Basics, benchmarks and best practice

A guide to email marketing

I bloomin’ love email marketing. Direct and completely personalisable. Easy to measure, and never victim to the foibles and fickleness of social media algorithms. Personal without being icky.

SEO, ads, ‘content’ - they all have their place. But marketers consistently rank email as the most effective marketing tool there is.

Yet this week, I’ve been receiving emails that reminded me quite how bad email marketing can be.

Image by Melanie Gimpel via Unsplash

I’m being subjected to a series of daily ‘offers’ - from a business I’ve had no contact with for a couple of years - that are guaranteed to annoy a lot of people who receive them. Plus, if the Information Commissioner's Office gets wind of them, they’re going to land the sender in some extremely hot water, because they break all sorts of laws.

When I talk to some really savvy business owners, it’s clear that email marketing can be pretty daunting, painful and time-consuming.

So here’s the lowdown on what every business needs to know about email marketing. The things I get asked all the time, mixed in with the things no one ever asks - but you really need to know.

The legal stuff matters

The awkward news: there’s a lot of legal stuff about email marketing that you really need to get right. Whether it’s GDPR in Europe, CAN-SPAM in the US, or CASL in Canada, there’s a lot to get your head around - because the rules matter according to where your readers are, as well as where you are.

The good news: this guide and using a specialist service provider (for instance MailChimp or Convertkit) tells you all you need to know.

Every marketing email you send has to include a postal address

If you’re home-based, it’s unlikely that you’ll want to put your own address on your emails - but all emails do need to include a (genuine) physical address. Accountants and other professional services will often allow you to use their business address; and some email service providers, like ConvertKit, have an address you can use. Otherwise you may just have to bite the bullet and buy a business address. This could be a PO Box, or a virtual office address - something that many office space providers offer.

The unsubscribe button matters

Your emails need to include the option to unsubscribe - it’s the law. No matter how tempting it is to hide it; no matter how much your ego may be hurt if people actually use it… you’ve got to have one. Your customers will loathe you if you don’t; and if they complain to their enforcer? It won’t be pretty. Oh, and if someone does unsubscribe? You need to scrub them from your list ‘in a timely fashion’ - like, straight away.

Opt-in matters

How you ‘gather’ someone’s email address matters. Just because they contacted you - or even bought from you - it doesn’t mean you have the automatic right to email them. In an ideal world, everyone on your list should have explicitly said they want to join your list. There are ‘soft opt-in’ exceptions - if someone has bought from you recently and did not opt out of marketing, it can be assumed that they are happy to receive emails. BUT the option to opt out has to be clear, both at the time of purchase and on every email you send.

Please look after this email address

Storing someone’s email address counts as super-sensitive personal information, so you’ve got to have strict and stringent controls in place to protect that data. If you download the data - perhaps into a spreadsheet to do some ‘number crunching’ - then you also need to be really careful how you store and protect it.

Email service providers are worth their weight

OK, so it’s ‘easy’ to send emails directly from your work email address, without using an email service provider (ESP). But it’s not for the faint-hearted.

Using an ESP removes many of the stresses and strains of complying with the law. That gives you the peace of mind that your list’s personal data is being held securely, and their checklists and templates are designed to be compliant with the laws of the countries on your list. ESPs offer you pretty templates and easy tools, as well as useful analytics and plenty of tips and advice. Some have decent free plans; the paid plans are great value.

Which ESP?

There are differences between what the main providers offer and charge; but it’s not the end of the world to start with one and switch later. It’s easy to spend hours going down the rabbit hole of choosing the ‘best’ ESP, but there are probably better ways to spend your time. Most of the more well-known providers will be ‘good enough’.

Constant Contact is a reliable old timer, while MailChimp is probably the best-known, mainly because it’s also been around for a very long time. It’s cheaper than some, but can be… frustrating. ConvertKit generally comes out near the top of the pile, although it can work out more pricey than some of the others, especially if your list is small. MailerLite is simple and has free plans, making it popular with small businesses and those new to email marketing; while ActiveCampaign can be a little tricky to get started with - but if you’re prepared to persevere you may well find yourself joining the almost cult-like adoring fans.

(These aren’t affiliate links - find out why, here.)

How often to send?

Creating a decent email can be hard-going. In a perfect world we’d all have the time, the interesting content and the motivation to put out one email a week. In the real world, unless you’ve got a dedicated marketing person, this is unlikely.

A monthly email sent consistently is far better than a ‘weekly’ one sent sporadically.

A monthly email that’s worth opening is far better than a weekly email that’s boring.

Leave it longer than a month and your readers will forget about you. That means they’re far more likely to ignore you, unsubscribe or - and this is Very Bad News - mark you as spam.

A daily email is spam.

How do I know if my emails are doing the job?

Open rates are tricky. Sites like MailChimp will often show you ‘industry averages’. What these hide is the sheer number of dire emails that are out there, significantly reducing the average.

So although your ‘industry average’ may be 10%, the brutal truth is that’s pretty woeful.

It’s far from an exact science, and open rates vary depending on anything from your industry to the purpose of your email. As a general rule of thumb I’m pretty comfortable that a new client is doing something right if their average open rate is more than 30%. If it’s less than 30%, then working out why is usually a priority. (A lot of experts will tell you that 20% is a good open rate. That’s true in product-focused, profit-driven marketing. If you’re using ethical marketing, it really should be higher.)

I’m often asked about what open rates I aim for - the answer is ‘it depends’. Frequency, the purpose of the emails and the sector all play a part. Sometimes the ‘click through rate’ (people clicking on links in the email) is more important than the open rate.

The Medley, which is the Ethical Business Marketing email I send once a week, has an average open rate of 54%; which I’m happy with.

Yikes, someone unsubscribed

It’s normal to have a bit of a moment because a customer has unsubscribed. Don’t panic. Unsubscribes are a natural part of the process: people have a purge, people who were once your perfect customer have moved on in their life journey. It happens.

An average of more than 2% unsubscribing is probably an alarm bell: bear in mind that if you collect email addresses via competitions or by offering a one-off discount, your unsubscribe rate will be higher.

Is it worth buying an email list?

No. Never.

What should I write in my email?

I’m sorry, I can’t tell you that. Not here, anyway. The DNA of a good email depends on so many factors - the business you’re in, the aim of your emails, your target audience and what works for you.

To get to the bottom of what good content looks like for you, go back to your reason for emails: is it to build relationships? Direct sales? Repeat custom?

Think about the emails you like to receive - and the ones that grate. As long as you’re similar to your target audience, this will help you with content.

It’s worth remembering that you can almost always write less than you think you can - short and sweet works better than War and Peace, for your readers as well as your sanity.

Growing your list

We all start somewhere - don’t let the size of your list (or lack of it) put you off. Quality is more important than quantity - an engaged list of 100 is more valuable than an unengaged list of 1,000.

Freebies, or ‘lead magnets’ are much revered in email marketing circles. Ebooks, free guides, checklists, that serve as an incentive for signing up to receive your emails, are all popular - and they do work, but you need to promote them and they can be time consuming (and good). They are useful - but not the ‘must-have’ that some would have you believe.

Don’t be afraid to promote your email on your social media. It’s not a post that will see much engagement; but you’ll soon get a feel for whether it has achieved its purpose, as you see little spikes in your sign-ups.

Include a sign-up option on each page of your site; in your email footer; on your social bios; and anywhere else you can think of.

Make it quick and easy to sign up - it’s unlikely you need more info than a first name and an email address. (I like to capture a surname as it makes those lovely analytics much easier to manage).

Encourage two way interaction

Most marketing emails are sent as one way communication tools. There is no logical reason why, in 2022, this is still happening. Treating emails as one way is a missed opportunity for getting to know your readers, to learn what motivates them, what they want, whether you’re reaching who you want to reach, building interesting relationships…

It’s worth setting up an automated reply, so that when someone subscribes they get a ‘thanks for subscribing’ type of email. But encourage your readers to reply to that. Perhaps around 5% will do so - what you learn will help you make your emails useful, and is invaluable.

Keep it in perspective

Email is one of the easiest tools to use in marketing. Just keep in mind your reasons for using it. Don’t be hard on yourself if you miss a week; don’t get uptight if your list doesn’t grow quickly or you have a few false starts; and don’t spend too long on it.

Follow those golden rules and you might just start to love email marketing (almost) as much as I do…

• What have I missed? If there’s any burning issues we’ve not covered, let me know through the contact page - and we’ll try to include it in the next update.