Friday, March 14, 2014

Email Marketing Conference: Event Summary and Key Learnings

Sharing below the Key Learnings from a recently visited Email Marketing Conference.

Date: 6th March 2014
Venue: ShangriLa's Eros Hotel, New Delhi

(+) Email Marketing Trends 2013-2014:

We got to know about major shift,  that have happened in email industry, were by two Mail Services Yahoo and Gmail. Yahoo started declaring those email address as inactive and expiring them where no open activity has been for 1 year. Gmail came up with two changes one of which was introduction of tabbed inboxes for auto categorization of emails in various tabs which impact the open rates by 14%. Second change by Gmail was caching of images (Dec 2013) where images started loading automatically resulting in increased open rate and ease for user.

Learnings:

- Removal of inactive email ids (every 3-6 months) who have not opened/clicked their emails.
- Inactives are monitored by anti spam bodies so updation of email database is required.
- Providing relevant content only which the user wants to see and engage in.
- First Segment the user and then target on basis of their behaviour of mail opens, location, email/web clients etc.
- Have conversation style email campaign where user can reply back (which makes from email id added in address book).
- In coming years, Email Marketing is growing and going mobile (50% emails are opened via mobile devices).
- More and more people are reading emails on mobile devices, so make emails thumb friendly.
- Timely emails which are sent when the user generally opens it up.
- More accurate analysis of BIG DATA by companies to increase on ROI, as data is increasing by many folds in terms of 3 Vs: volume, velocity and variety.

(+) Engagement of User During his Entire Subscription Journey

Got to know about important emails such as welcome messages, usage of subject line, preheader text, mobile and SMS integration during the subscriber's journey.

Learnings:

- Double-Opt in is important for generating and maintaining quality email data.
- Email frequency, content are important aspects about which the subscriber should be aware of.
- Subject lines is important for an email to get opened. Keep it short and clear rather than flashy or confusing one.
- Email + SMS when combined increases the Open Rate.
- SMS to those user who do not open email or Not Clicked for their re-engagement.
- Preheader text “snippet” that appears straight after the subject line in many email clients should be used.
- Test, Test, Test for formats, CTA (call to action button), color, subject, from line to get the best results.
- Personalized communication is required for customization which is based on user's past purchases, search keywords etc.
- Emails should be mobile responsive in terms of color, font type, navigation and content

(+) USPs of ESPs

This session had panel discussion wherein DS Sir threw light on most striking features (USPs), as follows, which need to be considered while selecting any ESP (Email Service Provider) to work with for best outcomes.

Learnings:

- Technology of hardware, software being used by ESP
- Robust Analytics- email clients, location etc.
- Pro-active customer support
- Delivery
- Trustworthy
- Having multiple (at least 2) ESPs, instead of one, is good approach

1 comment:

  1. I know little about email marketing and i think this is one of the best way to promote a business.
    thanks for sharing this with us.

    ReplyDelete

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