As an e-mail marketer, do you spend a number of weeks on e-mail marketing campaign design and content material?
If sure, e-mail templates might be the reply to your prayers.
Templates allow manufacturers to rapidly design and deploy personalized e-mail campaigns, saving effort and time. You’ll be able to even reuse the identical templates for various campaigns, saving much more time, whereas connecting together with your viewers in customized methods, and delivering wonderful model experiences.
Are your present e-mail templates not delivering the outcomes you anticipated?
Conduct an e-mail template audit to search out the gaps that stop you from assembly your e-mail advertising and marketing targets, and information your decision-making.
Learn on to grasp why template audits are necessary on your model, and how one can get essentially the most from the train.
What’s An Electronic mail Template Audit?
Electronic mail templates can change into outdated, or fall wanting supporting the model’s targets. However should you don’t know the place the gaps are, you possibly can’t deal with them, a lot much less enhance the efficiency of your e-mail advertising and marketing program. Right here’s the place a template audit could be a game-changer.
With a template audit, you or an exterior auditor can gauge template efficiency, establish any gaps, and take steps to shut these gaps. Thus, you possibly can set up enchancment baselines and establish alternatives for marketing campaign optimization.
With an e-mail template audit, you’ll find solutions like:
- Ought to we add further templates to our e-mail advertising and marketing program?
- Ought to we add modules to our present templates? Or take away irrelevant/outdated modules?
- Have we acquired suggestions from earlier A/B checks that now we have not but included into our templates?
- Do now we have a brand new brand, imagery or commonplace textual content (e.g. footer) that needs to be added to present templates?
- Are our templates accessible, mobile-ready, and darkish mode-friendly?
- Are all hyperlinks nonetheless related, up-to-date, and legally compliant?
- Do we have to replace the unsubscribe course of?
Advantages of Electronic mail Template Audits
A/B testing is a useful a part of each e-mail advertising and marketing program. By establishing totally different variations of the identical marketing campaign and sending every model to a unique subset of your broader viewers, you possibly can decide which model is most certainly to resonate with subscribers. Also referred to as cut up testing, A/B testing gives a good way to extend the likelihood of e-mail opens, clicks, and conversions.
However the truth that A/B testing is “cut up” testing can be its downside. Basically, because of this at any given time, you possibly can solely check totally different variants of a single aspect. If you wish to check a number of parts of two e-mail variants with totally different topic strains, you possibly can’t accomplish that with a single A/B check. For this, it’s good to run a number of A/B checks, which takes effort and time. Plus, it’s good to discover the proper sub-audience for each check, which requires a number of segmentation efforts.
If this seems like a well-recognized subject, you in all probability check just one or two parts earlier than deploying a marketing campaign. Because you don’t have advance visibility into whether or not your viewers will like the opposite parts, you don’t know whether or not your opens and click-throughs could also be affected by these parts. And because you don’t know what’s going to work – and extra importantly, what received’t – you possibly can’t take the mandatory motion to retain the nice and reduce out the dangerous earlier than it impacts your marketing campaign outcomes. By the point you do work out the place the gaps are, the deployment is already carried out. At this level, you possibly can solely measure marketing campaign outcomes, and make investments further money and time in redesign if outcomes are below-par.
Additional, by working in such a black gap, you in all probability reuse present templates, despite the fact that you aren’t getting the outcomes you anticipated. Conducting an e-mail template audit is an efficient approach to break this vicious cycle and keep away from all these points.
Advantages of Knowledgeable Electronic mail Template Auditors
Thus, an e-mail template audit might help you proactively perceive whether or not all e-mail parts are functioning optimally earlier than a marketing campaign ship. If one thing is working effectively, you don’t should expend further improvement price or time on a redesign. But when one thing isn’t, the audit outcomes will inform you precisely the place the problems are, so you possibly can focus your efforts in that course. That is one purpose why an audit carried out by a crew of consultants like Electronic mail Uplers is absolutely invaluable.
Exterior auditors have superior experience in numerous features of template audit. Plus, they arrive with an out of doors perspective and data of e-mail advertising and marketing finest practices – each of which may generate extremely related audit outcomes, and likewise present a transparent pathway in the direction of enchancment.
As well as, professional auditors can ship all these advantages:
- Audit every aspect of each in-use template (baseline evaluation) to verify if it’s nonetheless on-brand and related to each prospects and your e-mail advertising and marketing technique
- Discover flaws to be eradicated
- Test the effectiveness of design, aspect placement, performance, and content material
- Test hyperlinks and commonplace textual content
- Recommend if a template refresh is required to keep away from monotony
- Affirm if the template is totally accessible, responsive, and mobile-ready
- Test if each HTML and textual content variations can be found to satisfy the wants of all subscribers, together with these in low-bandwidth areas
- Determine what sources are required to appropriate any points
- Test if there are any issues with ESP integration
- Confirm e-mail shopper compatibility and recommend options for non-supportive shoppers
- Recommend methods to enhance design and ramp up open charges and click on charges
Which Template Parts Ought to You Audit?
Ideally, you must audit all of the under parts:
- Preheader and header
- Does it encourage the reader to open the e-mail?
- Does it present the proper context?
- Is it on-brand?
- Topic line
- Is the size optimized and visual in each browser or gadget?
- Are we utilizing emojis strategically?
- Are there “spammy” phrases which will land our emails within the Spam folder?
- Content material
- Is the textual content related, customized, and up-to-date?
- Are we utilizing crisp and daring headlines?
- Do font kind and measurement match our model’s esthetics?
- Is content material positioned in easy-to-read blocks?
- Is the copy well-formatted?
- Is there a transparent take-away?
- Are particular gives, reductions, and so on. related to the recipient? Are they outdated?
- Do dynamic content material blocks show the proper info to the proper recipient?
- Design and format parts
- Is the format straightforward on the attention?
- Are we utilizing the optimum mixture of textual content and graphics?
- Is the width optimized for each gadget?
- Are we making a textual content model of each HTML e-mail?
- Graphical parts
- Are pictures on-brand?
- Are all hyperlinks working?
- Does each picture have alt textual content?
- Are the CTA hyperlinks and textual content related?
- Are we successfully utilizing white house?
- ESP integration
- Does the template work with our ESP?
- If we use multiple ESP, does it work with all?
- Browser and gadget compatibility
- Do templates render correctly on each browser and gadget?
- Are they responsive and mobile-friendly?
- Interactivity
- Are we utilizing interactive parts successfully?
- How do they have an effect on person expertise and marketing campaign ROI?
- Social sharing hyperlinks
- Are we together with the proper hyperlinks?
- Do they take the person to the proper web page?
- Footer textual content
- Is it up to date and clearly seen?
- Are any modifications required?
- Is a bodily deal with included/required?
- Unsubscribe hyperlink and textual content
- Is the hyperlink clearly seen?
- Is the method difficult or straightforward?
- Compliance with CAN-SPAM and different relevant legal guidelines
- Are we non-compliant in any approach?
Electronic mail Template Audit Greatest Practices
When conducting an audit, it’s finest to divide the template into particular person sections, and deal with every individually. This ensures that each part is given the eye it deserves with out overwhelming the auditor.
Needless to say a template audit needs to be holistic. Don’t restrict your audit to only the visible esthetics or content material. Additionally verify placement, performance, responsiveness, and naturally brand-relevance.
When you can’t check for all the weather defined within the earlier part, begin with these parts that you’d usually A/B check, reminiscent of:
- Topic line
- Content material
- Visuals
- Personalization
- CTA
- Hyperlinks
- Gives
Additionally, since every e-mail has a unique function, the audit ought to begin with this function (the all-important “why”) in thoughts:
- Inform and educate
- Persuade
- Onboard, register, or welcome
- Have interaction or re-engage
- Cross-sell or upsell
- Comply with up
- Ask for suggestions
- Make an announcement or ship an invitation
- Ship a particular supply, low cost, or promotion
- Special day needs, e.g. Moms’ Day or birthday
Conclusion
Electronic mail templates are a invaluable aspect of your e-mail advertising and marketing program. Nonetheless, to make sure that you proceed to make use of the perfect and only templates, it’s essential to keep away from falling into the “slot in and overlook it” entice. Conduct common audits to tweak your technique and be sure that you get the absolute best outcomes from each marketing campaign.
The audit consultants at Electronic mail Uplers can audit your e-mail templates and supply a easy, easy-to-follow implementation plan. Click on right here to know extra.