Tips & stats to help your email campaign succeed

Posted by: Megan Amick, Marketing Coordinator

Email is an important part of your online marketing mix. Even with recent developments in the online sphere that have the potential to impact email popularity, social networking in particular, email is the most popular digital communication medium. Check out this blog entry from Oracle AppsLab on the subject.

In order to increase your open and click-through rates, as well as overall email campaign effectiveness, here’s some helpful information, which I’ve summarized from research by Lyris EmailLabs:

·         Most Popular Day to Send: Tuesday is the most popular day to send emails with 25.4% of respondents noting that they send emails out on this day. The second most popular day is Wednesday, which also happens to be the most popular day for emails to be opened.

·         When Users Check Their Email: 47% of users have noted that they check their email “sporadically throughout the day,” while 25% responded “first thing when they arrive,” 18% “at lunchtime,” 8% “during afternoon break” and 2% “right before they head home.”

·         Consider Rendering Issues: Many emails fall short of delivering their messages because images and links do not operate effectively. To avoid this, test your emails thoroughly before sending.

·         Text is King: Although images are flashy, audiences are more likely to respond to text. It’s also a good idea to use more text within an email to prevent rendering issues.

·         Make Your Email Relevant: Crafting compelling emails that are applicable to your audience is the key to getting respondents to take action. And according to email statistics presented by JupiterResearch vice president David Daniels at the Email Insider Summit, Park City, Utah, in December of 2007, email irrelevance is the number one factor causing respondents to unsubscribe.

If you’re stuck in a cycle of sending messages that don’t follow best practices, try tweaking one aspect at a time.