3 Tips to Take Your Email Marketing Program to the Next Level

Bronto Software
324 Blackwell St. Ste. 410
Durham, NC 27701
www.bronto.com

● Bronto Software provides the leading marketing platform for retailers and other commerce-focused companies to drive revenue through email, mobile and social campaigns. Over 1,000 organizations including Party City, Armani Exchange, Timex, Samsonite and Trek Bikes rely on Bronto to increase revenue through interactive marketing. The company won the Stevie Award for Best Customer Service in 2009 and 2010, was named a CODiE Award Finalist for Best Marketing Solution in 2011 and is one of Inc. magazine’s fastest growing software companies. For more information, visit bronto.com or call 888-BRONTO-1.

Emailvision
The Chrysler Building
405 Lexington Ave.
New York, NY 10174
www.emailvision.com

● Emailvision is the international leader in software as a service (SaaS) for email, mobile and social media marketing powered with customer intelligence. With offices and client service teams in 19 countries, Emailvision delivers 5 billion messages per month on behalf of 4,000 clients worldwide. The company is privately owned by Francisco Partners.

Silverpop
200 Galleria Pkwy. Ste. 1000
Atlanta, GA 30339
www.silverpop.com

● Silverpop’s Engagement Marketing suite enables companies to build relationships with customers and prospects through the creation, automation and delivery of relevant online messaging. Companies rely on Silverpop Engage to manage multichannel campaigns that enhance customer value. Silverpop Engage B2B scores sales leads, nurtures them and measures return on investment. www.silverpop.com.

By consistently producing the highest return on investment of any marketing vehicle, it’s easy to see why email is a part of most every marketer’s toolbox.

The challenge is getting your email message to stand out among the clutter. That encompasses a number of factors, including first and foremost getting your message delivered. After that, catchy subject lines, relevant content, enticing offers, great creative, among other things will determine whether your message connects with consumers. To help you optimize your email marketing program, here are three best practices to follow:

1. Test formatting and delivery across multiple email clients. There are dozens of email clients (e.g., Outlook 2003, Outlook 2007, Lotus, Entourage, Thunderbird, etc.) and webmail services (e.g., AOL, Gmail, Yahoo, Hotmail, etc.), and each renders emails slightly differently. Make sure your emails are relevant and coherent to recipients even if images aren’t rendered properly. Remember, most email service providers’ default setting is to have images turned off. Test to ensure your email isn’t getting caught in a spam filter.

2. Find the optimal balance for your email creative. There are four key elements in email design: graphics, layout, color and images. When creating your newsletter, find the balance between these components that works for your brand. Don’t cram the design full of graphic elements and colors. Rather, keep the layout clean with a few splashes of color and assorted images.

3. Establish a rhythm that encompasses the cadence, frequency and sequencing of your email program. Defining the correct rhythm for a program means understanding that frequency and cadence vary depending upon which period of the life cycle the subscriber is in with you. A new-to-file subscriber with profile characteristics that resemble your most engaged audience, for example, can receive (and should) more emails than other segments of your subscriber base.

Depending on a subscriber’s level of engagement with your brand, the recommended rhythm may also be different. What’s more, monitoring subscriber churn is also an important element in understanding optimal email rhythm.

Between declining subscriber engagement and increasing churn, those are two clear informational drivers to help optimize your email program’s rhythm.