Personalize emails
On average, personalized messages improve email campaign open rates by 14%, and conversions by 10%… but what is a ‘personalized’ message? A personalised message is a message that contains a person’s first name and salutation (e.g. Hi Mary) in either the subject line or body copy of an email. Currently, more than 60% of marketers are searching for a practical email personalization solution. If you’re an XL.Today™ subscriber, you’ve already found one of the best.
Your XL.Today™ subscription automatically selects your customers first name from your database segment and inserts it into the body copy of your email, making every email you send out from your XL.Today™ solution personalized. Simple.
A/B testing
The most important part of any retail email is the subject line, simply because if your customers don’t respond to the subject line, then they will not open the email and see your offer.
Best email practices recommend A/B testing, which simply means sending out the same message, with different subject lines to a small part of your database, then using open rates to determine what’s best. Your XL.Today™ subscription makes A/B testing simple.
You can add to separate subject lines when you are setting up your email and XL.Today™ sends out two separate emails, with different subject lines, to a small percentage of your customer database. In a relatively short time, your XL.Today™ learns which subject line delivered the highest open rates, then automatically sends the email with the highest performing subject line to the remaining 90% of your database segment. Simple.
Keep subject lines short
In addition to what is in your email subject line, the length of your subject line is also paramount. The highest performing emails have subject lines of 50 characters or less.
Subject lines with 60+ characters are considered the ‘dead zone’ for email response rates, so put some time into thinking and experimenting with the length of subject lines. Again, your XL.Today™ subscription allows you to graphically compare campaigns to see what works best for your brand and your customers.
Great images create great results
Great, optimized images make your product and services (and brand) look great. ‘Yes’, the right subject line is paramount, but once your customers open your email, you want them to either engage with your brand or complete an online or in-store transaction. A great image is the secret to getting this response.
If you’re an XL.Today™ customer, you already have possibly the most advanced and simple to use solution to manage and optimize images for use in email campaigns. You also have a digital image library that makes it practical to find images and create campaigns in minutes, without outside help.
As an XL.Today™ subscriber, you no longer have to guess what is the right sized image (for image fidelity and download speed) for your emails, as images are automatically formatted correctly.
Scheduling
The peak time for reading retail emails is between 8pm to 12am, average order size also increases in this zone, however, there is other great times to post.
Give something to get something
Incentivize your customers to engage more with your brand. Offer a voucher for additional personal information. Provide a gift with purchase, or just for coming into your store. Invite your customers to an exclusive in-store event. Figure out what value you place on a transaction or engagement, then design an email campaign around that offer. Your XL.Today™ account also allows you to measure how that offer plays out on other channels. With XL.Today™ you can easily compare similar offers and see what delivers the highest engagement and sales.
Optimize emails for mobile viewing
47% of all emails are now viewed on mobile devices, and retail emails may have much higher mobile views. It is for this reason that you need to ensure that your email templates are optimized for mobile viewing. If you have an XL.Today™ subscription, you already know all of your email templates have been optimized for mobile viewing.
Less is more
Keep your emails simple and focused. Less copy, targeted product offering for your database segment and great images. Your XL.Today™ subscription helps you develop more engaging, personalized and ‘customer-appropriate’ campaigns, simply and more often.
Create links to product pages on your website or e-commerce solution
One of the first questions you are asked when creating a campaign on your XL.Today™ solution is ‘campaign URL’. Why?
A campaign URL is the destination link for your email, SMS, Facebook, Twitter, and Instagram posts. It’s how you make it seamless for your customers to see your offer and respond. Without a ‘campaign URL’, your customers have to do all of the work to find out more or to make a purchase. When you add your ‘campaign URL’ at the start of your campaign creation, it automatically adds a ‘shop now’ button with the campaign link at the bottom of your email.