Happy Monday, marketers. Below is some recent email-marketing related news to help get your workweek off to an informed start. Have a great week!
Worried about IOS 10’s unsubscribe button? Maybe you shouldn’t be.
Tink Taylor, writing at Business 2 Community, addresses the question that many email marketers may be asking following the addition, with Apple’s launch of IOS 10, of an unsubscribe button on all messages that come from mailing lists: “Is everyone going to leave my mailing list?”
Taylor has good news to share: “If you collect and use good data, and your email content is timely and relevant, then the new iOS10 addition isn’t going to affect you,” he writes. “The aim of the button is to stop complaints and if you’re getting complaints, you need to ask yourself why: is your content poor and irrelevant, are the broadcasts of your emails badly timed, or are you sending to bad data? If you answer yes to any of the above then you probably are at risk of losing people, but that’s not necessarily a bad thing. Understanding why they’re complaining (now unsubscribing in iOS10) is much more important, and this information can be gleaned through the unsubscribe process. You’d rather lose the people who risk ruining your reputation and focus on the ones who want to hear from you.”
It’s time to say ‘goodbye’ to the fold and ‘hello’ to the scroll
Writing on the Litmus blog, Kayla Lewkowicz looks at the newspaper origins of the phrase “above the fold,” which email users adopted to describe the need to include their most important content, and calls to action (CTA), high in their messages. She argues that as mobile continues to cement its place as the platform on which most emails are read, email marketers should shift their focus from “above the fold” to “above the scroll.” That means that the content at the top of the message should be compelling enough to ensure that subscribers scroll all the way through it.
“Because of widespread belief that attention spans have shortened and that people don’t read, marketers became obsessed with cramming their important information and CTA above the fold,” she writes. “But scrolling is actually easier than clicking, and subscribers come to expect it. Above the scroll means that you have to entice your reader to scroll down – show them why they should read your email in its entirety – by providing compelling and memorable content up top,” Lewkowicz writes.
“The goal is to set expectations that your content will be relevant and interesting all the way down the email, and to be memorable right away, thus initiating the scroll,” she writes. “The most important thing to remember about the scroll? Set up expectations as a brand that provides compelling enough content that subscribers will want to scroll—and keep scrolling.”
Personalization seen as key for success this holiday season
Jess Nelson, writing at Email Marketing Daily, looks at the results of a recent study by Accenture Interactive that indicate that “Consumers are more likely to shop online and in-store at retailers who personalize their offerings or messaging.” The digital ad agency queried 1500 United States and United Kingdom consumers to find out how personalization affects their online and in-store buying decisions.
“Fifty-six percent of respondents acknowledged they were more likely to shop at a retailer that recognized them by name, 65 percent of consumers expressed a preference for retailers that remembered their purchase history and 58 percent of respondents were more likely to shop at stores that offered relevant recommendations based on past purchases or preferences,” Nelson writes.
He reports that the National Retail Federation (NRF) predicts that holiday sales in 2016 will grow 3.6 percent to $655.8 billion in November and December, led by a strong online growth of between 7 percent and 10 percent year-over-year – but adds that Deloitte and eMarketer anticipate even more robust holiday sales growth this year.
Seven ‘classic’ email marketing mistakes – and how to avoid them
“Everybody makes mistakes,” writes Pam Neely at Business 2 Community. “Some are big. Some are little. Many are avoidable. In email, there are so many mistakes you can make that to list them all would turn this blog post into a short book.” Neely lists what she terms “seven classic email marketing mistakes”: The broken-link email; a botched subject line; not optimizing for mobile; buying a list; mailing to people without their permission; never cleaning up your list; and not sending emails at all.
She advises that email marketers need to be ready for exactly how they will deal with specific types of mistakes (e.g., using a bad subject line or sending a draft message): “Write down a plan of how to deal with it if it happens, AND create a reasonable checklist of things you can do to prevent it from happening. Then stick with that checklist. Pin it to your wall if you have to – even tape it to the edge of your computer screen.” She also suggests considering an apology message (or at least an acknowledgement) as a follow-up to any emails containing errors