Webinar Wrap-up: 10 Email Breakthroughs That Won’t Break the Law

1. Provide Crystal Clear Terms of Data Use

Regulations are constantly changing. Over the last decade, the protection of customers’ personal information is increasingly emphasized and considered as a fundamental right. Governments across the globe are regulating it accordingly. This means data protection is a critical prerequisite for any business that deals with personal information. Companies are required to build trust and ensure that they are doing the right thing with personal information.

You need to tell me what exactly you’ll be doing with this data.

2. Offer Clear Consent Options

This is where a lot of companies are having trouble or issues because there's a lot of things that you need to change. There is no place for implied consent in the GDPR. Implied consent means that you can believe that a person would give you their consent if you asked for it. So you can't pre-check a box for people to subscribe or to agree to the terms of service. You have to abide by express consent, meaning, you ask for customer's consent, they understand the policies/requirements and the implications, and then make a personal choice. Your emails should also contain clear, simple, free of cost, and one-page, no process unsubscribe option.

3. Never Combine Consent

It is something like trapping people to buy your products or services and getting consent to do something at the same time. The GDPR mentions that consent can never be bundled up as a condition of service unless it is required for that particular service. For example, suppose you have read the Terms and Conditions and the privacy policy and agree to it, but you look underneath and find to keep you up to date we will send you the newsletter. That was a requirement of the terms and conditions, and to check out, you had to agree to the Terms of Service, which implied that you would receive their emails in the future. This practice should be avoided.

4. Do Annoying Pop-Ups Work?

Do pop-up ads work? Are they annoying? What's going on with them? Pop-ups have become complicated as the GDPR has laid down guidelines about specific consent for specific purposes, not blanket acceptances. However, there are some good as well as bad things about pop-ups.

Pop-Ups Best practices:

• Timing: 60 seconds into the visit. Don't immediately show the pop up as soon as someone gets to the website.
• Placement: After Blog posts & articles. Allow the user to meet their objective first, which is getting the information they want and then tightening that pop-up sufficiently to let them see the information and find the value from it.
• Benefit:  Ask yourself if there is a clear value to the reader.
• Never use exit pop-ups that don’t allow people to leave when they want.

5. Personalization – It’s All About ME

Email personalization is the easiest way to increase open rates, higher click-throughs, greater engagement, and better conversions. The Data & Marketing Association (DMA) estimates that 58 percent of all revenue is generated by segmented, targeted, and personalized emails. Personalization goes beyond name, and it is more about relevance. So when you know a few different methods for designing the highly targeted experiences people want, you can test them and see what works best.

6. The Robots are Coming!

Companies that use Artificial Intelligence (AI) found that their front end metrics increased dramatically. According to Persado, its AI tools led to a 450% increase in clicks for JPMorgan Chase Bank, and in every test, it outperformed human copywriters. AI tests different options faster to see what exactly are the words that trigger people to click. It is sifting through the information and finding patterns that humans may not notice. Human marketers write based only on their own experience and knowledge, instincts, and preconceptions, whereas a bot is not limited to that. However, a bot cannot replace human writers completely. For example, it cannot understand and analyze how many readers are sending you negative feedback, and so on.

7. Insanely Great Landing Pages

Beautiful landing pages can do wonders for your business. It can help you stand apart from your competitors and leave a long-lasting impression on your users. Landing pages are pages you create on your website and act as a gateway for customers who can link to your email. Designing a personalized landing page that links with your email give your audience a unified, streamlined experience as they move from one screen to the next. It also effectively improves the chance of them completing a goal, like signing up for a webinar, downloading an eBook, or perhaps even making a purchase. 

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8. Retargeting Emails 

Email retargeting targets your existing customers by using the information from your database. The audience of these emails is your current leads. An example of email retargeting is sending customers a follow-up email (or more than one) once they’ve abandoned their shopping cart. So, they have added products to their shopping cart but left the site without making a purchase. In email marketing, one of the best practices you can follow is to send remarketing emails to these customers, in an attempt to recover some of that “lost” revenue.

9. Real-Time Emails

Real-time emails allow more interaction and engagement at the email level within your email window rather than clicking through and going to the landing page.

Here's a great example of a real-time email:

10. Money, Money, Money

Don’t forget to track revenue and conversions for each email.

Do you think that your emailing skills are top-notch? Try these Email Marketing Practice Test Questions and find out yourself!

Conclusion

For more comprehensive email marketing expertise, enroll in Simplilearn’s Advanced Email Marketing Certification training course and learn how to generate emails that get opened, influence readers, and make sales.