Email Marketing Revisited

Previously our newsletters carried very predictable subject lines. When I say they were "predictable" I mean they were dry, boring and totally lacking in imagination. This time round I made an effort to apply some of my observations to the company newsletter and then gauge how successful the changes were. I didn't change the layout much and the content style was probably similar to previous newsletters. The one thing I did change, however, was the subject line. Why? As I mentioned previously the biggest obstacle you face with a marketing email is getting the recipient to actually open it. Once they've opened it your job is far from over, but you will have overcome the most important obstacle. I'm pleased to see that it may have actually worked! Within three minutes of the newsletter going out we had already received a number of sales calls! Not only were they enquiries, but they actually led to sales almost immediately. Of course if you can't see which content is performing well, then getting recipients to open your emails could almost be considered a waste of time. That may sound a bit strange but, from my point of view, it is essential that I know exactly which elements caught people's eyes. So how do you resolve this? Tracking the links in the newsletter itself helps. As far as I know most professional newsletter applications or services allow you to set special links. So, instead of simply putting in a standard link to a page or a site, you use a custom link which passes the click via a redirector script. The only thing that you need to be very careful with is how you actually compose the link. If you try to make the link to a site look like something it isn't ie. disguise the redirection, you could end up being flagged by an email filter. With regard to the tracking I was pleasantly surprised by the number of clicks that we got. According to one industry expert , who I spoke to the other day, a clickthrough rate of below 10% is considered the norm. In our case we have got close to 17%!! I would, therefore, have to conclude that we must be doing something right :)