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 Email Analytics Reveal Sweet Spots In Subject-Line Length |
| author: David Goetzl |
| source: MediaPost |
| date : 5/27/2008 |
Email marketing analytics have led Dela Quist, CEO of London shop Alchemy Worx, to discover a sweet spot for how long subject lines should be.
He says open rates climb when the subject lines are in the 50-character range or 80-character range. But, perhaps counterintuitively, they fall in the middle when the length is 60 or 70.
Research culled from 250 million messages sent over the past two years, with 660 different subject lines... |
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2008 Email Design Guidelines |
| author: mathewp |
| source: Campaign Monitor |
| date : 5/21/2008 |
As web designers, we’ve grown pretty good at understanding how to create a modern, semantic, accessible website using XHTML and CSS. We understand what makes a good website, and how to make it happen.
When it comes time to design emails though, do all the same rules apply? Are there things we should be doing specifically for email that don’t make sense on a website? In this article we’ll discuss the technical, design and information elements that make up a successful HTML email.
If you want to dive right in and just need some direction, here’s the outline: |
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Videos in Email...How Many Times Do I Have to Tell You!? |
| author: MindComet |
| source: EmailMarketingVoodoo.com |
| date : 5/21/2008 |
It's been long debated the best way to go about implementing videos into email. Well, I'll come right out and state the obvious: it can't happen.
BUT there are cool and creative ways to execute videos in email. The simplest thing to do is to take a screenshot of the video, making that clickable which will lead the user to a landing page. |
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The Psychology Of Words |
| author: Bill McCloskey |
| source: MediaPost |
| date : 11/21/2007 |
| Rather than any practical advice around email marketing, let’s talk about the whole idea of written communication. That is, after all, what email is. Television is visual as are, for the most part, print ads and banner ads. Radio is auditory. Mobile marketing is more of a haiku, as far as I can see. Email marketing, especially in the age of blocked images, is primarily the copywriter’s realm. It is about stringing words together in a way that makes an impact. |
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Better ‘Gift-Giving’: More Effective Email Creative |
| author: Jaime Senior |
| source: MediaPost |
| date : 11/12/2007 |
The holidays are right around the corner, and my five-year-old is already counting down the days to the big gift-opening extravaganza otherwise known as Christmas at Nana's house. His approach to opening gifts is down to a science. He scans his pile and evaluates who each gift is from, and has an idea of what to expect based on previous experience. It doesn't take long after opening each one to determine if he likes it or if it's time to move on to the next gift.
It dawned on me that his approach to opening the gifts is not unlike how we approach reading emails in our inbox. Perhaps when developing email creative, business managers can apply tactics similar to that of the gift-giver.
Here are some things to consider to be a more effective email gift-giver: |
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Simple Content: A Safer Choice - Improper e-mail rendering can cause creative marketing campaigns to miss their mark |
| author: Mary E. Morrison |
| source: B2B Magazine |
| date : 9/24/2007 |
Email marketing creative presents a particular challenge for marketers: Unlike a print ad or direct mail piece, which are usually displayed as the advertiser intended them to be, the content in a marketer's email message may or may not render properly depending on the recipient's e-mail client. With that in mind, many marketers are opting for simpler creative that loads easily and leads readers to their Web site for more information.
One concern is the newest version of Microsoft Outlook 2007, which was released earlier this year and renders HTML differently than previous versions. Instead of using the Web browser Internet Explorer to render email, Outlook 2007 uses Microsoft Word, whose support of typical Web design elements is limited. |
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Image-Blocking Scorecard, Part 2 |
| author: Jeanne Jennings |
| source: Clickz |
| date : 1/29/2007 |
In part one, I began my analysis of 30 email messages, 14 business-to-business (B2B) and 16 business-to-consumer (B2C), that appeared in my inbox with images suppressed.
We initially looked at methodology, scope of blocking, and the use of alt tags. Today, we'll look at five other factors that can make or break your message's effectiveness when images are blocked. |
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How to Hire a Great B2B Email Copywriter |
| author: Karen Gedney |
| source: Clickz |
| date : 1/10/2007 |
My last column on the growing demand for business-to-business (B2B) copywriters generated a lot of interesting comments and questions from readers, especially with those who are frustrated with their current cadre of writers. So let's take a look at how to hire a great B2B email copywriter.
I went through the following exercise a few months ago with my coach when I was looking for a fellow copywriter to help me with a big project. Since I'm in the market again, it will help me to repeat this process as I share it with you.
First, list all the requirements you have for a copywriter, then rank them in priority order. Here's what I've decided I require most: |
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All I Want for Christmas is a Purple Hat |
| author: Staff |
| source: Email Marketing Voodoo |
| date : 12/20/2006 |
| Earlier this month I received a message from REI. The subject line, REI-OUTLET: "Save and EXTRA 20% on gifts and more", was compelling enough for me to take a second look. Who wouldn't want to save an additional 20% off the discounted outlet price? |
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Image-Blocking Scorecard, Part 1 |
| author: Jeanne Jennings |
| source: Clickz |
| date : 12/18/2006 |
It's been over two years since email marketers began worrying about blocked images in their messages.
So where are we today?
I got to experience firsthand how effectively email marketers have risen to this challenge when I got a new computer and upgraded (finally!) to Outlook 2003. Although I'd transferred my contacts list, I still found images in most email blocked by default.
The good news: it was much easier than I had expected to get Outlook to show me what I was missing, although it did take two or more clicks.
The bad news: email marketers haven't adjusted their creative to address this two-year-old challenge. |
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Optimizing for Gmail's snippets and Outlook's AutoPreview |
| author: David Greiner |
| source: Campaign Monitor |
| date : 10/25/2006 |
Inspired by Jeanne Jennings great write-up on designing emails for Gmail's snippets and Outlook's auto-preview, I decided to run a few tests of my own.
First things first, a Gmail snippet is that small chunk of light grey text immediately following your email subject in the Gmail inbox. It usually includes the first few lines from your email to give the recipient a sample of what's to come. Outlook's AutoPreview feature is a very similar concept.
Problem is, the first few lines of your email might be a link to your web-based version or an unsubscribe link - probably not the optimal text to encourage your recipient to dive into the email. Then Jeanne came out with this gem: |
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Email Creative: What Works and What Doesn't |
| author: Ken Magill |
| source: Multichannel Merchant Magazine |
| date : 8/1/2006 |
Imagine creating and sending a print mail piece only to find out that before delivering it, the U.S. Postal Service stripped out the graphics and put little symbols where pictures used to be.
Infuriating? You bet. And thanks to spammers, this is increasingly the case with email. Inbox providers such as AOL and Google have been forced to block images by default, to prevent pornographic photos from assaulting unsuspecting subscribers and to stymie spammers' efforts to determine if the addresses they hit are real.
Morgan Stewart, director of strategic service for Indianapolis-based email service provider ExactTarget, estimates that 10%-20% of e-mail images are not “rendering.” Image blocking is causing such havoc that the phrase “email creative” might be considered an oxymoron. After all, if the inbox providers are blocking images, what can possibly be creative about it? Turns out, quite a bit. |
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Not-So-Obvious Words Trigger Spam Filters |
| author: Staff |
| source: Direct Magazine |
| date : 5/23/2006 |
Besides obvious words and phrases such as Viagra and penis enlargement, there are a whole slew of not-so-obvious words that can trigger spam filters, according to British company Email Reaction.
As most email marketers know, spam filters give words in incoming email scores based on how often they tend to be used in spam massages. Too high a score results in a blocked mailing.
While some words and phrases that trigger spam filters, such as "hot stocks" are easy to spot, others aren’t the least bit obvious, according to Email Reaction. They include: acceptance, accordingly, beneficiary, beverage, certified, dainty, deceased, degrees, deposit, depression, diagnostics, dollars, dormant, enlarge, foreigner, lenders, lottery, medication, paste, presently, reciprocal, replicas, reseller, southwestern, Swiss, tablets, trademarks, valuables and watches. |
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ACCM Show Daily: Email Critiques--Function Before Form |
| author: Heather Retzlaff |
| source: Multichannel Merchant Magazine |
| date : 5/9/2006 |
Yesterday's Email Marketing Creative Critique session here at the Annual Conference for Catalog & Multichannel Merchants (ACCM) started with an innocent question from Deirdre Cook, vice president of creative services at New York-based email communications solutions provider Epsilon Interactive: "How successful are your emails?"
"Pretty good," replied Melissa Read, Internet designer for pet supplier Drs. Foster and Smith, who had brought copies of the Rhinelander, WI-based multichannel merchant's email campaigns to be reviewed by Cook.
After looking at the pieces, Cook agreed that Drs. Foster and Smith was doing a good job, though she also outlined a number of ways that the merchant could improve its email messaging. |
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Subject Line Research: Response Goes Down As the Characters Go Up |
| author: Ed Taussig and Eunhee Lee |
| source: Return Path |
| date : 5/2/2006 |
The issue of subject line length is something that gets debated endlessly around the marketing water cooler. Most people know that anything longer than 55 characters (and, just a reminder, the spaces do count!) will get cut off. And many have heard the maxim that 35 is really a better number to aim for. But, does anyone know how the length of the subject line actually affects response?
Well, yes, in fact. We did an analysis on all acquisition campaigns sent through our Postmaster Direct Network over the last two years. We found that response rate (as measured by clicks) goes down dramatically when the subject line is longer than 50 characters. How dramatic is this difference? Click-through rates for subject lines with 49 or fewer characters were 75 percent higher than for those with 50 or more. |
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A Guide to CSS Support in Email |
| author: Ken Schafer |
| source: One Degree |
| date : 3/30/2006 |
The folks at Campaign Monitor have done a great service to anyone who’s ever needed to style HTML email.
I’ll let them tell you the problem they’ve helped you solve:
If Internet Explorer is the schoolyard bully making our web design lives a little harder, then Hotmail, Lotus Notes and Eudora are serial killers making our email design lives hell. Yes, it’s really that bad.
Inspired by the fantastic work of Xavier Frenette, we decided to put each of the popular email environments to the test and finalize once and for all what CSS is and isn’t supported out there.
We’ll dig straight into our recommendations based on what we found, followed by the results themselves with a few more details about our findings. |
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HTML Email Design, Coding, and Delivery |
| author: Staff |
| source: Monkey Brains |
| date : 2/27/2006 |
We just posted the 2nd edition of our "HTML Email Design Guide." It's a whopping 50-page document that covers everything a beginner needs to know about delivering email newsletters and promotional campaigns.
We wrote the 1st edition back in 2001, and it's been downloaded over 50,000 times since (whew!). But 5 years have passed, and things have changed in the email marketing world. We thought it was time for a re-write (and at the very least, a snazzy new cover)...
So what's changed?... |
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What to Test… and What Not to Test |
| author: Jeanne Jennings |
| source: Clickz |
| date : 2/27/2006 |
| I'm a huge fan of testing when you send email. It's the best way to continually improve metrics and optimize your efforts. That said, not everything warrants an A/B split test. Here are a few scenarios I've come across with clients recently, along with my test/don't test advice. |
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People Can’t Respond To What They Can’t See |
| author: Ken Schafer |
| source: One Degree |
| date : 2/17/2006 |
| Provide enough contrast between body text and background for your average reader on an average screen to be able to read the copy without strain. Ignore your designer’s complaints about your lack of understanding of design aesthetics. |
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Dear John: Tips for Testing Personalized Email Salutations |
| author: Jeanne Jennings |
| source: Clickz |
| date : 2/13/2006 |
If you run into someone you know walking around town, you probably greet her with a hello and use her name. Doing this reinforces your relationship; it tells her you value her, whether she's a friend, colleague, prospect or client.
The same holds true for email; it's a relationship, and you should treat it as such. Often a salutation, whether generic or personalized, engages your reader and lifts your CTR (define). Here are a few tips for testing salutations, along with a tale of three different email salutation tests and the results. |
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Creating better-looking emails |
| author: Emma |
| source: Ask Emma |
| date : 2/13/2006 |
One of my new year's resolutions is to create better email campaigns. I want them to be hot, Emma - good-looking, appealing, effective. Any tips for how I might go about this email-marketing makeover (without plastic surgery, goes without saying)?
Regards,
Watching My (Email) Figure in Los Angeles |
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Dear John: Tips for Testing Personalized E-Mail Salutations |
| author: Jeanne Jennings |
| source: Clickz |
| date : 2/13/2006 |
If you run into someone you know walking around town, you probably greet her with a hello and use her name. Doing this reinforces your relationship; it tells her you value her, whether she's a friend, colleague, prospect or client.
The same holds true for e-mail; it's a relationship, and you should treat it as such. Often a salutation, whether generic or personalized, engages your reader and lifts your CTR. Here are a few tips for testing salutations, along with a tale of three different e-mail salutation tests and the results.
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Omit Needless Words: The secret to successful email marketing: Be succinct |
| author: Mark Brohan |
| source: Internet Retailer |
| date : 2/1/2006 |
| Talk about being direct. An e-mail from ShoeBuy.com this winter advertised discounts on its inventory of 3,000 styles of winter boots and alerted shoppers to ShoeBuy’s standard offers of free shipping, free return shipping and no sales tax—all in 60 words. “We like to say we use a few choice words to deliver a very big message,” says Nick Copley, vice president of marketing for ShoeBuy. |
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Do Overly Specific Subject Lines Impact Email Response? |
| author: Ken Schafer |
| source: One Degree |
| date : 2/1/2006 |
I just got my weekly email newsletter from Ticketmaster Canada and - like I it does every week - my mouse went back-and-forth between the “delete” and “open” buttons as I decided what to do.
Take a look at the newsletter as it appears in my inbox: |
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Using Footers and Headers |
| author: Reid Carr of Red Door Interactive |
| source: iMedia Connection |
| date : 1/18/2006 |
| When the size of images, amount of content and various other issues must be contemplated, why not take advantage of the footers and headers that may not have been reviewed for months, if not years. These may seem like legally-mandated sections, but great emails use every inch of the page to achieve all goals, whether they are legal, marketing or cross promotional in nature |
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Optimizing The Look Of E-mail Marketing |
| author: Stefan Eyram |
| source: One Degree |
| date : 12/9/2005 |
When I set out writing an initial post about optimizing the look of email I didn’t want to make this about creative and design. My focus was based more on testing and the technical aspects of how marketing email looks when viewed by recipients.
To wrap up this series here is a list of my personal recommendations and tips to optimize the look of your e-mail marketing messages: |
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Optimizing Email For Different Devices |
| author: Stefan Eyram |
| source: One Degree |
| date : 12/8/2005 |
More and more I am seeing people use their portable devices to access email. The Blackberry has been joined by Palm Treo devices, handhelds that work on Pocket PC and Windows Mobile platforms, and even cell phones that read email. But have you taken a look at how your email - or other marketers’ email - looks on these small, mainly text-based devices?
Since people use these devices to decide whether or not they will read your whole email (now or later, like when they are back at the office), or if they should delete it, it is extremely important you get some key information communicated clearly and within the context of how these devices display your message. |
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Optimizing For The Preview Pane |
| author: Stefan Eyram |
| source: One Degree |
| date : 12/7/2005 |
In a recent DM News article, Study: B2B Readers Don’t Open Emails, we find out that most B2B newsletter subscribers use the preview pane to view emails.
- 69% of B2B newsletter subscribers “frequently” or “always” use the preview pane to view emails
- 49% said they only look at the first few lines of the preview pane
- 19% said they delete messages if insufficient information is displayed
B2B email recipients use their preview panes. Many also check their personal email at the office and likely apply the same preview pane to their POP3 ISP-based email.
How does your marketing email look in the preview panes of the most common email clients? |
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Optimizing For Different Email Clients |
| author: Stefan Eyram |
| source: One Degree |
| date : 12/6/2005 |
People who receive email use a wide range of email clients ranging from Outlook and Outlook Express to Eudora and Thunderbird. They also use web-based mail solutions like Hotmail, Yahoo, AOL and now Google’s Gmail. Each of these handles incoming email a little differently. And if you send a lot of B2B email or sned to recipients who might be checking email from within large organizations, you will come across Lotus Notes, an email client that is very tough on HTML and other formatted email. Lotus Notes will often chew up your HTML email and spit out some pretty awful stuff for the recipient.
Most email marketers will try and test (preview) their email in some of these environments, especially Outlook (and often Outlook 2003), Yahoo and Hotmail. In the US you typically see tests that include AOL due to the level of user penetration. But for the most part very few of the people I have spoken to test in enough different email clients to properly represent their recipients. Almost no one tests in Lotus Notes unless they use Notes internally.
Not testing across a broad range of email clients is a big mistake! |
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5 Days To Optimize Your Email Messages |
| author: Stefan Eyram |
| source: One Degree |
| date : 12/5/2005 |
I often get asked about email best practices. What is the best day (here’s a PDF on that one) and time to send marketing email? What are typical open and click-through rates? How do I optimize my email marketing?
The answer is almost always “it depends”. One thing that I commonly tell people is that these things are all relative. It all depends on your industry, the type of email you are sending, the depth of your relationship with the recipient, your objectives, etc.
Something I seldom get asked about, but consider a big pet peeve, is how email looks in various email clients, especially how they render within preview panes and on different devices. |
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Email Design Guidelines for 2006 |
| author: David Greiner |
| source: Campaign Monitor |
| date : 11/30/2005 |
As 2005 draws to a close, I thought I'd take the opportunity to outline what I think are some of the key email design trends and guidelines that we should all be paying attention to now and into the new year.
This certainly isn't an exhaustive list, but to me these are the key issues that seem to be overlooked in most of the emails I receive and a great deal that are sent through Campaign Monitor.
We're all busy people, so here’s a summary of what you should be doing to meet each of the guidelines. |
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Seven Words You Can’t Say In Email |
| author: Ken Schafer |
| source: One Degree |
| date : 11/23/2005 |
My guess is there are a lot more than seven words that will get your email newsletter sent to the penalty box and one of them has to be “porn”.
I was just about to send our weekly summary email newsletter to the list (expect it at 11:45AM folks) but on my final check before hitting send I paused and thought “Hmmm, good article, but if I put that title in there no one is going to see it because it will get caught by every spam filter worth its download.”
So I took it out and added this line at the top of the newsletter: |
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Who Should Write Your Newsletter? |
| author: Matt Blumberg, Tami Monahan Forman & Stephanie A. Miller |
| source: Chief Marketer |
| date : 11/23/2005 |
Perhaps we should start with who should not write your email newsletter. Avoid making the obvious choice of using someone in your PR or marketing department, since most people who are great at writing sales and promotional copy are not typically adept at writing interesting content that will hook readers. Often, these professionals will find themselves drifting into the inevitable habit of selling or promoting products and services, or writing from the company’s perspective. Instead, use these internal resources to help you understand your target audience and develop your story ideas, then turn over the duty of crafting the actual newsletter copy to a writer.
It should go without saying that... |
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Six Tips to Make HTML Email Look Right |
| author: Wendy Roth |
| source: iMedia Connection |
| date : 11/16/2005 |
Before you send that email, make sure that you validate the HTML. Don't know how? Lyris' training manager gives you a head start.
When your readers open your email messages, do they say “huh?” Unless the HTML has been designed and tested for email, there’s a strong chance that the message is distorted at best. Even if the message renders beautifully in your web browser, the same HTML code may make your message completely illegible when viewed through many of the most popular email reading programs. |
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The Preview Window: Keeping the Good Stuff Above the Fold |
| author: Matt Blumberg, Michael Mayor, Tami Monahan Forman & Stephanie A. Miller |
| source: Chief Marketer |
| date : 11/11/2005 |
“Above the fold” in email refers to what generally appears in a standard preview pane, such as in Microsoft Outlook or AOL. For readers who use this feature, the elements appearing here will primarily determine whether or not the email gets opened. If you grab the attention of the reader by what is in this small portion of the screen, you can hold their interest.
The preview pane is akin to the envelope of a direct mail piece, or the lead element in a direct mail package. Taking full advantage of this space ... |
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Email Mangling: Are You Seeing What I See? |
| author: June Macdonald |
| source: One Degree |
| date : 10/13/2005 |
This is always a hard one to explain to clients: why doesn’t my email look the same on Lotus, Outlook 2000, 2003, etc, on webmail…
MarketingSherpa’s report today, 71% of Big Companies Use Email Marketing But Many Make HTML Mistakes highlights a problem many email campaigns do not address: the mangling of html in different email clients. How do you address this?
One of the most interesting bits of information shared that I have been looking for myself, is a breakdown on types of email client used.
Over the past year I’ve noticed an increase in the number of messages using inline style sheets. Why do I know? |
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The Art of the Subject Line |
| author: Brad Berens |
| source: iMedia Connection |
| date : 10/6/2005 |
Online copywriting guru Nick Usborne chats with Exec Editor Brad Berens about the dos and don'ts for writing effective email marketing subject lines.
Last year, in a talk about online writing that I gave to a group of talented undergraduate writers at the University of Southern California, I argued that the most important genre of writing for them to master is the email subject line. I think a lot about subject lines: what makes them good and bad, effective and ineffective, but one thing that has long puzzled me is how little attention many companies pay to the lowly subject line. |
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Why Text-Only E-Zines are Hot |
| author: Matt Blumberg, Michael Mayor, Tami Monahan Forman & Stephanie A. Miller |
| source: Chief Marketer |
| date : 9/28/2005 |
| Text-only e-zines are not as elaborate as their HTML counterparts, nor are they perceived by marketers as glamorous, but they may indeed suit your purposes very well. If your audience wants quick access to important information, such as breaking news, legal briefs or research data, it is often in your best interest to use a text format. Such material forwards in a clean manner and is more easily readable on wireless and small-screen devices than HTML email. |
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Text or HTML? Make Sure Your Subscribers Have a Choice |
| author: Matt Blumberg, Michael Mayor, Tami Monahan Forman & Stephanie A. Miller |
| source: Chief Marketer |
| date : 9/28/2005 |
| According to a 2004 report by Jupiter Research, nearly 60% of email users have the ability to receive HTML emails. Such emails earn twice the response of text emails — an impressive feat! Take advantage of this opportunity, but still give your subscribers a choice. By offering both HTML and text versions, you allow customers to select what works best for them — a courtesy that does more to boost response and interest than any other relationship builder. |
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Six Steps to Avoid Spam Filters |
| author: Wendy Roth |
| source: iMedia Connection |
| date : 9/26/2005 |
If you think you're doing everything right, but your emails still end up in the spam folder, read these ideas from Lyris Technologies' Wendy Roth.
In the war against spam, don’t let your legitimate permission-based email become collateral damage.
You’ve worked hard to build your email list the right way, making sure every recipient has opted in and given permission to receive your email. So why, if you’ve done everything right, is your email getting filtered to the spam folder? |
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Live from Shop.org: Retail Email Lacks Creativity, Says Silverpop |
| author: Staff |
| source: Direct Magazine |
| date : 9/13/2005 |
Most merchants fail to take advantage of the technology and creative potential available in email marketing, according to email service provider Silverpop.
For example, 95% of the marketing emails in the company's survey of 175 major retailers had no form of personalization even as simple as the recipient's name, the company said in a press release published yesterday. |
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Does Sending Domain Impact Deliverability? |
| author: Chip House |
| source: Chip's Deliverability Tips |
| date : 8/25/2005 |
Email recipients put more weight on who the email is from than any other item when choosing which emails to open, which to delete and which to complain about.
Our “from address” testing shows an increase in open rates and click-through rates when the from name, from address and subject line are appropriately branded. It also shows a reduction in spam complaints.
An Email Service Provider (ESP) should provide you a choice of how your from address is managed. Possible options for XYZ Brand include: |
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Customization - You Know It’s Good For You..But! |
| author: June Macdonald |
| source: One Degree |
| date : 6/17/2005 |
One of my clients is on a limited budget and sends email once a month to sell their products and usually chooses to send a group message with multiple products per message. This can work very well if you are selling small ticket items such as books, DVDs or apparel, but in B-B, targeting is everything. How can you customize and stick to a small budget?
The answer is you can’t necessarily. But what you can do is tie your budget to your revenue.
For example, let’s say you sell computer leases and each contract is worth $3000. Your clients are in pharma, design and government. If you are sending one email a month and spending $3000 (just as an example), how many leases do you need to sign to break even? In this example, let’s say 2. |
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Preference Centres and Preference Pages |
| author: Stefan Eyram |
| source: One Degree |
| date : 5/11/2005 |
Today I read an article on email preferences in the E-Zine IQ newsletter from Chief Marketer. In “Preferences Prove Profitable” Bill Nussey, CEO of Silverpop provides a good overview of the WHY and HOW of giving subscribers the ability to tailor your email communications to them.
Preference centres or preference pages are a great way to segment customers and prospects alike. However, many email marketers do not use these tools properly. In addition, even if they capture preferences they are not effectively adapting their emails to this valuable information. |
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Deliverability Biggest Challenge for Canadian Email Marketers |
| author: Stefan Eyram |
| source: One Degree |
| date : 5/10/2005 |
Today I read another article on email deliverability. This one has a more Canadian slant. Basically the Direct Marketing News article “Deliverability is biggest challenge facing legitimate email marketers in Canada” suggests up to 50% of all marketing emails never get through. They use a good postal email analogy that simply underscores what deliverability is.
I dispute the generalization of the 50% figure when you are using reputable email service providers (ESPs) that have proper relationships with major Internet Service Providers. However, I will agree it is possible to have 50% of your email blocked.
What can you do? |
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7 Tips For Getting Your Marketing Email Opened |
| author: Stefan Eyram |
| source: One Degree |
| date : 4/27/2005 |
There are many reasons to use email in your marketing mix and many marketers do. A recent edition of DoubleClick’s Consumer Email Study confirms that email marketing done well is effective and desired by consumers. A full 2 out of every 5 people surveyed said they wanted email to replace direct mail. Over half of these people would prefer email to replace telemarketing. In addition, just under half would like email to replace person-to-person sales calls.
The main reason for these feelings is likely the fact that email puts the power into the hands – or inboxes – of the individual. They can chose to read and respond if, and when, they prefer. They can also easily save information that is relevant and interesting, while being able to quickly filter out what they feel is a waste of their time.
With this power in the hands of your customers and prospects, how do you ensure your marketing email is received, read and responded to?
Read on for some valuable tips. |
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Email's Seven Seconds |
| author: Al DiGuido |
| source: Clickz |
| date : 4/7/2005 |
| Email messages are the traffic and distractions of the Internet thoroughfare. Like billboards, your email messages have very little time to grab travelers' attention and convert attention into action. The road is filled with all types of competing messages -- a virtual Times Square of billboards. Fail to grab attention and move users to action, and your competitors will steal your customers and prospects |
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Truth or Consequences? Yeah, Sure |
| author: HERSCHELL GORDON LEWIS |
| source: Direct Magazine |
| date : 4/1/2005 |
The email is typical: “Fast acting wrinkle reducer. Try it free. Click here.”
OK, I clicked here. On comes a video with someone named “Lori Bacca, Age 44,” telling me how I can look as young as I feel. Then comes Carol Robins, age 49, and a succession of others, pitching Hydroderm, a Botox alternative. Uh-oh — “Click here for your Free Trial!*.”
Why the asterisk, my pet hate in any direct response offer? It isn't the $3.95 shipping and handling charge. Yep, it's a negative-option deal: “If you are enjoying the product, do nothing, and in 18 days we will send you a full one month supply of Hydroderm (after the completion of your trial). We'll bill your credit card automatically for the members' only special price of $49.95 (+ $6.95 for shipping and handling).” |
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How HTML Code Affects Email Deliverability |
| author: Kirill Popov and Loren McDonald |
| source: Clickz |
| date : 3/16/2005 |
A common email marketing misconception is e-mail is filtered because it contains words such as "free" in the subject line or body. By itself, that won't get your email filtered. Though certain content combinations may get a message filtered, ISPs may be trapping your legitimate e-mail for infractions you rarely pay attention to.
Take HTML code. Using outdated or incorrect code is a major reason why email to domains such as MSN/Hotmail and AOL are blocked or delivered to bulk or junk mail folders.
You may think you don't have to worry about this. Your email may render correctly and look just fine to you. Wrong! Pivotal Veracity, a delivery-monitoring service provider, estimates nearly 100 percent of all HTML email doesn't comply with World Wide Web Consortium (W3C) standards. |
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How to Write an E-zine Your Subscribers Will Love (or at Least Open and Read) |
| author: Robert W. Bly |
| source: Direct Magazine |
| date : 3/3/2005 |
For many marketers, the fastest way to build a house list of opt-in email names and addresses—an absolute necessity for online marketing—is with the offer of a free subscription to an online newsletter or e-zine.
A variety of online marketing tools are used to drive potential customers to a Web page where they can sign up for a free subscription to your e-zine in exchange for giving you their email address. You can also ask for their name, which allows you to personalize future emails you send to them. |
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Content-centered email in 6 steps |
| author: Andy Sernovitz |
| source: B2B Magazine |
| date : 11/10/2003 |
It’s time to face the music: Nobody wants another ad, coupon or press release in his or her in-box. Thanks to the glut of spam, plus a healthy dose of over-mailing by well-meaning marketers, average-quality email marketing isn’t doing the trick anymore.
The solution? You’re going to have to turn your email ads into email newsletters if you want them to get read. |
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Whose WORD IS IT ANYWAY? |
| author: HERSCHELL GORDON LEWIS |
| source: Direct Magazine |
| date : 6/1/2003 |
The text of a direct response email (not the subject line, where spam filters would kill it, dismember it and heave it into the Ganges River) suggests: Here is the detailed weekly listing of bargains. The unsalesmanlike thrust of this statement ignores an opportunity to transfer ownership. The very suggestion of transfer can help establish or convert a mind-set:
Here is your detailed weekly listing of bargains.
(A genuine certified wordsmith wouldn't tumble down the communications ladder to purgatorial prosaics such as detailed and listing. More likely, the sales pitch would be: “Here's your private register of bargains, for this week only.”) |
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E-Nurturing, the IBM Way |
| author: Joanna Belbey and Karen Gedney |
| source: Clickz |
| date : 4/23/2003 |
| Years ago, Karen worked at IBM's sales department as a college intern. She remembers the staff as the most professional, pleasant people she's known in over 20 years in business. So, when she spoke to Kyle Miller of IBM Canada about the "e-nurturing" strategy IBM uses for its WebSphere software solutions, it felt like old-home week. Miller, a strategist for IBM's Worldwide Direct Marketing of WebSphere, described his team's high-value approach to intelligently moving prospects through the sales cycle. |
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Get What You Need And Get Out |
| author: Doug Pond |
| source: Opt-in News |
| date : 4/18/2003 |
Don't take the title of this article the wrong way - it was not meant as a command. Rather, it refers to an observation made by one of the readers of my marketing eNewsletter, The Subject Line, about consumer behavior. After reading an issue about the power of sincerity in marketing and advertising messages, he wrote:
"It just doesn't matter that much what you say, or how you say it. Nobody really reads or pays attention to what you are writing. The point is targeting, getting your message to the right people. Making it relevant. Then people don't read what you write in your ads. They get what they need and get out." |
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Seven Questions for an E-Mail-Specific Creative Brief |
| author: Joanna Belbey and Karen Gedney |
| source: Clickz |
| date : 4/9/2003 |
| In past columns, we've discussed the importance of a creative brief. Today, a few extra points for that brief to take into account the special opportunities and challenges email offers. |
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Breaking the Rules -- or Adhering Too Closely? |
| author: Jeanne Jennings |
| source: Clickz |
| date : 3/27/2003 |
Effective customer service and reader engagement are two critical e-mail optimization areas.
Below, a real-life example of each. In one, a customer service department was on the right track but went too far and ended up angering the recipient. The other is a study of one of my favorite e-mail newsletters. It breaks all the rules yet is successful thanks to a secret ingredient that's easy to describe but much more difficult to practice.
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E-Mailing Seniors: Tapping Into a Lucrative Demographic |
| author: Paul Soltoff |
| source: Clickz |
| date : 3/10/2003 |
Statistics show that every 7.5 seconds, someone turns 55. But, unlike 25 years ago, today's new seniors are less brand loyal and more apt to comparison shop. They are also highly mobile and very adventurous.
And get this: Seniors today account for more than 50 percent of the discretionary spending power in our economy and control more than 75 percent of all financial assets. Plus, women in households composed of people 50 and older control more than 80 percent of personal and household spending.
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Free Shipping Keeps on Giving |
| author: KRIS OSER |
| source: Direct Magazine |
| date : 3/1/2003 |
Free shipping is a technique that's kept on giving for some online marketers even after the holiday season.
That's what Mondy Beller, the director of marketing at two footwear sites, found out.
Famousfootwear.com trotted out free shipping the Tuesday before Thanksgiving in a promotion that ran through Dec. 5. (After that, the site was locked into running a buy one, get one half-price promotion for the rest of the season.)
During the first week, sales leaped 27% ahead of the previous week — and 70% ahead of December 2001, Beller said. Conversion went up by 28%.
When the site switched to the half-off effort, sales dipped to only 13% over December 2001. “That's still positive, but it's not as significant as free shipping,” Beller said. “Our customers would rather have free shipping than dollars off.” |
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Traditional Marketing As A Base |
| author: Brooke Broder |
| source: Opt-in News |
| date : 2/28/2003 |
| Traditional marketing methods, such as direct mail pieces like mailers, and brochures, I consider to be the equal to the commercial email in many ways. When executed correctly the messages will be brief, intriguing and offer some for of value and action request. Of course email is interactive and presents many other options that it’s direct mail counterpart – it should still follow similar rules when in the planning stages. |
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Your Target Audience - Who Are They & What Do They Want? |
| author: Karon Thackston |
| source: Opt-in News |
| date : 2/14/2003 |
It still amazes me. When I write copy for a company, I always ask about their target audience. I have to know who I'm writing to in order to create a message that will bring a response. But about half the time, the client is absolutely stumped about who their target audience is and what they want.
At the risk of sounding like a broken record, I'll say it again: "You have to know your target audience before you can advertise effectively." |
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Broadband Gains Impact E-Mail Optimization |
| author: Al DiGuido |
| source: Clickz |
| date : 2/13/2003 |
| A profound shift in Internet access and online marketing is accelerating. They say speed kills, which may mean bad news for dial-up access providers as well as marketers who don't focus on e-mail optimization in a changing marketplace. |
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How to Answer Customers' Most Important Question |
| author: Paul Soltoff |
| source: Clickz |
| date : 1/27/2003 |
In my last column, I discussed the most important customer question an email marketer must answer to create a compelling email campaign: "What's in it for me?"
But how do you determine the correct answer? Do you simply pick what most appeals to you or your creative team? Do you survey your employees, family, and friends and go with their consensus? Or do you do what many do -- go with your gut feeling? |
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Use E-Mail to Optimize Your Brand |
| author: Al DiGuido |
| source: Clickz |
| date : 1/16/2003 |
E-mail impacts brand, you say? But e-mail is a direct response medium that has nothing to do with branding, right? Actually, e-mail is the most personal form of communication outside of good old-fashioned face-to-face communication, which is very often cost-prohibitive when you're doing mass marketing and communication.
So how is e-mail related to brand? Having spent many years working with different media, I have witnessed the power of e-mail and its ability to impact all the key attributes critical to building one's brand, including brand awareness, preference, satisfaction, loyalty, and purchase intent.
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Get Your E-Mail in Shape for 2003 |
| author: Joanna Belbey and Karen Gedney |
| source: Clickz |
| date : 1/15/2003 |
No, we're not talking about clearing out the 6,000 e-mails clogging your inbox in an effort to unclutter and simplify your life.
Today's column is about firming up and adding more power to your e-mail messages for greater profitability in 2003. So flex your fingers over your keyboard and get ready to give your brain a workout.
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Branding Your E-Mails, Part 2: Find Brand Loyalty Close to Home |
| author: Martin Lindstrom |
| source: Clickz |
| date : 1/14/2003 |
How do you achieve effective, branded e-letters? Well, last week I introduced the idea of branded e-mail, and I'll explore the topic further this time, but, first, an anecdote...
A friend of mine happens to be a big Dr Pepper fan. Yet every time I see him he's just bought a six-pack of Pepsi. Why? I asked him about this apparent incongruity, and I discovered he shows up with Pepsi rather than his favored Dr Pepper because of loyalty. That's loyalty to his local store, not loyalty to one brand over another.
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The Most Important Question E-Mail Marketers Need to Answer |
| author: Paul Soltoff |
| source: Clickz |
| date : 1/13/2003 |
If you're using e-mail to sell anything to anybody, there's one question you'd better be able to answer -- and answer correctly -- or most of your marketing efforts will be for naught.
That's right, one correctly answered question almost always makes the difference between success and failure in e-mail marketing. Whether you're selling a consumer product or a business service or offering a free e-mail newsletter subscription, getting the right answer to this question is your number one task.
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Branding Your E-Mails, Part 1 |
| author: Martin Lindstrom |
| source: Clickz |
| date : 1/7/2003 |
Here's irony. I not only remember, but still possess, an artifact from the '80s: a special "letterhead book." These publications accommodated thousands of letterhead, envelope, and label designs. Designing a letterhead had become a work of art, honed by the imperative of clearly reflecting a company's brand image.
By 1998, most Western countries noticed electronic mail exceeded the "snail mail" output and input. Suddenly, e-mail replaced regular mail. This signaled the demise of good old, paper-based letterhead.
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Start With The Subject Line |
| author: Brooke Broder |
| source: Opt-in News |
| date : 1/1/2003 |
“Get paid for yours…” “A Free Sony DVD Player!” “PROPOSAL”; and my favorite “Cash Notice: URGENT” are all subject lines from spammed emails I received in the last couple days. Before I even checked the source I knew they were Spam from the ridiculous titles.
Most Spam Nazis are simple people. They’re not very bright and have nothing to offer of value. Because of this many of us are sickened when our inboxes are filled with these useless messages. |
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Is Your HTML Broken? |
| author: Paul Soltoff |
| source: Clickz |
| date : 12/30/2002 |
| As you can imagine, we get zillions of HTML emails in our offices, which lets our IT department analyze them for problems with both their design and delivery. Lately, we've noticed a dramatic increase in the incidence of HTML emails containing assorted errors -- errors that can not only turn people off, but can also create delivery problems. As marketers, we liken these errors to newspaper ads where pictures are missing; TV spots without the company or product name; a call to action with the wrong 800 number; or direct mail pieces with typos and misprints. |
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Is Your Ezine A Wealth of Information or A Sales Trap? |
| author: Karon Thackston |
| source: Opt-in News |
| date : 12/27/2002 |
| Ask successful ezine publishers what draws subscribers to their ezines, and you'll be told one very important thing. Content, content, content. However, many would-be ezine publishers focus more on selling than they do on valuable information. They turn their attention toward making money instead of building relationships. If you follow suit, that practice will surely be the death of your ezine, my friend. |
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Email's Getting More Personal. Should You? |
| author: Pamela Parker |
| source: Clickz |
| date : 12/6/2002 |
| Whenever new technologies come to the fore, there's a natural temptation to jump right in because "everybody's doing it." At the recent ClickZ E-Mail Strategies conference in San Francisco, the latest craze was for email with dynamically generated content. Given the dramatic proliferation of spam, it stands to reason marketers would be interested in standing out by providing ultra-relevant content. It's clear that, as a recent Forrester Research study put it, "the time of simple weekly blasts is gone.... There is ample evidence that personalized emails have not suffered declining response." |
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Buy Versus Build: Branded Daily Emails? |
| author: Barry Stamos |
| source: Clickz |
| date : 10/14/2002 |
My last column shed light on low-cost, high-impact marketing through the use of branded templates for your organization's outbound email.
I was amazed at how many of you responded. This week, I'm following up with answers to the question and comment I heard most often:
"I love it. So how do I do it?"
"Here's a list of reasons why the idea won't work."
I say, "Amen!" to both sides.
The first group is focused on the business value to be gained. They're eager to pursue the idea further. The second group is focused on business costs. They want to ensure all technical hurdles have been taken into account.
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Brand-Aid for Everyday Email |
| author: Barry Stamos |
| source: Clickz |
| date : 9/30/2002 |
Whether you send 2 or 200 work-related emails per day, do you do the following?
*Insert a signature with contact information.
*Rarely include a company logo.
*Shy away from including a promotional trailer.
*Rarely add graphics linking to your Web site.
*Forgo tracking or reporting open and click rates.
If the above sound familiar, you don't use a branded template for your professional email. You should. Would you mail a business letter without using company letterhead? Of course not!
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Copy that Inspires On-The-Spot Decisions |
| author: Joanna Belbey and Karen Gedney |
| source: Clickz |
| date : 9/25/2002 |
| Many products have a very short life cycle. Conferences and corporate events fall into that category. You no sooner start promoting it than it's over. When you ask a prospect to register now, you really mean it. One day after the event is too late. |
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Get on the Executive Radar Screen, Part 2 |
| author: Joanna Belbey and Karen Gedney |
| source: Clickz |
| date : 9/11/2002 |
Our last column was about positioning your conference to immediately telegraph itself as a must-attend event for executives by leveraging its past reputation, playing up the current year's theme, and extending an offer to encourage early registration.
Let's get to the nuts and bolts of writing and formatting a winning save-the-date email.
The Subject Line Is Everything
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Where is this email coming from? |
| author: Al Bredenberg |
| source: Email Marketing Results |
| date : 9/9/2002 |
Both here and in other publications, we read a lot about email Subject lines and how to craft them so your email message gets opened instead of deleted. Most of us who use email for marketing think long and hard when it's time to come up with that crucial bit of copy.
But perhaps just as important to consider is the from "From:" field. In other words, when your email newsletter or promotion lands in someone's email box, will that user recognize it as coming from a trusted source?
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Get on the Executive Radar Screen, Part 1 |
| author: Joanna Belbey and Karen Gedney |
| source: Clickz |
| date : 8/28/2002 |
You've just walked out of the kick-off meeting for your next conference. You have the date, location, and, hopefully, the name of the event. At this early point in the event promotion lifecycle, that may be all you have to go on. Most likely, the actual agenda, list of speakers, and topics are works in progress.
Ideally, you'd wait until the whole program is finalized. When promoting a conference or similar business-to-business (B2B) event, you rarely have that luxury. To get on the radar screen (and calendar) of executives you need to reach, you need to send a save-the-date email, pronto. As discussed in an earlier column, for C-level executives you'll want to mail as much as 12 months in advance; for everyone else, 6 months is a good lead time.
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