Here's a little taster of some of the work that were doing to increase our knowledge (and our Clients) of email best practice, with 8 tips that can help you move your emails away from the ordinary and towards the remarkable.

1. 8 tips to achieve email
marketing greatness

2. Email matters. Here’s why:
According to a recent Radicati Group report, over 191
billion emails are sent and received around the world
every day. Bringing that a bit closer to home, the Warwick
Business School found that 1 in 12 UK workers are
dealing with over 100 emails a day.
Brands are as guilty as anyone in terms of filling up
people’s inboxes. And that won’t stop anytime soon if
econsultancy’s email marketing census is anything to go
by. In 2014, 68% of companies ranked email as their
best marketing channel in terms of ROI.
So how do you deliver an experience that won’t get lost in
the rush? That your customers will remember and act on?
There isn’t a one-size-fits-all solution that guarantees you
email marketing immortality (that we know of anyway).
However, we believe the following 8 tips can help you
move your emails away from the ordinary and towards the
remarkable. Take them into account every time you’re
working on a new project and you’ll be one step closer to
achieving great things with your emails.
Once you’ve digested these 8 bite-sized tips be sure to look out for the main
course: an in-depth Fresh Thinking session exploring email marketing best
practice in action – with a little glimpse of what the future has in store

3. Tip One: Define your audience & objective
Who are you sending the email to and
why are you sending it?
• Are you clear on which audience you need to speak
to in order to meet your objective? How have you
defined/segmented that audience within your current
data?
• What is it you want them to do – upgrade, sign up,
download, share?
• Have you thought about how the content of your
email is meeting their needs (to be informed, inspired,
entertained), as opposed to just pushing out a brand
message?
• Has the email been triggered by previous behaviour?
According to research carried out by RedEye,
automated triggered emails based on behavioural
data can double total email revenues
• Is it linked to another piece of marketing you’ve sent
them? If so, is your email consistent with that
communication (message, tone, imagery)?

4. Tip Two: Set yourself a target
How will you know if it’s a success?
• What are your key performance indicators?
• A 2014 report by Silverpop found that a good
open rate is around 24%, and a click through rate
of 4% will put you above most industry averages.
• That’s not to say you should limit yourself to standard
email metrics though. Conversion rates, upgrades,
customer engagement and social shares can also
help track success
• One thing to bear in mind though, could anything else
influence these measures, or will it be purely down to
the email?

5. Tip Three: Standout in the inbox
Getting your audience to open
the email
• Will your subject line stand out? Is it interesting,
enticing, intriguing?
• Will people be able to read the whole line? 30
characters is a good measure if you don’t want your
message to get cut off
• Can you personalise it? A 2013 Experian study
found that personalised subject lines achieved
26% higher unique open rates than non-
personalised lines
• Does it link to and work seamlessly with the pre-
header, headline and content of the email?

6. Tip Four: Think mobile as well as desktop
Making sure your email displays
properly
• Has the email been designed for mobile as well as desktop?
According to Litmus, 47% of emails are now opened on a
mobile device (March 2014). Some reports even suggest
this can be as high as 70% depending on your target
audience, product and email type
• With that in mind, you’ll need to make sure your email design
is responsive or scalable so that it be opened effectively
across all mobile devices. Amazingly, the same Litmus
report from above found that 58% of email marketers still
aren’t designing for mobile!
• It’s worth considering that people use different devices in
different ways. Tablets tend to offer a more immersive
experience and are used more for media and entertainment,
whilst smartphone usage tends to focus on communication
and task-orientated activities. Could you tailor your email
content accordingly?
• Have you used a big enough font size?
• And have you thought about what happens if your audience
has their email images turned off?

7. Tip Five: Be relevant
Capturing people’s attention, and
keeping it
• Is the content relevant to the person you’re sending it
to?
• What could you do to make it more relevant –
personalise it, make it timely (based on real world
events), or have it reference or be ‘triggered’ by
previous behaviour?
• Depending on what reports you read, triggered
emails achieve anything from 40-70% better open
rates than ‘business as usual’ comms such as
newsletters
• Is your content easily scannable? Sub heads and
bullet points can help readers pick up your key
features and benefits at a glance

8. Tip Six: Make your email worth reading
What does the customer get out of it?
Think of it as a value exchange. They spend time on your
email; you give them something in return: an exclusive
offer or deal, inspiration, a useful tip, knowledge, a
product or service that will make their lives better, easier,
more fun…

9. Tip Seven: Give clear direction
What do you want people to do after
reading your email?
• Is your call to action in plain sight (not hidden away)
and is it clear where people will be taken if they click
on it/select it?
• Have you considered that people opening emails on
smartphones (and remember that 47% of emails
are now opened on mobile devices) will use their
fingers to select items? So use image buttons and
keep them simple
• Where are you sending people to? Is it a seamless
journey? Does the ‘landing page’ feel like a natural
extension of the email? Is it mobile optimised?
• Can you integrate the email with social channels? If
so, how easy is it for people to transfer to your social
platforms?

10. Tip Eight: Test. Learn. Apply. Repeat.
Are you testing your emails to
continuously improve them?
• Email is highly measurable. Make the most of this fact
by using it as a means to learn what works and what
doesn’t. The elements you can test in order to
optimise your communications are (almost) endless.
Subject line. Headline. Layout. Images. CTA.
Time/day of send. Landing page. Frequency of send.
Links Vs buttons. Copy length….
• Then once you’ve found out what works and what
doesn’t, be sure to apply those learnings. It seems
obvious, but all too often organisations stick with what
they know, even when they’ve learnt that what they
know isn’t working

11. The supporting information in this deck was pulled from a number of documents analysing the
wonderful world of email marketing, including insights from the following experts:
Econsultancy
http://www.adestra.com/resources/downloadable-reports/2014-email-marketing-industry-census/
The Radicati Group
http://www.radicati.com/wp/wp-content/uploads/2013/04/Email-Statistics-Report-2013-2017-Executive-Summary.pdf
Litmus
http://www.emailmonday.com/mobile-email-usage-statistics
http://www.smartinsights.com/email-marketing/mobile-email-marketing/optimising-mobile-email-campaigns/
Silverpop
https://econsultancy.com/blog/64994-email-marketing-benchmarks-2014-how-do-you-stack-up#i.14jtzaf54gd53x
RedEye
http://www.redeye.com/resources-and-blog/whitepapers/2014/top-10-tips-for-effective-b2c-marketing-automation/
Experian
http://www.marketingcharts.com/online/more-data-supports-personalization-of-emails-39688/
Feel free to expand your mind further by taking a look!
Sources