‘Email Marketing’ Articles

In previous posts we have described a condition with which many email marketers are afflicted. This “disease” can break down a marketer, bringing all marketing progress to a halt by infecting it with confusion and distress.

‘Analytic paralysis’ is the condition of being completely obsessed with the analytic reports of your email campaigns. Those who have this illness disregard common sense and place far too much importance on numbers they don’t really understand.

I hope to cure some cases of analytic paralysis by discussing and debunking the myths surrounding email open rates. An email open rate is supposedly the number of people who have opened and read your email. It was created for the purpose of giving marketers a way to see how many people opened their email rather than just deleting it on the spot. The problem is, these numbers are almost always blurred and don’t give accurate real time representations of how many recipients actually read an email.

Why are the numbers skewed?

Statistics show that 84% of people 18-34 use an email preview pane. An email preview pane exists in email clients such as Outlook and Thunderbird. It allows readers to view a preview of their email in a small window under or next to the inbox. The way opens are reported when an email is viewed in a preview pane are inconsistent. In many instances, a recipient may have read an email in their preview pane but their view will not register in the open rate.

Email open rates are collected based on a hidden image placed into an email. When this hidden image is loaded, the recipient is counted as an open. Many email programs, including Outlook and Gmail, block images automatically. This means that users who have viewed an email will not be counted as an open unless they go out of their way to allow the images of the email to be loaded. This is something many people don’t do even if they value the content of the email.

So what does this all mean to you, an email marketer trying to find a good way to judge the success of your emails? Basically, it means that open rates are a great way to compare campaigns against one another, but not for much else. If your open rates increase or decrease drastically you’ll know you’re either doing something right or you screwed up.

Open rates are not a particularly good way to judge the individual success of a campaign or your email marketing efforts in general. A low open rate may seem discouraging, but the percentages reported can be very misleading. An open rate percentage should not be used as a hard and fast number to report how many people you have reached. A more effective judge of success of any email campaign is the click-through rate. Click-throughs are recorded more accurately and give reliable data on who has acted based on an email. Getting people to act based on an email is the real goal anyway.

Don’t let confusing numbers throw a wrench in your efforts. If you’re doing the right things in your email campaign, such as providing valuable content, avoiding spam flags and sending to a good list, you will have success.

Avoid analytic paralysis by trying to remember this information, and don’t forget, advertising can only bring customers to your product. You are responsible for giving them something of quality when they get there. No amount of advertising, regardless of its brilliance, can maintain a bad product.

You don’t have to be a programmer, developer, or graphic designer to be a good email marketer. You certainly don’t have to be a wiz with CSS or Javascript. Good email marketing requires nothing more than an employee who understands their customers and who can provide valuable content. That being said, having a basic understanding of the technology you are dealing with can be a great help and it may just save you from some serious technology induced headaches.

When something goes wrong and your email doesn’t look or function the way you want it to, what do you do? Many email marketers use HTML creation programs like frontpage, dreamweaver, or other template based systems to create good looking emails with little to no knowledge of HTML. These can be extremely helpful tools but they don’t always translate perfectly to email. So when a problem does arise where will you turn?

By learning some rudimentary HTML code you could solve many of these problems yourself. I’m not suggesting you spend days or even weeks to become an expert or even to memorize any code. If you’d like you could simply print out this blog or any of the more complete HTML cheat sheets online, and use it as an instant reference. At any rate, understanding some basic HTML code and finding out how it all functions will give you a valuable tool set and make you a greater asset in the workplace.

I’ve listed and explained some of the most simple and common HTML tags here.

<p>: This indicates the start of a paragraph, as with all HTML code the tag must be closed after the element is complete. Therefore at the end of a paragraph you would complete the tag by putting a closing tag like so </p>

Example: <p>This is my newest email!</p>

<img src=”insert location here” />: This is the appropriate tag to insert an image into html. Note that if you use a image location on your local machine others will NOT be able to view it. This problem occurs when using pictures from your computer in frontpage and then copying that HTML code. You will be able to see the pictures but no one else will. You need to use a location that is hosted somewhere on the web, in my example you will see that I used a image hosted on Admail.

Example: <img src=”https://www.admail.net/thumbnail/154/”></img>

<a href=”insert internet address here”>link </a>: This is the HTML tag to create a link. The word or phrase in-between the opening and closing tag will be made into the link.

Example: <a href=”http://www.admail.net”>Visit Our Website!</a>

Other tags include <b>, this will make your font bold, and <i>, which will make your font italic.

These are very rudimentary tags but they will help you understand some of the more simple elements of HTML. For those interested in learning more, websites like www.w3schools.com provide an online knowledge base and free online training.

Armed with this knowledge you will have a better grasp of your medium and, with a bit of study and training, you may be able to troubleshoot your own problems, saving you and your company valuable time.

To recap:

<p>: Paragraph </p>
<img src=”/>: Image
<a href=”>: Link </a>
<b>: Bold </b>
<i>: Italic </i>

Thaddy Claus (Thaddeus) is tying the bow on our seasonal present for our customers. With the arrival of Email Builder 2.0 we hope to answer some of your email marketing holiday wishes. Email Builder 2.0 is an improved version of our already powerful template system. It has many new features, of which include:

1. Controls and editing tools that are more familiar and more accessible for users.
2. Emails are now saved more often and the “Resume Last Email” function allows users to #  Admail Services # design # Email Marketing # HTML # Ncome back to work they may have previously lost.
3. Templates are easier to modify and format. Changes to background color and field sizes can be made with simple drop down menus.
4. Undo and redo buttons have been introduced.
5. Images are now easier to re-size. Images can be formatted by dragging the edges until it meets the desired height and width. (Not available in Safari)

Email Builder 2.0 provides these features and many more! We at Admail.net look forward to the New Year and the full implementation of Email Builder 2.0. If you’d like to try the beta version, please select the beta category when choosing a template in Email Builder. *Please note bugs may be present that will not be included in the final release.

“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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