Email Best Practices -- Says Who?

Recently, a client told me we were not using “best practices” in the recommended email copy and layout we had designed.

After probing them about their experience, it turns out they were referencing an article they had read in a marketing publication that provided “Top 10 Ways to Improve Your Email Performance.”

Since we too, read (and write!) articles like that one and subscribe to national research studies, attend conferences, listen to experts, read a multitude of books on email marketing topics, design, execute and measure multiple email campaigns for a variety of clients, it occurs to me to pose the question: Who gets to dictate that something is an email “best practice?”

A year ago, we invested several hundred dollars in an email research study conducted by Marketing Sherpa, a well-known and respected marketing resource. It was 580 pages with ideas, tips, and “best practices.” Only this time, their best practices were based on 86 Case Studies, which certainly adds up to credibility in my book. We use this as our email design and planning bible and so far, their tips haven’t proven to be wrong yet.

If you type “direct marketing best practices” into Google’s search engine, you’ll be served with 2.7 million results. The problem is, the results range from some really helpful sites chocked full of information, to an email vendor site that has a vested interest in steering you towards an email design that works best for their email software.

The real trouble is that email marketing — really good email marketing — is hard work. While you should certainly do your homework before you start, it’s even more important to know your own customer. What offers, creative formats, colors, etc. resonate with them? Have you tested it yourself to know? Ultimately, what proves to be a “best practice” for Company A is not necessarily a “best practice” for Company B.

That said, there are a few email best practices that work, no matter what and the trouble is, they seem to be the least of most email marketers concerns. So, for what they’re worth, here are my top 5 “best practices” or should I say “most practical words of wisdom” based on all my research reading, testing, and results of efforts for multiple clients, B2B and B2C:


1. Subject Lines: No longer than 40 characters INCLUDING spaces. Ideally less than 30 words INCLUDING spaces. Most important words at the front of the sentence. The Email Experience Council recently sent an email with the subject line “Top 10 Vital Factors for Email Marketing Success.” (41 characters) Based on the settings in my MS Outlook in-box, the sentence was truncated as “Top 10 Vital Factors for E” (21 characters), still an interesting subject line but missing the critical words “Email Marketing Success.” My suggestion would have been to change this Subject Line to “Email Marketing Success Factors” (28 characters).


2. Use Buttons AND Links: Visually, buttons draw your eye to the action item, however sometimes people don’t download all the visuals associated with your email. If viewed through a preview panel (and over 50% of consumers use one for personal email), the recipient can read your text and click on links without downloading any visuals.


3. Design Creative for Vertical and Horizontal Preview Panes: Print out your email creative and use your right hand to cover it, leaving about 2” showing from the left hand margin. Are your most important messages within the remaining space? Now cover it 2” from the top of the email. Now imagine every part of your email that’s NOT HTML will not download. Can you still read and understand the message? Can the reader still take the desired action? If not, rethink your layout and copy.


4. Include a Visual: People are drawn to people. Faces should be attractive and worth a second look. Product shots should be visually interesting. The same rules that apply to print, apply to email. An attractive visual breaks up the copy and gives the eye a place to rest. Thermal eye studies show recipients look at the visual first and rest of the image the longest.


5. Don’t Over Use Hot Links: Too many hot links and you’ll lose your reader. Not enough and the reader will be frustrated that they can’t easily follow up on a key idea. Readers scan email, looking to “cut to the chase.” If they can easily click on a link to get to more RELEVANT information, all the better. But if every 3rd word is a link, it’s visually distracting.


These are my email best practices — what are yours?

Building Brand Loyalty -- One Contact at a Time

Okay I admit it. Today I was impressed by a sales guy from a company called Vovici – and believe me when I say, I am not easily impressed.

It all started this morning when I was sorting through my in-box, finger poised over the “DELETE” key, and I noticed an email from Direct Marketing News Whitepaper of the Day. It offered a free whitepaper on ‘The Role of Feedback in Brand Loyalty.’

As a marketer I was intrigued. So I clicked on the link. Not surprising, a registration form popped up... and, like a good little soldier I filled out the form (knowing all the while that my contact information would be dumped into someone’s database for future follow up). After clicking “Submit” I reached another page with a laundry list of whitepapers.

Unfortunately, none of those whitepapers were the one advertised. Hmmm... I’m thinking. Somebody screwed up.

So I clicked on a different whitepaper (yep, still interested) but another registration box appeared. So now I’m cranky.

I find a “Contact us” link at the bottom of the page, and scribble a helpful little email note as follows:

Subject: Email Problem

You send out an email offering a whitepaper “The Role of Feedback in Brand Loyalty” – I filled out the form, but it took me to a page that there were 6 whitepapers but none by this title...

Then, when I did try to download a different whitepaper, it took me back to the registration page.

So, when you discover that your email campaign was not generating qualified leads, you now know why...

We design and develop B2B lead generation programs. When you realize this campaign effort didn’t work and you created a negative impression about Vovici, let me know. Perhaps we can help.

I hit the “Send” key and then notice an email in my IN-BOX with a link to the original whitepaper I had requested. Err...umm...

Suddenly the phone rings and my call display shows Vovici, the company I had just emailed. Wow. That took like, seconds for them to respond!

At the other end was a very friendly Vovici sales guy who patiently listened to my complaint and explained that I must have clicked past the page telling me they would email me my link and probably clicked on the link to read additional whitepapers.

But — and here’s the impressive part — he was very interested in my feedback, my user experience with the email and links, and my B2B marketing advice.

Naturally I shared a few best practice tips with him, and since he felt they were helpful, I thought I’d share them with you, too:

1. Don’t design your whitepapers (or any other downloadable document for that matter) with a heavy use of bleeds. It eats up printer toner.

2. Make sure you don’t use darker backgrounds with type over it for call-out boxes or sidebars. It turns into a big unreadable blob when it’s printed.

3. Often, to save paper, people don’t print the front cover of the document, so make sure your company’s contact information (name, phone number and email address) are on the bottom of every page. Especially since folks often just print specific pages or sections of a larger document.

4. Avoid the use of a lot of photography. Again, unless it’s adding a compelling insight to the story, it just eats up ink toner.

5. If you include charts or graphs, make sure they can print properly if the recipient prints in black and white. Don’t count on the end user to have (or want to use) their color printer.

6. If you offer a free paper/document as a lead generation device, make sure you test the user experience before you make the offer. Once I fill out a form, I don’t want to keep filling out forms to get additional documents. If your back end system can’t handle it, don’t make the offer – or provide a link with your follow-up/thank you email that carries my contact information on it so at least the form can be pre-filled for me.

Oh, and one more thing... make it someone’s responsibility to follow up on emails immediately, cranky or otherwise. It creates a GREAT brand impression.

URLs, MURLs and PURLS -- What's a GURL to do?

If you read direct marketing industry trade pubs on a regular basis, you'll constantly learning about new techniques other organizations are using to increase direct mail response rates and conversion rates. The challenge is to try and intelligently apply those ideas to your own direct mail efforts with the hope of yielding those same successful results.

Before Al Gore created the Internet, direct mail campaigns offered recipients two response channels: Phone and mail. But with the rise of the Web, URLs were added to the response channel mix. The term URL refers to "Uniform Resource Locator" which is the address of a specific Web site on the Internet. Our client KCSM-FM, for example, owns the URL www.kcsm.org. The problem is, when the target visited that page, they were arriving at the organizations front door. There was no one there to greet them, or help them find their way to the desired destination (a donation page, for example).

Then along came MURLs, or Modified URLs. Use the URL, but add an additional destination to the end of the URL so the target lands exactly where you want them to within your web site. An example might be www.kcsm.org/bass. It tied to a fundraising campaign based on the theme around a double bass instrument.
As MURLs started to get longer and longer (think of a URL that's already long to begin with, add a forward slash / nameofcampaign and you get the picture), that led to GURLs or Generalized URLs (thanks to Ethan Boldt of Inside Direct Mail for clarifying this definition).

An example of a GURL might be www.kcsmjazz.com. This is a nice way to create a destination page using many of the elements of the existing brand, but adding a campaign twist (and, since URLs are relatively inexpensive to own, it keeps campaign costs to a minimum).

Over the last few years, PURLs have been gaining a lot of traction with promised response rate increases by as much as 30%. A PURL or Personalized URL is a combination of a MURL and your personal name: www.kcsmjazz.com/carolyngoodman. These dynamic Web landing pages are customized to the recipient, which in turn, can be based on past purchases, buying behavior or other 1:1 communications. The lure of seeing your name in print is apparently, too enticing to resist. Thus the increase in response rates. If you arrive at your page and discover content that you can relate to, it would explain the lift in conversion rates.

We recently launched two different campaigns for two different clients using PURLs and have had some fascinating results.

The first campaign was for B2B client. Using a self-mailer, we reached out to busy professionals (doctors, dentists, etc.) asking them to learn more about a series of insurance products. The landing page offered a click thru to another page which provided more information. Without spending a lot of time and money on content or 1:1 communications on the page itself, we were still able to generate a nearly 1% response rate. A feat unto itself in this highly competitive category.

The second campaign was for our favorite non-profit client, KCSM-FM. By using a postcard to reach past donors and cold prospects, we offered them a personalized T-shirt if they made a donation of $80 or more to the station. The targets name was digitally printed on the billboard panel of the postcard, helping to build the personal nature of the message and the offer. The PURL lured them to the donation page, carefully tying all the messages together. After only 3 1/2 weeks, we achieved a nearly 1% response rate, with 80% click thru -- and the offer doesn't expire until the end of June.

My takeaways?

Personalization, which has always been a good thing in the direct mail business, is leveraged even further with the use of a PURL. And higher response rates and conversion rates for our clients make THIS girl happy.