Promotional newsletter marketing

summary from bachelor thesis. "Promotional newsletter marketing improvements with the aim of increasing KPI’s and implementing new brand visuals - A case development study. Johanna Öman, 2019 "

Bellow is a summary of variables that may have a positive effect on newsletter KPI's. The summery is taken from my bachelor thesis. "Promotional newsletter marketing improvements with the aim of increasing KPI’s and implementing new brand visuals - A case development study. Johanna Öman, 2019 " During the case study was KPI's such as Opening rate, revenue, bounce rate and conversion rate increased. The user-friendliness of producing the newsletters was also increased, which led to an increase in the number of newsletters sent per month. The changes done to the newsletter was based on the theories bellow.

Newsletter KPI's

These are the most valuable KPI’s out of the viewpoint of a promotional marketing newsletter with the aim of selling products.

• Delivery Rate – The percentage of the number of emails delivered divided by the number of emails sent.

• Bounce rate – The percentage of the number of emails that is returned by a email server divided by the emails sent

• Open Rate – The percentage of the number of e-mails opened divided by the number of emails delivered.

• Unsubscription rate – The percentage of the number of unsubscriptions divided of email delivered

• Clickthrough rate – The percentage of the number of clicks divided by the number of emails delivered.

• Website traffic – The amount of traffic that a newsletter generates to the website

• Conversion rate – The percentage of sells divided by the number of emails delivered.

(Dodson, 2016b; Gunelius, 2018; Hudák et al., 2017)

Variables that may affect the KPI's positively

1.1 Newsletter Layout

The newsletter template is recommended to be set to 600 pixels wide and a maximum of three columns wide. This ensures that the newsletter is easy to read on desktop, tablets, and smartphones. Preferably would the template also be responsible according to screen size so that it would switch to one column width when reading upon small screen devices. (Amunwa, 2019; Bly, 2018; Coles, 2017, pp. 170–174). The newsletter template is recommended to be created in HTML code so that all newsletter applications can read and display the newsletter correctly. (Bly, 2018; Gunelius, 2018)

According to a study made by Kumar and Salo (2016), from Oulu Business School, are email read in the shape of a U. Therefore, important links and call-to-actions should be placed on the left side rather than on the right side. There is also a suggestion of putting brands on the top shelf of product displays and information, such as price on the right lower shelf. (Kumar and Salo, 2016)

There is a suggestion of avoiding having important information imbedded in pictures to make sure that the receiver sees the important information. If using pictures should alternative texts be used so that some content would be displayed in case of the pictures not loading (Coles, 2017, p. 172). One also wants the newsletter to have some text content, divided into smaller sections to keep the message clear to read and focus on the products. Thus when designing the layout, should these factors be taken into consideration. (Amunwa, 2019; Bly, 2018; Dodson, 2016b; Gunelius, 2018; Mullin, 2015)

If the content of the newsletter is long, it is suggested to divide the layout into sections with middle headers so that the information is easier to absorb.

(Amunwa, 2019; Gunelius, 2018)

1.2 Newsletter Visuals

Good looking visuals that appear professional is an effective way of getting the viewers' attention and interest. It also increases the trust and professional feel towards the brand. A feeling of trust has a direct correlation with increased KPI's. Further, color choices can help with communicating the brand. For budget retail brands are usually intense base colors associated. (Jefferson and Tanton, 2015, pp. 19–20; Slade-Brooking, 2016, p. 57) Colors should also be picked so that it goes according to the brand's theme colors to improve brand awareness. According to Chieri (2018), red is an activating color that increases adrenalin and makes you want to move, which goes well in hand with the sports brand.

Professional visuals include good looking graphics, pictures, colors, and fonts. Newsletters containing colorful highlight pictures appear to have a positive effect on especially CTR, subscriber size, website traffic, and conversion rate. (Bly, 2018; Dodson, 2016b, p. 138; Gunelius, 2018; Mullin, 2015). However, it is recommended to use light colors for product display, simple graphics and contain an airy feeling throughout the newsletter template, so that the reader is not overwhelmed. (Amunwa, 2019; Hanna et al., 2015; Layton, 2016)

It is recommended to use standard HTML fonts to make sure that the visual look of the text appears the same independent of the application used for reading the newsletter. (Amunwa, 2019; Coles, 2017, p. 171)

1.3 Newsletter content

All theories discussed the importance of a well thought of content. Sending out newsletter marketing just to hit a newsletter interval amount does not appear to be a good idea. A short newsletter with interesting content that is relevant to the customer is highly spoken of. (Bly, 2018, p. 172; Coles, 2017, p. 169; Dodson, 2016b, p. 126; Gunelius, 2018, p. 187; Hanna et al., 2015; Layton, 2016) Sending emails that are not relevant to the receiver will risk dropping opening rates and increase unsubscription rate (Dodson, 2016b, p. 137).

It is suggested that it is better to display six products in a promotional marketing newsletter rather than 32. Too many choices to choose from seems to be unnecessary work that does not have any positive effect on the KPI’s. (Layton, 2016)

Slade-Brooking (2016), suggest that it also is important to keep it simple when displaying products, with as little unnecessary text as possible as the attention might be driven away from the products. (Slade-Brooking, 2016, p. 42) Keeping also in mind that people usually scroll through the newsletter at high speed, long text sections will most likely not be read. Text sections should thereby be short and high focused. (Bly, 2018; Coles, 2017, p. 171; Dodson, 2016b, p. 1; Gunelius, 2018; Layton, 2016; Leszczynski, 2019; MacDonald, 2019) However, the newsletter should in total include a fair amount of text so that the newsletter does not end up in the spam bin. Chiere (2018) suggests a text to picture rate of 75/25. Also, Dodson (2016 p.126) and Coles (2017 p. 173) discuss the importance of text content to avoid the spam bin.

Newsletter, including videos or moving pictures (gifs), appears to perform better than still pictures when it comes to CTR. (Amunwa, 2019; Coles, 2017, p. 173; Del Rowe, 2016; Leszczynski, 2019) However, these forms of moving pictures are usually big in size and might harm opening rates since they might be interpreted as spam. When making the newsletter content, the pictures should ideally be under 1MB and 72dpi so that it does not affect the loading time negatively. (Coles, 2017, p. 173; Gunelius, 2018; Voigt, 2016) According to Coles (2017) is the maximum size of newsletters 100 kb, everything over that risks being classified as spam. The average newsletter size in Europe is 30 kb. (Coles, 2017, p. 169; Voigt, 2016)

According to Bly (2018), one should avoid sending a lot of newsletters with only product sales content. He argues that it will lead to the customers getting uninterested and opting-out from the newsletter subscription. (Bly, 2018, p. 172)

According to Jefferson and Tanton (2015), the marketing content should conclude these aspects, in order to build a good relationship with the customers.

• Helpful- The content answers people’s questions.

• Entertaining – The content awakens an emotion or inspires the reader.

• Authentic - The content is real and genuine.

• Relevant – The content is relevant, interesting and meaningful to the reader

• Timely – The content is reflecting current times and happenings.

(Jefferson and Tanton, 2015, pp. 97–98)

1.4 Call-to-action

By adding call-to-action buttons instead of text links are the CTR and conversion rates expected to improve. A good call-to-action is clear and should be close to the marketing message. It is better to use fewer CTA’s than too many since it can have the effect of having too many things to shoes from. (Bly, 2018; Dodson, 2016b; Gunelius, 2018, p. 175; MacDonald, 2019)

Bly (2018) suggests that the same CTA should be repeated two times, once in the beginning and once in the bottom of the newsletter. He also suggests making the CTA button a minimum of 44 px so that it easy to read on all devices.

1.5 Titles and preheaders

Titles should be well thought of and not too long. The first three words are the most important ones that gather the attention of the receiver (Dodson, 2016b, p. 138) . The text's tone of voice should match the voice of the brand It is also important that the titles are not misleading and in line with the content of the newsletter (Media, 2019). To get the best attention of the receiver is suggestions of the following found for the title content:

· Ask a question

· Including emojis

· Call-to-action

· Use urgency to trigger or fare of missing out on something good.

(Dodson, 2016a, p. 138; Hall, 2017; Mullin, 2015; Oulette, 2019)

Newsletters containing a preheader is opened and clicked on more than those not containing one. (Leszczynski, n.d.) In an A/B test by Burstein (2016), on newsletters with and without preheaders, did the CTR increase with 17 % by only adding preheaders. This suggests that preheaders are an excellent way of increasing CTR.

There could also be a good idea to include a personalized message in the newsletter, such as the respondents first name. Companies that chose to personalize their newsletter marketing tend to score higher on opening rates, CTR, and conversion rates. (Del Rowe, 2016; Dodson, 2016b, p. 138; Leszczynski, 2019; MacDonald, 2019) According to Bly (2018) are 56 % more likely to buy a product through newsletter marketing if the message is personalized (Bly, 2018, p. 82).

1.6 User experience

Responsive design is high on everyone’s priority list of a good newsletter marketing template. Newsletters are read more on smartphones than on desktop these days, and it is expected to increase its lead the upcoming years. (Bly, 2018, pp. 173–174; Dodson, 2016b, pp. 140–141; Hanna et al., 2015, pp. 38–39; van Rjin, 2019) According to Budget Sports statistics are around 65 % of their newsletters opened on mobile devices, which indeed is a majority.

According to Hubspot.com are newsletters that are displayed incorrectly on mobile phones deleted within seconds. Therefore, the content of the newsletter should be easily readable on all devices and applications. (Del Rowe, 2016; Hott, 2019; HubSpot, n.d.; Mullin, 2015)

Some references go as far as suggesting building the newsletter mainly for mobile usage and secondary for desktop usage, to make sure that the content works well for smartphones. (Hub-spot.com, 2018; MacDonald, S 2019).

These are the found guidelines for mobile-friendly templates:

• Font size of 17 to 22 pixels,

• Big CTA buttons that are easy to click with a minimum size of 44 pixels,

• Short copy that is easy to read.

• Short content so that you do not have to scroll too much,

• Single column layout so that the content is not too small

(Bly, 2018, pp. 173–174; Coles, 2017, pp. 171–174; Gunelius, 2018, p. 58)

1.7 Email sending interval and time.

According to MacDonald (2019), companies that send 15-30 emails a month get higher CTR than those sending less. However, the content should still stay relevant to the customer despite the high sending rate. If having trouble keeping the content valuable for the customer, a sending rate of 2 -3 newsletters a month is recommended. (Dodson, 2016b, p. 138; Harbin, 2019; Leszczynski, 2019; MacDonald, 2019) The sending rate should also be adjusted depending on what that is advertised. If the newsletter is selling products that are easy impulse buys, such as fashion, a slightly higher sending rate than average is recommended. (Leszczynski, 2019)

If subscription size and KPI’s are starting to drop, it might be an indication that the sending rate is too vigorous and is thus affecting negatively on the performance. (Bly, 2018, p. 1; Dodson, 2016b, p. 143; Leszczynski, 2019, p. 172) Also, Layton (2016) speaks of the importance of not sending too often, since it might annoy the customer.(Layton, 2016)

Theories state that it is hard to pinpoint the best time for sending newsletters. However, researches show that newsletters are usually opened right away or a couple of hours after being received. There is a rapid decrease in engagement rates after a couple of hours after the sending, and only a tiny amount is opened later than the sending day. It becomes essential to know and understand the sending list; when do the majority typically have time to open and read the incoming newsletters? What are they interested in, and when? (Dodson, 2016b, pp. 136–143). According to Michal Leszczynski (2019) and MacDonald (2019), are the best times early in the morning around 7-9 am, at lunch around 1-2 pm, and in the evening around 6-7 pm. Tuesday, Wednesday, and Thursday are according to theories the best sending days for newsletters.(Anonymous, 2015; GetResponse, n.d.; Leszczynski, 2019; MacDonald, 2019)

However, some contradicting theories were found on which days were best for newsletter sending. Leszczynski n.d. (2019) Suggest that weekdays are the best days to send a newsletter to increase CTR. Also, MacDonald, S (2019) suggests that the best days for sending are Saturday and Sunday. By analyzing the case company’s KPI’s data according to sending days, the optimal sending day is hopefully spotted. When the best sending days and times are spotted is there an suggestion of making that sending time an habit, so that the receivers will start to anticipate the newsletter. (Anonymous, 2015)

Summary of variables that potentially effect newsletter KPI’s

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