5 New Ways Small Businesses Can Spice Up Email Newsletters
Image courtesy of jscreationzs at FreeDigitalPhotos.net
Email marketing is one of the best ways to connect with your target audience. The only problem is that the majority of businesses online are now using email to contact and sell to the same people you are contacting. These can be direct competitors or businesses offering substitute goods. This can be bad news for your email marketing campaigns as it limits the effectiveness of your message; unless, you find a way to stand apart from these competitors and spice up your email newsletter.
There are several ways you can do this. Here are five options for you to consider.
1. Using A Preview Image For A Video
Videos are very intensive to send via email. To avoid this, most businesses use a simple link to a video on YouTube or another video sharing website. This can often lead to a poor video viewing numbers. Yet, videos can be highly effectively in the sales process. Therefore, use an image from the video that looks impressive to entice your audience to click on it and find out more.
You should also consider hosting the video on your website. This way you can set up better monitoring to see how effective the video was at increasing page views.
2. Keep Your Text Short And Snappy
If you really want your audience to read your emails and then click through to your website, don’t place all your content within the email. This only encourages the audience to read the email copy and then either click off your email or delete it. You want them to visit your site and therefore, the best option is to get them there to read the content.
Use teaser paragraphs or descriptions of the content on your email copy and then link them to the full article on your blog or on a landing page.
3. Humour
Comedy is not used frequently enough within the online marketing realm; yet it is one of the best tactics for engaging your audience. Emails containing humour are often shared more via email and social media than those without. This can grow your brand’s online footprint and email marketing list.
Ensure all jokes are clean, short and funny. They cannot be sexual, sexist, racist or in any other way offensive – otherwise you may grab headlines, but not for the right reasons.
4. Competitions
People love to win and entering a competition is one way to achieve that. By offering them that chance through your email marketing campaigns is a way your brand can satisfy their need to compete. The prize doesn’t need to be expensive as long as it something that will have value to the customer.
Ensure that your competition isn’t just related to one email. Promote it over several emails and encourage people to share the emails with their friends and family to gain more tickets or chances to win the prize.
5. Quotes To Inspire And Motivate
Whether you are engaging customers who are already buying or attempting to attract new customers, using quotes from famous people is likely to grab their attention. Quote sites are very popular and are often categorised by industry and type of quote, so finding a good quote for your business is not going to be difficult.
Don’t go overboard, but if you include one good quote from an inspirational person you will be sure to grab some attention. Experiment with where to place the quote as different audience may prefer different placement.
Conclusion
The email marketing landscape is becoming a very busy place. Many of your competitors are likely to delivering their content to your target audiences at the same time as you. Therefore, you need to create content that is highly effective and a little different. One of the best ways: use techniques that will add a little spice to the content and allow your emails to look different to your competitors’.
Take Action:
- Add a new element into your email marketing design.
What do you use to spice up your content? How effective has it been?
Let us know in the comments below.
Read post Post a Comment. Tagged in: email content, email design, email marketing, Email Newsletters, Email Strategy
3 Potential Changes For Small Business Email Marketing In 2015
Image courtesy of Stuart Miles at FreeDigitalPhotos.net
As 2015 fast approaches there is going to be a need to look at what trends will start or will be continued into the New Year. Being ahead of these trends and implementing them in your small business email marketing campaigns is more likely to generate results that will succeed.
So what are the potential changes that will affect your email marketing campaigns?
1. Quality Content Will Require Professional Writers
As brands continuously develop so they become an online resource for potential and current customers, they will need to generate content that matches their customer’s expectations. To match these, you will need to ensure the writing is of the highest possible quality.
Research has shown how professionally written content can improve the leads and the number of sales generated. Currently, it is reported that two-thirds of the writing produced by businesses is done by product managers. Yet, with so many tasks already their responsibility, they have little time to create a well crafted sales message.
Therefore, some forward thinking businesses will outsource the majority of their writing to professional writers. These writers will be able to create content that is high quality and able to deliver results for your business. This will improve the results that your email marketing campaigns achieve.
Also, because you aren’t relying on an individual who has a significant number of responsibilities already, and may place email content low on their priority list, you will ensure your business is always producing new content, on time. This will allow consistency and improve the trust your email contacts will have in your brand.
2. Video Email Marketing
Video is a rich form of communicating with your audience. The human brain is designed to be attracted to moving images and the changing facial expressions that can be produced and used within your videos.
As technology develops and Smartphones and other mobile technology become more advanced, mobile devices will be better able to display rich content. Therefore, your email marketing campaigns will need to include videos within their content. These will need to be short, approximately two to three minutes and contain high quality information to engage your audience.
In addition, you will need to host the video on sharing sites like YouTube, which is the second largest search engine after Google, to gain better reach and attract new audiences for future email campaigns.
3. Email Contacts Are Short-Lived
As more businesses start to develop their digital marketing channels, the amount of content that is online for your target audience is going to reach a critical point. At this critical point, the amount of information available is going to be too much for the customers to read in their limited amount of time.
Therefore, what is going to happen is readers will choose which brands deserve the majority of their attention. To ensure your brand has their attention you will have a limited amount of time to grab it. If you are unable to convince them of your industry authority or expertise, they will either leave your mail unopened or unsubscribe from your email marketing contacts list.
Use valuable information and carefully written content to keep their attention.
Conclusion
Email marketing is a constantly evolving digital marketing channel that can be highly successful if it is employed in the right manner. With the New Year approaching, the latest trends will need to be used in order for your brand to achieve the best results from your email marketing campaigns.
Take Action:
- Examine the changes that are going to happen above and consider what your brand needs to do to make the most of your 2015 email marketing campaigns.
How successful have your 2014 campaigns been so far? What changes are you going to make for 2015?
Let us know in the comments below.
Read post Post a Comment. Tagged in: email design, email marketing, Email Strategy, Small Business, Subscribers
How To Find A Designer To Handle Your Small Business Email
Image courtesy of jscreationzs at FreeDigitalPhotos.net
Creating an email design to sell your products can be a difficult task; especially if you have limited computer and graphic design skills. A well created email can sell your services effectively. Therefore you will need to find an email design program that can create perfect small business emails.
The problem with finding a good design program is that there are various options on the market and not all offer the perfect combination of features. A good design program needs to have several functions for it to be highly effective for your small business email marketing campaigns.
So what should you be looking at with your small business email design program?
Examples
The first thing you need to do is to look at what others using the program have created for their email marketing campaigns.
You might be able to see some of the designs in your inbox. Some companies manage email marketing campaigns using free accounts. Free accounts normally include a link to the provider of the email marketing service. This is purely for a marketing point of view, but it is useful to identify what email designs are possible with their email designer.
Secondly, you could go to the website and look at their current clients or example designs. You can find Fluttermail’s through our features page.
This method could be time consuming, but as the overall design of the email is so important, investing your time into this process could be very profitable.
Ease Of Use
You want to ensure your email marketing design program is fairly easy to use. If you do not have any coding skills, then you won’t want an email designer that can only create emails in HTML code. Many modern email designers feature a click and drag interface. This is fairly simple to use and offers great results as long as your internet connection is strong enough.
By checking how each email is built; you can be confident that you can generate the look you are excited about publishing.
It might help your creativity if there are templates included with your email design package. A great template will allow you to tailor the images, colours and what is in each element box. These templates can greatly decrease the amount of time it takes to build a single email.
Save Designs
One of the most time saving processes with creating further email campaigns is the ability to use previous designs and editing some of the smaller details. This is really important because your contacts will want to know that you are being consistent. Using previous designs as a basis for future campaigns does this perfectly.
A template also allows you to A/B test your email marketing campaigns. This can be achieved by designing the email once and editing it for the second version or resending it if you are testing optimal timing.
Preview Settings
You need to know your email will display effectively on the different email clients your customers are likely to use. The best designers will allow you to see the results before you send off the email. This can allow you to make changes so your email looks perfect no matter what device or email client it is viewed upon.
Remember to preview the mobile display as well as the desktop as more emails are being opened via mobile devices than ever before. You might also want to see if the feature to test your email is available.
Conclusion
Choosing your email marketing design program can be a difficult process. There are many different functions and features that you will want to ensure the success of your email marketing campaigns. Be certain that the design program you choose contains the above elements for running your successful small business email marketing campaigns, growing your business and achieving better profits.
Take Action:
- Review the Fluttermail email design program.
- Create a trail account for $1.
Read post Post a Comment. Tagged in: email design, email marketing, Email Testing, Small Business, visual appeal
5 Examples Of Successful Small Business Email Newsletters
Image courtesy of Stuart Miles at FreeDigitalPhotos.net
Email marketing is one of the best ways to communicate with your target audience. Research has proven it can contribute significantly to your sales.
Sales isn’t the only factor of success. Email marketing can open up new avenues to increase brand awareness and generate more traffic to your website or physical store.
Many of the best performing small business email campaigns have several common attributes. Looking at some of the best examples can give you ideas on how to improve your own email campaigns and achieve great success.
Here are five examples of successful small business emails:
Moo.com
The high quality business card supplier does not focus its content on the business card but rather on giving creative inspiration, news and business tips to their audience.
The emails have images related to the content that help the reader to ascertain quickly what the email is going to be about. At the end of the short, easy to read content is a clear call to action (CTA). The CTAs are invitations rather than demands – so appeal to the inquisitive reader. They also have clear social media sharing buttons both at the top and bottom of the page.
Bicycle Adventures
This company combines bicycling tours with staying in five star hotel and lodges. Their newsletter is very clean and simple – making it easier for the audience to read. The header image is often one of a spectacular view with a clear header above it to describe what the particular edition is about.
Underneath the image is the subtitle, often describing a new available offer and then the newsletter rounds off with two locations their readers can book. Each location includes an image, not of the hotel but of the scenery they will be cycling around.
At the bottom of the page is a clear call to action, with the text larger than the rest of the page to draw attention to the reader.
What makes this email so successful is not that it sells a lot, but that as soon as the email is sent out, the website has double the traffic, often 1,400 unique visitors on day of release.
Wine Station
Next on the list is Wine Station, who doesn’t have an online store. Instead they rely on their readers visiting their physical store. Their emails have a feeling of luxury with clear labelling and pictures focusing on their products.
At the bottom of the page they include a special offer to entice people to visit their store.
Traffic into their store can be significant after an email has been sent out, with some emails generating 10 times the amount of traffic they usually get.
Build It Green! NYC
This small environmental group uses its emails to encourage signups and volunteer participation. The emails include a clear call to action at the top of the email and detailed information in the body. There are also some clear images demonstrating what the event is.
Generally the success of this email is regarded in telephone calls. According to the organisation, every email they send out receives 40 telephone responses.
The Pajama Program
While technically not a small business again, this organisation does have an excellent email which raises $1000 per email sent. The charity raises funds for children in need and uses its emails for donation collection and thanking those who have participated.
The emails always include images of those who they support and carry short messages with a clear call to action at the bottom.
What Do These Newsletters Have In Common?
These emails have three main concepts in common. Firstly they all have a relevant image that portrays exactly what the email is about, they have limited text and thirdly they invite the reader to continue on the journey with a clear call to action.
Action steps:
- Sign on to some of the above examples and see what their emails look like.
- Take some of the lessons learned here and incorporate them into your small business email.
Read post Post a Comment. Tagged in: email case studies, email design, email success, email templates, small business email
5 New Ways To Make Your Small Business Email Stand Out
Image courtesy of renjith krishnan at FreeDigitalPhotos.net
The success of your email marketing campaigns will often depend on how you design your content. There are several elements you can implant within your emails to make them stand out from your competitors. An email which is unique and captures the imagination or interest of the reader will lead to a better click through rate.
So what could you include in your small business emails to make them stand out and achieve success?
1. Videos
Videos are very effective when it comes to marketing. Audiences feel more connection to moving images and a voice providing information and are more likely to take action when included in emails. According to studies, videos in emails can increase the click through rate by up to 300% and the conversions by an estimated 45%.
However, only 58% of your audience can see videos embedded in your emails. The other 42% will be shown a “fallback image”, which has to be manually linked to a page hosting the video.
2. Animated GIF Images
Animated GIF images are a collection of images which create a slideshow creating the illusion of moving images. They can look very attractive and are accepted by most email viewing software. Most animated GIF images are created to showcase entertaining clips. However, Sprout Social used a GIF slideshow to demonstrate how to use their new mobile interface.
If used sparingly, customers react very well to GIFs and will share your emails with their peers. You can also experience a significant increase in interactions. Using only one animated GIF per four emails is probably the recommended level.
3. In-email calculator
Include a calculator within the body of your email to increase interaction with your audience. This calculator can be designed to measure how much your business can save the potential customer in a year or how much a project might cost.
You can set the calculator to send you a notification when the calculator has been used, who used it and what the results were. You can then use these to contact the customer with specific sales information to close the deal.
4. Audio
There are very few email marketing campaigns which have audio. The general consensus is that audio has no place in a visual based marketing avenue. However, audio can be powerful. Recent studies demonstrated certain songs can make people feel good. Audio is also known to encourage interactivity.
Good ideas for including audio are:
- If you are musician and want to include an example of your latest release.
- If you are a public speaker and want to include a sample of a speech you recently made.
- If you have recently released a podcast and want people to download it.
5. Infographics
Infographics are a brilliant marketing tool and are often used on blogs and social media to draw attention to a brand. Take it one step further by including it as an email. Infographics are so successful because they can contain a wealth of information and are easy to read for the audience.
You do need to ensure that your infographic still contains all the basic elements of a successful email campaign such as a good call to action and inviting title. However, you may find shares and interaction are greatly increased when an infographic is used.
Conclusion
There are significant options for your marketing team to create innovative and interesting email campaigns designed to inspire your audience.
Take Action:
- Design an infographic, GIF animation or video and insert that into a future campaign.
- Create and send a calculator into the body of your next email.
- Release a sample of your latest public speaking event or podcast.
Read post Post a Comment. Tagged in: email design, email marketing, Small Business, visual appeal
Are Your Small Business Emails Optimized For Smartphones?
“Image courtesy of Stuart Miles / FreeDigitalPhotos.net”
Email marketing is constantly evolving. New trends are continuously being implemented allowing email to continue to be one of the most successful online marketing avenues. One of the current trends is the growth in emails being read on a Smartphone.
According to statistics, 90% of Smartphone owners will access the same email accounts from their device as their desktop and just under half of emails opened are viewed on a mobile device.
Emails opened on a Smartphone also have a higher percentage of unique clicks, and emails tend to be read for longer, even when compared to other mobile devices and desktops.
To take advantage of this trend you need to ensure that your email design is optimised so that it can be read on a Smartphone. Here are some of the design elements you can use to ensure this.
1. Restrict Your Use Of Images
Keeping your emails clear of excessive image use is an important aspect for mobile-optimized email campaigns. Using too many images means it takes longer for the email to load on the phone and the potential customer will click off your email before they’ve read it.
Use one relevant image for the email. Ensure that it is not too big either, or you’ll suffer the same problem.
2. Have a Responsive Template
If you are using a predesigned template, then make certain the design is responsive. A responsive design will automatically adjust the view so it fits the screen it is being viewed upon, whether a desktop, tablet or Smartphone.
3. Watch Your Words
Some phones will only display a certain length of the subject line. Therefore you have to ensure your subject line is less than 30 characters. If you have to have a longer title, make the key components of the title within those first few characters.
Some phones will also give more priority to the “from” label. There is little you can do about this apart from to make sure your emails are being sent from an email address which has a name attached to it. Sending emails from a Sales@ or customerservice@ often get opened less, no matter what device is currently being used.
4. Body Text
The body of your email also needs special attention paid to it. Shorter paragraphs are easier for the reader to digest and because your reader is likely to be on the go, have the key points mentioned at the very beginning. Otherwise your message could be forgotten when they are distracted by something going on around them.
5. Linking
Links on phones can look rather clumsy. Reduce the amount of links to just two. These links should not be close together as this can be distracting and reduce the click-through rate.
6. Use Buttons
Because most Smartphones have touch screens; create links to content using buttons rather than in-text hyperlinks. This is far easier for the user to select the link they want. To aid this, have significant space around the button to avoid the user clicking upon the wrong item.
7. Link To Mobile Friendly Websites
Any link needs to direct the reader to a mobile friendly site. Otherwise your reader will be disappointed with a poor looking site and will take no further action with your brand.
Conclusion
Having a mobile friendly email is not a difficult task, keep elements simple and strip down most of the advanced features that were once a trend. A quality email designed for mobile, with the rise of users accessing their emails online, will allow you to achieve more from your campaigns.
Take Action:
- Have a look at your last few emails and see if there are improvements you can make to ensure your emails are Smartphone friendly.
- Test your new email design to see how it looks on a Smartphone.
Read post Post a Comment. Tagged in: email design, email marketing, Email Newsletters, mobile emails, Small Business