The Whitelist

Register Today for Marketing Sherpa's Email Marketing Summit 2012

If you’re starting to plan your schedule for 2012, make sure to block out February 7-10 for Marketing Sherpa’s Email Marketing Summit 2012 in Las Vegas! This is the world’s largest vendor-neutral, research-based email marketing event so you definitely don’t want to miss it. And save $700 on the registration fee, as a ClickMail Marketing blog reader (details below)!

Marketing Sherpa writes: “This year’s Summit is shaping up to be the best yet as we have a full slate of sessions aimed at overcoming your top email challenges with actionable training, grounded in rigorous research and science.”

In this four-day summit you can plan on expanding your email knowledge and expertise dramatically, learning new ways to analyze your current email strategy and leaving with a workbook full of “next steps” for lasting email success in this rapidly changing world. Whether you identify yourself as an “email marketing newbie” or “advanced email marketing guru” you’ll find sessions designed to help you get ahead – and stay ahead – of your competition.

Learn from best-in-class professionals on the evolving and expanding role of email marketing including creativity, personalization, segmentation, social media integration, testing and pristine list management. Here are just a few of the many reasons you should attend:

1. Interactive, How-To Training Sessions on email and social media integration, mobile, list growth tactics, relevancy, mobile, deliverability and measurement.
2. Multiple Case Studies, war stories and lessons learned, presented by your email peers and mentors (past speakers include marketers from Oracle, Siemens, Cisco Systems,among many others).
3. Latest 2012 MarketingSherpa Email Research and benchmark Data on spending, tactics, conversion rates, budgets and more.
4. Interactive Panel Discussions with subject matter experts on optimizing your email program, increasing ROI, create relevant contagious content and more.
5. Extended Face-to-Face Networking opportunities with seasoned professionals, trainers and peers over meals, breaks and receptions.
6. Proven Email Strategies, campaigns and tactics you can immediately apply to get more done with fewer people, less time and more limited budgets.
7. Interaction with Colleagues sharing successful campaigns and tactics to inspire and hone your marketing skills.
8. Become an Email Certified Professional by taking a pre-Summit workshop taught by email experts who provide a proven methodology with step-by-step tactics on how to maximize your email results.

This year’s Summit also features case studies, training and panels from companies who have found success through new strategies and refining existing programs.

If you’re ready to make 2012 THE year for your best email marketing ROI ever, you have to attend the Email Summit 2012. And ClickMail Marketing makes it even easier for you to attend: to save $700 on the registration simply enter this priority code: 185-ST-1003 at check out. We’ll see you there!

5 Holiday Best Practices for Increased Email Deliverability

‘Tis the season… for email marketing campaigns to ramp up! Which means increased promotions, increased email volume, and, unfortunately, increased subscriber fatigue. How do you ensure that your emails stay on your email subscribers’ “Nice” list, keeping your email deliverability rates high, and don’t migrate onto the “Naughty” list – resulting in unsubscribes or worse? Here are five simple but powerful holiday-themed email marketing best practices to keep in mind:

1) Fulfill email frequency wishes: This is the most important thing you can do as an email marketer to honor and respect your subscribers’ wishes. And yet it’s one of the most flagrantly abused by many email marketers, especially around the holiday season. If your subscriber requested once/weekly emails from your business, store, or organization, just because ’tis the shopping season, does not also equate to ’tis the time to flood email inboxes. At this time of year, email subscribers are already inundated with more than the normal volume of catalogs, circulars, newsletters, and donation requests in both direct mail and email. The last thing you want to do is annoy your email subscribers with too many emails, especially if they specifically requested the frequency with which they want to hear from you. Honor their wishes and your email deliverability will benefit.

2) Surprise your subscribers: Holiday shoppers are looking for great deals and special savings at this time of year: it’s your opportunity to think of fun and creative ways to offer it to them. Another boring 10% off promotion won’t cut it… this yawn of a sales email results in a “delete” without a second thought! But today I just had an interesting offer hit my inbox that taps into the joy of unwrapping presents because everyone likes a surprise: “unwrap your secret offer to save over 50%!” The code is valid only upon checkout, but I’m already guaranteed a 50% savings, making the offer highly attractive. The added surprise of an additional discount of who knows how much more off just makes it irresistible.

3) Spread holiday cheer: Take this special time of year to be fun, whimsical, and make your subscribers smile. A crowded email inbox means there’s less patience on your subscribers’ part for clicking through and reading. Are your subject lines informative while also inspiring positive feelings or a nostalgic memory? Think of ways to make your email marketing campaign stand out from the rest, and you’ll increase your email deliverability and, ultimately, your email ROI this holiday season.

4) Make a list and check it twice: Email deliverability relies upon sender reputation. Check yours now and take note of where you can improve. Can you improve your email content relevance? Have you segmented your list for increased specificity?  Are you developing targeted email campaigns for different subscriber populations?

5) Inspire with merry and bright designs: Make sure your designs are eye-catching, clean, and fun. Do your emails render well on mobile and tablet, as well as desktop clients? Are they holiday-themed but are any pictures or image files streamlined for quick loading? Keep it simple and be sure to test your designs for effective rendering. What do your emails look like in the preview pane? Always keep in mind your subscribers’ behavior path and design to lead them all the way through to conversion: Preview, Open, Scan/Read, Engage, Convert.

Keeping these five holiday-themed email marketing best practices in mind this season will ensure you’ll sail through the holidays with high email deliverability rates and increased conversions!

Time to Give Thanks via Well-Timed Thank You Emails

What better time to think about all of the things we’re thankful for than Thanksgiving? And as an email marketer, now is the time to give thanks – and consider the ways you express your gratitude – for your subscribers and the actions they take. Remember, with the increasing interactivity between social media and email, never has connecting with the consumer been more important. And adding thank you emails to your email marketing best practices is a surefire way to showcase the human side of your brand.

Just as in real life, there are some easy-to-follow rules for the well-timed thank you note in email marketing. First, make sure you always thank promptly, such as a triggered thank you response following a transaction. Second, express thanks when it’s expected. Thanksgiving is a perfect time to send a thank-you email to your list, as are brand and customer anniversary dates. Third, unexpected thank yous sprinkled throughout your email marketing mix can be a welcome surprise.  Last, personalize your thank you messages. The generic thank you message is as deletable and unremarkable as any poorly crafted, irrelevant email.

When considering how thankful you are for your subscribers (and you should be!), think about utilizing the three following thank-you email types into your email marketing best practices:

1. The Seasonal Thanks

Thanksgiving is typically a time for an email marketing blitz of special offers, holiday deals, and invocations to buy, buy, buy. Which is great: there’s a reason Black Friday and Cyber Monday got their nicknames. People are primed and ready to spend during the holiday season; however, it’s also a really good time to thank your subscribers, without asking anything in return. Alternatively, you could offer a special incentive or discount to express your gratitude for their loyalty. Sending out a special acknowledgment of gratitude will humanize your brand, and set you apart from the rest of the email marketing crowd. Also consider other special times of the year during which thanks are appropriate: how about your anniversary, the anniversary of their relationship with you, their first purchase anniversary, or other holidays honoring special people (like Mother’s Day, Father’s Day, Veterans Day) and our country (Fourth of July, Martin Luther King Day)?

2. The Immediate Thanks

An immediately triggered thank-you message should be sent upon whatever action your subscriber took, whether it be to answer a survey or purchase a product. Look at this as another email marketing opportunity to reinforce your brand image and message: make it consistent in tone, design, and style with the marketing message that prompted the purchase or action.

Also, consider matching the magnitude of your thanks to the action. For example, if the action is simply to enter an online sweepstakes, a thank you page might be enough. But if someone purchased a high dollar value amount from your company, perhaps their loyalty and high spend could be acknowledged with a significant savings coupon off of their next purchase.

3. The Surprise Thanks

Think about how nice it feels to get an unexpected thank you card from someone. Then think about how often it happens. Not very. Which makes these unexpected thank yous such a delight. Consider integrating a timed thank you email campaign into your email marketing program to reward repeat business and customer loyalty. You could time it to the seasons, creating seasonally appropriate specials offered during each season. Or, to keep the element of surprise even higher, send out thank you emails randomly, or in response to behaviors or actions that may not necessarily warrant a thank you.

When you integrate thank you email messages into your email marketing programs, you won’t be yet another faceless corporation or organization. Instead, you’ll be appreciated for being human!

Reaching Your Subscriber Through Social Media Integration

It’s here to stay, and it’s growing by the day. You know what’s coming, don’t you? Of course you do: It’s social media! But even as social media continues to grow in popularity and effectiveness, email marketing can play along! In fact, as the social sphere expands, so too should your email marketing best practices. There are many ways to expand your email marketing best practices to incorporate social media within your email marketing campaigns, and we’ve written about five of them.

But today, I was revisiting a MarketingSherpa article on ways to leverage the influence of social reinforcement within email marketing, as I am still not seeing it used very much in the email marketing messages that populate my inbox. I have to wonder why, since there are so many interesting and even exciting ways to integrate social into email marketing.

But by enhancing your email marketing messages using interactive technology, your email campaigns can become a new addition to the social media landscape, not to mention a stand out from the rest of the email marketing messages out there.

The MarketingSherpa article discusses several new and innovative tactics for leveraging social media within email. Three of these that especially resonate with us, when considering how to best integrate social media into an effective email marketing campaign, are the following:

1) Choose an appropriate goal: While social reinforcement doesn’t make sense for every campaign or product, it can be quite powerful for the right goal, for example: you want to complement and grow your social media efforts.

2) Become a participant in the conversation: As an email marketer, you’re undoubtedly used to controlling the conversation. But when you’ve decided to include social reinforcement to your email marketing mix, you’ve also chosen to become more transparent. And, as MarketingSherpa says, “with transparency comes risk.” It’s time to shift the focus from control to participation. As a participant, you want to understand what’s being said about your brand or product.  And that can only lead to better email marketing campaigns, and ultimately, better email ROI. Because you’re essentially gathering data when you increase transparency and encourage conversation from your subscribers.

3) Choose the method of social reinforcement: Interactivity lets you dynamically update emails with responses from your audience, or those who influence them. Whether you integrate Facebook contacts, incorporate live feeds from Twitter or blogs, or dynamically update emails with responses, you’re increasing the interactivity and dynamic nature of your email marketing messages significantly. Integrating Facebook contacts is a truly innovative way to leverage the power of social influence into your email marketing campaigns. As MarketingSherpa puts it, “You can include code that allows recipients to see which of their Facebook friends have purchased the deal. Each time recipients open the email, they can view the latest updates.” And we are all learning the power of social influence: the more our friends “like” something and share about it, the more inclined we are to also “like” or purchase the same thing.

For more on how to integrate social into your email marketing campaign, or otherwise design dynamic messages, call on ClickMail!

Does Your Email Marketing Campaign Have the Right BITS?

When it comes to a successful email marketing campaign, it will pay off in the long run if you adhere to the right BITS in your email marketing best practices. And yes, you’ve probably guessed it: BITS is an acronym to help you remember four key factors that will ensure the success of your email marketing strategy:

Brevity
Interactivity
Trackability
Subscriber Preferences

Brevity: If email marketing isn’t a format that is made for “short and sweet” I’m not sure what is. In fact, in the world of email marketing, a better expression might be, “short IS sweet.” People want to get through their email quickly and are increasingly using preview panes and subject-line scans  to decide whether or not to read further, open the email, or simply delete without another thought. So as an email marketer, this means meeting an additional challenge in order to get your emails opened to achieve maximum ROI from your email marketing campaign. It’s essential that your email messages get straight to the point AND create intrigue and interest, which will lead to higher email open and click-through rates! Short and snappy subject lines are the first way to make your emails stand out and ensure ease of preview pane readability. Well-written and relevant subject lines also illustrate the main point of your email message. See our post on how to create compelling subject lines for more.

Interactivity: The number one goal of your email marketing campaign is engagement. Because engagement leads to increased subscriber interest, loyalty, and ultimately, for you, increased ROI. And nothing engages the recipient like the opportunity to do something. Give them clickable links that lead to your website or product offering. Tease your subscribers with a little info to start (which satisfies BITS rule #1 – BREVITY), and then provide a link to the full story for increased click-through rates. Provide one-question polls or surveys that they can answer and participate in. Engage your subscribers and lead them into taking an action. If there’s interaction at the inbox level, you’re off to a great start. Inbox interaction tells the ISP your email was welcomed by the recipient, and you’ll continue to be allowed into that inbox. And there’s a ripple effect: If enough people don’t engage, that can reflect universally on the entire domain, and can lead to decreased email deliverability.

Trackability: One of the increasingly important features of email marketing is the ability to track and mine the data that you receive from your subscribers. Who are your subscribers? Where do they live? What are their buying habits? What devices do they use to read their email? What browsers are most popular? When do they open and click through your emails? Gathering, and most importantly, using this data in segmenting your lists and specifically targeting email marketing campaigns to different groups of users will increase the overall relevance and interest in your messages.

Subscriber Preferences: Here at ClickMail Marketing, we talk often about the importance of using preference centers to allow the subscriber to set the guidelines of your communication with them via email. When you allow subscribers to self select, segmenting themselves and giving them control over how often they hear from you and with what content, they are more receptive to your emails because your emails are more relevant. Relevance, and therefore engagement, has always been important for email marketing effectiveness. And overall, this will affect your email deliverability too.

Keep it simple – all you have to do is remember the four BITS of a successful email marketing campaign going forward for increased relevance, increased email deliverability, and ultimately, increased ROI.

Advanced Email Marketing Techniques: Upping Your Email Ante

You’re ready. It’s time. You’ve mastered the key points of email marketing basics, and now it’s time to to hone your email marketing skills even further. Integrating some or all of the following techniques into your email marketing best practices toolbox will set your email marketing campaign apart from the majority of email marketing messages out there, and that means more interest, increased subscriber numbers, higher level of open rates and engagement, which all translates into increased ROI for your bottom line.

It might seem intimidating to adopt some of the more advanced email marketing techniques available, but it doesn’t have to be. In the latest issue of the ClickMail Marketer we take you step-by-step through some of the most common and most effective advanced email marketing techniques, including automated emails, integration, and trigger-based messaging.

Here’s a quick and dirty summary on how to ante-up your email marketing strategy:

Automate your emails with a CRM and/or API: Automating will save you time and money while increasing your ability to be relevant and targeted.

Create quality content: Make sure your content is varied, interesting, and useful. Don’t make all of your messages sales pitches, coupons, or “exclusive offers.” Change up your message types for increased interest!

Tailor messages: Create relevant and interesting content that includes specific messages based on purchases, transaction confirmations, browsing behavior, and other things like demographics and birthday information. Automating messages is one way to actually increase the specificity of your email messages, and trigger-based messaging is another.

Track and mine your data: Track the preferences of your prospects and customers when they subscribe to your newsletters, fill out forms, open emails, click through links, visit your site and buy products. Use this data to further refine your email marketing campaign strategies.

If you’d like more details on these and other super-effective and easy-to-use (once they’re implemented) advanced email marketing techniques, check out the November issue of the ClickMail Marketer. And if you’d like CRM or API-integration assistance, or would like further information on any of these implementations, give ClickMail a call. Taking some time now to learn about and implement some advanced email marketing techniques will benefit your bottom line later. Find out how to get started in the November ClickMail Marketer.

Keep Your Content Current

As an email marketer, you know how important relevance is to your email marketing campaign strategy. But relevance doesn’t always equal current. Content relevance can refer to anything from information of specific interest to your subscribers, to regional specificity to, of course, specific and relevant information about the product, services, or information you are providing. Current content takes your relevant content to the next level.

How?

Because current content is the difference between connecting with your subscribers’ interests in the NOW. Whether it’s the upcoming elections, or the unseasonably early cold blast freezing the whole country or even the extra hour we’ve all gained by “Falling Back” to standard time (and early darkness) this past weekend, whatever is “current” is whatever your subscribers are probably talking about or otherwise impacted by.

By focusing on whatever your subscribers are focused on right now shows that you’re connecting with them, on a very immediate level. The solution you’re offering in your email marketing campaign is right for their needs, because you understand – you’re right there with them, experiencing whatever these times hold.

A recent post on AWeber’s blog displays specific examples from actual email marketing campaigns that integrated current events successfully into their content strategies.

Some of the effective examples highlighted include:

• Using events in the news as a launching pad for a related promotion or opportunity to provide relevant and connected information.
• Hosting an event that is similar in theme to a nationally-occurring event: e.g., “Vote on your favorite product!” mini-election to coincide with Election Day.
• Weather-related promotions. There’s a reason we all fall back on talking about the weather when conversation stalls: we all experience it. We’re all affected by it. And it’s always changing. Taking a cue from water-cooler small talk, some very successful email marketing campaigns have been launched entirely around major weather events that have affected significant population centers in the U.S. And if you’ve successfully segmented your list by region or location, even better: you could set specific weather-related email marketing campaigns to target only those in affected areas.
• Holidays. Well, of course. This is the one “current event” that every email marketer falls back on. But when considering how to construct your next Holiday-themed email marketing campaign, think about what makes THIS year’s holidays special or different.

Not only can you be current with your email marketing strategy, being current by definition requires being creative. And creative content is always a good thing. Make sure to add this “Keep It Current” strategy to your email marketing best practices toolbox and let us know your results!

When "Exclusive" Really Matters

How often do you see the word “exclusive” pop up in email marketing? Unfortunately, enough to render the word pretty meaningless. If an “exclusive” offer comes around every month, or worse, every week, your email subscribers will be trained not to pay for anything more than whatever your next offer is. And if they missed your latest “exclusive,” oh well, another one is bound to roll around soon enough. We tackled the tricky subject of the ubiquitous “exclusive” email marketing message here a few months ago.  But the overuse of the term doesn’t mean that it doesn’t hold value; on the contrary, if your email marketing best practices include offering truly unique opportunities, and specials that only email subscribers have access to, make sure to emphasize it.

And the best place to do this? The welcome email. A welcome email is easy and powerful, it starts building your relationship with your subscriber and gives you a chance to up-sell or cross-sell. Do you include a welcome email as part of your email marketing best practices toolbox? If not, you should! And what better way than to start with making your subscribers feel as though they are gaining access to something really special? Think exclusive, invitation only, insiders club: make them not only want to see your email. Make them look forward to it.

Consider the following examples:

“Now that you’ve joined, you will have exclusive access to members-only free downloads, invitations to events, and previews.” Free and members-only? A perfect way to reward your subscribers for joining. And receiving invitations to members-only events? This creates a feeling of belonging to an exclusive club, that generates excitement around your entire email marketing campaign.

“As our newest member, you are on our guest list for our next exclusive night-out event. Guests in selected cities will be invited to special events featuring live music, signature cocktails… and more.” Sounds sexy, doesn’t it? And not all cities are represented (are they)? As a subscriber, realizing that your city is one of the selected automatically raises the excitement level of wanting to be a part of whatever these special events are.

Email marketing campaigns containing the word “exclusive” are ubiquitious. Don’t kill the meaning of the word by using it too frequently. Make your subscribers sit up and pay attention when they see such special, once-in-a-blue-moon opportunities come from you. Trust us, by parsing out your “exclusive offers” and “selected invitations,” you’ll gain more subscribers, and keep the ones you have on the edge of their seats. This is an email marketing best practice that you can always keep in mind and follow…once in a while.

Recently, I came across a blog headline: “5 ways to guarantee you’ll NEVER be successful” and, as a typically ambitious American, I have to admit I clicked on it faster than I mass delete the emails in my SPAM folder. The catchy fear-inducing word “never” captured my curiosity, as in: “One: am I doing any of these things? and two: I want to learn what these things are so I’ll never do them!”

But then I ran across a very similar article on email marketing written by Danny Iny on the AWeber blog entitled: “Can ‘Bad News’ Lift Response Rates?”. Because I clicked on a blog that I’ve never bothered to read before due to a “bad news” title in the very same day, my interest was once again piqued. Given my recent experience, my thinking was, “Why yes, a “bad news” subject line WOULD increase email marketing response rates, and therefore, ROI.”

Typically, “bad news” email subject lines increase response rates initially because they:

• Prompt a question, rather than giving an answer
• Highlight a problem, rather than outlining a solution
• Evoke curiosity

These are three “musts” for a killer subject line that guarantee a high email open rate. While these kind of bad news subject lines do traditionally increase open rates initially, due to a feeling of panic and anxiety: “People read the email because they want to make sure they aren’t going to be negatively affected,” Iny writes, the overall results fall downhill from there. A negative-themed subject line can backfire over the long term because:

Your subscriber might not care about your bad news. If someone you actually know emails you with bad news, your stomach may drop a little bit and you feel your anxiety levels rising with concern. But “bad news” from an email marketer may result in disinterest, suspicion, or worse:

Your subscriber may lose trust in you. Many “bad news” subject lines open to messages that don’t actually contain bad news, and much like the fable of crying wolf, your subscribers might feel manipulated, or worse, deceived. “If your audience ends up feeling like you were employing cheap tactics to get them to buy from you,” says Iny, “then it will likely backfire.”

And a lack of trust means increased unsubscribes, possible spam reporting, and a drop in email deliverability. So if you’re considering implementing a “bad news” subject line email marketing strategy to increase response rates, think carefully and use them sparingly: if an initial boost in open rates ends up costing you subscribers in the end, you’re facing an email subject line strategy that will cost you big time.

Avoid Making These Scary Email Marketing Mistakes

On the spooktacular Halloween day, we thought we’d revisit some of the scariest email marketing mistakes we’ve seen over the years, in the hopes that you won’t let these haunt YOUR email marketing messages…!

In one of our early posts for the Email Experience Council (EEC) we talked about 9 common real-world email marketing mistakes that you can avoid, and I’m sorry to say, two years later, I’m still seeing some of these  email marketing mishaps haunt my inbox.

Some of the freakiest?

1) Corpse-Like Copy: otherwise known as boring, dull, repetitive, irrelevant or otherwise nonsensical copy. I don’t need to see dead content molding up my email inbox, and neither does anyone else. If you adopt: “content is king” as your mantra, and continue to craft interesting, engaging, and highly relevant copy, your subscribers will perk right up and listen. And what interested subscribers equals for you are higher open rates, more click throughs, and more conversions!

2) Zombie-fied Coding: Make sure you’re setting your pixel width to be accommodated not just by computer screens, but also smartphones and tablets. Also be careful with HTML-only emails, since not all email clients render these effectively. Always offer a text-only version of your email, and include a link to a web-version of the email that can be easily viewed online.

3) Blood-Sucking Subject Lines: Otherwise known as ineffective teasers, these can suck the life right out of your email; meaning, they’ll never be seen if the subject lines cause the email to be flagged as spam. Some of the most common spam-flags are subject lines that are too long, screaming (all caps), contain too many spaces, exclamation points, or repeated characters.

4) Ghostly Images: Many ESPs and email clients suppress images, not to mention the rendering difficulty encountered with mobile email clients. Also consider using some simple techniques to compensate for image blocking, like including descriptive alt tags beneath the images, using non-image copy for display type, and to be on the safe side, utilize a View Online feature so they have another way to see images if they are suppressed.

Granted, none of these email marketing mistakes are as frightening, as say, seeing a zombie making a beeline for your front door, but in the real world, the former are much more common, and very preventable. When you consider how much of an effect they can have on your email deliverability and how easily they can be avoided through use of your email marketing best practices, you might reconsider just how scary they are.