I was recently informed by a client that they needed to step up their social media presence because “email is on the way out”. That was a shock to me as most of my clients (this one included) see a nice return on their email marketing investment. In fact, industry wide email marketing boasts a leading ROI among online marketing
Read moreLike websites, there’s a temptation to look at the positive metrics rather than improving negative ones. Bounces from email is a great indicator of list health. An email campaign that has a low bounce rate (under 10%) is often a well built list that is regularly maintained. The benefit of this is that it usually reflects audience engagement. Poorly built
Read moreIt’s hard to find all inclusive tools. Some times the features in one system do a certain task well while another technology is better suited for something else. This is often true in email marketing, especially for small and medium companies. There’s no inherent problem with using multiple database or list platforms. However a lack of planning and organization can
Read moreEvery offer made online through email, social media, ads, or sponsored links should direct people to a webpage on your site dedicated to that offer. These landing pages are a tried and true best practice because if people land on a page that doesn’t reinforce the offer they were interested in, confusion and abandonment multiply. However, good landing pages bring
Read moreIt’s not uncommon for people to want to infuse their email list with a batch of new people. The stock answer from email marketers (myself included) is to gradually and methodically build a list. Use your network of contacts and regular business interactions to build up a legitimate opt-in email marketing list. However, some people are in a hurry or
Read moreUsing generic metrics for gauging success is very common in email marketing. Specifically the most common gauges are: Open rate Click rate Don’t misunderstand, these metrics are important but for most email campaigns they should not be the defining factor in measuring success. Success depends on the intent of the email. Here’s an example, an email campaign that consists of
Read moreIt’s common for people to use general metric standards as a guideline for success when analyzing online marketing data. This can lead to real problems with their campaigns because it doesn’t take into account individualized goals. Each webpage, email communication, or social media post needs to have a clearly defined metric for success rather than being analyzed on general metrics.
Read moreHTML based emails with sophisticated layouts and images are great. Generally speaking HTML layouts also improve conversion. However, email marketers always need to pay attention to images and how they are rendered. Recent studies have shown that only 33% of email users have images on by default. That means two of the three people you send emails to are not
Read moreOnce we get into a system for email and online marketing that works for us we can get lazy and blindly stick with it. As 2011 begins it’s a good idea to challenge what you are doing. If you don’t regularly review your web and email marketing performance, start now. If you are regularly monitoring results, check your trends over
Read moreJakob Nielson wrote a great article on email usability. There is a lot of good points but I wanted to focus on his section about subject lines. As a rule of thumb, if you have doubts on what the subject line should be . . . be direct. There is a great example in the article of a subject line
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