Within your list you will have a number of different groups; there will be the regular openers who trust the quality of your campaigns and will subsequently open virtually every email as they have a genuine interest. 

Then there’s the occasional openers who pick and choose when to look at your emails.  These people are more likely to be affected by relevance of email, timing of email, enticing subject header etc.

Finally there is the dead email addresses.  People who have only opened your email once, twice or sometimes never. 

Understanding what makes these people tick is the key to unlocking the full potential of your whole mailing list.

Firstly, the advocates of your company.  These people are already delighted with your company and it’s email campaign.  The key for them is to keep up what you are already doing.  No sharp changes in your format or direction of your emails will keep your core subscribers happy.

The occasional openers will require a little more research.  You need to look back at your previous campaigns and see where you had high open rates and then look at the factors which may have caused it.  An ideal thing would be to carry out A/B split testing on your list to see which factors encourage or discourage opens. By constantly testing your campaign you can get those occasional openers to at least become more regular.

Now for the dead emails.  This is always a tough decision for an email marketer to make but sooner or later you’re going to have to ask yourself “when is it time to remove them from the list?”

We have a customer who is currently going through this question with a sizeable list.  The first thing to do is try and eliminate all possibilities before believing that it is a lost cause.

Try changing the format or style of your email.  If it is quite a graphical email, there’s a chance that some of them are just not receiving the email. 

Another alternative could be that that you have never managed to entice them in.  In this case maybe offering these people a decent sized incentive to open the email will tempt the recipient back into the loop.

Eventually though, if you’ve tried these ideas and still had no response it may be time to part with them.  Some of them may have just signed up to enter a competition or entered in a hardly ever used email address just because they didn’t want their own inbox swamped.

Either way, with each passing campaign that you send out and they ignore, it will be getting more dangerous for you to keep sending to them.  The last thing you want is to have your reputation affected by someone who opens up the email after a year and has forgotten who you are.  Though your list will look less impressive, you will at least be able to concentrate your efforts on your active subscribers.

I’ve read a couple of blog posts recently that turned out to be a bit of an eye opener and have really helped me to look at email marketing in a new light (look at the bottom of the page for links).

Now, I can hold my hand up and admit that I may have spent too much time getting obsessed with the strategic side of email marketing and not offering some more inspiration for creativity.

Don’t get me wrong, I think a well thought about and well maintained email marketing campaign can really work wonders for you.  The problem lies in the fact that more and more companies are taking on email marketing and soon enough there will be many well maintained email marketing campaigns and yours will not be standing out from that crowd as much.

As well as having a stand out campaign, the main goal in todays climate is to not only grow the recipient list but to make sure that these recipients are attentive to your messages.  With that in mind I started to think about email campaigns and the holy grail of viral-ability (yes, I have just made that up, but if Ian Dowie can do it….).

In a previous post I pointed out how H&M had exceeded my expectations by giving me a £10 voucher when I signed up, which I then subsequently told my friends about who also signed up.  Though this was an expensive technique that most companies can’t really afford, the idea of it is still worth some heavy thought. 

Yes, I know, it’s easier said than done but if you can get something that has that forwarding on effect, you can guarantee yourself some serious, cheap exposure.

You have your usual just for laughs viral campaign that will guarantee forwarding during those long office hours (such as reggae irie name generator). 

But it doesn’t have to just be the usual type of viral campaign.  The H&M one was just such a good offer, it would be rude not to tell your friends about free money.  Another great example of this is from one of our own customers, The Urban Shop. They offer 15% off to anyone who forwards the email to their friends, plus another 10% for the person who gets the forwarded message.  Both people benefit from the forward whilst at the same time encouraging the recipient to sign up to the list to receive greater discount in the future.

Another thing you’ll have to remember is to not leave it to the customer to forward this email on.  Treat the link like you would a call-to-action (which it is really), and make sure that a well-placed forward button is present for them to click on.

So when you’re next creating an email make sure that you think long and hard about your forward link, it could be a fantastic way to not only re-ignite or maintain your recipients interest in your campaign, but may prove to be a successful way to increase your mailing list size in the process.

Useful Related Articles:

BeRelevant: How To Make Your Email Marketing Campaign Stand Out From The Rest

No Man is an iland: Take a design risk and get animated? I was dubious about this idea until I read the post and then was left with a head-nodding hmmm at the end

These tips aren’t just about getting a vast amount of new subscribers, they’re designed for you to get a healthy list of active and interested subscribers.

1. Don’t make joining the mailing list mandatory when purchasing something from you.

   We all want to make our mailing lists increase, that’s a given, but there’s no need to increase it for the sake of numbers.  This will undoubtedly lead to an increase in recipients but it’s guaranteed that quite a few will be switched off from your messages.  Leave the “join our mailing list” check box unticked and try and entice them in with what you promise your content will have. 

2. Deliver what you Promised

   If you’ve promised that you’ll send them the most up to date information on new stock and sales, make sure that’s what you actually send them.  There’s a certain level a trust placed on you when a subscriber joins your mailing list and to break that by sending content that you didn’t promise will ultimately result in subscribers losing interest and not opening your communications in the long run.  For an example of how you should and shouldn’t carry this out, see my previous post on this subject.

3. Positioning of Subscribe Button

   Something as small as this can make all the difference.  Many articles I’ve read in the past have shown up to a 400% increase in subscribers joining their mailing list solely on the prominence of the subscribe button on their site.

4. Go beyond expectations

   Something I outlined in my previous post, is going above and beyond what you outlined your subscribers would receive from you.  Giving them a voucher or discount off of future purchases from you can really impress your subscribers, especially when they weren’t expecting it.  Word spreads when something like that occurs and can result in mailing lists expanding quickly.

5. Be consistent

   Try and send regular mail-outs to your subscribers.  The worst thing you can do is leave it for several months and then start sending out again, expecting your subscribers to still be interested in what you have to say.  Regular, relevant campaigns are the essential ingredient to growing and maintaining your subscribers.

I signed up for two clothing companies email campaigns not too long ago, and I have to say that it has been a mixed bag of emotions since.

The first company I signed up to was H&M. They promised they’d let me know when new stock, new offers and special deals were on (I’m a sucker for bargains). I thought that sounded like something I’d be up for knowing about, so entered my address in.

I instantly received a notification email from them and opened it up to find that they had given me a £10 voucher in the welcome email. I printed off the voucher and went down to H&M and spent it. I also told some of my mates about this cracking offer, who also signed up and spent their £10 vouchers.

Since then I have received another three emails from them, two of which had vouchers for me to print out, and the other gave me news of some special range of clothes coming in from some designer.

So not only did they manage to keep to their word but they also impressed me so much that I went and told my mates about it. They went above and beyond my expectations from an email marketing campaign. This is particularly impressive as they don’t actually have an online shop which means they had to drive us to get up and go to their shop.

Now the not so good.

Another company who don’t have an online shop but who I also enjoy shopping at is TK Maxx (did I mention I like bargains?). They promised to let me know when new labels and new stock was coming into the stores. As you really can find some treats now and then in TK Maxx I was quite excited about this idea and signed up.

The first signs that they hadn’t really thought this through properly was in the sign up process. As some of you may know, the clothing in TK Maxx is not the same from store to store, yet they didn’t ask for my postcode or at least general area.

TK Maxx also houses a wide range of clothing and items, spanning the different tastes of the UK population. Yet when I signed up they didn’t ask what areas I was interested in. I could see this going a bit sour.

Like H&M I received an instant notification email from them. I opened it, hoping for some kind of repeat performance of free stuff. What I got was a plain text email telling me that I had officially signed up and then reiterated what I should expect from them.

Since then what have I received? Nothing.

From what seemed like a great idea has just turned into something really quite disappointing, especially seeing the potential I saw in the TK Maxx campaign.

In contrast H&M have really worked wonders with theirs. The emails themselves are nothing spectacular or groundbreaking. But they don’t need to be as they have put the right amount of effort into their campaign planning before hand that they can just send out their campaign to a fully responsive audience.

The subscribe and unsubscribe process can often be overlooked.  People can sometimes just be so desperate to get those names into their database that they forget about actually putting some detail and effort into their sign up process.

Understandably, you don’t want to  put off the potential sign up by asking reams of questions to make your email marketing life simple but you can add a bit more in there that will work wonders for your campaign.

If you’re worried about putting them off by asking questions, why not have different emailing lists based on where they have signed up.  For instance, if they have signed up through a purchase from your company, you can send a campaign to them offering new products and discounts knowing that they already have an interest within your products.  If you have obtained their email address through a competition, you can feel pretty safe that you know that prizes and freebies will be a large motivator to them, and you can use that to drive them to the site.

Asking questions though will really help you in achieving a successful long-term email campaign.  Probably the best time to ask a couple of questions will be just after they have purchased something.  At that point, you know that they are receptive to you and will probably be quite happy in that post-purchase feeling so will be more likely to answer what kind of emails they would like to receive.

At the other end of the scale, you could avoid a lot of unsubscribes if you just ask a couple of questions on the unsubscribe screen.  Give them the option of what they want to receive and even how frequent they can receive it.  They may not want to receive latest product updates but are still open to a discount or a freebie but as you haven’t given them the option, they’re just going to unsubscribe from the whole lot.

Both these techniques can be used to help build and maintain a healthy mailing list that will keep you and your recipients happy in the long run.

This article will have links to previous posts I have created throughout it that go into further depth about certain subjects.  I hope this helps!

1. Your open rate is low

Okay, so your campaign is stumbling at the first hurdle.  You need to ask yourself the following questions:

How was my recipient list created? 
If the answer to that question was “it was bought” then you can’t be expecting miracles.  If you’re receiving opens of around 10 – 15% I wouldn’t be that surprised.  If your list was self built, I’d expect your open rate to be between 15 – 30% as a minimum. 

Is your email subject enticing them in?
It’s all well and good having amazing offers and content in the email, but not letting the world know about it in the subject line is a cardinal sin.  The subject line needs to be a very short summary of what they can expect inside.  Scrap the “March 2008 issue #1” and go for “15% off of selected items with this email” or “deliverability articles and tips”.  That way you can entice people who are interested in the content in. 

If you are doing this but are still receiving low opens you have to ask yourself “am I putting in subject lines that might be specialised to only a group of my recipients?”  By no means is this a bad thing. In fact, it could improve your eventual sales as you’re targeting areas of your list.  Just because you’re getting an open rate of 15% doesn’t mean that the same people are opening your emails; you may have an active readership of 30% but your emails don’t appeal to all of them.  Just remember not to stick to one area though or the other subscribers will switch off.  The best thing to do would be to segment your list into several lists and then send targeted emails to each of them.

Are you receiving a high level of bounced emails?
This could be a deliverability issue.  Firstly, is there a large amount coming from a certain server?  If so, you could have been blacklisted by them.  You will need to contact the postmaster there and sort out the issue with them before sending again.  To prevent this from ever happening though, make sure you have a decent list hygiene routine in place.

If your list is predominantly business addresses opposed to webmail addresses, the likelihood is it is your content that is causing the blocking.  The problem with business addresses  is that there is no standardised reason for getting blocked by them, some filters block tracking links within the email, some block it because of words within the email and some just don’t get along with html altogether.  It really will be a case of trial and error.  Be prepared to compromise on your design and content though.  You may have to lose your tracking facilities to increase the success of your campaign.
 

2.  My link click-through rate is poor

Your open rate seems fine but your click-through isn’t.  The good news is your list are at least still listening to your message but for how long we don’t know.  This can be attributed to the content of your email.

Content
You need to be clear and to the point.  Don’t go over the top with content or you risk losing the recipients attention.  IT could be that the recipient just isn’t interested in what you’re writing about.  In which case you need to look at what you have previously promised, or done.  That subscriber may have initially signed up as you promised to give away special offers exclusively to your email subscribers.  Now though, you’re just updating them on developments about your company and informing them of new lines of clothing….but where’s the offer? 

Design
Maybe you’re keeping to your promise of content but you’re still not getting those click-throughs you desperately want.  Well the finger can be firmly pointed towards your design and layout.  Is your offer tucked away near the bottom of the email?  Is it bold and stand out enough?  You need to make sure that your recipients eyes are directed to wherever your “call to actions” are.  Do this and you will see those click-throughs rocket.   It could though, be that your email just doesn’t look that nice.  People make judgements within the first few seconds of looking at an email and if they don’t like the look of it, they will not even bother with the content (which is also another reason for having your call to action in an eye catching place).

3. My Conversion Rate is Poor

This is probably the most important indicator of your campaign.  If you have so far followed the advice on this article (and the rest of my blog) you should be seeing a good level of conversions now.  If that is still not the case then there could still be a couple of issues that need resolving. 

Firstly, are you directing your recipients to the exact page they wanted to go to.  If they wanted to see the offers on some of your products don’t go and send them to your index page.  Having to look for the product they want will turn them off of the idea. 

Secondly, make sure that your campaign matches your websites branding.  There is a lot of spam on the internet (you may have noticed) that is still hindering people’s confidence in e-business.  It is your job to minimise this, and the best way to do so is by having a consistent branding throughout your communications with the public.

Well, that should have your campaign back in working order now.  If you’re still having problems, email me with your problem and I’ll try and give you a hand.

It wasn’t too long ago that social networks didn’t exist.  You actually had to speak to one another, in person.  The quickest, cheapest (and well, best) way of keeping in touch with people who had moved away was via the old and trusted method of email.  No longer is this the case.  People don’t want to speak to one person anymore; they want the whole world to know that they’re staying in and having Spaghetti Bolognese for dinner tonight.

Tonight’s dinner aside, this is something which needs to be paid attention too.  I have read blogs recently from people who are saying that they are turning back to email in protest to social networking and stating that email is still king.  These people also happen to be in the email marketing field.  Unfortunately, the world of email marketing can’t exist just because there are stubborn email marketers out there who are refusing to change over.  Email marketing will still work with the younger generations; we just have to remember that the concentration on their inbox is probably going to be considerably lower than the older generations of email users.

I’m lucky enough to be in a situation where I a) have brothers and sisters who are full social network addicts; and b) Am at an age where I once used email and converted to social networking, so have knowledge of my own changing attitude towards email.

So when are the younger generation going to use their email inboxes?  I read somewhere that 91% of internet users still read and send emails.  I find this quite a crude generalisation in favour of the effectiveness of email.  Don’t get me wrong though, I do believe email does still work effectively.  What has to be considered is the age generations that read email, read them with different drives.

Okay, so that really isn’t a revelation.  Marketing 101 would tell you that different age generations have different motivators. This though, is about a generation actually changing their motivation from the pre-defined one.  Social Networking has basically drawn the attention away from the inbox and towards them in terms of personal communication.  Though I haven’t read any data to back up this claim, this must mean that the time actually spent looking at their inbox has drastically reduced.

So it comes down to how exactly to grab their attention in that shorter time frame you have.  From personal experience, I don’t really bother with any of the newsletters.  If I’m going to open an email it’s because it says something like 75% off - end of season sale.  I basically don’t want lots of content; I want deals and plenty of them.  I also pay absolutely no attention to emails that have come from 3rd party sources so being on an email list is pretty pointless with me.

Now I know I’m only using a very small group of people as my test subjects (me, my family and close friends) but there was a general consensus that this was the case with the rest of them as well.

What’s even worse is that the emails I do actually bother to open are what I advise our customers not to do in terms of design.  They are just one giant image with clickable links in the image itself.  This has led me to think that content filtering will become even less important in the future of email deliverability and that emphasis will be further placed upon whitelisting and sender reputation.

Why not also consider when these recipients are most likely to concentrate harder on their online email accounts.  Working hours are probably the best time to send your email marketing campaigns.  As most work places have blocked facebook and myspace, the concentration will have shifted towards email during working hours (providing that email hasn’t also been blocked), especially seeing that you can actually view facebook posts from your email account now.

So the future for email marketing will pretty much stay the same in all honesty.  A few things will have to change.  I can see the lure of buying or renting lists diminishing in some areas of the business world as the effectiveness of them decreases.  I can also see us stepping back a bit in terms of content and design.  I think people have already, and will continue to care less about the content and how they word their emails and focus more on the sending reputation they carry.

I would love to hear your thoughts on what I’ve said.  Whether you agree or disagree, it’d be great to let me know what you think.

I know I keep going on about this but I do feel it is really important to keep your list well maintained.  This article by Wendy Roth outlines some great pointers for you to keep your list in tip top shape.

I know it may hurt to get rid of some of your subscribers.  Especially if it is a self-built list but sometimes you just have to do it so that the subscribers that are interested in your product still receive your email in their inboxes.

Why not also get some feedback from your campaigns whilst going through the re-activation process?  If you can see what some of the less frequent readers of your campaigns are interested in, you could start to refine your campaign to be more universally appealing.

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 

When analysing your companies’ latest email campaigns performance you have a number of factors to look at that will determine how much of a success it has been.  The obvious indicator of ultimate campaign success is the recipients actually going back to your company and purchasing from you.  But that really is the final link in the email marketing campaign.

So, to diagnose how your campaign is doing you must assess what your statistics tell you.

The first step is to look at your open rates.  Even if you’re getting decent traffic through to your site, you could still be receiving low open rates.  This could be for a number of reasons which you will have to ask yourself.  One of the main reasons for poor open rates is the list quality.  It may be that you have purchased or rented a list and therefore you will not have the same level of interest as a company that have self-built their list.  It could also be down to the age of your list, maybe you’ve had the same list for a long time and haven’t actually cleaned up the list from inactive or uninterested subscribers (find good articles on list hygiene here, here and here).

It could also be attributed to the subject line; something that I have previously outlined as a major factor in why open rates can be low.  If you don’t have a subject line that stands out from the other bulk of emails that are in your recipients inbox, you can’t expect high open rates.  This will become increasingly important in 2008 as more companies start to turn to email marketing (find useful articles and the do’s and don’ts on subject lines here, here, here and here).

Maybe, it is in fact your deliverability.  If you are not incredibly vigilant with your reputation monitoring, then you could be falling foul of your email dropping into the dreaded junk folder, or worse, not even getting to the recipient at all.  This subject is vast and can’t really be summarised in this article as there are so many factors to take into consideration (sender reputation articles here ,here and here).  If you take the time, read as many articles on my blog as possible, most of them are based around deliverability and improving sending reputation.

If open rates isn’t your problem, it’s time to start looking at click through rates.  Basically, your campaign is being delivered and recipients are opening your newsletter but for some reason they are not going to your call to action.

Okay, so for those of you who are only making newsletters that are there to inform, this isn’t as much of a problem, it is more for the promotional campaigners out there.

The problem could lie within your email design.  If you have a poorly designed and amateurish looking email, your recipients are unlikely to take you very seriously.  They will have seen hundreds and thousands of below average emails, and they’ve predominantly been spam.  When they open yours, you only have a few seconds to make an impression on them and if it looks vaguely like spam, your email will be closed and never be looked at again.

Maybe your email isn’t spammy looking, but in fact wonderment to the human eye; a masterclass in HTML design.  Problem is, you’ve not being pay attention to the email marketing world for several months and haven’t noticed that ISP’s have different rules regarding how emails will now render in their browsers. Silly you.  Your once amazing email looks like a whole lot of grey with some words sporadically dotted around the place.  Who’s going to even bother with that as far as first impressions go?  It’s time to move on from that age of image heavy emails into the brave new world of HTML lite.  Try to keep your companies branding and layouts professional but cut down on the imagery and embrace background colours to keep the email looking bright.

Another issue that could hinder your click throughs is the layout of your campaign.  If you’re looking to get recipients to click through to your site somewhere, make sure it is clearly obvious where they need to click, it needs to stand out.

Also making sure that the subject line corresponds with the email content is vital too.  If they’ve opened your email from reading the subject line, and found that the content is different or is misleading, you’ll lose your click throughs.  Once again, make sure everything is clear and accessible (read a blog on this here).

Finally, I go back to email design for one more piece of advice.  There is still a lot of scepticism around online shopping, it’s getting better but there are still areas that are concerned about transferring their bank information over the internet (article here).  It is your duty to try and ease those fears.  The best thing to do is offer your customers an all-over branding of all communications with them.  Try to match your newsletter to your website, and in particular, the landing page that they will be directed to from the email.  This way confidence can be instilled in your communications and actual money conversions will increase (find articles on landing pages here and here).   

Using mailingmanager has its obvious benefits that I’m sure all of you are aware of.  What we thought we’d do was offer you some tips on how to get more out of the system.  We’re starting off this series with a look at how you can improve your market research using mailingmanager.

This article will concentrate on the subscriber form in mailingmanager to capture the consumers data.  Okay, so you will be limited to asking only a few questions in this form, not due to any limitations on mailingmanager, but you want people to actually sign up!  No-one likes to take forever and a day to actually sign up for something so bare in mind that you will only have a few vital questions to ask them initially, you can get a bit more in-depth once you’ve created an initial segmentation to your users.

What you have to decide is which information is most important to your initial research.  Will you be interested in seeing the geographical spread of your subscribers?  Maybe you want to see how many of your subscribers are local to your business in order to offer pick-up only deals or local in-store promotions to these people without alienating the rest of your list.  How about segmenting by age groups?  Or by purchasing habits? Or by people who have actually purchased something from you and people who are just interested in your product?

As I already mentioned, once they’re into these basic groups, you can start to do some serious profiling of your recipients by sending out further questionnaires to get an idea of what appeals to your customers.  Now don’t be scared to create a lot of mailing lists whilst segmenting your recipients, it will all work in your favour in the end.

How do I do it?

This really is very simple in mailingmanager.  Firstly, you need to create the information you want to collect in the custom fields section of mailingmanager (mailing lists > manage custom fields).  The custom fields will also have to be linked through to a mailing list that you have created, but you will be prompted to do that in the custom fields set up wizard anyway.  Once you have created your custom fields you are ready to create your subscription form.  To do that, just go to website forms >create website form and the preset form is already the subscription form.  Then it’s just a case of following the wizard through the steps and copying and pasting the html coding it creates onto your website.

Though this may be a bit of work in the short-term, this level of attention to your email marketing will work wonders for you in the long-term, and once it’s set up there won’t be any extra work to do, meaning a much more effective campaign for you.  This data can also be transferred to any other marketing activities you may carry out and can be used as a basis for how your whole campaign is shaped.

As ever, if this has inspired you to do something similar by using mailingmanager but you’re a little unsure on how to set it up, don’t be shy.  Just give the office a call or email me personally and I’ll work out how to best do it.

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