Introduction to Marketing Automation
Email marketing automation has become a crucial aspect of every campaign manager’s day-to-day work. Whether you’re using any email marketing automation platform, understanding the fundamentals is essential. This guide covers the basics that are shared across all platforms, ensuring you have a solid foundation in email marketing automation.
What is marketing automation?
Marketing automation is the use of software and technology to automate repetitive marketing tasks and processes, such as managing leads, segmenting audiences, sending targeted communications, and tracking campaign performance across various channels. This approach helps businesses improve efficiency, enhance customer engagement, and achieve better results in their marketing efforts by making these tasks more manageable and consistent.
Multichannel interaction
Reach your recipients through various online and offline channels, such as email, push notifications, social media, SMS, and even printed letters. By utilizing multiple channels, you can engage with your audience effectively, catering to their preferences and increasing the likelihood of successful interactions.
Omni-channel approach
While similar to multichannel marketing, the omni-channel approach emphasizes the customer journey. It is lots of time explained as the customer centered marketing approach. It focuses on delivering content seamlessly across various touchpoints, using the customer’s preferred channel and following company guidelines. The goal is to create a consistent and personalized experience for the customer, regardless of where or how they interact with your brand.
Internet Service Provider (ISP)
An ISP is the entity responsible for providing internet access to users. Understanding ISPs is crucial when it comes to email deliverability and complying with their guidelines. Factors such as IP reputation and content filtering by ISPs can significantly affect whether your emails reach the inbox or get flagged as spam.
Email Service Provider (ESP)
An ESP is a specialized part of an ISP that offers email domain hosting services, such as Gmail, Yahoo Mail, AOL, and Outlook.com. Working with ESPs helps ensure proper email delivery and management. Knowing the nuances of different ESPs can improve deliverability and engagement by tailoring your emails to the specific requirements of each provider.
Transactional email
Transactional emails are user-initiated or sent after a commercial transaction. They do not require marketing consent and include emails like password resets, account creation confirmations, double opt-ins, receipts, shipping information, and refunds. These emails are crucial for customer satisfaction and often have higher open rates than promotional emails.
Preheader
The preheader is the initial text displayed under the email subject line in the recipient’s mailbox. It’s an important element that can increase open rates, so make sure it complements your subject line and provides a compelling reason to open the email. I have found very nice article about preheader implementation.
Data Protection Regulations and Certifications: A General Overview
Data protection has become a paramount concern in today’s digital world, where vast amounts of personal and sensitive data are collected, processed, and stored by organizations across the globe. Various regulations and certifications have been established to ensure that data is handled responsibly, securely, and transparently. This overview provides a general understanding of key data protection regulations and certifications, and the role they play in safeguarding information.
General Data Protection Regulation (GDPR)
GDPR is a privacy and security law in the European Union that safeguards customer data. Complying with GDPR regulations is essential when conducting email marketing campaigns. Failure to comply can result in significant fines and damage to your brand’s reputation.
Comprehensive Consumer Data Privacy (CDPA)
CDPA is a customer privacy and security law in the United States. Understanding and adhering to CDPA regulations is crucial for email marketers targeting a U.S. audience. Compliance ensures that customer data is handled responsibly and that your marketing practices are legally sound.
California Consumer Privacy Act (CCPA)
CCPA is a California-specific privacy law that focuses on protecting consumer data. Complying with CCPA is vital if you target audiences in California. It provides consumers with rights over their data, such as the ability to request deletion or opt-out of data sharing.
Delivery measurement
Adobe Campaign delivery indicators
Adobe Campaign uses the term “delivery indicators” to provide cumulative statistics about how your delivery or campaign performs.
Initial population
The initial population refers to the segment of customers you intend to target with your email content.
Processed / sent emails
This term refers to the initial population after applying exclusions, such as opt-outs, blacklisted recipients, or a control group being tested by the email server. Monitoring processed emails helps you understand the actual audience size and effectiveness of your email list hygiene practices.
Delivered emails
The number of emails delivered to recipients. High delivery rates indicate good list quality and deliverability practices.
Bounced emails
Emails that have been sent but failed to deliver due to various reasons. In email marketing or ISPs distinguish two different types of bounces: hard and soft. A hard bounce is when the email account will always fail to receive an email (e.g., user does not exist, domain does not exist). It’s a permanent error, and this email address will be automatically quarantined. A soft bounce means that the email account is temporarily unavailable due to various reasons (e.g., mailbox full). Monitoring bounce rates is crucial for maintaining list quality and sender reputation.
Opens
How many times your email send-out has been opened in total. This metric gives a general sense of how engaging your subject line and preheader are.
Distinct opens
How many unique recipients have opened the email send-out at least once. This is a more accurate measure of reach, as it counts each recipient only once, no matter how many times they open the email.
Terminology used in Adobe Campaign.
Open rate
Email opens divided by total emails sent.
OR = (Unique opens / Emails sent) * 100 [%]Over 25% is considered as good open rate. Average is 18 to 22%
Clicks
The total number of clicks your email has received. This metric shows how engaging your email content is, particularly the effectiveness of your CTAs.
Distinct clicks
The number of unique recipients’ clicks for an email. Every HTML link (CTA) that is tracked inside your email counts toward this metric. Distinct clicks help you understand how many unique recipients are engaging with your email content.
Terminology used in Adobe Campaign.
Click-through rate (CTR)
Unique recipient’s clicks to total delivered messages ration. It is calculated by following formula:
CTR = (unique recipient email click / emails delivered in total) * 100 [%]Over 5 % is considered as good CTR. Average is between 2-4 %
Click-to-open rate (CTOR)
Unique recipient’s clicks to unique recipient’s opens ratio
CTOR = (Unique clickc/Unique opens) * 100 [%]Over 15 % is considered as good CTOR. Average is between 10 – 15%
Deliverability
The number of emails reaching inboxes or accepted by ISPs. High deliverability rates are crucial for successful email campaigns and are influenced by factors like sender reputation and list hygiene.
Complain rate
The number of emails that raised complaints via the ISP. This is usually captured via feedback loops from ISPs. A complaint rate higher than 1 per 1,000 emails sent is considered bad, indicating that the content or strategy needs to be corrected.
Salesforce Marketing Cloud delivery measurement
Salesforce Marketing Cloud (SFMC) is designed to provide comprehensive, data-driven insights into the performance of marketing campaigns across multiple channels. SFMC’s delivery measurement capabilities are integrated into several key modules, including Email Studio, Mobile Studio, Journey Builder, Analytics Builder, and for raw delivery sent and tracking data we can use data views.
Email Studio
In Email Studio, SFMC offers detailed tracking of email campaigns. Marketers can monitor a range of key performance indicators (KPIs), including delivery rates, bounce rates, open rates, click-through rates, and unsubscribe rates. These metrics are available in real-time, allowing for immediate insights into how recipients are interacting with emails. Additionally, marketers can segment their audience based on these metrics to refine targeting and improve future campaign performance.
Analytics Builder
Analytics Builder enhances SFMC’s delivery measurement by offering advanced reporting and data visualization tools. It allows marketers to create custom reports that combine delivery metrics across different channels. With features like Journey Analytics and Einstein Analytics, users can dive deeper into the data to uncover insights about customer behavior, campaign effectiveness, and ROI. This module is particularly useful for identifying trends and making data-driven decisions to improve campaign performance.
Data views
If your company has an established data analytics team that uses other analytical tools, you may need to extract raw data from Salesforce Marketing Cloud for more detailed analysis. One effective way to do this is by leveraging Data Views within SFMC. Data Views are system-generated tables that contain detailed information about different aspects of your marketing campaigns, including email deliveries, clicks, bounces, and more.
Tracking Extracts
Tracking Extracts in Salesforce Marketing Cloud provide a powerful method for exporting granular tracking data from Email Studio into external systems for further analysis. These extracts enable marketers to gain deep insights into specific aspects of their email campaigns, such as clicks, bounces, and survey responses. Data extracts can be scheduled and customized via the automation. If you are using campaign labels and the campaign calendar, these are only available in tracking extracts.
CTA
A link inside the email that is being tracked. The CTA is crucial for driving conversions, so it should be clear, compelling, and relevant to the email content.
Double opt in
Every time recipient submits their email address on your landing or corporate page. You would like to know if that email is functional so will be prevent from hurting your IP reputation. You most probably will send confirmation email with link to activate their account for subscription.
SMTP Headers
SMTP (Simple Mail Transfer Protocol) headers are an essential part of the email system. They contain metadata about the email message, guiding its delivery and providing important information about its origin, path, and content. Understanding SMTP headers is crucial for troubleshooting email delivery issues, ensuring security, and managing email systems effectively.
Unsubscribe
Unsubscribes are a critical aspect of email marketing, ensuring that your communications respect your subscribers’ preferences.
Double opt out
As you want your subscriber to confirm their email you want them to confirm their opt out by submitting a form on landing page. You can also add different options to opt out landing page for example to choose to unsubscribe from different newsletters or choose to receive less emails or put your subscription on pause for next upcoming months. If nothing helps you can ask to fill up the form so you can improve your newsletter services.
One-Click Unsubscribe
The One-Click Unsubscribe feature simplifies the process of opting out of email communications, making it faster and more user-friendly. This feature allows recipients to unsubscribe from mailing lists with a single click directly from their email interface, without having to search for a hidden link or go through multiple confirmation steps. This convenience is becoming increasingly important, especially with new requirements from major email providers like Google and Yahoo, which have made one-click unsubscribe a mandatory feature for senders as of June 2024.
If not added automatically by your marketing automation platform you would need to add following to your SMTP headers.
List-Unsubscribe-Post: List-Unsubscribe=One-Click
List-Unsubscribe: <https://exapmle.com/oneclickunscubscribe={recipient.cryptedId} >, < mailto:rmm@example.com?subject=unsubscribe
Salesforce marketing cloud
What Happens When a Subscriber Unsubscribes?
In Salesforce Marketing Cloud, an “Unsubscribed” status indicates that a subscriber has opted out of receiving further communications from you, either by their action or by your decision. When a subscriber clicks the unsubscribe link in an email, their status is automatically updated to “Unsubscribed.”
Important Note: The unsubscribe process described here represents a typical scenario. However, the process may vary depending on your account type. For example, Enterprise 1.0 accounts have a different unsubscribe process. To understand how unsubscribes are handled in your specific account, please contact your Salesforce representative.
How Unsubscribes Are Handled
Every email you send from Salesforce Marketing Cloud includes an unsubscribe link at the bottom. Subscribers have two main options when they decide to unsubscribe:
- Manage Subscriptions: This link allows subscribers to view and manage their subscription preferences. They can choose to unsubscribe from specific lists or types of communications rather than opting out of all emails.
- One-Click Unsubscribe: This option immediately unsubscribes the subscriber from the specific list associated with the email they received. To unsubscribe from all lists, the subscriber would need to go through the “Manage Subscriptions” link and manually opt out from each list.
Methods of Unsubscribing
Subscribers can unsubscribe in several ways, depending on how they interact with your communications:
- List Unsubscribe: This occurs when a subscriber opts out of receiving emails from a specific list.
- Universal Unsubscribe: When a subscriber chooses this option, they are unsubscribed from all emails sent by your company. Their status is updated to “Unsubscribed” across all your lists.
- Global Unsubscribe: A global unsubscribe means the subscriber has opted out of receiving any emails from any sender within your Salesforce Marketing Cloud account. This is the broadest form of unsubscribe.
- One-Click Header Unsubscribe: The List-Unsubscribe header is included with all commercial sends and supports one-click unsubscribe functionality. This header allows email clients to display a uniform unsubscribe link within their interface, making it easy for subscribers to opt out of unwanted emails. How and where this link is displayed depends on the Internet Service Provider (ISP).
Unsubscribe Processing for Enterprise 2.0 Business Units
In Enterprise 2.0 business units within Salesforce Marketing Cloud, unsubscribes are managed using subscriber filters. These filters help ensure that unsubscribe requests are processed correctly across different lists and business units.
Adobe campaign unsubscribe
Adobe Campaign allows you to create and manage various information services, such as newsletters and alert notifications. These services can be tailored for specific product categories, themes, or areas of a website.
Subscribing (Opt-In) Options:
- Manual Subscription: Add a service directly to a recipient’s profile via the Subscriptions tab.
- Automatic Subscription: Subscribe recipients from a filtered list, group, or import by selecting profiles and subscribing them to a service.
- Web Forms: Use or customize default web forms for recipients to subscribe. Change the recipient profile “blacklist” flag
- Targeting Workflow: Automate subscriptions using the Subscription service activity in a targeting workflow.
Unsubscribing (Opt-Out) Options:
- Manual Unsubscription: Remove a service from a recipient’s profile or delete recipients from a service. Unsubscribe a recipient from a marketing channel by updating their profile. Use a GDPR request to remove all of a customer’s data from the platform and blacklist their email address.
- Personalized Links/Web Forms: Use customized unsubscription links or forms.
- Automatic Unsubscription: Set a duration limit for services; recipients are unsubscribed automatically when it expires.
- Unsubscription Workflow: Automate unsubscription for a group of recipients using a workflow.
Adobe Campaign provides flexible tools to manage both opt-ins and opt-outs efficiently, ensuring a smooth user experience for managing email subscriptions.
Customer journey / campaign
Is a sequence of marketing activities where between them different logical conditions can be applied to your journey recipients (contact). For example you can send scheduled email then select all that have not open the email and send them another copy with different subject line. Or reward openers with additional email with premium information.
A/B testing
Is process of sending two variations of a email creative to a subset of your subscriber’s segment to decide later on winner creative that will be sent to remaining of your segment. You can for example test different subject line by measuring unique open rate, CTA by click trough rate
This list will be expanding in the future. If there are terms that you want to be added? Let me know in the comments.
