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Role of Transactional Email Marketing in eCommerce

While eCommerce email marketing is a category of email marketing that is specific to the eCommerce industry, but what sets it apart from the others is the additional set of emails. Most interactions people have during online shopping need to happen in real-time. So most of the emails sent in an eCommerce email marketing campaign also need to be instantaneous. Such emails that are automatically sent in real-time based on the user end triggers or online behaviors are called triggered emails, and in this article, we are exploring one such triggered email, i.e. Transactional emails.

What Is A Transactional Email?

As we stated earlier, transactional email is a type of automated email that is sent to acknowledge user activity or inform the customer, details about their recent transactions. They are triggered by events, interactions, or a change in the profile or preferences instead of being manually sent like a marketing campaign. Compared to marketing emails that are simultaneously sent to multiple subscribers, transactional emails are sent to a specified recipient one at a time and contain information that is personalized for the intended.

Importance of Transactional Emails

In the physical world, when you make a purchase, the transaction receipt or the product received is an acknowledgment. In the digital domain, you have a hard time tracking the progress of your transaction if you don’t receive a transactional email sent after different stages of the transactions. While a transactional email may seem insignificant compared to other emails, transactional emails are an integral part of your eCommerce email marketing. Let us understand how transactional eCommerce emails benefit your brand.

  1. Build a Trusting Relationship: Ever made a transaction and didn’t receive an intimation of a successful purchase? Didn’t it make you paranoid? In a survey by Mailjet, with 2000 consumers in UK and France, 77% of UK respondents always check for a confirmation email. An instantaneous transactional email acknowledges the customer about the order placed, when it shall be shipped, or when they shall receive it. This reinforces a sense of trust in your brand and helps you build a strong relationship in the longer run.
  2. Bound to be opened: Since transactional emails are a result of a user-end action or behavior, these emails have the consent of the customer and have higher open rates. Additionally, ISPs rarely redirect transactional emails to SPAM. Every successful email delivery contributes to maintaining the sender reputation and in turn the email deliverability.
  3. Progressive email updates: Be it for orders confirmation, payment success, password changes, changes to personal information updates, or shipping notification, a transactional email keeps the receipt updated on the progress. This helps them track their products and undergo a good user experience that helps you retain them in the long run.
  4. It can be a little promotional: Transactional email copy doesn’t need to be completely transactional in nature and can have 20% promotional content amidst the standard email copy. While this may not be as effective as an actual promotional marketing email, but it can act as the foot on the door to raise interest.
  5. Personalization without human intervention: Behavioral Transactional emails, as we stated earlier, are automatically sent whenever a customer successfully triggers any of the pre-determined actions set in the email workflows. The email sent has personalized content that is specific to the customer only. The only human intervention is during the creation of automation workflow as well as individual email templates.

Transactional Email Examples

The following are some of the most commonly used transactional emails.

Welcome Email

The first email once someone subscribes, the welcome email, is first of the triggered email. The content of the welcome email depends on the reason behind the subscription. Your customers can receive welcome emails on their first order, account registration, or when they sign up to your mailing list. A welcome email is a great opportunity to explain the value addition your brand brings. What sets your brand apart from competitors? How often you send emails? You can also include a sign-up bonus to increase conversion chances.
In the transactional welcome email example below by Bellroy, they started with welcoming the customer, followed by an introduction to the brand. They added links to their Instagram page as well as snippets to some of their promotional emails, followed by a showcase of their different products. The overall email copy has the warmth of someone personally welcoming you to their family.

Order Confirmation Email

The core transactional email in itself, the order confirmation email, acknowledges the customer about the purchase success. The order confirmation email not only informs about the order placement but also about delivery dates, price breakdown, order number, and whom to contact for any issues raised. As we stated earlier, promotional activities such as upselling and cross-selling can be done in this email to an extent.
In the example below by Firebox, the email content informs all the information mentioned above, along with links to their other products in the footer.

Shipping Detail Email

The shipping detail of the order placed can be featured in the order confirmation email or sent individually. Some brands tend to feature it in the same email, and some tend to separate both. Shipping detail email is generally sent when the shipping company is different from the brands selling the product. Either way, it is important to add a link for the customer to track their order, along with information on the point of contact for any issues arising.
In the example below by Etsy, the shipping details, the sender details, and the product images are featured for easy understanding of the customer.

Product Receipt

Even though the order has been delivered to the intended customer, it is a good practice to send an order delivered or product receipt email. This email can be used as a ‘thank you for placing order’ greeting and can help your email sound human.

Review / Feedback Email

Your communication with your customer doesn’t end with the purchase. In order to continue engagement, sending a review or feedback email is a good tool. This not only creates an opportunity for user engagement but also for brand advocacy. Send such emails after waiting for 10-15 days after the order was delivered for a more honest review. Avoid any promotional content in this email as it can be distracting.

In the example below by Target, the email copy is humble enough while asking for a review. Also, they have shown how the review will benefit other shoppers. This adds a social responsibility to the reader, and this would enhance the chances of reviewing.

Re-order reminder Email

Another post-purchase re-engagement opportunity is the re-order or replenishment emails. Applicable for subscription-based products, the replenishment emails are a great way to remind the customers about the upcoming deadlines. This way they can take action and continue being associated with your brand.
In the email example below by Rockin’ Wellness, they have displayed the product along with the price and the link for re-ordering for the ease of the subscriber.

Password Recovery or Profile update email

Any changes the customer makes to their online profile is also considered transactional and needs to be given equal urgency as other transactional emails. Such emails need to help the recipient to complete the actions mentioned above as easily and quickly as possible. So, the design needs to be minimalistic and to the point.
In the example below by Vervewine, there is no additional fluff as the email copy is straightforward and minimal.

Transactional Email Best Practices

  1. Include necessary personalization tags: Addressing your customers by their first name is no longer personalization. Include other relevant personalization tags such as order no, order date, the image of the purchased products, billing summary to make further the email seem personal. Learn further about email personalizations.
  2. Have a recognizable sender name and address: Be open for feedbacks by avoiding no-reply email address. Additionally, the sender’s name needs to be either the brand name or name of a correspondent that the customer knows. Also, include your contact information such as online chat link, phone number and local address for the customer to reach you.
  3. Only light promotions allowed: As we stated earlier, transactional emails can be promotional but don’t get carried away. Occasional offers are acceptable but should be only 20% of your total email copy.
  4. Give your emails a personality: Your transactional emails should reflect your brand. Hence your transactional email must have the brand logo, colors as well as fonts to add visual relevance and email tone for the personality.
  5. Highlight the most vital information: No one has the time or patience to go through the entire email to find the information they need. Always use formatting to highlight the most important transactional data that can be stand out even if the customer scans through the email.

How to Widen Up your Customer Base with Accessible Emails

Choosing a place to stay in a city depends on the accessibility to different facilities available. Is climbing stairs the only way to get to your home? How far is the workplace? What modes of transports are available? What shops are present in the neighborhood? How late will they remain open? Accessibility happens to be a significant factor when it comes to choosing, even the brands you subscribe to.

Email accessibility is a hot topic for the past couple of years, and the impact of having an accessible email on the average user experience has got most of the email marketers to sit up and give attention. Email accessibility is also one of the most misunderstood terms in email marketing. This article aims to teach about what email accessibility is and how you can reach out to new prospects while delighting the existing customer base with accessible emails.

What is accessibility and how are brands moving towards ‘digital accessibility’?

‘Accessibility’ is often associated with making daily interactions easier for someone with a disability of any form. The actual term ‘Accessibility’ refers to the universal design of an environment for people with a wide range of abilities to use products in a wide range of situations unassisted or with assistive technology. This means an inclined plane alongside the stairs makes the building accessible for someone in a wheelchair, using a walking stick or even for a person carrying a huge load.

When the principle of accessibility is transitioned into the digital realm, it governs the web as well as emails such that people can access them without relying on standard input devices, i.e. keyboard or mouse. Additionally, digital accessibility also makes people using assistive technologies such as screen readers, screen magnifiers, eye tracking systems, and advanced sip-n-puff devices navigate the web without hitting any user experience roadblocks.

How is an accessible email helpful in improving user experience?

An email that has a properly structured email layout, clear email copy formatting, and intelligent coding practices inculcated is considered as an Accessible email. When your subscribers can read through your emails with any hiccups, information transfer becomes very easy and engages them in a better way. An engaged subscriber will have increased user interactivity and motivates them to explore the brand more. The clarity in addressing the problem faced by them and providing a solution in the email itself helps in converting them faster.

Making small changes to your existing email campaigns such as keeping your CTA button in a contrasting color compared to your background color or adding appropriate alt-text to your images is taking a small step in the direction of making emails accessible. Let’s explore the different criteria for making an email campaign more accessible.

Transforming an email into an accessible email

As we stated earlier, adding an appropriate alt-text to your images and using a contrasting color for your CTA button helps to make an email more accessible. The benefits of doing so are:

  • Most people tend to scan through the email copy, and the CTA button stands out as it is differentiated.
  • Visually impaired people or those using screen readers can understand what image is conveying in the email from the alt-text.
  • Even if the images are disabled in the email, the alt-text will act as the placeholder, and the email layout is not affected.

To transform an email into an accessible email let us breakdown the different elements of an email into three categories:

  1. Email Copy
  2. Email Design
  3. Coding Principles

Email Copy

An All-inclusive subject line: The first interaction a subscriber has with your email is with the subject line. An ideal subject line needs to communicate what the subscriber can expect to read the email. The length of a subject line is important as it affects anyone reading directly or with the assistance of screen readers. So, a subject line needs to be concise and self-explanatory.

Appropriate hyperlinks at the relevant text: Most email marketers have a habit of using generic terms as their call-to-action copy. Just as with subject lines, the call-to-action copy also needs to convey what the subscriber can expect on clicking the link. A generic call-to-action copy can be confusing for someone using a screen-reader, and that might deter them from clicking it. When you use actionable words such as ‘Start my 14-day trial’ or ‘Explore more designs’, not only do you convey what is the next action expected but also what would the subscriber be rewarded with, on clicking. Learn about the different CTA copy best practices and innovative examples.

In the example below by Wealthfront, the call-to-action copy ‘Open a cash account’ gives a clear context about what the subscriber can expect on clicking the links, and the link becomes relevant to the CTA copy.

Legible Typography: Typography involves the fonts used along with the line-spacing, font size, kerning, etc. Depending on the devices used, emails are generally read from a distance of at least 12-15cms. Having a font size below 16px would be difficult to read at such a distance and should be avoided for an email copy. The larger the fonts are, the easier it becomes to read, but then the email layout would be disturbed and so take an informed decision when it comes to the font size.

An email newsletter by Paul Airy titled Type E: follows the best practices of the font size. The newsletter carries an interactive way to enlarge the font-size of his email by adding buttons on the side. Additionally, there are controls to change the background colors of the emails.

Coming to the next typography aspect, i.e. the line length and spacing are also important when it comes to how fast a subscriber can read through it. Line length dictates how many words can be accommodated in a single line. The longer line length means the eye needs to travel far between each sentence, and this can cause fatigue. Shorter line length means constant to-fro motion, and this might cause dizziness. Additionally, with less space between each line, the subscriber may end reading the same sentence again and again. The animation below explains the importance of line spacing in a better way.

Ideally, it is a good practice to have 10 words in a single line and the line space is 1.5x the font size.

Email Design

Colors that counter Color blindness:Color blindness roughly affects 1 in 12 men, 1 in every 200 women. Quite contrary to popular beliefs, a color-blind person can see colors but, depending on the conditions they have, they cannot differentiate between certain specific colors. Color-blindness in people can be anyone out of the following three conditions:

  • Inability to distinguish between red and green (Deuteranopia)
  • Inability to distinguish between blue and yellow (Tritanopia)
  • Complete color blindness (Monochromia)

So, while choosing the color scheme of your emails, they must be contrasting enough for a color-blind reader to differentiate.

In the email example below by Panic, the color schemes are black and white with appropriate formatting as well as clear headings. Additionally, the occasional green heading breaks from the monotony well.

Breathable whitespace: Whitespace is to design what line space is for typography. Whitespace between two elements helps you identify each element individually. In a tightly crammed email layout, someone in a rush may not be able to distinguish anything and might choose to skip the email content. Whitespace between elements also helps someone with a reading disability to easily move from one section to another.

In the email example below by Squarespace, as you can observe, the elements are spaced enough that there is breathable space between each and the eyes are not tired when scanning through the images.

Have 80:20 text to image ratio: Having a relevant alt-text for the images in your emails is a good accessibility exercise. It defeats the email marketing best practices if your entire email is a single image with no text. Also, most ISPs tag such emails as SPAM, and this affects your deliverability. Learn more about how to maintain your email deliverability.

Easy to tap CTA buttons: Most emails are now opened in mobile devices, and if your CTA button is not big enough to be tapped a regular-sized thumb, your click-thru rates shall take a dip. Additionally, for those suffering from temporal motor-impairment (fractures or injury to hand) or permanent impairment can find it difficult to gain precision to click a button smaller than 44px.

Coding Principles

Assistive Device friendly coding: Emails are read on desktop as well as mobiles, but people may not be using mouse or thumbs to navigate through the emails. For those using keyboards should be able to scroll through your emails using the ‘tab’ key and clicking using the ‘space’ or ‘return’ key. Additionally, by adding the ‘role=presentation’ attribute to every table in your email, screen readers will read the content inside the entire table instead of individual cells.

Proper text formatting using semantic tags: Instead of having utter chaos with misaligned paragraphs, encapsulate your email copy in

tags. By making ample use of the heading tags from h1 to h6, you can introduce hierarchy to your email copy, and screen readers will read out the text accordingly. In the example below by Stripo, there are two sets of headings, and with appropriate heading tags, each heading is easily identifiable.

Now that we have understood the role of different email elements in making an email accessible, let’s understand how to test your email for accessibility.

How to test your email for accessibility issues

  1. Alt-text for images
    Wave Tool and Google’s Accessibility tools can be used to disable images manually. Images without any alt-text will be displayed with ‘noalt’ attribute.
  2. Keyboard accessibility
    Use arrow keys on your keyboard to navigate through your email and shift across different links using the tab key. Does hitting return open the link?
  3. Semantic Code
    Using ‘inspect element’ in Chrome or any other web browser, check the code for semantic codes.
  4. Does zooming break Responsiveness?
    Zoom into your emails with ‘ctrl’ and ‘+’ combo or by pinch-zooming to check how far your emails be zoomed before it breaks.
  5. Voiceover and Screen reader support
    Use the inbuilt and popular 3rd party screen readers to check how your email is being ‘read.’

Wrapping Up

As you might have deduced, email accessibility not only for people with impairments but also makes your daily emails easy to read. An accessible email helps to build trust, significantly reducing your email unsubscribes, and this eventually helps you expand your customer base widely. Do you need help creating better accessible emails? Our QeInbox team of email designers and developers will make sure the delivered template is 100% accessible.

Email Personalization: Collecting Vital Information for Better Email Conversation

After a long day at work, you return back to find your favorite food prepared. All your friends are calling you to make plans for the evening. You drive down to your favorite hangout place where the owner recognizes you and sends your favorite drink at your booth. To make things more interesting, it is not even your birthday. It feels great when people recognize your preferences and create a personalized experience for you based on that. You look forward to getting pampered again.

Similarly, in email marketing, striking a personalized conversation with your subscribers makes them anticipate your emails and improve customer relations as well as loyalty. Earlier, it was sufficient to receive an email addressing the subscribers by their first name. The demand for moving ahead from the first name i.e. targeted personalization increases as marketers have observed their overall customer engagement rates increase with targeted personalization.

The main focus of this article is to shine a light on the different datasets you can collect for personalization as well as how to identify what customer data is relevant for your email campaigns.

What impact does personalization bring to email marketing?

Ever since the inception of email in 1971 as an interdepartmental communication channel, it was seen as a channel to have one to one conversation. Later on, the marketing potential was observed in 1978 and by the late 90s, marketers started sending promotional emails to the mass. Till ESPs were not used to send bulk emails, marketers used to personally type every email and send it to the intended recipient.

When ESPs were introduced in the market, marketers got the facility to use merge tags to personalize a single email in a way that, the relevant recipient information was automatically replaced at appropriate merge tags & the same email can be sent to multiple people at the same time.

When compared to emails that are not personalized according to the recipient, personalized emails have seen to boost email performance. 74% of marketers surveyed agreed that email personalization has brought great benefits to their businesses. The following statistics are also a testament to the effectiveness of email personalization:

  • Email subject lines that are personalized generate an average of 50% higher open rates – Oberlo
  • Personalized emails deliver 6x higher transaction rates. – Experian
  • 62.26% of consumers feel “happy” and “excited” to respond to a personalized message from a retailer – Dynamic Yield Research
  • According to GetResponse, personalization in the email body has an open rate of 29.95% and a click-through rate of 5.03%.
  • Epsilon research found that 80% of customers are more likely to make a purchase when their experience is personalized.

Now that we have understood the impact on email marketing by personalization, let us explore what are the different attributes that can be personalized.

What attributes can you collect to better personalize?

As we stated earlier, individually personalizing every email is an impossible task in the long run. So, most email marketers tend to categorize subscribers into lists based on common traits, interests, purchase history, online behaviors, etc. Some of the common segmentation criterias are:

  • Age
  • Gender
  • Geographic Location
  • Interests
  • Industry
  • Purchase History
  • Purchase Interests
  • Purchase Frequency
  • Purchase Cycle
  • Browsing History
  • Last Order Date
  • Average Order Size
  • Activeness Level
  • Stage in Sales Cycle
  • Rating

What to personalize in an email?

While we are talking about the greatness of email personalization, it is not everyone’s game. Over 60% of marketers admit that they struggle to personalize their content in real-time. To a keen eye, every element of your email can be personalized right from the sender’s name to the email footer inside the email. We shall aim to highlight all the different email elements that can be personalized based on the complexity level.

Simple Personalizations

These kinds of personalization are very easy to implement and email marketers don’t need to go out of their way to implement these in their email campaigns. These kinds of personalizations can be executed while the email campaign is being set up.

The sender’s name or the FROM name

This is the first element in your email that your subscriber interacts with even without opening the email. It helps when the sender is someone that the recipient is already interacting or is someone easily relatable. Imagine you receive an email from “ACME inc.” and another one with the sender name as “Joe from ACME inc”, which one would you choose to open? When there is a name attached to the brand the subscribers interact with, it creates a level of familiarity.

Going a step further, you can also have different sender names for different sets of audiences. Most brands tend to send email campaigns with their account manager or salesperson as the sender that changes with the interaction. In the example below, HubSpot sends an email from “Pamela” if you are subscribed to their marketing emails and as “Clint” if you are subscribed to their service emails.

Pamela Hubspot email personalization
Clint Hubspot email personalization

Subject lines

The next element that your subscriber would notice before opening the email is the subject line. What if instead of having a generic subject line, the email addresses with the first name? What if the subject line conveys regarding the product that they were just browsing? Statistically, Emails with personalized subject lines are 26% more likely to be opened (Campaign Monitor). In the example below, as you can notice, when the subject line includes with the first name, it creates relevance and motivates the subscriber to open the email.

Personalized Subject Lines

Medium complexity Personalization

Going one level higher are personalizations that need some amount of pre-planning. The implementation of these personalization happens when the email template is being created.

Email Copy

The main meat of your email, email copy, is a coal mine of opportunities for personalization. Right from addressing the subscriber by the first name, email copy can be personalized based on the online activity as shown in the American Airlines example below.

The level of personalization possible in an email is only limited by your imagination. With the help of personalization tags, you can create a single email template and based on the list segmentation, a certain portion of the email will change for the end-user. In the example below by Chewy, based on the products purchased by the subscribers, a reminder email is sent containing images of the products previously purchased by the subscriber.

The below example by Airbnb has personalization based on the location and can be targeted for a larger audience that has location as the common factor.

Offers

Offers are a vital part of running a business. What kind of discounts or exclusivity you provide can influence the purchasing pattern of your customer. If you can personalize the offer you provide to match the core needs and interests of your target audiences, you have a better chance of converting them.

This email from Skullcandy taps into customer loyalty by giving early access to their VIP members. Also, notice how the call-to-action is a unique actionable term instead of ‘click here’. Check out more such innovative ‘call-to-action’ copies..

Images

Earlier images were a visual replacement for the lengthy email copy but now with the introduction of tools like NiftyImages, you can even personalize your images. The example below by Pizza Express is an excellent example because the personalization is not only restricted to the image but also in the fallback alt text.

Advanced Personalization

These are end-level personalization tactics and these are not ‘plug and play’ type implementations. These types of personalization require intensive planning and are implemented at the conception stage itself.

Dynamic Content

What if you could build an email where an entire section can be changed every time the subscriber opens the email? It is now possible with the dynamic content blocks. These blocks fetch live information from a hosted server every time the email is opened. What this means for personalization is the fact that for multiple segmentation lists, a single email can be created along with separate dynamic content blocks that will be replaced.

In the example below by Nordstrom, the header content, as well as the related products, change depending on the current weather. This is based on location-wise segmentation.

Cart Abandonment emails

Cart abandonment emails are fundamental to eCommerce email marketing. Roughly the worldwide cart abandonment rate is 74.3%. Thankfully, a timely & relevant email can serve as the perfect hook to bring back abandoners. The level of personalization in this email will be featuring the products along with the images of the product.

Important Details for Personalizing Emails

  • Always use the right first name: Personalization is all about being relevant at the correct time. Test the personalization tags in order to check the correct name is displayed. Any wrong reference can impact the brand reputation and work against you.
  • Always segment your list wisely. Personalization relies heavily on the correct segmentation criteria
  • A personalized email can only be effective if it is timely, relevant, and humane sounding. Keep this in mind when you create a personalized email.

Wrapping Up

Personalizing your email campaigns is a great way to increase customer engagement and in turn the revenue you generate from the sales. With proper research and data management, you can easily turn a vanilla email copy into a better engaging email that ‘talks’ to the subscriber.

An in-depth guide to Background Images & Colors in Emails

Introduction

We, humans, are more prone to take attention to something visual than something textual. So, when emails progressed from the Unicode supporting plain text to full-fledged HTML email in the late ‘90s, email marketers started to make their emails visually attractive to get better engagement. With the adoption of CSS styling in HTML emails around 2014, email development took another jump. In this article, we are going to talk about one such innovation in email development, background colors and background image in emails.

Why You Need Email Backgrounds

As we stated earlier, people are more prone to notice visual changes and adding background to your emails helps you separate each section without compromising the attention given to each. In the email examples below, you can see for yourself.

In the above email example by Salesforce for their Connections 2018, every section is filled with different color, This helps in giving individual attention to each section. What if we remove the background colors?

As you can see, thanks to the zig-zag layout, the content is still getting attention but there is no bifurcation between each section.

Additionally, the email also features a hero image that acts as a background image for the initial paragraph. The background image in the email not only adds visual points but also is functional in highlighting the text.

So, in a nutshell, by either including a background color or a background images in email, you are

  • Enhancing the visual value and estimate hierarchy content
  • Conserve space with the ability to place more than one HTML elements in the same space
  • Keeping the email accessible as the HTML content on top of the background image is not affected even if the image is blocked or not displayed

How to include Background effects In Email

Including background effects can be done using three different ways:

  1. Using the Table attribute method
  2. Using the CSS method
  3. Using the VML code (exclusively for Outlook)

1) Using Table attribute

Including colors in an email are the easiest to execute, all thanks to the evergoing usage of <table> layout in HTML emails. By using the bgcolor HTML attribute or using background-color CSS attribute, you can specify colors with a 3-digit or 6-digit hexadecimal color. You can use the attribute with <body>, <table>, <td>, <div>, and <a>.

So, the following code

<table width="100%" bgcolor="#eceff4;" ></table>
Will create a table of grey background.

This is a Table with Grey Background

Adding the following code
<tr> <td bgcolor= "#ffffff;"> <p style="color: #8a3ffe;"> Hello World </p> </td> <td bgcolor= "#000000"> </td> </tr>
Will create a table of grey background with two columns with a black and white background.

This is a Table with Grey Background

This is a Table cell with White Background

This is a Table cell with Black Background

This is a Table with Grey Background

Adding a background image using <table> layout involves some extra steps.
The overall syntax for adding a background image is:
<td bgcolor="#ffffff"background="url of where the image is hosted"></td>
The bgcolor attribute needs to be added in the case where the image is not displayed the color will be displayed.
The disadvantage of this method is that the table will automatically inherit the dimension of the image to be displayed. Also you cannot position or resize the image as per your needs.

2) Using CSS Method

As we stated earlier, the CSS attribute for including background color in your emails is background-color. So the CSS syntax for adding the background color is:
<td style= "background-color:#6digit HEX code">
Similarly, the syntax for including HTML background images in email is
<td align="center" style="background-image: url('url of where the image is hosted');"></td>
To change the position you add the background-position property
<td align="center" style="background-image: url('url of where the image is hosted'); background-position: value;"></td>
Assuming the dimension of the image is different than the container, you can either choose to stretch the image, repeat or even not repeating.

To stretch the image use background-size property with cover as value
<td align="center" style="background-image: url('url of where the image is hosted'); background-position: value; background-size: cover;"></td>

To repeat the image use background-size property with contain as value
<td align="center" style="background-image: url('url of where the image is hosted'); background-position: value; background-size: contain;"></td>

In order to prevent the image from repeating by adding the background-repeat property.
<td align="center" style="background-image: url('url of where the image is hosted'); background-position: value; background-repeat: no-repeat;"></td>

Finally, you add the background-color as a failsafe.
<td align="center" style="background-image: url('url of where the image is hosted'); background-position: value; background-repeat: no-repeat; background-color:#6digit HEX code"></td>

3) Using VML code

As we specified, VML method is only used for adding background images for emails to be opened in Outlook. While a lot has improved in the rendering support for Outlook, it is a best practice to either avoid using background images or use VML to add them.
v:fill tag attribute is used to include a background image that Outlook will render, then fallback to the background attribute for non-Outlook clients.
In order to ensure that non-outlook clients ignore the additional code place the VML in between <!–[if gte mso 9]> <![endif]–> conditional code So the final code looks like:

<table cellpadding="0" cellspacing="0" border="0" width="100%">
<tr>
<td background="url of your image" bgcolor="#ffffff" valign="top">
<!--[if gte mso 9]>
<v:rect xmlns:v="urn:schemas-microsoft-com:vml" fill="true" stroke="false" style="mso-width-percent:1000;">
<v:fill type="tile" src="url of your image" color="#ffffff" />
<v:textbox style="mso-fit-shape-to-text:true" inset="0,0,0,0">
<![endif]-->
<div>
      <!-- HTML Content Here -->
</div>
<!--[if gte mso 9]>
</v:textbox>
</v:rect>
<![endif]-->
</td>
</tr>
</table>

Which Email clients support Background Images in Email

Email Client Support
Apple Mail All 3 types
Outlook 2000-2003 All 3 types
Outlook 2007-2016 Only the VML method
Gmail Android All 3 types
iOS Mail All 3 types
Non-Gmail Id in Gmail None
Gmail Web CSS method only
Outlook.com All 3 types

Wrapping Up

Background images are a wildly useful way to spice up your email design and improve the accessibility of your campaigns but they’re not without their problems. Always test your emails before you hit send. You can get in touch with us for an easier way to include background images in your email.

Best Easy-to-use Email Service Provider For Businesses

For someone who is just starting out in the realm of email marketing or runs a small business, it might be a shocking revelation that they should not use their free-to-use email address to send promotional emails in bulk. After a quick session on the best practices for successful email marketing and the importance of email deliverability, they understand the importance of using an email service provider.
So, the next step they take is to look for ‘free email sending program’ and register on whoever pops up as the first search result (mostly it is MailChimp). While MailChimp is great, it is not the only best email service provider for businesses with different requirements.
In this article, we have reviewed some ESPs that offer cost-effective email sending services based on your tailormade requirements.

Best Email Service Provider for small businesses

Smaily

Smaily is an up and coming email service provider that means business when it comes to providing features for email marketing. They have claimed to be intentionally simple and provide API integrations for everything other than sending email newsletters. They have also listed out all their features on the homepage.

Features

Intuitive Drag and Drop Editor

Smaily’s email editor is designed to help those marketers to create beautiful functional emails without relying on knowledge of HTML, image dimensions, fonts, line heights, etc. The overall layout is a simple and straightforward design. You have a plethora of pre-designed email templates to choose from. There is an option to upload an HTML template at the bottom of the list but it can be easily missed.

Once you choose a template, you enter the editor mode. The layout gives the most attention to the actual template and the sidebar carries all the necessary tools to help you edit the template.

The right toolbar sets the theme and the styling of your email template. The left toolbar has all the different layout choices as well as the different content elements that can be dragged and dropped to different parts of the template.
Once you are done editing, you can add the preheader, save the template, and move ahead to create your first campaign.

Easy to set up Email Campaigns and Automation Campaigns

Setting up an email campaign is made very easy using Smaily’s intuitive campaign manager. Click on the new campaign.

Add the subject line. Specify the FROM address.

Choose the email template. You also have the provision to test your email at this point.

Select your mailing list

Review everything and click send.

App Integration

Email marketing is not only about sending emails and you need to integrate your email client with other tools to make it work. Smaily provides API integrations for everything around email marketing and they support a lot of 3rd party tools that help you ease out your email marketing efforts. Right from opt-in forms to eCommerce tools to CRMs, you get API integration for most commonly and popularly used tools. Cannot find a specific tool integration? Smaily’s in-house API key can be integrated into whatever tools you use.

Forever FREE! for a mailing list <2000 subscribers & Competitive pricing
Yes! You read it correctly. Smaily also provides all the features and tools for free for those with mailing list smaller than 2000. The only nuance you need to adjust with is a small branding in the footer of your emails and support limited to chatbot and email only.
For those needing on-demand chat support and for those with more than 2000 subscribers, monthly subscription starts from 8.20 €, which is lesser than MailChimp’s minimum subscription (45.82 €).

What we liked

  • Very user-friendly UI
  • Easy to use but very powerful feature-rich email editor
  • Live email testing provision while setting campaign
  • Feature restriction-free plans

Minor inconveniences

  • Adding subscribers takes some time to be verified
  • The option for creating a custom HTML email templates is at the bottom, that can be easily missed.

Moosend

Another MailChimp counterpart, Moosend also has a similar business model to Smaily but the number of subscribers in the free pricing plan is 1000 subscribers. Don’t let the less number of subscriber allowance discourage you from exploring them. Moosend has a good set of tools to their freemium users that even enterprise-level ESPs charge exorbitantly for. Let’s explore the features they provide.

Features

Powerful Campaign Editor
Moosend doesn’t have a standalone email editor instead it is embedded in the campaign editor view. Once you create a create a campaign, it asks for the type of campaign. You have the option to choose from Automation, RSS feed, A/B split test or regular email campaigns.

Once you choose the type, you are requested to fill out campaign details.We like the facility to add personalization tag as well as emojis in the subject line as well as preview link.

Then you choose the mailing list and the next step is creating the email template. This is the only email service provider we found that has the option to import your custom HTML email template or using campaign editor to create one.

The first view of the campaign editor presents you with a blank template. You drag in different layouts or use the template library to create a design.

Once you are done with the design, it is time to test it. Moosend offers the option to test your email content for SPAM as well as delivery test.

Smart List Management
Moosend gives you the option to manually import your contacts from multiple sources as well as collect them using opt-in forms. All you need is to include the code in your webpage and the opt-in form will be displayed.

You also get the option to enroll the subscriber after a single opt-in or double opt-in confirmation.

Varied 3rd party Application Support
Just like Smaily, Moosend also provides 3rd party API support to integrate all your email marketing tools with your email campaign. Additionally, Moosend also provides SMTP services for integration into web apps.

What we liked

  • Easy to use but very powerful feature-rich Campaign Editor
  • Chat support available for every stage of Campaign setup
  • SPAM testing provision while setting campaign

Minor inconveniences

  • The UI needs some time to get used to
  • No provision to correct the profile name. (Notice the typo in the name on the top left)
  • The free plan only applicable till 1000 subscribers

For a detail review of Moosend, check out our blog.

CleverReach

Another best email service provider that we tested out was CleverReach. CleverReach offers to send 1000 emails per month to 250 subscribers for free. Setting up an account does not involve any setup fee or obligations. Just provide your email address to be sent a link to create your profile.
P.S: Unlike other ESP we reviewed earlier, CleverReach has restrictions on the features you can avail in the free profile. The below review is our view on the free pricing plan

Features

Dashboard
On login, you are greeted by the Dashboard that lists out things to do to set up your email campaigns.

Campaign and Email Editor
In CleverSend, you don’t have a separate email template editor but it is integrated into the campaign editor. The email editor provides the option to choose from existing templates or create one from scratch. There is no option to upload an email template. The template library is an exhaustive one with designs for all types of emails as well as industry-specific templates.

In the free pricing plan, you have the option to create email newsletters and automation emails. Paid users can also create autoresponders and A/B test them.

Once you select the type of email that you wish to create, you choose the list to which the email shall be sent.

Next comes the email campaign set up. Here you specify the name of the campaign, add the subject line, sender name and email address, specify the tracking functionality. You have the option to link your Google analytics to get tracking metrics of every campaign.

In the email editor, you have the option to drag and drop different elements. What we liked is the option to add pre-built modules as well as dynamic blocks that is a rarity in free-to-use ESPs.

Form Builder
In addition to email templates, you also have the facility to create opt-ins that follows the drag and drop ability as the email editor.

Automation Workflow Creator
CleverSend’s automation creator is called Automation THEA and it provides the option to create a single track as well as multiple level automation workflows.

The workflow creator is a simple UI and has distinguishable blocks for triggers, actions, and flow control. Every action can be manually edited for easy understanding.

Agency Partnership
If you are an agency, there are features offered by CleverSend specially designed for agencies. With features like centralized account management, easy monitoring, white-labeling, and standardized branding & corporate identity.

What we liked

  • Simple UI
  • Feature-rich email editor with dynamic content blocks
  • Opt-in form creator
  • White labeling options
  • Powerful Automation workflow creator

Minor inconveniences

  • No standalone email editor
  • You cannot upload your own HTML email template
  • Some settings are hidden without navigations

Wrapping Up

The email marketing realm is full of different ESPs created with different aims and industry in mind. Bookmark this article to remain updated about the different ESPs, as we shall feature more hidden gems periodically.

Improving Email Marketing Deliverability: How To Make Your Emails Land

In any form of marketing, it is important for your message to be reaching your prospective customer. In the iconic scene of the 1989 movie Say Anything, John Cusack held a boombox playing “In Your Eyes” outside Ione Skye’s house, in attempts to woo her.

While in the other channels of marketing you do have methods to communicate your message to your customers, you miss out on the reach. You either need them to follow you (social media marketing) or have them search a specific keyword (search engine marketing) to reach out. On the other hand, email marketing has the effectiveness of reaching the inboxes of your prospective customers, all you need is their email address.
One factor about email marketing that most email marketers tend to overlook unless it badly impacts them is email deliverability. This article is going to focus on everything related to email deliverability, how it impacts your email marketing game, what factors are related to your deliverability, and what you can do to improve/maintain your email deliverability.

Why should you beware of Email Deliverability?

The potential of emails being a great marketing tool was discovered in the late 1990s with webmail service providers such as AOL, Gmail, Yahoo!, Hotmail making it possible for people to create their personal email addresses. With the potential came the abuse of power. Marketers started to bombard inboxes of prospective customers with marketing emails and this brought forth the need to implement protocols and standards to protect the end user from unsolicited emails.
Under these standardizations,

  1. you need to use the services of an email sending provider (ESP) to send an email to the bulk of email addresses
  2. Any email you send is run through an initial set of filters from the sender end
  3. Before the email is delivered, it is run across a set of filters from the user end
  4. After the email is delivered, the email client used by the user checks it and places it in the inbox if found legitimate

The email, over the journey from the sender to recipient, is tested for:

  1. The sender reputation: How trustworthy is the sender email address
  2. Server reputation: The reputation of the email service provider
  3. Domain reputation: How trustworthy are the links present in the email
  4. Send volume: Number of emails daily sent by the sender
  5. Email Engagement reputation: Do most of the emails sent bouncing or marked SPAM by other filters

So, if any of the above reputation is not maintained, no matter how many emails you send, most will be discarded instead of being delivered to the inbox. Diminishing sender reputation will affect your email deliverability and email delivery.
Email delivery is when an email is successfully delivered to the receiving server. Email deliverability is when the email successfully moves ahead from the receiving server to the inbox of the recipient.

What factors affect email deliverability?

The overall factors that affect email deliverability can be divided into 4 broad categories:

  • Sender Reputation
  • Server Infrastructure
  • Email Authentication
  • Pre-send Email Marketing Practices

Factors related to Sender Reputation

As we stated earlier, the sender reputation is the reputation of the sender’s email address. The sender reputation like any other reputation is built over time and only with sending emails that build trust. Some of the factors that most filters look for are:

  • Non-spammy email copy that is well-formatted: A brand would work hard to maintain it’s brand reputation. This would mean the emails they send would be free of grammatical mistakes, misleading words, and would have a clear opt-in call to action buttons. You can refer to our blog to learn the best practices for the call-to-action copy. Moreover, brands would test their emails before sending and it helps greatly when your emails are properly HTML formatted.
  • A consistent email sending schedule: Email marketing is all about sending the correct communication at the correct time. By sticking to a sending schedule, you generate expectations in your subscribers as well as maintain the impression that you are a legitimate email sender.
  • Fewer SPAM complaints: When you send emails that engage with your subscribers and as per their interests, there is no reason for them to not prefer receiving emails from you. So ISP filters prefer to allow emails from those email addresses that have fewer SPAM complaints (ideally 0 but it should never exceed 0.1%).
  • Avoid sending to inactive email addresses: To catch miscreants and spammers, most ISP tend to take control of certain inactive email addresses and monitor them. Any email sent to such address is an indication that the email sender didn’t validate their email list and can be using a purchased list. Even though your chances of encountering this situation, if you follow the best practices, you should periodically eliminate inactive email addresses after a fixed time duration.
  • Less hard bounces: Similar to the above example, if you send an email to an invalid email address, it is returned with a hard bounce error. If an ISP filter or your email server suspects you to be sending emails with too many hard bounces, they can ban your sender email. Avoid this by periodically cleaning your email list.
  • No blacklisting requests: Requesting to blacklist is similar to marking SPAM complaints but the consequence is much worse. It is like someone creating a scene in a busy market while pointing finger at you, no one would like to interact with you after the incident. Blacklisting and sender reputation is inversely symbiotic to each other. Less blacklisting increases sender reputation and a high sender reputation makes ISP filters to overlook the occasional blacklist complaints.

Factors related to Server Infrastructure

As we stated earlier, ISP filters also test the server reputation i.e. how reputable is the email service provider’s infrastructure. Some of the factors that determine the server infrastructure are:

  • IP address: Sending emails are similar to their physical counterparts. The ‘To’ section of the email contains the recipients’ name & IP address and the ‘From’ section contains sender email address & ESPs server IP address. When an ISP filter blocks an email address, it puts the specific IP address, used to send the email, into observation. If the same IP address is used again to send a SPAM email, the IP address is blocked. There are two types of IP addresses used by most ESPs:
    • Static IP: This doesn’t change any time an email is sent. Only a viable option when sending high volume emails consistently.
    • Dynamic IP: This can be any of the IP addresses from a specified pool of multiple email addresses. This is greatly helpful if you are starting out or if your sender reputation needs improvement.
  • Feedback Complaint Loops: This is an automation services that reports back any form of complaints such as unsubscribes, SPAM or blacklisting complaints from subscribers. This helps email marketers to keep a clean list and prevents the subscriber from receiving any further communications. Some of the feedback loop providers are:
  • Optionally provide an abuse reporting mailbox: For those ESPs that cannot provide a feedback loop generally, provide an abuse reporting mailbox. An abuse reporting mailbox is nothing but an email address to forward abuse complaints to.

Email Authentication Factors

It is important to send emails from a recognizable ‘FROM’ name as it helps the recipient to easily identify the sender. The downside of this is that anyone can impersonate you by using your FROM name and sender email address, right? Not exactly. Provided that you have some authentication methods in place, you don’t need to worry about forgery. Some of the common authentications that boost your email deliverability are:

  • SPF (Sender Policy Framework): An SPF record is added to your website’s DNS and it informs the ISP filters that you are the owner of the domain and emails from your domain are verified.
  • DKIM (DomainKeys Identified Mail): A counterpart to SPF, DKIM also is a record of different web hosts and domain names that an ISP can refer to authentic emails. Most user end email clients check the DKIM signature on incoming emails to identify who sent it. Ideally, you need both authentications as either won’t work without other.
  • DMARC (Domain-based Message Authentication, Reporting & Conformance): It is a safety net authentication method that instructs an ISP on what to do when either SPF or DKIM policy fails.
  • TLS (Transport Layer Security): Emails are considered the most secure form of conversation, all thanks to TLS encryption. It protects the content from being read by anyone else except the intended recipients. Most webmails provide TLS encryption out of the box and you can opt for 3rd party encryption services for another layer of security

Pre-send Email Marketing Practices

These are some factors that are affected by practices followed by an email marketer before sending the email. Some of the common pre-send email marketing practices are:

  • Avoid all-image email copy: One of the most novice mistakes to do is sending a single image as the email copy. Such emails are considered spammy and most email clients also block images from unknown senders. Try to maintain a ratio of 80:20 text to image ratio.
  • URL shortener: URL shorteners mask the original link and that is flagged by some ISP filters. Avoid it unless necessary.
  • A plain text version with the HTML version: While sending HTML emails, it is a wise step to include the plain text version. This will allow the filter to scan through your email copy as well as improve the user experience greatly.
  • Double opt-ins: Considered gold standards, asking for subscribers to confirm their subscription not only informs you about their inclination to remain subscribed but also whitelists your email address in the ISP registry.
  • Wise Segmentation criteria: Emails need to be segmented based on subscriber interest and an ideal segmentation filter helps you send only the content that your subscriber is interested in. This reduces SPAM complaints overall.
  • Easy to find Unsubscribe: People change and with them change their preferences. By including an easy to find unsubscribe, you allow them to opt-out easily and reduce the number of blacklisting and SPAM complaints.
  • Request to whitelist: Every action by a subscriber to whitelist your email will add points to the trust and reputation you have built. By asking your subscriber to whitelist you in the welcome email itself is a great action.
  • Follow different anti-SPAM laws: Include a CAN-SPAM compliant footer in all your emails and follow the GDPR rules when you deal with a subscriber resident to any of the countries in the European Union

Best Practices to Maintain/Improve Email Deliverability

  1. Have a consistent sending schedule
  2. Reduce hard bounce by regularly cleaning your mailing lists
  3. Ask your subscribers to whitelist you
  4. Use double opt-in every time anyone subscribes
  5. Authenticate your domain with SPF and DKIM
  6. Use TLS encryption for added security
  7. Monitor feedback complaint loops or setup an abuse reporting mailbox
  8. Have a mobile-friendly and user experience enhancing email designs to better engage with your subscribers
  9. Avoid URL Shorteners
  10. Always include a plain text version along with the HTML version
  11. Use a recognizable FROM address
  12. Add an easy to find Unsubscribe link
  13. Be compliant to different anti-SPAM laws

Wrapping Up

Setting up and maintaining infrastructure for high-volume email is complex, challenging, and expensive. It’s not as simple as maintaining a corporate email environment, and very different rules and standards apply. You’ll either need dedicated staff who understand the ins and outs of email to monitor your email program, or you can turn to an email service provider that can take care of everything for you.

Moosend Reviews: Best Email Service Provider

In the email marketing business, you are in constant search for new technology that helps engage with your subscribers and make the realm a less scary place. An Email Service Provider or an Email Hosting Provider plays a vital role to simultaneously send an email to multiple subscribers thereby improving the effectiveness of your email marketing performance. Just like how all fingers in a hand are created differently to solve specific needs, different ESPs are created with specific features to address particular email marketing requirements. In this article, we shall be reviewing one such Email Service Provider called Moosend.

Who is Moosend?

Moosend is an Email Marketing and Automation platform that provides a reliable cloud hosting environment that will help you deliver your campaigns faster. From a full-fledged email editor, easy & efficient list management, to reliable analytics tool, Moosend has all the needed tools in their toolbox to cater to the email marketing requirements of businesses of multiple scales. Additionally, to ensure consistent delivery rates of 97%, Moosend monitors its server reputation every hour.
Moosend is an excellent alternative to MailChimp when it comes to choosing an email service provider for a small business or someone starting with their email marketing campaigns. While MailChimp offers their free plans for up to 2000 subscribers, there is a limitation on the features or the number of email automation workflows you can set at a time. On the other hand, Moosend provides free plans for up to 1000 subscribers, but there is no difference in the features you avail. You are charged only for the number of subscribers and nothing else.
Now that we have a clarity of who Moosend are, let’s jump ahead towards the plethora of features that they provide to ease your email marketing woes.

How is Moosend different from other Email Service Providers?

Easy to customize Campaign Editor


The Campaign Editor is the USP of Moosend. As you can observe in the video above, Moosend has a vast range of pre-designed email templates along with the individual responsive layout preview. For those who wish to build an email template from scratch have the freedom to create a professional-looking email template by simply dragging and dropping the elements and changing its properties.

If drag-and-drop wasn’t easy enough, the helper grid could make it easier. The helper grid on the top left corner helps you add additional structures as well as elements to your email template with a single click. Also, you get the provision to add a countdown timer in your emails, which most ESPs do not provide out-of-box.

Bring the true flavor of WYSIWYG (What You See Is What You Get) email template editor, you have the freedom to switch between 3 views:

  • Design View
  • Code View
  • Split View

The split view is similar to the MailChimp’s email editor, and the design pane updates the template in real-time based on any changes.

Spam Testing

While setting up our email campaign we came across this hidden easter egg.

Once you create your email template, Moosend provides you with tools to check the rendering of your emails as well as check your content for SPAM by testing it across different SPAM filters. Learn how to create an email copy that ‘talks’ and not sell, check out our blog.

Smart List Management

Once you have created your mailing list, Moosend provides you the option to add subscriber entries. You can either add them manually.

Alternatively, you can directly import them

Additionally, you can also create an opt-in subscribe form with custom fields. Just include the form fields you need and place the generated code in the page that acts as your lead funnel.

Another unique factor of Moosend is the ability to alter the opt-in settings for individual mailing lists as well as redirection settings for subscribing and unsubscribing.

Efficient Email Automation Workflow Setter

Any email marketer, who doesn’t want to get tied down to manually sending repetitive emails, considers the email automation a boon. Setting an email automation workflow involves calculating all the permutations and combinations to avoid sending two different emails to the same subscriber. Moosend has listed out the most commonly defined email workflows and just like with Campaign editor, here also you can create workflow automation from scratch.

The user-friendly UI makes sure that you are not jumping through hoops in order to set trigger conditions and all the trigger conditions, as well as actions, are listed out in an easy to find pop-up box.

Trigger conditions

Handy Measurable Analytics

Sending an email campaign without measuring the post-send performance will stagnate your campaign effectiveness. Moosend provides in-depth metrics about the different interactions occurring in your emails, such as:

  • email opens
  • links clicks
  • click heatmap
  • clicks from individual email recipients

Device-specific open rate breakdown is one feature that selected ESPs provide and Moosend might be the only one to offer it for free. You get a device-specific breakdown as well as operating system based analysis. This will significantly help you understand the fallback you need to provide for your email to render consistently across all email clients. Moosend also provides the provision to export your email campaign performance into downloadable XLS format.

Multiple Application Integration Support

In order to function effectively, your ESP needs to be connected to all the different marketing tools you use. Moosend provides API support as well as SMTP services for easy integration with other tools (APIs) and websites or apps (SMTP). Thanks to the integration support you can automate your whole marketing activities, white-label their tool and integrate with your favorite third party applications and tools.
For a complete list of 3rd party integrations that Moosend supports refer to this link.

Moosend in a nutshell

What we liked

  • Very user-friendly UI
  • Easy to use but very powerful feature-rich Campaign Editor
  • Chat support available for every stage of Campaign setup
  • SPAM testing provision while setting campaign
  • Feature restriction-free plans
  • Customizable countdown timers for email templates
  • Based on your email content, custom subject lines are suggested
  • Readymade Automation recipes for commonly set email automation

Minor inconveniences

  • The UI needs some time to get used to
  • No provision to correct the profile name. (Notice the typo in the name on the top left)
  • The free plan only applicable till 1000 subscribers

Final Thoughts

As we stated earlier, Moosend is the right choice for a small to a medium-sized subscriber list owner who wishes to experiment with the different facilities provided by the enterprise level ESPs such as GetResponse, Adestra, Aweber, Marketo, Hubspot. While the limitation of 1000 subscribers can be a minor roadblock but features are a great motivator to shift towards paid plans. We had used the free plan to understand the workings of this ESP, and now we are inclined to become customers.

Re-engagement Email Tips With Examples: Win-back Inactive Subscribers

“I am sorry but it’s not working out”…
“It’s not you… I am no longer excited to see you”…
“Wish we had not met”…
Breakups are hard. It is even harder when you are ‘ghosted’, ignored completely one day without any reason. You are swamped with the thoughts of ‘where did we go wrong’ and ‘would this work out if given second chances’. While this may not be possible in real-life relationships, with a careful understanding of the needs and requirements of your disengaged customers, there is a possibility to re-engage them using email marketing i.e. using re-engagement emails. One thing to keep in mind while sending a re-engagement email is the fact that it needs to feel like a personalized conversation instead of a robotic reminder.
This article will educate about the different approaches and tips to nail the most engaging re-engagement emails.

Reason for sending re-engagement emails

As per a study by MarketingSherpa, no matter how engaged the subscribers are for a brand, 22.5% of an email list decay every year i.e. the subscribers stop engaging with the emails. Some tend to stop engaging owing to some genuine reasons, while others tend to get over-flooded with emails and gradually stop opening them altogether. Thankfully, some of the disengaged email subscribers can be roped back in with a timely reminder email i.e. your re-engagement email. Practically, it is cheaper to re-engage an inactive subscriber than searching for new customers. To do so it is important to address the correct reason for the subscriber disengagement in order to effectively utilize the re-engagement emails.
Let’s start with understanding the reason for deteriorating engagement from some of your subscribers. The common reasons for it are:

  1. Diminishing interest what you offer in your newsletter
  2. A bad user experience
  3. Found an alternative from your competition
  4. Your email failed to convince them about problem-solving
  5. Overcrowded inbox
  6. Low email frequency caused them to forget who you are
  7. The email address provided is no longer functional or monitored owing to a job change

How to re-engage inactive customers with a re-engagement email campaign?

Now that we have listed out the reason for dormancy, it is time to move towards how to create a re-engagement email campaign. Sending re-engagement emails is a key part of your email marketing strategy as it serves two purposes:

  1. If the subscriber engages then great! You got back a subscriber.
  2. If the subscriber doesn’t engage even after the email series, it wasn’t meant to be. You can remove the entry from your mailing list and improve your list health.

Re-engagement emails are a vital addition to any email marketers’ roster of emails; one that should be included while charting out the customer journey of a prospect. The key requirements for a re-engagement email to be effective is that it is sent to precise subscribers who are assumed to be dormant and needs to address the reason for dormancy. So, the first step to create a re-engagement email campaign is to identify the dormant subscribers in your email list and the next step would be to separate them the herd.

Step 1: How to identify dormancy in your emailing list

To identify whether someone has become dormant or not, keep an eye on the open rates. The criteria for dormancy would depend on what kind of emails you send to your customers. For email newsletters, the ideal time for dormancy would be 2 months. For someone who sends promotional emails, non-openers of the past 10 emails can be considered dormancy. Ideally, someone who has not opened previous 5 emails can automatically be considered as a dormant subscriber.
Sending them a re-engagement email series can help you get an idea of what caused the disengagement and further down, your email can convince them to come back.

Step 2: Segment them separately

Most modern ESPs have the facility to filter out the subscribers based on their campaign activity. Based on the criteria you set for identifying the dormancy, filter out those subscribers who haven’t opened emails in the time frame between the last email they opened and the last email you sent to them. As you can observe in the example below, MailChimp gives you the option to filter out subscribers as far as those who haven’t opened any of the last 50 campaigns.

The results you got would also contain subscribers who had just joined your mailing list, add another filter for the joining date to get a refined result containing only your dormant customers.

Step 3: Re-engagement strategy and email series

Hoping for your re-engagement emails to be opened is an antithesis, as your subscribers are not opening your regular emails in the first place. Even then, with a strong re-engagement email strategy, you can win back some of them back. An effective re-engagement email strategy will define:

  • The goal: Should they be reminded of their dis-engagement? Should you request them to change preference?
  • The intention of the email: How will you re-engage with them? Offer them lucrative deals? Ask for feedback? Remind them of how important they are for you?
  • No. of emails: Should you send a single email? Create a series that progressively engages.
  • Email content: What tone would your email copy convey? Professional? Humor? Grief?

Based on the interaction you have with your subscribers, you can send a single re-engagement email, yet with the help of an email series, you can better engage with your dormant subscribers.

Email #1

The first email in the series needs to be the attention grabber. The subject line of this email needs to be captivating enough to prompt the subscriber to pause and open the email. Personalizing based on the past behavior of the customer would help make the co-relation and can inspire them to open the email.
In the example below by HeadSpace, the subject line “Having trouble finding time to meditate?” is a straightforward question based on the activity level of the subscriber. Your first email needs to remind the subscribers why they had subscribed to your emails. In the above example, the subject line does the job well.

Once they open the email, the email copy needs to focus on the address on what the subscribers are missing out on by being dormant. In the email example, the headline shows the benefits of taking 10 mins off to mediate and the call to action directly redirects them to a meditation session.

Email #2

Depending on the reception of the earlier email, the email #2 will change.

  • Assuming that the email is opened
    Congratulations. Your subscriber is interested in receiving but their involvement is stuck owing to some bottleneck. Now your aim needs to be understand the bottleneck and eliminate it. Send a preference choice email for the subscriber to change their area of interest.
  • Assuming that the email is not opened
    All hope is not lost. There is a chance that they may have forgotten about your emails in the flood of emails they receive daily. At this moment, your aim is to be patient with them while being polite enough to be considered as a close family member. Ideally you should send this at least one week after the initial email. The crux of this email needs to be that you care for them as well as their time and do not want to be seen as a pestering them with pointless emails. You can offer links to helpful resources, ebooks, infographics or free trial to engage them better. You can also highlight the benefits they have/are missing out.
    In this email example below by American Airlines, the subject line reads “Don’t let your miles expire”. In the email copy, they have listed out the reason for sending the email as well as the reminded the subscriber about the expiring points in their account. Additionally, they have list out different ways to collect even more points and how to redeem them.

Email #3

Two weeks have passed since your second email and the subscriber has not opened it. It is hard to acknowledge but the subscriber may not be interested in your emails and you are simply flogging a dead horse. As a last resort, your last email can be a notification that you are sorry for not meeting their expectations and are removing their entry from your emailing list. Use actionable and sad words in the hopes that at least this email would be opened.
In the example below by Framebridge, the subject line reads “Goodbyes are hard…” and on opening the email, you are greeted by the following email design.

As we stated, the email copy starts with the acceptance that the subscriber may not be interested in their products and remind them that their entry is being removed. What we liked in this email was that even though you are bidding farewell by this email, a link is included for the subscriber to be re-subscribed.

Step 4: Automate commonly used emails

Re-engaging process needs you to send personalized emails but that doesn’t mean that you need to manually identify and send emails to dormant customers. Most modern ESPs are equipped with automation tools to help you automate the commonly send re-engagement emails. The automation helps you not only to send different emails in your re-engagement series but also in managing your mailing list after every email send.

How to automate your best re-engagement emails?

Depending on the user interface and your pricing page, you may or may not have certain functionalities while setting email automation but the overall stages of automating your re-engagement emails can be broken down to following steps:
Segment your inactive subscribers → Create a workflow → Set the trigger conditions → Set a waiting period → Evaluate the results and repeat the process
The trigger condition in case of the above 3 emails would be:

  • Email #1: Manually triggered when a subscriber is added to the dormant list
  • Email #2: Automatically triggered when the subscriber has not opened the first email after a week.
  • Email #3: Automatically triggered when the subscriber has not opened either emails even after two weeks.

The action after each email would be

  • Email #1: If the email is opened, return the subscriber to the original list.
  • Email #2: If the email is opened, return the subscriber to the lead nurturing stage and start nurturing automation
  • Email #3: If the email is not opened, automatically unsubscribe the subscriber from your email list and move on

Re-engagement Email Best Practices

  • Personalize your copy – Use their name, sure, but hammer home the benefits they care about. And as long as your message is still clear, feel free to make it funny!
  • Segment your list of inactive subscribers – You might need a different re-engagement automation for different types of people depending on if they open but don’t click, or if they do both
  • Target emotions – Remind them of the painful problems you’ve helped them with (feel free to use guilt or nostalgia)
  • Offer another way to stay in touch – Let people update their email preferences or take a short email hiatus – it might avoid an unsubscribe
  • Offer them something for free – A content upgrade, a discount, a giveaway, a free trip to Hawaii (just kidding…)
  • Remind them why they signed up – Reiterate the problem you can solve for them – then give them the fix they need
  • Include a good and visible unsubscribe option – It feels counter-intuitive, but you still have to give them the option to unsubscribe. It’s nice, and not having it is illegal…)

Some Really Good Email Examples

The following email examples have been taken from ReallyGoodEmails. We thank them for the hardwork in compiling such amazing re-engagement email examples.

Re-engagement emails

Animoto’s re-engagement email has a fun design that replicates the actual mail using the envelope. The email copy is straightforward and requests the subscriber to change their preferences if they wish to remain connected.

We miss you emails

Duolingo’s miss you emails features their brand mascot in a tear-jerking version that is sure to tug a few heartstrings. What we liked in the email is that instead of going on and on, the email copy promotes a simple step to get back on track.

Win back emails

Webflow’s win back email utilizes a video to explain the benefits of their products and the use of numbers in the headline makes it sound personalized.

Retention emails

This retention email by Autopilot, is a unique one as here they have admitted to be out of touch for a while and asking their subscribers on whether they wish to be sent new content. Additionally, if the subscribers do not respond to this email, the email copy suggests that they shall only receive products updates.

Reactivation email

In the above email example from Hubspot, the subscriber is informed about the expiry of their account and the email goes far enough to explain the reason for account expiry. The cherry would be the link for someone who wishes to come back.

Wrapping Up

The reason why most email marketers struggle with re-engagement emails is that in the pursuit to sound caring and personal, they end up sounding desperate. You need to convey that your subscribers are important for you & you just want to keep them active and convert them into customers. You can also reduce the number of dormancy by periodically sending permission change reminders or keeping a link in every email you send.

140+ Tested Holiday Email Subject Lines & Tips to Boost Open Rates

With the pages of the calendar flipping to the last quarter of the year, marketers around the globe are pulling up their socks to prepare for the busiest time year on year. The time from October to December has popular six holidays falling in the short duration. Most people tend to begin their holiday gifting and shopping at least a month early. For better targeting and being present where the customers’ shop, marketers need to start their marketing activities at least a month and a half before the actual holiday.

With people turning more and more towards eCommerce with each day that passes, a robust online positioning is ‘the’ way to success. Additionally, email marketing manages to hold on to the position of the ‘Most preferred online marketing channel for customer acquisition and retention.’ Emails manage to reach the inbox of the intended recipients and are the best example of permission-based marketing. Landing your email is just the first step in your email marketing; unless it is opened, the email is a failure.

140+ Holiday Email Subject Lines eBook

An engaging yet intriguing subject line combined with a relevant preview text would help you in getting the email opened. This article is focussing on the Holiday email subject line tips to craft the perfect email opener.

6 Things to consider while crafting subject lines

As we stated earlier, subject lines are crucial for getting your email opened. 35% of email recipients agreed about opening emails based on the subject line alone (Source). Your holiday email subject line needs to act as the hook for your subscriber to be curious enough to open the email to learn more about the contents. A good and converting holiday email subject line would raise the expectation of what the email contains. Owing to the restrictions on the amount of information you can provide in a subject line, you need to keep the following criteria while crafting your holiday email subject lines:

1. Character Count

Earlier, emails were only opened on desktop devices, but with emails being opened on mobile devices as well. So it is essential to ensure your subject line is readable on screens of multiple dimensions.

As you can see in the example below, the subject lines (and a portion of the preview text) is visible in the Gmail Web but some of the subject lines get clipped in the mobile view.

gmail desktop view layout
gmail mobile view layout

2. Taboo or Triggering Words

Spam and phishing emails are the black sheep of the marketing domain. Owing to the unfair practices observed in them, your subject lines cannot feature certain words such as Free, Additional income.

3. The Sentence Case

People prefer sentence case or lower case and visualize All Cap sentence as shouting. Avoid it or using extra exclamation points.

4. Numbers and Emojis

These break the monotony of words, but their usage depends on the context as well as your email tones (emojis)

5. Sentiment

Does your email subject line convey the correct sentiment to your subscriber? Does it create hype, or is it informative? Actionable or Promotional? What kind of sentiment you convey with your subject line builds the expectation from your email copy.

6. Personalization

Emails with personalized subject lines are 22% more likely to be opened. Personalization can be as simple as referring your subscribers by name or complex as using past purchase history to create one-off subject lines.

Holiday Email Subject Lines Tips:

  1. Segment for accurate subject lines: Holiday seasons are the busiest time of the year, and people may not sift through all the emails they receive. By segmenting your email list based on the subscriber’s choices, you can craft a custom subject line that might catch their interest.
  2. Be Straightforward: Subject lines are a hit or miss when your subscribers are scrolling through their inbox. While a hint of cryptic tone would heighten the curiosity level, the subscriber shouldn’t end up scratching their head to decode it. To stand out, you need to be straightforward about what to expect from the email.
  3. A/B test: You can never accurately pinpoint what would prompt your subscriber to open your emails. So it is a good practice to often A/B test your email subject lines to understand your subscribers better. To understand what else you can A/B test, check out our blog.
  4. Communicate the urgency: Holiday promotions are time-critical, and your holiday email subject line needs to communicate that. Instead of writing, “Try our latest offer for <product>” go for “Try our limited time offer on <product>. Ends Midnight”. Use actionable words to state the urgency.
  5. Bring in the holiday essence: It’s the holiday season and let your email spread the holiday cheer. Add a holiday twist to the subject line for relevance but opt for the path less trodden. Avoid cliches that your competition would also be using.

Some Tested Holiday Email Subject Lines

  1. Best Halloween Email Subject Lines 2019
    • Foldies – Happy Halloween ✖️ ✖️ Treats Enclosed
    • Superdrug – Happy Hair-lloween -🎃
    • OshKosh B’gosh – 👻 BOO!!!
  2. Best Thanksgiving Email Subject Lines 2019
    • Fifth Sun – The Gravy Boat is Docking!
    • b-glowing – A Special Thanks From Our Founder
    • Evite – Happy Thanksgiving from Evite 💚
  3. Best Black Friday Email Subject Lines 2019
    • The Black Bow – Last Day, Don’t be a Turkey & Miss Our Black Friday Weekend Sale!
    • ThinkGeek – Pick out gifts that will charm them all for less with our Black Friday deals!
    • KJUS UK – The White Weekend after Black Friday
  4. Best Cyber Monday Email Subject Lines 2019
    • Altamont Apparel – GET CYBER MONDAZED // SAVE 40% OFF
    • simons – Last call 📞to all cyber shoppers, please click here!
    • Beekman1802 – In This Email: A Goat Doing Circus Tricks (And Cyber Monday Deals)
  5. Best Christmas Email Subject Lines 2019
    • Thorpe Breaks – 🎁 A gift full of thrills, frights, and fun 🎁
    • Treat A Dog Shop USA – 🎁A Special Christmas Gift … Just For You! 🎁
    • Factorie – It’s time to spend that Christmas Money 💰💰💰
  6. Best New Year Email Subject Lines 2019
    • Glamour In Rose – Celebrate the Season – Holiday & New Year’s Eve Looks Are Here!
    • Adrianna Papell – What are you wearing for New Year’s Eve?
    • britishcornershop – Your New year’s eve party essentials have arrived ✈🍸

140+ Holiday Email Subject Lines - Download eBook Now

Wrapping Up

With the holiday season approaching, every email marketer competes to be the best one out there. When it comes to effective email marketing, everyone may know all the above-stated facts, but what matters is how you implement the knowledge. Make your holiday season 2019 fruitful by sending click-worthy emails that convert! In case you are also looking for some holiday email marketing strategies, check out Holiday Email Campaigns: 6 ROI Boosting Marketing Strategies.

Holiday Email Campaigns: 6 ROI Boosting Marketing Strategies

As we inch towards the busiest yet profitable quarter of the year, marketers are looking for different ways to engage with their customers and hunt new prospects. With four of the most popular and a couple of lesser-known holidays falling in this short span, customers are in the quest to complete their purchases to avoid the holiday rush.

So, marketers need to start their preparation from at least two months before the actual holiday. If you are reading this in August, it is the right time to get your holiday email marketing campaigns ready and this article on different strategies you can implement in your email marketing campaigns.

Download Holiday Email Campaign Strategies eBook

The Significance Of Holiday Season For A Marketer

While many holidays are equally important as the main 6 holidays i.e. Halloween, Thanksgiving, Black Friday, Cyber Monday, Christmas & New Year’s Eve, these are the holidays that people tend to celebrate with their closed ones. Where there is an opportunity for celebration, modern consumerism dictates gifting and decorations. So, compared to the other holidays, US shoppers are predicted to spend over $1.035 trillion during the 2019 holiday season compared to $998.32 trillion in 2018, i.e., a growth of 3.7%. (Source: eMarketer)

Holiday Email Campaign Statistics - USA

The holiday season accounts for 20% of the retail industry’s annual sales. From an online perspective, last-minute shoppers are a boon from marketers as they make up nearly 30% of online holiday sales! In addition to boosted sales, the holiday season is a great opportunity for lead generation for both brick and mortar stores as well as online retailers owing to the increased traffic. Factoring in the effectiveness of email marketing, a correct marketing email sent at the right time can bring in more returns as compared with other channels.

How To Prepare Holiday Email Campaigns

As you may know, email marketing is not just about sending an email to a set of email subscribers.

Email marketing involves:

  • collecting leads
  • sorting them into relevant email list based on criteria
  • coming up with holiday email ideas
  • implementing them into email templates
  • testing the template
  • sending the email
  • analyzing the results
  • setting up automation workflows
  • optimizing them at the bare minimum

So, the preparations for an email campaign begins at least weeks before the actual email send.

During the holiday season, additional tasks such as list cleansing, website redesigns and coming up with newer ways for lead generation, makes it important to start your holiday email marketing preparations a month before the holiday.

To be prepared for your Holiday Email Marketing Campaigns, you need to have a foolproof strategy. The more detailed is your marketing strategy, the earlier you need to start your preparations from.

Flowchart for Email Marketing Strategies Creation

A simplified flowchart for creating your email marketing strategies, in general, is:

Step 1:

Define your goals. What do you want to achieve from the email campaign defines your goal. The goals need to be Specific, Measureable, Achievable, Realistic, and Timely. Goals can be as simple as increasing traffic or complex as overtake previous year revenues.

Step 2:

Segment your list. Once you have a goal in mind, you can get a clearer picture of who your target audience is. The next step in your strategy would segment your existing list into personas that fit your description of your target audience.

Step 3:

Chart out your customer journey. This process is not restricted to the holiday season, but the prospect you engage in August can purchase in December if the customer journey is correctly charted out. A well-defined customer journey will help you define the requirements and expectations of your customers at every stage as well as define the criteria for promoting them to the next stage.

Step 4:

Decide the touchpoints to collect data. Emails are all about serving a personalized experience to your subscribers. To personalize your email content based on the customer interactions, you need to define the touchpoints to collect data from. Opt-ins, Page visited, browser abandonments are a good place to start while looking for customer touchpoints.

Step 5:

Plan your email frequency. The visitor who subscribed to your emails is not exclusive to you. Just like you, many other email marketers might be competing to make the subscriber read their email. If you don’t follow an email sending schedule as well as the email frequency, you are not generating anticipation for your email, and it becomes very easy for your subscriber to ignore it.

Step 6:

Study your email metrics. The email metrics are the best friend of any email marketer as it gives a synopsis of how well an email is performing. By comparing the goals you set at the beginning with the email metrics, you would understand which elements of your emails are working as intended and which need improvement.

Step 7:

Opt for automating repetitive emails. Emails are supposed to be personalized based on the interaction yet certain emails such as welcome emails, thank you emails, purchase receipt emails have very few contents that change from person to person. With the help of merge tags and automation workflows, you can automate the sending of such emails based on predefined trigger conditions. This way, you can allocate more time to bringing innovation into the marketing game.

Step 8:

Maintain consistency. Your customers don’t interact with your brand on the email alone. So you need to maintain consistency when communicating across different marketing channels such as social media and website content. While inconsistency may not be damaging, but it does create a jarring experience. This means you need to factor in the development time for an associated landing page while planning your email campaigns.

Now that we have seen the way to create your email marketing strategy, in general, let’s observe some easy to implement Holiday Email marketing strategies.

Easy to Implement Holiday Email Marketing Strategies

1) Dress for the occasion

Close your eyes for a moment and guess the first imagery that comes to your mind when you think about Halloween, Thanksgiving, and Christmas. Most of you must have visualized decorated pumpkins, turkeys and Santa Claus. Implement such recognizable elements in your emails for the subscribers to make easy relation about the email content.

2) Create a shopping guide

Most of the people visiting might be in a dilemma of what things to buy when there is a huge variety available. By sending a catalog or product guide a week before your sale begins can help the customers to plan their shopping conveniently, and this can help you gain trust.

3) Social Media Engagement

Holidays are when people are most active on social media. Tie in your email marketing efforts with your social media marketing and organize flash sale announcements or contest that increase brand engagement as well as brand visibility.

4) Provide value addition

Offer something more than expected. Scour across popular platforms to understand what your customers are looking for and provide it in your emails. It could be something as simple as a shopping guide or free giveaways or exclusive deals. Make sure that your emails are providing some form of value addition, especially during the holiday season.

5) Consider lesser-known holidays

In addition to the prominent six holidays, many other lesser important holidays fall in the same quarter such as Small Business Saturday, Veteran’s Day, World Aids Day, Hanukkah. Identify the diversity in your mailing list and send emails on such occasions to connect with them more closely. Similarly, Green Sunday is a shopping holiday celebrated recently on a Sunday after Thanksgiving.

6) Consider shipping

Shipping costs and the expected delivery dates are two crucial factors that govern the customers’ purchases. Keep in mind, the shipping dates and the costs during the holidays and specify them clearly to avoid any last moment order cancellations.

Download Holiday Email Campaign Strategies eBook

Final Thoughts

All the brand awareness activities done during September gives you a large pool to retarget in December, and your preparations should start now to ensure your marketing efforts start in September. To help you plan your holiday email marketing campaigns better, we have compiled the best of email marketing strategies for the holiday season in our latest eBook titled “A Compendium on Holiday Email Marketing Strategy.” Have a look to get a breakdown of different processes involved in setting an email campaign along with anticipated deadlines for each. Additionally, we have featured some email templates for inspirations. Are looking for Successful Holiday Email Subject Lines, check out “140+ Tested Holiday Email Subject Lines & Tips”