If you’d like to learn more about email marketing and improve your campaigns, then check out our Email Marketing Guide in the Savvy Marketers shop or get in touch to see how we can help you!

Just as we think we’ve seen all the Email Marketing mistakes

Spelling & punctuation clangers. You’d think having built-in spell checkers would mean better spelling, punctuation and grammar, unfortunately that doesn’t seem to be the case (as Sam found out recently). A well written email marketing message is more likely to be read and speaks volumes for the professionalism of the sender.

Boring Subject Lines. These are so often treated as an after thought and written in a hurry before hitting ‘Send’ – big mistake! The Subject Line is the text that is seen in a list of unread emails and can be what prompts the recipient to open your message. It can also be the only thing that stops them from pressing the ‘Delete’ button.

Mystery ‘From’ Field. If I don’t recognise who an email is from, the likelihood of clicking to open it and find out is much reduced. For example, contact@ or info@ aren’t very friendly are they? As for noreply@ – personally I find this most off-putting!

Lack of or Confusing Call to Action. Every piece of your marketing needs to have a purpose and a clearly defined ‘Call to Action’ (CTA). Email Marketing is no different. Not including a CTA is a waste of your time and effort. Almost as bad is to provide so many options of things to click on or look at that your reader becomes confused – and does nothing as a result. That’s a waste too.

Collecting Email addresses and then not making contact until you want to sell something. This is a crazy phenomenon I’ve noticed recently. I signed up to receive updates on a couple of blogsites and weeks later was still waiting (I did check my spam filters). Then suddenly, BAM! Email after Email promoting a webinar or product launch. No thank you. This practice is just plain bad manners and, as I’m likely to have forgotten who the sender is after such an interval, their messages run the risk of being reported as spam.

We’re certainly not immune when it comes to making mistakes in our Email Marketing campaigns, but we do try our best to keep them to a minimum.

Further reading:

How not to do Emails

7 Basic Email Newsletter Mistakes (and how to avoid them) 

How not to send out Email Promotions

What Email howlers have you come across? Please share in the comments below.

No matter how many followers you have on Twitter, friends or fans on Facebook and connections on LinkedIn, Email Marketing is still a more direct way to get people’s attention. That isn’t to say you can afford to ignore social networking, because you can’t. But the different media will complement each other and work well together.

There are many ways to build a list of email subscribers, although we would strongly advise against buying a list as we covered in previous posts. Building your own list needs to be a priority objective if you want to take advantage of this very cost effective method of online marketing.

Try different ways to encourage people to subscribe to receive your Email Newsletters and marketing messages

Business Card – Use the reverse of your card to promote the free give-away available when people go to your website and fill out the sign-up form.

Email Signature – Add an invitation to get your free give-away to your standard email signature. This is easy to do both in Microsoft Outlook and if you use a service like WiseStamp (for GMail, Hotmail, etc.) Here’s a screenshot of mine:

Article Marketing – When you submit articles to other sites and to article directories, use the link in your Resource Box to take people to a page that tells them about the benefits of signing up to your list, and has the form there too.

Blog Posts – Within the body of your blog post, occasionally make reference to an article which is only available to subscribers and provide a link to the sign up box. Take care not to overdo this tactic as you don’t want to upset your blog subscribers!

Facebook Page – Don’t forget to provide a sign-up page linked to your Email Service Provider (as we have – see below) for fans to subscribe to receive your email newsletters and messages. If they already like your page, they’ll want to get more of the good stuff you share!

Here are a couple of general points to bear in mind when creating the sign-up forms, that have been proven to increase willingness to subscribe.

Keep your form as short as possible: just email address and first name are really all that’s needed in most cases. If you make the form unnecessarily long with lots of ‘required’ fields, people are less likely to sign up as they may be reluctant to provide too much detailed information about themselves.

Also, reassure them that you will store their contact details securely. State your privacy policy and link to it as well. Here’s a link to ours, feel free to model it.

There are more tips on list building and Email Marketing in our Guide.

Email marketing campaigns work well for some, less well for others

So how do you get your newsletters opened by more people?

Sender or ‘From’ field – make sure you use a recognisable name here, either your own name or business name. Don’t use your email address or a vague name such as ‘contact’ (yes I get a newsletter that just has ‘contact’ in the from field). If the recipient isn’t sure who the newsletter is from, they’ll probably view it as spam.

Subject line – this has to be one of the most important aspects of email marketing and one of the main reasons that people will choose to read or not read your newsletter. If your subject line just states ‘February newsletter’ or something equally uninspiring, then it’s not going to get many opens, however interesting the content is inside. You need to arouse curiosity, make people want to open it and this is where the subject line plays such an important part. Take a look through your email newsletters and see which subject lines have made you open and want to read more. A subject line such as ‘why your granny is better at social networking than you are’ is more likely to make people want to click and read the contents, instead of an alternative more bland subject such as, ‘top tips on social media’ for example. Whatever you do, don’t be vague either, your subject line needs to be to the point and convey what the newsletter will be about, what your readers will expect when they open it.

Over enthusiastic spam filters – I check my spam filters most days for the odd genuine email that may have ended up in there and this is a problem for email marketing campaigns. Asking people to white list your newsletter helps, if they remember to do it, but there are times when for whatever reason, your newsletters may end up in spam filters. It’s definitely worth reminding your subscribers to white list your newsletter from time to time.

What tips do you have to get more people opening your newsletter? Please share them in the comments!

When you go to all the trouble of crafting word perfect, interesting articles for your newsletter

With so many beautiful templates available from popular Email Service Providers such as MailChimp (aff), Vertical Response, Constant Contact, AWeber, et al, it can be difficult to know which to choose. Especially as, with most providers including the free ones, you can easily customise colours to your brand and add your business logo.

It can be tempting to go for every bell and whistle – just because you can! But depending on your audience, that might be a step too far, and leave you lamenting a trail of unsubscribes. While a more technically savvy audience will happily explore as many new bells & whistles as you can throw at them, a more traditional reader will be happier to simply find familiar features in each issue.

The complexity of design of your email newsletter is also going to depend to some extent on what device your audience is using. You’ll need to consider the growing number of people who will be reading on their mobile phones for example; their needs will be different to someone reading on their desktop, laptop or tablet. Fortunately the professional providers take care of that for you by offering a mobile friendly subscription option.

But no matter what device your readers are using, or their level of tech savvy-ness, there are a few basic design considerations which will make reading your newsletters a good experience for them, and so that they look forward to future issues.

Design Checklist

Your Email Newsletter is not the same as your website so it shouldn’t look like a web page. This style of template shows too many options, some of which look like tabs to click, and are generally too busy and confusing.

Should you use one column or two? Think about how you read on the screen – one column is easiest without a doubt. But two columns do look attractive and can be useful. Just make sure your most important messages are in the left hand (fatter) column, and keep items short in the right hand (skinny) column.

Provide a brief list of contents. This lets readers see at a glance what is included in each issue and gives them a chance to go straight to the content that piques their interest. Otherwise they may well consign your email to the ‘read later’ folder – which is basically a staging post to the delete folder….

Divide your newsletter into clear sections and keep these consistent in every issue as readers will have their favourites. Some will look out for your ‘Quick Tips’ to take away and apply immediately, or book recommendations, events, etc.

Use their first name two or three times in the newsletter. This is a good relationship building tactic, but don’t over-use the personalisation feature to the point that it comes across as smarmy and false. Inject a little of your personality by uploading one or two of your own photos in each issue; your readers will enjoy seeing them and learning about the person behind the newsletter.

The template and design should reflect the visual elements of your brand (logo, fonts and colours), in other words be easily associated with your business. While refreshing the design periodically is a good idea, changing it out of all recognition every month probably isn’t.

Make your page easy for your readers to navigate and keep the overall appearance simple, with lots of white space between columns, sections and paragraphs.

Consider font size and overall readability. Larger headlines will help to clearly define the sections, keep those fun and funky fonts to use as section headers. As a rule of thumb, don’t use anything smaller than 10 point font (HTML Size 2), and 12 point (HMTML size 3) is even easier to read.

Be sure to include graphics because they will enhance your publication, be pleasing on the eye and help break up the text. As I already mentioned, do consider including your own photos which are easy to take and upload using your smartphone.

What design features do you like to see in your favourite Email Newsletters? Please share them in the comments below.

Autoresponders are something that not many small businesses use

If you’re not sure what an autoresponder is, it’s generally a series of automated email messages sent over a period of time. The autoresponders are set up in advance, and can be used, for example, when someone signs up to your newsletter and you want to follow up with a series of tips – this could be a great add on to a free report you’re giving away. Perhaps you’ve written a short course and want to deliver it by autoresponder so the people who sign up to it get their weekly instalments.

There are lots of things you can do with autoresponders and we’ve been using them for a while alongside our Savvy Marketing Tips newsletter. Until recently, subscribers received a series of tips delivered a few days apart when they signed up, but we’ve now created a new e-course. When someone subscribes to our newsletter, they’ll receive a copy of our guide ‘Content Marketing…what it is and why you need to do it”. After that the subscriber will receive a short course delivered weekly over a 10-week period to help them implement the tips in the guide.

You may wonder why we would want to give such a course away for free?

Well, it’s a great way of showing off our knowledge, helps our subscribers understand more about what content marketing is and how it can improve their online marketing, adds value to our free giveaway, plus it keeps us in the minds of our subscribers, particularly when it comes to online marketing!

Most email providers such as Mailchimp (who we use), Aweber & Contant Contact have this facility. If you use any of these providers, you can easily set up autoresponders to go out to new subscribers to your newsletter, or deliver an online course.

For small businesses these features are a great way of growing your business and can be used effectively to deliver training and add value to a free report or giveaway.

If you’d like to find out how autoresponders work, then click here to subscribe to our newsletter, receive our guide and 10 week e-course on content marketing!

Email Marketing is one of the cornerstones of online relationship building

Things have moved on a bit (about a million miles actually) since the days of rainbow coloured text emails and using the BCC field for your list while sending the message to yourself, although unbelievably some of these still occasionally drop into my inbox (bless!).

There are many excellent Email Service Providers (ESPs), including Mailchimp (we are fans & affiliates), Constant Contact, Vertical Response and AWeber. Which provider you choose is down to personal preference, but there are compelling reasons why you need to choose and use a professional ESP for your business Email Marketing.

Get More of Your Emails Delivered

Many people think that pressing ‘Send’ is all that’s needed to get their email message to its various destinations. Not necessarily so. For people still using their computer email packages, deliverability is unknown and open & click-through rates are unmeasurable.

Using your web domain host or shopping cart email service isn’t a guarantee of getting delivered either. These are OK for occasional mailings but messages are less likely to get through spam filters, so it isn’t a good idea to use as your main ESP, if you’re serious about Email Marketing.

The number of people reading their emails on SmartPhones is growing rapidly, so making sure your Emails are mobile friendly is becoming increasingly important. The main ESPs have this covered with special templates for the publisher to use and options to receive emails in a mobile friendly format for the reader.

Benefit from their Good Reputation

The best providers have a good reputation they’ve worked hard to establish. Not only for deliverability (over 99% is their proud claim), but also, importantly, for their adherence to the CAN-Spam Act, which they take very seriously.

I was chatting with an Email Marketing colleague recently and he told me the sad story of two clients who had their email accounts suspended as a result of using their computers to send out campaigns. This could have been as a result of the large number of emails going out, or because they fell foul of the Spam filters.

I don’t know about you, but the thought of being without email in my business sends icy shivers down my spine. It’s one of my primary communication channels and I’d really struggle without it.

Professional ESPs use a ‘double optin’ process to further protect their reputation – and yours by association! This process replaces the practice back in the ‘bad old days’ when you simply added all your contacts’ email addresses to a spreadsheet and sent out uninvited and unexpected promotional emails to them. “But wait,” I hear you say, “I still have some of those emails arriving in my inbox.” Yep, me too – and I report them as ‘Spam’ because that’s what they are. I didn’t ask for them.

A Double Opt-In is when you enter your details (usually just Name & Email address) onto a web based form, press Enter and are then taken to another screen with a message telling you to look out for an email which you need to act on. The email usually arrives within seconds and has a link you have to click in order to confirm that you really did fill out that form and want to receive the emails from that person.

The above are just a couple of reasons why using a professional Email Service Provider is so important for the small business owner. Check out our Guide for more information on Email Marketing, and please ask your questions in the comment box below.

I was chatting with a fellow business owner over coffee the other day

We went through the need and purpose of having a blog and setting up accounts with the various social networks where his target market were most likely to be, and then I asked him: ‘How big is your list?’

His answer was pretty much what I’d expected: that he had a lot of contacts but they weren’t organized in any way or stored in a central place, for example on an Excel spreadsheet.

The traditional way of collecting business cards at networking events and trade shows often results in a drawer full of cards and very little else. Even if these cards are put into a display folder of some kind, they still won’t be of any use for email marketing until they at least find their way onto a computer.

As I explained to my downcast colleague, in order to make the best use of email marketing, he really needed to have enough people to send his emails to!

We agreed that his best starting point was to create an Excel spreadsheet and manually enter the contact details. From there it will be easy for him to upload the data to an email service provider (such as MailChimp, AWeber or Constant Contact – and there are many others). When it comes to those drawers full of business cards, his options include various scanning machines & software packages, and he would do well to consider the newer technology Apps for smartphones, such as ScanBizCards.

A common list building mistake 

One of the problems I’ve seen recently with enthusiastic social networking business owners is that they’re so focused on building a following on Twitter, Facebook, LinkedIn and so on, that they seem to have lost sight of the importance of building an email marketing list.

Just think about how quickly those online newstreams, updates and Twitter feeds move down the screen. You have no guarantee that your followers are actually going to see your message, amongst all the other messages vying for their attention, let alone click on a link.

On the other hand, an email is a targeted marketing message arriving in each individual’s inbox. They will have given permission for you to send them such emails and, providing proper opt-in procedures are followed, the recipient has to consciously decide what to do with each message they get from you. While some people may choose to delete without reading, if the campaign has been well put together, your email stands a much better chance of being opened.

By the time we’d finished our coffees, my fellow business owner had written down clear steps to get his email marketing list off the ground and had an understanding why it was urgent and important to keep taking action and build on it.

What would you have recommended he do to build his email marketing list? Please leave your suggestion in the comments below.

When you’ve worked really hard to build your email subscriber list ethically

After you’ve dried your tears, take a look to see whether it is an isolated case or have there been others during the past month or so?

If there are more ‘desertions’ than you’d like, it may be worth asking yourself a few questions about your overall email marketing strategy.

Did you ask permission to send Emails?

As I write this post there are two messages in my inbox from people I’ve met at local networking events and who have added me to their email list. They didn’t ask if I wanted to be added, so technically they are spamming me. It is tempting when starting out on email marketing to go through your business cards just to have some people to send your message to. Tempting but asking for unsubscribes and even a few spam complaints.

Are you providing valuable information?

The reason most people stay subscribed to a list after getting the freebie they originally signed up for is that the information in your emails is useful and valuable to them. Quite often, even though they may not have time to read your message when it arrives, they’ll move it to a folder until they do have time. But they will only go to this trouble if you consistently provide good quality, valuable content.

Is the content relevant to the recipients?

For people to trust you with their email address, they need to be sure that the emails they receive will contain articles, tips, tricks, and resources relevant to their situation or business. Coming up with fresh and interesting content on a regular basis can be challenging (as we both know from personal experience!), but it’s important to always keep in mind the needs and expectations of your reader. If your emails don’t resonate with your list, they’ll leave, and sign up with someone who does meet their needs.

Are you sending out too many emails?

How many is too many? That’s one of those questions which is difficult to answer. I’ve been subscribed to some lists for several years and look forward to receiving emails from the authors. Because their newsletter content is so good (valuable and relevant, as in points 2 & 3 above), I don’t mind receiving quite a few promotion-only emails from them when they launch a new product or service. Everyone’s tolerances are different and some people will unsubscribe as soon as you try promoting anything. So it’s generally a case of trial and error – and keeping a close eye on the unsubscribe notifications!

Is the tone of your message right?

We both started sending out email newsletters in 2003 so have obviously had plenty of opportunity to monitor what works for us, as well as what can cause people to unsubscribe from lists. Assuming the previous questions are answered satisfactorily, then the tone in which the message is written can be a deciding factor in building a loyal and happy list of readers.

Surprisingly, it often isn’t the wonderfully informative articles nor even the excellent resources that keeps the open rate high. But using a more conversational writing tone, as well as including a few details of a more personal nature will have subscribers eagerly awaiting a newsletter. People like to hear about real people whom they can relate to and get to know.

Click here for more tips about Email Marketing.

What makes you hit the ‘unsubscribe’ link? Please share in the comments below.

Of course, I’m assuming you use Email Campaigns as part of your marketing mix

Please, please, use a reputable email service if you want your email marketing to work.

Unbelievably there are some business owners who continue to use their computer’s email software to send out email marketing campaigns, and therefore have no way of knowing how well or poorly received their messages are. These are the same business owners who howl with anguish when their email accounts are suspended for spam-like activities (ie. sending out too many emails).

We like MailChimp (Aff link) for many reasons, but it’s obviously a good idea to explore other providers to find the one you like best, and that has the features you want. (For the purposes of this post, and because it’s the provider we know best, we will stick with screenshots from MailChimp.)

Reports are important

None of us has time to waste! Sending out email marketing messages that people delete without even opening are a waste of time and effort. Campaign reports that clearly show what has happened to your messages are a must, whether you access them on screen, print out, or download onto your computer. MailChimp has a selection of reports, starting with a summary overview and drilling down each section into as many details as most of us will need to see.

What Do you need to know about?

Open Rates used to be the measurement everyone took notice of, but actually this isn’t always reliable. More and more people have their privacy options set so that images don’t automatically show when they view emails. By doing so the email service is unable to track the little piece of code it places as an image in the message – and the open won’t be counted.

Bounces can happen if a person’s inbox is full, or when the email address can’t be found (which could be because the person has changed employer). But only if you know there’s a problem in delivering your messages can you do something about it.

Unsubscribes are like a personal slight aren’t they? What’s even worse is when someone reports your message as spam or ‘unwanted’ when they subscribed to your list in the first place?!! Anyhow, it helps to be able to track what your subscribers are doing, where they come from and so on.

Click throughs from links you place within your message will help you to know how much traffic your email campaign is sending to your website, and are therefore a more important measurement than open rates.

It’s also important to be able to compare the effectiveness of different elements of your campaign, for example how well a particular headline performs, or find out the best day of the week to send out messages.

Take a look at our OnLine Marketing Tracking & Measurement Guide, which will help you find out what’s actually working for ALL your different online marketing activities so you can stop wasting time on what isn’t!

What have I left out? What email marketing reports do you find most helpful? Please tell us in the comments below…