Emails that are wanted get opened and read, and emails that are opened and read tend to get delivered to inboxes. So, it makes sense to invest in the most persuasive, delightful content to entice your recipients to anticipate your messages.
Whether your messages are long or concise, persuasive or passive, plain text or graphic art pieces is up to you and your brand. A generally accepted practice is to know your recipients and what messages will delight and persuade them. OMCP’s OMCA exam does not test for copywriting or persuasion skills, but it does cover some essentials for delivering effective messages. So here they are:
- It is generally accepted that your email content must agree with what is promised in the subject line. In the same way, landing pages must deliver what is promised in the email call to action. The concept of “scent” or common design and wording from email to landing page can also assure recipients that they are in the right place, on the intended path. If your email offers 50 percent discounts on red hearts, then the landing page should feature 50 percent discounts on red hearts as the first thing your reader sees.
- For email campaigns where the goal is to persuade the reader to action, it is a good practice to have one primary goal for the email and include a clear and prominent call to action for that goal. The call to action might be a button, a highlighted link, or an invitation to reply. There is some dispute on how many calls to action are effective, so to know what’s best for your campaign, run an AB test.
- AB testing can reveal which components (e.g., subject line, call to action, style) of your email will perform most effectively. Many experienced campaign managers start each campaign by testing two variants to 10 percent of the target list to see which one should go to the remaining 90 percent of the target list.
Format for Email Clients
Each mailbox technology (email client or email reader) has its own method for rendering emails. So it follows that, to get the most engagement, your campaigns need to render well in the majority of mailboxes. Imagine if your call to action button does not show up for Outlook users or your message text doesn’t wrap for mobile clients. Some email service providers have tools to predict rendering, and some have attempted to create common markup frameworks that render consistently in the most popular email clients. Avoiding complex HTML and CSS in your messages can help here, but testing is a must. At minimum, ensure that your emails render well in the majority of your recipients’ mailboxes ahead of any significant campaign.
Many email clients reveal a portion of the email content in the inbox list before the recipient opens the email. This is called preview text, as shown in Figure 9.1.
Preview text can scale differently in each email client, but it usually follows the subject line in inbox message lists.
The preview text often includes the first words of the email body: Hi Pat, Your car didn’t quite make it to….” There are several techniques for controlling what shows up in the preview text including pre‐header text and use of multipart email components, or even hidden text. Some ESPs provide a specific markup for this. Accepted practices include using preview text as a continuation or enhancement of the subject line. When used properly, the preview text can significantly boost your chances for engagement.
Domain and Server Reputation
Your sending domain and the servers used to deliver your email can earn a reputation, good or bad, that helps mailbox providers, like Google’s Gmail or Microsoft’s Outlook, to decide which emails go to the spam folder and which ones go to the inbox.
One way mailbox providers do this is by authenticating that each email message is truly from the claimed sender, domain, server, and/or IP address and that there is some accountability from the sender when things go wrong. The industry has tried several ways to do this, and the ones that are most prevalent now, SPF, DKIM, and DMARC, are essential for email deliverability. While you may not implement these yourself, an OMCA must know the importance of each and ensure that they are implemented properly.
Sender Policy Framework (SPF) SPF, or Sender Policy Framework, is an email‐authentication technique that helps email senders specify which email servers (often specific IP addresses or domains) are permitted to send email on behalf of their domain. So, for example, if a domain like omcp.org, uses Sendgrid as a mail server, the SPF record would list Sendgrid’s server name, sendgrid.net (or IP address), as a legitimate source for emails. Most email clients and mailbox providers will mark a message as suspect or spam if there is not an SPF record set. SPF is typically configured in the DNS (Domain Name Service) settings for your domain. If you don’t have SPF configured for your email systems, your deliverability is likely to suffer.
DomainKeys Identified Mail (DKIM) DKIM, DomainKeys Identified Mail, is an email authentication technology that uses an encryption key and digital signature to verify that an email message and sender address was not forged or altered. DKIM is typically configured by generating a public/private key pair and entering this information in the DNS settings for your domain.
Domain‐Based Message Authentication (DMARK) If only there was a way to set procedures and be notified when emails from our domain fail authentication and show the world that we care about our email reputation. Well, that would be DMARK. DMARK, Domain‐based Message Authentication uses SPF and DKIM mechanisms to enable email senders to declare how they would like to handle emails that fail an authorization test. It also sends reports when those events occur. These data can help ensure that your recipients will only see emails that you have sent yourself. Proper use of DMARC improves email delivery and can prevent others from hurting your domain and brand reputation.
While the technical implementation may be done by someone else, a responsible email marketer will ensure these minimum three technologies are properly set up and tested before sending any email campaigns.
Warm Up New Servers
It is a generally accepted practice to warm up a new sending domain or server IP by gradually increasing the message volume. This can differentiate your campaigns from a fly‐by‐night spammer who burns through servers as fast as possible. Want to be sure you don’t share a server address with such a spammer? Use an established, reputable ESP who doesn’t tolerate such behaviors. When your ESP is strict on compliance, it’s a good sign that they are reputable.
One way, of many, to warm up your servers is by sending some interactive, highly personalized emails to your most loyal group, preferably signed by you. Leave out the tracking pixel and the link tags for these initial emails because these are common signals of high‐volume campaigns. The goal is to get replies or some interaction for the first batches. Ease into your volume by slowly increasing the list size. There are other ways to warm up the reputation of your domain and sending server. Talk to your email service provider for recommendations on what rates of volume increases are appropriate for your campaigns.
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