Does Split Testing Actually Help Me Get More Opens?
Ask the question: what could make my emails better?
Split testing is a marketing technique experts often state you should be undertaking on a regular basis. Yet when marketing their brand, leaders are sometimes hesitant to analyse their email marketing in this way, not knowing whether it does actually increase the number of opens in the long run or not.
So why is it that online marketing experts state you should be split testing? Is there any truth in it helping your business? Will it lead to an increase in your marketing results? Here are some of the key considerations:
What Is Split Testing?
Split testing is the process where you test two versions of a piece of marketing (landing page, email, social media, advert etc.) and see which one audiences prefer. For websites and emails, traffic or subscriber lists are randomly split in half, so one half will go to one version and the other half will go to another.
When the results are in, you should see if there are any major differences in the behaviours of those who saw the content. Then you can use this knowledge to produce more effective marketing materials.
Split testing is also referred to as A/B Testing.
Why Is It Split?
Some will question whether it really is applicable to test two variations of an email against an audience. This is often based on the number of variables that can affect the open rate. Audiences may prefer one email over the other but was it down to the wording of the email or the design?
So when split testing, it is important that you only change one variable, for example the colour of your call to action, or the wording of a title. If it is done in this way, split testing becomes the only logical way to determine which email variation is effective for marketing to your audience.
Short-Term Impact
The short-term impact of any split testing is always dependent on how effective your marketing was before the testing. If you actually had the most effective design and layout for your emails, then you will find that any other variant will lead to fewer opens and conversions. In the early stages of testing, you might find that this occurs anyway and therefore, you might get the impression that split testing will harm your email marketing campaigns.
Audiences sometimes react negatively to change, so if you’ve made a major change, audiences might react to the action of change itself rather than the variant. You might need to run the test for three to five weeks to test the long-term impact.
If the change does create a negative impact, then at least you know. However, one split test should never be enough. You should constantly be finding ways to improve your emails and what works best for your email campaigns.
Long Term Impact
The advantage of split testing is that once you’ve found a variation of your email design and copy which produces better results, you can use it as a control for future testing. Also, because you have found a more effective marketing design, as you create more emails, you will be getting more opens. So any subscriber interactions you may have lost previously will be gained again now at a greater rate.
Imagine that you lost 10% clicks on one variation but another produced 5% better results. On a subscriber list of 1,000 split evenly, you had a net loss of 5% opens (or 25 opens). However, in the next campaign, because you are only using the better variant, you have eliminated that loss and in the next campaign, the net effect on opens is increased.
Does Split Testing Work
There is so much research online documenting the positive results of split testing. Looking at some of the evidence on sites like Kissmetrics, Optimizely and others, tells you that a simple A/B test can help you achieve better results, including opens.
The results are clear. If you test, you can find a better way of running your email marketing campaigns, and subsequently, increase engagement. This should create more leads and sales to grow your business. So, can split testing help your business? Yes, it can.
Do you undertake any split testing? What results do you get?
Let us know in the comments.
Read post Post a Comment. Tagged in: a/b testing, Email Strategy, split testing
How To Determine The Best Day Of The Week To Send Email Marketing
What is the best time to send your email campaigns?
It isn’t just the email header or preheader that is important in determining the success of your email marketing campaigns. The timing of your campaign is really important. Send it too early and the consumer can either ignore your email, spam it, or just read it and forget about it.
So how can you determine when the best day is to send your email marketing campaign?
There Is No Magic Time
Unfortunately, there is no real ‘best time’ that is universal for all companies. It really depends on your product, service and audience. The only way you can determine when your audience is going to be more receptive to your marketing messages is to analyse the data yourself from past campaigns.
This can be a complex task, and there are different ways that you can measure the success of campaigns, depending on what you are trying to achieve. You also have to consider that some offers will not be as enticing as other campaigns – this can skew your results and make you miss the ideal times because your campaign wasn’t good enough.
Levelling The Playing Field
An option to prevent campaign results being skewed is to test the same email copy on multiple days/times. This is known as split testing. Most email marketing programs have automated systems that can help you set this up and monitor the results.
The disadvantage of this is that you need to have a significant number of subscribers each day for this to work. The more subscribers you have in a test segment, the greater the accuracy of the results and therefore you should not have a segment with less than 300 subscribers, though preferably it should be approximately 500.
This may mean that you have to test two days a week at a time to discover the ideal day. The best case scenario means that it could, therefore, take a minimum of six weeks to test the combinations available.
Another disadvantage is that the time of the email could be more important than the actual date. For instance, sending the email at 10 am on Monday might perform better than an email sent at the same time on Tuesday. However, the same email being sent at 2 pm on Tuesday could perform better than the 10 am on Monday. If you discount Tuesday too early in the testing, then you might miss out on opportunities.
Therefore, stringent testing needs to be done.
Not Just The Day But Also The Date
Another thing to consider is that you can’t always treat every day the same. For instance, if you test Tuesday against Thursday and see that Thursday has the best open and click-through rates, you may have forgotten to add into your campaign that Thursday was payday, and this is when most customers have the most disposable income and are more likely to make a purchase.
Therefore, it is important to avoid any potential dates that might interfere with the results so you don’t get biased results.
What Data To Look For
There are three statistics that you really need to look at. The content you are promoting, and the goals of your campaign will depend on what statistic is key for your campaign monitoring. The three statistics are:
Open Rate – The basic statistic of how many people opened your email and read it. This is fairly simple, but more opens don’t always equate to more click-throughs or purchases.
Click-Through Rate – The number of people who read your email and then clicked on a link within your email. This shows that people are interested in your offer and want more information.
Orders – This can be measured in a variety of ways including:
- Conversion Ratio – the ratio of subscribers who went on to buy a product/service.
- Purchasing Value – The revenue earned from an email campaign.
- Return on Investment – The amount earned compared to the amount spent.
Measuring these can tell you which campaign has been the most successful in converting customers. However, this can be difficult to measure as the landing page could be limiting sales and not the email.
Conclusion
Determining the best day and time for your email campaigns can be difficult for your business. You need to ensure that you study your email campaigns, test out which days are best for your business with split testing and then measure the results. This can be a lengthy process, but for the long-term benefit of your business, it is well worth the investment.
When was the last time you split tested your email campaigns? Do you know what day of the week is best to send your emails?
Let us know in the comments below.
Read post Post a Comment. Tagged in: email marketing, Email Strategy, sending campaigns
Email Marketing Newsletters: Your List Management Checklist
Maintenance of your email marketing list is vitally important. If you don’t manage your list properly you can suffer from low responses to your campaigns and higher costs as subscribers become less active on your list.
At the same time you might be missing out on potential sales by not moving subscribers to the right list and selling to them in different ways.
Email marketing maintenance, if done properly, won’t take your marketing team long, especially if you follow these simple rules.
For your convenience, here is our quick checklist and process on how you can better manage your subscriber list and achieve greater results from your email marketing.
1. Check For Those Who Haven’t Opened Your Emails
Those who haven’t opened your emails for a while are going to be either inactive (i.e. their email address has been abandoned) or have lost interest in your messages. Both of these happen from time to time and therefore each month you need to check for non-opens. Look for those that haven’t opened your messages for about 6-12 months and mark them up.
2. Check For Bounces
Anyone who hard bounces should be automatically removed from your email marketing list. If someone is soft bouncing, it is an indication that their inbox is full. An account that is soft bouncing continuously is probably not active and so should be removed.
3. Send Re-engagement Emails
Anyone who has not opened their emails for awhile should be sent one last campaign to try to re-engage them.
4. Delete Those Who Don’t Respond To Re-engagement Campaigns
If someone does not interact with your re-engagement campaign within a month, then you should immediately remove them from your email marketing list.
5. Check Those Who Have Been Clicking Through
Have you looked at those who have been clicking through on your campaigns lately? Have they been making orders or otherwise engaging with your brand? If not then you need to reach out to them. Sometimes you can enhance the success of your email marketing campaigns by picking up the phone and speaking to the contact.
Tell them that you’ve noticed they’ve been looking at certain products and ask them if they have any questions. Then consider talking to them about their concerns and see how you can resolve them.
6. Move Contacts Between Subscription Lists
You probably have numerous subscription lists based on what the customer is looking at. For instance, if you are a book seller, you will have lists for those that like different genres. Sometimes you might notice that contacts change their buying habits and therefore, require a different set of emails to successfully promote to them.
Switching subscription segregations can help you improve results and provide more accurately what the customer is looking for.
7. Connect Staff, Social Media And Email List
Your staff and social media can tell you a lot about what customers are looking for. If you notice that your customers are talking about a different range of products more on social media, moving them to that marketing list might be a good idea.
Likewise, if staff are noticing more calls for information on different products, swapping lists would be a good idea.
8. Have You Scheduled In The Next Update?
How often you perform maintenance depends on a number of different factors. If you send out daily emails, try sitting down every two weeks to perform these checks. If you send emails once a month, sit down every six months.
Conclusion
Your email marketing list needs regular maintenance to make it more effective. By completing the above process on a regular basis you can refine the success of your campaigns, save money and earn more revenue. Just remember to do this regularly before your list becomes too unhealthy.
When was the last time you performed maintenance on your email marketing list? What were the direct results from that maintenance?
Let us know in the comments below.
Read post Post a Comment. Tagged in: email list, Email Strategy, list maintenance, newsletters, segmentation
How to Use Email Marketing to Create Passive Income
Create some passive income with your email marketing content
Email marketing is one of the best online sellers. In 2013 and 2014, it was the third highest contributor to online sales, only direct visitors to a website and organic searching performed better. For many businesses, email marketing is a way to generate income by selling their products / services. Yet this isn’t the only way to generate an income from the tool. You could try passive income.
This article will describe how email marketing can be used to create a passive income.
What Is Passive Income?
The definition of passive income is relatively simple. It is defined as the regular income that requires little effort to maintain. It is often closely related to unearned income.
A further definition of passive income is given by the American Internal Revenue Service that states passive income is generated by one of two sources: either it is rental activity or “trade or business activities in which you do not materially participate.” Therefore, being an affiliate of another business is a way to generate passive income.
What Is An Affiliate Program?
An affiliate program is where one person, the ‘affiliate marketer’ actively advertises a product / service of another business. When the customer is ready to make the purchase, the product owner takes over and the marketer receives a commission. There are numerous programs available, including those on Amazon and webspace hosts.
Signing up as an affiliate partner is easy. Amazon allows you to do so in just a few clicks and their commission scheme allows you to collect on any purchases made by the referral (the person visiting from your website) within a certain amount of time, regardless if it is the product you advertised.
Why Is Passive Income So Good?
There are many reasons why passive income is such a great revenue stream. For starters, it allows you to sell products without the need of stock, warehousing, packaging or delivery costs. The only cost you have the generation of content. Secondly, you can sell your own products right next to the affiliate products, giving you great access to plenty of value.
Those who earn their living as affiliate marketers are often seeing high profits for the year and many claim to have the great lifestyle.
However, that doesn’t mean that it’s` easy. You still need to gain the traffic and trust of an audience and build an email list. Many affiliate marketers clearly state that an email marketing list is the most useful tool they have and their best selling tool.
But once you’ve developed that list, how can you use it to develop a strong passive income? What are the main types of content you can send?
1. Offers
The number one reason why people sign up to email marketing lists is because they want to know about the latest offers and deals from a brand. So by ensuring you are working closely with your affiliate partner, you can offer your list the best deals first and watch as they proceed to the website.
2. Reviews
Sometimes customers want to know what they will get when making a purchase. Reviewing products, books, movies and music is one of the largest affiliate marketing industries because so many people use the internet to find out this information.
3. How-to Guides
You don’t have to actively promote a product to collect passive income. You could mention them in passing. For instance, you write a how to build a website guide and include a link there to several hosting platforms, these hosting platforms could have affiliate programs where you can collect a commission from them.
Final Tip
Affiliate marketers often don’t have one site. Usually they are members of several programs and own more than one site to widen their opportunities and their revenue. Having more than one site offers you significant opportunities to sell and widens the audiences that you can appeal to. With the cost of website hosting and design at its lowest rates for years, you could easily be earning a lot of passive income in no time.
Do you earn a passive income? What are your best tips?
Let us know in the comments below.
Take action:
- Sign up to an affiliate program.
- Promote their products through reviews and how to guides.
- Create a passive income revenue stream.
Read post Post a Comment. Tagged in: affiliate marketing, earning revenue, Email Strategy, passive income, profits
How Holiday Season Emails Will Help Your B2B Sell
The holiday season is fast approaching with days like Halloween, Thanksgiving, Black Friday, Cyber Monday, Hanukkah, Christmas and New Year just around the corner. These times are great for growing awareness of your brand and making your customers and leads feel special.
Yet many business to business operations don’t tend to include the seasonal cheer within their marketing campaigns. Some feel that the seasonal spirit is not aligned to the business to business sales process – yet this could not be further from the truth.
The Audience
Those reading emails that relate to business services are just as much human as the next consumer. They have feelings and they want to develop strong connections to their potential suppliers and partners. This means that they are just as likely to read and respond to festive emails as any other business.
In fact, an email that has specific ties to what is currently going on is more likely to grab the attention of your audience than a generic email that ignores it. This is especially true if you are sending content to a company who is a B2C company and looking for suppliers and partners to make their festive promotions more exciting.
The Company
Even if businesses don’t work directly with consumers but are another B2B company, you are still likely to get a response. Many businesses have festive parties and plan special events for the holiday season. When people are in this mood, they are more likely to respond to content that is geared to their celebrations. For instance, if you send a Christmas card via email, you might get a similar one back. This demonstrates interest in your brand and opens up a dialogue between you and a lead.
This is a key consideration for your B2B business. People buy from people, the more dialogue you have with a company, the better the chance you have of selling to them through your personality.
Top Tips For A Successful B2B Holiday Season Email
So what are the best tips for your B2B holiday season email campaigns? How can you implement a strategy that will drive conversation between you and your potential customers? Here are our top tips:
1. Time Them Perfectly – This all depends on your message. If you are thinking about giving people advice about how to manage their business during the holiday period, you’ll want to send this in advance of the holidays. If you want to send a seasonal greetings message – then it has to be sent on the day.
2. Don’t Always Promote Your Business’ Services – Just by the virtue of sending the email, you are growing awareness of your business. By stepping away from your business and creating a more relevant, personal message, you can generate more interest in your message with your audience and more chances to develop a relationship.
3. Give A Gift – What is the holiday season about? Giving! Therefore, give your subscribers a gift for the holidays. This can either be a free, exclusive ebook or a voucher to spend on your site / another retail site. This can often be better than sending a box of chocolates.
4. Remain Focussed – You should always remember that you have to stay focussed on the goal to drive business to your site. So always maintain links to your website and monitor the response.
Conclusion
Seasonal email marketing is not just about the Business to consumer market. B2B companies can also take advantage of this special time of year. Yet it requires taking a step back and understanding that this is an opportunity to communicate with your audience and get to know them personally.
What is your holiday email strategy? Do you send Christmas cards to your subscribers?
Let us know in the comments.
Read post Post a Comment. Tagged in: Email Strategy, list engagement, marketing campaigns, seasonal emails
How To Create The Perfect Subject Line
How do you create the perfect subject line?
When it comes to increasing the open rate of your emails, there is one area that is often forgotten about: the subject line. The subject line is often the first impression you will make with your audience and can therefore make a huge impact on whether your email campaign is successful or not.
So what makes a great subject line and how can you use this within your own campaigns?
1. Directly Speaking To The Audience
If there is one element that is constantly missed it is the mail merge function in email marketing software. You have the ability to address each audience member by name in every email in the subject line. This is perfect for email marketing because it personalises each message going out and ensures you grab the audience’s attention, by making it seem the message was written just for them.
If you want an even better open rate and are a local business, try including a town name or region. Research has shown that this can increase the open rate of emails even better than a name.
2. Change The Subject Line
If you use the same subject line every week or message, then you aren’t going to grab the attention of your audience. They will think it is the same or similar message and therefore switch off from your brand.
One example of this is with People Per Hour. They used to use one message that was broadcasted every single day. Then they adopted a different message to be broadcasted every day and it helped their business triple in size.
3. Promise Something Valuable
Your audience’s time is valuable. Therefore, don’t assume that they will just want to read what you’ve written; you’ve got to offer them something for their time in reading your piece, for example a free offer, a valuable secret (always a winner) or something else you think people will appreciate.
However, you must live up to your promises. Not keeping your word can damage your reputation and harm the success of future campaigns.
4. Avoid Overused And Spammy Words
Most people know that you should avoid words like ‘free’ and ‘voucher’ in email subject lines. These tend to trigger spam filters and messages won’t even be received let alone opened and read. However, you should also avoid other words that are associated with sales and spam such as:
- Help
- Percent off
- Reminder
- Offer
While some of these might not trigger a spam filter, readers are likely to ignore emails with these words in the subject line.
5. Shorter The Better
We’ve already stated that people are short of time and you’ve got to respect this. This is why you have to keep email copy short for better returns. The same applies with your subject line; try to keep it below 50 characters for the best results. If this can’t be managed, just ensure that it is as short as possible.
6. Ask A Question
Want to know what really works as an email subject line? A question. Even asking a question such as ‘Do you know the best email subject lines?’ and then discussing them, is likely to get a better response than: ‘Here are the best email subject lines’.
Conclusion
Your email subject lines need to be optimised if you are looking to get the best results from your email marketing campaigns. Many of the best practices are easy to implement and don’t cost money. Just carefully choose your subject line to succeed.
What was your last email marketing subject line? Have you got any more tips for our audience?
Let us know in the comments below.
Read post Post a Comment. Tagged in: audience engagement, Email Strategy, open rates, optimizing open rates, subject line
3 New Ways To Get Attention For Your Regular Emails
Your emails are an important sales platform. The starting point of 13% of all online sales comes from email marketing. Only organic searching and direct visits are better sellers online. However, the effectiveness of your marketing campaigns depends on how much attention your emails can generate.
One of the biggest problems is that emails aren’t getting enough attention. The average open rate for emails varies between 15 – 25%. The click through rate after this can be anything between 1 and 5%. And then your landing page has to be convincing enough for them to take a desired action. This action could be making a purchase or downloading a new guide.
The open rate is dependent on the email grabbing the attention of your audience. If you are sending regular emails, this is really important. The longer a contact is on a mailing list but doesn’t take action, the higher the chance that the lead is lost and you won’t make a sale. If, however, you can increase their interaction with the mail earlier – the greater the chance that you can:
- Increase the open rate.
- Improve the click through rate.
- Make more sales.
- Grow the ROI of your email marketing campaign.
It should also be noted that you only have 15-20 seconds to grab a reader’s attention. This is the average length of time that a person spends reading an email.
Email marketing best practices are continuously changing, which is why it is important to consider your current campaigns and how you can change them to gain more interest. Here are three of the latest techniques for your regular emails that will grow the success of your campaigns.
1. Change Your Subject Lines
Long gone are the days where you could just use a simple promotional email or one liner like “Your Weekly Summary” and expect your contact’s list to open your emails. A good example about how your subject lines can make a difference is with People Per Hour. The site used to send a message every day about the latest offers available on their site.
Then in early 2015, they changed tactics and created different, unique and more personal subject lines. Almost immediately there was an increase in the number of jobs posted through the site. Before the change they averaged about 200 per day. After the change they averaged about 350. This is a 75% increase and was highly valuable for the online business.
So what should your subject line look like? It needs to have several elements to it:
- Promise to benefit the contact.
- Offer new information.
- Personal.
- Relevant to what is currently going on.
- Fun.
If you can insert these into your subject line, it will perform better.
2. Add Video
Video marketing is becoming a huge success. The combination of audio, visual and text on the screen is more memorable and engages audiences a lot better than just simple text and photos.
Inserting a video into your emails isn’t a tough task – it just requires you to be a little more technical than you might be used to. Speak to your email marketing provider and ask them how to insert video into an email using their software.
Once a video has been uploaded to your messages you can also use them on YouTube and your website to improve upon their ROI and ensure that they aren’t just used once and forgotten about.
3. Be Mobile Friendly
The way consumers are accessing emails is constantly changing. Previously, the only way to have a good experience and open your emails was on a desktop or laptop. Now the world has gone mobile and more emails are opened on a SmartPhone or other mobile device than on a desktop.
Email campaigns must consider this and change the way they display on mobile devices and the landing pages they direct to must also be mobile friendly.
Conclusion
You have 15-20 seconds to grab the attention of your audience. Ensure you do it with the email marketing best practices and you will see a higher number of sales and business growth.
Take Action:
- Optimise your messages for mobile.
- Add video to your next campaign.
- Experiment with your subject lines.
Read post 1 Comment. Tagged in: email design, email marketing, Email Strategy, Email Testing, Small Business
Why Email Will Remain Important Even With More Messaging Options
With the rise of more marketing options, it may seem that email marketing will become obsolete. However, email marketing has been around for a long time and has faced numerous challenges when it comes to marketing messaging online. For instance, social media has long been thought of as a way for businesses to connect with their audience but it has failed to achieve the success email marketing has.
Now with new instant chat messages being deployed and mobile marketing being used by more organisations, email marketing would seem to be at risk again, though the possibility of this is fairly low. However, there are many reasons why email will remain important for a long time to come.
Trust Is The Key Aspect
74% of consumers prefer to receive promotional messages via their email accounts. This is because the consumer feels that they are giving you permission to contact them via their email accounts. It shows a high level of trust and therefore, half the battle is won on converting the contact to a customer – you just have to demonstrate why they should buy that product.
With social media, mobile and instant messaging, the consumer doesn’t need to give permission to be contacted. Therefore, many customers are wary of marketing messages that are delivered this way as they don’t trust them.
In the UK, this has been demonstrated by injury claims and payment protection compensation. Lawyers from both niche industries have been sending out numerous messages via mobiles and the phone, offering customers thousands in compensation. The biggest problem is that they are not targeting their customers and are just sending messages to every number or contact.
Then the callers claim that they hold records indicating you are owed money, often thousands. This is often inaccurate. And the mistakes are compounded by the use of automation and recorded messages.
Apart from being in breech in the country’s data protection laws, where all databases have to be accurately maintained, it breaks down trust. How can the consumer trust a message that is inaccurate and one that is delivered by a recorded voice?
Simply put, both messages have become a major source of grief in the UK and there have been demands for the practices to be stopped.
Costs
Likewise, email marketing is one of the most cost effective ways to deliver a marketing message. Text messaging often costs 30 to 40 cents per recipient. For a contacts list of 2,000 this could mean that messaging costs $6,000 or more. Add on additional costs, such as time to develop the message and campaign and it could simply be too expensive to execute, yielding limited returns.
Email marketing on the other hand is fairly cost effective where you usually pay by subscriber and you can send as many messages as you like. This makes achieving a positive ROI much more likely.
Traceable
Another issue is that other mediums of content have limited tracking features, for example if the customer has opened, read, clicked through or deleted your message. This can be frustrating as this tracking feature allows you to refine your list, sending targeted messages to the consumers, knowing they will achieve the best results.
Conclusion
Email marketing has faced numerous technologies and new marketing options that have threatened its importance in the marketing plans of business. However, there has so far been no technology able to reduce the effectiveness of email marketing for businesses.
So while it is a good idea to investigate and use other marketing tools for business, you should not abandon email marketing.
What other tools do you use for marketing your small business? How effective are they?
Let us know in the comments.
Read post Post a Comment. Tagged in: email marketing, Email Newsletters, Email Strategy, Online Marketing, Small Business
5 Mistakes You Should Never Make With Your Email Campaigns
Email marketing is one of the most important sales channels your business will use. It accounts for more online sales than social media, retargeting and banner ads. Some of the best businesses in the world earn the majority of their income from sending out regular promotional emails.
There are several secrets to the success of their email marketing campaigns. You can achieve their success by not making major mistakes which can damage you reputation, annoy your mailing list or give the impression you are unprofessional.
Here are five common mistakes and how to avoid them.
1. Not Following Legal Code
There is a massive difference between cold calling and cold emailing – cold emailing is illegal in many cases. According to digital marketing laws in most countries, you should have permission from the list contact to be able to send promotional content. This rule must be followed unless the email address is from a limited company and it has no personal information in it.
However, sending emails to info@ or marketing@ is highly ineffective as it is normally not a decision maker who checks these accounts. Not following these rules can result in a fine which could cripple your finances.
2. Strategic Failure
One of the first things you should be doing before you even start sending off an email or building your list is to identify the goal for the list. Something that is strategic and applies to every communication you have.
Whether this is building awareness of offers on your ecommerce site or delivering content that will appeal to your audience – you have to know what the purpose of your email marketing campaign is.
Then when you write each email marketing message, you have to know what the specific aim is for that message (i.e. selling a particular product).
3. Forget To Blind Copy
Many businesses that run their lists off their mail servers make this mistake from time to time; when they accidently forget to ensure that no-one else can see who else the mail has gone to.
This can be particularly embarrassing as you are providing details to other businesses or individuals who might not want their information shared and it also looks highly unprofessional.
To avoid this, use an email marketing software program to hide contact details from other contacts. It looks more professional and more personal.
4. Sending Your Mail From ‘no-reply@’ or ‘info@’
As humans we love to feel the human connection. This is why email marketing campaigns sent from addresses like no-reply@ or info@ are not going to be ineffective. Think of email marketing as a conversation, you wouldn’t talk to a computer or a cash machine, so don’t automate your email marketing messages.
Instead use a named individual to send the message from. This could be a member of your marketing team; however, a senior person in your organisation can often send a more powerful marketing message to your contact’s list.
5. Buying An Email Marketing List
Don’t ever think of buying an email marketing list. These are highly ineffective and can often ruin your mail server’s reputation. Getting blacklisted will ensure that your emails will always hard bounce and there is very little you can do apart from starting anew.
The whole point of an email marketing campaign is that the contact has given you permission and is open to communications. This makes their use cost effective and gratifying.
Conclusion
Email marketing is one of the best online marketing avenues for your business. What you need to ensure is that you don’t accidently make any email marketing mistakes like the ones above and that you are producing high quality content that will entice your audience to find out more information.
What other mistakes can you think of? What mistakes have you made and how did you resolve them?
Let us know in the comments below.
Take action:
- Learn from the mistakes of other email marketers to perfect your own campaigns.
Read post Post a Comment. Tagged in: email marketing, Email Strategy, Email Testing, Online Marketing, Small Business
7 Email Marketing Strategies You Need To Implement Immediately
There are approximately 2.5 billion email users in the world and 74% of them prefer to receive promotional material via their email accounts. This makes email marketing one of the most effective and critical marketing activities your business should be undertaking right now.
While creating campaigns for your customers might yield some success. To make the most from your campaigns you should be optimising them. There are several strategies which allow you to do this. Here are seven strategies for you to implement in your next campaign:
1. Specific Audience
Not every email you create is going to be relevant to all those on your list. For instance, a message about setting up a new account with you is pointless to already existing customers. Therefore you want to limit who you are sending your messages to only those who should read the content.
Careful segregation will limit unsubscribers, lower costs and improve your marketing results very quickly. This can be achieved by ensuring there is a label in your database that refers to what sub-list they should be listed on. Then when you are sending a campaign, use the label to determine who should receive the message.
2. Specific Time
Email marketing is effective because it can be picked up at any time. However, research has shown that emails are generally opened at certain times. You’ll want your emails to be sent at the best times and not at other, less effective, times.
There are numerous studies claiming they know when you should send emails. Many of them disagree with the best time to send mail. The best practice is to experiment and discover when it is best to send your audience emails.
3. A/B Testing
To ensure you are sending your email messages at the best time, and that the design of your message is right, you should A/B test your emails. Start with testing when to send your emails and then move onto the email design.
There are various elements you can test, including image position, subject lines or the call to action copy. By testing these one at time, you can ensure your campaigns become more effective.
4. Have Value
Always answer the question: “What is in it for me” question. If your contacts can take an important message away from your communication: whether it is how to do something or where to get something – then you’ll gain their trust and it will make it easier to sell to them.
5. Mobile Friendly
More emails are being read on SmartPhones and other mobile devices, than on desktops. Emails need to be formatted right if they are to be read correctly on your contacts’ mobile devices. Otherwise your messages will not look professional and this will limit impact.
To help with mobile friendliness, you need to limit images and the complexity of your design. At the same time, ensure your website is also optimised for mobile devices.
6. Social Media
Social media is a highly effective way for you to spread word of your brand to new audiences and potential customers. Don’t undervalue the opportunity. Embed social media share buttons on all your emails. Then the emails can be directly shared on various platforms and this can encourage others to view a web version.
7. Follow Up
After you have sent your email marketing message, you need to examine the results. You should use this to determine who is interested in your content and products. If you notice someone is opening your mail and clicking through to your website but then not doing anything, you should follow up with a phone call. They might be experiencing a barrier that is preventing them from buying. By calling them you might be able to help them to complete the intended action.
Conclusion
Improve the results of your email marketing by using some powerful email marketing strategies above. Then you can generate more revenue from your emails and have a better return on investment.
What strategies do you use to ensure effectiveness?
Let us know in the comments below.
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