Newsletter: how to evaluate the e-mail communication

August 25, 2015

20% of marketing emails are blocked by filters. With an average opening rate varying between 15-30%, and click rate between 2-5%, it is important to optimize your newsletter for maximum performance. 

Today, emails are one of the main drivers of direct communication with customers: newsletter is a complex process imposing an integration of quality with capacity of organization. To ensure successful and recurrent newsletters is a real challenge.

Strengthening the data collection thanks to your web site

Would you like to collect high qualified e-mail addresses with low cost? Once your web site is up and running, you can strengthen the data collection by applying the following recipes:

Grow your customer base with a better registration experience

One of the key goals of any registration system is to collect information on site visitors, not only to identify who is visiting your site: it helps your brand to make decisions about the site design and content.

Place the registration form on your landing page, so that visitors could leave their contact information immediately. Be sure your web form is impressive and at the same time simple enough to attract people and make them fill it and press the ‘Subscribe’ button.

To get the best results, make sure the visitors find the subscription button easily, the best place is to have it at the end of the web page (53% versus 24% in the right upper side of homepage).

Keep it short! Do Not Ask For Much Information… Most users have an attention span of roughly 8 seconds before they begin to wonder if this is worth their time.

Your web form should make visitors complete the subscription process, so since no one wants to spend hours filling lots of fields, don’t ask too many questions, this may scare your visitors because people usually hesitate, when they need to fill in personal information online.

During subscription, ask first for the email address in order to validate it, and then show a complementary form to gather more information.

Explain the advantage of registration

To motivate the visitors to give their information, try to include, at the very least, a brief description on the form itself explaining what the user is signing up for. Provide them with all the necessary information like what they are getting, why they may want it, and how often they will be contacted. It should be a brief (but detailed) explanation of what you are offering. Some markets provide a welcome offer to encourage visitors to register like a discount for the first purchase.

Start a life cycle

Send high structured series of emails will help you develop a strong relationship with your subscribers, which in turn should bring you higher deliverability and revenue. As long as the first impression is critical, the welcome email launches the process immediately after opt-in… Unfortunately, it is not the case most of the time.

Facilitate the subscription process and be clear

If you can help it, aim to answer any questions the recipient may have right on the form. You can use the label tool to add additional notes for the user.

Add “I Agree To Terms” checkbox

Having Privacy Policy or a Terms and Conditions is important. In the case of Privacy Policy, the Law requires it.

You should regularly review the terms and Policies to make sure they're up to date, well identified at the time of subscription and linked to the site.

Now, after you have spent a lot of time to collect new subscribers and potential customers, you have to make sure that your messages will be read and let them follow the process you worked on.

To have a successful campaign, you should define the objective and the frequency of your Newsletter program – it depends on the target (BtoB or BtoC) and the sector of activity. Do you want to create traffic on your website, generate online sales or leverage the number of subscription.

Don’t send the same message to all your members: the personalized messages are the best weapon to avoid un-subscription and claims.

The first visible element of any campaign is the sender address and the second is the object. These two elements influence more than 60% Internet user’s immediate action: opening or deleting the message. It is important to think twice before sending the message.

Your newsletter should contain clear and precise information about the offer; the call to action should be prominent in order to foster conversation.

In the email-marketing field, nothing is hard, you need to be continuously challenging and ask probing questions. Thanks to the technologies, you can duplicate the tests and analysing the real time of response. This is unique in marketing; you should then manipulate these tactics and enforce the impact and the profitability of your newsletter.