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36 October 2015 | beautystorebusiness.com GOING MOBILE To impress your customers—both cur- rent and potential—your emails should acknowledge the rapid shift toward smartphones. "Most email is now read or at least reviewed on mobile devices," says Arnold. "So your email strategy needs to provide information that people on mobile devices want to read." That means writing copy that gets to the point quickly and encourages readers to interact with the email text. Include links that take recipients to informative pages on your website. "Provide lots of content that can be watched, swiped, pressed and tapped," says Arnold. A bonus tip: Make all content mobile friendly. Arnold cites this example: "Videos with portrait dimensions that fit on the screen when the phone is upright are more effective than widescreen videos that must be viewed by rotating the phone." TARGET CUSTOMER BEHAVIOR Your email campaign should reflect knowledge of what marketers call "behavioral retargeting." This refers to the practice of creating copy that is informed by your recipients' recent activity at your website. Maybe some visitors browsed your wares a bit, then left without buying. Perhaps some even started to buy items, but then failed to complete their transactions. "One of the most effective tactics you can use is to send follow-up emails with appropriate messages after a visitor puts something into your shopping cart, then abandons it," says Jessica Best, digital marketing evangelist at emfluence (emfluence.com), a Kansas City, Missouri-based full-service digital marketing agency. "The customer might have lost interest because of a feeling that the total was too high, or because of shipping costs. Or maybe the person was just distracted. In any case, consider reaching out with an automated follow-up in 24 or 48 hours." What should such a follow-up email say? It might invite the customer to purchase the very item that had been abandoned. Or, if your research has shown that your customers in general dislike shipping charges, you might offer free shipping for a limited time if the customer spends a minimum amount. Follow-up emails can also be sent to customers who complete their transactions, points out Best. "You might invite customers to leave reviews about items purchased recently. Or you might promote items related to recent purchases." All of the emails described above can be automatically generated by computer software. Make purchases as easy as possible by inviting recipients to click on links that process transactions. "Help your customers by removing as much friction as possible from the check- out process," says Best. Here's a bonus tip: Include a line asking recipients to explain why they did not buy during their recent visits. Their answers can provide valuable marketing insights. OPTIMIZE THE PREHEADER Next time you open your email, take a close look at your inbox messages. You'll likely see one or two lines of text underneath or beside the subject line. That text is called the preheader and it's an important sales driver for those who know how to use it. "An amazing number of marketers ignore the power of the preheader," says Best. "That snippet of text gets the biggest percentage of real estate in the inbox. So you want to make the subject line and the preheader work together to encourage the recipient to open the email." Here are three examples of such combinations: How Good Is Your Email Marketing? The accompanying article advances a variety of techniques for smart email marketing. Does your own campaign measure up? To find out, take the quiz below. Score yourself on each question and see how close to 100 you get. 1) Do your emails promote a clearly defined "brand" for your retail organization? Never: 0 Seldom: 4 Often: 8 Regularly: 10 2) Are your emails designed for mobile? Never: 0 Seldom: 4 Often: 8 Regularly: 10 3) Do your emails include plenty of links to encourage customer engagement? Never: 0 Seldom: 4 Often: 8 Regularly: 10 4) Are you "retargeting" the behavior of visitors to your website? Never: 0 Seldom: 4 Often: 8 Regularly: 10 5) Do your emails invite feedback about ideas contained in the messages? Never: 0 Seldom: 4 Often: 8 Regularly: 10 6) Are you exploiting your email "preheaders"? Never: 0 Seldom: 4 Often: 8 Regularly: 10 7) Do your emails include "share" buttons that post your content on your customers' social-media feeds? Never: 0 Seldom: 4 Often: 8 Regularly: 10 8) Do you post appreciative comments when customers share your email messages on social media? Never: 0 Seldom: 4 Often: 8 Regularly: 10 9) Do you avoid direct sales pitches in favor of offers for additional information, such as podcasts? Never: 0 Seldom: 4 Often: 8 Regularly: 10 10) Do you include an invitation to send feedback? Never: 0 Seldom: 4 Often: 8 Regularly: 10 What's your score? Over 80: Hooray! Your email marketing program is terrific. Between 60 and 80: Time to fine-tune your marketing initiatives. Below 60: You are "sending emails" rather than "email marketing." Regear your campaign by instituting some ideas from the accompanying article. Continued on page 40