Email Marketing: 8 Practical Lessons Learned From Our Newsletter Redesign

1. Inboxes are cluttered—your newsletter shouldn’t be.

In retrospect, our old email newsletter was cluttered. When thinking about our email redesign we opted for a more minimalistic approach, which included more whitespace, better typography and less color. Steven Bradley does a great job explaining the concept: “Minimalism aims for simplicity and objectivity. It wants to reduce works to the fundamental, the essential, the necessary, and to strip away the ornamental layers that might be placed on top.” Less is definitely more when it comes to email. Many businesses are guilty of trying to cram more than one marketing message into their email marketing campaigns, but focus drives metrics. Our minimal design approach ended up being easy on the eyes and beautiful across all devices.

2. Bring sexy back with thoughtful email design.

Our minimal email design focuses on key elements, all with the same underlying principle that less is more. We added blocks of neutral color to help break up the newsletter into sections that are easy to distinguish. And the color scheme makes our weekly newsletter, as a whole, look cohesive. When recipients open our emails we want them to think, “fresh and clean” instead of “overwhelmed and cluttered”. One of the most important things you can do (with any marketing communication) is to stay on brand … simple is in fact, sexy.


3. We’ve got mobile on our mind and so do your customers.

As Forbes contributor Katie Lee explains, “If a campaign doesn’t show up on mobile devices, it’s not going to perform very well.” We’re on-the-go, and so are you and your customers. Mobile is no longer a nicety, it’s a must-have. We’ve adopted the philosophy, moving forward, that everything we send should be mobile-friendly. “63 percent of Americans and 41 percent of Europeans would either close or delete an email that’s not optimized for mobile.” (Source: Forbes) These stats speak volumes.


4. Subject lines must be short and relevant.

Once we clearly defined our primary goal for sending email, we rethought our subject line. As a consumer, we’ve all seen wordy, misleading, and lengthy subject lines that made our heads hurt. So, we opted for a “simple” cut to the chase approach. An email marketing rule of thumb is that you should keep your subject line to 50 characters or less. (Source: MailChimp) Also, since our free Weekly Insider is delivered on a weekly basis we added a date to the subject line for easy cataloging and reference. Keep in mind, your subject line is highly dependent on my next lesson learned – content.

5. Create compelling and focused content.

“One of the biggest problems with email newsletters is that they are often cluttered and unfocused because they are supporting every aspect of your business.” Our email strategy will continue to evolve, but it starts with the notion that there are several different types of emails to share. From newsletters, to digests, dedicated emails, lead nurturing, sponsorship, transactional, welcome, advice/educational, testimonial, surveys and more – it’s important to decide which communications work best for your audience and deliver focused content, respectively. HubSpot, a great resource for marketers, goes into detail here.


6. We’ve got a lot of personality and it starts with a brand voice.

When I launched YFS Magazine in late 2009 it had a very specific brand voice (I think “Young, Fabulous and Self-Employed” spoke volumes). As we’ve evolved into a global platform for entrepreneurs, our reach expanded and our voice matured. In essence, it has remained true to its brand roots: making entrepreneurship accessible with an authoritative voice and selectively optimistic view of startups and small business culture. To share this personality with readers, we’ve added a publisher’s note to our newsletter, which I will pen for the foreseeable future. My goal is to highlight key trends and insights we’re seeing across the ecosystem and stay in touch. It’s a simple way to steer clear from boring and remain relevant. Also, we endeavored to write short, strong copy—because there is beauty in getting to the point, especially in email.


7. Remind people that you’re social.

In our freshly-minted newsletter we place a high priority on social. Not only did we link to our primary social networks, we also included social sharing buttons for every article to increase engagement. Did you know? “Options to share on social platforms generated a 115% better CTR (click-through-rate) than emails with no options to share the message.” (Source: Socialfresh) This in itself is reason enough to empower people to share what resonates. Social is still an incredibly viable and cost-effective way to grow your business. Email is no exception.


8. Metrics are in the overlooked details.

Pay close attention to the details. From design to deliverability, branding, social and more. The smallest details can go a long way. For example, we had never given much thought to email preheaders—until now. It’s the first thing you read after the subject line and it gives a quick summary of what your email is about. For example, “in Gmail, it is the first line of text that follows the subject line in the inbox view.” (Source: Email Design Review) Most importantly, it boosts the subject line and delves deeper into what your subject line doesn’t say. Also referred to as the “Johnson Box,” these 30 characters actually raise open rates and click through rates on mailings. Who knew?

Source : http://yfsmagazine.com/2014/11/20/email-marketing-8-practical-lessons-learned-from-our-newsletter-redesign/2/

Tags : email marketing, email marketing malaysia

8 Effective Email Marketing Strategies, Backed by Science

 

The cutthroat inbox of your standard consumer roils with marketing messages, competitive subject lines, and scores of attention-seeking emails. With over 144 billion emails sent each and every day, email marketing remains one of the elite channels for business communication. So how does the signal separate itself from the noise? To be sure, finding the key to a stand-out message is critical to your bottom line—whether that bottom line is cold, hard cash or community engagement or anything in between. What follows are eight inbox-tested email marketing strategies that successful senders have used to get their emails clicked.

1. Personalize your email without using the recipient’s name

No more “Dear [INSERT NAME HERE]”.

The practice of personalized email greetings is not nearly as effective as it may seem. In fact, research by Temple’s Fox School of Business suggests that this particular kind of personalization could be harmful.

Given the high level of cyber security concerns about phishing, identity theft, and credit card fraud, many consumers would be wary of emails, particularly those with personal greetings.

A significant element of email marketing is relationship. Does a recipient trust you? Does a recipient even know who you are? When an email jumps the gun by forcing familiarity too soon, the personalization comes across as skeevy. Intimacy is earned in real life, and it would appear to be the same way with email. Take this example from my inbox; no one has called me lowercase kevan l lee in years.

Faking familiarity with the subscriber turns many wary email readers off. But this isn’t to say that all forms of personalization are off-limits. In fact, a particular brand of personalization can pay off big time: Sending email that acknowledges a subscriber’s individuality (e.g., purchase history or demographic).

(The study) also found that product personalization, in which customers are directed to products that their past purchasing patterns suggest they will like, triggered positive responses in 98 percent of customers.

The takeaway here is that if you are to use personalization as an email marketing strategy, do so in a meaningful way. It takes little knowledge or relationship to place someone’s name in your greeting. It shows far greater care to send personalized email that is specific to a recipient’s needs and history. Again, an example from my inbox, this email from Rdio dispenses with the formalities and simply provides an update on music I actually listen to.

2. The long and short of subject lines

When it comes to deciding how to craft that perfect subject line, there appears to be really only one area to avoid: the subject line of 60 to 70 characters. Marketers refer to this as the “dead zone” of subject length. According to research by Adestra, which tracked over 900 million emails for its report, there is no increase in either open rate or clickthroughs at this 60-to-70 character length of subject line.

Conversely, subject lines 70 characters and up tested to be most beneficial to engage readers in clicking through to the content, and subject lines 49 characters and below tested well with open rate.

In fact, Adestra found that subject lines fewer than 10 characters long had an open rate of 58%.

Short subjects came in vogue with the success of President Barack Obama’s email fundraising. He saw incredible engagement with subjects like “Hey” and “Wow.”

So the question becomes: Do you want to boost clicks (response) or opens (awareness)? Go long for clickthroughs; keep it short for opens.

Either way, a helpful email marketing strategy is to squeeze out more words or cut back just a bit to avoid that 60 to 70 character dead zone.

3. 8:00 p.m. to midnight is the prime time to send your email

While many a quality email may be built during business hours, the ones with the best open rates aren’t being sent from 9 to 5. The top email marketing strategy is to send at night.

In their quarterly email report for 2012’s fourth quarter, Experian Marketing Services found that the time of day that received the best open rate was 8:00 p.m. to midnight. This block not only performed better for open rate (a respectable 22 percent) but also for clickthrough and sales.

The chart above shows that the 8:00 to midnight window is also the least used—a key factor in helping those late night emails outperform the rest. From Experian:

Optimal mailing time often depends upon your customers’ behaviors, inbox crowding, and the deployment times of other marketers.

Inbox crowding and the deployment times of other marketers go hand-in-hand; if your email goes out when few others do, it stands a greater chance of getting noticed (so quick, start sending between 8:00 and midnight before everyone else catches on).

Optimal mailing for your customers’ needs will be up to you. Test, test, and test some more to find out how your customer ticks and when he/she opens email.

4. The best content is free content: Give something away

Consumers love a free lunch—or a free template.

In a study on their singapore email list of 6,300 subscribers, Bluewire Media tested various types of content to see what led to the highest rates for opens and clicks. The winner was templates and tools, just the kind of freebies that email readers want.

Many a consumer will ask, “What’s in it for me?” When it comes to resources, Bluewire Media’s test results say that templates and tools outweigh ebooks, expert interviews, brain teasers, and even photo albums. You will want to test with your own list, but certainly use Bluewire’s research as a head start.

5. Mobile opens accounts for 47 percent of all email opens

Mobile opens accounted for 47 percent of all email opens in June, according to numbers provided by email marketing firm Litmus. If your email list singapore accounts for $100,000 in sales each month, could you afford to wave bye-bye to $44,000 just because your email looks funky on a mobile phone?

Design responsively to ensure that your email looks great no matter where it’s read. Here are some quick mobile design tips:

Convert your email to a one column template for an easy mobile fix.

• Bump up the font size for improved readability on smart phones.
• Follow the iOS guideline of buttons at least 44 pixels wide by 44 pixels tall.
• Make the call-to-action obvious and easy to tap. Above the fold is preferable.
• Consider ergonomics. Many users tap and scroll with their thumb, so keep important tappable elements in the middle of the screen.

6. Email marketing still reigns over Facebook and Twitter

Social media may be the young whippersnapper nipping at email’s heels, but the content king of the inbox still holds sway in social influence, according to a study by SocialTwist. Over an 18-month period, SocialTwist monitored 119 referral campaigns from leading brands and companies. The results showed a significant advantage to email’s ability to convert new customers compared to Facebook and Twitter.

Of the 300,000 referrals who became new customers, 50.8 percent were reached by email, compared to 26.8 percent for Twitter and 22 percent for Facebook.

Email marketing ruled supreme, by almost double.

7. Send email on the weekends

While not as overwhelming a winner as the 8:00 p.m. to midnight time of day, Saturday and Sunday did outperform their weekday counterparts in Experian’s study of day-of-week performance.

Again, the volume of email sent on the weekends is low, just like the volume for evening emails, which could help those messages stand out more. The margins for clickthrough, open, and sales rates were not substantial, but in email marketing, every little bit counts.

8. Re-engage an inactive group of subscribers

Your list is huge. Great! The only problem is that two-thirds of it may be inactive.

Research has found that the average inactivity for a list is 63 percent, meaning that once someone joins they are less likely to ever follow-up with your follow-up emails. Email marketing firm Listrak goes so far as to identify the first 90 days as the window for turning a sign-up into a devotee (and they lay out a plan for doing so).

What’s to become of that inactive 63 percent? Re-engagement campaigns are an excellent place to start.

Recently, a re-engagement campaign from Digg wound up in my inbox. The subject was catchy (“This Is Not An Email From 2006″), and the content helpfully explained what the email was all about.

As with everything that we call science, it’s all about doing experiments. Very likely, if you are doing your own experiments, you might actually have found different results. What are your best email marketing strategies and email marketing tips? Tell us in the comments below!

Source: https://blog.bufferapp.com/8-effective-email-strategies-backed-by-research

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

Better Data and Personalization Are the Future of Email Marketing

Most brands have some kind of email marketing platform as part of their overall marketing strategy. But in recent years, consumers have grown weary of one-size-fits-all, spamlike promotional messages, and marketers who still take this approach will need to update their tactics to stay in their customers' inboxes.

Business News Daily spoke with marketing experts to discover what trends are shaping the future of the industry. Here are five ways email marketing will evolve in the coming years.

Real-time campaigns

Big Data has touched nearly every facet of business in recent years, enabling brands to create highly personalized and effective campaigns by analyzing detailed consumer data. Email marketers already utilize Big Data to segment their audiences based on past purchases and Web browsing history. But Jason Warnock, vice president of market intelligence and deliverability at email marketing software Yesmail, said that real-time email triggers will become increasingly common in the coming years.

"Email marketers are increasingly recognizing the value of triggered campaigns and sending personalized brand messages based on a customer's behavior," Warnock told Business News Daily.

Since many consumers check their various newsfeeds consistently throughout the day, a real-time marketing email based on a relevant local event or news story is very likely to be read because the event is top-of-mind.

"Data is becoming sophisticated enough to do this, so we can expect more personalization and automation in the future," Warnock said.

Contextual behavior predictions

Big Data is also helping email marketing evolve by telling marketers not only what types of content their recipients are most likely to consume, but when and where they'll actually open the message.

"The real cutting edge of email in today's world is context and behavior," said Len Shneyder, director of industry relations at messaging software provider Message Systems. "Knowing when a person is most likely to open their email because you've tracked previous opens, segmented those opens and applied geographical location data will make a world of difference."

More data in the email channel means more specificity and a highly personalized experience, Shneyder said. As in other forms of marketing, the most highly tailored email marketing efforts will be the ones that see the most engagement.

"Users will be able to tell a marketer the exact kinds of messages they want — push [notifications] versus SMS versus email versus social," Shneyder said. "Marketers will respond and adapt to the fact that consumers are driving the conversation and relationship."

Moving "up the funnel"

The sales process is often described as a funnel. The closer a consumer is to making a purchase, the lower down the funnel they are said to be. Dela Quist, CEO of email marketing agency Alchemy Worx, said that marketers currently tend to view email marketing at the bottom of the funnel, with a focus on conversion and optimizing the conversion, but this won't be the case going forward.

"Over the next few years, more companies will need to consider how they can make email equally as effective at the top of the funnel as a powerful branding tool," Quist said. "If a consumer decides not to open [an email], that doesn't mean it hasn't left an impression. We'll see more marketers figuring out how to account for those types of actions that come from using email as a branding tool. If marketers can learn to optimize email for both the top and bottom of the funnel, we'll see even more powerful and impactful campaigns."

Because so much of email marketing is automated now, companies can stop worrying about the technical aspect and zero in on crafting messages with great content. Understanding what subscribers want and delivering it to them in a creative and personal way are the keys to connecting subscribers with your brand, Quist said.

More sophisticated reporting

Thoroughly analyzing reports from your email service provider (ESP) is the most effective way to determine what's working and what isn't. Your reports can tell you everything from how many emails were opened to what links in the message were clicked. But it's what you do with those reports that will really matter most in the coming years.

"Reporting is the new key to maintaining high delivery rates," said Seamas Egan, manager of revenue operations at email marketing service provider Campaigner. "The new MO at Internet service providers is interaction rate. This means that if you use a tier 1 ESP, your emails will eventually end up in junk if they have low open and click-through rates. Use reporting to proactively monitor those rates and adjust messaging frequency and content accordingly to ensure you maintain high interaction rates."

Reading the reports is only the first step; you'll need to take action and adjust your strategy based on the numbers. E.J. McGowan, general manager of Campaigner, reminded marketers that an email "campaign" no longer means sending just a single email.

"Campaigns should consist of multiple steps, with different email content based on the actions of the reader," McGowan said. "If they didn't open your original message, try sending a different subject line. If they didn't interact, then try changing up the offers and calls to action. Marketers need to utilize the data available to connect with their readers effectively."

Email as a gateway

Years ago, email was a unique marketing channel that essentially existed in a silo. However, as more and more communication channels have opened up, email has taken a backseat to the growing number of ways to reach consumers. Marketers now need to approach email as their consumers do — as part of an omnichannel marketing strategy.

"Email is no longer a silo but a gateway to social media," said Chris Penn, vice president of marketing technology at public relations firm Shift Communications. "It's an alternate sale on your website and the only reliable future-proof marketing channel against constant change in social media."

Although Penn predicts that email will lose some of its traction to mobile digital channels, he said that email will remain the gold standard for reliably reaching consumers.

"It's the one outbound digital communication method that is vendor-agnostic," Penn said. "Facebook, Twitter, etc. are all privately held entities, not open Internet protocols, and that ensures that email will remain relevant for some time to come."

Source: http://www.businessnewsdaily.com/7315-future-of-email-marketing.html

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

Email Marketing Software – An automation to generate leads and ways to make it an effective marketing tool.

Email Marketing Software – An automation to generate leads and ways to make it an effective marketing tool.

Email marketing system or Email Direct Marketing (hereinafter known as EDM in this article)is a platform to send email to a collection of leads mainly to communicate or to advertise product to the intended group of people.

At some point, we will be asked of this question.

 What is a lead?

In the digital marketing, the term lead is often used by digital marketer as a prospect of sale. This is not a technical jargon but to someone initially exposing to online marketing his products / services this doesn’t sound right to him.Lead is not a chemical element in this article, chemist, sorry another day perhaps.

A lead is a piece of information or any personal detailsusually an email addressobtained through;

a)      Filling an e-form in a website;

b)      Subscribing to monthly email content or;

c)      A participant to your seminar or webinar (web conferencing).

Are the leads generated genuinely representing prospects which can be converted into sales? As digital marketers we are the fronting the line to provide various solutions to answer YES, but how?

EDM is one of the effective marketing tool today and still stand the test of thebooming Internet Technology era. One can assume it is known as a traditional marketing tool now due to uprising streams of social media marketing.

Research from Experian(http://blogs.salesforce.com/company/2013/07/email-marketing-stats.html) shows that in every $1 invested in email marketing initiatives still yields roughly $44.25 return for marketers. Considering the huge percentage of yield it does show full confidence in EDM.
   

Although facts show how familiarity in EDM breeds confidence and comfort in this marketing tool, yet many are still unaware of how to effectively manage an email campaign let alone generate revenue. Let’s face it, the market is huge and there are millions of businesses still reluctant in trying EDM.

List below are 5 important steps (list is not exhaustive but comprehensive) on how to fully utilize EDM.


Segmentation -

In every EDM, there is a basic function to track the leads by filtering grey or white leads. Not everybody subscribing to your email content are interested in buying the product. Perhaps they just want the latest news feed or certain contents are informative for whatever reasons they think is relevant.

The first step to effective conversion lead into sale is segmenting the types of lead. Grey lead is what I term as indecisive prospect. They are unsure whether to switch brand but more likely to be informed of the latest information. White lead is a typical genuine prospect that will readily submit their feedback and subscribe to your weekly / monthly email content.

One way to be sure is to insert 2 different types of subscription link. A link to subscribe for daily / monthly newsfeed and another link to direct audience to your landing page (your website).

With the response we get, we can segment each group of leads and only send relevant information. Quality communication with your prospects and customers can get you closer to that group of people actually looking forward to your message.

 Personalize your email -

This has been said too often many times but seems a huge neglect.

Recipients will feel connected to the sender if email content has the person’s name acknowledged. It is a serious blunder telling them oh okay we are mass emailing so we can’t type your name.

Most EDM allows personalization and by using it you get to go long way by earning their trust.

 

 Designing your Email Content -

The question that every digital marketer ask is, what is the ultimate aim of you sending the email content?

Generally, selling or promoting a product is the top of the list, followed by brand awareness or promoting seminars. The central idea is communicating a message to the intended recipients. Relevant content is king. A few tips on the designing the email content.

Subject line– The subject line should be short but carry weight of what the content is about. It is an invitation for someone to open the email. Having said that, the subject line must be interesting yet not misleading and capital letters should be avoided outright so it doesn’t look ‘spammy’. So spend some time on creating a fantastic subject line. There is no one size fits all for a great subject line. What sounds amazing to one business doesn’t mean it can make it for a different business in different industry. Hence, creativity is the key.

Image–Something I read recently, the brain comprehends images 60,000 times faster than text. Words brief and to the point enough for communication.

Information details– Leaving contact detail and subscription linkto avoid your email content be deemed as spam by spamming filter and this leads us to point number 4.

Remember your landing page -

In digital marketing, CTA is our widely used word simply means ‘Call To Action’. Some emails ultimate aim is to just drive recipients to their website.

Your email content can be amazing but it must be resourceful by directing recipients to the landing page, which is your fantastic website.

Be creative in designing a landing page. Outsource if you do not have an in-house creative team. Landing page must be optimized for smartphones, tablets with user-friendly buttons. Traffic routed to landing page can be captured as a valuable data. Bottom line here is if your email content is mobile-friendly so should be your landing page.

Contact us for advice -

Finally, the safest bet to avoid the trappings in EDM is to contact us for more information. You don’t want your email newsletter to be junked by the internet service provider without knowing why.

Happy working ladies and gentlemen and have a great day.

Tags: email marketing, email marketing thailand, email blast, bulk email, email blast software, mass email marketing, email marketing solutions, bulk email software, email marketing services, email marketing company, sms marketing, sms blast

9 Email Marketing Best Practices for Lead Gen

1. Use Incentives to Increase Open Rates: When you include an incentive in your subject line, you can increase open rates by as much as 50%. “Free shipping when you spend $25 or more” and “Receive a free iPod with demo” are examples of good, incentive-focused subject lines.

2. Stick to Fewer Than 3 Typefaces: The less clutter you have in your email, the more conversions you’ll experience. Don’t junk up your email with more than 2, or at maximum, 3 typefaces.

3. Keep the Main Message and Call-to-Action Above the Fold: If your main call-to-action falls below the fold, then as many as 70% of recipients won’t see it. Also, any call-to-action should be repeated at least 3 times throughout the email.

4. Keep Your Email 500-650 Pixels Wide: If you go wider than 650 pixels, then you’re asking users to scroll horizontally to read your entire message. That’s a no-no.

5. Put Your Logo in the Upper Left-Hand Side of the Email: Eye tracking studies have found that people instinctively look for logos in the upper left-hand side of emails. Put your logo in the upper left-hand side to ensure it gets the most visibility.

6. Write Compelling Subject Lines: A good subject line should contain no more than 30 to 50 characters. It should also create a sense of urgency, and it should give readers some indication of what to expect once they open the email.

7. Use Auto-Responders for Opt-Ins: Be prepared for your readers to forget they opted in. Set up an auto-responder that reminds people they opted in to your email database. The auto-responder should be sent out 1 day, 5 days, and 10 days after the person registers. Each auto-responder email should include additional content or bonus material to reward the reader for opting in.

8. Closely Tie Emails to Landing Pages: Your landing page should match the email in terms of headline, copy, and content. The look and feel of your landing page should also match the email. And make sure you’re utilizing tracking tools to see which emails and landing pages performed the best.

9. Conduct a 5-Second Test: Send a copy of the email to a friend or business associate. Can they quickly tell what your call-to-action is? If so, you’re golden. If not, keep working.

Source : http://blog.hubspot.com/blog/tabid/6307/bid/23965/9-Email-Marketing-Best-Practices-to-Generate-More-Leads.aspx

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

Five tips for building stronger B2B email relationships

For many B2B businesses, email marketing is an important channel for marketing to customers and potential customers. And, in many respects, B2B companies have opportunities to use email marketing to build relationships in ways that B2C companies can't.

Yet relationship building is hard, and despite the opportunities email provides as a channel, many companies fail to take advantage.

So how can companies use email marketing to build stronger relationships with customers and prospective customers alike? Here are five tips.

1. Segment
Segmentation is an important part of any successful email marketing effort, and that's particularly true when building B2B relationships using email. If your company sells software, for instance, chances are you'd want to send a different email to a CIO than you would a technical lead responsible for deploying and maintaining your solution.

2. Make it personal
B2B email lists are often much smaller than their B2C counterparts, and that provides an opportunity to make emails more personal than is often possible in the B2C world.

Personalization can take many forms. When dealing with existing customers, emails can be tailored based on the type of product or service a customer has purchased in the past, or could feature the customer's account manager as the sender. For prospective customers, information frequently gathered during signup, such as industry and company size, can be used to deliver more relevant content.

3. Don't just sell
At the end of the day, most marketing initiatives are expected to directly or indirectly drive sales, but when it comes to email marketing in a B2B context, that doesn't mean that you should be selling all the time. Email can be a great channel for offering customer assistance with products and services they've already purchased, or to provide free advice to potential customers.

4. Demonstrate your knowledge, skills and capabilities
B2B purchasing decisions are often more complex and considered and that means that the messages you deliver via email will probably need to be more thoughtful if they're going to produce the desired result. No "Buy one and get one for 50% off!" or "Free shipping!" offers here. The key to producing a compelling message: know your customers, what problems they have right now and how your products and services can be applied to solving them.

5. Don't leave it all to your list
Email marketing isn't just about your list. If you want to build stronger relationships with customers and potential customers via email, taking the time to send direct messages is a must. For all the effort many companies put into producing content for email marketing campaigns, sometimes a simple "How are things going?" from an account manager can do far, far more to build a long-lasting relationship.

Source: https://econsultancy.com/blog/10675-five-tips-for-building-stronger-b2b-email-relationships

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

10 Email Marketing Tips for Small Business Owners

Small-business owners are busy folks, especially in the current economy. They wear many hats, including that of marketer.

Email marketing is a medium for economically and effectively marketing your small business. But most everything out there that provides guidelines, best-practices, and advice on the application of the channel to your marketing efforts are largely geared toward bigger businesses.

And it can be difficult for those who plan and build email marketing plans and strategies for bigger organizations to step back and reflect on the days when office politics didn't exist and they had to do it all yourself...

Until now, that is, because here are 10 tips you can leverage and implement easily and quickly—while still having a positive influence on your bottom line—without having to worry yourself with multivariate testing, dynamic content development, and data integration.

Tip 1. Be yourself

You've been able to achieve your accomplishments to date by being yourself; that doesn't change in email. People frequent your establishment because they enjoy the environment, the way they are treated, the quality of your product... Your recipients need to feel the same emotion when they open your email marketing messages.

You can achieve that result through the look or tone of your message. Don't change your writing or speaking style just because you are writing in email. Writing for email can be much less "professional," lending itself more toward relationship building—and that does not come with servings of "Sir" and "Ma'am."

Tip 2. Start small

Starting small is easy when you are a small business. Unless your business lends itself nicely to email collection, you probably don't have a vast database of email addresses on record. But when you operate a small business, it may be easier for you than any of the Fortune 500 companies to obtain that information from your customer base.

The people who do business with you want to do business with you. They have built a trusting relationship with you and will give you that information. So just ask. Tell your customers that you are introducing a new, exclusive email blast program and will be sending periodic offers available to those recipients only. Provide point-of-purchase cards that customers can fill out and provide the permission... and you're off!

Tip 3. Don't over-promise

You may want to promise the world, but you need to keep it realistic. In the beginning, you may not have any idea how you want to leverage email to support your business, but before you can really validate it you need some email addresses.

Your preference may be to offer big promises of frequent offers and discounts—but unless you are prepared to deliver on those promises, don't make them. You may just want to use email for reminders and notifications.

For example, if you own an auto repair shop, you may want to use email to remind folks when it is time for their next oil change. Or, if you're a dry cleaner, you can notify customers that their items are ready for pickup.

Tip 4. Find a email marketing vendor

Selecting a email marketing software vendor could be tricky. If you search online, you will find that they vary in sophistication, from the simplistic to the complex. You are going to want to demo a few email blast vendors to see what really works for you. But do not be afraid of what you don't know. Ask questions, see how much guidance and advice they are willing and able to share—and, most of all, be comfortable in your decision.

Tip 5. Use what you know

You know more about your market, your customers, and your location than any consultant could ever tell you. Leverage that information when you are planning your email marketing programs.

For example, if you have a large professional customer base that uses smartphones or PDAs, then you may want to develop messaging that will be accessible while your customers are on the move. Or if they have children, you may want to appeal to them accordingly.

Appealing to the recipient by leveraging information you know about them extends your relationship to the inbox.

Tip 6. Stay compliant... CAN-SPAM is real

Just be compliant. Include a valid unsubscribe that only requires one click to convert, present your mailing address in the messages, unsubscribe people when they ask you to, don't steal email addresses, and don't be misleading. It doesn't matter what size your company is, if you are sending email blast you need to follow the law.

Tip 7. Drive subscription

Make sure you tell your customers via your Web site and in your store that you are building your email database and tell them why. If you are not driving subscription through every touch point, you should be. Otherwise, how do you expect to get them?

Tip 8. Offer an incentive

While it is typically not recommended that businesses offer people an incentive in for subscribing to receive emails, doing so can be a successful tactic for small business owners.

In large organizations, providing incentives to the masses tends to result in a poorer-quality recipients because chances are they are just providing their email address to get the free stuff.

But because of the closer relationship that most small-business owners have with their customer base, the incentive tends to be perceived as a "thank you" to a good customer and not just a ploy to get an email address. Be careful, though—too much of this sort of thing, and it can begin to add up!

Tip 9. Track your results

As much as I would like to tell you that you don't need to do this, you do. You can never know how email is working for you if you don't track it.

I am not saying that you need to tie every email you send back to a dollar amount that it drives through the door, but identifying early on what your email marketing program objectives are and then measuring against them to determine your success is key in leveraging the channel to the best of your benefit.

The goals can be as simple or complex as you want—anything from achieving a 50% open rate because you are striving for brand awareness or tracking conversion to the penny and driving an ROI of 5:1. It's up to you!

Tip 10. Now do it!

Yes. Once you begin collecting email addresses, you actually need to send them email. In small business, you have up to a six-month window from the point of collection to the delivery of your first email—but if you are going to get the address, you really should be using it as soon as possible.

It may not be possible to start sending right away, but you certainly should within three months of acquisition; otherwise, you may see complaints, bounces, and nonresponsive recipients because they don't actually remember providing you permission.

Email marketing is a highly lucrative and largely viral marketing channel and can be an effective and immediate solution to driving new and increased business. What are you waiting for?

Source: http://www.marketingprofs.com/9/email-marketing-tips-for-small-business-owners-trivunovic-osterday.asp

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