Smart email marketing

Excerpted from ConvUrgency.com's Smart Email Marketing Guide

In the past few years, email marketing has advanced significantly in terms of widespread adoption, as well as sophistication. For some businesses, email has become the single most important communication vehicle, the primary interface for marketing to prospects and customers alike.

I’m not going to bore you with the history of email itself (I’ll assume you either know already, or just don’t care). But it’s obviously a very well-established tool, which has been readily available to marketers for many years now. Despite its age however, for many marketers it remains a mystery of how to use it effectively, and is therefore under-utilized. It’s quite sad, in fact, that the most sophisticated users of email are the unethical marketers known as spammers.

The objective of this document is to educate marketers on how to use email effectively as a marketing vehicle. My hope is that you’ll not only be able to adopt the best practices I’ll outline, but also that they’ll inspire you to test and tweak new ideas of your own.

I should probably give you a quick overview of my credentials as an email marketer. I began my online marketing career by creating simple websites back in 1996. I began working for one company in the role of Webmaster, and worked closely with someone else who was the Email Marketing Specialist. When he moved on, the reponsility of email marketing fell on my plate. I quickly became fascinated with the deep level of interaction email marketing provides. I read books, reports and case studies. I attended seminars and conferences. I tried various email platforms, and tested as many variables with my campaigns as possible, always striving to learn and improve from the results. I began providing informational seminars myself, and during the last one, the thought of creating this document struck me. And now here we are!

It seems that most marketers understand the basic concepts of email marketing. You have a list of email addresses (a.k.a. ‘subscribers’). You create an email and ‘blast’ it out to them. Of those that receive the email (some are blocked or invalid emails), some people will open it. Some of those that open it will actually click on links within the email, and some of those that click will convert (purchase a product, register for an event, etc).

It is very easy to derive metrics with this process. For example, let’s take an average email campaign, throwing in some average numbers. For the sake of the example, I'll tie direct monetary value to the conversion. This may be different in your case if you're not selling products in every email, but the principles are the same.

List size: 1000 subscribers
Valid Recipients: 95% (people who actually receive the email)
Opens: 25% (of the people who receive it)
Clicks: 20% (of the people who open it, referred to as click-to-open rate)
Conversions: 20% (of the people who click through)
Average conversion value: $39.99 (the cost of the product they’re buying)

This can be represented by the formula:
1000 x .95 x .25 x .2 x .2 x 39.99 = $379.91

Now the obvious conclusion is that if I can get more subscribers, I’ll make more money. So let’s do the math. I aggressively promote my email subscription all over my website, and within time I’m able to double my list size. Now the formula looks like this:
2000 x .95 x .25 x .2 x .2 x 39.99 = $759.81

Wow, double the profit! But how much work and time did it take to double that list size? Indeed, it would take quite a bit of effort to double a list size. And this is where the concept of Smart Email Marketing comes into play.

Smart Email Marketing
What if I told you that you could easily double your profits, with the same list size? (and no, not by doubling the offer amount!) Smart Email Marketing works on the premise that if you can optimize each component of the formula, you can derive far greater profits from your existing subscriber list. For example, by refining your list quality and sender reputation/authentication, you could increase the deliverability rate to 97%.

Now the formula looks like this:
1000 x .97 x .25 x .2 x .2 x 39.99 = $387.90

With a better subject line, you could easily achieve a 35% open rate. Now the formula looks like this:
1000 x .97 x .35 x .2 x .2 x 39.99 = $543.06

With optimized content and layout, you could lift the click-to-open rate by 10%. Now the formula looks like this:
1000 x .97 x .35 x .3 x .2 x 39.99 = $814.60

With content and creative matched to your landing page, you could even lift your conversion rate by 5% without much difficulty. Now the formula looks like this:
1000 x .97 x .35 x .3 x .25 x 39.99 = $1018.25

So we’ve almost tripled the profit, with the same list size! Now imagine what it would be like if you actually did double the list size, with all components of the formula optimized!

The rest of this report will explain many real ways in which you can optimize these components. As you read them, you’ll understand that they’re not fluff, not concepts and theory, but tried and true practices that are based on logic and common sense. In fact, when you read many of them, you’ll probably smack your head and wonder why you didn’t think of them!

Oh, and one quick disclaimer. There is no such thing as an absolute best practice. The methods I explain work in the vast majority of cases, but you’ll need to test each for your specific email campaign. Here’s a quick anecdote to illustrate this:

Last year I was running an email campaign to an academic audience. The person responsible for content sent me a 3 page text document. I explained to them that email best practices dictate that we use shorter, punchier, scan-able content. But he argued that this particular audience preferred to get all of the information at once and read through it, before making any decisions.

So we ran two parallel campaigns to portions of the list, one with the full content, and one with an abbreviated version, and links to read the full info online. Contrary to my expectations, the longer version greatly outperformed the shorter email. Once we had confirmed this, we were able to send the best performing email to the rest of the list.

I’m not trying to absolve myself of any sort of credibility with that example. I’m merely trying to express that you’ll need to test each factor, and figure out which is the best combination for your audience.

Excerpted from ConvUrgency.com's Smart Email Marketing Guide