Email Marketing: Knowledge, Best Practices & Tips: email done right

Showing posts with label email done right. Show all posts

Grow Your Email List With Your Offline Catalog

One very important goal of any email marketer should be to consistently grow his or her email lists with quality names. One great way to do this is to invite your offline customers to join your email list. Harry and David did a great job of this in their recent Mother's Day catalog. They are using their offline catalog to promote their email marketing programs. They not only have an offer but also promote why someone should sign up for their email list. Nice!

Transactional Email Message Best Practices

Do you send transactional email marketing messages? Transactional messages include order confirmations, shipping confirmations, demographic updates, registrations etc.

Here are some transactional message best practices:

Since the main communications objective of transactional emails is to give the user their order/shipping information; the message should be presented clearly and above-the-fold with minimal visual clutter.
A good ratio of transactional data vs. promotional offers within a transactional template is 70/30 with the promotional content further towards the bottom
Consider making the total width of your transactional template 580 pixels for easy printing in case the user wants a physical record of their purchase. Most transactional templates have regular email widths of 650-700 pixels, but it's something to consider.
When providing the user with recommended products based on their purchase, product content should be placed within a right hand column. This column should take up 35% of the total email width, with the other 65% reserved for the main order content.
The overall design of the template should be minimal since it's only meant to present one message.
Include a link to opt-in to receive email! A transactional message doesn't necessarily mean the user is also a subscriber of the main email program.

Here is a great example of a well done order confirmation from 1-800-flowers.

Diapers.com – Email Done Right

One of my favorite websites in the world is diapers.com . The site is fun, offers free (and super quick) shipping, and almost everything under the sun that a parent could possibly want or need for their child and parenting needs. Their slogan is “We deliver everything but the baby.” Indeed they do.

I am also a fan of their email. Here is a recent email I received from Diapers.com.

They do everything right in this email

They have a view online link in the header text.

The header image has useful links, the company name, slogan, and a shop link.

The main body image has my name dynamically populated, has a shop now button, and has links to six products. These products are based on the age of my child. This data, I assume, was collected when I signed up for email with diapers.com and when I purchased various age specific products.

The footer image is also complimentary to the email. Once I have seen all the cool toys I can get, I am gently reminded NOT TO FORGET THE DIAPERS! - Thanks, I almost forgot :)

The footer text is also well done. There are social media links, a forward to a friend option, a clear disclaimer, a notification of who sent the email, a message making sure the email is age-appropriate for my child (this is a super big plus!!), and the standard unsubscribe and CAN-SPAM content.

Also, in this email, I discovered the diapers.com has a new twist on a common email feature. The HTML and TEXT version of their emails have the common "This message contains graphics. If you do not see the graphics, click here to view." feature which opens a hosted version of the HTML email.

Most email marketing programs simply display the hosted version of the email and stop here when this link is clicked. Not diapers.com. The hosted version then contains this message in the header: "If you are still having problems viewing this message, please click here for additional help."