When doing email marketing, learn from the spammers!

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When you’re setting up your first email marketing campaign, the one thing that you’ll hear from the experts is that you need to ensure that you’re not spamming your list.  Whether that’s adding people without their permission or sending out emails that aren’t relevant or consistent, you need to be doing your email marketing correctly so that you are seen as someone who respects your contacts’ time and information.

One way to do this is to learn from the spammers themselves and here are 5 essential lessons that you can learn from spam emails.

Mind your language.  One way to ensure that your message will end up in the junk folder is to use words like “free” “£££” “bonus” etc and add exclamation marks and use UPPERCASE WORDS in the subject line and body of the email.  Make sure your subject line and any call to actions are compelling without coming across as too ‘salesy’ and ‘spammy’.

Be relevant.  Sending out information that people haven’t asked for is another way to get people to unsubscribe.  When people sign up to your list, explain clearly what they will be getting, eg monthly newsletter, special offers etc.  And make it relevant.  People who have signed up to receive your free guide on losing weight, don’t want to start receiving emails on how to use social media!

Engage with your readers.  Most spam emails you get are just broadcasting links or sales messages.  Make yours stand out by engaging with your readers.  You can do this by asking people to comment on a blog post or LinkedIn discussion.  Alternatively you could capture people’s phone numbers and give them a call.  It’s said that the majority of people who sign up to a list will give a valid phone number if asked.  By initiating a discussion, you can find out why they signed up  and what kind of information they would find useful.  This is all good market research that you can use for planning future email marketing campaigns.

Let them go. You’ll find that many spam emails won’t let you unsubscribe.  Most email marketing programs will add a one-click unsubscribe link as standard.  If people do unsubscribe, then respect their decision. On no account challenge or get aggressive towards anyone who decides to leave!  By letting people unsubscribe, you’re keeping your list relevant and engaged.

Respect their time.   We all struggle with keeping on top of our inbox so sending out endless emails to your list isn’t going to go down well.  Be respectful of their time by emailing your list no more than once or twice a week.  But make sure that you are communicating with them regularly otherwise they will forget about you.

So look at how spammers are using email marketing and educate yourself to ensure that you stand apart from them.  By using email marketing correctly, you can build a relationship with your contacts which will increase your profits and get your information to the people who most want to see it.
 

If you want to get more tips on how to use email marketing to promote your business, then download our guide The Essentials of Email Marketing. This guide is packed full of useful information from how to set up your first campaign to the best time to send your newsletter. Click on the link to download the guide >> The Essentials of Email Marketing
 

3 Ways to Use Autoresponders for Your Business

Email marketing, How to2 comments

As I mentioned in my previous blog, How to Market to Your Contacts While You Sleep, autoresponders are a great way to stay in contact with your list.  They are automated emails that you set up on your email marketing system which get sent out at specific intervals set by you.

Here are 3 ways that you can use autoresponders for your business.

1.  The most common way to use autoresponders is to send out emails after someone has signed up to your list.  For example, I offer free guides on my website and once someone has signed up and downloaded one of the guides, then they receive emails over several days giving the top 5 tips from the guide.  Very often when you sign up to a mailing list, you don’t hear from that person for several weeks or months.  So it’s a good idea to set up a series of autoresponders so your list get to know who you are.

2.   Another good way of using autoresponders is to set up an online course. If you’ve already got Ebooks on your site or written various articles and blogs, then think about turning that information into a product that you can sell or give away to attract leads. You can set up a series of autoresponders for each module and these emails can contain video links, guides and worksheets which people can use to work their way through the course.

3.   Get feedback on your service or product.  If people are buying from you online, then you can set up an autoresponder after the buying process to get feedback on what they have purchased.  This is great market research which  you can use to either adapt the service or product or find out what your customers would like from  you in future.

So as you can see, there are various ways of using autoresponders.  The great benefit to you is that once you set them up then they do the marketing for you without any other extra effort on your part.  And if you keep in contact with your list on a regular basis then they will think of you first when they want to buy your services or products.

Email marketing and autoresponders are great ways to promote your business to people who you know are interested in what you do.  If you want to know more about how to use these tools then download a copy of our free guide “The Essentials of Email Marketing“, which contains all you need to know to help get you started.
 

The Truth About Open Rates

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If you are using email marketing to promote your business then you know that one of the key things that you need to track after each campaign is to see who is opening and interacting with your emails.   Now many business owners get very discouraged when they see the low percentage of people opening their emails.  They wonder if it’s worth the effort to send out campaigns that only 20-30% of their list is opening. 

If this sounds like you, then here’s some information about open rates that you probably didn’t know.

Your open rate isn’t your real open rate.

The way open rates are calculated means that they are a highly unreliable way of measuring who has actually opened your emails.  The open rate is actually a ratio of the number of people who opened your email divided by the total number of emails delivered.

When you send out a newsletter via an email marketing program, the software automatically adds a small invisible image to each email.  When this invisible image shows up on the server then this counts as the email being opened.  However, many people use email browsers that block images by default, eg Gmail, Outlook and Yahoo.  That means that if people select not to see images on their emails by default then it will not count as an open when they receive your newsletter.   This also goes for people who have selected to receive plain text emails from you when signing up to your mailing list.

This means that your open rate could be affected by as much as 35%!

However, before you abandon open rates altogether, they are still a useful metric to track.  Look out to see if your open rates rise or fall dramatically and analyse what you did differently if that happens.  You can also use your open and click through rates to carry out split tests on the best date/time to send your newsletters and which subject lines are the most effective.

However, don’t get too hung up on open rates if they are low – a lot more people could be engaging with your content than you realise!

5 Things to consider when changing email marketing programs

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Very often when people start with email marketing, they just want to send out a regular newsletter to their contacts, build their list and raise their profile.  Now many of the basic programs will do this without a problem.  However, what many people fail to do is plan ahead and pick the right program at the start.

What happens when you want something more sophisticated?  For example, you may want to start using your list to sell products.  If your current program can’t do this in the way that you want then you’ve got to change suppliers.  But this may be harder than you thought…

So here are 5 things to consider when changing your email marketing program.

Upload contacts.  You might have several hundred contacts on your database that you’ll need to switch over but many email marketing programs are very strict about uploading names on to their database.  Most email marketing programs will force people to go through the double opt-in process before allowing them on to their list.  It doesn’t matter whether your contacts did this when they originally signed up with your previous supplier, they will have to go through the process again and there’s going to be a large percentage of your contacts that aren’t going to do this.  Also, some email marketing programs will strip out names that are generic, eg email addresses beginning with “sales@” or “info@”.

Segment lists.  If you segmented your lists according to topics or categories that your contacts are interested in then you will need to set these up in your new email marketing program and ensure that all your contacts transfer correctly to the appropriate list.

Change templates.  Unless you’re an HTML whizz and have designed your newsletter template yourself using an HTML editor such as Dreamweaver, then you’ve got to redesign a new one using the tools in your new email marketing program.   This obviously takes time depending on the ease and simplicity of the design tools.  The branding will need to look similar to the old template so that recipients can instantly recognise it’s from you.

Sign up forms.  When changing email marketing suppliers, you will need to create new sign up forms for your website.  OK, the program will give you the code but very often this needs tweaking so that it fits in with your branding.

Autoresponders.  If you have set up a series of autoresponders to go out to contacts after sign up, then these will need to be recreated in the new email marketing program for each list as appropriate.

So as you can see, there are various things to think about when changing email marketing programs.  It therefore pays to plan ahead at the start, and think about how you will be using email marketing in 12-18 months from now.  You may start off by paying for features that you don’t need now but it will save you a lot of time and stress in the future.

If you need any help with your email marketing, whether it involves setting up a campaign from scratch or managing your existing activities, then check out our email marketing services.

Have You Got the Right Newsletter for Your Business?

Email marketing, Online marketing0 comments

If you’re thinking about using email marketing to promote your services or products then the first thing you need to decide on is what kind of newsletter you are going to send your contacts.  I produce a monthly newsletter which is aimed at giving my contacts money and time saving tips;  however, you may be more interested in getting people to sign up to receive exclusive high value products.  Whatever your objectives, you need to adapt your newsletter format accordingly.

So here are 3 types of email newsletter that you can use to promote your business.

Tips, advice and special offers.  You can provide valuable information related to your services, or to offer special promotions and discounts on your products.  This is content that your contacts can’t access anywhere else – either on your website or Facebook page – and is exclusive to people who have signed up to your mailing list.  Because you are making the content valuable and exclusive, your prospects will feel like they’re joining an elite club and will therefore be more compelled to sign up.

Blog/article digest.  An easy way for you to get content for your email newsletter is to use blog posts that you’ve already written.  If you’re using blogs to share your knowledge and expertise, and build trust with your contacts, then this helps to promote your content to a wider audience.  Some email marketing programs such as Aweber make this easy for you to do by automating the process.  For example, you can specify the number of recent blog posts to add to the digest and how often you want to send it out.

Plain text newsletter.  This is a newsletter that just contains text which leads people back to your website with a special offer.   A lot of internet marketers send this type of newsletter when they’re promoting a product for a limited time.  You click on a link and get taken to a sales page which is geared towards you buying something, or signing up to their mailing list to receive a free product which is then leading on to a sale.

Most small business owners use the first option when they’re sending out their newsletters.  Providing your contacts with valuable information or special offers is a great way to raise your profile and build engagement with your contacts.  So think about what you want to achieve with your email marketing and focus your content towards your objectives.  By doing this, you are more likely to achieve the results you want, and generate leads for your business.

If you want to find out whether your email marketing campaigns are performing effectively, then take our free Email Marketing Assessment.  This questionnaire will take no more than 5 minutes of your time and you will receive 3 key actions that you can take straightaway to improve the effectiveness of your campaigns. Click here to find out more.