Test Your Email Marketing Services

WRM-Media - Email Marketing Specialists

Morgan Stewart from Media Post recently advised that mass email marketing success was entirely dependent on prior testing.

Stewart said that the inbox is a ‘phenomenal equaliser’ demanding that brands of all shapes and sizes meet appropriate standards. A fair comment, as it is true that every email fights for a recipient’s attention from the same place with only its brand reputation and a subject line to stand it in good stead.

‘To improve, you need to try new stuff - a lot!’ he said.

‘However, change for the sake of change itself usually just perpetuates mediocrity. Give yourself (or your team) the freedom to push the limits while constantly comparing the results of these new approaches against a control."

Business standards for testing email campaign performance should be compared against their own previous experiences, in order to improve upon their best, as opposed to making a comparison to the rest of the industry.

Measuring Targeted Email Marketing

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A recent study by MarketingSherpa has suggested that many marketers struggle to continually deliver highly relevant content to a specific target audience.

Despite this, email remains one of the most valuable forms of communication in the majority of digital marketing strategies when focus is given to quality over quantity.

Measuring the return on investment of email marketing is notoriously difficult for many. It can be hard to monitor email responses and the rate of opening to sales/lead. Many companies that provide email marketing services will also provide you with a report upon campaign completion, which details the clicks, opens and unsubscribers to name a few.

To minimise the number of unsubscribers, businesses should be patient when building a targeted email list. One typically successful way of growing such a list is to ask website visitors to provide their email address in return for a service that indicates some of their interests. For example, if website visitors have to leave their email address in order to gain access to a downloadable white paper or extra content/news, you can be fairly sure they are interested in the content on offer.

WRM-Media’s consumer site Who-Remembers-Me.com requests that members agree to receive email marketing material in return for free membership to the site and as the site’s purpose is for members to reconnect with old friends, WRM can offer unparalleled data accuracy as well as an ability to measure the results of all email campaigns.

Small Businesses Benefit From Email Marketing

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Georgia Christian of Male Blaze has suggested that small businesses should be able to receive good ROI from email marketing thanks to its cost effectiveness. In an article for Marketing Web, she noted that the channel is an effective way to establish long lasting relationships with a wide audience of consumers.

"With each permission-based email campaign that your recipient opens, you are effectively establishing a trusting relationship with them," said Ms Christian.

"Your email messages will, over time, make your customers feel as though they are an important part of your company."

WRM-Media believe that email marketing can be a valuable tool to small businesses because it allows targeting towards either a very wide audience, which businesses would be unable to attain otherwise; it also enables targeting towards a very niche marketing if appropriate.  Small businesses can benefit from niche targeting if they cannot afford to lose emails sent to uninterested recipients.  Email marketing can be sent both en masse and to a niche market, making it a unique form of communication.

Adapting To Suit The Priority Inbox

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Hotmail has advanced its filtering techniques for email marketing recently but Gmail has upped its game with the new Priority Inbox. ESP’s user behaviour will now affect email campaign deliverability.

Emails will now be sorted in to three categories: ‘Priority’, ‘Starred’ and ‘Everything Else’. The content of email campaigns, the sender reputation and how recipients respond to previous email marketing messages from you, will all affect where your email campaign will be directed.

Consumers will be able to specify the kind of email marketing material they want to receive in their Priority Inbox as well as ‘starring’ emails to mark them as important.

This change to ESP layouts will undoubtedly affect the results of email marketing campaigns; therefore the importance of making your email campaigns relevant and targeting your email data will increase even further. Making email campaigns individual is more likely to ensure that they are delivered as priority messages.
The importance of adhering to best practice is now of more importance than ever; non responsive email addresses that are regularly targeted will result in you being marked as spam.

In terms of your creative, it is a good idea to have a text/image ratio that adheres to best practice, as this also enables you to include keywords. You should also consider how the email preview looks as well as the opened email campaign.

Being whitelisted with ESP’s will be crucial for good delivery. If subscribers add your sender address to their address book this also means that your email marketing will not be redirected so inviting them to do this will be beneficial for you.

The increased importance on relevancy means there is a necessity to listen to consumers and target them with appropriate email marketing material. This will enable the new priority inbox to have less of an effect.

Email List Marketing Issues

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According to ‘Direct Marketing News’, 30% of records in an email database list become inactive or change email address every year. This is often referred to as ‘list churn’. This can reduce email deliverability, click through rates, open rates and email campaign performance, resulting in decreased overall revenue. 


List churn means that you often have to spend money on customer acquisition email campaigns because with a 30% decrease in your email lists, it is necessary to find new consumers elsewhere.
Reasons for list churn include people who move home, move jobs – therefore making their work email address inactive, or they might switch email provider.
There is a need to strike the right balance with your email campaigns: if you send too frequently, you might annoy subscribers. Send them too infrequently and consumers could forget when or why they subscribed. 


The easiest ways to prevent list churn is to check your email list registrations – all records should be opt-in data only and all third parties should be checked thoroughly.
All unsubscribers must be blocked from your email lists straight away – better to do this than to be marked as spam which can have a negative effect on your credibility. You should also test all messages before sending email campaigns to ensure links and the overall creative sends properly through the email provider. 


In order to prevent list churn, it is possible to use something called ECOA (E-mail Change of Address), which updates the records in your email database that are no longer active or that bounce. To engage inactive consumers, you could develop a re-engagement campaign with welcome back offers or incentives to encourage them to start opening emails again. 

A list of active consumers is necessary for a healthy email database and is possible simply by keeping consumers happy and interested in the campaigns offered.