‘Tips’ Articles

How often should you send to your mailing list? There are two major schools of thought when it comes to determining the correct frequency of mailing.

The first philosophy, and the one which creates the most problems, is to mail very often. The marketers who adopt this strategy typically believe that it’s best to stay at the forefront of their customer’s minds. There are several problems with this type of mailing strategy. Foremost of those problems are over-saturating your list and sending out bad content. Your list members can only handle so many mailings before they begin to find them an annoyance, this, compounded by the unfortunate reality that good content takes time and thought to produce, will create high complaint and unsubscribe rates.

The contrasting theory of frequency is to send very infrequently. This is typically advocated by wary marketers because of the extreme negativity surrounding “spam” sending practices. By sending rarely, marketers have plenty of time to create great content and they don’t run the risk of burning out their lists. On the other hand, research has shown that if you don’t send often enough, your list can go cold. You may miss out on sales that you could have generated if your frequency was slightly higher.

So, as is true in most things, moderation is rewarded. Just how often you need to send is up to you, but for the sake of your marketing efforts, avoid either extreme. A no-brainer way to answer the question of how often to send is to let your list members decide for themselves. You can achieve this by asking them how often they’d like to receive mail when they sign up. Once you have that information, you’ll know how often to send. I do suggest you provide a way for them to change their preference later.

So, here are the take-aways: don’t send too often, but don’t disappear from your customers lives either. Content is king. If you provide your customers with content that they truly want (offers, information, entertainment) you will have more leeway when it comes to frequency. Great content breeds good will and forgiveness from your list members. Last but not least, ask your customers what they want as far as mailing frequency is concerned! It’s easy for you and great for them.

Good luck!

A good newsletter is one of the best ways to stay in touch with your clients. If used correctly, your newsletter can entice customers to come into your store, provide them with valuable information, let them know about a special offer that appeals to them, or just keep your company’s name on the tip of their tongue.

It’s difficult to consistently send out a good newsletter. You want is to promote your own business, but you’re also try to do so while providing valuable and intrusive content. The best kind of advertisement doesn’t seem like an advertisement at all. Achieving this is no simple task.

1. Don’t over do it, don’t force it.

Send your newsletter only as often as you can produce interesting content. Nowhere is it written that you must send a newsletter weekly or monthly. Be self aware enough to realize when you have nothing to say. You’ll start to see recipients unsubscribe left and right if your newsletter becomes boring. It’s a real struggle to regain interest once someone on your list decides your email is boring or unhelpful.

2: Target specific consumer groups.

Create multiple versions of your newsletter based on customer interests. You can gather this information by giving people the ability to designate their own interests on your sign up form. Not only will you be able to use this data to target groups in your newsletter, but it can serve as a small sample of your overall customers interests. Sending multiple newsletters is more work because you may need to produce content for several different newsletters but the result is well worth it.

3: Don’t try to trick your users into signing up for your Newsletter.

Many websites will have the default action of signing up as a user of their site or using their checkout form result in the user signing up for their mailing list unless they opt-out by removing a check from a selection box. This is a common practice that you should avoid. Considering that sending email isn’t free, why waste your money on sending to people who don’t care about what you are sending them? These types of practices increase complaints and can cause you big headaches in the future. Why risk having people click the “spam” button in their email client because you tricked them into signing up for your mailing. Building trust with consumers is far more important than building your mailing list.

4: Include an explicit and easy to follow call to action.

You really can’t expect your customers to give you much of a response if you don’t ask them to. If you want them to do something in response to your email, you have to ask them and then make the action as easy as possible. If you want them to make a comment, give them a simple way to do it. The easier you make it for them, the more likely they are to go through with it (duh). Make your call to action clear. Ditch subtlety in this case, straightforward is the way to go.

Hopefully these tips will help you create and execute a better newsletter. For more email marketing best practices, check out this post.

Going from cold to hot isn’t so tough.

It’s no big news that email lists can go cold. It can happen for any number of reasons. Maybe the list building process took longer than you expected, maybe your boss wasn’t ready to pull the trigger on email marketing when the list was forming, or maybe you’ve just bored your list to tears. Regardless of the reason, you can heat your list back up with some fairly easy methods.

Don’t be afraid to ask your customers why they haven’t been responding to your email.

Communication is key. While you may think that asking your customers directly will make you look bad, it doesn’t. They will respect your honesty and if they do have an issue they will know that you care and are making efforts to correct it.

Offer exclusive incentives to returning customers.

Even if a customer has begun to ignore your email, a particularly good incentive can bring back even customers with the most waning interest. If someone was at one time interested in what you have to offer it’s very likely that they will be again under the right circumstances. Give them a reason to come back.

Change your strategy.

If providing one kind of promotion doesn’t seem to be exciting your audience, try something new. Maybe your recipients are still interested in buying something from you but have just grown tired of the same old offers. If you send them a coupon for 10% off every time, it’s not going to be much of an attention grabber after a while. Consider changing up your offers and occasionally doing something very unique to make your customers do a double-take when they receive your email.

Consider an email redesign.

While content may still be king, good looks certainly can’t hurt. If you aren’t seeing the results you want from your campaign, you may consider taking another look at your email design. A really bad design, and trust me they are all over the place, can scare someone away faster than just about anything. If you want your consumers to trust and respect your company your email should have a design that promotes you in the best light, not as some two-bit spammer.

Re-examine your demographic.

Their wants, needs, and how they interact with your company/organization may have changed over time. What was once a popular subject among the people on your list may now be sorely out of date. Make sure you stay current with the interests and trends among your list. Keep your products and ideas up to date. If possible you could offer incentives to some of your recipients for filling out a survey. A great way for retailers to get people into their store is by giving out a five dollar gift card. Since barely anything costs just five dollars, it’s pretty likely they will be spending some of their own cash once they get started.

If you’re only using your email statistics to judge the effectiveness of your email campaign, you are missing out on a vital tool for improving the success of future email marketing endeavors.

If you want to tap into the full potential of your email marketing, your work isn’t finished after you send out your campaign. The next step in the process is to analyze your campaign statistics. You should give your recipients a few days to read and respond to your email. Not everyone is glued to their computer screens and some recipients take longer than others to act on offers. After you have given ample time for your campaign to be received, you can begin to utilize your statistics. You should start by getting a general feeling for the overall success of your mailing. You can do this by observing your opens and clickthroughs, but you don’t want to stop there. Below are several other ways you can use campaign statistics to improve your ROI and move your marketing plan forward.

One of the best ways you can use your campaign statistics to your advantage is by doing targeted follow up mailings. You can send follow up emails to targeted groups based on what links people have clicked on or based on who opened the email. For example, if someone clicked on a link to one of your products, you might want send them out a coupon. Done correctly this can nudge interested recipients into becoming a paying customer!

A slightly more advanced technique is doing a random 50/50 split of your list and sending out an ‘A’ and ‘B’ version of your email. In each version you can vary the content of your email. You might want to change the subject line or present a different offer. Once you have the statistics from both of your campaigns, you can compare the results and get a general idea of which tactics were more effective. Doing this every once in a while will help you get to know your audience better and will make it easier for you to create successful campaigns.

Another tactic that can be useful is to download your soft bounces and do a directed mailing specifically to them. It’s best to usually wait a short period of time before sending out to your bounces again, but a specific mailing to them can accomplish two things: 1) You’ll eliminate addresses that aren’t active more quickly and 2) Soft bounce will often times resolve themselves and you’ll be able to contact them on your second mailing.

Email campaigns are a great way to communicate with your contact list. Whether you are advertising or sending news updates about a group or organization, email is an effective tool for presenting information. Email isn’t the only way you should be reaching your recipients online however.

The online landscape is constantly changing and new forms of communication are being developed every day. Social media sites are some of the most popular new methods of receiving information and they also happen to be a great companion for email campaigns.

Social media and email are a perfect match. They compliment each other by providing list members with choices. If a user base is younger or more technically savvy, they may prefer to use Twitter or Facebook as a means of obtaining information about and communicating with a company. Conversely, email is simple, versatile and almost everyone is familiar with how to use it. An list comprised of older or more traditional members may respond best to email updates.

By including social media links within your email campaigns, you give your user the option to choose how they want to interact with your company. If a member dislikes email advertising but wouldn’t mind seeing you on their Twitter or Facebook feed, providing them with the option to use social media instead of allows you to maintain communication with them. So don’t shy away from including social media links in your email campaigns. Together, they give your users the options that they want, and can keep your list members in contact with your company even if they unsubscribe from your email campaigns.