‘Tips’ Articles

It may sound like a no-brainer, but the most important part of your email is the content. Email was created to easily transmit written correspondence. It’s a digital replacement for a physical letter. Just as with snail mail, email has evolved and changed. The original purpose, a simple text correspondence, is sometimes lost amidst complicated layouts, unnecessary images, and other marketing trends.

To improve the overall quality of email campaigns, marketers need to return to the basics. That isn’t to say that all advertisers should abandon pictures and flashy layouts, for some companies that works. Still, the primary focus should always be on messaging and content. This is especially true for those new to the industry.

The email marketing business today is more competitive than ever. A great deal of bad email has been sent out and users are more savvy and skeptical than ever before. While this means that content is held to a higher standard, it also makes good content that much more welcome.

Being successful in email marketing today isn’t as simple as slapping together a message and pushing it out thoughtlessly to a list. Recipients demand quality and value from email, now more than ever. Unfortunately, many marketers have responded to these demands with gimmicks and marketing fluff, rather than improving their content.

In our 15+ years of experience, we have seen many beautifully designed emails fall on their faces because they do not offer anything interesting to the recipients. We’ve seen beautiful, organically collected, highly interested list members turn on their senders in an instant. These phenomenon are not rare unfortunately and could be avoided if marketers put more effort and thought into campaigns. Keep in mind that the dangers involved in email marketing are inversely related to how many times you mail to a recipient. The more often they receive a useless email, the more likely they are to click the unsubscribe button, or even worse, mark the message as spam.

If you’re going to spend your money on sending out an email campaign, make the content worth the price! Do you homework and create some AWESOME content, otherwise your email campaign won’t do you any good and could quickly turn against you. There is a ton of information on the web about how to create a good email campaign, and we offer a lot of wisdom and advice on this very blog, but no one can learn to be a great marketer from one advice blog or “10 great tips!” write up.

If you care about your business and really want to make the plunge, take some time to study the subject. More importantly, create something that you’re proud to send. Review it; ask for the opinions of your colleges; send it to your spouse and kids and ask them what they think. Email marketing can be a very powerful tool. With the right amount of time and support, an email campaign can be the leading charge and most profitable portion of your marketing efforts.

As for us? We’re always here to provide you with the best database management, statistic tracking and sending tools possible. We’re also happy to consult with you on design and content ideas if you run into a road block. We want you to be a successful email marketer. As your business grows, so does ours!

Email marketing is not an easy form of marketing. It requires a unique knowledge set and a gread deal of hard work in order to achieve success.

The most common method of creating a marketing email today is to have a designer, who is familiar with HTML, create an email from scratch. Designers with a large HTML skill set and vast knowledge of the email marketing world can create beautiful and functional designs. Of course, this method can be costly and difficult for small companies or for those who just want to test the waters of email marketing. That’s why at Admail.net we provide our customers with several ways to create their email.

If you would like to have a designer create your email using HTML, that is still possible. We allow for the direct input of HTML code into our system. Beware however, HTML for email is not the same as HTML for the web. HTML for email is limited in many ways by the email clients that receive it. You’ll want to be intimately aware of the differences between HTML in a browser and HTML in email. Email clients simply aren’t designed to be as efficient and up-to-date translators of HTML as browsers are. Knowing the limitations, along with testing of your email before sending it out, is crucial.

For our many clients who aren’t going to be using HTML code to create their emails, we have created our Email Builder 2.0 system. It is designed to give our users most of the benefits of creating an email using HTML without the drawback of having to learn the complicated language. Once an email is created in Email Builder, it is also much easier to edit and can be updated, for the most part, by anyone with basic word processor experience. As with anything, there are always trade offs. No HTML editor is 100% perfect and in some instances you won’t be able to do as many complicated things as you could if you wrote HTML from scratch.

Being aware of the limitations of email marketing is a necessity. If you ever have any questions about your campaigns, please call us and we will be happy to guide you. In our 15+ years we’ve seen and dealt with pretty much everything under the sun. We’re here to help you get the most out of your email marketing.

I just got off the phone with a client who was very concerned about her open rates. We occasionally come across this from a new mailer and it can be hard to explain to them why they shouldn’t worry about it. The reason we provide an open rate statistic is, for the most part, because people expect it. Having been in the email marketing industry for almost 20 years, we know that open rates aren’t really an accurate way to measure the success or failure of a campaign.

At one time, open rates were an accurate and useful way to record campaign data, but starting in 2004, Microsoft began blocking images by default in their email programs. In the proceeding months and years, other email clients followed suit. Today, nearly every email client provides their users with the option to block images and most do it by default. This dramatically changes the usefulness of open rate statistics. They no longer provide accurate information about the individuals who open email. Certain situations, such as if an email happens to have no pictures, and therefor provides no incentive for your users to click the “load images” button, makes open rates appear even worse. This isn’t to say that you should include images solely for the purpose of getting your open rates up. What you should do is accept that open rates just aren’t as important or as useful as they once were.

Open rates, while no longer effective at projecting how many people have actually read your email, can sometimes be used effectively as a meter stick to compare results. Looking at the open rates of two different campaigns sent to the same list and noting how they differ can be a helpful exercise. Each list you send to will have a baseline open rate based on several factors. Those factors will include: the email habits of your recipients, what email client they are using, and how interested they are in your general message. Once you have figured out this baseline open rate, you can use it to judge the overall effectiveness of future mailings. If one promotion or newsletter performs above or below the baseline, you know you’ve either done a superior job with that content, or missed the mark.

If you want a more accurate statistic to monitor, you may want to keep a close eye on the clickthrough statistics. A clickthrough is recorded anytime someone clicks on a link in your email. This number has nothing to do with unreliable image loading and can’t be distorted by the email client. It’s simply a one to one representation of how many people have clicked the links in your email. Many of our clients are trying to drive traffic to their website, this number is actually the most crucial number for them. If you have a call to action on your email that involves clicking a link, the clickthrough statistics will give you actual numbers on how many people answered that call to action. Clicking on a link or acting on the mailing is the true test of it’s effectiveness and should be of much greater concern then open rates.

Social media has become an integral part of online marketing strategy. It’s a fantastic way to connect with your customers through the circles that they travel rather than through traditional advertising forums.

Social media marketing is a perfect companion to email marketing. They can each promote one another to increase the effectiveness of all of your marketing strategies.

Email is an effective way to promote your social media endeavors. You can provide links to your social media locations in mailings that you send out. This will inform your list that you are active in the social media community and drive traffic to these sites. The same principle works in reverse, you can use social media to collect email addresses for your mailing list. Social Media provides you with many opportunities to get to know and interact with your possible clients and industry peers.

The most important goal of any email marketing or social media campaign is to connect with your audience. Before you start either, you should sit down with your company heads and decide on a strategy. Discover who your clients are, what the want, and craft a social media story. If you attempt to spread yourself too thin, you won’t connect with anyone. Find out what your niche is and then promote it!

As the holiday season quickly approaches, it’s time to start thinking about your marketing strategy.

E-mail is still the work-horse of holiday marketing. E-mail marketing has many advantages over the alternatives. It’s cheaper, faster, and provides feedback almost instantly. Direct mail and other forms of marketing can’t do that.

Other forms of marketing, such as text messaging, are beginning to come to fruition, but they don’t have the reliability, accessibility and time-tested rates of success of e-mail. E-mail marketing has the highest ROI and the holidays are the best time to use e-mail to cash in.

Consumers are looking to buy during the holiday season. If there is any time that your offer will be welcome and have a high chance of being acted on, it’s during this short period of time. One great thing about starting a campaign during the holiday season is that it can get you off to a very good start with your email list.

If you provide an exciting offer during the holiday months, you can start a very positive relationship with your list members that can last all year.

One way to make the most out of your holiday marketing is to start early and do some A/B testing. By that I mean segmenting your list and sending out two or more different campaigns to different segments to see which gets the better response. This will give you insight into what your customers are looking for and will help you narrow down your most effective material. Starting early gives you the chance to fine tune your campaigns before the big push closer to the holidays.

This is also a great time of year to kick off a social media campaign through e-mail. Many companies have been providing offers solely to their Facebook or Twitter page members. Holiday exclusives for your social media customers and fans will help you build your connection with your customer base. The most common way this is implemented is by offering a coupon or online price only to those who have agreed to follow you on Twitter or are “Fans” of your friend page on Facebook.

The holiday season is crunch time for retailers all over the country, don’t let your competition beat you to the punch, cash in on the holiday buying frenzy with an effective and easy e-mail campaign from Admail.net.