Kennedy’s point is a valid one, and one that bears additional scrutiny from email marketers. While we preach that the core of email marketing is to send relevant, timely, targeted, valuable email to people who asked for it, let’s put aside content for just a few moments to examine email campaign structure.

The debt collector campaign structure is elegantly simple: repeated messages with limited variations on content over a period of time. You’ve seen these: first notice, second notice, third notice, final notice. Debt collectors typically stage their notices a couple of weeks apart, interspersed with phone calls, and the notices are sent on different days. The rationale for doing so is to try and catch people at different times and days.

Apply this same logic to an email marketing newsletter. Start by creating a dynamic segmentation that automatically filters out people who opened, read, or clicked on the current issue. You don’t want to annoy people who have already received your newsletter and paid attention to it.

Next, set up an auto-response campaign that will resend your newsletter to that segmentation (which should auto-update after each send) every 9 days and 4 hours until either everyone has opened/clicked/read it or you’ve reached the end of the newsletter’s useful life (typically when the next newsletter goes out).

Let’s say for purposes of example that your newsletter is monthly. If you send your first issue on a Monday at 7 AM, the next resend will go out on Wednesday 11 AM of the following week, then Friday 3 PM of the following week, then Sunday 7 PM of the following week.

You’ll cover 4 sends total, including the start of the work week, the middle of the work week, the end of the work week, and a weekend day. You’ll also cover 4 different times of day to catch people who check email at different intervals – the early riser type A folks first thing out of the gate on Mondays, the Wednesday lunch crowd, the folks looking for something different on a Friday afternoon, and folks winding up the weekend on Sunday evening.

Is this too much? Not at all. Remember, the segmentation filters out anyone who already saw our newsletter, so we’re only trying to reach the people we haven’t been in touch with yet.

Of course, all of this structure assumes that you have relevant, timely, targeted, valuable email and you’re sending it to people who asked to receive it, right? That said, it’s poor practice to just send an email and hope people receive it and get around to reading it, especially when you have the tools and technical capacity to deliver email at different times to suit different needs.

Christopher S. Penn
Director of Inbound Marketing, WhatCounts

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However, there are cases where taking a small sample of your audience may not prove to be helpful for drawing an effective conclusion about your data. For example, one of our Business Development Managers asked recently whether animated calls to action are less or more effective than static ones. Initially, we did a standard 10/10/80 split, with 10% of the list receiving one version of content with a static image call to action and one version of content with an animated call to action.

Let’s take a look at those results:

Sample A: 4,892 people. Response rate for non-animated image: 24 clicks.
Sample B: 4,892 people. Response rate for animated image: 16 clicks.

Now, you might be tempted to make the mistake of declaring Sample A the winner in the test. That would be a critical error. If you know anything about statistics, you are familiar with Pearson’s Chi-Squared Test. Applying this test against our A/B split above reveals an important fact: the difference between Samples A and B is statistically insignificant. That is, random noise, random variations are just as likely to be responsible for the difference in results as the actual test itself.

When we saw these statistically insignificant results in our initial A/B split test, we knew that we had to retest with a much larger sample size. This is one of the reasons why the WhatCounts platform allows you to choose a winner of an A/B test manually – there was no actual winner!

Don’t just let your email marketing software automatically “pick a winner” when there may not be a clear winner!

To retest, we used the testing suite to divide our list evenly in half to use the entire list rather than just 20% of it.

How did the much larger sample size turn out?

Sample A: 24,463 people. Response rate for non-animated image: 75 clicks.
Sample B: 24,463 people. Response rate for animated image: 87 clicks.

Ah ha! Animated images work, right?

Nope. Again, if you apply the chi-squared test, there is no statistical significance here. Animated and non-animated images behave largely the same – there’s no statistical difference that clearly declares one approach to be better than another. We can now reasonably conclude that for our list, for our audience, there is no statistical difference between animated and non-animated calls to action.

Here’s where data turns into action: by running two tests and validating that there is no statistical significance between animated and non-animated calls to action, we can now make the business and marketing decision that the time it takes to produce an animated graphic is likely not worth it. We’re better off focusing our efforts to improve our email marketing in other ways.

To do your own chi-squared test, use this handy Google Doc, based on the work of Rags Srinivasan.

Christopher S. Penn
Director of Inbound Marketing, WhatCounts

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How to set up Facebook Pages for Email Signups is available in 3 different formats to best suit your needs:

• Download in PDF format for most desktop computers
• Download in MOBI format for Amazon Kindle devices
• Download in EPUB format for Nook and iBookshelf devices

Christopher S. Penn
Director of Inbound Marketing, WhatCounts

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For most of these clients, they know what their goal is: to see what type of subject line generates the most email opens. (Note: Some also have higher click-throughs or conversions as their goal). That much they know.  I’ve found a common trend though: they don’t know what to test in their subject lines in order to reach this goal.

With this in mind, here are five great subject line tests that are worth trying.

1. Specific versus General

One of my adult education clients sends emails to prospective students about upcoming open house events.  Historically, their subject line was something like “Attend our Open House on November 12”.  Direct and to the point, right?  One day, we decided to try a more general subject line, “A Foundation for Success”.  And much to our surprise, the less-specific subject line garnered more email opens!  We’ve tested it several times since then, and the general subject line always wins.  Apparently these subscribers like the element of surprise in their inbox!  Try this for yourself – one subject line with a specific call-to-action and another with a more general teaser line.  The results may surprise you!

2. Personalization

We’ve all seen the “Joanna, get 10% off today!” type subject lines.  The first name personalized subject lines have been around forever, and they seem to have lost their impact.  But why not try other personalization tactics?  Try adding the subscriber’s location or other demo/geographic information to the subject line.  Seeing something personal about themselves might make your subscribers want to open your email and read more.  Here’s a great example: on a recent gloomy day in Charlotte, North Carolina, my colleague received an email from Qdoba offering a rainy day special.  The subject line was “Rainy Day Special from Qdoba Mexican Grill”.  You can’t get much more personalized than that!  Take a look at your subscriber database.  What information do you have on your subscribers that you could use in your subject lines?

3. Company/Branding

Another great test to try is adding your company or brand name to the subject line.  Of course, your company or brand name will show in the From Name, but will adding it to the subject line as well increase your open rate?  In many instances it will, as subscribers will recognize the email more as coming from a trusted source.  One of my online retailer clients (let’s call them Acme) recently sent an email with the subject line “Save 15% on spooky Halloween cards & invites!”  Could adding the company name to the subject line, like “Save 15% on spooky Acme Halloween cards & invites!” or “Save 15% on spooky Halloween cards & invites from Acme!”, have increased their response rates?  You never know until you try!

4. Negative versus Positive

Have you noticed that many subject lines are so negative?  For example, consider this subject line I just received, “Enterprise Marketers: Social Media Management Woes?”  While it’s direct and intriguing, it is assuming that we all have woes at work, which is depressing.  While this type of subject line may work for some, why not try a more positive spin?  For example, “Enterprise Marketers: Improve your Social Media Management”.  Again, it’s direct and intriguing, but is uplifting and promises good things!  See what works for your subscribers by testing a positive subject line against a negative one.  It might give you some good insight regarding the general moods of your subscribers too!  (Side note: I wonder if a negative subject line would work better on a Monday morning when we’re all grumpy and want to commiserate versus a Friday afternoon when we are in a more positive, happy mood … something to test!)

5. Urgency

This one is my favorite.  Will adding a due date or expiration date to your subject line make your subscribers open your email more?  This is a great one to test during the holidays, since we are all on tight present-buying deadlines.  Try adding the ship-by date to your subject line, like “Only 5 more days to get guaranteed shipping by Christmas!” and compare it against a date-less one, like “Get guaranteed shipping by Christmas!”.  Or try testing a sale announcement with and without a date limit, like “5 days only – Get 15% off!” versus “Get 15% off!”.  Don’t have an expiration or due date to use?  Make one up to create urgency!  (Just don’t do this too often or you’ll become the boy who cried wolf.)  Brainstorm with your team to come up with ways to make your subscribers feel like they need to open and take action on your email today, or else they’ll miss out!

Final Thoughts Before You’re Set Loose

Remember, the key to email subject line testing is having a control group. It’s imperative to have this so you can get accurate results on the winning subject line.  So, for example, if you want to test branding within the subject line, make sure you have an exact replica without the branding, like this:

• Control: Enjoy 10% off your next purchase
• Experimental: Enjoy 10% off your next Acme purchase

You can also test more than two subject lines at once, but remember to only change one variable at a time.  This will help you to understand what caused the winning subject line to perform the best.  Note: you can do this type of more advanced testing using Publicaster’s A/B split tool.

For example, if you want to test branding and urgency at the same time, try this format:

• Control: Enjoy 10% off your next purchase
• Experimental 1 (branding): Enjoy 10% off your next Acme purchase
• Experimental 2 (urgency): Only 3 days left to enjoy 10% off your next purchase
• Experimental 3 (branding & urgency): Only 3 days left to enjoy 10% off your next Acme purchase

And finally, before you start testing (and this goes for testing anything in your email program), decide what your goals are and what will determine the “winner”.  Most often with subject line testing, your winning version will be the one that generated the highest open rate.  But if you’re testing a different offer, your winner could be the offer that garnered the highest click-through or conversion rate.  Be sure you’ve decided this beforehand as well as what margin of error you will allow before deciding on a winner.

So there you have it, you no longer have an excuse as to why you aren’t doing subject line testing!  Start with these five simple tests, and you’ll be well on your way to finding the best subject line for your subscribers.  If you’re a WhatCounts client and need help with some more A/B split test ideas, contact your client services manager today.  Not a WhatCounts client yet?  Get more info today, we’d love to have you!

This post was originally written by Joanna Roberts.

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Ask any prospective buyer that is not cash-in-hand-ready where they are in the buying process and almost all will give you the same answer, from the shopper in aisle 17 to the chief procurement officer of a Fortune 50: “just looking”. Just looking and its millions of variations are a polite way of prospects indicating that they haven’t learned enough about your products or services and thus are not ready to commit.

What’s the antidote to the non-committal prospect? It’s not pressure, not trying to extract value faster out of someone who has not received value. It’s education, and email marketing is the ideal vehicle for delivering the education. Here’s a recipe for constructing a value-delivery email campaign to bring prospects closer to a close.

1. Develop education-based content.

Start by determining what things your prospects are actually looking for. Look in your analytics for your web properties to see what people are searching for, what questions people are asking on your site’s internal search, what questions you see over and over in your inbox and voice mail. Compile these questions and rank them by frequency of occurrence from 1 to 7.

2. Create an auto-response campaign.

Set up each of the 7 questions with your answers in a series of 7 emails that someone receives, one per day, over a 7 day period. Obviously, if you have better information from data and experience about the length of your buying cycle, adjust the frequency accordingly, but if someone is doing research, keeping the topic – and you – in mind over a week probably isn’t a bad idea in the absence of other data.

The questions should each have clear answers that are valuable enough that a subscriber would want to forward them to a colleague, friend, or family member. Remember, the cardinal sin of most salespeople is asking for value first instead of providing it first, so be sure your email content is more than just a pitch or a close – make it valuable.

For example, if an email for, let’s say real estate, answers the question “what credit do I need to buy a house”, make sure you provide a list of resources for people to check their own credit for free and understand what credit is. That level of educational depth provides value and makes prospects more comfortable that you know what you’re doing and are worth building a relationship with.

3. Invite people to participate.

Nearly every salesperson has had this conversation or a variation of it:

“Can I help you?”
“No, I’m just looking.”
“What are you looking for?”
“I’m not sure yet, I’m just looking.”

At this point, there’s usually an awkward transition where the salesperson encourages the prospect to come to them with questions, and the prospect walks away without ever asking questions.

Here’s where you make your email offer as the alternate sale:

“Great. What I’d like to do is help answer some of the questions you’ll probably have after you’ve learned what you’re looking for. We’ve been in business long enough to hear the same questions and concerns come up, so we put together a little email miniseries that can help answer those questions as you have them with one short email a day for just the next week. Would you like me to send that to your work email address or your home email address?”

If you deal with trade shows or walk-ins, take the time to put this offer on a business card-sized piece and let people take it with them if you’re not speaking to them face to face.

4. Track your data carefully.

If you’re legitimately answering questions about your product or service in a valuable way, make sure you track prospect responses throughout the cycle. You may find that prospects always reply or call back after message #3 in the series or always make a purchase after message #6 in the series. Pay attention to the data as you test, because you may find that data can help you improve the speed of your regular sales process as well.

Try out an auto-response campaign as your alternate sale antidote to “just looking” and see how well you can transform “just looking” into “just buying”.

Christopher S. Penn
Director of Inbound Marketing, WhatCounts

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Simply put, use email to advance the sale. Please keep in mind that “sale” is a generic term for getting someone to make a substantial commitment. Substitute in volunteer, donate, join, download, activate, or whatever action is most appropriate for your audience in place of buy if you’re not selling something.

Let’s look at one way email can be there at the sale: sales abandonment reduction. Everyone who has an online process for making a sale (volunteer/donation/etc.) has lost people along the way from the first click to the completion of the purchase. If you set up Google Analytics correctly, you can even make a chart of how many people abandon your sales process online and at what points, by setting up goals and a funnel.

So how do you reduce the number of people who bail out on your purchasing process? How do you recover some of that lost business?

In order to make email a vital part of sales abandonment recovery, you’ll first need to change the order of items and sequence on your web forms. Put simple contact information such as name and email first, so that you capture that information as quickly as possible and gain the right to follow up.

Instead of having one lengthy form, consider having a form broken up into two or more stages with just a few questions each. On each page of the form, create a hidden form field that indicates what part of the process was just completed, and make sure that’s recorded in your database. Here’s an example of what that might look like:

Assuming you know what’s on each page of your purchasing form, you can create special emails for people who abandon at each page. Let’s say in the example above that page 1 is basic contact information. Everyone gets through that, which is excellent. Page 2 contains the stuff in the cart, page 3 contains credit card information and the buy button, and the purchase page is the thank you page at the end of the process.

You’d want to create a set of emails for people who reached page 2 but didn’t finish it, like Jane Smith in the example above. In that email you’d want to say something to the effect of, “Jane, we noticed that you didn’t buy the stuff in your cart. Were you unhappy with the items you’d selected? Write back to us and let us know where we went wrong.” Obviously, you’ll want to have a customer service employee reading these replies to help customers who do respond.

You’d want to create a set of emails for people who reached page 3, the place where you press the buy button, and send a similar message that’s contextually appropriate, such as, “John, we noticed that you had selected some of our fine items but didn’t finish the process of owning them. Is there something we can help you with, some questions we can answer to better suit your needs?” Again, make sure someone’s actually going to answer any replies.

Inside your email program, set up autoresponse campaigns based on the purchasing fields. It might be custom-written code or something built in. WhatCounts customers, ask your Support manager about setting up a time-based autoresponse campaign based on a data segmentation. Here’s the logic of how that might look:

• If page1 == 1 and page2 == 0 and page3 == 0 and purchase == 0 then send Sales Abandonment Reply #1.
• If page1 == 1 and page2 == 1 and page3 == 0 and purchase == 0 then send Sales Abandonment Reply #2.
• If page1 == 1 and page2 == 1 and page3 == 1 and purchase == 0 then send Sales Abandonment Reply #3.
• If page1 == 1 and page2 == 1 and page3 == 1 and purchase == 1 then send Sales Thank You For Your Purchase.

No matter where someone stops in the sales process once they start, you’re reaching out to them to see what the sticking point is. Pay careful attention to the replies; perhaps some people abandon because the price in the cart is different than the price on the web site. Perhaps some people abandon because they have to ask a significant other, in which case you’ll want to change the content of your web site to fit this scenario. Whatever the feedback is, you’ll be able to act on it and recover more sales than simply ignoring people who abandon your sales process.

Use email to be there at the sale, every step of the way, and watch your sales grow as your prospective customers tell you exactly why they’re not buying – and how to fix it.

Christopher S. Penn
Director of Inbound Marketing, WhatCounts

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One of the most effective ways to build business is to work with the prospects who are most ready to do business with you. Generally speaking, people who call or email you are far more ready to buy than someone engaged in an activity that has nothing to do with what you sell. Sometimes, however, people will start down an activity and forget what they were going to do along the way or decide to come back later and never do. That’s where a prospect recovery system is useful.

A prospect recovery system relies on basic click tracking to determine intent and readiness to buy by asking prospects where they are in their buying process. Virtually every email marketing system out there lets you track what’s clicked on in a message. By creating simple 1-click actions for subscribers to perform, you can determine intent with a minimum amount of effort on the part of your subscribers. Here’s how.

First, create a simple email that asks subscribers to click on however few or many options you want to present that will flush out intent. In this example message, we ask for three basic intent responses: yes, not now, and no.

Subscribers click on one of three links. Their behavior is recorded by the Publicaster system (our email marketing software) and the subscriber ends up at a simple thank you page. Obviously, you can create different landing pages that will further encourage subscribers to take action immediately, such as having a click to call option on the yes response, a calendar scheduler on the not now response (sign up for an appointment when you’re ready), and a newsletter subscribe option on the no response.

Once you’ve gotten some data to work with, you can effectively measure how many people are saying yes, not now, and no:

This gives you an idea of how warm your audience is, and how ready they are to make a purchasing decision. If the vast majority of your audience says no, your focus needs to change to find more qualified people. If the vast majority of your audience says not now, you know you’ve probably got a long sales cycle ahead. If the vast majority of your audience says yes, you know you’ve got some selling to do in the near future.

Finally, if your email service provider allows you to download click activity, you can export all of the people who made any given choice and import them into your sales CRM for immediate action. Obviously, you’d want to export the yes responses as quickly as possible so that your sales team can begin immediately following up with the people who clicked yes.

By using click tracking data for what is effectively a purchasing intent survey, you give subscribers the reminder and option to take action or otherwise indicate their intent with a minimum of effort on their part. By exporting your data into your sales CRM, you can very quickly help your sales team prioritize the opportunities that are most important and most ready to go.

This methodology can be used for nearly any kind of business which interacts with customers. Doctors’ offices could use this to schedule appointments, as could car dealerships’ service departments. Non-profits could use this to determine when donors are interested most in making a contribution (imagine a set of calendar icons and a “choose your donation reminder month” message).

There is a pitfall to this system, a built-in danger. If you create a message like the one above but don’t have the capacity to follow up and fulfill the customer’s expectations, there’s a very good chance you’ll lose that sales opportunity permanently. Like all sales, timely followup is absolutely imperative to make this system work for you, and if you don’t fulfill the customer’s expectations, you’ll make them far more unhappy with you than if you had never contacted them in the first place. If you’re not ready to take their business, don’t send the message.

Try out this simple prospect recovery system on your database of unconverted sales leads and see if it shakes loose some easy business for you to jump start your sales!

Christopher S. Penn
Director of Inbound Marketing, WhatCounts

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While the most widely recognized form of spam is email, the term is applied to similar abuses in other media: your instant messaging windows, internet forums, facebook, in blogs and discussion boards and so on. It’s one of the most hated phenomena of the digital world.

As a response to complaints from people being bombarded by trillions of unsolicited email messages, most countries have implemented some form of spam legislation, and the consequences to violators can be severe. For example, violators of Canada’s Bill C-28, Fighting Internet and Wireless Spam Act (FISA), can be fined up to $1 million for an individual and up to $10 million for an organization. There is also an international CAN-SPAM Act that was passed.

However, even if your email program has complied with the laws, there will be subscribers who gave you permission but will hit the spam button anyway. Why? Because those subscribers don’t feel that your email was relevant, timely, targeted, or valuable. At the end of the day, no matter what the law says, it is ultimately up to the subscriber to decide what is unwanted email, and the subscriber holds all of the power with the “Report as spam” button that can trash your company’s online reputation – and the ability to get future email delivered – with just a click.

Read that again: what is spam is up to the subscriber.

So how do you fight this?

There are few general solutions to help keep your recipients from hitting the spam button, even after they have opted in. Making sure you are sending your messages to those who have explicitly given their permission is a vital first step. What makes permission email marketing different is not just that you have the approval of the customer to send to them, it’s that you, by getting permission, are sending email messages to people who really want them. The key is to only send useful emails that are relevant to your recipients. Remember this golden rule above all else to avoid being flagged as spam:

Send only relevant, timely, targeted, valuable email to people who asked for it.

Keep track of what works and what doesn’t and adapt accordingly. Most readers spend only three to five seconds scanning an email before they decide to read it or ignore it, so it’s critical you do everything possible to make sure they open and engage with your message. A great way to do this is to set-up a simple A/B “Subject-line” test and segmentation rules. Testing your email campaigns upfront provides you with real-time consumer data based entirely on recipient behavior, allowing you to maximize campaign effectiveness and reaching your customers with the right message, in the best way, at the right time.

If you can send relevant, timely, targeted, valuable email to people who asked for it, you’ll avoid being flagged as a spammer by your subscribers.

Madison Murphy
Marketing Coordinator, WhatCounts

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Download the Email for Sales eBook as mentioned in the talk by clicking here.

Christopher S. Penn
Director of Inbound Marketing, WhatCounts

Are you making the most of your email marketing program? If you haven't incorporated Lifecycle Email Marketing, you're leaving money on the table. Click here to download and read our Lifecycle Email Marketing White Paper and find out what your email marketing program is missing.

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If you’re looking for a way to enhance your current email marketing program, this post is for you. Below, you will find five different types of email efforts that you may want to consider implementing to increase your results and dazzle your boss!

One: Welcome Email

Ideally, Welcome emails are sent on the first day of a user’s subscription and they are set up to send automatically from your email marketing platform once a new user is added to your email list. Take the hard work out of the process and let your email marketing platform’s auto-response solution do the work!

Recommended Welcome email content includes:

• Welcoming subscriber
• Thanking them for signing up for your emails
• Encouraging them to mark your ‘From’ address as a Safe Sender in their email system
• Providing a link to whitelisting instructions
• Last, yet most important, the Welcome email should present a promotion for first purchase to drive conversion

Gardner’s Supply Company: Good Welcome email

For details on Welcome campaign best practices, check out this WhatCounts blog post: “Best Practice: Welcome Your New Email Subscribers“.

Two: Holiday Campaign – All holidays

It’s no secret that the holidays present huge opportunities for all businesses: both B2C and B2B. B2C companies experience huge revenue spikes while B2B companies typically see more engagement/interaction with their customer base. Budgets are tight but your customers are willing to spread the holiday cheer…don’t miss out.

According to Experian’s 2010 Holiday Marketer: Benchmark and Trend Report, email volumes are expected to increase 15% to 20% for the 2010 winter holiday season as compared to this same time period last year. Why? Because emails generate results whether that is in the form of revenue or stronger relationships. Need proof? The Direct Marketing Association conducted research that suggests that email marketing generated an ROI of $43.62 for every dollar spent on it in 2009.

For holiday email marketing ideas and tips, view the recent WhatCounts Holiday webinar.

While the winter holidays are top of mind now, don’t forget about the smaller holidays scattered throughout the year. These holidays represent the same opportunity for you and/or your business. Follow Brooks Brothers’ lead.

Brooks Brothers: Good Holiday email

Need further details and inspiration? Check out this WhatCounts blog post by Amy Garland: “4 Ways to Reach Your Subscribers this Holiday Season“.

Three: Birthday Email

Similar to a Welcome email, a Birthday email should be setup to automatically fire off to a subscriber on his/her birthday or during the subscriber’s birthday month.

According to Experian Marketing Services report, 2010, the top five birthday subject lines based on open rates are:

1. A special gift for your birthday
2. Happy Birthday [FIRSTNAME]
3. Happy Birthday From [Company]
4. Your Special Birthday Bonus
5. A special gift of 20% off for your birthday

Like the Welcome email initiative, be sure to add value to your Birthday email efforts.

Macy’s: Good Birthday email

For the ins-and-outs of birthday email efforts, view the WhatCounts blog post “They Say It’s Your (Subscriber’s) Birthday“.

Four: Re-Engagement Campaign

WhatCounts recommends running a re-engagement campaign every 6 months in an effort to clean your lists of dead and “emotionally unsubscribed” email addresses and ensure all subscribers on your lists are actively and positively contributing to your email results. Those that want to hear from you are less likely to mark your emails as spam so they should be the prized addresses you keep on your list. Don’t blow your email budget on people that don’t want to hear from you. They won’t buy, they won’t engage so what is the benefit of having them on your list?

TurboSaver: Good Re-engagement email

DJ Waldow describes Re-Engagement campaigns further in this WhatCounts blog post: “Re-Engagement Campaigns: Not Often Timely, Yet They Work!“. MarketingSherpa also recently released a great case study showcasing the benefit of Re-engagement efforts (list cut in half, sales doubled).  Read the MarketingSherpa article.

Five: Apology Email

When you mess up big time (we’ve all done it!) fess up and reap the benefits. Apology messages aren’t necessary for every small slip up but when needed, keep it short, add value (e.g., discount, gift, free shipping), try to send the apology email as soon after the mishap as possible and, last but not least, add some humor if you can!

1-800 Flowers: Good Apology email

For more hints on what your Apology email should involve, view WhatCounts blog post “How to Handle Your Email Marketing Oops with Class“.

If you’re not hitting your subscribers with all these types of communication when appropriate, you’re missing out on huge opportunities. Get to it and, WhatCounts clients, let your account managers know if you have any questions.

Happy Emailing!

Lindsay Ferrara
Strategic Account Manager, WhatCounts

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