Answers to your Email Marketing questions

For starters…

1. Right up front, clients and/or potential clients will ask me do I grow my email list?

Often, when I’m browsing the web, I’ll come across a blog with a stunning newsletter subscription form, boasting thousands of subscribers and to be honest with you, I’m kind of jealous.

So, yes, one way is to have an Email signup form to convince and convert visitors to join your newsletter.

Big subscriber numbers are something we all want, so it’s good to know there are many smart ways of going about growing a list.

But first, and foremost, let me start with one way NOT to grow: Purchasing email addresses.

Buying email addresses is frowned upon by most major email service providers (e.g., Mailchimp, Constant Contact and Aweber will cancel your account if you try to do so).  More importantly for you, the quality of these leads is poor.   Let’s face it, these people don’t know you and most likely they won’t have any interest in your product organically, so you’re already fighting an uphill battle and they report you as a spammer.

Instead of buying subscribers, try earning them through quality content and asking permission.   Here are some tactics for growing your list the right way.

Create an offer

Any piece of quality content will do.  Depending on your industry you may be able to build an eBook out of a series of blog posts.   Or maybe an email course if this something you can offer.   

Then once you have your offer, ask folks for an email address in order to access the content.

Use subscription forms

You’ll never get an email address if you never ask for one.   (Duh, I know, but stay with me.)   The University of Alberta famously boosted subscribers’ 500 percent with a popup survey asking nothing more complicated than: “Would you like to sign up for our email?”

Popup surveys are one of many locations for a subscription form.   Consider adding one to the sidebar of your blog, as a popup for those reading your articles, or in a call-to-action on your main page or in your footer.

Make great partnerships

You are likely to find willing subscribers at other places around the Internet by partnering with sites that fit your focus.  The key is to be helpful: Provide great content that your peers find valuable, and you’ve likely found yourself a partner.  (Then be sure to close the deal by asking for email signups.)

2. Here is another question I get often, what is the best day of the week / time of day to send an email?

I hate to tell you this but there is no magic bullet for an optimal time to send email.   The “right time” varies by so many factors and from list to list.

Your own email timing data is the best data you can get your hands on!

The best time to send your email will be unique to your list.   That being said, there are some trends in open rates and click through rates that provide a good starting point for some tests.  An Email Marketing platform should provide you with the analytics that will help you to fine tune the timing.

3. How often should I send email to my subscribers?

I won’t cop out on this one either (but I probably should).   Your own data will teach you a lot about optimal email frequency, but here’s a good rule of thumb to follow, in my opinion, depending on your industry:

It can be once a month, twice a month or if you run a retail store or restaurant, maybe once a week to highlight your “weekly specials”.

Another way to help you decide is to offer some kind of any eBook or some other educational piece of literature when they opt to sign up for your newsletter(s) but be clear upfront letting them know that they will get a series of message however frequent you design your way of staying in contact with your audience.  Eventually you will send them just updates about your blog  and/or new products or services.

5. What metrics should I track?

There are two titans of email marketing statistics:

Open rate: The number of recipients who opened or viewed your email.

Click-through rate: Percentage of recipients who clicked at least one link in your email.

Certainly, you should follow up each campaign by checking these two numbers.  Industry averages range, but in general, a 15 to 20 percent open rate is healthy and a 1 to 3 percent click through rate is good.

Consider opens and clicks to be your bread and butter. You’ll still need fruits and vegetables (and desserts), right? Here is another vital metrics that help complete the analytics picture for your email campaigns.

Click-to-open rate: Of the subscribers who opened the email, how many clicked?

Whereas click-through rate is based on total emails sent, click-to-open rate is based on total emails opened.   This will help you measure the quality of your copy and design better than the overall click through rate will.

You may have to calculate this yourself if your email provider doesn’t provide it.   Simply take the number of unique clicks and divide by unique opens.

Conversions

It is possible that your email is merely a stop along your sales funnel, in which case you will want to follow up to see how the email converted.   Conversion tracking requires that you dig deeper beyond the first open or click of an email and to track the user trail all the way to the end.   You’ll likely need to get your website analytics involved in this step.

Email list health and deliverability

Having hundreds of thousands of subscribers is only a good thing if hundreds of thousands are engaged with your emails.   When lists balloon in size and not quality, huge percentages of the list can result in bad email addresses or disinterest.   This negatively impacts whether or not your message reaches the inbox (deliverability) as email services tend to frown on places that send bulk email with a lot of bad ends.

The good news is that proper list health – which could involve pruning a list dramatically or scrubbing out all the zombie subscribers – can lead to big results.

7. Where should I spend the most time on my email?

Certainly, there is a lot to consider for sending an email marketing campaign.  It’s easy to get lost in a sea of options, so here’s an exercise to try: Put yourself in a subscriber’s shoes. (Should be easy; you probably get a ton of email yourself!)

What will make the subscriber open your email?   What will he or she see first?   Their eyes will go in a pattern something like this:

Who sent the email (“from” name)

What the email is about (subject)

These are the elements that will determine whether or not your subscriber even proceeds to the body of your email.

In other words, spend quality time coming up with a quality subject.   Here are some options for a good workflow.

• Write your subject line first

Before the design.  Before the copy.   Before the amazing call-to-action you know is going to rock the world of email marketing.

Write your subject line first, and tackle the rest second.

• Schedule time in your workflow to write you subject line

OK, let’s say you’re incredibly set in your ways with designing and writing your HTML email first.   You can keep it that way, as long as you make sure to schedule an appropriate amount of time for your subject.   Yes, it is that important.   If you have two hours to create your campaign, spend an hour-and-a-half on the design and copy and the remaining half hour on your all-important subject.

8. What is the ideal length for my subject line?

In general, keep the subject line shorter than 50 characters.

Ideally it should be 28 to 39 characters if all possible

9. How do I make my email look good everywhere?

The latest numbers on email opens confirm that mobile is hugely important.

Better than 50 percent of emails are opened on a mobile device.

That means that half your audience will be viewing your email on a screen three inches wide and the other half could be viewing on a screen 15 + inches wide.   How do you bridge that gap in one well-designed message?

Answer: Responsive email design.   Much like responsive web design, responsive emails look good no matter where they are viewed because they have specific styles for specific screen sizes.

If you’d prefer a quicker fix, try this: Design a one-column email.   One-column emails scale beautifully because there are no sidebars to squish the content as the screen size decreases.   One column email is as simple as they come and work great on almost any screen.

10. Are there any rules to email marketing?

Yes, and they aren’t just rules—they’re laws.  In the United States, the CAN-SPAM Act legislates good and bad email with some specific guidelines.   If you are sending commercial email, you must do the following:

• Include an unsubscribe link
• Include your brick-and-mortar address or your P.O. box
• Honor someone’s unsubscribe request by never emailing them again
• Avoid purchasing a list

Penalties for not following the law can be as severe as a $300+ fine for each recipient of your email.

Your turn

Do you have a question that didn’t make the list? Ask away in the comments, and I’ll do my best to give you an answer!

P.S. If you like this post, you might also like How To Write An Email Newsletter