Blog - Archive for November, 2010

A landing page or squeeze page is, in marketing terms, a specialized page that visitors are directed to once they’ve clicked on a link. This usually comes from an outside source such as a PPC ad but could also come from a banner or link that you have included in your email marketing campaign.

The reason for your landing page is to convince the visitor to continue reading your website or make a conversion, such as signing up for a mailing list, completing a form, buying a product or forwarding your email to friends. For these reasons, it’s vital that this page is eye-catching, succinct and follows on directly from the link. Remember that your landing page is what many first time users are going to see of your web presence, so you want to make sure their interest is peaked and maintained.

It’s important that the structure of your landing page corresponds to that of the PPC ad, link or banner that your visitor clicks on. All too often a link will take you to the homepage of a website, which isn’t where your visitor wants or needs to be.  If they are already at the stage where they want to buy a product, the link should take them directly to a page where they can complete their billing information. Any deviations could cost you that conversion or sale, and any future sales for that matter.

We can distinguish two types of landing pages – the instant access form and the mini sales letter form. The instant access form does exactly what you think it would – it informs your visitors that the action they are about to take will allow them instant access to a great content website, interesting information or the opportunity to download e-books, software etc. All they need to do is fill in the form and submit it. The mini sales letter form encourages people to subscribe and focuses more on the benefits of what you’re trying to get people interested in.

When creating a landing page there are a few basic but revealing questions you need to ask yourself that will help you plan and target accordingly.

• What product or service are you offering?
• Who is your target market/audience?
• Why should they be interested in your offer?
• What will they need to do to participate or purchase your product?

Once you have considered these questions you can start thinking about the actual content and layout of your landing page. We’ve outlined a few tips for you to follow:

• Have a strong, clear-cut and visible call to action. ‘Sign Up Now’; ‘Sign Up Here’; ‘Call’; ‘Email Us’; ‘Contact Us’; ‘Find Out More Here’. Make sure it’s big and bold and hard to ignore or miss.
• Keep your content short and succinct. Ideally you want everything above the fold. Your visitors don’t want to scroll through pages of text and information that can easily make them forget why they are on that page in the first place.
• Offer a bonus or incentive. Everybody wants and enjoys something for free – a report, relevant document, software and discounts on your products or services are guaranteed to get results.
• Write in the 2^nd person – ‘you and your’.  This goes a long way to making your visitor feel special, like they are the only ones you are appealing to.
• Remove any clutter and unnecessary content or links from your landing page. You need to keep the focus on your offer and make sure your visitor stays on track until they’ve made a conversion.
• Don’t push them for anything that you don’t need at that moment, this being enough information to conclude the sale or the desired action.
• Be consistent with the design and colour. The PPC ad, banner, link and the landing page itself all need to follow the same concept and style. This is necessary for two reasons. Firstly it looks professional and secondly it helps the visitor visually identify you and know for certain that the link has taken them to the correct site.
• Use images and pictures that are relevant and show the product in context. For example, a man downing a cold beer in a beer commercial, a baby having its nappy changed in a diaper commercial – you get the idea. This offers the visitor a real life perspective and gives them something to take away from the situation. Bare this in mind though: tests have shown that if an image is placed on the right hand side of a page it makes it harder to draw the eye to the content on the left hand side of the page.

In our previous post we wrote about how important it is to keep your content relevant, but we know it’s not always easy to continuously come up with fresh and interesting ideas for your campaigns. So, what we’ve done for you is put together a few ideas (especially helpful if you are an email marketing ‘newbie’), to help you get the ball rolling.

First off, you should create a content folder on your computer which you can add ideas to as and when they come. Remember that everything you see, hear and read is a potential interesting topic for your next newsletter so be sure to keep that in mind at all times. It also wouldn’t hurt to have a regular notebook on hand, so you can jot things down while you are on the go.

Have a selection of back up articles that you can use in an emergency. While you don’t want to get lazy and rely on these all the time, they are certainly handy to have at short notice or when you simply can’t think of something to write about. You will need to make sure that the topics are general, so their relevance doesn’t expire. What you want, for example is something along the lines of “why e-marketing is successful”, as opposed to one titled “latest e- marketing trends.”

It’s also really important to follow what your competitors are doing. What are they writing about that is popular with their readers? What questions are being posted that are leading to further discussions? You can adapt and direct some of these ideas to your own needs.

There are many ways that you can fill the spaces and pages of your campaign and we have summed up 9 of the best content ideas, which can be used to create short or long copy. Here they are;

1. Event Listings – Inform people about special events that you will be running in the coming months, or point them to other relevant events that are happening. These might include webinars, conferences, workshops etc. If you don’t like the idea of promoting someone else’s event, bear in mind your reader’s interests. What might they benefit from and find interesting? Ultimately, they will be thankful for the information and you will gain their loyalty quickly.
2. Trivia, History and Interesting Facts – This often makes for thought provoking discussion and feedback. Be sure to keep these points in line with your subject matter and don’t be scared to add a refreshing or even humorous touch.
3. Lists – People love them because they are quick and easy to read and you’ll love them because the options available for topics are endless. The best/worst; most/ least popular; biggest /smallest; types of; ways to. You get the idea.
4. How-To’s – These are very popular and today you can find an online ‘how-to’ guide for just about any problem, product or service you encounter.
5. Question / Answer – Set up a forum on your website where visitors can post queries or problems. You can publish the answers online and also include them in your newsletter if you feel it is a topic that would appeal to others.
6. Trends and Predictions – What’s the latest news in your industry? Recent developments, products and services, trend forecasting etc. all make for an interesting read. You can extend this down the line by writing about what has happened since or if any trend forecasts have come true.
7. Conduct a survey and track the feedback. You can use the data and information you gather for future topics. Even better, ask your visitors directly what they would be interested in reading and learning more about.
8. Product Reviews – These are very helpful for someone trying to make a decision on something and you can help them. Try to make your review as unbiased as possible though, you want to give a fair report without sounding like you are actually selling the product. On the other hand, if it really is rubbish then you need to inform people of that too.
9. Guest Author Contributions – Invite guest experts and well known people in your industry to contribute a blog posting once a month and see what the feedback is like. The exposure and association would benefit both of you.

So there you have it. You’ll soon find that you only need a few really good topics up your sleeve at any given time simply because the better your subject matter, the more discussion it generates and the more you can develop it.

Fact: your website content is one of the main reasons why people keep coming back to your site and remain subscribed to your email campaigns. A recent stat from Jupiter Research reported that 51% of people surveyed will unsubscribe if content is not interesting. It certainly isn’t a stat you want to hear but definitely one you need to hear. People place high value on what emails they allow through to their inbox. Added to that, most people have a short attention/time span and skim through their emails, only stopping to read something further if it grabs them immediately. Keep them entertained and informed from the outset and you stand a good chance of getting your entire email read.

It’s however, not always easy coming up with fresh ideas for each new campaign, and it gets even harder the higher the frequency of your emails. So how do you go about creating content that will rivet your readers? If you think about it, content has to adapt, otherwise, like most things in life, it will become stagnant, irrelevant and boring. Products, services, data and pricing structures can become out-dated quickly. If you spend all your time and energy getting visitors to your site only for their search to end in old information, they won’t give it a second chance. There are, however, a few things you can do to ensure that your content stays relevant and up to date, which will go a long way to ensuring that your visitors become repeat visitors. Here’s what you need to consider:

1. Is the content the same as what’s stated in the teaser / heading?

When a person clicks on an article titled ‘E-Marketing Basics’, they expect to read about that topic. If they open it and discover it’s about advanced e-marketing strategies they aren’t going to be impressed. Even though the subject is the same, it’s not the information they are after. Follow through and make sure that what you are stating in your header is exactly what people can expect to find in the rest of the article.

2. Keep your content concise and to the point.

Avoid a long winded thesis on any subject matter that requires a university degree to fully comprehend what you have written. People skim read at the best of times and lose interest very quickly if: a) the information isn’t relevant to their search, b) if it doesn’t state clearly and quickly what the information is about and c) if it’s boring. At the same time you need to keep the content fairly straight forward and simple. The brain can only process so much at any given time, so don’t cram it all in at once.

3. Highlight key words.

You know you only have a very limited time to grab and retain a person’s interest so you need to use it wisely. It can help to highlight certain points in your content, which automatically draws their attention, hopefully long enough for them to want to read more.

4. Keep it interesting.

Yes, it is easier said than done, but try this out. Follow your readers in forums and groups. What are they commenting on? What do they have questions or frustrations about? You can then use the information you gather to create new content for your next campaign, thereby keeping it entirely relevant, up to date and interesting (simply because you are addressing topics that your readers were wondering about.)

5. Create links to other relevant content/articles.

Any link to information that can re- confirm or even further develop your idea is good for your credibility.

The general rule of thumb is to update your website content annually. This will ensure that everything from programmes, products and services to pricing schedules are kept up to date and therefore relevant for most searches conducted.

You have 2 seconds and less than 50 characters to grab your reader’s attention with the subject line of your email marketing campaign, so it is absolutely vital that you optimise this space. You might be tempted to go for CAPS, exclamation marks and cheesy phrases but contrary to popular belief this is the complete opposite of what you should do.

Good subject lines are straightforward, clear and describe the subject of your email, go figure. It’s simple advice and yet many people don’t take heed. You need to say what the email contains, why your reader should open it and what benefit or reward they’ll get if they do. Have a look at stats online and you will find that the most effective subject lines are almost ‘boring’. Conversely, the ones that have some of the lowest results are generally the ones that look and sound like creative advertising, which recipients automatically think is spam and delete accordingly.

Your subject line directly influences your open rate, get it wrong and it’s time and money wasted, get it right and you can realistically expect very impressive open rates.  So how do you go about creating the ultimate content for it? We have come up with a number of ways to help you maximise this small yet equally important component of your campaign.

First off, you need to clearly state your offer and the contents of the email. Whether it’s a newsletter, promotion, special deal or sale you should aim to use that word in your subject line. According to a recent study by Return Path, 55.2% of recipients opened the email because the subject line clearly stated the offer.

Use your company name as the first word in your subject line. This has shown time again that it achieves high open rates and it’s a tactic well worth employing. Of course this might use up a considerable amount of valuable characters so remember that you can always put the company name in the ‘from’ line.

Personalisation and using your recipient’s first name, such as ‘Hi Bob – check out our latest offer’, will generally grab that person’s attention. This is especially the case if he is skimming through emails, and it can lead to a higher open rate.

Creating a sense of urgency, without going overboard, will have the same desired effect. ‘24-hour sale’,’ today/this week only’, ‘limited supplies’, ‘offer expires in 30 minutes’ tends to play on a reader’s subconscious, and who likes to miss out anyway?

A/B testing is one of the most cost and time effective ways to improve your subject line and campaign. You know what they say about assumption? Well it rings true here too. Don’t assume that the content of your subject line will definitely garner the results you desire. Put it to the test. Keeping your copy the same, you only need to change the wording or angle of the subject line in your email. Send both options of the campaign to a select (not random) number of recipients and track them using your analytics. Which produces the desired results as far as click through or conversion rates?  You can then use that subject line when sending out that particular campaign. If neither option produces a satisfactory result then you need to go back to the drawing board.

Make sure that whatever you write in your subject line follows through in your email. Misleading people and failing to deliver on your promise of discounts, sales and once in a lifetime offers can get you reported as spam, which can ruin your reputation before you realise you even had one.

It’s not easy creating a winning subject line and it will take a certain amount of trial and error to get it right. You might have the most award winning copy for your campaign, but if no-one opens your emails then what’s the point? To sum it up, you should state clearly; personalise; create a sense of urgency and put your subject line to the test to help ensure that your email doesn’t get deleted or ignored.

Opt-in marketing, also known as permission based marketing, is centred on obtaining a customer’s explicit consent to receive information/newsletters/special offers or promotions from a company. This is usually achieved by having a ‘sign up here’ link on your website. It is now law to have an official opt-in list, which isn’t as daunting as it sounds and is relatively straight forward to develop. It will also ensure that the people you are targeting actually have a genuine interest in what you are offering, so it really is a win-win situation. You’ll soon find that an opt-in list can easily become your company’s greatest asset.

In this article, we’re going to tell you what some of the best ways are to build up your subscriber list, and therefore keep on the right side of the law, because being blacklisted as spam is hard to come back from.

Your number one priority should be to get people to your website. It’s all very well if you already have a lot of traffic, but if visitors are simply checking your site and exiting without performing any action or entering their email address along the way, they are as good as lost to you.

If you haven’t yet started an opt-in list you need to kick start the process by posting and submitting articles online to various relevant sites. Use your knowledge of an industry or product to your advantage and offer advice and recommendations on different forums. People will come to know you and trust what you say, and therefore sell. This would be a good time to ask them if they would like sign up to your newsletter, or direct them to your website to find out more about your company. Once here, you could even ask your visitors to refer you to friends, which they will be willing to do if they feel they can trust you. You could potentially double your opt-in list right there.

We have spoken a lot about your ‘call to action’ and how vitally important it is in email marketing. It’s a fact that people generally do not subscribe to an email list because they haven’t been told to. Make it easy for them by having a quick link sign up form on your website and tell them what they can expect from you once they have registered. Remember, initially you are only looking for their basic details, so don’t go overboard with your sign up questions. If people sense that it’s going to take 15 minutes to fill in their details, they are unlikely to do it, and then you would have lost a potential long term customer. Don’t forget to point out that the service is FREE (everybody loves a free service) and that they can opt-out at any stage. It’s important to make this process equally as simple for them.

You might want to offer something to your customers as a way to get them to divulge their details. One way of doing this is to offer ‘free downloadable articles’ or ‘e-books’. Give them a snippet of the content and if they want to read the entire document they will need to register on your site with their email address. It’s as easy as that.

Email marketing is all about developing and maintaining a long term relationship with your customers, but you have to make that first contact and gain their loyalty, slowly. Contact them frequently, perhaps once a week, but don’t inundate them with emails too quickly. Developing an online relationship with your customers is not far off from real-life. Too much, too soon will get you dumped, quickly. It’s crucial to get your customers to trust you before you try to sell them anything, but once you have gained this trust you’ll be well on your way.

There is a lot of advice out there on the internet to help ensure that your email campaign is beautifully created, sent out successfully and most importantly well received. What many people tend to forget, and this goes for seasoned email campaigners and newbies alike, are the common mistakes that are all too often made when you are caught up in developing the perfect campaign. We’ve summed up a list of 10 of the most common email marketing blunders which, if you avoid successfully, will go a long way to ensuring that your content is relevant, good to look at, grammatically sound and entirely logical. Here they are;

You want and/or expect instant success. Banish the thought from you head immediately. With email marketing your aim is to develop a relationship with your customer and this takes time, sometimes more time than you think you have. You’ll need to have patience and a strong resolve. You and I know, understand and accept that Rome was most certainly NOT built in a day so don’t be in such a rush to get that campaign out ‘like yesterday!’ Make sure you are 100% happy with it and it’s been 100% tried and tested before you send it out. You won’t regret it.

Your message isn’t clear. You want it to be powerful, concise and with a strong call to action. If there is any doubt in your mind that it lacks these points then you need to reassess it, even if it sets you back time wise. It will be worth it in the long term, believe me.

You aren’t entirely sure you have permission. If in doubt, here’s a quick question you can ask yourself to check: ‘Have they specifically requested to receive my emails?’ If the answer is ‘no’, then you have to back to the drawing board and work on building up your subscriber list. It’s a simple enough task and will ensure that your emails aren’t deemed ‘SPAM!!’

You have subscribers on your list that haven’t heard zip from you in 6 months. Do yourself a favour and delete them from your list. They probably won’t remember you and will therefore report your campaigns as spam immediately. Rather go through the process of getting them to remember you again. Send a friendly ‘remember me?’ email and guide them to sign up to your newsletter again. It’s the best way to ensure that your subscriber list remains entirely ‘opt-in’ and therefore more valuable.

You BUY an ‘opt-in’ list. I have one word for you here and that’s ‘unscrupulous’. Your target audience is specific and so is the product or service that you are trying to market, so sending your campaign out to 20 000 people who you don’t know and who certainly don’t know you is rather pointless and not really a very good idea. Neither is getting blacklisted for spamming, which is what would probably happen if you went this unsavoury route.

You use your personal ‘Yahoo’ or ‘Gmail’ email address in ‘reply to’. From your side it’s very unprofessional and it certainly won’t instil a sense of respect and trust in your readers, which should be your long term goal. Your (legitimate) company has a website and domain name and should have at least a couple of email address’ set up already, use them.

You use all 101 font types available to you. Keep the focus of your campaign on your brilliant copy, images and clever layout. Don’t let your readers get distracted by your creative use of French script MT. It looks busy, reads badly and if you’re honest, it doesn’t really have the effect you were aiming for, does it?

You don’t check your reports and stats regularly enough. Did you notice your open rate has decreased and your subscriber list is shrinking each month? Take note, make changes accordingly and do what you can to win back your readership.

You underline non-links. Underlining words to draw emphasis is a sure sign of poor writing and it won’t have the compensating effect you think it will. Added to that, web readers will inevitably think that it is a hyperlink. Remember good, strong, clear writing is your key to success, so brush up on those fabulous writing skills and use that to draw attention instead.

You write overlong copy and don’t include images. Don’t be scared to break up your copy with a few images (read FEW, it shouldn’t look like a promotional flyer.) Too much text can be incredibly monotonous and gets boring quickly, even if your subject matter is the most interesting thing since sliced bread. Also, remember that you can include a ‘read more’ link to your website if you want people to get more information about your company. That way, your newsletter, campaign or product promotion remains just that and not a platform for a complete company profile.

Right, so there you are. Take this information, absorb it and go create that brilliant campaign that will land up exactly where you want it, in your recipient’s inbox.

So, you have taken the first step and realised that an email marketing campaign is one of the best e-marketing tactics you can use to promote your company and product. What now? Before you start putting your campaign together there are a number of questions you need to ask yourself to help you ascertain exactly who your target audience is and what you ultimately want to achieve with your campaign.

A few points to consider:

1. How can I build up my subscription list? The most obvious way to do this would be to have a ‘sign up’ link on your website, which will ensure that all your subscribers have genuinely opted-in. It is also necessary by law to have an original opt-in list, so try not to take short cuts here.
2. What type of content would my customers like to receive? Newsletters, promotions, discounts, price changes, special offers, updates, latest product information,editorial, entertainment, quirky offbeat news etc.? Do a bit of research, ask questions on forums, join different focus groups and look to feedback from previous campaigns for guidance.
3. What is the purpose of my campaign and what would my customers read and respond to? Your call to action needs to be clear and enticing. ‘Call’, ‘subscribe’, ‘join’ etc. People need to be told exactly what to do.
4. How frequently should I send out my campaigns? Daily, weekly, monthly? Whatever you choose, you need to be consistent about when you send it out, for example, every Thursday afternoon. Ideally you want your customers to recognise and look forward to your emails, at the same time every week.
5. How do I make sure my campaign doesn’t end up in the spam folder of my intended recipient? This can happen even if you have an opt-in list. Be aware of the CAN SPAM ACT – the U.S. law that regulates commercial email. Mail Blaze’s email marketing solution includes a special feature that puts your email campaign through a spam filter before it gets sent out, so you can see the results of the check and amend your campaign if necessary.

Once you have given some thought to the above, you are half-way there. Now for your first email campaign! Of course your objective is to get a decent response right from the outset but how do you go about this? Follow these tips to maximize your chance of success right from the word go.

1. Always send your email from a valid address, not from a non-existent one. People will want to reply to your message, so make sure that it gets to you.
2. Keep your original aim in mind when creating your campaign. It’s easy to get distracted along the way. Promoting a new product; offering a special deal, increasing your readership? Keep your focus and ensure that your email works towards this. Once again, don’t forget a strong call to action.
3. Correct grammar and spelling. It can’t be over-emphasised enough. The amount of emails that get sent out with bad grammar and typos is mind boggling. SPELL CHECK, double check and then and get someone else to proof read it.
4. Keep your content short, sweet and to the point. You have a very short period of time in which to grab your reader’s attention. Use it wisely. Remember people usually skim over text so try to make it as eye catching as possible. You can always have a click-through link to your website so people can get more information if they need to.
5. Make sure your HTML and plain text message are equally well composed. Don’t assume that your readers can or even want to open an HTML only document.
6. You want your customers to act fast, so it’s a good idea to put in a time limit / expiry date in your email. People generally do not like missing out on a great deal and you can use that to your advantage.
7. Make it easy for your readers to unsubscribe to your emails. It’s a good idea to have a quick link posted in the footer of your email and also a link in the header so that they can view the email in their browser.
8. Always, always test the compatibility of the campaign on yourself before you send it to 20 000 people. Send it to your own email address first and then to that of a friend or co-worker. You need to be able to see if your text and images have come out correctly and make any adjustments if necessary.

Simply put, email marketing is a form of direct marketing which utilises electronic means to deliver commercial messages to an audience. At its core, it is focused on developing and maintaining long-term relationships with customers and used effectively, it has been shown to deliver one of the highest ROI (returns on investment) of any e-marketing activity.

To give you an example of its potential; according to research conducted by the Direct Marketing Association, email marketing generated an ROI of $43.62 for every dollar spent on it in 2009. As such, it outperforms all other direct marketing channels examined. With nearly every U.S. business and a professed 95% of people and households using email on a regular basis, it’s easy to see why email marketing campaigns are fast becoming the most popular form of company and product promotion.

So why has it become one of the most powerful online marketing strategies you can use?

• It is extremely cost effective – Mail Blaze pricing starts at $15 per month for 2 500 emails (your first 1 000 are free)
• It’s easy. Mail Blaze provides a selection of pre-built email templates, step-by-step guidelines, video tutorials and online support to ensure that your campaign creates a high-impact and a professional finish. You don’t have to be a technical genius to put an effective campaign together, the hard work is done for you
• It allows personalisation – on a mass scale – and therefore creates awareness and familiarity with your target audience
• It drives direct sales and also supports sales through other channels. Integrating with these channels, both online and offline, reinforces your brands message and increases responses
• It builds relationships, loyalty and trust with both existing and potential customers, maximising their value which in turn leads to greater profitability
• It is completely measurable, allowing you to track, analyse and optimise your campaign in a number of ways
• It is customisable and its services and solutions support database integration; segmentation and various other techniques for improving the targeting of outgoing messages
• Each email campaign that you send out generates further data that you can then you use to improve on your messages and line of approach
• It generates an immediate call to action such as sales, special offers, downloads, subscriptions etc.