EMAIL MARKETING: EXPERT ADVICE - Tips for success.

Despite the healthy outlook for email as a direct marketing channel, open rates, deliverability and client expectations are all practical issues for the industry. Leading email practitioners share their insights and advice. You can click here to read more information

Interviews by Luan Goldie

With more email being sent than ever, how do you ensure cut-through and healthy open rates?

Kirsten Berg "The basic principles of successful email marketing haven't changed. Well-targeted lists, a relevant proposition, bold visual design, a single-minded message and a single compelling call to action all help to ensure a healthy open rate. The problem is that few actually follow these principles, but those who do are always surprised by what great results they get. "Capturing the audience's initial interest is most critical. Approaching email creative like an ad rather than a newsletter yields better results. Too often there's a desire to say everything in a single email, with the hope that one of the many messages will resonate with someone."

Mathew March Smith "We analyse different subject lines within the same campaign to determine the most effective use of words and phrases. We also have simple tricks like using first names, sending the mail from a person and using a relevant subject to the demographic. The number of mailings is important - a recent client found their open rates dropping off simply because they had sent too many communications in the last six months. We reduced the number and the rates have gone back up."

Dela Quist "In email marketing the balance of power is held by your customers and prospects. This is because with the help of ISPs and spam filters, and backed by the EU Data Directive, consumers can block unwanted email very easily. However, if a consumer wants to receive your email messages they can take active steps to guarantee your message is delivered. They're most likely to do this if the messages come from a brand they trust and they have personally subscribed to your mailing list via your Web site or as part of a recent transaction. "We advise our clients to do everything they can to grow their own lists and make sure that their messages provide true value to their customers. Email addresses acquired in this way are highly likely to be to the consumers' primary address and open rates for the first two or three messages will be very high."

Mike Weston "Cut-through and open rates are factors of how welcome your message is and how well you communicate that to recipients when they scan their inboxes. Is your recipient expecting to hear from you? Are you saying something they're interested in hearing? I'd argue that if the answer is no to any of those questions, you shouldn't be sending the email."

Pipa Unsworth "Write to be scanned, not read. And say what you want to say three times. Make the call to action clear: tell them what to do and where to click. "Be aware of your audience profile: are they AOL, Yahoo! or Hotmail users, as these clients often strip out some tags? Know how your email will look with the graphics disabled, as email image disabling is increasingly common. Don't ask for too much from prospects too soon: ask only for the minimum initially unless there's a strong incentive to do otherwise. "Integrate with other customer communication channels and marketing - email isn't the only way your customers communicate with you. Ensure your email systems and data are linked into your CRM systems to get a holistic view of customer activity. "Keep lists fresh. Maintain a dialogue with your customers/prospects by emailing everyone on your list at least once every 90 days. The more recent the data, the better it performs. And test, test, then test some more."

Rupert Harrison "When planning an email campaign, organisations should make sure they actually have something to say. They should resist the temptation to broadcast a campaign on Tuesday just because that's what they do every week. It all links back to relevance, as messages should be tailored to the recipient. I can't imagine that an organisation's entire customer base is interested in a blanket message. "To ensure greater cut-through, emailers should segment their list and send dynamic content based on what they know about their customers/prospects. Tagging Web pages is very useful to track users' journeys, which will come in handy for future campaigns. "Organisations that communicate regularly by email should set up templates. Not only do they save money, they give the customer a degree of continuity.

How much tougher is email marketing becoming as ISPs promise users greater protection from spam?

"Gavin Male "It's important to work with the ISPs to understand their criteria regarding commercial mailings, be that volume, frequency, sender ID or content. Following best practices and having an open dialogue with ISPs ensures that messages reach the intended recipients. Open rates are still being affected by image-blocking techniques employed by ISPs and corporate domains to defend against spam, so it's important to look at the open rate in conjunction with the other metrics, such as click-through rate."

Kirsten Berg "Managing relationships with the ISPs, assessing emails before they go out and keeping abreast of issues and changing rules is critical to ensuring message delivery. Email marketers must concern themselves with both sides of the equation to get results."

Mathew March Smith "We're partners with a world-class email distributor that has relationships with all the key ISPs to ensure its mails have the maximum cut-through. Each email is individually vetted and analysed to check for dubious words, phrases or scripts. Any mail scoring below a certain spam threshold is simply not sent. This is to protect the distributor's relationship with the ISPs."

Dela Quist "ISPs' efforts to protect consumers from spam are a big problem for email marketers because the spam war is an arms race, so the filtering rules are constantly changing. This problem is exacerbated by the fact that there are well over 25 significant service providers, and no two do things in the same way. "We hand-code all our HTML emails, which guarantees a consistent look and feel across all platforms and reduces the chances of something in the code triggering spam blocking. We create a test platform of a client's top 25 email domains and check that messages are getting into the inboxes of all of them before sending. After sending, we monitor delivery rates to the top 25 domains and, if we encounter any issues, work with the relevant email provider's ISP relations team to establish what the issue is and fix it."

Mike Weston "ISPs are promising to get tougher on spam because their customers dislike it. Clearly it still generates enough response to get a return on its (low) cost, but if you're a marketer for a reputable brand you must consider how negatively you'll impact your target's view of your brand through sending unwanted, unsolicited email."

Rupert Harrison "Data hygiene is imperative to ensuring that your IP address doesn't end up being blocked by ISPs. Triggers like consistent high bounce levels can result in blocking. Until an industry-wide solution is found, content will remain the largest junk trigger.

What do clients need to be educated most about?

"Kirsten Berg "What clients need most is education about data analysis and acquisition. I've been very surprised how difficult it is to convince clients of the value of analysing their prospect database and selecting only the most relevant lists for a mailing. Because email is so cheap, many would rather email the entire database and not miss any respondents, rather than take a segmented approach. This attitude is why everyone receives so many emails that are irrelevant to them, which can change their attitude towards the brand. Many email marketers need more experience purchasing email lists."

Mathew March Smith "The cost. Some clients are experienced with eCRM but new ones tend to think that email is supposed to be free. To get the most out of email, you have to be prepared to put enough into it. Using a distributor with better relationships with ISPs costs more than a cheaper bulk-mail specialist, but the fact it has those relationships means your open rates could be 100% bigger. If you're sending 200,000 mails, that represents a lot of potential new customers."

Dela Quist "Clients who are in heavy acquisition mode need to be educated on the fact that performance over time can vary a great deal, depending on the acquisition source or method. This needs to be monitored carefully. It's therefore very important to append details of the source and acquisition method of each subscriber or customer within their database, so that comparisons between the performances and ROI of the different acquisition sources can be easily made."

Mike Weston "Clients should consider really carefully whether email is the right tool for acquisition. It's an excellent tool for conversion, once the prospect has given permission for you to send email, and perfect for customer retention, provided the message is relevant. "The more value your message offers the recipient, the more likely you are to improve their impression of your brand. Conversely, the more you spam, the less they will think of you, impacting your business beyond email. Customers won't distinguish your email efforts from the product or service they decide to shun."

Gavin Male "Clients need to take into account the other, less measurable aspects of a campaign, such as the recall rate and branding. Email encourages and expects an instant reaction, but this isn't always possible, so it's important to consider post-campaign acquisitions. This can be done via cookies on a user's PC."

Rupert Harrison "Clients should first look at what they already have. Internal data is generally cheaper and a prospect list already contains warm leads. Some companies forget the benefits that customer profiling can bring. Most lifestyle companies offer either free profiles or make them free with a volume commitment. Once they know the make-up of their customers, they can buy look-a-like data using a combination of profiled, manual selects and affinity. Organisations should aim to acquire customers that will be interested in what the organisation has to offer and have the highest lifetime value. "From a best-practice point of view, clients should check the privacy policies and registration pages of their sources and ensure they meet the required standards."

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