ESPs (Email Service Providers) are becoming more strict on who they allow you to send to. Email addresses MUST be opted-in. That means you must have permission from the recipient to receive an email from you. Below are a few ideas to help build your email marketing list using social media.
Export your lists of people you know and business colleagues who know you from your Linkedin, Outlook, Gmail and Yahoo accounts. Send everyone an email from you personally asking them to join your list. Link off to a hosted version of an opt-in form to collect them. If you need assistance your email service provider can assist you.
Almost everyone has a Facebook page. If you don’t you should. Send out an email to your fans and friends asking them to join your email list. Direct them to your hosted opt-in form and encourage them to sign up with some sort of incentive. If you have a Facebook Fan page you can put an opt-in form right on the page.
Tweet to your Twitter list some sort of an offer for joining your opt-in list. Forward them to your opt-in form using a Boomerang Hot Link to save space.
You can easily include an opt-in form on your blog. Contact your Email Service Provider to learn how.
Offer helpful comments on blogs or discussions boards that your prospects might visit. Make sure to include a link to your site where your opt-in form is hosted.
I think that one of the great benefits of the web is that anyone can become a published author. Since I first started creating web pages in the early 90’s I have technically been a publisher. I put up photos and articles that people would mail in just for fun. Then came ‘web 2.0′ where anyone could use a content management system to quickly create websites. This opened the door to blogs as we know them to exist today. Anyone can now update their online journal even from a phone. As the interfaces become increasingly easy to navigate podcasts, videocasts, blogs, tweets, Facebook pages et cetera have evolved to a mainstream media outlet.
One thing that has not changed much through the course of time is the company newsletter. It has been a tried and true communication tool to stay in touch with clients, prospects and colleagues. Many companies are moving away from a print version and are finding that a digital newsletter is more economical and a greener solution. Even though the format is shifting from print to digital the newsletter fundamentals have remained the same.
It would stand to reason that there is always a better work-flow to consider when writing the company newsletter. One element to consider is leveraging the content that your company is already producing on the website or blog to use in your newsletter. Content is king in this day and age so if you’re going to write it once be sure to publish it everywhere.
Email marketing can help you convert visitors into customers, build long term relationships with those customers and introduce new profit streams into your business. But none of these benefits are possible if you commit one of the “seven deadly sins” of email marketing.
What are these deadly sins? They are mistakes that many email marketers make either out of lack of knowledge or the wrong perspective on email marketing.
Let’s take a closer look so you know what to avoid.
You should never send an email to a recipient who hasn’t opted into your list. You shouldn’t add email addresses to your list that you find online, that you purchase or that another business owner provides you with. This is considered spam, and your sender/reply email address can be penalized.
Since you need your new list members to opt in, make sure that the process is easy for them. Don’t make them fill out a long complicated form in order to join your list. Their name and email address should be enough for most list owners. You can also add their industry or zip code if it’s relevant to your needs. The shorter the opt in form is, the easier it will be to get people to opt in.
The main reason people join your email marketing list is to get more information - not to be sold to. If your emails are full of ads and promotions, or your email messages are all about special deals, discounts and sales, you need to rethink your approach. Think about what your target market would like most to learn about and then provide content each month that reflects those needs. This doesn’t mean that you can’t send promotional emails, just be sure to balance them with informative emails.
Nothing makes you look more unprofessional than an email with spelling and grammatical errors. Before you send out the email, make sure to proofread it well. Read it out loud to make sure that you aren’t missing any words and to ensure the message reflects your purpose.
Your subject lines are the gateway to your messages and newsletters. If the subject line isn’t compelling, your list members will be less likely to open your email and read the information that you have to offer. Boomerang’s split test feature allows you to test out different versions of your subject line and see which version gets the most opens. You can use your winning version as a template for your future email marketing messages. See here for more: Email Marketing Subject Line Testing…Do You Test?
Although one of your main goals is to provide information to your list members, there should be a “next step” for each of your messages. Whether this next step is to get them to your website to read the rest of an article, to sign up for a new service or to contact your office, you need to communicate this in the body of your email. If you don’t ask, they’ll never follow through with the action.
Graphics don’t always translate well in email inboxes. Using a simple HTML template for your email marketing messages is preferable to using large sized graphics in your emails. Use graphics as supplements in your emails, if they are necessary but make sure that most of your email message is text based.
With all the email filtering programs in effect it seems like escaping being filtered is near impossible. There are a few tricks you can do to increase your chances of slipping through the cracks and not falling victim to the spam folder.
In order to avoid the filter, the best way to approach it is to address what are the most common words used to block emails and do your best to avoid those. As the wise proverb says, “if you do not understand your enemies but do understand yourself you will win one and lose one.” So loosely translating what the great Sun Tzu stated is the best way to get through an email filter is to understand the ways you are being filtered, right? Well that is what I got anyway. We are trying to get you to win at everything here.
So take a look at the key 20 words to avoid when sending out emails as courteously provided by:
http://www.businessknowhow.com/internet/spamwords.htm.
I know avoiding these words is difficult and sometimes unavoidable but do your best and you will see the amount of bounced emails drop drastically. Good luck and may the force be with you.
Every email marketer knows that having a large list is a key to making the most out of email marketing. Think about it this way: if you expect a 10% response rate on your email marketing messages, and your list has 100 people you’ll get 10 people on your list taking action. If you’ve grown your list to 500 people, with the same response rate you’re looking at 50 people taking action. And the numbers just keep getting larger the more that you grow your list. Whether that action is making a purchase, calling your office or clicking on a link, it doesn’t matter. Having a large list with a good response rate will bring you more of the results you’re looking for.
There are several different ways to grow your list - from offering a newsletter, to advertising a free course, to giving away a free report - but one of the most effective is having your current list members suggest the list to their friends. There’s a high likelihood that the people who are interested in your list have friends and acquaintances that would be interested as well. For example, many people join online groups related to their interests. Your list full of home improvement aficionados probably know several other people who would take interest in your hardware store’s newsletter.
Adding a “tell a friend” link in your email marketing messages, you can open your list up to a wider variety of people. In addition, people are more likely to join a list that someone they know has suggested. It’s kind of like when a friend refers a new restaurant to you. You’re probably going to try it out based on their suggestion alone. The same goes with your newsletter list. The friends of your list members are going to sign up based on their suggestion.
Make it easy for your list members to share your newsletter by including a “tell a friend” link in your messages. When they are reading one of your excellent articles in your biweekly or monthly newsletter, they can click on a link in order to share the article with their friends. It’s important that you ask for the referral in this context. Invite your list members to share the article with their friends rather than directly asking for a referral. This way they are sharing something of value with their friends and not simply suggesting they opt in to a list.
Place a “tell a friend” link underneath each article in your newsletter so your subscribers can suggest whichever article they’d like to. Be sure to emphasize that you won’t spam their friends and acquaintances. In order to emphasize this, you can offer a link to your privacy policy at the bottom of each newsletter. Your privacy policy should detail how you use the email addresses you receive (ie: only sending them messages if they’ve opted in, not selling the list to others, etc).
Having your list members grow your list for you has many benefits. Once you make “tell a friend” links a part of your email marketing, you’ll increase your list members automatically each time you send out a newsletter.
I recently had a customer come to me asking how he could do away with the “click button to display images” prompt.
The customer was sending out an email and as you know, most, if not all, email programs these days block images by default. He was looking for a way to bypass this and have the images appear automatically. Specifically, he asked if this could be done via the use of background images.
To his dismay, I informed him that background images would also fall victim to this block and in addition, that the use of background images is something that should be avoided altogether.
Seeing as the background images issue is something we haven’t covered in some time, I thought it worthy of a revisit. So here’s a quick cheat sheet on how background images will render in various email clients.
Standard Background Coding
Inline CSS Background coding
As you can see, background images do work for quite a few email clients. However, the ones they do not work for, Outlook, take up the lion’s share of the corporate email market. (I’ve heard of estimates as high as 85%.)
With that being said, it would only make sense to refrain from using background images. Otherwise, you risk sending out a message that’s lost much of its visual impact.
When creating an HTML email message, we’re aiming for the lowest common denominator. We want a message that renders well across multiple clients. So unless you’re certain your clients are not using Outlook, the use of background images is a no-go.
As viral videos from places such as YouTube.com or Break.com become more and more important to the Internet and to your customers, a lot of email marketers are probably wondering how they can incorporate video into email marketing campaigns. Let’s explore.
Constrainted by Old Technologies
Unfortunately, email marketing is still constrained by the older HTML technology being used in email readers such as Thunderbird and Outlook. This technology also constrains ISP email software such as Yahoo Mail, Gmail and Windows Live Mail (formerly Hotmail) and especially corporate solutions like Lotus Notes. So, while it is possible to attach files to emails as embedded media, video is not functional in this way (read below). Until the technology in email clients is brought up-to-date with the latest W3C (HTML 5) standards, sending video directly in an email isn’t easily possible.
Linking To Video
However, there is a way to link to videos from remote sites that will give you something close to the feel of sending the video in the email message. Of course, opening a link to a video will require an active Internet connection. For high definition videos, the recipient will require a higher bandwidth connection like DSL or Cable.
Basically, the only real way to accomplish linking of video in email is to create an image of the video that you want to show and make the image a link to your YouTube video page. When the user clicks the still image in your email, it will take the user directly to the video on YouTube.
You would think using the embed code, which YouTube supplies, would work. It doesn’t. The reason is that the email clients are standalone programs and have no direct linkage to a browser or its plugins (such as Flash). The only exception to this is Mozilla’s Seamonkey. However, Thunderbird and Outlook do not have access to Flash (required by YouTube). Therefore, the embed code that YouTube supplies will not show when viewing the email in an email client. The option that works is to create an image (jpeg or gif) and host it with your ESP. Then, use that image as a link that takes the reader directly to the YouTube video page.
You will need to do this for each video that you wish to place in your email marketing message.
Embed Codes and Web Pages
Note, most email service providers offer your email hosted as a web page. This allows the user to click a link in the email to ’see’ something that might be missing in the email itself. On such a hosted page and because a browser is involved, the user can see embedded Flash objects. Therefore, a hosted page version of the email can have embedded versions of the YouTube videos. On these pages, the embedded version will play as soon as the users click the video. No need to go directly to YouTube. This solution requires you to have a hosted version of your email and it requires your recipients to read the email in a web browser by clicking on a link in the email.
In this way, you could use the hosted email page to create a second version with embedded YouTube videos rather than simple placeholders (like in the email itself). Or, you could create a page on your Blog and have the hosted version of the email lead directly to your blog that has the embedded videos on the blog page.
Videos Embedded Directly In Emails
Unfortunately, this is not possible. The closest you can get is by using an animated GIF. You could use an animated GIF in the above linking example as your placeholder to the video. But, remember that animated GIF files have no sound and should remain as small as possible. The longer the animation, the bigger the GIF becomes and the longer it will take to download this image when the user opens the email. So, you will want to keep this in mind if you want to create animated GIFs as placeholders for YouTube videos. Also, it takes a little time to create animated GIFs. Still images are far easier to create.
As far as directly embedded videos within email, this not possible. Since neither Flash nor HTML 5 is available in email clients, embedding videos is out of the question. But, even with the old technology in email clients, you can still use old-school methods (i.e., image links).
Attachments Not Recommended
Yes, while you can attach flash files to an email message as an attachment, this is not recommended. Flash files can be very large and, at the same time, are not supported directly in the email client or most operating systems. Therefore, the user will have to save the file somewhere onto their computer’s hard drive and attempt to open the file. Since most operating systems don’t support running .FLV (flash video) files, the user will need to have a program installed that will let them open this type of file (such as VLC media player). Note that attaching .FLV files doesn’t solve the embedding problem as the user must still save the file and then open it outside of the mail client.
Again, the most compatible way to use video within email marketing is to create an image placeholder and make that image link to your YouTube video page. Using this technique will allow nearly all of your recipients to view your videos without major issues and give you the look in the email that you need.
One of your businesses’ most valuable marketing assets is the email distribution list. This list can be an aggregate of existing customers, past customers and prospects. To build your list, you will need to put certain programs in place. Some options are to set up incentives for people to complete a form or voucher, or sign up online and share their information. The following four examples are proven incentives to building your list.
Recruit members on your site One easy way to collect email addresses and permission is through a sign-up box on your Web site.
Maintain a guest book in your office or store Keep a guest book near the register or receptionist. Remind employees to ask customers if they would like to receive your email newsletter, special promotions, or notification of private sales and events.
Collect email addresses at every chance Make sure that at every point of contact you and your staff are collecting email addresses. Make your staff aware of the importance of growing your list
Do you ever wonder if Facebook is anything but a time vacuum? Have you ever suddenly looked down and realized you have wasted 30 minutes flipping through a high school friend’s recent photo album that you have not spoken to in 10 years? A more positive use would be attaching your business Blog to Facebook through an RSS feed. This will allow all content that you share on your Blog to be instantly updated to your Facebook users, helping better promote your business. If you think it sounds like a daunting time consuming task you are sorely mistaken. With a few clicks of the mouse you can increase your businesses exposure and begin to use Facebook for a more productive purpose.
1) The given: Log into your Facebook account. Once on your home screen resist the urge to check your News Feed and navigate to the top right hand corner of the page.
2) Under Account click on “Application Settings” from the drop down menu.
3) On the list of applications find and click on the “Notes” category. Don’t worry you are almost done.
4) On the left side of the page click the “Edit Import Settings” Link
5) Now just edit paste the RSS feed from your Blog into the blank box and click “Start Importing”.
6) All that’s left is the final click on “Confirm Import” and Voila! Your Done!
Now you can go check to see if you have any new notifications as a reward for your productive behavior.
Email marketing can be an effective tool to keep in touch with your list members each month with a newsletter, but one of the best ways to use email is to run promotions. Promotional emails can help you announce a new product, sell a product or get sign-ups for an event. While your newsletter is designed to inform them and build trust, your promotional emails are there to build on that trust and get them to take a specific action.
Business owners normally fall into one of two categories - they either shy away from promotional emails and avoid them entirely or they abuse them to the point that their list members unsubscribe. But there is a middle ground of promotional email writing that is effective without being annoying. Here are five secrets to making them effective for your email marketing list.
Your list members are more likely to take action on a promotional offer if you’ve already built a relationship with them through a newsletter or other informative message. Adopt an information to promotion ratio and make sure that you’ve sent out at least three to four newsletters or informational messages before you send a promotional email. This way you’ve already proved your expertise to your list members. They’ll appreciate your information and will automatically see the value in your offer.
Many resources that you’ll find on promotional email writing have some dubious advice about formatting. How often have you deleted a message from your inbox that had all capital letters in the subject line? How many times have you wondered about the credibility of a sender when they use multiple exclamation points? Not only do these techniques look bad to the reader, but they are often caught by spam filters and never reach inboxes.
Promotional emails are normally about sales, special offers, events or other timely matters. That’s why it’s so important to time the messages correctly. For example, if you’re promoting a teleseminar that will take place on a specific date, send a series of three promotional emails - one for a week and a half ahead of time, one five days ahead of time and one the day before. Be sure that the emails aren’t sent on a Monday morning or Friday afternoon (these delivery times tend to be the worst for email open rates).
Subject lines are what get your emails opened, so for your promotion’s sake it’s important that you do them right! If you are offering a coupon or a special discount off of a product, be sure to mention it in the subject line. For deals like this, it’s important to be up front (ie: “30% off New Naturals Vitamins - Today Only”). Alternatively, if your promotional email is about a new course, class or event that you’re releasing you may want to emphasize one of the benefits of the new offering in the subject line. For example, instead of sending “The Coaching Basics Class Starts Tomorrow!” you should send a message that states “What’s the #1 Reason You Haven’t Started Your Coaching Business?” This piques reader interest and increases open rates.
Your promotional email won’t do you any good unless you clearly show the reader where to go next. Don’t forget to end your email message with a strong call to action that will motivate them to sign up, buy from you or register…whatever your action is. Include a few links to your sign up page within your email, be sure those links work and you’ll be ready to go!