Pathway to Email Marketing: Best Practices and How-To

Editor's Notes

• #3: Please take a few min to review this. Please note that all training materials and the delivery of training are Marketo’s Intellectual Property. That means you may not copy, record, take screen captures, or reproduce our intellectual property in any fashion. Just a reminder, this session is not recorded and you are not allowed to make a recording. However, you should have a copy of the slide deck and exercise, so I’d recommend taking some notes!
• #5: This course explores email deliverability strategies to help ensure your messages will reach their intended inboxes. <click>Define a winning email marketing strategy: <click>Automate and personalize your campaigns: <click>Leverage A/B testing to drive better results: <click>Ensure your emails hit the inbox: <click>Prove the ROI of your email efforts: Why should marketers be concerned about deliverability? You spend time and effort building your email list and creating your emails because email marketing provides the single best return on investment of any marketing channel. If your email doesn’t even make to the inbox, you might as well have not sent it.
• #6: So as we get started talking about email strategy. Understand that an engaging email is a strategic email!
• #7: Sooo…What exactly do we mean by a winning email strategy?- We mean a plan of action based on results. Remember that first date….it was all about how much contact you were able to get away with…..
• #8: Successful touches are needed in order to convert a cold prospect …in to a buyer Your going to want to set the stage for powerful metrics to draw from, to define your winning strategy Allocate the value of every engagement across all of the Marketing efforts a customer has touched. Count your successful touches: Review the past, and bring it forward Start with or review your <click>email programs, It’s the perfect candidate to feel out your prospects to nail down what they like best…. it has A/B testing(but more on that later). Then with the engagement platform<click> lock in what you gathered and deploy the right content on a regular schedule tailored to win! Identify how much a touch is worth: Lock in those scoring campaigns , not sure where to begin? check out our BP scoring campaigns available for import . Assign value across your successful touches In a Multi touch attribution scenario our revenue cycle analytics will show you revenue across your marketing programs
• #9: Do we even know each other? A study by Experian found that personalized emails deliver 6x higher transaction rates! Let’s break this down into numbers we can all understand: On average email marketing generates $0.11 in revenue per email. If you send 100,000 emails, you can expect $11,000 in revenue. But then wait When your just starting out it’s probably best not to personalize right a way with their first name! whaaaat? Consider demographics / industry / purchase history… first , gain trust the old fashion way…..eeeeeearn it. Personalization too soon comes off stalker! (according to Temples school of business – too much personalization sets off cyber security flags) Email Design Short subject lines are better according to Adestra 10 characters or less had an open rate of 58% Night time is the right time…. Really? Yes really according to Experian marketing services 8 to 12 is your best window….. now ….that was some time ago… but that’s why you always test to check your audience! Optimal mailing time often depends upon your customers’ behaviors, inbox crowding, and the deployment times of other marketers. So why not send when everyone is reading right?! Free Stuff Yes give something away, market research/whitepapers or best practice …people love free stuff, this will drive clicks and opens to the moon. Mobile Make sure your email are responsive and or have been designed with mobile in mind….. that call to action….make sure the button is near the thumb where most people touch Re-engage Ok so you’ve got a big list of prospects in some research 64% of list are inactive Consider your inactives but be careful….make sure to weed out any bounces first! Segmentation If you segment your lists, you get better open rates, revenue, leads, transactions and more customers. Common ones to consider: Industry Size of Company Sales cycle
• #13: In general, you want to engage based on buying stage, since it is critical to think about where the lead is in his/her buying journey. As buying behavior is shown, transitions to different content should be made.
• #14: Streams are your stages, Just plug in the winning content Trigger campaigns Transitions cadence
• #15: So as we get started talking about email strategy. Understand that an engaging email is a strategic email!
• #16: A/B testing is for one-time emails where a small part of the audience will get a test and the resulting winning email goes to the rest of the audience. Champion challenger is used for ongoing emails in triggered smart campaigns or engagement programs. It will introduce variations to an ongoing percentage of recipients.
• #17: Four steps Test Settings has two sections. Variations and Distribution
• #18: Subject line Select Subject Line: Holly wants to Test Subject Line. You only need the one email for this test. She can add up to 10 subject lines She’ll add a few lines highlighting specific features in the newsletter and one line that uses a Marketo token. The token will automatically add the recipients first name in the subject line. For example, if she sent it to herself it would say “Holly, your Human Health Newsletter is here” A: Key Tips For Healthy Living B: Top Surgeon Joins Human Health C: Free Health Fair Saturday D: {{lead.First Name:default=Sir/Madam}}, your Human Health Newsletter is here Whole Emails - Select Whole Emails: This will test the overall performance of the entire emails you select. You could use this to test the position of a button, different images or any changes in content within the email You need at least two emails to use this option You can add up to 10 emails to test From address/From Name- Select From Address: This is a popular testing method to see how the sender effects the open rate. For example how would recipients respond to [email protected] versus [email protected]. You may find that you get a higher open rate when people feel like the email is coming from a person instead of a department. You need at least two addresses to test You can add up to 10 address variants Date/Time Select Date/Time This tests what time of day or day of week are best to send emails. Are you marketing to 9-5 workers at their job? Saturday afternoon probably won’t do much for you. However, maybe you are marketing to people at home who usually check email after 5. This test will help you determine which time and day is most effective for your audience. Name your test times something easy to remember like “Monday Morning” or “Weekend” then just choose your date and time You can test up to 10 date/time variants Next determine the Test Sample size. The green area is the percentage of people in the audience that receive the test. Once a winner is determined the percentage of people in the white area receive that email. It’s easy to adjust just drag the purple bar to the where you need it.
• #19: Winner criteria can be determined by opens, clicks, click to open ratio or your own custom conversion! Open: How many opens Clicks: How many clicks Click to Open Ration: How many opens then clicked Choose Custom Conversion and Edit to launch window If you choose Custom Conversion you’ll have access to tons of different Marketo triggers which allow you ultimate control over how you define success! Holly just needs to test Opens for now. --------------- Next we need to determine how a winner is declared. Choosing Automatic means that the winning email automatically goes out on the day you choose. Choosing Manual means you will receive a report on the day you choose. If you want to send the email you’ll do that after you get your report. Holly knows she wants the winner to go out to the larger percentage of people so she’ll choose Automatic.
• #20: First she chooses the day to send the test out. Then the day to send the winner. She wants to give the test a week to process before determining a winner. You must give at least four hours for the test to process. Keep in mind longer test times will give you better results since there is more time for people to open the email. Notice the Test Duration days change to let you know how many days are being chosen. Then she enters in her own email address so she can receive a notification when the email goes out. If she would have chosen Manual instead of Automatic in the Winner Criteria she would receive a report instead of a notification. Remember, the winning email is not automatically sent out when you choose Manual. You receive a report.
• #21: So as we get started talking about email strategy. Understand that an engaging email is a strategic email!
• #22: Deliverability is <CLICK> the measurement of how often or how likely it is that your emails end up making it into your target audience’s inboxes <CLICK> Only 79% of commercial emails lands in the inbox. This means for every five emails sent, one never reaches the intended recipient 2015 Deliverability Benchmark Report (Rep.). (2015). Retrieved September 29, 2016, from https://returnpath.com/wp-content/uploads/2015/10/2015-Deliverability-Benchmark-Report.pdf One in five messages now fails to reach the inbox. That’s a big number, especially if you are relying heavily on email marketing! So what can you do about this? Well, in this course, and specifically this section, we’ll discuss why this is happening, what you can to do prevent it from happening, and how to fix a problem if one should arise for your org. For some additional reading, check out this blog post and infographic from our Marketo blog: (paste URL in chat window) http://blog.marketo.com/2011/05/the-evolution-of-spam-an-email-marketing-infographic.html?fullsize=https%3A%2F%2Fblue-sea-697d.quartiers047.workers.dev%3A443%2Fhttp%2Fblog.marketo.com%2Fwp-content%2Fuploads%2F2011%2F05%2FThe-Evolution-of-Spam-an-Email-Marketing-Infographic.png
• #23: Getting your email delivered is tougher- MUCH tougher- than its ever been. Five years ago, getting your email delivered was a matter of having the right email address and little details like ensuring that the email was not super obvious spam. By that, I mean your email didn’t say FREE in all caps 50 times. But in today’s world, avoiding spammy words isn’t enough to hit the inbox. Big internet service providers have followed Gmail’s push towards an engagement model. What does that mean? Let’s take a look at how things have changed for the major providers.
• #24: Gmail started with their Priority Inbox (also for Google Apps). When utilized, email is still delivered, but not always marked as “priority”. Gmail has recently updated their foldering – they now have a Promotions folder. Some Marketers are scared by this, others think it’s a positive step. You may have noticed that Gmail now also has tabs: one for primary email, another for social, and a third for promotions. Hitting that primary inbox is increasingly difficult because now Gmail looks at several things, such as: Continuously opened emails Unique clicks as well as multiple clicks Scrolling Frequency of engagements (does the recipient open emails and engage with them regularly)
• #25: Microsoft is promoting their new rebrand of Hotmail, Outlook.com, as a tool to manage your email and clean out the clutter. Their features called Sweep and Schedule Clean Up allow their users to delete email by sender. <CLICK> You can filter by your contacts <CLICK> It also categorizes email automatically based on content type, Newsletters, Social Updates, Everything Else.
• #26: Even Yahoo is changing the inbox as we use to know it! <CLICK> Yahoo Mail allows you to set up folders to store and manage your messages. Several folders exist automatically at the left of the home screen - Inbox, Drafts, Sent, Spam, Trash, Contacts and All Feeds. Making it harder to hit the inbox. <CLICK> As well as giving real time updated in the homepage.
• #27: The first step in preventing problems is ensuring you have the proper authentication methods configured. You can improve your email delivery rates by configuring SPF, or the Sender Policy Framework, and DKIM, or domain keys identified mail, into your DNS settings, known as domain name system. Let’s talk about each of these acronyms in a little greater detail.
• #28: <CLICK> - You want people to read your emails. Derivability determines whether your message gets a chance at getting read by your audience <CLICK> You don’t want to be labeled a “spammer”. if you are a spammer, the scope of your reach and readership will be limited According to Google, spam is either a canned meat product made mainly from ham or irrelevant or inappropriate messages sent on the Internet to a large number of recipients.  Either way, it’s not something I want to see on my computer in the morning.  And since I don’t think I’m in the minority on this one, it’s probably not something that should be a part of your email marketing. “Spam is in the eye of the beholder”, because a marketer might send out what they believe to be the best piece of marketing every created, but the recipient, or the recipients enterprise emailing software sees it as spam! But what can we do to change this? Well lets address why spam is bad… An increasing number of spammers, such as Quantum Communications, will send most or all of their mail through innocent intermediate systems to avoid being blocked, considering many systems have already placed blockers against mail coming directly from the spammers' systems. This sneaky method of sending email fills the recipients system networks with unwanted spam messages, which takes up their email system administrators time dealing with all the undeliverable spam messages, and subjects admins to complaints from recipients who conclude that since the intermediate system delivered the mail, they must be in cahoots with the spammers. Many other spammers use “hit and run" spamming in which they get a trial dial-up account at an Internet provider for a few days, send tens of thousands of messages, then abandon the account (unless the provider notices what they're doing and cancels it first), leaving the unsuspecting provider to clean up the mess. Many spammers have done this tens or dozens of times, forcing the providers to waste staff time both on the cleanup and on monitoring their trial accounts for abuse. Spammers are stealing valuable resources and money is spent to deal with the headaches email system admins deal with.
• #29: When determining your deliverability, its important to understand what metrics to look at and where to find them. It’s also helpful to understand what the metrics are actually indicating. Pending Email is still in the process of being delivered Clicked Link Number of recipients who clicked a link in the email Soft Bounced Email was rejected because of a temporary condition, such as a server being down or a full inbox Hard Bounced Email was rejected because of a permanent condition, such as nonexistent email address Unsubscribed Number of email recipients who clicked the unsubscribe link in the email and filled out the form
• #30: Here’s a helpful chart for us to use to define the key metrics we refer to in our Email Performance report. It’s important to keep a holistic eye on our emails and look at all of these metrics, not just narrow in on one.
• #31: But first, let’s understand how Marketo calculates these numbers in the report. In general, at Marketo, we try to use common sense to record these statistics. For example, if someone clicked a link in an email, they obviously opened it first. We follow these specific rules for the Email Performance Report:
• #32: You are able to review these items on an email by email basis or in an aggregate view with the Email performance report. Note An email performance report includes leads that have been deleted since the email was sent. To filter deleted leads out of your report, use the Smart List tab with the Email Address filter set to: is not empty.
• #33: Email spam filters out there are likely watching out for certain keywords, spelling errors, the reputation of your links out on the internet, and your image to text ratio. Therefore, you want to develop a good strategy to navigate various filters in the world wide web. Usually one of the hottest questions that comes up from every email marketer is “Where can I find a list of words that I shouldn’t use in my email?” Well, keyword filtering isn’t as large a part of the picture, but it can impact some marketers delivery success - especially when sending to smaller email networks. You don’t necessarily have to worry about using the word “Free” in an email, or even a subject line. However, repeated use of these words through out the Subject Line and content can become a problem. Also, writing the Subject Line in ALL CAPS may be a great way to make your Subject Line pop in the inbox, but there are some filters out there that are looking for this technique. Some filters are looking at the balance of letters to punctuation in a subject line so you may also want to avoid too many $ signs or ! points. Filters are also looking for spelling errors. Think of the spam in your junk folder, and how senders are trying every which way to trick the filters with misspellings but still trying to convey the original product. Filters are sensitive to these misspellings. HTML to text ratio is also something that comes up quite a bit but is fairly easy to manage with the Marketo application. Filters like to see a balance of text and html or images in the content. Image spam and spam that follows the pattern of a few lines of text with a link or two are still popular formats, so be sure to create a balance with your own content to avoid looking like a spammer. Marketo enables you to create a text version of your email once the graphical, html version has been built. Be sure to look at this text version and make sure it is well formatted and ready for publication because a solid text version will help create that balanced message that the filters won’t immediately correlate with spam. Normally we would never call out a particular vendor or business in a negative way. But bit.ly, as the most popular link shortener in the market, has become a target for spammers who are attempting to obscure their own links. This shortener is listed on many email blacklists and using a bit.ly link can cause delivery issues.
• #34: After you have taken steps to ensure your email won’t get caught in the filters you also want to make sure it doesn’t get caught in the Human Spam Filter. The innate Spam Filter we have all developed. For example, many of us are trained to avoid messages from sender we don’t know with the word FREE in the subject line. But you might have good intentions! If so, be sure to BRAND your From Address. Avoid common spam signals that will make your recipient suspicious.
• #36: An email that is expected by the recipient will see higher engagement and higher response. This is why opt-in permission is so important with email marketing. One of the ways of making that email an expected email is to tailor the content as specifically as you can to the recipient. Do you know the industry, their role in the company, where they are located, have they downloaded a whitepaper or have they opened the last 3 emails you have sent? Are they a decision maker? Utilize Marketo’s Engagement/Nurture Program. Dialoguing with individuals and setting up ‘tracks’ can build is what build engagement with your emails and this engagement will drive optimal deliverability. Add a touch or personalization with tokens, as well. Poll: How many times have you signed up for emails from a company, forgotten (or wished you hadn’t!), gotten the emails you requested, then unsubscribed because they felt like spam?
• #37: We say “proactively” here because languishing, inactive leads can lead to delivery issues. By removing non-responders, a whole host of delivery issues can be avoided. Don’t continue to send the same old emails. Someone might have abandoned their email account. A chronic non-responsive email address could potentially be turned into a spam trap. Email providers sometimes repurpose abandoned email addresses and full domains as spam trap networks designed to catch spammers. While it can be valuable to attempt to re-engage with a targeted campaign, sometimes it is best to just set the lead as marketing suspended.
• #38: When considering your chronic inactive, here’s a few best practices to keep in mind. First, its always a good idea to review this list at least once per sales cycle. Take a look at the emails on there and consider if any stand out or if you see any trends. It’s also a good idea to develop a flow action process. Consider building out some data management campaigns that can automatically set these leads to at least marketing suspended, so that you no longer are attempting to market to them. When evaluating your list, be sure to review by source. If someone at one point in time engaged with a gated asset, what was it, and why haven’t they engaged since then? Was the piece of content an outlier to your normal content, something that maybe was truly indicative to buying intent? Are there problematic sources providing names to your database? Consider optimizing your subscription process as well, to see if there is a reason that names are opting-in and then not engaging or consuming your content. Where it makes sense, you can also consider a re-engagement campaign for in-actives. Then if they still choose not to engage, either set to Marketing Suspended (if customer) or set to Blacklist (if prospect). Finally, consider an appropriate timeframe that you might consider deleting the lead all together from your database.
• #39: While click rates haven’t been an item we’ve mentioned much yet, they play an important part in the way that many of the freemium email providers gauge engagement and therefore likelihood of a sender being a spammer. So one way to help shore up your reputation, and to stay relevant with your audience, is by finding ways to increase your click rate. This can be done by testing of course. But also be mobile ready! Be sure your Call to Action (CTA) is above the fold and linked to at least 3 times, preferably twice in the first paragraph. Cater to the person you are speaking to- an individual will be opening and reading this! Don’t be afraid to use “my,” “mine” or “me.” And for help in understanding what your leads have been clicking on, check out the email link performance report. This report shows you a break down of the links that are receiving clicks in your email, how many times they are being clicked, and by how many leads. Very helpful information!
• #40: <CLICK> As you focus on targeting and understanding your audience, you should also simply think about how often you are emailing them. If a business doesn’t engage with me relatively quickly I will forget I subscribed. On the flip side, if you go too long between emailing me, I will forget that I was previously engaged and think that you are spamming me! <CLICK> For infrequent emailers I encourage businesses to send at least one email quarterly. This keeps your audience engaged and likely to recognize and expect the mail the next time it’s in the inbox. <CLICK> Are you really a daily emailer? There aren’t too many business models out there that can sustain a daily email without drowning their audience. As an email consumer, I would want to stop that steady stream and hit SPAM to end it all. Do you even know if you are a daily emailer? Do departments in your company share a database? This can lead to “lead exhaustion” as recipients receive email from multiple senders within one organization. Marketo’s Engagement program will also enable you to set limits to the number of emails your leads receive, reducing the chance of different departments overzealously sharing a lead database.
• #41: Let customers know what they are signing up for. Are the leads signing up for newsletters? Event invitations? Alerts? Industry announcements? If so, you will be sending multiple distinct types of mail and should consider setting up multiple mailing lists. Also, be consistent and timely with your messaging. If they signed up for the monthly newsletter, you should be sending it out on a monthly basis. Don’t leave them wondering why they haven’t heard from you.
• #42: Marketo prohibits sending unsolicited email. Bottom line! If a recipient does not wish to get marketing messages from your company they wont, but keep in mind that there are regular email you can configure and send in Marketo, and are those you can set as operational. When you sent an email as operational, what happens? Right, that email will bypass the settings of those leads who are marked as unsubscribe and Marketing Suspend in your database. That is why it is best practice to configure a Marketo form that will allow prospective leads and customers to opt-in to email messages that are of interest to them. Opt-in options should go directly to your company not third part vendors. Try to avoid depending on someone else to manage the emailing desires of your prospective leads and customers. For more information, please be sure to read the Marketo Use Policy found here (paste in chat window) http://legal.marketo.com/use-policy/
• #43: Having a recipient opt in is the best way to make sure an email address is valid. There are double opt-ins, active opt-ins and passive opt-ins. The safest method is the double opt-in, in which the recipient receives a confirmation message with an embedded link that must be clicked to validate the address and confirm the desire to receive emails. For active opt-ins, the recipient enters an email address and clicks a box in order to receive mailings. This type of opt-in works best when recipients are instructed to enter the address two times; this reduces “fat finger” mistakes. You end up with more accurate addresses, and recipients are less likely to mark your email as “abuse” or “spam” since they actively signed up for the mailing in the first place! Passive opt-ins are those in which the box is already checked when someone visits a Web page or makes a purchase. This is by far the least reliable opt-in method. It generates bad addresses and you will receive high abuse rate responses from recipients. From a deliverability standpoint, the double opt-in is your best bet, as it validates addresses, reduces abuse complaints and gets mail delivered to recipients that want your email. Avoid other methods like only offering recipients the option to opt-out when they didn’t even know they were being added or appending the leads email address to other marketing initiatives just because they might have purchased one product from you in the past. Some companies will even rent or purchase lists of email address to try and acquire new leads, but we do not suggest it because you may not be able to utilizes Marketo’s lead database features and nurturing features to control how and when to communicate with your contacts
• #45: Due to laws like CAN-Spam in the US as well as other laws globally, it is important to mention that some countries are requiring the audit of logs for data about when and how an email recipient chose to opt-in to marketing material. To gather this data, configure your form include a timestamp, customer IP address, and URL of the opt-in point. Ensure that both your company and major products, brands, or business units are identifiable by recipients of your email communication. If they know who you are, there is less of a chance to end up in the spam folder. It may sound counterintuitive to your goals but the easier you make it for your user to find the unsubscribe link the less likely they will report you as spam instead of unsubscribing. Unsubscribe links should never be “hidden”. Not only does it increase the chances someone reports you as spam, it also is a bad business practice. It's questionable at best in terms of CAN-SPAM compliance. Employing a preference center that allows users to “opt-down” from subscriptions (both in terms of frequency of emails and types of communication) increases the chances you will keep a subscriber. For more considerations, check out this blog post (past link in chat window) http://blog.marketo.com/2013/08/the-problem-with-implicit-opt-in-for-email-marketing.html
• #47: In three steps one way to nail this down is to utilize the opportunity influence analyzer to tell Marketing’s story on impact on revenue Step 1: Count All the Successful Touches In an omni-channel scenario, successful touches can happen across numerous channels. Perhaps the customer’s last touch point was your website, but prior to hitting “buy,” he spent time in an email, on your Facebook page, and on your Twitter feed. He may have even gone into a brick-and-mortar store before committing to the purchase online (or vice versa). When collecting all your touches, be sure to only count those that occurred before the action was taken — those that led to the action. Step 2: Assign Value to the Final Action You might use your e-commerce platform, transactional system, or CRM as the system of record for how much the action is worth. A marketing automation tool can make this easy for you. Step 3: Distribute That Value across Your Successful Touches In a multi-touch attribution scenario, you assign a value to each successful touch. Often, this is best done with simple distribution: if a consumer touched five marketing programs, each touch point gets 1/5th of the credit for the ultimate value. As simple as that seems, it’s often easier said than done, because most ESPs don’t support such sophisticated analysis. But modern marketing automation solutions can do this right out of the box.
• #49: Hopefully this course has helped you feel more confident in analyzing how effective your organization is at getting emails into your audience’s inbox. As we come to an end, here’s what we covered in today’s course.
• #50: <Talk about the current offerings>
• #51: Take advantage of our additional resources in the Marketo community, take additional on-demand Marketo webinars, and check out our Email deliverability tool.
• #52: Next steps would be to take advantage of more learning and practice opportunities with some of our more advanced adoption courses, resources and Certification.
• #53: Paste the link to the survey in the chat window: https://marketo.co1.qualtrics.com/SE/?SID=SV_8vpNgeQUcUmgiu9