The First Word: Email Marketing

[Note: What follows is an excerpt from the instructor’s unpublished

book “Marketing Street Smarts,” adapted for this online course.]

Email marketing is a workhorse. A workhorse, I tell you!

Not sexy, not flashy. But, whew, can it pull its load.

(Actually, email marketing can be sexy. Explore Really Good Emails.

Take time to admire the handiwork of these talented email
marketers. Like an art gallery for emails.)

It seems to me each new generation is ready to write-off email

marketing. “I mean, surely we’re past email,” the next generation of
marketers might be tempted to think. “This is the age of
generative AI, influencers, live-streaming, and TikTok.
That “email is dead,” a common prognostication, has outlasted the
prognosticators who made it (and continue to make it).

How can email have such staying power?

Let me make a couple of “unmatched” points…

#1 Unmatched Versatility

First, think about all the tools in your marketing toolbox – both
digital and non-digital. How many of these tools offer a
customizable, potentially one-to-one experience with prospects
and/or customers that can also be automated?

(By automated, or marketing automation, I mean the use of

software – like email marketing software (e.g., MailChimp) – to
perform a marketing action (e.g., send emails) with less,
minimal, or even no human input.)

Few-to-none. Except email. Email can be incredibly flexible and

targeted.

We discussed SEO last week. SEO is a powerful, “long-game” tool,

we said. Email, uniquely, can be a powerful long-game and
short-game tool. It can live comfortably in both worlds.

●​ Long-game email examples: Email newsletters and “drip

campaigns.” A drip campaign is a series of emails sent slowly
over time, to stay in front of and engage
customers/prospects.
 ●​ Short-game email examples: Email promotions (e.g., 50%-off
today only) and announcements (e.g., a new podcast just
dropped)

Also consider how you can use email throughout the

sales-marketing funnel, from top to bottom:

●​ ToFu-MoFu: Email updates and/or subscriptions. For

example, you could develop a best-in-class, inbound
newsletter that folks will find so valuable that they give you
their email address. This gets them in the funnel.
●​ MoFu: Content upgrades and events, for example. “Download
this free ebook,” “Attend our upcoming webinar.”
●​ MoFu-BoFu: Any email that looks to get a prospect to start
an account, enjoy a free trial, return to an abandoned
shopping cart, etc. Or, any email that looks to bring a
previous customer immediately back into the fold (see this
week’s Play+ case study).

See what I mean?

Email can do so much – short-game and long-game, up and

down the funnel, across the buyer’s journey.

Let’s add another dimension of flexibility. A very important one:

You can send an email to one prospect/customer or millions at

once.

●​ One-recipient email examples:

○​ “Bummer! Your credit card just expired”
○​ “Just for You: Yellowstone, Season 192” ; )
 ○​ “Just checking in…” (one-on-one email from a member
of the sales team)
●​ Multi-recipient email examples:
○​ “Product recall: We goofed. We’re making it right”
○​ “Updated terms and conditions” (Blah)
○​ “Friends is now on Netflix!” (Blah)
○​ “Taylor Swift tickets now on sale” (Blah x 1 million)

You get the point, email has the flexibility to get in front of one or
many, at just about any point on the path to purchase, under a
number of different circumstances, for a variety of reasons.

Last week I mentioned my bias for SEO. I also have a bias for email
marketing. I admit it. My preferred ToFu tool is SEO; my preferred
“everywhere else” (MoFu to BoFu to after care) is email.

That doesn’t make me right; it just makes me biased.

And, at least, it should suggest that email is not dead. Hardly!

#2 Unmatched ROI

Eye on the ROI. How many times have I said that?

Well, email fares pretty well in terms of ROI.

Uh, yeah, pretty well. Many-a-blog-post and report has touted the
ridiculous ROI of email marketing.

Many companies, to their disadvantage, wouldn’t be measuring

the return on their email marketing program. But a 2020 Litmus
survey of over 2,000 marketers ascribed a 45:1 ROI for email
marketing, among companies measuring email ROI.

This would mean: For every $1 these companies put into email
marketing, they received $45 back (in revenue). And this gaudy
number isn’t isolated. It generally fits other numbers I’ve seen
associated with the return on email marketing.

I like that return. (Sure beats my savings account – how ‘bout you?)

Of course, much would depend on industry, clientele, and other

marketing circumstances, but email marketing is – for many
companies – a generous, open-handed channel.

Why? For at least a couple of reasons:

1.​ Email marketing is a direct marketing channel. It’s straight

from the marketing organization to the customer/prospect.
While you earn the mailing list over time (remember paid,
owned, and earned?), you own the channel itself. That is, you
can send an email at any time, on your own terms (within
reason), without a direct expense. Consequently, with no
“middle man” like Google or Meta charging us to use their
shiny platform, we can send emails with no direct cost.
2.​ Email marketing is opt-in (or it definitely should be). If
you’re sending a marketing email to more than one person,
and you’re not breaking the law (i.e., spamming them), it
means you were given permission to send the email. In other
words, the recipients opted-in – they said, “I bequeath unto
you permission to enter my inbox.” And that permission, on
the front-end, means something. It means a lot. Think of how
it sets marketing emails apart from, say, social media or
search ads or TV commercials. In a very real way, your
 audience has asked for that email. And they probably asked
for it because their intent is stronger than the average, for
instance, social platform. Naturally, this has implications for
ROI, too.

Unmatched versatility and unmatched ROI.

If you’re paying attention, email matters. Still. And don’t expect

anything different any time soon.

3 Elements of an Effective Email Marketing

Program

What’s it take to send marketing emails that really deliver?

The answer, of course, looks different from one set of

circumstances to another. Yet, we can be pretty confident with the
following advice: You need these three elements…

1.​ Qualified recipients

2.​ Engaging content
3.​ Precise measurement

#1 Qualified Recipients

I’m co-opting this term a touch. By “qualified,” here, I mean the

people who receive the email (i.e., recipients) are…

1.​ Relevant, based on the message, offer, etc. (that the email
will generate the right attention/traffic/etc.)
2.​ Opted-in (they gave you permission to send the email)
All marketing actions should, as you know, begin with the
question, “Who is this for exactly?” This keeps us from generating
the wrong attention, and it helps us create well-targeted content
and take well-targeted action. But with email marketing, we’re
adding another early question: “Do we have permission?”

Both questions bring into focus the mailing list, or a list of

opted-in, potential email recipients who are in the market for
one or more of your offerings. If they’re not in your market, why
oh why email them?

The cleaner, sharper, more targeted your mailing list = the more
effective your marketing emails and email program. Also, the
better your reputation as an email sender.

And all of this matters, as you’ll see. Which is why list hygiene is an
important activity for email-marketing organizations. Let’s define
list hygiene as an ongoing effort to keep a mailing list
up-to-date, including removal of unengaged contacts (we don’t
want to send emails to folks who don’t open them), actively
retaining permission (e.g., permission to send marketing
emails), and keeping contact details (e.g., first name, company)
as accurate as possible.

What does list hygiene look like in the real world? One excellent
example is the re-engagement email. This is an email to purge the
mailing list of unengaged contacts, or “graymail” recipients (emails
you have permission to send, but the recipient doesn’t engage
with them). Maybe you subscribed to a morning newsletter. Yet,
you haven’t opened the newsletter in months. Thus, the
newsletter’s open rate/click-through rate could be better – but you
(and others) aren’t opening it. Don’t you feel bad now?
You see, it matters because email marketers want to keep their
sender score/reputation and “deliverability” (i.e., the ability to get
into inboxes) as high as possible, and they want to reduce the
chances of their emails going to spam/junk folders.

If email service providers (ESPs) like Gmail and Yahoo! Mail

consistently witness poor open/engagement rates – or
high-volume unsubscribes and/or spam reports – associated with
a particular email-sender, these ESPs will get the idea they’re
sending unwanted or even “spammy” email.

Goodbye inbox; hello junk folder. Email senders can even be

blacklisted.

Read between the lines here: ESPs play a watchdog role in email
marketing – and they want to protect the users of their email
services. Marketers have to play by the rules of ESPs. (Moreover,
email software-providers, like MailChimp, also try to limit
spamming activity.)

Consequently, a re-engagement campaign, or another form of list

hygiene, can help us ensure our list is, yep, clean.

That it’s targeted; that it’s legal; that it’s on-the-level.

Hey, BTW, what is spam? It may not be exactly what you thought.

Spam isn’t any unwanted email. Nor is it unwanted emails with a

marketing or sales pitch. People may, for instance, find my email
address on LinkedIn, and then reach out to me with a sales pitch.
This isn’t necessarily spam.
It all hinges on an important question: Was the email sent to just
me…or multiple recipients?

Just me? Not spam.

Multiple recipients (who didn’t opt-in)? Spam.

So think of spam as any unsolicited, bulk email. Unsolicited

because one or more recipients of the email didn’t opt-in; bulk
because the email wasn’t sent to just a single recipient.

And spam is illegal. Increasingly so. Companies can be hit with

hefty fines. In the U.S., it’s the CAN-SPAM Act of 2003 that keeps
email marketers honest (this is the legislation that requires that
“unsubscribe” button you love so much in the footer of emails). In
the EU, it’s the much tougher GDPR. Yes, the GDPR does extend to
companies outside the EU who may be marketing to EU citizens.
Emails must be “verified opted-in,” according to the GDPR. That is,
folks knowingly opted-in to the emails – and you can prove it.

All that to say, qualified recipients – who have opted-in, and who
are relevant to the email message/offer – are a critical first step to
effective email marketing efforts.

Email marketing is garbage in, garbage out. Make sure your list is
anything but garbage.

Today’s CRM tools (customer relationship management – think,

Salesforce) can be a great ally in helping you maintain a squeaky
clean mailing list – so you know you’re emailing qualified
recipients.

#2 Engaging Content
“Content is king,” right? In social, in search, and, yes, in email.

(I know, I know, the right content is king. Good reminder.)

There are many content angles and strategies in email marketing:

●​ Promotional offers (Subject line: “BOGO ends today”)

●​ Inbound content (“Ecomm success: On-demand webinar”)
●​ Relational (“It’s Your Birthday! Make a wish”)
●​ Transactional (“You have unused funds in your account”)
●​ Newsletter (“May’s greatest hits: The Fiddler Blog”)
●​ One-on-one (personal) (“Just checking in on you”)

Emails can also be sent via manual action (you hit the send
button) or triggered action (the would-be recipient does
something, like start a free trial, that automatically triggers an
email or series of emails). The latter is a prime example of
marketing automation.

The best content for your email/email campaign will depend on…

●​ What exactly are you trying to achieve? To re-engage, to drive

sales, to generate leads with a content offer, to inspire, to
thank, to remind…what?
●​ Who exactly are you trying to achieve it with? What persona?
What content would appeal to them?
●​ What type of email is it? See above. Promotional? Inbound?
Relational? Will it be manual or triggered?

Regardless of your answer to these three questions, this is about as

close to certain as we get in email marketing: Your subject line
really matters. Generally, it’s your most important content
element.
Your subject line is a gatekeeper. Nobody will see your content
proper – which you worked so hard on – if they don’t make it past
the subject line. The preview text (i.e., the extra line of “inbox” copy,
right below the subject line in the image below, which serves as a
second subject line and a second chance to make your case) is
also important and shouldn’t be neglected.

I advise you to write a subject line that…

●​ Gets attention (Can you create a purple-cow subject line?)

●​ Lures (i.e., recipients find the subject line mysteriously
alluring; it pulls them in)
○​ A question – whether implicit or explicit – can often
achieve this. For example, imagine you’re a parent and
 you read this subject line: “Here’s what your teen isn’t
telling you.” No explicit question was posed – but the
subject line creates a pounding question in the
recipient’s mind.) Use the recipient’s curiosity. Make
them ask, “What’s behind that curtain?”
●​ Stands up to rigorous measurement (More coming later on
this. A subject line, because it’s so important yet so
diminutive in size [we’re talking maybe half-a-dozen to a
dozen words here], is a great thing to A/B test.)
●​ Excludes spammy words/phrases (Avoid junk folders by
staying away from words like “free” and “now,” especially in
the subject line)

Now we get to the message proper. The subject line and preview
text did their job; your email has been opened. What now?

Here, too, answering the questions (a) what are we trying to

achieve, (b) with whom, and (c) in what kind of email is at least half
the battle. At least.

Let’s start with the copy/story…

For most marketing emails (as long as they’re action-driving; i.e.,

the email wants the recipient to do something – “shop the store”;
“start a free trial”), I highly recommend our old friend: the AIDA
framework. Remember, attention…interest…desire…action?

For example, if my aim is to get the email recipient to download an

ebook. I could use an approach like this:

●​ Attention: “Did they really just say that about Walmart?”

 ●​ Interest: “Our 2024 ‘Shopping with Gen Z Survey’ is the single
most comprehensive and colorful look at the shopping
patterns of this up and coming consumer class.”
●​ Desire: “We assembled 100 key insights into a free, 50-page
ebook that’s as fun to read as it is enlightening.”
●​ Action: “Claim your free copy today… and gain deep, timely
insights into how Gen Z shops.”

(Note: I’m having fun above, but be careful with sensational claims.
Claims that can’t live up to their promises will breed
dissatisfaction. Plus, sensational claims sound like marketing, and
we don’t trust marketing. You can achieve AIDA without
exaggerating. Finally, sensational words/phrases - “while supplies
last” – can trigger spam filters and send your emails to junk
folders.)

Now, maybe the AIDA example above isn’t perfect (I did it on the
fly), but you clearly see an attempt to capture attention, generate
interest, build desire, and drive action – and such is a good
blueprint for an action-driving email.

And, speaking of action, most marketing emails have a CTA

button. As they should. Indeed, unless you’re creating/sending a
newsletter (which is typically a sampler of bite-size content; a
newsletter is the destination, rather than trying to send someone
to another destination [for the most part]), I’d always recommend
you limit your email to one – and only one – CTA. Why divide
attention? Instead, drive hard and exclusively at one call to action.
Live by the rule: one email = one CTA, generally speaking.

Formatting, too, is important in a marketing email. Write for

scannability – short paragraphs, plenty of white space, bullet points
(when relevant), maybe an image or two.
Whatever else you’re trying to achieve, I encourage you to strive for
what feels like a one-to-one content experience. Maybe you’re
sending that email to 5,000 recipients, but you can still write in
such a way that the recipient will at least feel the message is
tailored to them. Two quick points along these lines:

1.​ Write to a specific persona – always. If you do, it’ll feel more
relevant to all recipients. (Of course, naturally, ensure the
email is only sent to this one persona)
2.​ Use personalization tokens/tags. “Hey [fill in your name], we
noticed you’re not using all your benefits.” That [fill in your
name] insert represents the personalization token/tag. When
you use an email marketing service like Campaign Monitor or
Constant Contact, you can include one or more of these tags
in the subject line, preview text, body, CTA, etc. As long as it’s
working properly, and you’re not using it in an overly-creepy
way, it can make the recipient feel more like a real person.
(This is another fine content element to A/B test.)

Both of these tips (and much more) depend on having clean,

accurate, complete records of your customers/prospects. Here, too,
a good CRM – that’s well-maintained – can win the day.

A couple of notes about email design, or the visual elements of an

email, including its visual architecture, graphics, color scheme,
typography, and overall aesthetic.

●​ Compose the email to be understood as effortlessly as

possible
●​ The design should support the larger story and goal – not the
other way around. Don’t lead with a “pretty email.” “Pretty”
may be great, but it should support something bigger.
 ●​ Ensure the email can be viewed and interacted with across
screens, particularly on mobile devices

And here’s a real paradox in email design: Heavily designed

emails, like those you’ll encounter on Really Good Emails, don’t
always perform better than simple, even plain text emails.
Here’s a riveting article from HubSpot about this paradox. For all
their strengths, immaculately designed HTML emails just scream, ​
“Marketing!!!!” They’re not very “native”; they don’t look like the
emails you’d receive from your trusted friends, colleagues. And
there’s some evidence to suggest plain emails get better
click-through rates. Hey, test it. Collect data on which works best
for your organization and its unique marketing circumstances.

Speaking of data…

#3 Precise Measurement

Here’s another distinctive benefit of email marketing, that we’ve

kept hush-hush until now: Emails are hyper-measurable.

And measurable means money. As in, saving money on marketing

that doesn’t work, and investing money where the ROI is best.

With an email you can see, for instance:

●​ How many were delivered

●​ …opened (in aggregate and individually by recipient)
●​ …glanced at, skimmed, or read (in aggregate and by recipient;
i.e., engagement level)
●​ …clicked (in aggregate and by recipient)
○​ Including what was clicked
 ■​ This can indicate what content interests the
recipient, and can guide future emails
●​ …if the email resulted in a lead or sale

You’re not just learning about the email with all of this
measurement; you’re learning about the customer/prospect!

The most popular metrics used by email marketers today include

(along with averages provided by Campaign Monitor, 2022):

●​ Bounce rate (i.e., the number of emails that weren’t delivered

– either permanently [a hard bounce] or temporarily [a soft
bounce])
●​ Open rate (i.e., the % of sent or delivered emails [depends on
who you ask] that are opened) – 21.5% across industries
●​ Click-through rate (CTR; i.e., the % of sent or delivered emails
that are clicked; might also be called “click rate”) – 2.3%
●​ Click-to-open rate (CTOR; i.e., of opened emails, the number
that were clicked [as a %]) – 10.5%
●​ Unsubscribes – 0.1%

Speaking of unsubscribes, don’t hate on them. Yeah, it’s a little sad

when people tell us they don’t want our email, but much better an
unsubscribe than a spam report. And better an unsubscribe than
graymail (and a poor sender reputation).

Besides, they may be unsubscribing because they’re getting too

many emails, or because they switched jobs, or…any number of
reasons that shouldn’t be taken personally.

Individual email metrics like those above are important to know.

Yet, they’re not end destinations. They count only inasmuch as
they help us grow the business.
Some marketers struggle to see the revenue forest for the email
trees.

Indeed, marketing organizations should measure not just the

performance of their individual emails but also their email
program/channel on the whole (e.g., How well is email performing
relative to social, search, etc.? How’s the ROI?). They should also
keep tabs on email health metrics, including their sender
reputation and deliverability health.

The upshot: measure and learn, measure and learn.

As a hyper-measurable channel, you’re without excuses. Measure

your email activity, and apply what you learn.

Signing Off on Email

Just a few additional points I’d like to make about email

marketing:

●​ Requiring a double opt-in (i.e., requiring would-be recipients

to verify their email address before being included on your
mailing list) is a tried-and-true way of enhancing
engagement and ensuring people who opt into your
emails…really want your emails. There is a cost: Maybe some
qualified recipients won’t be willing (or might forget) to
respond to the verification email.
●​ Bad LPs ruin good email marketing. I’ve been saying this all
along…and it’s true here, too. Look ahead to where you’re
sending that email “clicker” (i.e., the landing page). Will they
be well-received? Or, are you sending this qualified,
 hard-earned email traffic to a clumsy landing page
experience? I encourage you to delay calling that email
“done” – ready for sending – until you do everything within
the limits of solid ROI to optimize that LP.
●​ Send at the “right” time. It’s not hard to find articles online
that claim to know the best time to send your emails –
mid-morning on Tuesday, Wednesday, Thursday are popular
mentions. But “right” on average may not be right for you.
Plus, in this case, right would also mean busy (i.e., when
everyone else is sending their emails). So, experiment, collect
data, and decide on a persona-by-persona,
category-by-category basis about the best send times.
●​ Send test emails before hitting go. Look at you, about to
send an email to 1,000 clients. Think you should test it first?
Sure you do – because you’re smart. Most email services, if
not all, will allow you to send a test/preview email to your
colleagues prior to sending the email proper. Test for at least
three things: (a) readability (e.g., How’s it read? Does it hit all
the points in AIDA? Any typos?), (b) renderability (e.g., Does
the email look right? Does it render properly across devices
and screens?) and (c) clickability (e.g., Does everything click
that’s supposed to click? To the right place?).

Now, go email with confidence.

Email’s a workhorse. So, make it work for you.