One of the best parts about email marketing is that you can target specific groups of people quickly and easily. Moreover, you can personalize each email so that relevant information appears. To do this, you’ll need to start by creating a form that’s tailored to your needs.
Advanced HTML user? You can create a fully customized form.
In order for your form to reflect the information you need, you have to add fields to your list.
Note: Avoid asking for too much information: you don’t want your customers to have to fill in so much information that they’ll get bored and simply not subscribe instead. Keep it between 3 or 4 fields.
When you upload a list, you will be able to Match Fields.
Note: Every field mapped to your contact list will show on your form.
Now that your form is set up and your fields are in place, it’s time to use the information to send targeted campaigns.
To improve engagement with your contact list, create groups in your list according to common features within your list, and send them content that’s directly pertinent to their interest.
Your confirmation and welcome emails are going to be the first impression your subscribers get about your newsletter. Moreover, your welcome email is a great place to greet customers and ask them to be added to their safe senders list. Your welcome email is pre-setup and automatically sent when you created your account.
Click on Edit Email and customize it any way you want.
No matter what you do, keep the [CONFIRM LINK] tag
Make the changes to the plain text version too: click on the “Text” tab and edit appropriately.
Send yourself a test and make sure everything shows the way you want it to.
Note: Welcome and confirmation emails cannot be edited within a trial account.
Advanced HTML user? You can paste your HTML directly into the emails.
If you like the layout of the first campaign you sent, you can save time when creating your next campaign by duplicating the first one you sent.
Email is a great place to begin, or continue, a conversation with your customer base. However, while talking about promotions and specials deals is great, it’s not very conducive to conversations. A good rule of thumb is that, 80% of your communications should be content that brings value to your customer, and only 20% should be a sales pitch.
Here are a few ideas beyond the latest greatest deal you can talk about:
Give them relevant information about your industry: If you’re a hair salon, you can separate your customers by hair length, and suggest different styles for each. If you’re a restaurant, you might even consider sharing a recipe for salad dressing, or give wine and meal suggestions.
If you’re a mechanic, you can send an email to remind customers to change their winter tires, or get their Air Conditioning checked.
Sometimes, you can just say “Merry Christmas” or “Happy New Year” without saying “Big Blowout Special!”
Did you attend an event and meet up plenty of great new people? Acknowledge them: send them an email, thanking them for their time, and asking them questions about what interests them.
By asking people when their birthday is, you can send them “Birthday Present” via email: they can bring a printout of the email you sent them to redeem their gift. You won’t have to remember the day either: just create twelve groups (one for every month), and schedule a campaign to be sent out on the first of the month.
If you’re a wedding planner, and you saw a really awesome tradition take place, you can tell your other clients about it – it might help them create new traditions.
Going to a tradeshow out of town? Send an email to your customers in a city to tell them you’ll be nearby. Moving? Tell your loyal following about your new address.
Are you attending a tradeshow? Hosting a special event? Send out an email invitation to your customers. It’s cheaper than paper invitations, greener and you can actually see who reads it.
Keep track of how your campaign is doing by reviewing the campaign report:
What is tracked:
Percentage of people who opened the email. Note: we can only calculate this number based on the number of people who displayed the image or who clicked on a link in the email. Your real open rate might be higher than the open rate reported because most email clients (Gmail, Outlook, AOL, Yahoo, Hotmail…) don’t display images unless the sender is a “trusted sender” or the user clicks on the link to display images. Have more accurate rates by:
Open Rate:
(People who displayed images + People who clicked on a link)
______________________________________________________________
Total number of people you sent your email to
Expected results: Between 15% – 40%
Variables:
Percentage of people who clicked on one of the links in your email. Note: Your email should be short and succinct. People have a 15-20 second attention span when reading emails. Make sure you always have a few links linking to complementary information:
Click Rate:
People who clicked on a link / Number of unique opens
Expected results: Between 3% – 10%
Variables:
A bounce occurs when a campaign is not delivered to a recipient.
A “hard” bounce: the address no longer exists (worse, maybe it never existed… Did you send a confirmation email?) . If not addressed, these can have dramatic consequences to your account, sometimes going as far as getting it suspended. As a result, all hard bounces will be removed from the list. A “soft” bounce: the email is currently not available for a “temporary” reason. If there are 4 soft bounces on a single email address, the email address will be automatically removed from the list.
Note:
Your reports will provide you with very detailed information about the bounces on your emails, including several different types of bounces not listed above.
Why are emails removed from the list?
To avoid potential Spam complaints. It will also help in regards to future email statistics.
Bounce Rate:
Total bounces / Total number of people you sent your email to
Expected Results:
0% – 0.5 %
Should always be less than 1%
Variables:
A subscriber may no longer wish to receive emails from you. In this case, if they click on the ‘[UNSUBSCRIBE]’ link, they wilfully remove themselves from your list.
Total number of unsubscribed contacts / Total number of people email was sent to
Understand that is much better for someone to unsubscribe than to flag you as spam.
The popular name for unsolicited commercial email. We can only measure the complaints for specific internet service providers. Use best practices to avoid complaints, test with SPAMAssassin and send a test to yourself (see where it lands) before sending out your campaign.
Total number of complaints / Total number of emails sent to specific internet service providers
As soon as someone marks you as spam, they are definitively removed from the list.
Send yourself a test email (you might also want to send it to a friend to check for typos) so you can see what your recipients will see. Make sure to test the text version as well as the HTML version of your email.
Click on the Preview and Schedule button and proofread the email.
General Information
☐ Campaign Name: Is this really the campaign you want to send?
☐ From Name and Email: Is the sender recognizable?
☐ Reply-to address: Is it a real email? (check for typos or unwanted spaces)
☐ Subject: Make sure you have no typos in your subject and that it’s explicit If you used Merge fields:
☐ Preview as: Check at least 3 different contacts to make sure the information displays properly
Header:
☐ Do you have the link to show the email on the browser?
☐ Do you explain that the subscriber signed up for the newsletter?
The email body
☐ Do all the images display properly?
☐ When you mouse over the images, is there a clear alternate text that pops up?
☐ Do all the links work?
☐ Do the links bring you to where they are supposed to land?
☐ Are special characters displaying properly?
Footer
☐ Do you have an unsubscribe link [UNSUBSCRIBE]?
☐ Do you have the [CLIENT.ADDRESS] tag?
Click on the Schedule and Send button Send yourself a last test email.
Triple check the Summary – Campaign and the Summary – Recipients
If you’re ready to send it now, you can select the Send the campaign immediately option and click theSend button.
If you’re scheduling the campaign, you have two calendar years (the current year and the next) to plan the delivery of your campaign. Select the Schedule this campaign for later option and enter a date and time and click on the Schedule button.
To create a new campaign go to the Sent tab and click on Create New Campaign on the right hand menu.
Note: Each contact list already has personalizable “Confirmation” and “Welcome” emails setup and automatically sent.
Enter additional campaign details
a. Subject – Make it resonate with your audience. Be explicit!
b. Sender’s name and email address
c. Optional : an alternate reply-to email Avoid using “no-reply@…” emails.
d. Advanced options are available for experienced users.
We recommend you start by selecting one of our default templates. They’re free and have been optimized for email clients. The templates can all be stamped with your own brand with the Email Campaign Builder.
If you’re an HTML master, you can upload your own template ZIP file or copy-paste your HTML code.
Some of your customers can’t (or won’t) receive HTML-Based emails. Generating the Plain Text version also helps in regards to lowering your SPAM score. Please make sure you generate your text version:
Note: Square brackets represent either Tags or links.
[Visit our Website] ([http://www.mywebsite.com])
In your HTML email, this is a link. You should edit this text to look like:
Visit our Website at [http://www.mywebsite.com]
Before sending your first campaign, you must have at least one active list with at least one valid subscriber.
We recommend using one master list for all your clients. You can later create groups within this list.
Import a list, as a .CSV, Comma delimited type file. If you have an existing list, this is your fastest and easiest option.
Enter contacts one-by-one, If you only have to add a few new subscribers
Remember: You can only email a person, not a group (emails will be sent to “jane.doe@”, but will not be sent to “sales@…” or “accounting@…” )
By the way: How old is your list? If you haven’t spoken to your “customers” by email in the past 6 months, we recommend launching a reconfirmation campaign to avoid any kind of complications – such as account suspensions or being flagged as Spam by your customers.
Note: If you have any personalized fields on your list, they will be added to the form.
Important: A Confirmation email is preset to be automatically sent to anyone who uses s subscription form to sign up to your list. It’s followed by a Welcome email once they’ve confirmed their email address. You can personalize the welcome and confirmation emails.
Make sure you have a paper form or an iPad so people can fill in their information while they’re waiting to pay. Use a specially created confirmation email to make sure the address is valid.
569 874CitrusEmail subscribers worldwide
2,264,226emails sent in the past 30 days
