The Evolving Internet Marketer

The Best Time to Send Email

I’ve now seen 2 email marketing authorities in the last 2 days cite 2 case studies saying that the best time to send your email marketing missives is on Tuesday. Marketing Sherpa & Mail Dog Papers (published by Mail Dog Manager) both described case studies where a Tuesday morning mailing provided the highest open rates. Mail Dog’s report also found that “Subject lines with a strong call to action out performed a subject line with shorter characters.” Hmmm, what an interesting concept, give your subscribers a compelling reason to open your message. Sounds good to me…

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.

One Hundred (and Seven) Ways to Get Your Email Blocked

Marketing Profs published an article by Jordan Ayen of SubscriberMail that lists the one hundred sure fire words and phrases guaranteed to get your emails blocked if you use them in your subject line (and often in the body of your posts as well). The seven they reference are George Carlin’s infamous list – I guess they still have legs in email if, increasingly, nowhere else. Funny, huh, that email is so prudish.

Interesting that while Cialis and Levitra made the list, Viagra was not to be found. Hmmm. Spam blockers as market research tool … you know that your product is hitting the skids when it can’t even make the list of top spam terms!

My favorite on the list was, you’ll never guess, online marketing, followed by search engine listings… No wonder I can’t get any of my clients to return my emails!

Common sense advice for email marketers:
Read the list. Post it at your desk or your online copywriter’s desk. And, at the end of the day, never use terms in your subject lines that you would block if you saw them in your email inbox!

Email Marketing: First Impressions are Everything

Does your email have great graphics, great content and great offers but nobody’s opening it? Maybe it’s because you’re making a lousy first impression.

Here’s some statistics (if I could have done the math, I’d have been a statistician):

49% of all respondents to a MarketingSherpa survey report using preview panes. The little window at the bottom or side of your email software that gives you a sliver of a view of an email’s content.

85% of Business to Business email users use preview (also known as reading) panes.

Why does this matter and how does it effect your email campaigns?

Here are a few graphics to illustrate (I would have been an artist except I can’t draw):

The Bad Preview Pane Example…

As you can see, the preview pane (2) shows no content because the email was constructed with all images and no text and, as with many email clients, images are turned off by default (1). At a minimum they should have used the alt image tag to describe the image content.

The only thing that potentially saves this email is that its subject line, “Do You Know What Great Managers Do” (3) is fairly strong. But if I’m visual and making decisions based on initial look I may decide that clicking the Show Images button is too much trouble particularly when my inbox is full as above. Knowing that this email described a Harvard sponsored seminar from management guru Marcus Buckingham might have positively influenced my open decision but this information is not available because it’s delivered graphically.

The Good Preview Pane Example…

The Mequoda Daily, on the other hand, does almost everything right…

Images are off (2) but the content of the email is clearly described in the preview pane friendly text box (1) that leads their message. Combined with a compelling subject line (3), I have all the information I need to make a positive open decision.

The final image shows what you see with the images on. The descriptive text remains constant and you have a glimpse of what appears to be an attractive title graphic heading the main body content. But the point is this:

1. An attractive graphical layout to your email communications only works if it’s seen and
2. To be seen it has to be opened and being opened is primarily a function of
3. A strong subject line coupled with decisionable information in the 1.5 inches typically allowed for the preview pane. This is particularly important with Business to Business messages where the recipients curiosity is tempered by an often overwhelming volume of email and the desire to actually get productive work done. The preview pane – at 85% usage with this audience – appears to be a key filtering device for making open or delete decisions.

So do yourself a favor, check out how your emails look with images off in the preview pane and examine the strength of your subject lines while you’re at it.

What Tactics Do Online Marketers Use to Market?

Online marketers use email marketing more than any other tactic with close to 73% favoring this medium. It’s no surprise that email newsletters (ezines) are the second most popular tactic at 61%. (What’s your most effective online marketing tactic? Vote below…)

Other tactics listed include

• Banner Ads
• Blogs
• Online Promotions
• Social Networking Web site promotions
• SEO
• Viral campaigns
• Podcasts
• etc…

You can see all the online marketing tactics cited and their relative popularity at eMarketer.com.

[poll=2]

For those who answer ‘Other’ I invite you to leave a comment about what online marketing tactic you find most effective and, optionally, why. Thanks.

Increase Your Email Newsletter Subscriptions – 10 Tips

I belong to a Yahoo Group that is focused on its member’s use of blogs as a business marketing and communications tool. A member asked the group for advice regarding the lack of success in getting sign-ups for her ezine (she’s averaging 1 sign-up/week). A subscription form is prominent on the upper left of her site and she incentivizes subscriptions by offering a free report (which she doesn’t name). These were my contribution to the topic thread. I think they’re pretty relevant for most bloggers and ezine publishers

1. I agree, with the earlier comment about placing the actual title of the free report on your sign up form. But also, be sure that the report is of interest to the majority of your desired audience. I subscribed myself just to find out that your report is … 33 Do’s & Don’ts for Your Next Presentation. I don’t do presentations so the report was a bit of a disappointment to me. I’m sure that this report resonates with a lot of people but since your site is presented as a personal development resource, your visitors might be more inclined to subscribe to your ezine if the report you provide focuses more obviously on that topic, e.g., your post on “The Top 7 Ways to Improve Your Self Esteem“. You might create 2 or 3 reports and test which one provides the best response. Run each report for a couple of weeks and see if any one in particular offers a superior result.
2. When I subscribed the email I received under your signature provided a link to your website but how about promoting your ezine – with a link to subscribe – in your signature line as well.
3. Create a separate subscription page that ’sells’ your ezine. Use this page to talk about the content and how it will benefit subscribers and provide access to an archive or sample issues.
4. When you give speeches or training, develop a landing page — and promote it at the event — that encourages people to subscribe to your ezine as well as provides special product or service offers and/or ‘exclusive’ content. I do this for my clients on a routine basis and they will add from several to several dozen (and more depending upon the event size) subscribers to their ezine subscriber lists as a result.
5. Use the back of your business card to promote your ezine (and blog). Include a link to the subscribe page…
6. You incorporate all of the social bookmarking links (Digg, del.icio.us, etc.) in your blog posts. How about a tag line at the end of each post that provides a message along the lines of, “If you liked this post and want more depth, subscribe to my ezine (with a link).” I haven’t received your ezine yet but, if you aren’t, cross promote your blog in your ezine as well. I have several clients who provide links to their most recent blog posts to good effect.
7. Don’t forget your blog. Use Feedblitz to allow people to subscribe to your blog via email. This is another great way to generate names that you can use to cross promote your ezine and other services. You don’t provide an obvious way for people to subscribe to your blog via either RSS or email. I like Feedblitz because it’s easier to track who’s subscribed. As far as RSS goes, I’d recommend a service such as Feedburner which allows a visitor to subscribe using their favorite RSS service.
8. Finally, get more ‘juice’ from your free report. The header of your PDF report lists your website with the tag line, “Join EY Insider Community Today!” Great! But why not make that a live link to a page on your website that allows them to subscribe – in other words, give them an easy means to ‘Join Your Community’. And use the last page of your report to tout your business. You just end after tip #33. You’ve just spent 6 pages providing them valuable information. Now give them an opportunity to thank you by giving them the information – and access – they need to inquire about your products, services, ezine and blog. This is good stuff, assume that it’s going to be passed around. In fact, invite them to do so.
9. Finally, Part II, in looking at your site, you have a bunch of info (most prominently, Audios) that say, “Coming Soon”. Get rid of those. If it’s not available now, remove the reference. When it becomes available, promote its availability as an ‘event’ which you can use to generate fresh interest in your site.
10. Finally, as with everything else on the web, the better content you deliver the better results you’ll enjoy in increased subscribers, visitors and business.

Hope these help and good luck.

Regards,

Tom Gray
The Evolving Internet Marketer

Use Image Alt Tags When Sending Emails

My previous post showed an example of what an email message looks like when viewed with images disabled. Here’s an ezine that I work on showing a before and after. In the first picture you’ll note that the image is disabled but the viewer knows what it is because the image alt tag is being used.

The code for this tag (in red) looks like this:

Image Alt Tags are also a great way to load some page, and image, specific key words into your web site code. Your visitors may not seem them but search engines will. Just remember, make them relevant.

Finally, here’s the image above once image display has been enabled. It’s a pretty picture but we didn’t lose the meaning when we lost the graphic.

Effective Marketing Requires Repetion. Effective Marketing Requires Repetition…

A statistic I came across recently stated that we’re exposed to 3,700 distinct messages a day. How do you break through that clutter with your message? By repeating it. We may think it rude to continuely bombard our prospects and customers with our message but, honestly, chances are they won’t see it until it works it’s way into their subconscious as being somehow familiar. Then perhaps they’ll pay closer attention – if for no other reason than to figure out why.

In marketing the rule of thumb is that a prospect generally needs to be exposed to a message 8-11 time before taking action.

If you’re publishing an ezine, consider increasing it’s frequency or add direct mail postcards to your marketing mix. Promote yourself via a corporate blog or host webinars or teleseminars to spread the word.

Take a clue from Madonna when she sings “Express Yourself. Don’t Repress Yourself.” Change this to “Repeat Yourself. Don’t Delete Yourself (from your customer’s awareness).”

Building Your eZine List – 5 Ideas Off the Top of My Head

A prospective client who’s interested in having me take over management of his electronic newsletter asked me if I’d talk to him about building his ezine subscriber list. I mean what’s the point of having a great newsletter if nobody’s reading it, right?

Here’s a few of the ideas I gave him…

1. Take a cue from print publishers and offer a premium for subscribing to your ezine. Maybe it’s an informative white paper, an introductory teleseminar for new subscribers, or a chock-full-of-great-ideas e-book. The point is, incent people in some way to sign-up for on-line newsletter.
2. Promote the cr*p out of it. Pardon my french but to mangle an old saying, “if an ezine is published on the internet and nobody knows about it does it make an impact?”
• If you speak or provide workshops or seminars, include a handout that combines your subscription info with the description of both the invaluable content they’ll receive with each issue but touting the insanely valuable premium they’ll get just for subscribing.
• In your email signature file add a blurb with a link that says something like, “Subscribe to my SuperDooper Ezine for valuable tips on widget fabrication and receive my award winning eBook on ‘Ten Things Your Mother Never Taught You about Widgets But You Need to Know’.”
• If you have a retail store include a sign-up form next to your cash register and train your staff to ask people if they want to sign up for this valuable tool.
• Prominently promote your ezine on every page of your web site. Include access to sample issues or invite them to browse your archive of past ezine issues.
3. Don’t use it as a glorified sales vehicle. Follow the 70/30 rule that says provide 70% valuable content for every 30% of self-promotion you include.
4. Go viral. Use a broadcast service that provides “Forward to a Friend/Colleague” type functionality. Oh, and don’t just ask them to forward it to one friend, suggest they forward it to 5 people. You’ll be surprised at how many people will do so.
5. Write killer content and publish it on a consistent schedule. Make it valuable. I know when one of my clients has hit a home run with their content because click-throughs go way up. Forwards boom and web site traffic (to the ezine archive) soars.Consistency means that if you’ve captured their interest you’ve also captured their trust by being regular and reliable. There are 2 local papers in my market. If I’m subscribed to one but they deliver sporadically while the other delivers daily – guess which one will get my subscription?
6. Bonus Tip: Consider co-promotion which means finding complementary ezines and swapping subsription links with them. If you provide sales training find a marketing guru and offer a link to subscribe to their electronic newsletter if they reciprocate. If you’re a restaurant in an entertainment district, work a deal with the community playhouse next door.

In other words, market and promote your ezine like you market and promote your products and services. And don’t forget #5. That’s the key. Good content, consistently presented will do wonders for your subscriber base. How do you know it’s good? Ask yourself: Would I subscribe to my ezine?

Don’t Use More Than 49 Characters When Composing Email Subject Lines

Email Labs reports some interesting research on email subject lines. Subject lines of 49 or fewer characters garnered a 75% higher click-through rate while achieving a 12.5% higher open rate than email messages with 50 characters or more in their subject lines.

They also found that the more hyperlinks the better with emails containing 25 or more links enjoying a 12% advantage in open rates and a whopping 29% edge in their click-through rates.

I can bear this out in my own experience as the link-rich ezines that I build for my customers generally pull significantly higher click-through rates than those with fewer links. For example, the April issue for one of my clients generated a phenomenal 22% click-through rate. This issue contained 62 links in the html version with 44 of the links generating clicks.

Why do shorter subject lines pull better than lengthy ones? I think, in part, because with a shorter subject line it’s more likely your reader will get the full story whereas longer subject lines may end up being truncated. In an age of email inundation from both legitimate and illegitmate sources; fewer people may be willing to take a risk on an unknown subject line. As far as links go – variety is the spice of life and apparently ezines as well. The more places available for your subscribers to go to, the more likely that you’ll tempt a broader spectrum to go there.

So shorten the subject lines and increase your links to boost your email open and click-through rates.