ASSIGNMENT 7: EMAIL MARKETING

Introduction:
As a key driver of lead nurturing and customer acquisition, email marketing can carry one of the highest ROI yields of all marketing channels ( Sendgrid, 2018). A yield the 2014 Vero report have estimated as large as 4300% ROI (Australian Academy of Digital Marketing , 2018) . However these yields are only possible through best practise email marketing techniques. These begin by knowing your audience. SendGrid views knowing your audience as “one of the most important pieces of data you can leverage to improve your email strategy” (Sendgrid, 2018) and it ensures that you deliver the right content to the right person at the right time (Australian Academy of Digital Marketing, 2018).

Best Practise Findings and Discussion:

Observing the permission based criteria set out for email marketing campaigns is a best practise  email marketing technique that ensures both customer retention and adherence to the legalities of business marketing practise. Permission based marketing is best carried out with opt in verification, where a customer subscribes to an email list and their email address is then verified (Australian Academy of Digital Marketing , 2018). This method ensures accuracy of email address which avoids an undelivered email  that can be detrimental to your email reputation (Australian Academy of Digital Marketing , 2018). Opt out is another requirement for an email marketing campaign. Best practise opt out should entail a free opt out option and the opportunity for a subscriber to detail why they chose to opt out. This allows the mailer to collect information on the reason for a client’s opt out and can give insight into changes that can be made to specifics of the campaign should the opt out rate be too high (Australian Academy of Digital Marketing , 2018).

In line with permission based email  marketing ‘best practise ‘is accurate mailing lists. This factoralso highlights the importance of becoming familiar with the legalities of best practise marketing rules. Purchasing an emailing list is not seen as best practise and is considered spam to recipients who have not opted into your emails. This can cause your emails to land in the spam folder and your email domain to end up on a blacklist (Sendgrid, 2018).  Best practise  should follow promoting email sign-up on your website, blog or landing pages and also utilisation of “thank you” pages (after users have filled out a form).  Most importantly, best practise should involve communicating what subscribers are signing up for when they submit their email address (Sendgrid, 2018). “building your subscriber lists the right way will ensure that email engagement remains high and your emails  get in front of the eyes that matter” (Sendgrid, 2018).

Lastly, ‘best practise ‘email marketing should ensure that the email marketing campaign is compatible and viewable on smartphone. To do this it is, “essential to send email that looks good and loads quickly on mobile phones and to also ensure that any links and landing pages associated with the emails are also optimised for mobile” (Australian Academy of Digital Marketing , 2018).

Conclusion (incl. Email Marketing Mistakes):

Making a good first impression is crucial to the retention of old and recruitment of new customers, and its therefore essential to get the campaign right. One of the biggest email marketing mistakes businesses make is not building a database (contact list) effectively ( Meyers, 2018) . The overwhelming majority of literature advises business not to purchase emailing lists but instead promote signup to the mailing list via website, social etc. and to provide clarity around what the subscriber is signing up for. 

Another common email marketing mistake is not planning and testing the email marketing campaign effectively. The use of planning tools such as lead nurturing workflow (Australian Academy of Digital Marketing , 2018) and testing techniques such as A/B testing and test emails are all techniques which will help with the success of an email marketing campaign.

Lastly, not embracing mobile (Wright,  2018) would be seen as a major fault in an email marketing campaign. Statistics show that, “ 56% of emails are now opened on mobile devices and the majority of the most used email clients are found only on mobile devices or tablets”. (Wright, 2018) This demonstrates the absolute need for an email marketing campaign to be compatible with mobile.

Reference List:

Sendgrid (2018). A-Z Email Marketing Guide. Sendgrid  [Online]. n.d. Available: https://sendgrid.com/resource/2018-email-marketing-guide-a-z/#introduction [ Accessed 24 June 2018].

Australian Academy of Digital Marketing (2018). Email marketing content. Unit 3: Email Marketing. Australian Academy of Digital Marketing, unpublished.

Meyers (2018). Top ten Email marketing mistakes to avoid. Outbound Engine [online]. n.d. Available: https://www.outboundengine.com/blog/top-10-email-marketing-mistakes-to-avoid/ [Accessed 24 June 2018].

Wright (2018). Biggest email marketing mistakes. Outbound engine [online]. n.d. Available: https://www.outboundengine.com/blog/biggest-email-marketing-mistakes [Accessed 24 June 2018] .

Mailchimp (2018). Mailchimp [online]. Available: https://mailchimp.com/ [Accessed 24 June 2018]