the spreadsheet. Once the results are collected, they should be used to calculate the overall averages. Thus, for each metric, the best and worst message can be calculated. In addition to standard metrics such as clicks, open rates, and bounce rates, corporate newsletter publishers also need to look for the metrics best suited to meet the company’s goals and objectives. The main metrics to consider depending on your goals are Open Rate, Click To Open Rate, Click Through Rate, Delivery Rate, Bounce Rate, Referral Rate, Unsubscribe Rate, Spam Complaints, Net Followers, Follower Retention, Unique Clicks , unique clicks. by certain backlinks, website actions, orders, downloads, transactions, total revenue, conversion rate, average order size and average cost per email.
- Content
The content of the actual messages must be analyzed. Every aspect should be relevant and should also include creativity. The style, tone, and length of the subject line should be reviewed. It is very important to include the name of the company or brand in the subject line or be easily recognized by the reader, otherwise the letter will end up in the spam folder. If the email format is constantly changing, you should compare samples to see which is more effective. If personalized emails were sent, look at the results to see if the attempt was successful.
- Recipient feedbacks, web site analytics and surveys
You can create an email account to receive negative and positive reviews, which can be viewed at the end of the year. If the number of comments received is insufficient, the comment procedure should be simplified. Another problem may be that you are not creating an attractive personality that makes subscribers respond. Reader polls help find clues for next year’s work. Analyzing site statistics also helps a lot. If there are articles on the site, find out which of them interest readers the most. If the website sells products, look for product categories that are visited the most and generate the most revenue and orders. Also think about the offers that grab the attention of subscribers the most.
- And finally comparison between internal and external benchmarks
Co-marketers may share information in an organization that produces more than one campaign or newsletter. It helps to compare key indicators. A company’s performance can be compared to industry averages to see if a program is going according to plan or needs immediate attention.
After the internal audit has been done and the review has been completed, it is now time to make an improvement plan for the future, which should include:
- Analysis and reporting
- Testing
- Creativity
- Maintenance
- List building
- Personalization and segmentation
How to Optimize Email Opt-In Pages?
Optimizing email signup pages is one of the most important tasks and also one of the most overlooked tasks. The way subscription forms and pages are presented determines the quality of the list, the rate of growth, and the expectations of the subscriber, which in turn helps the email experience. The first step to optimization is getting people to fill out the registration page. Right after that, you design the page layout and the registration form.
Getting one to come to the site is another matter. But once they get to the website, they need to be lured into signing up by getting them to the signup page. First of all, the path to the registration page should be simpler and clearer. Links to the registration page or form should be included on the main page and even on other pages. Ad units should appear in the sidebars. The visitor does not need to search whether the website offers email newsletters or not. Links to the navigation area should send a clear message. Non-obvious terms and names should not be used. Words like Email Newsletter, Newsletter, or eNewsletter are very appropriate.
Since the goal of the subscription page is to convert as many readers as it converts subscribers, the design, copy, and layout of the subscription page should be similar to the landing page. The page should be designed in such a way that the form, text, and images reflect security, value, and trust. Links to samples should be included that can give an idea of the quality of the email that will be received upon registration. A small screenshot of the email screen is optional, but also helpful. Feedback from readers of electronic publications may be included in abstract format. Feedback content can be text or images.
In today’s world, everything has a price. So when a subscriber provides their valuable email address, they are certainly looking for something in return. This is why images and text should be included on the signup page, which conveys the core value of the emails you send. Subscribers can receive “special offers by email only”. Any regular encouragement is very helpful. Whether it’s “$2 off your next purchase” or “free report,” even discounts can boost conversions.
Special care should be taken when writing a brief email policy next to the submit button. In the end, there should be a link to the company’s detailed privacy policy. The frequency, format, and content of emails should be clarified, and the registration process confirmed with a welcome email.
You should also take into account some details of the subscription page. It is necessary to maintain an appropriate balance of information that is collected through the subscription form or page. You also shouldn’t ask for too much information; also, don’t ask for very little information. The future must be planned from the very beginning. Asking for just an email address is very fast; the information needed to deliver the email will be lost. Information that is not required for email delivery, segmentation, or personalization should be avoided. If there are too many fields, the less important ones should be marked as optional. To check for syntax errors, a script must be included for this purpose. Two fields must be present to enter an email address twice. This reduces the risk of entering an incorrect email address. The minimum form fields that must be included in the form include first name, last name, email address, and preferred format. An optional form field can be based on an optional email address, frequency, preferences, and demographics.
How to Make the Subscription Process Easier?
In the email world, there is a lot of competition for a subscriber’s attention. To be distinguished from the rest of the mess, communication must be made easy for the recipient. People are always drawn to things that are easy and far from things that are difficult to do. Thanks to this distinctive feature, services, and products such as Google AdWords, Turbo Tax, etc., have gained popularity all over the world.
As the saying goes, easy to say but hard to do, so you need to make it easy for customers and subscribers. Sometimes what is easy for one group of clients may not be easy for others. This is especially true for new clients.
The first step to making things easier is to add a simple email address, link, or signup form field in a promotional email or newsletter. In addition, this information should be placed on all pages of the site. The web version of HTML emails should be provided. It’s helpful to include a “Send to a Friend” link or feature in every message. Subscribers should be able to take action despite images being blocked. Each submits button should be labeled with an action to take, such as “buy now”, “subscribe here”, etc.
If any of these features are missing, consider simplifying email management and content access.
Email Management
Subscription should be made easy by working with email IDs, links, and a registration form, and placing this information on every page. Every email should have a link to subscribe to attract readers, especially those who received the message from a friend. To subscribe, the steps should be minimal. According to the survey, marketers who reduced signup steps from 9 to 3 saw a 300% increase in signups. More personal information needs to be collected from the subscriber to send more relevant emails. It also helps to maintain the email list efficiently. But email marketers need to know where to draw the line, as too much information can turn off a subscriber, especially someone who hasn’t signed up yet but is about to. A separate page may contain a subscription form to collect relevant information. Important fields in the form should be marked with an asterisk, and the rest of the extra fields should be left to the subscriber. It should be easy to set and update customer content preferences. The password can be resolved along with the inclusion of a link to reset the password if it has been forgotten. These links must be visible on the web page and in the email. Email should have software that provides an “Email to a Friend” option and should be simpler than the forwarding feature.
The email should stand out from the rest of the emails. The sender should be easily recognizable, and the subject of the message should be attractive. Emails should provide conditions for easy completion of actions. They must be both text-based and HTML-based. Include a link to the web version of the email so you can view more visual information. Emails should be easy to print; otherwise, a printed version of the email must be provided.
It is very important to check the operation of each of the links, including the unsubscribe link. Clicking on a link should take the reader directly to a web page, image, or file. It is very tiring for subscribers to search for the desired content. Another important point that most marketers forget about is to make unsubscribing easier. This strengthens the trust of subscribers. You can get more out of the unsubscribe process by enabling various options such as changing the address or changing the email frequency.
When all these points will be pondered upon, you will be certainly surprised with the subscription turn out.
How to Expand Your Email Program?
A business needs to diversify and expand to survive. Admittedly, growing emails is a tough task, especially if you’re showing your subscribers emails on topics other than the ones they originally chose. A subscription permits you to send you an email when you subscribe and register on your website. You might think that just another email about a new product or promotional brochure won’t hurt, but will instead improve your marketing and email program and, in turn, your business. You would like to get the most out of your subscriber database by getting the most out of your membership acquisition costs. But this is not as easy as it seems, as it can annoy current subscribers so much that they will not subscribe to new information. You can get a flood of unsubscribe requests, clicks, or just plain indifference.
Interest cannot be exchanged with permission. You should not assume that you have permission to send spam. There is a moment when the goals of the email program match the preferences and expectations of the subscriber. Instead of increasing the frequency of letters, the focus should be on improving the quality of letters so that each letter is valuable to customers. Moving from a bi-weekly newsletter to a weekly newsletter means content needs to be twice as effective. Content should be not only effective but also relevant. Relevant content is the key to targeted marketing. Today’s emails need to include more specialized messages to get the most out of your customer database.
Interests cannot be exchanged with permission. You should not assume that you have permission to send spam. There comes a point when the goals of the mailer match the preferences and expectations of the subscriber. Instead of increasing the frequency of emails, you should focus on improving the quality of your emails so that each email is valuable to your customers. Moving from a bi-weekly newsletter to a weekly newsletter means the content has to be twice as effective. Content should be not only effective but also relevant. Relevant content is the key to targeted marketing. Today’s emails should include more specialized messages to get the most out of your customer database.
Emails should always begin with a subject in the subscriber’s chosen message category. Always include a link to register, which is easily located. Many marketers don’t realize the value of transactional messages. If buyers are unable to sign up for the email program upon purchase, the transactional email can be sent to them to confirm the product purchase and also to promote the company newsletter.
Since new subscribers are very eager, this enthusiasm should be emphasized in the welcome email, which should also include other offers that were not selected at the time of subscription. The information should be concise and the benefits should be focused. Include a link to the subscriber settings page where you can change your enrollment options. It’s a good idea to create a tool where you can email an article to your friend. If the information is really interesting, there will be a chain of subscribers.
Sample tasks can do wonders for new clients if used correctly; otherwise, they will end up in the spam folder. The sample can be tested first on recent buyers or current subscribers who have not responded to emails in a certain period. Please make it clear at the top that this email is just a sample and that the recipient will continue to receive it if they sign up to receive it.
Of course, diversifying and diversifying your email helps grow your email program and business. Success can only be achieved when subscribers have the freedom to manage their mailboxes. Use the channel to send emails that subscribers have permitted.
How Subject Lines Resembling Spam Hinder Deliverability?
A lot depends on what you put in the subject line when you send your marketing email. This can make or break your email marketing campaign. Recipients are fed up with receiving emails like “download this software for free”, “upgrade for free”, or “RE: some software”. Now, even an email marketer finds it difficult to determine which emails are sent by a legitimate software marketer based on the subject line of how someone might expect recipients to guess. And when recipients can’t identify them, they think it’s spam. They will simply send the message to the trash and even report it as spam or abandon the email program.
No matter what action they may take, you will have delivery issues. You should never take this for granted when you win the favor of subscribers. There have been countless cases where marketers, despite not being spammers, have been mistaken for spammers and faced dire consequences. This is a warning to anyone active in email marketing, especially those in healthcare, financial services, technology, and luxury goods.
The best defense against misidentification is the subject line, which means you’ll have to work hard and be creative to outsmart the spammers. The subject line should not only be catchy, but also short, informative, and reassure recipients that the email is from a trusted source.
The best thing you can do is stay awake and be aware of the spammers around you. It should be noted that spammers often use key events to launch their spam campaigns, such as product launches, national disasters, holidays, and news events, to entice recipients to open their emails.
The release of the new Microsoft Vista operating system can be seen as a perfect example of all the spammers trying to take advantage of its release and spamming everyone via email with Vista promotions. Now, because of this, the real seller can become guilty. If a real seller tries to advertise the same product through legitimate means, recipients who think the email also comes from spammers will simply send it as spam. The next morning, the email marketer wakes up to nothing but countless spam complaints, resulting in emails from that particular email marketer being blocked. What is the reason for this? This was not due to improper content filtering, but because recipients were unable to distinguish legitimate emails from spam. The email marketer in this case lost both an excellent reputation and good subscribers. Therefore, you need to be aware of the importance of a good email subject line and not pay a high price for the loss of reputation and customers.
To avoid these traps, keep an eye out for alerts and reports generated by anti-virus and anti-spam companies that monitor and report virus and spam outbreaks associated with specific events. The good thing about these reports is that they also include spam messages with subject lines to help you record the keywords and phrases that spammers have used and thus avoid them in your emails. Also, be careful and make sure your email marketing program doesn’t coincide with key events or product launches, and better stay away during this period. It’s also a good idea to check your inbox and the spam folder to see which subject lines spammers are using, and then stay away from the ones in your emails. Also, make sure the product, company, and name of the newsletter appear clearly in the subject line to reassure recipients it’s from a trusted source.
How Deliverability is damaged?
How many times have professionals said that mailers should adopt best practices to improve their programs, but marketers ignore this every time and make the same mistake. They end up with terrible results and blame ISPs for their strict spam filtering policies.
One of the reasons why emails cannot be delivered is due to failed authentication checks. This is the main reason marketers need to keep careful records of authentications to make it easier for ISPs to identify genuine senders and use reputation data to make delivery decisions. More destructive is an incorrect or broken registry, which can be even more destructive than no registry at all. For example, consider the case where an IP address and a sender are identified by authentication, and when that authentication fails, a message is sent saying “an email was not sent by me” and therefore the message is not delivered.
Another thing that interferes with the delivery of marketing emails is the use of an unrecognizable sender address. Recipients usually decide what to do with an email after reading the sender’s address; otherwise, the email will most likely be marked as spam or deleted immediately. Therefore, the more you try to hide your identity, the more devastating the results will be.
One way a good email marketing campaign self-destructs is to use subject lines that appear to be spam or spam on their own. The subject line is the next most important thing after the sender line for a successful email marketing campaign.
Another important point that most marketers ignore when sending marketing emails is checking the list of bad or invalid email addresses. A list full of bad or invalid addresses creates a bad reputation with an ISP, increasing the likelihood of messages being blocked. Regularly removing invalid addresses from your list improves the situation. Handling unsubscribe requests and responding immediately to spam complaints are also very helpful.
What could be the next downside to a good email marketing campaign? You are creating excessive complaints. If you accumulate a lot of complaints from recipients, this again affects your reputation with the ISP and they use this as a major factor to stop your emails. To reduce this, immediately delete the addresses associated with any spam complaints you receive. Not only that, go one step further to find out how these addresses made it to your list and what they have in common to improve your programs and reduce complaints.
Sending unwanted emails is not everyone’s freedom. Nobody would like to see junk emails in their inbox for no reason. ISPs judge a sender’s reputation by knowing how the sender obtained the recipient’s email address, such as whether they asked for your permission or simply obtained it by spamming.
Marketers tend to clutter their emails with irrelevant text and images that recipients may not want to see. Always ask the subscriber about their choice when choosing the type of content you want to receive, and do your best by asking for everything you can do to meet their requirements.
Some of the points discussed above are just one of the many measures that email marketers can take to prevent damage to the delivery of their emails.