This session was delivered by Rachel Collinson.

Tech:

• SMTP server (like a sorting office) > DNS server > domain > MTA server (most problems happen here- spam check) > user account > recipient fetches email
• It’s not easy to get an email through all that to someone, which is why you can’t send big emails from your usual domain address (e.g. Staff on a work outlook account)
• Sendgrid / engaging networks get round that, signals legitimacy, works the system

Sending:

• People read emails at certain times of day 2pm, Tuesday Wednesday and Thursday is a good time to send
• Test best practice against what we’ve learnt as an organisation – important not to overhaul based on general best practice and waste the work your org has learned
• Some people get hundreds of emails a day, what’s going to make yours stand out

Sender and subject lines:

• Make sure your sender is personalised, not from an organisation
• Subject line – something that looks personal, like it might enrich someone’s life “an extremely intimate form of communication”
• People flippantly email without thinking, there’s often no filter “straight from finger to send”
• Think as if you’re writing to a friend
• Over 50% of emails in the UK are read on mobile, could be up to 75% depending on your audience
• This often cuts off long the sender and subject
• It’s not mobile optimal to have “trouble viewing this?” in the first line – put it somewhere else
• Email on Acid for testing email templates
• Salience
• Relevance
• Reference something that’s going on in the news so it looks current and relevant – open rates shoot up then
• Everyone on your team writes a subject line on a postit and passes to the next person, collaborative but not “by comity”
• Focus on them as a reader and a person, not about what we want from them, but about what they might be worried about
• Or have something to offer them, like tips / info
• Split test between two

Content:

• Single issue always wins. Always!
• Ask the person to do one thing
• If you ask them to do two things, they’ll do one of them
• By splitting different asks into different emails, people will act on both
• People forwarding them on is important, but they won’t forward a big enews if there’s only one thing they’re actually interested in sharing
• The things people would share around the campfire are the things you should share
• Treat your audience like your friend, tell them something you think they’ll like, as it happens

Characteristics of success:

• Simple – few characters, clear reasons, simple asks
• Unexpected – surprising
• Concrete – easy to imagine, can be sensory details, things that paint a picture
• Credible – can mean based in fact / legitimised somehow
• Emotional- and charities shouldn’t be afraid of using humour
• Stories – like currency in communications

Mobile:

• Crucial that content is readable on mobile
• Plaintext alternative essential
• BlackBerry and iPhone 3 will come through as a blank email

Personalisation:

• Names are a must but there’s more – use their location, workplace, things that matter to them
• Use dynamic targeting

Attention grabbing:

• Distractions are everywhere
• People’s IQ drops by 10 points when they surf the web – too many distractions
• It’s not insulting to dumb content down to the basics
• Use short words as often as possible
• Short sentences, less than 20 words
• Anglo Saxon origin rather than Latin based words e.g.
• Converse – talk
• Complementary – free
• Facilitate – help
• Regulations – rules
• Use the same sender so they know you, trust and relationship building, allows you to put yourself into it so people feel like they know who you are
• Template – make sure the responsive code pulls out the first line of the email, not all the browser stuff
• Logo alt text
• Don’t be confusing, one call to action
• Don’t be confusing in the footers
• Test buttons against simple text links
• Emails need a purpose
• Be careful about disconnect
• Paint a clear, concrete picture
• Emails are about give and take, be careful you’re giving as much as you’re asking for
• Stats make people go into analytics mode, which means you lose them on the powerful emotive stuff that makes someone take action
• But of course it depends on audiences, e.g. a medical journal versus a charity email
• Stats can be mixed in with the story to emphasise the problem, e.g. 1 in 4 people every year will experience a mental health problem

After the click:

• Supporter journey, design it like a story
• Test that story – did their experience match the story that you wrote
• Does the journey you’re sending them on have a joined up brand – email template to website consistency
• Pre fill forms, you know about them because you sent them an email, annoying if they have to fill in their details again at site stage
• Pre filled forms get 3x the response

Segmentation:

• By the time that’s elapsed since their last campaign action
• By the action they’ve taken
• By where they live
• By how much they’ve donated
• Lapsed donors can end up giving more than the moderate donors because you’ve made them feel special
• Relevant personal content = higher conversion rate and better response

Measurement:

• No vanity metrics
• Decide what you want to find out
• The open rate tells you about trust, subject line, timing, sender
• Click through rate tells you whether the content is good
• Conversion rate tells you whether the site is working well
• Emails sent to actions taken will give you a response rate you can compare to other campaigns
• Open rates are estimated based in conversion pixels (why you don’t know about BlackBerry open rates – no images)
• 5% is a big response rate for a charity ask

Negative feedback:

• ‘Mark as spam’ is a big problem for you being a trusted sender
• .9% is a big unsubscribe rate
• Run an opt in campaign to make sure you’re not working harder than you need to

Testing:

• A/B testing – change just one thing
• Make sure the result is statistically significant

Community building:

• Much less likely to unsubscribe if they get to know you as a person / sender
• Feature the story of a subscriber so you’re building a community between people on the list
• Ask people a question and share the response in the email
• Have a guest writer
• Remind people of something they did in a previous campaign (value and personalisation, also taps into people wanting to be consistent, loyal and good)
• Don’t leave it too long before get in touch with people
• Don’t worry about sending too often, if you have something good and campaigny each time they’ll open it
• You also get round the issue of people thinking “oh, who’s this?” and unsubscribe
• 1:3 ratio – for every ask you make, give 3 things back
• When they read our emails they feel good, not burdened
• People need reminding to do things – follow ups are important, segment by people who didn’t open or click on the email
• You get a higher response rate to reminders than to the original email – it’s useful, it plays on them maybe feeling guilty for not doing it the first time
• Don’t do that sneaking dishonest thing of re: or fwd:
• Make actions forwarable for people, provide the rest for them so they don’t need to do the work, give it a plain text version so it doesn’t look to brandy when they forward it on
• Reactivation campaign – “have I upset you?” – cleanses the list, saves time and money, gives you better stats
• Use professionals and agencies to judge your content so you get an objective view
• A story that has another level of meaning can work – parallel examples
• Get stories from supporters
• There is a whole world of untapped storytelling out there – people who hit the mark without even knowing it

Top tips:

1. Use email on acid to check spam and appearance
2. Test, test, test – get colleagues to checktoo
3. Consider who from, subject line, timing
4. Success format
5. Keep sentences and words short
6. Subscribers are not a list, they are people – personalise
7. Reminders
8. Reactivation campaigns
9. Email around once a week, with something to say
10. Culture change – free food, tell the story of what works, get some peer endorsement
11. Run pilot project pitch – you don’t have to do this forever but would you like to be part of our pilot – present the results back to them
12. More likely to adopt it because they’ve asked for it and bought into the process – they’ll never look back
13. Use the transformational index to measure social impact