Archive for the ‘Email Marketing Best Practices’ Category
Posted by John Reynolds on March 22nd, 2012
Do you watch Mad Men? The 1950s, 60s and 70s were a great time to be an Ad man. Many modern day marketing and advertising principles were created long before I was born. One of the very best resources I have is the short 1900 word advertisement written by David Ogilvy. He ran How to create advertising that sells in the newspapers while he was working at the agency Ogilvy & Mather.
Download a copy of it here (PDF). You can read it and file it away for a rainy day. Or, print it out and display it proudly – like me.
Posted by Dave McCue on February 17th, 2012
Advertisers shell out big bucks and roll out their best commercials to reach millions of viewers during the Super Bowl. Whether or not you’ve got that type of advertising budget at your disposal, a lot can be learned from the spots that aired during this year’s big game.
Think multi-channel
Chrysler’s “Halftime in America” featuring Clint Eastwood caused a big stir among viewers, but why stop there? Shortly after the commercial aired, Chrysler deployed an email message with a link to view the commercial. Not only did this strategy help Chrysler get in front of potential non-football fans, it also provided the commercial in an easily share-able format, helping expand the potential reach of the campaign into the social media space.
Familiar, or stale?
Nobody was surprised to see the Budweiser clydesdales, the Coca-Cola polar bears or GoDaddy’s latest “web content unrated” teaser, but at what point does the familiar begin to become background noise? It’s an important point of discussion for email marketers as well. If response rates aren’t where you would like them to be, it could be a case of recipients tuning your messages out. Try something new to get their attention.
Listen to your audience
Doritos’ “Man’s Best Friend” and Chevy’s “Happy Grad” both received high marks in the various audience polls conducted after the game, and both were user-generated contest entries. Does the audience understand brands better than brands understand themselves? Not likely, but from an email standpoint your audience can offer valuable insight into what “works” and what doesn’t in relation to your communications. See what they have to say, you might be surprised.
Posted by Dave McCue on February 6th, 2012
Are you sticking to your email marketing resolutions for 2012? Heading into a fresh new year is a good time to evaluate the wins and losses of the previous year and identify opportunities to improve. Here are a few things to think about as you look to optimize your 2012 program.
Better User Experience
Taking steps to increase the scannability of messages can drastically improve the experience for recipients and increase engagement. When testing, adopt the mindset of a typical recipient who is short on time and, in many cases, multi-tasking. How much of an impact do your messages have “at a glance?” Don’t assume recipients who open your messages are reading every word—make it easy for recipients to find the most important content.
Effective Welcome Messages
New subscriber welcome messages are known to receive some of the highest engagement metrics of any type of campaign, but since these messages are typically automated they are often set up initially and then forgotten about, even as changes to the email program are implemented. If it’s been awhile, go back and review your welcome message to make sure proper expectations are still being set for new subscribers as far as the type of messages they should expect and the frequency at which to expect them.
Try New Things
Don’t be afraid to try something new, even if only to a test sample of recipients. Maybe that’s a new template design, sending at a different time of the day, including social media sharing tools in messages, animated graphics, etc. Not everything you try is going to work, but it’s worth the effort to see how your audience responds to variations on your typical communications. On a related note, let us know if you like the new Digital Spin News design!
As always, don’t hesitate to contact SubscriberMail for any of your strategic email marketing needs. Have a terrific 2012!
Posted by John Reynolds on January 23rd, 2012
Reaching your Gmail subscriber’s inbox is critical. Even more important is that your message renders the way you want it to. All of it! If your HTML is more than 102 kilobytes, your email may be cut off by Gmail in mid-sentence. As an email marketer you may focus on the top half of your message, but at the bottom of your message are the tracking image used to record Opens/Renders and the unsubscribe link you need to be CAN-SPAM compliant.
Gmail will automatically clip a message if the total size exceeds 102 kilobytes. Users will see a [Message Clipped] View Entire Message link in order to download the rest of your message (see screenshot below). In Gmail’s smart phone and tablet apps, the same rules generally apply.
To fix this situation, keep your HTML code short by removing extra returns, comments and unnecessary attributes and styles. Applications like Outlook and Apple Mail will show you the size of your message if you’re looking for ways to test. You can also check your file size from an original HTML text file.
Aside from the HTML code, it is also recommended that you save your images in an optimized format. Recipients should not have to wait for the images to render on their desktop or smart phone.
Continue to test how your messages render. It is critical that your message renders properly in Gmail to avoid losing the unsubscribe link, tracking image for Opens/Renders , and any content that is displayed after 102 kilobytes.
Posted by Rob Ropars on October 21st, 2011
Just a quick thought on managing recipients and their experience with your email marketing. I’ve been in the process of migrating subscriptions to various email newsletters from Yahoo to Gmail.
I have been amazed at how many email marketing pieces I regularly receive that don’t offer the option to change your email address. One after the other offered an unsubscribe link and in some cases, a link for someone to opt-in (if the email had been forwarded to me from a friend) to receive future emails.
In those cases, I would have to opt-out and back in with my other email address. I suppose in the end it’s not too many extra steps, but it seems so unnecessary. Why make it hard for someone to change addresses (which happens so often)? What if they get interrupted or irritated and don’t opt back in?
When setting up the footer area of emails (often called the “mousetype”), your marketing should include:
• A valid postal address (for CAN SPAM compliance)
• A functioning opt-out link which lets the subscriber opt out without having to give any more information than their email address (CAN SPAM again)
• Any pertinent legal wording, trademark/copyright references
• A link to your current privacy policy
• A link to subscribe if the email has been forwarded to you from a friend
• The email address it was sent to
• Any footnote references related to the body of the email (such as links to sweepstakes rules or further rebate program clarification)
Let your readers feel they are managing their subscription to whatever email address they prefer. Otherwise, you risk losing them completely.
