How to Write Good, SEO-Friendly Articles

When developing killer content for your blog or website, there are two key considerations: first, how to create quality content that will engage, entertain, and ultimately drive conversions; and second, how to make that content available to a broad audience. As the majority of web traffic comes through search engines, creating content that is optimized for search visibility is one of the best ways to get your name into the world. While traditional marketing may have considered these two concerns separate, they are increasingly part of a unified content strategy that makes SEO a factor at a very early stage, producing content that seamlessly blends engaging writing with SEO-rich markers.

Although these aims - quality content and high search visibility - may seem at odds with each other, it’s vital to your marketing success to start considering them part of a holistic goal. Yes, your content should be well-written, dynamic, and full of valuable information for your audience, but none of that matters if it languishes in an unseen corner of your website. A high SEO ranking can pull your content out of obscurity and get it in front of a new readership. But today’s audiences are smart, and simply peppering your article with keywords will only serve to turn readers off.
What makes an article good? While truly great writing can’t be taught, good writing definitely can. As a marketer, you are ultimately a storyteller, conveying the story of your brand through different mediums and reframed for different audiences. Now all you need to do is translate this skill to the page. Here are some best practices for creating impressive, captivating articles:

1. Use concrete examples: Nothing gives writing more power than strong, relatable examples. Avoid the purely theoretical by using case studies when talking about a product’s success or focusing on one customer’s story. Find points of connection in news or pop culture to give your reader a frame of reference. These tangible stories will stay with them longer than facts or numbers.

2. Don’t hide your voice: One of the best things you can do for your brand is to give it a unique voice. Don’t be afraid to be funny (if you are funny), quirky, even a little bit weird. It can be helpful to read the piece aloud to see if it sounds like you. Your genuine voice is one of your greatest assets. Yes, you need to adhere to the standard of professionalism appropriate for your industry, but the more you sound like a human being, the more people will want to engage with you - by re-posting, commenting, and finally, by purchasing your service or product.

3.  Know your audience: Your blog is not your diary, nor is it an interoffice memo. Make sure you choose language suitable for whomever you’re addressing. If you’re writing for a larger audience, stay away from jargon. Keep paragraphs short and on-point, and section difficult-to-understand material into digestible concepts. Include links to examples that will help elucidate the work. Finally, become your fiercest critic: revise, revise, and revise again. Circle the ideas you find irresistible and cut everything else. The more focused you are, the more your audience will be able to gain from your work.
Writing for SEO

With those tips in mind, crafting a good article should be simple. Now to address the next piece of the puzzle: getting your content seen. Along with cross-posting and social media, optimizing your content for search engines is a proven way to place your work before a new audience. By optimizing your content to appear more often in search engine recommendations, you will be increasing both the visibility and trustworthiness of your brand.
 Some ways to create good SEO-friendly content include:

1. Choose organic: Incorporating highly visible, popular SEO keywords into your articles is one of the best ways to drive up your recommendations. Major caveat: these keywords need to be included in a way that feels organic to the subject matter. They mustn't stand out or be jarring to the reader. Readers, especially those who spend a lot of time in the digital world, are extremely capable of noticing if you’ve just stuffed your work full of words you hope will drive up visibility.

2. Keyword placement: Make sure you optimize the placement of keywords in your SEO articles by putting them in your titles and subtitles. Create a hierarchy of keywords and use the most search generating up front. Be sure to use your most important keywords in the title.

3. Picture this: Include images with alt text to get your page showing up in image searches as well. Images will also break up the text in a dynamic way. Image-driven content is getting more and more play as a digital marketing technique and it is especially suited to viral content.

With these tips in mind, you should be on your way to a higher SEO ranking in no time; and, at the same time, you’ll be enhancing your reputation as a quality content provider. Win-win for your brand!

Source : http://help.outbrain.com/customer/portal/articles/1411677-how-to-write-good-seo-friendly-articles Tags : seo, seo malaysia, seo malaysia company, seo services, seo service

Top 20 Email Marketing Articles of 2014

Welcome to another end of the year roundup! In this series, we’re collecting some of the best posts we’ve come across that encompass the entirety of the industry. Whether we focus on local marketing, mobile advertising, web design, and inbound marketing, we pick the most valuable pieces of content and share their insights.

Email marketing continues to be a point of contention for the majority of marketers. On one side of the spectrum (arguably the much bigger side), blog owners tend to gate their content behind an email subscription requirement.

On the other side, blog owners lead with value in order to entice readers to sign up. And even then, the subscriber is rewarded with more free content the moment they join the list.

Is one tactic better than the other? Well, that depends on what you’re measuring. If you’re measuring subscription counts, it seems likely that the email capture method could be more effective. If you’re recording email list engagement, it may be better to take the latter route.

Whichever mindset you decide to take in your marketing, we advise you to learn from the best in the industry and focus on testing your email communications to improve conversions. In order to help you, we’ve picked some of our favorite email articles from 2014 for you to read.

Enjoy the lessons!

• Don’t treat your audience like lower lifeforms. Educate them with smart content so they can become smarter, and ultimately, more loyal to you. Edward Gotham teaches us to use smart content for more engaging emails.

• Would you rather automate your marketing or do you want to invest in successful email marketing campaigns? It depends on what your sales and marketing goals are. Marketo pens this article.

• We don’t exactly know why your emails aren’t getting results, but Kristen Dunleavy lists some pretty powerful reasons why that might be the case. Check out this post for the full list!

• Building an email list is often times a slow and steady process. Although there are ethical ways to speed it up, we do not advise buying lists to boost your numbers. Daniel Burns gives us five strong reasons why.

• As we say repeatedly, if you want to be the best, you have to learn from the best. Tracey Videshighlights 18 brands that get their email voices just right.

• Learn how Jason Acidre increased his email subscribers by 532% in a single month by reading this post.

• It’s one thing to blast our email to several thousand subscribers. It’s another to have them actually open it. Elisa Silverman shows us how to structure our email messages.

• Grow your email list using a number of smart hacks from brilliant Neal Taparia.

• There’s more than one way to amass a significant following by email. Read through Jeff Bullas’s six simple tips to grow a larger list today.

• The perfect set up for your email list is here! Rob Walling gives us basic guidelines for starting your email list.

• What can you possibly learn from 12,500 emails from Internet retailers? Quite a bit actually.Luiz Centenaro analyzes the common threads in these emails with a case study. Enjoy this smart read!

• First impressions matter, especially on the Internet. Mustafa Khundmiri details how to make a great one through your first email.

• Dynamically target your subscribers through email using two powerful tools Vamshi Mokshagundam expands on in this post.

• Don’t just setup your email list and forget it; continue to add value in order to grow your subscriber count. Satish Patel posts five tips to get you on track to your first 1,000 readers.

• If you’re a startup, your email list is your biggest ally. Joelle Steiniger lists three dead simple tactics for a robust list of loyal followers.

• Even though the first 1,000 email posts are admirable, I go by the philosophy that your first few followers are your most important. Bryan Harris exemplifies this notion in an article.

• Don’t kill your open rates with these five mistakes! Abigail Waterer presents them in a post.

• Use the VENT methodology presented by Justine Jordan in order to create compelling content for your email marketing campaigns.

• You think you know how to build a sturdy email list? Here’s everything you need to know, and more, by Nate Desmond.

• People can spot a sales email a mile away. John Bonini makes sure you write tight email copy that gets you the right response in this article.
  

Source : http://upcity.com/blog/2014/11/top-20-email-marketing-articles-of-2014/

Keywords : email marketing, 電郵推廣

Five Key Email Automation Takeaways for Marketers

Part of being a modern marketer means geeking out on data, so let's get straight to the stats.

Companies that use marketing automation have 53% higher conversion rates than non-users, and an annualized revenue growth rate 3.1% higher than non-users, according to the Aberdeen Group. And B2C marketers who take advantage of automation for everything from cart abandonment programs to birthday emails have conversion rates as high as 50%, eMarketer reports. Yes, you read that correctly: One out of every two of these emails could convert.

Despite such findings, some marketers are reluctant to embrace email automation. Most holdouts think that adoption and integration would be too complicated, too costly, or too much of a time commitment.

It's true that successful deployment of an email automation solution requires some time to get off the ground. But automation doesn't need to be complicated—and it shouldn't be daunting. After all, most of us are already automating in our personal lives even if we don't realize it—setting up monthly utility bills for auto-pay or scheduling regular prescription refills.

Email automation applies that same principle to your marketing—at scale."

To kick-start your efforts, here are five key takeaways from Emma's Automation Demystified guide, which helps marketers set up an email automation strategy for great results.

1. Automation = increased engagement

Want results you can be proud of in your next meeting with the boss? Automation can help. Triggered email messages average 70.5% higher open rates and 152% higher click-through rates than traditional bulk messages, according to Epsilon.

2. Lead magnets attract subscribers

Create an irresistible lead magnet, and you'll draw in countless new contact opportunities. How? Tie your signup form to a great piece of content (the lead magnet) and automatically collect email addresses from potential leads.

Choose something that is valuable and immediately useful, but also specifically beneficial to your unique audience. Maybe it's a discount, e-book, or webinar—any content that piques the interest of your future customers should work.

3. Don't forget the warm welcome

New subscribers are key to the success of any marketing program. They're more engaged; since they haven't seen your content before, they're statistically more likely to click and open your messages. In fact, an Experian study found that welcome emails have four times the open rate and five times the click rate of traditional newsletters.

Make a good first impression on new subscribers by building an automated welcome series. A welcome series puts you in control of how your subscribers are introduced to your brand. More important, it creates trust and helps you establish a relationship with your customer.

4. Keep the content coming... as long as it's relevant

Relevant emails drive 18 times more revenue than general e-blasts (gross), according to Jupiter Research, so tailor your emails to fit the lead magnet they used to find you in the first place.

For example, if subscribers found you at a conference and snagged some free swag from your booth, your emails should not only remind of them of who you are but also connect back to that shared conference experience. Include a reference to that inspiring keynote speaker, or the equally inspiring chocolate explosion cupcakes served during the coffee break.

5. It's all in the timing

Automate for all occasions—but make sure the timing and the message are right. Birthdays, anniversaries, and recent purchases are all perfect triggers for a well-timed automated message from your brand.

Simply schedule a date-based automated email paired with a special offer, and send annually on your subscribers' special day—a simple way to stay top of mind and build loyal customer relationships.

Source : http://www.marketingprofs.com/articles/2014/26408/five-key-email-automation-takeaways-for-marketers

Keywords : email marketing, 電郵推廣

6 Tips for Creating a 2015 Email Marketing Strategy

Have you determined all the priorities for your email marketing strategy in 2015? Now is the time to review the success of past marketing efforts and look for areas that need to be improved. Here we provide some tips for developing a strategic email road map, so you’ll be ready to hit the ground running when 2015 arrives.

Begin by Setting Goals

Set your marketing objectives for 2015 by first determining where you are today and where you want to be at the end of next year. Our email marketing software is a great tool for helping you see the impact improvements such as higher email open and click-through rates, list growth, and increased landing-page conversion rates can have on the success of your email marketing efforts. As you plan your digital marketing strategy for next year, you’ll find this financial-modeling calculator is a quick, easy, and free way to discover opportunities for increasing your email marketing return on investment (ROI).

Tips for Developing an Effective Email Marketing Strategy

Once you’ve established your email marketing goals for 2015, determining where you should focus your time and resources is the next step. Taking into account current industry trends, here are some prime tips for developing your email strategy for 2015:

• Make mobile a top priority. Considering the already large and rapidly growing number of people using mobile devices, a significant portion of your prospects and customers are likely using smartphones and tablets to read your emails. And if your emails aren’t mobile-friendly, you’re likely frustrating your mobile subscribers and at risk of losing their business. So to make sure your emails both look great and are easy to interact with – whether your subscribers are using desktops, laptops, or mobile devices to read your emails – use responsive design. This dynamic display technology automatically adjusts content and image sizes based on a user’s screen. Check out this previous NewsLever article for other key ways to help ensure your emails are mobile-friendly.
• Use automation to create email drip campaigns that nurture prospects and customers. With the availability of today’s automation tools, setting up email drip campaigns is an easy and highly efficient way to nurture prospects and customers, build customer relationships and loyalty, as well as drive sales. When done right, automatic drip email campaigns send the right offers and content at the right time to effectively convert prospects to leads … and leads to customers. If you’re not already using drip marketing, be sure to read our series of articles that cover the basics of email drip marketing, how to use drip email campaigns to drive conversions, and drip campaign best practices.
• Combine content marketing with strong lead-generation tactics. Each year, typical email lists experience attrition as high as 25% due to bounces, unsubscribes, and inactive users. That’s why it’s essential to counter attrition with a strong lead-generation program and a compelling content marketing strategy. Begin by using demographic data and market research collected on your current customers to create marketing personas, which show the character attributes of your company’s ideal customers. Then, based on these personas, craft content that can be used to effectively capture new leads (content provided in return for contact information), as well as nurture prospects through the sales funnel. For example, this content can include email newsletters, blog posts, videos, webinars, and white papers.
• Personalize and customize your content. In other words, use micro-targeting to 1) identify smaller segments of your subscriber list, and 2) use personalization and customization tactics to provide highly relevant marketing communications to each segment. As we pointed out in a previous article, personalization pays off – generating as much as six times higher transaction rates. So for a smarter, more effective spend on email marketing, email list segmentation combined with content that is both personalized and customized for the different segments should be a high priority in your email strategy.
• Integrate your website with email marketing efforts. If customers begin shopping at your website but abandon their shopping carts, do you have a triggered email campaign in place to reach out and reengage them? If not, you’re missing a huge opportunity to recover the sale. The shopping-cart recovery email is just one example of how you can integrate your website with email marketing to help drive conversions. You can also set up triggered emails based on website visits and browsing activity. For additional examples, check out this NewsLever article on triggered emails.
• Implement an email-optimization process. To drive great results from each of your email campaigns requires continuous improvement of all email elements, such as copy, design, calls to action, subject lines, headlines, landing pages, frequency, and time sent. So set up and analyze email optimization tests for each campaign to determine what works best for your target audience. And then be prepared to implement appropriate changes for future email campaigns to help increase the overall performance of your email marketing program.

Feeling overwhelmed with the task of creating your organization’s email road map for 2015? We can help. We’re a data-driven email marketing firm with a proven process for creating and implementing winning email campaign strategies.

Source: http://www.fulcrumtech.net/resources/create-email-marketing-strategy-2015/

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

SearchMetrics Released SEO Ranking Factors For 2014: Content Now Really King?

Every year, SearchMetrics releases the study but this is the largest study they’ve done, with almost 100 pages and by adding dozens of new factors like time of site, bounce rate, fresh links and others.

The key take away from here is that content may now be truly king. Marcus Tober from SearchMetrics said in the report that content is “no longer an addition to, but is the main focus of, SEO .”

Here is a breakdown of the study with some charts showing parts of the analysis. But you can download the full report over here.

Content

• There is a measurable correlation between the quality of content and rankings. This is demonstrated by, among others, the analysis of two new features based primarily on word co-occurrence analysis: Proof and Relevant Terms.
• The length of content continues to increase.
• A good internal linking structure is an important factor, and probably the most underrated SEO measure.

Onpage Technical SEO

• Onpage, the keyword remains an important part of the overall concept for SEO, often represented by a balanced presence in Title, Description, Body copy, H1, H2, etc. Needless to say, that keyword stuffing should still be avoided. However, there is a definite trend towards developing keywords to topics to generate holistic content.
• Site load speed is a veryRF Robot important performance factor.
• Good site architecture is the beginning and end of effective SEO.

Backlinks

• The quantity and especially the quality of backlinks remains important.
• The number of keyword backlinks continues to decrease, even if the correlation increases.
• Backlink features for Brands (Point 6 below) appear to work differently to the rest of the URLs in SERPs.

Social Signals

• There were minor changes to the previous year, with Social signals correlating slightly less with good rankings than last year.
• Average values rose slightly.

User Signals

• Both the click-through rate and the time-on-site are considerably higher in better ranking sites – this may appear obvious, but average values determined over many URLs can be used as a benchmark for your own optimization.
• The bounce rate is lower for top-ranking URLs.

Brand Factor

• There seem to be special consideration for big brands.
• The Brand Factor and its definition have been revised this year, to show the increasing complexity of its influence and quality.

Source : http://searchengineland.com/searchmetrics-released-seo-ranking-factors-2014-content-now-really-king-202756

Tags : seo, seo malaysia, seo company malaysia

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