Table of Contents:
- Overview
- The Five-Step Email Marketing Process
- Build Team Awareness, Understanding & Readiness
- Develop Email Plan, Launch & Track Campaigns
- Establish Lead Management to Acquire Contacts
- Improve Email Content
- Track, Review & Refine
- Glossary of Email Marketing Terms
- Resources
- Getting Started with Constant Contact - By Constant Contact
Overview
Why Use Email Marketing?
Email marketing presents a tremendous opportunity for SCORE chapters to improve workshop attendance, reinforce the SCORE brand, acquire new clients and build relationships with local partners and funders.
Email also has the highest ROI of all direct response-marketing methods - over $45 for every dollar invested, according to the Direct Marketing Association - and is therefore a marketing tool of great interest and value to small businesses. It is vital that SCORE chapters quickly develop expertise in email marketing, exploit its potential in accomplishing their mission, and excel in the process of training small business in its use.
Our Approach
Like every business process, email marketing requires focused effort to set up and manage successfully. Fortunately, there are free or inexpensive tools that automate virtually every part of the process. Our approach is to provide SCORE chapters with a simple, easy-to-follow single source of information tailored for SCORE on how to set up an email marketing program that gets results. Our process has been developed with extensive input from email marketing experts, SCORE partners and vendors, and best of all, SCORE chapters that have been there and done that!
How to use this document
Since setting up a successful email marketing program is an intensive project with multiple components, we recommend the following approach:
- Give the entire document a quick read to understand the entire process.
- Take it a step at a time. Focus on each step individually and build expertise before moving to the next step. To execute steps 2 through 5, you need the skills developed in the previous steps.
- Follow the instructions carefully in each step. Don’t get ahead of yourself.
- Lost? Don’t worry, it happens. We’ve included a variety of resources along the way to get you back on track
Help!
If you do get lost and need some help, here are some great resources to get you back on track. In addition to extensive online help, Constant Contact provides customer support via telephone and email:
Constant Contact
Telephone Support: (866) 289-2101
Email Support: https://community.constantcontact.com/contact-support
The Five-Step Email Marketing Process
We’ve broken the process of implementing a successful email marketing campaign down into five logical steps:
Step 1: Build Team Awareness, Understanding & Readiness.
Recruit a champion to lead email marketing efforts. Learn about email marketing best practices with online webinars. Recruit for email marketing roles. You can do this by creating a specific opportunity within VolunteerMatch. Click here to view our already created opportunities. A typical program requires two volunteers who are comfortable with technology and passionate about email marketing.
Establish a Constant Contact account and import your client list. If you do not know your chapter's Constant Contact information, email marketing@score.org. Import existing contacts from Engage/CORE. Begin to create “opt-in” lists. Collect new contacts at every client event. Ensure that the chapter website provides easily visible links for the client to join the mailing list and to register online for workshops. Use Constant Contact for email marketing and event marketing.
This step is the most labor-intensive, but it lays the foundation your chapter needs to launch its first campaign.
Step 2: Develop Email Plan, Launch & Track Campaigns.
Develop an email marketing plan and content calendar (a plan for when to send out emails). Create a consistent schedule for messages. Use SCORE-branded templates for outreach. Customize content to meet local needs. Templates are designed based on industry best practices. Your plan identifies key targets for: subscribe rate, open rate, click-through rate, delivery rate, and event registration.
If Step 1 is “ready, set…,” Step 2 is GO! You launch your first email marketing campaign. And equally important, you track the results.
Step 3: Establish Lead Management to Acquire Contacts.
Start or continue collecting new names and email addresses at every client-facing event to build your list. Ensure that the chapter website has an opportunity to join your lists. Routinely import new clients from Engage/CORE to Constant Contact to help grow your list. For instructions on how to import/export contacts, click here.
Step 3 shows you how to build your email database and segment it so that you can zero in on client needs
Step 4: Improve Email Content.
Target email content with list segmentation and targeted messages. Use client interests and location to target messages. You can use data from Engage/CORE to update information in Constant Contact. Use online surveys to find out the interests of the contacts. This will help improve numbers by targeting only those contacts on the list that would be interested in the topic being delivered.
Successful email marketing is all about sending clients email messages they will love to open. Step 4 shows you how to develop content that gets your emails opened and increases your workshop attendance.
Step 5: Track, Review & Refine
Track email campaign performance: open rate, click-through rates, conversion rates, registration rates, and attendance rates. Gather data and track information on a spreadsheet to monitor performance over time. Review performance against benchmarks. Refine campaign subjects, message timing, and segmentations as needed to improve performance.
If you really want to excel at email marketing, you have to approach it as a continuous cycle of trying new things, tracking performance, refining your approach, tracking, and so on. Test, test, test. When you reach Step 5, you’ll have the expertise and tools you need to drive your email metrics – and chapter performance – to the limit.
Step 1: Build Team Awareness, Understanding & Readiness.
1. Objectives
In this step we will show you how to:
- Build your email marketing team.
- Get started with Constant Contact.
- Learn the basics of email marketing.
- Get your workshop program online.
- Get your chapter website ready to start generating leads.
2. What You’ll Need
Here are the tools of the trade for SCORE email marketing:
- PC or Mac with Internet access
- Engage/CORE Administration login (username and password)
- Microsoft Excel or similar spreadsheet application
- Administrative login to your chapter website, or access to your chapter’s webmaster
- Your chapter’s workshop schedule (complete info: dates, times, locations, presenters, etc.)
3. How to Do It
1. Build Your Team.
Email marketing is a results-producing tool; however, it does require some effort to set up the foundation and execute campaigns on an ongoing basis. SCORE chapters with successful email marketing programs already in place have two or three volunteers working on email marketing depending on chapter size, one of whom is providing a leadership role. We recommend that these volunteers have some experience with email marketing, but this is not necessary since the process is easy to learn once you get started. If you don’t have volunteers with this type of experience in your chapter you will need to recruit them. Look to interns or students for this work as well.
2. Get Familiar With Your Constant Contact Account.
Your chapter should already have access to their Constant Contact account. If you are not aware of your login or if your chapter is actively using Constant Contact, please email marketing@score.org.
To log in to your Constant Contact account, go to www.ConstantContact.com and click on the Login button in the top right-hand corner.
3. Learn the Basics of Email Marketing
Email marketing is just like any business discipline – there are a few right ways to do it and a lot of wrong ways. Now that we have your account set up, we highly recommend that you take advantage of the extensive learning resources Constant Contact has to offer, from webinars to live training in your area.
https://knowledgebase.constantcontact.com/
4. Get Your Workshop Program Online
Event Marketing Through Constant Contact
Constant Contact provides a one-source solution for both email marketing and specific event marketing. The system has a variety of tools including invitations, reminders, event landing pages, and your own public events calendar. It also allows you to track your metrics to see your results.
For instructions on how to create an event in Constant Contact, CLICK HERE.
Step 2: Develop Email Plan, Launch & Track Campaigns.
1. Objectives
In this step we will show you how to:
- Develop your email marketing plan
- Develop your event invitation
- Launch your first campaign
- Track the results of your campaign
2. What You’ll Need
You’ll be building on the foundation you set up in Step 1, so all you’ll need is:
- PC or Mac with Internet access
- Constant Contact login
- All the foundational elements you implemented in Step 1
3. How to Do It
1. Develop your marketing plan.
You were going to start sending out emails without a marketing plan? Bad idea!
You have to have a plan, tied to your chapter marketing plan. The key elements of the plan are:
- Objectives – what are you trying to accomplish? Boost workshop attendance? Develop awareness? Update your brand?
- Schedule – You will definitely want to coordinate your email marketing efforts with your workshop schedule and other key events.
- Resources – How many volunteers will you need to pull it off?
- Goals – How will you measure success? What are your targets for key email marketing metrics (see the Benchmarks in Step 2)? How long will it take to achieve them?
- Integration with overall marketing plan – Your email marketing program isn’t an island. It has tremendous power to support other chapter activities (fundraising, volunteer recruitment, mentoring), and your traditional marketing activities can definitely help support and build your email program.
Download a marketing plan template here.
2. Develop your event invitation.
The secret of successful email marketing could be summed up in one sentence: Send your clients emails they will love to open. That’s what it’s all about. What makes clients open an email? Because they expect to find something of value to them. We’re talking content here – information, offers, events, knowledge.
There are five components in the creation of an event:
- Event Information
- The Event Invitation
- The Event Registration Form
- The Event Registration Notification
- The Event Landing Page
Once you enter event information, you can create the invitation, customize a registration form and create an event landing page. While none of these steps are required, each of them provides useful tools to help you meet your goals of creating, publicizing, and holding a successful event. Below are the easy steps to follow to for your event marketing process.
Constant Contact offers great tutorials for creating an email campaign for events. Check it out here: Create an Events and Registrations Campaign Invitation
NOTE:
The CAN-SPAM ACT OF 2003
Before you launch your first campaign, we need to talk about something important: spam.
Spam is unwanted email – we’ve all received it and don’t like it. But now we’re on the other end of that equation, sending email. So we have to make sure we aren’t spamming. Spamming is illegal and there are stiff penalties.
In 2003, the 108th U.S. Congress enacted Public Law No. 108-187, the CAN-SPAM Act. The acronym CAN-SPAM derives from the bill's full name: Controlling the Assault of Non-Solicited Pornography And Marketing Act of 2003. At its most simple level, the CAN-SPAM act makes it illegal to:
- Send a promotional email to a recipient who has not given you specific permission to do so
- Fail to give a recipient an easy way to remove himself from your mailing list
Fortunately, if you stick to sending emails to SCORE clients and people who have signed up for your email list via your website, you should be in compliance with CAN-SPAM. If you have questions, contact SCORE headquarters.
Most SCORE chapters have found that sending two to three blasts for each workshop is most effective. Schedule one blast 10 days in advance of the workshop, another five days in advance, and another two days before. Many chapters have found that the emails sent the day before a workshop yield the most registrations. The idea is to find a balance between getting results and turning your clients off by sending too many emails.
3. Track results
We can’t emphasize tracking enough. It’s critical. Constant Contact provides very powerful tracking capabilities that you don’t have to do anything to produce – they just appear. If you aren’t tracking your campaigns – and using the information to improve your results – you aren’t getting the real benefit of Constant Contact.
After you’ve sent your first email campaign, it's time to measure your results so you can benchmark for the future. Click here for a Constant Contact tutorial on all the reporting features available to you.
Reporting Terms
Sent – This is the total number of emails sent.
Bounced – These are the number of emails that can’t be delivered, for a number of reasons: address not valid, recipient’s email box is full, etc. See Hard Bounce and Soft Bounce in our Glossary of Terms for more info.
Spam – This is the number of times a recipient’s spam filter has rejected your email because it thought it was spam.
Opt-Outs – The number of recipients that clicked the Unsubscribe link on your email message.
Opened – The number of recipients that opened your email, also expressed as a percentage of total emails delivered (emails sent minus bounces).
Did Not Open – You can pinpoint contacts who did not open emails and try new tactics for reaching them.
Clicks – The number of times recipients clicked on something in your email, such as a link to your workshop registration page, also expressed as a percentage of emails opened. Sometimes the click rate is measured by Clicks divided by Emails Delivered, but Constant Contact measures them as Clicks divided by Emails Opened.
Forwards – The number of contacts who forwarded your email to someone else.
Step 3: Establish Lead Management to Acquire Contacts.
1. Objectives
In this step we will show you how to:
- Set up a lead management process – a process that generates a steady stream of permission-based contacts for your mailing list.
- Segment your clients and campaigns for maximum impact.
2. What You’ll Need
- PC or Mac with Internet access
- Microsoft Word or other word-processing program
- CORE login
- Constant Contact login
- Support from your chapter chair to implement a new process
- Participation from all chapter volunteers
3. How to Do It
1. Implement a Lead Management process.
Lead management is a process that is used to routinely and systematically gather names and email addresses for your email database. You’ve already put a newsletter signup feature on every page of your website, but much more can be done to grow your list.
The idea here is to get every volunteer in your chapter to seek and obtain permission-based names and email addresses and get them stored in your email database. It’s simple, but it’s not easy to get everyone doing the same thing.
Permission-based? Remember the CAN-SPAM Act (Step 2)? According to the CAN-SPAM Act, you can’t send a promotional email to a recipient unless he/she has given you specific permission to do so. More about that later.
Where do you get these leads? Everywhere! Any time a chapter volunteer has contact with a potential client, partner, donor, community leader or anyone else interested in SCORE, he/she should ask that person for their business card and permission to put them on our mailing list.
Trade shows and expos where SCORE has a table are excellent opportunities to gather leads. One SCORE chapter even brings a scanner and scans business cards on the spot. Clever!
Here is the approach we recommend to set up your lead management process:
- Designate a volunteer as the person that will enter all new names and email addresses into Constant Contact.
- Discuss the process with your chapter chair – make sure you have his/her support.
- Put together a brief process description (see Process Elements below) – this shows step-by-step who does what.
- Ask the chapter chair to circulate the process to all volunteers, under his/her name.
- Ask for some time at the next chapter meeting to discuss the process.
- Make a brief presentation at the chapter meeting and answer questions.
- Wait for the leads to come in. Push and prod when necessary.
Here are the elements of a Lead Management process:
- All chapter volunteers should seek and obtain names and email addresses for our mailing list.
- Ask for permission to send them emails. If they decline, don’t pass the lead on.
- All leads will be sent to the volunteer responsible for lead management, via email, fax or other means.
- Leads must include name, address, phone, email address, and whether the lead is for a client, workshop attendee, donor, or volunteer.
- Lead management volunteers will enter leads into Constant Contact.
2. Segment your clients.
Not all clients are created equal! The ability to segment your clients – sort them into groups based on their needs, interests, and other key attributes – is regarded as one of the critical success factors of email marketing.
One of our objectives is to send our clients emails they will love to open. If your chapter has 2,000 active clients, would you expect that they all love the same thing? Probably not. And if we send clients emails about things they don’t love, they’re probably unlikely to open them. Worse, they may opt-out of your list.
The best example has to do with gender. Women in Business workshops are quite popular with SCORE clients. But why send male clients emails on WIB workshops? If you’re a new SCORE client and the first emails you get don’t interest you, are you likely to open future emails? Probably not.
How do you segment your customers? We recommend segmenting customers by the following attributes:
ZIP Code
- Startup/In Business
- Type of Business
- Nature of Mentoring Requested
- Areas of Interest
Step 4: Improve Email Content.
1. Objectives
In this step we will show you how to:
- Develop email messages your recipients will love to open!
That’s really all this step is about, but it’s absolutely critical!
2. What You’ll Need
To improve your email content, you’ll need:
PC or Mac with Internet access
- Constant Contact login
- All the knowledge you gained from your first campaign and your explorations into customer segmentation
3. How to Do It
Before you launch your next campaign, follow these steps to systematically improve your email content:
- Go to Constant Contact and login.
- Pull up your last campaign’s activity report. If you need a refresher, see Step 2, section 5.
- Look at the metrics and compare them to the Benchmarks we’ve provided in Step 2, section 5. How do you stack up? Is there room for improvement? Clicks? Opens?
- If your Opens seem low, try improving your Subject line. Constant Contact has plenty of info just on that one topic.
- If your clicks seem low, you may want to work on your email content – are you stressing client benefit? Is the behavior you want from the recipient (such as clicking on a link) clearly requested? Is there a clear call to action? Are you including enough hyperlinks to your website in your email?
- Including numbered benefits in the subject line and email, the body is a proven best practice: “5 Ways to Drive Your Sales Through the Roof,” or “7 Secrets of Getting a Loan.”
- Forwards are great indicators of how much your recipients love your emails. They wouldn’t pass it on to their friends if they didn’t think it was valuable. Think about what kind of changes you could make to the email to make recipients want to forward it.
- Workshop topics are important. If the topics aren’t relevant, or the workshops don’t have compelling names, you won’t get many clicks. Encourage your workshop volunteer or team to use your email campaign results to evaluate the relevance of the workshop program.
- Experiment!
- Test, test, test! On your next campaign, try an A/B test. For the same workshop, send half of your list an email with one type of subject line or content, and send the other half an email with a different subject line or content. Compare the results to see which produced better opens, clicks or forwards.
This might also be a good time to take advantage of the resources Constant Contact has to offer, including their online Help Center or even a live workshop in your area.
Step 5: Track, Review & Refine.
1. Objectives
In this step we will show you how to:
- Refine your email marketing program.
- Implement a quarterly chapter newsletter.
- Implement a welcome message to new clients.
2. What You’ll Need
To successfully complete this step, you’ll need:
- PC or Mac with Internet access
- Constant Contact login
- Engage/CORE Login
3. How to Do It
1. Refining your email marketing program.
Add online mentoring clients to your mailing list.
Online webinar clients can now easily be added to your list:
- Go to the CORE Reports page
- Login using your chapter administration username and password.
- Click on Chapter Reports
- Click on National Online Workshop Client Leads Report.
- Export the file in full to excel
- This will open an Excel spreadsheet in the browser. Save the file with filename that will make it easy for you to find, perhaps containing the date (ddmmyy).
Now, import your list into Constant Contact:
- Go to www.constantcontact.com.
- Login.
- On the home page, click on the Contacts link at the top right side of the page.
- Click on the “Add Contacts” button and select “Upload From File” from the dropdown menu.
- Follow the steps to upload your spreadsheet into Constant Contact.
- Constant Contact will ask you to name the fields in their database that correspond to the data in your spreadsheet. We recommend that you use the same names in the spreadsheet, in the same order.
- Select a name for your list that denotes its content, such as “Online Mentoring Clients November 2021.”
2. Implement quarterly newsletter
Up to now, we’ve focused on email messages sent with the specific purpose of promoting SCORE workshops. Email newsletters do much more than that. Their objectives are to:
- Help small businesses grow and thrive.
- Increase awareness of SCORE.
- Reinforce SCORE’s brand by providing useful information and resources.
- Reinforce promotional campaigns for workshops and other events.
- Drive traffic to your local chapter website and www.score.org.
- Promote SCORE local and national partners.
That’s a lot of things to do, so the key with email newsletters is to keep it concise and well organized. Fortunately, Constant Contact has provided a SCORE newsletter template that will help you do just that.
The first step in producing a newsletter is to gather content. We recommend that you gather your content before logging into Constant Contact and developing the newsletter. It will go much faster if you get prepared.
You may want to also consider a theme for each edition of your newsletter. This can make for a more compelling experience for your subscribers, particularly if the themes are timely or of local interest. Suggestions for themes include:
- Finance and loans
- Technology
- Starting a business
- Sales and marketing
SCORE Chapter Monthly e-Newseletter: Biz Success Tips
If you are using Constant Contact, at the beginning of every month, a chapter e-Newsletter will be made available in your account that you can customize and send to your chapter:
- Go to www.constantcontact.com
- Log in
- On the home page, click on the Email tab at the top of the page
- Click on the email entitled: SCORE: BizSuccessTips (Month Year)
- Click on “Edit Email”.
- Insert your chapter contact information in the sidebar block provided.
- Under Quick Links, update the links to point to the appropriate pages on your chapter’s website.
It is a good idea to send the newsletter at a standard time each month, such as the second Tuesday, or the third Thursday--whatever works best for your chapter’s marketing plan.
Constant Contact: Welcome Autoresponder
This welcomes individuals who have subscribed to the chapter mailing list via the newsletter signup feature on the chapter website. Note that people who subscribe to your newsletter may or may not be mentoring clients.
To learn how to set up your Automated Email Series, CLICK HERE: https://knowledgebase.constantcontact.com/articles/KnowledgeBase/27935-Choosing-a-Trigger-for-Your-Automated-Email-Series?lang=en_US
Glossary of Email Marketing Terms
A/B Test: A method of email testing where two equal segments of an email list are sent two different versions of an email to gauge response to certain variables. Commonly used for testing the response of recipients (in the form of open rates) to different subject lines.
Above-the-fold: The top part of an email or web page that can be seen without scrolling. This is generally more desirable placement because of its visibility.
API: Application Programming Interface that allows an outside system to have a well-defined protocol by which they can access another system's functionality. Valuable to email marketers for performing such tasks as list management through their Email Service Provider's interface.
Append: The practice in which a marketer leverages offline data to match profiles with users and contact via email.
Blacklist: List of IP addresses that are being used by or belong to organizations or individuals that have been identified as sending SPAM. Blacklists are often used by organizations and Internet Service Providers as part of their filtering process to block all incoming mail from a particular IP address (or block of addresses).
CAN-SPAM: A law, which became effective January 1, 2004, that establishes provisions for those who send email with the primary purpose of advertising or promoting a commercial product or service.
Click-through: When a reader takes action and clicks on a link.
Click-through Rate: The number of times all links in an email were clicked compared to the total list size, represented as a percentage. To determine the click-through rate, divide the number of responses (clicks) by the number of emails opened (multiply this number by 100 to express the result as a percentage).
Conversion Rate: The number of recipients that completed a desired action as a result of an email message compared to the total list size, represented as a percentage. To determine the conversion rate, divide the number of recipients who completed the desired action by the number of emails sent (multiply this number by 100 to express the result as a percentage).
Creative (Email Marketing): Terminology used for copy and content of an email. Email creative can be in many different formats including HTML, text, images, etc.
Demographics: Data about the size and characteristics of an audience.
Double Opt In: A double email opt-in sign-up requires that a user confirm that he or she has actively joined your email list. This is typically done by generating an email to the user after he or she signs up. That email then requires the user to click a link in the email in order to confirm that he or she is the owner of the email address and does want to receive emails from you.
Email Authentication: Practice of validating that an email sender is legitimate to cut down on spam and phishing scams.
Email Client: A computer program used to send, receive and manage a user’s email. Includes programs such as Outlook, as well as web mail programs such as Hotmail, Yahoo! and Gmail.
Email Frequency: The intervals at which email marketing efforts are repeated: weekly, bi-weekly, monthly, bi-monthly, etc.
Email Header: The portion of an email containing basic information such as the sender’s address, the recipient’s address, the subject line and the date sent. Also contained in the header (though not always readily accessible) is more detailed information about the entire path the email traveled between the sender and recipient.
Email List Manager: Controller of email list or database entity.
Email Marketing Campaign: Coordinated email marketing messages delivered at intervals with a specific objective or goal.
Email Newsletter: An email message sent out to a group of subscribers with relevant information on a topic. Often used to capture website visitors’ email addresses, they can also be used to keep in touch with existing customers, or simply as a means of distributing new product information.
Email Service Provider (ESP): Service that provides clients with platform from which to create and deploy email messages, as well as the ability to access reporting tools. Depth of service and sophistication of systems vary depending on the ESP.
Email Spoofing: Altering certain elements of an email to disguise or misidentify the origin of the message. This is an illegal technique commonly used when sending SPAM.
Forward: An email function allowing subscribers to relay a previously received message in full to another email address (or addresses). This is convenient in that the entire email is passed along without the need to create a new message or do any cut/paste work.
From Name: The name by which the sender of an email is known.
From Address: The email address from which an email is sent.
Geo Segmentation: The ability to target email recipients by geographic region such as city, state, country and postal code.
Hard Bounce: An email address that is rejected by the receiving server for a permanent reason (example: "email address does not exist"). Hard bounces are not valid email addresses and should be removed from lists.
HTML-based Email: An email comprised of HTML code. Essentially, an HTML-based email is the equivalent of emailing a web page, complete with colors, graphics, and other visually appealing methods of delivering content.
Image Suppression/Image Blocking: A default setting in many email clients (and an available option on almost all), image suppression allows recipients to view emails with no images displayed. Only text and HTML-coded colors will display when emails are viewed with images blocked. Recipients do this to cut down on the amount of advertisements displayed in the emails they view, and to make emails load onto their screen in the least amount of time required. Emails viewed with images blocked are not counted as an Open because the invisible tracking images used to determine the emails? Open Rate is blocked as well.
List Segmentation: Breaking a list into smaller pieces for the purpose of targeting recipients with specific characteristics or demographics.
Multivariate Testing: A form of email testing where testing software is used to display emails containing variations to several different elements. These emails are displayed with different combinations of the elements to different users. The data can then be viewed to see which combinations and elements had the greatest impact on performance.
Narrowcast: Used to describe targeted email marketing that aims for the highest possible relevance, as opposed to "broadcast" email marketing where one message is sent to an entire list with no segmentation applied.
Open Rate: The percentage of total recipients who open a given email. An open is only counted when an invisible tracking image placed within an email by an Email Service Provider is viewed. This tracking image is not considered as having been viewed when an email is seen using an email client with images blocked, which makes open rates a less reliable metric than many realize.
Opt-in Code: Code posted on a company's website that allows a subscriber to sign up for email from the company and be automatically added to that company's email list.
Opt-in Email Marketing: The process of collecting permission to email users whereby the user must take action to receive email communications. Also known as Permission-based Email Marketing.
Permission-based Email Marketing: The practice of sending email communications only to recipients who have given their consent to receive them.
Personalization: Inserting a token into your email message that allows you to draw personal information from the recipient’s account, i.e. first name, title, customer number, etc.
Predictive Modeling: Mathematically-based formula used to dynamically segment subscribers based on who is most likely to engage with a particular message.
Preview Pane: Available in some email clients, preview panes display a portion of a selected email message without the recipient actually having to open the full message. In some clients, the size of the preview pane can be adjusted to display all or most of an email.
Psychographics: Identification of personality characteristics and attitudes that affect a person's lifestyle and purchasing behaviors. Psychographic data points include opinions, attitudes, and beliefs about various aspects relating to lifestyle and purchasing behavior.
Quick Poll: A simple survey built directly into the body of an email, allowing for quick and easy collection of research data from members of a mailing list.
Recipient: Any member of a mailing list who receives a particular email communication without a hard/soft bounce affecting delivery.
Reply-to Address: The email address to which a recipient can reply to from your email message. This address must be a working email address and must be live for at least 30 days after your email is sent.
Segmentation/Targeting: Identifying and sending to only a select portion of an email list based on a shared, pre-determined criteria, such as the recipients' ZIP code or online purchase history. Segmentation is used to help increase the relevance of a message to the recipients.
Sender ID: Email authentication technology protocol that verifies the domain name from which email is sent.
Sender Score Certified: Email certification process that requires originators of legitimate email adhere to a baseline set of industry standards for email communication.
Single Opt-in: Method of list building where only a single action is required of an interested party before he/she is added to a mailing list (such as submitting a web form). Differs from Double Opt-in in that no follow-up action is required on the part of new subscribers in order to confirm their opt-in status.
Snippet Text: The first line of text within an email, also called the Pre-header. While often used to prompt recipients to add the sender to his/her safe list, Snippet Text is increasingly being used for more high-value content. In email clients such as Gmail, Snippet Text is displayed after the subject line in recipients' inboxes, making it a valuable area for key messaging.
Soft Bounce: An email that makes it to a recipient's email server but is bounced back. This can be due to a recipient's inbox being filled to capacity. A soft bounce email may be deliverable at a later time if re-sent after the initial bounce.
SPAM: Unsolicited bulk or commercial email. The prevalence of SPAM emails has led to laws against SPAM being enacted by the U.S. government, as well as more stringent filtering methods implemented by widely-used email clients.
SPAM Score: A determination of the probability that messages from a certain sender will be classified as SPAM when delivered to email clients. The score itself refers to the IP address being used to send the messages. All messages sent from the same IP address share the SPAM score of that IP address.
SPAM Trap: An email address that has been specifically created to detect individuals who have illegally scraped or collected email addresses. The belief is that any email sent to a SPAM trap address is indeed SPAM, as the email address is not usually used as a real email address.
Split List: A list that has been segmented in some way(s). Examples could include a 50/50 split, customer vs. prospect split, a split based on subscriber profile information such as their industry, etc.
Subject Line: Used as the first point of contact with an email recipient, the subject line is the only portion of an email message guaranteed to be seen in all email client inboxes (i.e., those with and without preview panes available). The importance of subject lines is twofold: not only does the appeal of a subject line directly affect whether or not recipients will open the email, but a subject line containing unfavorable elements can trigger SPAM filters and be considered junk mail by email clients.
Subscriber: Any member of a mailing list who has opted-in of his/her own accord to receive mail from that particular sender.
Text-based Email: A black-and-white email consisting only of typed text; sometimes preferred by recipients who view email on mobile devices, or those who prefer email without images.
Total Clicks: The total number of times a link was clicked; includes recipients who may have clicked multiple times.
Total Opens: The total number of times an email was opened; includes recipients who may have opened the email multiple times.
Unique Clicks: The number of individual recipients who click on a link within a given email. Even if one person clicks on three links within an email, he/she is only counted as one unique click.
Unique Opens: The number of individual recipients who opened a given email. Different from Total Opens in that each individual is only counted once. A recipient who opens an email three times will be counted as one Unique Open, while adding three to the number of Total Opens.
Unsubscribe: When an email recipient requests to no longer receive email communication from a particular sender. The option to unsubscribe from a mailing list is required by law to be available on all email marketing communications.
Web version: Most email marketing messages contain a link that points to a Web version of the message. This is usually displayed at the top of the message so it is the first thing recipients will see if they have images suppressed. Web versions of emails contain the same content, but are viewed as standalone web pages instead of through an email client.
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Getting Started With Constant Contact
(By: Constant Contact)
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