While running through the campaigns sent by our customers, I notice one obvious missing link.  No, not the unsubscribe link, because, after all, you will not be able to send any campaigns without it. I’m referring to a simple link that will help you spread your campaigns and the opportunity to get a few new subscribers.

Most of the campaigns that go out do not add the “Forward This Email” function in their email campaign.  This would be one wasted opportunity for you to be able to capture new subscribers or at least to create some form of viral marketing for your campaign.

We have made adding this link process as simple as possible and you should consider using it.  After all, whether or not your subscribers actually forward to their friends, having that link will have provided them with the convenience to do so, if they want to.

To add your “Forward This Email”, simply click on the Personalize button and choose “Personalized Link” followed by “Forward This Email”, and the link will be added to your campaign.  That is simple right?

So next time you want to send your campaign, do remember to include a “Forward This Email” link and open up the opportunity to spread your campaign and get more subscribers.

(Via deliverability.com) According to Return Path, even top firms can’t seem to get it right when it comes to managing subscriber opt-outs or unsubscribes.  It turns out that many of them still lack proper IT setup to help them manage opt-outs and some of these top firms even violate the CAN-SPAM Act.

What I took away from this report, however, is not the fact that even top firms are having problems with opt-outs (not like it should give you justification that you can mess this up too, right?) but rather the point raised by Bonnie Malone, director of strategic services for Return Path.

She points out that when your subscribers opt out of your list, it does not necessarily mean that they are no longer a customer.  This means, if you do not handle your opt-outs correctly, you may end up giving a negative impression to your customers.  Need a real-life example?  Incidentally, Laura Atkins of Word to the Wise just got into this same situation with AT&T who kept sending her emails despite her repeated opting out of their numerous mailing lists.

It cannot be stressed enough that respecting your subscriber’s wish to be unsubscribed from your lists is of utmost importance.  Be it small or large companies or organizations, your reputation will only stand to lose if you fumble on your opt-outs and inadvertently cause frustration in your customers and would-be customers alike.

The more seasoned email marketers already know most of these tips, but we all need some recap every now and then to remind us of the best practices in email marketing, so that we can improve our email marketing practices for better reputation and delivery. In this post, we list down 10 most recommended tips that you should know.

1. Make your unsubscribe link obvious
   Decide on a suitable and yet prominent area in your campaign email where you can insert your unsubscribe link.  This makes it obvious to your subscribers that you already provide them a way to tell you to stop sending them your emails, which should discourage them to use the “spam” button in their email clients.  Some marketers have recommended placing the link at the top or in the footer of the email.  It’s entirely up to you, but be sure to always include one.  If you are using an ESP, like eConnect Email, you will always be reminded to include your unsubscribe link before you can send your campaigns.
2. Give your subscribers a way to update their subscription preferences
   Set up a subscriber preference center so that your subscribers can manage their subscription preferences.  A preference center can help you to retain subscribers who have changed their email addresses by giving them a convenient way to update you without needing to resubscribe to your lists again.  Check out more on why you need a preference center.
3. Encourage your subscribers to add you to their address books
   Tell your subscribers explicitly to add your email address to their address books. Write something like “Don’t miss your newsletter.  Add our email address (friends@abccompany.com) to your address book or safe list”.  Many web mail providers use this as a basis to determine that if the recipient has your email address in their address book, then your email should less likely be spam.  Some clients will even load the images in your campaign emails automatically.
4. Use the same email address to build reputation
   Always use the same From email address for your campaign emails and refrain from using different email addresses for different mailing lists or campaigns.  By using the same email address, not only will it be easier for your subscribers to associate the campaign emails with your company, you will also be able to build a better reputation with the ISP’s and your subscribers, which in turns means better deliverability for your email campaigns.
5. Sign your emails for domain authentication
   Get your domain properly set up with domain authentication schemes like DKIM, DomainKeys and SenderID, and sign your campaign emails to bolster the authenticity of your emails.  Most ESPs today provide some ways for you to set this up easily.  If you are already on board with eConnect Email, but have yet to set up domain authentication for yourself, you should do it today!
6. Avoid “spammy”content
   Be very mindful about the language and visual formatting of your content. Avoid using “spammy” words or phrases, large fonts, sparse text and low quality images, all of which are quite the hallmarks of today’s spam emails.
7. Make sure your campaign emails can be viewed correctly
   If you are sending HTML campaign emails, be sure to also set up the text part of the email properly so that subscribers who are not able to view the HTML version in their email software will still be able to read the content of your email.  The text part does not have to be an exact text-only replica of your HTML message; you can have a simple message to direct them to an online version of your campaign email, which they can view in their web browsers.
8. Avoid list fatigue
   Do not flood your subscribers with too many emails.  Marketers recommend that you send at most one email per week.  If email marketing is one of the major sources of income for your business, make sure you plan and time your launches or new updates properly.  If you are working in large corporation, make sure the different departments who are responsible for sending emails are aware of the sending frequency of one another.  Without proper planning, your subscribers may feel overwhelmed and may end up unsubscribing themselves or reporting your emails as spam.
9. Respect your subscribers
   Make sure your subscribers get what they signed up for.  Unless you have made it explicitly clear to them, you should never send them emails containing information that they never asked for. Let’s say you own a business selling coffee beans and tea leaves and you maintain a mailing list for each of these two products.  If a subscriber only signed up for coffee bean information, respect that, and only send newsletters that are related to coffee beans to that subscriber.  Then, invite the subscriber to also sign up for the tea leaves mailing list.  This way, you can let your subscribers know about your other products, but not without asking for their permission first.
10. Check and test, check and test
    Check your campaign thoroughly and send yourself a few test messages before sending out your campaigns.  Nothing is more embarrassing than grabbing the attention of your subscriber, only to direct them to a “Page Not Found” error page when they click on your links.

That’s it!  Always keep these 10 tips in mind when running your email campaigns.  Have you got your own suggestions that you wish to share too?  Go ahead and fire away in the comments.

What do email marketing and romance have in common?  Plenty, in our opinion.  For one, reaching out to a customer or prospect online is a lot like being on a first date, where you’re not sure if there will be a second.  Except, if you’re running an email campaign, you could possibly be on your last date every single time, because, let’s be honest, it’s not that hard to click on “unsubscribe.”

So here’s what we’re suggesting today – take a few minutes to get out of your marketing mindset.  Instead, imagine how you might engage someone on a date, and you might come away with some new insights on how to keep subscribers committed (i.e. subscribed) to your email newsletters.  Here are a couple of ideas to get you started:

Don’t Hog The Conversation: Think of your newsletter as a conversation starter, where you introduce a topic and let readers jump in with their contributions wherever possible.  Focus on drumming up interest, rather than comprehensive coverage.  Here’s why, say if you’re running an advice or How-To column and attempting to cover all bases, readers may feel they have nothing left to add apart from “Great article!” or “Really helpful tips!”, and you’ll lose the opportunity to introduce interactivity to your content and gain new perspectives from your readers.  A good way of making sure you’re not saying too much is by setting a word count limit and sticking to it.

Feed That Ego: You can’t go wrong by making someone feel special, and there are many ways to do this.  Take contests, for example.  In a typical e-newsletter contest (or online contest, for that matter), readers are made to answer an idiot-proof question about a company’s product or service, and winners are selected at random.  Although a list of winners is usually published in the following issue, it’s unlikely to generate much excitement (unless you’re giving away a whopper of a prize) or give anyone a sense of achievement.  Now, think about those contests that require readers to work a little, e.g. submit the best caption/story/picture to win!  If you want to make a star out of your reader, this is the way to go – let your readers shine by showing off their wit, ingenuity and creativity, and they’ll love you for it and keep coming back for more.

Grow A Personality: There are good newsletters and there are bad newsletters, but even worse than the bad newsletter is the newsletter that no-one remembers.  And to be remembered, you need personality.  There are two ways to decide on your newsletter’s “personality”.  If you know your target audience well (and every marketer should), think of a few keywords that would describe their personality (e.g. “prim and proper” or “zany and fun-loving”) and write and design your newsletters accordingly.  The second way is to play up your strengths, i.e. if you’re not bursting with wisecracks, don’t try to turn your newsletter into a stand-up comedy routine.  Instead, focus on what you’re great at, whether it’s your experience and industry knowledge (“wise and authoritative”) or your knack for breaking down tricky information and mind-boggling concepts into bite-size pieces (“clever and insightful”).

Be Original: Don’t mail out a newsletter that looks just like the rest of the competition.  At every step of the way – from deciding on a theme to planning articles and designing – ask yourself how you can do something in a way that is entirely yours.  A good place to find inspiration is Marketing Sherpa’s list of Email Marketing Award Winners.  One of their ’07 winners won hearts with their inventive feature headlines, such as “Does Your Web Site Taste Like Chicken?”  Others offered designs that readers couldn’t resist.  And you’re not limited to text and graphics – you can find creative ways to incorporate media (we’ve got a few video ideas right here).

Reach Out: Companies don’t reach out to people – people do.  And blogs are a surprisingly effective way of revealing your company’s human side.  If you decide to run a blog, you can have it work hand-in-hand with your newsletter, by featuring extended versions of your newsletter articles that readers can leave comments on.  Keep the tone casual and steer clear of the negative (e.g. customer horror stories), unless you’re positive you can pull it off by, say, being terribly funny.

Have Fun (Or At Least Try): When was the last time you had fun with your newsletter?  If you can’t remember, it’s likely your readers aren’t having a ball of a time either.  It’s important to challenge yourself when you create a newsletter, so you don’t run into a content dead end.  If you look hard enough, you’ll find there’s always a way to do something differently.  For example, if you feel certain articles in your newsletter archives were good but failed to generate reader interest or participation, you can think of how they might be repackaged for a fresh run.  This can include changing the headline, summarizing and re-organizing the article, or simply applying a more eye-catching design or adding media.

And here’s our final tip: put your readers first.  Use our A/B split test function. Find out what subject lines turn them on and off, when they’re more likely to open their mails, and more.  If this doesn’t win them over, we don’t know what will.

You can be anything you want to be online, and your company is just waiting to tap on the endless possibilities.  But first, read our etiquette guide to make sure you’re not in danger of letting your dark side take over:

Monster Marketer #1: The Invader
Think about the people you’d love to keep at arm’s length: the strangers at parties who stand way too close and are way too generous with their hugs and kisses, the dreaded acquaintance who crashes social gatherings and invites himself to hang out at your apartment, or the colleague who reads over your shoulder and steals your stationery.  Here’s what they have in common: they don’t ask for permission.  Ever.  The same rules apply online, and not asking your recipients if they would like to hear from you counts as very bad manners indeed.  Even if you know your recipients in some capacity (and that includes your best friends, by the way), don’t assume they’d appreciate emails from your company – always ask first.  It may not be apparent, but it costs money and takes time to download your emails (and to chuck or report them as spam if necessary), so it pays to be considerate.

Monster Marketer #2: The Show-Off
Why compose an email newsletter in plain text when there’s HTML mail, and why write an obvious subject line when you can pen a headline that’s mysterious, witty, or just plain clever?  Be careful that showing off doesn’t result in your company being showed up.  Not all email applications are able to display elaborately designed emails, so relax on your images and HTML coding, and not all readers will understand what you’re trying to say, if you don’t say it in the clearest possible way.

Monster Marketer #3: The Narcissist
We all know the type: they’re only interested in talking to you as long as the spotlight’s on them.  Although, if truth be told, we all enjoy a bit of attention from time to time.  Which is why the last thing anyone needs is to read about your company’s milestones and awards and exciting new hires, when in fact they’re really wondering, “So what’s in it for me?”  Answer that question for readers right away, and you’ll keep them coming back for more.

Monster Marketer #4: The Chatterbox
Sending an email to your readers is a lot like holding a one-way conversation, and you know what happens during a one-way conversation – the other party tunes out, and fast.  So make your emails as interactive as possible, by inviting your readers to vote in polls, post their views online or send in their feedback.  Also bear in mind that the less you say, the more readers are likely to remember what you’ve said.

Monster Marketer #5: The Loudmouth
If you’re not planning to shout at your customers and scare them off, steer clear of putting words in all caps and exclamation marks.  But if you need to emphasize a word, there is a mature, tasteful way to do it – by using italics.  Exclamation marks can be used sparingly, but we wouldn’t recommend more than one or two per mailer.

Monster Marketer #6: The Slacker
Most people have a good idea of what constitutes professional behavior in the real world: they show up to meetings on time, try to be fairly well groomed, and refrain from chewing gum.  But give them a chance to make an impression online and all hell breaks loose – their emails are riddled with spelling and grammar errors, missing text, broken links, misaligned images… you get the picture. Clean up your emails just as you would clean up before meeting a customer; if not, your offline efforts would’ve gone to waste.

We get plenty of email marketing questions from our customers, some of whom are still treading gingerly into a weird, and sometimes wacky online world.  So we’ve put together our “Email Marketing Basics” Q&A series, to lend direction to email marketers who are just starting out.  We’ll be adding to this section as we go along, and you can keep up with us by subscribing to our RSS feed and newsletter.  (We’re doing some online self-marketing here as we speak.)

Apart from inviting visitors to sign up on my web site, how else can I build my mailing list?

• Use your offline resources.  If you have a physical store, get your staff to check with customers if they would like to receive email updates, and place a sign-up book at the checkout counter.  If you’re making calls to existing customers, take the opportunity to pop the email question.  At a business meeting, seminar or networking event, mention your email newsletter and collect business cards from interested parties (or have a sign-up sheet ready).  After which, drop them an email and direct them to your subscription form, or simply get them to reply to your email if they want to be added to your list.  But remember to keep those replies, because you never know when you will need them as proof of subscription.
• Sweeten the deal with a gift.  You can offer tangible incentives such as discounts or freebies in return for signing up, or highlight your ability to provide valuable information (e.g. tips and tricks, contributions by industry experts).  You can also package your content in the form of crash courses that are relevant to your audience, and deliver the material over a series of emails.  Or, try the fun approach – think lucky dips, contests or games that require participants to sign up beforehand.
• Be an active member in relevant discussion boards, and let other members know how they might benefit from information in your web site or email updates (but before you do, check that this isn’t against the rules).
• Rope in existing subscribers to spread the word.  Marketers often do this by attaching a “send to friend” or “tell a friend” link at the end of their web or email features.

More to come soon.

If you’ve been wondering when to send out your newsletter, you’re not alone.

Back in ’04, at least two prominent studies concluded that a Monday morning (6-10am) mail-out would get you the highest open rates, and apparently, if you couldn’t make Monday, Tuesday wasn’t half bad either.  The result? Email marketers fell over themselves and worked weekends to deliver a Monday morning newsflash, only to discover a year later that emails sent on Wednesdays through Fridays were enjoying the most clicks.

After that, it seemed no-one could agree.  Some argued that end-of-the-workweek or even weekend mailers were potentially more effective because of the lack of competing emails coupled with the relaxed mindset of readers, others claimed Tuesdays to Thursdays gave the best results, while the rest returned to their Monday delivery schedule.

As for time of sending, the assumption was that your email is likelier to get read at 9am, 12pm and 4pm, because those confined to work desks are either a) still settling in; b) getting ready for lunch; or c) winding down for the day. An electronics retailer tested these timings early this year and found 9am to be the clear winner.  The results were posted by MarketingSherpa, and it remains to be seen if this statistic will hold up after online marketers scurry to implement the 9am send.

Our advice?  Forget the research and conduct your own investigations.

Here’s how:

#1 View your last five sent campaigns’ open-and-click rates, and note the day and time these campaigns were sent.  Or find out what time your mail was read and the links clicked on, and whittle it down to the most popular timings, taking into account time zone differences.

#2 Carry out an A/B Split Test – set two different send schedules for your test group of readers (say Monday 9am for Group A, and Friday 4pm for Group B), and compare your campaign’s open-and-click rates. (For best results, ensure that recipients in your test groups are in the same time zone or location.)

#3 Know your audience – use eConnect Email reporting functions to see a breakdown of your audience by location; find out about typical working hours and national holidays, and adjust your send dates and times accordingly.

Marketers have also suggested looking at each subscriber’s sign-up or view-and-click time and customizing delivery times to match, although the strategy has been criticized as reading too much into a single random event.  To me, this is just plain ridiculous.

Once you’ve obtained your results, make a decision on your send times and stick with it until you feel compelled to conduct a round of tests again.  It’s probably better to focus your energies on producing a newsletter that subscribers will want to read, not whether it lands in their mailboxes at midday or midnight.

Creating an e-mail newsletter isn’t rocket science, or at least, it shouldn’t be.  In fact, we’ve found that keeping it simple often gets the best results, and by simple, we mean fewer words, less graphics, and going easy on the sales pitch.  Read on for more ideas on how to turn your e-mail newsletter into a crowd pleaser:

#1 Give, And Keep Giving
Save the company updates for your web site – the self-indulgent newsletter belongs in the trash, and that’s where it often winds up.  If you want your newsletter to be read, give your readers useful information.  For example, if you’re a travel agent, you can offer travel tips and highlight trendy destinations, while including links to your holiday packages for interested readers.

#2 Say It With Words
It’s estimated that almost 60% of readers block images in their e-mails, so your newsletter should have more text than images.  More importantly, don’t put vital information in the images, but rather, have it in text format.  And when you include images in your newsletter, use enticing ALT text (e.g. “Checklist For Success!”) coupled with a “View/Download image” link to get the hit.

#3 Subjects Matter
If your reader can’t get past your subject line, it’s practically game over for you and your newsletter.  To be effective, the subject line should contain the title of your newsletter and the topic of the week/month in a nutshell.  Once you’ve got a catchy liner, run it by a few friends – would they open your mail?

#4 View From The Top
Most of your readers at work will be viewing your mail through their preview pane – even if they’re not impressed with your subject line, they may give your newsletter a chance, depending on what shows up on their screen.  It’s reason enough to think twice before you stick that ad banner or instructions on how to unsubscribe at the top of your page.

#5 Every Second Counts
You’ve got 51 seconds to grab your average reader’s attention, or so says the Nielsen Norman Group.  If you’re writing an editorial note or summary, highlight issues that your readers are interested in.  You may also want to feature a hyperlinked table of contents at the top of your page; research shows that bottom-listed articles are rarely read.

#6 What’s Next?
Sure, your newsletter should be a good read, but what happens after?  Chances are, you’d like to direct traffic to your web site or your store, and to do that, you’ll need to tell your readers how to take action.  This can be anything from printing out a newsletter coupon to qualify for a store discount, or clicking on a link to your product promo page.

#7 Write It Yourself
Outsourcing writing is the rage these days, but when it comes to understanding your company, no-one does it better than you.  So don’t be afraid to give writing a shot, just keep these pointers in mind:

• Be Conversational: Write as if you were talking to your reader; avoid jargon, corporate-speak, and anything else you wouldn’t say to a customer.
• Don’t Waste Words: Keep a lid on your word count by weeding out redundancy (e.g. don’t write “close proximity” when “proximity” already means nearness) and words that dilute your message (e.g. don’t say something is “very/quite/sort of breathtaking,” when “breathtaking” alone will do the job, and with greater impact).
• Avoid Clichés: It’s tempting to reach for a cliché or catchphrase, but an over-reliance on common phrases makes your writing look tired.  The same goes for rehashing material that can be found elsewhere.  The best way to beat this: coin a phrase of your own and provide an original viewpoint as often as you can.

Once you’ve prepared a draft, consider hiring someone to edit or proofread your work.  This way, you’ll produce copy with passion and polish.

#8 The Ultimate Test
Before you unleash your newsletter on the public, test it on different e-mail clients (including web-based e-mail services) and operating platforms to make sure it shows up as intended.  eConnect Email allows you to send up to 10 test emails – that’s enough to test your campaign on all the well-known web-based e-mail services – so please use them.  After spending so much effort on a great campaign, the last thing you need is to realize the images aren’t in the right place or haven’t been linked properly.  And don’t just test the visuals, remember to click on your links to see what happens – are they pointing to the right URL, or are your links even working?

#9 Know Your Holidays
If you’re out of ideas for newsletter content, try checking your calendar – it’s easy to link products and services to common holidays like Christmas.  However,  avoid sending out your newsletter close to (or during) the holidays, because readers tend to take a break from their computers as well.

#10 Same Time, Same Channel
Decide on a date, time, and frequency for sending out your newsletter, and stick to it so your readers know when they can expect to hear from you.  As a rule, anything more than once a week is too much unless you’re in the horoscopes business, and anything less than once in two months is too little for readers to remember your newsletter.

Your campaigns won’t become a smash hit overnight, but the only way to get there is to start improving on what you have.  Enjoy sending your campaigns and remember this: Always respect your subscribers.

Your company has just produced this great product and you want to tell the world about it.  You buy advertising space in the newspaper, magazines, on billboards and maybe produce a TV ad.  What’s next? Let’s start announcing your products through email.  But wait, you don’t have any email lists to start with.  No problem, let’s get in touch with a company that sells email addresses, that would solve the problem.

Stop.

Before you part with money to buy those lists, read on to find out how this could impact your company and your new product.

Email marketing works differently from marketing in offline mediums.  It’s ok for you to put your advertisement in the papers, because the reader who purchases the paper knows there are going to be advertisements there.  Also, even though readers purchase the newspaper, they are not its rightful owner.  The company that prints the newspaper is the owner and it can choose to do whatever it wants with its newspaper, and as a buyer, you can choose to purchase the paper or not.

With email, it is different.  An email address is someone’s private property. Y ou don’t have the right to send someone a promotional email if he didn’t request for it.  You could think about e-mail as a virtual home – and you certainly wouldn’t walk into a stranger’s house to tell him about your product.  You would need to first knock on his door and ask for permission to talk about your product.

And so the same applies to email marketing; you can’t simply send your campaign to email users who do not request for it.  You must first get them to be interested in your company (knocking on the door) by setting up a website that features your products or services.  Next, put up an email subscription form (getting permission) to allow visitors to show they’re interested in hearing what you have to say. Only after they have displayed their interest (by subscribing to your email newsletter) can you respectfully send them more information.  That’s how email marketing works.

Back to your current problem: where are you going to get those email addresses?  Our advice to you is to forget about email marketing for now and focus on building up your lists.  We’ll tell you why.

1. You are putting your company’s reputation at risk by using email lists to send out your marketing materials.  There are many people out there who will not think twice about making a complaint against your company, and within days, you will realize that your company’s emails have been blocked and it is now officially known as a Spammer.
2. The worst reputation for a company to have is to be labeled a Spammer, at least in the digital world.  You not only risk angering the people in the email lists you have purchased, your existing customers might feel disappointed with your actions should news spread, and decide not to support you in the future.
3. You might end up losing your internet connection as most of the ISPs have zero tolerance policies towards spammers.
4. You are putting your company at risk of being in a civil and criminal litigation. The fines can go up to tens of thousands of dollars or even millions. (Spammers handed record $234 million fine)

These reasons are enough for you to consider your actions before you proceed.  We have yet to encounter a business owner who has built a successful campaign by buying or renting email addresses.

For now, just focus on building your email list.  As we’ve said before, put a subscription form on your website and encourage visitors to sign up for your newsletter by telling them what they have to gain. Or speak to customers in person and interest them in your newsletter.  Remember: getting 10 responses from users who choose to hear from you is better than getting 100 complaints.