1. INTRODUCTIONOver the years we’ve run hundreds of email campaigns and we’ve come to realise our audience is unique. We’ve learnt to tailor campaigns to their behaviours and seen some great results.

We’ve also learnt which campaigns cause our members to ignore our emails or worse, unsubscribe from them completely.

This guide is designed to help you see the same great results we see by showing you how to tailor your email to our unique audience. It also helps us maintain our email subscription audience by minimising the chances of our emails being unsubscribed from.

EMAIL GUIDE & TECH SPECSALL EMAILS FROM TSR ARE QUALITY CHECKED TO ENSURE THEY MEET OUR REQUIREMENTS AND TECHNICAL SPECIFICATIONS BEFORE BEING SENT OUT

CLIENTS WHO FOLLOWED OUR RECOMMENDATIONS DOUBLED THEIR CLICK TO OPEN RATES!

CONTENTS

1. Introduction

2. Technical specifications & requirements

3. What our users respond to

4. What our users DO NOT respond to

5. Are you following best practise?

2. TECHNICAL SPECIFICATIONS &REQUIREMENTSThis is the criteria we use to assess the quality of any email content we’re asked to send out to our members so please review it carefully.

SUMMARY OF RECOMMENDATIONSThis is the criteria we use to assess the quality of any email content we’re asked to send out to our

members so please review it carefully.

SUBJECT LINE

• Keywords (e.g. subject, course, name of institution) in first four words

• Subject line variant for split test (see Best Practise guide)

CONTENT• Maximum of 90 words in main message

• Summary of message to appear above the fold

• Standalone CTA – not lost in text

• Colour scheme: maximum of three colours

SUBJECT LINE SPECS• Maximum 40 characters (including spaces)

AUDIENCE SPECS

• At least two levels of segmentation e.g. age, subject, location

TECH/ CONTENT SPECS

• Html format; no CSS or Javascript

• Maximum 600 pixels wide

• Maximum of four images

• 200 kb max for all imagery

• Maximum of 200 words

• Alternative text for all images

• Mobile responsive

• Title/ main message to appear above the fold

3. WHAT TSR MEMBERS RESPOND TOCLEAR AND CONSISE MESSAGING On average people only read 20% of an email they receive. That’s a small window to get your message across to TSR members so make sure your wording is to the point.

STRONG CALL-TO-ACTION (CTA)Don’t let your main CTA get lost in a body of text. If you want a user to click through to your site, make the link a big, bold, button they can’t miss.

MOBILE OPTIMISED CONTENT80% of our users open their email on mobile. Bear in mind how much smaller your content will be on mobile. Always test send to make sure the formatting is correct, and the text is big enough to read.

MOBILE OPTIMISED SUBJECT LINEOn mobile, only the first five words will show up in the subject link. Ensure your subject line is engaging by including keywords that will appeal to them (course name, uni name etc).

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4. WHAT OUR USERS DO NOT RESPOND TOTOO MUCH TEXTStudents are busy, as are you, with a lot of messages coming through email, Twitter, Facebook, Instagram… the list goes on! Unless they’re highly engaged, they won’t take the time to read too much text. Get your message across in as few words as possible and focus on why they should click your CTA.

SMALL TEXT To be easy to read on mobile, make sure your text is all at least 15px.

THINK 'ABOVE THE FOLDWhat does your email look like when a user first opens it? The key space in your email is the top third, which needs to encourage the user to scroll down. Get the message across in this space; save space by keeping logos in the header small.

REMEMBER YOUR AUDIENCEWho are you targeting? Your messaging and design should reflect this. See the below email for an example: this email is targeted at students who are interested in the music business and are probably quite creative; the uni should use more imaginative content to capture their interest.

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5. ARE YOU FOLLOWING PRACTICE? Want to know a bit more about maximising your email’s performance? Here’s our list of the top best practise features that can make a big difference to both deliverability and user engagement.

SNIPPET TEXT The snippet is the piece of text that appears after the subject line in the inbox. This is taken from the first piece of text in your email.

By adding a piece of text to the top left of your email you can make it more engaging before a user has even opened it, like this:

If it’s not added, it will show the next bit of text in the email, which will often look like this:

Use the snippet to compliment your subject line, to entice the user into opening your email.

ADD SUBJECT LINE SPLIT TESTTo get the best open rate possible we recommend split testing your subject line. This will allow you to learn from your results and continually improve your email performance.

Mobile users will only see the first five or so words, so get your message across quickly. Don’t try to over-complicate it, just tell the user exactly what to expect from the email.

Here is an example of an inbox on mobile; see how little of the subject line is showing:

TARGETINGWhen thinking about your target audience, remember it’s quality, not quantity. Targeting your audience by age, interest, subjects, location and more will improve the performance of your send.

On average, our emails have a 23% higher open rate, and a 119% higher click to open rate, when they are sent to a highly targeted audience.

Without alt text:

IMAGE TO TEXT RATIO

To avoid your email content being a spam trigger, ensure you have around 40% images to 60% text. Not only will this improve deliverability, but it’ll keep your email from looking bare if the images don’t load (see below).

ALTERNATIVE TEXT FOR IMAGESIf a user receives an email and the pictures don’t load, it will show the alternative text describing the picture or message. Without this text, an email will have less meaning and appear more like spam.

With alt test:

CHECK SUBJECT LINE FOR SPAM TRIGGERSTo maximise your deliverability, be aware of words that will stop your email getting through spam filters.

Spam triggers include:

• Exclamation marks and percentages

• Capital letters

• Words such as ‘free’ and ‘offer’

See more spam trigger words here: https://blog.beeketing.com/wp-content/uploads/2015/09/infospam-01.jpg

THINK MOBILE - BUT BE RESPONSIVE TO ALL INBOX PROVIDERSSO important! On mobile our email can look wildly different on Gmail compared to other providers. Gmail will stack an email, which is fine but the design will need to take this into account.

Here is an example of an email designed to be responsive across different inboxes:

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