You will find in this article a mix of feedback, tips, tricks ... in short a list of quick-wins very easily deployable from the beginning of the year without additional cost for your marketing budget.
Do not target your customers without opt-in even if you have the right to do so.
My husband, my mother, my friends... in short, everyone complains about the newsletters they receive when I DIDN'T ASK FOR ANYTHING, DAMN IT ! Just this morning, I hear my husband complaining that he is receiving emails from a brand since he gave me my Christmas present. I'm talking about commercial emails (not management emails related to the purchase or to his customer account). I explain to him that this famous brand has the right to send him commercial emails since he is now a customer of this brand, so the opt-in is not necessary. First, my explanation made him septic. He looked at me like
"- Are you sure of what you are saying?
– But yay! we even organized a live show with Melanie about it! (Melanie being a lawyer in personal data, it (a little) nailed it!)
– Well, it's COMPLETELY BAD your thing! (as soon as it comes to emailing, it's my thing 😉 )
He tells me he is SURE he checked the box "I do not wish to receive newsletters". So now the brand would be outlawed. But if you have a customer base, ask them for their consent to send them emailings with commercial objectives because it makes some of them angry. There are tips for that at the end of this article.
Do not send promotional emails to your buyers under 30 days old.
This time I'm going to tell you about my mom. This summer, my mom bought a razor for my dad online. The very next day after the purchase, she was getting promotional emails from them. Already, it was really annoying to her.
" - Roooh they piss me off, I haven't even received my package that they suggest me to buy other products!"
Then, the delivery time was not respected. So she calls customer service and tries to sort it out with them. But in the meantime, she keeps receiving promotional emails.
"-Do you realize that? They send me emails when I haven't even been delivered!
- It's true that it's EXCESSIVELY annoying Mom."
Name your campaigns precisely.
It's the end of the year, time to take stock!
Generally, when you want to make a statistical review in emailing, you connect to your routing toolWe export the stats in .csv format
- The tool produces a large excel table with the details of the campaigns in rows and in columns the name of the campaign, the sending date, the subject (sometimes not always), then the indicators (sent, bounces, delivered, deliverability rate, openers, opening rate, clickers, click rate.... until the unsubscribe rate)
- Then, you build your pivot tables (if you don't know which tables to generate, there is a white paper that details everything here).
- Then you begin your analysis.
- And then you say to yourself:
- "um...ideally I would need to differentiate newsletters from promo emails."
- "hum hum... ideally I should break down the stats according to prospects, customers and ex-customers"
- "ummmmm... actually what would be cool is if I also broke it down by topic"
5. There, you either create columns for "Typology", "Targets", "Universe" and you manually qualify all the lines. Or you give up because it's too much work.
To make your life easier during your 2022 review, accurately name your campaigns starting in January 2022.
For example, start with the campaign type: "NL" for editorial newsletter, "PROMO" for promotional email and "REL" for relational email.
Then, note the type of product (or product universe if you have many) or service you sell (and which is related to your product catalog and therefore to the centers of interest): "ECO" for the Economy universe, "DEC" for the Discovery universe, etc.
Then, you can specify the target on which the campaign is sent " ACTIVE " for the customers you consider still active, " EXCLIENT " for the customers you consider or who are inactive, " PROSPECT " for your newsletter subscribers who are not yet buyers.
This results in campaign labels that might look like this: "NL_ECO_ABO", "NL_DECOUVERY_EXABO", "PROMO_FEMININ_ABO", "PROMO_TV_PROSPECT".
And there, by beautiful Excel formulas, you will be able to qualify directly the columns "Typology", "Targets", "Universe" of your Excel table and analyze your stats correctly.
Calculate your dissatisfaction rate.
I feel like we talk about it all the time at Badsender.
As a reminder, the dissatisfaction rate =
number of clicks on the unsubscribe link / number of clicks on the overall campaign.
This is a rate that is calculated and monitored systematically during the coaching with our customers. This rate allows you to know if the content of your message is liked or not. It also allows you to make decisions. Is it worthwhile to relaunch this campaign? Is it worthwhile to relaunch this specific target?
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- If this rate exceeds 30%, the content does not appeal. Don't retry. Put your next campaigns on pause. If you continue with your initial sending schedule, your unsubscribers may increase, you risk complaints and therefore deliverability problems.
- If this rate is between 15% and 30%, the content is boring for some. Revisit your writing style, your design, try a short and more impactful message. Or try to dig into your segmentation to find out which
- If this rate is below 10-15%, the content is liked. All is well. You can continue to deploy your originally planned sending schedule.
In fact, this rate is great because it allows you to lower the marketing pressure in a smart way and it prevents deliverability problems (spamming or blocking).
Bring up the conversions in some way.
So, there's a HUGE topic on conversions in email marketing: the end of third-party cookies, adblockers, Safari, Firefox and soon Chrome restrictions... Have you understood nothing? I'm just getting the hang of it! But don't panic, we're planning to evangelize all this in a live chat with Romain Baert Thursday, March 17. Add this live to your agenda!
In short, try to put them back together anyway. Even if it's manual, even if it's approximate, even if you don't have much confidence in what you'll write in the "Conversions" column of your excel table.
The idea is to know if your campaign has generated the expected results.
Attention, the conversion is not only a generated turnover. It can be a number of visitors on a site/blog, a number of downloads, a number of subscribers, etc...
Above all, the conversion can be different from one type of campaign to another. For example, the number of visitors for editorial newsletters and the number of orders/contact requests for a more promotional email.
Make decisions based on the trio of "satisfied clickers, dissatisfaction rate and conversions".
Any campaign must be analyzed according to these 3 indicators:
- Is the number of clickers good compared to my average?
- Is the dissatisfaction rate well below 10%?
- Did the campaign generate the expected results?
Depending on the results, the original schedule is adjusted. And naturally your marketing pressure will decrease.
Write a preheader.
I still see plenty of emails without a pre-header. That's a shame. As a reminder, this is the first sentence of your email content. If it is not used, it is really a waste of space.
In general, it is a misunderstanding on the part of those who set up the campaign (think of a training on emailing best practices ;-))
Still a lot ofrouting tools lack education and do not highlight the pre-header at the campaign setup stage. But some tools do.
A/B test.
Few companies A/B test their campaign objects and contents. Clearly due to a lack of time, as campaign managers are often underwater or on the run when sending out the campaign. This is a mistake. Every campaign that goes out the door should have an A/B test. The A/B test of objects is the one that takes the least amount of time, so do at least that one.
Ideally, as you set up your mailing schedule, you should list your test schedule. You have made assumptions in 2021 about the content of your messages. Is it better to talk about promotions or services in the subject line? Is it more effective to use shocking or soft images? Does a short text email work better than a long text email? Does the color of the button have an impact on the number of clicks?
All these assumptions, write them down, plan them and test them. It helps you better understand what your target audience wants. It helps you increase your number of clickers. Frankly, it works and all tools are equipped with an A/B testing module.
The last word.
I could also have talked about segmentation. There is a way to do a lot of things at no extra cost if you have the basic data. I could have talked about copywriting. I could have talked about technical settings to optimize deliverability, etc. To inspire you, I also advise you to read this article on the 14 trends 2022 in emailing. If you have any questions, do not hesitate to contact us ! Happy New Year!
