The Accountants Guide to Email Marketing from Sage

An Accountant’s Guide to Email Marketing

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An Accountant’s Guide to Email Marketing

294 billion emails sent each day

92% of adult internet users maintain at least 1 email account

72% of email users check their inboxes 6 or more times each day

3x as many email accounts as all of Facebook and Twitter combined

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Why Use Email, And What Response to Expect

• Cost effective, versatile, immediate, personal, trackable

• Consumers who receive email marketing spend 83% more when shopping. Their orders are 44% larger. They order 28% more often

• 77% of consumers prefer email promotions and offersoveranyother marketing channel

• For every £1 spent, £26 is the average return on email marketing investment (Experian)

• 95% of online consumers use email

• 91% of consumers reported checking their email at least once a day (ExactTarget)

• Email open rates are the highest they’ve been since 2007 growing year-over- year and month-over- month (Epsilon)


How best to use it


How best to use it

Do introduce new content frequently

Do Answer questions, give advice, tips, how-to’s and helpful info

Don’t bombard readers with messages. Only send relevant, important info/updates


Do watch your words

• This year, about 84% of all email traffic will be spam (The Radicati Group)

• Avoid the spam filter:

– Check your spelling and grammar

– Don’t over-use capital letters

– Don’t use too many images

– Don’t use spammy phrases such as ‘Once in a lifetime opportunity’

– Choose a subject line that relates to the email content


Do include social sharing buttons toyournetworkprofiles

• Emails that include social sharing buttons have a 158% higher click- through rate (GetResponse)


How best to use it

• 38% of email is now opened on a mobile device, with 33% for desktop and29%forwebmail. You must consider this in your design/build.

• Test your email on a mobile device. Can you easily read the text? Is everything in order and appear in the right format? (Source: Litmus)


Howtotargeteffectively

• Use a clean list of targeted opted-in recipients

• Avoid impersonal email addresses like [email protected]

• Keep subject lines 50 characters or less

• Always personalise – personalised emails improve click-through rates by 14% and conversion rates by 10%

• Give recipients control over opting in or out – 69% of subscribers cite “too many emails” as the number one reason they unsubscribe

• Test, monitor, analyse


How to structure your messages

• Break it into sections – it needs to be easily digestable

• Don’t add too many messages. Keep it clear

• Always include social media buttons

• Subject lines that contained terms such as ‘ROI,’ ‘asset,’ and ‘industry’ perform the lowest

• Choose a subject line that describes what’s inside, make it short and snappy as you only have a few words!

• Give your reader an action early on

• Put your most important info early on in the email


How long they should be

• Brevity is key. Ask yourself, would I keep reading?

• People will want to access the info quickly, and digest it easily

• Get their attention, and get to the point

• On mobile devices, long emails will require more scrolling. How long will they scroll for?

• Simplify your text, spend more time writing content that relates to where the customer is on their journey

• Make your actions (links/buttons) standout, and don’t put too many in

Source


http://blog.hubspot.com/blog/tabid/6307/bid/32606/The-9-Must-Have-Components-of-Compelling-Email-Copy.aspx

Using your brand’s voice

• You want to adhere to your brand’s voice so that all marketing is consistent

• Am I speaking as I wish to be spoken to? Find a ‘voice’ that makes sense to your customers and business. Check whether you’re talking in a way that reflects your brand

• Long pieces of writing do not equal effective. Get someone to proof-read and if you need to, cut it down.

• What do I do next? Having a call to action is something you should aim for in every email. Keep it simple and direct


Effectivecall-to-actions

• Before creating your campaign, decide exactly what action you want your subscribers to take as a result of reading your message. Whether it’s signing up for another newsletter, downloading afileor purchasing a product or service, your campaign’s message has to be simple and easy for the reader to follow

• If the people reading your emails aren’t sure where to click, what link to follow, or where to order, the campaign’s results will likely be disappointing

• Ideally, the call to action should be contained within the first few paragraphs (or even the subject line) of the email. You don’t want to make subscribers read through the entire email before letting them know what you want them to do, and what value your email holds for them


Jargon busterAbove the Fold Above the fold refers to anything that can be seen on screen without the user having to scroll down

Body Copy Body copy is the text that is within the email

Bounce Rate Bounce rate refers to the number of people in your email list that didn’t receive the email and had it returned by their email server

Call to Action (CTA) A call to action is used to encourage the recipient of the email to take the desired action, this might be “Call Now” or “Add to Basket” depending on the purpose of the email

Click Through Rate (CTR) Click through rate is the number of people who clicked within your email and is usually measured as a percentage

Click to Open Rate (CTOR) Basically measures how many clicks have been made by recipients who have opened the email

Clicks Clicks demonstrate where recipients have clicked on an email and how many times

Unique Clicks Thebestwaytodefineuniqueclicksis by an example, if the reader clicks onalinkfivetimesthiswouldbecountedasoneuniqueclick,butasfivetotalclicks

Conversion Rate A conversion rate is based on the percentage of recipients who clicked in the email and completed the desiredactionwhetherthisisfillingin a form or purchasing a product

Dynamic Content Dynamic content is content that changes according to the recipients criteria


Email Client An email client is the application that the recipient is viewing within, for example Outlook, Hotmail or Yahoo

Email Filters Thissoftwarefiltersemailsbasedonsender address, subject line and the body copy of the email

HTML HTMLactuallystandsfor“HypertextMarkupLanguage”,butyoudon’treally need to know that. All you need toknowaboutaHTMLemailisthatit provides the platform for a better designed email with more elements such as fonts and background colours

Open Rate Theopenrateisquitesimplyhowmany people have opened your email

Personalisation Personalisation is feeding personal details into the email, making the one received by each recipient uniquetothem

Received Receivedisquitesimplythenumberof people who received the email

Segmentation Segmentation in email marketing is usually to do with email analytics. By splitting the data pot you’ll be able to see how each segment reacts and be able to make conclusions from this

Sender Address The sender address is the email address that the email comes from when it lands in your inbox

Subject Line Asubjectlineisthefirstthingauserwill see when they open their inbox along with your sender name

Tracking Links Tracking links are links which are put into the email to record the customer journey of the recipient if they click through to the company website

Unsubscribe Rate Unsubscribe rate is how many people have opted out of receiving emails from you


Sources

http://www.sociallystacked.com/2013/07/infographic-of-the-day-email-marketing-facts-stats/#sthash.73J7USIS.dpbs

http://emailcritic.com/2013/05/complete-guide-email-marketing-stats-part2/

http://www.smartinsights.com/email-marketing/best-time-of-day-to-send-email/

http://unbounce.com/email-marketing/emails-your-customers-will-love/

http://www.redcmarketing.net/blog/online-marketing/an-email-marketing-jargon-buster/
