‘Email Marketing’ Articles

“A picture is worth a thousand words.” This phrase has been used for years to highlight the value of a good visual image. A phrase that has led many marketers to believe more pictures = better content.

One of the most difficult ideas for new email marketers to understand is that email doesn’t function like traditional medias. There are a number of unique rules and standards that only apply in email marketing. If you decide to step into the realm of email marketing, be prepared to throw some of your old rules out the window and to adopt some strange new ones.

In a series of posts, I am going to address several of the rules and issues that arise in email marketing, especially the ones that throw inexperienced email marketers for a loop.

Today, I want to focus on the misuse of pictures in email marketing. Many new marketers want to fill their emails with many large, impressive images. In the worst case some email marketers make their entire email one large image. The reason people fall victim to this taboo is because they are tempted by the possibility of making a beautiful and technical layouts with photoshop or illustrator. The major downside to doing this is, most of your recipients won’t even see the image. Almost all modern email programs  have a default setting to block images. It’s true, users can choose to allow images after opening the email, but at first glance, if your message is one large picture, your customer will see nothing but a blank page and a “pictures have been blocked” message. This will not make a good impression and will most likely wound your email campaign, possibly fatally.

Another common misstep is loading an email up with images that have massive files sizes. Not only can this put a strain on your email system, but it can also trigger your recipient’s spam filters. Of course you want your clients to see the best quality image you can provide and you may want to show off a beautiful product, but I highly suggest providing a properly re-sized thumbnail that links off to the larger image file hosted elsewhere. This keeps your email file size low and allows you to create concise and attractive layouts. Believe me, this will save you a lot of hassle and will make your emails much more manageable and effective.

As I continue with this series of posts I will discuss a variety of topics directed toward new email marketers, including posts like: Simple HTML Code Every Email Marketer Should Know, Understanding Open Rates, and Long Live The King: A Focus On Content.

Picture this: You spend hours laboriously crafting the perfect email, one that you know your clients will love. You send it out, excitement engulfing you as you imagine how great the response will be. But as the results trickle in, they aren’t quite what you were expecting.

Could it be that your customer never received your email at all, or that it merely went overlooked? Below I’ve outlined two simple but powerful rules to ensure that your hard work isn’t wasted and to increase your email readership.

Get on their list. Ask your customers to put you on their contact list or in their address book.

You want to make sure your emails stay out of the spam folder. The increasingly variable nature of spam filters, and the fact that they are often user defined, makes this a particularly challenging task. There is really only one strategy that ensures that everyone who wants your emails always gets them, and that is to always send your email from the same email address and to ask your recipients to add your sending address to their contact list or address books. Mail sent from a known contacts is always put into the inbox. We suggest you use a simple text email to send new users this request along with an option to opt-out if they are no longer interested.

Use branding in your emails, and that doesn’t stop at including your logo.

Become an expert on your company’s brand and then make sure it is clearly displayed in all the emails you send. By consistently using the same address (as suggested above) your recipients will recognize your message, but if they are quickly scrolling through their inbox, branding can ensure your email is a familiar and trusted sight. While the content of your email, such as pictures and copy, is important, the subject line is the most crucial. It will be the first thing your readers see, and possibly the only thing unless you make a good impression in the subject line. Your opt in customers trusted you and found value in your product, so they will be more apt to open an email if they know it’s from you. This will separate your message from spam and other generic communication.

There are many rules that can be applied to sending marketing emails, but as always the most important is to provide your customer with true value. If the content of your email doesn’t give your customer something they want, the above strategies won’t be able to save you! These strategies simply give your message a chance to be read, its up to you to give your readers something worth paying attention to and acting on.

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More than ever people are using devices other than their home computer to check their email. Since you’ve been reading this post your customers have probably done something on their mobile device, either sent a text message, surfed the Internet, or checked their email. With such a large and captive audience, a big question arises; is your business addressing the needs of your mobile customers? There are many simple things you can do to make your emails more mobile-friendly, that is, make them look better on your recipient’s mobile devices. If you have recipients who might be reading emails on their mobile devices, here are a few rules to consider when creating your emails.

1. Don’t Make them Download the Rest of Message – Your message might get truncated if it is too big. A large file size may cause your recipient to be prompted to “download the rest of the message”. Consumers are wary of downloading messages and frankly its just a hassle, so avoid large emails or you are running the risk of them not seeing your entire message or worse, deleting it.

2. Don’t Make them Scroll – You will want to avoid having your recipient do a lot of scrolling. Attention spans are limited, especially when dealing with mobile devices. Make sure your key takeaways don’t get buried at the bottom of your message.

3. Let them Know Who You Are – Make sure you include your logo at the top of email so you’re recognized immediately. If you are a trusted brand your logo will give your message a better chance of being read. At the very least, even if the customers only glaces at your message, with your logo and name at the top, you’ll have been exposed.

4. Click To View in a Browser – You’ll want to have a link for them to click to view your message in a browser, however you might think about putting it somewhere other than at the very top of your email. Many mobile devices display the beginning of the email in the inbox so your recipients can decide if they want to click to the entire email or not. Including the link to view in a browser might take up some valuable, attention grabbing, space.

5. Make Your Email Lose Weight! – Smaller devices, smaller screens, the next step to making email suitable for phones? Smaller emails. Make your emails 500-600 pixels wide.  The Admail.net Advantage Template labeled “White-Paper” is preset to 500 pixels already.

6. Let Them Call You – Include a click-to-call link if possible. The easier you make it for your recipient to contact you, the better.

7. Text Version is a Must – Make sure you have a text version of your emails in the event that your mobile recipients can only get text. Make sure you keep it short. Since emails usually have line breaks at about 60 characters and mobile devices 20 characters, you’ll want to cut back on some of your copy and direct them for more information to your website.

Reaching all of your customers is your goal and email on mobile devices is only becoming more predominate. Follow some basic mobile guidelines and your email marketing campaign will be accessible to all of your clients, no matter how they check their inbox.

Admail’s Accu Trak delivers key information to help you determine what is or isn’t working in your campaigns. Recently I attended the Marketing Sherpa Annual Conference, during one session the presenter said: While vast amounts of information and tracking that information are available, sometimes you have to ask yourself “Do I really need it?”. Clients many times want to track every minute detail to the moment of yes, Analytic Paralysis. Just because you can think of it does not always mean you can use it. Sometimes it really boils down to having a better understanding of what is in front of you.

A prime example of this is, another seminar I recently attended with an “E-mail Marketing expert” told the audience that email marketing was getting tougher because one; Open Rates where falling and two; excess junk in recipients inboxes.

Let’s cover open rates first. The fact open rates are falling isn’t that email marketing is not working it is that the technology has changed. In 2005 Microsoft began blocking Images by default and other email software makers have since followed suit. Many of you I am sure have noticed the Load Images buttons on your email browser or, the “Problems viewing this page click here” link in email header’s.

Opens historically have been tracked by an embedded 1×1 pixel image in HTML emails. What this meant was, once an email was touched upon in a preview window or opened briefly by the recipient – a message was sent back to the sender that the email had been “Opened or Viewed” – but not necessarily read. Therefore as users migrated to the new email client software opens appeared to be  dropping. Which isn’t all bad! What it does mean is that you are now seeing a truer picture, of who is actually reading your emails. Many times people view this as a delivery issue or their email program has become ineffective which isn’t the case!

Before you throw the baby out with the bath water take a look at your click through these are true readers and they moved from the body of your email to your web site for more information.

If you really want to drill down on your ROI either use the Click Through email address to match back on your transactions or upgrade to the Admail.net Custom Fields to pass a campaign Source Code to your shopping cart, you can even tie it into your Google Analytics. But, don’t forget to ask yourself do I really need it or what am I going to do with the number once I have it. Order more widgets?

Information overload can bog you down – if sales are off over analyzing it won’t fix the problem – but a fresh approach can. I have been involved in target marketing for close to thirty years and one thing is for certain what Works – Works! I repeatedly see people and businesses get myriad in statistics that some Guru recommended.  For decades Mutual Funds and Wall Street Analysts have used the disclaimer “Past performance is not a guarantee of future results”. Don’t become a victim of Analytic Paralysis!

The second point, “excessive junk mail” you have a perfect leg up with Admail.net our robust delivery system provides you the perfect options. Send your email during the day or early evening if you are marketing to consumers. If you are working across different time zones use the Interest Groups to break out your members by time zones or use Target Filters to break up your list member by State. For tips and information visit our FAQ section on Email and Spam Blockers.

A Feed Back Loop (FBL) is a direct data feed that is sent to an email sender when the recipient presses the “Junk” or “Spam” button. The benefit is that the email sender can clean their subscriber data, allowing them to maintain their reputation with Internet Service Providers.

What triggers (flags) cause ISPs to block your email? Sometimes it’s a dirty list containing non-deliverable addresses. Other times it’s the ratio of spam complaints from that domain, which can include false positives.

Here are the grades for ISP’s where legitimate messages were flagged and determined to be false positives: Yahoo! gets an A, Hotmail B, AOL C, and Gmail scores the lowest with a D.

Some techniques to avoid false positives are:

• Don’t use words, terms, or phrases in the subject line or message that trigger spam filters
• Understand domain-specific user interfaces to request address book entry. Here are some examples.
• Manage list hygiene to ensure messages are not sent to unknown domains. (Admail.net’s system catches these and purges from your list member file)

As always–be aware of your list.