Despite the sensational, attention-seeking claims that email, as a Content Marketing channel, is dead and in the grave, it isn’t. It really isn’t. There is a ton of research that proves email marketing is still a marketer’s gold mine.
Here are a few stats to consider:
- 91% of consumers check their email at least once a day (source: ExpressPigeon)
- When marketed through email, consumers spend 138% more than people who don’t receive email offers.
- 60% of marketers believe email marketing produces positive ROI (source: Marketing Sherpa)
- 66% of consumers have made a purchase online as a result of an email marketing message (Direct Marketing Association)
- On average, over 205 billion emails are sent per year and the average office worker receives 121 emails a day - they potentially spend 6.3 hours to check their personal and business messges. (Source: digital.com)
But here’s another one:
- On average, subscribers receive 416 commercial messages a month.
That means that inboxes are bursting at the seams and competition is rife. In order for our email marketing efforts to be effective, we have to craft emails that stand out from the crowd and deliver results. Like any other marketing asset, such as your website or landing pages, a good starting point is to ensure your emails are well optimised for performance.
What is Email Optimisation?
Essentially it is applying best practices to your email marketing initiatives or campaigns to improve email marketing results. Considering we use HubSpot for our email marketing, I am going to demonstrate using the newly introduced HubSpot Email Optimiser tool but you are welcome to apply the principles to emails set up in other providers too.
The Email Optimiser provides suggestions in four categories, namely:
- Sending
- Subject lines
- Body optimisations
- Deliverability
Each checkpoint is colour coded to help you quickly ascertain what has already been optimised (green), what you should review (yellow) and what still requires attention (red).
Optimising Emails for Sending
Each industry and offer will be different, but it is a good idea to schedule your emails for times and days where historically engagement has been highest.
The HubSpot Email Optimiser checks your scheduled day and time against your own data and makes suggestions based on your most engaging email sends. If you have too little data to draw any statistically significant results, HubSpot will offer advice in line with their overall customer base performance.
Subject Line Optimisation
64% of people say they open an email because of the subject line (source: SalesForce), so it’s an important aspect to consider. You’ll want to craft an email subject line that is compelling and concise. While the tool does not evaluate your actual subject line wording, it does check subject line length and alerts you should you be over the recommended maximum of 50 characters.
The second element the Optimiser evaluates is the presence of preview text. This is the snippet of text often shown alongside the subject line (or below in a mobile view) so it’s another spot to focus on in terms of encouraging your readers to open your email. Again, the tool does not check the copy itself, it merely reports on the presence (or non-presence) of it.
Optimising the Body of Your Email
When reviewing the body of your email, the HubSpot Email Optimiser looks at 6 points in particular.
These are:
- Possible spam score
- Shortened links
- Links
- Calls-to-Action
- Personalisation
- Imagery
Using certain words in your email copy may cause spam filters to sit up and pay attention (at worst, flag you as spam). Keep your spam score low to ensure that your email is safely delivered to your reader’s inbox.
Another potential spam trigger is the use of shortened links, such as bit.ly and the like. You can easily avoid this by using the proper URL as the link destination.
And on that note – it is a good idea to include links in your email that point to website content that can provide further reading or deeper insight on a particular subject.
Including a call-to-action is imperative for email conversion. Be sure that you have a strong call-to-action that compels readers to take action and convert on your offer.
An Experian Marketing Services study showed that personalised promotional mailings had 29% higher unique open rates and 41% higher unique click rates than their non-personalised counterparts. The HubSpot Email Optimiser checks for the availability of personalisation tokens and warns when they are missing.
Visual cues and images are always great in an email. In fact, we’re seeing more and more emails that incorporate not only static visuals but animated gifs too! Just take care that your marketing message is not wholly contained within the image as many email readers strip images or prompt readers to download images in order to see the entire email. Be sure that your message is still clear without images enabled.
Craft, Optimise, Then Send
With email marketing being one of the most cost-effective channels delivering a comparatively excellent return on investment, it is well worth the additional 10 minutes it takes to ensure your email is properly optimised before you push that send button!
Image is altered. photo credit: ginnerobot via photopin cc
