Blog - Posts Tagged ‘email marketing’

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.

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.

Email list churn is very nearly considered one of the few ‘givens’ in life (next to death and taxes that is). No? Ok fine, maybe it’s not that dramatic but it is something that most marketers have to deal with and likely on a regular basis. List churn refers to the number of subscribers who are ‘lost’ to your list over a given period and it’s measured by the number of hard bounces, unsubscribes, or spam complaints you receive. Other factors that add to list churn include email content relevance, frequency of the campaigns, inactive subscribers (though this can be hard to measure) and ineffective opt-in processes, all of which in turn affect deliverability and your bottom line. On average a marketer will experience 20-30% list churn every year, but you can work out your rate by following this simple equation:

Tally up your hard bounces, unsubscribes and spam complaints for the time period you’re interested in (usually a month or year) and divide this total number of ‘lost’ subscribers by your current list size and presto, you have your churn rate. A basic example looks like this:

• 3,000 (‘lost’ subscribers) / 10,000 (current list size) = 0.3 x 100 = 30% list churn rate.

While list churn is inevitable to a certain extent, there are steps you can take to reduce it and although they aren’t necessarily ‘quick fixes’ (if there is there such a thing in email marketing?!), if you make a concerted effort to employ these tactics you should start to see positive results.

1. Tell your subscribers everything they need to know

If you don’t have a preference centre where subscribers can decide which newsletters they receive and how often, then tell them what they can expect from you when they first sign up, and stick to this. Email marketing is all about developing a long term online relationship with your subscriber, and this is where it starts. This would also be a good time to lay out your privacy policy, in layman’s terms. No need to go into 5 pages of indecipherable text, just let your subscribers know that you aren’t going to sell, rent or disclose any of their details to anyone else. It’s really that simple.

2. Learn from your mistakes

If someone unsubscribes, politely ask for feedback or comments about why they’re opting out and what you could do better, and then do what you can to implement those suggestions into your campaign. It all helps with customer engagement and while you might have lost this particular subscriber, the constructive criticism can be used to adapt your strategy and help ensure you meet the expectations of the next customer who signs up.

3. Make things easy for your subscribers

Quick and simple opt-in and unsubscribe processes along with reliable contact details are what your subscribers are initially looking for, so get off to a good start and make sure these aspects of your campaign are optimized for ease of use. It’s also a good idea to offer a simple preference centre so your subscribers can easily update their profile or change their preferences in terms of what their interests are, which newsletters they’re interested in, how often they want to receive them etc. Not only is this a good way of engaging with them, but the data is hugely beneficial to you too, because you can use it to segment your audience and target them more effectively.

4. Re-engage inactive subscribers

The term ‘inactive’ is open to interpretation, but generally if a subscriber hasn’t clicked on any of your emails in the past 6 months (based on say 1-2 campaigns a month), then you could assume that they now fall into the ‘inactive’ category. It’s not a train smash, rather see it as an opportunity to re-engage with them and get them interested again in what you had to offer. They obviously liked something you did otherwise they wouldn’t have signed up in the first place, so work off of this. Assuming these subscribers are perhaps bored with your current email offerings, your reactivation campaign needs to jump out at them and offer something truly irresistible that’s going to guarantee a high open rate. This would also be a good time to find out if they are still interested in receiving your emails or if they’d prefer to reduce their subscription or unsubscribe completely.

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.

In short, an email preference centre is much like a membership page on your website that allows your subscribers to manage their subscriptions. After signing up and when they login, they’re given the opportunity to update their profile and also specify what information they’d like to receive from you and how often. This works best and is necessary if you have a variety of email campaigns that you send out, such as newsletters, sales alerts, product information, industry updates and more. In the preference centre, your subscriber can opt in for as many of the campaigns as they wish, and subsequently make changes whenever they want. They should also be able to specify how often they receive correspondence from you, the format of the emails (html or text versions) and whether they want to subscribe to RSS, mobile or SMS updates.

If you supply products such as books, music, DVD’s or clothes then you should definitely look at incorporating an email preference centre to manage your subscriptions effectively. If however, you only offer a single product or service it’s not necessary.

The real value of a preference centre is that it gives subscribers complete control over what lands in their inbox, and this helps build trust and loyalty, which is one of the main objectives of email marketing. By giving them what they want when they want and honouring their preferences, they’ll have less reason to unsubscribe from your email campaigns.

Keep in mind that customers are voluntarily offering private information about themselves at a time and pace that suites them. Therefore, it’s important that your preference centre is friendly and welcoming and the questions aren’t overly complex, in depth or personal. You want them to feel like they can come back at any time to make changes and when they do, it’s a painless process.

Contrary to popular belief, an email preference centre is pretty easy to implement and to begin with many people simply store data on their email platform or CRM, which is perfectly acceptable.

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.

Although progressive profiling is not a new concept, it is a ‘practice’ that many marketers seem to have side-lined of late. This is evident with the number of otherwise great websites that bombard would-be subscribers with a 15 field sign up form, all for the privilege of receiving a newsletter. Needless to say it can (and quite possibly does) hinder ones sign up and conversion rates.

Registering for something or requesting a download should be a quick and painless experience that needn’t require handing over too much private information. So, when a visitor is confronted with a stream of increasingly personal questions with no explanation behind them, they are likely to abandon the process, permanently.

Of course ultimately you want to find out as much information about your subscribers as you can, but if you want to do it right, you need to do it subtly. Enter progressive profiling. What this clever little feature allows you to do is ask for information incrementally rather than all at once, thereby engaging with your subscribers in a slow and steady manner.

How it works is like this:

1. When a visitor first lands on your site and wants to sign up for your newsletter, only ask for their name, surname and email address. This is all you need to start building a basic profile of them.
2. The next time they return to the website, prompt a few more questions such as their industry and job title. On their following visit, ask them the name of their company, city and or country. Subsequent questions to this could be what their interests are and what they would like to receive from you. What’s key here is that because you are only asking two or three questions at a time your abandon rate is low.

Remember to reconfirm your privacy policy each time a subscriber converts, and reassure them that any data you gather is used to make sure your email campaigns remain relevant to them.

One of the great benefits of this tactic is that with each new interaction you find out valuable information about your subscriber. At the same time, they don’t feel uncomfortable with an intimidating sign up form because the process is handled over a number of stages, at their own pace. The result, everyone’s happy. You get the information you need and the subscriber gets their newsletter (or whatever it happens to be).

Naturally, to keep your subscribers coming back for more and happy to give out personal details at each interaction, you need to be offering truly unique and relevant content from the start.  You can read more about keeping (newsletter) content relevant here and great ideas for content here.

The process of setting up progressive profiling questions might involve a little bit more PT, but there is no doubt that it allows you to develop a strong online relationship with your customer, even if it is over a longer period of time.

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.

Conversion Rate Optimization (CRO) describes the process of creating an experience for a website or landing page visitor with the explicit goal of encouraging them to perform a conversion of sorts, be it signing-up for a newsletter, downloading a report or white paper or making a purchase. This isn’t as easy as it appears (go figure!) and marketers use heaps of tactics to persuade people to part with their closely guarded email addresses and/or hard earned money. Tantalizing copy and eye-catching websites and landing pages form part of their modus operandi.

Just to clear any uncertainty, your conversion rate is worked out at the number of people who perform a desired action divided by the total number of people who landed on your site. Unfortunately, conversion rates are generalised (not targeted at all) and are therefore not always considered an accurate indication of the success of your email campaign. Therefore, many marketers are now focused on the pretesting stage of CRO which helps ensure that all campaigns are highly optimized. With this approach, a lot of time is spent understanding exactly who the audience is and what they want and expect before creating highly targeted messages for each group within their audience.

The pretesting stage might include researching:

•             Demographics

•             Geographic location

•             Characteristics

•             Awareness of your company (or product/service)

•             What the customer is looking for

•             What they expect from you

•             If they are already repeat buyers or frequent visitors to the site

•             How they reached your site (referral, PPC, organic search etc.)

All of this information enables marketers to gain an in depth look at their customers which in turn creates a greater chance of increased conversion rates.

Clearly, conversion rates are a vital metric of any email campaign, so we’ve looked at a few ways that you can help to optimize yours.

1. You really do need to have an awesome landing page

Pay extra special attention to detail here. Your design needs to be crisp, clear, bold and eye catching – but keep it uncluttered and triple check it to make sure it doesn’t have any unnecessary copy or links that might distract the visitor from performing the desired action. Importantly, as with most things email marketing related, what does your call to action say? Does it stand out? Is it easy to find and follow? Make it clear to visitors exactly what you want them to do and keep the process painless.

2. Gently welcome your new subscribers – don’t smother them

Once they have converted, resist the temptation to start sending them promotional emails immediately. A simply welcome email shortly after they have signed up is all that’s necessary for now. In it, remind them exactly what they have signed up for and what they can expect to receive from you in the future. Also mention again that the privilege is completely free and that they can opt-out easily at any time. People don’t like to be backed into corners so it’s important they know they are not obliged to anything. In the beginning, while you are still ‘courting’ your new subscribers so to speak, send them 3 or 4 newsletters before you send any promotional emails. This way they get to know you a little better and should feel more comfortable when it comes to buying from you in the (near) future. High conversion rates are a strong indication of the type of online relationship you have with your customers, by nurturing them from the start, it helps build loyalty in the long run.

3. Quality products that offer value trumps

If you aren’t 100% satisfied and proud of your product and its benefits to your customers, then why should they be comfortable buying it from you? If someone buys something from you that’s substandard or faulty and they have trouble replacing it or making you aware of the problem, then they’ll never buy from you again. On top of this you can rest assured everyone they know will soon hear about your service too, and not in the way you want. If you’re going to do something then do it right from the beginning and don’t compromise on your products or service. Provide the best you can afford and you’ll soon see your list of loyal customers (and your profits) growing.

4. Content needs to be catchy and succinct

The best email newsletter design and product offering in the world won’t do you much good if your content hasn’t been given thought. Short, sharp and snappy is what you want to aim for and yes, by all means include one or two relevant images, but bear in mind that most people have images disabled on their email and especially on mobile devices. Your aim is to get your message across without having to resort to lengthy text, which distracts your readers and leaves them feeling bored and disinterested. If you have a lot you want to say, rather insert a ‘click here for more information’ link in your message that will direct subscribers to your website. People’s attention span is notoriously short when it comes to promotional emails so you need be as quick and clear as possible and try to ensure that this is all done above the fold. No pressure or anything, but the faster you learn to do this effectively the better it is for you in the long run.

5. Give them great reasons to convert

Every now and again it’s a thoughtful gesture to send out gifts to your customers, to let them know that you really do care and appreciate their loyalty. Give them the option of an interesting and useful e-book, a free software download that will make their online lives easier, a coupon they can redeem immediately offline or online, or even a discount voucher for the next time they purchase something from you. If you aim to do this every few months not only will it endear you to your regular customers but also to those who might slowly be losing interest in you, in which case it’s a great way to win them back and remind them of just why they signed up in the first place (because you’re a great company of course!)

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.

At some point along the line, you might have bought an email list, or at least been tempted to buy one. This is bad idea for two reasons. Firstly, they are undoubtedly filled with inactive, non-existent email addresses and spam traps and secondly, it’s borderline illegal, so forget that idea.

The only way that you can truly ensure that you have a targeted email list is to build it up from scratch with people who have opted-in to receive your emails, which automatically means they’re genuinely interested in what you have to say and offer. It’s important to remember quality over quantity in terms of how big your list is and in this case bigger isn’t necessarily better. You might have a huge list with low click-through-rates (CTR) and conversions, which means you’re spending wasted money targeting inactive or disinterested subscribers.

Fear not! Building up a relevant and highly valuable email database isn’t as daunting as it sounds and there are a number of ways you can do this for free or for very little money.

Firstly, you need to create a (short) subscription form so visitors to your site can sign up for your email offerings. This form needs to be highly visible and it’s not a bad idea to have a version of it on each page of your website. At this stage, only ask for the person’s name, email address and company name so they can’t be put off by too many questions. Be sure to follow it up with a confirmation email that they have to click to confirm their subscription – also known as double opt-in. Once they’ve signed up, follow up with a brief ‘welcome’ email that reiterates what they can expect to receive from you and give them the option of forwarding or sharing your email with friends, which will of course expand your email database even more. Remember to include the direct link to your sign up page in the message that gets forwarded.

Run a competition on your website. People are always interested in free goodies. The actual competition can be anything – best article, best photo, best design, best strategy, basically whatever is relevant to your industry. What can you put up for grabs? Techie products, software or a great programme always goes down a treat. The catch is that anyone who wants to enter has to give their email address, and sign up for your newsletter in the process.

Contribute your relevant industry articles to various online magazines and blog sites, thereby building a profile for you and your company and establishing yourself as an expert in the field. Almost all sites that accept freelance contributions allow you to have links to your website or email address for people to click on. Take it one step further and include a link to sign up for your newsletter, offering great insider information, updates, advice and promotions.

Seduce them with special offers on your sign up page. This isn’t quite the same as a once off competition, but rather, in exchange for signing up to your newsletter and divulging their precious email address, they’re getting a ‘gift’ so to speak. This could be a discount, coupon or voucher that they can use immediately, an interesting e-book that you’ve created or perhaps a month free premium membership for your website or one that you know is trending at the moment.

Use social media networks (Twitter, Facebook, LinkedIn) to encourage people to sign up for your newsletter (or whatever it is that you want to promote), then include a direct link to that sign-up page so they can check it out straightaway.

Online and offline, use each point of contact you have with a customer as an opportunity to let them know about your newsletter. This means including links to sign-up on all invoices, business cards, brochures, advertising, feedback forms and surveys.

If you are in a position to, run a PPC campaign. Create a purposeful and hard to ignore landing page that encourages visitors to sign up when they click through on your PPC campaign. Once again, keep it simple and straightforward. Name, email address, company (if necessary) and a big bold button they can’t miss.

Include an invite to sign up in all your email signatures and make sure the process is quick and painless. If you are already communicating with customers on a regular basis, then you probably have or are in the process of, developing a relationship with them, in which case inviting them to sign up should be a cinch.

It might sound like a lot that you have to do just to get people to sign up, but it really is the best way and you may find that it only requires a minor adjustment to what you are currently doing now. It isn’t necessary to immediately incorporate all of these suggestions, by all means start with two or three and see how that goes. You can develop your ‘sign up’ campaign as and when you need and you’ll soon find your (highly targeted) list growing at a healthy rate.

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.

CAN-Spam defines a transactional or ‘relationship’ message as any email that facilitates, completes or confirms a commercial transaction that a recipient agreed to enter into with the sender. It is said that no other message is as personal, relevant or anticipated and as a result, transactional emails generally see open rates of 47% and click through rates (CTR’s) of 20%. Compared to commercial messages, which on average have open rates of 31% and CTR’s of just 6%, it’s easy to understand why marketers are including transactional emails in their overall e-marketing strategy – it provides an additional platform to create awareness for your company.

Traditionally, transactional emails are triggered by the following events:

• Purchase confirmations / customer order processes
• Shipping notices
• Product recall
• New accounts
• Expired subscriptions
• Membership
• Account balance information

A good transactional email will always describe the event in detail, use language that makes the customer feel good about the action they have taken, invite them back to the website for more information or to expand on the event, and provide contact information for any questions or concerns they might have.

There are however, further features and best practices that you can incorporate to help ensure that you maximise the potential of your transactional email.

1. Always use a valid, existing email address and avoid having ‘no-reply’ in the ‘from’ line. This makes it easier for the recipient to identify the sender and to reply immediately if they have any questions.
2. Use the subject line to remind customers who you are and what the purpose of your email is. An easy example could be: ‘Oliver Bonas – Payment Confirmation’.
3. Express your gratitude and thank your customer for their purchase, no matter how big or small the order. It’s quite common for this to be one of the first sentences of your email.
4. Anticipate any questions that customers might have. What different ways can they follow up on their purchase? Then, make it easy for them to do so.
5. Keep the copy easy to read and scan through. Sentences should be short and clear and don’t be shy to use bullet points if need be.
6. Remember a strong call to action. What action does your customer have to perform next?
7. A purchase is personal no matter what, so personalise your transactional email also. This can be something simple, such as: ‘Dear Ms Smith or Dear Susan’.
8. Make sure your company logo is easy to see and recognise. Many spammers use fake transactional emails as their weapon of choice and if your customer can’t or doesn’t recognise the email immediately, it may well get deleted.
9. Include any data that the customer might require to complete the transaction. This might include billing information, or details they would need if they want to change an order or update their profile or preferences.
10. Include a privacy statement. Make sure that it’s detailed and inform your customer about what you intend to do with the details they have divulged to you (hint – keep them to yourself)
11. Clearly state all terms and conditions of their purchase. This should include any information regarding payment, exchanges, returns, shipping etc.
12. An easily located link to your website, in case they would like more information from you.
13. Maintain an HTML format; nearly 60% of all transactional emails are created this way. While you want your email to be easy on the eye, the copy is what’s most important so keep that in mind. Include one or two relevant images but make sure the email still downloads quickly and is easy to read.
14. You can include promotional content in your transactional email, as long as the latter is the most prominent and remains Above the Fold. The transactional information is of course the objective of your email so don’t lose focus and be tempted use it as a platform for a full on promotion. Having said that, according to Ecommerce Benchmark Guide, 57% of consumers have a positive view of marketing content in transactional emails as long as the transactional component is readily seen and the marketing content provides information that is relevant.

In conclusion, it’s important to bear in mind that because transactional emails are so highly anticipated, they get opened more often. Therefore each one is an opportunity for you to create awareness, reinforce your brand and drive deeper customer relationships.

B2B Marketing is the practice of facilitating the sale of a product or service to other companies or organizations that in turn resell them; use them as components in products or services that they offer, or use them to support their operations – thanks Wiki. As with most marketing drives, the purpose of B2B marketing is to bring in new business and generate qualified sales leads. As in real life, your B2B email campaign needs to mirror the same behaviour as your face-to-face meetings with a potential client. Keep the tone sincere and professional and state clearly and simply what you are offering and what benefit it has to the recipient.

Examples of B2B email campaigns might include trying to coax your subscribers to sign up for a free trial, invite them to an event, participate in a conference or webinar or offer expert advice and tips on relevant marketing strategies. Even though what you are offering may genuinely be a great deal or opportunity, if your recipient ignores or deletes your message immediately, then what’s the point? As with any email marketing campaign, a B2B subject line needs to grab your reader’s attention and encourage them to open it and take action. Once they do, it’s especially important that you follow all forwards and new opt-ins, which count towards your sales leads.

We’ve outlined 5 of the most popular B2B email marketing best practices and followed them up with 5 examples of great subject lines, so that you have an idea of what works and what doesn’t.

1. Know who you are targeting: You can get a lot of valuable information about a company just from viewing their website. Is it full of graphics? Then go ahead and include a few relevant images in your campaign. Is it mainly composed of text? Then follow a similar style with your message. Customizing your email according to the business you are targeting won’t go un-noticed by your recipient and you are far more likely to start seeing the results you desire if you do so.
2. Keep content relevant, specific and concise: State your offer openly and without reservation right from the beginning of your email message, and certainly keep it Above the Fold. Maintain a professional tone at all times and as always, don’t forget to include a strong, clear call to action that is easily visible. By keeping the content short and ensuring that it opens and downloads quickly, you also appeal to those who are likely to view their email on a mobile device. This option is fast becoming very popular and is worth taking into consideration.
3. Know how to reach the level you want: Quite obvious, but often ignored. If you want your email to get to the CEO or MD then don’t send it to the most junior employee. Here, your ‘from’ name is incredibly important, one that is recognized and relevant will correspond to an email that is relevant and therefore important. Realize that a ‘from’ name is more likely to resonate with a person in power if it’s from a person in power.
4. Know what your B2B customer wants: Because your customer is a business and not a consumer, their interests are different and bombarding them with the latest offers, discounts and sale items is probably not going to get their attention. This is because the B2B audience don’t generally spend their own money so an offer for a coupon off their next purchase is wasted. You need to give them something they can use and something that adds value. Open access to a VIP event or an upgraded status on a favoured networking site are just two unique ideas you could try.
5. Create a follow up campaign: By tracking and using your analytics, you can get a much better idea of who to re-target and how to devise a more relevant strategy. Be sure to only send out one follow-up though. Be respectful of a person’s time, especially if they are a busy corporate, and don’t send countless emails telling them that they are missing out. If they are interested, they will respond. If they haven’t after the second email, then let it go.

Right, so now you have an idea of which best practices to follow, take a look at these 5 top performing subject lines, as given from numerous marketers who count them as their most successful. We’ve chosen these particular lines because they are descriptive, clear and professional in tone.

1. July home sales increased 12 %; median home price declined 19.6 %
2. Complimentary Webinar: (insert webinar name and details)
3. Success Tip: # Ways to a Better (XXX)
4. Save Money and Look Like a Start to Your Boss
5. Event Registration Today: (name of event) (date)

And here are a few that weren’t successful, note the ‘spam’ words and long, boring text.

• Free Evaluation of ABC Encrypted Portable Drive
• Data Company Adds Cascaded Replication to DR Infrastructure
• EFG Company: Request for Meeting
• Meeting Request: Introducing our new product
• XYZ data centers: High density collocation & Managed Server / Storage Solutions

These days, all good email marketing solutions come ready quipped with a campaign builder that helps you put your email message together from start to finish. This of course takes much of the hard work out of the equation and is particularly useful if you are a ‘newbie’ and have never done anything like it before. However, while an email marketing service can do a very good job of creating a beautiful looking campaign, what it can’t do (yet) is optimize it for you.

Optimizing your email is one of the best ways to increase conversions, traffic and interest and you should look to optimize each new campaign that you send out. Look at it as a ‘refining process’, and continuously assess and make small, yet valuable improvements that will drive ever better results with each new email.

What we’ve outlined here are 5 ways that you can optimize your email campaign to help ensure that you reach those desired results.

1. Let’s start with your ‘subject’ and ‘from’ line.

We could dedicate an entire article to this topic alone. To sum it up though, the ‘subject’ line should immediately capture your reader’s attention, and the ‘from’ line needs to come from an existing, valid email address and should be easily identified by the recipient. You should aim to personalise each of these lines. With the subject line, you can include the person’s name and you should specify clearly what the reader can expect when they open your email, all in less than 50 characters. Creating an effective subject line is actually quite an art and there is a fine balance between choosing SPAM safe trigger words and those words causing your email to land up in the junk/spam folder. With the ‘from’ line, you should include your name or the name of your company or both even. If people recognise or are familiar with who is sending the email, they are more likely to trust it and open your message.

2. Secondly, keep your copy relevant, succinct and punchy

Just because this forms the main part of your message, it’s no reason to go overboard with overly long, boring content. Ideally, aim to include all vital information on a single screen Above the Fold and keep the purpose of your email in mind, are you offering, promoting, selling or getting people to sign up? Your copy needs to be relevant, valuable, short and succinct, with the benefits clearly stated. You’ll also want to make sure that it’s easy to scan so use bullet points if necessary and avoid overly sophisticated language. Now is not the time to try and impress them with your lexical range. If you do have a lot of information to convey, rather create a link to your website or landing page so that if your subscribers want, they can read more about your company there.

3. Next, make sure your landing page takes readers exactly where they need to be

If they have just clicked on a ‘sign up here’ button, then take them directly to that page on your website, not just to your home page, where they can become distracted and exit without making any conversions. Studies have shown that if a headline directly reflects on the landing page, it has a favourable boost on conversions.

4. A strong, clear call to action

It might seem like an obvious point, but is your call to action clear, bold and easy to locate on the page? You can test different placements and have this button at the bottom, middle or top of the page and see which results in a higher CTR. Join Now, Sign Up Here, Call Us, Email Us – your call to action needs to be short, sweet, easily understood and quick to locate.

5. Graphics and images add value to an email

Now that your reader has been tempted to open your email after reading the hard to resist subject line, don’t bore them to death with text heavy copy. Short paragraphs interspersed with clever, relevant images add to the value of your message and can elicit emotional and psychological responses that complement your email and keep your readers interested. Having said that, ensure that your pictures have been compressed and resized for email and that they load fast. Also, don’t assume that everyone is on broadband and take into consideration the fact that some of your recipients might choose to open their emails on mobile devices – iPhones, Blackberry and Android to name a few. To be on the safe side, use Alt text to describe an image, in case it doesn’t load. You won’t gain any friends with an email that takes 10 minutes to open correctly and there aren’t many second chances in the email marketing game.

Once you have optimised your email along the lines of the suggestions mentioned, it’s important that you do extensive split A/B testing, which can be conducted on every component of your email. Testing your newsletter has many benefits and will, amongst other things;

• Determine which email version is most user friendly and accurately meets your subscribers needs and expectations.
• Improves the overall performance of your campaign in terms of opens, clicks, conversions and sales

In conclusion, remember that optimization doesn’t finish once you have sent out your campaign. You need to constantly assess your results, see what’s working and what can be improved on. You’ll soon find that the more you polish your campaigns, the more positive results you can expect to get.

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.

There is a much to be said for implementing ‘best practices’ in email marketing. Many practitioners adhere to them religiously; others choose to ignore them completely and further still, there are those who claim that so-called best practices have become obsolete and are no longer relevant. As with most things in life, best practices evolve over time and can be adapted to suit your specific requirements as and when you need, so you can see why people are divided in their opinion.

In the e-marketing industry almost everyone has their own list of what they deem ‘best practices’, in other words, what has worked for them in the past and what is working for them right now. We’ve summed up some of the best of these, here they are:

1. Don’t buy email addresses. It will do nothing for you in the short or long term and chances are the people on the list aren’t even your desired target market. You are  much better off developing and building up your subscriber list the good old fashioned way – by diligently collecting data from people who have signed up to your newsletters via the sign up form on your website.

2. Make signing up simple and straight forward. This goes for the actual sign up link, which should be clear and easy to find on the page, and the sign up form.  Remember initially, all you need is a name and email address to get the ball rolling. Be very cautious about sending potential customers to complete a full registration form. It can put them off quickly and this can affect your opt-in rate drastically.

3. Tell them what they can expect to read in your newsletters and how frequently they will receive them. Also let them know if they can expect to receive other campaigns from you that might be of interest to them. If you let them know exactly what your intentions are, they are less likely to become irritated – and possibly unsubscribe – from an email they weren’t expecting or don’t know they signed up for.

4. State your privacy policy clearly. All too often this is simply a link right at the bottom of the page that lays out the terms of the policy in fine print that no-one can read. All you really need to state is that you won’t sell, disclose or pass-on their details unknowingly, so make sure this information stands out. Remember, this is your personal guarantee and failing to deliver on this policy may have very negative and irreparable consequences for you.

5. Send a welcome email after someone has subscribed. The internet is a rather ‘faceless’ medium, so this gesture goes a long way to making people feel that their email has been received and their action was successful. Sending a welcome email has numerous benefits. Besides building trust, it often carries a ‘double opt-in’ link, so you can be sure that the person who has subscribed really is interested in what you have to offer.

6. Keep your content relevant. People will unsubscribe immediately if what you have promised them is not what they are opening in their inbox. Have a look at our article on ‘Keeping Content Relevant’ for interesting ideas you can use to help ensure that your newsletter appeals to your subscribers and keeps them opening your emails.

7. Know when to send your campaign. Do your research and find out when it’s the best time for your email to be received. Obvious times like Monday morning or Friday afternoon are out of the question. Think about it logically and practically. When are you more likely to open and act on an email that prompts further response from you?

8. Don’t spam, ever. This is a sure fire way to lose your subscribers trust, loyalty and valued email address. Check your campaign for spam before you even think about hitting ‘send’. Spam filters are a welcome prerequisite and a quick check is all it takes to make sure you are abiding by the CAN-SPAM act and that your email marketing strategies fall well within its regulations.

9. Test, Test, Test. Just because your campaign looks absolutely fabulous when you send it to yourself, doesn’t mean that it’s going to come out looking the same on everyone else’s email. Is it going to be opened using Outlook, Yahoo or Gmail? Test as many options as you can and adapt it accordingly. A great way to ensure that your subscriber opens your email the way you intended is to ask them what format they would like to receive it in. You can then go about segmenting your list depending on what they requested.

10. Lastly, track and take note of everything. Delivery rates, open rates, click through rates and conversions all offer vital data that you can use to improve your campaign and techniques.

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

2. Keep your content concise and to the point.

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

3. Highlight key words.

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

4. Keep it interesting.

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

5. Create links to other relevant content/articles.

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

A few points to consider:

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

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

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