New survey reveals email marketing top for ROI, but still much potential for improvement
Shocking news in the latest Econsultancy/Adestra Email Marketing Industry Census: 68% of respondents rated email's ROI as excellent or good (the top result).
OK, not a shock.
However, despite the continuing strong results from email, the report suggests there is still much potential for improvement. The related infographic is below, and one area definitely in need of more focus is mobile email.
When I state the mobile email needs more focus, I don't just mean mobile email design, but mobile email as a whole. So what needs optimising?
Ignoring measurement issues for the moment, around half of mails are recorded as opened on a mobile device. This is the obligatory stat to remind us that mobile is not the future, but the present (almost one billion smartphones were sold…
Examples and techniques for integrating video with your email marketing
It doesn’t take a scientist or even a marketing expert to know that most people check their emails every day. Your friends, your coworkers, your mom, your grandmother, her grandmother. Email is used by virtually everyone regardless of age or any other demographic you can think of.
Email marketing is critical to your brand’s success and is still the best way to engage your audience and keep customers coming back. According to eMarketer, one of the top benefits of email marketing is that it yields a wealth of data about who a company’s best customers are.
Marketers can target those people and offer incentives or discounts to encourage them to share with their friends and advocate on behalf of the brand. Add video to your email marketing campaigns and you have an inexpensive, visually appealing and adaptable marketing medium for…
Is the linking, embedding or animated GIF technique best given recent email client enhancements?
You can embed video in emails. But just because you can, does it mean you should?
For a long time the possibility of playing video directly within an email had such limited support it wasn’t an option worth considering. The classic approach has become to include a still image of the video and a play button, which when clicked takes you to a landing page. The video doesn’t play inside the email.
Smartphones and in particular iOS supports video within the native email client using standard HTML5. This plus the fact that 50% of all emails are read on mobile devices means the question of whether to use embedded video or just link to video from the email is once again relevant to…
What is responsive email design?
Responsive design is an approach for web and email designs that ensures the user has the best experience possible, regardless of whatever device they are viewing.
Often you will find that a website viewed on a normal desktop PC will look a certain way, however once the same site is viewed on a tablet computer or mobile device it will look considerably different.
Responsive design will re-arrange and streamline web and email content for these different devices and screen sizes. It helps to minimise resizing, panning and scrolling by the smartphone or tablet user. It may also involve enlarging smaller text as well as making links and buttons actionable and visible. This gives the user a much simpler experience enabling them to engage with the creative and offer in the email.
Examples of mobile responsive emails
Here is our first example showing the difference between a non-scaled email template on…
Gmail Promotions Tab Grid View: The Lowdown
Brace yourself, email marketers, Aaron Rothman, Product Manager at Google, recently announced some more major news on the Gmail blog which follows on from Gmail's move to default image display.
The announcement explains that Google is testing a new feature for its email service, making the promotional tab more visual. With one click users can switch to a grid view and can see the pictures used in promotional newsletters straight away.
You can see the visual impact from this mockup from Google (click for animation):
The thought behind this and what excites us most is that this will make it easy for Gmail subscribers to quickly scan through their promotional messages and find the ones that look interesting. And why do they look interesting? Because the content is engaging.…
Creating Email CTAs with Impact with Tim Watson
In this video, regular contributor Tim shows that too many email campaigns contain calls-to-action (CTAs) which focus on what to do, rather than the reason to click.
This 99 second video shows how to improve email CTAs via top tips, examples and a simple formula on how to avoid mistakes, thinking about CTAs as mini value propositions.
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To get more tips on email best practices, read Tim's Zettasphere blog, sign-up for his email or check out the Smart Insights online copywriting course. …
5 key insights to create the best experience for your smartphone and tablet audience
You'll know that usage of smartphones and tablets, and the revenue and engagement delivered by them, is skyrocketing. In Q3 of 2014, 25% of global traffic to e-commerce sites came from mobile devices (10% smartphones, 15% tablets) according to Monetate.
That’s up 3% in a single quarter. Meanwhile, eMarketer predicts that the value of UK m-commerce in 2013 will have reached £6.61 billion.
Understanding and optimising the customer journey and experience for these active mobile audiences has become an imperative for mainstream multichannel brands, as well as pure-play digital brands. Happily, there are simple ways to do this. Here are five steps I would start with ...
Insight 1. Define 'mobile'
Organisations, analytics reports and the media use this term inconsistently. Be clear whether it just refers to smartphones or whether it's an umbrella term for all handheld…
Practical ideas to test in the often neglected preheader
The small kid with glasses that gets picked last for the football team? That was me.
And that's the email preheader, too...
At least that's what it often feels like: it's there to tick the box on the "what goes in an email?" checklist, but it doesn't get much copywriting love.
In case you're wondering, the preheader is the line or two of text, usually in a smaller font, right up the top of an email. Here's the preheader at the top of a National Express mail:
It's one of the elements I cover in the email module of the Smart Insights online copywriting course, and its potential value stems from two plausible marketing roles.
First, while an inbox display typically focuses on the from name and subject line of each email, it may also include the first…
6 practical tips to improve response from emails read on mobile devices
With the current growth in use of mobile devices, from smartphones to iPads and a variety of tablets, mobile email design has become a vital consideration for 2014 if you want people to be able to read and respond to your email marketing campaigns
In fact, according to these Litmus mobile open statistics, 51% of email opens are on a mobile device, and some brands see upwards of 70% of their emails opened on a mobile, while 80% of people will delete an email if it doesn’t look good on their phone.
Yet even with all this growth in mobile email, 58% of email marketers are still not designing for it, and MarketingSherpa reports that 31% of marketers don’t even know their mobile email open rate.
Design your email marketing for a mobile device
So…
Reviewing content strategy for your email marketing
It’s a simple equation. Provide sufficient value in your emails and customers will continue to welcome you into their inbox. Not enough and you’ll be ignored or banished. Value can be delivered in many forms, it isn’t just measured in pounds and dollars. A proven currency for value is content. But want content should you provide to whom across your email marketing?
Different email subscribers have different interests and needs depending on their characteristics and situation. The following matrix is taken from Dan’s post on generating content ideas. It provides an easy to use breakdown to review the options for different types of content for a defined segment or persona. You can use it to audit your current content and identify new content types to engage audiences at different points in the buying process.
If you’ve already a…
