Roughly 200 campaigns and 400,000 sends a year, on a list of 4,000 contacts. Built, written, and measured by one person.
How I approach it
I was responsible for ACNL’s email program for seven years: strategy, copy, templating, list hygiene, and analytics. The audience was primarily using their hospital- or university-issued work emails, both of which have notoriously aggressive security filters, and both of which are also notoriously busy work environments.
To clear security, the emails had to be text-forward and image-light. When Outlook might not load your images, and the mail server might not let them through to begin with, the only images you should be using are your logo and the occasional attention-grabbing header — nothing with dates, locations, speaker names, or calls to action.
Getting the attention of a busy nurse is a bit trickier, especially when, in many ways, ACNL was a B2B company that only appeared to be B2C. Yes, I was promoting events directly to potential registrants, but many of those registrants were going to file for reimbursement with their employers. Emails had to be easy to print, easy to skim, and have potential benefits or learning objectives clearly laid out, so a nurse could hand it to their manager for a quick approval.
Analytics are hard to measure between security scanners checking links and Apple MPP spoofing opens. I added a simple, invisible footer link on every send, almost the opposite of a pixel, intended to set a baseline for clicks. If Mailchimp said a CTA was clicked X times, and the invisible link was clicked Y times, I could reasonably conclude that the CTA was actually clicked X minus Y times.
Samples
Five representative sends. Click any one to read the full email.
