Unit 12 Email Marketing

What is an open rate?

A. An open rate is the percentage of users that open your email.

Achieving a high conversion rate is very important to many companies because:

A. It means you're selling more products or services without having to increase your budget.

When deciding which service is best for your brand, you will need to consider the following factors:

1. Cost 2. Deliverability 3. Reporting 4. Email list management 5. Template features

The Data and Marketing Association found that ____ percent of people use the same email for over ____ years. That means as a marketer, once you get someone on your subscriber list, there's a possibility that they could be your customer for ____ years.

A. 51% B. 10 years

What is a forward rate?

A. A forward rate is the percentage of recipients who click on the "Share" button to post to social media or who click the "Forward" button to send to others.

What is a website prompt?

A. A website prompt is a digital banner that calls on a website visitor to act in some way.

What is an email marketing report?

A. An email marketing report is essentially a collection of your KPIs that you present to your team and stakeholders to inform them of your campaign's progress.

What is the list grow rate? This number is helpful to track because:

A. List growth rate is the rate at which your list grows. B. If your emails are quality, a high list growth rate may translate to a higher sales volume, which can mean a higher ROI.

What is ROI?

A. Recall that ROI is the ratio of money made and money spent. B. This important metric tells you whether your email marketing strategy is productive. -> ROI and email marketing tends to be pretty high because the total spend is so low.

What is a conversion rate?

A. The conversion rate is the percentage of email recipients who clicked on a link in your email and took a desired action like making a purchase. -> Basically conversion rate answers the question, did your audience do the thing you wanted them to do?

Why is it important to consider social factors ?

A. Try to be in-the-know when it comes to popular cultural references and social media use. -> Consider things like population growth rates, geographic location, cultural aspects, age, and education levels of those you may or may not be serving. B. You want to make sure your strategy is inclusive of everyone. These factors will affect how you market to customers.

Email marketing automation is the practice of:

A. Using software, programs, and technology to manage email marketing processes automatically.

A forward rate is an incredibly valuable metric because:

A. When an email is forwarded, it means you are generating new leads. -> And what greater compliment to your brand is there than to know your subscribers want to share you with the world?

What is a complaint rate?

A. Your complaint rate is the percentage of complaints recipients sent to mailbox providers about receiving your email.

What are welcome emails?

Welcome emails are emails that are sent out to brand new customers or subscribers.

Why is it important to consider technological factors ?

A. Our world is ever-evolving, and email marketing is not an exception to that. B. As I've mentioned, it looks different than it looked 40 years ago. -> For example, nowadays, customers are able to ask smart devices in their homes to read their emails aloud. -> Make sure you consider that when you craft your strategy. C. Legal factors should also be considered. This means you should think about any and all laws in the markets you serve. -> Based on regional legal restrictions and requirements, certain tactics and marketing may not be lawful.

So, what does a PESTLE audit refer to?

A. PESTLE refers to the political, economic, social, technological, legal, and environmental factors that may affect your email marketing strategy.

Quality control is a process through which:

A. A business seeks to ensure that product quality is maintained or improved.

What is a click to open rate?

A. A click to open rate is the percentage of email recipients who clicked on one or more links in an email out of the total number of unique opens.

What is a customer referral?

A. A customer referral is a word of mouth initiative that encourages existing customers to introduce their family, friends, and contacts to become new customers. B. Think about how much you trust your best friend or closest family member. -> If they told you you'd like something, you might believe them. C. Customer referrals are incredibly valuable because research has found that people are four times more likely to buy a product when they are referred by a friend.

What is a newsletter?

A. A newsletter is an email sent to subscribers on a regular basis, containing news and informational content relevant to the company and of interest to subscribers. B. Newsletters should include only relevant content that you think your readers will enjoy.

What is a retention email?

A. A retention email is an email sent to a current customer with the intent of keeping them as a customer. B. Retention emails are all about timing. -> When sent at the right time, they can be incredibly effective, and if you commit to sending them, you can keep more of your customers coming back again and again.

Why is it important to consider economical factors?

A. People in varying geographic locations may prioritize spending money on certain products and maybe you can deliver emails that feature products with relevance to those customers.

Retention email should include:

A. Personalization, a clear call to action, and a great deal of empathetic and inviting language. B. You might be wondering what I mean by personalization. -> In email marketing, personalization means you get to know your customers and tailor your emails based on who they are.

What is PII?

A. Personally Identifiable Information, or PII. -> PII basically refers to any data that could potentially identify a specific individual. B. When people share information with a company, it's important to use it in ways that build trust and for only the intended purpose. -> Your subscribers didn't have to share this information with you, but they did, and in doing so, they are trusting your company to use it for good.

Acquisition emails, which are used for:

A. Acquiring new customers. B. One secret to a good acquisition email is giving your potential customer something before they even know they want it. -> I don't necessarily mean it has to be a material item. Although, you can offer items like downloadable guides, product catalogs, PDFs, or free trials. -> You can give them an indirect compliment, or some positivity, just something that makes them feel good.

Behavioral data refers to the:

A. Actions your customer takes or doesn't take when it comes to shopping on your website. -> This is one of the most important categories, because it gives you a glimpse into how a customer engages with your specific brand and products. B. Purchasing habits, spending habits, browsing habits, loyalty to your brand, and engagement with your website, are all great ways to segment your list based on behavioral data.

Psychographic characteristics are based on customers':

A. Activities, interests, and opinions. -> This includes factors like lifestyles, values, and hobbies. B. Segmenting by lifestyles and diets can help ensure you send useful, targeted content to people, while also ensuring you don't send anything unappealing or offensive.

Newsletters are a great way to:

A. Advertise your product, build up trust and show your expertise, create lasting relationships with your customers, and inform and educate them. B. Newsletters should also include mentions of trending topics, pop culture, or current events, so that the content feels informed and fresh. C. They should always include catchy, clever writing that makes them stand out among the dozens of emails your readers get every day.

Demographic data includes information such as:

A. Age, gender, income level, and family status. B. Segmenting by demographics is great because it's based on fairly consistent information, whereas psychographics are more subject to change frequently.

What is alt text?

A. Alt text is a brief, written description of an image with the primary purpose of assisting individuals who are visually impaired. B. The alt text is not shown visually in the email, but is read aloud by a screen reader. -> In addition, structural elements such as headers provide screen reader users with information about the content hierarchy in the email.

What is an email marketing provider?

A. An email marketing provider, or email marketing service, is a company that offers email marketing or bulk email services.

What is an email marketing strategy?

A. An email marketing strategy is a set of procedures that a marketer identifies and follows to achieve their desired marketing goals with email advertising.

When you prepare to send emails to your subscribers, you'll need to have a purpose. Why?

A. Ask yourself why you are sending an email in the first place. -> It could be to announce a new product launch, to educate your subscribers with relevant tips and tricks, to offer a discount code or announce a sale, or many other reasons. B. Make sure there is motivation behind every email. -> Doing so will allow you to create context for your email. If you know why you want to send an email, you'll have an easier time deciding what to say in it.

To ensure you don't have typos, grammatical mistakes or personalization errors in your email, conduct an:

A. Automated spellcheck using an online spellchecker or some kind of plug in on your internet browser like Grammarly. B. QC your email by proofreading several times and make sure to send a test email to yourself to double check all personalization tags are spelled right.

Using automation, you can efficiently:

A. Build up your list, segment that list, send automatic welcome and acquisition emails to new subscribers, follow up with newsletters, promotional emails, and retention emails using templates, and easily track the engagement and behavior of each subscriber.

What is a merge tag or personalization tag?

A. Code that allows the writer to insert unique user data from their mailing list into emails.

So, if you want to send a targeted email to your list of 18 to 25 year olds because they're more likely to purchase a certain item, but you accidentally send it to your 40 to 55 age group, you sent the wrong email. First, to prevent this from happening in the future, you'll want to:

A. Create some kind of quality control or QC process for your marketing emails.

This might include:

A. Creating a checklist that ensures you're using the right format, content, personalization tags and anything else you may want to be extra careful about.

One way to get additional emails without added cost is to rely on:

A. Customer referrals and forwards.

What is data?

A. Data refers to a collection of facts or information. -> These facts, numbers, or information are used to inform or plan something.

If you aim to educate your readers with a weekly newsletter featuring tips, tricks, product uses, articles, and more, try to:

A. Develop a theme for each week. -> This theme will give your email a general narrative. B. Use internal and external resources and links that fit into this theme so that the newsletter feels cohesive.

What are display ads?

A. Display ads are graphic ads on websites and apps through banners comprised of photos, text, or videos. B. When used in an email marketing context, they will include a place for the Internet user to fill in their email, or it will link them to a learning page where they can sign up.

If you're sending a marketing email that hyperlinks to external websites, pdf documents or something else and the reader gets an error message, your link may be broken. And the best way to ensure this never happens is to:

A. Double check every hyperlink before you send the email out. -> It always helps to have another set of eyes on your email as well. -> So enlist the help of a colleague to ensure everything looks okay.

What is a email bounce rate?

A. Email bounce rate refers to the percentage of emails sent that could not be delivered to the recipients inbox.

What is an email copy?

A. Email copy refers to the text in your email and subject line. -> Using witty, unique, and inclusive copy can be a huge difference maker.

Email marketing automation tools help:

A. Email marketers generate leads or turn strangers into customers. -> With automation, email marketers can send personalized messages to each individual subscriber.

How do you go about getting those leads?

A. Email marketers typically use one or more of the following strategies. -> Website prompts, display ads which are shown in the Google Display Network or through Creatio, SEMrush and Taboola. -> Social ads like Facebook lead ads, search engine marketing or SEM, referrals, and direct email marketing.

What is email marketing?

A. Email marketing is the process of sending messages to a list of existing subscribers to share information, drive sales, or create community.

As a digital marketer, your goal is to convince people to open, read, and click on the links in your marketing emails. To achieve this goal, write content they will want to engage with. How can you accomplish this?

A. Every email you send should add value to the subscriber in some way. B. Whether you're introducing them to new products or services, making them laugh, or teaching them something new, each element in your emails needs to be thoughtful and intentional.

How large is your subscriber list?Consider setting your frequency based on the parameters below:

A. Fewer than 500: Send an email once a month. B. 500-10,000: Send an email once a week. C. 10,000 or more: Send emails twice a week.

What is a broken link?

A. First, let's talk about sending a broken link. -> A broken link is a hyperlink that no longer leads to the correct website for whatever reason.

What types of emails do you plan on sending?

A. For instance, newsletters will be sent out more frequently than promotional emails about sales or discounts.

You can segment your list based on any number of criteria. But most companies segment their lists by:

A. Geography, psychographic characteristics, demographic data, and behavioral data.

Writing preview text that teases the content can be an effective way to:

A. Get readers to open an email. B. Preview text like: "The recipe you didn't know you needed..." might be an effective way to make your subscribers curious about the contents of your email. -> Before you do this, think about your goals and objectives and whether this makes sense for your brand. C. Keep it between 35-50 characters. Your preview text should be brief enough that your subscribers can read it quickly.

If you are sending an email to announce a product launch, you might want to tell the story of:

A. How the idea came to life. Who came up with the idea for the product? What motivated them to do it? How long did it take to create? What problem does the product solve? B. Consider adding all of these details in your email so that the reader is engaged with the narrative and they relate to it in some way.

Why is it important to consider personalizing your subject line?

A. If you use an email marketing tool, you will have the capability to personalize emails by using first names. -> This is a great way for subscribers to feel like you're talking to them specifically. B. Depending on which tool you use, the way you do this will be a little bit different, so read up on your specific tool.

What purpose is this email serving?

A. If you're aiming to educate users on something—like a new product—you may only need to send one email.

What types of content is in your emails?

A. If you're including nearly identical content in emails, maybe they don't need to be sent more than once. -> If you are reminding people about a sale, you might want to send a couple emails—one when the sale starts and one when the sale is about to end.

Emails may be flagged as spam when they include too many:

A. Images or images that are too large. -> Take note of this, and make sure to send yourself a test email first and review that you don't have too many images.

A few ways to build your list using SEM is to:

A. Include a discount or other type of incentive written out in plain text in your ad, enticing those who subscribe immediately in the ad copy. B. Another way is to use SEM specifically for email marketing lead generation. -> So if a customer is browsing a website, they may see an ad for your company with a form included directly in it. -> They can fill out the form then in there resulting in them subscribing to your list.

A bounced email is caused by:

A. Incorrect or inactive email addresses or an import error with your email list.

What are insights?

A. Insights are pieces of information that are discovered through research or data analysis and that can be directly actioned upon to benefit your email strategy.

Email marketing automation makes the email marketing process simpler and smoother. How?

A. It ensures your campaign stays organized and on track, and it happens in the background so you can be completing and focusing on other tasks if necessary.

Your open rate is important, because:

A. It indicates how engaged your subscribers are. -> A high open rate might mean you're writing effective subject lines while the low open rate might mean your subject lines needs some work.

What are KPIs?

A. KPIs, are measurements used to gauge how successful a business is in its effort to reach a business or marketing goal. B. KPIs are metrics, but not all metrics are KPIs. -> This is because KPIs are the metrics you decide are important to determine your email marketing campaign success.

Lead generation is:

A. Lead generation is the practice of collecting a potential customer's email address. -> Every time you acquire an email address, you're generating a lead that could potentially turn into a sale. B. And since the main purpose of email marketing is to turn possible subscribers into loyal customers, leads are pretty important.

When you're segmenting your list by geography, you might do it by:

A. Location, climate, population, language, or environment. -> This segmentation focuses on the physical location of your subscribers. B. If your brand is offering free shipping on all orders for the month of October but you're only offering it in the United States, you will want to segment your list by country so that international customers aren't misled or confused.

There are countless reasons you may want to send promotional emails, including:

A. Maybe your company is having a sitewide sale, maybe you like to celebrate your customers' birthdays by offering them 10 percent off of their order, maybe your brand is celebrating five years in business, maybe you're launching a new product, contest or giveaway, maybe you're offering some kind of free downloadable content for a holiday.

What are metrics?

A. Metrics help you make sense of raw data. -> Metrics refer to the quantifiable measurements that are used to track and assess a business objective.

What is a preview text?

A. Preview text is next to an email's subject line in the inbox and gives extra insight into what's inside the email. -> It may be secondary to your subject line, but it's still visible from readers' inboxes; they see it before they click into your email. -> Your preview text tells readers exactly what to expect in opening the email. B. What is the main point you are attempting to communicate? That should be your preview text.

It's a very effective tool for:

A. Promoting services, products, goods, and stories to potential, new, and existing customers, and creating email marketing campaigns can be really fun too.

What are promotional emails?

A. Promotional emails are emails that are sent out to inform your subscribers of your new or existing products or services.

What is ROI?

A. ROI is a ratio of net income or money made, and investment or money spent, so ROI is used to evaluate the efficiency of an investment. B. If you have a high ROI, you probably made a lot more money than you spent, and your campaign was effective.

What is SEM?

A. Recall that SEM is the increase of a website's visibility in a search engine through paid advertising. B. If you are using google.com to search for something, you will see some paid text ads above the organic results. -> This is an example of search engine marketing.

What is segmentation?

A. Segmentation is the practice of categorizing contacts by a predefined set of identifiers, so that each email feels relevant to every subscriber.

What is segmentation?

A. Segmentation is the practice of dividing an email subscriber list into smaller groups based on criteria like interests, location, or purchase history. -> Once you build an email list, you need to segment it.

Why is it important to focus on your threats?

A. Similar to opportunities, look for resources, events, contacts, and opportunities that could be detrimental to your brand. -> Maybe you just heard about a new competitor who is creating the exact same product as your company.

What are social ads?

A. Social ads are paid advertisements on social media platforms targeted to social media users. B. Some social media channels offer ad formats specific for lead generation. C. These are similar to display ads in that they combine text, images and a URL that links to a website where customers can learn more or buy products. -> However, these ads feature a form, where users submit personal information such as their name, email, or anything else the advertiser chooses.

Conducting a SWOT audit will help you identify:

A. The internal context of your company. It's an acronym for strengths, weaknesses, opportunities, and threats.

Why is it that the subject line and preview text work together?

A. The subject line and preview text should work together to entice subscribers to open the email.

What does accessibility refer to?

A. The term accessibility refers to the design of products, devices, services, or environments for people with disabilities.

Why is it important to maintain a second person perspective for your e-mail body?

A. This means you will always want to write your emails as though you are speaking to your subscribers. B. You want the email to seem personal and specifically crafted for your readers. -> Second person—also referred to as "you" language—helps create a sense that the writer is talking directly to you, the reader. -> This makes readers feel engaged and involved. A phrase like "Here's a discount for you," is more powerful than "Here's a discount for our readers."

To avoid a high bounce rate, make sure to:

A. Verify your domain. -> Double check your automation tool is up to date and working properly for your email list periodically so that inactive emails are no longer included and make sure you have your subscribers permission to send emails.

Why is it important if you're offering something, be clear about it?

A. Whether it's an experience, a new piece of information, a discount, or something else, make sure subscribers know there is a benefit to opening your email.

If you're announcing a sale on your website, you might want to explain:

A. Why there's a sale and how it will benefit them. -> Are you celebrating the company's birthday or another holiday? -> Are you trying to sell inventory so you can bring new inventory in? -> Is it an end-of-the-season sale? B. Crafting a narrative about why you're having a sale can help convert potential and loyal customers.

Why is it important to pique readers' curiosity?

A. Write a subject line that makes readers interested in the content of your email. B. If you're sending emails to a list of people who added items to their cart but abandoned it at some point during the checkout process, you might include a subject line like: "These items are too good to leave in your cart."

Let's say you link to a blog from your website in an email but the URL had a typo, how do you fix this mistake?

A. You can redirect them so that the link with the typo sends subscribers to the correct URL. -> Or you can let it go and aim to triple check next time, because even the most experienced email marketers make mistakes.

When possible, break up blocks of text with white space. Why?

A. You don't want your email to seem overwhelming to the reader, so be brief and include visual breaks in between your text.

Include a compelling call to action, why?

A. Your readers are more likely to do what you ask of them if you ask them clearly. B. If you want them to buy an item, encourage them to do exactly that. -> Sometimes, emails will have several calls to action—especially in newsletters, where several products, services, or links are likely being shared.

Why is it important to keep your subject like brief?

A. Your subject line should be about 6-10 words total. -> If it's too long, it may be cut off from being viewed entirely by your subscribers.

A. Examples of environmental factors that should be considered, are:

A. climate change, sustainability, and natural disasters.

Using segmentation, a company is able to:

A. deliver the most relevant content to its subscribers. -> The more tailored and personalized the email is, the more likely subscribers are to enjoy their emails, which can result in sales and brand loyalty.

Some examples of words that will be flagged by spam filters are:

1. Act now 2. Apply now 3. Urgent 4. Exclusive deal 5. Important information regarding 6. This won't last

Building email lists is an ongoing process. To build an email list, you can:

1. Create a signup form on your website 2. Create an in-person sign up list 3. Share a signup form on social media A. Once you create a signup list, you'll be able to divide it into smaller groups based on criteria like interests, location, or purchase history, in a process known as segmentation. -> This will help you target specific groups for specific goals.

Choosing the right email marketing provider can significantly impact the success of your email campaign. Some popular email marketing providers are:

1. Mailchimp 2. HubSpot 3. Salesforce 4. Constant Contact

In your email marketing strategy, identify specific brand guidelines that will be relevant to your email marketing campaigns. These guidelines can include the following:

1. Fonts 2. Colors 3. Layouts 4. Illustrations 5. Logos

Some common goals include:

1. Increase brand visibility 2. Increase website traffic 3. Increase sales 4. Acquire new customers 5. Build relationships with existing customers 6. Increase brand loyalty and loyal customers A. Defining your email marketing goal first will help guide you when choosing relevant email options in the upcoming strategy steps.

First, you'll consider political issues or happenings across the markets you're serving. How?

1. Is there political unrest in a country you just started shipping to? A. Or perhaps a new piece of legislation that could impact your business has passed and you want to include a mention of that.

The sections of an email marketing strategy include:

1. Set your goals 2. Choose an email marketing provider 3. Build your email marketing subscriber list 4. Evaluate brand guidelines 5. Determine email frequency 6. Determine performance measuring methods

When running a SWOT audit, start with strengths. Why?

1. What aspects of the company's marketing resources make it stand out? 2. What is special about the marketing team? 3. Is it eye-catching design and innovation? 4. Does your marketing team really shine at copywriting? A. Take note of anything your company excels at internally.

So when you're creating your welcome emails, ask yourself:

1. What do you want people to know about you? 2. Which aspects of your business's identity feel like they absolutely must be included? A. A good welcome email includes a conversational and inviting tone. -> And a brief summary that tells customers what makes your brand unique or tells your brand's story.

After you've conducted your SWOT analysis, reflect on the results. How?

1. What is your general analysis of the results? 2. What did you learn from them? 3 Are you more aware of where you shine and where you could use a little improvement? 4. How will you leverage that information to create an effective campaign? A. If everyone on your team ran an analysis, compare results with your team members.

Why is it important to focus on your opportunities?

1. What resources, events, or contacts would help your team create an incredible campaign? 2. What types of opportunities can you leverage into something bigger? A. Maybe a colleague of yours has a contact in another country that can help you build international brand awareness.

Why is it important to focus on your weaknesses?

1. Where could your company and/or marketing team improve? A. Maybe because your team is so talented with design and copywriting, you haven't prioritized strategy as much. Take note of that.

There are four major ways you can categorize your lists:

1. geographic, demographic, psychographic, and behavioral.