The year 2010 brought huge changes in the way consumers interact with companies online. As social media opened the door for increased interaction between businesses and their customers, marketing efforts were often left scrambling to keep up with the changing demands of the new marketing landscape. As we head into 2011, the lessons we learned in 2010 can point us in the right direction and keep us on the right track.

• Customer expectations constantly change.

Because customers can now interact in real time with businesses, they expect faster responses to their concerns and requests. For your email marketing campaigns, this means staying on top of customer interests and providing real-time value. eConnect Email can help you achieve these goals through email automation by the implementation of email triggers and auto-responders.

• Social media is here to stay.

While no one knows what the next big “thing” in social media will be, we do know that social media as a technology is not going anywhere anytime soon. While that idea can be intimidating to some businesses, social media actually provides excellent opportunities to grow both your email marketing list and also engage your social media followers online.  This being said, we have embraced social media and have actually integrated with Facebook, Twitter, LinkedIn and Google Buzz.  Click here for information about the integration of social media with eConnect Email.

• Customers expect stellar service.

While customer service has always been a top priority for successful businesses, customers now expect even greater attention to be paid to their needs due to increased interaction online. This means staying on top of subscriber’s preferences and making sure each email arrives at its intended destination.   eConnect Email ensures that your mailing lists stay up to date by using list cleansing, suppression lists, list segmentation as well as giving your subscribers the ability to manage their mailing list subscriptions through the online preference center.

• What works for someone else may not work for you.

It’s easy to put together a list of best practices and slap them up on a website for others to emulate, but building a truly successful email marketing program takes a little more planning and insight. The truth is that what works for one company may not work for another, so it’s vital that you incorporate testing into your email marketing strategy. That’s why I would recommend that you A/B Split Test each and every email campaign.  Split Testing will help ensure that you deliver only the most effective messages to your audience.

With 2010 in the past, businesses will need to take the lessons learned over the past twelve months and build on them to create a strategy that will effectively meet the challenges of 2011. eConnect Email stands ready to help you accomplish this goal with a vast array of tools and features that will help keep your email marketing strategy on the cutting edge.  If you have any questions about the capabilities of our application we’d love to hear from you!

Holidays are a great excuse for a fun email campaign.  You may be thinking “the holidays are over”, ha, I thought that too until I looked at the calendar and was reminded of all sorts of holidays, worthy of a little email so that you can stay connected with your subscribers.

So, a new year begins with plenty of opportunities to get creative with email marketing campaigns.  Here is a little list to get you prepared

• Martin Luther King Jr. Day – 1/17/11

• Chinese New Year – 2/3/11

• Valentine’s Day – 2/14/11

• President’s Day – 2/21/11

• St. Patrick’s Day – 3/17/11

• First Day of Spring – 3/20/11

• Easter – 4/24/11

Remember the Dress for Success books that flooded bookshelves in the 70s? Bookstores today offer updated versions of those books that reflect fashion shifts over the intervening decades, but the concept remains the same. If people can learn to dress well, they’ll be more likely to get the jobs they want and to command respect in the jobs they have. When you’re dressing for an interview, first impressions can make or break your chances of landing the job, meaning you’ve got to dress the part right from the beginning.

As you’re designing emails for your marketing campaign, a lot of those same principles apply. Viewers typically spend about 20 seconds tops deciding whether to keep your email, delete it, or mark it as spam. eConnect Email can help you dress your emails for success with our design tools and templates, making the most of your first impression by following these user-tested guidelines.

• Identify Yourself

Emails that start with spammy sounding questions such as “Want to win a free t-shirt?” will often be directed into the spam folder, even if it’s a legitimate offer. Instead, start off by identifying yourself with a well-placed company logo or name. Also, make sure your email address is recognizable at first glance.

• Look Professional

Use eConnect Email’s image manager to upload, sort, and edit photos that you would like to use when building your campaign. If you want to use colored text, pick a color and stick with it rather than changing colors throughout the message. In addition, avoid fire engine red and hyperlink blue for your primary text colors since these can send spammy vibes.

• Pay attention to details

Any designer will tell you that the details will make or break your entire look. Pay attention to font choice, color, white space, and image placement. Viewers will be more likely to read emails that look as though someone actually cares about what they are sending out.

• Take a Last Look

Always have someone else review your email before you send it. A second set of eyes might catch things you didn’t, and they also might be able to give you some insight on what impression your email will immediately make on your viewers. As a general rule of thumb we always suggest that you send out a test email before deploying it to all of your subscribers.  This way you can ensure that any merge tags you may be using are working properly and you have one final chance to catch any changes before it’s to late.

Make a great first impression and improve subscribe response rates by dressing every email for success.

Choosing the right day to launch and send your email campaigns can have a huge effect overall results. Much of the process of deciding on a day will initially rely on intuition (Will people be packing up for the weekend on Friday and therefore be less likely to open emails? Will they be stuck in the doldrums on Wednesday and therefore be more likely to open?). Your decision will also depend on your list specifics and the idiosyncrasies of your target audience, meaning that best practices will be relative. However, there are some concrete steps you can take to determine what day your subscribers will be most likely to engage with the content you send them.

• Make an educated guess.

You know your customers better than anyone and you’ve had the chance to observe their habits over time. Take advantage of eConnect Email’s analytics tools to monitor open rates and click rates and then make an educated guess as to which day will be best for your email campaign based on what you learn.

• Test.

Don’t rely strictly on guesswork, however. Test your theories by sending emails on various days and observing how customers interact with them (again spend some time reviewing campaign stats from previously sent emails).

• Consider weekends vs. weekdays.

Aggregated benchmarks often point to weekends as good days to send email. If you engage primarily in business-to-business marketing, however, weekends probably won’t perform well for you.  On the other hand, many people can now check email from the comfort of their easy chairs via smartphones, making weekend email checking easier than ever before. Again, we recommend testing, reviewing results and testing again.

• Consider the email content.

Does your email discuss a weekend sale? Is it a newsletter that talks about best practices for business? How about a weekend gardening project? The day you send each email will be affected by what the email contains, so be willing to alter the content within your campaign if you’re sending a time-specific message.

• Be flexible.

Even if you’ve found the perfect day to send, it’s still important to remain flexible. You might usually send on Mondays, but you’ll want to alter your strategy for Labor Day weekend, for example.

The bottom line is that there is no perfect day to send email that will work for every business. The analytics and stats tools available from eConnect Email can help you determine what the best practice will be for your company in order to maximize the actions (opens, clicks, purchases) taken by your subscribers.

In the aftermath of Black Friday and with Christmas just a couple days away, most businesses are operating on full-throttle holiday adrenaline. Promotional emails and advertising messages flood customer inboxes, but if businesses could step inside the mind of the reader as they’re faced with all these emails, what would they find?

During the week of Black Friday (and also, incidentally, Thanksgiving) I received nearly 70 promotional messages from dozens of retailers between my two email accounts. One of those retailers sent me six messages during that week—seven, if you count the email I received on the Sunday after Thanksgiving. Of those 70 emails, only two acknowledged the holiday that supposedly enjoyed the limelight that week. Call me sentimental, but I enjoyed being wished a Happy Thanksgiving, even by a company with whom I rarely shop.

What’s the point? It’s that customers like to be appreciated and treated as people. Not every email you send has to say thanks, and there is definitely a time for promotional emails that advertise special sales events. But there’s also a time and place for letting your customers know you appreciate them—and not just after they’ve made a purchase. Here are some tips for crafting a thank you message that will keep you on your customers’ nice list this holiday season.

• Personalize

Include the customer’s name and other relevant info such as the last product they purchased. Use eConnect Email’s custom fields/ mail merge features to further personalize email for every customer you contact.

• Invite Feedback

Ask your customers how their purchases worked for them and whether they have any comments about the service they received. Make it easy for them to reply and communicate your desire to hear from them.

• Be Timely

If you’re thanking a customer for his or her purchase, make sure they receive your email within 24-48 hours of the transaction. You can use eConnect Email’s personalized autoresponder/ email trigger capabilities to make sure emails arrive in a timely fashion.

• Include freebies or special discounts

If you really want people to know you appreciate them, give them a little something extra. An additional 10% discount or a free gift with purchase can go a long way toward cementing your relationship with your customers.

Whether you’re responding to a purchase or just checking in with a subscriber you haven’t heard from in a while, a thank you email can boost your company image significantly in the eyes of your customers. Use the personalization and list management tools available from eConnect Email to design a thank you note that will fill your readers with holiday cheer.

The team at eConnect Email would like to wish you a wonderful Holiday Season and best wishes for a prosperous 2011!  We have put together some tips and tricks to making your email marketing a success in the new year.  As always we welcome your feedback and if you have any questions about our software, we are hear to help.

Have a merry little email and a happy new marketing campaign…

For This Month’s Tips & Tricks – CLICK HERE

Did you know that you have less than 60 seconds to get your message across to most of your email subscribers?  Once a subscriber clicks on your email, they typically spend less than a minute absorbing information and determining whether the email is pertinent to them before they decide to keep it or trash it.  Since the amount of text a person can read in 60 seconds is negligible, you’ve got to make your initial impact another way: with graphics!

There are plenty of arguments that deal with why using images in your email newsletters is a bad idea, but when planned effectively and used in proper proportion, they still offer the most bang for your buck in an intensely visual medium. Here are eConnect Email’s tips for using effective imagery in your emails.

• Choose pictures that communicate your message.

If a visitor couldn’t read the text in your email, would he still have an idea what your company does and what the topic of your newsletter is? If not, then your images are just taking up space and creating large files that might get  your email misdirected to the spam folder. With eConnect Email’s unlimited image hosting, you can upload a library of images to store and use within email content.

• Communicate without images, too.

Images are important, but there are two reasons your message should still be communicated even if a viewer can’t see your images. First, viewers who don’t have HTML viewing turned on will miss out on important information if it’s contained only within images. And second, viewers who check email on their smart phones will miss out on image rich messages if they don’t convert easily to mobile format. Either way, you’ve lost a potential customer if you trap vital messages within images.

• Maintain a 25/75 ratio of images to text.

The most effective email newsletters use approximately 25% images and 75% text. This ratio ensures that viewers find your emails visually pleasing but not cluttered and that they can still understand your messages if images can’t be viewed. eConnect Email can help keep your messages balanced by using our predesigned templates provided or one of our talented designers can customize an email template for you to effectively communicate your message.

Creating a visually effective email newsletter depends on your ability to marry text and images so that viewers clearly understand your message whether they spend a few seconds glancing at pictures or whether they have access to text only. The design help you’ll receive from eConnect Email will ensure that you have achieved that perfect balance in order to reach the most viewers with your message. Happy imaging!

Your email campaign’s delivery rate refers to the number of emails sent that reach their destination.  For most email service providers (ESP’s), this rate hovers between 80% and 90%.  eConnect Email’s delivery rate averages 95%-98%, well above the norm, kudos to our delivery team!  Don’t be deceived by that statistic though.  Just because we successfully deliver your email campaigns doesn’t necessary mean viewers actually see them.  If you’re not careful, your company’s emails could be misdirected to the spam/ junk folder, out of sight of your subscriber.  Here are a few tips to help ensure your email successfully reaches the inbox:

• Use Double Opt-ins

Double opt-ins require a subscriber to click a link you send them through email after they have registered on your site in order to begin receiving messages from you. This way, you know that the correct email address was entered and that the person legitimately wants to receive emails from you. You can use eConnect Email’s list management tools to ensure that only the people who want to receive your messages make it onto your list.

• Be Smart About Subject Lines

Spam filters watch for certain characteristics in subject lines. While it’s impossible to know exactly what the filters are looking for, you can bet that subjects in all caps or those with lots of exclamation points are more likely to be flagged as spam than a clear, concise subject line. Strive to communicate your message in as few words as possible and without using gimmicks to grab the reader’s attention.

• Avoid Spammer Behavior

Purchasing an email list is one of the top ways to get your sender address blocked by spam filters. These lists often consist of outdated addresses that will earn a high bounce rate, making a filter more likely to blacklist your sending IP’s (just know using purchased lists is never a good idea, trust us on this one).

• Avoid Spammer Content

Using spammy phrases such as “free,” “sale,” or “buy now” sends up red flags for the spam filter. You should also avoid using a single image as the body of your email with no headers, text versions, or alt tags.  A good rule of thumb for email newsletters is to incorporate one or two well-placed images alongside informative text within the body of each email you send. eConnect Email can help you custom design a template for your emails that will make sure as many of your subscribers as possible get to view your message.

By putting some thought into your email creation and taking advantage of the expert assistance available from eConnect Email, you can ensure a successful email campaign with not only high delivery rates, but also a higher percentage of messages that make it to the email inbox!

Do you read the welcome emails that show up in your inbox? For most people, the answer would be “probably not.”  For me it depends on whether the subject line captures my attention, whether I remember the company, and whether I think it’s going to be worth my time. Fail to achieve any of these goals and you can kiss your readership good-bye. Superb welcome emails show personalization, relationship, timeliness, and value for the reader. With eConnect Email, these key elements are easy.

Personalization

“Dear Stella” works much better than “Dear New Member” when it comes to capturing a viewer’s attention. Make the reader feel like you value him enough to remember his name and he’s more likely to keep reading past the salutation. In addition, sign your letters with a person’s name rather than with a generic “thank you from the team.” Make your welcome emails look like a letter, not like a form. Keep it personal by using the custom fields/demographics feature that eConnect Email offers to merge subscriber data into each welcome email you send.

Relationship

Your welcome email should say more than “welcome.” It should also include a hint for the reader of what they can expect out of their relationship with you. Intrigue them, but don’t put all your cards on the table at once. For instance, if you’re a fitness gym, talk about a six-week program to achieve the goal the user specified at sign-up.

Timeliness

Have you ever received a welcome email from a company you don’t remember interacting with? This usually happens because the company sends welcome emails out in batches, meaning that an individual subscriber might not receive his letter for two or three weeks when the next batch gets sent out. Keep readers interested in your company by using autoresponders to send an immediate message to new subscribers. Also, don’t forget to personalize the messages too by using eConnect Email’s merge tags, or dynamic content to create unique content for each subscriber.

Value

Because of the sheer number of  email messages competing for your subscribers attention, it’s vital that you communicate value to your readers from the very first email you send. Offer a discount, give them a sneak preview of an upcoming event, or provide a tip of the week.

Takeaway

By incorporating personalized, timely messages that communicate value and build relationships, you can capture your readers’ attention from day one. Use the tools available through eConnect Email’s customizable delivery system to deliver brilliant welcome emails that will leave new subscribers hungry to read more.

It’s that time of year again where we let everyone know what we’re thankful for. We all know the usual suspects (friends, family, facebook, Twitter, etc.), but what else are you thankful for?

To figure this out, Thankfulfor.com put together a (surprisingly long, 55 page) report that details what things people say they are grateful for having in their lives. It has also created an overarching infographic with the help of JESS3 for those of you not eager to read  the full report.

2010 Gratitude Index Report