In the current economic environment, email marketers are under pressure to justify program investments and improve performance. Mastering the basics of email creative, campaign execution, and reporting is the first step for many programs. For those who have mastered the basics, the following email best practices can boost performance and help quantify your program's value.
1. Lifecycle segmentation: The foundation of an email program should be a lifecycle segmentation scheme. Using a lifecycle approach -- such as new-to-file, active, inactive -- will help identify opportunities, drive program development, and structure program measurement. Program dashboards should track segment health, consumer migration rates between segments, and rate changes over time.
2. Trigger emails: Behavioral triggers outperform standard emails by a wide margin. As a first step, email marketers should leverage online and email behavioral data, such as saved and abandoned carts, completed online product ratings, browsing behavior, and email clicks and opens. Major lifecycle events also represent opportunities for trigger emails. Examples include email opt-in, purchases, warranty expirations, changes in email, other brand engagement patterns, etc.
3. Email ROI: Understanding the value of an email address is critical to determining appropriate program investment levels. However, many email marketers do not know the incremental value of an email address. Typically, marketers assess program performance using click-to-purchase data, direct and indirect attribution methods, and/or some comparison of revenue from consumers with and without email addresses. These approaches all have shortcomings. To calculate incremental value, email marketers should implement email hold-out groups.
4. Multivariate testing: Many variables affect email performance. Common examples include subject line, day of the week, time of day, email frequency, offer, email format, creative, and landing pages. Subject line testing alone can be broken up into many dimensions such as length, personalization, sales proposition, keywords, location of the offer, etc. Conventional testing approaches involve too much risk and incremental work to effectively test many variables. By employing advanced experimental designs (multivariate) testing, marketers can test more factors with less risk and effort.
5. Preference-driven dynamic content: Email relevance drives consumer engagement and program results. Email marketers should create and actively market preference centers to collect user preference data that can enable improved relevance through meaningful email content customization. Programs should begin with simple versioning based on simple segmentation. Marketers can then evaluate advanced dynamic content solutions that require larger investments in data, analytics, and technology.
6. Comprehensive email capture strategy: Email marketers should optimize email capture at all customer touchpoints. Start by taking an inventory of all touchpoints and assess current email capture practices and opportunities. High-volume touchpoints should be the major focus of optimization efforts. Marketers should test alternative capture methodologies for relevant touchpoints, using the incremental value of an email address as one means to evaluate each method.
7. Data-driven contact governance: Many companies send consumer emails from different brands or business units with limited coordination between the groups. While different groups may have "legitimate" rationales for sending messages, the distinctions are often meaningless to consumers. Companies should coordinate these communications to limit frequency and manage the balance of service, informational, and promotional content in a way that maximizes consumer engagement and lifetime value.
8. User-generated content: Savvy online consumers frequently reference user ratings and other user-generated content (UGC) when making purchase decisions. Marketers should incorporate UGC captured from other areas of the business into their marketing messages. Examples include product ratings, reviews, and customer testimonials.
9. Content optimization: The best email programs employ a mix of content, including service, informational, and promotional content. Promotional emails are not likely to nourish and sustain long-term relationships with most consumers. Consumers are more likely to engage with programs that provide information that enhances their experience using a company's product or that is a subject of interest to the customer community. Companies should determine the most appropriate content mix for each consumer through research and testing, and invest to develop and deliver that content.
10. Channel integration: Email is an effective means of communication for many consumers, and for some, it may be the only means of direct marketing required. However, there are segments of consumers who will respond better to marketing communications delivered through multiple vehicles (e.g., direct mail, text, phone, etc.). Marketers should identify these consumers through testing and analytics and design coordinated, multi-vehicle campaigns to drive sales to this group.
Keep in mind this is not an exhaustive list of all items that must be addressed to run a world-class email program. All programs must master the competencies required to get email out the door. For marketers who have mastered the basics, implementation of best practices can help dramatically boost program performance.
Scott Sutton is director of account management at Merkle.
