Posts Tagged ‘email tips’

Newer Entries »

Effectively use email autoresponders and follow-up emails: autoresponder tips

Wednesday, July 21st, 2010

Autoresponders are underestimated. An email autoresponder can be used to set up follow-up email which you can employ in a million ways.

Here are a few email autoresponder tips — really, a few of them.

  • email autorespondersEducate the users by sending courses about your service/product – or simply courses that are likely to be relevant to the receiver;
  • Gather online surveys to gain information from new subscribers;
  • Thank the new user for joining your service;
  • Wish the user a happy birthday;
  • Give the user advice in case of inactivity; etc.

There are, however, even more creative ways in which you can employ follow up letters.

Imagine you are selling e-books about dogs, and are giving away a free e-book for new subscribers, titled “How to take care of your dog”. After the clients have received it, you don’t simply dwell on the huge success, but send relevant, regular follow-up emails that both remind the client to actually read the book, and give additional dog care advice that involves dog training.

At the, for example, third of your five follow-up emails, you introduce the client to your new eBook, the best-selling “How to train your dog”. Voila, you have now sold a product using follow-up emails.

There are hundreds of email autoresponder tips, these few are just a fraction of them. Most of the best autoresponder uses simply involve a little creative use of the stuff you already have.

For example, do you send a welcome message to your subscribers when they sign up? Good, because most businesses do. What most businesses don’t do is load the actual welcome message with links that should interest the new subscriber. If a subscriber is new, it may be one of his first visits; why not link him to this month’s most popular posts, among them to a post where you sell something the subscriber might like?

Email autoresponders are indeed underestimated, but that’s mostly because they aren’t used to doing creative things with them. The same old same old is boring; keep that in mind and do something new.

Tags: , ,
Posted in Email Autoresponders, Tips & Tricks | 1 Comment »

The importance of the unsubscribe link

Thursday, July 15th, 2010

Never underestimate the unsubscribe link.

Although it is what it is – in many cases a lost client – you can reinforce your way of thinking and make the most out of your unsubscribes. There are many different ways to try avoiding opt-outs, but they sometimes are the only feedback you’ll ever get. And remember – no clever way of placing (or omitting for that matter) of the unsubscribe link can save against a client who has lost interest in your services or products.

email unsubscribe
You need an unsubscribe link because:

  • You want to be polite to your customers.
  • You want to comply with the CAN-SPAM act.
  • You want to remain in good terms with your clients even after they’ve left you.
  • You want to gain useful information whenever a client unsubscribes.
  • You want to keep your list clean.
  • You don’t want more bad feedback from clients who would’ve left anyway.

…and the list goes on.

Simply put, you need an unsubscribe link, and to make the most of it, you should also include a simple textbox at the opt-out link where the user can write his reasons for leaving your list. While many users will leave the text box blank, you will gain enough information from those few who fill it.

Furthermore, think about the placement of the opt-out link. The latest studies indicate that a counter-intuitive unsubscribe link at the top of your e-mails reduces the number of spam complaints. As spam complaints usually come from inactive subscribers, you could simply join them in a segment and place the link in the top of the e-mails they receive.

You can gain valuable information from unsubscribing trends. An example of this would be an opt-out rise after you’ve sent too many e-mails during a week (4-5+). If there’s a such rise in unsubscribes, it’s time to decrease the e-mail volume. Maybe you aren’t using segments when sending the information and you need to send more targeted information when you see people unsubscribing after an apparently normal campaign?

And lastly, remember that nothing is really black and white when someone unsubscribes. The client may simply have chosen a different medium (Twitter?) to communicate with you; maybe the client has too many lists he/she has subscribed to. An opt-out doesn’t mean that you list is bad. A hundred opt-outs a day could indicate something, though.

Tags: , ,
Posted in Email Deliverability, Tips & Tricks | 1 Comment »

Email List Targeting and Segmentation

Tuesday, June 15th, 2010

List segmentation is nothing new for making your conversions easier and more frequent through targeted marketing. Email is relatively new, though, and now is the perfect time to use the extensive segmentation options that modern technologies provide.

You should try and target your userbase right from the start. Include additional questions in the subscription form, such as the subscriber’s location, interests, what products they’re interested in, et cetera. Furthermore, if your platform allows it, you can create an unique code for each subscriber – a code that you include in the subscription confirmation email -, and then see his browsing data neatly sorted (browsing data – what products has that single subscriber recently looked at, what pages has he seen, et cetera) in a database.

Once you have subscribers, keep track of their recent purchases. What relevant products could they be interested in? Why would they want to return to your company after they’ve made a purchase? Answer those questions, and you’ll know whether or not should you email them after they’ve made a purchase.

The choices are really endless when you segment your list. For example, you can test how well your newsletters work by sending one version of your newsletter to half of your subscribers, and sending the other version to the other half. From the interactive data you can clearly see which version got more response. With the modern technologies, you can really release your inner marketing professional!

Targeted marketing is good marketing, and everyone knows it, because it simply generates more sales than other marketing methods, but the sales are not all. You can also save bandwidth by sending email only to targeted customers, and don’t disturb clients that wouldn’t want to receive offers irrelevant to their interests or location.

Tags: ,
Posted in Email List Management | 4 Comments »

Composing Email From Names and Subject Lines

Monday, May 24th, 2010

You can send valuable newsletters that interest your subscribers, but you have to compose an e-mail that the readers will actually read. That’s why there are certain guidelines to follow when you’re sending out email to your customers, and the “from” and “subject” lines are the most important; you have to make them as effective as possible – it often lies on those two lines whether or not the email will be opened at all.

The ‘from’ field is the field that the recipient looks at first.

As a rule, it has to be either one of the following:

  • A person the recipient knows from your company;
  • A customer group he/she belongs to;
  • Your company name that the client knows well.

Of course, the “from” field isn’t limited to these three options. Basically everything that is somewhat personal will work, for example, if the recipients are from Texas, the ‘from’ field can be ‘<your company> Texas’, or any local place or city.

The subject line is secondary, but by no means should you disregard it.

The email subject line has to be catchy, short, and should focus on the benefit to the person receiving it. It should also suggest the nature of the email; for example, if the email is a promotion, include relevant terms like “save on <product name>”, “this week’s xxx”, etc, in the subject line, as they urge the buyer to take action. It is, of course, necessary to include personal details like the name of the recipient in the subject line. The subject line should also be shorter than 50 characters or seven words, but again, this varies depending on the name of the recipient.

Never underestimate these basic details, as mistakes in those two fields can wreck your campaign. However, don’t go too far in cropping or personalizing these fields; the customer still has to know that you have something to offer, which means that you have to state your case. Also, be aware that the subject field needs to sound somewhat natural, not like it was written by a robot. Keep it simple, don’t stress it too much, and good things will happen.

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

Smart Email Marketing Guidelines

Tuesday, February 16th, 2010

Smart Email Marketing GuidelinesYou’ll love the difference!

Email marketing is the easiest, most effective and also most affordable way to keep your customers coming back, and at the same time increase the number of your customers and most importantly increase your sales. By using attractive, professional and good looking email marketing, you can achieve this result. Most of you already exercise email marketing, but most of you by far know how to use it to its full potential. This is where Mailigen can make a big difference, with great solutions and tools. Mailigen provides easy guidance and thorough support, step by step how you can accelerate your business’ success with minimum investment, and you’ll love the difference!

Let’s start with a few simple tips

There’s no right way of doing email marketing, but there are for sure some better ways to do it, and we can guide and support you right here, accelerating sales and growth, bringing real success to your business. First of all you need to have the right idea and plan for your business’ email marketing, which depends on what you want to achieve, who is your audience, and of course the type of business you’re doing. If you do this right the chances that your email marketing will be successful ar much bigger, and you’ll love the difference it makes to your business’ success!

1. Optimizing your customer database

To ensure that your email marketing will be effective and successful you need to collect as much information as possible about your customers. Secondly your emails must have great design and provide high quality relevant and valuable content for your customers. Regular email newsletters are easy and inexpensive to make and will keep important contact with your customers. Even more effective it will be when you target your customers, creating specific customer lists in your database, depending on your customers’ interests, age, sex, location etc. This way you can send even more relevant and targeted email campaigns to your customers and the response you’ll get will be much better, increasing volume and sales even more.

2. Increasing the number of your customers

If your emails and newsletters are done professionally, look good and provide high quality relevant and valuable
content, the chances are very high that your customers will forward them to their friends, which can give you many new customers and increase your sales potential. Even better result can be achieved when you include a ‘Join our
mailing list’ link on your website, where new potential customers can sign up for your mailing list, and through further communication you can turn these prospects into new loyal customers.

3. Timing & tracking

It’s easy to send out emails and it’s just as easy to see the results if you have email-reporting option available. Well Mailigen does! This enables you to get immediate response and action, and you can even schedule the delivery of your email marketing campaign for times when your customers are most likely to check emails, increasing the chances that they will read them and respond. This way you can track which customers open and respond to your email marketing, even who forwarded them to friends and who you might need to resend it to. If you added links in your email letter, you can also tell who clicked on which links in your email. Using tracking tools will help you to better understand what your customers finds interesting and read in your emails and newsletters, and you can even tailor the content in your next campaigns to get an even better response, increasing sales even more.

So, if you follow these simple steps you will definitely accelerate you business’ success, increasing sales and growth, and you’ll simply love the difference Mailigen makes for your business!

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

10 E-mail Marketing Tips

Thursday, January 7th, 2010

Nothing would please your marketing ROI more than E-mail marketing, for a reason that E-mail marketing adds value to your customers, it is a cost effective and very valuable tool. Not only it is an interactive tool for attracting and reaching out to customers, but also precise aimed weapon in the digital marketing channel. When you are trying to launch a new campaign or start a successful e-mail marketing project, make sure your target audience accept your offer, and to achieve best email marketing results follow these 10 simple E-mail Marketing Tips:

1.     Permission First

E-mail marketing works best when people have subscribed and requested email from you. It should be easy to unsubscribe as it is a legal compliance matter and you maintain your brand reputation. Besides permission, you should present your company name or contact address and keep it consistent to remind the reader who you are in case they have forgotten, usually in 6 month time, subscribers don’t even remember where they signed up for your newsletter..

2. Right Targeting – Understanding Reader

Think about who is your target customer you are going to reach prior sending any emails out. This should be surveyed and really known before sending an e-mail marketing because you need to screen, update you database and
then personalize your message.

3. Attractive Subject Line

There are several factors your readers consider before deciding to read or ignore your e-mail message when you are trying to launch your campaign. Between 5 to 10 words in your subject line are important to catch readers eyes and grab their attention enough to open your e-mail.

4. Quick & Clear Message

In general, only 6 sentences and 3 seconds could draw readers’ attention. If the content inside is too long, they will ignore and delete your e-mail. Moreover, you should not type all CAPS or multiple exclamation marks within your message.

5.     Completed Layout

Layout is one of very important things today, the way you present your campaign tells your client a lot. Most of e-mail applications today are capable of handling HTML emails, you should consider investing time in building your own branded template. Your own email template will quickly remind your subscriber about who you are, it should be attractive enough to scroll down, short and right to the point. Check your email every time before sending, test it – whether it shows broken links or broken images, send couple test emails to your self at least. Nothing can be worse than a “broken” message.

6.     Include a link back. Create opportunity

Use a back link in your e-mail newsletter, invite your readers back to your business website as it creates new opportunities, increasing traffic, getting customers back to make a purchase and connecting with them.

7.    Right time to send E-mail Newsletter – Delivery Time

Periodic delivery has to be scheduled as a standard for any email marketing campaign. Best time to send emails to your readers really depends on your business and niche, but some of the best open rates as well as click through are measured around 4-6 p.m. This can vary depending on your business. Best days – Tuesday to Thursday or Friday
evening and Sunday afternoon. Be careful if you have customers in different time zones. Recommendation would be to segment or group your mailing lists according to the Time Zones, otherwise there is no point on planning the best time of delivery.

8.     Include Forward-to-Friend or Social Networking Options

To create a better response rate, your e-mail message should be easy to forward to anyone who your readers think would be interested in this message.

9.     Passionate Benefits

When finding new e-mail message in a mailbox, readers always think about valuable insights. Once you use a clear message and provide something extra that would be a great value to them, this increases response on your campaign dramatically.

10.  Build and Manage e-mail List

Buying an e-mail list and sending them your offers is spamming, these people never asked for your email. It is necessary for professional company to build a list by inviting your existing and prospect customers to subscribe to your news letter from your web site. It is easy to do this by providing a special offer to them.

Tags: ,
Posted in Tips & Tricks | 1 Comment »

Newer Entries »