The ABC’s of Email Marketing

[Tweet “Do you know your ABC’s to email marketing? Grab your alphabets soup and sing along.”]

A:Authentically This is the key to any kind of marketing. The number one rule to influence people is by showing your authentically. What is that mean? It means that to write like how you talk in the emails. None likes to read corporate writing. I dread writing in a corporate tone, let along reading it.

B:Bounce Rate– This is the percentage of email that didn’t make it to the recipients’ inboxes. The goal for your email marketing is to get a low bounce rate, because it indicates that your email list is in good health. (see H) Here’s a how to find your email bounce rate.

C:Churn Rate — The percentage of people unsubscribe to your email in a set period of time. To retain people from leaving your email that’s something that you need to test and retest to get to the cause of it. Here’s the equation for math lover out there ;-)

D:Design– E-commerce business should take advantage of using product photos in email campaigns. Design your email like a storefront so people can window shop right in their inbox.

E:Emoji– :-) There’s a whole post on the science of emoji and why you should start using emoji in your online marketing. In sum, emoji is a medium to reflect your emotion to your end reader. A smily emoji frame the context in a positive manner that readers feel more happy and comfortable in reading your message.

F:Framing Effect- Content marketing is about stirring up the enthusiasm and excitement to the end reader. To do it, use the framing effect, meaning use words and structure your email content in way that your recipients can see a positive light to the message. Here’s an example of what I mean.

Subject Line One: Why you failed at your business?

Subject Line Two : Why you will succeed at your business?

See how two subject lines can bring different emotional outcome when you read it. The latter would induce readers to open the email with a clear gain.

G:Gather Grow your email list from day one. Email is a valuable asset that people hold on to tightly, so for those who signed up is a sign of validation for your business. It tells you that people find your product/service valuable.

H:Health– Email health is a real thing! Did you buy your email list from a third party service? If yes, then your email list is in bad health, abandon your list immediately. If no, move on to check what makes up a good healthy email list.

I:Information Gap– Content upgrades gets its merit on growing your email list exponentially. Think of content upgrade as a bonus material that you wouldn’t see on blog unless you exchange it with your email. Why content upgrade works so wonderfully is because of the phenomenon of information gap. You know there’s extra information that you don’t want to miss out on.

J: Joe Job– This is a spammer practice where he hack jacks someone’s email identity. The spammer in turn send out email with the stolen identity.

K:Kate — That’s ME ! How’s your alphabetic soups so far. Sing tweet to me on @hellokatechan

L:Lifecycle — The Lifecycle of email starts when a user gives you his email. The welcome email, informational email, thank you email, all of which are part of a lifecycle. We know that it takes time for people to make a purchase. With consecutive emails, we’re nudging recipients toward the buying journey.

M: Merge Tag Trick– The idea behind using merge tag trick is to sound more human to the recipients. Email that starts with your name or other personal information, that’s using merge tag trick. The rest of the content is a template email that are also sent out to dozens of customers. This method of email “customization” works still but not as effective as before. People are getting smarter and more tech-savvy; we know it’s a just a script behind it.

N: Newsletter– It’s a curation of contents that are related to your niche.

O: Optimization– There are a dozens of email optimization that you can follow to get the most of your email campaign. Of all the email optimization, mobile-friendly email is the number one on the list. As more than people check their email on the phone, you will be missing out on a large audiences group that could have been reading your email.

P: Personalized– How do we know what kind of information are the recipients looking for in their email? We can find out by asking, simple right? Formulate a question that can segment your email subscribers. To illustrate, if I run an athletic clothing store that are mainly for yogi and runners, I would ask the user to answer if they identify themselves as yoga or a runner or both? That way I know if I have new products release, I know which group of email subscribers I should send the news to.

Q: Questionnaire– This remains one of the most effective to know what your users are thinking without guessing. Data can tell you what your users did on your site, but why your users did what they did will be uncertain unless you ask. If you user wants to unsubscribe your email list, ask them why. From their answers, you gather a consensus users’ view to your email campaign.

R: Reciprocity–We feel indebtedness when someone helps us. With this understanding of human physiology, we can employ this to email marketing. Ask free trial users for a product review or shared it on your social media. Or ask someone whom you just helped for a small token in return.

S:Subject Line — Your first touch point with with your recipients starts with a subject line. Whether the recipients will open the email or not depends on your headline. What’s a good subject line that entice people to open? Let’s start with what not to do in a subject line first.

U: Unsubscribe Rate– It puts the number of people who unsubscribe to your email list in context. Here’s the grade school level math equation to find out your what your unsubsucribe rate. High subscription rate, anything higher than 0.5% is an indication of something wrong with your email campaign.

V: Value– We received dozens of emails everyday. So how does your email campaign cut through the clutter of other emails and let yours stand out? People pay attention to emails that provide value to them. What’s something that the recipients want to hear and want, use that as a starting point to compose your next marketing email. Remember it’s about what the recipients want, not what you want.

W:Website Your email campaign should always include a call-to-action button that people can move on to the next step. In most cases, that call-to-action button leads your users to your business website. This standard protocol for a website

X: Xcellent– Yay you made it all the way here!! If you like your alphabet soup so far, sing it out loud on @RabbutMail

Y: You–An effective to influence people is by stating what your users want, and not what you want. Use “you” in an email copy to convey the importance of end reading.

Z:Zeigarnik Effect– This can be explain by something that we all had experienced when movie trailers left us with a cliffhanger. That’s the Zeigarnik effect you’re feeling, the urgency to complete the task, in this case, watch the full movie. This can also extend to email marketing strategy, position your recipients in a cliffhanger so they would complete the task, whatever your conversion goal is.