Five Tips to Better E-mail Campaigns
Five Tips to Better E-mail Campaigns
Jan. 10, 2006
By Abny Santicola, associate editor, FundRaising Success
In her session "Internet and E-mail Prospecting: How to Do It Right" at the List Vision conference in New York over the summer, Anne Holland, publisher and editor with marketing research firm MarketingSherpa, shared practical advice on what works and what doesn't for e-mail campaigns, including the importance of landing pages, tracking and testing.
Holland's session highlighted the following five statistic-based tips from MarketingSherpa research:
1) Welcome messages are the most read e-mails. Most people have automated messages that go out when someone opts in to their e-mail list that say something like, "You have subscribed," and think of these messages as routine administrative e-mails that no one pays attention to. But those messages, Holland says, are read by more people and capture more attention than any offer or newsletter your organization ever sends them again.
"You've got the biggest opportunity with that first welcome message to really get their ear because they actually are paying attention, and you want to grab them while they're paying attention," Holland says, adding that while you don't want to be too promotional, adding a link to your best article, a link to your calendar of events or a special offer can be useful. "Those kinds of things tend to be very compelling in that welcome message, and consumers tend to respond very well to them."
2) Twenty percent to 40 percent of e-mails aren't delivered. Understand how to read the report that your e-mail system gives you on delivery, and understand that the numbers you get on delivery do not include e-mails that were swallowed by filters.
"So you have to know that there's a bigger problem with delivery than you think and there's a variety of things you can do about that ... one thing to look at is ... any people on your list who have not opened or responded to an e-mail in a long time. Maybe you're being filtered there," Holland adds.
3) Thirty percent of e-mail addresses are changed each year, which means that they no longer receive your e-mails, e-alerts, e-newsletter, etc. It's an easy way to lose loyal supporters, but Holland suggests doing a postcard campaign like that used by Duke University. When a message goes out from Duke to a potential or former donor, if it is bounced because of a bad address a postcard is automatically sent to the donor that directs him to a page on the Duke Web site to update his information.
4) Fifteen to 20 seconds are spent with the average opened and clicked message. "People don't read that many words when they look at an e-mail. Especially if there's a distraction -- a logo, bright colors, different things going on that might draw their eye during those 15 to 20 seconds," Holland says.
Marketers tend to make the mistake of using small type and cramming in more words. Holland recommends using large type "because if it's super-readable they'll be able to read more in that 15 to 20 seconds, and of course the more they read, the more persuasive your message is," she says.
Try to use a typeface no smaller than 10 points, preferably 12 points. Holland also advises carving down the words in your e-mail to capitalize on readers' short attention spans.
"I'm not saying long copy can't work; if you have shorter paragraphs, big type [and] compelling copy, people will sit there and read through it. But a whole bunch of verbiage that isn't necessary that they have to plow through to get to the point is a problem because they're not paying attention," Holland says.
5) Fifty percent to sixty percent of visitors who click through on your e-mail message leave the page in less than eight seconds. This is due to bad landing-page design, Holland says. This can mean cluttered design where there's a lot to look at, such as navigation bars and, most importantly, "paragraphs of information about stuff that isn't the offer you just made" in the e-mail.
"If there's extraneous information that isn't about the thing they clicked to see, your response rates will plummet. You want to absolutely hone that landing page to a single topic page," she adds.
For more information, visit http://www.marketingsherpa.com
