email marketing design for better conversions · email marketing design for better conversions...

EMAIL MARKETING DESIGN FOR

BETTER CONVERSIONS

DESIGNED TO CLICK!

Presented by: Andy Behr

EMAIL MARKETING

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Is it still relevant?

Marketers have ever-increasing options for messaging in today’s

world:

• Social Media Channels

• PPC campaigns

• SEO

• Blogging or guest blogging

With all of these options, is email marketing still relevant?

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EMAIL MARKETING

The answer is YES.

• 91% of consumers check their email at least once a day

• Email is also the most important activity on mobile devices among 18 – 44 year olds

• Email is nearly 40 times more effective at acquiring customers than Facebook and Twitter

combined

• In addition, emails prompt purchases at least three times that of social media, and the

average order is valued 17% higher

• In 2012, $1.5 billion was spent on email marketing, with an ROI of $40.56 for every dollar

spent (2011)

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Is it still relevant?

Americaneagle.com FORUM

EMAIL MARKETING

Like any marketing initiative, however, you succeed or fail based on your planning:

• Capturing subscribers

• Creating your message

• Delivering your message

• Building your landing pages

• Mobile-friendly emails

• Managing subscribers

• Test, measure and improve

• How Americaneagle.com can help!

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Plan your campaigns

EMAIL MARKETING

Your first challenge is getting subscribers:

• Most importantly, be visible!

• Design call-outs to stand out

• Clear & actionable sign-up boxes

• Placement of sign-up box

• Site headers

• Rail call-outs

• Site Footers

• Content-embedded sign-ups

• Pop-ups or pop-overs

• Duplicate placement


Capturing Subscribers

EMAIL MARKETING

• Make the purpose clear:

• Why should a user subscribe?

• How often will you email them?

• What’s the value?

• Collect only the information that you need

• Tie subscription opportunity to another conversion

• Contact Request

• Purchase

• Give the subscriber options

• Remember offline sign-ups

• QR codes

• Tradeshows


Capturing Subscribers

EMAIL MARKETING

Subject Lines:

• Keep them short and sweet; 35% of recipients open email based on

subject line alone

• Make subject lines action-oriented

• Show urgency and/or timeliness

• Avoid “spam” words like “Free”, use of ALL CAPS, etc.


Creating your message

EMAIL MARKETING

Content:

• As always, content is king

• Ensure that the message is relevant to the user and their subscription

• If possible, highlight the ONE important call-to-action

• Take advantage of the pre-header text (usually 100 characters)

• Use short sentences and visual elements to help highlight messages

• Maximize potential links

• Consider exclusive offers, content, etc.

• Use content hierarchy to prioritize the message in multiple-message emails



EMAIL MARKETING

Designs:

• Keep in mind design/presentation limitations:

• Blocked images

• Background images

• Stripped out stylesheets

• Compatibility differences between email clients

• Your message should be clear despite these limitations

• Use basic HTML and inline styles as needed

• Text-only version as a back-up

• Make sure you have a good “view in browser” link



EMAIL MARKETING

Designs, cont.:

• Mobile

• Aim for 320 – 550 pixel layout to work on all devices

• Simplify the layout; use a single-column, ladder approach to stack

content for priority

• Padding and room to breathe

• Consider scalable or fluid layouts

• Keep in mind, a true “responsive” email still is a way off



EMAIL MARKETING

Brand Identify

• Consider this in all areas of email

• From fields and name

• Subject line

• Headers & footers



EMAIL MARKETING

• Keep relevancy of your individual messages as a priority:

• Take advantage of segmentation rules to personalize content around:

• Geography

• Behavior

• Audience profile

• The more definitive the segmentation, the higher the conversion, lower

unsubscribe rates, etc.

• Ensure that users are getting the emails they requested…and nothing more

• Targeted email lists for type of email


Delivering your message

EMAIL MARKETING

• Timing of emails

• Highest click through rates generally occur on Tuesdays

• Highest revenue generation generally occurs on Mondays

• Generally 9 – 10 am and after business hours for personal

• Find the timing rules for your audience and industry

• Emails vs. Triggered Emails

• Triggered emails are sent based on a pre-determined behavior

• Opening an account, adding an item to a cart, viewing a product, etc.

• These triggered emails can have a 50% higher open rate


Delivering your message

EMAIL MARKETING

• Where are we sending the consumer?

• Landing pages should be relevant to the call-to-action, so that individual

message is priority

• Avoid sending users to general pages like homepage

• Make sure landing pages are responsive or mobile-friendly as well

• 28% of users state the difficulty in reading/viewing landing page on

smart phones stopped them from clicking through emails

• Similar to emails, make call-to-actions clear and immediate


Building your landing pages

EMAIL MARKETING

• We covered this before, but it’s important to remember

• Mobile email opens grew 21% alone in 2013, and 180% over the past

three years

• Additionally, 47% of emails now opened on a mobile device

• Aim for 320 – 550 pixel layout to work on all devices

• Simplify the layout; use a single-column, ladder approach

• Padding and room to breathe

• Consider scalable or fluid layouts

• Remember: the mobile experience needs to be cohesive across the entire

experience: email -> landing page -> conversion


Mobile-friendly emails

EMAIL MARKETING

• Legal compliance:

• Visible unsubscribe link in all emails

• Opt-out requests honored within 10 days

• Scrubbing future lists against opt-outs and black lists

• Opt-out in a single click

• Providing ability for users to update their subscriptions

• Cleaning lists:

• Take steps to determine “low activity” subscriptions

• Clean rules for bounces and inactive

• Up-to-date Segmentation Rules


Managing subscribers

EMAIL MARKETING

• Keep testing simple and controlled

• Focus on one factor or difference between emails

• Subject line or time/day of delivery

• The more you know about the specifics, the better your data will be

• Remember to test the entire process:

• Sign-up/subscribes

• Email content and delivery

• Landing page conversions


Test, measure and improve

EMAIL MARKETING

• Keep in mind…there are no magic answers

• Your success is based on industry, audience, staff, etc.

• The best way to succeed is to learn from your successes and mistakes

• Track open rates, click-throughs and unsubscribes to determine:

• Ideal messaging, possibly leveraging A/B testing messages

• Ideal email timing to find what works best for your audience and/or

segments

• Ideal segmentation


Test, measure and improve

EMAIL MARKETING

As with all aspects of your online presence, Americaneagle.com is here to

help:

• Project strategy and design

• idev® Broadcast Email tool

• On-going strategy work


How Americaneagle.com can help!

EMAIL MARKETING

With any redevelopment project, your PM is looking to understand:

• Your Goals:

• Objectives and goals for your site

• Key Point Indicators for achieving those goals

• KPI Targets

• Audience Goals

• Macro conversions – Primary conversion points like a purchase

• Micro conversions – Smaller conversion points, like adding an item to a cart

• Marketing messages

• All of these can help us plan, design and develop a site that’s optimized for achieving these goals


Project strategy and design

EMAIL MARKETING

• Our tool meets and exceeds industry standards

• SaaS-based model, including rolling upgrades and enhancements

• Direct idev® CMS connectivity

• Managing lists and contacts in on location

• Standard API to ferry data between systems

• These APIs can also be used in other non-idev® Platforms

• Configurable metrics and reports to show you what you want to see

• Video tutorials and 206-page users guide


idev® Broadcast email v2.0

EMAIL MARKETING

• Configurable dashboards for user-by-user needs

• Contact List management

• Importing offline contacts

• Managing subscription lists

• Segmentation

• Creating “clean rules” to scrub your lists

• Leveraging custom fields for audience-specific data

• Message management

• WYSIWYG-based

• Text-only email formatting as well

• Campaign management



EMAIL MARKETING



Future Enhancements, including:

• A/B Testing Interface: setup a single message with multiple versions and

then have objective metrics based on what is more efficient message

• Build Your Own Reporting: ability to report on more custom fields, beyond

pre-determined reports currently available

• Social Media Publishing: publishing to social channels similar to idev®

CMS tools

• SMS Publishing: ability to send text alerts to users

EMAIL MARKETING


On-going strategy work

Your job, and our job, isn’t over at site launch:

• Reviewing email stats to improve understanding and knowledge of your successes and failures

• Comparing conversions across all channels: email marketing, SEO, social media, etc.

• That’s where our Strategy Department can help:

• Engagement Strategy: overview of all marketing channels for more eyeballs on site, better conversions, etc.

• Includes potentially all channels: blogs, social, podcasts, emails, etc.

• On-going analysis as well

• Personalization Strategies

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Questions?

Contact your account manager or email:

[email protected]

email marketing design for better conversions · email marketing design for better conversions...

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