There are ways to offend subscribers if you’re looking for them…but why would you want to do that?  Problem is, often you offend or annoy subscribers without even knowing it.  I’ve put together a few key things that you may want to watch out for.

Problem:  Your emails aren’t customized to cater to my interests
Yes, email is a mass communication tool – but that doesn’t mean that one email appeals to all tastes and interests.  Personalised and, I’ve said this before, relevant communication gets better results from recipients. 
The danger here is that when you try to cover everyone’s varied interests in one newsletter, your newsletter becomes too long and confusing – a ramble of content that your subscribers will have to filter through to find something that appeals to them. 

Solution:
Make sure you send different emails to cater to the specific segments of your list.  Ask for your subscribers’ preferences when they sign up, i.e. what kind of information they’d like to read in your emails and how often they’d like to receive them, then stick to it!  Don’t email them daily if they requested a weekly email.
Yes it’s a bit more work, but if you keep it simple and work from a template it needn’t take much of your time.  Plus, isn’t it better to have smaller, more engaged audiences than just one mass of inattentive inattentive people who delete your newsletter or unsubscribe from it?

Problem:  They’re too long – and they don’t get my attention
As I’ve mentioned above, emails that require the reader to scroll through masses of information that could easily fill four or five screens simply won’t be read.  It’s too time consuming and too difficult to filter the information you’re actually interested in from that overflow.  Email is instant, quick communication, not something your recipients want to spend twenty minutes pouring over laboriously.
Also, you don’t know what dev ice your subscribers read your emails on. What if they read it off a smartphone or iPhone? Space limitations on there are far greater than on a PC or laptop. Think with a small screen on your mind – it will do wonders to your newsletter layout and where you place what content and links!

Solution:

Keep your content short and sweet.  If there’s a lot of in-depth information that needs to be conveyed, rather insert a hyperlink that will take me to the full article – it can even be on your site, generating more webtraffic.  Make sure the copy above the fold is attention-grabbing and that the call to action is clear.

Problem:  Your emails have too many images – and yes, there is such a thing!
Most of us have our images turned off in our email clients by default – it helps me to save on server space, means I spend less money when checking my emails on my mobile and generally helps reduce the number of spam emails I receive.  Why?  Because spam filters see too many images in an email as a spam threat.

Solution: 
When designing your emails, bear in mind that many people block their images and make sure that the area above the fold has enough copy to hold their attention regardless.  Keep a balance between copy and images and remember, when uploading your images to your newsletter, to insert alternative text.  That way even those of us who have our images turned off will see something other than a blank block where your image is supposed to be.

Problem:  Your email just isn’t hip enough.
Like it or not, social media is the hype of the moment – and staying a step ahead of your competitors requires staying ahead on every front.   Making it easy for me to share your email with my friends and colleagues shows that you understand the social age online marketing is entering, and that you’re keeping on top of these new developments.  Plus, it shows that you’re eager for me to share the information I value in your emails with your contacts, so if you keep the informative content coming I’m likely to help you out and spread the word.

Solution:

Add some social widgets to your footer, making it easy for me to share your newsletter with my social network connections with a simple click.  Or you can place a Forward to a Friend link in the footer, so I can easily forward your email to my email contacts.  More than anything, if you really want to get my attention, publish your newsletter where it’s fun for me to find – on Facebook or Twitter.  When I’m social networking I’m a lot more relaxed than when I’m checking my work emails, and thus in a much more positive and responsive frame of mind.

Problem:  It just doesn’t look right…
Different email clients, like Gmail, Hotmail, Outlook and Mweb (to name a few), render emails differently.  This means that your email will look different in every subscriber’s inbox.   Sometimes the images won’t be aligned the same, or the preview pane will be smaller than the one you designed it for – which means it might not look as appealing to all subscribers as you’d hoped.

Solution:
Conduct a test send! It’s what it’s there for.  Try sending your email to as many different email clients as possible – open accounts with the different clients specifically to receive test sends if need be.  Whether you try to view it in different clients or not, you should always conduct test sends – it’s the only way to really see what your email will look like and to test that all your links work.  (We’ll also be releasing a clever Inbox Preview tool soon; I’ll be able to give you more details in the coming weeks!)

Yes, I know these are pretty subjective – but think about when you receive email newsletters:  Don’t you respond the same way? 

I have a lot to say about what to do in your email marketing campaigns – tips, best practices, that kind of thing - but I thought it might be a good idea to share with you some of the biggest mistakes I find our clients making in their campaigns.

1.    Neglecting to manage your mailing list

Ensuring that your mailing list is always up to date is vital for a healthy campaign.  Sending to outdated email addresses waves a red flag at spam filters, so it’s important to make sure that you regularly remind your subscribers to update their profile.

It’s surprising how many email marketers simply don’t delete unsubscribes from their mailing list!  Not only is that illegal, but it disrespects the subscriber’s request.  Why not stay on good footing with those unsubscribers?  There’s always a chance that they might subscribe again at a later date.  Perhaps they signed up for your real estate emails because they were in the market – then they found the perfect nest through you and unsubscribed as they no longer need to receive your emails.  That doesn’t mean they won’t be moving again in a few years…  Make use of our automated mailing list management tools to ensure that unsubscribes are removed from your mailing list and spam complaints are added to your block list.

2.     Not sending targeted, relevant emails

As I pointed out last week, relevancy is one of the make-or-break elements of your campaign.  If your content isnt’ relevant to your subscribers, they won’t read your emails, won’t click on your links and will, eventually, unsubscribe.  According to this chart by Emarketer, 55% of email recipients said their reason for not opening marketing emails was because the content didn’t interest them.  (The survey is about how subscribers respond better to targeted emails, so it’s worth your while to have a look.)

Targeted sends mean the content is more relevant to the person receiving the email, making it much more likely that they’ll follow your call to action – whether it’s clicking through to your site or donating to your cause.  How to target your list?  Segmentation and automated responses (TriggerMail).  To find out how, read this article recently posted on our US blog on how one company increased their email generated revenue by 322%, simply through segmenting their mailing list, and this one on how you can implement TriggerMail to target your sends.

3.    Overlooking the importance of testing

Subscribers are a whimsical bunch; their preferences and topical interests are constantly changing.  Your email campaign needs to evolve with them, or you’ll risk becoming irrelevant (I won’t bore you by repeating myself – see point 1!).  Using our A/B split testing tool gives you the ability to constantly test how variations of different campaigns perform against each other.  Test with a clear objective in mind:  If you want to see how recipients respond to longer or shorter subject lines, or a subject line that contains your brand name against one that doesn’t, test it.  You can test longer versus shorter newsletters, one that contains more or fewer  images, or even test different placements for your logo. 

Testing ensures that you send out only the most effective newsletters with every send.

4.     Not considering timing

Some days are proven to yield higher open and click-through rates than others.  There’s no point in sending out a newsletter late on a Friday afternoon when most of your subscribers have already knocked off for the weekend.  Midweek (Tuesday, Wednesday and Thursday) are generally considered the best sending times, but this might differ depending on your business.  I’ve given more tips on send times a previous article, but the most important thing to keep in mind (as always) is the subscriber.  What time best suits them?  When will they be most likely to sit back with a cup of coffee and read your email – and when are they likely to be most responsive?  If you’re trying to get them to make a purchase, why are you sending a week before pay day?

5.    Disregarding social media

I’ve written a lot this year about the rise of social media – and you’ve probably noticed the social versus email debate.  The general consensus is that social media, when implemented properly, can complement your email marketing very well.  Email is more personal, but social has the ability to expand your audience drastically.  It’s time to make use of this quality to grow your email marketing reach.  Add social widgets and forward to a friend links to your footer and make use of our new social share tool which allows you to share your newsletter with your friends and followers on Facebook and Twitter.

Some of these may seem obvious or clichéd, but unfortunately that’s because these mistakes happen.  I suspect it’s because often clients think that these measures are difficult to implement, or that it doesn’t apply to them.  GraphicMail offers you the tools you need to avoid these mistakes at no extra charge.  They’re part of the service we provide and without fail they’re easy to use. 

Email marketing reports - what is it that you want to get from them?

I suppose the better question would be, ‘What is it that you want to gain from your email marketing?’  After all, your send reports are there so you can track how your campaign is doing.  Basics, I know – but I sometimes get the impression that a lot of users don’t know exactly how to read their reports.  The graphs and statistics are easy enough to understand, but how do you interpret them?

Email is a useful marketing tool in that it gives you the perfect opportunity to engage with both existing and potential clients directly.  You get to engage on a more personal level and convince them that your business really does cater to their needs rather than relying on mass advertising messages.  It makes sense then, that your reports should give you an idea of how well you are engaging with your audience.
 
So what do I have to look out for? How do I interpret my statistics?

Open rates
One of the first things you probably look at when examining your reports is your open rates – and rightly so.  After all, in order for subscribers to engage with your emails on any level they need to open them first  If you want to boost your open rates, think the things subscribers see immediately when they receive an email:  The From name and the subject line.  If the subject line  is attention grabbing, unique and relevant, your recipients are more likely to open your emails.  Also consider things like when you send your emails – is it at a time that is convenient for your recipients to read it?  Or do you perhaps email them too often?   Small tweaks can boost your open rates.  We find that most emails are sent mid-week: Most are sent on Thursdays, followed by Wednesdays, Tuesdays, Fridays, Mondays, Sundays and lastly, Saturdays.  It’s clear that our clients don’t get as good a response to their mailings over weekends as they do on weekdays.  It's something to bear in mind when timing your sends.

Unsubscribe statistics
Another important statistic is the number of people who unsubscribed from your list.  Inevitably there will always be some people who are no longer interested in receiving your mailings, so it’s important to keep track of how many people do so, on average, after each send.  That way you’ll notice trends, so if for a few sends the number of unsubscribes is slowly increasing, you know that something in your emails is putting your readers off.  Perhaps there is even a particular message that caused significantly higher unsubscribe rates than usual, in which case it’s a good idea to sit down and analyse the message to identify what in the email caused them to do so.

Click-through rates
The interaction that (in most cases) is probably most valuable to an email marketer is when a subscriber clicks on a link in your email.  Not only does it generate traffic to your website, but it means that they are one step closer to buying your product or signing up for your service.  It means that you’ve managed to pique their interest sufficiently enough in your email that they’ve decided to look into it further.  Understandably then, click-through rates are something you want to keep an eye on.
But how can you boost your click-through rates?  Subscribers are a simple bunch – they don’t want to spend more than a few seconds skimming through your email. Make sure that your content is relevant, direct and targeted.  Make it very clear what you want them to do: “Click here to sign up” or “click here to get your 20% off coupon”.

Social share statistics
Your best metric is one that sends your campaign soaring beyond the immediate Inbox – it’s when your subscribers become so engaged with your email campaigns that they share them with their friend and contacts.  Emails are perfect for growing your audience virally – that’s why we offer you the option of inserting ‘forward to a friend’ buttons and social widgets to your email footer.  (Social widgets allow your readers to share your email through their social networks like Facebook, Twitter, and Digg.)  And again, if your subscribers find your emails valuable or informative enough to want to share with their peers, you must be doing a good job of engaging them – so make sure you track your growth through your social share rates.  These give you a clear indication of how many people forwarded or shared your message.  Who knows, their friends might also sign up as subscribers, so you increase the reach of your emails.  Just remember that your subscribers might not be aware that they have these sharing options, so be sure to point it out to them clearly.

If you keep track of these statistics you should be able to track the efficiency of your campaigns and be able to adapt your email marketing strategies to ensure optimal results.  Of course, sometimes you can notice fluctuation in these rates, but not be quite sure what caused the changes.  When in doubt – test!  Use the A/B split testing tool to measure how well your emails compare against each other.  That way you’ll have a very clear indication of which one works best, so you can send out effective newsletters with every send.

Remember when I introduced you to our new social share feature?  It’s a tool that enables you to publish your email newsletters on Twitter.

Why would I want to do that?

Through social media you have access to a whole new audience of potential clients, plus there’s the benefit that you’re likely to reach people who are actually interested in your product.  Think about it:  Facebook, YouTube, Twitter, blogging – these have become daily networking activities for most of us.
Social media is the way I tell my friends what I “like” and if one of them recommends I follow a particular topic or person, I take them at their word.  After all, who would know my interests better than my social contacts? They’re bombarded with my status updates every day!  So, if someone recommends I follow your company on Twitter, I probably will.

At the end of the day though, social media speaks to the masses – email engages customers on a more personal level.  So, our social share tool makes it easy for you to integrate these two marketing channels! 
When you send out your email newsletter, we give you the option to automatically post a tweet from you GraphicMail account that contains a link to your full newsletter.  That way, all your Twitter followers can also stay in touch with your latest news. 

Not only that, but you can further increase your online exposure by adding social widgets to your email footers, so your subscribers can also share your newsletter with their contacts through their own social network profiles. 

Still a little unclear on how all of this works?  Well, just to make life a little easier, we’ve added a video on social share to our YouTube channel!  It shows you how to set up social share for your newsletter and add social widgets to your email footer - and you get to see both features in action.  Happy viewing!

If you read yesterday’s blog, you’re up to speed with the “social revolution”!  (If you’ve missed the hype watch this Socialnomics YouTube video to see just how powerful social media has become.)

As the internet’s “word of mouth” social media is a must-have marketing, branding and networking tool.  Being an email marketer, you’re probably aware that email has long been the top performing direct and online marketing channel – now I don’t know about you, but something tells me that combining these two channels (email and social media) should have quite a powerful effect.

So, as promised, we’ve release a brand new way of complementing your email campaigns with your social media presence. 

It’s called social share.

This tool enables you to publish your email newsletter straight to your Twitter account.  The newsletter title with a link to your full newsletter will then automatically appear as a tweet – without you having to log into your account to manually tweet about your newsletter. 
Our developers have even included an added gadget: GMtiny, our very own URL abbreviator.  As Twitter limits you to 140 characters per tweet, GMtiny will automatically shorten the link to your newsletter, cutting down that lengthy, unsightly URL to only a few characters.  (I’m sure you’ve seen bit.ly links in tweets before? It’s basically the same thing.)  Handy, isn’t it?

And this is only the beginning - we’re already working on extending this feature to enable you to publish across more social networks.  Next up, Facebook!  Keep watching this space, I’ll let you know when you can take your social sharing even further.

Enhance your brand presence online, increase your audience and subscribers and boost your sales by engaging more fully with potential clients – all with our new social share tool.

(While you’re at it, don’t forget that GraphicMail is also on both Facebook and Twitter, so let’s befriend and follow.  I always enjoy seeing what our followers get up to!)

Don’t forget:  GraphicMail also offers the tools to insert social widgets in your footer – for which we also provide social widget statistics in your reports.

I’ve used the phrase “social media is the new buzz word for 2010” (or some derivative thereof) countless times recently, but something tells me there are many of you out there who either don’t know what I’m talking about, or simply aren’t convinced - which is why I was so excited to read Chris Moerdyk of Bizcommunity’s article yesterday. 

He reviews Socialnomics, a book by Erik Qualman, and summarises some of the important facts about the development of social media.  Moerdyk lists 41 interesting tidbits from Qualman’s book – and some of these made me think:

If Facebook gets more traffic on a weekly basis than Google in the US and YouTube has become the second largest online search engine, then your customers are more likely to find your product on a social site like Facebook or YouTube than on Google. So what happens if they can’t find your product in their social media searches?

Social media is the online version of what is traditionally referred to as “word of mouth”: Qualman states that “78% of consumers trust peer recommendations, only 14% trust advertisements”. So what happens when their peers aren’t recommending you through word of mouth (social media)?

Social search has become the new online phenomenon: Search engines now give preference to companies based on their social mentions.  (Our Head of Marketing wrote a very interesting article on this for Bizcommunity earlier this week.)  According to Qualman we will, in future, “no longer search for products and services, they will find us via social media.” So what happens when you don’t have a social media presence?

While I know our US clients can see these effects of social media in their business communities every day, in South Africa we (unfortunately) do not enjoy the same level of connectivity as our US counterparts and therefore also aren’t as exposed to online social content.  That doesn’t mean that the effects of social media aren’t reaching us here, or that the effects of social media won’t continue to snowball in our own business environment.  Many local businesses are already very active on Facebook running profiles, fan pages and groups – and the hype is slowly expanding to Twitter too.

A perfect example:  I hadn’t hear of the book Socialnomics until reading the article on Bizcommunity, but after reading it I found a blog and YouTube videos by the author, promoting his book.  There was so much information, and so much to convince me that the book must contain some interesting facts, that I’m recommending it to our blog followers the very next day. 
And that’s how online word of mouth works.

But what does this have to do with email marketing?

GraphicMail has been rolling out new ways of integrating social media with your email marketing – we want to assist you and your business to be prepared for this next wave of online expansion.  Last year we enabled you to place social widgets in your email footer so your subscribers can share your newsletters through their social network accounts - recently we’ve even added a new social widget reporting tool.  (It allows you to track who shared what, who they shared it with and through which network.)  Finally, we announced the release of our new social share feature in our newsletter two days ago!  I’ll be publishing a blog article tomorrow to explain the features of this exciting new tool, don’t miss it!

Now:  If social media is this powerful, imagine what you can do with the combined powers of email marketing and social media…