The Evolving Internet Marketer

Getting Your E-mail Audience to Click-through to Your Landing Page

According to research cited by the folks at MailDogManager.com “…the words “Click to continue” generated 50% more click-throughs than either “Continue to article” or “Read more.”“

Of course that may mean that only 2 people clicked on “Read more” while 4 clicked-through on “Click to continue”! And, they didn’t mention what it was they were clicking to continue. If it was to the Girls of Albania pictorial from Communist Today I can see where reading wouldn’t be an appropriate call to action!

What’s the Point?

Little things matter. And no element of an e-mail offer or its supporting landing page should be considered too small to evaluate for effectiveness or improvement. Just because it makes sense or sounds good to you, doesn’t mean that your audience is going to share the same sensibility. And, if in doubt, test. Sure the big things like offers and subject lines but test the subtler things like button placement, color scheme and font size.

Most Important Factors in Getting E-mails Opened

Marketing Sherpa gives us an early peek (available free until 10/23/07) at the critical factors that will boost your email open and click-through rates according to a report to be released later this week by MailerMailer.com:

What’s the most critical component of an email marketing campaign after the list? Subject lines. That’s the findings from MailerMailer’s new Email Marketing Metrics Report, which will be released next week.

“We are seeing the trend of open rates going down continue across industries,” says Raj Khera, CEO, MailerMailer. To contend with this, subject lines are gaining importance. “Shorter, personalized subject lines that contain your brand name consistently outperform everything else.”

You’ll be able to download the entire report next week (10/22/07) from http://www.mailermailer.com/metrics/.

My Own Experience
I recently signed up for an email broadcast service that offers a weekly state-of-email-marketing report from their CEO. The problem? I kept deleting his missives because he was broadcasting them using his name rather than his company’s. I don’t use a preview pane so I’m looking at the From Line and thinking, “Hey, I don’t know this guy, must be spam!” DELETE. I still have to catch myself from deleting his messages. The solution is simple. Unless you are the brand (think Seth Godin) use your brand to mark your messages.

E-Mail Broadcast Lesson: Make sure you’re sending out your important e-mail messages using an address and a subject line that your subscribers expect.

Wall Street Bullish on Email Marketing

Are you concerned that email marketing has lost its relevance in the face of ongoing deliverability and spam issues? Apparently Wall Street doesn’t share your concern having boosted the IPO of Constant Contact – a leading email service provider – into the stratosphere. The market has valued CC at close to a billion dollars – a helluva an endorsement of its belief that email is both viable and here for the long term.

As a long time consumer of Constant Contact’s* services I can tell you they do a great job at a reasonable price and I applaud their stock market success.

[* Disclosure: This is my affiliate link. Constant Contact's direct link is www.constantcontact.com]