As I read up on the latest report about subject lines (find it here) I thought I might as well look through my own inbox and see what I liked and didn’t like and why.

I never sign myself up to receive email newsletters just so I can analyse them, so my response to these newsletters will be from a prospective consumers perspective.

Maharishi - Maharishi Easy Summer 2008: Brick Lane Store now open

I am always a bit disappointed with Maharishi.  The dphmi site has some great clothes on it but the emails they send out have absolutely no consideration put into them.

Okay, so this was never really going to grab my attention that much, I don’t live in London so don’t really care about a new store opening, so I can’t really judge whether this would grab the people of London a bit more than me.  I opened the email just now anyway to see what was going on (for the sake of this blog) and found something that I might have been slightly interested in…..a 70% off sale!!!

Who exactly thought that wasn’t worthy of subject line status?

I also noticed that they have repeated their company name in the subject line which is always a no-no and pointless.

Could’ve probably fit “up to 70% off” in that space….

Chemical Records – Biggest Ever Chemical Clothing Sale – You heard it here first!

I like this subject line, a lot.  If you’re looking to buy some clothes and you see the words “Biggest Ever Sale” you’re probably inclined to at least have a look. 

Couple that with the “You heard it here first” gives it a certain sense of urgency.  It’s like you’ve been let in on a secret that everyone will know about soon, so you’ve got to hurry to get those bargains.  I can also see there subscriber base becoming more attentive to future messages because of a campaign such as this.

Like the easily led person I am, I purchased from them.  I regret nothing.

Urban Industry – The Massive Urban Industry Store Summer Sale in now on

A rival of Chemical Records, Urban Industry also decided to launch their sale at the same time.  Though it will attract interest, when put in comparison to the Chemical Records subject it seems a lot less attractive.

Apart from that everything seems fi……wait a second, they’ve misspelt is in the header.  Woops…..

eBuyer -  HP 530 2gb memory Laptop only £269.97 @ebuyer.com

I’m actually looking into the possibility of buying a new laptop so this was going to interest me.  Still though, I will stay objective in analysing the header.

I’ll start off with the small gripe of having the companies name in the subject line after having it in the send from name…right that’s the bad stuff over with…

I like the fact they are putting the price in.  I think if there is a sale on or you are aiming at the price orientated market (and in these financial climates, who isn’t?), then price will entice more recipients to have a look.

As you may have guessed, i’m on a budget and the fact they have put a small bit of specification (also a selling point), interested me further and made me go and have a look through onto the site. I didn’t purchase (which is the ultimate goal of these) but that’s only becuase i’m half serious about a laptop. If I was more serious about going through with it, there’s a very good chance it would be through ebuyer.

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).   

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

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