An Email Marketing Best Practice: Ask for Email Signups in Print

With the publication of our last email marketing newsletter on list building do’s and don’t’s, it seems I’m seeing examples left, right and center! I don’t know if that’s just because I’m paying attention because it’s top of mind, or if it’s because our email newsletter article was so timely, but all these other instances are helping us at ClickMail drive the points home! Here’s to better, and more successful, list building for everyone!

And here’s a technique I hadn’t considered before…

At email marketing vendor ClickMail, we encourage businesses to “sell” their email signups on their websites. You can’t simply ask someone for an email address. You have to tell them what they will get from you in exchange for surrendering that valuable piece of personal information. Quite often, a sample newsletter or email will help you convince a potential subscriber.

But here’s a new twist on that, from Eric Groves, SVP, Global Market Development, Constant Contact, quoted in a recent MarketingSherpa article.

Groves suggests having a print out of a sample email for people to see when you are asking for their email addresses in person, say at your brick-and-mortar location or at a trade show event. That’s a great idea that’s easy to do…super easy to do, in fact.

Always remember that an email address is like a form of currency, and just like someone won’t give you money for no reason, no exchange, nor will they give you their email address without something in return. Anything you can do to make your case, to persuade them that entrusting you with their prized email address is a good thing…and printing out a sample is certainly an easy thing!

Let’s add that to our do’s of list building!

An Example of an Email Marketing Best Practice not Practiced

Don’t you just love serendipity? Or maybe I should say, don’t you just love when you say something to the world, and then you see what you’re proposing being put into action?

That just happened. We at ClickMail, an email marketing vendor, are publishing our newest email marketing newsletter chock full of email marketing best practices for list building tips, and then a great example of one of those tips happens to me in real life. Good! On the other hand, there’s plenty of room for improvement with this example too. Bad! Which drives home the point that it’s not enough to know about email marketing best practices. You must put them into practice.

Here’s the story: Thumbing through a Restoration Hardware catalog yesterday, I noticed a small insert fall out of the catalog into my lap. One usually notices something falling into one’s lap, and being a marketer, I was intrigued anyway, so I took a look at it. It was a black piece of paper with silver text that said:

“BE THE FIRST TO KNOW ABOUT:
Special Events
New Product Introductions
Special Private Sales
Exclusive Online Savings Offers
…and Much More

RESTORATION HARDWARE
RESTORATIONHARDWARE.COM”

I’m an email marketer. Right away, I’m thinking, “Hurray, this is one of the email marketing best practices we recommended in our last newsletter, and here’s someone doing it to build their email list!” But then I took a closer look and realized what started out as a great idea—and email marketing best practice—fell horribly short.

Here’s what Restoration Hardware did right:

• Soliciting email signups offline
• Giving reasons for signing up, not just asking people to do so

Here’s what they did wrong:

• They’re not really soliciting email signups. They meant to! But they fell short and left out the most important info

Do you see what’s missing from the text? What I said above about what they did right is based on assumption, because I assumed all that verbiage was intended to drive email signups. But…do you see anywhere in this text the words “sign up for our emails”? Or even the words “sign up”? Or even “go to”? I don’t.

If you flip the card over, there’s a call to action, albeit it a weak one: “Visit restorationhardware.com today to sign up.” The call to action would be much stronger as “Sign up for specials at restorationhardware.com.”

But then you have to assume the catalog peruser is going to turn the card over. And if they only look at that side, the side with the call to action, the benefits are missing, so why sign up?

At ClickMail, we want every client and email marketer to be as successful as they can be. That’s why we practically preach email deliverability best practices and email marketing best practices. That’s why we have this blog. That’s why we have a newsletter. That’s why we publish email marketing whitepapers.

But in the end, all we can do is talk about the best practices. It’s up to the marketers to implement them. And that means thinking them through, testing, being clear on the result you want. If Restoration Hardware had done all those things, their clever trick for growing their in-house email list would likely gain them many more subscribers. But done the way it was, I think most of those black pieces of paper are now bookmarks…if not tossed.

I only hung onto mine so I could blog about it…

Email Marketing Best Practices: The Do's and Don'ts of List Building

Who doesn’t want more names on their in-house email list? As an email marketer, you’d be crazy to think your list was ever big enough.

And therein lies a problem: We sometimes get too focused on the quantity of our email lists, and not the quality. Which doesn’t sound like a problem, until you realize a list based on quantity will decrease your email marketing ROI, negatively impact your email deliverability rate, and have other not-so-nice consequences.

For a list that works, you have to focus on a quality list. Don’t worry! You can still grow your list, just maybe not as quickly or carelessly.

The newest issue of the ClickMail Marketer has do’s and don’t’s for growing your in-house email list with a focus on quality. Because it’s not growing your list that’s the email marketing best practice. It’s how you go about growing your list that is.

Remember: The value of your list is more important than the size of your list.

So see what the ClickMail Marketer has to offer, with tips like:

• Have something of value to offer in exchange for an email address
• Sell your email signups
• Ask people to sign up in multiple locations
• Offer great content that people will share

That’s just a few of the do’s. Make sure you see the newsletter for what not to do, as well.  Because knowing what not to do is just as important as knowing what to do when it comes to email marketing best practices.

Read the do’s and don’t’s of email list building.

Sometimes Email Marketing Best Practices Require Ignoring the Media

If you saw the headlines this week that email is too slow for the class of 2014, did you have a little panic attack as an email marketer? Or did you take it in stride?

I’ll admit when I saw the headlines around the new Beloit College Mindset List and the assertion that these young folks find email too slow, I had a reaction. But it wasn’t panic. It was “not again.”

It seems like the media wants to see the end of email, since we keep hearing about its demise. And here again was another supposed symptom purporting to make us believe email suffers from something incurable and deadly.

Here’s the thing. These kids might think email is too slow, preferring texting and instant messaging instead. But when this class of 2014 leaves school and heads out into the working world, guess what their primary means of communication will be?

Email.

Their bosses will email them. Their coworkers will email them. Meeting notices will be sent and accepted by email. Documents will be attached, forwarded and archived by email. Work assignments will be made by email.

And they in turn will reach out to prospects, customers, vendors, partners, bosses and coworkers with…wait for it…email.

They’ll use email for personal use too, as they shop for furniture for their apartments, computers for their home offices, and pictures for their walls. Merchants will email them order confirmations, receipts and shipping notices, and these young ’uns will likely sign up for some email marketing campaigns too, in the hopes of spending less on that furniture, technology and decor.

I won’t dispute that the class of 2014 thinks email is slow, just like they think all the other things on the Beloit list, like phones have always been cordless and Russia has always been a friend. I only take issue with the media’s use of the “email is too slow” as a headline in what seems to be a pervasive attack on email.

Email is here to stay, as a communications tool and as a marketing tool. So stick to your guns, email marketers. Stick to your email marketing best practices. Even if those email marketing best practices sometimes mean you must ignore the media.

See the complete list Beloit College Mindset List at http://www.beloit.edu/mindset/2014.php.

Best Practices for Email Marketing: Capture Email Addresses on Your Website…Now

One thing about email marketing: It is not a standalone channel. Not by any means. As an email marketing vendor, we at ClickMail continue to teach best practices for email marketing. But if you get too focused on email marketing best practices, you might lose site of the bigger picture, of email’s part in your organization’s overall marketing strategy.

Email can be a complex part of your overall marketing practices and strategy. But you can think of it rather simply as the trifecta of online marketing:

◦       You use search marketing to attract prospects to your website

◦       You use your website to engage those prospects and persuade them to sign up for your emails

◦       Then you use email to deliver content and build a relationship with that prospect, nurturing them along until they become a customer…or strengthening the customer loyalty if they already are

Do everything right, and they’ll be back to your website to buy at a later date. That’s best practices for email marketing.

The flip side of that is this: Your website should be optimized to do everything possible to grow your in-house email list by capturing email addresses for you through signups.

Even if your website isn’t getting a sale right at that moment, at least it should be trying to get you an email address, as part of your email marketing best practices. Typically 70% of website visitors are first-time visitors and 80% of them won’t be back. So strive to get as many of those first-time visitors to raise their hands and say “Yes, I want to hear from you in the future” as you can by convincing them to sign up or subscribe for your emails.

Studies show $43 returned for every $1 spent on email marketing. Studies also show that customers who provide an email address are 20% more likely to buy, and they spend 24% more than those who don’t provide an email address.

What is an email address worth to you? MarketingSherpa calculates it to be $118 LTV (lifetime value). David Daniels and Jeanniey Mullen say it’s more like $180 when one factors in the email-influenced offline behavior.

Is that worth some effort on your part, some time spent optimizing your website to collect as many quality email addresses as possible? Can you make that one of your best practices for email marketing? I sure hope so!

For other email marketing best practices for growing your in-house email list, see the article Do’s and Don’t’s of List Building.

Track Email Marketing ROI With This ROI Worksheet From MarketingSherpa

As an email marketing vendor and deliverability consultant constantly encouraging our clients to learn and use best practices for email marketing, we at ClickMail consider actionable worksheets like the latest from MarketingSherpa absolute gems. Anything that takes email marketing best practices from theoretical to actionable is a great tool.

The latest great tool from MarketingSherpa is the email marketing ROI worksheet for automated emails.

This ROI worksheet was designed to help you measure the real value and return of your transactional and automated email messages. This becomes useful information for you as you see the strengths and weaknesses of the different components of your program, so you can make improvements…or do more of what’s working. And it’s useful when you need to report numbers to the higher ups.

Download this email marketing best practices worksheet today, because it’s only available to nonmembers until August 22^nd.

Striving to Be the SAME: When Sameness Is an Email Marketing Best Practice

So maybe the idea of being all the SAME won’t sit well with marketers because we spend so much of our time trying to be, well, different. We want to stand out from the competition, in the inbox, in the mail box, on the Internet. Standing out is even an email marketing best practice. So why would we want to be the same?

Because unlike direct mail and other Internet marketing, email has a problem. And that problem is metrics. Oh, not that we don’t have metrics! We do! Plenty of them! And that’s the problem! Too many metrics, too little consistency.

This is a particularly sticky issue between marketer and vendor, as Ivan Chalif so accurately described in a blog for the Email Experience Council (EEC): 

“Email marketers are almost universally judged based on program performance. For them, every click, open, delivered, bounced and sent matters. So when there are multiple email systems in play or marketers are considering a new email solution from a different vendor, there are always headaches around what the report metrics are and why they don’t match.

“The marketer gets mad because things are different and there’s no way to compare apples to apples. The vendor gets mad because some performance metric in their system is not coming out as well as some other vendor’s, so they look bad. The marketer’s boss gets mad because the numbers don’t match up between systems, so they lose confidence in ALL of the metrics.”

That’s why the EEC started the Measurement Accuracy Roundtable, to bring consistency to the metrics conundrum. Through the work of the Roundtable, the email marketing industry now has the opportunity to adapt consistent, uniform standards for the most basic of email deliverability metrics: delivered, opened and clicked through.

But this industry standardization is all voluntary. The task now is to get the industry to participate. And once everyone is on board? Everyone wins, marketer and vendor alike.

To help make this widespread adoption a reality, and another way to adhere to email marketing best practices, the EEC has put together the SAME (Support Adoption of Metrics for Email) Project. Eleven email service providers (ESPs) are already working to adopt the standardized metrics, and ClickMail proudly represents and resells two of those ESPs: BlueHornet and Silverpop.

Imagine a world where the metrics are all the same…. It’s about to become a reality.

Read more about the call for standardized metrics.

Get more detailed information and see a complete list of the participating ESPs.

We Hire Smart People Like Stefan as an Email Marketing Best Practice

Among the email marketing best practices we try to follow, as email deliverability consultants and an email marketing vendor is hiring great people.

The newest addition to our email marketing team is Stefan Eyram. Stefan joins us as the Toronto-based Director of Business Development for ClickMail Marketing.

Before joining the email marketing team at ClickMail, Stefan spent 5 years with ExactTarget, a leading email marketing company. With over 20 years in various sales and marketing roles, the last 10+ focused on data-driven email marketing, Stefan has become a recognized expert in the online marketing industry. He has worked with clients and brands such as Canadian Tire, Sears, TELUS, Nestle, Kraft, Molson, Coca Cola and others, plus dozens of agencies. While doing so, he has amassed a wealth of experience and expertise in the areas of email marketing best practices and email deliverability which he freely shares with clients and colleagues.

Stefan is married with three children and lives in Oakville, Ontario, a suburb of Toronto. He enjoys family time, coaching hockey and soccer, and participating in hockey, soccer, sailing and biking. Connect with Stefan on Twitter and LinkedIn.

Dynamite! Dynamic Design Is Your Next Email Marketing Best Practice

You’ve heard of dynamic content, but what about dynamic design? To keep up with email marketing best practices, you’d better add dynamic design to your list! We’ll tell you why in the latest issue of the ClickMail Marketer.

If your demographic is aged, your creative is tired, or you’re noticing signs of list fatigue, definitely think about a redesign. This article on dynamic design will help get you started, with tips for making sure it’s a dynamic design, one that will enable more one-to-one marketing, and will move your forward, not keep you stuck in the same old way of doing things.

Read the article on dynamic email design, and be ready to add that toolset to your email marketing best practices.

Email Deliverability Tools: What Does That Email REALLY Look Like?

Part of your email deliverability is what that email looks like when you’ve done everything else right and it does get delivered.

Every email marketer worth his or her salt has a seed list, to test deliverability, and maybe even to see how emails are rendering in different email clients. But you’d have to have an unbelievably large seed list to test rendering on all the different email clients out there, especially given that any webmail can be viewed in different browsers as well.

That’s why we recommend Pivotal Veracity’s eDesign Optimizer as a rendering and email deliverability tool.

This tool helps test your email rendering on multiple mobile devices without an email deliverability from the iPhone to the BlackBerry to Windows Mobile, you’ll get different results. And then there’s Gmail, AOL, Yahoo, Outlook 2003, Outlook 2007, Outlook Express, Hotmail…and an email sent to an AOL address might look one way if opened in Internet Explorer, and quite another way if opened in Firefox. Of course, you must consider preview panes too, and how your email looks with images on vs. images off. You need to know where your email is getting cut off, horizontally and vertically, and if there’s enough imagery and/or text to compel someone to open it. And more.

Still think you can do all that testing of your rendering with your seed list?

Don’t drop your seed lists! You still need the information you gain from them. But don’t rely solely them either.

Learn more about working with Pivotal Veracity to test your email rendering, and to add it to your email deliverability tools.