When doing any kind of email marketing, you must first realize that there’s a lot going on behind the scenes: planning and strategy, finalizing the copy, configuring MarTech software, preparing the email sequence, and more, before a single email can be sent. That’s often why most email programs have a high upfront cost just to get your campaign ready. And in parallel, your website must be designed and integrated to work with, not against, your email campaigns. It sounds like common sense, but what does that mean from a marketing and web design perspective?
Let’s dive into six key areas you must get right when performing any email marketing: tracking, mirror domains, landing pages, cookies, and contact forms.
1. Email Tracking Configurations
There are two camps when it comes to email marketing campaigns:
- You only give people one option: reply to your email.
- They can still reply, but you’ll also embed a landing page URL in case they want to browse.
We’ve found that both can work when properly configured and optimized. If you’re in the first camp, feel free to keep on reading. If you’re in the second camp, the first step is to implement an email tracking pixel.
Many email marketing platforms provide email tracking pixels to report email deliverability (which come in handy when monitoring your domain reputation):
- Which links were clicked?
- How many prospects opened your emails?
- How many prospects flagged your content as spam?
- How many emails didn’t reach an inbox?
- How many prospects responded?
With the same email pixels, you can even identify which target companies have visited your website! With this data, you can do two things: 1) target similar individuals from the same company, and 2) target similar roles at a competing company.
This advanced tracking is incredibly powerful and can really scale your lead generation efforts.
2. Website Tracking Configurations
In addition to tracking emails, you’ll also need to track website visits. You can do so by appending UTM parameters to your landing page URLs. Using a tool like Link Builder, you can segment email campaigns with utm_source, utm_medium, utm_id, utm_campaign, utm_term, and utm_content. As long as you have Google Analytics or a similar analytics package, you’ll be able to track what your email traffic is doing and determine which email campaigns are working.
Note that all of this tracking data comes with one caveat: data privacy must be complied with at the local and federal levels. Therefore, you may want to consult with a web design team like Uplancer to help implement email tracking.
3. Pick Mirror Domains When Sending Emails
You should do everything to protect your email domain. Email service providers like Microsoft and Google are wary of email abuse and will penalize you and even ban your domain. That means if you’re running email campaigns, you shouldn’t put your business email at risk.
There are techniques your web design and hosting team can use, but we find the best approach is to use mirror domains. These domains are slight variations of your primary business domain name. For example, our business domain, uplancer.agency, would use the following mirror domains: uplancercompany.com, uplancerllc.co, and uplanceragency.com. Notice how these mirror domains kind of look like our business domain.
Once you’ve picked out mirror domains, have your web design agency or designer set up proper redirects from those mirror domains to your primary business domain. This is a precaution for buyers who quickly look up your mirror domain.
4. Dedicate a Landing Page for Email Marketing Traffic
In organic or paid search, your listing is the first touchpoint and does all the convincing. In email marketing, your email is that first touchpoint. And for both, your landing page becomes the second touchpoint. That’s why we recommend treating each email campaign like an organic or paid search experience: always build a landing page for each email campaign, and make sure to link it with UTM parameters in the body of your emails.
To get the most out of your landing page, follow these web design best practices:
- Landing pages should align with the messaging from each email campaign. For example, an email campaign for tire repair should discuss tire repairs and avoid content related to auto body repair.
- Landing pages should place conversion actions, such as a contact form, download, or lead magnet, at the top of the page. These conversion actions must be front and center and easy to do.
- Less is more for landing pages! Only include the content customers need to convert on the page.
5. Cookie Usage and Storage Scripts
What happens when prospects from your email marketing campaign navigate away from your landing pages (even with UTM parameters)? Without custom scripts on your website, those parameters are lost! The good news is there’s a workaround that lets you store the UTM parameters in a browser cookie. This cookie information is stored temporarily and can be tracked across your website. A marketing agency like Uplancer can help write and implement these custom scripts.
6. Get Your Contact Forms in Order
Whether using your own or a third-party form, make sure it works across your entire website. And if you’re using a CRM, sync all your form data and metadata so your sales team can quickly engage. For example, if your sales team knows which web page a form was submitted, they can tailor the sales meeting accordingly. You can also pass other information to your CRM, such as UTM parameters and the referral page, to further improve your sales outreach. As you can see, a well-thought-out contact form workflow will help optimize your sales approach not only for email marketing traffic but also for any web traffic!
The Bottom Line / TLDR
To maximize the impact of email marketing when embedding landing page URLs, you must implement email tracking on your website to gain insights into visitor behavior, secure your domain to avoid spam flags, and use dedicated landing pages to target traffic. Also, add UTM parameters to track campaign performance, store cookie data to preserve source details, and ensure contact forms work seamlessly. These steps are critical for driving email marketing conversions, streamlining your sales process, and making your email marketing efforts more effective.
Ready to take the common sense approach to email marketing? Contact us today for a free consultation about your email marketing or website needs!
