Email Marketing Tip of the Week
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"Never write an advertisement which you wouldn't want your own family to read. You wouldn't tell lies to your own wife. Don't tell them to mine. Do as you would be done by. If you tell lies about a product, you will be found out--either by the Government, which will prosecute you, or by the consumer, who will punish you by not buying your product a second time. Good products can be sold by honest advertising. If you don't think the product is good, you have no business to be advertising it." --David Ogilvy
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Marketing Morsels
Remember that your e-mail marketing campaign is more than just the e-mail message itself. The second part of the campaign, the Web-based response form respondents go to when they click the link embedded in the message, is important, too. The headline and copy at the top of the response page should carry the theme of the e-mail and motivate the reader to complete and submit the form.
Why you should check open rates by domain
Some people still think open rates are a waste of mental energy. But here's another reason why you should worry about them...
...if you check open rates for specific destination addresses (all @yahoo.com addresses or all @companyABC.com addresses), then a huge deviation from your average might hint at a deliverability problem.
Unless that address group makes up a big proportion of your list, a 0% open rate for those addresses wouldn't change your total open rate too much: you'd never notice the problem.
A case in point: Recently, MarketingSherpa discovered problems with getting HTML emails delivered to BellSouth addresses thanks to just such a check. They switched those addresses to text-only and the problem was solved.
Marketing Morsels
· Don't overlook the importance of the subject line in your e-mail marketing message. It should be constructed like a short, attention-grabbing, curiosity-arousing outer envelope teaser compelling recipients to read on — without being so blatantly promotional that it turns them off.
· Testimonials are among the most effect elements of a direct marketing package — use them, but always with attribution of name, company, city and state. The more specific the testimonial, the better it works. Solicit them via customer-service reps, conference evaluation forms or reader surveys. Try writing them yourself and then find someone to take ownership.
· Try a three-month post-expire "come back special" offer — 12 issues for the price of 10 or a cross-sell of a different publication.
Shorter Subject Lines Better
According to a Return Path analysis of all acquisition campaigns sent through its Postmaster Direct Network over the last two years, click rate goes down dramatically when the subject line is longer than 50 characters (via MediaPost). Click-through rates for emails with subject lines with 49 or fewer characters were 75 percent higher than for those with 50 or more characters.
Open rate differences weren't as dramatic: Subject lines with 49 or fewer characters had open rates 12.5 percent higher than those with 50 or more characters. Return Path points out that testing subject lines is the only way to know what will work and what won't.
Get personal. Make customers feel special with messages that sound like they were written just for them.
Make content informational. Inboxes are inundated with emails. Make sure your subscribers look forward to receiving your emails. Providing informational or industry relevant content like tips and tricks will encourage subscribers to remain interested and might also lead a subscriber to share the message with others. And this leads to the next step.
Never use "I," the biggest turn-off word in copy, or use it very sparingly. Use the two most under-used and powerful words frequently in your copy: "Free" and "You."
Permission is perishable! Don't wait until your list is a minimum size before embarking on your first email marketing campaign. If someone gives you their email address on a business card or at a networking event, close the permission loop immediately with your first mailing, which asks permission and shows them what they'll get if they subscribe. Sit on that address for six months and you'll no longer have permission!
Top 8 Tips to Find Anybody's Email Address
You know how elusive email addresses are. Even if you once had a friend's address, you may not be able to locate or recall it now that you need it. Or maybe the address has changed. No matter whose email address you are looking for and or much you know about the person, here are eight strategies that you can use right now to help you find. You'll look in new places and obvious but oft-overlooked corners.
1) Find Email Addresses in Previous Email Correspondence
If you have emailed them before, you probably have their address. Go find it now.
2) Find People in Email Address Directories or White Pages
From public records to MySpace.com to email address directories and change of address services: find people and their email addresses using dedicated search engines.
3) Find Somebody's Email Address by Searching the Web
Search somebody's email address like you search for anything else on the Web (and successfully).
4) Search for Email Addresses in Usenet Newsgroups
Find the person whose email address you are looking for in discussion groups.
5) Find an Email Address by Making it Find You
If the person you are looking for is searching for herself, she will find you, and her email address will find its way to you.
6) Find Email Addresses on Business Cards
Go through your collection of business cards to find email addresses of more people than you probably know.
7) Ask Somebody for Their Email Address
Yes, that's obvious, but asking is still the easiest way to find an email address.
8) Find Somebody's Email Address Using soc.net-people
If all other means to find somebody's email address fail, you can turn to the Usenet newsgroup soc.net-people.
There are emailing misconceptions you should be aware of:
-Never Use the Word Free
-Don't Send Emails on Weekends
-Improve Results by Growing Your List
While there are varying levels of truth to each of the above statements, they are not universal truths.
Test the day of week and time of day you send your emails. Tuesday through Thursday have been considered the best performing days for quite some time, however, new surveys indicate Monday may be the new favorite. As far as time of day goes, some studies now show that, because the volume of email sent is highest between 10am and 2pm, your emails may have a greater chance of being seen from 8am - 10am or 4pm - 6pm.
Can I send commercial email messages to U.S. recipients without their permission?
It depends. Many marketers believe they cannot send commercial email to someone who hasn't opted-in to their list. Although it's true that you shouldn't email people without their permission, in the United States, it isn't actually illegal to do so.
Despite its name, the U.S. federal CAN -SPAM Act of 2003 does not outlaw unsolicited commercial email, also known as spam. Rather, it attempts to regulate commercial email by prohibiting subterfuge, such as using misleading subject lines or disguising a message's origins. While the law will never rid the world of spam, it does take strides toward protecting consumers from fraudulent or misleading practices, and making commercial email a more efficient way for legitimate senders to do business.
Test
It is important to test your market for the best days and times to send e-mail marketing. Most e-mail is sent on Tuesdays through Thursdays, he said, so it may be worth testing Mondays and Fridays.
Your E-mail Subject Line is Critical
Don't make it look or sound like spam. The purpose of the subject line is not to sell, but just to get people to open the e-mail — that's it! Be careful of the words you select. Check your e-mail against a spam checker to see that it doesn't contain words that automatically will result in deletion.
Use wide margins. You don't want to have weird wraps or breaks. Limit yourself to about 55 to 60 characters per line. If you think a line will be too long, insert a character return. Internet copywriter Joe Vitale sets his margins at 20 and 80, keeping sentence length to 60 characters and ensuring that the whole line gets displayed on the screen without odd breaks.
Don't overload them. E-mail recipients will report even verified permission e-mail as spam if they get too much of it or it's irrelevant. We saw this in the holiday 2005 shopping season: a Return Path survey found many e-mail recipients said they not only received more e-mail than they expected when they signed up with various senders, but they also hit the "report spam" button in their e-mail clients more often to try to stop getting it. That should be in the footer area your e-mail message?
Your e-mail footer space can provide customers with important facts about your e-mail program and your company.
Remind the prospect what they signed up for, and from whom.
One thing you never want to put in your footer is a statement about how well you comply with CAN -SPAM. Not only does it sound a bit self-serving but, ironically, it may actually increase your chances of getting filtered as spam.
Incorporating helpful information into your e-mail footer is good practice, a wise use of space and, moreover, your customers will appreciate it.
Revelent Content
Most internet users are on many permission-based lists, but they look forward to--and avidly open and read--e-mail with content that's specifically relevant to their needs. What would your customers and prospects most like to receive from you? Building a successful e-mail campaign hinges on sending messages that fit your list members' attributes and preferences.
The number one rule of marketing was taught to us 50 years ago by Zig Zigler; People buy from people. More importantly they buy from people they like!
We like people who are fun. We tolerate people who are responsible or reliable. When your goal for lead nurturing email is to get engaged with a prospect…..well it might be a good idea to be fun.
Add a subscription box to your home page so that the average visitor to your home page can see where to put their name and email address to get on your email list immediately.
Never forget that the Internet is essentially a print medium, and that long copy works, but only if compellingly written.
Landing pages: Do you create and direct your audience to different landing pages and review what destinations performed the best? Creatively testing where the click takes them and what that looks and acts like can give you considerable insight.
Monday is the best day of the week to send email.
Your own mailing list is the best-performing list you have. It may be worthwhile to develop a low-cost product to sell to non-customers (to build this list) and convert them to a higher-priced product.
Midweek seems a safe time to send out email campaigns, with response rates better than on Monday and Friday. Wednesday is tops with the highest number of clicks (4.1 percent.)
Make email ad messages 60+ words in length and use 40 characters for subject lines for best results.
Opt-in Techniques
At first glance, the opt-in techniques you use every day may appear rather cut and dried. For example, either somebody wants to receive info about your opportunity or they don't.
Fact is, the language you use can make a huge difference-between being totally ignored and creating an exciting prospect.
Here are some simple tools and ideas to do just that:
"What's in it for me?"
Sounds like it's not too much to ask. But your audience still wants to know.
So, which of these opt-in techniques would you more likely to respond to?
a. Get information NOW ! (click here)
b. Get FREE timely insights delivered to you explaining a simple way you can create a full-time income from the comfort of your home! (click here)
Obvious, eh?
The point is, opt-in techniques that first "jazz up" the benefit to the reader will always have the advantage. So enhance your response by always putting the value of your communication in reader terms. When that's taken care of, then request the action and expect results.
If you have a "Refer a Friend" program on your Web site, be sure to always tell the friend why they are hearing from you:"You are receiving this message because XYZ said you might be interested."
Email when others don't!
So why would you ever send an email on the weekend, or even Monday or Friday? Putting aside breaking news, announcements, daily newsletters and the like, weekends can be the best time to motivate readers or customers to take a specific action.