Email Marketing Influences Online Purchasers

Tuesday, October 28th, 2008

In an increasingly troubled market, I think it’s important to focus on marketing that works – or at least provides results or great ROI. Email is one of those tactics that is often overlooked or dismissed because of all the spam out there. However, despite all of that spam, people still rely on email marketing. Receiving promotional emails is consistently one of the top-three influencers for online purchasers – based on stats released in a study from eMarketer this past April.

Now of course as you can see in the results, the size of influence depends greatly on age and location, but with that in mind – isn’t it time you re-evaluated your email marketing strategy to see if you’re providing value as well up/cross selling where you can?

Notice I said providing value first. Value is key to keeping your subscriber numbers up. If you provide value, you can build a relationship and establish some form of credibility with your customers (or potential customers), which means when those promotional emails come out, they are more likely to influence those purchasers.

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28.10.2008 Email Marketing, email campaigns No Comments

Three Ways to Improve your Email Marketing

Thursday, March 27th, 2008

I receive a number of business and consumer email newsletters, some of which I open as soon as they come in, others that I file away for later reading or because there’s something useful I think I might need down the road, and many of which I often delete without reading unfortunately (I’m sure I’m not alone in these habits either). Here are three simple things to think about that, if done right, could help improve your email marketing efforts and hopefully have your newsletters fall into one of the first two categories above when they land in your customer’s inboxes.

Segment Your Data

Not everyone is the same, and not everyone wants to read the same information. If you know enough about your customers and prospects, segment your data and send out separate newsletters with content that speaks to a certain type of audience. If you can’t do this for whatever reason (time, resources, budget), try at least using different subject lines that speak to a certain article or topic covered that each different audience group would be interested in – even if there’s no difference in newsletter layout or information.

Set Benchmarks For Your Company, then Compare Them to the Industry Standards

What is it that you want people to do when they read your newsletter? Buy something? Click to the site? Visit an ad? Determine your newsletter’s objectives and then review your previous stats against those objectives. Determine your average statistical numbers for those objectives and set your own benchmarks. Then worry about what your competitors and the industry say. Once you have your own affairs in order and know what is “good” for you, you can then set up to improve – and you never know, perhaps you’ll find you’re doing better than you realized. In any case, the important thing is to learn. Walk before you run.

Write Shorter Copy

Yes, people are busy, and yes, studies show people tend to skim or scan versus read every word on a web page, but in my opinion, that’s not the “main” reason you should write shorter copy. Don’t you want people to visit your website? Write little snippits that make it easy for scanners, and entices people to click through to your website. After all, you have other great content or reasons you want them to stay on your site and surf around, right? Right. If you give your readers everything in the newsletter, there’s no reason for them to really click through to your website, now is there?

*Photo Credit: simonok/Stock.xchng

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27.03.2008 Email Marketing, email campaigns 3 Comments

Is Email Marketing Dead?

Monday, October 22nd, 2007

Contrary to what you might believe from reading the title – this is not a post about how email itself is dying. It’s a post that I think all fellow email marketers and I will continue to post until we are blue in the face.

I recently receive this email from Dominion/AirMiles and was baffled that these types of emails are still being sent. Look below and see if you can spot the issues. Is it any wonder it landed in my spam filter?


Number 1: It’s mainly images. Images are not email friendly. You need to use an even ratio of image to text – otherwise you’re going to get something that no one can read. If you must use a lot of images, try some alt tags so those with images off can actually determine if there’s anything in the image worth looking at.

Number 2. From Lines: Obviously there’s somethng to be said for recipients connecting with your brand – but outside of the client or their marketing agency – would you really open an email that said Freshobsessed.com? Not to mention – websites don’t really send emails – it’s companies or people.

Number 3. Subject Lines: It’s been said time and time again, and I think I’ve even mentioned it in a past blog post – but don’t use exclamation points and other punctuation in your subject lines. Okay – question marks are debatable, but exclamation marks are definitely a no-no.

On the plus side they did ensure to include opt out instructions as well as why I was receiving the email.

They also did ask me to add the sending address to my safe list to ensure I would keep receiving these offers – but if I didn’t think to check my spam folder in the first place – I’d never have the opportunity to add them to my safe list.

I don’t mean to pick on one marketer – this is just one of many bad emails I get on a daily basis. It just amazes me that no one appears to be listening to all of us marketers who keep providing these tips and tricks. Though I suppose if they did – we’d all be out of jobs.

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22.10.2007 Email Marketing, email campaigns No Comments

Email Marketing Class anyone?

Monday, March 19th, 2007

It never ceases to amaze me how many people claim to be great email marketers – yet everyday I see emails landing in my inbox that don’t pay attention to the guidelines.

With so many seminars, blogs, books, etc out there, how does someone ignore these things?

Here’s a few reminders for those of you out there who really want to create an effective email campaign and not waste your money.

Rule 1. Images are not the be all and end all of email. Don’t make your email creative either one big image, or multiple images with no html text. With almost every email client out there offering readers the option of choosing whether or not to view images – how do you expect anyone to know if they want to read your email, if they can’t see it?

Rule 2. Use the top 4-6 inches of your email wisely. Don’t block it up with large graphics. If your reader has to scroll to understand what is in the email, chances are they will find it too much work and give up. This is especially important if you are renting an email list, as most list owners will have a header that identifies why someone is receiving the email.

Rule 3. Tell people why they are getting the email – it’s okay to remind them up front – it gives credibility to you. Again, making a reader scroll to remember why they are receiving the email is more work than most people want to do.

Rule 4. Don’t say everything in the email. The email is meant to be a teaser to entice someone to click through to your landing page and/or website. If you tell them everything in the email – why would they visit your website?

Rule 5. Keep your subject lines short and compelling. 50 characters or less with spaces. I once was told a great line about a company who sold shitake mushrooms who thought they used a great subject line with the name of their mushrooms at the end… Where do you think the line got cut off? I really love that line and wish I could remember who told it to me so I could quote them appropriately. There are many great tools out there that will help you see where your subject line might get cut off.. EmailLabs has a great one of these. Don’t forget to make sure you entice your reader to open that subect line. You can read more rants about how to do that in a previous post of mine, I won’t repeat those again.

Rule 6. TEST.. Check to see how your email looks in various web browsers. Outlook is not the only email client in the world. Every email client renders your templates differently and there are many a guideline for how to address designing for each email client. Card Communications made a point of notifying their subscribers of these issues and providing tips on how to avoid these design pitfalls in their January Newsletter. If you haven’t printed it out and given it to your designer, I suggest you take a read.

I could go on and on (and those of you who know me, know I’m not kidding) about these things as effective email campaigns are both an art and a science. However, I think you might get tired of scrolling, so I thought I might just point out the most common mistakes I see on a daily basis.

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19.03.2007 Email Marketing, email campaigns No Comments