Email marketing

How effective is your email marketing?

March 17, 2015

Email is still one of marketing’s greatest tactics but how effective is your email marketing? It’s easy to understand the allure of email marketing.

It’s cost effective (but not free), it’s easy to plan and execute in advance and very few people don’t access their email every single day, so in theory – the audience is engaged with the medium.

So why do so many efforts fall flat? I think we almost take it for granted. We think just firing off an email without thinking through the steps will still be effective. But the reality is, there are many elements that can make or break an email campaign at each stage of the effort.

Is deliverability impacting the effectiveness of your email marketing?

Just because you click send doesn’t mean it actually gets into the recipient’s inbox. Here are some of the critical things to be mindful of as you develop your email.

List Quality: You can absolutely go out and buy a big batch of emails. But the best email list is going to come from actually building your own list by offering something of value that someone is willing to trade their email list for.

CAN SPAM compliance: If you break the rules, your emails will end up going nowhere. You need to be very familiar with the boundaries and requirements of this regulation.

Are opens impacting the effectiveness of your email marketing?

Getting it into their mailbox is the first step, but now you need to get them to actually read it.

Subject line: Like the headline of an ad, your subject line is the most important element of your email. You only have a few seconds to grab the recipient’s attention and entice them to click open.

Time Sent: The e-marketing company Mail Chimp did a study and found that Tuesdays and Wednesdays had the highest open rates throughout the week. They also found that 10-2 pm local time (so you’ll have to find some middle ground if you mail across time zones) worked best.

Are click throughs impacting the effectiveness of your email marketing?

While it’s great to get someone to open the email, what you really want them to do is click on something – to learn more, to buy something or to ask you to contact them.

Relevance: If your list or your content isn’t pretty targeted – your content may be off target. Even the best headline in the world isn’t going to make someone click on a link that is irrelevant to them. You need to know your audience well and write to them about things they will definitely care about.

Design/layout: I don’t care how exciting your offer is – if I can’t find it or can’t understand what I need to do to get to the next step, I can’t move forward. Make sure your email design is clean, easy to read and the calls to action are very clear.

Offer/Call to Action: If the offer isn’t compelling, time sensitive and a great value – it’s not likely you’re going to get a lot of takers. This is one of the most common mistake business owners make – they don’t sweeten the pot enough.

Is revenue (or the lack thereof) impacting the effectiveness of your email marketing?

Ultimately, you are sending out these emails to make money. Short of that, it was a valiant effort but it didn’t achieve the objective.

Landing page content/design: When someone is interested enough to click on a link – you sure want them to land on a page that only heightens their interest. Great photos, testimonials, video demos and very clean design with clear calls to action are what drive sales.

Check out experience: If you actually sell something from your website – you want to avoid cart abandonment at all costs. Make sure the check out experience is simple, fast and doesn’t ask the buyer to duplicate efforts or invest too much time.

If you want effective email marketing  — it has to be a well-orchestrated machine. So take the time to think it though, invest in good tools and test, test test!

Want to dig in a little deeper?  Grab this great (and free) ebook on ways you can better answer the question — “how effective is your email marketing” from the good folks at Copyblogger.

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What it takes to create a successful email campaign

March 7, 2013

Email.  We hate it when our inbox is overflowing but we love the possibilities as marketers.  Email flows freely (sometimes too freely!) and because of that, I think we sometimes take it for granted.  We assume it has magical powers of some kind….and so when we want to reach an audience — we just fire off an email or three.

Probably not the best approach. Like any marketing tactic, it requires some planning, effort and follow through.  Our friends at agencyside (creators of the BOLO conference) developed this inforgraphic to outline what it actually takes to drive revenue from the inbox.

Click here to download a full-sized version.

Next time you want to use email to drive home a message, create sales or generate traffic for a specific outcome — don’t waste your time or the recipient’s.  Use this handy reminder to make sure you cover all the bases!

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Oops — can’t say THAT in an email! (stupid SPAM filters)

June 3, 2012

I’m working on our weekly e-newsletter (always different content than here at the blog — gotta keep it fresh!) and I’m writing about email marketing mistakes.

One of the mistakes I’m talking about is using phrases or words that trigger spam filters.

I’m in the middle of making the list and realize…”duh, Drew, you’re going to email this out to the subscriber list and basically, by demonstrating all the criteria that trigger spam filters…you are going to trigger spam filters!”

Sooooo, I am going to list them here and then invite the email subscribers to come check out the list in this safe environment. You, my blog readers, are the lucky recipients of this little technology work around, because now you too can see the list of stuff you shouldn’t include in your emails if you want them to actually reach the recipient.

Start reading here…newsletter subscribers:

As I was saying….every email software has built in spam filters and most companies add another one of top of that. Every email that is sent through their server – on it’s way to your target audience – gets screened by the spam filters. If your email matches one or more of the criteria they set as likely to be spam – your email will never get delivered.

What are some of those common filters?

• Excessive use of exclamation points or other punctuation!!!
• Using ALL CAPS (especially in the subject line)
• Bad code (copying a word document directly into your email software will often do this)
• Colored fonts
• An email that is just an image and very little actual text
• The phrase “you registered with a partner” (in other words…we got your name from someone else)
• The salutation “Dear” before the recipient’s name
• Attachments

(Newsletter subscribers…you can head back to the newsletter to read the rest of the email marketing mistakes or you can hang out here..but don’t miss the rest of those tips!)

To you, my blog readers — thanks for letting me bring the newsletter readers into your space. If you have an interest in checking out the newsletter content — you are welcome to sign up by clicking here.

 

Photo courtesy of www.BigStockPhoto.com

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The worst sales email ever

May 24, 2012

Maybe I’m wrong and you can top this…but check this out:

Hi folks,

Name Name here from InvestorGuide.com. Our network of sites reaches a business savvy audience of over 5 million people every month. We also have a million opt-in subscribers and 125,000 financial advisors ready to receive dedicated email blasts.

We’ve been in this business for over 10 years so we know what works. I’m trying to find out who handles media buys for your clients, and I’d really appreciate it if we could get an updated copy of your client roster. I think we can really make something work here.

Sincerely,

Ms. Name Name
Title
e-mail address

Hi Folks?  So who all got this and how did I get lumped in with them?  Send you an updated list of our client roster?  Are you kidding me?  Who writes these things and worse yet…who approves them to actually be sent to prospects?

This is why we have all the SPAM laws and why our email inboxes are so cluttered with junk that we can’t find the emails we want to receive/read.

If you are sending out emails like this — stop it.  Now.

 

Photo courtesy of BigStockPhoto.com

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