Blog - Archive for the ‘General’ Category

As is the norm each year, at the end of 2010 and even into the first few months of 2011, there was a lot of talk about what new email marketing trends we could expect to see during the course of the following year. One of the most talked about was the concept of time sensitive messages, which include offers with an expiry date and/or offers with limited stock. Marketers were interested to see what sort of role they’d play in the subscriber’s inbox and how’d they affect the overall user experience.

We’re only half way through the year so it’s too early to start drawing any conclusions on this but in the meantime let’s look at what you can do to help optimize the effectiveness of your time sensitive messages so you can make the most out of them.

Your message could be a 24-hour daily deal or it could have a week long expiry date, what’s important though is that even if the offer has expired or  the item has sold out, the subscriber still receives a relevant message when they open the email. This message can be one of a number of things.

If the item has sold out, then this needs to be clearly indicated when the subscriber opens the email.  Something along the lines of: “This item is now out of stock/no longer available, sorry you missed out this time”, or “Our apologies, but this item has sold out”, is fine. To compensate though, you should have recommendations of a similar product in the same price bracket that your subscribers might be interested in. By giving an alternative, you’re lessening the blow of missing out on the special offer in the first place.

This brings me to the second point. If you run promotions once a month for a limited time, such as over a weekend, then it’s a good idea to let your subscribers know a few days before the event that they should watch their inbox for details of an upcoming offer. Think about something like: “Watch this space, our super sale starts in 2 days”, or “Don’t miss out on our next sale, starting 15 June”. This way, they know what’s coming and if they’re interested they have the opportunity to do something about it before the offer ends. This of course makes for a better user experience, just be careful not to get overzealous with the reminders or you might do more harm than good.

The alternative messages that render when an item has sold out or the offer is finished are known as ‘intelligent content’ but right now there is a lot of buzz in the email marketing industry to create emails that self-destruct (delete and archive themselves) once the expiry date or time is reached. This is a very interesting concept and could potentially take the dynamics of email marketing to a whole new level. We can’t wait to see how it develops further, so watch this space.

Can you honestly say that you feel the love emanating from your loyal subscribers?  If the answer is ‘no’ and the feeling is more like that of licking a cactus, then you could assume that you aren’t engaging with your subscribers very well, if at all. As you know, engagement is one of the first things you need to establish and meticulously maintain if you want to reach the goals you have in mind. If the thought of this strikes fear in your heart and mind, fear not! Engaging with subscribers has become infinitely easier over the past few years and today there are scores of different online platforms you can choose to connect with your valuable customers on.

To get you going, we’ve summed up some of the best questions you can ask yourself to help you identify whether or not you’re engaging with your subscribers in the most appropriate way.

1. Are you giving them with high quality content?

Consistently conceptualizing and delivering quality content that gets you top results every time is by no means easy. What worked yesterday might not work today, and to be honest, sometimes you just have a mental block that you can’t get through. In times like these, you need to have content to fall back on and you need to have it on hand immediately. Many people resort to old school methods like keeping a notepad and pen in their bag, so they can jot down ideas as and when they come up, but as long as you’re writing down content ideas somewhere then it doesn’t really matter how you do it. Off the top of my head, topics such as event listings; lists; trivia, history and interesting facts; Q&A’s; trends and predictions; comparisons; polls and surveys; product reviews; guest contributions and links to interesting industry articles or other blogs are just the tip of the iceberg and they’re all ideas that are essentially ageless.

2. Are you offering them choices through a preference centre?

A preference centre is hugely beneficial and necessary if you offer more than one type of newsletter. It serves a dual purpose in that it lets your subscribers decide which newsletters they’d like to receive and how often, and it also gives them the opportunity to update their profile and add personal information (such as likes, dislikes, job sector etc.) when they’re ready to. This of course is all incredibly helpful data that you can then use to target them more effectively. Just make sure that you let your subscribers know their information is top secret and that you aren’t going to sell or rent it. One of the best ways that you can get people to your email preference centre is by telling them about it in your welcome email when they first sign up. Give them the direct link and let them know what it’s about and remind them they can access and edit it whenever they like.

3. Are you sticking to your word?

Saying one thing and then proceeding to do another is simply unacceptable. Harsh as it may seem, I doubt you’d find one reputable ESP who’d disregard this statement. Email marketing is developed around online relationships and as in real life, if someone doesn’t trust you you’re going to have a hard time convincing them to give you what you want. You need to ensure that if you promise your subscribers something, you’re able to deliver on it, and you need to establish this before you start advertising the fact. This goes for everything from the frequency of the emails you send, to special products/services you’re advertising for today only.

4. Are you interacting with them on their preferred social platforms?

A well set up email preference centre comes in handy here too, as you can also include a field that allows them to choose which social media networks they prefer and which one they’d prefer you to contact them on. They might have a Twitter, Facebook and LinkedIn account but would prefer you to connect with them only via Twitter for example. Having this type of information can also help you to further segment your audience and it really offers you the opportunity to connect with them on their level, so use it to your advantage. If you’re not yet confident enough to interact, then you can at least start by listening to what your subscribers are posting or tweeting on their profile. What are they waxing lyrical about, what are they dissing and dismissing, what’s trending amongst their peers? Because the topics are focused on what’s happening now and what they’re interested in, this information can be used to help you create and deliver more relevant content. Also make a point of following highly ranked forums and look out for questions that are being asked that you can answer or contribute to. It’s a good way to get yourself known online as an expert in your field and you’ll soon find that people start interacting with you and bringing you into the thick of things.

5. Are you asking them to share with you?

This can be done as a once off survey, or you could choose to include a link on each newsletter that takes them to an online comments field on your website. You can ask your subscribers to share photos, stories, ideas for newsletters, topics they’re interested in finding or reading more about, issues they’d like addressed, any questions they might have, and prizes they’d like to see up for grabs, all of which can be posted on your website. By giving them this platform to speak their minds as it were, they are also helping you with content ideas. You can also take their input one step further and include comments that people have made, or questions that are frequently asked (with your expert answers) in your newsletters. This way, everyone wins.

Finally, but perhaps most importantly, be real, you’re only human after all. There’ll be a time to be serious and a time to laugh and make light of situations. Engaging online, especially across social networks, isn’t about blatant self-promotion and sales pitches, it’s about finding out what your customers want and doing it in the least obtrusive way possible, and then actually doing something about it.

The phrase “dynamic content” sounds like something that is likely to explode (in your inbox). Truth is it does offer you the opportunity to add serious “bang” to your email campaigns. Incorporating dynamic content goes beyond simply personalizing the basics of your email, such as: Dear Bob Blogs and from: your(real)name@comapanyname.com. It allows you to tailor your campaigns based on how you’ve segmented your audience according to their specific individual attributes. This means different target groups receive different content, for example offers, specials, images, CTA’s and links to landing pages. Clever stuff, you’ll agree. Such highly personalized and targeted campaigns can only result in one thing – you’re one step closer to the results you desire.

The idea behind dynamic content is that you can set up a single email (which can be repeated for future campaigns), but the content of each gets personalized for each recipient. Because the content is so highly relevant, open rates, click-through-rates and conversion rates are generally much higher. There are also other benefits to incorporating dynamic content, including: automatic updates of editorial content, optimal use of message templates, avoiding double the production work, personalizing external content boxes as well as tracking links inside the external content boxes.

It’s not just with email newsletters that dynamic content can be leveraged. Subscriber’s data including demographics, preferences and interests, purchase behaviour and history and analytical website data can also be applied to email alerts and updates, mobile SMS marketing and even across social media.

So, how can you go about using dynamic content in your email marketing campaign? For starters, you could look at cross selling products. For example, if you know that your customer has recently bought a gas braai from you online, you could offer them accessories to go with it, such as cooking utensils, specialized cleaning products and recipes designed specifically for gas braai meals.

You could also offer vouchers, coupons, discounts or incentives based on the level of your customer’s loyalty. The more loyal they are (and this refers not only to direct sales, but also supporting your newsletter, spreading the good word of your company and so on), the better the deal they get. You can also let your newer customers know about escalating sales offers, which could help motivate them to become even more engaged with you.

Finally, one of the best actions you can take is to genuinely listen to what your customers want and put the information to good use. If they are only interested in holiday promotions to South America (and you know this because they have specifically requested this), then don’t bother ‘trying your luck’ and sending them the latest Asian holiday deal. Really, in the long term your customers will appreciate the fact that you aren’t sending them any and every special deal you have. Your customers want to feel unique and special, so nurture this, do your best to get them what they want and put any information they give you to good use.

Drip email campaigns are by no means a new marketing strategy, but they are still one of the most popular tactics when it comes to nurturing leads. Not quite sure what it is? A drip campaign involves sending or ‘dripping’ a series of regular promotional pieces over a period of time. Although each individual email serves a different function, it also builds on previous emails in the campaign. The goal behind a drip campaign is to encourage a certain action from the lead (or customer), such as a sign up, or purchase. An effective drip campaign aims to keep your readers informed and aware of your products, which is especially necessary in the beginning stages of an online relationship, when you are establishing brand awareness with your leads and arming them with the right information to help them make the right purchasing decision.

Drip campaigns take their name from the agricultural term ‘drip irrigation’, whereby crops or plants are given small amounts of water consistently over a long period of time, thereby making it more resource efficient. This (and this is where the email marketing analogy comes in) is because with drip irrigation the ground is given consistent moisture as opposed to just being soaked and then left alone before it is drenched again (think email spray and pray tactics).

No doubt, drip campaigns need to be thought out carefully and planned strategically, so we’ve looked at four important questions you need to consider before you put yours into action.

1. What’s your aim?

What is your end goal and what exact action do you want/need your customers to take in order to reach it? You need to determine the key messages for each email and optimize them individually so that you can work towards reaching this goal.

2. Do you have your content lined up?

It’s been said a thousand times before, but it’s true. Content is king and well-written, informative content will keep your customers and leads interested. With drip campaigns, the content needs to be enticing, clever and even a bit teasing, especially if you are aiming to build up anticipation over the course of your campaign.

3. Are you able to segment your campaigns?

If you’ve only just started out, then you might not have much data with which to segment your campaigns, however even if you have basic information, such as whether they are male or female, it can be used to target your customers with more relevant content. Think about it, there is little worse than receiving an email that is promoting men’s underwear at half price, and you’re a woman. Customer engagement, I think not. As your campaigns and relationships develop, you’ll find out more about your subscribers, such as what their interests are, what they would like to see more or less off, their buying behaviour etc. all of which will help ensure you deliver interesting campaigns that hold value.

4. What’s your layout going to look like?

Think carefully about the layout and design. More than likely you’re going to keep the same template for the duration of the drip campaign, so while it might be nice to get a bright, funky, busy email once in a while, if you’re sending it once a day then the novelty will wear off quickly. Keep it simple, with short and concise copy, one or two relevant images and the necessary links. Remember, you want to keep the focus on getting your readers to perform a specific action with each email you send and you don’t want them to get distracted along the way.

While these steps are by no means the only questions that you need to consider, they are some of the most important ones. A drip email campaign can be one of the best decisions you make or a complete flop, so make sure you’ve planned and thought through each one meticulously before you hit the send button.

All marketers enjoy and appreciate a thoroughly planned and well-executed HTML email campaign and if you think about it, there’s certainly a lot to like about them. Quite simply, HTML emails have the potential to pack a solid punch. Let’s have a quick look at some of their endearing features:

• Greater control over formatting, layout, colour, fonts, graphics and branding – meaning you can unleash your inner designer and be as creative as you like.
• The result is a beautifully designed email that visually appealing (if you’ve done your testing)
• Interactive functionality
• You can include images that enhance your copy and corporate branding that helps establish brand awareness (make sure these are embedded properly and not just copy/pasted)
• You can include links to: websites, landing pages, videos, sign up forms, etc. (basically anywhere you want to)
• You can track the open rate and click through rate

Before we get carried away with this, it should be noted that although HTML emails are a hugely popular choice for email marketers, plain text emails are not without benefits and in fact many subscribers prefer to receive them over the HTML version. This is because they are:

• Straight forward and easy to read
• Don’t require images to be downloaded
• Always render correctly no matter the ESP or the type of mobile device it’s viewed on

Also, from an email marketer’s point of view they’re easy to produce and don’t require hours or days of testing. HTML versions on the other hand may very well have you pulling out your hair at 2am in the morning because for some reason it ‘looks a bit funny’ when you test it in such and such a browser or email client. Which is why marketers almost always include a plain text option alongside the HTML version, so that those who can’t or don’t like to open HTML emails don’t miss out.

Of course each version also has its share of downsides. With HTML:

• Emails invariably take much longer to open and download, especially if they’re image heavy.
• If you’ve downloaded the email to view it later offline the images won’t display and links will appear to be broken
• Someone, somewhere will undoubtedly have a problem with it rendering incorrectly when they open it
• A busy design and too many images and/or links can be very distracting, which ultimately affects your click through and conversion rates
• If you’re an email marketing newbie, creating an HTML email might be a bit mind boggling, although most good ESPs (such as Mail Blaze) have pre-build templates which do all the hard work for you.

And with plain text:

• Text can’t be hyperlinked
• Any link that is included has to be typed out completely (e.g. http://www.mailblaze.com)
• You can’t include any images or graphics
• You can’t format the font at all

At the end of the day, when it comes down to it both formats have proven to work very well in terms of open rates and conversion rates, so the best thing that you can do is to create both an HTML and a plain text version of your campaign and give your subscribers the option to open either. That way you cater effectively to all your subscribers and it helps ensure your message gets across to as many of them as possible. In short, cover all your bases.

Quick Response (QR) codes were originally the brainchild of Toyota back in the mid 1990’s and were developed in order to track vehicle parts in manufacturing. The name comes from the fact that they allow users to decode its contents at high speed. QR codes work in the same way as regular barcodes except they are two-dimensional and made up of black modules arranged in a square on a white background, like this example below.

For the past year they have been a seriously hot trend largely due to the fact that they can literally be applied to almost everything. Although they have been used for years in Japan, the technology to utilize them to similar levels elsewhere was simply not available. Thanks to the world wide explosion of the smart phone however, that’s changing. Most smart phone users download an app that allows them to easily scan QR codes, but some new smart phones come with a QR scanner pre-installed, which just goes to show how popular they’re becoming.

Once a code has been scanned, it causes the phone to load data. Often this data is a URL, which then opens the embedded website on the mobile device thereby delivering instant information to the reader.

Although QR codes are undeniably novel and successful in print form, many marketers are still sitting on the fence regarding its practicality in email marketing. In an email message they would be used in the same place as an ordinary link, but where a QR code would still require scanning, a link can simply be clicked. This makes it a tricky and less effective option if your subscribers are already viewing the email on their mobile device. If that’s the case, they would need to be able to first save the image on their phone to scan later, or they would have to have a second mobile device handy in order to scan the code (somewhat unlikely). Either way, it takes away some of the ‘immediacy’ that a QR code brings with it.

If however you are integrating email marketing with traditional marketing solutions such as direct print mail, then QR codes could be put to good use here. Unique codes on advertising could instantly take readers to:

• The home page of your website
• The sign-up page for your email newsletter
• A landing page for special offers
• A ‘contact us for more information’ page
• Automatically register them for a competition or freebie
• Send a text on your behalf
• Display text, contact or additional product information
• Provide directions to your stores (via Google Maps)
• Connect to a wireless network
• Display your social network profiles

There’s no doubt that we’ll be seeing much more creative use of QR codes this year, even though we’re already finding them in magazine advertising and editorials, name tags, for sale signs (directs you to a virtual tour of the property) coupons, billboards, busses and bus stops, posters, cards, clothes, business cards, invoices, print distributions and street signs, making them hugely versatile. If you can find a way to incorporate them into your overall marketing strategy, you’ll be engaging with your customers on an entirely new level and you’ll be staying ahead of the latest marketing trend.

If you’re interested in taking the next step, then there are a number of free or inexpensive QR code generators online such as Kaywa, ZXing Project and QR Stuff. For inspiration, you can also check out some innovative examples of QR codes here and here.

When you think of a brand, or specifically your brand, what comes to mind? Broken down, a brand constitutes a name, tag line, logo and design, all of which should ultimately define your business perfectly. A brand, we now know however, is much more than that. It is the voice, attitude, style, familiarity and feeling that people get when they think about a business or company, and it’s hugely important.

On the back of a global recession competition is stiff and just a click away at the best of times, so the more awareness there is surrounding and supporting your business the better. One of the ways that you can boost your brand is to use (or make better use of) email marketing. These days it’s an extremely affordable solution that can help keep you in the inboxes and minds of those who matter most to your company; your customers and subscribers. On average it takes 7 times for a customer to recognize your brand after first encountering it. The beauty of email marketing is that it allows to you to engage, interact and find out more about your customers long after they have left your site. In short, it helps them remember you and recognize your brand quicker.

Without further ado, let’s look at the ways that it can help your brand.

1. It keeps your customers informed about what’s happening at your company; what’s trending; latest industry updates and what specials or promotions are running.
2. It gives you the opportunity to let them know more about your blog, forum or website and your subscribers the opportunity to share your fabulous news and articles with their friends via email and social networks.
3. Thankfully these days emails are becoming more personalized and targeted, based on customer behaviour, purchase history and geo-location, to name a few. This means your email campaigns and brand have the potential to reach the exact target audience you’re interested in.
4. Loyal customers become your own personal brand ambassadors without you having to do much. Provide the best service you can, consistently and from the very beginning and your customers will spread the word about your company (and brand) for you, to their family and friends.
5. It helps reinforce your brand, especially if an email welcome letter or campaign is sent soon after a customer has left your website. If they haven’t visited your site in a while, then your message will remind them about your company, what you have to offer and why they were interested in you in the first place.

So now we’ve had a quick look at how email marketing can benefit your brand awareness, let’s look at what you can include in your email campaigns to help win your customers over.

1. Don’t be shy to remind them how great your product or service is. With all the competition out there, it won’t do you any harm to blow your own horn. Remember, your customers first bought from you because they thought you were fabulous and loved what you had to offer, remind them of this and don’t give them any reason to cross over and sniff at what’s on offer from your competitors.

2. Make sure that your email campaigns have the same style, color, font and format as your website. If a customer has visited your website, but hasn’t received a newsletter from you then you want them to be able to instantly recognize your brand in the email when they preview or open it.

3. Be consistent when you send your email campaigns. Whether that’s every Saturday or every third week of the month, your subscribers will come to recognize and appreciate this pattern. A welcome email sent soon after a person has signed up also gives you the opportunity to tell them more about your company and let them know the different ways that they can stay in touch with you. It creates a sense of familiarity, which is part of what you’re aiming for. It’s good practice to send a warm and friendly welcome email before you start hitting them with your regular campaigns. It’s similar to ‘courting’ in a real relationship, and really, who doesn’t like to be wooed?

4. Make sure you have a standardized email template that clearly shows your company name, logo and tagline. That way, each time your customer opens your email and reads something relevant or useful, they positively associate that knowledge with you and your brand.

5. Remember to take the time to personalize each email. Rest assured your subscribers don’t like being thought of as just ‘an email address.’ By taking the time to personalize each campaign you make them feel unique, which of course they’ll like and in turn associate this feeling with your brand. It’s easy to personalize your campaigns and it’s simply a matter of changing your settings in the campaign builder stage of your message.

6. Keep your campaigns and content user friendly (read simple and easy to find). You want your message, links and branding to stand out and be immediately visible, not hidden amidst cluttered copy and a busy design. If you have a lot you want to say, don’t cram it into one message; rather have a link to your website where they can find out more information if they need to.

Email marketing has been shown to deliver one of the highest ROI’s over any other e-marketing tactic and by incorporating it into your overall marketing strategy; you are effectively optimizing your company’s brand awareness, whilst at the same time building and nurturing an online relationship with your customers.

A/B split testing is a refined and enhanced email marketing strategy that has been shown to increase open rates, click through rates (CTR) and conversion rates with minimal risk. So what is it and how does it work? Basically with an email A/B split test, two versions of the same email are produced, with one variable such as the subject line or call to action different to the first version.  These two emails are then divided equally between a small group (normally 20%) of randomly selected emails on your list. The results are carefully tracked and monitored and once it is clear which email produced the most desired results, the remainder of the email list is sent the ‘winning’ email. A/B split testing is often done on an on-going basis, and the format is commonly referred to as the ‘champion/challenger’. This ensures that campaigns are continuously improved on, so results are up to date and representative of your target audience at any given time. Although it might be time consuming to test separate variables individually in your campaign, it is the best way you can determine exactly which element is having the desired (or undesired) effect.

The beauty of email A/B split testing is that there are many variables of an email campaign that can be tested, such as:

• Subject Lines
• Calls to Action (text vs. buttons)
• Headings / Greetings
• Body Content
• Long vs. Short Copy
• Landing Pages
• Colors and Images
• Personalization
• Layout
• Banners
• Numbers of products promoted at one time

It’s important to remember that although you have a variety of elements that can be used to test the strength of your email campaign, not all elements produce the same results. The value of A/B split testing is that it allows you to identify those elements that consistently produce the best results.

Besides increased open rates, click through rates (CTR) and conversion rates, A/B split testing can bring the following benefits to your campaign:

• It allows marketers to better understand their audience behaviour and habits. What motivates them to convert? What makes them tick (and click!) on links?
• Easily determines which variations improve the performance of your campaign
• You know exactly what changes you need (and don’t need) to make
• You’re able to quickly and easily identify and implement the best combination based on test metrics and analysis
• Email campaign optimization leads to improved user experience (UX)
• It’s inexpensive because existing resources and tools are used
• It’s a low risk approach

With these benefits in mind and the fact that nearly every aspect of your email campaign can be tested, there is no reason why you shouldn’t be conducting A/B split testing on your email campaigns. By taking the time to truly understand your subscribers and optimizing your campaign to the fullest, you have the opportunity to target your customers with an email message is hugely relevant and beneficial to them.

You have diligently gone through the process of establishing which of your subscribers are actually inactive and more importantly why. There could be a number of reasons for this, but one of the most likely is that your content simply isn’t interesting enough to grab their attention, either in the subject line or in the body of your emails. These are the subscribers that you want to target your re-activation campaign at.

Re-engaging (re-activating) your subscribers is a good idea for a number of reasons. Firstly, the process costs less than if you were to try and acquire new subscribers. Also, having inactive subscribers on your list can harm your reputation and deliverability. This is because client interaction is becoming increasingly important in the filtering decisions with ISP’s. With the aim of identifying spammers, these ISP’s turn old email addresses in to ‘spam traps’ or ‘honeypots’ and monitor email marketers that constantly send emails to these invalid addresses.

Your campaign goal is to peak your subscribers’ interest again and win them back to your side of the court, but how can you go about doing this? We’ve looked at some of the most effective methods that you can apply to re-engage these inactive subscribers before you lose them for good.

Offer an incentive/special offer. This should be the first step in your re-activation campaign. Consider offering something for free, such as a coupon, white paper, survey, entry into a competition or a discount on your products or services. It needs to be eye-catching, succinct and hard to pass up; you don’t want to give your subscribers any reason to ignore this special email.

Remind them of the benefits of being a subscriber. Once they have opened your hard to resist message, now is the time to remind them of subscriber benefits. What are they missing out on? What further special offers are they eligible for? What interesting articles can they expect to read in the next newsletter? You could at this stage also allow them the opportunity to update their profile. Make sure this is a painless process whereby they can change their email address, their preference to how they receive their emails, their demographics and even their interests. This updated data is very important and can help segment your subscribers so you can send them more relevant emails, which will go a long way to peaking their interest once more.

Conduct a survey on inactive subscribers. This email needs to stand out as much as possible. Remember that your subject line might be one of the reasons that your subscribers aren’t opening your messages, so look at changing your content here first and see if it has a positive effect. For example, you could try personalising the email more. In the survey, ask them what they would like to see in your newsletter and what they are interested in. If you’re brave enough you could also ask them if they feel you are meeting their expectations. Also take the time to find out if they are actually still interested in receiving your emails.

Include links to past articles. Gather your most popular articles and write-ups from past newsletters and put them together into a special ‘best of’ email. A trip down memory lane will help remind subscribers why they signed up in the first place.

Test different send days, times and frequency. If you are not generating desired results with your current roll out plan then perhaps it’s time to reassess your strategy with regards to when and how often you send emails.  A lot of research and testing has been done with regards to this and although the information might differ depending on who your target market is, it is well worth investigating. Many companies and individuals have had success by simply changing the day or time of day that they send their emails.

If there’s still no response at this stage, then prompt them by letting them know with a friendly reminder that their subscriptions will be expiring soon. Let them know that if they still want to be on your mailing list then they’ll need to reconfirm their interest and email address. Make the link to the details update form simple and easy to find.

Once you’ve taken these re-engagement strategies into consideration and put them into practice, you’ll find that you needn’t delete any inactive subscribers from your list just yet.  If you put the right amount of time and energy into winning them back and doing everything you can to keep them interested, you might not have to think of the prospect of re-engaging them again in the future.

2010 has come and gone and arguably the biggest industry prediction that came to pass was the rise (and rise) of social media and its relevance and impact on email marketing. Then, towards the end of the year many marketers were left mumbling when Gmail announced its Priority Inbox and Facebook unleashed Messages, both of which have added a heap of new email deliverability issues, to which answers are still being sought.

As far as 2011 goes, I’m loath to use the word ‘predictions’ when I talk about email marketing, simply because I am not a fortune teller, rather I’d like to stick to ‘developments’.

First off, real-time email marketing has come along in leaps and bounds and guaranteed there’s still much to be explored on that front. It’s already a growing trend in the US and Europe, and now it looks set to continue making its mark in other parts of the world too.  Marketers know that strategies are developed months in advance and are a long-term process, but what real-time marketing does is focus on what’s happening right now, what’s trending, and what can be done to make a difference to your customer today. Take for example the relentless snowstorms and sub-zero weather that has been tormenting much of the US (and Europe for that matter) this past season. Many retail email marketers took advantage of the ghastly weather and quickly designed campaigns around it. The result was relevant, timeous emails offering specials on such things as sub-zero winter clothes, snow equipment, motor anti-freeze and skiing holidays targeted to customer’s individual locations. Retailers claimed increased responses in the number of opens and forwards, and conversion rates also increased over the period these specials ran. Even though these campaigns didn’t necessarily coincide with regular email newsletters that customers received, they were more receptive to them because they were so relevant. Of course this strategy can also be used conversely in countries experiencing scorching summer temperatures and heat waves that hit  for weeks at a time. Think of specials on bikinis, board shorts, sunblock and suntan lotion and seaside weekend getaways. Obviously you have to be fast on the ball with real-time email marketing, but there is no doubt that if you successfully pull a campaign like this off, then you’ll reap the rewards, and that’s aside from your regular email promotions.

Another great example was put forward by David Meerman Scott, author of “Real Time Marketing & PR”, who was interviewed at the MarketingSherpa Email Summit in January in Las Vegas. He spoke about the Chilean mining accident and the fact that when each miner emerged they were sporting the new range of Oakley sunglasses. The company thought ahead and knew that after months underground the miner’s eyes wouldn’t be prepared for the sunlight so they did the next logical thing and equipped each miner with sunglasses. Great marketing and the pictures made front page news worldwide, but they could have taken it further. They could have hit their email list with specials on those same sunglasses; have a special feature on their website showcasing the range or even a link on their site to articles explaining the damage that ultra violet rays can do to a person’s eyes. Don’t get me wrong; what they accomplished was a great marketing strategy. They saw a unique opportunity and worked fast to capitalize on it and the free advertising they got from it was incredible. I wholly agree with David though, they could easily have taken it to the next level.

Aside from real-time email marketing, we should be seeing more technological developments with ‘intelligent content’, which renders when an email is opened, giving customers ‘real-time’ offers tied to available stock. An example of this would be if a featured item was already sold out by the time the recipient opened it, then a similar alternative offer would automatically be presented. The result is that you have a higher chance of your emails being read and converted and your customers are happy because they are getting relevant offers that don’t expire. A precursor to intelligent content would be time-sensitive messages, which automatically delete from an inbox once the offer expires. This is a good alternative if intelligent content email campaigns are not an option for you. Your customers, however will still appreciate the fact that they aren’t opening loads of emails that are irrelevant and worse still, entirely invalid, which would give them good ammo to unsubscribe or report you for spam.

Of course we’re definitely (and anxiously!) expecting more video email and viral email marketing tactics in 2011. While video email is still in its infancy, new apps are almost certainly being created that will make this process quicker and easier to format and render across all major email clients and mobile devices. Viral email marketing has the potential to reach huge audiences very quickly and with the right amount of calculated research, clever strategy and unique content, you’re almost guaranteed a successful campaign. You can read more about video email marketing here and viral email marketing here.

Real-time email marketing, intelligent content, time sensitive messages and video and viral email marketing tactics are all positive signs that email marketing isn’t ‘dead’ at all, it’s simply adjusted to a changing environment and developing new strategies that should enable it to continue providing high ROI’s. By keeping abreast of these developments and testing them in your campaigns to find out what works best for you, you’re helping yourself stay relevant and interesting to your valued customers.

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.

So what constitutes a great email subject line? We’ve rustled up a few examples that have achieved some of the best open rates.

1. “X Company” Sales & Marketing Monthly Newsletter

2. “X Company” Webinar: Case Studies – Join Us Feb 15

3. This Week’s Phone Call / Meeting (Personalized note from sales rep to prospects)

4. “First Name” – 8 Customer Service Tips that Work

5. Event Registration Today: (Name of event and date)

6. Success Tip: # Ways to a better (X topic)

7. Invitation – Breakfast with (Name of guest speaker and topic)

8. You’re Going to Love This – Look What We have for You

What makes these good examples you might ask? Quite simply, they follow all of the ‘best practices’ one should consider when drafting an email subject line.

• They tell you exactly what the message is about,
• They tell you what company or person has sent it
• They offer something valuable and relevant to the reader
• They give the reader a ‘teaser’ and peak their curiosity
• They avoid any spam-like red flag words
• They are concise and to the point
• They’re personalized
• They aren’t blatantly trying to sell something
• They’re unique and stand out from the usual promo campaigns

And just so you can compare and get an idea of what a shoddy email subject line looks like, we’ve also rustled up a few of those and once again give you the reasons why they didn’t make the cut.

1.            Meeting Request: Introducing Our New Product

2.            Free Evaluation of ABC Encrypted Portable Drive

3.            Post-Trade Show Webinar: Expert Insights Into Key Trends and Observations from the Trade Show Floor

4.            European Lakefront Elegance

5.            Register to Win Your FREE iPod!!

6.            Shop Early and Save!

7.            30% off Holiday Sale!

8.            Last Chance! Purchase 5 and get one free on us!

• There is no evidence of who sent these emails or what is actually being offered – basically giving the reader zero reasons to open the message in the first place
• The third example is simply too long, boring and drawn out – yawn
• Win! Save! Free! Sale!– are all spam trigger words and dime a dozen – think how many emails you get like this, and how many do you actually read? None, exactly
• They aren’t personalized or targeted in anyway, making them highly irrelevant. I live in Cape Town, why am I getting promotional campaigns about Europe? The same goes for accommodation, flights and special packages. If someone sends me something about a special offer for a spa weekend in Hermanus they might have better luck.
• Exclamation marks should be reserved for very special occasions and certainly not for an email you are sending to someone you don’t know. It is the equivalent of shouting and no one likes being shouted at.
• With the last example, even though there is a sense of urgency (which is actually a good thing), it’s offset with the exclamation mark, which makes it seem pressurized. You can create the same sense of urgency by simply re-wording it – ‘You only have 1 day left to take up our offer of buy 5 get one free – act now’.

So there you have it. Remember that the subject line of your email is often the first contact you have with a subscriber or prospective customer, so you need to do everything you can to make the best first impression possible. It’s hard to get second chances in email marketing, so don’t blow it at the outset with a subject line that screams “spam” and looks like every other promotional email in your inbox. By sticking to a few tried and tested best practices, and by researching subject lines that have proven to be successful, you’ll stand a much better chance of your email landing in the inbox.

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.

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.

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.

YouTube, with over two billion videos viewed daily, is a great indication of the high degree of engagement that is associated with videos. According to a recent study of over 1 billion video emails by internet marketing firm Implex, results revealed that emails containing videos achieved 96.38% higher click-through rates and 5.6% higher open rates compared to non-video emails. That’s an impressive figure to say the least and should go a long way towards converting those who are still sitting on the fence regarding the potential scope of this medium.

It has been said that video email is much more personal than text campaigns. The reason for this, according to HuStream (conversational video apps) is simply because video email is more ‘human’. In fact, their sources go so far as to say that video is 7% words, 38% voice and tone and 55% body language. It’s no wonder then that it has also been said to be more ‘engaging’ of a target market. People are no longer dealing with websites, text and automated responses; they are coming face to face with another human being. This simple gesture can instil a sense of trust and goes a long way towards building customer relationships and brand loyalty.

We’ve looked at a number of reasons why video is proving to be so beneficial to email campaigns;

• It’s simple to use – You can create, upload and send out a video email in as little as 15 minutes
• It generates ‘buzz’ – Web video is a ‘hot’ topic at the moment, people like to forward and share them and it’s easy to get a video to go viral.
• It’s proven to increase the CTR of an email campaign – This is, of course, a huge factor of success for any email strategy. According to a survey by the World Wide Marketing Council, 73% of marketers surveyed said that integrating video with email marketing increased their CTR. The same survey went on to state that 50% of marketers now use video in their email campaigns and an additional 25% are considering it
• It’s more readily viewed and enjoyed than text – This is because it’s much easier to assimilate the information and message being conveyed and also because people are inherently lazy – they would much rather watch a tutorial or review than actually read one
• It makes you stand out from the crowd – Although video email campaigns are increasing in popularity, it’s still far from mainstream, giving you an automatic competitive advantage when you use it
• Simplicity – You can convey a complex marketing message very quickly with video
• It appeals to both a younger and older generation – This, according to ComScore which showed that the highest percentage (21%) of people who engaged with video were those aged 2-17 years. The second highest percentage (18%) belonged to those aged 35-44 years
• It’s highly influential – As stated by the Publishers Association, 76% of respondents found video to be influential and 52% of people had taken some form of action as a result of video
• Videos have higher page ranks- A study by Forrester showed that videos are 50 times more likely to show up on the first page of any given search

Despite all these impressive figures, video email is still considered to be in its infancy and this is evident in the fact that there are really only two different ways that one can incorporate it in their email.

• Static Image (Click to View) Video - This is the most simple and popular solution. A static image taken from the video is embedded in the email campaign. This image normally has a large ‘play’ arrow that, when clicked links to the real video which is hosted on a landing page or even a social media site such as YouTube. The advantages of using this solution are that there are no certification requirements, it’s widely supported and compatible with all email clients, it has established best practices and there are rarely deliverability issues. The downside is of course that users have to click through to view the actual video and audio, so it is important that the image you select clearly depicts the content of the video, which will help ensure that the subscriber follows through.

• Optimized video GIF (video in email) – The advantages to this solution are much the same as using a static image but it has additional benefits. The video is displayed directly in the preview pane or email and it doesn’t require downloading prior to viewing. The downside of animated GIF however is that there is no audio, it can take time to load, it requires embedded images, your subscribers email client might not support it, and it’s often expensive to produce and deliver.

Of course you need to remember that when using any form of video in your email, best practices still apply. This means that the video still needs to add value to the recipients experience (what do they get out of it?), contribute directly to the campaign objectives (more clicks, conversions, page views?) and it must be in line with other emails and campaigns you send in terms of brand recognition and corporate identity.

The ultimate measure of video email success lies in the audience engagement time and there are a number of factors that affect this; permission, interaction and attention. If you get the balance right, it can result in increased content consumption, increased brand awareness and an increased conversion in call to action rates.

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.

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.

We are proud to announce the launch of the all new Mail Blaze email marketing solution. The system has been developed to give you, our valued customers, a platform to create and send emails with the greatest of ease.

We pride ourselves on delivering a high quality service at an extremely reasonable rate. From the simple setup, send and track functionality to the more complex A/B split campaign, image embedding and advanced triggers, Mail Blaze has something for every user.

We are currently working on training videos that will assist you with every facet of the Mail Blaze system. In the meantime if you have any queries please contact us via the support section of the site. We are eager to get you started and utilizing the marketing power of Mail Blaze.