A couple of weeks ago I went on an email marketing best practice session and here are a few of the main take-aways. The session was run by Communigator, who provide email marketing software and analytics.
Test test test!
Email marketing isn’t an exact science (as the saying goes), but scientific techniques can be used to achieve results for your campaigns. The simplest form of testing is called “A/B Testing” and essentially means setting up two campaigns that are slightly different and seeing which one works. You can edit the subject line, calls to action, from address, content – in fact anything that makes up your email.
We run Recruitment Reach (our industry tailored email marketing solution) and with this you can automate this whole process meaning no extra work for you and much better results.
Calls to action – make them obvious
Conversions are the aim of your emails, whether this is to place a candidate, generate clicks through to your content or get someone to pick up the phone and call a consultant. So, don’t hide the calls to action down the bottom of the email – put them at the top, in hyperlinked text that has a high chance of showing in different email clients and preview panes.
Is your Imagery working?
Images can be great in an email, providing visual stimulus, reinforcing branding and containing calls to action. However, with so many email clients (e.g. Google) and preview panes (e.g. Outlook) images won’t appear in the email without the reader accepting to download them. So, be careful with how much time and money you invest in them.
Calls to action should not be in imagery, as if they don’t show the conversion rate of your email with drop. Consider where they’re placed on the page – a big image right at the top meaning the reader has the scroll to get text, and you’ve probably already lost their interest.
Here’s a similar post on my training day at the IDM on digital copywriting.
