Because our developers had been custom-coding templates in Mailchimp, the venerable client had to wait beyond his apparently self-appointed TAT.

On the surface, it may seem there’s no difference between the two. But probe deeper, and you’ll find that “custom” means both “tailor-made” and “conventional.” In other words, custom coding an email template on a particular ESP requires a thorough practical understanding of said ESP’s technical convention/ecosystem. 

So if you want to code your own template in Mailchimp, you need to work within the technical compass of Mailchimp. This would involve knowing how Mailchimp works, what the ESP allows or prohibits, how it reacts, whether or not it sheds code, etc. 

And that’s where experts like us come in. In this developer guide, we’re putting out all the stops to show you how to custom-code a Mailchimp template. From the top! 

• Take A Goal-centric, User-friendly Approach
  
• Embed CSS Styles into The HTML Code
  
• Arrange Content Blocks within Rows
  
• Coding for Image, Text, And CTA Button
  
• Adding The Email Footer
  
• Upload Your Template to Mailchimp
  
• Test Your Email for Rendering across Clients 

Read more: A Complete Guide to Mailchimp’s New Email Builder

How to Create A Template in Mailchimp?

1. Take A Goal-centric, User-friendly Approach

To begin with, identify your goal. What is it you’re trying to achieve with a custom coded email template? Much of coding depends on having a prior idea about the placement of various components in your email. 

For instance, if you’re creating a promotional email which offers a gift card, it would contain a CTA button either on the hero image or just after. Again, if you’re showcasing a brand’s product line, you’re thinking of multiple CTAs across the email. Perhaps you want to embed the images and CTAs in a Z-pattern to improve readability, and so on. 

2. Embed CSS Styles into The HTML Code

Mailchimp automatically incorporates the CSS styles in your code into the HTML code of the email template. So there’s no need for a separate CSS file. This reduces code bloat. 

Consider the following code snippet. When you save this code in Mailchimp, the CSS styles defined in the <style> tag will be integrated or “inlined” into the HTML code of the email template. Besides limiting code bloat, this also ensures consistent rendering across email clients that may not support CSS stylesheets. 

Read more: How To Embed Mailchimp Survey & Polls In Emails To Boost Your Campaign ROI

3. Arrange Content Blocks within Rows

Like we mentioned earlier, having a prior idea about the placement of various components in your email is crucial while coding. This idea will guide your coding, ensuring each block operates as intended within the layout. Now, to give a structure to your code, you need to think about how the content blocks in the email will operate. 

Take editable blocks, for instance. These are sections within your email that the designer can modify without needing to fiddle with the code. Likewise if the designer wants to change the order of these editable blocks. These blocks should be placed within rows for better organization, as shown below. 

4. Coding for Image, Text, And CTA Button

Keep in mind that whenever coding for an editable block in Mailchimp, you’ll need to add mc:edit. In the following example, the attribute is added within the <image> tag. 

(mc:edit is not part of standard HTML. It’s a custom attribute that is used within Mailchimp email templates. In this regard, feel free to read Mailchimp’s proprietary Template Language documentation.) 

N.B. Mailchimp tends to strip out the attributes that define the height and width of images. Now this creates a problem if you want to use retina images i.e. images that have twice the number of pixels per inch than regular images. In the absence of attributes, the images will appear larger than intended, leading to disrupted viewing. There are two ways to deal with the problem. One, you can scale down the retina images before uploading them to Mailchimp. Two, you can add the image size attributes manually after editing the Mailchimp template.

Like images, you can add an editable section for the body copy as shown below. 

Finally, the CTA button. Note that you can only use padded buttons in Mailchimp’s custom-coded templates. Any styles you may have applied to the anchor tags of your custom button might be removed by Mailchimp’s rendering environment. This once again reminds us of the importance of adhering to an ESP’s native penchants. 

The click real estate will be limited to the CTA text. The viewer can’t click on the space surrounding the text. Outside the text, the pointing hand will resolve into the default cursor. Below is an example of HTML code for adding a padded CTA button in a Mailchimp email template. 

5. Adding The Email Footer

You might not have to make the footer section editable if the legal information doesn’t require changes. However, if the designer wishes to incorporate a creative footer, ensure you include “mc:edit=footer” in your code. 

Also, remember to insert *|UNSUB|* in the code to generate the unsubscribe link, which is a legal requirement.

Speaking of merge tags, make sure you always add the following merge tags in your code:

• *|MC_PREVIEW_TEXT|* : To generate the appropriate preview text mid-campaign-setup
  
• *|ARCHIVE|* : To generate the ‘View Online’ link
  
• *|UPDATE_PROFILE|* : To give your subscribers the option to update their personal information or manage their email preferences
  

*|TWITTER:FULLPROFILE|* : Or any other social media channel integration for that matter. In the present case, the “FULL PROFILE” argument will populate the email with your brand’s X avatar, followers, follow link, and the latest tweets. 

6. Upload Your Template to Mailchimp

Once the HTML code is ready, 

• Log in to your Mailchimp account
  
• Go to ‘Content,’ and choose ‘Email templates.’ 

• Click ‘Create template’

• Select ‘Code your own’

• Choose ‘Import Zip’ to upload a zip file with your template code

• Name your template, and click ‘Upload’
  
• Make changes to your code or design
  
• Once you’re done editing your template, click ‘Save and Exit’

7. Test Your Email for Rendering across Clients

Testing is the key to understanding how an ESP operates. In particular, examining how an ESP naturally behaves in coding provides valuable insights for developers to navigate around any limitations of the builder in future projects.

From removing code to ensuring proper rendering, it’s essential to test your emails before sending them to your design team. In Mailchimp, you can easily test your template by sending a test email to your own email address. Learn more about previewing and testing your emails in Mailchimp. 

Order Custom Coded Mailchimp Templates for A Decent Buck! 

As official Mailchimp partners, we’ve been delivering pixel-perfect custom coded templates to businesses worldwide for over ten years. Share your design brief with us. Our coding services begin at just $59. Rest assured, all templates undergo rigorous testing for rendering and responsiveness before delivery. Hustle!

The post How to Code Your Own Email Template in Mailchimp appeared first on Email Uplers.

Like every season, you want to design emails which make your subscribers sit up and look. You need them to stay with your email. Sure, you’ve the algorithm down pat, but what can you do more this year? How to create a scroll-stopping impact?

In this blog article, we’re sharing some of the classiest Father’s Day email examples, the design principles behind which should open up the creative vents. Over to the emails then! 

• Letterfest
  
• Google
  
• The New York Times
  
• FitVine
  
• Brooks Running
  
• Brother Moto
  
• Bridge & Burn
  
• Animoto
  
• Father’s Day Email Marketing: Key Design Takeaways 

Read more: 10 Mother’s Day Email Inspirations 

1. Letterfest

Source: Milled

Letterfest’s Father’s Day email starts off with a scrapbook-esque hero image, which sets the (nostalgic) mood for the rest of the template. The hand-drawn signs seem to evoke a child’s pleasant association with their father. (The hero image actually features a product – a cool way to trigger fantasizing, paving the way for a surprise purchase option below the fold.)

Past the waveline which introduces the next section, the email is quite low-key in terms of design, perhaps to accentuate the products. The alternating color scheme improves readability, and maintains visual interest. 

2. Google 

Source: Really Good Emails

Google as you know has always prioritized simplicity in design. There isn’t much to play around with Google’s aesthetics. But in their Father’s Day email, Google has chosen to enhance the viewing experience notwithstanding their famed plainness. 

There are nine different shapes, or pods, wherein Google embeds the marketing collateral via text and images. The human brain craves novel experiences. Viewing multiple shapes can be stimulating since there’s more information to process. 

When there are multiple shapes, some products will stand out more than others, creating a visual hierarchy. This adds depth to the image. The viewer is more likely to really see the products. In addition, contrasting shapes will create tension, further enriching the viewing experience. 

3. The New York Times

Source: Really Good Emails

NYT’s Father’s Day email is short, cute, and unassuming. If you want to use GIFs in your email, this is one of the best ways to do it. NYT’s GIF integration is:

• Relevant: The walking crossword is relevant to NYT’s niche segment
  
• Rigorous: The GIF acts as a live CTA, pointing to the message of the email
  
• Restrained: It’s simple, and draws attention away from, not toward itself

Note the Z-pattern of the email as well, which is in line with how we scan content. 

Read more: How to Use Animated GIFs in Email Marketing 

4. FitVine

Source: Really Good Emails 

FitVine’s Father’s Day email is single-column, and majorly monochromatic. It seems that the email was designed keeping mobile viewers in mind. 

The single-column layout eliminates the need for horizontal scrolling and pinching in on narrow columns to make out the content.  

This makes for a more intuitive reading experience. A single column also gives you more space to use text and large CTA buttons. Plus, the flow is viewer-friendly since the visual hierarchy is uncomplicated. If you’re designing for your mobile audience, FitVine’s email should give you a head start. 

5. Brooks Running Heartfelt Story

Source: Inbox

This Father’s Day email from Brooks Running is ingenuous in more ways than one.  

The hero image is winning, both in terms of its photographic vigor and seamless blending with the succeeding portions of the email. The slant of the road is the first divider. The road leads on effortlessly to the light-gray concrete background. The products are casually arranged, with only the native slits in the concrete separating the one from the other. 

The rest of the email uses on-screen dividers to separate the blocks. If you look at the email in full, you’ll see the blocks progressively decrease in size. This symbolizes the order of importance of each component of the email. Because it’s a gift guide, the most important block is the one at the top. 

6. Brother Moto

Source: Really Good Emails

Brother Moto leverages ultra-detailed all-screen photography to create a lasting, immersive experience. The template is in line with the subject line, “For the rad dad.” The design is radical. The product images occupy more than half of the email. 

An all-screen photo fills out your entire field of vision, immersing you in the finest details of the image. It’s a cool way of letting your product make an impact without going into too much textual description. 

The extra-bold all-caps typography in the hero section (FREE SHIPPING* ) is in perfect harmony with the equally bold zoomed-in motto on the shirt. This makes for consistent, unified design. 

7. Bridge & Burn

Source: Really Good Emails

Bridge & Burn employs the quintessential collage in their Father’s Day email. This maintains visual interest, encouraging the recipient to pause and explore. 

Next to an all-screen presentation, the collage is the best way to showcase your products. It minimizes scrolling. The viewer can take in a multiple range of products at a glance. Viewing and decision-making go hand in hand. One need not scroll up and down for comparative viewing. Now that’s quite user-friendly. 

This Father’s Day email requires just one scroll to convert the recipient. There’s the product line above the fold, and there’s the CTA button below the fold. Neat!

8. Animoto

Source: Inbox

It is fairly simple to design an opt-out email on special occasions. Nearly all brands are consistently formulaic in their design approach. What’s the formula? Using up the brand palette! 

That’s what Animoto’s opt-out Father’s Day email does. Cerulean and yellow are Animoto’s predominant colors. The email likewise uses three shades of cerulean, and a yellow passive CTA. No fuss. 

Father’s Day Email Marketing: Key Design Takeaways

To summarize, put a pin in the following before designing your Father’s Day emails this year:

• Embrace design that captures the mood of Father’s Day
  
• Experiment with shapes to overcome the limitations of vanilla aesthetics
  
• Use simple, short, and content-aligned GIFs
  
• Leverage single-column layouts for intuitive mobile viewing
  
• Where possible, look beyond on-screen options to separate content blocks
  
• Explore all-screen photography
  
• Try the traditional collage for showcasing your product line
  
• Utilize the brand palette for all opt-out emails

Alternatively…

If you think all this is too much to take in, you can get in touch with our inhouse email design experts. From modular to custom to interactive emails, we design all kinds of templates for all sorts of clients for all occasions. 

If you have a design file, share it with us. We’ll convert it into an HTML email in just 8 hours. In case you don’t, we can provide you with design and coding services, and your email will be good-to-go in just two days. 

The post Top 8 Father’s Day Email Inspirations for 2024 appeared first on Email Uplers.

Your prospects may differ in their interests. Someone may want to buy/sell their home; while another may need help with office spaces, warehouses, etc. In all events, as a realtor, you’re expected to give them the right information.

But you may have all the information, and yet lack the funnel to direct it to those in need of information. Being informed and being able to inform – bridging the gap between the two often requires a calculated leap rather than a mere stepping-over.  And this is where real estate landing pages prove useful.

A proper landing page informs and educates. By the end of this post, you’ll know what exactly such a landing page looks like and consists of. 

• What is a landing page in real estate?
  
• 5 real estate landing page examples
  
• Real estate landing page design best practices
  
• Real estate landing page development best practices

What Is A Landing Page in Real Estate?

A real estate landing page is a web page that visitors “land on” upon clicking an ad or a specific SERP result for your business. 

Now, a landing page need not be your website’s homepage. All homepages may be landing pages, but not all landing pages are homepages. Unlike a homepage, a landing page is dedicated to a single goal. 

The first result for Zillow below redirects the user to Zillow’s homepage. The URLs further down are dedicated landing pages for specific search queries.

For more related information, read: The Thin Line between Landing Pages and Microsites.

Now that you know the difference between a homepage and a landing page, over to the real estate landing pages examples! 

1. Trulia

Trulia’s landing page above the fold uses minimal content and sleek design to eliminate viewing distractions. Look at the use of white space in the hero section; it draws attention to the midpoint of the banner where the action is. 

Below the fold, the page provides information on newly listed rentals in Phoenix, how Trulia can help with renting or buying homes, etc. The second search bar right below the static carousel allows the user to search without having to scroll back to the top again. This eliminates an extra step, minimizing effort. 

2. Beycome

Beycome’s dedicated landing page for explaining how the buying/selling/renting process works deploys a directional strategy. The hero section does not contain the information the user’s looking for. But the content points to the details below the fold. (Don’t miss the chatbox, which is helpful to keep for more urgent visitors.)

As you scroll further down, you can see the process explained. Note the caret on the right of the landing page. No matter where you are on the page, clicking on the caret will zip you back to the top, eliminating scrolling. Both that and the chatbox are outside the navigational hierarchy. All this is to make the page user-friendly. 

But there’s more. Further down the page, Beycome has provided more information, along with social proof and customer testimonials. 

Evidently, the focus is on preventing confusion, and building trust – a sine qua non for success in real estate. 

3. S&P Global

The first role of a proper landing page is to inform. S&P Global’s Summary informs the visitor what the page is about. Further down, the page lists the featured speakers, along with their headshots and designations. But the most important part of the landing page is the signup form. Here it is in full view. 

A landing page is used for capturing leads. The signup form will capture relevant information about leads, thereby activating the marketing funnel. Once prospects enter the funnel, S&P Global will send out emails in an effort to engage and potentially convert the webinar attendees. 

Note the checkbox at the foot of the signup form. By sending promotional emails and emails containing real-estate highlights and event invites, S&P Global will try to lead the subscribers down the various stages of the funnel. 

4. Apartments.com

Apartments.com’s landing page for property listing is a banner for minimalism. The brand provides relevant information below the fold in the Z-pattern. The Z-pattern is how users scan web pages. So placing key information in the expected zones can improve readability and user experience. 

Like Beycome, Apartments.com offers social proof, followed by more information related to advertising properties on the rental network. 

Further down, there’s a FAQ section, ending with additional resources. Once again, informing and educating prospects is the overarching goal of the landing page. 

5. HotPads

Our last example is a homepage that may double as a landing page. 

HotPads uses a humble GIF to add to the viewing experience. Helpfully, the visitor can pause the GIF if they find it intrusive. Interestingly, unlike a typical homepage, HotPads’ homepage is neither hectic nor does it have trust signals.

This could be because HotPads is part of Zillow Group. The need for adding social proof and customer reviews may not have been essential.

Another reason might be that the homepage was intended to be a landing page. It’s short, and very search-query-focused. Apart from the search bars, there’s nothing by way of direct on-page information, prioritizing user intent over extensive gumph. The page is clean, minimalistic, and directed. 

Real Estate Landing Page Design Best Practices

You can create your first landing page on a landing page builder. There are various LP builders out there, furnished with templates and code-free functionality. 

That being said, it is helpful to have an idea of what goes into designing and developing landing pages from scratch. Besides, if your LP needs are complex, you may not find builders that answer to advanced requirements.  

When designing a real estate landing page, keep the following in mind:

• Identify your target audience: The landing pages we explored so far were designed keeping the user in mind. With a similar approach, designing can be less hectic and more focused and compact.
  
• Compose a short, compelling headline: The primary and secondary headings should not be longer than a sentence. Your words should capture the user query.
  
• Use simple, engaging visuals: Because a landing page is primarily about informing and converting users, balance it with simple but engaging visuals.
  
• Ensure responsive design: Your design should be device-optimized. 58% of real estate website visits come from mobile.
  
• Strategic CTA placement: Place one relevant CTA button above the fold. Try to repeat the same CTA across the page since the latter serves a single purpose. This will also minimize scrolling. 

Real Estate Landing Page Development Best Practices

Development is a different ball game altogether. A well-designed but poorly-developed landing page won’t convert visitors. So you better jot these down:

• Leverage effective schema markup: Implement relevant schema markup to your landing page code, enabling search engines to better understand your content.
  
• Minify landing page assets: Reduce file sizes of images, CSS, and JavaScript for faster loading times. Learn more: 10 Tips to Improve Landing Page Loading Speed
  
• Enable browser caching: This reduces server load and speeds up later visits by the same user. It’s faster to retrieve information from your hard drive than from a server.
  
• Enable lazy loading: For longer landing pages, prioritize lazy loading. Instead of loading the entire page at once, the browser loads the page progressively according to how the viewer scans the page.
  
• Utilize a CDN: Today, almost all websites rely on a Content Delivery Network to serve landing pages from geographically-distributed servers. Why? A CDN reduces delivery delay for users from different locations.
  
• Server-side rendering (SSR): If your landing page is complex with heavy client-side scripting, use SSR to help search engines properly crawl and index the content. 

Create Responsive Landing Pages with Email Uplers!

Whether you want to turn your design into a custom landing page or start from scratch, feel free to get in touch with our custom landing page design experts. Just share your design brief, and we’ll turn it into a responsive, conversion-friendly landing page. 

The post 5 Bounce-proof Real Estate Landing Pages Examples appeared first on Email Uplers.

The benefits of email segmentation include:

• Improved campaign performance: More relevant content will lead to greater engagement, resulting in higher open rates, clicks, and conversions.
  
• Improved email deliverability: Higher engagement with emails signals sender authenticity to email service providers.
  
• Improved targeting: Distinguish between loyal and and not-so-loyal customers to create relevant, targeted emails for each segment.
  
• Improved customer experience: Offering customers exactly what they’re looking for leads to better CX. 

The process of segmentation varies from ESP to ESP. In this guide, we’re going to learn how to do audience segmentation in Mailchimp. Later, feel free to learn how to create and send an effective Mailchimp drip campaign. 

• Mailchimp audience segmentation steps
  
• Segmentation by demographics
  
• Segmentation by behavior
  
• Segmentation by interest
  
• Segmentation by buyer journey
  
• Launching your campaign 

1. Mailchimp Audience Segmentation Steps

By breaking down your subscriber list into smaller, more specific groups, you can tailor your messages to suit the unique needs and interests of each segment. 

Follow these simple steps to create audience segments in Mailchimp:

1. Log in to your Mailchimp account using your credentials. Once logged in, navigate to the Audience tab.

2. Select the audience you wish to segment from the drop-down menu.

3. Once you’ve chosen your audience, click on the Manage Audience dropdown and select “View Contacts” to access the Audience dashboard.

4. On the Audience dashboard, locate and click on the “Create Segment” button to initiate the segmentation process.

5. In the segment creation window, define the conditions that will determine how your audience is segmented. This could include factors such as demographics, interests, or past interactions.

6. After setting your segment conditions, preview the segment to ensure it accurately captures the desired audience subset.

7. Once you’re satisfied with the segment preview, click on the “Save Segment” button to save your segmentation settings.

Segmentation by Demographics

This is the most common method of audience segmentation—and usually the easiest one. Age, income level, job type, and geographic location are all demographic criteria you can use to sort your audience. 

One way to segment customers based on location is by targeting them when they’re most likely to want your product. For instance, a farming business might buy equipment during harvest time. In some places like the American South, this could be nearly all year, while in other regions, it might be in summer or fall.

Important note: You can group people by different categories like where they live or how old they are, but only if you’ve gathered that info from them.

For instance: If you didn’t ask where your subscribers are from, you can’t sort them by country at first. But with Mailchimp, you can guess where they’re from after sending some emails using the ‘predicted’ feature.

Segmentation by Behavior

Customer behavior segments require e-commerce data in your account from version 3.0 of Mailchimp API. This data can come from integrations like Mailchimp for Magento, Mailchimp for BigCommerce, or a custom API 3.0 integration.

This approach goes beyond just splitting people by basic details like age or location. Instead, it delves into how people behave when they shop. It means examining what they buy, how often they buy it, and why they make those purchases. 

For instance, someone who regularly makes small purchases needs different messages than someone who only buys big items occasionally. This is because their needs and reasons for buying are different. With behavioral segmentation, your message is crafted to reach customers when they’re most likely to make a purchase. 

Examples of these groups include potential buyers, first-time purchasers, regular customers, and those who’ve switched to a different brand.

Segmentation by Engagement

Create segments based on how subscribed email contacts have interacted with your emails. For example, use a combination of segmenting criteria to target contacts who were sent recent emails but didn’t open them.

Here are some examples of how email interaction segments work.

• Email interaction | did not open | Any of the Last 5 Campaigns

Subscribed email contacts who did not open 1 or more of your last 5 emails

• Email interaction | did not open | All of the Last 5 Campaigns

Subscribed email contacts who opened none of your last 5 emails

• Email interaction | opened | Any of the Last 5 Campaigns

Subscribed email contacts who opened 1 or more of your last 5 emails

• Email interaction | opened | All of the Last 5 Campaigns

Subscribed email contacts who opened all of your last 5 email

Segmentation by Interest

Everyone has unique interests, from the things they find visually appealing to the activities they love. By targeting customers according to these interests, you can divide your audience effectively and tailor your messages accordingly. 

For instance, if many of your customers are passionate about a specific sport or team, you can design personalized and captivating ads for them. You can also segment your audience based on their preferred aesthetic, whether it’s a sleek, contemporary style or a classic, traditional one.

Note: To aim your messages directly at specific interests, you’ve got to have those interests saved in your audience list. Alternatively, you can link up your store to gather that info and target your audience based on it.

Segmentation by Buyer Journey

With this strategy, you customize your messages according to where your customer is in their buying process. 

If you’re not familiar, the buyer’s journey typically consists of three stages: awareness, consideration, and decision. At the start of their journey, a buyer might only be realizing they have a problem to solve. But toward the end, they already know what they want and are ready to decide. 

Instead of sending everyone the same message, segmentation allows you to address each buyer’s unique needs and address any questions they might have.

Read more: How To Leverage Email Segmentation To Maintain Customer Relationship?

Launch Your Campaign

Now that you’ve saved your segment, you can customize your email campaigns to reach this particular audience group. Create personalized messages that connect with their interests and preferences to boost interaction and increase conversions.

Hire A Mailchimp Pro Partner for Your Next Campaign!

Mastering audience segmentation on Mailchimp is key to delivering targeted and relevant content to your subscribers. 

We are a team of dedicated Mailchimp email pros, developers, campaign managers, automation experts, and migration specialists. 

Looking to launch a new email campaign? Learn how to choose the right Mailchimp experts. Or, get in touch with our Mailchimp crew right away, and make a date with success! 

The post Pro Guide: How to Do Mailchimp Audience Segmentation appeared first on Email Uplers.

In today’s highly digitized world, customers expect you to be attentive to their needs 24×7. If you aren’t, they won’t hesitate to move on to a competitor that does!

This is exactly why a solid customer relationship management (CRM) strategy is critical to business operations today.

To that end, you may be researching the perfect CRM platform and exploring ways to deploy it in the most optimized manner. But have you thought about what a successful CRM team should look like? Surprisingly, this is the one aspect that a lot of businesses overlook when putting together a CRM strategy.

Successful CRM entails a lot more than just picking out the best software. If you plan to be around for years to come, the end-goal should be to build lasting and strong relationships with your customer base. 

But to pull this off with panache, you first need the right human resources!

8 Roles that Make a Rockstar CRM Team

The secret to CRM success lies in striking the right mix of technology, processes, and people. Sure, you need to invest in customer-centric business processes and the technology to support these processes. But most critically, you need people who can enhance the effectiveness of such processes, including email template development, email automation, campaign management and so on.

Here are the eight roles that are critical to building and sustaining robust CRM systems that work efficiently for every department in your organization. Your very own Avengers, if you will.

1. The Project Leader

This is the person who will get behind the driver’s wheel and steer your project in its intended direction, making them, the most vital cog of your CRM team structure. The project leader will be responsible for all the deliverables of your CRM initiative and delegating all concerned CRM roles and responsibilities.

Needless to say, this has to be a person in a senior position within the organization or someone with the expertise in handling CRM projects. Yes, you can select the leader internally or find an external consultant for this role. However, this choice must be based on evaluating your requirements in the immediate and distant future vis-à-vis the budget.

At the same time, it’s important to give the project leader a say in drafting the vision of your CRM initiatives and finalizing the deliverables. Equally important is to give them the liberty to allocate CRM roles and responsibilities as they deem fit.

2. The Trendsetter

Research suggests that the failure of corporate management to embrace CRM in their day-to-day operations is one of the key reasons behind the failure of these initiatives. Without a nudge from leadership, your CRM initiatives cannot scale to their true potential.

So, pick someone from the top brass – a CEO, COO, managing director, board member – to be the trendsetter. This person would be responsible for ‘leading by example’ by using your new CRM system to communicate with employees. They’ll also be responsible for coming up with many of your most successful CRM strategies.

And do so with zeal!

3. The Experts

Software applications and a set of tech tools to facilitate seamless operations are critical for any CRM initiative. You need to have the right technical experts on your team- like the email developers. These technical experts will not only prove to be a great asset in eliminating the frustration around initial hiccups in the implementation of the CRM software but also offer support in data protection, bug removal, and other tech issues later on. In a way, they shoulder the most pivotal CRM responsibilities within the team.

To choose the right talent, you need to first have clear specifications on what your CRM initiative will entail and the kind of technical expertise required to pull it off.

4. The Bees

CRM implementation can be an arduous task. One that requires a considerable amount of manual effort in checking systems, uploading files, and so on. You need to have a pool of hard-working employees who can pick up the slack and bring stability to your CRM operations, and ultimately breathe life into your successful CRM strategies. Maintaining a dedicated team to take care of these less fancy aspects of CRM operations ensures that the entire system works like a well-oiled machine without causing a significant dent in your budget.

5. The Champion

The process of CRM system implementation can be a long-drawn-out, thankless job. There will always be some glitches and unhappy end-users. And there will be a team of professionals working tirelessly to iron out these crinkles.

Having a senior member of your organization rooting for these team players can be a huge asset for their morale and motivation. If you want to make successful CRM campaigns a habit, such an individual must be present in your team. This appointed champion can also play a key role in getting other stakeholders invested in your CRM initiative.

6. The Sounding Board

When a group of professionals is working closely together on a project, they’re likely to get too invested in it to view the outcomes dispassionately. That’s where your sounding board comes in. Here’s someone who is result-oriented and can see the big picture.

This team member is of paramount importance in making your CRM initiatives a success, as they question decisions, review CRM responsibilities, critically examine outcomes, and offer vital inputs for improvement. In short, this one team member will drive the rest to push the envelope and ensure successful CRM campaigns. They may not be appreciated by others on your CRM team for obvious reasons, but their role in optimizing your CRM initiatives is indispensable.

7. The Innovator

This team member has to be an early adopter of the technology you’re working with. They can play a key role in weeding out antiquated practices and replacing them with a more futuristic approach. This makes them a crucial player of your CRM team. The innovator may also help you find new, hitherto unexplored, ways to tackle the myriad roadblocks in your CRM initiative.

8. The Tester

There is only one way to know whether your CRM system is working optimally – by testing settings, fields, categories, workflows regularly. That’s where the tester comes in. It’s fair to say that your CRM team structure won’t ever be complete without them. They will test different functionalities of your system from time to time, ask the right questions, and offer the right tips to eliminate glitches.

They will perform this task on a loop until your CRM system is ready to work seamlessly. And then, top it up with more tests along the way to make sure that it stays that way. A person with the technical know-how as well as a firm grip on your target user base is ideal for this role.

Finding the Right Resources through Outsourcing

You’re probably wondering: ‘Where am I going to find all these team members?’ ‘By how much will that shoot up my CRM budget?’ Putting together a well-rounded and successful CRM team doesn’t necessarily have to be expensive. A handful of these resources can be pulled from within your organization. The trendsetter, the sounding board, the champion, for instance.

Depending on the nature of your operations, you may also find a few more skills in-house. For the rest, you can consider collaborating with a third-party service provider. It is ideal to outsource tasks or roles that are not a part of your core operations but essential for successful CRM development and implementation.

Some of the key benefits of the outsourcing approach include:

• It proves to be a time- and cost-effective alternative. In most of these contractual arrangements, you typically pay for the work done. This means saving up on salaries of idle resources as well as the cost of employee training. Besides, trained professionals who offer their services remotely prove much cheaper than hiring full-time experts for the same job.
• Since the professionals offering third-party services work primarily with CRM systems, they are more skilled and experienced. These people have handled scores of similar projects in the past, and can therefore optimize your CRM initiative more efficiently and quickly.
• It allows you to pick and choose resources as per your requirements, which may not be the case if you’re working with in-house employees.
• You don’t have to worry about keeping backups ready in case a team member takes a leave of absence.
• There is greater room for scalability. There is no need to hire or fire employees if you decide to expand or curtail business operations.

Wrapping It Up

Your CRM initiative is as good as the people behind it. Once you’ve found your rockstar team, make sure each member understands the objectives clearly. Institutionalize a rock-solid system for project management, and interact with them regularly to understand the challenges, progress, and expected outcomes.

For hands-on assistance with outsourcing CRM roles, simply contact us at Email Uplers to get the ball rolling!

The post 8 Roles that are Essential for a Rockstar CRM Team appeared first on Email Uplers.

If there’s something that constantly keeps email marketers on their toes, it is figuring out how to maintain a good sender reputation. Why is it so critical, you ask? Well, this is what determines whether their campaigns would land in their subscribers’ inboxes or not. You see, a poor sender reputation spells doom for deliverability and that in turn severely impedes the reach and visibility of your emails. 

In the 50 years (nearly) that email has been around, governments, ISPs (Internet Service Providers), and various other regulatory bodies have had sufficient time to lay down the ground rules that businesses need to abide by in order to uphold a spotless email reputation. Warming your IP effectively, following accessibility best practices, and maintaining the hygiene of your email list are some of the most talked about tenets.

Today, however, we are going to call your attention to an aspect which we feel doesn’t get the spotlight enough- the significance of using email subdomains. 

But first things first!

Understanding Email Subdomains

Go to your inbox. Open any random email. Now click on the “from” section of the email to see the sender’s details elaborately. What do you observe? A name followed by the “@” symbol, followed by another name, right? Well, the word that comes after the @ sign is nothing but the domain name.

In most cases, the domain name is the same as that of the business and is unique to it. Now, this domain is also referred to as the “root” domain or the “parent” domain. Subdomain, then, as the name suggests, is one that is derived from the parent domain. However, emails delivered from the subdomain are treated separately by ISPs and mailbox providers.

Conceptually, subdomains are pretty much the same as what you might have noticed in the context of websites. If the URL of the home page of business “XYZ” is xyz.com, then the URL of its blog page would be blog.xyz.com. Here “xyz” is the parent domain and “blog”, the subdomain. Similarly, when you receive an email from kevin@emailuplers.com, understand that it has been delivered from the root domain. But, if the sender’s address is kevin@hello.emailuplers.com, then the email has been sent from the subdomain “hello”. Keep in mind that there’s no restriction as such to what you can put before the @ symbol while sending emails from your subdomain. So, it can be “Kevin” or “Laura” or “Duke” or anything you wish for it to be. 

Why Should Businesses Use Subdomains?

Your email domain is essentially an indicator of who the sender of the message is. Consequently, it is what ISPs use to monitor your sending activity. As a business, you have different kinds of emails to send out: welcome emails, newsletters, marketing emails, post-purchase emails, and feedback emails, to name a few. That’s a large volume of emails, you’d agree. If you go ahead with sending them all out under one domain, you’ll be inviting the suspicion of ISPs. 

It’s hard to tell what benchmarks they use to deem domains as trustworthy or otherwise. That they frown upon the act of several emails hailing from a single email domain, is for sure. Once you land in the bad books of ISPs, your sender reputation suffers. And, as we discussed above, that directly translates into your deliverability going down the dumps. Thus, businesses must consider having separate subdomains in place. Ideally, you should aim to have one for every department. That way:

1. The mistake of any one department will not cause collateral damage to the others.

2. Two departments with entirely different strategies can co-exist peacefully.

Let’s consider a hypothetical scenario revolving around each of the two cases listed above.

First case:

Suppose your marketing team has overshot the daily limit of sent emails. This will impose a shadow ban on your domain. Now, if all your departments are sending their emails from the root domain, this shadow ban will bring their operations to a halt too. In this scenario, however, if the marketing department had had its own subdomain, the ban would have remained confined only to it. The others would have been able to go about their affairs as usual. 

Second case:

Say you have a team each for sending welcome emails and promotional emails. And both are using the root domain. Welcome emails, on any given day, register better engagement rates than promotional ones. In fact, it wouldn’t be much of a stretch to say that the engagement levels of these two occupy opposite ends of the spectrum. 

So, what do you think will happen when you send out both your welcome and promotional emails from the same domain? The low engagement levels of your marketing and promotional levels will, at some stage, push ISPs to subject your domain to greater scrutiny. Ultimately, this will hamper your high-engagement welcome emails from reaching your subscribers’ inboxes too. The reason behind this chain of events isn’t either team, but the lack of separate subdomains being taken into account.

Additionally, if you’re not using subdomains, it can hinder your ability to accurately measure performance. Consider this: Will you get detailed insights into how each email category performs if they’re all sent from one domain? You can, but it’ll require extra work. So, setting up separate subdomains can be a smart move to fine-tune your email strategy and achieve better results.

Setting up a Subdomain

Now that we’ve talked at length about the significance of email subdomains, let us take a look at how you can set up one. At the outset, let us clarify that this process varies across ESPs (Email Service Providers), so what we have done here is listed down some best practices that will hold true across all.

• One of the first things you must keep in mind while setting up a new subdomain is to configure email authentication protocols for it.
• Remember how you have to send emails in gradually increasing volumes while setting up a new IP, to establish a positive sending reputation for it? Yes, IP warming. Well, you have to do the same with new subdomains as well.
• Deliver links in your email to your parent domain.
• Ensure to formulate rules for subdomain email addresses. That way, when they receive any replies, they will go to a monitored inbox.
• Don’t forget to redirect all your subdomains to your parent domain. Otherwise, when someone tries to look up your subdomain on the web, it will show up as an entirely independent entity altogether, bringing about unnecessary confusion.

Mistakes to Avoid!

• Many people make the mistake of assuming that sending emails with different names from the root domain is the same as using a subdomain. While using different names might help you better organize your emails, it offers you none of the benefits that setting up separate subdomains do. It won’t affect your sender reputation and deliverability.
• “Why should I create subdomains when I can buy a new domain altogether for each of my departments?” Well, technically, there’s nothing wrong with that, and yes, you’ll remain free from the scorn of ISPs and mailbox providers. But, think once from your audience’s perspective. By bombarding them with emails from different domains, you are essentially preventing them from becoming accustomed to any. Subsequently, they’ll never show the levels of engagement you expect them to.
• Be mindful of how you are naming your subdomains. Make them as intuitive to remember for the subscribers as possible. For instance, if your domain is “uplers.com”, deliver marketing emails from the subdomain “marketing.uplers.com”, newsletters from “newsletter. uplers.com”, transactional emails from “orders.uplers.com”

Wrapping It Up

Improving email deliverability tops the priority list of all email marketers out there. Employing email subdomains is just a part of the bigger picture to get closer to your goals. Understanding subdomains might seem complex at first, especially for beginners. We trust the points mentioned above will assist you in becoming familiar with them as soon as possible!

The post What are Email Subdomains and How do They Work in Email Marketing? appeared first on Email Uplers.