Email Marketing Best Practices Flashcards
Defining a Digital Marketing Strategy
1) Put yourself in your customer’s shoes for every interaction
2) Inventory your existing data assets and technologies
3) Prioritize your Business and Customer Use Cases
4) Determine your success criteria
5) Create a single view of the customer
How do you put yourself in your customer’s shoes for every interaction?
- Identify how your prospects and customers interact with your brand.
- Take note of the advertising, website, and marketing messaging, content, CTA’s, process steps, data inputs, and duration between communications.
- Uncover challenges your customers face when interacting with your brand.
How should X company inventory their existing data assets and technologies?
- Identify the technology platforms they already have in place. Identify how they impact the customer and how they impact the customer’s experiences and interactions with the company.
- Identify which systems store personal identifiable information and which don’t.
- Record the unique identifiers that exist in each technology. Use this information to create data extensions and your data model in Marketing Cloud.
- Consider GDPR. Consult with technology and data teams to determine how GDPR impacts your strategy.
How should X company prioritize their business and customer use cases?
- Determine the level of effort, business impact, and customer impact for each of their customer’s challenges. Use a grading score of 1-5 to help rate the challenges.
- Identify quick marketing wins based on the scores.
- Identify technology overlap and technology gaps.
How should company X determine their success criteria?
- Assign key performance criteria to each customer challenge. EX. clicks, opens, conversions, likes, shares, cost-per-acquisition, and cost-per-conversion.
- Use and track progress using SMART objectives.
How should company X create a single view of the customer?
- Identify technology platforms that you can connect to maximize use of customer data. Ex. Connect commerce platform to Marketing Cloud to deliver the right offer at the right time and increase conversions and order value.
- Document the complete 360-degree view of your customer based on all the first-, second-, and third-party data you collect across platforms.
What are the key elements to crafting effective marketing emails?
- Keep them short and sweet.
- Use your branding to your advantage.
- Test, test, test! A/B Testing
- Preheaders
- Utilize AMPscript to build dynamic content and create emails that are personalized.
- CTA’s
EFFECTIVE MARKETING STRATEGIES
SUBJECT LINE BEST PRACTICES
- Keep them short and sweet. Limit to 50 characters or fewer.
- Use your branding to your advantage. Infuse your brand into the messaging and take advantage of brand loyalty.
- Test! Utilize A/B testing
EFFECTIVE MARKETING STRATEGIES
A/B TESTING
Takes two versions of an email and tests to see which one works better.
A/B Testing Possibilities
- Front-loading the brand name
- Front-loading keywords
- Length
- Styles
- Personalization
- Calls to Action
EFFECTIVE MARKETING STRATEGIES
PREHEADERS
Limit preheader to about 100 characters, and make it catchy!
EFFECTIVE MARKETING STRATEGIES
CTA’S
Great CTA’s are:
- Urgent: Use CTAs that create a need for urgent action.
- Brief: State the CTA briefly, with no more than 5 words.
- Action-oriented: Begin your CTA with a verb.
- Clear and Predictable: Be clear and link to a place that doesn’t surprise subscribers.
- Limited and visible: Focus subscribers’ attention on one to two prominent CTA’s.
CAN-SPAM GUIDELINES
Controlling the Assault of Non-Solicited Pornography and Marketing Act
- Accurately identify the sender in the header information.
- Use a subject line that accurately represents the content of the email.
- Identify the message as an advertisement.
- Include your physical mailing address.
- Honor opt-out requests promptly.
- Provide a mechanism to opt out.
You receive an email opt-out request. According to CAN-SPAM, when do you need process that unsubscribe request by?
An unsubscribe request must be processed within 10 days. The unsubscribe mechanism must be operational for at least 30 days after mailing.
Company X is creating a mechanism for subscribers to opt out. What should be kept in mind when creating this mechanism, according to CAN-SPAM?
Under CAN-SPAM, you cannot require a subscriber to log in or visit more than a single page to unsubscribe.
What are the types of unsubscribes?
- Global
- Primary
- List
What is a global unsubscribe?
When customers choose global unsubscribe, they unsubscribe from every email sent from Marketing Cloud.
What is a primary unsubscribe?
With primary (account-level) unsubscribe, customers choose to unsubscribe from emails sent by a given company.
What is a list unsubscribe?
Customers choose list unsubscribe when they want to unsubscribe from a specific list.
What are some ways to improve email deliverability?
- From?
- Bounce and Purge
- Manage email frequency
- Spam filters
Email Deliverability
Deliverability refers to the various stages of an email’s life: the sending, receiving, and opening and an email.
IMPROVE EMAIL DELIVERABILITY
FROM?
- To ensure your email is recognizable, include an actual name in the From address.
- Add the name of your organization to the subject line.
- Using your organization name in both the From address and the subject line will decrease the chances your email will end up in the spam folder.
Company X sent out a marketing email and received bounce-back messages. What should they do to help improve their email deliverability?
Bounce-back messages alert you to defunct email accounts. It is critical to remove any bounced addresses from your mailing lists between one marketing message and the next that you send.
What bounce rate do you want to avoid?
A bounce rate of over 20% for any single mailing can have serious consequences. If your deliverability is bad, your IP address can be put on a blocklist or even shut down.