Testing Emails Effectively

The big picture, which is missed by many marketers, about email is that apart from being cheap and quick, it gives the ability to find what works and what does not. It is inexpensive and offers more information to the subscriber than direct mail and the turnaround time is decreased from weeks to hours. Yet, very few marketers invest time and efforts to test drive their eNewsletters and emails. Many of them will question whether the effort made is really worth it. If the order button is shifted from the bottom of the page to the top of the page, where it is more visible, the click through rate goes up by fifty percent. With such results, the effort is worth it. With hundreds and millions of dollars involved in email marketing, money cannot be thrown away like that.

The only way to know about offers and topics which work for the audience is by testing. Testing can be carried out on preferences, emotional triggers, reaction towards subject lines, do they like short or long formats, or do they like text or HTML format. Valuable information about the audience can be learned by variable testing.

Basics of the emails can be started with like the simplest portions of the emails can be formatted. Most of the emails aren’t read because of faulty HTML code. Emails should be tested in different types of email applications like Yahoo or Outlook. By doing this a drastic change can be observed in the overall response rate. Testing should be kept in control. Sometimes marketers get so overwhelmed that they test the whole email at once. If two completely different versions of the same email are send out to different groups, there will be no clue to what actually worked and what didn’t. Therefore it is necessary to pick a single element to be tested at a time and then observe the response of the audience to that particular variable before testing another variable.

Timing is also important when sending out emails for testing. When sending multiple test emails, the time of sending them out should be considered. It is to be seen whether the emails can be sent at the same time, same season, etc. This also includes the testing on more than one variable at a time. According to researches, Wednesday is the best day for getting responses. Other statistics say that at least thirty to fifty responses are required to make a good decision. Some percent of these responses can be confusing, but nearly ninety percent of them will be accurate. The list of elements can be further divided into smaller list and the individual list can be concentrated upon.

Testing doesn’t mean just taking the grade. It means that we should get the grades or results and learn from it. If something is wrong in the email, the correction should be sought out. When the email marketing efforts are put to test, the goal of this testing procedure is to test one or more elements or variables, the results must be analyzed and the lesson learned should be put to application. Otherwise, it is a waste of time and money to test. And when the results are ready, the marketer should know how to apply the new found knowledge.

The Biggest Email Brand Killers

One of the biggest mistakes to do is to use email like the electronic version of direct marketing media such as postal mailers, catalogs, radio, television, newspaper inserts and even brochures. A world class brand builder can become a sure fire brand killer in no time if it is treated with ignorance, carelessness, and laziness. The brand killing capability is very much dependant on the email’s relationship with the recipients. The relationship is more personal because of the intimate relationship between the people and their computer. And because of this intimacy, positive and negative feelings are encourages by the company’s name. No mail is as irritating as junk mail and the penalties for such emails are getting much stiffer. A flood of spam complaints can affect the email program to the extent of shutting it down.

The email is becoming a personal medium, slowly. The recipient should be made in charge, he should be able to decide from whom he should receive email from, what kind of email he wants to receive and when he can stop receiving those emails. An email program which dose not includes all these conveniences will do severe damage to the company’s or brand’s name.

The first thing to concentrate upon is to remove poor permission practices. If this thing isn’t taken care of, nothing done after that will make up for the loss. In simple words, it is completely wrong to email a commercial message to anyone who hasn’t given the permission to do so. Sometimes, a person is simply signed up for receiving email while registering on the website because of checking boxes in a hurry. Thus, it is important for the registration page to display the privacy policy which says that the registration also includes agreement for receiving emails. And in spite of this, there is a high chance to get large complaints because of the unclear opt-in process. Some companies send emails to a person who has downloaded whitepaper or brochure form the website. It is better for the check box be not checked before hand. The job of checking the box should be left to the visitor.

In spite of taking these precautions sometimes it happen that the recipient will head straight to the report spam button when they do not want to receive email anymore. This happens when the recipient dose not trust the unsubscribe process. The first reason for the loss of trust is because of not sending the message in the desired format: text or HTML. The readers subscribe intrusting the company and when their email program fails to honor their trust, the company has to pay for this. It is very important to give the reader the option to choose from text or HTML format. Usually technical people prefer only text messages where as the teenagers prefer messages in the HTML format.

The content of the email should exactly meet the requested information. If a subscriber has asked for sales announcements then do not send them company news. Similarly, the frequency of email should also be kept in mind. If request has been made to receive a weekly newsletter, do not send bi-weekly newsletters. An occasional exception such as sales bulletins or news can be used sparingly. Customers complain a lot about the pouring of emails during the holiday season. It is better to focus on the quality rather than quantity.

It is not a compulsion that the content of the email look like spam and considered as a spam. If the recipients able to recognize the sender or dose not consider him to authentic, the mail directly goes to the spam folder. Three things should be considered to keep away from this problem. The sender or the subject shouldn’t appear vague. The content should be relevant to the brand name and its products. The unsubscribe procedure should be checked regularly. Failed unsubscribe and repeated requests for unsubscribing not only blocks the email program but also kills the brand name. Along with checking this link, it is highly recommended to check other links as well. Clicking on the link should take directly to the landing page and not on home page or a ‘Page Not Found’ page. Also, effort must be made in reducing the number of clicks done to achieve a certain action.

Monitor Feedback to Boost Deliverability

It is a fact that monitoring or managing customer feedbacks does not fall in the top 10 priorities of email marketers in order to improve the deliverability of their emails. It is really a sorry state of affairs as feedback management enables email marketers to improve email’s most important quality i.e. providing direct interface between customers and email marketers.

When a factor so important such as this it turns off the readers and makes your program vulnerable to threats like spam reports and leaves you with a list containing lots of invalid or dead addresses. Many email marketers forget that relevancy is pivotal to driving deliverability of emails which results in loss of opportunity to make email campaigns more sought after and pertinent to target subscribers.

Even if some email marketers are in a impression that they are doing a tremendous job just being able to receive and reply to people’s comments and issues they have through mediums such as letter, phone or through the website. What email marketers overlook sometimes are few customers who put not to reply to their emails in the subject line as nobody would see it or the email is highly monitored.

While the very thought of shutting down the communication with the customers creates a pain in many email marketer’s heart there are some good email marketers who take both negative and positive feedback in a right way and try to improve. It has been observed that a good email program always requests a feedback in the end with a link to feedback form or customer service or provides phone numbers of customer service. And again good managers have a habit of attending to the feedbacks whatever channel they come from.

Despite clearly telling in the email not to reply it is a fact that some customers will always reply to the email. Thus limiting the customers to only certain channels kills the relation that you are trying to establish in the long run. This also affects deliverability. Take it this way, when you try to close a communication channel you lose one channel to get information from the customer that could have helped you improve efforts.

Effective feedback management does not stop here I.e. just by taking care of customer’s comments or complaints or questions that you receive as a response to your email or purchases or any other interaction you had with the customer. But effective feedback management involves taking extra steps and going that extra mile to reach to the customers requesting your customers for their comments and surveys through offers, newsletters, web links and email transactions.

When customer’s feedback or comments are sought you get rich information that can not only help you market goals but at the same time also take care of the emails that create dissatisfaction among customers and affect their deliverability. But care should be taken that you do not give overdose of surveys also to the customers. Rather email marketers should give attention to 4 main points of interaction where the possibility of getting valuable feedback is highest. The first is when customers sign up for your email program. The second point of interaction is after two or three months when you should contact your customer to bring back their attention to the email program who might have strayed away from the email program. The third and very important point of interaction is when customers contact you with complaints irrespective of the medium of interaction. The fourth point of interaction is when customers contacting you due to sudden surge in spam emails; you can take this as an opportunity to survey the customers.

Last but not the least an effective key to better feedback management is cooperation of different departments in your company in sharing the data and in helping overall improvement of email program.

How Deliverability is damaged?

How many times professionals have said that senders should adopt better practices to enhance their programs but, marketers ignores it every time and commit same old blunder. They end up getting nothing but terrible outcomes and they blame them on ISPs for their tough spam filtering policies.

One of the reasons why emails are undeliverable is due to failed authentication checks. This is a key reason why marketers should keep good records of the authentications to make it easy for the ISPs to identify authentic senders and make use of the reputation data to make decisions related to delivery. More damaging is an incorrect or broken record which can be even more devastating than not having any record at all. For instance consider the case where the IP address and sender is identified by authentication and when this authentication check fails it sends out a message that the “email was not sent by me” and thus do not deliver the message.

One of the other things that damages chances of deliverability of marketing emails is using an unrecognizable sender address. It’s a general practice among the recipients to decide what should be done about the email after reading the sender address otherwise the email is most likely going to be reported as spam or deleted right away. So, the more you try to hide your identity the more damaging would be the results.

One of the ways to self destroy a good email marketing effort is to use subject lines which look like spam or spam themselves. The subject line is the next most important thing after sender line for an email marketing campaign to be successful.

Another important point that most marketers ignore when they send marketing emails is check the list for bad or invalid email addresses. A list full of incorrect or invalid address creates a bad reputation on ISP thus increasing the chances of messages being blocked. Taking invalid addresses off of your list regularly improves the situation. Processing requests to unsubscribe and taking care of spam complaints instantly also helps a great deal.

What could be the next damaging factor to a good email marketing campaign? It is generating excessive complaints. If you accumulate lot of complaints from the receivers this affects your reputation again on ISP and they use this as a foremost factor to stop your emails. To help reduce this, immediately remove the addresses that are associated with any spam complaints you get. Not only that, take one extra step in finding out how those addresses got into your list and what commonalities they share in order to better your programs and cut complaints down.

Sending unsolicited emails is not just anyone’s liberty. Nobody would like to see any unsolicited email in his/her inbox without any reason. The ISPs judge a sender’s reputation by knowing how sender acquired the email address of the receiver like whether they solicited their permission or simply got it by spamming.

It is a tendency by the marketers to overload their emails with irrelevant text and images which the receivers may not want to see. Always ask for subscriber’s choice in selecting the kind of content they want to receive and go one extra mile in asking any other thing that they can do to satisfy their requirements.

Few points discussed above are some of the many measures that email marketers can take to prevent the deliverability of their emails from getting damaged.

Doubling Promotional Email Revenue and Ecommerce

One of the best aspects of email marketing is that it has the ability to turn out considerable revenue from a promotional email campaign or ecommerce. But the common perception of this type of marketing is that you design your email, forward it to a list of subscribers and then wait and watch the revenue rolling in. But it is not that easy.

For an ecommerce program to be successful it takes more than just emailing the newsletter. And because of this, companies jeopardize lot of money by not dividing their customers into segments and utilizing more advanced emailing features. Segmentation can be done on the basis of demographics, personalization, actions, customers responses detail tracking and trigger based emails. By considering these variables, a lot of investment may not be made in infrastructure or technology.

The revenue of an ecommerce program can be doubled or even tripled within few months with a little extra effort, analysis, refinement and testing. The things to be taken care of here are list building, content creativity, list management, segmentation and testing.

List building is the most effective means for increasing revenue. The email subscription form must be optimized for growth of the email list. Just a good home page won’t do the trick of capturing new subscribers. An eye catching link to the subscription form must be placed on every page of the website, possibly with an impossible to miss image. Many readers expect incentives when they sign-up for something. Try to offer ‘free shipping’ or ‘$25 off on the first order’, or something like it. The email address of a customer should be captured on the shopping cart form. Then a transaction confirmation email can be sent which includes link to the subscription form. This opportunity can also be used to get additional information from the customer in order to target them better. Demographics such as gender, product interests, and preferences can be asked about.

Try to use a search engine pay-per-click or PPC program, because search is the most frequently used way for customers to buy products they desire. PPC program increases the traffic towards your website. If such programs are used, the signing up process must be made easier for visitors who have or haven’t bought products from your website. Making the website search engine optimized is the most cost effective method of getting traffic and improving your list. This optimization can be done either internally or by hiring an external SEO consultant. Every page of the website must be optimized to get the top rankings. The ‘Send-to-a-friend’ feature must be included in every eNewsletter as this feature generates a considerable amount of new subscribers. Although the number won’t be big, but it will be enough to satisfy the number of unsubscribes every month.

If the business or shop is located somewhere, in-store promotion offers can be sent via emails. Sign-up forms can be given at cash registers and subscriptions can be promoted at the point of purchase.

According to researches, a compelling subject line can increase the open rate by fifty percent. Solid offers and great design are the perfect blend for doubling the click through rate. Give customers options from which they can choose the most appropriate one which suits their appetite. The products must be divided into categories. Personalization helps in increasing the response rate. Emails can be personalized by referring to the customers by their first name or by their past purchase history. Since the email is just an extension of the website, it is better to leverage the website’s navigation. If the website has search capability, it must be incorporated in the email.

The personality of the company should be reflected in their emails and its designs. Emails main job is motivating the recipients to click on the links to go to the website or subscription form. Some other very important links can be included, but a clutter shouldn’t be formed so that the most important one cannot be located. Graphic buttons and images can be used to draw attention. Great subject lines, top lines and offers just to wonders.

List should be managed by calculating email churns and fatigues. Incorrect email entry can be solved by including a second email entry box. Send out confirmation to check the validity. Update email address and manage account link should be included in every email.

Testing is very critical in optimizing the email program. Majority of the email variables must be checked before the emails have been send out.

Future of Email Deliverability

The biggest boost to email deliverability is the growth of transparency since the internet bubble burst in the millennium. It took away much uncertainity associated with email marketing. Address spoofing was absent then and spam undermined the recipient’s confidence in email marketing. In transparency means the person at the other side goes according to the claims he make. Now the identity has to be proved through out the delivery chain. Authentication systems used by ISPs have been developed to check the validity of the authorized sender and then either pass along the email or block it.

Few authorization systems work invisibly while others display a visible notice in a message form. Authentication, though, hasn’t solved the phishing and spam problem, but transparency fostered by it makes the legitimate senders more vivid. Previously there were closed systems which have become open now to email senders because of introduction of transparency by reputed vendors. The IP address of the sender can be known instantly and there are websites which can show how the email pattern of a particular sender is reflected to the world.

Things are easier for the email sender too, as they can check whether their email has been delivered or not with the help of email broadcasting solutions which have incorporated delivery monitors in their systems. Emailers who follow the best practices policies being offered by vendors, ISPs, and email industry trade groups have greatest rate of email message delivery. These policies include delivery volume, email bounces, opt-in practices, address management, IP address integrity and content trigger. According to these policies, transparency is also meant for the emailer’s personal program. The subscription process of the sender explains why the sender is is signing up, type of emails he will receive and how the unsubscription process is carried out. Depending upon the trustworthy atmosphere created by these policies, the ISP separates emails which have to be delivered, blocked and filtered.

If messages are being send to major ISPs, the sender must watch and study spam complaints, reply to emails, and bounced emails more carefully. Permission emailers who are willing to work within the requirements of the ISP, showed how content filters which were simple and server settings which were restrictive blocked requested emails which were both transactional messages and commercial messages.

In 2003, email receiver and senders gathered to share their concerns and air their grievances. From there aroused industry working groups who tackle fraud issues and email spam. Now ISPs are also identifying and trusting emails which are sent by clients of systems of third party authentication, email certification agencies and reputed vendors which take the guarantee of the email sender’s legitimacy. The regular server lever filters now let’s go the guaranteed email which is being delivered to the desired inbox, as requested. In both email delivery and sending, transparency has helped in dealing with the uncertainty and mysteries which prevented the marketers from effectively utilizing the email and the marketing associated with it.

Now it is very easy to come out the darkness and know whether your email has been delivered or not, with the help of transparency. If it is not delivered, the notification message can be checked for details and the mistake can be taken care of so that the message gets delivered in the future.

How to Make the Subscription Process Easier

There is a lot of competition in catching the attention of the subscriber in the email world. In order to distinguish from the rest of the clutter, communication must be made easier for the receiver. People always get attracted to things which are easy and go away from things which are difficult to do. Because of this hallmark of services and products like Google AdWords, Turbo Tax, etc., they have gained popularity all over the world.

Like they say it is easy to say but difficult to do, so is the case with making each and every thing easy for the customers and subscribers. Sometimes it might happen that the things which are easy for a group of customers might not be easy for the rest. This case is true especially with new customers.

The very first step in making things easier is to have a simple email address, link or opt-in form field in a promotional email or newsletter. Also this information must be included on every page of the website. There should be provision of a web version of the emails which are in HTML. It helps to include a send-to-friend link or functionality in every message. The subscribers must be able to take actions in spite of the images being blocked. Every submit button should be labeled with the action to be taken like ‘buy now’, ‘Subscribe here’, etc.

If any of these functionalities are missing, then Email Management and Accessing Content should be considered for simplification.

Email Management

Subscription must be made easier by working on email ids, links and sign-up form and post this information on every page. Every email should have the subscribe link in order to tempt the readers, especially those who have received the message from a friend. In order to subscribe, the steps to be taken should be minimum. According to a survey, marketers who had cut down the subscription steps from 9 to 3 saw an increase of 300% in the subscription rate. More personal information need to be collected from the subscriber in order to send more relevant emails. It also helps in maintaining the email list effectively. But email marketers should know where to draw the line as too much information can turn off the subscriber, especially those who haven’t subscribed yet but intend to do so. A separate page can hold the opt-in form to collect relevant information. The critical fields on the form should be marked with a star and the other extraneous field should be left on the subscriber’s choice to fill. The setting and updating of the customer’s preferences about the content must be made easier. Password can be allowed along with the inclusion of link for the retrieval of password, in case it has been forgotten. These links should stand out on the web page and in the email. The email should have software which provides ‘Mail-to-friend’ option and it should be easier than the forward function.

The email should stand out amongst the rest of the emails. The sender should be easily recognizable and the subject line should be catchy. Emails should have provisions to take action in an easy way. They should be text based as well as HTML based. Include a link of the web version of the email, so that more vivid information can be seen. Obviously, the emails should be printer friendly; if not a printer friendly version of the email should be provided.

It is very important to check the working of each and every link, including the unsubscribing link. Clicking on the link, it should take the reader directly to the web page, image or file. Subscribers find it very tedious to hunt for the desired content. Another important point which most of the marketers forget is to make the unsubscribe option easy. This strengthens the trust of the subscribers. More can be gained out of the unsubscribing process by including various options such as address change or changing the frequency of emails.

When all these points will be pondered upon, you will be certainly surprised with the subscription turn out.

Guidelines for Growing the Opt-In List

It requires dreadfully hard work to build a robust, responsive and high-quality mailing list. Just flooding thousands of emails to the list of recipients in the database won’t do the trick. The truth is that acquiring email addresses is just a small part of the large process of email marketing. It is very important to realize that the company should build an individual relationship with every person behind the email address. If the starting is wrong, every chance for building a rewarding relationship with the subscribers is instantly killed. And on the other side, if the company proves itself worthy to its list of subscribers, then many happy years lie ahead for both the parties.

For list building some key components need to be kept into account like the method of acquiring the email addresses, how new subscribers should be welcomed, and how the relationship is maintained after the opt-in process. Acquiring the list of addresses is the easiest part of list building. But the basic rule here is to take explicit permission from the owner to send emails. Violation of this rule is going against the U.S. CAN-SPAM law regarding commercial email. This also leads to breaking of the relationship with the customer.

Addresses can be collected by online and offline means. Links for email opt-in should be posted on every page of the website, including the registration page and every transactional page. Paid search can be used to reach elevate the position in search engines results. The land up page should include a vivid link to the sign up page. Alliances can be searched who have a similar or a complementary business so to promote one’s company in return of promoting the other company. Incentives such as email only discount and free shipping can be offered to increase the subscription list. If the list is being rented from another organization make sure the list contains subscribers which have given permission. Offline means include collecting email addresses from visitors to the company, trade show or on-site. Email addresses can be asked for in appropriate situations by the customer support employees and telephone sales workers. Links for subscription can be posted in all printed material such as newspapers, flyers, magazines, bags, store signs, customer survey and feedback forms, catalogs, etc.

The next important step is to welcome the new subscriber. Because of the flood of emails filling one’s inbox, it is a tough to make one read the email and trust in it. A welcome message, with appropriate content, helps in building the relationship of trust with the subscriber. In fact, a complete welcome program must be build for this purpose. Welcoming a subscriber actually starts from the website’s registration page. This page should clearly explain the content, benefits and frequency to the subscribers. The opt-in page should be easy to navigate and shouldn’t be bothersome with numerous questions to be answered. For start four fields are sufficient: first name, last name, email address and format preferences. The other information can be collected via optional forms. After sign-up a thank you page must pop up immediately. This doses the confirmation job and leads the subscriber to the optional form. Next, a welcome email should be send to the customer. This email will not only build up the initial trust but will also check the validity of the email address. This email should include links to optional forms and the detailed preference page. It can also contain the subscription benefits and sample of the past best newsletters.

The next step of relationship management is the most important and delicate phase because of the personal relationship with every subscriber. If it is not taken care of properly, all the effort taken to collect email addresses for subscription list will be wasted. The subscriber’s preferences must be honored in order to expand the email program. The trends in bounces, inactivity and unsubscribing can be noted by the list statistics. Occasional special offers and surveys can be created for sustaining the interest of the readers. People who haven’t opened the emails for a long time should be concentrated upon, especially. Send follow-up emails and query messages.

Opt-in list building takes lots of time, energy and dedication. Certainly all the effort is worth it in the end, which can be seen by the healthy growth of the mailing list.

How Subject Lines Resembling Spam Hinder Deliverability

A lot depends on what you are putting in the subject line when sending a marketing email. It can make or break your email marketing campaign. The receivers are fed up of getting emails like “download this software for free” or “upgrade for free” or “RE: some software”. Now, it is difficult even for an email marketer to identify which emails are from a legitimate software marketer based on subject line the how someone could expect recipients to guess. And when receivers can’t identify them they think that it is spam. They will simply send the message to trash and would even report the message as spam or unsubscribe from the email program.

Irrespective of whatever action they might take you’ll have delivery problems. One should never take it for granted when you are earning the goodwill of the subscribers. There have been innumerable instances where marketers in spite of not being spammers were mistaken to be spammers and dealt with heavy fallout. This is a word of caution for anyone who is actively involved in email marketing but in particular to those who deal in healthcare, financial services, technology, and luxury goods.

The best guard against mistaken identity is the subject line which means that one must hard and get really creative to outsmart spammers. The subject line must not only be catching to the eye but also brief, informative and provide assurance to the recipients that the email came from a trusted source.

The best thing to do is to be awake and vigilant of the spammers around you. One should take a note that spammers usually use the key events to launch their spam emails like around product launches, national disasters, holidays and news events to entice recipients and make them open their emails.

The launch of Microsoft’s new operating system Vista could be taken as an ideal example here wherein every spammer try to take advantage of its release and spam everybody’s emails with promotions of vista. Now, due to this a real marketer could become a culprit. If a real marketer tries to endorse the same product through legitimate means the recipients thinking that this email also came from the spammers would simply spam it. Next morning an email marketer wakes up to see nothing but countless number of spam complaints resulting in blocking emails from this particular email marketer. What is the cause of this? It didn’t happen due to incorrect filtering of content but due to recipients not being able to differentiate between legitimate email and spam. The email marketer in this case lost both excellent reputation and good subscribers. Thus, one should realize the importance of good subject line and save oneself from paying huge price of losing reputation and clients.

To avoid falling into these traps keep an eye on alerts as well as reports triggered from anti-virus and anti-spam companies which keeps track and reports virus and spam outbreaks related to some specific events. Good thing about those reports is that they also contain spam emails with subject lines, which would help in noting down the keywords and phrases that spammers have used and thus avoiding them in your emails. Also, be careful and watchful if the email marketing program coincides with any key events or product launches and better stay away during that period. It is also not a bad idea to check your inbox and spam folder to see what subject lines the spammers are using and then stay away from those in your emails. Also, make sure that the name of the product, company and newsletter clearly shows in the subject bar to assure the recipients that it has come from a reliable source.

Understanding List Fatigue and List Churn

Email list dies a slow but steady death if action isn’t taken from time to time. For most of the companies, fifty percent of their subscribers leave them every year. Everyone uses their click, conversion and open rates in order to measure their email program’s success. But they fail to measure the size of their and quality of their email list. Email list hurdle rate is the new metric to be considered, along with the other old ones, in order to keep the list growing.

The email list hurdle rate determines the loss rate from the email list which needs to be overcome for the list to grow. It gives the exact number of new subscribers to be attracted in order to replace the old ones which have either left the list. The other stumbling blocks to be tackled are list churn and list fatigue.

List churn is the percentage of subscribers who have left the list during a certain time period. This is measured either monthly or annually. Out of this only three percent constitute of people who have unsubscribed from the list. Other thirty percent constitute of email addresses which have been lost to hard bounces every year. The subscribers can either enter their email address incorrectly when signing up or the emails addresses might no longer be valid, causing the emails to bounce. The rest of the percentage constitute of people who have reported spam complaints. Even the biggest legitimate permission marketers get spam complaints.

The list churn rate can be calculated monthly by looking at the email performance reports. The yearly lost subscribers can be calculated by adding up number of unsubscribed, hard bounces, and spam complaints. The total should then be divided by the current size of the list to find out the list hurdle rate. Calculation of the list hurdle rate is very important for the annual planning process and for forecasting the revenues. If this metric isn’t considered a lot of explanation is due to your boss if you fail to achieve the required list growth goal. The list churn rate can be improved by reducing the number of spam complaints and bounces.

List fatigue deals with the subscribers on the email list which have hibernated and have become inactive for quite a while. These people haven’t unsubscribed, but have stopped reading the emails and interaction. Therefore the un-subscription rate cannot give a clear picture about how the readers feel about the company’s emails. The most common cause of list fatigue is irrelevant offers, over mailing and newsletter content which dose not deal with the interest of the reader.

The percentage of the inactive subscribers should be calculated to figure out the list fatigue. People who haven’t clicked or opened not even a single email over a certain period of time should be counted. Usually thirty to fifty percent of an email list becomes inactive annually. There can be a variety of reasons cause of which these people are receiving your emails but aren’t unsubscribing. Major reason is because your mail can be going directly to their bulk folder or because your un-subscription link isn’t working. So there can be a possibility that out of the fifty percent, forty percent are inactive and the rest ten percent are busy, on vacation, or just not motivated enough by the subject line or email content. Small surveys can be conducted to understand the changing needs of the subscribers.

These sleeper subscribers need to be activated from time to time by giving them spicy stuff like special offer, different newsletter outlook, interactive tools, etc. On one had the old subscribers must be re-energized and new subscribers must be added from time to time. Otherwise the list gets shorter and shorter. Resources must be obtained and plans must be established in order to get the targeted list growth rates. The ratio of inactive subscribers must also be reduced and slowed down.

Getting Better Email Open Rates

The success of email campaigns can be gauged by the number of email open rates. The more number of readers read the email, the greater chances of people taking the desired action. But for this, the readers must be motivated into clicking on the link.

The very first thing which any reader will notice is the subject line. It is the most important factor which should resonates with the mind of the readers and should compel them to open and read the email. The subject line should be personalized depending upon the recipient’s interest, and other factors. So creativity needs to involve creating words of motivation. The brand should make its mark so much so that the customers must set up expectations for the brand. Recipients should be anticipating the emails. For this the services or products provided by the company should meet their current needs and interest. The recipients should know what to expect when they are opening the email and they should be made to feel that they will miss something very important if they didn’t open your email.

Apart from the subject line, lot of attraction also lies in the content of the newsletter. The content must be original along with being compelling. If the content of the email can be found elsewhere, the customers may forgo the thought of opening the email and instead going for the one of a kind content. The content should also have valuable information which can be used by the readers. It could concentrate on the free offer, or the big discount.

Another factor which forces the reader to open the email is his relationship with the company. Email readers fall into different categories. They can be irregular purchasers, potential clients, information hungry subscribers or existing clients. The method by which they decided to subscribe and the reason also tells a lot about the customer’s interest. Did they find the website through a search engine or did they sign up when buying products? The subscribers who have sought for information and then signed up for the emails are more likely to open the email, when compared to subscribers who signed up while buying a product because of a pre-checked box meant for signing up which they forget to uncheck.

A strong personality is must for the success of the email. If the actual CEO or the marketing director is behind the newsletter, the readers get more interest in the email and the email open rates will boom immediately. The email list should be of high quality and should be well-maintained always. Also, efforts must be made in expanding the email list with targeted audiences which are more likely to open the email and take the desired action. Most of the times, long-time list members become inactive. So the list must be segmented based on list age and the inactive customers must be offered interesting incentive to bring them out of the hibernation.

The mailing frequency is also a very critical issue. Too frequently send mails will hamper the growth of email open rates as the recipients will get irritated, so does scarcely send mails as the recipients will not remember who you are. The time of sending also is important. Test different time and days for finding out which time works best for every type of audience. The time of the year should also be considered here. People tend to open emails less frequently in summer which means lower email open rates. Holiday season means good email open rates for commercial emails and lesser email open rates for information oriented emails and newsletters. The number of legitimate opt-in emails being caught in the spam filters is increasing by the day. Although the message is being shown as ‘delivered’, the end recipient won’t be seeing the email at all. Care should be taken to avoid certain words and symbols which are the cause of spam filtration.

The bottom line is to do every job exceedingly well in order to achieve higher email open rates. For email newsletters, sixty percent email open rates can be achieved and for commercial emails, about forty percent email open rates can be achieved.

Strategies for Email Marketing

Any marketing to be successful requires a particular strategy to be followed. Hence, email marketing also involves using some strategies. The biggest advantage of using email as a marketing strategy is personalization and segmentation. These advantages are also the most underutilized feature of email marketing, by most the companies. It is very important to make the company’s emails as clear and relevant as possible for every recipient because that particular email is competing with the rest of the emails in the recipient’s inbox. Email can be made relevant by personalizing subject lines, articles, offers, product showcased, and flowing emails depending upon recipient’s action.

Before carrying out an email marketing strategy it is best to send out pre-campaign test to uncover problems before actually implementing the strategy. The test results can be monitored by checking ISP filtering, blacklisting and filtering. The test messages should be sent to different email clients and platforms. The authenticity can be established by the sender of email by adding SPF code in the DNS record. Every email client and platform has a different preview pane and they have different policies for blocking images. To deal with this, the emails need to be redesigned so as to be read easily and rendered properly. The top portion of the email should deliver the maximum possible information. Also creativity should be increased by playing with HTML colors and fonts. Images should be less relied upon as there is greater chance of them getting blocked the email clients or ISPs.

Everything becomes passé over a period of time. A thing which worked few months ago might not work today. Variables such as design, format, copy style, subject line, offers, content types, personalization, product categories, etc., need to be tested constantly.

Email relationship should be paid special attention from the start, because majority of the decline requests comes in the first two months after subscriber’s opt-in. A well organized program must be designed which should engage the subscriber immediately. A welcome message should be sent out instantaneously, followed by current email including the latest offers and promotions. An email can also be sent which offers the best of the past newsletters along with exclusive offers for newcomers. The trust can be build by making things clear such as frequency, proposition, content type, and privacy policies, from the start. Apart from concentrating on new comers it is also important to take care of the long term subscribers. Over a period of time nearly fifty percent of the email list becomes inactive. This happens when the subscribers do not open the company’s emails from a long time. Such subscribers need to be awaken by trying new subject lines, new email formats, and by sending best of newsletters or spicy deals.

Short surveys can be carried out to know about the customer’s requirements and to uncover potential trends.

Instead of focusing on metrics such as click through and open rates, marketers need to focus on end goals such as revenue per mail, conversion rates, whether desired action was taken on time or not, etc. Format style and the type of articles liked by the subscribers must be concentrated upon. Searching option also helps in acquiring customers to a great extent.

The biggest job is to make a working email marketing plan which actually has specific goals, action steps and success metric. The plan should include enough resources and budget. The program needs to be improved often by continuous testing and analysis, by increasing segmentation and personalization, and by including the latest technology.

Permission is Not Optional in Email Marketing

Permission is not an optional extra, but is the basic apparatus in email marketing. Permission is the key component in gaining recipient trust, optimizing deliverability and getting investment returns. It is practiced by all legitimate email marketers. But many new email marketers, especially those from print, television, radio and direct mail background resist the idea of taking permission. They fail to realize that email is different from the rest as it is a personal medium, similar to telephone. And the result of decline in telemarketing is a clear proof of this malpractice.

Email marketing isn’t about smacking the recipient with one email after another nor is it about list size. Initially some do get okay results when they do not take permission. These kinds of marketers send out floods of email to email list gathered in trade shows, from white paper downloaders and visitors. But for most of the marketers, mediocre result is not the goal. When subscribers give permission for emailing, results such as increased response rates, better deliverability, and increased brand affinity and trust can be seen. It does take time to build a list based on permission and to send out relevant messages to targeted readers. This list will become shorter by the day if this list is an unsolicited email list. In simple words, permission helps in achieving better results and it is the only method to build strong relationships with customers via emails.

Few marketers think that their non-permission programs are bringing results which are just fine. But when they review their open rate, click rate and conversion rates, they can conclude that they could have improved the results by at least five times if they had used the permission based approach. Permission not only means the subscriber’s consent of receiving emails from the company. It can be further broken down into expressed consent and implied consent. Expressed permission is what the subscriber gives when he fills the opt-in form or clicks on the email permission checkbox when he is filling the registration form. Implied permission is not given actively, but is a following result of another actions like not un-checking the pre-checked email permission box. This practice is not healthy and can affect the relationship with the customer. Therefore, expressed permission is the acceptable one. Implied permission can also be expressed as opt-out.

The U.S. issued law for commercial email in 2003 which is also called as CAN-SPAM. This law allows opt-out marketing if certain conditions are met. The opt-out emails should include a working unsubscribe link. The commercial email should be labeled as a promotional email if affirmative consent is not given by the recipient. This law only has legal criteria and does not promote opt-in or best practices. Opt-out email marketing gets the company blacklisted instantly. This means most of the money and time spend in emailing is wasted. In opt-out email marketing, there is a high chance of sending emails to addresses which do not exist or which block the messages.

Opt-in email marketing is of two types: Single opt-in and double opt-in. In Single opt-in, the subscriber is automatically added after the completion of web form or after emailing a request. In Double opt-in, also known as confirmed opt-in, the subscriber is sent an automated email message immediately after the request to which the subscriber must reply to confirm the subscription and to be added to the email list.

Statistics and surveys have proven the benefits of using opt-in email marketing. Instead of wasting resources on people who aren’t interested in the company’s services or product, a small part of the same resources can be utilized effectively by reaching out to the targeted customers.

How to Expand Your Email Program

It is very important for the business to diversify and expand for survival. Certainly, increase in the number of emails is a tricky proposition, especially if you are showing your subscriber with emails on different topics than they had chosen in the start. The subscriber does give you permission to mail him when he subscribes and registers on your website. You may think just another email about a new product or sales flyer wont hurt and instead will increase the marketing and the email program and in turn the business. You would want to get the most out of the subscriber’s database by getting maximum return on the member acquisition costs. But it is not as simple as it sounds as you may irritate the present subscribers so much that they wont sign up for new information. In fact you may receive flood of unsubscribe requests or spam clicks or just indifference.

Interest cannot be interchanged with permission. Assumption must not be made that you have the permission to message them anything that they had not requested. There is a minute point where the email program goals meet the preferences and expectation of the subscriber. Instead of increasing the email frequency, emphasis must be made on increasing the quality of the email in order to make each email valuable to the customers. Switching from a bi-weekly email to a weekly one means that the content should be twice as effective. The content should be relevant along with being effective. Relevant content is the key point of targeted marketing. The current emails should include more specialized publications in order to make the most out the customer database.

Do not try to impose the company’s will on the customers; instead take them to the new information by making it as attractive as possible. The marketing program can be expanded by not violating the expectations or the original permission grant, in order to respect the reader’s interest. Certainly permission must be taken from them. Increasing the frequency of newsletters also means increase in expenditure. While emailing we might think that the email belongs to a different category but if the subscribers are not able to differentiate a regular newsletter from the special offer, the effort is worthless.

The emails should always start by a topic in the message category chosen by the subscriber. Always include a link for signing up, which is easily locatable. Many marketers do not realize the value of transactional messages. If the buyers are not able to signup for the email program when buying, the transactional email can be send to them to confirm the product purchase and also to promote the company’s newsletter.

Since the new subscribers are eager, this enthusiasm must be highlighted in the welcome letter which should also include other offerings which weren’t chosen at the time of sign-up. The information should be brief and the benefits must be focused upon. A link should be included which would direct to the subscriber’s preference page where the sign-up choices can be edited. It is a good idea to create a facility by which they can email the article to their friend. If the information is really interesting, there will be chain of subscribers.

Sample issues can be do wonders to get new customers if they are used properly, otherwise they will result in the spam folder. The sample can be tested initially on recent buyers or current subscribers who didn’t respond to emails during a time period. Clearly state on the top that this email is a sample only and the receiver will continue to receive it if they sign-up for it.

Certainly diversifying and branching out the email holdings helps in the growth of the email program and business. Success can be attained when the subscribers are given freedom to manage their inboxes. Use the channel for emailing which the subscribers has given permission to.

Engaging the Newsletter Readers

In this email saturated period, the subscribers will get bored if the emails they receive contain messages such as ‘SALE’ or ‘Buy me’. Every other commercial email and spam has such kind of information which fills up the inbox. Thus to avoid this, information in the newsletter must include expert advice, latest trends, how to use the products, and tips. There should be numerous ways for interaction and the products should be displayed as the most anticipated products of the season. This will make the readers invest more time and eventually more money in the company’s products.

The links for interaction should be counted and not the ones for unsubscribing. The newsletters must get the readers involved in it. The reader engagement should be increased by adopting certain creative strategies. A good newsletter should have a perfect blend of interactive content, purchase behavior and also, entertainment value. Effort should be made to add at least some value to the email, irrespective of the fact that the receiver is a regular customer or a new recipient. Value can be added by giving information of latest company news, off sales announcements. Transactional emails can also be sent which includes updates and regular information such as registration, subscription and order confirmations.

Customer feedbacks are very important for revamping marketing techniques. A minimum of one web link, contact email address, telephone number and postal address should be included for collecting feedbacks. Short surveys can also be designed which have one question pop quizzes regarding company’s products, instead of statistically valid queries. The introduction to the quiz can be used in the email as a link to the actual quiz located on the website. A display of running vote’s total can also be included in the quiz topics upon improvement of the newsletter, website, or products; new ideas for product improvement; how the product changed the life of the user and others are good ideas for taking feedbacks. The best feedbacks can then be published in the next issue. Noteworthy questions can also be collected under the ‘Frequently Asked Questions’ section. A small prize can help to increase the interest of the newsletter readers.

Choosing the best recommendations can be tricky, because you wouldn’t want the customers to give negative comments besides the glowing ones. The most useful among the good comments must be selected to be featured in the product spotlight. Storytelling can be added in the email as everyone is curious to know what is happening behind the scenes. History of the company, fun facts, employee perks, personnel changes and other company operations can be divulged. If the company falls amongst the Fortune 500 Company or is one of the fastest growing companies in the area, the booming business can also be discussed about. Job openings can also be posted as every company does need employees at one time or another.

Blogs are another wonderful thing. Get a blog and link it to the newsletter. A blog dedicated to the subscribers and customers helps in receiving feedbacks and comments, among which the premium quality and problem solving ones can be chosen for display. If a post generates many good comments, publish those and let the conversation carry on. Videos can also be used to promote the company and newsletters which can eventually lead to vblogs.

Personality can also be added to the newsletter, which means that if the newsletter was a live person, what it would be, male or female, fun guy or serious authority, smart or shy. Like if the newsletters are relating to pregnancy, the newsletter can be given a personality of an old and wise grandmother, who is witty and also at the same time enjoyable. Once the personality and the distinctive tone are pictured, it gives way to topic selection and copywriting. A personal note from the editor in a commercial email message can strengthen the relationship with the newsletter readers.

Getting More Out of Unsubscribing Option

The unsubscribing link helps the marketers to understand their customers better. This makes them to look for alternatives which would help to retain the customers for a longer time, sometimes even forever. The whole procedure will give an insight about the view of the subscribers, how they picture the company and what are their expectations from the company. Unsubscribing customers force the company to think of a counter-option to restrain the customer from unsubscribing. So, if the whole process is designed well, it actually helps the email program in reaching its goal.

Also, it is considered as a good practice to provide the customer with the opportunity to unsubscribe.

The major reason being that if you do not provide the unsubscribe link, it is more likely that the consumers will report you to their individual ISPs as spammer. The unsubscribe link should be easy to locate and use. Marketers include the unsubscribe instruction in every promotional emails, but they should understand that building customer trust is also very important. The customer should be given the chance to manage their inboxes by giving the unsubscribe option at other critical contact points. The first step towards this is to send the welcome message soon after the customer subscribing in order to confirm the request. Sometimes it may happen that the customer will subscribe unknowingly, especially because of pre-checked boxes on the registration form. In this case it is very important to include the unsubscribe method in the welcome email, otherwise the recipient will be forced to receive unwanted emails which can bother him to the very extend. This increases the risk of clicking the spam button.

Apart from being easily locatable, the unsubscribing method should also be very easy. This discourages the recipient from clicking the spam button or from ignoring the messages. Although one-click URL, which is a one step process, is used by most but a better option is a two step process. Sometimes the recipients do an address change; in this case one step process is the worst option. His interest or needs might even change or he might want to receive mails from you less or more frequently. Here the profile pages will be of help in reduction of unsubscribe and in giving the customers a more fruitful experience. In this method, some links takes the customer directly to the profile page and some ask for passwords to get through. If password is asked for, it is compulsory to add a ‘forgot password’ option. This adds another step to the complete process and increases the chance of the recipient giving up and clicking on the spam button out of frustration.

The best bet is to use a two step process. The first step takes the recipient to his profile page with the help of a click. The second step helps in confirming the removal request or changes in the individual’s profile. Adding other request removal opportunities works as bonus, such as contacting the customer support if the profile page isn’t working or including web form contact information. Along with this other options for receiving information should be provided to the recipients. It is helpful to give the subscriber a chance to explain the reason for unsubscribing.

Another good practice is to acknowledge the unsubscribe process. This helps in building trust in the email program as this tells the subscriber that his request was processed, immediately. If the subscriber has intended upon leaving the email program, a graceful goodbye and vote of thanks for their past patronage helps in strengthening the relationship. The medium used to do this can be same as the request removal.

The unsubscribing and subscribing process should be checked minimum once a month. Nearly half the marketers do not test the unsubscribe method once it has been set up and only one in four check the process only after receiving the complain about it being not working.

Mistakes Made In Email Opt-In Usability

The reader needs motivation in order to subscribe for emails from a company. This is the very first step towards increasing the email opt-in rate. The website should have display the benefits of subscribing. Simple, nondescript boxes inhabit the homepage which say ‘Subscribe to the company’s newsletter’ and nothing more than that. There is lack of reason why the user should sign up unless they already find the content of the website interesting. It is agreed upon by many that the content should be kept basic. But how basic is the question. Lonely sign up boxes are a big no-no. There should at least be a brief promotional line which gives a specific and concrete benefit that would get the reader motivated to fill the box with his email address and click on the sign up button. The promotional matter should answer questions such as ‘Why should the reader sign up for the newsletter?’, ‘What are the solutions being offered by the newsletter?’, and ‘Is the newsletter focused and specific, concentrating on the needs of the reader?’

The same technique is to be used with the type of words and language being used in the promotional copy or more better, on the complete website. The links should be clear and shouldn’t have any empty, vague or generic matter. The content should be able to solve the problem which the reader is looking forward to be solved. The readers must be offered with back issues and sample to give them a good idea about what they can expect from future newsletters they will be receiving.

After the reader signs up, many of them receive a big nothing. They get big blackness and dead silence. The subscriber wants something to happen in his inbox immediately. Therefore, it is a good idea to send a welcome email right away which can include the latest newsletter or sample of the best newsletters. Try to include some email-special offer. At the end of the message tell them they will be expecting such great offers and newsletter in a short while. The new subscriber should feel that he has joined the club and has already received some benefit. He should feel the signing up process worth the effort. The welcome email also does the job of confirming email, which checks for the validity of the email address.

On one hand there are people who have barely any motivating information on their website and on the other there are people who have too much information on their website. The information is not organized and the users are overwhelmed with innumerable choices. If the company has too many things to offer, it should narrow them down by grouping them into categories. On the basis of these categories, the newsletters too must be sent out. The newsletters should have specific content and any new material posted on the website should be posted in just a link and not more than that.

The last thing which puts off the subscriber is asking too many questions. In the sign-up page they are asked for their email address only. Next they are linked to the preference page, followed by twenty more pages. This is a really blown opportunity. Initially, it is good to keep it sweet and short by asking information like first name, last name, and email address. Then send them a confirmation email where they can click the link for making choices. Marketers should know where to draw the line. A box asking just for the email address is a great way of not getting any subscriptions.

How to Optimize Email Opt-In Pages

To optimize email opt-in pages is amongst the most important jobs to do and is also amongst the most forgotten job. The way the opt-in forms and pages are presented determines the quality of list, rate of growth, and meets the subscriber’s expectations which in turn help in email performance. The very first step towards optimization is to get the people to fill in the opt-in page. Immediately following it is designing the layout of the opt-in page and form.

Making one come to the website is another issue. But once they get to the website, they should be allured into signing-up by making them go to the opt-in page. Firstly, the path to the sign up page must be made easier and clear. Links to sign up page or form must be included on the home page and even on other pages too. Promotional boxes should appear in the areas of side bars. The visitor shouldn’t search whether the website offers email newsletters or not. The links to the navigation area should send out clear message. Terms and names which aren’t obvious shouldn’t be used. Words such as Email Newsletter, Newsletter or eNewsletter are very appropriate.

If there is sufficient space, promote the latest newsletter on your home page by pasting its link. The website should have a ‘Knowledge and Resource Center’ area where extract of articles and archived issues can be placed. This area can then be used to promote sign-ups to the company’s newsletter. It is good to include the subscribe link in the back issues.

Since the purpose of the opt-in page is to make as many readers into subscribers, the design, copy and layout of the opt-in page should be similar to the landing page. The page should be designed with form, copy and images which should reflect confidence, value and trust. Links to samples must be included which can give an idea about the quality of the email to be received upon sign-up. Email’s small screenshot display is optional, but beneficial too. Testimonials from readers to the email publications can be included in pull quote format. The content of the testimonials can be either text or images.

In today’s world, everything comes for a price. So when a subscriber is giving his valuable email address, he is certainly looking for something in exchange. This is why images and copy should be included on the opt-in page which conveys the basic value of emails to be sent. Subscribers can be given ‘email only special deals’. Any kind of regular incentive goes a long way. Whether it is ‘$2 off the next purchase’ or ‘free white paper’, even discounts can increase conversion.

Extra precaution must be taken by writing short email policy near the submit button. A link to the company’s detailed privacy policy must be included at the end. The frequency, format and content of emails should be clarified and the sign-up process must be confirmed via a welcome email.

Certain details about the opt-in page should also be considered. A right balance needs to be maintained of the information that is collected through the opt-in form or page. Neither too much information must be asked; nor must too little information be asked. The future must be planned from the start. Obviously asking only the email address is very quick; information required for email delivery will be missed. Information which is not required for email delivery and segmentation or personalization should be avoided. If there are too many fields, the not so important ones must be marked as optional. To check syntax errors, a script should be included for that purpose. Two boxes should be present for entering email address twice. This reduces the risk of typing invalid email address. The minimum form fields to be included in the form are first name, last name, email address, and format preference. Optional form field can be based on secondary email address, frequency, preferences and demographics.

Tips on Reducing Number of Email Bounces

Reducing and managing the number of email bounces has never been so critical for an email marketer. Frequent managing of email bounces reduces the email delivery costs and boosts the conversions and transactions. This is a sign of a good email program.

The list needs to be cleansed on a timely basis. The cleansing process can be done manually or through list hygiene service by which incorrectly formatted addresses, and invalid typos and domains can be checked for. Most of the companies experience an email address churn of two to three percent per month. Here the Email Change of Address service or ECOA service can be employed to deal with this problem. According to reports, many of the ECOA companies receive at least one million email address changes every month.

Email addresses need to be confirmed regularly. This can be done by sending auto-reply confirmation to customers when they register, subscribe or make a purchase. If the message bounces, attempt can be made to correct the email address. The problem can be tackled by including a second email address line in the opt-in form which can confirm whether the email address entered was correct or not.

One of the basic steps to be taken is to make the update process easier by including the website account and subscription management link in the emails. The customers must be prompted to update information. They can be asked to verify or to update information at the time of completion of transaction in the shopping cart. If any transaction has not been made in a while, phone or direct mail can be used for information update. People who have bad email addresses and whose phone numbers or postal addresses are stored with the company can be contacted for email address correction.

Major domains such as Yahoo, AOL, Hotmail, etc. can be used to track bounces and open rates. If one is different from the others or if there is a sudden change, this can be attributed to blacklisting or filtering. Therefore, it is also a good idea to check major blacklists and spam databases for your company’s or email provider’s name. If the name has been blacklisted, no bounce message will be received even if the message wasn’t delivered. Monitoring and understanding of spam filters helps in dealing with spam complaints more efficiently. The terms and conditions of the spam filters must be reviewed carefully. Quite often the spam flag addresses are added maliciously. These flags must be removed. Email providers also process bounces. Only understanding them can solve the problem. The basis on which soft and hard bounces are to be pronounced should be studied and later on, managed accordingly.

Because of financial troubles, mergers, and other announcements a big list of service users of one particular ISP decide to shift over to a different ISP or account for their email. Such members on the subscribers list must be emailed with a question raised on the domain name. They should be asked whether they want to update their email and other information. It is a good practice to pretest the emails before distributing the email to the entire list of subscribers. The test can be performed on oneself, company employees and a trusted group of current readers. Try including all the major email services being used by majority of the subscriber list members.

When every other attempt fails, it is best to delete or suppress recurring bouncers. For this purpose a suiting bounce deletion and suppression strategy should be designed according to the email program. Hard bounces should land directly in the trashed list as they are permanently undeliverable.

Spicing up the Snippet Text

Snippet is the top line of the email which is displayed apart from the subject line. Usually the inbox snippet displays the first line of the text message or HTML message. It is tiny but a very significant part of the email message which helps to tilt the balance in the marketer’s favor, when the readers zip through their messages, searching for the most important ones and deleting the rest. Therefore, it is more important to juice up the snippet in order to optimize the email and make your message stand out from the rest of the crowd.

Different service providers have different types of display pane. Yahoo displays the snippet in a pop-up text box when the cursor is brought over the subject line. Gmail shows the snippet in a shaded part after the display of a truncated subject line. In Outlook, a short part of the text is shown in auto preview.

Some marketers give the invitation to join their list of subscribers in the snippet itself. Although the service is valid it still shouldn’t be mentioned in the first line. Instead it must be used to generate interest, value and excitement in your email. A correctly framed snippet helps the reader, especially the one on the run, in deciding whether they should read the email immediately or delete it. Apart from the subject line alone, more words are available in the snippet or the top line of your email to build brand recognition. This top line facilitates the snap decision of the reader when he is in the middle of inbox triage. Some preview panes block images by default, which again increases the importance of the top line.

According to a survey, some of the common top lines are ‘View the email with images’, and ‘If you are having trouble seeing this email, Click Here’. At face value, there is nothing wrong with the message. But according to another statistics, the required number of people does not click on the link to go to the web version of the email. And none of the above sentences convey an offer or the purpose of email, leaving the reader to rely on the subject line alone for hint. Not other common failing is that it dose not even include the company’s name or brand. Another great opportunity to stand out is lost here.

The basic thing to keep the snippet spicy is to make a new one every time, even if few extra minutes are required for this job but its worth can be seen in better open rate. So the magic word here is to rejuvenate the top line, even if the same offer is being repeated. Retail email should have the offer in the top line like free shipping, festive discount or try our new product. The news publications should have the headline as the snippet like the quirky tidbit, top story or company announcement, followed by the web version link. If the email is a transaction confirmation then the action must be referred to and thanks should be offered, if required. If an order confirmation or thank you page is to be included in the transaction confirmation email, a link should be included to that page but otherwise, links can be skipped and templates can be used instead.

Before sending out email with the revamped top line it is important to revise the snippet. It can appear in a different method in different web email and desktop clients such as Yahoo, Gmail, etc. and on different platforms such as PC, mobile, Macintosh, etc. Testing should always be done. Divide your group of testers which can include employees and trusted old readers, into two groups. Send the first group your standard email and the other group the revised email. Notice the opinions of the two and choose the one with the best feedback. Always check the click rate of the snippet, to see the attention it is attracting.

The bottom line is that not even a single line of the email message should be wasted. The aim should be all business and no nonsense text.

Building Email List Based on Permission

The biggest challenge for email marketers is to build a cost effective list. This is because at least thirty percent of the email addresses change on most lists. Therefore, marketers have to go for a more aggressive approach in order to expand the list and to get more significant investment returns.

Taking permission is the basic key to maintaining a almost constant email list, along with other steps. Permission is certainly not the optional thing. If permission is not taken it means direct landing up as a spam complaint or even greater, breaking the U.S Law for spamming. The sign up form should be featured on every web page. No opportunity should be missed for turning the visitor into a subscriber. Subscription value can be enhanced by adding sample emails, screenshot of an email, testimonials and good copy on the sign up and registration page. To attract more number of subscribers, incentives can be offered upon signing up. The incentives can be as small as white papers and as big as special discounts. Incentives increase the conversion rates to great extent.

Today everything is becoming search engine optimized. Therefore it is the need of the hour to optimize the website in order for the website to land in first hundred search result. The current and archived web pages and newsletters must be optimized for increasing the traffic rate of the website and subscription rate. Search services such as Google AdWords can be made use of, for including subscription link on the landing page and for promotion of the website. Opt-in check boxes must be added on the demo requests, registration forms and white papers. This increases the conversion rates by at least fifty percent.

Very simple method to increase new subscription is by including the ‘Send-to-a-friend’ option. If the current subscribers find an email interesting, there are greater chances that the email be liked by their friends too. And if they like the emails, there is an even greater chance that they will subscribe to receive future emails. Email subscription can also be encouraged by print ads, catalogs, direct mails, radio and television. Employees can be directed to include the ‘Subscribe to the company’s newsletter’ link in their signature lines. The sales employees and customer support can ask customers whether they would like to receive promotional email, in appropriate situations. Sign up forms can be distributed at seminars and public speaking engagements and presentation on newsletters can be given at such locations. Permission can be taken to include opt-in forms in trade show lead generation forms so that booth visitors can subscribe.

If the postal information of the customers is in the database, post cards can be sent to them which ask them to subscribe to newsletters. Sign-ups can be promoted in transactional and confirmation emails. It is optional to include opt in link on receipts of credit card, product registration cards, invoices and warranty. The company’s email and newsletters can be promoted in other company’s publications. Sites and industry directories can also be used for promotion. Product shipping boxes are the next important place to include the opt-in form. Many catalogers and retailers even include promotional offers of non-competing companies. Newsletters which have topical articles can be used for press release, along with information such as how to subscribe and content being offered. This option is useful to smaller companies.

Designing for Different Types of Email Audiences

Marketers usually send only one type of message to a strictly targeted list of recipients. But in reality, the email is seen by ten different types of audiences who read the message in ten different ways. Hence, it is important to create a message design which satisfies the needs of majority type of audience as possible, instead of creating a different message for each type of audience.

Things get even more complicated when audience keep shifting. It can happen that the same recipient reads the message with a different perspective from edition to edition, depending on the time or mood constraints. This problem can be solved by understanding the major email audience. Then the design tactics can be designed and the potential of the email being read by everyone can be maximized. There are eight types of audiences: Identifiers, skimmers, readers, HTML readers, text reader, mobile, desk, and searchers.

Identifiers have only one goal. They check from address and subject line to make decision amongst the other emails which have overcrowded their inboxes. They make recognition and delete the rest of the emails which they do not want to read. For such audience great subject lines and clear branding make the greatest impact. Snippet or the top line of the emails is also displayed in the preview pane, so this text is of all importance as it can help to make the difference between reading and deletion. Usually the business people fall into this category who want to clear the inbox after they arrive to the office before the first meeting or when they are waiting for their flight.

Skimmers go beyond from address and subject line by actually opening the email. But they read the email as fast as possible, noticing only headlines, subheadings and calls to action. Then they make the decision whether to delete the email or read it in detail. When the email is being designed, these copy points should be worked upon in order to deliver the central idea and guide the skimmer towards the click through. Skimmers do not even enable images, if they have been blocked. Thus, strong text content should be designed to deliver the content without much focus on the images.

Readers are a little ahead of skimmers. They read from address, subject line and open the email and read few sentences between the headline and call of action so as to learn more about the email topic. This helps them with the click through hurdle. These audience also turn on the images or click on the web version link.

Every email should have both HTML and text version of the message. Since most of the readers now-a-days are using their portable devises for checking emails, here text version will be of more use than the HTML version with images. HTML design dose takes more time, but few more minutes must be devoted to make the text version attractive. Include URLs with text as short and as clear as possible. Easily readable text messages increases the number of clicks by a great percentage.

Email design is encountering new challenge because of the growth of mobile readers. Some PDAs show HTML version correctly, while the others show lines and lines of irritating HTML code. Again, matching the right format with the right reader is important here, but hundred percent is impractical. If an interesting message isn’t being displayed properly, mobile readers will save the message to later read it on their laptop or desktop.

Desk readers are the biggest audience for which majority of marketers design emails. This audience is also the one most likely to act on the email. Design strategy used to optimize emails for other audiences will also prove effective for this particular group too. Desk readers can also be skimmers or readers. Therefore, here too, it is important to concentrate on the top line of the email, apart from the subject line.

Searcher audiences start as members of one of the other type of audience. When they see something which they like but cannot deal with it at that time they save it for later. When they have time they want to find the message in a flash. So if the message does not stand out, it will be forgotten about. Again here it is important to design the subject line, top line of email and sender address properly.

Costly Email Mistakes

When an email program is designed and executed well it can bring more subscribers and revenue than what was targeted. If, executed poorly it will get terrible results and also anger among recipients and not to forget answering your boss’s innumerable questions.

Outlook is the most used email client, so it shouldn’t be ignored, especially the Outlook Junk Filter. But many companies do not spare time to learn about keywords and symbols with the default filter searches for. Some of the common words and symbols, which are also the most widely used, used for filtering the email as spam are ‘free’ and exclamation mark at the end of the subject line. But the word ‘free’ does not always arouse suspicion like many legitimate email marketers think. It can be used correctly and in context with shipping or sample, etc. Nobody can disagree that it is still the most effective email offer. So the key here is to know the words and how to use them so that the email does not get caught by spam or bulk mail filters.

Certainly quality costs money, which also applies to email marketing. Some marketers say that even low cost email list delivers a respectable turn over, but experts advise that more expensive list produces even bigger returns because of high quality. Another point to be noted here is that when you are mailing to an inferior quality list, you are actually harming your brand.

The subject lines of eNewsletters must not be meaningless. Examples are ‘SE Update #101’, ‘Career Journal Today’ and ‘eClub Newsletter’. These subject lines say nothing at all, when it is the purpose of the subject line to entice the recipient to open the email. Things such as issue number and words saying that this email is a newsletter are of no value; instead they should include information which will grab the attention of readers.

A target link which will work in one email client won’t work in another. For example, if it was mentioned ‘AB Company’ in the “from” line, it will be displayed as ‘marketing@ABCompany’ in AOL email client. If it is written ‘Order by Sunday for Free Shipping and Arrival by Nov 28’ in the subject line, AOL will render it as ‘Order by Sunday for Free Shipping and Arrival by Nov’. Either some part of the message is missing or the content is manipulated. So such variables must be tested in different email clients and if not, it will have a big impact on the email results.

The ease in email marketing when compared to other marketing is the immediacy of testing. If variables aren’t tested regularly then the medium is not used correctly. Successive and regular testing not only builds but refines results. Many marketers like to test on rented list, but wouldn’t mail in great number to the best performing email lists.

It is understood that the email campaign is successful when it promotes a compelling offer. Compelling does not mean that the offer should be ‘free’ or ‘50% off’, but it should be of value and relevant to the reader. The lists must be segmented and the offers made must be more relevant to the recipient’s needs, behavior and interest. When lists are being rendered, the most appropriate ones must be selected and the offer must be developed upon the needs of the targeted audience.

Some of the top email clients have emerged as big challenges for the customer oriented marketers. Every ISP has its own issue which needs immediate addressing, such as HTML compatibility issues, spam, blacklisting, and volume based filters, etc. The biggest mistake is not monitoring the results by ISP or domain. Problem is not known until it is discovered.

Everyone is becoming search engine optimized. The key to reach the top ranking on top search engines is search engine optimized content. Since eNewsletters are the best content sources, they definitely must be search engine optimized by including various keywords, so as to increase the rankings.

Making the Year End Email Marketing Review

At the year’s end everyone needs to look back on their email marketing efforts to see how successful their program was and if it wasn’t as successful as they were expecting, then what steps should be taken in order to make the program successful.

The main points to be looked upon are:

* Key performance metrics

The first step in the process of annual review is to note down the newsletter or campaign’s annual result in a spreadsheet. All important statistics such as clicks, referrals, complains, unsubscribe, bounces, spam, etc., should be included in the spreadsheet. After assembling the results must be used to calculate the overall averages. By this the best and the worst performing message can be calculated for every metric. Beyond standard metrics like click through, open, and bounce rates, corporate newsletter publishers must also look at metrics which are more appropriate for achieving the company’s objectives and goals. The major metrics which should be looked upon based on objectives are open rate, click to open rate, click through rate, deliver rate, bounce rate, referral rate, unsubscribe rate, spam complaints, net subscribers, subscriber retention, unique clicks, unique clicks on certain recurring links, website actions, orders, downloads, transactions, total revenue, conversion rate, average order size, and average price per email.

* Content

The content of the actual messages should be analyzed. Every aspect should be relevant and should also involve creativity. The style, tone and the length of the subject line should be reviewed. It is very important to include the company’s or brand’s name in the subject line or easy recognition by the reader, otherwise the email will land in the spam folder. If the format of the emails is being changed constantly, the samples must be compared to see which one is more effective. If personalized emails have been sent, observe the results to see whether the attempt was successful or not.

* Recipient feedbacks, web site analytics and surveys

An email account can be created to receive feedbacks containing both negative and positive comments, which can be reviewed upon at the end of the year. If the number of feedbacks received isn’t adequate, the feedback procedure must be made easier. Another problem could be of not creating a motivating personality which could make the subscribers to respond. Readers surveys helps in finding keys which can be worked upon in the next year. Analyzing the website statistics also helps a lot. If there are articles present on the website, figure out which ones interest the readers the most. If the website sells products, check out for the product categories which are visited the most and produce the most revenue and orders. Also ponder upon the offers which draw the most attention from the subscribers.

* And finally comparison between internal and external benchmarks

The co-marketers can share information in an organization which produces more than one campaign or newsletter. This helps in benchmarking the key metrics. The company’s performance can be compared to the industry averages to see whether the program is going according to the plan or if it needs attention immediately.

After the internal audit has been done and the review has been completed, it is now time to make an improvement plan for the future, which should include:

* Analysis and reporting

* Testing

* Creativity

* Maintenance

* List building

* Personalization and segmentation

Optimizing Holiday Email Marketing

The holiday email marketing season takes the overdrive with the onset of Halloween. Certainly, this isn’t the time to design the marketing program from the scratch. But a small fixes can do the trick to raise the deliverability by a few percent without the need to shift to another completely new program. These fixes won’t take major investment in money or time.

As they say the first impression is the best impression, a very important aspect is to include the brand or company name as the sender and not individual name or email. The “from” line acts as the basis for the readers based on which they recognize and trust the sender. So it is best to use the brand name which is widely used by the readers for recognition. Following it is the subject line. It also plays a major role in the opening of the email. The subject line should not only be irresistible but trustworthy. Many subject line tools are available on the internet which can be of great use. The trick followed by most is to phrase the first twenty eight characters with the most important information. Usually the first twenty eight characters are of high importance to get the message across to the client. Putting the brand name in the from line helps to free up space for the critical information, which is the heart of the message, in the subject line. If the email is send to a mobile, the brand name should be first thing the reader should see. If there is space, special offers will be worth mentioning.

The email should have a link to the complete information which is posted on the website. The link should redirect the reader to the complete article just by one click. Subscribe and unsubscribe links should be working always and the directions should be displayed promptly. If this isn’t done, it is going against the US email marketers law. The email should also include information about the company’s name, address and other contact information such as telephone, link to web contact page, and email. It is good to have links to other offers and services provided by the company. Effects of the previous offers and customer testimonials can also be included to draw attention.

The email shouldn’t resemble to a print ad which has bright colors within which the information is contained. Although, most of the HTML designers love to design this type of emails, but another fact is that most of the readers would have their block images option activated which will stop the image from downloading and the recipient will not be able to see any part of the message. The email should be broken down into manageable chunks. One large image should be replaced with many smaller images and important information should be placed in a text boxes which will be displayed in spite of the images being displayed or not. Alt tags can also be used to describe the images or the offers contained within it. This information will be displayed if the images do not show up.

Coding and spelling mistakes are a big no-no. If there is, this is a sure sign of a spammer. Miss spelt brand or company name can never be forgiven. It is a good habit to get the entire email proof-read by a professional before sending it to the readers. The links should be check individually to see whether they are working or not. Although it is a tedious task, it will save the readers from getting irritated and from losing sales. Past performances shouldn’t be trusted upon and regular checks must be made constantly.

The most important thing is to keep an eye on the competing company and the offers being offered by them. Try to design a better offer and test it on sample readers before committing to the offer. Like every one will be offering free shipping during the holiday season, so try to think of something which will differentiate you from the rest.

The last point to be considered is that because of the overwhelming flow of emails during the festive season, the subscribers can get irritated and complaints may arise. This can be tackled by throttling the frequency of emails. Delivery logs should be read constantly to handle the problem at the proper time.