Rendering and deliverability are the yin and yang of email marketing. Rendering is the grabber, the creative spark that moves recipients into taking action on our requests. Deliverability is the art and science of getting into people's inboxes.
But how many marketers make the effort to periodically evaluate the email itself for these two critical elements, and not just analyze the results it generates?
Beyond the concrete statistics of rendering and deliverability is the amorphous cloud of best practices (some technical, some not) that go into making an email marketing campaign successful. Although daunting, creating an email message to increase brand awareness, or initiate an action from the subscriber, is often viewed as a one-shot deal—in other words, once you have designed the template, you can subsequently use it for all future mailings.
But in this era of blocked images, preview panes, new ISP deliverability rules, and the constant flux in rendering issues associated with Web-based and desktop email clients, a one-size-fits-all email design just won't cut it.
Each email template needs to be "tuned-up"—that is, assessed and configured optimally for each campaign for it to truly deliver.
Look at the engine
Marketers tend to look at campaigns and evaluate the results based on benchmarks they have already set. With email, this means comparing the open rates, deliverability statistics, click-throughs, and so on, from campaign to campaign.
However, it's important to not only compare how these campaign results differ from one another but also periodically examine why. Taking a fresh look at the campaign and taking stock of what makes a good email message work can uncover possible glitches that may be putting the brakes on your results.
Try these four key "tune-up" steps to improve your email messages:
- Test your opt-in process. If it's been a year since you tested your opt-in process, chances are that significant changes have occurred in the industry and your opt-in process may not be as easy—or relevant—as you thought. Check the process from the recipient's point of view.
Are you setting proper expectations about what types of email you're sending at sign-up? Do all the links work? Do you end up at the pages where you're supposed to go? How many clicks does it take to opt-in? Two clicks is optimum, three is acceptable, but more than that and you risk users' abandoning the process.
- Optimize the design for newer email-client "features," including blocked images and preview panes—and test, test, test. Many email clients used by both B2B and B2C recipients now enable features such as preview panes and blocked images as the default setting. Redesigning email templates to deliver maximum information in the top 2-4 inches of the email—as well as decreasing the use of images while increasing the creative use of HTML fonts and colors—is becoming critical.
With Outlook 2007, the process is even more complicated, since many advanced features like CSS, background images, animated images and rich media content have very limited or no support by the client.
Before sending out any email, test it. Using applications like EmailAdvisor, Pivotal Veracity or ReturnPath can help you see how your email renders in numerous email clients.
- Test all the links in the email—especially your unsubscribe link. Try to unsubscribe from each email before you send it out to your subscriber base. Do all the options work (links, reply-to addresses, contact phone numbers and addresses)? If your unsubscribe process doesn't work, you may be in violation of CAN-SPAM—and you could be up for some hefty fines from the FTC.
It's also good practice to tests all your links in the email—both text-based and graphical—to make sure that they are in fact directing users to the correct pages.
- Review the message for CAN-SPAM compliance, spam signatures, and coding irregularities. Code often needs to be cleaned up, especially if more than one person has access to it. And because spam is an ever-changing beast—and ISPs and corporate servers change their spam filtering on a regular basis to combat it—it's important to review your messages for potential spam signatures that may not have offended in the past but may do so now.
Many ESPs offer content checkers to assist in this process, but installing a common filter and testing against it is another way marketers can fine-tune their email templates.
Overhaul the transmission
Now that you've evaluated and refined your email message, it's important to look at the back end of the program to ensure that it's in working order.
Before you hit the "send" button, make sure to evaluate how your list, frequency of communications, and relationship with existing subscribers affect the deliverability of your messages.
Consider these key "tune-ups" for the campaign as a whole:
- Monitor all email addresses associated with your program. Although you may think your email is clear on the calls to action and other links, remember that not everyone follows instructions, and sometimes recipients will reply to the sending address.
Make sure that someone in the company monitors all mailboxes associated with the campaign for unsubscribes, opt-ins, feedback, and other questions or concerns. If your subscribers cannot reach you, you risk losing their subscription and business.
- Make sure to send the right number of messages at the right time. Sounds simple enough, but what is the correct mailing frequency? What did you promise subscribers when they opted-in? You don't want to violate the permission grant or risk offending your subscribers by suddenly increasing the number of messages you're sending. On the other hand, perhaps sending bi-weekly instead of monthly will increase ROI.
Be advised: Any changes in mailing frequency should be accompanied by a rigorous assessment of key indicators such as opens, clicks, conversions, sales, average order size, as well as spam complaints and unsubscribes. Monitoring these factors will provide a good indication of how the change in frequency is affecting your subscribers.
- Periodically remove inactive addresses from your subscriber list. No matter how good your opt-in list, there are always recipients who aren't opening, buying, or clicking on your emails. But how do you re-engage inactive subscribers? First you need to know who they are.
Segment your database by addresses that generated no clicks or opens for an appropriate time period, such as six months for a monthly newsletter, and create a special message inviting recipients to opt in again, update preferences, or take advantage of a special offer. After a week or so, go back into the segment and delete the addresses of those who still haven't responded.
Finally... take a drive
Periodic maintenance and tune-ups are essential to the smooth operation of future email campaigns.
By undertaking these easy but comprehensive steps, you can ensure that your email campaigns are meeting the needs of those who opted in, that they are being sent to active recipients who want to hear from you, and that you are adhering to best practices for email communications.
