Email marketing and Web 2.0: Do they play nice together?

In his August 28 blog post titled “The new email marketing: embracing Web 2.0,” Mark Brownlow gives a great rundown of the potential and pitfalls of email marketers jumping on the Web 2.0 bandwagon. He takes on seven different points to consider, and offers plentiful links to more on most subjects. From Facebook to repurposing content, this isn’t a “how to” but it is a “how to think about it” guide that anyone involved in email marketing can benefit from. As an email marketing vendor who knows I must keep up to speed, I was glad to read it.

It’s sound advice, and timely, because you do have to consider social networking as part of your email marketing mix. It’s just a matter of determining in which way you’re going to do it. What makes the most sense for your marketing goals and your audience?

Overall, I was struck once again the reminder that–no matter what the medium–it’s the message itself that still has to have value. As Mark said:

“What you say, what you send, what you communicate still has to have value. In that sense nothing has changed since the day they printed the first newspaper.”

It’s something we as an email marketing vendor preach continuously: have value and be relevant. Be someone your customers want to hear from, and you’ll decrease your unsubscribes while you increase your email marketing ROI. This is about three crucial components: content, content and content.

Whether your content is delivered into an Outlook inbox, posted on a Facebook fan page, or Twittered about, make sure it’s content that your customers value. Even if we get to Web 9.0, the importance of relevant content will never diminish.

See Mark’s post at http://www.email-marketing-reports.com/iland/2008/08/new-email-marketing-embracing-web-20.html.

What to include in your email marketing…and what to leave out

Below is a quick overview of some of the many pieces each of your email marketing messages should include, or not, to up your email marketing ROI. We’ve drawn this list from our newest ClickMail Marketing whitepaper: You’ve made it to the inbox. Now what? Definitely download the email marketing whitepaper to get more details about each of these components. But for now, here’s a high-level list to get you thinking-and checking. Because email marketing and design are much more complicated than some marketers realize! And checklists can help make our jobs just a little bit easier…

To get your email opened, include:

• A From address that is recognizable to the recipient
• A clear, compelling subject line
• As much personalization as is appropriate and possible
• A quick, to-the-point hook

To get your email acted upon, include:

• A professionally crafted description of your offer/message right at the beginning
• A reason to act right away
• A simple and easy way to respond
• 3 to 5 instances of your call-to-action

To follow best practices and please your recipients, include:

• A “view as web page” link
• A straight-forward unsubscribe to opt-out
• A link to a profile center or preferences page

To organically grow your in-house email marketing list, include:

• A FTF/FTC (forward to a friend, forward to a colleague) link

To increase your email marketing ROI even more, do not include:

• Competing links in a campaign email; include only one action

Like I said, this is just a summary, but can at least get you started double-checking your email marketing and design. For more details about these email marketing components, and many others that will help you maximize your email marketing ROI, download the email marketing whitepaper at http://www.clickmailmarketing.com/resources/whitepapers.html.

One sure sign your opt-in email marketing shows up too often…

The cost-effectiveness of opt-in email marketing can be both a blessing and a curse. On the one hand, you get a higher ROI from email marketing over other direct marketing methods. But being affordable means we sometimes send out too many emails too often.

It’s like candy that’s quick and easy to grab and it tastes good, so even though we know it’s bad for us and is loaded with empty calories, we succumb to our temptations and eat even more.

So too with opt-in email marketing. It can lead to some quick sales, so we keep going for more. Never mind the long-term effects of emailing too frequently…

What’s that, you ask? How can eating too much candy and emailing more frequently both be bad for you? One leads to weight gain, the other leads to subscriber loss. Email your list too often and you’ll burn out your list and people will either unsubscribe or delete or even report you as spam. Yes, even people who opted in will want out if you’re annoying them with too many messages.

OK, so this is something email marketers do know, but we find it easy to ignore. Especially since there isn’t a clear sign that you are over messaging, right? But guess what, there is.

A good indicator that you might be over messaging your list is your unsubscribe rate. If you see it go up, that could mean you’re emailing people more often than they want to hear from you. Of course, not everyone will unsubscribe. Many people will just delete your emails. So be extra sensitive when the unsubscribe rate does go up, since that’s only a portion of the people you are annoying.

As far as the candy goes, watch the level in the bag or bowl. If it’s going down, obviously your intake is going up!

It’s not the length of the email, but what’s in the Preview Pane that counts

A few months ago I listened to a speaker talk about emails that were feet long, as in 2 feet, 4 feet. At first, I was confused, then I realized he was talking about as you scroll, that the emails he was referring to really were that long. And he did have an example of one that was 4 feet long!

Picture that as paper: Email doesn’t come in pages the way paper does. A 4 foot long paper document can be 4 or more pages long and therefore manageable. A 4 foot long email is one long piece of paper!

That’s a lot of scrolling! And just because it’s opt-in email marketing doesn’t mean your customers will opt to read it.

I suspect some email marketing departments (or more likely their bosses) figure that’s free real estate so let’s fill it up with everything we could possibly say. Never mind that the customer will either lose their patience or lose their way trying to get through all that text!

But that begs the question of, how long should your email be? Obviously 4 feet is too long! Is 2 feet to long? One foot? Eight inches?

Does it matter? Not so much. In reality, the length of the email doesn’t have to be limited except by common sense.

What does matter is making sure the most important information is “above the fold,” meaning in the area approximately 200 pixels from the top. That’s because after the From address and the subject line, what someone sees in the Preview Pane is what will get them to open your email and interact with it…or not.

It’s also like an ad. Think of the inverted pyramid example I once read about how many people read how far down your ad: At the upside down base of your pyramid, the widest part, you have the most people reading. That’s your headline. But as the pyramid gets narrower and narrower as it goes down the page, fewer and fewer people read.

I suspect the same thing happens with emails, although I don’t have the stats to prove it. Still, that top section is like the top of an ad: It’s the part most people will read.

Make the most of it so they keep reading. Just don’t expect them to read 4 feet worth of anything!

Driving email marketing ROI after you get to the inbox

Even with a superior deliverability rate, is your email marketing ROI everything they could be? Getting your email delivered is only the first step. Your emails must arrive in a manner that encourages action on the part of the recipient.

Now you can learn how and improve your email marketing ROI with the latest whitepaper from ClickMail: You’ve made it to the inbox. Now what? This whitepaper addresses the key factors of email marketing that matter after your email makes it into the inbox, to encourage more opens, more click-throughs and more conversions.

Of course you can’t make a prospect or customer do anything. But this whitepaper talks about aspects you can control to encourage more opens, more click-throughs and more conversions. It covers topics like:

• How to get your emails opened
• Making the most of the Preview Pane
• Knowing your email will render the way you want it to in your customer’s inbox
• What to do about image suppression
• What percentage of HTML to images works best

Download your copy at http://www.clickmailmarketing.com/resources/whitepapers.html.

Are you spending enough on email?

If you’re wondering about your email marketing spend, you might want to take a look at MarketingSherpa’s new chart, “Attitudes toward email at budget time.” It shows only 38% of companies recognize the ROI value of email marketing and increase their spending on it every year accordingly.

Meanwhile, at the other end of the spectrum, 10% don’t invest at all, and more than half (52%) don’t increase their spending but keep it the same.

Chances are good, based on countless email marketing studies I’ve seen (as an email marketing vendor, it’s part of my job to keep up with them all), that the companies that invest more in email marketing yield better email marketing ROI. These are the companies that hire dedicated and experienced staff, make sure they’re working with the best email service provider (ESP) for the highest deliverability, integrate their email marketing platforms with their CRM systems, test and test and test, segment and segment and segment, and more.

In other words, they are the email marketers that will win in the overcrowded inbox because they are investing the time and money to do so.

Are you? Might be time for another look.

See the chart at: http://www.marketingsherpa.com/1news/chartofweek-08-12-08-lp.htm.

How long should your email subject line be? Depends…

It seems we’re all after the subject line Holy Grail. Everyone wants to know the ideal subject line length for maximizing open rates. But based on what I’ve been reading lately, it’s not cut and dry. It depends on what you really want to maximize: your open rates or your click throughs.

Studies are showing that although shorter subject lines (often it’s less 35 characters or seven words) work best for increasing your open rates. But guess what? Longer subject lines are better for increasing your click through rates! And possibly your conversions.

What happens is this: A longer subject line can be more specific and therefore more relevant to a smaller segment of your audience. As a result, fewer people open the email, but those that do are more interested in your offer, and therefore more likely to convert.

I doubt we’ll ever have a guaranteed email subject line length but there’s one thing I can guarantee: The way to know what works is to test, test, test, test. Remember, email marketers, in your world, testing is much more doable than in the print marketer’s world. Take advantage of that ability to boost your email marketing ROI.

For more on how to write an email subject line, see the useful guide from Lyris: “Email Subject Lines: 15 Rules to Write Them Right.” It’s available on the ClickMail Web site at http://www.clickmailmarketing.com/pdfs/Lyris_15Rules_for_Subject_Lines.pdf.

Landing pages boost your email marketing ROI

You’d think landing pages would be no brainers for those of us in email marketing. I mean, we’re all going after opens first, click throughs second, meaning we should be paying attention to where those click throughs go. But apparently we don’t.

It seems there are still those companies linking their email marketing calls to action to a home page, or, if they are using a landing page, they’re doing a poor job of it.

It’s not that landing pages are simple; it takes a lot of effort and knowledge and testing to build a powerhouse landing page that converts at a higher rate. But there are two landing page essentials that can get you started at least, and they are absolutely necessary for effective email marketing:

• 1. Use one-Make sure you use a landing page specific to the email marketing message you’re sending out. I mean it. Don’t send them to a catch-all page or a product listing page or-worst of all-a home page.
• 2. Match the email-When someone does click through, they need a seamless experience. If you’re landing page doesn’t match the look, feel and offer of the email, you are creating friction. Friction slows down motion. That’s bad. We want to keep them moving toward conversion. So make sure your landing page matches the email that links to it in design and in message.

Over time make sure you’re paying more attention to your landing page elements, including the message, design, the information you ask for, etc. But for now, make sure you use these two ways to make your landing pages land you more customers and a higher email marketing ROI!

Test your email subject line for spamminess

We all know, or should know, that writing subject lines is hard work. Just a few little words can make or break the success of your email marketing campaign. And not just by impacting your open rates. What goes in that little box can affect your deliverability too.

Even if you’re diligent about avoiding words like Viagra in your subject line, you can trigger spam filters with little things you probably didn’t even think of, like punctuation.

What’s a smart email marketer to do? Have no fear, here’s a great little tool that any email marketer can use to check an email subject line for spamminess: http://www.localnews.biz/subjectline/validatesubjectline.asp.

Just type in your subject line and the tool will check for word usage, capitalization, punctuation, numbers, length and more. It only takes a minute and might save you a bundle in lost revenue from your next email marketing campaign by making sure you don’t negatively impact your deliverability!

How to get your customers to anxiously await your emails

Who doesn’t get too many emails? We all do, at work, at home, on our BlackBerries and PDAs. There’s the elderly aunt forwarding the bad jokes, the email newsletters from the financial planner you met once at a networking event (and who ignores your unsubscribe requests because he’s never even heard of CAN SPAM), the countless work emails you get because people are careless with their use of the “Reply to All” button so all of you get emails only meaningful to one of you…this is the deluge of email you know only too well.

As an email marketer, your number one concern is to be wanted. Not just delivered, not just opened, but actually wanted, desired, anticipated.

That sounds like a tall order, right? But there’s a surefire way to make sure people look forward to your emails: content.

Content is at the key of your email marketing after all. You’re not serving up pretty graphics just for the sake of being visually pleasing. You’re delivering a message with a purpose for you, the marketer. The trick is to make sure it has value for them, the recipient.

Too often it seems email marketing neglects to take into account what the customer really wants. The email is meant to drive ROI and “the sooner the better” is the mentality.

But that means the customer’s interests are secondary to the marketer’s.

Whether you’re sending out a weekly email newsletter, or a carefully thought out drip email marketing campaign, really focus on the content. Put the customer first and give her content that’s useful, relevant, valuable, helpful, etc. … to her that is, not you.

Deliver content your customers want to get, and your emails will be anxiously awaited.