Growth hack-your-email-marketing

eMRKTNG.co.uk | #WeLoveEmail
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WHY EMAIL MARKETING?
Often overlooked in favour of its younger, sexier cousins
- such as social - email marketing is still a powerhouse in
its own right.
More than 90% of the world’s 2.4 billion email users
checked their email at least once a day last year and
received over 180 billion emails, according to Vero.
How are you going to make sure you stand out from the
crowd? Marketing is a science and email marketing gives
you access to a wealth of data that you can use to grow
your results.
Every step in the process – including database
segmentation, send number, time of send, subject line,
content of email and landing page – is up for testing and
analysis.

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TARGETING YOUR EMAIL
MARKETING CAMPAIGNS
At the end of the day, it’s all about the numbers and
making sure you are targeting your campaign at the right
people.
Whether it’s with your own database or as a third party
campaign, you need to look at personal interests, age,
location, salary bracket, recent engagement and a whole
raft of other factors that relate to your product.
For example, if you are selling premium holidays in Italy
to British tourists, you may want to segment your list
along the lines of: Country: United Kingdom, salary:
£30k+, age: 26 and up
Although, don’t get bogged down by going too granular
with your targeting and try to keep your net as wide as
possible – the more fish the better.
Always ensure you are attempting to target the right
people.
Larger send emails that are not targeted suffer from lower
open rates, lower click through rates and a higher scrub
percentage. Sending to more people doesn’t always
equal more leads or sales.
Balanced management of data will allow you to run more
campaigns over a longer period of time.
It’s also the correct way to run your database, and you are
treating your customers with the respect they deserve.
Keeping scrub rate in mind also ensures you are not
penalised by your email service provider – ESP. Campaign
Monitor is a great ESP that promotes good quality email
management.

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If you are prone to rinsing your database, sending out
poor campaigns and have a high scrub rate, Campaign
Monitor don’t want you using their platform and will
quickly let you know.
At your disposal is information on open rate, click
through, scrub, bounce, individual link clicks, email open
time, geographic location and more.
Here’s an example of one of the Learning People’s –
specialists in project management, digital marketing and
IT certifications – monthly newsletter, the Certified, and
the response we achieved.
This provided us with all the information we needed to
outline our plans for future campaign content, focus,
offering, subject line, send time and what we would AB
test.
ASK YOURSELF
1. Have you properly segmented your audience? Have
you got the send time right
2. Is your third party list bought from a reputable source?
Do they flog their database too much with other
partners?
3. Is your email genuinely of interest to your send list?

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SUBJECT LINES AND
PREHEADER TEXT
Subject lines are oh so simple, yet can be oh so hard to
get right. This is your first opportunity to impress and a
high open rate can do wonders to your final campaign
numbers.
The Certified example above achieved a great open rate
of 26.9%, but that still meant 73.1% of people either
didn’t see the email or they didn’t bother to open it. Even
with a good campaign, you will lose a high proportion.
If your campaign doesn’t perform well here, it will be a lot
higher – meaning you will have little chance of getting the
positive results you want. Be emotive, enhance a person’s
fear of missing out and create urgency – all within 55
characters.
To finesse your subject line and give you the best chance
at success, AB testing principles can be implemented
with ESP’s giving you the option to send two subject line
variations.
The winning subject line is chosen from which had the
most opens or clicks. Many companies, small and large,
misuse the pre-header text – compiled from the first text
portion of your email – which you’ll read on your phone.

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Instead of wasting it with copy such as “can’t read this
email, click here” and giving off a negative vibe before
the email is even opened, use the space to enhance your
message and increase open rate.
Which one of these are you most likely to click on?
ASK YOURSELF
1. Would you open this email?
2. Have you created a sense of urgency and intrigue?
3. Is the text to long? Have you got to the point, quickly
and clearly?

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EMAIL MARKETING FOR MOBILE
Breaking news… mobile is king… No surprise, as with all
areas of the web in 2016, it’s all about your smartphone
and email is no different.
It was a few years ago that we realised emails had to be
optimised for mobile. At the Learning People, partner
stats and their own were showing an organic increase in
mobile visits and we wanted to capitalise on this.
Through trial and error, we shifted email design to being
fully mobile friendly. At the time there weren’t many
resources around to lean on and we had to do it the hard
way and learn from our mistakes.
If your message can’t be read quickly, easily and
accessibly on mobile then forget it and start again. Use
visually appealing images that don’t have a large file size
– no more than 200kb for a large image.
Customise them as much as you can in Photoshop
and then use a compression tool like ImageOptim – or
JPEGmini – to squeeze out that last 5 to 10% of file size,
without harming image quality.
Litmus is the place to check out how your email will
perform across multiple platforms and devices.

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It’s also a great resource and community for email
tech heads across the globe, who share ideas and
help problem solve. Your content is an extension of
the subject line, there to enhance your message. But,
don’t give it all away.
Give people a reason to click on that gorgeously
designed call to action that jumps out from the page
and screams “click me”.
Get to the point, less is more and jargon is your
enemy. Fear of missing out and creating urgency are
essential – have I mentioned that already?
Keep in mind that your brain is hard wired for
information that is given in three digestible chunks
and even read three times. Alt text is also great for
boosting conversion. If you design this well you can
deliver a good message before a viewer needs to
click on ‘download pictures’.
ASK YOURSELF
1. Is your email to the point? Are you overloaded
with content and not enough direction?
2. Do you have clear call to actions?
3. Is your message / voice authentic?
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KILLER LANDING PAGE DESIGN
Fear of missing out and creating urgency is essential on
your landing page too – third time is a charm.
Landing pages are an art form in their own right and
should be tailored to your message, what you want
to achieve, your product and your target audience. As
emails need to be adaptive, your landing page needs to
be responsively designed to give you the best results on
mobile.
When checking browser and device compatibility,
Browserstack is your key tool here. Browserstack will
show you how your landing page will look on Android,
Windows, OS X, IOS for mobile and IE, Firefox, Safari,
Chrome, Opera and Yandex on desktop.
We are all more alike as humans than we realise and we
respond to the same emotive indicators and visual clues
– although to varying degrees – and colour is crucial to
this.
Blue gives you a feeling of trust, just look at how many
web giants use blue in their logo. Facebook, Twitter and
LinkedIn being three examples. Red elicits excitement
and I’ve put it to use many a time when highlighting
hooks. White creates a feeling of calm and is another
elicitor of trust.
When coupled with subtle design, white gives your
website a high end feel. Just ask Apple.
Ling Cars have definitely not gone for this option…
I’d place a bet that a great number of their visitors are
marketing agencies showing clients what to not do.
To find a good combination of colours that holds true to
the quality of your brand, keep things simple.
You can also use colorsontheweb.com if you need a bit of
inspiration on complimentary colours.

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Your brain likes smiling faces, even when there not even
there and are formed from the froth in a coffee mug.
Smiles help people feel happy and positive. If your
landing page visitors are happy and positive your
message will be better received. We also incorporated a
smile into the new Learning People logo.
Get to the point on your landing page too and
concentrate on the essential benefits. We don’t have time
to read chapter and verse on each product we want to
purchase; so don’t expect your visitors to have the time
either.
Content wise, it should follow on from your email and
you can afford yourself a good level of repetition of the
message within the email. But do make sure to give a
little bit more to fully hook them in.
Layout of your landing page, as well as your email is key,
and you need to make sure your message is in the correct
place in terms of how a visitor views your page.
Visual Website Optimiser is essential for AB testing
landing pages and tweaking content. Their heatmaps are
also great indicators on what is working on your page and
what isn’t, but will take time to compile as it’s formed
through visitor data.
If you want to get an indication of what will work, and
get it quickly, a fantastic tool to use is EyeQuant which,
through a powerful algorithm, will show you how
effective your landing page is in terms of visual clarity.
Heatmaps of a previous Learning People landing page
show the magnificent effect of a smiling face looking
towards our big, bold and red hook.

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The natural flow of a person’s eyesight on a landing page
is to go from left to right and then down the middle. The
following heatmap shows that the layout we used for our
page used this to our advantage.
Landing page heatmap with eye tracking direction
This campaign improved conversion rate by over 180%.
ASK YOURSELF
1. Is your content informative, emotive or entertaining?
2. Are your calls to actions in the right place?
3. Would you leave your details? As a user, would you
trust the journey you’ve just been on?
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UNDERSTANDING YOUR RESULTS
WITH GOOGLE ANALYTICS
The trend is your friend, it’s all about the numbers behind
the numbers and other marketing jargon like that – but
it’s true. Statistics vary from industry to industry, and
company to company, so getting to know your own stats
over time is the main benchmark you should measure
yourself against.
Google Analytics is the most essential piece of the puzzle
as you analyse your final results here.
Data is key in knowing what is working and what needs
to improve. Google Analytics will give you as much
data as you can handle. Stick a Google tracking code
on everything that you do and adjust it for each link.
Through doing this, you will be able to see all your hard
work come to fruition.
You will be quickly see where you are succeeding and,
importantly, where you need to get better. The Learning
People heatmaps – highlighted earlier – followed through
to a very positive Google Analytics trajectory.
If your progress looks like an upward ski slope, you’re
doing something right. The world of email growth
hacking is a moveable feast and the above advice is
merely the start.
Immerse yourself in the world of growth hacking and
conversion rate optimisation and watch your business
grow.

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