21 Ways to Improve Email Deliverability

Most of us have had at least one experience of losing something in the postal mail. Hopefully yours was something small, like a postcard, not something like a mortgage payment or a rent check.

But despite how much we all complain about the post office, its delivery rates positively sparkle compared to email messages. Just last week, Return Path, the email certification service, reported that one in six emails never makes it to the inbox.

One in six is a lot. What if one in six of your customer-service emails went missing, or one in six order confirmations? Even with all the other demands on your time, to track sales, to create more content, to manage your social media accounts, when one in six of your email messages is getting lost, it’s time to do something about it. Just cutting that rate in half, from one in six to one in twelve, will give your entire email marketing program a 10 percent lift.

One in six is a lot. What if one in six of your customer-service emails went missing, or one in six order confirmations?

The good news is it’s not all that hard to improve deliverability rates. And, if your deliverability rates are already good, it’s not too hard to preserve them. Here are 21 simple techniques for increasing your list’s deliverability rates, or for keeping the healthy deliverability rates you’ve got. And there’s enough time before the holiday rush to see results if you make these changes now.

1. Use Double Opt-in, Not Single Opt-in

The difference between double and single opt-in is that with double opt-in (also called “confirmed opt-in”), people get a confirmation email after they’ve entered their email address into your form and clicked submit. They’re not subscribed until they click a link in the confirmation email.

Deliverability rates for lists that use double opt-in are significantly higher than for single opt-in lists. Their unsubscribe rates are also lower, and their open and click through rates are higher. Double opt-in crushes single opt-in on just about every metric, with one exception — you’ll get about 20 percent fewer subscribers on the front end with double opt-in. However, that small loss up front will translate into big rewards long term. Use double opt-in.

2. Purge Hard Bounces after One Bounce

A hard bounce is when an email message is sent to an email account that is closed or no longer exists. The major ISPs (Gmail, Yahoo, Hotmail) keep track of these bounces, and will start to suppress delivery of all your emails if you trigger too many hard bounces. So keep your list up to date and remove hard bounces fast. Most email service providers make this easy.

3. Purge Soft Bounces after Multiple Attempts

Soft bounces occur when an email message is sent to an email account that is full, or temporarily unavailable for some reason — the server is down, for example. Soft bounces are less of a problem than hard bounces, but it’s still a good idea to clean them up. After 3 to 4 soft bounces to an email address, it’s time to take it off your list.

4. Avoid Over-mailing

One marketer’s definition of over-mailing can be another’s everyday practice. But generally, if you’re mailing more than once a day, you may be over-mailing. Over-mailing is also a little trickier to blame for poor deliverability rates, because when you send more emails, people tend to respond less — i.e., you can’t just send twice as many emails and get twice as many responses. Those suppressed response rates can also contribute to reduced overall deliverability, which brings us to the next point.

5. Purge Subscribers Who Haven’t Opened or Clicked in Awhile

“Awhile” can be a year, or six months. Whatever time frame you pick is up to you, but you have to draw the line somewhere. If people aren’t opening or clicking on your emails, culling them from your list might hurt, but it will help the deliverability rates for the people you’ll keep.

6. Avoid Spam Traps

A spam trap is an email address that has not been used by a real person for a long time, like 18 months, and has since been taken over by an ISP or by an anti-spam organization. That email address is now called a spam trap because if any emails get sent to it, the sender will be flagged as a spammer. There are reports of a mailer sending just one email to a spam trap and having its Sender Score drop by 20 points. That’s a severe example, but it drives the point home: Mailing to even one spam trap can hurt you.

The top way to get a spam trap on your list is to buy an email list. But if you want to know some of the other, less common ways that even good email marketers can end up with spam traps on their lists, see “Email Spam Traps and How to Avoid Them,” my article on that topic.

7. Use a Consistent, Recognizable Sender Name and Email Address

In other words, don’t have your email messages be from a free email account (like Hotmail or Gmail). Use the name of your company or brand as the “from” name.

The image below shows why this is important. Your sender name is actually more prominent in some email clients that the email subject line is.

The sender name on your email messages is often just as visible as the email subject line.
The sender name on your email messages is often just as visible as the email subject line.
8. Send from a Consistent IP Address with a Good Sender Score

Not sure if you’re doing this? Ask your email service provider.

9. Use Clear Email Subject Lines

“Deceptive” is the term the ISPs use, when subject lines are intentionally misleading. It can sound a little harsh, but here are some examples of what they mean: Don’t mention a sale or a coupon in the email subject line and then not offer it in the email. Basically, don’t promise anything in the subject line that your email doesn’t back up.

10. Do Not Include Attachments

Never, ever include an attachment for the emails you send to subscribers. Got a PDF or some other file you want them to have? Include a link to download it in the email.

11. Do Not Use Fancy Coding Languages

Avoid Dynamic HTML, frames, PHP, JavaScript, Java, ActiveX, ASP, and “cache busters.” Just keep it simple, okay?

12. Avoid Known Spam Words

This is actually far more complicated than it sounds. Search on Google for “spam word lists” and look around. If you removed every word that appears on every spam word list from your emails, you’d have to communicate by images — there wouldn’t be any words left. That said, if you have to use a few spam words (and you will) try to use them as little as possible. For example, don’t open your email with “FREE FREE FREE FREE.”

13. Avoid Embedded Videos

This is too bad, because videos increase email engagement by a lot. But unfortunately, they can also suppress deliverability. If you still want to send something like a video, send an image that looks like a video, and link it to a page that automatically plays the video. Most of your subscribers won’t notice the difference.

14. Keep Message Size to 40KB or Less

That doesn’t mean you can’t ever send an email over 40KB, but try to keep most of your emails under that size. This may mean you have to take an extra step and reduce the size of any images in your email. It is extra work, but it’s worth it.

15. Use a Spam Screening Tool

Almost every email service provider will have one of these tools built into the interface where you create your emails, but if they don’t, head over to SpamScoreChecker.com or any one of the free spam tools, and run your email through their process. It takes less than 5 minutes. To ensure a good deliverability rate, your email should have a SpamAssassin spam score of less than 5.0. If your email rates higher than that, the tool will definitely let you know.

Source : http://webmarketingtoday.com/articles/113607-21-Ways-to-Improve-Email-Deliverability/

Tags : email marketing, email blast, edm software, email marketing software, email marketing company, email marketing service, email marketing malaysia

8 Email Marketing Tips

The day of the pitch has passed. Best practices in email marketing demand communications that go beyond advertising, respect the customer, and speak in a familiar one-on-one style. Email is "the most personal advertising medium in history," says Seth Godin, whose book Permission Marketing set the rules that transformed email marketing into what it is today. "If your email isn't personal, it's broken."
In response to the impersonal abuses of spam, email marketing became personal by necessity following the 2003 adoption of the CAN-SPAM Act. The act essentially defined spam as marketing messages sent without permission and set penalties not only for spammers, but also for companies whose products were advertised in the spam. Smart marketers, recognizing that people's aversion to spam destroyed the customer loyalty they worked so hard to build, had already begun to address the problem with best practices that focused on permission. Today, what's best is often defined by the size of your company and the industry you're in. But a few core practices hold for everyone.

 1. Get Permission "Email is one of the most powerful and yet one of the most dangerous mediums of communications we have," says Jim Cecil, president of Nurture Marketing, a customer loyalty consultancy in Seattle. "Virtually everyone uses it and in business-to-business marketing everyone you want to reach has access to email. It's also very inexpensive and it can easily be built into existing marketing systems. But of all media, it is the one where it's most critical that you have explicit permission." Without permission you not only risk losing customer goodwill and inviting CAN-SPAM penalties, you could end up blacklisted by ISPs that refuse all mail coming from your domain if spamming complaints have been lodged against you. Permission is not difficult to get. Offer something of value--a coupon or promise of special discounts, a whitepaper or informational newsletter--in exchange for the customer agreeing to receive your messages and, often, to provide valuable personal information and preferences. Sign-up can be done on a Web site or on paper forms distributed at trade shows and conventions or by traditional mail, resellers, and affiliated organizations in a business network.

 2. Build a Targeted Mailing List "The very best way to get permission is to have your best customers and your biggest fans ask their friends to sign up," Godin says. It results in a self-screened database of prospects who are probably interested in your offering. That is how Tom Sant built a mailing list that now numbers 35,000 for his newsletter, "Messages That Matter." According to Sant, author of Persuasive Business Proposals and Giants of Sales, "We simply began by following up with people we met at trade shows or on sales calls and asked them, 'Would you like to get a tip from us every few weeks about how to do your proposals better?' We made it clear that people shouldn't be getting this if they didn't want to." Sant includes a Subscribe link in his mailing so new readers have a means of signing up when their friends forward it to them. His mailing list "just grew organically," he says, "because people would pass it around. We created an entire network of people who were getting these messages. It's very effective and it's enabled us to strengthen our position as thought leaders or recognized experts in the field." 
3. Work with a Clean, Targeted Database Jack Burke, author of Creating Customer Connections, advises that you should work with the cleanest permission-based list you can find that is targeted to your industry and your offering. Many companies have this information in CRM, SFA, and contact management databases. But there are places to prospect if you don't. "A good place to look is with traditional, established data merchants for your industry," Burke says. In the insurance industry, for instance, Programbusiness.com allows its members to send broadcast emails to its database of some 50,000 targeted subscribers and members have the opportunity of selecting subsets of addresses categorized by insurance type such as commercial, health, life, and auto. Coregistration services Web sites, such as www.listopt.com or www.optionsmedia.com, can help. Coregistration simply means you offer your e-zine and email promotions through a registration form that appears on multiple sites. You should, however, do some research to ensure they will reach your targeted demographic and the lists are maintained. "Too many companies, large and small, are under the illusion that they have the email addresses of their clients," Burke says. "If you actually go in and audit their client databases, you'll find they're lucky to have 20 to 25 percent--and what they do have is often out of date." 

4. Adopt a Strategy of Persistence It takes time to build customer relationships. "They used to say it takes something like 7.3 impacts to make an impression with an ad, and that was long before the Internet. I believe today it's approaching 20 imprints before it makes an impression," Burke says. "So if you aren't touching your clients in some way at least once a month, chances are they're going to find somebody else to do business with." Successful email marketing, Godin says, "starts with a foundation and uses the email to drip the story, to have it gradually unfold." That foundation requires an entrance strategy to greet new prospects and set up expectations for the relationship. "After the customer has registered for future emails, downloaded your whitepaper, or entered your sweepstakes, there often is nothing to enhance that relationship. Companies need to think about what should happen next," says Jeanniey Mullen, partner and director of email marketing at OgilvyOne Worldwide. Ogilvy's research shows the first three emails are the most critical. Mullen advises there should be an introductory message in which customers accept an invitation and give permission for future communications, followed by a second that sets up customers' expectations by explaining future benefits (discounts, coupons, or high-value informational newsletters). The third should begin to deliver on their expectations by sending the promised newsletter, whitepaper, or discount offering. 
5. Tell a Story In All Marketers Are Liars, Godin emphasizes the importance of storytelling as a successful marketing strategy. Email offers the opportunity to tell the story in continuous installments. "Email marketers don't have a prayer to tell a story," Godin says, "unless they tell it in advance, in another medium, before they get permission. Otherwise, it quickly becomes spam. The best email marketing starts with a foundation, like Amazon, and uses the email to drip the story, to have it gradually unfold." Too much email marketing, Burke opines, is one-off offers written as if recipients "like to run home at the end of the day and turn on Home Shopping Network so they can be targeted 24x7 by commercials." A well-crafted newsletter should be more than just a summary of your resume or company history. For instance, each issue of Sant's Messages That Matter offers a free tip or strategy on how to make business proposals sing. "We focus on providing specific content, messages of a page or so about the kinds of things we're good at," Sant says. 
6. Let Readers Drive Design As there's no such thing as guaranteed delivery in the email business, design is especially important. Because filters often block logos, graphics, and Flash animation, they can determine whether or not a customer or prospect even sees your message. "Filters are getting extremely thorough in what they're filtering out," Burke says. "If you're not careful, those filters can filter out legitimate email." He recommends using flat text with hyperlinks to your Web site. "It's text so it'll go through," Burke says. "You can put all of the graphics in the world on your Web site and once they click through to your Web site you're better able to capture their identity and their information for future follow up." Many companies offer both plain and rich text email editions, giving customers the option of registering for the html edition on their Web sites. In those editions, design becomes especially important. But Ogilvy has found that email requires something different than traditional creative marketing design: Its studies have shown that users are most likely to respond to images and copy to the left of an image. "We have seen increases up to 75 percent in response rates by moving the call to action button up next to an image instead of below the image, or by literally changing a link to a button so it stands out more prominently in the text," Mullen says. She has also found that the use of industry-, company-, and brand-specific words and phrases enhances the response. For instance, the word advice generates a high response for companies considered to be the thought leaders of their industry, but companies with consumer products, such as Apple with its iPod, will generate a better response using words like new or sleek. 
7. Have an Exit Strategy People who gave you their email address did so because they wanted to hear from you. But that can change and often does. "If they stop responding," Mullen says, "chances are it's for one of two reasons: either they're not interested in your content anymore or they're no longer getting your emails. "In either case we recommend that you define a set number of non-response messages [after which you] stop sending them emails. It sends a negative brand message and it doesn't do anything to help reestablish your relationship with them," Mullen says. That number differs by industry. Travel companies, for instance, cannot predict when their customers will be traveling and looking for discounts on rooms and airfares, so their horizon is much longer--as long as several years. On the other hand, a high-tech B2B company is probably only going to want specific information on wireless security when it's addressing the problem internally. After the problem is solved, continued mailings about wireless security are likely to irritate. Devising a successful exit strategy is much like determining a successful formula for content: Know your industry.

 8. Best Practices--Know what you want The key to maintaining a set of successful best practices is to know what you want from them and be prepared to rewrite them as your business needs change. Mullen suggests starting with a good awareness of what you want your best practices to achieve. "Identify what you will use them for, the goal of your communications, and how you'll define the success of your campaign," she says. "The most important element in any kind of successful email marketing is understanding and defining what your realistic strategy should be." Carol Ellison is a freelance writer in Secaucus, NJ. Build Your Email Reputation "Understanding developments in the enterprise/corporate environment can be enormously helpful in pursuit of best-in-class email delivery rates," says Al DiGuido, president and CEO of Epsilon Interactive, a provider of strategic email communications and marketing automation solutions. The latest trend in corporate filtering is reputation-based technologies that authenticate the sender using a variety of techniques that whitelist the IP addresses sending the mail. This suggests a set of best practices, in addition to honored standards such as getting permission, to help assure deliverability. Some of these include the following:

Test your campaigns to ensure they'll pass traditional antispam techniques such as content filtering.

Send a consistent volume of mail from stable IP addresses. Sudden increases in message volume from a single address, particularly if it's new or unfamiliar, can trigger a block.

Contact the companies at the domains you email most often and ask that they whitelist your IP address. It could open doors elsewhere. According to DiGuido, "being on multiple corporate whitelists is sometimes used as a factor in enterprise/corporate solution reputation algorithms."

Test your campaigns with content filters and monitor emerging corporate solutions to better understand how they determine reputation scores.

Authenticate your email and implement sender verification technologies to enhance your reputation and help assure deliverability. --C.E.


Source : http://www.destinationcrm.com/Articles/Editorial/Magazine-Features/8-Email-Marketing-Tips-47641.aspx
Tags : email marketing, email marketing service, email marketing singapore, mass email, email list, bulk email, email database

55 Quick SEO Tips Even Your Mother Would Love

Everyone loves a good tip, right? Here are 55 quick tips for search engine optimization that even your mother could use to get cooking. Well, not my mother, but you get my point. Most folks with some web design and beginner SEO knowledge should be able to take these to the bank without any problem.

1. If you absolutely MUST use Java script drop down menus, image maps or image links, be sure to put text links somewhere on the page for the spiders to follow.
   
2. Content is king, so be sure to have good, well-written, and unique content that will focus on your primary keyword or keyword phrase.
   
3. If content is king, then links are queen. Build a network of quality backlinks. Remember, if there is no good, logical reason for a site to link to you, you don’t want the link.
   
4. Don’t be obsessed with PageRank. It is just one isty bitsy part of the ranking algorithm. A site with lower PR can actually outrank one with a higher PR.\
   
5. Be sure you have a unique, keyword focused Title tag on every page of your site. And, if you MUST have the name of your company in it, put it at the end. Unless you are a household name, your business name will probably get few searches.
   
6. Fresh content can help improve your rankings. Add new, useful content to your pages on a regular basis. Content freshness adds relevancy to your site in the eyes of the search engines.
   
7. Be sure links to your site and within your site use your keyword phrase. In other words, if your target is “blue widgets” then link to “blue widgets” instead of a “Click here” link.
   
8. Focus on search phrases, not single keywords, and put your location in your text (“our Palm Springs store” not “our store”) to help you get found in local searches.
   
9. Don’t design your web site without considering SEO. Make sure your web designer understands your expectations for organic SEO. Doing a retrofit on your shiny new Flash-based site after it is built won’t cut it. Spiders can crawl text, not Flash or images.
   
10. Use keywords and keyword phrases appropriately in text links, image ALT attributes and even your domain name.
    
11. Check for canonicalization issues – www and non-www domains. Decide which you want to use and 301 redirect the other to it. In other words, if http://www.domain.com is your preference, then http://domain.com should redirect to it.
    
12. Check the link to your home page throughout your site. Is index.html appended to your domain name? If so, you’re splitting your links. Outside links go to http://www.domain.com and internal links go to http://www.domain.com/index.html.
    
13. Frames, Flash and AJAX all share a common problem – you can’t link to a single page. It’s either all or nothing. Don’t use Frames at all and use Flash and AJAX sparingly for best SEO results.
    
14. Your URL file extension doesn’t matter. You can use .html, .htm, .asp, .php, etc. and it won’t make a difference as far as your SEO is concerned.
    
15. Got a new web site you want spidered? Submitting through Google’s regular submission form can take weeks. The quickest way to get your site spidered is by getting a link to it through another quality site.
    
16. If your site content doesn’t change often, your site needs a blog because search spiders like fresh text. Blog at least three time a week with good, fresh content to feed those little crawlers.
    
17. When link building, think quality, not quantity. One single, good, authoritative link can do a lot more for you than a dozen poor quality links, which can actually hurt you.
    
18. Search engines want natural language content. Don’t try to stuff your text with keywords. It won’t work. Search engines look at how many times a term is in your content and if it is abnormally high, will count this against you rather than for you.
    
19. Text around your links should also be related to your keywords. In other words, surround the link with descriptive text.
    
20. If you are on a shared server, do a blacklist check to be sure you’re not on a proxy with a spammer or banned site. Their negative notoriety could affect your own rankings.
    
21. Be aware that by using services that block domain ownership information when you register a domain, Google might see you as a potential spammer.
    
22. When optimizing your blog posts, optimize your post title tag independently from your blog title.
    
23. The bottom line in SEO is Text, Links, Popularity and Reputation.
    
24. Make sure your site is easy to use. This can influence your link building ability and popularity and, thus, your ranking.
    
25. Give link love, Get link love. Don’t be stingy with linking out. That will encourage others to link to you.
    
26. Search engines like unique content that is also quality content. There can be a difference between unique content and quality content. Make sure your content is both.
    
27. If you absolutely MUST have your main page as a splash page that is all Flash or one big image, place text and navigation links below the fold.
    
28. Some of your most valuable links might not appear in web sites at all but be in the form of e-mail communications such as newletters and zines.
    
29. You get NOTHING from paid links except a few clicks unless the links are embedded in body text and NOT obvious sponsored links.
    
30. Links from .edu domains are given nice weight by the search engines. Run a search for possible non-profit .edu sites that are looking for sponsors.
    
31. Give them something to talk about. Linkbaiting is simply good content.
    
32. Give each page a focus on a single keyword phrase. Don’t try to optimize the page for several keywords at once.
    
33. SEO is useless if you have a weak or non-existent call to action. Make sure your call to action is clear and present.
    
34. SEO is not a one-shot process. The search landscape changes daily, so expect to work on your optimization daily.
    
35. Cater to influential bloggers and authority sites who might link to you, your images, videos, podcasts, etc. or ask to reprint your content.
    
36. Get the owner or CEO blogging. It’s priceless! CEO influence on a blog is incredible as this is the VOICE of the company. Response from the owner to reader comments will cause your credibility to skyrocket!
    
37. Optimize the text in your RSS feed just like you should with your posts and web pages. Use descriptive, keyword rich text in your title and description.
    
38. Use keyword rich captions with your images.
    
39. Pay attention to the context surrounding your images. Images can rank based on text that surrounds them on the page. Pay attention to keyword text, headings, etc.
    
40. You’re better off letting your site pages be found naturally by the crawler. Good global navigation and linking will serve you much better than relying only on an XML Sitemap.
    
41. There are two ways to NOT see Google’s Personalized Search results:
    
42. Links (especially deep links) from a high PageRank site are golden. High PR indicates high trust, so the back links will carry more weight.
    
43. Use absolute links. Not only will it make your on-site link navigation less prone to problems (like links to and from https pages), but if someone scrapes your content, you’ll get backlink juice out of it.
    
44. See if your hosting company offers “Sticky” forwarding when moving to a new domain. This allows temporary forwarding to the new domain from the old, retaining the new URL in the address bar so that users can gradually get used to the new URL.
    
45. Understand social marketing. It IS part of SEO. The more you understand about sites like Digg, Yelp, del.icio.us, Facebook, etc., the better you will be able to compete in search.
    
46. To get the best chance for your videos to be found by the crawlers, create a video sitemap and list it in your Google Webmaster Central account.
    
47. Videos that show up in Google blended search results don’t just come from YouTube. Be sure to submit your videos to other quality video sites like Metacafe, AOL, MSN and Yahoo to name a few.
    
48. Surround video content on your pages with keyword rich text. The search engines look at surrounding content to define the usefulness of the video for the query.
    
49. Use the words “image” or “picture” in your photo ALT descriptions and captions. A lot of searches are for a keyword plus one of those words.
    
50. Enable “Enhanced image search” in your Google Webmaster Central account. Images are a big part of the new blended search results, so allowing Google to find your photos will help your SEO efforts.
    
51. Add viral components to your web site or blog – reviews, sharing functions, ratings, visitor comments, etc.
    
52. Broaden your range of services to include video, podcasts, news, social content and so forth. SEO is not about 10 blue links anymore.
    
53. When considering a link purchase or exchange, check the cache date of the page where your link will be located in Google. Search for “cache:URL” where you substitute “URL” for the actual page. The newer the cache date the better. If the page isn’t there or the cache date is more than an month old, the page isn’t worth much.
    
54. If you have pages on your site that are very similar (you are concerned about duplicate content issues) and you want to be sure the correct one is included in the search engines, place the URL of your preferred page in your sitemaps.
    
55. Check your server headers. Search for “check server header” to find free online tools for this. You want to be sure your URLs report a “200 OK” status or “301 Moved Permanently ” for redirects. If the status shows anything else, check to be sure your URLs are set up properly and used consistently throughout your site.

Source : http://www.searchenginejournal.com/55-quick-seo-tips-even-your-mother-would-love/

Tags : seo malaysia, search engine optimization, malaysia seo company

50 Email Marketing Tips and Stats for 2014

Our friends over at Salesforce.com have written a ton of posts that deal with email marketing tips and tricks for your success. We thought it would be great to compile some stats, tips and suggestions in one post for your reading pleasure.

Email Marketing Stats

1. On average, subscribers receive 416 commercial messages a month. (Return Path)
2. There are more than 3.2 billion email accounts.
3. Email ad revenue reached $156 million in 2012. (Interactive Advertising Bureau via Salesforce.com)
4. 95% of online consumers use email.
5. 91% of consumers reported checking their email at least once a day. (ExactTarget)
6. US internet users will average 3.1 email addresses this year, according to a July 2013 survey conducted by Harris Interactive on behalf of MyLife. 
7. According to eMarketer there will be around 236.8 million US email users by 2017.
8. Worldwide, market research firm The Radicati Group forecasts the email audience will grow from 2.42 billion this year to 2.76 billion by 2017.
9. Purpose of email marketing programs according to UK brand marketers? 78% said retention.
10. 64% of decision-makers read their email via mobile devices. (TopRankBlog)
11. 89% percent of UK brand marketers polled by the UK’s Direct Marketing Association (DMA) in December 2012 said email was important to their business strategies. 
12. For every $1 spent, $44.25 is the average return on email marketing investment.
13. 56% of businesses say they plan to increase their use of email marketing in 2013.
14. In Q4 2012, more than nine out of 10 UK internet users sent or received email at least once a week, according to data from Deloitte.
15. 70% say they always open emails from their favorite companies. Conversely, only 18% say they never open commercial emails.
16. 55.2% of global users use the desktop to open email (Harland Clarke)
17. eMarketer estimates the US adult email audience will reach 188.3 million in 2013 and will continue to climb to 203.8 million by 2017. 
18. 93% of consumers also get at least one permission-based email daily.

Mobile Design

1. A whopping 66% of Gmail opens occur on mobile devices, with only 19% opened in a web browser (Litmus)
2. When planning content for a multi-device experience, your most important content should come first. Think back to the top-down hierarchy taught in basic journalism—what do you most want your readers to see?
3. We recommend using text of at least 13px for body copy. In order to avoid having to zoom in, try starting at 15-16px (depending on the actual font) and preview it on your mobile device.
4. The mobile experience is highly interactive and every email is viewed in stages. Plan for each stage, using both the design and content strategically. (Designing for the Mobile Inbox) 
5. According to Bridget Dolan, vice president of interactive for cosmetics retailer Sephora, the percentage of email messages opened on mobile devices is already in the 50% range.
6. 43% of all emails are now being opend via a mobile device. (Return Path)
7. Know your audience—it’s the most basic of all marketing principles. If your brand’s mobile audience is at or above 10%, it’s time to start optimizing for mobile.
8. The #1 email client for Gmail users is the iPhone’s built-in mail program, with 34% of all Gmail opens. (Litmus)
9. In a world where smartphone penetration in the US has reached 55%, marketers can no longer afford to think of email messages in terms of “mobile” and “non-mobile.” The reality is that subscribers will likely view your messages on a wide variety of devices—including desktops, laptops, smart phones, and tablet computers.
10. Don’t focus solely on click-based interaction—instead, try to think in terms of swipes and taps. As with any good design, grid-based layouts ensure content is easy to read and digest.
11. Rather than asking for name, address, company, and so on, keep it simple. Try limiting your form to one field: the email address. (Salesforce.com)
12. A one-column layout works best in both aware and responsive design. If you have a  multi-column layout, carefully plan how elements shift or stack, using a grid to ensure the technical aspect is possible.

Mastering the Inbox

1. Do you want to help your bounce rate? Locate the emails that generated the high number of bouncebacks and investigate the source of the list. 
2. Comply with the guidelines in the federal CAN-SPAM legislation. Most importantly, make sure that all requests for removal from your mailing lists are honored. 
3. 33% of email recipients open email based on subject line alone. (Convince & Convert via Salesforce.com)
4. More people read emails that deal with their finances and travel than any other category. (Return Path)
5. Desktop and smartphone email opens happened most often between 10am and 4pm—during the typical workday. (Harland Clarke)
6. Recipients often only read the subject line or the first few lines of an email. Include your CTA early on in your email. 
7. Subject lines fewer than 10 characters long had an open rate of 58%. (Adestra July 2012 Report)
8. According to Google, there were over 425 million active Gmail users as of June 2012. According to email testing and tracking service Litmus, approximately four percent of all email opens can be attributed to Gmail webmail users, as of June 2013.

B2B Email Marketing

1. 61% of B2B marketing professionals worldwide said CTR was the most useful metric for analyzing email campaign performance, compared with 48% of business-to-consumer (B2C) marketers. (Ascend2)
2. Use autoresponders to automate simple, recurring emails. Since welcome and thank-you emails will be sent over and over again as you gain new subscribers and followers, they are perfect for testing the marketing automation waters. (Mastering the Art of Marketing Automation) 
3. Bold, beautiful imagery is slowly taking over our inboxes, as we take cues from Pinterest and social hubs like Facebook and Twitter. Images help tell your brand’s story, so consider taking the time to choose artful shots that complement your message. For B2B emails, think outside the realm of traditional stock photography to make your messages are unique. 
4. The smart B2B marketers are personalizing their communication based on a prospect’s interests—using behavioral data and a whole new generation of online personalization technology.
5. Start building your landing pages, forms, and email templates using industryaccepted best practices. Many automation providers offer implementation services that will walk you through creating these assets, from template design to the content included in each. 

Data. Data. Data. 

1. Get accurate and detailed data from people who want to hear from you, then automate the numerous steps involved in sending them relevant messages. (eMarketer)
2. One of the top benefits of e-mail marketing is that it yields reams of data about who a company’s best customers are. Marketers can target those people in the social realm and offer incentives or discounts to encourage them to share with their friends and advocate on behalf of the brand. (eMarketer)
3. There’s a Big Data disconnect. In a recent study from Econsultancy, 77% of marketers said purchase history had a very high impact on return on investment (ROI), meaning they are leveraging that data for lead nurture and to aid the buyer’s decision-making process. (Joel Book)
4. 7 in 10 people say they made use of a coupon or discount from a marketing email in the prior week. (2012 Blue Kangaroo Study)
5. If the addresses were acquired organically via form submissions, consider using a Confirmed Opt-In process. With Confirmed Opt-In, an individual is required to enter an email address to access your site or content. Upon registering their email address, a verification email will be sent to the address provided. This way, new subscribers can only submit valid, active email addresses.
   

Social Media and Email

1. Email sharing is extremely important to any digital marketing campaign. It is important to include social sharing buttons at the top of your email. When the recipient clicks the share button, have the social post populated with interesting copy and a shortened link.
2. A May 2013 survey of US internet users, conducted by ad agency The Buntin Group and survey research firm Survey Sampling International (SSI) on behalf of disposable tableware company Chinet, showed respondents spent more time per week with email than any other digital activity—an hour more than popular digital diversions such as Facebook and texting.

Source : http://www.exacttarget.com/blog/50-email-marketing-tips-and-stats-for-2014/

Tags : email marketing, email blast, edm software, email marketing software, email marketing company, email marketing service, email marketing malaysia

20 Email Design Best Practices and Resources for Beginners

Even for experience designers, building email marketing newsletters isn't easy. You receive a lovely looking design, and you crack on with the development. Unfortunately, it just doesn't work as it should in every email clients. Styles don't display, images aren't visible, etc.

This is where these twenty best practices come in handy.

1: Keep the Design Simple
Email marketing newsletters are not like complex website designs; they should be nicely designed, but somewhat basic. Try basing your designs on a main header image followed by the main content.

The cleaner the design, the easier it will be to code, and the less chance of any abnormalities happening between various browsers and email clients.

2: Use Tables

Email clients live in the past, so all email newsletters must be built using tables for layout. Some CSS styling can be used, but we will discuss this later.

3: Have Web Browsers at the Ready

Make sure you have as many web browsers as possible available to you. Who knows who will view your email marketing messages, and what he or she will be using to view it!

At the very least, use these:

Internet Explorer 6

Internet Explorer 7

Internet Explorer 8

Mozilla Firefox 3

Apple Safari 3

Google Chrome

4: Sign Up for all the Major Email Clients

Sign up for as many email accounts as you can think of. Below is a list of email clients to get you started:

Google Mail (http://mail.google.com)

Hotmail/Live Mail (http://www.hotmail.com)

Yahoo Mail (http://mail.yahoo.com)

AOL Mail (http://webmail.aol.com)

Please note that they're are other, more convenient services that can be used instead; however, many of these charge monthly fees. For more information, review Litmusapp.

5: Use Inline Styles

If this were the website world, every developer on the planet would say, "do not use inline styles, create a class for it". Unfortunately, in an email, this is not possible, as the email clients will strip them out, and we don't want that. So if anything needs to be styled, use inline styles.

Elements like font type and size can be used within the <table> tag, but individual styles should be placed on <td>'s.

6: Give all Images Alt Tags

This is a very important step to take, but is often forgotten by many. Styling the <td> for which images are in, with font types, size and color, will allow for your email to degrade gracefully when images are off by default.

7: Do not Set Widths or Heights to Images

Again, this is a further step to take in order for a lovely gracefully degraded email. If images are off by default, there dimensions will be present, leaving a lot of unnecessary white space throughout.

8: Wrap the Email in a 100% Width Table

Email clients only take the code within the body tags, not the body tags themselves. In order to use a background color, you must create a 100% width table to "fake" the background effect.

9: No Wider than 600px
Many people don't actually open their email; they instead view them in the preview panel. On average the smallest preview panel is around 600px, so always design your email marketing newsletters accordingly, unless you don't want your full email viewable in the preview panel, of course.

10: Link Styling
Don't forget to style the <a> tag. This will overwrite the email client's standard link tags.

11: Try not to Nest Tables
Apart from the 100% width wrap table, you should try your best not to nest additional tables. This is easily avoidable; use the stacking system instead.

This allows for a much easier, controllable email.

12: Avoid Background Images
Stick to block colors rather than images for the backgrounds for your text; only use funky gradients, images, etc. when no text is involved.

13: Borders don't Work
Within emails, we don't have much room for browser or email clients specific fixes, so when we have borders that can either sit outside or inside the <td> or be included or excluded from the <td> width, there's not much we can do.

The fix? Drop two extra <td>'s to either side of the main <td>, and set the background color in each one. This will again "fake" the look of a border and work in all browsers and email clients.

14: Hotmail Bug Fixes
Over the past couple of years, Microsoft has vastly improved the Hotmail/Live service. But... one huge bug you will come across is the strange padding added to all images. Why do they do this? Who knows? All I know is, there is a wonderfully easy fix.

15: Encode All Characters
Although we don't technically have to encode characters, it's best we do.

When viewing email newsletters in various email clients, we cannot guarantee the charset every website is using, so encoding characters allows us to be certain that all characters are being displayed as they should.

16: JavaScript = Junk Email
You cannot, unfortunately, include any type of JavaScript. So no fancy pop-ups or auto-scrolling emails please! If you do decide to include it anyway, your email marketing messages may be sent to the junk folder. Email clients will see you as a threat. And this is obviously not good. So please stick to plain old HTML.

17: Give the User a Way Out
When sending general newsletters to various clients/customers, although you have a lovely designed and developed email, that user may not want your email (hard to take, I know). Always allow them a way out, by adding an unsubscribe link to the bottom of the email, like so:

If you would like to unsubscribe from this newsletter, simply click here

18: Users Want Options
Some users may be utilizing a very basic email client - maybe they're checking there webmail at work or on their phones. Images and complex designs may not be best for these types of clients,. Consider, at the top of the email newsletter, having a link which points to the email on a web server somewhere, so the user can view the email in all its glory.

Cannot view this email? View it here

19: Use a spacer.gif
Some browsers (Internet Explorer), don't get on with empty <td>'s. Even if the <td> is set to 10px in width. IE will ignore this and set it to 0.

The fix is to add a transparent GIF, and set this to 10px wide. This then provides you with something to put within the <td>, thus fixing IE's issues with having empty <td>'s.

20: Send Tests
This is the most important aspect of email design; sending test emails allows you to view them in all browsers and email clients, looking for any bugs and odd variations.

Source: http://code.tutsplus.com/tutorials/20-email-design-best-practices-and-resources-for-beginners--net-7309

9 Email Marketers Explain Why Nobody Opens Your Emails

9 Reasons Your Open Rates Are Plummeting

1) Lack of Customization

"It’s not surprising rates are dropping and there’s only one reason in my opinion -- people want customized content. Period. They don’t want to sift though a bunch of junk that isn’t intended for them. Know your buyer and give them what they want. Email newsletters are part of the reason email as a whole is diminishing."

– Justin Gray, LeadMD

2) Not Optimizing for Mobile

"Chances are, the way your audience is consuming your content is radically different than it was three years ago. In fact, in 2013, over 50% of all emails were opened on mobile. And this trend is only rising as we speak. If your newsletter (or your website) doesn’t respond to this change, it very well might be the “hidden reason” why your numbers are dropping. Check your audience device statistics."

– Juha Liikala, Stripped Bare Media

3) New Signups Don’t Know What to Expect

"Sometimes, what happens is your older leads are still opening your email, while new signups have no idea your newsletter is coming. Remember to automatically email new sign-ups with information about what they should expect from you and when. That way, they will be prepared to receive your email every Thursday morning instead of quickly tossing it in the trash because they forgot you even existed."

– Firas Kittaneh, Amerisleep

4) Email Subject Lines

"Often weekly business newsletters have the same subject line format. As email providers try to clear the inbox, emails with repetitive titles often start to go under Promotion tabs or in the spam folder. So you have to spice up your subject lines. One trick that helps is reaching out to inactive subscribers and asking them to update their preferences and contact details."

– Syed Balkhi, OptinMonster

5) Not Enough Value

"If your newsletter is always about you and what’s going on in your world, you’re missing the point. Any time you send out an email to your customers and potential customers, it should give them something of value. This could be a tip, a strategy, a tool you’ve used that they could benefit from, or other free resources. If your customer gets value from what you send, they will keep opening."

– Natalie MacNeil, She Takes on the World

6) Messages Getting Flagged as Spam

Spam is a moving target, as are the efforts of service providers to cut down on spam. If you have a sudden drop off in open rates, you may want to check to see if your mail servers or providers are on a black list.

– Mark Cenicola, BannerView.com

7) The Label Leads to Boring, Repetitive Material

"Creators often see a weekly business newsletter as another chore. This mindset is poisonous. The creator goes through the motions churning out uninspiring, repetitive material. People’s inboxes are flooded. Many people hate their inbox because mining a quality Golden Nugget is like finding a needle in a haystack. Instead, be contrarian; solicit conversations and write back when they reply to you."

– Joshua Lee, StandOut Authority

8) Stale Email Lists

"Nothing will kill your deliverability like a stale email list. To define stale, think about email subscribers who haven’t had activity in six months (either they haven’t opened an email or haven’t been sent an email since subscribing). Other contributors to a stale list are subscribers who were manually added without their permission. Both of these groups kill open rates and drive up spam complaints."

– Brett Farmiloe, Markitors

9) Format Congestion

"Like all forms of messaging, the success of a newsletter depends a great deal on being scannable and easy to absorb. Complexity isn’t ideal for inboxes."

– Sam Saxton, Salter Spiral Stair and Mylen Stairs

Source : http://blog.hubspot.com/marketing/reasons-for-bad-open-rates

Tags : email marketing, email marketing service, email marketing singapore, mass email, email list, bulk email, email database

Google search changes will push SEO firms and social media marketers closer

Google's Panda, Penguin and Hummingbird search algorithms affect around 90% of online searches, according to Search Engine Watch. These algorithms strip out "bad searches" – sites stuffed with keywords, duplicated content and manipulated hyperlinks – and rightly so; the onus for higher search rankings has consequently been placed on the quality, originality and relevance of online content.

So must our understanding of search engine optimisation (SEO) fundamentally change in light of this? "Yes, SEO is dead (technically) in the way we used to be able to build links," says Matt Wilkinson, account director at Pinnacle Marketing Communications. "Now we are focused more heavily on content marketing."

Wilkinson, whose business employs former journalists, is adamant that "businesses still need SEO professionals". But he also admits that "SEO managers must change to be more creative and know how and where to share this content." He adds: "The basics of optimisation may seem simple, but implementing it isn't."

While Google does not comment on how it measures engagement on websites, it is believed that search rankings are now biased towards the context of content; if it's written by a reputable journalist or blogger then it ranks higher. SEO experts believe Google's new algorithms also consider users' engagement with the content, such as the time people spend on a website and its organic links, rather than paid-for content.

While a recent Econsultancy study found that 88% of the 2,500 firms surveyed now integrate SEO with content marketing, and 74% integrate SEO efforts with social media marketing, some marketers are sceptical about the evolved role of SEO firms.

Dane Cobain, social media specialist at Buckinghamshire-based FST the Group, says: "Social media requires a human touch, something that a lot of SEO professionals aren't equipped to deal with. SEO has always been tied to the performance of metrics, but you can't carry out a social media campaign if you look at people as numbers instead of individuals."

As expected, SEO agencies that focused on link manipulation through "black hat" techniques and keyword-focused methods of SEO are going out of business. However, those with a focus on content marketing are thriving. But what does this mean for brands' existing relationships with their PR, social media and digital marketing teams, whose remit digital content has historically been?

Tim Grice, head of search at Branded3, agrees that the "boundaries are blurring" between the roles of PR, social media, SEO and digital marketing. "There are some people in PR that feel like SEO managers are stepping on their toes," he says. "To create brand value, you need good, creative content, from all sides, and you need to be technically sound in implementing it. It's a collaborative game."

An SEO team alone cannot offer everything needed for great content marketing and this is one significant driver for increased collaboration across business roles that previously operated in distinctive silos. Consequentially, some brands are taking this to the next level, creating their own digital newsrooms for real-time marketing strategies.

Adidas, for example, has created its own "brand newsroom", operating from a global digital centre in Massachusetts and liaising with other newsrooms around the world. Herbert Hainer, chief executive of the Adidas Group, told Marketing Week he hoped the brand newsroom would "bring greater consistency, increase speed and drive higher levels of brand activation online". Adidas follows consumer brands Puma and Nike in developing concentrated, centralised digital content marketing hubs.

Priyanka Dayal, content manager at Cision UK, a communications and marketing software company, says that brand newsrooms will remain the preserve of large multi-nationals that are able to maximise on the benefits. "The future for PR, SEO and marketers still involves traditional distribution platforms. Home-grown newsroom successes will be the exception."

Andrew Smith, a member of the Chartered Institute of Public Relations (CIPR) strongly disagrees that the expansion of SEO is a threat to PR professional, though he says there may have been some fear of this five years ago: "With these changes, PRs are the ones who have the skills to get mentions in established media companies, which Google is now emphasising. It's not putting PR people out of a job, more changing where you might find them; there's a chance they may now be found as part of a team in an SEO agency. Their skills are more vital than ever before."

With its algorithm changes, Google's search is more human-friendly. People are now searching online using questions and complex phrases rather than just entering stand-alone keywords. To solve their query, it makes sense that content marketers meet this content demand, with SEO in mind.

Source : http://www.theguardian.com/media/2014/jul/28/google-seo-social-media-search-marketing-panda-penguin-hummingbird

Tags : seo malaysia, search engine optimization, malaysia seo company