Look Into These 5 Technical Aspects to Improve Your Email Campaigns
In a 2019 survey, 59% of consumers said that emails influence their purchase decisions. On the other side, close to 60% of marketers said that email marketing is their biggest source of ROI (Return On Investment). Here are a few common challenges in email marketing and ways to deal with them.
There are 3 times more email accounts today than Facebook and Twitter accounts combined. Emails have an average open rate of 22.86% and a click-through rate of 3.71%. This should tell you something about the power of email marketing and the importance it holds in your marketing strategy.
Yet, there are far too many companies competing for attention in a user’s inbox. The first step is figuring out how to find your way into their inbox. The next step is making sure your email is opened. The final step, of course, is creating an email copy that’s engaging enough for a user to click-through.
The technical aspects that matter in Email Marketing
In order to go through the steps outlined above, there are some technical aspects you need to keep in mind. Here are a few common challenges in email marketing and ways to deal with them.
Hard bounces in Email Marketing
A hard bounce usually happens when the email ID of a recipient is wrong. While sending email campaigns through, it can also happen for other reasons. It could be a temporary blockage by a major ISP like Gmail or MSN/Hotmail due to spam complaints. Your email server may also get blocked by corporate spam filters and email firewalls. In many cases, your email itself can be identified as spam by spam filters on the recipient’s computer or their ISP/data center. To prevent this from happening, you need to take certain measures. For instance, you should verify the reputation of your domain and the IP of your SMTP server before starting the campaign. You should also work on slowly warming up the campaign rather than drastically increasing the emails.
Soft bounces in Email Marketing
Unlike a hard bounce, a soft bounce is usually a temporary problem. Your email server will re-attempt to send the email and will only consider it as a hard bounce after 7 soft bounces. Usually, a soft bounce happens for reasons beyond your control. These include factors like a full recipient inbox or downtime of the recipient’s email server. In some cases, however, a soft bounce can happen when the email message is too large. It’s important to watch out for this while designing the email.
What’s a good open rate for email marketing and how to get there
Most email providers automatically calculate open rates for you. Here’s how an open rate is calculated:
Open Rate = Unique Opens / (Number of Emails Sent – Bounces)
The average open rate in 2018, according to Sendgrid, was 18%. Of course, a good open rate is also a matter of the industry you’re in. For instance, according to MailChimp, the average open rate for companies in the hobby industries is 28.49%. On the other hand, in the marketing/advertising industry, it’s 17.85%. In an ideal scenario, you should focus on getting your open rate at least 15-20% higher than the average open rate.
How to write a marketing email
The content of your email is the easiest way to become the target of a spam filter. You need to be very careful about avoiding words, expressions, and punctuation that is detected as spammy. This includes excessive symbols, ALL CAPS, excessive punctuation (!!!), and unstructured phrases. Also watch out for words and phrases that build a sense of urgency, imply gratuity, give a false sense of trust, or induce a purchase.
You should also implement personalization when writing your campaign emails. Various marketing tools offer personalization options when sending out your emails.
How to test email campaigns
Split testing or A/B testing is the best way to find out which email copy works best. You can use this method to keep tweaking the different design and text elements in your copy. Do this until you arrive at the copy that appeals directly to your target audience and drives those click-throughs. Do the same on your landing page to get the maximum conversions.
Even in 2019, email marketing continues to be a critical part of any comprehensive marketing strategy. To get more details about the technical aspects of email marketing, check out this infographic below.
