I recently decided to opt out of two emails I am subscribed to and using my phone started to hunt for the unsubscribe link in the first email. I didn’t find one, got frustrated and opened the other email to unsubscribe from that one. That email had no unsubscribe link either, at least not one I could find.

I said earlier that I started to hunt for an unsubscribe link, and a dictionary will list one definition of the word ‘hunt’ as ‘search diligently for’ but whether subscribers are viewing their emails on a mobile device or desktop PC, there should be absolutely nothing they should have to hunt down, be it information, an email address or an unsubscribe link. If you force subscribers into time-consuming searches for what they want they will almost certainly unsubscribe.

Email marketers not displaying a prominent unsubscribe link or no link whatsoever in mobile emails will achieve nothing. If subscribers can’t opt out via their mobiles they will simply do so from a desktop PC. However, that might not be the end of the matter as subscribers may also decide to report the email as spam as a way of getting their own back.

Subscribers will opt out of your email marketing campaigns for lots of different reasons many of which will have nothing to do with the quality, content or frequency of your emails, and although as an email marketer you obviously don’t want to lose subscribers, you can’t keep them on your list against their will; you must make it easy for them to opt out of your email if they wish to do so.

Mobile is still on the rise and rapidly becoming the preferred method for accessing email and the internet in general but like traditional PC users, mobile users still have little or no patience when they can’t easily do what they want  especially when it comes to unsubscribing from email marketing campaigns.

If you don’t want to see your sender reputation and email marketing campaigns damaged because of spam complaints you must ensure that your mobile emails contain an easy-to-find unsubscribe link, and having no link at all is simply asking for trouble.

Until next time.

First off, it’s worth noting that it’s rarely the case that any two campaigns are ever the same. What works for one won’t necessarily work for another which means that testing your emails is not a one-off exercise but an ongoing process that ideally should be carried out for each and every campaign.

Listed below are six areas that will benefit from testing and which should yield valuable information that will enable you to hone your email marketing campaigns into becoming more effective and consequently more profitable.

Subject Line

What you say in your subject line should persuade recipients that your email is worth opening. Try a few differently worded versions of your subject line and see which works best.

Sending Day

No hard and fast rules here except sending on a Monday is generally considered a waste of time with Tuesday only marginally better. Wednesday onwards is usually the best time to send, but again – testing will show which days are the most productive for you.

Images

Test and keep a close check on your text to image ratio. Some subscribers may have disabled their images settings so you should keep them to a minimum unless you know subscribers have you down as a safe sender. 

Calls to Action

Make your call to action strong and firm without being abrupt and making it sound as though you are barking orders. It can be done, so experiment with the wording to see what works and what doesn’t.

From Address

Using your business name may be the best option but sometimes an individual’s name works just as well especially if you are known to the recipient. As before, test which option works best.

Personalisation

This is best done by analysing your subscribers’ behaviour and preferences and tailoring your emails accordingly. Use subscribers’ first names if you have them and experiment with your wording. Remember to avoid any words that could be considered as spam. 

Testing your emails probably won’t be the most relished of tasks and may even seem pointless to some, but you only get out what you put in, so if you are serious about your email marketing and want to achieve only the very best results from your campaigns then testing is an absolute must.

Until next time.

The subject line is one of the biggest hurdles email marketers have to overcome because creativity isn’t always there when they need it. Coming up with the perfect subject line might sound fairly easy and probably is if you only send occasional marketing emails, but when it comes to whole campaigns where you could be sending one, two or maybe even three emails every couple of weeks then it can and often does become considerably more difficult.

Whatever you choose to say in your subject line should compel subscribers to open and read your email but there will inevitably be times when you will be completely stuck for inspiration and ideas and when this happens it could be worth coming at your subject line from another angle.

In an earlier post on subject lines I suggested stepping out of business mode and making use of significant events and dates to spark interest and encourage higher open rates. If you’ve managed to collect enough subscriber data to discover their different likes and interests including those that aren’t work-related, then try hooking these personal interests and preferences into your subject line.  

“How about something to do with St George’s Day; St Patrick’s Day and St David’ s Day or even Chinese New Year. You could use a subject line based around Kissing Friday which is the Friday after Ash Wednesday. There’s Coronation Day, Ascot, Fathers’ Day or even Crufts and numerous other days and events to choose from; it’s up to you.

You have to remember that your subscribers come from all walks of life and all will have their own out-of-work interests which will likely cover an extremely wide range; anything from train spotting to hill walking or skateboarding to Morris dancing: the list is potentially endless…”

The more you know about your subscribers personal preferences the better the chances of composing an effective subject line, and the more personalisation you can inject into your subject line the higher the chances of your email being opened which is only a good thing for your email marketing campaigns so don’t be afraid of using this data to your advantage.

Coming up with strong and persuasive subject lines is one thing but something else to consider is getting them safely past spam filters. There are certain words and phrases that are likely to trigger spam filters with some being more obvious than others. Having said that, a lot will also depend on how individuals have their filters set up so occasionally it can also be a case of pot luck where some are concerned. I will be covering the subject of spam filters in more detail in a future post.

Becoming proficient in coming up with good, strong subject lines rarely happens overnight; it takes time, practice and more than a little patience but well worth all the effort when it eventually does come together.

Until next time.

Very simply explained, segmentation involves using available subscriber data to ensure you send them only the most relevant and targeted content and gathering that data should start right at the very beginning of your new relationship with a subscriber which of course is the sign-up process.

A typical sign-up page will ask for a name and email address at the very least and technically that is all you need to get a subscriber onto your email list and although it’s a start, a name and email address on their own are not quite enough: you need more information before you can effectively start to tailor content for that subscriber, so back to the sign-up page.

Most if not all would–be subscribers are happy to supply a name and email address when signing up to an email because it’s quick and simple but you could still get away with asking for a bit more information with little risk of them abandoning the sign-up process as not worth the bother.

There are many sign-up pages around that initially only ask for a name, an email address, date of birth, location and gender whilst some go further by also asking for marital status, occupation and hobbies. Obviously, the more information you can obtain the better, but the trick is not to put them off signing up by asking too many questions at the outset; it’s all a bit of a balancing act.

So, assuming your sign-up page asked all the above questions and successfully added a recipient to your list, you now have the beginnings of your new subscriber’s profile before their first marketing email has even been sent. You have their name, their age; whether or not they are married, male or female, what area of the country they reside in, what they do for a living and how they spend their leisure time.

This is actually a fair amount of personal data you have managed to obtain on what is technically a one or two-minute first meeting, albeit via a sign-up page, and as your relationship with your new subscriber progresses you will be able to gather further information along the way which should enable you to deliver far more targeted and relevant content with each email marketing campaign you send.

With segmentation, the thing to remember is the more you segment, the more targeted the content which in turn increases subscriber interest and furthers the engagement process. Sign-up is your opportunity to start building your subscribers’ profiles so don’t ask for just a name and email address; ask the other questions previously mentioned as well but don’t be tempted to turn the sign-up process into a long-winded questionnaire because it will simply deter potential subscribers from going any further.

In the second part of this newbie guide to segmentation, we will look at other methods of gathering subscriber data and explain in more detail how segmentation can be implemented by using that information to deliver even more targeted content in your email marketing campaigns.

Until next time.

If you are new to email marketing, it’s likely that you won’t have quite found your feet when it comes to which days of the week are the best to send your emails. The truth is that there are numerous opinions on the best and worst days to send but it’s down to you to find your own.

What is generally agreed on is that Monday is the least favourable day to send as this extract from a previous post explains.

“For subscribers as well as everyone else, the first day of the working week is generally one of dealing with whatever issues may have arisen over the weekend, and one of their tasks will be to go through their inboxes and decide which emails to answer immediately, which ones to read later and which to delete.

Before subscribers even think about reading anything else, it will be the work-related emails which they will open and respond to first; something which may take up a good deal of their time along with other daily duties and as such, reading your marketing email won’t be high on their list of priorities”.

Some email marketers believe that Tuesdays are little better than Mondays although they do tend to produce slightly better open rates. In general, most email marketers prefer to send from Tuesday or Wednesday onwards and some even over weekends, but if you’re thinking this is a hard and fast rule then think again.

There is nothing to say that you shouldn’t send on Mondays and Tuesdays and as a newbie to email marketing you will want to try them out anyway, so if those days do happen to produce the most favourable results then by all means go with them.

Just because the most favoured and most productive days for many email marketers are Wednesdays, Thursdays and Fridays, it doesn’t mean the same days will necessarily work as well for you.

Remember as well that sending at weekends could also be worth testing out for your mobile optimised emails. According to a survey by Return Path, the share of emails accessed via mobile devices increased by 81% from October 2010 to March 2011.

“I think what really surprised us is the very rapid growth in mobile as a proportion of all platforms,” said Bryan Dreller, senior product manager at Return Path, an email certification and security company. “I don’t think we expected to see that in just a six-month period; mobile viewership relative to its peers would nearly double,”

Another interesting discovery was that open rates on mobiles actually peaked over the weekend which totally changed the thinking as to the best sending days, and with mobile still on the increase since then, it’s also possible that sending on Mondays and Tuesdays may no longer be out of the equation, but as always, test them out first.

Until next time.

A newsletter is perfect for doing this and an excellent way of increasing subscriber interest and further strengthening your business relationships. Something to bear in mind should you decide to start sending a newsletter is that it should be just that; a newsletter, not another opportunity to push sales.

I mentioned this in a previous post on newsletters.

“A newsletter should deliver what its title suggests – news! However, it’s very easy and perhaps understandable that email marketers may find that line becoming a bit blurred when composing content for a newsletter. What could start off as an interesting piece can quickly turn into a full-blown sales pitch without the writer even realising, and before you know it you’ve got just another marketing email on your hands”.

How often you choose to send a newsletter will be entirely up to you but like marketing emails, subscribers won’t thank you if you send too often. Many email marketers send out a newsletter about once a month or maybe twice a month but obviously anyone in an industry where newsworthy stories are an almost daily occurrence might understandably have a higher sending frequency. A subscriber survey might be a good way of determining how often you send and much safer than risking spam complaints.

As well as sharing industry-related news, let subscribers know what is happening with your business as well such as awards, achievements, staff retirements, new starters, contracts gained or expansion plans for example.  Offering tips, help and good advice and displaying strong subject knowledge will build your credibility and go towards establishing you as an authority within your particular industry.

There are a lot of benefits to be had from sending email newsletters as long as the content is informative and free from sales pitches intentional or otherwise, and like email marketing in general, you may need to test various areas to see what works best but anything that engages and increases subscriber interest surely has to be worth the effort.

Until next time.

Deliverability is a catch all phrase to describe all the factors involved in ensuring your email is delivered to the inbox of the intended recipient. This may seem like an alien concept. Usually you type out  an email and it is delivered without any issues at all. Occasionally you receive a non-delivered email, but that’s usually because you typed the email address incorrectly. Email Marketing makes this process more challenging, not only are you sending many more emails, you are also sending to people that may not necessarily want them. There are a variety of factors which can cause your email to land in the junk folder, or not be delivered at all. Managing these factors is managing deliverability.

Deliverability is obviously important, if 10 – 20% of your recipients never see your email you can be sure they’re not going to click on any links.

What we do to help?

Like all reputable Email Service Providers we handle the backbone of email deliverability for you. We operate and monitor the infrastructure necessary to send out large numbers of emails ensuring that protocols are followed in order to pass the checks that many spam filters will be using to judge whether an email is spam or not. We also manage the unsubscribe process and bounced email process, to ensure you don’t continue to send to email addresses where there is a problem or the recipient doesn’t want the email. We also monitor any feedback we receive, including any spam complaints we also have relationships with major ISPs to ensure we can monitor any complaints they receive about emails sent by our users. Without these processes in place your deliverability rates will significantly decline over time. We also provide free authentication (http://www.mailingmanager.co.uk/blog/what-is-authentication) to ensure you can prove who you say you are to recipient’s spam filters.

In Part 2 we’ll look in more detail at you can do to improve deliverability.

Mobile and in particular the arrival of smartphones and tablets has changed the way in which email marketers must now reach their intended audience. Mobile subscribers are just that – mobile!  No longer confined to desktop PCs and often preferring their smartphones to PCs anyway they’re in easy reach for more of the time and a potential goldmine for email marketers with the right campaigns.

However, as good as your emails may look and read on a PC doesn’t mean they will render well on mobile devices so you will have to optimise your mobile email not only to ensure deliverability but so they can easily be read once they’ve reached a recipient’s phone.

Below are a few tips that should help to start you off.

• Not all mobiles support HTML so always include a plain text version of your email.
• Some mobiles don’t display images so include alternative text to describe those images.
• Optimise your email so subscribers don’t have to scroll sideways.
• Use a preheader to summarise your message and include a link to your website.
• Include a link so subscribers can add you to their safe senders list.
• As with normal emails, always include an unsubscribe option.
• Don’t overfill your email with links.

Content is another area to consider when sending mobile emails and one that should stretch your creativity a little. Your normal marketing emails can contain any amount of content but for mobile devices, the content will have to be reduced to bite-sized pieces but still written in a way that will capture subscriber interest and hopefully elicit a positive response.

The mobile market continues to grow at an extremely fast rate as more and more users choose to upgrade to smartphones and what once was a predicted trend has more or less become a permanent addition to standard email marketing practices making the need to optimise for mobile a must and no longer a matter of choice if you don’t want to be left trailing behind your competitors.

Until next time.

It’s been said countless times before that email marketing is about building relationships with subscribers and this is very true. However, you can’t build those relationships without trust, but that trust isn’t limited to just your business dealings alone: it goes much further than that.

Subscribers want to know they can trust you to take good care of their personal data as well. When a subscriber first signs up to your email, the least amount of information you will hold will be their email address, name and in some instances, gender, but over time you could gather quite a bit more such as age, hobbies, marital status, etc, all of which it is your duty to keep safe and secure.

Ideally, the trust building process should start with your opt-in page by placing a simple but prominent statement guaranteeing that you will never sell or pass on subscribers’ email addresses or their data to third parties.

Now you may be wondering, why all the fuss: it’s just an email address so what harm can it do if you happen to pass it on? Well here are just a few reasons why it’s a bad idea.

Passing subscriber email addresses to third parties without permission will almost certainly result in an increase in spam – Result? – Angry subscribers.

The most important reason is that it’s a breach of trust, and if your subscribers can’t trust you with their data, they won’t trust you in business – Result? – Lost subscribers and customers.

Subscribers are extremely likely to opt out of your emails if they believe their data isn’t properly secure or suspect you’ve sold or passed it on – Result? -Again, lost subscribers and customers.

Email addresses represent the value of your subscriber list because every one of them has been given to you voluntarily during the sign-up process (assuming you obtained them this way), and although subscribers are often fickle, demanding, have high expectations and are not always easy to please, they are the lifeblood of all email marketers’ email campaigns and as such must be properly looked after and that includes their email addresses and any other data you hold.

The subject of protecting subscriber data is perhaps not the most riveting topic regarding email marketing practices but is nevertheless a vital part of the whole process and its importance shouldn’t be underestimated.

Until next time.