Speaker 0: I don’t see the

Speaker 1: Oh, sorry. Your camera broke up. I’m sorry. Can you hear me okay, Joanna? Can you hear me okay?

Speaker 0: Am I breaking up?

Speaker 1: Yeah. Just a just a little bit.

Speaker 0: You’re

Speaker 1: back. Hi, Nick. Hello, everyone. Where’s everybody from? Hey, Patricia. Hey, Allen. Hey, Katie. New Jersey. Michigan, Texas. Wow. Colorado. Oh, India. Alright.

Speaker 0: Alright. Can you can can anyone hear me? I’m sorry.

Speaker 1: I’m having some Internet. Yeah. You sound really good.

Speaker 0: Yeah? Okay. I I still am not seeing any chat, but I’m gonna post my message here. Can you guys hear me okay? I do. Alright. I’m so sorry for the Internet technical difficulties, but welcome to our dream in everyone. Um, my name is Joanna Rauter. I am from Circante, um, and I’ll be moderating today’s session. So super excited to introduce you to, uh, Avery McKenzie, who will be talking us through the seven easy tips for effective email campaigns. Um, so and, yes, the session is recorded. It will be available on demand, and we’ll also follow-up over email. Um, so with that, um, please post anything in the q and a, but I will kick it over to, uh, Avery.

Speaker 1: Yeah. Hello, everyone. It’s great to see, um, everyone in the chat from all over the country and a couple from all over the world. Very excited to share my presentation with you, as Joanna mentioned. If you have any questions, you can pop them in the q and a, and they will be answered at the end. So I’m gonna switch over to my screen. Alright. So I will be covering seven easy tips for effective email campaigns. And before I get too far into it, I would like to say a big thanks to our incredible sponsors who have made this whole event possible. Alright. So what will I be covering? I will be covering how to personalize your emails, how to craft compelling subject lines, keep concise and scannable content, optimize for mobile devices, how to use engaging visuals within your emails, how to use clear CTAs or call to actions, and how how we can test our emails. So moving right along to number one, which is personalizing your emails. There’s a couple of different ways you can personalize your email. Starting off, you can segment your audience. You can do this by demographics, behaviors, or performances. Let’s say you only want to target women 50 for an exclusive deal on clothing. This can be done through segmentation. It’s also a good tip to use your recipient’s name. This creates an immediate sense of personalization. For example, at Veterans Guardian, we use the recipient’s last name because we refer to all of our clients as Veterans. You can also use personalization by leveraging behavioral data. You can analyze past interactions to suggest products, content, etc. Let’s say John Smith has purchased exercise equipment in the past. You can use this data to send him targeted email campaigns about related topics such as sportswear. Another way to use personalization is through dynamic content. Images, text, and offers can change based on the recipient’s characteristics. Another example, Jane enjoys mountain biking, while Sam enjoys running. They are both your clients, but they have different interests. You can use dynamic content to change the offer depending on who is viewing the email. That way, Jane and Sam get relevant content delivered to them without having to make a different email template. And I have a fun fact at the bottom corner. According to a twenty twenty one study conducted by InVEST, emails with the recipient’s name have an 18.3% higher open rate than those without. So let’s look at a visual example of personalization. I grabbed a Marketing Brew email from my inbox, and this email uses personalization by including my first name, so it feels tailored to me. They are sending me this email based on my past interactions with the marketing brew, and they also suggested this virtual event based on my past interest in other events. Tip number two, how to craft compelling subject lines. There’s a couple ways that you can craft compelling subject lines. Starting off, keeping it short and sweet. This is a good rule of thumb because keeping a subject line under 50 characters ensures your message is viewable regardless of the device your recipient is reading the email on. Try to create urgency or curiosity. Words like limited time offer or exclusive can be effective. Building curiosity or urgency can influence your recipients to open your email and find the answers. Try to highlight the value of your email. Don’t let all your hard work go to waste if it ends up in the spam folder, which goes right into our fourth point. Avoid spam triggers. Words like free, guaranteed, and earned money can trigger can trigger spam filters. Another fun fact, from a 2021 study by SuperOffice, thirty three point nine zero percent of recipients open an email based on the subject line. A visual example of this, I pulled this marketing professional’s email from my inbox. The subject line is short. It is 46 characters, so I was able to view it in full on both desktop and mobile. To me, it created curiosity by asking if I was keeping up, and it added value by implying that my market was shifting, which led me to open the email and view the content. Moving on to the third tip, which is keeping your content concise. Couple of ways to do this is to use short paragraphs. Focus on a single point or idea per paragraph. Don’t try to cram a bunch of information into a single paragraph. Break up your content into bite sized, easy to digest sections. You can also use bullet points or numbered lists. Bullet points and numbered lists are visually appealing and easy to follow. And this can allow your recipients they may be more willing to read your email if it’s more visually appealing. Try to keep your content clear and descriptive, especially your headings. Readers can then quickly identify the content that interests them. Try to trim down unnecessary details. It’s okay to cut all the fluff and big words out and only cover what is necessary. From a 2016 study conducted by Boomerang of over 40,000,000 emails, Emails with 75 to 100 words had the highest open, highest response rate at fifty one percent. So let’s look at an example of concise content. This litmus email I have makes use of a list format. The heading for each section is clear and descriptive. And the information is short and to the point. There’s no extra fluff involved. Tip four, which is optimizing for mobile devices. So, a couple ways you can optimize for mobile is to have a responsive design. Ensure that your designs can adapt to different screens. You want your email to look good no matter what device your recipient is viewing on. Try to use a single column design. This makes scrolling and viewing easier on mobile. I had to learn this the hard way when designing Veterans Guardian’s first client newsletter. I was so excited because I spent hours on the design, content, images, and links, then at the last second remembered I needed to toggle from the desktop view in email studio to mobile. Then I realized that a dual column design does not work cohesively with mobile. Try to have large and touch friendly buttons. It is recommended to have 44 x 44 pixels to prevent accidental clicks. I’m sure at one time or another we’ve all fallen victim to the itty bitty teeny link that is almost impossible to click on mobile. Don’t make your recipients fight their screens and make your buttons touch friendly. You also want to use readable fonts and text that are legible. While the spooky Halloween font may be fun, it isn’t necessarily easy to read. The same can be said for small text. Make your email easy to read with clear font and decent text sizes. And from a 2022 study conducted by Litmus, forty six percent of all email opens occur on mobile devices. So, a visual example I pulled is from an email I received from Duolingo. This email uses a single column design. It’s very easy to read, and it flows on the device. The buttons are large and easy to use. I know exactly what the button is asking of me, and it’s clickable. And the font is readable and a decent size. I know exactly what is written on the email. Tip five is how to use engaging visuals. A couple ways you can use engaging visuals is by using high quality images. Blurry images can detract from the email’s message. You don’t want your content to be ignored because the supporting image is not up to par. Ensure that your images are relevant to the content. Images should enhance the message and provide value. For example, if your email is promoting the sale of makeup, an image of someone eating pizza may not be relevant. An important tip on this page is alt text for accessibility. This is not only essential for visually impaired readers, but if our images are unable to load or are blocked by the email client. This allows our images to be described, so it still supports the content within the email. Ensure that your images are clickable and interactive. This engages readers and can link to relevant pages. Let’s say Alice opens your email and sees an image of jeans that are 30% off. This is an interesting offer to her, so she clicks on the image but it doesn’t link to anything. This experience can become frustrating for recipients if they have to dig through an email to find anything interactive. And from a recent 2023 study conducted by Vero, emails with images have a 42% higher click through rate than those without. So let’s look at an example. This email may not be surprised for some people who have Amazon Prime. Um, this Amazon email uses engaging visuals by the images being high quality. Both the header image and the supporting images towards the bottom of the email are high quality. I know exactly what’s being depicted. The header image showcases a man who looks very happy with his purchases on Amazon Prime Day. There’s two supporting images, one showcases kitchenware, while the other one showcases apparel. The images are relevant to the content of the email. All of the images are also clickable. So when I clicked on kitchenware, it took me to a kitchenware page as well as apparel. Took me to an apparel page. The images also included alt text. So even if none of these images loaded in, I would still have a descriptor of what was being depicted. Number six. How to use clear CTAs or calls to action. There’s a couple ways that you can have a clear CTA. Starting off is using action oriented language. Verbs like register today and get started prompts engagement. For example, if your email is informing your recipient about an upcoming event, your call to action could be register now or count me in. Try to use a contrasting design. Using a contrasting color can not only enhance your CTA, but it’ll complement your email. Try to simplify the area around your call to action. Keep it clean and free of distractions. I do this by increasing the margins around my CTA in my emails, so there’s no text or images crowding my CTA. Try to keep your CTA above the email fold. The email fold is the top portion of an email that is visible without having to scroll down. Try to keep your CTA above this fold so minimal effort is required from your recipient. As humans, we like things to be simple and easy. And from a 2023 study conducted by Databox, email call to actions get an average click through rate of three to 5%. So let’s look at this visually. This DoorDash email has a clear CTA. They use an action verb, track my track your order, which grabs my attention. The CTA is also a contrasting color, while it still fits in to the design of the email. And the design is simple and above the fold on both desktop and mobile. Coming up on our seventh and final tip, which is testing and optimizing our emails. There’s a couple of ways you can test and optimize your emails. The first one being AB testing, which is creating two versions of an email with one change. This change could be a subject line, image, color of a CTA, or text. You can also conduct AB testing and then test the open rate of different subject lines or unique clicks and see which version of the email is doing better. You can also test by segmentation. You can segment an audience based on demographics, past behaviors, etc. You can test recipients’ responses to different content based on their past buying behaviors. For example, Riley has a past buying behavior of tennis shoes, and George has a past buying behavior of loafers. You can test segmentation by separating the two based on shoe type. You can also test through device responsiveness. Test on multiple mobile devices and email clients to ensure that your email is cohesive. While there are some softwares that allow you to to track what your what device and email clients your recipients open the email on after send, it is hard to predict before sending. That’s why it is important to test how your email looks on different devices and email clients. You can also test by performance analytics. You can monitor key metrics like open rates, click through rates, unsubscriptions, etc. As marketers, one of our number one responsibilities is to analyze, monitor, and report on key metrics. Thanks to Marketing Cloud’s intelligent reports, I’m able to dig down into different campaigns and compare bounce rates, unsubscriptions, even my top five performing email campaigns. And for my 2019 study conducted by Litmus, fifty seven percent of marketers test their emails. And I hope that number increases every year until it reaches 100%. So let’s look at an example of testing an email. Now these two emails are a pretty crude example, but I think it gets the point across. In email a, the link to sign up is a hyperlink in the body of the email. In email b, the link to sign up is a clear CTA with action language. Now as the marketer, we can compare to see which email is performing better with the CTA, and it may not be the one you’re expecting. So that’s why it’s very important to test your emails. So a quick summary of everything I just covered for the seven easy tips for effective email campaigns. Number one, you wanna personalize your emails by segmenting your audience, using your recipient’s name, leveraging behavior data, and using dynamic content. Second tip is how to: craft compelling subject lines by keeping it short and sweet, by creating urgency and curiosity, highlighting your value, and avoiding your spam triggers. The third is how to: Keep your email’s content concise. Use short paragraphs. Bullet points where you can. Have clear and descriptive headers. Trim unnecessary details. The fourth tip is don’t forget about mobile users. You can do this by using responsive design, a single column layout, large and touch friendly buttons, and using readable fonts and text. Don’t forget about using engaging visuals. By having high quality images that are relevant to your content, it includes alt text, and is clickable. How to use clear call to actions? By using action oriented language, a contrasting design to your email, keeping your CTA simple and free of distractions, and keeping it above the email fold. And lastly is to test your emails. You can do this by AB testing, segmentation, device responsiveness, and performance analytics. I hope that this speaker session has been helpful. Um, I hope I covered a lot, and there’s plenty of questions. Oh, I think you’re muted, Joanna.

Speaker 0: Alright. Can you hear me? Thank you so much. You. A really great session. Um, and as a former English major, I especially like the keeping it concise. And do have some time for q and a. So, um, a couple questions that were already popped into the chat were so for the segmentation testing, are you sending two separate list emails in Pardot? Is there a way you can do that with one list email send?

Speaker 1: Right. So, um, I personally use, um, Marketing Cloud and, uh, Journey Builder, uh, so I don’t have a lot of experience with ParaDot. But for Marketing Cloud, for segmentation testing, you can split a list if you prefer. Um, a good example of this would be, um, when we have clients that have completed the initial form on our website but have yet to schedule their appointment, We can separate what we consider the drip campaign, uh, entries into two separate equal lists and then test some changes. And that can be done in Journey Builder. Um, very easy to set up, and that’s what I recommend.

Speaker 0: Great. And, um, do you run AB tests on all of your emails?

Speaker 1: So it’s a good rule of thumb, uh, to run AB tests on the majority of your emails. Um, if you’re testing out a new campaign, I would suggest running more AB tests to that. There’s always evergreen campaigns that you know will perform well, um, regardless of the content. Uh, it also depends on seasonality. Um, if your company or business that, um, happens, you can test the seasonality of emails. But, yes, the majority of the emails that we run do go through AB testing. Awesome. Thank

Speaker 0: you. And just a new one that popped in. Um, who do you use to test your your subject lines?

Speaker 1: Right. So if I’m testing internally, it’ll either go to myself or some colleagues on the marketing team. If we’re doing an AB test, that will be done through a subscriber list. We’ll that will be split in half, and the testing will be done on, uh, clients.

Speaker 0: Awesome. Um, any other questions to pop into the q q and a? Alright. I think that might be all the questions. Um, any other final final thoughts or oh, here’s another one. Um, so it’s a question about about Pardot, and I think Avery uses, um, Marketing Cloud. But the question is when you do an email draft, it asks if you want to do an AB test. Oh, sorry. That’s an answer to a question.

Speaker 1: Not a question.

Speaker 0: Sorry about that. Alright. Well, we I think that’s all the questions. I’m not seeing any more pop in. So thank you so much for joining. Um, again, we will be, uh, set sharing the recordings with everyone. Um, and please do stick around for our next session that’s coming up in just a couple minutes. Um, otherwise, head over to our agenda and see what else is next. Lots of great content coming up over the next few days. So hope to see you all around.

Speaker 1: Yeah. I hope you guys have a great day. Thank you for listening.

Speaker 0: Yeah. Thank you. Bye.