Email Marketing Trends

Here are a few trends as we enter 2010.

• Small/Medium Business will embrace email marketing as we emerge from recession. 
• Integration with socila media – leveraging your best customers ability to talk about your company.
• Relevancy is still King – Ensure that your emails are talking to the individual and not the list.

The Technology Issue | September 2009

The Technology Issue | September 2009

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Email Tests

Did you ever wonder how you should test your email marketing message to get the best results?  Here are a few simple steps you can take to ensure that you are getting the most from your email marketing efforts.

• Test your subject lines to see which subject line is most effective. – To do so, a rule of thumb is to take approximately 10% of your total list and create a sample list “A” and sample list “B”, each with half of the (10%). You then send out the same email at the same time to each of the A & B sample lists. The variable is the subject line. You will see the results in as little as 24 hours. Take the winning email (based on the highest number of opens) and apply that subject line to the remained of the list who were not part of the A or B group.
• Test only one variable at a time – It is best to not test both the subject line and the offer at the same time. If you want to test the results (conversions) of a 10% discount vs. 25% discount, keep the offer as part of the email, not in the subject line.
• Make sure you test all of the links in your email to ensure that they are directed to the proper website.

There are dozens of agencies who can assist with email testing and several of the ESP’s have random sampling as part of their user interface that makes do it yourself testing a snap.

Website Design

Websites should be designed with the visitor in mind, not the person creating the website.  Below are a few tips you should utilize when creating your website:

• Convert visitors into customers (capture their names)
• Must be easy to navigate and intuitive
• Leverage landing pages
• Offer fresh content every few days to give the visitors a reason to engage with you. 
• Measure success with analytics
• Build a competitive advantage

Landing Pages

Landing pages are used by marketers to acquire and retain customers.  Many times they are used as stand alone marketing pages or as part of a coordinated email marketing campaign.   Here are three tips when designing landing pages for your campaigns:

1. Get to the point – Make sure that your page headline is eye-catching.
2. Be consistent – Your landing pages should have a similar theme as your emails and websight.
3. White space is OK – Gaps in your landing page copy allows the page to be easily read.

Email Consultants

I have been following two blogs for about a year and wanted to share with you the names.  The first is www.emarketingwerx.com.  This blog is run by Chris Barnes out of California.  He is a former ExactTarget person who is making a great living in helping organizations to figure out their email marketing strategy.  He says that email is about relevancy, not batch and blast.  The other is Skip O’Neill – Email Marketing Guide.  www.skiponeill.wordpress.com.  This guy is spot on with this timely advise from segmentation, top “best practices” and overall knowledge of the email marketing space.

I hope you find this useful.

Email Value Proposition

How unique is your value proposition?  Or are you putting a different spin on the same message?  If you are unsure, you should ask yourself  these four questions:

1. How usefull do your subscribers find your content?  If you don’t know, ask them (try a survey).
2. Do your emails provide something of value that can’t readily be found elsewhere?
3. Is your value proposition a brand extension? Does it capture the thing(s) that make your organization unique?
4. How easy is it for your expertise to be identified in your emails and how do you demonstrate that expertise? Or do you just talk about it?

Your value proposition is often times evolving, you should not get comfortable and keep doing the same thing even though it might work short term.

Email Mistakes to avoid

Email mistakes to avoid in 2009 include:

• Subject lines – Keep your subject line short and to the point with a call to action.
• HTML emails with no text – When images are blocked, the only thing the recipient sees is a red X.
• Call to Action – Make sure the call to action is easy to find and act upon.
• Triggered Welcome Emails – Make sure to welcome your new subscribers with a timely “welcome” email.

If you can avoid these common mistakes, you can improve your email marketing results in 2009 and come out a winner.

Growing Email List

How do you grow your opt-in list?  The most effective way for you to build your opt-in email list is to offer something of value that the subscribers want to learn about. The simplest way is to them during the sign up process. Be sure to explain to the subscriber exactly what they will be receiving from you and at what frequency by which they will be receiving the email once they opt-in. There is no use sending unwanted content to the recipient because they will delete your messages, unsubscribe or worse mark the email as spam

Growing Your Prospect List

You need to take advantage of all of your customer and prospect “touch-points”.  At each touch point, you should be asking your prospects to join your “newsletter” list, subscribe to your service or register for whitepapers or webinar invitations.  Below are a few ideas and places where you can capture a touch.

• Email Signature – These are easy using Outlook.  Ask all employees to have a consistent footer with a link to register.
• Transactional Emails – If you are confirming an order, why not ask the recipient to join your newsletter list.
• Product registration forms.
• Website – Every page should have a link to allow the visitor to subscribe.
• CRM Record – You might consider making email address a required field in your CRM for all new records.  Then it is easy to send them a single opt-in email asking them to join your list.

It doesn’t have to be hard to get your list to grow.  It just takes a little time and the commitment across the organization.