Email marketing secrets that most marketers don't know

Email marketing secrets that most marketers don’t knowBy Elizabeth Yin, October 30, 2014

Who am I?● EIR at 500● CEO/co-founder LaunchBit

(adtech for SaaS, Batch 2, acq by BuySellAds ‘14)

● Xoogler product marketing● BSEE Stanford, MBA MIT

Sloan

Today’s talk is on● Overview of email marketing● Improving your open rate● Improving your click-through-rate

Email marketing means so many different things...

Newsletters are a great business...

...but only if you

● Can get signups specifically for your newsletter

● Have high engagement (open rate / CTR)● Get scale ● Have high value brand advertisers in your

industry

Here are the numbers:● $20-$50CPMs for email ads● $100-$300CPMs for dedicated emails

100k subscriber list w/ daily email (at ave $30CPM) -> $1M revenue per year

But use transactional emails for marketing

● Emails should be ○ Dynamic○ Personalized○ Differentiated

What can transactional emails be used for?

● Keeping your audience engaged● Nurturing leads via drip sequence● Thanking your audience

What “numbers” should I be aiming for?

Letter from a YC founder

A pretty good open rate is 20%

But open rates decline

You need to look at cohorts

What does average open rate mean?

A couple ways to increase your open rate

A/B test subject lines ONLY if...

● You are sending the same transactional/drip emails over and over

● AND you send 100k+ emails per month

Try different subject line formats

Send at a different time

A couple ways to increase your click-through-rate

We analyzed lots of emails...

Most people click on the first or second link (< 5 links)

Put your call to action upfront

Breakdown of the campaigns we analyzed

Doing the math...

People click “evenly” on 5+ link emails

So, reduce your links...

Digest emails “teach” people to click

Non-black fonts have a significant impact on click-through-rate

One-column newsletters have a low impact on click-through-rate

Questions?elizabeth@500startups.com