Email Marketing Fundamentals

List of Recipients

Email marketing starts with a list of recipients.You will need a clean list with validated addresses and no duplicates. We mentioned earlier that legitimate email campaigns require permission. No savvy marketer today would use opt-out techniques because s/he knows that permission-based email campaigns will get the message opened, read and considered.

Opt-In or Subscribe

Customers and prospects will opt-in or subscribe to grant you permission. There are four levels of permission, as defined earlier: opt-out, single opt-in, notified opt-in and confirmed (double)-opt-in.

Affirmative Consent

Thanks to CAN-SPAM, we also have affirmative consent, which describes a higher level of permission wherein recipients give their express permission in response to a clearly stated request.

Third-Party Lists

Third-party lists can be borrowed or rented from sources such as other divisions of your own company, business partners, or a list aggregator. These lists can be used to drive opt-ins to your house list or for advertising and promotions.

Testing and Segmenting

Lists are handy for testing your message to ensure it is relevant to customers and prospects. Test your list by segmenting, or dividing your list into random groups to try out various elements of your message (e.g., subject line, offer, graphics, etc.) to determine which versions get the best response. Or you can segment based on demographics, interests, past purchase behaviour, etc. This is a good way to target your messages only to those recipients who wish to receive them. The result is improved conversions.

"Nthing"

A more sophisticated method for creating random segments is called "nthing." With this method, you pull every nth record from your list to create nearly random subgroups. For instance, if you have 5,000 names, and you nth on every 10, each of those 5,000 names is assigned a value of 0, 1, 2, 3, 4, 5, 6, 7, 8 and 9. Say you want to create two random "test" segments, so you send one offer to segment 0 and another to segment 1. Depending on the results, you then send the best-performing offer to segments 2 through 9.

A/B Split

Another segmenting technique is called the A/B split. This method randomly divides a list into two equal parts. Part A is the control group, while Part B is the test group. Using Part A as a baseline, you send Part B a series of messages in which you change one element at a time (e.g., subject line, offer, graphics, etc.). Then you measure the response of one group against the other. By changing one piece of your message at a time, you learn what works best.

Test Cells

Both nthing and A/B splits can be used to create test cells – a term used to describe the combined list segment and the message variation being tested. Before sending out your final message for a particular campaign, you can decide ahead of time to create so many test cells (e.g., it could be 5, 6 or 7+ test cells).

Target

Segmenting can also be used to target your message to a particular audience. You can send to multiple targets to test one group's response relative to another (like men vs. women). Most importantly, you target to increase relevancy, by sending messages only to those on your list known to value your communications.

Next: Following the Path of a Single Message