Email Marketing Agency

Inspire meaningful dialogue

Why are so many emails resigned to the trash can? Relevance. Without meaningful value, your emails risk being brand negative. We deliver emails with meaning, as part of a well-planned journey.

Get in touch

A-Z of Email Marketing: Guide to Best Practice

4d Impact are a content marketing agency, taking the guesswork out of email marketing.

Save time, increase effectiveness, and reduce the cost of your next email marketing campaign. Get in touch, or use our email A-Z of as a guide.

Automation

Document ‘explict’ actions your users perform on platforms where you have the ability to record behaviour against a customer record. Devise triggered response campaigns, which automate emails to aid the customer journey.

Brand perception

Recipients judge your email based on their knowledge of your brand before opening. A consistent approach to branding is vital, so that brand equity is increased, and translates to increased email engagement over time.

Concision

Whilst often tempting to tell everyone about all the exciting news / products / promotions, attention spans are especially slim among email recipients (think 2 seconds slim). Try putting together a content plan spanning several emails, rather than saying it all in one go.

Data

The quality of output (e.g. engagement, leads, sales) directly corresponds to the quality of input (audience data and targeting). Make sure data is kept fresh, relevant, and is compliant of all standards, such as GDPR. Depth and clarity of data taxonomies aid meaningful personalisation.

Enticing

Without an enticing subject line, your emails will not convert to meaningful commercial goals. Email content must be short and captivating, getting right to the heart of the offer with minimum waffle.

Frequency

One great strength of email marketing, is its ability to keep your brand front of mind. Emails should be sent as frequently as usefully possible. In other words, never sacrifice quality. However, where quality is present, frequent sends are preferable.

Goals

Avoid the temptation of sending emails without clear and realistic goals attached. Over the years, we’ve seen many email campaigns scheduled without clear customer-focused goals. Quality, relevance, and results are often diminished.

Helping

Emails which solve a specific human problem or need through the eyes of the audience, rather than those of the brand, are often the most successful. Document your customer pinch points and devise an email campaign to match.

Integrated

Align your email marketing campaigns across channels, integrating singular or stacked messaging tying back to a consistent thread. At 4d Impact, we have a number of activity templates we’d be happy to share. Get in touch for more info.

Journey

Emails rarely function in isolation. Thought must also be given to what happens following CTA engagement. Is your landing page content optimised to receive traffic from your email campaign? Have you defined email customer journeys? 4d Impact can help.

Kudos

There is significant social currency in acknowledging the achievements and wonders of others. Rather than making your email campaigns exclusively about your own brand, take time to give kudos to people and products your audiences might be inspired by.

Learning

A continuous approach to learning is fundamental to a winning email marketing strategy. Measurement, testing, and optimisation are important, but so is your ability to store, distribute, and apply your learnings between people, teams, and campaigns.

Measured

A great benefit of email marketing is its measurability. Take time to setup a methodical approach to tracking and reporting, which gets straight to the heart of what is and isn’t driving your performance. Tracking should extend beyond email, throughout your customer journey.

Nudge

Nudge emails are a vital component of CRM (Customer Relationship Management), prompting your customers to get to the next stage of the customer journey. For example, nudge emails include basket reminders to complete purchase, to redeem reward points, or to renew membership before an expiry date.

Optimise

At 4d Impact, we are well-versed with AB and Multi-variate testing to optimise emails prior to bulk dispatch. We recommend all bulk emails are tested and optimised for subject line engagement prior to sending. All content is not equal: email body content requires a greater number of test sends and / or optimising between campaigns.

Personalise

Personalisation is critical to email success. At its most basic level, ensure accurate, well-targeted GDPR compliant data with a well-structured taxonomy. However, personalisation works best when recipient engagement is recorded and content tailored to their infered (subjective) or known (explicit) needs.

Quality

Worst case, poorly executed emails can be brand negative, lowering reputation with Email Service Providers, resulting in poor delivery stats and an increase in unsubscribes. At 4d Impact, we believe quality is ALWAYS preferable to quantity. Our email marketing services are designed to embed quality in everything we do.

Relevance

Every piece of email content that is not relevant to the recipient risks disengagement, which, over time, can amount to negative brand perception. We recommend a targeted / segmented / data-led approach, ensuring emails only reach those for whom your message is meaningful.

Social

Humans are guided by social norms, which factor deeply in decision-making. By embedding social proof in your email campaigns, we de-risk decisions, resulting in greater engagement. For example, display how many people have already signed up to / are using your product / service.

Timing

Timing…as ‘they say’….is everything. At 4d Impact, we will always test and monitor the most effective time to reach each audience segment, depending on your specific marketing goals. Emails should also be sent according to technical and / or customer support availability. And, at a time which guarantees rapid delivery.

Unsubscribe

Whilst the fewer the better, unsubscribes can also help cleanse your database, improve your conversion stats, and inform improvements to your email strategy. Ensure analysis of unsubscribe causation is built into your periodical reporting, or give 4d Impact a call for support.

Values

Whilst promotional emails may be all about ‘that deal’, emails that seek to connect on a deeper level should target and align with specific audience values. Psychographic targeting (our values and beliefs) is often far more powerful than demographic profiling (for example age and gender).

Words

As a content marketing agency, we had to mention words. A consistent tone of voice is especially important in building bonds between audiences and brands. Opt for fewer, rather than more words. And, always prioritise product / service benefits over features.

X ‘unknown’

The letter ‘X’ describes an ‘unknown’, often used in marketing to typify the extraordinary. With 350 billion emails forecast to be sent each day in 2023 (Statista), c.150 per person/day in the UK, your emails must work exceptionally hard to stand-out and convert attention to action.

Yield

As Email Marketing is so measurable, it is easier than many channels to inform what role it is playing in the overall customer journey, and its relationship to your commercial / marketing goals. Yield is, therefore, used to describe overall channel impact over time. More advanced strategies may include ‘attribution modelling’, but we’ll leave that for another time.

Zeal

Passion is infectious. Make sure your brand stands for purpose beyond profit, and adopts a clear position, rather than sitting on the fence. Try to add value beyond words, building narrative around solid real-world actions. 4d Impact specialise in ESG and Sustainability strategy and content marketing, positioning your brand at the heart of audience values.

Book a free email strategy call

At 4d Impact, everything we do is rooted in values and purpose. Ready to connect with your audiences on a deeper level? Book a free email strategy call – typically 30 mins, with no obligation. We’ll provide at least 3 clear recommendations, with no charge attached.

Email Marketing Services

Email campaign planning
Personalised / dynamic email strategy
Email Automation Strategy
(Triggered and nudge emails)
Email testing and optimisisation
Customer Journey Mapping
Narrative Building and Copywriting
Email Insight and Reporting

Turn audiences into advocates

Email campaign planning
Personalised / dynamic email strategy
Email Automation Strategy
(Triggered and nudge emails)
Email testing and optimisisation
Customer Journey Mapping
Narrative Building and Copywriting
Email Insight and Reporting

“Make the customer the hero of your story”
Ann Handley

Read Article