During our digital Activate Live convention in June, considered one of our clients, Jade Kolber, Senior Marketing Manager at 99designs, shared the teachings she’s discovered about email deliverability through the commercially-critical time that’s the vacation season.
With the festivities simply across the nook, there’s by no means been a greater time to talk about vacation email advertising and marketing. And with over ten years of digital advertising and marketing expertise, Jade is an professional at surviving and thriving through the busiest time of the yr.
This yr, customers plan to spend less due to the coronavirus, as security, well being, and monetary well-being are their top priorities. Given the circumstances, 67% of buyers plan to store on-line for items, whereas 3% of buyers plan to store in-store.
And with the pandemic lingering for the foreseeable future, email entrepreneurs should talk with clients extra steadily and with better transparency.
If you’re inquisitive about Jade’s recommendations on vacation deliverability (and wish to know how one can spam-proof your email advertising and marketing), then learn on!
About 99designs
99designs is a worldwide artistic platform that connects companies with designers. It has over 90 design classes—from logos and web sites to wine labels and tattoos (and far more).
Before a brand new challenge begins, companies can both launch a design contest or rent a designer immediately for 1:1 collaboration.
The benefit of working at 99designs? As an email advertising and marketing supervisor, Jade can entry an intensive community of proficient designers who can create compelling campaigns for her email advertising and marketing crew.
Click the picture to view this Cyber Monday email in all its animated glory! Source: 99designs
Now let’s leap in to share Jade’s six suggestions to spam-proof your campaigns so you may keep away from any last-minute email advertising and marketing errors and maximize deliverability this vacation season.
Six Tips to Spam-Proof Your Holiday Marketing Campaigns
1. Don’t delay your listing hygiene
The well being of your subscriber listing could make or break your email campaigns. If you wait till the final minute, you run the chance of getting blocklisted and lacking out on alternatives for income throughout premier vacation purchasing occasions.
Start by going via your email listing. Identify any soft-bouncing email addresses and take away them, as holding onto them can have an effect on your email efficiency and injury your sender repute.
Another approach to gauge your listing hygiene is to analyze low-performing signup sources. Is your e-newsletter signup email easy and straightforward to navigate? Is the CTA action-oriented or value-driven? Take inventory of the weather that require fine-tuning and make adjustments accordingly.
Additionally, you may take into account double opt-in (DOI) to filter out inactive subscribers. But right here’s a caveat: Adding one other step in affirmation emails reduces subscription confirmations by nearly 40%, so spend money on email deliverability providers earlier than committing to any drastic actions to hold your listing each wholesome and worthwhile.
2. Audit subscribe types and add reCAPTCHA
Bots can simply join utilizing faux email addresses and compromise the integrity of your listing. To shield your online business from these bots, add visible or invisible reCAPTCHA in your subscribe types.
Visible reCAPTCHA is taken into account the simplest to combine for an added layer of safety. Your consumer merely marks the ‘I’m not a robotic’ checkbox to confirm they’re not a malicious bot.
On the opposite hand, invisible reCAPTCHA takes place through a JavaScript API, making it even simpler to your consumer to join your listing.
3. Choose listing high quality over amount
Amassing 1000’s and even hundreds of thousands of subscribers appears nice on the floor.
However, specializing in listing measurement with out the context of development or engagement solely offers you the phantasm of success as a result of a big listing in and of itself doesn’t essentially translate into conversions.
In reality, in accordance to the “True Fans” ideology, it solely takes 1,000—or even 100—diehard loyal clients who will purchase something you promote and shout your praises from the very best mountaintops for your online business to obtain huge success. A smaller however extra engaged viewers can deliver you nearer to your advertising and marketing targets.
4. Don’t take it personally
It’s onerous not to take issues personally once you run into deliverability challenges, particularly for those who inherited the listing with out the duty of rising it.
The fact is, email fake pas occur on a regular basis. Sometimes issues past your management wreak havoc in your campaigns.
What’s extra vital is that you simply study from the expertise and apply proactive high quality management—reasonably than injury management—in your listing.
5. Form a very good relationship along with your suppliers
If you haven’t completed so already, begin constructing rapport along with your email service supplier. Email deliverability points are extremely nuanced, and backbone instances can range relying on its complexity.
A robust relationship along with your buyer success crew can speed up the decision time and enable you to meet your targets.
6. Trust in your subscriber group and make them your precedence
When you’re caught up within the marketing campaign constructing course of, you might overlook that there’s an individual behind each email handle in your listing.
But keep in mind: your subscribers are your bread and butter.
If issues go south, break free from the transactional mindset and talk with them brazenly and truthfully. Humanize your marketing campaign as a lot as potential.
People can detect empathy and authenticity in your messages, and once you exhibit these traits, they’re extra probably to stay loyal to your model.
The Spam-Proof Is within the Holiday Pudding
Despite its identify, “spam-proof” doesn’t imply fool-proof, and email mishaps can—and do—occur even to the very best advertising and marketing groups. But you may mitigate them throughout this prime vacation purchasing season by following these six suggestions from Jade Kolber at 99designs, earlier than launching a serious promotional marketing campaign.
In doing so, you’re delivering extra than simply wonderful Black Friday or Cyber Monday offers in folks’s inboxes; you’re additionally preserving your repute (and ROI) intact.
Have much more vacation deliverability questions? Read the recap of our current AMA within the Iterable Community or contact our Deliverability Services crew of consultants.