An online course in growth marketing [part 7] ‘Review’
By: Bahaaldin Alhassan
Tags: Cxl Institute, Email Marketing, Email Marketing Tips, Cxl Minidegree, Cxl

Photo by Luke Chesser on Uns plash

Fully completed the 4th module which is the conversion module and now it's time to gain some channel-specific growth skills. the first one to come across is email marketing. To be more specific, Email marketing: from basics to best-in-class.

Jessica Best as an instructor head of data-driven marketing at Berkley’s University, making a promise about getting 20x returns from email marketing.

so here’s what a syllabus looks like:

1. Email Marketing Basics: The Good, the Bad & the WOW!.

At first, she addresses the importance of email marketing and what differentiates it from the other channels Email can send directly from me to you to every individual on our list. It can send at the time that’s most relevant to each recipient with automation. It can show the content or the product you are specifically interested in on my website, it can track your individual engagement. So if you are a lot more interested in articles about the English department at my university, then I might know what to send you in my follow up emails. And then, of course, one of my favorite things about email, the machines can do it all for us. We can automate our follow up. The listening and deciding can happen by data. Again, I love social media, but one of the big keys that email has over other channels is that it gets read, it gets delivered. So on average, we see 20 or 25, sometimes even 30% open rates in email marketing. Compare that to the 2% read rate you see in social media, and that’s if you have a budget. We don’t see a lot of organic social media consumption anymore. So email gets delivered to your inbox. Do something with it. Even if it’s deleted, you still get to read that subject line. And mostly, email cheats, email works, because we’ve already gotten somebody to say, yes, I’d like to receive your emails. And we’ll talk a little more about that in this lesson. How about for the people who received it, which channel do you want to receive your information brands from? And this is, according to a study from Adobe. Email is still the winner here. In fact, it’s the consumers’ preference that, from their brands, they get this stuff by email, because they can read it when they’re ready. They have a folding system where they can store their offers or information about upcoming travel, Email drives the best ROI of any marketing channel $38 for every $1 invested.

The Anatomy of an Email

1 Subject Line

2 Pre-header

3 Branded graphic header

4 Main message

5 Call-to-Action

6 Supporting Message

7 Footer

2. How to Optimize Your Email Marketing List Growth.

Email List Building 2.0 which is Partners so first Choose a relevant, symbiotic partner who has the attention of your target audience it should be complementary not a competition and second Swap content, not lists and Offer value and entice subscribers to opt indirectly for your emails and Swapping offers may not always fit and Exclusivity of the offer matters.

3. Optimizing Email Marketing Copy & Design.

So Apple Mail and Gmail make up a lot more of our user base, probably, than Thunderbird or Lotus Notes. So it’s not really 50% that don’t see images, and it’s different in every inbox. Some people change the settings on their inboxes they see images by default. And some good B2C inboxes like Apple Mail, iOS devices, and Gmail have images turned on by default. But we’re looking for a balance. To make emails that are a balance of image and text, we design on a grid for email. And what that means is that we’re able to slice or cut out those sections we want to be image versus those parts that should be text. Big hero image, maybe there is a headline or something in that hero image, but then the body can be pulled out and treated as HTML text. It’s something we can code right into the email, it shows up whether images are on or off.

Mobile-Friendly Email Design should be accounted for Lots of white space between headlines, body copy, and calls to action and sizing should be At least 40px tall/wide buttons Bigger font: Minimum 14pt font size for body copy sizes up on mobile devices (25–30pt).

You should also Limit words in images that might not resize well. Think “headlines” only. If possible, keep text out of images so they can be “true text” which solves for the images of version.

“Video in Email” Video can drive engagement if you use an accompanying copy to tell readers why to watch and it's better to use The “freeze-frame” is alluring and The CTA should be clear. Most inbox providers won’t play video inline in the email's body, so we will have to fake it with:

A still shot from the video A play button (like the thumbnails that YouTube creates).

2. A link to the video on YouTube/Vimeo/Facebook or our website.

4. Using Data to Drive Email Marketing Relevance and Results.

Data that drives relevance and which means revenue. When we can make an email campaign more relevant to our subscribers, they respond to it. So we will spend less money to get to the right people to have them take the action we want them to take. So will use data in four ways. Data for personalization,. Data for segmentation,. Data for automation, using data to determine the timing of our emails. And then data for optimization and really getting into our results and understanding how that can help us plan for smarter campaigns from now on. Data can and should inform the content, the timing, and the outcome of our email marketing campaigns and programs.

What are the important metrics to watch: the first metric is views, Clicks, Click-to-View rate, Purchases or donations, Bounces, Opt-outs, and Complaints.