E-mail Marketing Tips, Part IV

Get More Clicks

Newsletters Should Encourage Clicks

In the world of Internet e-mail marketing, the more clicks the better. Clicks mean your message is getting across, and someone is interested in finding out more. Once someone opens your newsletter, the next step is for them to dig deeper and follow your call to action. This means they will ultimately click on the links in your newsletter and end up on your website's homepage—or, in Internet marketing terminology, end up being “captured.” If they buy, fill out your subscription invitation, or in some other way fulfill the purpose of your newsletter campaign, they are then “converted.”

A “click” is the act of someone responding to a link. The “click through rate” (commonly referred to as CTR) and how it is determined depends on whether your e-mail is text only, HTML only, or a combination of both. By using a combination of both, you can make sure your message is attractive graphically and also accessible to those recipients whose e-mail may not handle HTML messages—a customer with a portable device, for instance. Also, e-mails designed with HTML have more sophisticated tracking abilities.

The formula for an HTML, or text and HTML, click through rate is—

(total # of clicks / total # of newsletters sent)*100

For example, if you send out 500 newsletters and of those that open the e-mail, 75 people actually go to the next step and click on the link or links in the open newsletter itself, then your click through rate is 15%.

(75 clicks / 500 newsletters)*100=15%

Ways to Get More Clicks

By increasing the number of clicks, you can improve your chances of getting conversions. In the book Sign Me Up! written by Matt Blumberg, Tami Monahan Forman, and Stephanie A. Miller, the following suggestions are offered to improve your click rate. (See pp. 37, 39)

Keep Actionable Items in View: The field of view varies depending on the browser in which your e-mail is opened. On top of that, people naturally ready from the top left, downward and across the middle, to the bottom right of the screen. Therefore, if you want to catch your reader's attention, the call to action should be in that field of view. If it is at the bottom of your newsletter and the viewer must scroll down to see it, the chances are they won't do it, and your opened newsletter will lose its value. To help in the design of your newsletter, Google recently released a tool called the “Browser Size Tool.” This tool will allow you to compare how different browsers will display your content. It will be the subject of a future article from HIT Web Design, so stay tuned. In the meantime, you can read about the tool at Browser Size.

Offer Other Avenues to Convert: Suppose someone reads your newsletter, but then can't get back to the computer to act on it. To help in this situation, give your subscriber some other way to contact you. For example, offer a toll-free number, a fax number, or a physical address to visit . Also, prominently provide a memorable e-mail address so that if your subscriber is on an airplane or somewhere that they can compose an e-mail on a portable device, they can take advantage of your offer.

Use Some Marketing Savvy: Do some marketing research on your target market, and make offers accordingly. Take into account buyer preferences, expressed interests, as well as lifestyle, behavior, income, and other demographic information. You might also consider breaking up your campaign by geographical area.

Give Stuff Away: Let's face it, everyone loves to get stuff for free. As the authors of Sign Me Up! put it, “Tell your readers about something they can't resist and require that they come to your site to retrieve it. Maybe it's a coupon, music download, cool game, or a hot new screen saver. Whatever it is, let them know why they must have it and why they need to click through to get it.”

Provide Mini Reviews of Other Content on Your Site: One way to get people to your site is to give a glimpse of what it has to offer in the newsletter, a teaser, so to speak, so that the interest of the reader is piqued and they want to see more. One idea is to write a newsletter about a particular subject, and then have that story link to your website for more information.

The clicked through rate for your e-mail campaign is a critical metric that translates into results. Careful attention to increasing your clicks will ultimately net higher fulfillment of your website's purpose.

HIT Web Design offers an effective tool to create and manage e-mail newsletter campaigns called Stay-N-Touch. For more information, see Stay-N-Touch.

• Newsletters Should Prominently Display Calls to Action for Optimal Click Rates

• Increasing Your Click Rate Translates into More Conversions

• Giving Alternative Ways to Act On Your Call to Action Helps Boost Conversions

• Use HIT Web Design's Stay-N-Touch marketing tool to create effective newsletter campaigns.

Testing Your E-mail Marketing Campaign

Testing is an important but often overlooked step when creating a marketing campaign. A well written marketing email is useless if it goes right to someone’s junk folder. Another thing to consider is how your e-mail will look with different email programs such as Hotmail or Gmail especially with html emails. There are several things you can do to test your campaign before you send it out to all your customers.

One thing you can is set up several free email accounts with different email services like Yahoo and Gmail to test your campaign. You will not only see what the email looks like with the different services but you can also see on which service the email goes right to the junk folder. You can then tweak the text and subject line as needed to help avoid your email ending up as spam.

After the campaign you can also test by seeing how may of your emails were opened by your customers. The percentage is a good indication of whether or not a large amount of your emails are ending up as spam, this is also a good indication of the effectiveness of your subject line and text if a large percentage of your emails were opened. This can help you plan future marketing campaigns.

For more information, please visit http://www.hitwebdesign.com or call 1-866-211-0743.

Tips For Writing An Effective Marketing Email Or Newsletter

Whether you are sending a marketing Email or Newsletter there are several things you can do to help increase their effectiveness.

The most important aspect of any e-mail is the subject line. Make sure your subject line catches the recipients attention while avoiding common spam phrases that may result in your e-mail going straight to the junk folder.

Make sure it has a hook, something that tells your customers the reason you are sending them the e-mail. Your hook should be clear and concise and often should be a call to action as well.

Choose your words carefully. Emails tend to be less formal but should still be professional. Make sure you choose words that effectively convey your message in a concise manner.

Contact HIT Web Design to have a professional writers write a marketing newsletter to help grow your business.

Keep your text short and use bullet points and dashes to call attention to important information. This is useful since most people will only scan an email and not read the whole message.

With the body of the text make sure the paragraphs are short only a few sentences each. Use a standard font such as Times New Roman or Arial. Short paragraphs and standardly used fonts are easier to read.

For more information, please visit http://www.hitwebdesign.com or call 1-866-211-0743.

Increase The Chance Your Email Is Read

When it comes to emails most people will only scan the email for a few seconds before deciding if they will delete it or want to read more. There are a few things you can do to help make sure your email is more effective and more likely to be read.

The subject line may be the most important part of the email, make sure you think of a good subject line while avoiding words and phrases such as “Free...” that would likely be determined to be spam.

Send your emails during business hours and not over the weekend. More people check their email during the work week.

Make sure it is easy to tell who the email is from, put your company name where it is easily seen or in the subject line.

Use meaningful headings for multiple paragraphs in your email. Make sure they accurately describe the content and generate interest. When scanning the email this may be all the recipient looks at.

Try to keep the email short. If it is too long then it may never be read at all.

For more information, please visit http://www.hitwebdesign.com or call 1-866-211-0743.

Email Marketing: Avoiding Spam Filters

Any email can be determined to be spam by email spam filters and automatically sent to the junk folder. So how can you make sure your email makes it to your customers inbox? The best way is to understand how spam filters work.

The best way to avoid spam filters is to avoid phrases that are often associated with spam. Spam filters look for phrases including words like, Cash, Free, and Click Here. There are several common spam phrases that we always see when we happen to check our email junk folder. Make sure you limit or eliminate these phrases from your email and never use them in the subject line. Spam filters also look for emails in all caps, and multiple !!!, never do this in your emails, it will not only never get read it is also considered poor etiquette.

Here are a few other things to avoid when sending emails, sending e-mails that are only images, sending HTML emails with poor coding, and using bright colored fonts. These are also characteristics of spam emails and will often end up being sent directly to the junk folder.

For more information, please visit http://www.hitwebdesign.com or call 1-866-211-0743.

Email Marketing - What Software Should I Use?

E-mail marketing is a great way of reminding your customers who you are, getting your brand in front of them, providing them with useful information and helpful tips as well as great deals you might be offering. How do you implement it though? That’s where a great software program can be invaluable. HIT Web Design has an easy to use and easy to understand piece of software we can install on your site called the Stay-N-Touch. After researching different options out there on the web I would have to say this is definitely the standard that all software should be judged by.

The Stay-N-Touch software tested successfully with 300,000+ mailing lists. All known e-mail lists file formats are supported so compatibility isn’t an issue. The Stay-N-Touch Marketing program includes advanced reports on mailing campaigns, click-throughs, new subscribers and more stats. It also gives you the ability to create custom forms for any mailing group, use custom fields, and custom design- the advanced online editor allows you to build cutting-edge newsletters and emails using both HTML and Text.

I will list the qualities of Stay-N-Touch and say that any software you decide to go with to help you with your e-mail marketing program needs to have these functions to be of true use to you.

• Create and manage highly targeted mailing campaigns
  Mailing list builder, newsletter editor, subscription forms, auto responders, tracking, reports and more. All in one place.
  
  
• Customization and Personalization
  Send personalized and customized emails to all recipients, groups or to custom mix of mailing groups.
  
  
• Custom fields
  Create multiple custom fields and use them in the newsletter body, mailing lists and subscription forms.
  
  
• Advanced tracking and reports
  Track mailing campaigns, click-throughs, and get detailed mailing reports.
  
  
• Automatic bounced emails
  The system will automatically move bounced email addresses to a special folder. You can make these emails active again or delete at any time.
  
  
• Multi-language support
  Supports over 50 main world languages. These include European, Asian, Arabic, Chinese, Japanese and other languages.
  
  
• Advanced auto responder
  Create a series of unlimited follow-up auto responder tasks. Choose basic, multiple or mailing campaign auto responders. Choose a start point: any date/time or deliver emails once a user joins your mailing list.
  
  
• Full support of huge mailing lists
  This software tested successfully with 300,000+ mailing lists.
  
  
• Easy-to-use interface makes administration a snap

For more information as well as a complete demonstration, please visit http://hitenhancements.com/stayntouch.shtml or call your customer service representative at 1-866-211-0743.

E-mail Marketing - Tips On a Successful Campaign

You’ve decided on an e-mail marketing campaign through your double opt-in, offering bonus services, discounts, helpful information and tips to all your customers. This can be very successful or it can be downright frustrating, and a lot of what happens with it depends on you and avoiding some common pitfalls that can take the energy out of your campaign before it even begins.

One of the first things you want to do make sure you’ve put an obvious “call to action” on your e-mail that cries out to the customer as soon as they open your e-mail; this is the same concept we talked about when creating your website. You want to make it as easy as possible for your customer to buy from you so in order to capture their attention you need to provide them with an easy to understand opportunity to buy as soon as they see your message. If a customer doesn’t see what you want them to do they usually won’t search; they will close that email and go on to the next one. Also make it easy for them to understand what they are getting out of doing what you’ve asked them to, otherwise, what is their motivation?

Another tip is to make the e-mail (if it is an HTML based e-mail especially) consistent with your corporate look, website and other marketing, no matter what media it is. This helps with branding and helps your customer understand immediately it is message from you. Inconsistency in marketing messages can look ‘messy’ and can have a detrimental effect on the message you are trying to convey as well as an overall harmful effect on your corporate image. It makes you look unprofessional, inconsistent and can portray you as an entity that can’t be trusted. A unified look in marketing efforts provides instant branding as well as a sense of security in the reliable look.

You should also be consistent with the times you send out e-mail messages. If you do it too frequently you will run the risk of alienating your customers, but not often enough and they forget who you are. There is no real rule about it but putting your name out there in front of your customers at least once a month should be considered your minimum. Any other kind of time line will have to be determined by you and how often you feel your customers need to hear from you or can tolerate yet another marketing message.

For more information, please visit http://www.hitwebdesign.com or call 1-866-211-0743.

E-mail Marketing - How To Do It Right

As I mentioned in Friday’s web log, E-mail marketing is an extremely efficient means of keeping yourself in touch with your customers. You can use it to give your customers helpful hints and tips, answer frequently asked questions, as well as provide you with opportunities to get your products out there in front of your customer base, introduce new products and generally keep your brand in front of them in a helpful, non-intrusive and generally inexpensive way. But how do you get that list of customer e-mails to begin with? If you’ve sold to them, as part of the process you can ask them for their e-mail address, but it is critical that you ask the customer if it is OK for you to send them e-mail messages from time to time, otherwise you run the risk of alienating them. But how do you get e-mail addresses from people who haven’t purchased from you but may be interested in what you have to offer? There is a simple way that is easy to implement on your site and relatively inexpensive; it is called confirmed subscription opt-in, or, the “double opt-in”.

Confirmed subscription opt-in or double opt-in is a method for those seeking information from you to confirm with you that it is actually them asking to be included on your mailing list. The customer or potential customer fills out a short form on your website asking to be included in your mailing list. Once they submit the form, the form sends them an email that they have to respond to in order to complete the subscription. They are confirming, twice, that they actually want to receive the e-mails from you that you send out, be it informational, marketing or otherwise. This prevents anyone from posing as someone else and entering their email address as one that wishes to receive the information you send to your email list, be it marketing information, FAQ’s, a newsletter or sales opportunities. The potential abuser may put in a second parties email but doesn’t control that person’s email address therefore eliminating this particular scam. Not only does it confirm that they want to receive information, it is also a way of confirming that someone is likely to spend money with you and is genuinely interested in your products or services.

For more information, please visit http://www.hitwebdesign.com or call 1-866-211-0743.

E-mail Marketing - What It Is

E-mail marketing is an enormously effective tool to keep yourself in touch with your customers when utilized in a legal (non-spam) way, and can benefit your customers as well as provide you with opportunities to get your products out there in front of your existing customer base, introduce new products and generally keep your brand in front of them in a positive and cost effective way. Depending on how effective and helpful you make the message you’re trying to get across you can significantly increase your bottom line. In reality e-mail marketing is so inexpensive even if it doesn’t have a significant return; almost any amount of return becomes worthwhile.

The great thing about e-mail marketing campaigns is it doesn’t matter what size business you are, it is just as effective for a small business as it is for a large business; in fact, sometimes it benefits a small business considerably more. A good e-mail opt-in database can be worth infinitely more than what you spend on it to begin with as it can be used in so many different ways. Not only can you use it to get a marketing message across, you can use it as an ambassador of good will to your customers, sending them out helpful hints and tips, as well as utilizing it to follow up with customers who have purchased from you lately. It can have many, many different uses. However, with all that said let’s examine and define exactly what a decent e-mail marketing campaign is, and what it isn’t.

Wikipedia defines E-mail marketing as –

E-mail marketing is a form of direct marketing which uses electronic mail as a means of communicating commercial or fundraising messages to an audience. In its broadest sense, every e-mail sent to a potential or current customer could be considered e-mail marketing. However, the term is usually used to refer to:

• Sending e-mails with the purpose of enhancing the relationship of a merchant with its current or previous customers and to encourage customer loyalty and repeat business,
• Sending e-mails with the purpose of acquiring new customers or convincing current customers to purchase something immediately,
• Adding advertisements to e-mails sent by other companies to their customers, and
• Sending e-mails over the Internet, as e-mail did and does exist outside the Internet (e.g., network e-mail and FIDO).

You can find that definition at http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/E-mail_marketing. This definition pre-supposes that you are not e-mailing people that haven’t asked to be included in your mailing list. Sending unsolicited e-mail is called ‘spam’ - so what is the difference between e-mail marketing and spam? E-mail spam is defined loosely as unsolicited, bulk, commercial e-mail. Most people find e-mail spam to be distasteful at best.

HIT Web Design offers an easy to use email marketing program called Stay-N-Touch. For more information on Stay-N-Touch, please visit http://hitenhancements.com/stayntouch.shtml or call 1-866-211-0743.