Blog - Archive for January, 2011

I love this: “Not since the Pony Express have there been so many obstacles to getting mail delivered. Bandits, rugged terrain and wild animals have been replaced with blacklists, spam filters and apathetic recipients.” (Debra Ellis – Target Marketing)

To drive home this fact, a report by ReturnPath Reputation Benchmark Report states that the presence of just one spam trap can drop your deliverability rating by up to 53%.  At the end of our previous article on the top 3 email deliverability issues, we mentioned the importance of sender reputation. Play by the rules and get the ISP’s onto your side and you’ll see your email delivery rates increase. A further study by ReturnPath showed that sender reputation accounted for 77% of email deliverability.

While email marketing newbies can be forgiven for thinking that getting your email campaign into your recipient’s inbox is as simple as writing what you want and hitting send, seasoned pros know that the reality is somewhat different (and more of a fine art in fact). So, for those who are wondering what you can do to get that golden ticket, we’ve looked at 6 of the best practices you can follow for email delivery success.

First things first,

1. Sign up for ISP feedback

This way you can get immediate notification when your subscriber makes a spam complaint, which means you can take action straight away. Bear in mind though that you’ll have to apply to each ISP individually.

2. Make sure you have your subscriber’s explicit permission to send them emails

The best way to do this is with a double opt-in sign up. Also give them the option to choose which of your newsletters they want to receive and how often they wish to receive it, and then honour their request. If they start getting emails that they aren’t interested in and are irrelevant, they’ll simply unsubscribe or worse, report you for spam. If you take the time to get it right from the beginning and give your customers exactly what they want, you’ll have already started on the path to a long and prosperous relationship with them.

3. Ask your subscribers to add your address to their contact list

This is possibly one of the most effective ways to reach a subscribers inbox all the time. It’s as simple as making a note in your newsletter asking them to add you. Get this done and most of your deliverability problems are solved right there.

4. Be consistent with when you send your campaigns

Not only will your subscribers come to recognize and look forward to your emails every Thursday (or whichever day you choose), but the ISP’s also appreciate and acknowledge your consistency.

5. Spend time optimizing your design

Follow your consistency through to your templates and stick to the same (or at least a similar) design depending on if you are sending out your newsletter, promotional or transactional email. This also goes a long way to developing brand awareness and customers will soon start to recognize your emails simply from their design, which is great. Try to avoid adding attachments or large images, which often raise red flags with ISP’s. Flash and JavaScript are also best left out of your email, Flash because it’s not viewable with most email clients, and JavaScript because it’s often disabled automatically.

6. Make sure you always use the same “from” name and address

Not to harp on too much about consistency, but this will also help your subscribers recognize you, and quite simply it’s much more professional than sending out each new campaign from a different address.

Remember that ISP’s and ESP’s are constantly on the lookout for new ways to catch spammers, and although you might be as legit as they come, there is always a chance that your emails can be mistaken for spam. Unfortunately it doesn’t take much to get reported, so as far as deliverability is concerned, adhere to as many of these (and other) best practices as possible if you want to ensure your email reaches its target.

Email deliverability ties in closely with email authentication and more often than not the two are written about simultaneously. While email authentication focuses on validating your email and making sure that it comes from where it says it comes from, email deliverability focuses on what allows or prevents your email from landing in your recipient’s inbox. In this article we’re going to look at the top 3 issues that face email deliverability, these being bounces (hard and soft), spam traps and spam complaints. According to an article on SmashingMagazine, studies have shown that your reputation determines your email delivery more than your content, so by meeting the expectation of your subscribers and providing valuable content they can use, you improve the delivery rates of your emails. You can find out more about creating relevant content here and here.

So, let’s look at those three deliverability issues in more detail.

1. Bounces

A bounce is when an email is returned to the sender when, for one reason or another it can’t get through to the recipients inbox. There are two of these, soft bounces and hard bounces, the latter often being more of a concern for marketers. More often than not a bounce message is promptly sent to the sender informing them that this has happened. Usually, two things cause the email to bounce, one of them is a temporary problem (a.k.a. soft bounce), and the other is permanent (a.k.a. hard bounce).

A soft bounce could simply be the result of a full inbox, or a technical problem whereby the connection is down or lost over the time your email was sent. Internet service provider’s (ISP) generally take this into consideration, however if your message soft bounces the same email address more than say 5 times in a row, you should consider removing it from your active subscribers list. Many email marketing solutions will do this for you automatically.

A hard bounce is when an email is sent to an invalid or non-existent address. ISP’s are less tolerant with these because lists should all be opt-in, so why would you have an incorrect email address on your list, right? Fact is people change jobs, change their email addresses and last thing on their mind (hate to say) is to update their details with companies that send them regular email campaigns. Of course these hard bounces are also expected from any large list, which is why list hygiene is so important. ISP’s automatically block access when a message is sent to an invalid email address and will continue to block you until it’s removed from the list, so it’s much easier to simply comply and delete the offending email address.

As far as spam is concerned, spam complaints and spam traps are also a major issue when it comes to email deliverability, perhaps more so than bounces, because you rarely, if ever, receive any kind of feedback unless you participate in that particular ISP’s feedback loops. Learn how to sidestep these pitfalls and you’ll save yourself a lot of trouble. Let’s first look at the lesser of the two evils, spam complaints.

2. Spam Complaints

These happen when a reader reports your message as spam, which tells your ISP’s that your email is not wanted and unsolicited. This can happen for a number of reasons, some of them not necessarily your fault. Your reader might find it easier to mark you as spam rather than go through the process of unsubscribing; or you might just be unfortunate to get them on a bad day.. The general consensus is that 1 complaint per 1000 emails sent raises a red flag with the ISP’s. What happens is a temporary block is put in place banning you from the inbox for up to 72 hours, if the complaints continue it’s likely to become permanent.

3. Spam Traps

Also known as ‘honey pots’, spam traps are email addresses that are used by ISP’s to identify spammers. Often these are inactive email addresses that are recycled. The theory behind it is that spammers often use old, rented or paid subscriber lists with scores of invalid emails. With spam traps there is no temporary blocking access to an email address, you will inevitably be permanently blocked until the offending address is removed. There are a couple of common sense ways that you can avoid spam traps and blacklists.

• Don’t buy email lists, ever. They are bound to be full of invalid, non-existent addresses and people who have no idea about your company and are not interested in what you have to offer, so really what’s the point?
• Grow your email list organically using a double opt-in approach. Although this will inevitably take time to reach the numbers of a list that can easily be bought, at least everyone on your opt-in list actually wants to hear from you and is genuinely interested in what you have to offer.
• Practice list hygiene regularly. Clean your list of any inactive subscribers, those who haven’t shown any response to your emails in the past 6 months, and continue to update this regularly. You don’t have to delete your unsubscribes entirely, just put them to one side for now and aim to target them with a re-activation campaign.
• All good email mail marketing solutions allow you to check the spam score of your email campaign before it gets sent. This is worth taking advantage of and you can quickly see if the score is too high, in which case you can adjust it accordingly. It’s a hugely valuable tool and one worth utilizing.

As we mentioned before, a good online and sender reputation influences your email deliverability, and is associated with the IP address of the mail server you are using to send your emails from. Basically, a good reputation with them means that you can be trusted, and as far as getting on the right side of the ISP’s, this is a huge benefit.

It goes without saying that if you are a legitimate business, email authentication is vital to secure your brand and online reputation.

Email authentication is, quite simply, a way to prove an email is not forged. Of course it’s been around for years and today all ISP’s and even corporate email servers are using it to control inbound spam. This means that if email marketers want to reach the inbox of their intended recipient, they have to work smartly to ensure their emails are authenticated. ISP’s have an ever expanding set of policies regarding email authentication and email markers constantly have to adapt and adopt new techniques and best practices to stay ahead of their game and on the right side of the law. As for the ISP’s, they simply want to rid their networks of spam, which is also a constant task for them.

Spammers like to employ a wide range of tactics to swindle unsuspecting customers of their personal details, banking details and/or money. A common tactic is email forgery whereby it looks as though an email has come from a certain domain/source (such as your bank), but it’s actually sent from another source. Often, one doesn’t realize it’s a false website until they have entered their personal details. This type of spamming is called phishing and a few years ago, it caused major problems for email marketers worldwide, who had their email lists hacked and spammed to no end.

IP and cryptographic solutions are the two types of authentication that ISP’s use to battle email forgery. SPF and sender ID are IP-based solutions and Domain Keys is a cryptographic solution.

So how do they work?

Sender Policy Framework (SPF) authenticates the envelope HELO and MAIL FROM identities by comparing the sending mail server’s IP address to the list of authorized sending IP addresses published by the send domain’s owner in a DNS record. If the IP’s don’t match, then the email isn’t actually from that website and your ISP can choose to spam it, or not deliver it to you. Many providers such as AOL, Google, Hotmail and Verizon, to name a few, use SPF.

Engineered by Microsoft, Sender ID is based on SFP and addresses the same issue of email forgery by authenticating a different part of the email message. This is done by using an algorithm to verify the Purported Responsible Address (PRA) for an email message and then to validate the address against the website’s Sender ID record, proving that the message came from the indicated sending domain. Both Hotmail and Windows Live Mail use this type of authentication.

With Domain Keys, a website will generate two ‘keys’ – one private and one public. While the public keys are similar to SPF and Sender ID in that they’re available for everyone to see, the private key is only available to the website email servers. Basically, when an email is sent, the private key is put into the message headers, so when your ISP receives the message they check both the public and private headers to ensure that the email does in fact come from where it states it’s from. Yahoo! And Gmail both use this form of authentication.

While these methods certainly make it harder to forge emails, it can also make it more difficult for the sender and receiver to apply. Not all ISP’s use the same technology to authenticate incoming messages so until a standard is set, it’s best to use all three if you want to ensure that you get the best email deliverability possible. You should also check that your email marketing service provider utilizes all three methods too.

Recently, mobile email marketing has become an increasingly popular and profitable marketing tactic. The figures and stats speak for themselves so before you start thinking that it might not be a viable option for your company or business, let’s look at a few of them;

• An article from DirectSellingNews states that in 2007, mobile marketing spending was estimated at $1.8 billion, with revenues expected to grow to $24 billion by 2013.
• In an e-Dialog report of a survey of over 2 000 adults in the UK and US, it noted that: 33% of consumers access email on their mobile devices in addition to their computers”.
• A survey conducted by SmartFocus reported that: “Two years ago the mobile was almost entirely used to read, filter and delete unimportant emails, whereas now 30% of users are reading and replying to emails through their mobile.”
• eMarketer reported that as of 2009, 42% of US consumers stated that they had a smart phone and nearly 13% of respondents said they planned to purchase one in the next 3 months.
• Analysts Gartner noted that by 2011, over 85% of handsets shipped globally will include some form of browser. In mature markets, such as Western Europe and Japan, approximately 60% of handsets shipped will be smartphones with sophisticated browsing capability and the ability to render conventional HTML sites in some manner”.

Not something to sniff at, is it? However, if you are still sitting on the fence regarding mobile email marketing then consider these points too:

• Firstly, mobile messages are more immediate than email; this is because most people hardly ever switch their phones off, even while they sleep. This means that they are generally quicker to respond and studies have shown that mobile messages are opened within 15 minutes of receiving it.
• Secondly, have you asked your subscribers how they would prefer to receive your messages? If you already give them the option of how often they get your emails, then take the next step and offer them the option of receiving them via their mobile device. eConsultancy reported that 20% of people open their emails with a mobile device, so do yourself a favour and find what your subscribers would prefer. Remember, email marketing is all about giving them what they want and in return you get their loyalty.
• Lastly, as with traditional email marketing, there is little commitment or investment involved if you want to test the waters before launching head first into it. Also, because your message is limited to 160 characters (give or take); the main factor you need to consider is tight copy. As for any form of creative process, it’s all but taken out of the equation.

Right, so now we’ve given you a bit more food for thought you might be thinking about how you can go about taking the next steps towards mobile email marketing. We look at 4 of the most straightforward and easiest ways that you can do this.

1. You’ll need to reformat the text

This might sound like a no brainer but you would be surprised at how many marketers simply email the same campaign to all their customers, regardless of their ESP or personal preferences. Just as campaigns look different in Gmail, Hotmail and Yahoo!, they also display differently depending on if your customer has a Blackberry, iPhone, etc. You should offer a plain text option as an HTML alternative for all your subscribers. Even though many smart phones can readily handle HTML emails, your subscriber might prefer to read it in plain text. Bear in mind that most text messages have 60 – 80 characters per line and mobile platforms will show 20-40 characters in 12-15 lines per screen, depending on the width of the screen and the type style. Desktop-friendly line lengths can create long paragraphs in the mobile reader, so adapt your text accordingly.

2. Think Twice about long URLs

On a mobile device, tracking URLs can take up 4-5 lines on a screen so you should definitely consider going for a simpler URL, even if it means you have to sacrifice certain tracking abilities.

3. Keep content short and sweet

As we mentioned before, with mobile email marketing your copy needs to be succinct. Long words and long sentences mean that your subscribers will have to scroll down more, which means the chance of them becoming disinterested halfway through is very high. More than ever – ‘above the fold’ is important here. By keeping it clear, simple and brief there is a better chance that your subscriber will save the message to read later on their PC.

4. Test, test and test again

As with any campaign you need to test it before you send it out to thousands of people. However, this just got a bit trickier. You’re not just testing to see what it looks like across Gmail, Hotmail and Yahoo!, but also how it looks on the different smart phones or any phone that has an internet browser function. So while you’re testing it on your Blackberry and your colleague’s iPhone, also test it on a couple of older mobile devices. In short, cover all your bases.

With viral marketing the principal objective is to increase awareness of a product, service or concept using word-of-mouth behaviours. To put it into context, where spam is based on massive distribution of unsolicited emails, viral emails use popular social networking aspects to achieve their goal of reaching the masses.

The development of a viral email is pretty straightforward. An individual will receive a message that can be of any nature really (something with a humorous tone is almost always effective, but try not to insult),  which they then pass on to their friends using the “forward to a friend” or “share on a social network” button, strategically placed in the email campaign. Secondary recipients can clearly see and trust where the email comes from and therefore the chance of it getting opened is greatly increased. They in turn then do the same thing, and so forth. The concept is similar to that of an email chain letter, except of course there is no explicit requirement to forward it. A viral email is spread because the content that’s in it is relevant and (this is important), there is true value in passing it on.

A viral email is very similar to a real virus, and is in fact where the name comes from, duh. Think about it like this: a virus starts out as a single entity, with the potential to increase exponentially to the point that it dominates. It uses a host and their resources to grow, replicate and double with each interaction. Clever little organisms really, the hard work is done for them, they just have to find the right host to start out with – much like choosing the right recipients for your first viral email campaign.

Recently there have been great examples of hugely successful viral email marketing campaigns.  One that you might be familiar with is that of Threshers – the UK off-licence retail chain. They emailed vouchers to staff and suppliers, which were then redistributed by them. This proved so successful that many branches ran out of stock when people went to cash in on the deal. On top of this, the story made headlines all over Europe and the Internet was filled with news of this ‘viral campaign.’ According to Threshers however, it was not an intended viral email campaign although due to its phenomenal success, they initiated a similar campaign the following year, with similar levels of success.

Hotmail.com is another superb example of a viral email campaign that resulted in the number of people registering for a free Hotmail account climb rapidly into the millions, literally within a few days. The strategy was unbelievably simple; each email that was sent out from an existing Hotmail account had a tag at the end of it which read: “Get your private, free email at http://www.hotmail .com. “

To give you more of an idea of the potential success of a viral email, I rustled up these stats, courtesy of EmailStatCenter:

• 20% of Facebook, MySpace and/or Twitter users have posted or shared something from permission email to their social account(s) via a “share” option.
• 32% of marketers say they’d share promotional email offers with members inside a social network and open emails from others.

Based on these examples and healthy stats, you might very well be thinking at this stage that it’s something you’d be interested in trying out. And so you should. I’ve summed up a few best practices for you to follow to help ensure your viral email campaign gets sent off without a hitch (and potentially make the news).

1. Make it Unique

Think about what makes you respond to an email and take action. It’s probably because it contains something unique, something that makes you laugh or shocks you, something that excites you or maybe even something that makes you rethink your perspective on an important issue. You want your campaign to have a similar effect, so think very carefully about your content and the information you are about to potentially have sent to thousands of people. Think outside of the box and don’t be too quick to fall back on ideas that ‘normally work’. People are naturally curious about anything that’s ‘new’ and your fresh approach could help you reach higher levels of success.

2. Offer a Reward of Substantial Value

Make sure what you are offering has substantial value – this can be in the form of giving something away for free (products, services, white papers or reports for example) or offering a tempting discount or coupon (with an expiry date.) Of course, if your offer is of material value make sure that you have enough stock, or the capacity to deliver on your promise, in a timely manner. There is little worse than offering a reward and not being able to make good on it. You’ll immediately loose the trust of your customers and any further campaigns you send out will inevitably get ignored. On the other hand, deliver as promised and word of your company will spread like wild fire.

3. Send to a Select Target Audience

You don’t want to appear as a spammer, which is why your initial email should be sent to  a select audience. It’s also why you’re going to tell your recipients not to just forward the message any old way to any old person. If they’re going to pass it on, it’s important that they use the special ‘forward to a friend’ or ‘share’ button in the body of your email. This will allow you to track it easily and get the stats you need, as opposed to if they just forwarded the email regularly, in which case you won’t be able to track it from that point on. A viral email might start off small, like a real virus, but it grows and spreads extremely fast. Remember that offering incentives for forwarding may increase the amount of forwarding but it might also increase the chances that recipients will spam their entire mailing list, which could have negative effects on your company’s brand. Therefore it’s vital that you make it clear to your readers that they too should be highly selective over who they choose to share the email with.

4. Check and Optimize Your Message Format

Have you checked the format for your message? Do you have an HTML and plain text message and have you optimized it for recipients that open and share emails on mobile devices?  According to an article on Econsultany.com, 20% of email sent by retailers is opened on a mobile device. Use this to your advantage and plan strategically.

5. Bold Branding and Logo Placement

How clear is your branding, logo, website and contact details, are they immediately visible? Without this, it won’t matter how huge your campaign gets, if it can’t be attributed to you then what’s the point?

6.   As Always – Don’t Forget a Call to Action

Make sure you’re telling your recipients exactly what they need to do and how. Including a strong call to action in your email might be advice that’s drummed in your ears all the time, but it’s for good reason. If you don’t tell someone what they need to do, they won’t do it. Simple. In the case of a viral email, your call to action might be along the lines of “share on your social networks” or “forward this to a friend now”. Make sure this feature is also immediately visible.

7. Your Follow-Up Campaign

Based on the stats and feedback you get regarding your first campaign, you could consider sending up a follow up, targeting those that responded positively to your efforts the first time. This could be in the form of a survey of the campaign results; people are often interested to see how their actions affect the overall results of a project. If you previously sent a video you could consider sending the unedited version, especially if it has humorous footage. This will also help you appear as more ‘human’ to your customers. Another idea would be to let them know if you have any further promotions or specials running or remind them where they can redeem their vouchers or coupons if you included one in your first campaign as reward for forwarding your message.

Although concocting a viral email campaign might be considered ‘fun’, if only to see how far it goes, it’s vital that you still follow best practices to help ensure that it adheres to anti-spam laws and reaches the inbox of your target audience. The purpose of your campaign remains the same as that of a traditional email campaign in that it is there to inform your subscribers, make an offer, share important (or humorous) news, create awareness for your brand and ultimately develop lasting relationships with your customers.

Over the years, email marketing has become a vital tool for businesses big and small and across all industries. It’s well understood that while a successful campaign can bring welcomed brand awareness and profit for your company, one that fails, regardless of the reason, could result in decreased business.While some companies are happy and quite adept at creating and controlling their own email campaigns, others look to outsource email marketing specialists to strategize, develop, implement, track and report on emails for them. While outsourcing might not always be the most cost effective option, it’s often the easiest and you are guaranteed good results. Consider these benefits, an email marketing specialist is:

• An expert in the field so they’ll show you how to optimize all aspects of your current and future campaign strategies.
• Up to date with CAN-SPAM laws
• Know what content and designs work with different target audiences
• Are conscious of industry best practices and latest trends
• Proficient in important technical aspects which you might not be aware of
• Able to provide creative designs
• Format campaigns to look perfect in every email client (Outlook, Gmail, etc.)
• Ensure your email campaign is more likely to reach its intended recipient
• Able to draw out more useful data from your subscriber base

With that in mind, perhaps it’s not such a bad idea to outsource your email campaigns, especially as they form a very important part of your overall marketing strategy. Remember that email marketing still delivers the highest ROI over any other e-marketing tactic, so it’s worth putting in the extra effort and ensuring that your campaigns are created as professionally as possible.

If you were to hire or outsource an email marketing expert, what skills should they exert and what should they be responsible for? I’ve come up with a few ideas below, but please feel free to add your comments and let me know what your interpretations are.

1. Ethical responsibility

They need to have an ethical responsibility to create compliant email campaigns – for me this is very important and although it sounds obvious there are a lot of marketers who are quite unethical, i.e. making false claims about products or services or misleading customers about results or product performance. You get the idea. It’s not cool and you will lose customers and potential customers faster than you can say ‘what did I do wrong?’

2. Proven Marketing Strategy

They should have proven email marketing strategies that show results of high-impact successful campaigns that sell, inform, create brand awareness, increase site traffic and procure and retain new customers

3. Increase Campaign Effectiveness

They should be able to analyse and make recommendations and changes to current email marketing campaigns, thereby increasing their effectiveness. This might include altering campaigns to an HTML format that multiple email clients can access easily.

4. Combine content and formatting

They should be able to effectively blend great content with relevant images to create an email that is informative, great to look at and has a strong call to action

5. Relevant Subscriber Segmentation

They should be able to segment and target your audience and create campaigns relevant to each group, depending on demographics, geographic, frequency of purchase and purchase history

6. Ensure Low Spam Rating

They need to ensure that all content is CAN-SPAM compliant in the subject line and body of the message.

7. Unsubscribe Links Working and Honoured

They’ll make sure there is a clear unsubscribe link in your email message, and that unsubscribe requests are honoured, promptly.  They’ll also guarantee that any disclaimers and disclosers are visible and easy to understand.

Having looked at some of the skills that an email marketing expert possess’ and responsibilities that they take on, you can see that the benefits and potential increased success of any email marketing campaign that you send far outweighs the cost of outsourcing such an intricate function.

Promotional email campaigns, traditionally used to drive sales, can be powerful tools and if created effectively they’ll help to;

• Stimulate demand for your product or service
• Persuade your customers to action
• Increase website traffic
• Drive new business
• Procure new customers

Opportunities like that aren’t easy to come by, so it goes without saying that you need to put in a bit of effort (as you should with all campaigns!) when sending out any promotional email to your customers or potential customers.

Although the main objective of sending a promotional email is to drive sales, it can also be used to encourage sign-ups, downloads, registrations and so forth.  When looking at promotional emails in the traditional sense (that is sales), the design and style of writing are all done with this explicit purpose in mind. This means that whoever opens your email is doing so either because they have a genuine interest in your offer at that time, or they like the price of your offer. That’s it. Unfortunately, due to the very nature of promotional emails, they generally see lower open rates; however, the subscribers that do open them have a very high chance of performing the desired conversion. Based on this information alone, you can see why it’s worth taking the time to optimize each of these emails you send.

Generally, the validity and life-span of a promotional email is short and it aims for immediate returns, which means that if you don’t garner a response from your subscriber more or less immediately, the value of your email is lost. This is yet another reason why it’s so important that the campaign is created effectively and has a hard to resist call to action.

The frequency of your promotional emails is something you need to take into consideration and here you can adopt an information-to-promotion ratio. Basically, your subscribers are more likely to take action on a promotional offer if you have already built a relationship with them through other types of messages, such as newsletters. Let your subscribers get to know you a bit before you start inundating them with promotions. Send them only newsletters for the first month or two before you send them sales letters, this way they will come to regard you as an expert in your field and trust what you have to say, and in turn have to offer. Although the purpose is essentially to make money from your customers, don’t undervalue the long term relationship that comes from sending newsletters, they are the glue that binds you to your subscribers.

Email campaigns are almost always the first a potential customer will hear about your company, products and services. Since you only get one chance to grab your reader’s interest and make a great first impression, your content has to be exceptional. There’s just no two ways about it. Top-quality, expert content will ensure that your email leaves a lasting impression and the chances of them buying from you from the outset and certainly from any future promotions is much more likely.

Although there is no doubt that your promotional email campaign success will involve an amount of trial and error, there are a few steps you can take when planning the content that will help you reach your goal faster.

1. If your subject line isn’t up to scratch then your message isn’t even going to get opened, so the first step you need to do is optimize this space. Subject lines, despite their seemingly diminutive form, can pretty much determine the success or failure of your campaign so before you do anything else, make sure you are happy with what you have written here and don’t forget to test a few options before you send any out en mass.
2. Be warm, friendly, personal and welcoming in your message. In short, be real. The one problem of email today is that it’s faceless and if a message is written badly it can easily be misinterpreted by the person reading it on the other side. People will relate to you (and trust you) if you appear ‘normal’ to them. Don’t be afraid to tell them a little bit about what’s happening in your life.
3. Peak your readers interest with teasers about what they can expect to read about or promotions that are coming up – which will leave them wanting more and looking forward to the next promotional email you send.
4. Give them valuable information that they can take away with them. People like to come away from a situation feeling as though they have learned something new (which they can pass on to others) and are able to make an informed decision. An example here might be if your promotion is on garden furniture then do a review and price comparison with something similar which shows the great quality and pricing of your offer in relation to others.
5. Offer something ‘extra’ with your promotional emails. This could be free shipping for orders over a certain amount, a coupon to use in one of your stores or online, a discount for future purchases. Some call it ‘sweetening the deal’, you get the idea.
6. Don’t forget your call to action at the end of the email – ideally you want your customers to act now – so give them a reason to do so and make it easy for them to make the purchase.

If you are new to email marketing and aren’t 100% confident in your writing ability, then look to outsource the content for your email campaigns, at least for the first few until you get an idea of what works and how. It’s such a vital element of any email campaign and there isn’t often a second chance to make a better impression. Don’t worry though – by following industry best practices and incorporating them into your campaigns, you’ll soon get the hang of it.

As far as the metrics that are available for you to use to evaluate your email campaign, there are a few; however it really doesn’t have to get complicated. There are a core group of these commonly used that will enable you to successfully track the most important aspects of your campaign.

We’ve looked at 6 of the most popular metrics, which if you follow carefully and use the data gathered effectively, will take your campaigns from strength to strength.

1.Delivery Rates

It has been estimated that nearly 20% of all permission-based email messages are mistakenly blocked by ISP’s. Having your subscribers consent doesn’t guarantee that your email is goes straight to their inbox. If the email isn’t getting delivered, it’s either being sent to/from an invalid email address or it doesn’t adhere to Anti-Spam laws. Take the time to test your campaign before it gets sent out. Most good email marketing services have spam filters so you can automatically check each campaign for ‘spammy’ words and amend it if the spam score is too high. You can also increase the chances of your email being delivered by asking your subscriber to ‘add this email to your address book’.

Interesting stat: Canada has the highest non-delivered rate blocking almost 14% of permission-based email. The United Kingdom boasts the lowest non- delivered rate, blocking only 10% of opt-in email. (Source – Emailstatcenter )

2. Open Rates

Assuming your message reached the inbox (good job!), your subscribers still have to open it and if your subject line isn’t compelling enough then it’s simply going to get ignored or deleted. You need to follow every best practice available here. Make sure your subscriber knows exactly who is sending the message – your from line needs to have your name or that of your company. Sender recognition has a high influence on open rates, if your name is recognised chances are your email will be opened, if not it will continue to be ignored or deleted.

Interesting stat: General business products and services see an average open rate of 23.9%. The industry that has the highest open rates is agriculture, with an average of 25.3%. (Source – EmailStatCenter)

3. Click-through rates

CTR’s are almost entirely dependent on their relevant and personalised content – get this right and you are on your way to achieving the email results you desire. You also need to ensure that you segment and target your audience correctly, so that each recipient who opens your message feels as though it is directed exclusively at them. Demographics, geographic, purchase history and frequency of purchase can all be used to make sure the right email is reaching the right target. Keep your campaigns simple. Stick to one or two offers and links, if subscribers are overloaded with choices, chances are they won’t take anything. Your landing page is also important and the link to it needs to be clearly visible, with a strong call to action. A little bit of urgency goes a long way at this stage. If subscribers see that your offer is going to expire today/tomorrow/within 24hrs they are more likely to act NOW, which is exactly what you want.

Interesting stat: General products and services see average CTR’s of 3.7%. The industry with the highest CTR is Religious, with an average of 10.5% (Source – EmailStatCenter)

4. Unsubscribe Rates

Unsubscribe Rates: Start by splitting new email addresses from old ones and evaluating each list separately. If there is a pattern of new subscribers opting out, then you need to see if what you are delivering is exactly what you promised them and what they asked for. If you don’t do this from the outset, your subscriber probably won’t look at anything else you send in the future. If old customers begin to drop off, your campaign probably needs refreshing. You should look at re-wording it and updating any specials, offers or sales you have in place. Your aim here is to make your subscribers remember why they signed up in the first place (hint: your newsletters are interesting and different). You can improve your unsubscribe rate by offering the option of reducing the frequency of emails your subscribers receive. They might prefer to happily read an email from you once a month as opposed to an irritating email sent every day. By taking this step you are letting them know that you are listening to them and they in turn feel they have some control over what lands in their inbox. It’s a win-win situation, really.

Interesting stat:

In 2009, 35% of retailers allow subscribers to reduce the number of emails they receive, up from 16% in 2008 (Source – EmailStatCenter)

5. Conversion Rates

As with CTR’s, your conversion rates are a measure of relevancy. Whether your campaign goal is to encourage a purchase, sign-up to a newsletter, download a white paper, take a survey or make a phone call, you need to make it simple, clear and fast for your subscriber to do it. If the process to convert is timely and complicated you run the risk of you subscriber abandoning the action before they complete it. Your call to action and how you present it is also important here so it needs to be strong and visible.

Interesting stats:

As a direct result of receiving an email (source – EmailStatCenter):

• 67% of subscribers say they’ve purchased products offline;  71% of respondents researched a specific offer online; 63% of respondents clicked a link in the email to learn more

6. Subscriber retention rate

According to a 2008 survey by Forrester Research, acquiring new customers can cost five times more than satisfying and retaining existing customers, so your metrics here can literally make or break you. Keep subscribers happy and coming back for more and you’re guaranteed frequent sales (and profits) for as long as you continue to do so. Many marketers consider this to be the most important metric to follow; after all, email marketing is about developing and nurturing relationships with customers, so take note of your stats.

Interesting stats (source – Strategic Client Retention):

• A 2% increase in customer retention has the same effect on profits as cutting costs by 10%
• The average company loses 10% of its customers each year
• A 5% reduction in customer defection rate can increase profits by 25-125%, depending on the industry

So there you have it. Ideally you want to be measuring your success on all of these metrics to get a true reflection of the success of your email campaign. If you are new to the game though, focus on just a couple of metrics to begin with and use the data you receive to improve on each new campaign you send. You take other metrics into consideration as you go.

Many months ago, amidst talk of social media dominance in 2010, were whispers of ‘the death of email marketing’. Fortunately though, this overly dramatic statement was laid to waste and instead, the integration of email marketing and social media is on the rise, with favourable results. MarketingWeek recently reported that 47% of email marketers integrate either Facebook or Twitter or both into their email campaigns. In a survey completed in June 2010 by Email and Online Marketers, stats showed that 21% of those surveyed reported ‘significantly better’ results after integrating the two mediums.

Many did not think it possible, simply because on their own, they represent two different platforms of communication. While social media is focused on sharing content and engaging in interactive discussions, email marketing is focused on taking the results of those conversations and fledgling relationships to the next level of engagement. Together however, they complement each other and form a powerful solution.

Essentially, marketing has become a multichannel approach, and why not? The benefits of adapting and expanding email for social media are easy to see, especially if you look at the increase of brand exposure and the potential to reach thousands of new customers.  A quote from Simon Bowker, Manager Director of eCircle UK sums up this integration, ‘It’s not about abandoning one method for another but about using the best element of each to deliver higher ROI.’

If you are considering integrating email marketing and social media (which you should be), there are a few things you need to be aware of so that you can use them to the best of your advantage.

1.  Include a Call to Action:

The most popular way to connect email with social media is by including a call to action link for people to follow you or become a fan on your social media page, such as Twitter, Facebook and/or LinkedIn. Many people also use widgets or apps to add newsletter sign-up and registration forms to their blog. By all means use your newsletter to call people to follow you, but remember to also use those social mediums to let people know that you have an email newsletter they can sign up for. You see, it works both ways. Of course, you’ll find that different people get their fix in different ways so take note of your subscriber’s social media preference and target them accordingly.

2. Convert Your Email Subscribers to Social Media Subscribers

If you already have a significant email list, then ask your subscribers to follow you or become a fan on your different social media pages. If they are loyal customers who trust your brand and who you have built a solid relationship with, this shouldn’t be a problem. Once you have created a profile, make sure that you keep your tweets or posts relevant, interesting and informative. This will help establish your social media presence and will gain the attention of potential subscribers and customers at the same time.

3. Earn Trust to Gain More Subscribers

Remember that integrating email with social media is done with the goal to expand your audience and customer base, pretty much free of charge. Make sure you get involved in conversations, blogs and forums, and after you have developed an online relationship with people, invite them back to your website so that they can sign up to your newsletter or find out more about your company.

4. Be Selective With Who You Follow

Be selective when choosing people to follow on Facebook and Twitter. Even though it’s tempting to add 2 000 people just so that they follow you back, it won’t do much for your professional online image. If you are a carpentry company then follow similar companies and people in the industry. Your customers will far greater appreciate your 200 followers who post useful, informative links and comments, rather than streaming through a list of highly irrelevant posts from 2 000 people with nothing of value to add.

The integration of email marketing and social media might be a relatively new concept, but current trends show that it is set to become a standard practice in the following years, with new apps being created to further ease the integration process. By starting now with a campaign strategy that incorporates both mediums, you can potentially find yourself at the head of your game as this practice gains increasing popularity in the months to come.

You’re a small start-up company with high ambitions but a small budget, so how can you go about reaching that large, attentive audience you so desire? It’s simple, use email marketing.

It is universally understood that email marketing is a cost effective, fast way to engage your customers and potential customers. Added to this, it delivers the highest return on investment over any e-marketing tactic available. Being a small, new business, you might not have started on the path to creating and developing any lasting relationships with customers, which isn’t the end of the world, but it is something that email marketing can help you with. With each permission-based email campaign that you send and your recipient opens, you are effectively establishing a trusting relationship with them.

Your email messages will, over time, make your customers feel as though they are an important part of your company. Created effectively, email marketing campaigns give you the opportunity to inform your growing customer list about updates, product and service promotions, special offers and even changes and developments happening in your company.

Email marketing might not be far off from what your small business is doing already in terms of traditional marketing. Think about it, most businesses already conduct direct mail marketing in the form of specials, promotions and reminders, which means that they are already used to creating this type of material in print form. Adapting to email campaigns from print is not a huge step, but it will save you a lot of money, not only because email marketing is so cost effective, but also because print campaigns can cost hundreds of dollars for a single shot. It’s worth pointing out that print marketing is not very targeted or easy to track, whereas email campaigns are highly segmented and targeted and can be tracked right down to who opens, or even forwards your message.

In terms of commitment, it goes without saying that start-up companies often aren’t able to take on heavy commitments in terms of the time and energy required to market a company. Most email marketing solutions offer pre-built templates and step-by-step guides to help you create an effective campaign in little time, which means the pressure is off you to create one from scratch. You should also be able to view your stats live, which makes follow-up campaigns much easier to manage.

In conclusion, it’s important to remember that smaller companies often have more of a loyal customer following than larger businesses, simply because their contact with them is more personalized. To be able to begin your email marketing campaign with a list of people who are already interested in you and what you have to offer is a major advantage that you can use to leverage your company to greater heights.

Broadly speaking, B2C is the activity of a business servicing end consumers with a product and/or service, a consumer being defined as a buyer of products that are not business related. These products include food, clothes, houses, phone services etc. An easy example of a B2C transaction would be a person buying shoes from a retailer. The transaction that leads to the shoes being available for purchase, that is the buying of the leather, rubber and laces as well as the sale of the shoe from the shoemaker to the retailer, would be considered a B2B transaction.

When it comes down to it, a B2C email marketing campaign is most likely to be assessed by sales, which means it’s successful if it results in a purchase.

Some of the most effective B2C email marketing best practices include identifying the most opportune time to send messages, aiming to increase customer loyalty, using promotional offers in transactional emails and using surveys to gather data about customers.

Looking at them in more detail, the following top 8 results were established according to a 2010 B2C worldwide marketer’s survey on best practices:

1. 51% of marketers identify when the best time is to send emails. This will differ depending on your target audience, but it is a practice that has been thoroughly tested, and knowing the right time to send your message can have a huge impact on the results of your campaign.
2. 38% of marketers include promotional offers in their transactional emails. Just ensure that the promotional aspect does not eclipse the importance of the information in the transactional email, the promotion should be a by-product, not the main focus of your message.
3. 29% of marketers include links to social networking sites in their messages and newsletters. This goes a long way to building and maintaining more of a personal relationship with your customers, which in turn will ensure that your messages get shared with others and your products and services get recommended.
4. 43% of marketers gather customer data through surveys. There is no denying the value in conducting a survey with your customers or potential customer’s; it helps you know more about them and what they want from you. Try to keep the questions short and relatively straightforward, remember that you can always send out another survey at a later stage to get additional data. Focus each survey on information that you need at that point in time.
5. 24% of marketers triggered offers based on recipient activity and how often they do or don’t make purchases. Those who make frequent purchases are rewarded and those who haven’t made a purchase recently are prompted to do so, often with a once-off discount or coupon.
6. 24% of marketers focused on behavioural targeting. What are your customers buying, do they always buy the same thing and is there any pattern that can be established? Campaigns based around this data are highly targeted and therefore appreciated by your customers.
7. 20% of marketers implement life cycle campaigns. It’s a good idea to have a separate targeted campaign for those who purchase frequently, infrequently or haven’t purchased anything in a while. Sending the same email to everyone regardless of purchase history makes customers feel as though you aren’t taking notice of their actions, or you don’t appreciate the purchases they do make.
8. 3% of marketers distribute cart abandonment messages. This is done to prompt customers to return and complete a purchase and the practice often sees positive results. In 2011, this practice is set to increase, and with good reason. The messages should be highly personalized and sent out very soon (with hours or a day or two) after a purchase has been abandoned.

As far as effective B2C subject lines are concerned, there are a number of best practices you can utilize that will help your email not only land up in the inbox, but go a long way to increasing the chances of it being read. Subject lines are a vital component of your email marketing message and neglecting it will almost certainly have a disastrous effect on the overall success of your campaign.

Your subject lines should be:

• Short. Keep them at 35 characters or less, which makes them easy to read and ensures that the whole title shows up in the preview pane.
• Consider the “WIIFM” (What’s In It For Me?) factor. Put yourself in your customer’s position, would you open the email with the subject line you have just drafted? What words would tempt you to open an email? How would you react to what is written in the subject line?
• Be upfront and tell it like it is. What exactly are you offering, promoting or selling? One of the most detrimental things you can do is to mislead your customers and the only thing you will achieve by doing this, is their subsequent distrust of you and any emails you send in the future. It’s just not worth it.
• Add that personal touch and include your customer’s name, it will give the impression that you are speaking directly to them and almost everyone enjoys that type of attention.
• Test, test and test again. You should have a few subject lines that you can put through the paces and track to see which is most effective, which you can then apply to the rest of your campaign.

Although B2C email marketing is not as widely considered as B2B marketing, the value of attending to your customers in the right manner and treating them with individual respect will guarantee that your company and brand name is trusted and respected in return.  It’s worth putting in the time and effort to ensure that your B2C email marketing campaign is as good as it can be.