As an integrated marketing communications (IMC) agency, we are often required to include email marketing as a default “glue” channel that holds all of the major campaign elements together or to “connect the dots” between audience needs and content offers. Because of this, the day-to-day operations of email campaigns can get to be pretty routine around the office. I am surprised from time to time, however, when a client or account rep grabs me and asks a question that makes me realize that not everything about what we do, just because it is routine, is obvious. To address this, I have decided to write this multipart blog series on the basics of email marketing in acquisition campaigns.

Acquisition Emails
So first things first: What exactly is an acquisition campaign email versus other types of email communications? There are many reasons you might send an email communication to a customer or prospect. You might be confirming an order; you might be sending a legal notice of a privacy agreement change. Not all emails serve the same purpose or seek the same result. In some cases an email is sent just as an FYI and the sender really doesn’t care if the email is ever read or responded to—I have actually worked on a campaign in the past where the specific purpose was to NOT get the email opened and read. Acquisition emails have a very specific purpose though: Acquisition campaign emails are those emails that are designed to elicit a specific action from the recipient that will move the recipient forward in a direct response campaign. In other words, these are emails that are intended to move a prospect closer to acquisition. This can be an email to prospects late in the buy cycle with a promotional offer intended to trigger a direct sale. Or it can be an email for prospects who are much earlier in the buy cycle, promoting an offer to download an educational white paper that will move them closer to consideration. The bottom line is that acquisition campaign emails are intended to get the recipient to do something as a result of receiving the email.

Core Concepts
First, it is important to realize that emails are read online in much the same way as web pages. Online users, particularly in the business-to-business space, are time-starved and scan information looking for combinations of words that spark an interest with them. As a result, most email recipients initially scan their email subject lines and then scan email contents. They do not—at least not until they are hooked—read heavy blocks of text. They are much more likely to read bold headlines and obvious bullet points in an email. The implications of these facts will affect the way an email is conceived, written, built and delivered. We will come back to this concept often as we talk about acquisition emails.

Next, when we talk about measuring the success of an email, we often consider the KPIs of delivery rate, open rate, and conversion rate.

Delivery rate is the percentage of emails in any given send that are actually delivered to the target recipient. Today, the biggest impediment to delivery is spam filtering systems both at the network and desktop level. A key factor in managing how effective your email is in getting past these spam filters is your email’s spam score. This is a score that measures how “spammy” your email appears to most spam filters. The score typically ranges from 0 to 5—a lower number is better. Most ESPs provide spam score evaluation interfaces; it is crucial that you use these to ensure your spam score is as low as possible. Email factors that affect your spam score include your From field domain, your subject line and the content of the email.

Another key consideration that will affect your delivery rate is the quality of your list. If your list is a house list that is maintained and updated frequently, this shouldn’t be a problem. Unfortunately, many email senders do not regularly update their lists, and lose a good portion of their delivery rate to poor list hygiene and data degradation.

Open rate is the percentage of delivered emails that are opened. Open rate is determined by two primary factors: interest and trust. Interest is affected most by your email’s subject line, which answers the recipient’s question, “Do I care about this?” Trust is based on both the subject line and, most importantly, the From field on the email.  Studies have found that email recipients are much more likely to open emails from people and brands that they are already familiar with.  Our internal experience also indicates that emails from specific people are more likely to be opened than emails from business names. Other factors that can affect open rate include the time of day and the day of week that the email was received. The chart below from MailChimp shows the effect of time of day on open rate:

Conversion rate is the percentage of recipients opening the email who act upon its call to action.  Conversion rate is, not surprisingly, the most complex measure and is affected by nearly every aspect of the email.  Specifically, conversion rates will vary based on the subject line, the From field, the email message, the email design and the email programming.

I am also often asked for benchmarks for these and other KPIs for email campaigns.  MailChimp shares some great data that breaks these benchmarks down by industry.

OK, that takes care of the background work for discussing the keys to a successful activation email campaign. In my next article, I will discuss some of the specifics in the email subject and message that can make or break your campaign.