The most common complaint from email users is that their inboxes fill up with irrelevant and/or unwanted email messages. Most of the big web mail providers (including AOL and Hotmail) have enhanced their free email services by offering junk filters, of varying degrees of sophistication and accuracy. Junk filters offer a level of screening, but they aren’t always completely accurate and some important emails still get missed by being re-routed direct to a junk folder.
Google email (Gmail for short) has introduced a new, dynamic facility to address this. Launched in August 2010, Priority Inbox looks at a user’s behavior to decide which email messages he/she should read first. By examining details of the email sender, previous user activity and keywords, Priority Inbox identifies certain emails as top priority and marks them as urgent for the user to read first. This is great news for users, but makes life difficult for email marketers, who may struggle to get their emails past this process of filtering.
There are, however, a number of steps that email marketers can take to address this.
Allow users to customize email preferences
Sites can allow users to customize the frequency or content of emails that they receive. Users know how frequently they are willing (or able) to read emails and by customizing marketing campaigns according to this behavior, email marketers are far more likely to see their emails making it into the Priority Inbox. Additionally, web site owners should look at previous user behavior to customize future emails sent. Where users have browsed or purchased certain items recently, emails linked to these products are far likelier to be opened by users. Generally, users want to be able to decide what they receive and when.
An issue of quality over quantity
Simply mailing masses of addresses and hoping for a basic level of return is poor practice. Now, marketers need to ensure that emails are sent to the right groups of recipient, at the right time. One way to achieve this is through a process called double opt-in. This is where users add themselves to an email mailing list and then subsequently confirm this via a single email. Users that have completed the double opt-in process can be considered as ‘hot’ leads. These are customers that are confirming a real interest in the material. Far better rates of success are likely to be experienced with these smaller, more focused groups than simply by bombarding long lists of people.
Test different approaches
In a relatively experimental area such as email marketing, it is important to try different approaches and to constantly refine marketing models. This may be as simple as sending out a particular message in two batches, each with different designs and keywords. By tracking the relative success of each batch, marketers can constantly refine what they do and when they do it.
Introduce appropriate tracking mechanisms
Email marketers need to understand two key outputs from their campaigns. They need to understand the percentage of emails sent that were opened and the percentage that subsequently resulted in further action, whereby the recipient clicked through to whatever was being promoted. It is impossible to understand the success of a particular campaign without measuring these results. A campaign with a high open rate and a low click through has a good initial approach, but has issues with the content. A low open rate and a high click through indicates that the initial ‘grab’ is poor but that the content is appealing, once it has reached the target audience.
Gmail’s Priority Inbox may be the first of its kind on the market, but similar functionality is likely to be rolled out across all the other big web mail providers. It makes sense for email marketers to refine their approach now, to cater for what is likely to be a development that all email users will start to expect.
Search tags
most popular email providers
web marketing for dummies
Google email (Gmail for short) has introduced a new, dynamic facility to address this. Launched in August 2010, Priority Inbox looks at a user’s behavior to decide which email messages he/she should read first. By examining details of the email sender, previous user activity and keywords, Priority Inbox identifies certain emails as top priority and marks them as urgent for the user to read first. This is great news for users, but makes life difficult for email marketers, who may struggle to get their emails past this process of filtering.
There are, however, a number of steps that email marketers can take to address this.
Allow users to customize email preferences
Sites can allow users to customize the frequency or content of emails that they receive. Users know how frequently they are willing (or able) to read emails and by customizing marketing campaigns according to this behavior, email marketers are far more likely to see their emails making it into the Priority Inbox. Additionally, web site owners should look at previous user behavior to customize future emails sent. Where users have browsed or purchased certain items recently, emails linked to these products are far likelier to be opened by users. Generally, users want to be able to decide what they receive and when.
An issue of quality over quantity
Simply mailing masses of addresses and hoping for a basic level of return is poor practice. Now, marketers need to ensure that emails are sent to the right groups of recipient, at the right time. One way to achieve this is through a process called double opt-in. This is where users add themselves to an email mailing list and then subsequently confirm this via a single email. Users that have completed the double opt-in process can be considered as ‘hot’ leads. These are customers that are confirming a real interest in the material. Far better rates of success are likely to be experienced with these smaller, more focused groups than simply by bombarding long lists of people.
Test different approaches
In a relatively experimental area such as email marketing, it is important to try different approaches and to constantly refine marketing models. This may be as simple as sending out a particular message in two batches, each with different designs and keywords. By tracking the relative success of each batch, marketers can constantly refine what they do and when they do it.
Email marketers need to understand two key outputs from their campaigns. They need to understand the percentage of emails sent that were opened and the percentage that subsequently resulted in further action, whereby the recipient clicked through to whatever was being promoted. It is impossible to understand the success of a particular campaign without measuring these results. A campaign with a high open rate and a low click through has a good initial approach, but has issues with the content. A low open rate and a high click through indicates that the initial ‘grab’ is poor but that the content is appealing, once it has reached the target audience.
Gmail’s Priority Inbox may be the first of its kind on the market, but similar functionality is likely to be rolled out across all the other big web mail providers. It makes sense for email marketers to refine their approach now, to cater for what is likely to be a development that all email users will start to expect.
Search tags
most popular email providers
web marketing for dummies
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