Answers to 9 Top Email Marketing Questions

by Admin on Friday, February 11th, 2011 | No Comments

The Science of Email Marketing with Dan Zarrella

Yesterday we hosted our biggest webinar yet, The Science of Email Marketing! With 20,000 registrants, the event gave rise to a great discussion and became a number one trending topic on Twitter. As we were unable to answer all of our participants’ questions live, we decided to address some of them here.

1. Don’t you think social media will take over email marketing?

The future of email marketing has been heatedly debated recently. Is email marketing dead? Should we do less of it because of the incredible potential of social media? In some cases, the answer to that question might be yes. As an example, look at Ben & Jerry’s and how they dropped email marketing in favor of social media. On the other hand, the answer is strictly no. As an example, look at how wildly successful GroupOn is. So you could argue both ways, for the demise of email or for its rebirth as the most powerful marketing channel. The answer would depend on your personal approach and the preferences of your target audience.

2. Any tips for email subject lines and placement of calls-to-action?

To ensure deliverability of your emails, make sure your subject lines don’t include spam-triggering words. As mentioned in a previous post, some Email Service Providers (ESPs) help you identify these phrases with features such as Content Detective, SpamAssassin and ContentChecker. Try to keep your email subject lines consistent with your branding, yet out of the box and compelling.

To ensure you are making the most of your calls to action in an email, you will have to test different placements. What’s a better spot to place a CTA—the middle of your message or its end? Also consider experimenting with different forms of calls to action. For instance, is a hyperlinked text going to perform better than text in a colored box that looks like a button?

3. What email software do you prefer to use?

The list of ESPs one can choose from these days is long. Some of the most popular ones are Constant Contact, ExactTarget, MailChimp and Blue Sky Factory. HubSpot also offers an email marketing tool as part of our integrated inbound marketing software. Making the decision about which provider to go with would depend on your specific business situation—how complex of a system you need, your price limits, what CRM you use…

4. How can you do email marketing without it seeming like spam to your contacts?

Ultimately, email marketing remains a channel for communicating a message. The message carries the real value. That is why, if you want your subscribers to anticipate your email, send them meaningful offers. Instead of pushing your product, special promos and discounts all the time, provide them with some valuable piece of content, such as a monthly industry report, a compilation of case studies, an opportunity to win in a sweepstakes. Think about nurturing your list, not necessarily asking them to purchase.

5. People are wary of overloaded email inboxes. How do you stand out and get people to read yours?

As Dan suggested in the webinar, one way to stand out in people’s inboxes is to take full advantage of brand recognition. Try adding your company’s name in the subject line. Create emails introducing a series of offers people will be expecting. For example, at HubSpot, we produce webinars on a regular basis, so our subject lines often start with the phrase [New Webinar]. That way, people who have enjoyed a previous webinar of ours are more likely to express interest in attending an upcoming one.

6. What about open rates?

Compared to click-through rates, open rates are not a very reliable metric. Changes in technology prevent us from evaluating accurate open rate data. Mike Volpe, HubSpot’s VP of Marketing wrote about this very same issue some time ago:

The fundamental reason email open rate metrics are unreliable is that the metric relies on a tiny image in the email being downloaded by the person reading the email. When this image is downloaded from the web into the person’s email reader, the software counts that email as being read. This is the only way that anyone has been able to figure out how to track if someone opens an email, and all email marketing systems use this method.

7. Between HTML and Text email, which one should be sent more often?

In order to answer this question, you will have to do A/B split testing. Companies see success with both versions. While GroupOn is a heavy user of HTML, Google seems to stick to simpler text-based emails. The messages of both are widely read. Your task as a marketer is to recognize what resonates with your audience. If you are seeking to build more mobile-friendly emails, consider cleaner, text-based emails with fewer images. Accoridng to MarketingSherpa’s 2010 report, 67% of people do not display images by default in their email system.

8. Does message length make a difference?

It is generally accepted that shorter is better (no one has time to read a long email). Also, for mobile email consumption, shorter copy with a call to action at the top, performs better. Yet, Dan’s research showed that more links in a message lead to higher CTRs and lower unsubscribe rates. You can include more links only if you have a longer message. So try to strike a happy balance between what gives your subscribers enough context about the offer and what they will realistically read.

9. What are some best practices to ensure deliverability?

We discussed 7 of these in a recent blog post, but let me repeat some of them since this is a critical point: suppress against hard bounces, increase engagement levels, use a preference center and track your compliant feedback loop.

Did you have any more email marketing questions that we can address? Make sure you check out the slides and video from Dan’s webinar for further details!