With Google announcing their new IMAP accounts for customers, we thought it best we start to look towards the future of email marketing.  For those of you who don’t know what IMAP is, it simply means an email account that can now be synchronised with mobile technology.  So if a recipient checks their emails on their mobile, that will now be marked as read in their inboxes opposed to before where a copy was generated just for their phone. 

So what does that mean to us?  Well, to start with email marketers are going to have to consider mobile email marketing a bit more than previously.  I had already outlined in a previous post that b2b email marketers would have to consider mobile marketing a bit sooner than b2c orientated companies, but now that seems to be shifting somewhat.  If it turns out that IMAP accounts prove popular with customers, you will be sure that the other leading email providers (hotmail, yahoo) will follow suit.   

You must then consider that your message will now only get read once by mobile users, and that they may not read your email on a pc as your email will already be marked as read.   Your email design will have to change somewhat to cater for this quickly expanding area. It will be worth your while to set up your own Google account so that you can see what your message will look like on mobiles.   

Obviously that brings you back to one of the longest running debates in email marketing, HTML design vs Text.  If you’re considering mobile marketing it may be more tempting to move towards text as not only does your message render well in the recipients screen but it would also skip a lot of spam filter checking meaning a higher delivery into inboxes.  I don’t believe this is the answer though.  Successful email marketing campaigns evolve around differentiating yourself from the competition, and however interesting your subject matter may be, users will switch off if every promotional email they read is in a text format.  I’m already an advocate of the HTML light (30% image, 70% text) method of email design and believe that email marketers should work around that still as recipients will still read the majority of campaigns on their pc. 

So how can we cater for this market without sacrificing our whole design strategy?  My personal thought is to start to heavily concentrate on list segmentation.  For instance, if you placed all your Google recipients into a sub group you could then alter your main campaign to render well for mobile devices.  This would of course mean a bit more work, but who’s scared of that when the chances of extra revenue increase?   

mailingmanager is a full e-marketing solutions company that also offers spam filter analysis on its customers email campaigns.  Visit the website or contact the company on info@mailingmanager.co.uk

After another busy week at mailingmanager towers, we were left wondering what we should base this week’s newsletter on.  “Why don’t we do something different and offer them advice on how to better their email campaign?” one bright spark said.  And here it is…. 

Don’t just hard sell to them 

Though obviously you want to sell your products by using email marketing, if you only sell you will find that users will start to switch off.  If you offer a bit more than just what products you have, you will see a constant reader base that will come to expect your email and will be more receptive to your messages.  By doing this you’re laying the foundations for a successful, long-term campaign. 

Let the customer get to know you 

So you’re no longer just hard selling to them, good.  But hold off from giving yourself that well deserved pat on the back just yet, there’s still some work to do.  Try to introduce your company’s personality into your newsletters.  Don’t just write in a formal manner and state facts; be friendly.  This will bring you closer to the customer as you will go beyond just visual branding and customers will be able to relate to the company on a whole. 

Be Consistent   

The last thing you want to do is let the customer forget about you and your company.  If you leave massive gaps in between your campaigns your recipients will have either lost interest in your product or will have forgotten that they signed up for your newsletter in the first place.  Either way, it will lead to a higher complaint rate which will have an adverse effect on your sending reputation, and ultimately deliverability.   

Make it more interactive 

If you want to keep your recipients attention, try to do it by having different forms of interaction in the newsletter.  Small things such as a quick survey can keep their minds focused on the whole newsletter opposed to a quick skim read.  This will also allow you to grab some much needed information about your service or your customers habits that can help to shape future campaigns.  “How do I get them to fill out the survey?” I hear you ask. Read on….. 

Give them something 

Everyone loves free stuff, and people will be much more inclined to spend a couple of minutes filling out a questionnaire if they have a golden carrot of “prizes” at the end of the questionnaire.  Also if you keep offering prizes as a regular feature (perhaps not every issue), then you are guaranteed of repeat opens.Another helpful tip is to include the winner of any prize in the next newsletter.  Not only does it validate that people can win your prizes, but also adds extra content to your newsletter.  And you can be sure of some positive comments about your company from the winner. 

Keep it short 

No-one wants a newsletter to scroll down for what seems like an eternity, so try to keep your message short and clear.  If you have articles for your newsletter, just put an extract of it in your newsletter and then link back to your site for the whole article.  Doing this not only keeps your newsletter short, but also drives recipients to your website.  What’s even more useful is that you will also be inadvertently adding content to your site, which will get picked up in the search engines, and improve your ranking. 

Matching Design with web site branding 

With parts of the population still unsure about trusting e-commerce, you must do everything to alleviate their fears.  With one of the most recent scams being phishing, the recipients will be wary about trusting newsletters that may or may not be from the actual company.  One of the best ways to maintain trust in the newsletter is to have it branded to match your website.  Not only does it maintain trust in the validity of the sender but also that you are a professional company.  Branding is always important. 

Subject Line Tweaking 

Though I have gone on about this in my blog quite a few times, I cannot stress how important a decent subject line is.  If you’re receiving low open rates you have to look at why, and if you’re not receiving massive amounts of bounce emails, then the problem is probably stemming from your subject line.  I have posted a couple of blogs on subject lines here and here. 

mailingmanager is a full e-marketing solutions company that also offers spam filter analysis on its customers email campaigns.  Visit the website or contact the company on info@mailingmanager.co.uk

Ok so we all know about the text vs HTML debate that has gone on forever (If you don’t know about this, the answer is to send it multi-part), but when can text emails be a hands-down, more effective form of contacting your recipients?

I read an article recently (there’s a link in my “back from the dead” post) that had a good point about using text-only campaigns to get a fast turnaround response.  In the example it used a baseball (rounders) team that managed  to sell a massive amount of tickets by sending out a text-only email to their mailing list.  Apart from the fact I was massively shocked at how big little league teams’ stadiums are (size of championship teams!), I was impressed to see the use of text campaigns and how successful they could be.

By using a text email campaign  you are less likely to get picked up in Spam filters (no HTML coding to get caught in the content folder).  This also means that delivery rates will increase somewhat as your emails will bypass the majority of filters (just make sure you avoid those “spammy” words). 

So you see, a good campaign can be constructed by using text-only emails.  Now don’t get me wrong here.  Don’t go crazy and delete your html template and convert to text just yet.  I think the best thing to do is combine both of them; HTML for long term branding of your company and text emails for short-term turnover offers. 

mailingmanager is a full e-marketing solutions company that also offers spam filter analysis on its customers email campaigns.  Visit the website or contact the company on info@mailingmanager.co.uk

Okay, so I told you in a previous blog that the email subject line is very important.  This time I’m going to help you a little further by giving you a guideline to on how to write decent subject lines.

Don’t make the subject line too long.  You want the recipient to be able to read your whole message without it ending half way thr…..The subject line should be no more than 50 characters long.

Try to summarise your offer in your subject line.  Don’t be vague about it and just say “offer” or “sale”.  Try to let the customer know what is on offer or what you are reducing.  By doing this you are offering a first line of targeted marketing to your recipients and you may be able to entice more opens.  You also manage to avoid looking spammy by throwing in words like “free” and “offer” into the subject line.

Finally, try to leave CAPITAL LETTERS and punctuations!!! out of the subject line, this is just asking for your recipients to junk your folder.

mailingmanager is a full e-marketing solutions company that also offers spam filter analysis on its customers email campaigns.  Visit the website or contact the company on info@mailingmanager.co.uk

A welcome email is the first point of contact from you to your recipient and can be a very effective message if thought about properly. 

As they have just opted into your email list you have to consider that they’re at the time of the welcome email reaching them, highly receptive to any material you put forward to them.  Knowing this fact can enable you to secure a high long-term deliverability and open rate. 

One of the best things you can do is ask the user to “whitelist” you.  To ask them to whitelist you, you simply have to ask them to add your address to their contacts list in their account.  This will then enable you (in certain email inboxes) to bypass most of the spam filters they have in place as the user has you as a trusted sender.  This will allow you to be a bit more creative with your design and not so creative with your wording; the email marketers dream.

This is also a time where you can start to entice them with special offers.  In the first welcoming email you could offer a “sign up” discount for all new users or just display your current offers.  Just remember, you’re guaranteed a really high open rate and it would be a shame not to capitalise on that just a little bit. 

When I say “a little bit”, I really do mean it.  There is a limit to how much you can hit them with to start with.  Remember you’re not whitelisted just yet and bombarding them with promotions is not advised.  The majority (79%)  of welcoming emails are constructed in html (source:EEC – Retail Subscription Benchmark Study) but most of them are constructed in html “light”, a scaled down version of html with emphasis placed on text content, not image.  So bear this in mind when constructing your welcome email template.

mailingmanager is a full e-marketing solutions company that also offers spam filter analysis on its customers email campaigns.  Visit the website or contact the company on info@mailingmanager.co.uk

And I started to catch up on the latest blog posts from the email marketing world.  I found a great article which highlighted the advantages of a combined format email campaign.  Though the case study used is a sports team, I’m sure you can think of how you can adopt the ideas for your own company.  Find it here.