If you are like most marketers, email marketing has been a staple for as long as you can remember. While use of the channel continues to evolve slowly for most, many companies I run into are stuck in a rut. In an effort to help you get out of your rut I put together this list of questions to bring to your next 1:1 meeting with your email marketing manager.
1. What % of our emails are opened on mobile devices and tablets and how is that impacting our results?
If you don’t know the answer to this question already, it will probably surprise you. According to Litmus, over 50% of emails are now opened on a smartphone or tablet. And that share is growing quickly. It’s the classic big deal getting bigger every day. If you haven’t done anything about it, you better. Because….
According to a different study by yesmail, only 16% of email revenue is coming from mobile devices. Using the power of sketchy cross-study napkin math, I calculate that revenue per open is over 8 times greater on desktops. If that doesn’t get you motivated to work on this problem then I don’t know what will.
2. What changes have we made to our creative and messaging to account for the shift to smartphones and tablets?
As I am sure you have experienced first hand, a lot of emails are difficult to see and interact with on smartphones and tablets. Does that matter? Apparently it does, according to litmus, 80% of people delete an email if it doesn’t look good on their mobile device. Ouch!
You have a couple of options to attack this problem. The first and best option is to use responsive templates. According to a recent study by Yesmail, responsive emails have a 21% higher click-to-open rate than non-responsive ones. Get a lot of sustainable 21% lifts lately? This is a “no brainer” if you can pull it off.
If you don’t have the resources to move to fully responsive emails yet, there are a lot of small design changes you can make that can really move the needle. Things as simple as font size, button size and button placement can make a huge impact. By simply reviewing your emails on a phone instead of on a PC in your creative reviews you will move the needle.
3. Do we have opportunity to increase frequency to our most email-engaged customers?
Chances are that you are sending the majority of your emails to a pretty large segment. As with all direct response communication there is a highly exaggerated 80/20 rule in effect. Probably more like 95/5. There is always an opportunity to increase frequency profitably at the very top of your file. In order to capitalize on this opportunity you need to do three things:
- You need a way to rank your customers based on both brand and email engagement
- Great ideas for these additional contacts
- The creative and marketing capacity to handle the additional workload
4. What time do we send our emails each day and why?
Chances are that whatever time you are sending the whole file is going out in the same window and that is the way you have always done it. If that’s the case, you are sitting on a massive opportunity. Let me point out a few things to get you thinking about the problem.
- People live in different time zones
- Device behavior varies significantly by day of the week and time of day
- Different devices have significantly different conversion rates
- Different people have very different use patterns
Are you more likely to buy something on your tablet at night or on your iPhone as you step into an elevator?
5. What is our inbox delivery rate?
I am constantly amazed at how few companies know the answer to this question. This goes without saying, but emails that are either not delivered or land in the spam folder don’t perform very well. Measuring inbox delivery rate is easy and does not have to cost and arm and a leg. Want a free recommendation for a great cost effective option? Send me an email and I’ll give you one.
6. Which ISPs are we struggling with and what are we doing about it?
Taking the right actions to improve delivery is very tricky business. Diagnosing the root case is difficult. ISPs are not great communicators, so you are often left with trial and error as the only tool available. Sometimes there are tiny changes you can make to your subject lines or body content that does the trick. Other times you may have to cut back on some combination of mail depth and frequency. And the stakes are high. Stay in spam jail and your revenue from those customers drop to zero. Cut your mail depth or frequency back too far and you are losing contact with customers. If you’re struggling, outside help is your best bet. Are there other email marketing managers you can share learnings with?
7. What event triggered messages have we deployed and what % of our sales do they drive?
At any given time there is a relatively small segment of hyper engaged customers driving the majority of your email marketing revenue. Improving the relevance of communication to consumers in that segment is an incredibly profitable venture. According to Epsilon, event triggered messages are opened at a 70.5% higher rate and clicked at a 101.8% higher rate. Who wouldn’t want more of that?
This has become such a well established marketing technique that campaign ideas should be incredibly easy to come up with.
8. What event triggered message ideas do we have that we have not deployed? And why haven’t we?
Every single email marketing manager I have spoken to in the last couple of years, and that’s a pretty big number, has a list of event triggered message ideas they can’t get to. The “free” nature of the channel makes it a constant target for changes and last minute requests. As a result, email marketing managers can never quite get their new ideas across the line. My advice? Get her some outside help, it will pay for itself almost immediately.
9. How are we personalizing messages for our best customers?
This is an area where us marketers have really failed. Most of the email I receive is clearly batch and blast. Horrible. Shame on us! And technology companies haven’t done much to help us out. I would characterize most personalization technology as “20% solutions”. In order to excel in this area you are generally not going to be able to rely on a single technology vendor to make the magic happen. You will need to have your own ideas and find the right internal and external resources to bring them to life.
10. What reactivation campaigns are we running and how effective are they?
Email is the perfect channel for reactivation campaigns. Because it is so cost effective you can reach customers that are often impossible to reach economically via other channels. As a result, reactivation campaigns should be an ongoing staple within your email marketing program. And you shouldn’t limit these campaigns to reactivating buyers. Keeping your email file fresh is just as important. As customers lose interest in your emails you should be hitting them hard with aggressive messaging and offers to keep them engaged. Your active email file will be significantly bigger after a couple of years of great reactivation execution than it would without.
