5 Tips for Improving E-mail Metrics Using Marketing Personalization

Email metrics are increasingly becoming an essential part of a company’s marketing plan. Marketers are constantly under pressure to excel at various key performance indicators. These 5 tips will give you a better understanding of how to start improving and measuring important email metrics using marketing personalization ad various other tactics.

1) To Increase Open Rate, Personalize the message

Personalizing email message content results in an average open rate of 13.2% versus 9.8% with no content personalization. It’s clear that personalizing the content in the message is instrumental in increasing open rates. Personalizing a message may include adding relevant items based on the individual’s past browsing behavior, cart additions, or more sophisticated omnichannel data analysis.

However, it’s interesting to note that personalizing both the subject line and content message results in a much lower open rate of 5.3%, according to the same study. Conducting your own study with your customer base may give you a better understanding of how your consumers react to different personalization tactics.

Fabletics.com works on a subscription model, where you receive an outfit every month for $49.95. If you don’t wish to purchase an outfit that month, you must login and opt out within the first 5 days of the month. Your first outfit is $25 which is a steal for an outfit compared to the price of other athletic brand names. When you first sign up you are prompted to create a Lifestyle Profile Quiz, which generates a personalized profile regarding your likes/dislikes, what kind of activities you are involved in, and the type of clothing you prefer. Consumers sign up for the website and get an email on the first of every month, exclaiming “Your Personalized Picks Have Arrived”. This model is an example of how personalization is integrated within both email and the website experience where personalized outfit picks are the largest selling point.

2) To Decrease Bounce Rate, Use Double Opt-in Signup

A company’s reputation is perhaps its most valuable asset, not just in the physical world, but in the digital world as well. It’s important to be well aware of your bounce rates because these numbers directly affect how an ISP sees the emails that are coming to your consumers’ inboxes.

A soft bounce means there is a temporary problem associated with the email address, such as an automatic vacation message responder or full mailbox message.

A hard bounce means there is a permanent reason why the email cannot be delivered because the email address is invalid or closed. Removing hard bounces is important in maintaining your reputation as a company because ISPs will use these bounce rates to place your emails in the “Spam” category.

Using double opt-in can combat increasing bounce rates. Double opt-in means that an email address is validated a second time through a confirmation email which will contain an activation link.

Additionally, letting members personalize their preferences on what types of emails they wish to receive and making the unsubscribe process simple will also ensure satisfactory bounce rates.

3) To Increase Open and Click Through Rates, Time of Day Matters

Some claim that deciding when to send your email is just as important as what goes in your email.

There is a wide variety of conflicting information regarding what time you should send your emails. Open rates typically peak at 8am and emails are more likely to be opened during normal business hours, specifically from 8am to 5pm.

Additionally, sending emails on either Tuesdays or Wednesdays are beneficial in increasing your open rates. Weekend email sends generally have lower open rates and click through rates as well, although this could vary for certain retailers, such as those who send out weekly sale emails every Sunday.

4) To Increase Open Rates, Keep Your Subject Line Relatively Short and Sweet

When crafting subject lines, keep in mind short and sweet is the way to go. Aim for a range of 4-16 character limits, as this range has shown to have higher open rates. Various studies suggest that subject lines with 4-15 characters have slightly higher open rates compared to emails with longer subject lines.

Since the goal of the subject line is to entice an open, it’s important to explain the benefit from the get-go by explicitly stating it in the subject line in order to grab the user’s attention.

Below are some examples of subject lines received in my personal inbox within the last two weeks that were enticing enough for me to open because they were either very applicable to me (just bought a Kindle PaperWhite and was therefore browsing books on Amazon) or piqued my interest because of the potential discount or promotion I could get (J. Crew lured me in with the $50 off promotion and Travel Zoo knew I would love travel sales from my city).

You There? Here’s $50…
J. Crew

Up to 85% Off More Than 1,000 Kindle Books | and more
Amazon

NEWSFLASH: Virgin America Launches 3-Day Sale from Dallas
TravelZoo

5) To Increase Click Through Rate, Include Multiple Calls of Action within Email

Have you heard of “above the fold”? Essentially, you have about 2 inches of space to really catch your customer’s eye before he/she decides to hit the back button and browse the other 100 promotional emails within the inbox over the weekend. Because this is valuable real estate, you will want to make it as appealing as possible by announcing what the benefit of the email is to the user. Your e-mail header, the header that contains your company logo, shouldn’t take up too much space because you will want to allow room for both the benefit and call of action.

I counted 24 different areas within the main area of the email below where one can click to go through to the website. The email offers plenty of opportunities for clicks which makes the experience very user friendly. If the consumer is not particularly interested in the clearance items, but has been wanting to get a new cross-over bag, she can click on the BAGS tab which is reflective of Francesca’s website.

The image above the fold is eye catching and it’s clear that the benefit of the email is buy one get one 50% off.