Having sent over 500 million emails on behalf of our clients, people
looking to grow their businesses frequently turn to us for email marketing
questions and answers.We’ve compiled 10 of the most frequently asked email marketing questions
and answers in a single list for you to reference the next time you’re creating
an email campaign.
1: What’s the point of email marketing?
Email marketing is
a way of reaching many people at once to encourage them to do business with
you. However, it’s important that email marketers keep their end goals in mind
(sales, conversions, web traffic, etc.), and execute their strategy in a way
that leads their subscribers to willingly complete the desired action. This
approach builds audience trust through emails, thus increasing the sender’s
credibility and getting that sender closer to their desired goal.
2: How do I grow my email subscriber list?
Email marketing is
only as successful as the email list. A large email list doesn’t automatically
equal success, though so make sure that you’re growing your list with the right
people. If they’re not actively engaged with you or interested in what you have
to say, your email marketing efforts will be for naught.
Your email list should include past, current and potential customers,
friends, family, and past coworkers. From there, you can branch out to
neighbors, acquaintances, and contacts from clubs and organizations. It’s also
important that you give people plenty of opportunities to sign up for your
email list through opt-in boxes on your website and blog.
3: How do I figure out what to write about?
If you’re not
writing something that your audience cares about, you won’t get their
attention, even if you do land the email in their inbox. The
emails should be directly tied to the subject line and written in a short,
consistent way that makes it quickly readable and easily digested.
Good content marketing like this is
centered on your customers. Find out what problems they have and write about them.
Learn about their habits and hobbies and pair your expertise with content that
will strike a chord with them. Make sure that what you write is serving their
interests, not your own agenda.
4: What are the best practices for email subject
lines?
You have only 3-4 seconds
before someone decides whether or not they are going to open your email, so
it’s important to make an impact. Best practices for subject lines are
debatable, especially when trying to compare different industries and topics.
However, there are some ballpark best practices for subject lines that you can
feel confident about following.
Fifty characters is
generally a good, safe rule of thumb to follow. However, people have seen great success with subject lines over 70 characters
and less than 49, so feel free to experiment. Other tactics that work well in
subject lines include asking questions, numbered lists and personalization.
The best email subject lines tend to be specific, short and compelling.
Set expectations up front and let the email content do the rest.
5: What are the laws of email marketing?
As I mentioned
above, it’s good to email people you personally know. However, some email lists
might include people from bought lists or lead gen services (which you should
generally avoid). We don’t recommend buying lists because there are laws in
place to protect people from receiving certain types of unsolicited
communications.
The CAN-SPAM Act spells out the rules for email marketers,
whether their intentions are good or bad. If you’re sending emails for
commercial use, you have to do the following:
·
Include an unsubscribe method.
·
Actually, unsubscribe someone when
they request it, and do it in a timely manner.
·
If sending for commercial uses, you
need to include a physical address.
·
While not explicitly banned, sending
to people who have not opted in is discouraged.
6: What’s the best time and day to send emails?
This is one of the most frequently
asked questions and one of the most debated. Ask 10 people, and you’ll get 10
different answers. Even some of my most trusted sources have differing opinions
on the topic based on their data sets:
·
Kissmetrics says early mornings and weekends … but also
says those days/times are also the most likely to get you unsubscribes and
bounces.
·
Experian’s benchmark study says that 8 p.m. to midnight is optimal.
·
Wordstream thinks that Thursday from 8-9 a.m. is best.
·
MailChimp says that Tuesdays, Wednesdays, and Thursdays
between 2 p.m. and 5 p.m. are the surefire winners.
Needless to say, there are many right answers to this question. If
you’re looking for a fairly safe bet, try Wednesday afternoons around 2 p.m.
But every person, recipient and email list is different. Try different days and
times and find what works best for your audience.
7: How often should I send emails to my customers?
The jury is not as undecided on this
as they are on the best time and day to send emails. The optimal frequency to
contact your customers is one to four times a month. This is the frequency we
use for our customers, and our clients see great results with a
twice-a-month schedule.
Once a month is fine for keeping your name in front of someone.
Two-three times a month leaves enough time in between emails so you don’t
become a nuisance. Obviously, four times a month gets you to a weekly
consistency. Essentially, you can keep increasing your send frequency as much
as you want, but be conscious of your open and unsubscribe rates. When your
engagement starts to decline, you know you’ve taken it too far.
8: Email deliverability and email open rates: what
do these mean?
These are two important email
marketing metrics that should serve as the initial measure of your email
marketing success.
Email deliverability rate (or acceptance rate) is the success rate of
getting an email delivered to a person’s email address. To find out the
deliverability rate of your email marketing, you simply take the number of
emails delivered and divide it by the number that was sent.
Example: 2,000 emails sent, 1,987
delivered: 1987/2000 = 99% email deliverability
An email open rate is the percentage of people who opened the emails
that ended up in inboxes. This is one of the more important metrics for email
marketers because it has a huge impact on how their campaigns perform. If
someone doesn’t open your email, they never even have the chance to engage with
your content.
Ex. 1,987 emails delivered, 750
opened: 750/1987 = 40% open rate
9: What’s a good email open rate?
Similar to the best
day/time to send an email, this question can also be a bit slippery to nail
down. It’s like comparing apples and oranges. Even if two people in the same
industry sent the same email at the same time with the same content, they could
have very different open rates due to factors like list quality and personal
relationship. In short, there’s no definite answer to this question.
Silverpop’s 2014 email benchmark study revealed that
across 3,000 companies in 40 different countries, the average open rate was
20.2 percent. Typically if you’re getting 15-25 percent email open rates,
you’re up to industry standards. Over 30 percent and you’re killing it.
But remember, a lot of industries fall below the 20 percent mark. Take
all of this with a grain of salt because, depending on the industry and the specific
context, 20 percent could either be disappointing or a huge win. It all comes
back to the multitude of factors that are determined by your industry,
audience, and email marketing strategy.
Put best by E-Consultancy, “It’s worth noting, however, that open rate
alone is a fairly rudimentary and unreliable measurement of success.” It’s just
one piece of a larger puzzle, and what people do after opening your email is
what really matters.
10: What other metrics should I track for email
marketing?
Over time, you need to track your
email marketing efforts alongside your larger goals, whether they’re direct
sales (like B2C retail companies), website traffic and conversions (B2B or B2C
with long sales cycles) or referral business.
However, there are four other foundational
metrics that you should measure in order to get high email
deliverability:
·
Inbox rates: how many delivered
emails actually made it into someone’s inbox (rather than their junk folder).
·
Bounce rates: the percentage of emails that were rejected by recipients’
mail servers.
·
Spam reports: how many times your emails were marked as junk mail/spam
by recipients.
·
Unsubscribes: how many people unsubscribed from your emails.
Wrap-Up
There are no dumb questions when it comes to email marketing. As you now
know, there are many variables that affect the success or failure of your email
marketing program. While it’s nice to understand some of the industry standards
and best practices for email marketing, the most important takeaway is that
everyone’s stats will be different as a result of these variables.
Take all of this with a grain of salt, follow the best practices for
email marketing when it comes to content and distribution and, most important
of all, track everything to find out what works best for you.
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