Just been reviewing last month's email newsletter campaigns with two very different Bristol clients - one a gastro pub chain, one that sells complex software products.   The percentage of people who opened the newsletters ranged from 25% to 37% and clicks through to the website of 50% and 25% respectively.  All excellent figures.  Moreover, both received bookings or leads within hours of distributing the emails.

I often hear that email marketing should be compared with direct marketing where 1% response rates is good and 2% is outstanding.

So what do these two very different email marketing campaigns have in common?   Both are:

• sent to people who have given their permission to be sent these emails

• compelling subject line

• attractively styled so that receivers are reassured even before they read anything

• have content that is targetted at the needs of the audience

• strong calls to action

• links from the email take visitors through to the relevent landing pages
  

So best practice really does work.

Having an list of the contents with anchor links further down to content below has been one of the items that has helped to improve the percentage of readers who click through to the website.

However, one element that we need to work on is growing the list by the 'forward to a friend / colleague' link.  This seems to be rarely used.  On the next sending of the emails we'll test moving the link higher up the email and consider offering an incentive such as entry into a price draw for each friend that an email is forwarded to.

Marketing Sherpa published a survey last September that showed that 43% of marketeers were planning to reduce emailing to rented lists (with 6% planning to increase this activity).  Whereas in the same survey 48% of marketeers were planning to increase emailing to house lists (with 14% planning to reduce this activity). Sorry can't give you a link to it as its members' only content.

I'm always nervous of surveys results so it's good to have practical results.