Dos and Don’ts of Email Remarketing

By using existing metrics and subscriber behavior to remarket to your consumers, your email marketing campaigns can become much stronger and more effective. Here are some best practices for email remarketing.

Too often, busy digital marketers send a one-size-fits-all campaign and move onto the next one. Any kind of segmentation is often going to drive more impressive results. In fact, 76 percent of email revenue came from segmented emails in 2013, up from 55 percent in 2012, according to the "DMA National Client Email Survey 2014."

Marketers take heed - the plethora of email metrics from each campaign result in some bountiful follow-up options. I made a list for those rolling out some smart, metrics-driven, and behavioral-focused efforts.

Do

• Use metrics to build different paths based on their actions.
• Have a well-defined strategy of how, what, why, and when you will remarket. The planning will make or make the success not the execution. 
• Sweeten the deal to those who clicked but didn't buy.
• Do incorporate other marketing channels. I know it may seem shocking, but email works really well when connected to telemarketing and direct marketing efforts. Think phone call/direct mail as precursor or subsequent touch as the email. 
• Experiment on subject lines that drive interest (and opens) to those that did not open or click. 
• Provide extra attention and/or some VIP type offer to the best leads. That is what sales professionals do and email marketers should mirror them - because it works. 
• Automate much of the campaign pathing (example below of how BrightWave created and executed behavioral campaign path).

• Do track your ROI for all campaign elements. BrightWave has seen staggering ROI. For one international client, we saw a 3,886% return on investment. 

Don't

• Send the exact same email campaign a few days later to your entire list or even non-responders.
• Plan the efforts in a silo. Bring key digital stakeholders to plot how to best get the sale, regardless of channel. 
• Don't skimp on killer creative and content and make sure it is compelling on mobile. 
• Don't forget to test some of the seemingly minor things that could move the needle like call to action wording, pre-header.
• Don't forget to leverage technology outside of the email channel - especially retargeting - which can potentially keep the engagement going after the email. 
• Don't forget to deliver awesomeness to the inbox in some shape or form.

Source: http://www.clickz.com/clickz/column/2361309/dos-and-don-ts-of-email-remarketing

Tags: email marketing, email blast, edm software, email marketing software, email marketing malaysia, email database

Mastering the Inbox

Mastering the Inbox

If you're looking for ways to improve your email marketing campaigns, look no further. Here's a list of tips and statistics we've compiled to help marketers like you make the most of their subscriber lists.

1. Do you want to help your bounce rate? Identify emails that generated a high number of bouncebacks and investigate the source of the subscriber 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 happen most often between 10 a.m. and 4 p.m.—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 message.
   
7. Subject lines fewer than 10 characters long have 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 4% of all email opens can be attributed to Gmail webmail users, as of June 2013.
   
9. 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.
   
10. 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.
    
11. Smart marketers are personalizing their communications based on a recipient's interests—using behavioral data, customer intelligence software, and a whole new generation of online personalization technology.
    
12. Start building your landing pages, forms, and email templates using industry-accepted best practices. 

Source : http://www.exacttarget.com/products/email-marketing/email-marketing-best-practices/mastering-the-inbox

Tags: email marketing, email blast, email marketing software, email marketing company, email marketing singapore

Save Your Subscribers 5 Tips for Email Lists that Last

Although there are email marketing subscribers that will allow themselves to remain on email marketing update lists indefinitely regardless of their interest in receiving those email newsletters, quite a few people will eventually unsubscribe or [oh, the horror; the horror!] route those emails to their “junk” folders. Do not let this happen to you.

Naturally, this is far easier said than done. After all, very few of us enjoy receiving email marketing and sales solicitations in our personal inboxes, just as we don’t spend an afternoon with someone trying to sell us a timeshare without the promise of reduced-rate hotel accommodations and free continental breakfasts. Clearly, the key is offering something that the recipients actually want. Not necessarily free products (although that certainly helps), but relevant information, tips and disclosures of special services of which they wouldn’t be aware without your updates.

Notice we said “wouldn’t be aware [of] without your updates.” This does not include reminders that your business exists, or follow-throughs about previous email communications. If you sent an email alerting your customers about a sale or a deal, don’t send additional emails about the same sale or deal. Likewise for emails about newsletters, blogs or any other alert, because…

No one wants an inbox full of marketing emails – pare them down.

Even if – by some remote possibility – all of your email communications alert subscribers to completely different deals and services, you run the risk of your customers shutting down from the glut of information. Basically, when your email count exceeds one or two per day, the recipients begin to view your emails as a nuisance. Even if your emails describe valuable services, if you’re the type of organization that constantly sends marketing emails, the recipients won’t view the services described in those emails as being special or anything that would necessitate instant action.
It is also critically important that whatever emails you’ve sent contain beneficial, interesting or useful information, regardless of how many you choose to send, since…

Emails that present no benefit to the recipient will be disregarded. Give them value.

If you’ve made it a habit to send causal email updates or requests that your subscribers follow you on one of your innumerable social networking sites, your subscribers will learn that your emails do not provide valuable content. Where are the sales? Where are the notifications of new services? Where are the alerts to new merchandise in stock? Have you provided tips on how your products might be used effectively? These are examples of alerts that merit email notifications, since they are what consumers want. If consumers consistently get emails reiterating the same information about your business, products or services, they will come to believe that none of your emails say anything relevant. Speaking of relevance…

Expand beyond simple descriptions of sales.

Content is key, and while it is important to delineate what special services you have to offer, it is also important to occasionally expand into well-constructed and pertinent information, specific to your customers’ needs and desires. If you are a local plumber, for example, you might occasionally offer tips on inexpensive home maintenance techniques that will help customers reduce the likelihood of expensive replacements and services. However, you have to mete out your content judiciously; as we’ve said, overabundant emails will have the opposite of the desired effect.

Test their effectiveness.

Do your customers check their emails on their personal computers or on mobile devices? Which browsers will they likely use? Are they Mac users? Do they live in rural or urban environments? The answers to all of these questions will determine whether or not your email marketing strategies will be effective, and you can test them by using segmentation analysis and email marketing analytics tools.

Make your email marketing newsletters specific.

Don’t treat your email marketing strategies like your social media strategies. In other words, blanket sales pitches don’t work. If you are having a sale on ballet flat shoes, you’d better make sure that the subscribers to whom you’ve sent the notification would be interested – sending an email message about such a sale to men who are uninclined to buy or wear women’s shoes could lead to a mass of “unsubscribe” requests.
Quality will always be more important than quantity. Your email marketing strategy has to do more than get your business’ name out there – it has to speak to your potential customers clearly and effectively. Customers have to do more than tolerate your email communications in order to stay subscribed; they have to like them and – most importantly – need them.

Source: http://blogs.boomerang.com/blog/2014/11/12/save-your-subscribers-5-tips-for-email-lists-that-last/

Tags: email marketing, email blast, email marketing software, email marketing company, email marketing singapore

5 Ways to Align Content Marketing and Semantic Web Optimization

Marketers must integrate their content marketing and semantic search optimization practices in order to create a natural single-track strategy.

2014 has been heralded the year of content marketing. At the same time, we're optimizing our search marketing practices for the semantic search environment. Together, there's a need to merge the two different objectives into a unified strategy.

From a search marketing perspective, it makes sense to integrate content marketing and semantic search optimization practices. The introduction of Hummingbird has taught us to deploy search optimization strategies that contextualize queries. Digital marketing with content, on the other hand, is deployed to drive traffic and engage prospects. You can see where the two might combine to form a natural single-track strategy, right?

I've got five ways I believe content marketing and semantic search can be better aligned.

1. Google Authorship

It's been talked about here on ClickZ, on the Adobe blog, on Moz, and on many search industry blogs. Google has stated that Author Rank is used as a ranking factor, especially for in-depth articles. Moreover, you can't rank without content that is viewed, shared, mentioned, linked to, or otherwise distributed.

Google Authorship has been shown to significantly boost organic visibility, even for authors who exist in fewer than 100 Google+ circles. Authorship markup helps with ranking on Google but more importantly, leads to higher click-throughs. This will, in turn, support better organic visibility. By distributing contextualized content that can be indexed using snippets through a Google+ profile, your chances for high visibility are increased.

2. Sharable Content

Search marketing analysts have been implying for years that social signals will soon correlate to better search visibility. While Google has denied using social signals as ranking factors, there is still a correlation effect where content with higher social activity may also rank higher. Obviously, shared content is not about link building, but rather a strategy - using content that provides value - which seeks to have your content shared among social circles, authority sites, and others. As your subject matter authority (see #4 below) improves, search relevancy will likely improve as well.

3. Link Potential

I realize that, in many circles, link building is not an intentional technique most enterprise SEOs engage in regularly. Partly this is due to the spammy ways in which SEOs have acquired links, which are repugnant to search marketers who optimize in a natural way. Traditional link building also takes more action, effort, and commitment than a social sharing strategy. However, because links remain a high-impact ranking factor, it's important to consider deploying semantic-centric marketing to build inbound links. In turn, this value will contribute to increasing your subject matter authority (see #4). Consequently, a robust content marketing campaign that is optimized for semantic search is more likely to yield page authority, thus greater search visibility, than simply deploying a social sharing campaign alone.

4. Subject Matter Authority

One intent of search engines is to provide searchers with the most likely sources of information for a specific query. In order to ascend to a position as a subject matter authority, your pages must reflect a combination of relevant information and popularity. The value you provide, when optimized for semantic search, can evoke higher search visibility because your site is recognized by engines as having domain authority, which is another way of saying you have become a subject matter expert, a "go-to" site for potential customers.

5. Structured Authoring

Many trends are pointing to structured authoring (SA) governing the future of mobile and local search. Every content marketing campaign should be developed with search results in mind IMHO. Therefore, content marketing that deploys structured authoring will be better positioned to have success in the space.

As background, I talked about structured authoring as the new normal in search optimization recently. Note, though, that SA has been noted by Bing and others to not affect ranking. However, because this siloing of data makes it easier for engines to index page data, structured authoring of information typically leads to greater visibility. The additional benefits include a consistent delivery of information and reuse of data and localization, both critical factors in the mobile search space.

Using XML to define attributes (called "resources"), we can assign a variety of subject, property, and object tags which, when used across multiple assets, produce a unified profile that searchers can approach through a diverse set of queries.

The content being distributed has to be specified (authored) with context in mind. Take the following example from schema.org that marks up a page for the movie Avatar:

< div itemscope itemtype ="http://schema.org/Movie">
< h1 itemprop="name">Avatar < /h1>
< span>Director: < span itemprop="director">James Cameron < /span> (born August 16, 1954) < /span>
< span itemprop="genre">Science fiction < /span>
< a href="../movies/avatar-theatrical-trailer.html" itemprop="trailer">Trailer < /a>
< /div>

Supporting content related to this entry should provide additional context to the spiders. Here is an example of how a contextualized, related asset might be structured:

< div itemscope itemtype ="http://schema.org/Movie">
< h1 itemprop="name">Avatar < /h1>
< span>Actor: < span itemprop="actor">Sigourney Weaver < /span> (born October 8, 1949) < /span>
< span itemprop="genre">Science fiction < /span>
< a href="../movies/avatar-theatrical-trailer.html" itemprop="release date">December 18, 2009 < /a>
< /div>

In this markup, we defined the actor Sigourney Weaver as an asset associated with the movie. You can see the variety of information that can be written into each snippet. There will usually be a robust set of resources that you can embed in each page. The more details you can provide in a structured author markup, the more likely your assets will be found in a semantic Web environment.

Rich Snippets

Content marketing for semantic web search success starts with creating rich snippets. Rich snippets are parcels of information displayed in various formats on search engine results pages. On-page markup embeds schemas, which provide standardized rules that engines use when crawling your pages. Look at the image below:

Notice there are four types of snippets in the image: reviews with image, local map, images, and traditional text snippets. Your content delivery approach should be structured in a way that leverages as many attributes within your content as possible. Meaning it's best to structure your microdata, microformat, or RDFa formats to deliver one or more of the following resources that Google supports in every marketing asset you distribute:

• Reviews
• People
• Products
• Businesses and organizations
• Recipes
• Events
• Music

Doing so ensures that, when indexing your pages, search engines can easily depict the details that searchers are looking for. To see how your structured data will appear in a SERP, use the Google Structured Data Testing Tool.

Disambiguation

Let me provide a word of caution here. When you optimize your content marketing for semantic search, avoid conflicts around ambiguity. Disambiguation is required when spiders get confused about the use of certain language, and that can lead to ineffective visibility (i.e. high bounce rates due to irrelevancy). For example, the term board can mean an organized body, a piece of lumber, a set of connected circuitry, or the act of getting on a plane. Protecting yourself from ambiguity requires that you define on-page resources clearly and completely.

Content marketing for semantic search isn't terribly complicated - but it takes an organized approach to creating content using on-page markup, which connects machine-readable attributes that meet a searcher's intent. We must find ways to describe our business without embedding repeatedly the terms most directly used to search. With the dawning of semantic search following the Hummingbird update, content marketing has become more necessary in order to put what you have to say in as many ways as you can.

Content marketing gets much more interesting and valuable, to your prospects and search engines alike, as you continue to innovate in how that content's structured and delivered. Implementing just a few of these strategies on your most valuable content can significantly improve the effectiveness of your overall digital marketing efforts.

Source : http://www.clickz.com/clickz/column/2354261/5-ways-to-align-content-marketing-and-semantic-web-optimization

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

Google Inbox Could Make It Easier to Ignore Email

As content marketers anticipate the widespread adoption of Google Inbox, they must also prepare to personalize content so that it doesn't get pushed aside.

Google Inbox offers users a new way to sort and view email, which could make it more difficult for many email marketers to stay visible.

The Bundle feature in Google Inbox allows users to more easily sort related content, such as bank statements and promotional offers. According to the Google blog, the intention behind Bundle is to group similar email in order to "swipe them out of the way," which doesn’t bode well for marketers already caught in the no man’s land of Gmail’s "Promotional" tab, which filters most marketing email away from the primary inbox.

Content, and not a misleading headline, is key to staying relevant in Google Inbox, according to Jesse Noyes, senior director of content marketing for Kapost. "Bundle will make it harder to break through within the noise of Inbox by neatly categorizing messages by promotional nature," says Noyes. "Many marketers will try to game this system, much in the way content farms tried to game Google search results, but this is an ultimately doomed strategy. Marketers need to adapt by creating content that offers a fresh look at a trend, ties into the intended audiences concerns and issues, and doesn’t overtly push product."

Content should add value to a customer’s Inbox before pushing offers and promotions, says Noyes. For example, a sneaker company announcing a new type of running shoe will probably be sent straight to a seldom-seen Bundle. But an email that offers tips on improving running times adds value and is more likely to be read.

Noyes says that with Inbox, marketers must try harder than ever to anticipate customers’ needs. "Understand what drives a person to open your email. Is it because they desperately want new running shoes or because they want to improve their running performance and avoid injuries? If you can establish value first through your content, you’ll have a much better chance of getting into the inbox."

Google Inbox is still invitation-only, and audiences may be slow to adopt the new technology. Noyes warns that marketers need to wait "to see if this is Google’s next Gmail or Googles next Wave" before making any adjustments. Google Wave was the company’s short lived 2009 messaging and file sharing system that turned users off with its complicated features and difficult-to-navigate configuration.

However, if Inbox does take off, marketers need to be aware that fewer emails will show up on users’ screens. "If that stays true," Noyes says, "the chance of getting ignored will likely go up. You need to be recognizable to stand out."

Source : http://www.clickz.com/clickz/news/2377749/google-inbox-could-make-it-easier-to-ignore-email

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

Putting the Life Back in Your Customer Lifecycle

If you take the time to establish a customer lifecycle blueprint, you will be able to understand your consumers better and more effectively market to them.

In case you haven't heard, marketers - we have arrived! We now have the opportunity to develop sophisticated lifecycle marketing strategies that deploy the right message at the right time in the channel of choice for each and every consumer. Marketing is yielding greater influence over corporate budgets and IT initiatives, and we're leading the charge to deliver on heightened consumer expectations.

However, many marketers haven't had a chance to catch up with the rapid advancements in email and cross-channel marketing technology. To get there, they need to quickly navigate and prioritize opportunities and accelerate planning and execution.

No pressure, eh? Even with the abundance of available data and marketing solution capabilities, getting the gears in motion requires a clear focus on attainable goals and a tiered approach to climbing toward contextual marketing nirvana.

One important first step in this direction is to focus on the human beings at the receiving end - our customers. Take some time to carefully think about how the end consumer will experience the output of your combined marketing tech stack, analytics insights, strategies, and tactics. Examine your customer lifecycle with a lens toward injecting some life back into it!

This process begins with establishing a customer lifecycle blueprint and understanding how your consumers traverse it. Of course, lifecycles are business- and consumer-specific, and very non-linear these days. Many organizations, large or small, don't have a clear sense of the lifecycle experience their consumers receive. This is due to a variety of factors, the most prominent one being time - it simply takes time to stop and document a current state of any program or process, and time is a resource that is in short supply on many marketing teams.

However, taking that step back to document current lifecycle communication elements is a foundational investment that paves the way for future program optimization. This process is the only proven way to better understand the different communication touch points across the lifecycle process and how the consumer experiences the process, from initial acquisition to conversion through to various customer engagements: key milestones, transactions, and any other customer experience paths deployed across the lifecycle.

Just a warning - this process often gets very messy before it becomes clear. The ultimate goal here is to understand the current touch points and outline opportunities to add or optimize communications to drive better customer experiences (and business results).

Once you have a blueprint of your customer lifecycle in hand, you can begin to examine ways to craft a better design. Here are some of the types of questions you'll want to ask to begin to uncover insights and define opportunities:

• Is the customer lifecycle consistent and integrated across channels - email, mobile, social, display, in-store, and more?
• Are the programs aligned and customized to key segments and maximizing different lifecycle stages?
• Are there also programs dedicated to highly engaged individuals, as well as initiatives in place to re-engage disengaged audiences to improve their experience?
• Are communication touch points consistently deployed across the channels of choice?
• Is data organized to drive the right experience at the right time in the right channel?
• Are there obvious data points on hand that could be used to communicate more contextually with customers (location, likes, life-stage, device used, etc.)? 
• Conversely, are there data points that need to be gathered, or implied data that needs to be captured and put into action?
• At the beginning of the consumer relationship, are expectations being set clearly? And are new acquisitions being maximized early on, when they are most engaged?
• Do you understand your consumers' known attributes, activity levels, social influence, and other differentiators? 
• Are there gaps in your cross-channel communication strategy that result in missed opportunities to drive consumer action and conversion?
• Is testing and optimization taking place to drive stronger program performance?

I would venture a guess that almost every marketer out there would answer "no" to one or a few of these questions. The end goal of all this work is to come up with a list of amazing and innovative opportunities to act upon in order to generate stronger engagement and conversion - i.e. put life back into your customer lifecycle!

Once you have a foundational understanding of the current lifecycle experience and a "blue sky" list of optimization opportunities, the next step is prioritization. Prioritization should be based on the level of expected impact and the level of effort required. This prioritization exercise should lead to a clear, simple, and attainable strategic initiatives roadmap, including testing elements.

And then the fun really begins. So pivot your organization in the direction of your customer and put some life back into the lifecycle as you head into 2015!

Source : http://www.clickz.com/clickz/column/2374901/putting-the-life-back-in-your-customer-lifecycle

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

How to Use Email Marketing to Increase Sales This Holiday Season.

So what can businesses and marketers do to make sure their emails will be opened and clicked on before Christmas day? Dozens of email marketing experts share 12 can't-miss tips for making your email marketing deliver for the holidays.

1. Try different subject lines -- and be creative. "Do A/B testing of subject lines right up until the very end of the season," says Alyssa Nahatis, the director of Deliverability for Adobe Campaign. "There is always time to make it better."

For example, "test subject lines that include [the customer's] name," says Ben Meyer, email campaign manager, Cleverbridge, a global ecommerce provider.

"The more individualized an email is, the more likely consumers will respond to it," says Christopher S. Penn, vice president, Marketing Technology, SHIFT Communications.

"I recommend that brands try to be as specific as possible with subject lines, to grab the target audience's attention," says Steve Warren, vice president & general manager, Teradata Interactive, a provider of data-driven marketing solutions. "For example, try: Top Electronics for the Men on Your List; 10 Toys Kids Want under the Tree; Gift Ideas for Animal Lovers; or Gifts Under $25 They Won't Return."

Also, "use words like new, free, sale, now, holiday and save in your subject lines," suggests Connie Sung Moyle, head of Public Relations at VerticalResponse, an email marketing provider. "VerticalResponse recently analyzed 10,000 email campaigns sent over the holidays in 2013, and these words generated the highest open rates."

2. But go easy on using Cyber Monday. "We found including the words Cyber Monday in the subject line of an email sent on Cyber Monday 2013 actually decreased open rates," says Christopher Lester, vice president of sales, Emma, which provides email marketing services. That's because people "are bombarded with Cyber Monday messages." Instead, "get creative [with your subject lines, to] stand out from the crowd."


One last thing to keep in mind: "according to an email marketing benchmark report from eMarketer published in 2013, shorter subject lines had higher open rates, but longer ones had higher click[through] rates," notes Meyer.

3. Put the most important information in the first two sentences of your email. "Many ISPs and email providers display a line or two of text after the subject line," referred to as the "preheader," says Ramesh Bulusu, CEO of MyUS.com, a packaging consolidation service. "So [inserting] a call to action, attention-grabbing copy or teaser into the valuable preheader space is a great way to keep your subject lines short but still emphasize special offers, create urgency and, most importantly, encourage recipients to open your email."

4. Use photos, especially ones that evoke the holiday spirit -- but don't forget about your copy! "People are inspired by photos," says Lysa Miller, lead designer & Web strategist at Ladybugz Interactive. "If you are selling a product or offering a service, offer a visual that appeals to your market to make them want to click on your offer. For example, if you are selling pajamas or nighties, have pictures of those products in a holiday setting or holiday theme," she suggests. Even better: "have a photo of someone opening a gift with the product."

That said, "don't rely solely on graphical elements," says Janelle Johnson, director of demand generation at Act-On Software, a provider of marketing automation software. "Yes, images make an email beautiful, but many email clients strip out [or don't display] images. So your copy must be engaging to provide recipients a reason to enable images," she says. Therefore write the copy first and ask yourself: "If all someone saw was the text, would they be interested? Once you have the copy spot-on, add graphics and visuals to enhance the email," she says. Finally, "don't forget to test to see how your email will render across multiple email platforms."

5. Don't forget a call to action! Tell people what it is you want them to do. And "if you're selling something, include a direct link to that service or product," says Mario Mirabella, founder & creative director, MSM DesignZ. "Even if you aren't selling or promoting anything, you should always add a link to your company's website to the email with a call to action such as 'For more details' or 'Learn more at,' to encourage clicks to your website."

6. Notify customers of delivery deadlines. "Be sure that your email messages provide clear and concise instructions to ensure gifts ship and arrive on time," says Warren. "You can create a sense of urgency with strong reminders to buy now, rather than waiting until shipping costs go up and guaranteed delivery is unavailable." Also, as this is information customers consider very important, consider putting it in the subject line as well as in the body copy.

7. Make customers feel as though you are giving them something. "Create an offer that your audience can't resist," suggests Miller. Whether it's "free shipping, by one get one free, [or whatever], make the holiday offer your holiday gift to your customers."

8. Employ limited-time offers. Another good strategy is to "offer something that has a deadline," she adds. "Offer a specific deal to targeted customers, which has to be redeemed by a specific date. Then send a follow-up email a day or two before the offer expires."

For loyal customers, "give [them] advance notice on planned promotions," says Nahatis. "Announce your offer two to three weeks in advance, and then send a reminder the week of the offer."

9. Make sure your email is mobile friendly. "A significant number of people use their phone to check their email," says Chris Apaliski, social media director, Magic Logix, an integrated marketing agency. So "if you aren't properly optimizing your emails for mobile, you run the risk of running customers off.

"Make it as easy as possible for them [to interact with you]. So they can open an email from their phone, cruise on to your site and make a purchase without ever leaving the comfort of their surroundings."

10. Target your email. "Segment your lists so that you can send targeted emails to groups of subscribers based on interests, purchase history and/or how often they've engaged with your past emails," says Sung Moyle. "The more targeted the email content and subject line, the more likely your subscribers will open it. For example, if you're a winery, send a holiday promotion for red wines to subscribers who've purchased a red wine in the past."

11. Remember that timing is (almost) everything. "Outbrain found that Americans are more likely to click on holiday content on the weekend," says Lester. So create "an automated email series scheduled to send each Saturday [through] December." Just keep in mind that "overall engagement with holiday emails starts to steadily decline after the second week of December, so focus your holiday email marketing on [earlier in the month], while people are still paying attention."

Another tip, for when you do want to send email during the week: "For B2C email campaigns, sending around lunchtime or after work is best since that's when most people will check their email for leisure," says Mirabella. "For B2B campaigns, send early, before work, or in the early afternoon after lunch."

Remember, "folks are usually busy during the holidays and even more so during the days and evenings," says Sharif Kalil, content manager, Neesh, a digital marketing agency. "If they get your email during their busy hours, they'll quickly close and forget they ever saw it [or outright delete it]," he says. So "sending email during the early morning means you'll have a better chance of grabbing their attention."

12. Create a seamless experience. "Create a seamless experience from the moment people open your email through their website visit," advises Bruce Ernst, vice president of Product Development at Monetate, which provides cloud-based testing, email optimization and in-the-moment personalization software. "Something about your brand's email caused the customer to click." So make sure your messaging and branding is consistent, from your website, to your email marketing campaigns, to your social media and other channels.

Source : http://www.cio.com/article/2846176/email-marketing/how-to-use-email-marketing-to-increase-sales-this-holiday-season.html

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