How my email campaign obtained a 67% open rate and 31% click rate

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A highly successful email campaign (customer survey) was recently implemented for a client and I thought I’d share my approach. People are reluctant to open a “marketing” email, let alone to click on a link within it. However, as the above results show, this campaign greatly exceeded the industry averages: opens were ~4x higher, and clicks, ~17x higher. To be clear, nearly 7 out of 10 people who received the email, opened it, and of those people who opened it, nearly half of them clicked on the link to the survey. It is worth noting that the MailChimp and Google services used were free.

The email had a link to a Google form where 531 respondents landed, 529 of them answering the first eight questions. While 529 customer opinions is considerable, it is not always enough. When you download these data into a pivot table and categorize the responses in different ways, you find that a few categories are too small for making statistically valid inferences. Therefore, the 199 bounced emails are regrettable; they could have generated an additional 62 responses - an increase of nearly 12% - given the open / click rates. We always want more, high-quality data and we should take every pain to ensure that we get it.

In terms of maximizing opens, you have two controllable parameters: the selection of contacts to whom you send the email and the manner in which you configure the header. Maximizing clicks requires carefully crafted email content. There is no formula that applies equally to all campaigns. Any seasoned, customer-aligned professional will recognize that you need to put yourself in the shoes of the intended recipients and tailor your campaign specifically to that audience. You should also understand the company you are representing.

Here is what I did for this particular campaign:

Meticulously validated the contact list
Fortunately, the client had a “point of sale” system from which I could extract an actual customer list. It is a huge advantage to have your own customer data. Even though the data entry at the time of sale had been somewhat sloppy, I was able to get a final list of 1,961 contacts. I painstakingly looked for obvious typos in the list and made corrections if possible, or else deleted. I had hoped to target the maximum number of contacts allowed by MailChimp (2,000) but I had to delete a lot of duplicates and other dubious entries having names that didn’t seem to match their email addresses. Spreadsheet software has tools to help, such as flagging duplicates. I searched for duplicates by name as well as by email address. I skimmed for obvious errors by sorting alphabetically by name and comparing to email addresses (and vice-versa). Alphabetical sorting made finding and correcting the “Mc” and “Mac” surnames much faster. All of them lacked proper capitalization (eg - Mcdonald instead of McDonald).

Personalized / tailored the email header
I leveraged the fact that my client is well-liked by customers and is considered to be friendly, sincere, and knowledgeable. It’s not unusual for him to spend an hour with a customer and it is almost certain that a customer would have positive associations with dealing with him. I could see customers, in turn, being willing to help him.

• From: Neither my company name nor my client’s company name were used. My client’s personal name was used in the following format: “First_name (xyz store) < First_name.Last_name @yahoo.ca @send.mailchimpapp.com >” where xyz was the type of product sold, and served as a reminder to customers who may not have been to the store in several years. MailChimp appends “@send.mailchimpapp.com” to the “From” field but not to the “Reply to:” field.
• To: included the recipient’s first name, last name and email address. The body of the email itself started with “Dear First_name”. It’s important to address the email to each person by name (correctly spelled!), rather than by a patronizing “Dear valued customer”. Thus the emphasis on validating the names on your contact list.
• Subject: “new store planned”. This was a concise, truthful statement and the main reason for the survey. It is asks nothing of the recipient and provides information that might be intriguing.

Wrote a “personal” email that was concise and sincere.
I wanted recipients to realize right away that the survey would be fast, secure, and anonymous. The email was brief, having only four sentences that I revised multiple times before being satisfied. I indicated that due to the closure of the old store, a new store was being planned for which their input would be appreciated. There was one clear “ask”: “Could I ask you to fill out this brief survey?” followed by a reassurance that the survey was anonymous with no personal questions being asked. I also indicated that there were 12 multiple choice questions that would take only 2-3 minutes.

People are concerned with internet security; viruses and phishing scams abound. So if you’re asking people to click on a link, you’ll want to somehow reassure them – indirectly and directly - that it’s safe. Ensuring that your email meets the requirements of anti-spam legislation (Canada and USA) is an indirect indicator that your email is legitimate (of course, this does not guarantee that an email is safe, or not spam). Things like clearly identifying yourself or your organization, providing contact information, and having an “unsubscribe” link are all important. Directly letting people know what to expect will also reassure them. For example, I wrote: When you click the blue button below, you will be taken to the survey on a page hosted by Google “forms”.

The clincher?
I have no data to base this on, but I suspect that a large part of the click rate success was due to having included a photograph of my client at the bottom of the email. It was carefully chosen and had a caption at the bottom “Thanks in advance for your help”. The photo was clearly not a professional shot. It was a natural and unposed, head and shoulders shot, taken in warm sunlight in front of some greenery. He looked very relaxed and happy with a genuine smile. I wanted recipients to know exactly who the email was from. Many would have forgotten his name but a photograph is a powerful reminder. I was also counting on them having good associations with his friendly face.

We were very pleased with the results of this campaign. Receiving 529 responses was well beyond our expectations. Furthermore, the analysis of the survey data was highly informative and hopefully will be the subject of another article soon.

Footnote
I wanted to verify the industry averages quoted by MailChimp and found an informative study done by Watson Marketing (IBM). They looked at campaigns by country and by industry and found that Canadians are much more receptive to email campaigns than many other countries. Below, I summarize their data for Canada and for the retail category and compare it to our campaign results. Our success rates were considerably higher than even the best campaigns (top quartile) recorded in their study.