Home > email marketing

Tag Archives: email marketing

Email Marketing: Avoiding SPAM Filters

Posted on June 14, 2012 by Rachel Kaylor

We were recently asked how to keep marketing or promotional emails out of spam filters. While there is no easy or full-proof solution, there are several key considerations when crafting messaging and format.

Here are some things to avoid:

  • Phrases such as “Click Here” or those with a gazillion exclamation points!
  • ALL CAPS, especially in the subject line.
  • Sloppy HTML code, which can occur from converting a Microsoft word file to HTML.
  • Creating an HTML email that is one big image.
  • Excessive use of different colors, fonts, sizes, images and so forth.

Are you sending a commercial email, also known as an e-newsletter, e-blast, etc.?

If so, consult the CAN-SPAM Act and make sure you are in compliance. Don’t worry, it should not be hard to follow the regulations as you will want to employ many of them for effectiveness anyways. Some takeaways include:

  • Subject Lines: Your subject message must accurately reflect the content of the body message.
  • Contact Information: Your message must include your valid physical postal address. We advise including other contact information as well (e.g. email, phone number).
  • Unsubscribe Option: Your message must include a clear and conspicuous explanation of how the recipient can opt out of getting email from you in the future.

After considering some of these avoidances, also remember you need a solid marketing strategy. For more considerations in email marketing, read our past blog post Increase Email Open Rates.

Posted in exeQnAtion | Tagged , , | Leave a Comment

4 Ways to Extend the Reach of Your New Ad Campaign

Posted on April 26, 2012 by Kayleigh Fitch

Whether a print, TV, web or radio ad campaign, you dedicated your blood, sweat and tears to develop a creative and compelling campaign.  But beyond the ad buy, there are ways to extend the reach of your ad campaign and deliver your message to more people in a more engaging way.

1. Social Media.  Consider using social media platforms to engage your audience in a contest related to the ad campaign.  This is a great way to draw those who viewed the ad to your social media sites as well as encourage social media fans and followers to seek out your advertisements where they appear.

2. Website & Email Marketing.  When developing an ad campaign (no matter the medium) a website landing page is a great way to continue to keep the audiences engaged and provide additional information that you didn’t have room to include in the ad. If you have a quality email database, create an email marketing campaign that coincides with the advertising campaign (and drives visitors to the landing page).

3. Publicity. Is there a timely or edgy aspect to your new ad campaign? Develop a pitch or media invite positioning your campaign as part of a larger, compelling story.  If you can secure media coverage for your new campaign, you have extended its reach beyond the actual ad buy.

4. Events.  Does your campaign celebrate a company landmark? Is it in support of a new product launch? If there is a reason to celebrate and a bigger story to tell, consider hosting a live or web-based event.  Invite customers, prospects, vendors and media to share in the celebration.  And if the event itself is unique or unexpected, this may serve as another opportunity for some publicity.

Posted in exeQnAtion | Tagged , , , , , , , , | Leave a Comment

Developing a Content Marketing Strategy that Drives Measurable Results

Posted on March 8, 2012 by Kayleigh Fitch

Content marketing is nothing new.  However, there is so much “noise” being created on and offline, it is overwhelming.  There are online “press releases”, social media sites and websites established just for organic search engine optimization, and it is timely to revisit why generating truly valuable content for your target audiences is imperative and beneficial.

 

Content marketing is the process of developing and disseminating relevant and valuable content to customers and prospects.  The goal is to engage and ultimately drive an engaged action from consumers.  The key benefit for customers/prospects is they receive information that benefits them, and the reward for the business is it becomes a trusted resource when a customer/prospect is ready to take action on a related product or service.

Examples of content marketing include educational microsites, expert blogs, educational videos, custom publications, useful smart phone apps and small bits of information disseminated through social media.  Even creating feature articles for magazines is a good example of content marketing.

Prior to developing content, consider the following to help shape your content marketing strategy.

1. Build Content Around Customer’s Pain Points: In order to create valuable content for customers and prospects, develop a clear understanding of what makes consumers tick as well their challenges.  Document what you know and what you still need to learn about consumers’ pain points, and identify opportunities as ways to solve them.  Once you understand the type of information a customer needs, it is easy to develop content directly addressing topics they care about.

2.  Identify Channels of Distribution: It is absolutely essential to know where and how customers/prospects get their information.  This of course is different for every industry.  If customers/prospects are not using Twitter or Facebook, no matter how good your content is, it is not going to reach them. If you are not sure on the best distribution method, conduct research.

3.  Develop a Strategy: Develop a clear editorial calendar to guide your content.  What exactly should be published, when and how often? Plan topics in advance and then modify as needed based on current events and emerging trends.  A little work up front can save time and frustration in the end.

4.  Content Should Change Behavior: The goal with content marketing is to make a connection with customers/prospects that will eventually lead to profitable action.  The first step is developing content that is important and relevant to the audience.  But in order for the content to be an effective marketing strategy, marketers need to find a way to relate content to their company’s message, communicate indirectly how a product or service eases a pain point, and encourage a change in behavior that benefits both the customer and the business. Not seeing behavior change?  Consider testing new content and delivery methods, but do give each approach time to work and the attention to properly assess shortfalls.

5.  Understand Impact on the Bottom Line: It is simple to track and measure microsite hits, blog visitors, followers, likes, circulation, etc. But go beyond those statistics.  When implemented successfully, content marketing should drive profitable customer actions.  If your content marketing strategy is not helping to achieve your goals (increasing qualified leads, driving sales, saving money, increasing customer satisfaction, etc.), consider ways to revise the content.

Content marketing can be a valuable marketing strategy.  But just like all marketing strategies it requires time and attention.  Consider closely the valuable content your company can share, the best distribution methods and how to best measure the campaign to develop a successful content marketing strategy.  The result is content that will benefit target audiences, build brand and drive sales in the process.

Posted in exeQnAtion | Tagged , , , , | Leave a Comment

Email Not Compatible with Mobile? You Can Be Missing Out.

Posted on December 1, 2011 by Jennifer Manocchio

Email is not dead. In fact, the way we view email is beginning to shift as more people use smart phones and tablet computers.

According to Knotice, a provider of direct digital marketing software and services, there was a 51% increase in the number of people viewing their email on mobile phones and tablets from the first half of 2011 compared to the last quarter of 2010.

As far as the breakdown of the type of mobile and tablet devises people are reading their emails on, the iPhone is king.

iPhone: 12.78%
iPad: 3.92%
Android: 3.15%
Palm: 0.22%
Windows: 0.05%
BlackBerry: 0.01%

Knotice also evaluated mobile email opens by industry segments. Consumer services had the highest (30.49%) mobile open rates among the 11 industries, followed by the entertainment industry (21.41%), cable and telecommunications (20.42%), hospitality (20.13%) and retail (20.07%). The B2B industry had the lowest mobile email open rate with 6.77%.

However, while the data reveals more people are opening emails on their mobiles and tablets, the rate of those clicking on links within the email is far lower than the desktop computer. For example, the click to open rate (measure of the click activity once a person opens the email) for consumer product emails on mobiles and tablets is 18.99%. This number almost doubles (29.17%) on desktop computers.

Regardless of the click to open rates, a 51% increase in reading email on mobiles and tablets is a tremendous jump in a short amount of time. This is something marketers need to take note of, and ensure emails are designed for mobile devises, tablets and desktop computers.

Knotice’s Mobile Email Opens Report: First Half of 2011 is based on a cross sampling of approximately 701 million emails across 11 industry segments during the first six months of 2011. Click here to download the full report.

Posted in Consumer Products | Tagged , , | Leave a Comment

Increase Email Open Rates

Posted on July 14, 2011 by Kayleigh Fitch

A recent study on email marketing by Harte-Hanks revealed both good and bad news about consumer response to email marketing messages.

On the one hand, average email open rates declined to 17% for 2010, down from a 26% average open rate in 2009.  However, the study indicates the drop may be due in part to more users accessing email via smart phones as well as changing patterns in downloadable email images.

Now for the good news…

Overall delivery rates across nine major industry sectors have increased to 95% in 2010, up from 93% in 2009.  Moreover, unsubscribe rates have dropped from .32% to .19%, and bounce rates dropped to 5% from 7% in 2009. And click rates remained flat at 3%.

This means more emails are reaching the customer’s inbox more often, and you have to work harder to continue to increase open rates among a more crowded inbox.

Here are six tips for increasing your email open rates.

1. Consider the Source. Email recipients are more likely to trust a name they recognize. Determine which has the most recognition for your target audience – the organization name, company spokesperson or leadership, or even a mascot – and make that person the “From” name with a corresponding and recognizable “From” email address.  And remain consistent so recipients become familiar with the email source.

2. Short and Snappy Subject.  This seems obvious and elementary, but consider how many email messages your receive daily that you delete without ever opening.  Why? Because it took too long to figure out what the email was about or you lost interest after the first three words.  In an inbox, users typically can only see the first 5 or so words…so try to get your point across fast and with as few filler words as possible.

Don’t settle for being descriptive. If possible, communicate a direct benefit received by opening your email.  For example, “Tips for Email Marketing” is a more descriptive subject line compared to “Increase Email Open Rates”, which provides a more direct benefit to the recipient.

3. Segment Your List.  Take a look at your list and determine if there are natural divisions like customers vs. prospects, age categories, industries and even level of authority that could benefit from more targeted messages.  You can still target all segments with more general messages, but measuring and tracking results of targeted emails will increase the likelihood of the email being opened.  It can also potentially provide insight into behavior of certain target audiences you can apply across a broader marketing campaign.

4. Experiment – The More Scientific the Better. Even if you are satisfied with current open rates, consider there is always room for improvement.  Start with a hypothesis…For example, we get the highest open rates for sales-focused emails on Wednesday afternoons. Now test it…try Monday mornings and Saturday at lunch, Sunday night, etc.  And give it a chance to work…One blast on a Thursday morning will not provide enough data to know if this is a better time; revisit different delivery times consistently for several distributions, collect data on open rates and engagement, and then make an assessment.

5. Repetition.  To have meaningful impact, email communication with your list should happen frequently and regularly.  Expecting stellar open rates from one email push is like expecting to increase sales by 10% by running an ad just one time.  Give email marketing the time it needs to work.

6. Infuse Content Marketing. If it is logical for your business, consider one of two approaches to deliver non-promotional, useful content to email recipients.

Develop and distribute content focused, entirely non-promotional emails periodically to your list.  Provide information that helps solve common challenges or problems; become a trusted provider of information.

Include the same type of content within the context of a promotional email.  For example, to market a new line of food storage containers, an email might provide recipes that store or travel well with the new containers, and include a link to purchase that product.

Keeping with the first recommendation, if recipients associate your “From” name and email address with beneficial information, they are more likely to open your emails. This is true even when the emails are strictly promotional, because they will expect to receive an offer with a relevant and tangible benefit.

Need help strategizing and implementing a successful email marketing campaign? Contact kayleigh (at) sweeneypr (dot) com.

Posted in exeQnAtion | Tagged , | Leave a Comment

Promoting without Gloating

Posted on June 16, 2011 by Jennifer Manocchio

It is certainly easy to continue to beat your chest and tell your customers and prospects how amazing you are, what contracts you won, what awards you won and how much your customers love you. But typically this type of communication is only good in moderation. Customers want to know they are working with an industry leader or a successful company, but too much of a good thing can be overkill.

So how do you promote your company without constantly gloating? I recently received an email from iContact thanking us for our loyalty and feedback. At first glace it seemed like a heartfelt thank you. However, the more I read it the more I realized iContact was using this as an opportunity to communicate its accomplishments, including its expanding client roaster, upgraded technology and its Inc. 500 rating.

The message was carefully crafted and it did an excellent job of communicating iContact’s accomplishments without beating its chest too much.

Dear Jennifer,
On behalf of the entire iContact™ Family, I want to personally thank you for your continued loyalty and feedback throughout the year.

You and over 65,000 other customers have again made us the number one fastest growing email marketing company in the SMB market and a member of the Inc. 500 list.

As you are probably aware, over the last several months iContact has greatly enhanced its product by adding new features and functionalities such as:

  • iPhone and Android applications
  • Our new MessageBuilder™ for creating beautiful email messages
  • More customized templates
  • iContact for Salesforce

The response from our customer base has been overwhelmingly positive.

Our development efforts are driven by the knowledge that email marketing continues to generate the greatest return on investment. Email provides the most effective targeted and
personalized customer marketing. No other marketing channel allows for such easy, targeted and absolute customer tracking.

If you are not taking full and frequent advantage of email marketing, you are missing out on a tremendous opportunity to gain, educate and retain customers. Check out our newest
features.

Have an immediate need? Call 1.866.803.9462 or contact our support team.

Cheers,
Ryan Allis, Co-Founder and CEO
Email Marketing

Posted in exeQnAtion | Tagged | Leave a Comment

Will Consumer Email Marketing Soon be History?

Posted on February 24, 2011 by Jennifer Manocchio

The short answer is no.  However, web-based email usage (Yahoo, Google, AOL, etc.) is seeing a shift.  More youths are abandoning email and opting for different forms of mobile and social media communication.  But older Americans are continuing to use the Internet and sign-up for web-based email accounts.

According to comScore’s 2010 US Digital Year in Review, total web-based email declined 8% in 2010. The most significant decline was among 12-17 year olds, which was down 59%. Usage also declined minimally among 18-24 year olds and declined 18% among 25-34 year olds. However, web-based email usage was up 22% among 55-64 year olds and was up 28% among those 65 and older.

The shift is occurring as more youths are using texting, instant messaging and social media sites to stay in touch with family and friends, while older Americans are continuing to adopt the Internet and email.

As a marketer, this doesn’t mean consumer email marketing is a thing of the past. While the comScore numbers might seem like email is heading south, in the same study comScore reported email was one of the top mobile devise activities with 30.5% of mobile subscribers (that’s 70.1 million Americans) using their phones for email.

Also, the social media giant Facebook announced in mid-November that it will be launching email for its users. This means that users can sign up for an @facebook.com email account. While Facebook email is different than web-based email accounts like Google, it is still telling that Facebook is offering this new service to users.

Certainly mobile devises and social media are shifting the way we are communicating, but according to comScore, 153 million people visited web-based email sites in November 2010. Additionally, email still remains one of the top activities on the web with email reaching more than 70% of the US population each month. So don’t let the numbers fool you; email is still a powerful marketing tool and will remain so for the foreseeable future.

Posted in exeQnAtion | Tagged , , | Leave a Comment

Email Blooper

Posted on January 12, 2011 by Jennifer Manocchio

Sometimes the best way to learn from others is learning what not to do. I received the following email below in my inbox today.

This is exactly the type of emails you don’t want to receive as a consumer or send as a marketer. Here’s why:

1. I intentionally removed the sender’s name from the email because I didn’t want to call him out personally. However, the email said it was from “Gevalia Stainless Steel Bundle Pkg” and then it listed a person’s email address. The “FROM” line of a consumer email should always be the company, in this case “Gevalia Coffee” and should not list an individual’s name (unless your the Geico Gecko).

2. The subject line is not enticing at all. Plus, I’m not a coffee drinker. The only reason I opened this email is because I was curious as a consumer marketer.

3. The copy does not encourage me to click the link. It simply falls flat. Plus there is no visual in this email at all. Why not create an HTML email with the offer right there for me to see.

4. What is with that URL? The URL should be a link to the company “Gevalia Coffee”. Not a link that looks suspicious and I have no idea where it will lead me.

5. Who is “Gevalia Coffee”? There is no information in this email to tell me about the company and why I would want to buy their coffee.

6. “Write to us”? Huh… why would I want to write to you? Plus, how do I even know who I’m sending a letter to if you only provide a PO Box?

As you can clearly see, there are many issues with this email and it is highly likely it didn’t produce any positive results. You better believe I don’t want to be receiving email again from this company.  Did I mention I’m not a coffee drinker?!

Posted in Uncategorized | Tagged | Leave a Comment

Measuring Email Marketing Results

Posted on January 7, 2010 by Jim Sweeney

How can I effectively measure the results of a consumer product email marketing campaign?

___________________________________________________

By Jennifer Manocchio

Prior to starting your email marketing campaign, set specific and measurable objectives. For most consumer packaged goods companies, email marketing objectives often include: increasing company/product awareness, increasing web site traffic, and increasing product trial and sales among current and prospective customers.

Once you set specific objectives, determine the most effective methods for tracking the results. Ideally, you want to accomplish this prior to beginning your campaign so measurement opportunities are not overlooked. Below are some key methods for tracking results.

1. Email distribution service: Using an email distribution service like iContact, Constant Contact, JangoMail, etc. will not only help you follow spam laws and protect your ISP, but it will also help track results. Typically, email distribution services will track the delivery rate, open rate, bounce rate and click through rate.

2. Google Analytics or another web site tracking tool: While this might seem obvious, we find this measurement tool is often overlooked. Google Analytics is free and easy to use and install if you don’t already have it. It can help track the number of people who came to your web site directly from the email, as well as how long they stayed on the site, what pages they visited, where they exited the site, if they converted to a sale and how much money they spent.

3. Unique phone number: If you can accept phone orders, it is beneficial to use a unique toll-free number in the email. This will allow you can track the number of phone calls the email is generating. Be sure to contact your phone company to determine if they have an online system that tracks the number of incoming calls. Reviewing phone bills can be tedious.

4. Unique promotional code: If you are offering a promotion, use a unique promotional code for web and phone orders. This will help you track what sales were specifically generated from the email.

After you establish your measurement methods, create a master database to record all the results in one location, including: open rates, click through rates, bounce rates, web site traffic, number of sales and total revenue generated by the email. This will help you to evaluate each email distribution and the campaign collectively and make adjustments when necessary.

Have questions about tracking the results and increasing the ROI of your email marketing campaign or want to learn more about how to develop and execute an effective campaign, contact me at jennifer at sweeneypr.com or 910.772.1688.

Posted in exeQnAtion | Tagged , , , | Leave a Comment

Best Days and Times to Distribute Email

Posted on November 4, 2009 by Jim Sweeney

From your experience what are the best times to distribute email marketing campaigns?

President at ProNetworkMedia

___________________________________________

By Jennifer Manocchio

The answer to this question is not black and white.  While there are studies conducted on the best day and time to send business-to-business and consumer emails, the answer really depends on your subscriber base. For example, if you are sending an email to a business audience, sending the email on weekends might produce a low open rate.  However, if you are targeting consumers, this might be an effective time to distribute your message.

Consider the results from our agency e-newletter (InSites).  We distribute InSites weekly to our client and prospect database that features top marketing stories.  While we avoid distributing on Monday or Friday, it doesn’t seem to matter what day we distribute the email during the week.  We have tested different days and haven’t seen a change in open rate, which remains in the 26-31% range.  What this tells us is we have a following that reads the e-newsletter on a regular basis no matter the day of the week.  We attribute the fluctuation in open rates to the subject lines and people being out of the office.

On the consumer side, we recently started an e-marketing campaign for a retailer in the healthcare industry.  We typically distribute the emails on a Tuesday or Wednesday because the client’s web site traffic tends to spike on Monday and drop off throughout the week.  Distributing it on a Tuesday or Wednesday helps increase the web site traffic when it typically is down.  Since this is only our third distribution to the database, it is hard to say whether day and time are affecting open rates.  However, to our surprise, consumers continue to open the email weeks or even a month after the distribution.  This tells us some of the contacts on the list don’t check their personal emails very often and the day and time of distribution don’t really affect this group.

The most effective way to determine when to distribute email is to test the days and times that you distribute email and determine when is most effective based on the open and click through rates.  However, you need to take more into consideration than just the distribution day and time.  The relationship you have with your subscribers, the from line and the subject line can also affect your open rates.

Want to know more about email marketing best practices, contact me at jennifer at sweeneypr.com or 910.772.1688.

Posted in exeQnAtion | Tagged , , , , , , , | Leave a Comment

How to Develop Successful Email Databases

Posted on August 27, 2009 by Jim Sweeney

What is the most effective method and/or resource to procure a targeted listserv for a successful e-mail blast?

Susan, Vice President, Hoffmann & Associates, LLC

______________________________________________________________________

By Jennifer Manocchio

There are two ways to measure the success of an email campaign.  First, how “healthy” is your list.  If you receive a number of complaints (verbal or electronic), a high number of bounces and unsubscribes, your list needs a closer look.  The most detrimental consequence of a bad list is your IP address getting blacklisted by an email client (AOL, AT&T, etc.) or an email distribution service shutting down your account.

Secondly, evaluating the open rate, click through rate and response to your call to action (e.g. sale, sign up form, registering for an event), will give you a good indication of your success.  Benchmark open and click through rates are available; however, they vary by target audience and industry.  Two recent reports are available to help you identify benchmarks by industry – MailerMailer and Epsilon.

Developing or Purchasing a List

There are a few methods, depending on your target audience, you can use to create a list.

1.  Build your own:  This is the most effective and safest way to communicate with your customers and prospects assuming that everyone on your list has given permission (either on your web site, in written form or verbally).  Otherwise you can end up with complaints and high bounce and unsubscribe rates.

2.  Purchase a list from a list company: Purchasing a list may seem like an easy way to target thousands of contacts.  However, you need to ensure it is a credible company selling the list, the contacts on the list have opted-in and the company  you are purchasing the list from will guarantee a high delivery rate (or provide a refund for outdated contacts).  You also want to ensure the lists are for actual people, not addresses like info@sweeneypr.com.

You are certainly taking a risk purchasing a list and while list providers will assure you these contacts have “opted-in” they haven’t necessarily opted-in to receive information from you.  Therefore, you risk complaints, high bounce rates, high unsubcribe rates, as well as low open and click through rates.

3.  Use an existing e-newsletter list: Web sites that offer e-newsletters (like Web MD), trade associations, consumer and trade magazines typically allow you to pay for access to their email database.  Most of these groups protect their members and will not sell you the list, but they will send a prepared email to their database and provide tracking reports.  This method can be effective if the database is targeting your key prospects.

When using this method, consider a strategy (sign up form, etc.) that allows you to collect contact information and encourage recipients to opt-in to your email database.  Otherwise, you will need to continue to pay for access each time.

Permission based email databases are always the most effective method.  It will ensure you are not spamming, will increase your credibility among  customers and prospects, increase loyalty and increase brand awareness.

__________________________________________________

Have a marketing, public relations, social media or advertising question?  Post your question below or email exeqnation at gmail dot com.  We are committed to answering your marketing questions real time.  And if we don’t know the answer, we’ll contact one of our valued partners who will.

Posted in exeQnAtion | Tagged , , , , , , , | Leave a Comment

BLOG ARCHIVE

markeTING

  • 2013 (21)
  • 2012 (41)
  • 2011 (51)
  • 2010 (54)
  • 2009 (55)
  • 2008 (86)

exeQnAtion

  • 2013 (12)
  • 2012 (33)
  • 2011 (39)
  • 2010 (50)
  • 2009 (25)

Consumer Products

  • 2013 (10)
  • 2012 (24)
  • 2011 (35)
  • 2010 (50)
  • 2009 (41)
  • 2008 (3)


POPULAR TOPICS