Posts Tagged ‘email effectiveness’

« Older Entries

The most important email optimization elements

Monday, October 3rd, 2011

Marketers know there is no one formula for an ideal email marketing campaign. The secret to success is testing and optimizing emails. In-depth analysis of previous results and well-considered changes in email elements can significantly boost your email marketing ROI.

Marketing research firm MarketingSherpa has published marketing research chart on top email campaign elements routinely tested to optimize performance. The chart shows 9 email elements that are tested the most in order to increase the return on email marketing efforts.

The more you are in email marketing, the more you understand the importance of studying analytic and making some changes over time to increase ROI.

The best way is to take a step back and look at your message form the customer’s perspective. So, let’s have a walk in our customer’s shoes. What questions could he ask when receiving a newsletter?

Subject line – Why should I open your email?

As opening of email depends on the subject line, it is the most popular element to test and 90% of email marketing practitioners focus on that.
Vary with word order leaving the most important ones at the beginning, try questions, buzzwords and active voice inviting people to take action. And certainly write them short and adjust for mobile phones to increase open rates of mobile readers (more about subject lines).

Message – Why should I read your email?

The majority or 64% of marketers share the opinion the message should be regularly analyzed and tested in order to boost the effectiveness of email campaigns.
After the subscriber has swallowed the subject line and opened the email, he desperately seeks approval for this action in the message.
Test on the first words and phrases in the message. Make sure they are linked with the subject line. And write message in active voice to make people take a further step.

Calls to action – Why should I click on the link?

Almost as many marketers (61%) test on calls to action. It’s very important testing element because clicking on a link is already a half of all campaign success.
Try different wording (people prefer „learn more”, not „click here”) and placement (instead of traditional „at the end” use F-shape across the page). Make sure there is only one call to action, however links can be several (read our article about call to action).

Layout and images – Is this email eye-catching?

According to MarketingSherpa chart, more than a half of marketers have tested email layout and images to improve campaign results.
Test on how the text is structured and what kind of photos you place in email. Bullets, paragraphs, enough free space, one or two pictures stressing the message would be the best choice.

Day of week and time of day sent – Do I want and do I have time to open your email now?

A little bit less than a half of marketers search for an ideal day and time when to send newsletters.
Firstly, identify the profile of your subscriber. If they are too different, better segment them. Send emails to business people on working hours on Tuesdays to Thursdays. Usual customers you can email on Fridays to Sundays when they have free time (read in our blog when to sent emails).

Landing pages – Is your offer worth it?

40% of marketers test and optimize landing pages to increase email marketing ROI.
Here you can test on layout, text, call to action and other details. But be sure you include a clear call to action, tell the subscribers exactly what is your offer and what kind of action you want them to take (more about landing pages).

Personalization – Is it relationship between us?

The same number of marketers pay attention to personalization. Personalization is not only adding subscriber’s name at the beginning and your personal signature at the end of email. Segment your subscribers into groups to send them relevant emails. The more personalized information you send, the closer relationship you demonstrate (read about email personalization).

From line – Do I know the sender of the email?

Although from line also has impact on open rates, only a third of marketers test on that. Change the company name to your personal name to grow the effectiveness of results (more about from lines).

In comparison with last year

A year ago, we published the previous MarketingSherpa chart on elements marketers test in order to optimize email campaigns. If we compare the two charts, we see tested email elements are the same – subject lines, offers and calls to action, send time and day of week, creative copy and layouts, landing pages, and from lines.

But the importance of testing elements has jumped dramatically. In 2010, 48% of marketers tested subject lines and 36% were willing to test them. This year, 90% of marketers have included testing subject lines in their to-do lists. The same increase for other elements. Seems all who had planned to test email elements did it, were satisfied with results and now continue to do this.

Conclusion

Some elements are easier to test than others. In campaign statistics, you see open rates and click through rates, so you can estimate your subject line and call to action link. While you can’t precisely know how effective your layout or images were. Only regular testing and optimizing can lead you to high ROI.

Just don’t rush by changing each element every time you send campaigns. If you make changes, give yourself some time to observe the impact of changes and draw conclusions.

Tags: , , , , , , , ,
Posted in Campaign Optimization | 1 Comment »

Email deliverability: global situation and tips for improvement

Wednesday, September 28th, 2011

Last week, Return Path, the world’s leading email reputation monitoring company, published Global Email Deliverability Benchmark Report of the first half of 2011. The report shows that only four out of every five or 81% of permission-based email gets delivered to the inbox. Of the rest 19%, 7% of email lands in a spam or junk folder and 12% of email is blocked by ISP level filtering and simply goes missing.

Global situation

Return Path reviews data from 149 ISPs worldwide, and the research indicates deliverability rates vary by each region.

North America shows the highest inbox placement rate (IPR) with 86% of emails delivered exactly to recipients. Europe ranks second with 2% less than US and Canada (84%) but Asia and the Asia Pacific territories and Central and Latin America go under the global average, accordingly 78% and 62%.

Why so many emails do not reach the inbox?

Bounce rate myth

Marketers continue to spread a widely believed „lie” if email doesn’t bounce it reaches the inbox and hide a little known „secret” that it’s not exactly true. Even if email gets sent, for various reasons it can land to spam or junk folder. Recipients usually don’t read spam messages, so we can consider email actually is not delivered.

Deliverability failures

Even though deliverability problems cost a lot of money, marketers don’t pay enough attention to that. Focusing just on revenue comming from campaigns, marketers do not think how to increase email marketing ROI. However, ignoring deliverability failures is a real lost of money.

Impact of new inbox technologies

Return Path analyzed a panel of sample 30 000 Gmail mailboxes and indicated that 91% of emails arrived in the inbox, while 9% were missing – blocked before reaching the mailbox. Moreover, 81% of Gmail mailboxes had priority inbox enable, but only 17% of emails in the inbox were marked with priority.

Business inboxes are particularly difficult to reach because they are protected by systems like Postini, Symantec and MessageLabs. Only 80% of emails go through these filtering methods.

Missing email marketing best practices

A lot of marketers still don’t follow the best practices, for example, sending only permission-based emails, including unsubscribe link or cleaning old email lists. Return Path revealed that even top brands fail in implementing the best practices.

How to improve email delivery?

Monitor email delivery

  • follow spam complaints and unsubscribe rate that point to the bad quality of campaigns
  • ask for advice your e-mail marketing consultant to fix delivery problems

Clean your list

  • check spelling mistakes of bounce emails and correct them (.gmal, .ocm etc.)
  • delete hard bounce emails from your list (non-existing email addresses and blocked emails)
  • remove maintenance addresses (support, noreply, admin etc.)
  • if your list is more than 6 month old, make general data base cleaning to remove non-existing emails (Mailigen offers the service)

Ask for permission

  • when making a list, use double opt-in to be sure about existing email addresses and willingness to receive emails
  • if using email list for a long time, ask subscribers for permission confirmation
  • practice re-engangement campaigns to involve inactive contacts
  • always include unsubscribe link in emails

Send relevant information

  • send information that people have subscribed for to avoid spam complaints
  • segment subscribers in groups to send even more tergeted emails
  • avoid spammy subject lines and content

Use professional email service providers

Together with the best email marketing practices, your campaigns have more than good chances to reach the inbox.

Deliverability on Mailigen service

Email marketing service Mailigen is proud about its high deliverability rates. Taking into consideration the best technical practice, Mailigen shows its inbox placement rate of 86% that is similar to the global leader North America and higher than Europe average rate.

If you have any questions or want to increase your deliverability rate, please contact our consultants. We will be more than happy to help you.

Tags: , , , , ,
Posted in Email Deliverability | No Comments »

Care about email list quality, not quantity. How to increase the value of your email list?

Tuesday, September 13th, 2011

When you start doing email marketing, what are you proud of? I would guess, you like to see your email list is growing bigger and bigger. But after some time, you have to return to the question – does your email list size matter? Generally no. Quality certainly does. Ask yourself one very important question, is your list engaging with your emails?

What is the point of having X number of contacts if open rate is only 2%? Some days ago, The Direct Marketing Association released the Q2 2011 North America Email Trends and Benchmarks Results on key email metrics. Compiled from more than 7 billion emails, the quarterly analysis shows average open rate is 22.2 percent and average click rate is 5.2 percent. Of course, each email marketing campaign is unique and sometimes metrics do not matter. However, it is a great way to compare and measure your email marketing campaigns against averages.

The quarterly report shows a 4.8 percent decrease in average open rates and a 0.7 percent decrease in average click rates from Q1 2011. The reason of the decreases is not that marketers make worse campaigns. It is rather the fact email lists have grown up to a giant size and a huge part of lists are no more active; therefore, metrics decrease. If so, it is time to review your email list, get rid of inactive contacts and increase the value of your list. Smaller, but qualitative and targeted email list can be more fruitful than huge email list whose audience is less interested in the content.

What indicates the lack of quality in your email list?

  • Low open rate. You send emails to inactive email addresses, recipients do not recognize the sender or the subject line is not eye-catching at all.
  • Low click-through rate. The content of email is not attractive enough to read it and act according to call to action by clicking on links.
  • High unsubscribe rate. The content is not only uninteresting but even annoying or totally irrelevant to what people have subscribed for.
  • High bounce rate, a lot of spam reports and abuse reports. Your email list contains a lot of non-existing addresses, people have not subscribed for your list or are totally disappointed.

The reason why your email list is missing quality can be you did not follow the best email marketing practices.

  • Bought email list or use 3rd party list.
  • Did not ask permission to your contacts for sending them newsletters.
  • Did not choose the right place to gather subscribers. For example, in a forum where almost nobody is interested in your specific business.
  • Used material bonuses to motivate people for subscribing. If you do that, use relevant bonuses, for example, offer free consultation before buying your product, not a ticket to the cinema. It will show whether a person is really interested in your issue.
  • Got subscribers using tricky methods. For example, when a person registers for something, there is already checked the option he wants to receive newsletters, and of course the check box and explanation are so tiny that nobody pays attention to that. It is better to enlarge this check box and invitation to subscribe, move it to a visible place and let people to choose. Therefore you will be sure about their interest.

In short, all the time you have been focusing on your email list quantity and the quality have suffered.

What indicates qualitative email list?

  • Permission given by subscribers to send them email newsletters; therefore, you know you have targeted audience.
  • Double opt-in that ensures a person really wants to sign up, email exists and subscription is not by mistake.
  • Entering email twice in order to be sure there are no spelling mistakes in email addresses.

What can you do to increase the value of your email lists?

  • Rule No 1 – clean your email list from non-existing and inactive contacts.
  • Rule No 2 – make re-engagement campaigns for inactive ones in order to interest them again in your issue.
  • Rule No 3 – know the time to say “goodbye”, meaning if certain contacts do not want to engage in your issue, let them go and unsubscribe them manually.

Big cleaning day – what to start with?

  • Use database cleaning from non-existing addresses (Mailigen offers the service).
  • Make a re-engagement campaign for inactive ones, for example, asking for re-permission, sending a survey in order to find out their interests, or offering a special promotional benefit (see our article on re-engagement campaigns). From now, you should treat them differently.
  • Use autoresponders for inactive contacts. It is a great way to save your time by sending reminding emails at a fixed intervals if a person do not open emails or do not click on any links (check our article about Mailigen autoresponders).
  • If re-engagement campaigns do not success, let inactive ones go and exclude them from your list.
  • Use surveys for active contacts to get their feedback and than act according to the results. Do not miss a moment people get dissatisfied with your activities (read our article about online surveys).
  • If you have a large list, use surveys to segment your active contacts and offer them various email content regarding their interests.
  • If your business is periodic nature, for example, maternity clothing, bridal issue, make sure on a regular basis people are still in the topic. Remember: opt-ins are not forever.
  • Instead of spending energy on inactive contacts, focus more on active ones to get them satisfied with you.

Last tip

Just do not rush with inconsiderate cleaning. If a person does not buy your product after receiving your first email, that does not mean he will not do this after the seventh. Maybe he will not buy at all. But maybe instead of it he always forwards your emails to his friends and share the information on social networks (see our article on Mailigen social sharing).

Tags: , , , ,
Posted in Email List Management | No Comments »

How email marketing metrics can help you to make your campaigns more efficient

Tuesday, March 22nd, 2011

Email Marketing MetricsData from email marketing reports is often misjudged and even misused. Instead of using statistics to improve campaigns, marketers often use email marketing metrics to show the highest quarter (i.e. their boss) that email marketing is, in fact, efficient.

Statistics are too often used to make excuses, not to benefit email marketing campaigns. For example, to avoid misuse of statistics, marketing expert Avinash Kaushik suggests an interesting approach to email marketing metrics: apply a “so what?” test to each and every web metric you look at.

Email marketing is such an efficient marketing method because it, unlike other marketing channels, gives you hard to ignore, straight-to-the-point numbers on how you are doing with your email marketing campaigns.

A few email marketing metrics you can use to make your campaigns more efficient:

Conversion rate

The conversion rate is a down-to-earth statistic, which tells you how much the clients are investing in you.

The conversion rate is often mistaken for a meaningful email marketing statistic by itself. Well, it is nice if subscribers like your products, sure.
But if you sell $500 worth of products to 1% of your list, or $50 worth of products to 2% of your list, the conversion rate — although higher in the latter case — can lead you to believe that you are doing better in terms of money.

Here’s a well-known “secret”. You can boost the conversion rate by offering samples of your products, or trials if you are offering services. Give your clients a taste of what you really are.

Delivery rate

The email delivery rate is naturally amongst the most important email marketing’s metrics. Spam complaints, network failures and mistyped addresses all contribute to worsening your delivery rate. The industry standard delivery rate varies, depending on the niche, but it can be as high as 96%, and the overall number is continually improving in the industry.

To improve the delivery rate, follow basic email list hygiene procedures — purge your list from mistyped addresses, and reengage inactive subscribers. As email delivery is dependant on the quality of your email service provider, choose a reputable provider for sending your campaigns.

Open rate

The email open rate is another straight-forward statistic. The open rate is how many per cent of your subscribers (that have received your emails) actually open your emails. Now, it doesn’t mean that they read your emails — the subscribers simply open them.
The open rate tells how good you are in catching the subscriber’s attention. A good open rate also implies trust and recognition from the client.

If the recipient knows your address, he/she is likely to open the email you have sent–if the subject line is interesting, you will probably get an open as well. Also, if your email has numerous images and text, the recipient might not open the images (or they can be blocked by the email client), so you can become clueless as to whether the recipient has actually opened the email if you spice up your email with images.

Click-through rate (CTR)

The CTR of a campaign is how many subscribers from your list click on links in emails. The value is expressed in per cent. A high CTR means that you are doing good in personalizing your emails, and vice versa.

The “how do you improve your CTR?” question should be put this way: how do you write more appealing emails? You do it by making your emails personal, making your emails an experience. In short, making your emails a real conversation. For more about making articles more interesting, see our article on email personalization.

Unsubscribe rate

The unsubscribe rate, like the open rate, can signal if anything has gone wrong with your campaign. If your content has become weak, there will be a peak in unsubscribes. If your offers are too pushy, all the same.

Again, the unsubscribe rate signals that something is not right with your content. That means that you are most likely not sending what you were supposed to send to the subscriber. Segmentation, content revisions and new offers should keep the subscriber’s interest at bay.

Cost-Per-Click (CPC)

CPC is an email marketing metric that tells you how much you “pay” for each click a user makes. So let’s say your campaign costs $250 (money for copywriting, email marketing software, marketing, etc), and gets 50 clicks. You wind up paying $5 for a click — which would be quite reasonable for some businesses.

However, if you feel your CPC rate is too high, you should either reduce your costs or revise your content, emphasizing clear calls to action.

Statistics without a proper context are what they are: mere numbers; what actually counts is what you do with these numbers.

Which is the most important email marketing metric for you?

Tags: , ,
Posted in Email Marketing Metrics | No Comments »

The most important performance measures and trends in email marketing 2011

Wednesday, December 15th, 2010

In a recent survey by MarketingSherpa, more than 1100 email marketing specialists were surveyed. It concluded that the one of biggest obstacles to communication in email marketing is creating truly relevant content for email marketing campaigns.

Relevant content means increased efficiency for email marketing campaigns, but it does involve additional costs. The additional costs relate to segmenting users and creating different versions of the content.

MarketingSherpa Email Benchmark

Writing good emails is one thing, but you have to push the investment returns to the max and gain new subscribers—both are as important as creating relevant content. Investment returns and reaching new audiences are actually connected, because a good way of reaching new subscribers means a better chance of getting additional value for your effort, in the future.

Of course, a single email tactic isn’t a long-term solution. Acquiring a new subscriber doesn’t mean that the subscriber will actually become a customer. To make it happen, however, you need to pay attention to bettering your email marketing strategy. The MarketingSherpa survey also says this: one third of the participants think that the lack of an effective marketing strategy is a concern.

How to solve these issues?

A content marketing strategy

The communication with a subscriber — or a client — doesn’t end after sending an email marketing campaign. You’ll obviously send more and more email campaigns to these subscribers. However, a question remains: does the client really want to receive more emails?

Here the content plays a huge role, because it has to be written in a way that makes them weep for more from you. This is where you’ll have think outside the box, because, in order to become successful, you’ll have to send them something the subscribers truly value, not what you think would “sell best”. Besides, if the campaigns are regular and with related topics, it’ll give you additional returns—and probably make the customer stay interested.

Social media implementation

The implementation of social media into email campaigns was the hot topic of this year, simply because social media is the channel that can turn a campaign viral in no time. And that, in turn, attracts new subscribers. We expect this tendency to continue, because social media and email are quite like one another, and intertwine well. New solutions will also be found to enhance these marketing channels and synchronize them into a sole strategy.

Data analysis and evaluating the efficiency of a campaign

Email marketing software offers solutions that allow you to make conclusions about the opened emails and their click rates. However, to realize the true efficiency and make it possible to get a “real” number, there is need for an option to measure the overall return from the investment.

For that to become possible, implementing Google Analytics into future campaigns is a must—as well as setting a goal for each campaign is.

The true value of an email marketing strategy

A good email marketing strategy is the key to success, and includes everything mentioned above.

We can conclude this from the data of the MarketingSherpa survey: email marketing can be problematic, and email that has been subscribed to can still count as spam. If this happens, the fault is either in the nature of the campaign, or the content.

The email campaign content means a lot, and we can only expect that next year it will mean not less for truly effective email marketing.

Tags: , ,
Posted in Email Marketing Trends | No Comments »

Analyzing email marketing campaign results

Wednesday, November 3rd, 2010

Email Campaign Tracking & reportIf you’ve already sent an email marketing campaign, chances are that you are at least familiar with the process of email campaign tracking, and have analyzed the statistics you got from your campaign.

However, the analysis of acquired data doesn’t stop with open rates or the average clickthrough rate (CTR).

Overall analysis

When a campaign has concluded, take a look at the obvious data: the open rates and the CTR. The open rate can be somewhere from 20 to 40 percent, but we can’t give an exact number for the CTR, hence the CTR relies heavily on the composition of your content, how well you write, etc; as a rule of thumb, CTR is best measured relatively to other campaigns.

If the open rate is well below 20 percent, the campaign has failed, and you should review the fundamentals: are the “Subject” and “From” fields in order? Is your audience targeted enough? Is every single e-mail delivered or are there broken e-mail addresses?

Then have a look at the unsubscribe amount; if the number has soared without no apparent reason, you might be sending e-mails too often, or need to re-think the branding of your e-mail campaign.

The CTR is a bit controversial: if it’s high, it’s good, right?

Ultimately, you want to pay attention only to the clicks that go to a landing page. A big clickthrough rate is good, because it shows that your readers pay attention to what you have to say, though you might want to adjust the layout or the content of your e-mails if people don’t click what you want them to click.

The sending time is also crucial: are your subscribers located in a single time zone? Are they spread out? What sending time generates the most opens?

As a rule, you shouldn’t send e-mail on Monday mornings and from Friday to Sunday; around those times e-mails are more likely to drown in the already full inbox. As for the “ideal” sending time, determining it is entirely deductive–just follow what works for you and experiment a bit.

In-depth analysis

Analyzing campaigns doesn’t stop at the obvious.

Good analytics software will let you know other important factors. For example, the average time spent on the site (or not spent), is a good indicator of how well your landing page integrates with your email campaign.

If the time spent on your site is too small (or many users bounce), you might want to adjust the design and content of your landing page to look more like your e-mails do.

If the time spent on your landing page is large, but there are still few conversions, you might want to add clearer calls to action. The email call to action should create a sense of urgency within the reader; long time spent on the site indicates interest, but also shows that the readers can’t make up their minds (hint: it’s you who has to make up their minds).

What to do with your data

An email campaign report is merely a guide, from which you have to extract useful information.

You should divide your users into segments according to the data you analyzed. You could, for example, create a separate email marketing landing page for users who spend a lot of time on the landing page, and include urgent calls to action in the page.

Here you decide what you need to correct, and why. Be careful, though, and pay attention only to the “big picture”, as individual statistics are what they are: mere numbers.

Conclusion

When all is said and done, you’re finally ready to send out your new campaign. Go ahead, send it. Then learn from the results once again. E-mail marketing is a long-term process; it involves long-term thinking and focuses on long term results.

By continuously improving your campaign, you’ll be able to achieve the long-term results everyone is longing for. Each time when you analyze email campaign, you’ll become better at recognizing all the subtle things that make an e-mail marketing campaign successful.

Tags: , , ,
Posted in Campaign Optimization, Email Marketing Campaign | No Comments »

Tips for a Better Email Call to Action

Thursday, October 21st, 2010

Call to ActionE-mails are nothing without a call to action. Simply put, they have no real purpose without a call to action. The “action” you want the user to take, can vary. However, if you’re serious about your business, the place where each email ultimately leads to is a landing page.

How to “call for action”?

Email marketing’s call to action is a bit of a mind-bender. On one hand, you have a client who will never think about what you want from him, unless you make it clear. On the other hand, there is a client who’ll simply leave if you “pressure” him. Although the idea that the truth lies between the two extremes was rejected by philosophers, it still stands true for email marketing.

Some people have problems distinguishing between a clear call to action and pressuring the client to make a purchase. The first one is a practice you should employ at all times, but a “negative” sort of pressure will make you look stupid.

Basically, you should call for action by telling the recipient what to do if they’re interested. Of course, don’t hesitate to up the interest by telling the reader why he should commit to your call-to-action.

6 Tips for a Better Call to Action

Let’s jump to the tips that will help you create a better call to action:

1. Unless it’s a sales e-mail, use phrases like “learn more” instead of “click here”.

“Click here” doesn’t really give an idea of what’s inside the page you’re linking. If you must tell “click”, elaborate on the link and tell exactly what’s inside and what it offers to the one reading your e-mail. Email marketing’s call to action relies more on the informative side – most conversions are still done in landing pages.

2. The call placement.

You should position the CTA somewhere high in the page, not only in the bottom. See #6

3. Links, links, links.

People like to do things fast. First of all, adding many links in your page will save time for impulse buyers; secondly, it will give ground to questions like “what to click”.

4. Use markup to your advantage.

Bold text gets noticed easier. So does italics, to some extent. This is obvious, but is often misused or forgotten altogether.

5. Measure and analyze what gets you the most clicks.

If your campaign uses Google Analytics, try adding UTM Link tags. Add these tags to your links. For example, specify a location in the page – footer, header, body.
In time, you will see that you’re able to remove some links which don’t do much, and replace them with useful content.

6. Spread the calls to action within an F-shape across the page.

They will get more attention that way. Although a pretty old piece of research, it’s useful, nevertheless. Read more about the F reading pattern right here. Basically, be sure to remember that your links are well-placed, and informative, and then focus on everything else. Email marketings’ call to action has, however, always been less about “where to click” and more about “why to click”.

Tags: , ,
Posted in Campaign Optimization, Email Marketing Campaign | 4 Comments »

E-mail marketing for small businesses

Tuesday, September 21st, 2010

E-mail marketing is one of the best advertising means for smaller and medium-sized businesses.

Smaller businesses are often reluctant to invest money in advertising, simply because there’s not that much money they can spend.

Email Marketing Small Business

However, email marketing software is available for ridiculous prices and offers high-tier return tracking. You’ll know where every single penny went, and that is very important for a smaller advertising budget.

Furthermore, people are much more responsive when it comes to e-mail marketing, because subscribers have to  allow you to send them emails. The permission is actually a very important thing, and pretty confusing for those who are just starting.

E-mail marketing is permission-based, and usually requires the users to confirm their e-mail address when they sign up to an email newsletter. However, the permission to mail is what sets e-mail marketing apart from other direct marketing forms, because it allows you to actually build a relationship with your customers.

E-mail marketing creates brand awareness, which is useful for most, but especially local businesses. If a person knows you from your e-mails (but the person has to actually like you), that person is a lot more likely to choose your products if he or she has been given the opportunity.

E-mail marketing fits with the current marketing trends pretty well

It’s very easy to integrate Twitter, Facebook, and other social media into your campaigns. While it is questioned whether or not social media is effective at all, social sites do make it easier for the customer to communicate with you. Adding your social media streams to your emails will encourage the users to give you precious feedback–and a little buzz, too.

And lastly, most small businesses use e-mail marketing anyway. It helps them stay with a single customer for as long as possible, and is a very efficient method of marketing, not only because it’s so cheap.

So, to reiterate, this is why e-mail marketing rocks for smaller businesses:

  • E-mail marketing can track each and every penny you invest
  • E-mail marketing has the best response rates in advertising
  • It creates brand awareness (really useful for businesses that are just starting out)
  • E-mail marketing offers a chance to interact with customers and create dynamic marketing
  • Most small businesses already do it anyway

Furthermore, email lists are a great passive source of income you can count on in the long run. If you are loyal to your customers and don’t do anything too out of the line, they will respect you and choose your products for months, even years. It’s still important to acquire new subscribers though.

We aren’t saying that e-mail marketing is the holy grail we’ve all been looking for. We’re saying that e-mail marketing is pretty close to being one. You still have to do things on your own, you still have to do cutesy things with your campaigns, keep up with the developments in marketing, and actually work a lot to make your e-mail marketing campaigns successful.

Here are some quick tips if you’ve decided to try email marketing:

  1. Add a sign-up form at your website ASAP. You’ll acquire subscribers – even if you don’t send that much content yet.
  2. Add your company’s social media channels – this will help your e-mails become dynamic and offer a greater chance for the customer to interact with you
  3. Try and do some A/B split testing. Send different versions of your newsletter to different subscribers, and see which one generates better results.
  4. Know the difference between spam and permission-based email. You have to acquire permission to mail people. Don’t manually add people you don’t know to your mailing list; don’t buy e-mail lists you’ll later spam until infinity.
  5. Develop a strategy which clearly states your goals with e-mail marketing. Whether it’s simply selling more products or expanding your business globally, is entirely your call.

Tags: ,
Posted in Email Marketing | No Comments »

Testing Email Elements to Improve Campaign Effectiveness

Thursday, August 26th, 2010

In the series of charts about email marketing, this week we are looking at different elements of emails that are tested the most. Over 1,400 industry marketers have provided their input to identify which email elements they are or will be testing, in order to improve the effectiveness of their email marketing campaigns.

testing email elements

As we can see above, the most frequently tested element for long time has been “Subject” Lines. Offers and send time is being tested almost as much. Testing elements can improve significantly your email campaign results and should be done by each and every company that’s using email marketing in their business strategy.

To run full tests you do need to take in account your target market and list size, as both of the criteria has big effect on results. To produce measurable results, you need sufficient amount of data therefore you need bigger list or have to run tests over longer period of time. B2C marketers test more often different elements of email than B2B marketers.

We would like to hear from you! Are you running any tests on on your email marketing campaigns, if so what are the elements you are currently testing?

Tags: ,
Posted in Campaign Optimization, Email Marketing Reports | No Comments »

E-mail marketing is not merely advertising

Tuesday, August 24th, 2010

Direct – if not blatant – advertising has become a thing people associate with email marketing.

You know, the e-mails that swarm in after you register at a site and forget to uncheck the box that says “send me regular e-mails with promotional offers from our company”.

newsletter signup

Although such marketing is permission-based and successful in some cases and niches, there are often better things than mere promotions to send to your clients.

When someone subscribes to your list, that person allows you to send emails with the content you said you’ll send.

Now, if you were a client. Why would you want to receive countless promotion e-mails?

If you didn’t have a good enough reason (e.g. a freebie) to subscribe to a promotional email newsletter, you probably did not picture that your inbox will be filled with advertisements.

Which means that the subscribers will be confused, and some will leave or complain if you send myriad promotional letters after they’ve subscribed.

Don’t get it wrong, however. Sales emails are successful and many businesses get great results with them.

Sending sales e-mails is a short-term strategy, though. They give an offer; if a client refuses it, he’s refused it for good, and you can just as well

Newsletters, on the other hand, build trust and, often subtly, urge the client to take action over a good period of time. It just takes a little thought to distinguish between newsletters and promotional emails–and choose the one that suits your business.

Content-based newsletters escape the “all or nothing” syndrome that has plagued marketing for decades. That’s why newsletters are becoming increasingly popular.

But how do I advertise to my audience if I don’t send any advertisements?

email trust pyramidLet’s be bold for a second: we know that marketing masterminds aren’t good Samaritans. If something doesn’t bring profit, it is not viable. From this we can conclude – if marketing masterminds invented newsletters, they are profitable. And newsletters are profitable, because they build trust. (You still have to earn it, though.)

You earn trust by providing the user with good content and by not abusing your client-seller relationship. You spend trust by breaking the boundaries of your relationship with the customer by, for example, sending him unrelated advertisements.

You need to set rules of what you will send and what you won’t send to the subscriber. This doesn’t mean that you can’t include advertisements in your e-mails. You just have to give your clients value – usually with the content – that somehow makes up for the advertisements.

A simple example is a usual 300-word blog post. You can add an image advertisement at the bottom of the post. The clients shouldn’t mind this, as long as you offer something valuable to them.

A complex example is a 500-word blog post with no advertisements, but with a subtle call to action. For example, your site might focus on video games, and you could write a honest review of a recent video game… that you happen to sell through your site.

A few other examples of good content (content that builds trust):

  • Advice on the topic(s) your newsletter focuses on
  • Articles about new stuff that’s happening in your niche
  • Courses related to your niche
  • Articles that appeal to the customer’s self-esteem
  • And everything else, that will make the subscribers feel good and also offer value to them

Just be sure that you don’t overdo things if you choose sending newsletters with promotions within them. You should also be more or less consistent with the content of your e-mails.

No promotions in e-mails will build trust, but if you suddenly introduce ads, the trust will evaporate quickly. Too many promotions will make the clients think that you don’t really care about them. Keep things at balance, and everything will be fine.

(By the way, many people think that their content isn’t valuable to the subscribers or that their writing skills aren’t that great. If you’re discouraged about your content, be sure to read this eye-opening article at Copyblogger.)

What are your thoughts and experience with heavily executed and annoying advertising in newsletters? Would you like to share some of your experiences? We always welcome your comments!

Tags: , ,
Posted in Email Marketing, Tips & Tricks | No Comments »

« Older Entries