Category Archive: Stuff that’s stylish
Five things you didn’t know about daily deals
Click to download the PDF.
Download our Seize the Daily Deals guide here.
Along the way, we discovered some interesting facts. Here are five things we didn’t know about daily deals:
1. Your industry matters
Are you a restaurateur? An interior designer? A ballroom dance instructor? When it comes to daily deals, your industry greatly influences the odds of a successful campaign. A Rice University study found that health services and special events were the most profitable deals for business owners, with 70% of businesses claiming profitability. Restaurants and spas were the least profitable, with 44% of businesses claiming profitability. Ironically, restaurants are also the most highly purchased deal. Go figure.
2. Expect spurts and lulls
The largest surge of daily deal customers typically occurs at the beginning and end of a promotion. A Yipit study found that approximately 25% of coupons are redeemed in both the first and last months of the deal. When determining how long your deal should last, factor these spurts and lulls into your foot traffic estimations. In most cases, a deal with an expiration of three or six months should suffice. A year is too long.
3. 85 is the new 100
Historically, 15-20% of buyers never redeem their coupons, but businesses still receive profits off these sales. So if your business sells 100 deals, look for 80 to 85 to be cashed in. A ForeSee poll found that 62% of these shoppers are potential new, or infrequent customers. With 100 deals sold, your business can expect about 50 new customers walking through the doors.
4. No two deal providers are alike
To differentiate themselves, daily deal providers take either the super store or boutique approach, driving business through either the quantity and reach of their email subscribers or via the importance of location and business niche to their subscribers. Partner with a daily deal site whose business goals are most in line with your own. For example, if your company has a philanthropic vein, you could find a deal provider that will donate a portion of its profits to a non-profit in your company’s name. You can also find vertical-focused sites, like Daily Gourmet for foodies.
5. Timing can be tricky
Most daily deal providers have a waiting list — some as long as nine months. On the one hand, this gives you plenty of time to plan your deal; on the other, if you’ve been putting off running a daily deal until a special event or your next slow time, you might want to consider reaching out to a provider to get a little more information and a realistic timeline.
Ready to plan your first, or next, promotion and looking for more tips? Download our Seize the Daily Deal and get a crash course on planning, launching and profiting from deal-a-day promotions.
Have some daily deal advice of your own? We’d love to hear from you in the comments section below.
Erin Gagnon is an account executive for the Bradford Group, a full-service public relations, advertising and marketing agency based in Nashville. You can reach her by email at ErinGagnon@theBradfordGrp.com, or via Twitter at @ErinDGagnon.
When life gives you iPads & Kindles, make an email marketing strategy
How authors and publishers use email to increase reader engagement
I’m a sucker for a hardbound novel that’s way too heavy to carry, but looks like a piece of artwork on my shelf. Even though iPads and Kindles make buying, consuming and transporting reading material incredibly easy, I’ll never stop collecting gorgeous physical copies of books.
While I hope book buying never fades away completely, a relentless technological tide and shifting economy have forced even the most traditional denizens of the literary world to go with the online flow. Since more people are reading online, it makes sense for publishers and authors to focus their marketing efforts there as well.
Here are a few examples from folks in the publishing industry who are successfully utilizing email marketing to stay in touch with readers and broaden their audience. Hopefully, these will inspire you to put pen to paper, er, fingers to keyboard.
Keep up with your favorite characters with Janet Evanovich's newsletter.
Janet Evanovich | Living beyond the page
Ever put down a book and find yourself immediately missing your favorite character? Me, too. Janet Evanovich builds excitement for her next novel by sending email updates written in the voice of Mooner from her bestselling Plum series.
Have a little fun and let your imagination do the heavy lifting. Consider using Emma’s trigger feature to send a clever (and automatic) hello from you or one of your favorite characters when someone subscribes to your newsletter.
+ See a recent campaign
+ Follow @janetevanovich on Twitter
+ Sign up for Janet’s newsletters
Want to know where Patti will be next? Sign up to receive her emails.
Patti Digh | Making an appearance
Self-help author Patti Digh would like to read to you. And more importantly, inspire you! After all, musicians aren’t the only ones who get to travel the country spreading their talent to lucky listeners.
Send an email letting fans know when you’re doing a reading in a town near them. Ask for subscribers to provide their zip codes, then use Emma’s search and segment tool to easily follow up with them when you’re pulling into their city.
+ See a recent newsletter
+ Follow @pattidigh on Twitter
+ Read Patti’s blog
Oxford American previews what's coming up next.
Oxford American | Featuring offline content
Wondering what to expect in the next issue of Oxford American Magazine? Here, the team at OA does a great job of touching on topics to look forward to, as well as encouraging email subscribers to purchase hard copy versions.
Sending an issue synopsis is the perfect way to pique your reader’s interest. Don’t forget to create links that easily direct traffic so folks can dig into your content back at your website. Then, check out Emma’s response section to see who’s clicking to read more and which topics resonate.
+ See a recent newsletter
+ Follow @oxfordamerican on Twitter
+ Connect with Oxford American on Facebook
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Want more ideas? Check out the slide show below for additional examples from authors.
Click to view the slideshow.
Not yet an Emma customer? Learn more about our products and service.
Crazy about email design?
Our picks for the best design-related posts on the Emma blog
In the past year, we covered everything from fancy-lookin’ customer emails to email makeovers to (lots of) mobile design tips. In this roundup, we’re sharing the best design-related posts on the Emma blog.
1. Building a slice and dice campaign: Instead of compromising email deliverability with one big image, we taught you how to code an image into smaller slices.
2. Designing emails for smartphones: Guest blogger Anna Yeaman, creative director of Style Campaign, shared her top six mobile design tips.
3. Research, inspiration and doodling: Taylor Schena offered a behind-the-scenes look at her design process.
4. Stylishly formatted email campaigns: We featured five customers with effective content arrangements in their emails.
5. HTML code for email layouts: We gave you access to the code of Emma’s content layouts to use and adapt if you’re building campaigns with an Upload Your Own HTML template.
6. More mobile tips: Miles Price weighed in with more design tips for crafting emails for mobile devices.
7. An email makeover: We highlighted a refreshed email strategy and brand new look for Rumours Wine & Art Bar in Nashville.
8. Animated GIFs of the future: Cody De Vos paved the way for using animated GIFs in your email campaigns.
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For even more design inspiration, see our design showcases.
What design topics would you like to see us feature next? Let us know by commenting here.
Design showcase: The navigation edition
A look at custom email templates that direct readers to more than just the homepage
Navbars, nav links, navigation menus — no matter what you call them, they’re part of almost any website that you visit. They’re usually a series of buttons or text links like Home, About Us or Order a Platypus, and they provide the most direct way to move about a website’s various pages (especially if you’re like me and are always looking for the shortest route to a platypus bargain).
What you may not know, though, is that they can also be a very helpful addition to your email template. Let’s take a look at some of Emma’s custom designs that include navigation links, and some of the benefits of including them.
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Client: University Settlement
Designer: Kelly McClain
Design Level: Concierge Design
University Settlement is a fantastic organization that provides a range of social services and support for immigrant families in New York City. Their colorful tab navigation is eye-catching and easily recognizable to anyone who has visited their home page.
Kelly’s inclusion of those tabs in her design creates strong brand recognition due to the visual consistency between their website and email stationery. That kind of familiarity really helps when subscribers are deciding whether they should read your painstakingly-crafted campaign, and it also keeps their experience of your online presence as seamless as possible.
Client: UCSD Track & Field / Lex Gillette
Designer: Kelly McClain
Design Level: Concierge Design
An inspiring paralympic athlete and motivational speaker, Lex Gillette has a content-packed website and a lengthy navigation menu to match. Much of what makes his site so visually memorable, though, is his striking portrait in conjunction with the spare color palette. Knowing the best approach would be consistency here, Kelly chose to echo the look and feel of the website to reinforce his singular branding, as she did with the University Settlement design featured above.
The big difference here is that University Settlement’s five colorful tabs are a primary feature of their stationery header; Lex Gillette’s has twice that number of links, so the header would look cluttered if the navigation were more prominent. Kelly’s challenge, then, was to include the links as unobtrusively as possible without making them too inconspicuous — a goal she accomplished quite tidily.
And while ten navigation links is a lot to include in a stationery design, there’s definitely a benefit: on Emma’s response page, the client will be able to track click-throughs to each linked page. That way, he’ll be able to gauge each campaign’s ability to generate interest in specific areas of his site.
Client: HomeWorks
Designer: Taylor Schena
Design Level: Concierge Design
HomeWorks, a company that not only contracts home improvements but offers do-it-yourself coaching and educational services to homeowners, has a distinctively hand-drawn, tactile look and feel to their website. Their main page contains ten navigation links — like the Lex Gillette site mentioned above — and Taylor’s design is an excellent example of a different way to handle that many links.
In this case, instead of trying to cram all of those whimsically-penciled navigation icons from their site into the smaller confines of an email stationery header, Taylor helped the client narrow down the links to what they considered to be the four most essential. This is a helpful reminder that you don’t have to include all your nav links; in fact, limiting links will aid in driving traffic to particular pages of your site that you’d most like to feature.
Client: Anna Mae’s Southern Bread Co.
Designer: Cody Newman
Design Level: Concierge Design
Of course, your design doesn’t have to look like your website in order to include a navigation menu. Anna Mae’s Southern Bread Co., a bakery that crafts slow-risen, artisan sourdough rolls, loved the look of their site but preferred that their stationery resemble their delightful product packaging.
Cody recreated the look of their packaging by using the distinctive border decoration, block print graphics and background texture, and he was also able to cleverly incorporate their four nav links into the design. Their inclusion doesn’t take away from the feel of what the client wanted, while still offering the advantage of direct page links in their header.
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Want to see even more custom email templates with navigation menus? Take a look at these six examples from Emma customers.
If you’re ready to get yourself a fancy new stationery with navigation links (“Order Platypus” button optional), you can get started by filling out our design request form and we’ll take it from there.
Until next time, much navigational love from your Emma Design Team!
Emma City Guide: New York, NY
Tour NYC this Valentine's Day and meet some of our favorite Big Apple customers
I’m back for another stop in our tour of Emma cities, and today I’m highlighting some of our New York City customers. And since it’s Valentine’s Day, I’ve added a bit of a romantic twist to my lineup of Big Apple destinations. February 14th means different things to different people — that is, not everyone expects to meet their soulmate at the top of the Empire State Building today — but the magical thing about New York City is that there’s enough romance for everyone.
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Catbird
219 Bedford Avenue, Brooklyn
Were you that kid in 2nd grade who distributed handmade Valentines while your classmates settled for assembling the boxed variety? Do you gravitate toward great design, appreciate a well-curated shop and just love love? Then you’ll want to pop into Catbird this month to get in on the Valentine goodies. Or if you’re admiring NYC from afar, visit their website and ogle collections of jewelry, stationery and treasures for the home. Oh, and while you’re there, sign up for their emails to get a heads-up about free shipping offers, new products and maybe even a little special surprise on your birthday.
+ See a recent campaign
+ Visit their website
Kiki de Montparnasse
79 Greene Street, Manhattan
If you’ve moved past conversation hearts and Bee Mine cards (buzz), New York City has got you covered. After all, it’s home to Kiki de Montparnasse, which boasts a luxury lingerie line sure to make your Valentine’s Day special. Every product in their flagship boutique is ensconced in romance, and their online shop lets you get in on the fun even if a trip to SoHo isn’t on your agenda. Kiki de Montparnasse uses Emma to promote new products and invite subscribers to exclusive events.
+ See a recent campaign
+ Visit their website
Daniel Boulud Restaurants
For some, Valentine’s Day is all about candlelight, good wine and just about the best meal you could possibly imagine. Look no further than the restaurants of renowned Chef Daniel Boulud. Whether you’re catching a quick pre-theater meal at DBGB Kitchen and Bar (try the burger!) or spending the whole evening lingering over a four-course prix fixe menu at Boulud Sud, it’ll be a night to remember. Subscribers to Boulud’s emails were recently enticed with a sneak peek of the Valentine’s Day menus and a link to online reservations. They had me at Chocolate Macadamia Almond Cream Cake …
+ See a recent campaign
+ Visit their website
Brooklyn Public Library
10 Grand Army Plaza, Brooklyn
The Brooklyn Public Library is an unexpected Valentine’s Day destination, but it’s a lovely place to spend an afternoon with someone you love. With an impressive permanent collection highlighting Brooklyn’s rich history and ever-changing events calendar, BPL sends the highlights to more than 100,000 subscribers so they’ll know to check out cool exhibits like Building Stories. Go yourself, and you won’t only get to be cute and couply with your Valentine, but you’ll learn about city architecture and start seeing your surroundings in new ways.
+ See a recent email campaign
+ Visit their website
Whole Foods Culinary Center
95 East Houston, Manhattan
Rather than go out for a Valentine’s Day meal with all the other couples, surprise your sweetie with a cooking class at Whole Foods Market. The Bowery Culinary Center is offering up a menu of intriguing classes this February — who wouldn’t be delighted to attend Beer & Southeast Asian Cuisine or The Winter Herbal Kitchen? The Culinary Center uses smartly placed signup forms to keep website visitors in the know, and their campaigns contain clear calls to action with class registration links.
+ See a recent campaign
+ Visit their website
Physique 57
Maybe you’re not in a romantic relationship right now. Maybe you’re still going to have the best-ever Valentine’s Day, thanks to your best-ever friends. If you’re looking for ideas to gather the gals for an outing, consider a group fitness class at Physique 57. In one hour, you’ll stretch, strengthen and tone by performing a variety of exercises to energizing music that’s always changing to keep things fresh. You might even catch their Love Songs playlist in an upcoming class, which was cleverly promoted in a recent email campaign. It’s the kind of exercise experience that always puts a smile on my face and makes me feel a little less guilty about indulging in a Valentine’s Day pastry later in the day.
+ See a recent campaign
+ Visit their website
Canal Room
285 West Broadway at Canal, Manhattan
Perhaps a night on the town is in order, too. Why not meet up at Canal Room, a music and event venue that has some pretty irresistible shows on its February calendar. Make plans to dance the night away to your favorite guilty pleasures, courtesy of 80s cover band Rubix Kube. The Back to the Eighties show runs Saturdays in February and March, and it’s guaranteed to be one of those dance-in-a-circle-you’ve-tossed-your-purses-in-the-center-of kind of nights. Canal Room fans learn about upcoming events through regular email updates, and since the email stationery matches the look of the Canal Room website, it’s a seamless experience to hop from one to the other.
+ See a recent campaign
+ Visit their website
Whatever your plans are, we wish you a lovely Valentine’s Day! And if you want to catch up on our other city guides in the places Emma calls home, click to read about Austin, Portland and Denver.
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Emma powers the emails of more than 30,000 businesses, nonprofits and agencies. Get 60 days free when you join today.
Improving your email list
How to use advanced tools and strategy to nurture your growing audience
Yesterday, I offered tips for turning your email readers into buyers, but those tactics may not do you a ton of good until you’ve really engaged your audience. Today, we’ll look at a few strategies for nurturing your growing audience.
Make time to nurture your growing email list.
Your list is all grown up. What now?
At this stage, I imagine that your email marketing goals are more advanced. You’re keen to keep your original fans while attracting a larger crowd, but as you do so, you want to maintain strong delivery rates and engagement. Now’s the time to pair your goal of growth with additional measures like effective messaging, relationship building and higher delivery rates.
Here are a few ways to do just that:
+ Segment beyond demographics. Your audience list likely falls into more relevant categories than male/female and north/south. For example, a brand new subscriber may respond better to being treated like a very special newbie than simply receiving a particular demographic’s message. To kick off that relationship, develop a series of welcome emails for new subscribers that introduces them to your content and messaging. Retool a particularly successful past campaign or build a new one from scratch, or both. (For more ideas, Cody gives tips galore on segmenting your subscribers based on their relationship with you.) Alternatively, if you have a longer purchase cycle than traditional retail, you may want to segment based on your recipients’ place in that process. Read my perspective on segmenting based on customer lifecycle.
+ Elicit audience actions to help your emails succeed in filtered inboxes. Most popular webmail clients (like Gmail and Hotmail) do some automatic filtering for their users. Unloved email senders start to get filtered to the “unimportant” category — and sometimes right out of the inbox. To combat this, encourage your readers to perform the actions that say “this email is valuable” to the inboxes that use these algorithms.
A reply is one of the most powerful indicators to the inbox filter that your email is wanted. Ask your subscribers to reply to your email, vote in a poll or ask questions. Subscriber clicks are also powerful boosts for your reputation; craft situations where readers click, even if they’re not shopping or reading more. For example, let subscribers provide feedback by clicking on links right from your email. Keep in mind that every non-open hurts your reputation with all recipients at that domain, so send and segment wisely.
Email expert Mark Brownlow encourages subscribers to reply directly to him.
+ Measure past the click to learn what speaks to your audience. Your Emma response page shows you which links in your newsletter were the most popular. For an even deeper look into your audience’s preferences, tag your links using an analytics tool like Google Analytics to learn where your subscribers are ultimately landing. For a tutorial, read Cassie’s guide to implementing Google Analytics.
+ Develop a plan for non-engaged subscribers. Disengaged subscribers hurt your sender reputation. Periodic pruning of your list is a good idea. First, define what “inactive” means for your brand. Is it someone who hasn’t opened, clicked or engaged through any channels in three months? Six months? A year?
Next, create your plan of attack. Will you send a few emails asking folks to opt back in and then remove those who don’t? Is opening the reactivation email enough to be considered active? Give your plan a try, and then move those lifeless email addresses out of your regular sending list. You may decide to remove them completely or send less frequently for a while before saying goodbye. Just don’t be alarmed if your reactivation campaign doesn’t win the majority of folks back. With email address turnover these days, many of them may not be salvageable.
Moving beyond “one size fits all” messaging and saying goodbye to your non-openers isn’t always an easy transition, but your response rates will reflect the additional effort. Before you know it, those folks who stick around will be engaging with you in ways you may not have expected — and helping spread the word about you to new, attentive subscribers.
This is part three in our blog series on audience growth. Read parts one and two.
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Not yet an Emma customer? Send stunning emails that get noticed.
Are you ready for some email?
A peek at the New York Giants' email marketing strategy
This Sunday, millions of people will gather to watch the Super Bowl. For some, it’s all about the commercials. For others, it’s about critiquing Madonna’s half-time performance. And for the sports fans among us, it’s about the matchup of two football teams who had very different, and equally exciting, seasons. Regardless of which side you’re rooting for, Emma is proud to power the emails of this year’s NFC Champions, the New York Giants. The folks that handle the Giants’ premium ticket holder relations have knocked their email strategy out of the park, er, into the end zone. Take a look at a few of the ways Rachel Wohl and her team tackle email marketing.
The right message to the right people
The Giants’ marketing team understands the art of audience segmentation. With various levels of ticket holder, messaging has to be specific. By segmenting smaller groups based on ticketing level, the Giants ensure the relevancy of every message that hits the inbox. In turn, recipients trust that their time is not being wasted with unnecessary information. The Giants average open rate is a whopping 55% — that’s more than twice the industry average!
Taking time to target your messages can make a huge difference in your response metrics.
In short: While the Giants have built-in segments to work with, any business can find ways to get more focused with messaging. If you’re a nonprofit, consider creating unique audience groups for donors versus volunteers. Retail shops and restaurants can group by recipient preferences. And businesses with multiple locations can use zip codes to divide their database. Find what groupings make sense for your business and industry, and use Emma’s search and segment feature to make it happen. Then, test to see if segment-specific messages make a difference in your response rates.
Having fun with the brand
With a legacy that goes back to 1925, the Giants have established themselves as one of the most recognizable brands in the NFL. The block-style “NY” logo is as instantly familiar as their blue and red uniforms. In keeping with that tradition, the Giants’ email stationery boldly conveys the brand. And once you’ve got brand recognition, it’s easy to loosen up and have a little fun. The Giants call on Emma’s design team to occasionally adjust their existing stationery by adding subtle nods to various seasons. From hints of pink for Breast Cancer Awareness Month to leaves for fall and snowflakes for winter, the stationery stays true to the brand while delivering a little surprise and delight along the way.
Adding new elements to existing stationery is a fun way to change things up.
In short: If you’re getting bored of your newsletter’s look, chances are your audience is a little bored too. Why not get creative? Adding holiday elements for an end-of -year push is an obvious place to start, but any season or special event in your business or industry can inform a slight variation on your existing template. Send a design request to our team, and we’ll walk through the details with you.
Keeping the party going
The Super Bowl is a time to party, and that’s especially true for the Giants and their fans this year. As a special thank you for continued support, the Giants planned a party for their premium ticket holders. They worked with our design team to create a custom email that has the feel of an exclusive invitation, while incorporating brand familiarity. To manage the response, the Giants linked the invitation to an Emma-powered survey, which acts as an RSVP form. When recipients fill out the survey, all the information goes right into the response section in the Giants’ account, making it easy to track and follow up.
Pairing a survey with an email invitation makes tracking and follow-up a breeze.
In short: Consider managing your next event right within your Emma account. Create an email invitation, link it to a survey that collects all of your RSVP details, and then set up triggered emails to remind attendees about the event in advance. You could even create a follow-up survey after the event to gather feedback. Need help geting started? Our support team would be happy to show you how it all works together.
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As you watch on Sunday and get swept up in the gameday antics, take a moment to marvel at all the behind-the-scenes work that boosts fan engagement and participation. We’re thrilled to be partnered with the Giants, and we’re excited to see how their marketing team continues to smartly reach their fans.
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Ready to freshen up your email stationery? Request revisions from Emma’s design team.
Organizing Emma’s customer feedback
How Kindling helps make the best ideas happen
Emma customers are a bright, clever and vocal bunch. When you talk, we listen. And take notes. And then organize those notes in a not-overly-OCD way. Our choice for organization is a tool called Kindling. We add customers’ suggestions, feedback and ideas in Kindling for everyone at Emma to see. To date we have over 700 I-really-wish-Emma-woulds and What-if-there-was-a-way-tos. Many of these ideas are in development now, and many more are waiting for their chance at greatness.
It’s pretty simple for us to express our support for an idea in Kindling: just click a button to vote it up. More votes means more popularity and traction for an idea.
One of the most popular ideas in Kindling was just unveiled as a new feature in our Featurepalooza. “I’d really love to know when someone signs up for my email list,” you said. We heard this from many customers over time, so it’s no surprise that this idea rose to the top in Kindling. Now, notifications is a feature that’s available in our new system, and coming soon to your account, too.
Finding great ideas hasn’t always been so easy, though. Kindling’s newest case study recalls the dark ages of idea management at Emma, and how we adopted Kindling as a core part of our customer-focused culture.
If you’ve ever sent in a wish list, complaint, frustration or random musing loosely related to email marketing, we’re watching it in Kindling. If it’s popular, the next place you might see it is in your account.
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Not yet an Emma customer? Give us a try for free.
The anatomy of Emma’s response page
Understanding delivery stats, opens, click-throughs and more
Once you send out an Emma campaign, your response results immediately start building on the main response page. If you’re like us, you spend the next few hours obsessively refreshing the page to see how many folks are opening, clicking and sharing your campaign. It’s exciting stuff, for email marketing nerds anyway. But it’s even more exciting when you’ve got a solid handling on what you’re looking at — and what you should be striving for.
Let’s take a closer look at an Emma mailing, one of our Agency Insiders. I’ll break down Emma’s response page to explain each section and how you can use the data to inform next steps.
Here's a look at the Overview tab of our mailing's response.
The Trend
The chart at the top of the page gives you an at-a-glance account of the mailing’s opens and clicks. Click the upper right links to adjust the view (by default, it displays a 12-hour view), and hover your mouse over data points to see numbers. Read more about our interactive charts here.
What to look for: Scan the time of day that yields the highest open rates for your audience. In many cases, this will be three hours following the mailing’s send time; however, you might see different trends if you send your mailing very late at night, for example. Our mailing met expectations, as we saw the most opens in the first hour after its 11:00 am send.
Next steps: If you see open times contrary to what you expect, use this information to determine the timing of your next mailing. Perhaps you expected your audience to be opening your email during work hours, but they’re actually opening in the evening. Schedule your next mailing for 6 pm and see what happens.
The Send Off
At the server level, we track the number of emails sent, received or bounced.
When you send an email campaign, the response tracking is actually happening at two distinct levels: the server where your recipient’s inbox is hosted, and the inbox itself. (For more information on how email delivery works, take a look at this blog post by our delivery specialist, Art.) The numbers under The Send Off all happen at the server level. Emails sent refers to the number of emails we attempted to send (which will match the number of active email addresses in the audience group that you send to). Emails received refers to the number of emails that were successfully received by the servers on the other end. And the bounces include emails that were kicked back as undeliverable by the receiving servers. Read more about bounces here.
What to look for: Emma has an average 98% delivery rate so you should see that about 98% of your sent emails were received at the server level. If you’re working with an updated list of addresses, you’ll see even better delivery rates. (Our mailing saw a strong 99.4% delivery rate.) Keep in mind, however, that if you’re sending to an email list for the very first time, you may see a few more bounces, as Emma helps to weed out addresses that are no longer valid.
Next steps: If more than 3% of your emails bounced, click to take a closer look. If all bounces are from one particular domain, Emma may have had trouble connecting to that domain. Feel free to reach out to our support team to help you uncover any curious bounce patterns. And keep in mind that Emma handles soft and hard bounces a bit differently. Addresses that soft bounce will stay on your list, and we’ll mark addresses that hard bounce as “error” so you don’t waste time (or money) mailing to them next time.
The Response
A closer look at the response activity at the inbox level
Here you’ll notice response activity at the inbox level. You’ll see the percentage (and number) of folks who opened your email in a trackable way (read more about what that means here) and the number of people who clicked at least one link in your campaign. If you have a “send-to-a-friend” envelope icon atop your email stationery, you’ll also see how many folks shared your email with friends. (Not to be confused with Social Sharing via Twitter, Facebook and LinkedIn, which we’ll get to in a moment.) Finally, you’ll see how many new subscribers signed up and how many recipients opted out.
What to look for: The open and click-through rates are sort of like your report card grades. Have you met industry averages? That’s a solid C. But why settle for average? If open rates are lower than you expected, there’s a chance that a phrase or two in your email kept it from arriving in your recipients’ inboxes. Proof your content, and make sure to avoid spammy words and phrases. And if you’re doing well, think about how you’ll maintain momentum. We’re pretty pleased with a 37% open rate — and we’ll continue offering the sorts of content our audience responds well to — but that doesn’t mean we aren’t thinking about ways to improve it as well.
Next steps: It’s time to move the dial and go beyond proofing your content. Spruce up your subject line, surprise your subscribers with an unexpected format or dream up a contest. And, hey, ask them to share the email with their friends by using the send-to-a-friend feature, and thank those who do by sharing special content or a coupon.
The Clicks
A breakdown of the clicks across the campaign
This section shows the total number of clicks across all links, along with a link-by-link breakdown. In our example, we see 401 total clicks across 35 links (HTML and plaintext). Notice how, in the screenshot above this one, we see 255 unique clicks. Why is the number of total clicks (401) greater than the number of unique clicks (255)? Unique clicks refers to the people who clicked. In this case, 255 people clicked a combined 401 times, meaning certain recipients clicked the same link multiple times or clicked multiple links.
What to look for: Clicks tell you more than the sum of their parts. Your audience is communicating their interests to you — and their reading habits. Maybe your audience likes your video content more than your weekly wrap-up. Maybe they respond better to a call to action at the top left of the email versus the bottom. Whatever you see, pay attention and repeat what works. In our case, the marquee story, a guest post by Ilise Benun of Marketing Mentor, was the most-clicked link. It was also the story we chose to place at the top of the email.
Next steps: Use the data to guide future newsletters and content, but don’t forget that those clicks come from people. Consider following up in a more personal way every now and then. Save all members who clicked on a particular link as a search group, and reach out by email, on Twitter or even by phone.
Shares
The Shares tab shows the number of shares on Twitter, Facebook and LinkedIn. You can click the tab to see more details.
Let’s depart from the Overview tab and focus on Shares. If you enabled Social Sharing in your mailing, you’ll be able to track shares to Twitter, Facebook and LinkedIn on this tab. Moreover, you’ll be able to see how much traffic was generated from those shares. If you’re not sure about Social Sharing, read more here.
What to look for: If you enabled Social Sharing, we do hope some of your recipients shared your mailing! Take a look to see which networks are most-used by your audience, and which recipients are doing the sharing — these folks are likely some of your most enthusiastic brand advocates.
Next steps: If you’re not seeing as many social shares as you’d like, take some time to plan next steps. Just because the social buttons are atop your email doesn’t mean your recipients know how (or why) to use them. Give them a brief tutorial in your next mailing, or design a fun giveaway or reason for participating. For example, in last year’s April newsletter, we challenged our subscribers to share the Earth Day infographic we created. If we reached 100 shares (we did, thanks to our readers!), we’d plant 100 extra trees. That plan worked swimmingly, whereas this mailing didn’t see the same kind of success. It’s back to the drawing board for some new ideas …
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Want some more inspiration? Check out Carolyn’s post on making the most of response charts and our customer stories, highlighting a slew of effective email strategies. And let us know if you have any questions about your response rates — we’re here to help.
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A roundup of successful holiday campaigns
Taking a peek at four email campaigns by the Union Square Hospitality Group
If you crafted and sent out your holiday emails on time this year, give yourself a pat on the back. There’s a sense of relief that comes with negotiating the busy holiday season and getting your newsletter out before the new year. But make sure you haven’t checked the task off your list and forgotten about it. Now’s the time to review your holiday response rates and learn from them as you kick off your 2012 email marketing efforts.
Let’s take a look at a few email campaigns crafted by Emma agency partner, Union Square Hospitality Group (USHG). USHG includes some of New York City’s best known restaurants, including Union Square Cafe, Gramercy Tavern, Blue Smoke, The Modern and Maialino. These four campaigns carry representative looks and strong response rates — and serve as fitting case studies for welcoming in the new year.
Union Square Hospitality Group
In this snowflake-themed campaign, USHG has fun with a split test of sorts. Can you guess which button earned more clicks? In fact, the gift card button edged out the e-gift certificate button by just 2%.
+ Sent on Wednesday, December 21st at 9:00 am to 69,892 people
+ Subject line: The Perfect Last Minute Gift
+ Open rate: 19.58%
+ Click-through rate: 6.16%
+ Shares: 23
Why it works: There’s a sense of whimsy in the design — and the sentiment. Plus, the two buttons are a source of education for USHG; they’ll be able to see who clicked where and follow up with other relevant offers, if they like.
The Modern
This festive winter campaign, created on an Upload Your Own HTML template, captures the sophistication of The Modern and shares, among other things, details of its New Year’s Eve line-up.
+ Sent on Tuesday, December 20th at 11:17 am to 10,497 people
+ Subject line: Winter News from The Modern
+ Open rate: 31.33%
+ Click-through rate: 1.92%
+ Shares: 6
Why it works: The email provides a consistent brand experience with The Modern’s website, and with a mix of compelling content, it’s an easy email to navigate.
Gramercy Tavern
Gramercy Tavern’s holiday email is short ‘n’ sweet. It’s also personal, featuring a “season’s eatings” photo of the tavern’s employees (after the click).
+ Sent on Tuesday, December 20th at 9:00 am to 7,949 people
+ Subject line: Happy Holidays from Gramercy Tavern!
+ Open rate: 31.41%
+ Click-through rate: 47.39%
+ Shares: 4
Why it works: Talk about piquing curiosity. Nearly half of email openers clicked through to view the photo. When average click-throughs hover around 6%, a spike like this is a coup.
Union Square Cafe
Created on Emma’s blank template and utilizing an Advanced 7 layout, this campaign by Union Square Cafe follows the format of a traditional newsletter. A departure from their usual campaigns coded from scratch, the built-in layout allows them to revise each newsletter without pulling in a designer from their team — a definite time-saver.
+ Sent on Thursday, December 15th at 1:03 pm to 19,140 people
+ Subject line: Union Square Cafe Newsletter – Winter 2011
+ Open rate: 27.18%
+ Click-through rate: 14.96%%
+ Shares: 5
Why it works: The campaign makes use of space by providing short story blurbs that link to the full scoop elsewhere. Moreover, it plays with content placement. Convention would tell us that the top story in your campaign will earn the highest clicks; in this case, the link to the recipe for Ménage à Pommes is the most popular. Union Square Cafe’s audience is an engaged bunch, happy to spend some time with the campaign and comb it for their favorite stories.
Ready to interpret your holiday response rates? Here are some things to look for:
- Compare the numbers … Use our campaign compare feature to see how your holiday results stack up against the prior month’s mailing — or against your holiday results from last year. Then, see how they compare to industry averages.
- … But only the numbers that matter to you. It doesn’t make a lot of sense to compare click-throughs to your Facebook page if that wasn’t the one of the goals of your holiday campaign. Instead, focus on metrics that correspond to your intended goals. Look for places where you fell short, and adjust the approach of your next mailing.
- Plan a follow-up. When people click on links in your campaign, they’re telling you that they’re interested enough to learn more. Armed with that knowledge, make plans to send a smaller, targeted mailing to the audience members who are most likely to read and engage.
- Prepare for the next mailing. Do the response results of your holiday mailing seem interesting but inconclusive? Have a hunch about why your subject line enticed more people to open? Set up a split test in your next mailing to test your theory. Read more about subject line split tests in Cassie’s post.
If you have questions along the way, we’d love to help. Comment here, or reach out to our support team.
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