The Ultimate Guide to Email Marketing

The Ultimate Guide to Email Marketing CRAFTING ENGAGING EMAILS THAT GET CLICKED WITH FINALSITE MESSAGES Introduction With social media, video marketing, live video, chat bots, mobile apps, and dozens of other communications tools — one of the questions we frequently get is: “Is the email newsletter dead?” And in short, the answer is “no, of course not!” Email is still one of the most popular and effective ways to communicate with prospective and current families, as well as alumni and donors. Checking email, in many cases, is a secondary habit. People do it while watching TV, sitting at their child’s soccer game, waiting for an appointment, and yes...even sometimes while sitting in traffic. Because of its simplicity and habitual nature, all generations depend on email for communications — and there’s plenty of stats to back that up, including: 73% of millennials identify email as their preferred means of business communication. For every $1 spent on email marketing, you can expect an average return of $32 Despite the rise of social media, Forrester research revealed that people are twice as likely to sign up for an email list than interact with your Facebook page 61% of consumers enjoy receiving weekly emails, and 38% would like emails to come even more frequently 88% of smartphone users actively check email on their phones So, even though email marketing is not dead, it is important to note that the types of emails your community expects has changed. For example, the old email newsletter you used to send likely contained some PDFs, followed a multi- column format, and had content for everyone, and was not personalized for each constituent base. You did it this way because you didn’t have the time, resources or tools to segment and change content. But, this type of email marketing strategy isn’t effective — and it’s likely showing in your data. (Maybe making you feel like your email newsletter is dead?!) But with a few simple changes, you can breathe new life into your school or district’s email marketing strategy. Throughout this guide you will learn modern best practices for creating email newsletters and email campaigns that engage and excite your recipients, and how to execute these best practices using the Finalsite Messages Module. © Finalsite 2018 2 Implementing Email Marketing Strategies with Messages © Finalsite 2018 3 Part 1: List Segmentation Before you can get to the fun part of building and sending emails, you need to start with a strong base, which is your list (or lists for that matter). List segmentation is a fundamental piece of building this strong base. WHAT IS LIST SEGMENTATION? List segmentation is the process by which you categorize (or segment) recipients based on their interests and/or constituent group. WHY DOES LIST SEGMENTATION MATTER? Segmenting email lists and content by constituent groups is the easiest way to make sure the right content is getting to the right people, which is proven to increase email engagement. In a digital world of noise, it is important that your community only receives messages relevant to them in order to build trust and increase their likelihood of opening and clicking an email. As a matter of fact, in one study by MailChimp, segmented campaigns performed much better than non-segmented campaigns — including a 14.3% higher open rate and 100.95% higher click- through rates. HOW SHOULD WE SEGMENT OUR LISTS? The easiest way to segment content is by constituent group and school. For example, an independent school with an upper, middle, and lower school will want to segment lists by school, but also constituents within the school, such as parents, students, faculty, volunteers, and then of course alumni. Similarly, a district would want to segment lists by schools and then constituent group. You also may want to create lists based on the sports students play, the clubs they’re a part of, or even how much they donated in a previous annual fund (if at all). In many cases, a single person may be on multiple mailing lists, which is why it is important to follow the rules of engagement, which we cover later in this eBook. © Finalsite 2018 4 SEGMENTING YOUR LISTS IN FINALSITE MESSAGES Creating targeted lists in Finalsite Messages can be done in just a few simple steps. First, you’ll want to navigate to the “Lists” tab within the module, and select “+Mailing List.” You’ll be prompted to click the “+Subscriber” button in the top right hand corner. From here, you can individually add subscribers one by one for a small list segment, or import contacts based on their group membership in Consistent Manager. When the “Add as dynamic subscription” box is checked, your contacts in Messages will automatically update based on changes to your Group — meaning as individuals are added or removed, or contact information is updated, those changes will automatically be reflected in your mailing list as well. Keep in mind that because lists are managed by Constituent Manager, proper segmentation and data begins in your Student Information System and/or Constituent Manager — not in Messages. As an added benefit, if you integrate your SIS with Finalsite, data will automatically flow from your SIS into Constituent Manager, and then into Messages, ensuring data is up to date everywhere. For individuals not segmented by Constituent Manager, Messages also includes an “upload” option to import a list. © Finalsite 2018 5 Part 2: Preferred Layouts & Templates While your data and list is the foundation of a successful email campaign, the look and feel of your email is what will drive those clicks that you’re looking for. Most schools are now opting for a panel design newsletter, which resembles the look and feel of most modern web designs. Rather than working in multiple col- umns, it is a best practice to work in multiple rows — also known as panels. If you need a point of reference, let’s compare Avon Old Farm’s alumni newsletter from 2006 to their alumni newsletter from 2018. NON-PANEL LAYOUT PANEL LAYOUT We clearly see an evolved brand, but we also see a distinct difference between the approach to email — as AOF moved away from the dual-column, magazine-style email, to a more modern, panel style design, focused on compelling images and big headlines. How can your school transform your email newsletters to something more sleek and modern? We’ll share a variety of ideas and best practices in this section, followed by how to execute them in Finalsite Messages. © Finalsite 2018 6 Constructing Visual Hierarchy Like web design, content needs to follow a visual hierarchy in order to be easy to scan. You can think of your email visual hierarchy the same way you would think about your website’s visual hierarchy. Image Headers: Almost every email you send will have some type of image header — even if it is just your school’s logo. An image header is important because it immediately establishes your brand, and gives you an opportunity to visually engage email recipients with important content. Text Headers: Beneath an image header, you will likely have a text header with some additional details. For example, an image header may simply say “Homecoming 2018,” whereas your text header may say “Join us for a weekend of fun and community!” Adding a text header to each section that is about 20-30% larger than your body text will make emails easy to scan. Content: Keep content short and to the point. If you can talk about the upcoming fundraiser in 25 words instead of 75 words, do so. You can always link to your school calendar, or a page on your site with more information. We recommend using lists, bold words, and smaller headers to make content easy to scan, especially on mobile. Buttons: When it comes to extended content like a blog post, you’ll see better results if you use a “Read More” button that allows users to read more when its convenient for them. As you can see here on the right, Stuart Country Day School creates a beautiful visual hierarchy by incorporating: p A branded logo p Header image p Header text p Short text p Calls to action © Finalsite 2018 7 Building Modern, Responsive Email Templates in Messages Templates in Messages are the key to maintaining your school’s brand, while enabling multiple contributors to build quality, responsive emails. USING TEMPLATES, YOU CAN STANDARDIZE THE FOLLOWING EMAIL COMPONENTS: p Layout and structure p Background color p Text sizes and styles p Link and text color p Images p Calls-to-Action When building emails, those email components will be locked in and ready to go. Because templates will quickly become the foundation of simple, daily emails, as well as monthly, complex newsletters, it is important to take numerous best practices into consideration. In this section, we’ll explain how to standardize your email templates. © Finalsite 2018 8 Setting Up General Options in Messages CONTENT AREA WIDTH: This is the width of the email body itself. Set your email width to 600px to ensure an optimal viewing experience for desktop-based, web-based, and mobile-based users. BACKGROUND COLOR: This is the color of the background behind your email body — meaning it will only display when the content area width does not fill the entire window or screen. This is most common in desktop-based and web- based email clients. Make this color white, or a very light shade of gray for a slight contrast, or a fun brand color. CONTENT AREA BACKGROUND COLOR: This is the color of your email body.

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