Email Marketing Interview Questions and Answers

Top Interview Questions for Freshers &Experienced Person

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Email Marketing is basically deals with sending electronic mail (e-mail) to particular group of people.Email  marketing is the use of Emails to develop relationships with potential customers and/or clients. It is a way to reach consumers by using direct electronic mail to generate leads and ensure conversions.It usually involves using email to send advertisements, request business, and is meant to build loyalty, trust, or brand awareness.

You Can not predict exact numbers of email should shoot into the user inbox. According to various studies we can send emails once a month would be fine. But it will be change as business domain change.You can target your potential customer as per their convenience.
Be that as it may, choosing four times a month option would offer you weekly consistency
You can also increase the frequency of sending emails but you ought to have a tight check over open and unsubscribe rates If you see a decline in your engagement, you have to decrease your mail sending frequency

early mornings and weekends. However, you should also be aware that those days and times are responsible for most numbers of unsubscribes and bounces as well.Therefore, to be on safe side, you can try Wednesday afternoons However, every person, email lists and recipients vary and you should try to use different days and times to find out the time that works best for your target audience.

Email deliverability rate (or acceptance rate) can be understood as success rate of getting an email delivered to the email address of your target audience Formula to calculate Email Deliverability= Number of Emails Delivered/ Number of Emails Sent.

Email Marketing is directly proportional to the Email list that you create. Some of the best techniques to grow Email Subscriber

List are-
1) Create remarkable email content.
2) Encourage your current email subscribers to share and forward your emails.
3) Reinvigorate a stale email list with an opt-in campaign.
4) Create a new lead generation offer — like a free eBook or whitepaper — and require visitors to provide their email address in order to download it.
5) Use your Social Media Page to promote different offers Link to offers that capture email signups throughout your website
6) Collect email addresses at offline events like trade shows and import them into your database, etc.

Advantages of Email Marketing-

  • Wider audience base to target
  • Internet users regularly check emails
  • If planned immaculately returns on investment can be quite huge
  • Email is the most basic and popular service of internet and thus most people are familiar with it.
Disadvantages of Email Marketing :
  • Filtering lets extensive number of emails become undelivered
  • Spamming may cause legal action and can also cause inconvenience to target customers
  • Have to be accurately planned because even a nominal factor can let an Email become undelivered or filtered out.
  • Open Rates

    It refers to number of people in an Email List who opened your email message
    Normally open rate is expressed as a percentage, and 30% open rate would mean that of every 10 emails delivered to the inbox, 3 were actually opened One of the most common Interview Questions for Email Marketing related to open rate is ‘What’s a good open rate’ and the answer depends on your industry, however, 20-to-30 percent or more open rate is considered good

    Click-through Rates

    If anyone clicks on any of the links in your email then that would be counted as a click
    Click-through rate is measured as a percentage and it can be understood as the number of recipients out of one hundred who clicked somewhere on your email
    Your CTR would be 30% if 30 out of 100 people clicked on your link

    Unsubscribe Rate
    How many people unsubscribed from your emails is known as unsubscribes
    It is number of people out of 100 who unsubscribed from the email message you sent.

    Hard Bounces
    Hard bounces occur when you send an email to an email address that no longer exists
    Most of the major ISPs such as Gmail, Yahoo, Hotmail monitor hard bounces closely and that is why you should never ignore hard bounces
    It is advisable to remove people from your list after even one hard bounce.

    Soft Bounces
    When you send an email to an inbox that is full then soft bounce occurs
    When the related person deletes some of the emails, your email will be visible in their inbox.

    Complaint or Abuse Rate
    This tells you about the subscribers who actually labeled your email message as spam
    It is advisable to not let your complaint rate get over 0.05 percent. The average complaint rate is approximately .02 percent, but it varies with different industries
    To reduce complaint rates, you should never hide the unsubscribe link. You need to always be nice to your subscribers even if they are leaving.

    Forward Rate
    This metric brings smile to the face of Email Marketer as it tells about how often people open, read, and then liked your email message so much that they shared it with someone else
    Forward rates are also known as “referral rates” or “share rates”
    Having Social Media Sharing Button in your Email Message would help you increase your Forward Rate.

    Churn Rate
    This one tells about the frequency through which your list is growing after the unsubscribes, hard bounce and complaints
    The average churn rate is approximately 25 percent per year that tells you that Email lists are losing 25% of their subscribers per year. To keep your list same and equally effective, you need to add 25% new subscriber to your list

    It can be understood as a law that sets the rules for commercial email.

    CAN-SPAM Act-
    Establishes requirements for commercial messages
    Gives recipients the right to stop you from emailing them
    Spells out tough penalties for violations

    Below given are the checklists you need to go through before sending an Email-

  • Know what is purpose of your email.
  • What kind of response you want from the receiver.
  • Check the list of supporting documentation you should attach to your communication.
  • Does your subject line successfully summarize your email message.
  • Check SPAM Score and then accordingly modify your content.

  • Spam reports: how many times your emails were marked as junk mail/spam by recipients.

    Over time, you need to track your email marketing efforts alongside your larger goals, whether they’re direct sales (like B2C retail companies), website traffic and conversions (B2B or B2C with long sales cycles) or referral business.

    There is no limitations and rules for email sending but it should not be bombarding of emails in inbox. The optimal frequency to contact your customers is one to four times a month. This is the frequency we can use for our customers, and some of our clients see great results with a twice-a-month schedule.

    Keep Your Audience (and Your Goals) in Mind
    Localize and Personalize
    Test Keywords and Phrases
    Keep It Short and Sweet
    Use Groups and Segments
    Convey a Sense of Urgency
    Offer Value
    Use Numbers
    Engage With Questions

    You have only 3-4 seconds before someone decides whether or not they are going to open your email, so it’s important to make an impact. Best practices for subject lines are debatable, especially when trying to compare different industries and topics.

    As I mentioned above, it’s good to email people you personally know. However, some email lists might include people from bought lists or lead gen services (which you should generally avoid). We don’t recommend buying lists because there are laws in place to protect people from receiving certain types of unsolicited communications.

    If you’re not writing something that your audience cares about, you won’t get their attention, even if you do land the email in their inbox. The emails should be directly tied to the subject line and written in a short, consistent way that makes it quickly readable and easily digested.

    Email marketing is a way of reaching many people at once in order to encourage them to do business with you. However, it’s important that email marketers keep their end goals in mind (sales, conversions, web traffic, etc.), and execute their strategy in a way that leads their subscribers to willingly complete a desired action.
    This approach builds audience trust through emails that are valuable and entertaining for the reader, thus increasing the sender’s credibility and getting that sender closer to their desired goal.

    There are no dumb questions when it comes to email marketing. As you now know, there are many variables that affect the success or failure of your email marketing program. While it’s nice to understand some of the industry standards and best practices for email marketing, the most important takeaway is that everyone’s stats will be different as a result of these variables.

    Email marketing is directly marketing by using electronic mail as the communication medium for commercial marketing or advertising to a group of people at a time. This internet marketing strategy generally works by using emails to send ads, request business or solicit sales or donations and any form of email communication that is meant to built customer interest, loyalty and increasing the current customer base. It basically aims at encouraging ‘repeat business’.

    The following are the various types of email marketing techniques:
    Email newsletters: They are direct emails sent out to a list of subscribers or customers on a regular basis. They may be sent out daily, weekly, monthly, quarterly or even annually. They primarily aim at building and strengthening the customer relationship with the company.
    Traditional emails: They are triggered transactional messages sent out based on a customer’s action with a company. They include dropped basket messages, purchase or order confirmation emails and email receipts. They primarily aim at conveying and confirming the actions that triggered it. These days many email newsletter software vendors provide transactional email support which gives companies the ability to include promotional messages or advertisements within the body of the transactional emails. Some software vendors even offer specialized email marketing services such as providing targeted and personalized transactional email messages and running specific marketing campaigns such as customer referral programs which thereby enhances the vendor’s or website owner’s online marketing strategy.
    Direct mails: This email marketing strategy includes sending an email solely for the purpose of communicating a promotional message, such as announcement of a special offer or catalogs of products. Companies generally maintain a list of customers or potential customers or even hire a list of email addresses from service companies to send direct mails to.

    ‘Pay per click’ , also known as ‘cost per click’ is a form of internet advertising which is used for directing traffic to websites. In this advertisers pay the site owners or publishers for the ads being viewed or click. Pay per click introduces a simple strategy of marketing in which an advertiser pays the website for publishing his advertisement and getting people to view it by clicking it, the more the views are for the advertisement, better is the revenue generated by the website from advertisement.
    Generally ‘pay per click’ is used by advertisers on keyword phrases relevant to their target markets. Content sites generally charge a fixed amount per click rather than using a bidding system. ‘Pay per click’ advertisements are commonly displayed on websites and search engine results.‘Pay per click’ is an approach that differs from the ‘pay per impression’ methods used in television and newspaper advertising.

    Following things should be kept in mind when drafting an email for marketing purposes :
    1. Use an effective subject.
    2. Make sure the email does not go into spam. To ensure this make sure the email does not have too many links and restricted words which lead to mail ending up as spam.
    3. Keep the email body crisp and up to the mark.
    4. Make your point and do not drift away from it.
    5. Avoid any form of grammatical mistakes.
    6. Reiterate atleast once.

    Following steps should be taken to prevent mail from ending in SPAM :
    Check if your domain name has been blacklisted.
    If you are using html, then html should be well coded.
    Avoid using spam filtering words, punctuation or capital letters message in your content/subject.
    Spam filters look to see how many messages you are sending at a time.
    Encourage your receiver to add you as friend or contact.
    Keep the length of your subject under 45 characters.
    Don’t use lots of colored fonts.
    Only use one exclamation point at a time!
    Avoid using the phrases “to unsubscribe” and “to be removed” in your message body.
    If you want to deliver an important message to multiple groups better use the ‘BCC’ function.
    Most, if not all, email providers’ spam filters penalize your domain or IP with a higher spam score (meaning there’s a higher possibility of your emails going to junk folder) if they see that you are sending emails to bad email accounts. A bad email account is an address that doesn’t exist, has been disabled or has a full inbox.

    1. What is purpose of your email?
    2. What action needs to result from your email?
    3. What supporting documentation needs to be attached to your communication?
    4. Have you successfully summarized your email message in the subject line?
    5. Check SPAM score(Mailcheck) and modify your content as per score you received
    6. Press send

    There are many social media platforms available but email marketing gives many other benefits over social media marketing. Some of the benefits are:

    i. Limitations of social media: It’s not necessary that your targeted audience is present on social media platform. 94 percent of internet users use email so there are more chances of people seeing your e-mail rather than the social media page.

    ii. Customization: Through social media platforms it is not possible to send customized messages while you can do this in the email. It offers a personal touch which increases the chances of conversion.

    iii. Target Audience: By emailing you can contact the correct target audience as you can segregate them as per their age, income, likes, etc.

    iv. Reporting and Analytics: You can know the open rate, bounce rate, conversions, click through rates which the email offers for reporting and analytics.

    v. Opt-In email: This is the email which is sent to the receiver with his /her permission. Here the reply or conversion rate is higher and it shows that you respect the receiver’s privacy.

    It is very important to authenticate your email as it verifies from where the email is coming from and also improves email deliverability. It blocks harmful or fraudulent uses of email such as spamming.
    Every organization must do email authentication as it protects their online reputation and also helps the customers to maintain their trust in the brand.

    This is one of the basic concepts and you may be asked about this in your interview.
    An email consists of three important components:
    Envelope: Internal process by which the email is enrooted
    Email Header
    Main Body: Text Contents
    Email header or header is nothing but the first part of any email message. The header contains information like the subject of the email, who is the sender, the date, which are compulsory. The optional headers are Subject and CC which are very commonly used. When the email is forwarded the date, time, subject become one of the headers with the body of the email.

    All the emails sent are not usually received and read. A good email open rate is calculated taking into consideration the emails are received and read by the recipient.
    The range of good email open rate is between 15 to 25 percent for marketing emails.

    A candidate who has experience will know what kind of e-mail is needed for a marketing campaign and would be able to identify where and how the e-mail could be improved.
    If you are a fresher you should know the characteristics of a good email to answer this question.

    See, if the e-mail you are seeing meets the following requirements:


    Mobile friendly emails: It is important to create mobile optimized email content that is engaging and appealing on a smart phone. Make sure your content is seen correctly if sent on Gmail or Outlook or on device like the smart phone.


    Consider text emails: Email client like Outlook blocks images so it is best to write a good descriptive email with links to your site.


    Effective subject line: Looking at the subject line people decide if they should open the mail or not. Make sure your subject line is to the point and make it as compelling as possible.
    Email from real person: No one likes an email in which they can’t ask a query back. If your email is only for the information purpose, for e.g., letting the customers know that their product has been dispatched, you can send the system generated email but provide your customers a way in the email to ask a query, if they need to.


    Personalized email: The more personalized email you send, the better will be the reply rate/ expected action rate. It makes the receivers believe that someone genuinely means to contact them rather than it being a system generated thing sent to everyone.


    Defined call to action: Looking at the email the reader should know what is needed to be done by them. A properly defined call to action can be anything from calling at a given contact number, or form submission or driving traffic to a page.

    With this question the interviewer is allowing you to demonstrate your email marketing knowledge. The candidate should be able to answer this question with naming a few types of emails.

    Here is the list of the types of email:

    i. Transactional Email: When a transaction takes place this type of email is sent. Here an email is sent to the customer after he completes a required action. This type of email has a high click through rate as they are specific and contain important information such as confirmation.

    ii. Newsletter Email: This type of email is sent on a regular interval to inform the customer about the brand. This helps in building a regular communication.

    iii. Lead conversion Email: This email is sent when you want a subscriber to become your customer. In this type you can either send a mail of updates or send updates about the products. These type of email receive a good response than the other mails.

    iv. Dedicated Email: These mails are dedicated on one topic. The topic could be an announcement, information about a new product or service or to tell people about an event. They are also easy to set and have a strong call to action.

    v. Digest Email: These emails are easy to send and can be automated and scheduled to be sent on regular basis. These emails are smaller than Newsletter email.

    vi. Anniversary Email: Anniversary mails offer a personal connect with the subscribers. It could be the subscriber’s birthday or the company’s birthday. This type of mail improves engagement and helps to grow trust in the brand. The open rates for anniversary mails are three times higher than other email and also they are easy to set.

    vii. Welcome Email: When someone subscribes to an email list, he or she should receive a ‘Welcome mail’. Here the customer knows that you are going to email him/her. It confirms their subscription.

    You can make your subscriber list grow long but this does not guarantee you success. You can get contacts from the event, or you can ask for referral but when you are growing your list you should know who you are contacting, are they the right kind of people, will they be engaged with you, would they be interested in what you have to say.
    A huge long list does not means success but the relevant one means your efforts of email marketing will not go in vain.

    The answer to this question is an “Interesting email subject line”. Your subject like should be catchy and appealing.
    Following are some tips to make your subject line catchy:

    i. Curiosity and urgency: Use these two characteristic to write your subject line. Make them curious and tell them that they will get more information in the email.

    ii. The shorter the better: It becomes difficult to read long subject line in the mobile phone. The person should be able to read the whole subject line at a glance.

    iii. Personalization: Make people feel special – This makes the Email look relevant to the reader. Add receiver’s first name in the subject line.

    iv. Tell them what is inside: This makes it clear that there is something inside the email probably what they were waiting for.

    v. Sense of importance: Your subject line should make the reader act immediately. You can create scarcity and urgency for the receiver to act promptly.

    vi. Include numbers: Using numbers in the subject line is an effective marketing practice. It makes the email more clear and straightforward.

    vii. Compelling question: You need to ask questions which are relevant to the receiver’s behavior or persona. It also helps create curiosity as mentioned above.

    viii. Avoid overuse of exclamation and All CAPS: Avoid using more than one exclamation mark. And if you are using all Caps lock your email will get ignored as it appears to be a spam mail.

    Click through rate is one of the important metrics for measuring email marketing success. There are a few ways by which you can boost your click through rate:

    i. Consistency: You should strive for consistency in your website and email. One simple way to do this is by adding a logo in your email.

    ii. One Call One Action: While writing an email make only one offer. It is tempting to include multiple calls to action in hopes of getting the subscriber to accept atleast one but that’s not true. In order to get optimal click through rate include one call to action to focus your subscriber taking the call to action.

    iii. HTML Buttons: This is one of the easiest ways to get more click through rate. Adding a button with contrasting colours is attractive for users and draws attention.

    iv. Email design: Keep your email design simple. Keep the font clear with simple content and clear call to action button.

    v. Action oriented words: If you want the subscriber to shop use the word ‘shop’ instead of the common call to action words “click here”. Using specific verbs describe the action you want the subscriber to take. Other words like learn, submit, grab, send, get, start, read are some specific words which influence the subscriber to take a call to action.

    vi. Mobile friendly: Make sure your emails are mobile friendly and also your emails are easy to read from any device.

    vii. Correct audience: Everyone is different and so are their interests. Send emails based on your subscribers interest.

    viii. Create Urgency: By using words like ‘Today or now’ helps to create urgency and makes the subscribers act immediately as everyone has a fear of missing out or loosing something.

    ix. Personalization and Curiosity: When one person sees a personalized mail he/she feels it is just written for them and hence ensures that they take the desired call to action. Everyone wants to know what will happen or what they will get if they click on the button. Create curiosity to make people take the call to action.