Email marketing… Wait, isn't it supposed to be an outdated form of communication with customers in the era of IG reels, TikToks and Twitch streams? Make of it what you want but reels and social media trends come and go, while email databases are reliable and more informative, when done right, of course. And for that, many companies/brands still employ email marketers/managers within their marketing departments. If you'd like to be employed in that position, let's get you prepared with several basic interview questions.
- What types of email marketing are effective and why?
To reach customers and interest them in a product/service 4 email marketing methods could be applied: 1 - Newsletters, the most popular option for businesses to provide customers with information and insights, yet the content should be concise and compelling; 2 - Transactional emails, designed to promote a transaction between a parties, or it should inform a customer about the action they have just made; 3 - Promotional emails, to basically boost sales or sign-ups via new product offerings, or in other words, to convince a customer to purchase something; 4 - Retention emails, or targeted messages to existing customers for more engagement and brand loyalty.
- What is the best time of day to send emails?
Mornings for workdays and on the weekends, this means the optimal time would depend on customers' location. In other words, the best time for email campaigns would be morning hours in their time zone.
- How often should one send emails to customers?
The goal is not to annoy or overwhelm customers with messages resulting in them losing interest, so rule #1 is no daily emails. The general rule of thumb is sending no more than 3-4 emails per month, spaced 3 days apart. Also, there's email cadence - the method to identify and optimize time, frequency, and content for subscribers. By analyzing open and unsubscribe rates one should be able to correct and maximize email campaigns.
- What would you do to prevent email from ending up in spam?
There are an array of options, tips, dos and don'ts. For example, do not use text styles in titles, no multiple exclamation points, include an unsubscribe option in the message body, see if your area name or IP address have been blacklisted, keep the subject line short, analyze spam filters in terms of the number of emails sent simultaneously, do not use all-caps words and spam-triggering words such as "Jackpot", "Free", "Sale", etc.
- How to overcome email deliverability issues?
In order to avoid email ending up in Spam or Promotional folders, certain email authentication techniques and services could be used, e.g. sender policy framework (SPF), DomainKeys authenticated mail (DKIM), domain-based message authentication, reporting and conformance (DMARC). Also, Postmaster by Google is a great tool to troubleshoot email deliverability since it gives insight into their own Gmail, which is by far the most popular email mailbox.
- What metrics are used to evaluate success of email campaigns?
Those include email open rate, click-through rate (CTR), click-to-open rate, bounce rate, conversions, delivery/deliverability rate, campaign ROI. The choice of specific metrics to use depends on email marketing campaign objectives and overall business goals.
- What can you tell us about email automation?
Automated emails can result in higher open rates and response rates, since they are better personalized and targeted based on users' actions. Modern marketing software offers email automation, but this should be done with great care and attention. Some tips and approaches I would utilize for email automation are as follows: examine automation goals and proceed accordingly, quality content that sounds and looks human (same with sender name and profile information), lead recipients along the way towards purchase (for example, little asks for little 'yesses' - read a blog, download a file, watch a video), make emails sequential, use proper and designated landing pages, etc.
- What is the difference between hard bounces and soft bounces?
These are emails that cannot be delivered to the sender. Soft bounce is an undeliverable status potentially caused by factors like offline server, overflown recipient inbox, incomplete setup. Hard bounce is a "permanently" undeliverable status for cases such as incorrect email address or deleted inbox.
- What are the 5 Ts in email marketing?
These are key considerations that can make or break email marketing campaigns: targeting, testing, timing, triggers and tracking. Obviously, all of those should be given a lot of attention and care to be performed the best way possible and result in successful email campaigns.
- How would you monitor and reduce unsubscribe rates?
Firstly, a few practices could be tried out, for instance sending emails less frequently, sending only relevant and properly set up emails, setting up email preference centers (EPCs). Secondly, when closely monitoring the unsubscribe numbers one has to be more selective with email marketing strategy and frequency.
- Which email marketing tools would you use?
Hubspot (2,000 emails per month in the free plan), Mailchimp (10,000 emails per month in the free plan), Mailer Lite (12,000 emails per month in the free plan), Omnisend (15,000 emails per month in the free plan), Sender (15,000 emails per month in the free plan). For upper-tier recipients, email automation software like Moosend, Close, Instantly, Gmass, Amazon SES, SendPulse, GetResponse, Benchmark.
- What are overall tips to improve email campaigns?
Here are some tips I would apply: segmenting the customer list (by source, customer journey, demographics), personalizing the emails, trying to re-engage inactive recipients, performing A/B test campaigns, sending out triggered emails (reaching users while they are engaged), showcasing value and adding emotion, testing our dynamic content vs plain text emails, designing eye-catching content, including clear and strong CTAs, etc.
- Can you go through an email marketing funnel, from acquisition to conversion?
Email marketing lifecycle implies subscribers' stages - from the initial acquisition to final conversion. The sequence is the following: 1 - Acquisition, or a signup to mailing list; 2 - Sending a welcome email; 3 - Engagement via regular email campaigns with offers and or updates; 4 - Segmentation, based on activity, interests, demographics, etc.; 5 - Personalization, i.e. include recipient name, relevant products in emails; 6 - Conversion through CTAs; 7 - Nurturing, or post-conversion emails for establishing relationship; 8 - Retention, or customer loyalty programs.
- How to collect a customer email list from scratch?
First of all, determine the target audience and their preferences, select an email marketing platform/software. Then design an attractive sign-up form and place it on your website, also you may add incentives like discounts, exclusive content, etc. Promote it through social media posts, where you also publish engaging content regularly. Add bonus content that users would have to subscribe with their email to access it, run contests or giveaways for the same purpose. Then segment and analyze the email list.
- How to produce an effective email subject line?
The elements of an engaging email subject line that will make a recipient open an email are: clarity, relevance to the recipient, brevity (5-10 words in 40-60 characters), action-oriented ("join", "discover", "learn", "exclusive"), urgency ("limited time offer"), value, curiosity, and finally no spammy language.