Anatomy of A Five Star Email Hubspot
Anatomy of A Five Star Email Hubspot
Anatomy of A Five Star Email Hubspot
EP
The Anatomy of
a five-Star Email.
A Deep Dive
into the 12 Core
Components of an
Exceptional Email
A publication of
DI
VE
HubSpots All-in-One
Marketing Software.
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Video Overview
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Marketing analytics
Analyze your web traffic
and see which sources
are generating the most
leads.
email
Send personalized,
segmented emails based
on any information in your
contact database.
s
U
search optimization
Improve your rank in
search engines by finding
and tracking your most
effective keywords.
Lead management
Track leads with a
complete timeline-view of
their interactions with your
company
N
q
Blogging
Create blog content
quickly while getting SEO
tips and best practice
pointers as you type.
social media
Publish content to your
social accounts, then
nurture leads based on
their social engagement.
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Follow me on twitter.
@IIIIISMITHIIIII
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few years ago, marketers were decrying the death of email. Instead of fading away a la
Myspace and mood rings, email remains one of the most productive means of generating leads and
selling products online. According to a 2013 National DMA email report, 89% of marketers consider
email important to their organizational goals. Rather than dying out, 56% of email markets plan to focus
more on their email campaigns in 2013.
How do you make sure this focus pays off? By making sure you are maximizing conversions and
clickthrough rates with every email you send. Managers of five-star restaurants spend hours combining
the right ingredients for their recipes. Similarly, creating a five-star email marketing campaign involves
more than laying out some content and crossing your fingers emails with killer clickthrough rates have
a special mix of the right content, a stellar layout, and the right underlying strategy.
In the rush to ship emails out the door, we know it can be difficult to design the perfect email layout
every time - trust us, we send out more than 8 million emails a month! With that kind of volume, we
have spent a lot of time learning how to test and improve our email marketing.
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To help you learn from our experience, we put together this two part resource:
Part One: This pocket guide.
In the next sections, you will find a printable tip sheet that displays 12 components of a five-star
email. The remaining pages walk you through each of the 12 elements in detail to help you understand
the strategy behind each of these email sections, and explain how to optimize your email marketing
campaigns.
Part Two: Five free downloadable email templates.
In conjunction with this guide, we have built five downloadable email templates that you can use. We
worked with expert designers to implement our best practices into great looking email templates.
Download them now to start making your own five-star emails.
According to Magill research, marketers earn an estimated $39 for every $1 they spent on email
marketing in 2012. Use this two-part offer to start developing an email strategy to maximize your own
results.
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Here are a few guidelines to ensure your subject lines entice your readers to click.
.Address your readers concerns: Put yourself in your audiences shoes and write your subject lines
to address their needs. What is interesting about your product and service from their perspective?
The key to generating clickthroughs is answering questions that your prospects care about.
Personalize: Consider including your readers first name in your email subject line. According to
our own Dan Zarrellas Science of Email research, adding a name in the subject line significantly
increases clickthrough rates.
Use actionable language: Use action words to inspire your readers to click. As you are writing
actionable subject lines, remember this requires a bit more than checking your thesaurus. You want
your action verbs to inspire your audience to immediately click on your email by instilling urgency
and excitement for people reading your subject lines.
For example, in an email inviting people to a hockey legend dinner, the email subject line should
read, Dine with Bruins legend Bobby Orr on Saturday, rather than a more generic (and less
actionable) Local Boston Sports Legend Meal. The former email spells out a dinner that will
happen on Saturday, and uses Dine to help the reader envision themselves at a dinner table.
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.Be explicit: Clearly spell out what the email contains. You want the reader to understand exactly
what they will get when they open your email. For example, the subject line [Free Collection] 101
Companies Rocking Social Media tells my reader exactly what they will get by downloading our
collection. Similarly, if you are running a special 20% off special, allude to that specific number in
the first third of your subject line.
Scan your subject lines for clarity: MarketingExperiments is often quoted as saying clarity
trumps persuasion when writing online copy. A clear, easily-understandable subject line is vital for
generating email clickthroughs. Occasionally, when marketers try too hard to be clever, they end up
just making the reader think huh? You want your emails to grab attention, but not at the expense
of clearly conveying the emails content.
Deploy Brevity: Email subject lines will get cut off if theyre too long, particularly on mobile devices.
We recommend using subject lines with fewer than 50 characters to make sure readers scanning
their emails will read the entire subject line.
Be consistent: Your email subject line is making a promise to your reader about what you will
deliver in your message. Make sure that you make good on that commitment.
Do not promise a 50% off coupon in your subject line unless that coupon is prominently displayed
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in your email. Similarly, dont advertise 50% off if that discount only applies to a small segment of
your products. A bait and switch email engenders too much distrust to be worthwhile. If people
think they have been cheated by your subject lines, they will stop opening your emails, which leads
to lower open-, clickthrough-, and conversion rates, as well as higher unsubscribes. No good.
Avoid SPAM triggers: Email spammers rely heavily on certain words to boost their open rates.
Because of these dark hat practices, email providers employ special spam filters to keep out any
emails containing certain words. Email marketers should be careful about using words like Cash,
Quote, and Save to make sure they dont inadvertently get caught by a spam trap. We recently
wrote a blog article that includes a full list of spam trigger words.
Spam traps look at more than just subject lines to determine if they will deliver your email. For
example, Free is a traditionally spammy subject line word, but you will notice that we included it
in our 101 Companies Rocking Social Media subject line. We did a lot of background research to
make sure this word wouldnt work against us. Because HubSpot has a great sender reputation,
and we were sending out the email from a legitimate person, including free in this line didnt
impact the emails deliverability. There are several tools online you can use to test if your subject
lines will raise any red flags.
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adding the senders picture to the bottom of your emails, and signing off the email with their signature
or nickname.
Experiment with how to position your from sender. Watch your open rates to determine if people
prefer someone they hear from frequently, such as the relationship manager or sales rep, or if your
company CEO nets more clicks. You may find that your best email open rates actually come from a
combination of a persons name and company name, e.g., Shannon Johnson, HubSpot. Including both
a name and a company brand can help to put context around your email marketing.
If you are creating five-star content, people will frequently look forward to your regular email
communications, and open your messages because it comes from your company so let them know
its you!
Finally, whomever you choose to include as your sender, be conscious that people will expect an
answer to any emailed replies, so have someone tracking your email accounts, and be prepared to
address any questions or concerns you receive from your list.
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3. Company Branding.
Make sure your email marketing templates echo your overall company brand. You want the people
opening your email to recognize who you are, and remember why they clicked on your email.
While they dont need to be identical, the design elements in your emails should echo your company
style. A consistent brand image, language, and tone helps your audience relate to your content and
expands your overall brand experience. Consistent brand style also conveys the professionalism and
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planning that goes into your email marketing efforts or at the very least, its a great step toward faking
it!
The easiest way to ensure a consistent email style is to create, and regularly utilize, email templates,
such as the ones that accompany this offer! In your template design, include your company colors,
logo and any other important corporate branding elements.
When designing your branded templates, dont overdo it, and pay attention to how long it takes
to download your email messages. Emails with tons of design elements big images or video, for
example can create problems in prospects inboxes than more basic HTML emails.
Some of your recipients inboxes will default to prevent images from downloading, or in other words, it
will take too long to find and download all those images. You want the visual design of your emails to
enhance the overall experience, not get in the way of the content, so make sure your design doesnt
inadvertently decrease your open rates.
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4. .Personalized Content.
According to our Science of Email research, personalized emails improve clickthrough rates by 14%.
This is an easy win! Simply include a persons first name in your email greeting to net a double-digit
boost in email clickthroughs.
Despite the impressive benefits of email personalization, a surprising 68% of marketers arent utilizing
personalized content in their email marketing despite the fact that a third of marketers believe
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5. Appropriate Segment.
Your database most likely includes both customers and prospects all of whom are at varying stages
of their buying cycles. When designing a five-star email experience, pay attention to how you segment
your list and align your email strategies to capitalize on your lists needs.
Segmentation is extremely effective in boosting email performance metrics. We found that 39% of
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email marketers who practice list segmentation see better open rates, while 28% have reduced optout and unsubscribe rates. On the other hand, companies that sent email to a single list had a lower
average email click-through rate (7.3%) than those that segmented their overall email database into
two to six lists (8.3%).
As you can imagine, in reaction to these results, 84% of B2B marketers use some kind of segment
targeting in their email campaigns.
If you are looking to start segmenting your list, consider the following to begin your list parsing:
Demographic data: Personal data such as geography, age, gender, job function, industry, seniority,
etc. can all offer insight on what kind of email content will be most interesting to your target
audience.
Personas: The best marketing strategies are built around detailed buyer personas that help inform
their content development. If you havent yet built out your buyer personas, check out this article to
help you create them. Once you have defined your personas, use these targeted personas to design
email content that appeals to your personas distinct challenges and concerns.
Purchase history: Any past purchase or browsing history can also help focus email sends to
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specific interests. Purchase history can be used to target thank you and cross-sell emails. In your
secondary CTAs, recommend additional services or complementary products your audience might
enjoy based on past purchases.
Lifecycle stage: Even if you dont have explicit personas, segment your list based on your
customers purchase cycles. Set up separate lead nurturing tracks for those at the top of your
sales funnel, in the middle of your sales funnel, and at the bottom of the sales funnel. By providing
information linked to questions your prospects face along their decision-making process, your
content will better push your leads down the funnel, and ultimately close sales.
.Content engagement: Look at your email analytics. Is there a specific segment that always
downloads a certain kind of content? What can you infer about these content trends to improve
your email list performance?
At HubSpot, we found that some of our leads and contacts are far more interested in certain
content topics than others. One of our segments frequently downloads information on sales and
marketing alignment, while another is far more interested in Pinterest marketing. We segment our
list based on the topics our contacts have showed interest in, and make sure to offer additional
complimentary offers based on this interest and engagement. Look at your lists to see if similar
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trends emerge, and incorporate these insights into your email strategy.
As its popularity grows, segmentation is becoming more efficient. New marketing automation, email
workflows and triggered smart lists make collecting and segmenting your email database more
streamlined. Use these ideas above to begin cutting up your database. You will learn along the way,
and you can improve your practices as you watch what works.
When thinking about your segmentation, consider how people will open your messages. To be worthy
of five-star status, your email needs to be readable on all devices. First, check to see that your email
messages are mobile optimized. As iPad and SmartPhone technology evolve, more people are
bypassing their laptops reading your emails on a mobile device - email opens rates on smartphones
and tablets have increased 80% over the last six months. Check out this blog for more details on
optimizing your email messaging for mobile devices. Another viewing best practices is to create a textonly version of all your email messages, for those on your mailing list with less advanced technology.
This additional step ensures that your good content will be delivered to even those without HTMLenabled inboxes. Most email tools make it relatively painless to create a text-only version of your send.
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Your value proposition should clearly address the key points of your offer in brief, compelling language.
For a standout value proposition, utilize these tactics:
.Clearly highlight what email recipients will get from downloading your ebook, purchasing your
product, etc. For example, the sentence five free downloadable email templates informs the
reader in several ways. We explicitly tell people the number of templates they receive in conjunction
with this offer (five), as well as how to access them (downloadable), and how much they cost (free).
Incorporate statistics to emphasize what problem your offer is solving. For example, we know that
companies who tested and optimized their value propositions saw a 15% increase in their marketing
ROI, according to MarketingSherpa. As a result, we included this section on value propositions as a
key component of a five-star email, to help you significantly boost your overall email performance.
.There are also multiple visual elements that can improve your emails. For example, minimize page
friction by keeping your emails clean of clutter and multiple messages. Prominently feature a button
to download your offer. We do this after we position the value proposition so that people are excited
to download. You should also add multiple links for your offer in the email content, in the event that
your audience prefers clicking on hyperlinks. You can also use bullet points to break up the text and
emphasize key takeaways.
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In addition to developing a compelling a value proposition, you want your email copy to provide
context on why your reader has received this email. People have notoriously short memories when
it comes to what links theyve clicked or what pages theyve visited. Acknowledging why they are
receiving your email reduces anxiety. For example, in a welcome email, you want to remind a new
subscriber specifically how, when and where your reader signed up for your email list.
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optimizing their CTAs extremely valuable. Whether you are looking at a CTA in your email or landing
page, its clear that marketers need to think about how they are positioning their CTA buttons.
Your call to action button includes two elements:
The button itself: Make sure your button is visually distinct from the rest of your email template,
and place it in the top third of your email layout what we call above the fold. At HubSpot,
we position our CTAs immediately after the value proposition. We have just explained whats
exceptional about our offers, and we want the reader to immediately download our link before they
get distracted.
The button copy: Most people scan their emails rather than actually reading them, so minimize the
copy to ensure people will read it. As a general rule of thumb, CTAs should run between 90 and 150
characters and include explanatory subjects and verbs.
When designing this minimal button content, keep these key items in mind:
Tell the reader specifically what action they must take to receive the offer (e.g. Download)
Create a sense of urgency using words such as Now, Today, etc.
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.Tie the CTA to the offer itself (e.g. for a live webinar, say Register For the Webinar Now or
Reserve Your Seat Today).
.Avoid vague language such as Submit, which doesnt inspire the reader or tell them anything
new.
Call-to-action buttons are intended to get noticed. To boost your email clickthrough rates, you want
your CTAs to stand out on the page, communicate a clear value, and compel your visitor to click on
them. Great design, strong word choice, and concise sentences will get you there.
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8..Relevant Image.
Incorporating images is another tool to differentiate your email marketing. Visual cues are great tools to
ensure every element of your email template engages your audience. Our Science of Email Marketing
research , revealed that 65% of people prefer emails with mostly images rather than text.
People simply like pictures - probably because 90% of information transmitted to the brain is visual,
and visuals are processed 60,000X faster in the brain than text. (3M Corporation and Zabisco) With so
many people scanning your emails online, breaking up your text with a professional looking image is a
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You spend so much time developing valuable content make it easy for your list share your offers with
their own networks. Add social sharing buttons to your email templates so that readers can share all of
your material with their networks.
In addition to making your content shareable, use email campaigns to grow your social media reach
by adding follow buttons or links to your email templates. You developed five-star content, which
means people will want to further engage with your brand. Give your email list a chance to do so by
encouraging your subscribers to follow you on Twitter, like your Facebook page, subscribe to your
YouTube channel, or follow your company updates on LinkedIn.
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10..Secondary Call-to-Action.
If your email recipients have successfully read all the way through the bottom of your email, make sure
you provide some way for them to dive deeper into your content. The best way to do this is by adding
a secondary call-to-action button at the bottom of your page sort of like the P.S. on a handwritten
letter or a complimentary dessert at a great restaurant.
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Use this secondary CTA to provide additional information on your product, push people further down
your funnel, or to promote a cross-selling opportunity. If your email subscribers are ready for a more
product-focused offer, such as a free trial of your product or a personal consultation, you want to be
sure to provide that information, rather than asking a potential conversion to go hunt for your pricing
they probably wont.
The key to a secondary call-to-action is to make sure it compliments, but doesnt compete with, the
primary objective of your email. If you clutter the page with too many CTAs, you will confuse your
reader, and they will likely become frustrated and stop reading. Still, adding a smaller secondary CTA
will boost engagement among your more inspired readers.
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Even a savvy online audience may have some concerns about privacy as many have received spam
emails or other unsolicited marketing at one point or another. Give your email subscribers peace of
mind and a sense of security by including a link to your companys privacy policy.
In your privacy policy, tell your subscribers exactly what you will do with their email address plus any
other information you think will help alleviate their privacy concerns.
You dont want to blow your five-star email status or waste a conversion - because you failed to dot
all your is. Using a privacy policy will help combat any potential anxiety your email sales or lead
generation sign-ups may cause. This is an easy addition to all your email templates that will help boost
your clickthrough metrics.
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In addition to being a legal requirement, adding an unsubscribe link is smart email practice. You only
want to send emails to people who actually want to hear from you. Dont try to trick people into staying
on your list make your unsubscribe link clearly visible and offer a simple unsubscribing process.
As we mentioned before, online readers scan most of your content. Rather than hunting for an
unsubscribe link, 47% of recipients just click the spam button in their email. (Sherpa 2010 Email
Marketing Benchmark Report) Someone opting-out of your email marketing will not hurt your
deliverability reputation, but a complaint for neglecting the unsubscribe link certainly will.
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Conclusion.
onsumers remain committed to their email inboxes. In fact, 77% of readers prefer being
Your email list is your most engaged audience these are the people who have opted into your sales or
lead generation lists and agreed to let you market to them. Make the most of this resource using these
five free templates and add the ingredients above to produce your own five-star email marketing.
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