3 ways to broaden your focus and improve your email marketing

It’s not an email.

No, it’s a multidimensional social construct meshing design elements in an optimized synergistic whole that inspires a slew of emotional and physical responses.

Actually, maybe it is just an email.

We have analysed the poor thing to death.

There are reams of wonderful advice out there on each component of that email, from sending times to subject lines…from CSS to CTR to CTA to CPR (no, wait, email is not dead).

And sometimes this intense focus, aimed primarily at optimizing the next message, leads us to forget to take a step back. So we can check the forest is doing as well as the individual trees.

Here are three examples that show how too much focus can leave money on the proverbial table (or desktop):

1. Value or value-for-money?

Good email marketers latch on to the idea of delivering value to subscribers. That focus is good and right, but only if you understand the meaning of value to your audience.

For many marketers, delivering value means delivering value-for-money. Which is OK(ish), but leads to two problems.

First, it can encourage retailers to assume email is only for delivering discounts, coupons and special offers.

Which can be fine, where that fits the business model, but can change how subscribers perceive your business and how much they are prepared to pay in future. Why buy at full price when you can wait a few days for the inevitable coupon?

It’s ground we’ve covered before.

Second, delivering value-for-money can be misconstrued as giving a fair return on the value invested by the subscriber.

Since subscribing costs nothing, some marketers assume they can get away with sending banal, valueless content or offers: nothing for nothing is a fair exchange.

Subscribers typically don’t pay cash to get your emails. But they do pay to get your emails.

The loan of their email address is a payment.

And any attention they give your messages is a payment in time. Precious time for the harassed office worker, stressed parent or teenager desperate to get back to Facebook.

So a successful email marketer has a solid understanding of what constitutes real value to their audience (or audience segments).

This might well be coupons and discounts.

But it may also be the “latest” products (at full price).

It may be helpful information.

It may be the sense of community or belonging to a group of likeminded individuals.

For your loyalists, it may be inside information on the brand or organization.

It may simply be the value of email as a reminder that you exist, so they don’t forget to make their once-a-year purchase with you and not the competition.

When was the last time you thought about the meaning of value?

2. Design for images off (and on?)

There are many examples of words leading us astray (like open rates not telling you who opened your email), and another is the concept of designing for images off.

A lot of email software and webmail services block images from displaying. So it makes sense to ensure your email “works” in such a display environment.

So what’s misleading about that concept?

The problem arises when you focus, literally, on designing for images off. The “images-off” doctrine is so prevalent that some design as if images are blocked and not in case images are blocked.

There is a subtle difference.

Designing for blocked images keeps use of images to a minimum. Taken to its extreme, we end up with plain text emails: all function and no form.

Designing in case of blocked images exploits the full potential of images, but also ensures that the key impact or message remains should those images not display. For example through styled text headlines, appropriate use of alt attributes, preheader text etc.

The difference is important, because images have the power to influence, impress, and grab attention. They are particularly useful for special occasion messages, fashion and lifestyle retailers and similar.

Oh, and image blocking is on the wane. The latest iteration of the Yahoo! Mail interface, for example, apparently no longer blocks images by default. Another reason to rethink email design for images on.

3. Response is about the past and present

A lot of email marketing (and email marketing advice) focuses on the next message.

What can we change in the subject, offer, content, layout, send time, distribution list etc. to lift response to our next email?

These changes aim to alter the behavior of the recipient. To make them click this time. To make them pay attention this time.

But we forget that the recipient is not viewing each new message with a fresh, open mind.

The previous emails have trained the recipient in terms of expectations and response. Any changes to the next email have to work in their own right and also overcome the inertia built up by all the previous ones.

If your previous emails were pretty boring, you’ve trained people to gloss over them. Your next email may be perfect. But it won’t get a perfect response.

I’ve heard of many examples where a complete design and content revamp has barely moved the needle…initially.…it can take time for people to rediscover your emails (and some never will).

Ryan Deutsch wrote recently:

“I would argue that brands have one to three emails to set a tone of value with their subscribers. Once that sense is lost, so is engagement, and getting it back is nearly impossible.”

This concept is important when you come to evaluate the results of any changes.

Fundamental changes to the value you offer and the email’s design might need longer than one email to reveal their true impact. And the greatest improvement may come from new subscribers unblemished by your previous mailing history.

All this analysis is further complicated by the impact of the novelty factor and all the other influences on response outside the actual email itself.

[This works in reverse, too. People with a long history of highly valuable email content can score super open rates regardless of what they put in the next subject line.]

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