9 Rules for Driving Email Marketing Success

To kick off yesterday's All About eMail Virtual Conference & Expo, presented by eM+C, Jeanniey Mullen, chief marketing officer for digital magazine publisher Zinio and founder of the Email Experience Council, presented her nine rules for driving email marketing success. Here's a look at Mullen's list.

1. Have a good reason to email. Determine why you're sending emails, then send as many of them as you need to get that message across, Mullen said.

2. Five critical elements of email marketing. For Mullen, these include the following:

• understand the impact on brand;
• add intelligence to your design — make emails accessible for mobile, share them on social networks;
• drive the purchase — Mullen cited a statistic that said one in four people send your emails to family/friends to recommend products;
• create service messages; and
• add viral elements to your emails, such as a “share this” functionality.

3. Plan your plan. Noting that trust in the world is down, but self-reliance is up, Mullen said that consumers are now going online first and foremost to engage and interact. Email marketers therefore must shift their strategies, starting by following these 10 steps:

• create a mailing calendar;
• place value on email addresses (opt-in and -out);
• plan activation, retention and reactivation campaigns;
• develop key performance indicators that make sense for your business;
• focus on the behavior of your list;
• tailor landing pages to individual emails;
• optimize content based on results;
• develop seed lists (Google, Yahoo, etc.) that aren't on your network;
• determine multichannel usage early on; and
• map out continuity campaigns — i.e., triggered emails.

4. Get the right tools in place. Acquire the tools that'll allow you to be an effective email marketer, including real-time data feeds, access to analytics, warming strategies and qualified leads.

5. Cross your T's. Closely monitor the following eight areas, Mullen said:

• email address acquisition;
• creative/copy;
• making the data work;
• multichannel integration;
• technology (delivery, deployment and design);
• reporting/analytics;
• privacy; and
• reactivation.

6. Ready your resources. Ask the following questions of your business:

• How important is a preference center? If you deem it important, how do you get one?
• How frequently do you want to email your customers?
• Do you need a separate delivery vendor?
• How can you get more budget for email?
• What can you say/do to get senior-level execs to understand?

7. Launch and evaluate results. Mullen cited the example of a single email that was sent from VIVmag that offered a free trial membership and tote bag when consumers signed up. This email was posted on Twitter, generating discussion about the tote bag while drawing thousands of new subscribers for VIV.

8. Getting fancy. Be on top of what's new in email, Mullen said, naming four key trends:

• mobile reading — make sure you're aware of how your customers are accessing your emails;
• video in email;
• dynamic images — for example, an apparel company can send an email that opens with an image of a pair of shoes, then when clicked later a tote bag is shown, thereby extending the life cycle of the email; and
• social sharing — links for “Share this on” Facebook, Twitter, etc.

9. Multichannel integration. Integrate your message at every point of interaction with consumers, Mullen said. Steps to consider include the following: email (pre-/post-purchase), multidigital subscription center, activation/engagement, media integration with opt-in CTA, mobile, RSS/widgets, social networks, viral and call center.

To see the full keynote presentation, as well as the rest of the All About eMail Virtual Conference & Expo, register here.

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