The Whitelist

Recovering from "Oops" Moments in Emails

If you’ve been reading this email marketing blog for any length of time, you’ve probably noticed that we like to talk about the importance of testing. Only through testing do you learn what works for your email marketing campaigns, and what doesn’t. Testing is how you continually improve your email marketing. And there’s another benefit to testing: you can avoid mistakes that require apology emails later.

By testing emails, you can catch typos, prevent broken links, ensure that data feeds through correctly and segmentation works. If your email marketing best practices include testing every email before it gets sent to your list, you would see a significant decrease or even an elimination of almost 100% of the problems that typically plague email marketers.

That said, if you actually did have a Rick Perry-style “oops” moment and need to apologize to your subscribers, there are some email marketing best practices for apology emails that you should make sure to follow.

1) Make sure the mistake is worth apologizing for. After all, an apology email is yet one more email to hit your subscriber’s inbox – make sure, like all of the content you send, it’s valuable and relevant. If the mistake is minor, unlikely to cause revenue loss or significant brand damage by annoying, angering or offending subscribers, then don’t
send an apology. Everyone makes the occasional mistake or typo, just ensure it’s not a regular occurrence or else your professionalism, email marketing reputation, and ultimately, email deliverability will suffer. If, however, your email misstated an offer, contained broken links or worse, e.g., major rendering problems or list segmentation deployment error (recipients received the wrong email), then an apology email is in order.

2) Send the apology email as soon as you can. Just like in real life, apologies work better the sooner they’re said (or sent). The point of any apology is to fix the mistake and get back in the person’s good graces and better to make your subscribers aware of the fact that you made a mistake before they catch it, or soon thereafter.

3) Make it clear in the subject line that you’re apologizing. The ironic twist about apology emails is that some email marketers say that they are some of their best performing emails. After all, everyone is human, and sometimes making your subscribers aware of the fact that you, indeed, are a human, can endear your email marketing campaign to them even more. For that reason, if you’ve made a big error and are apologizing for it, make it clear in the subject line. Even if someone didn’t notice the error or wasn’t affected, they’re likely to open the email just to see what you’re sorry about.

4) Give them a reason to forgive you. If you want to increase the effectiveness of your apology, give your subscribers a compelling reason to forgive you. Typically, apologies are accompanied by flowers. In the email marketing world, consider an additional incentive or reward offer your “apology bouquet”.

5) Don’t make excuses. Just fix the problem. People don’t care about the technicalities behind why the error occurred, so much as how they might benefit going forward (i.e., what you’ve done or planning to do to fix it!). Keep any explanation of what went wrong to a minimum. And before you send that apology email, make sure the problem is actually fixed. And here we are again, back where we started: at the benefits of email testing. If there was ever a time to test and retest, it’s now. If you have to apologize repeatedly for problems, you’ll start to appear disingenuous, unprofessional, or worse. And there goes your email marketing reputation, you’ll lose subscribers, and your email deliverability will suffer.

6) Don’t make a mistake in the apology email. Well, “duh!” If there was ever an email marketing best practice to follow with respect to apology emails, it’s this one. If you want to reassure your subscribers that you really are professional, on top of your email marketing campaign, and value their time and loyalty, make sure that the apology email or any resend is flawless. Which means, of course, that you need to test your emails. Again. And again.

You can always improve your email marketing program and email marketing ROI. Always. Testing is necessary not only to avoid the mistakes that lead to the need for an apology. Testing is an email marketing best practice that not only helps you avoid errors, but is actually an email marketing best practice that improves the overall effectiveness of your email marketing program!

Need help deciding what, how, and how often to test? Ask ClickMail today!

Checklists and Cheat Sheets Help With Email Marketing Best Practices

Your email marketing experts at ClickMail have been busy pulling together some useful guides for you! Just posted on our website, you’ll find a some checklists for those new to email marketing and email marketing best practices, and for those of you that are more advanced, a cheat sheet to help you optimize your email marketing.

Your Email Marketing Beginner’s Guide gives you:

• Best Practices for Building an “Email Friendly” Template
• A Last Minute Email Marketing Checklist to Use Before You Send
• An Email Marketing Terms Glossary

For those more advanced and knowledgeable about email marketing best practices, the recently updated ClickMail Email Optimization Cheat Sheet is a quick and useful guide for marketers and designers alike.

For email marketing best practices beginner to advanced, count on ClickMail.

In a World of Shiny New Marketing Methods, Email Still Ties It All Together

It’s funny. It seems like for every hot new topic that hits the marketing world, there’s a crucial place for email, most recently with social media and content marketing.

You can be talking about blogging and I can be telling you how email integrates with and supports it. You can be talking Facebook and I’ll tell you the same thing. Content marketing? That too.

What makes email a critical part of all these new marketing methods? The content. Email has always been about content. OK, except for the emails set up as all images that render as simply a little red X on a big white space. Let’s disregard those for now.

No, I’m talking about real content, content of value, useful content. This is the stuff of email newsletters in particular.

If you aren’t yet integrating your blogging, social media, content marketing and email programs, you’re possibly not making the most of what you are doing. Post your emails to blogs. Make your emails share-worthy. Use email to feed your content marketing and then use email to promote it.

Here’s an example of how all of these pieces can play nice. The commonality that ties it all together? Email.

Let’s say you sell building kits for various things like sheds and corrals. Write a guide on building a round pen for horse training. You sell such a kit, of course, but your guide won’t promote the kit. It will give the instructions and the factors to consider like choosing a site, and only towards the end promote your kit. You post this guide on your website and push out an email to your list telling them about the guide and encouraging them to click through and check it out. Subscribers click through, like what they see, and share it with their social networking sites because they find it useful. Even those on mobile devices! Others see the guide shared and go check it out at your website. If they like it and you, they might “like” you on Facebook. Now you’ve extended your reach to a new audience, people who are already warm to you because they were in effect referred to you by their social network. At the same time, you’ve blogged on the guide and linked to it. People using search engines for tips on building a round pen find either the guide or the blog or both. Now you’re extending your reach even farther to people who haven’t heard of you at all. Those people like the guide and decide to sign up for your emails…so the next time you publish a guide, they receive an email from you telling about them about the guide…and the cycle starts all over, every time extending your reach a bit more each time.

Then it gets even better: You email your list asking them for stories about building round pens and you publish those stories in your blog. Subscribers share the blog posts…and again, your reach is extended.

I just made this example up, but these kinds of streamlined marketing efforts go on every day when savvy companies tie it all together and use email as the common thread that makes it all work.

Yes, we’re caught up in the newness of social media and content marketing right now, but there’s one thing that won’t change: We have always and will always need email.

Tips for Moving to a New ESP

Whether you’re searching for a new ESP or you’ve already found one, you’re going to be making the Big Move at some point: the move from one ESP to another. I have two words to help you with what can be a challenging transition: patience and preparation.

If you’re patient and you’re prepared, the move to a new ESP will go faster and smoother than if you’re in a hurry and not really ready.

Be patient.
Transitioning to a new ESP takes time. It can take a lot of time. This move often involves setting up new domains, ramping up IP addresses, moving your in-house email lists and more. Give yourself enough time to do these things internally. On average it can take about 10 days to start sending and at least a month or two before your processes are completely set up. The more complex your integrations and campaigns, the longer it will take. Be realistic in your expectations for data movement. Some marketers expect to be sending the day after they transition to a new ESP, and while that may be possible, it’s often not easy. Give yourself enough time in the planning stages, and in the transition phase too. Also be patient with the ESP. They want you set up right from the very start. As someone once said to me about a marketing project, it’s better to do it right than right now!

Be prepared.
The more prepared you are with your strategy, the faster and cleaner the process will be when you move to a new ESP. If you aren’t sure about some processes that you have in place with your existing ESP, speak to your new ESP (or talk to ClickMail) about the best ways to implement your existing strategies. This might be a good time to evaluate and improve your processes and email marketing best practices too. If you do, definitely seek the input of your new ESP or ClickMail. You can also tackle training early on and get up and running that much faster with your new ESP. Watch demos or video tutorials on how to set things up and use the new platform, or hire a consultant like ClickMail to guide you through the process.

Moving to a new ESP that will improve email deliverability and email marketing effectiveness is a smart business decision. Yet it comes with some short-term pain. Take these tips to heart and you’ll quickly convert that short-term pain into long-term gain!

Trends in SMS Mobile Marketing

As email marketers, we might find the sexiness of HTML email too alluring to pay much mind to SMS as a form of mobile marketing. However, now that 90% of the U.S. population owns a cell phone, you should take the time to see if mobile marketing via SMS should be part of your overall plan.

Among the trends we’re seeing in SMS mobile marketing is location-based marketing. If, for example, you know your customer just showed up at the mall and you can send her a coupon code for your retail store located at that mall right when she’s parking her car, imagine the likelihood that she’ll make a trip to your store while at the mall!

You can also use SMS to drive people to email. Bar codes and QR codes cannot be sent via text message. They can however, be sent via email if, for example, you were to text subscribers with your email address to receive updates and coupons from you.

SMS messaging requires having the phone numbers to market to, and a platform that enables SMS messaging. So it’s not as if you can jump straight into it as an email marketer. First you’ll need the numbers, then you’ll need the platform. However, you might already be positioned for SMS marketing depending on your ESP: It could be the ESP you’re already using can provide the tools you need for SMS marketing. For example, ExactTarget has SMS marketing capabilities built in to their platform, enabling you to market with contests, polls, coupons and surveys, as well as measure and track results.

As text messages, SMS marketing can reach your audience with a directness and immediacy mobile email can’t quite match. Plus not everyone carries a smartphone. Plenty of folks are still relying on the good old fashioned cell phone, and mobile marketing to them requires SMS. Consider making it part of your mobile marketing mix.

Email Marketing Best Practices: Know Your Social Goals Before You Start

The world seems to be all about social media now: Facebook, Twitter, YouTube, Digg, LinkedIn, Flickr…so many social networks! So many places you’d love to connect with via your email marketing program!

Go social with email, yes! And have more success when you’re clear on your goals before starting.

What is the purpose of social media marketing? For your business it’s most likely two-fold. On the one hand, you’re deepening customer engagement with your social media presence, particularly if you’re a B2C email marketer with a Facebook page.

On the other hand, social media marketing can lead to discovery too. Just as search engine optimization gets you “discovered” when someone is searching for an answer to a problem online, social sharing can get you “discovered” when people tell their network about your company or product.

Obviously people won’t share just anything you send out. Email marketing best practices help you to offer content worth sharing.

Before that, however, comes setting up your social program in the first place. When integrating social into your email marketing program, be clear on your purpose and goals. You’ll be more successful if you are, and you’ll make a smarter ESP choice as well.

In our experience as a vendor-neutral email marketing vendor reselling ESPs, we’ve noticed email service providers take differing approaches to social media marketing and the sharing tools they offer as part of their ESP platform. Social sharing might mean one thing to the first ESP you talk to and something else altogether when you talk to the next ESP. The only way to know if their definition matches yours is to get yours figured out first.

If your social marketing initiative is simply a “Like” button integrated into your email design, your needs are less than a business that has identified say 10 social networks they want people to be able to post to. (That said, don’t offer 10 different social sharing options if your audience doesn’t use them.)

Also be sure to have a plan for tracking social sharing and measuring its effectiveness. That’s definitely a question to cover with your potential ESPs!

For other factors to consider when shopping for a new ESP, download the 2011 guide to choosing a new ESP today.

Keeping You Up to Speed With Email Marketing Best Practices

At a recent marketing conference, I was struck by two things: 1) the predominance of “content” as a topic, and 2) my assumptions about people’s level of knowledge.

Sometimes as an email marketing vendor we can be so immersed in the daily business of email–constantly keeping up with email marketing best practices and industry changes–that we forget not everyone knows what we know.

Whether it’s creating this email marketing blog, writing our email marketing newsletter, researching possible email marketing whitepapers, or updating our annual guide to choosing an ESP,  we might lose sight of the real need for knowledge among email marketers who are new to the field or realizing email marketing can be much more effective with the right tools and knowledge.

Many of the attendees at the conference were hungry for basic knowledge…knowledge I admittedly assume everyone to have. But our field is a funny one. It doesn’t work the way other fields do. No one graduates with a degree in email marketing and starts out in the job market armed with the necessary email marketing tools and knowledge. Instead, our field tends to be a learn-as-you-go one.

Thank goodness for all of the conferences, blogs, newsletters and articles that industry leaders put out for email marketers to learn from. Email marketing is a crazy business at times. Things can change so rapidly and constantly, like ISP expectations or design requirements. Yet others are set in stone, like the importance of list hygiene and the need to maximize your email deliverability rate.

If this blog is a resource for you as an email marketing newbie or someone looking to be more sophisticated about your use of email marketing, and you have topics you want addressed, please leave a comment here and we’ll do so in future blog posts.

And always feel free to reach out directly to ClickMail for help! We are your email marketing vendor!

Email Marketing Best Practices for Growing Your List: Use a Real Person!

Sometimes in my continuous search for email marketing best practices advice, I get the sense that I’ve seen it all before. Being surprised with new ideas is a treat.

At first I would have claimed there was nothing new in this short MarketingProfs article on growing your in-house email list. I would at first glance have deemed it advice worth repeating just the same…because if everyone were applying these email marketing best practices, we’d stop talking about them.

However, among Tim Grahl’s five tips for increasing email subscriptions–most of which should be familiar to all of us, even if we aren’t implementing them yet—was one tip that stood out to me as new and something I hadn’t considered: making your email seem like it’s from a real person.

Tim suggests even including a photo of the person who will be sending out the email. That makes perfect sense. Your email will be much more attractive to a potential subscriber if they get the sense that they will hear from a real person rather than an automated system or faceless corporate voice. We are social creatures. We want to connect with other people. And we’re visual. We want to know what they look like.

As he says, “Nobody wants another corporate newsletter. They want to hear real stuff from a real human being, so assure them that is what you will be sending.”

(He also says if you’re a one-person show, you probably don’t need to use a photo, but hey, it can’t hurt to remind them what you look like and reinforce the idea that the emails will come from you!)

Other tips from Tim that are worth repeating (and implementing, mind you!) follow, with additional advice added for emphasis:

• Making sure you answer the “What’s in it for me” question. Very clearly, I might add.
• Making signup as obvious as can be. (And the benefits of doing so obvious as well.)
• Making a great first impression with the first email. (Your welcome can wow! And it should!)
• Making sure you do A/B split tests. (Yes, a recurring theme in this email marketing best practices blog…for a reason!)

Thanks, Tim, for reminders about the basics that we will need to work on applying until they become email marketing best practices we no longer even have to think about, just benefit from! Read the full article of email marketing best practices.

This Takeaway Takes the Cake!

The final blog post of our take on the takeaways from MarketingSherpa’s Email Summit ’11 in Las Vegas… 

Today’s takeaway: Real-time marketing for big-time results

This story in MarketingSherpa’s takeaway is so compelling, we offer it up here quoted in full:

“Keynote speaker David Meerman Scott, Author, Real-Time Marketing and PR, challenged many commonly-held marketing beliefs in his keynote session — particularly those around planning and scheduling. Rather than always setting one-month, six-week or six-month schedules — marketers should test adding the power of ‘real-time’ to their marketing.

“Scott cited marketing automation software provider Eloqua, whose competitor had recently been acquired by Oracle, a larger business software and hardware provider.

“Oracle released a brief and impersonal statement about the acquisition, Scott said. Eloqua’s marketers quickly crafted a blog post ‘Welcoming Oracle to the Party’ and noting that this was a positive development for the industry.

“Eloqua quickly emailed the blog post to subscribers and promoted it through other channels. The result: much of the press coverage mentioning Oracle’s acquisition also mentioned Eloqua’s real-time response. The announcement also brought some Eloqua subscribers into its sales process.”

ClickMail applauds Eloqua’s proactive, real-time approach and encourages all email marketers to try this effective approach for your business. Need help getting started? Call on ClickMail!

Is Relevance Now the Prince and Engagement Is King?

Last week we enjoyed rubbing elbows with other email marketing vendors and meeting new email marketing practitioners at MarketingSherpa’s Email Summit ’11 in Las Vegas. True to form, MarketingSherpa has condensed the event into seven key takeaways, always helpful considering the almost overwhelming wealth of information one walks away with after an information-packed conference like this one!

We’re going to take each of their takeaways and give our own ClickMail Marketing spin to each one, not because we disagree. We don’t! But because we have a unique position in the industry as a vendor-agnostic email marketing company, so we have a different angle that might help make your email marketing best practices just a little bit better.

Today’s takeaway: Relevance is king

 If you’ve read this email marketing blog even just a few times over the past couple of years, you’ve no doubt seen us preach relevance. As MarketingSherpa said in their email newsletter, it used to be content is king, but now it’s relevance.

We’ve been saying for some time that relevance wasn’t just your content but your frequency too. Then lately, while working on our updated guide to choosing an ESP, we started realizing that email marketing must move beyond relevance to engagement.

As we said in an earlier email marketing blog post:  

“Engagement raises the email marketing bar. As an email marketing best practice, engagement involves going beyond simply being relevant to being so relevant, your subscriber takes action. That action might be simply opening your email, forwarding it or sharing it with a social network. Or it might be clicking through and making a purchase (B2C) or downloading a whitepaper (B2B). It’s relevance on steroids. And it simply has to be part of your email marketing best practices in 2011.”

So maybe relevance is now relegated to prince, and engagement is king?