Email still has the best return of any marketing channel. Most people with smartphones use them more for email than any other activity including texts. So thinking through your email designs for access on mobile is critical.
And most people open slightly more email on their phone (51%) than they do elsewhere.
There are essentially three kinds of emails:
Mobile First/Scalable:
- displays the same content on any device, meaning you need to design for mobile and be okay with it being a very simple layout for desktop, etc.
- should have a single column that doesn’t exceed 640 pixels wide
- bigger fonts – 13pt to 16pt for body copy
- lots of whitespace
Fluid-Width:
- the size of the viewing area within the screen will determine how certain elements of the email will flow, but it will resemble the Desktop version
- measurement uses percentages not pixels
Responsive:
- layout changes based on the screensize
- it may hide, crop or resize images to match the viewport (viewing area in the screen)
- it may hide or move text
Retina Images:
Apple introduced Retina Images to make images richer.
Essentially, a Retina Image takes a larger image and scales it to about half the size but maintains the same number of pixels.
Thing is, while our eyes and brains LOVE Retina Images, we can only take so many of them at a time, so use them sparingly.
Branding:
Colours and branding on your emails should be consistent with your website. Your landing pages (any page that emails will direct people to in any CTA) should also be similarly branded.
Subject lines:
Three to Five words tend to work best. They can’t be misleading or promise more than they deliver. But a little intrigue goes a long way in getting people to click through.
Tone:
Emails are a very intimate and informal mode of communication. They don’t work if they sound like they are written by a robot instead of a person. But they should also get straight to the point and not take people outside of the email except for a compelling Call to Action.
That includes your Transactional Emails.
Transactional Emails:
A transactional email is anything that comes in response to an action someone has taken. If they have lost their password and requested a new one, your responding email is a transactional email. They include:
- password replacement
- receipt
- donation thank you
- sign up acknowledgement
Take the Opportunity:
The worst thing you can do is revert to blah, meh corporate speak on your transactional emails. Give your people helpful information. Make them laugh. Tell them about something that you think will matter to them. Be useful. Be delightful. Be something.
Be anything but boring:
If your emails starts with “Thank you for your email” just stop. Stop now. All anyone will ever think about you for an email along those lines is “oh dear God, any correspondence with this company will go into a black hole. And they will stop trusting you.
Be Social and include:
- Embeded social links
- “Tweet This” buttons
- Forwarding buttons
- Newsletter sign up in email for those who have gotten it from a friend
Social Signin:
You’ve probably gone to sign up for a site and given you the option of signing up through one of your social accounts. That’s called Social Sign in. And you absolutely want to offer it to your people.
But you have to make it clear to everyone that you will not be posting on social channels on their behalf. Social sign in got off to a rocky start because apps were using social sign in to spam the friends of those who used it. It caused more harm than good so thankfully most apps don’t do that anymore.
Don’t take us back to the bad old days. And make sure your people know you don’t want that either.
Personalization:
Personalization isn’t going anywhere so might as well get on the train now. It’s only going to become more important.
Rudimentary personalization includes addressing people by first name. All you have to do to ensure you can do that is by making the first name field mandatory in the sign-up.
But you can and should also segment your lists on different behaviours and demography.
Build Triggered Responses:
You should have “if this then that” processes built into your campaigns so that you don’t confuse your people. Once they’ve taken a particular action or converted, you need to give them relevant content, not content that you hope will still be relevant to them.
Here’s an example of why:
I LOVE CoSchedule, an awesome tool that integrates your blog and social editorial calendars. I used the free trial and then upgraded to a paid account almost immediately I was that impressed.
So imagine my surprise when two weeks later, I’m getting content that includes a CTA (Call to Action) that tells me that I am going to be given another two weeks of a trial. Perplexing since I had just bought it.
But then I started to wonder if I misremembered. So I start rummaging through my inbox for a receipt.
When I found it and realized that yes, I had paid, I then wrote the company pronto a bit panicked that the trial would end, and I would lose all my data.
The gist of their response was: “Oh don’t worry. Everyone in a trial period gets the same email whether they’ve converted or not.”
That’s just silly. The needs of someone who has converted are completely different from someone still on the fence. And in my case, it took time out of my life to deal with a problem that wasn’t even there.
Not an awesome drip campaign.
Speaking of drip campaigns:
Yup, you need a drip campaign.
A drip campaign is simply a series of automated emails that are sent out over a predetermined course. Often they are to help drive people through the sales funnel but they might just as easily be used to roll out information to people on a timed basis.
Welcome drips:
You definitely need a welcome drip for anyone who signs up for your content to orient them to you and to the content that will be most useful to them. It’s a great way to build trust with the brand.
A great welcome drip campaign might include 3-5 emails in that first 30 days. You could drill down to the benefits that being a supporter offers, give exclusive insight into initiatives, offer special reports or incentives to take particular actions. This first month is critical for building rapport with your supporters.
Drip campaigns are also super useful to help with challenges like cart abandonment.
Cart Abandonment:
By some estimates, as many as 74% of all online purchases get abandoned in the cart.
You can win them back using drip:
- after 2 hours, remind them to come back
- after 48 hours, ask them how we can help
- after 7 days, offer incentive to purchase
Money back Guarantee:
Never underestimate the power of a money back guarantee.
It gives your people psychological comfort that you are who you say you are and your product is as good as you say it is.
The best way to make a sale is to remove all points of friction. And people are infinitely more likely to take the jump if they know they can get their money back hassle-free if they don’t like it.
Interestingly enough, most people don’t refund products, even if they’re not crazy about them. That said, the best strategy, of course, is to make or sell something no one in their right mind would EVER want to return.
Your email lists:
In the old days, people would buy lists.
Not such a great idea today for a number of reasons, not the least of which is CASL, the Canadian Anti-Spam Laws. CASL hit the ground running in July 2014 and in February 2015, levied its first two penalties against two Canadian businesses for violating the new rules.
CASL:
While I’m not offering you legal advice on CASLhere are some high level things you need practice for your emails to be in compliance with it:
- The email must clearly and honestly state who it is from and include current, accurate contact info for the sender including an address
- There must be an unsubscribe button and any request to unsubscribe is immediately honoured
- You must have consent to send to someone, either explicit or implied
- explicit is they have signed up or given you permission in a trackable way
- implied is when you have a pre-existing relationship that you can prove
- Consent to send the email must come prior to sending it
The long reach of CASL:
CASL doesn’t just apply to emails. It also applies to texts and social communications. It also applies to individuals along with businesses. And while there are exceptions (like one employee sending to another), the smartest thing is to simply think of CASL as best practice and make every email compliant.
List Maintenance:
Clean up your lists regularly. Try and re-engage with those segments of your lists that haven’t been very active.
Ask them if they want to stay on your list and get them to re-opt in. It will remind them of their commitment to you. Give them incentives to engage. If they still don’t, get rid of them. It isn’t cost efficient to carry people who really don’t want you to be reaching out to them and you are training people to ignore your brand.
Make them want you:
The best way of course to ensure people actually want you in their inbox is to keep giving them valuable content. It doesn’t hurt to make sure they get to see your content before you distribute through other channels.
Urgency is a powerful tool too. No one likes to think they are going to miss out on something.
And exclusivity. People have come to expect that membership has its privileges.
Invest in your supporters. It doesn’t take much.
Maybe first look at content or content that is just for them (the inside scoop), you can create people who will not only support you but become an unpaid sales force sharing your brand with their world.
That’s the power of email.
Susan McLennan
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