Guest Post

6 Tips for Making Your Email More Like Snail Mail

February 26, 2013 by Sadie Cornelious 6 Comments

I’m on vacation right now … likely checking in every so often … so I figured it was a good time for a guest post. Thanks Sadie!

Sadie Cornelius is the Director of Marketing for Cover Story Media, Inc. leading the charge on all brand management, social media strategy, graphic design and marketing growth initiatives. With more than 9 years experience in communications, new and traditional media, public relations, special events and film, her experience ranges from Fortune 500 companies to local non-profits. She’s also a pretty awesome, cool, fun human being. I mean, check out her picture. Fun, right?

In an age when the post office and traditional mail have become less and less common, we become much more reliant on email as a way to get our message to our friends, family and customers. Email these days is still one of the more personal forms of communication despite the fact that it’s used in a very mass ways. Like telegrams or cards, emails are between two people and are a one-on-one way to communicate electronically.

But over the past few years our inboxes have become more of a mailbox full of junk. It’s hard to sort through the pile and toss out or delete what’s irrelevant when there is so much to dig through. How do you avoid going in the trash? Think of your inbox in a more traditional way like a mailbox – what do you look for first when you get the mail? The baby shower announcements, the wedding invites, the birthday cards. People tend to gravitate toward these personal human connections.

How do you translate those emotional and personal connections to business? As an email marketer, it’s time consuming and can be expensive to keep up with your CRM efforts – birthday emails, thank you emails, etc. But an easy way to implement humanization into a mass communication message is to include something personal in your emails, even if it’s just the recipient’s name.

In researching for this blog post, I dug back through my notes from 2008 on “Email Best Practices.” While the facts may have changed in the past 5 years, the tactics remain the same: segment, personalize and deliver a one-to-one message. Direct mail marketing shares these strengths. So let’s get back to the basics and use these snail mail techniques in our email campaigns to make them more effective.

1. Share an Anecdote or Story – In a world where we are fed thousands of advertisements a day, a simple way to grab people’s attention as they sift through the coupons and dentist cleaning reminders is to share something personal. Just have a baby? Show us! Did you have a great time at a conference in Vegas? Tell us. The reason reality TV and Facebook has become so popular is people like entertainment and storytelling. DJ did a great job of this in his recent Valentine’s Day email.

DJ email

2. Include your Email Signature and your Personal Social Media Links – It seems simple but so many people forget to do this. Think of it as the equivalent of putting a return address label on your envelope. Not just a way to contact you, but actually encourage them to get in touch. Take it a step further and put a photo of you to put a face to the name. As we in the SEO world are realizing how important Authorship is, giving a personal author and face to your content in email is also likely to be a game changer in the future. See example below.

Jessica email

3. Person to Person – Unlike web content, with email you have the ability to personalize your message, so make it personal. A simple “Hi John” might get their attention more so than a generic “To whom this may concern.” And keep in mind that people want to connect with people, not a brand. Unless you offer ongoing weekly e-deals like an airline, you may want to consider having your emails come from a personal address. I guarantee you even if they don’t recognize the from name, it will at least make people stop and think they might know you which may increase your open rate.

4. Use Personality in your Voice – Let’s be real, okay? Don’t talk like you would in a sales pitch, or to a second grader. Pretend like you are writing a letter to a pen pal. Although the recipient might be a complete stranger, you want to be human. If you have fun writing your content, it is more than likely they’ll have fun reading it, too. No one wants to read a long-winded research paper in the middle of his or her day. Keep it light, be brief and if possible use a little humor. It will give your readers something to look forward to in their inbox versus just another email to read.

5. Compelling Subject Line – When you check your home mailbox and you see a card or package that interests you, you open it and you open it with excitement! The same goes for email, but with email you get the chance to tease your recipient before they open with a compelling subject line. Give them a reason to open and more than likely they will, and that’s half the battle. Once their eye balls are inside your email, you’ve at least captured their oh so precious attention (Editor …errr … DJ Note: I’m a big believer in the power of a compelling email subject line).

6. Timing is Everything – Like an RSVP for a wedding, you might not react right away, and that’s okay. Unless you have a compelling offer like a one-day sale, the lag time on email can be up to a week or more. So be patient and as you send out email campaigns, be conscious of your timeframe. You wouldn’t send a wedding invite the day of, so don’t expect your readers to take immediate action, no matter how exciting your content. If you do have something timely, make sure you know the turn around time. Although email seems like it’s as easy as pressing a button, there are many steps involved. Mail doesn’t just magically show up on your doorstep. There are many steps that get it there. And if you miss the boat, don’t be afraid to send a belated birthday wish. It’s never too late to admit you missed out. Send a follow up post-event or take advantage of the less congested rush hour.

In conclusion, similar to the way Facebook has succeeded with sharing personal aspects of our lives, don’t be afraid to show a little personality in email marketing, too. You are likely not just another credit card application so don’t act like one. What grabs your attention? Who do you think has done a good job of personalizing email? Put yourself in the recipient’s shoes and think about what would make you open and read your email then implement this plan.

DJ Waldow
Waldow Social

P.S. Have you heard the news? Nick Westergaard and I have started a weekly podcast called The Work Talk Show, where we interview crazy-smart folks about how work gets done. Give the latest episode a listen!

DID YOU KNOW…

I recently launched a new online course, Email Marketing Made Simple, that promises to help make you a better email marketer.

-Having trouble growing your email list?
-Not sure what a preheader is?
-Avoiding using the word “free” in your subject lines because someone told you it was a “rule.”
-Having trouble figuring out how to use social media and email marketing together?
-Not sure what you should be testing and how often?

If you answered yes to any of the above questions (or all 5!), I can help.

Learn More about Email Marketing Made Simple

Filed Under: Guest Post, Personalization, Subject Line, Timely

5 Key Tips for Creating Great Email Marketing Content

December 7, 2012 by DJ Waldow Leave a Comment

The following is a guest post from Robert Woodford who has been writing about email topics for companies like Reachmail.net for more than 15 years. Visit his site to learn more about the power of email marketing.

Okay, so you’ve done your research on email marketing and you know which days and times are best to send, and how to read and understand your analytics so that you can improve. You’re even paying extra to make sure your IP address remains static because you’re aware of how a changing IP will negatively affect your campaigns.

Good. Great. So – why aren’t more people opening your email? And for those that do, why aren’t they clicking through?

You might not want to hear this, but it could be that your problem is with the content itself. It’s not as simple a fix as sending emails on a Tuesday instead of a Monday, but it can be done. If you take these five key tips to heart, you’ll be well on your way.

1. Improve your subject lines. If you’re not getting enough opens, it means that the subject line isn’t enticing enough. Now, this doesn’t mean that you should write things like, “The world is going to explode.” Admittedly I’d be curious enough to click if I saw that subject, but I doubt I’d do more than that because it’s so cheesy. What you want to do is engage in subject line best practices, which means keeping it short, using localization like city names, and avoiding words like “free” that trigger spam filters, and “help” that tend to have lower open rates.

Editors note: As you know if you read this blog post regularly, I’m a big fan of the power of compelling subject lines. I mean, how awesome is this one from Urban Outfitters?. That being said, I also believe that you have to test to see what subject line works best for your audience. In most cases, using “free” in the subject line will not land you in the spam folder.

2. Keep it short. Length is important for more than just subject lines. If your emails read more like novels, no one is going to bother reading the entire thing. You want to keep your message to only a few paragraphs at most, and if you’re writing a newsletter with lots of articles, just include the opening or a brief description and link to the whole piece.

3. Avoid mistakes. This has to be one of the easiest things to fix, yet I still see tons of email campaigns that have spelling and grammar issues. How can someone trust that your product or services are of high quality if you can’t even bother to proofread your emails before you send them out? Do yourself and your company a favor and take five minutes to have someone else read over the message before it goes out to thousands of people.

4. Take time with formatting. Way too many people make the huge mistake of copying and pasting content from Word or other programs directly into emails. This can destroy your message, because many email services don’t have the appropriate translation tools and you’ll end up with nonsensical characters. If you’re going to copy and paste, at least put it into Notepad first to remove any formatting. And once you’re in the email, don’t be shy about using things like bold, italics, underlines, capitalization, bigger fonts, and different colors when you want to draw attention to a word or phrase. Do it sparingly, but definitely do it.

5. Make sure your calls-to-action are clear. First off, have calls-to-action. Hopefully that’s obvious, but it needs to be said. Of course, just having them isn’t enough. You need to be sure that they are extremely visible and that the action you want people to take is easy to understand. That means using short, active phrases, different colors and sizes of text, and possibly even incorporating buttons. Be careful when you embed call-to-action links in images though, because if people don’t realize that’s where they’re supposed to click or the image doesn’t load correctly in their email program, you can ruin a campaign.

Of course, the most important thing – and the hardest one to get right – is to write well, and focus on things that your audience wants to read. Do that and incorporate these other strategies and just watch as the click-throughs roll in.

DJ Waldow
Waldow Social

Speaking of breaking “the rules” of email marketing, did you know that my buddy Jason Falls and I just wrote a book called The Rebel’s Guide to Email Marketing: Grow Your List, Break the Rules, and Win?

Yup. It’s true.

In the book, we talk about growing your email list as well as breaking “the rules” of email marketing. Break the rules and grab your copy today, right now. Here –> AVAILABLE NOW!

Reminder: There is no such thing as “best practices” when it comes to email marketing. Best practices are those that are best for your audience.

Filed Under: Email Marketing, Guest Post

The 3 C’s – Why Video Belongs In Your Email Marketing

November 27, 2012 by DJ Waldow Leave a Comment

The following is a guest post from Ethan Beute, Chief Marketing Officer at BombBomb, an email marketing platform designed to support video since day one. With a background in television station marketing and promotion, Ethan writes, speaks, and trains on creating video easily and inexpensively and on adding video to your emails. Connect with Ethan on Twitter or LinkedIn to talk video, email, video email, University of Michigan football and basketball, or anything else.

When it comes to email and video, Ethan is the man. No surprise here, but in order to explain why video belongs in your email marketing … Ethan shot an exclusive video (embedded below). How cool is that backdrop? Bonus: Ethan is a U of Michigan alum! Go Blue.

Just as you employ video on your website, on your landing pages, in your blog posts, or anywhere else, you can add video to your email marketing. From my view, it’s not about stuffing commercials or ads into a new channel. Instead, it’s about improving communication and building relationships. Video is a personal and powerful medium, just as permission to reach an inbox is a personal and powerful opportunity.

There are many types of video-in-email solutions, including DIY (like dropping in an image and linking it to an external video), add-on tools sold through email service providers, and more integrated services like our BombBomb video email marketing software.

Why pursue video in email? Here are 3 simple reasons.

Video: The 3 C’s of Video Email

Can’t see video above? Try this link.

1. Complete

Video provides complete communication, infused with all the subtlety, nuance, emotion, and non-verbal cues that text and images alone simply can’t deliver. Because of this dynamic, video is a great way to build trust, rapport, and relationships.

Of course, you’re not restricted to eye-to-eye, face-to-face videos like the one above – you can use the medium to show-and-tell any aspect of any kind of product or service. Worth noting: typing the previous line just made me want to add “Creative” as a 4th C!

2. Complementary

Video need not say it all. It can be produced with the sole function of complementing the words and images in your email – to help bring your message to life, to humanize it, to highlight your main points, and to drive home your calls to action.

In emails, your video should work together with the subject line, headline, body, graphics, and call to action. Your video doesn’t have to do the entire job itself; it can be used to complement your words and images.

3. Compelling

If you’re presented with 5 paragraphs of text or a :30 video (assuming no pre-roll ad!), which will you go to first? Most people tend toward video. It demands attention. It’s easily consumed.

Likewise, it’s easily produced. Instead of struggling to construct what you’d like to say in words, phrases, sentences, and paragraphs, you can simply turn the camera on and say exactly what you want to say.

Until the novelty wears off, video will remain a compelling and even differentiating communication tool.

A Few Notes on the State of Video in Email

Before heading into this section, I want to note that I’m treating these topics in brief.

Video Play In The Inbox: Some email marketers hang up on the term “video email” for the limits of video play inside the email inside the inbox. The ability to do this is a function of HTML5 technology, currently supported in iPhone, iPad, Apple Mail, Hotmail, and a few other clients. Approximately 50% of email opens on average provide this experience. The growth of this number (it was 33% a year ago) is primarily driven by the growth of iPhone and iPad use. Litmus provides Email Client Market Share numbers here (updated monthly)

Video Play Outside The Inbox: Where HTML5 is not supported (Outlook, Yahoo, Gmail, Android), a common solution involves a Flash player. In the inbox, the email is available in full to be read with links available to be clicked. When the video is clicked to play, either the video or the entire email opens in a new browser window and the video begins playing.

Like most of our subscribers, we’ve never been hung up on the exact video in email experience. The fact of the matter is that people are opening video emails and playing the videos. We can see exactly who’s opening, playing, clicking, and more. One advantage of the Flash fallback is that we can also see how long people are watching the videos and where viewership trails off.

Linking To A YouTube Video: We love YouTube and have hours of content uploaded to our channel. An uploaded, titled, tagged, dated, and located YouTube video is great for lead generation. Naturally, then, many people wonder “why not just drop in an image and link to my YouTube video?” That’s a perfectly fine DIY execution.

We prefer to keep your video inside your branded HTML template, in the context of your headline and body, and adjacent to your call to action. This integrated approach keeps the entire message together as a unit for the targeted person or segment of people for whom it was intended.

In Conclusion

I feel strongly that nearly every business and organization can benefit from the use of video, including the use of video in email. The earlier you build in or hire in a video competency, the more you can capitalize on its connecting and differentiating benefits.

Have questions about video? Please email me: Ethan (at) BombBomb (dot) com.

—

A Note from DJ Waldow

Yup. It’s true.

In the book, we talk about growing your email list as well as breaking “the rules” of email marketing. Break the rules and grab your copy today, right now. Here –> AVAILABLE NOW!

Reminder: There is no such thing as “best practices” when it comes to email marketing. Best practices are those that are best for your audience.

Filed Under: Email Marketing, Guest Post, Video, Video

Stop Sharing Your Email Newsletter in Social Media

September 12, 2012 by DJ Waldow 17 Comments

The following is a guest post from my colleague, mentor, good friend, and former co-worker (boss), Chris Penn … who also happens to be featured quite a bit in The Rebel’s Guide to Email Marketing.

Mr. Penn is the Director of Inbound Marketing at WhatCounts, an email marketing company based in Atlanta, as well as co-founder of the groundbreaking PodCamp New Media Community Conference, and co-host of the Marketing Over Coffee marketing podcast. He is an adjunct professor of Internet marketing and the lead subject matter expert and professor of Advanced Social Media at the University of San Francisco. He’s also the author of Marketing White Belt: Basics for the Digital Marketer.

Here’s a long-cited, long-preached best practice, so commonly accepted that it’s even built into many email service provider platforms:

Share your email socially!

We at WhatCounts did it for the longest time until recently. Our clients have done it, our competitors have done it, and now it’s something of a shock to be saying not to do it.

You read that right: stop sharing your email newsletter in social media.

Why on earth would we recommend that advice? How does that make sense in a world where email+social are the digital marketer’s peanut butter and jelly?

Two words: engagement cannibalization.

In our recent research for our series on engagement and how individual ISPs are measuring engagement, we stumbled across these notes by Hotmail and Gmail: engagement metrics are now being widely used to determine the legitimacy of the sender and the deliverability of the message. Hotmail has publicly stated and outlined that they have four metrics they are paying attention to:

Messages read, then deleted
Messages deleted without being read
Messages replied to
Frequency of receiving and reading a message from a source

This begs the question: if you share a newsletter socially, meaning that it’s viewable on the web from social media posts, does that then mean that your most engaged fans (who follow you, Like your Facebook page, etc.) will read straight from social and not open the email?

We know from our own data that we started aggressively sharing our newsletter on every social outlet in April of this year, much more so than we’d done in the past. Here’s what we used to post on social media sites:

Here’s the style we’ve since switched to:

How did the new sharing design go? While we’re still collecting longer-term data, our initial results show about a 1% increase in open rate. That doesn’t sound like very much, but when your list is 60,000 people, that’s an extra 600 people opening it up!

Anecdotally, these results match up with the experience many digital natives have: once they read the content in one location, there’s little reason to read it again in another. Sharing it socially would mean not needing to open it in the inbox – and thus dampening inbox engagement.

So what should you do? Test, of course. Try a week or several weeks of letting people know that you’re publishing your newsletter, but don’t give them a link to the actual content. Make them go to their inboxes and drive up your inbox engagement numbers, then see if that impacts your ability to get email delivered to the entirety of your list.

Christopher S. Penn
Director of Inbound Marketing, WhatCounts

Note from DJ Waldow:

This is one of the many reasons I respect Chris Penn. He does not “break the rules” just for the sake of being a rebel. Instead, he tests. Then – and only then – does he have the data to show what works best for his audience. Remember: Best practices are those that are best for your audience.

Speaking of breaking “the rules” and being an email marketing rebel, you do know that my buddy Jason Falls and I just wrote, The Rebel’s Guide to Email Marketing: Grow Your List, Break the Rules, and Win. In this book, we dedicate an entire section to email marketing + social media. We also feature quote a few case studies from today’s guest poster, Mr. Christopher S. Penn.

Break the rules and grab your copy today. AVAILABLE NOW!

Filed Under: Email Marketing + Social Media, Guest Post

7 Keys to Building a Successful Manage Preferences Page

June 8, 2012 by DJ Waldow 2 Comments

Stephan Hovnanian, Shovi Websites The following is a guest post from Stephan Hovnanian of Shovi Websites. At Shovi, Stephan works hands-on with businesses & non-profits to build, manage & market their websites, so they can focus on more important things. Shovi’s eCampaigns email marketing platform works hand-in-hand with their in-house CMS framework to make email marketing more polished and convenient. Connect with Stephan on Twitter, LinkedIn or Google+ to talk more about your next web design project.

After reading this post about the Unsubscribe process, I reached out to DJ to ask if I could expand on his points as they relate to using a Manage Preferences page.

Below you’ll find a short screencast (3:53) talking about some key points when using a Manage Preferences page in your email marketing.

7 Keys to Building a Successful Manage Preferences Page

Clarity - Part of the reason you have a page like this is because you want to segment your lists, so be clear about those segmentation options.
Expectation - Offer samples whenever possible, so subscribers know what to expect. (Idea: if you’re offering a desktop vs. mobile option, offer a QR code that links to a sample email, or an auto-responder campaign, so the subscriber can see if the mobile version makes sense for their phone)
Transparency - Always be clear about the email address you’re using; some people use forwarders and may not realize that’s what they signed up with.
Simplicity - Keep the process simple, starting with the email, and use as few clicks as possible.
Tactfully Opportunistic - If you’re offering a one-click unsubscribe option (a good idea), and you have multiple lists, make the unsubscribe confirmation page a place to subscribe to other lists. Why lose the subscriber forever?
Professionalism - Don’t skimp on the branding. Use your ESP’s API to build your own Manage Preferences page (like we did above), instead of settling for the default, empty look. If you can brand your public-facing pages (archives, subscription forms, manage preferences, etc.) then do that as well. Your subscribers will be more comfortable coming to a page that looks like your website than a blank one that gives little indication of who or what they’re opting out of.
Mobile-ready – If you can make this page mobile-friendly (or responsive), do it. At this point, everything related to your email marketing needs to function on more than just a desktop.

Do you have any good, great or … not so great examples of manage preference pages? If so, please share in the comments below!

Filed Under: Email Marketing, Guest Post, Manage Preferences

How To Use SMS to Grow Your Email List

May 29, 2012 by DJ Waldow 1 Comment

The following is a guest post from Justin Mastrangelo, the Founder of the JA.TXT text message marketing platform. As President of the parent company, JA Interactive, he has worked with businesses, nonprofits, and agencies to cost-effectively reach new audiences through digital marketing and technology. Justin launched the JA.TXT platform to give these same organizations an opportunity to start strategic mobile marketing campaigns using text messaging. Learn more about SMS marketing on the JA.TXT Blog.

———-

You know something you don’t hear very often in a radio spot? “Send us an email to be entered into a contest to win…”

Have you ever been to a rally where the speaker told everyone to send an email to get involved?

When you’re walking down the street you never see an outdoor advertisement that tells you to send an email to learn more about a product or service.

Why not? Because email isn’t a very good call-to-action in those scenarios.

If you’re focused on email marketing somewhere on your list of goals is probably “increase list size.” The trouble with that goal is there are only so many ways you can grow an email list, and many of those ways depend on web traffic or the dreadful clipboards and pens.

Is there a better way for offline efforts to grow an email list?

Yes, using text messaging. Text messaging is a great call-to-action because it’s simple, easy, and everyone has it on their phone (unlike email). It also helps that you don’t have to come up with a subject line or key-in a long address.

How Does It Work?

using text messaging to capture email address for opt-in marketing In the scenario of the rally above, a speaker and the printed materials handed out at the event would direct attendees to send a text message to get involved. For example, “Text the word SUPPORT to 12345 to sign up and find out how you can help us!”

After doing this the user would receive an immediate text message back asking them to respond with their email address to join the list. After responding the user would then receive a final text message confirming receipt of the address. If additional information is needed, like a zip code, this can be requested with another text message.

Once the email address is received it can be saved in a database for download later or pushed directly into an email marketing platform so the user has the welcome email waiting for them when they get back to their inbox.

The 3 best opportunities where text messaging can grow an email list

1. Traditional media: Just like in the example above, text messaging is a much easier call-to-action for your TV, radio, print, or outdoor ad. Have your audience text-in to get a coupon for your product or register for an upcoming event via email.

2. Events: Lose the old-fashioned, tacky clipboards and make signing up easier for your attendees. Nobody likes to wait in line for a pen. Have the speaker direct attendees to sign up in seconds by texting-in. Pass out cards with the instructions while people are walking in or out of the event. Tie signing up to an on-the-spot giveaway and drive even more participation. Hint: Call the winner from the stage at the end of the event, everyone will love it.

3. Foot traffic: Give all those people walking through your door or waiting in line an easy way to join your email loyalty club. Have them text-in for an email discount good on their next visit.

I hope this gets you thinking about ways to use text messaging to grow your email list. I’m sure you can come up with some great ideas I haven’t covered here. If you feel like sharing, drop in a comment below. I’d love to hear what you come up with!

———-

Did you know … Jason Falls and I just wrote a new book about breaking the rules of email marketing! In the book, we have an entire section dedicated to growing your email list. In The Rebel’s Guide to Email Marketing: Grow Your List, Break the Rules, and Win, we share with you all sorts of email marketing “best practices” individuals and companies are breaking each and every day … and still finding success.

PRE-ORDER IT NOW! (please)

Filed Under: Email Marketing, Growing Your List, Guest Post, SMS