With every email you send, it gets easier to fall into old habits. Before you know it, they all start to look the same, or even worse, to incorporate some flagrant email marketing errors. If you haven’t taken the time to flesh out your “To Don’t” list, start by correcting these common mistakes:

1.  Failing to Design for Mobile Devices

With roughly 20% to 30% of users checking the majority of email on their phones and almost 90% doing so at least occasionally, you can’t afford to fall off the bandwagon. To get you started, here are some quick tips that will make your next email more mobile friendly:

• Use fonts that can be easily read on tiny screens.
• Put space between clickable elements to accommodate touch screens and clumsy fingers.
• Enlarge the call to action buttons, making it stand out from surrounding content.

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People love to play online. Part of the appeal of Facebook is that it gives you so many opportunities to interact with people and with the companies you’re following. Email has traditionally been less interactive than websites or social media, but the current trend in email marketing is to enable interaction with the subscriber. That way, you can capitalize on the surfer mentality (give me something fun to do) while still taking advantage of the more personalized and intimate communication venue of email. Here are some ideas to get your subscribers involved.

• Ask for a vote

Whether it’s a vote on a new ice cream flavor, a cutest photo contest, or a new logo, asking for a vote gives readers a chance to click a button and get involved!  It also makes your subscribers feel valuable by encouraging them to influence the decision you make as a company.

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Social media has undoubtedly been in the spotlight for the last couple of years. It’s time email marketing received its due praise. While it’s true that social media can accomplish things like reaching a broad audience and encouraging conversations with customers, email marketing offers its own list of benefits that social media will never be able to emulate.

• Guaranteed Exposure

Does your post make it on your fans’ news feed? With Facebook’s algorithm, only the pages deemed most popular or relevant will make it on the “worthy to be seen” list. Even if you do make it, your post will disappear from your fans newsfeed within hours. Email, on the other hand, always makes it to your subscribers’ inboxes (forget about bounces for now), giving you a better chance of grabbing your subscribers attention with a carefully crafted subject line. In addition, even unopened emails can remain in an inbox for days, with each new visit by the subscriber an opportunity to snag his attention.

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Your call to action is arguably the most important element of your email marketing messages. Because it provides the link between passive reading and active clicking, it supersedes even the supremacy of the subject line. But many businesses fail to treat it with the respect it deserves. Subject lines tend to get all the attention because they provide the first point of contact and the incentive to open. And while that is undoubtedly a vital role, the call to action requires the subscriber to take decisive action towards your conversion goal.  That’s why it’s essential that you put some serious thought into creating a single call to action that will funnel your subscribers toward the decision you ultimately want them to make.

Why a Single Call to Action?

Simply put, too many calls to action paralyze the decision process. For instance, one email I received offered me the opportunity to donate, review new merchandise, visit the store website, and make a purchase, all in the same email. Just reading it burned through my allotted attention span for this email campaign; forget about actually deciding which call to action was most enticing. Studies show that you’ll make more sales by offering fewer choices than you will by offering a smorgasbord of options. Why? Ever try to choose between twenty-four different flavors of barbecue sauce? After a while they all start to taste the same.

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When was the last time you created an email and sent it out to your entire subscriber list? Last week? Lifecycle marketing offers a more personal approach to creating emails by targeting them toward customers at various stages in their relationship with your company. By segmenting your audience based on their current interest level, you can create emails designed to elicit the next logical response. Still not convinced? Take a look at how lifecycle marketing approaches these three common groups of subscribers.

Subscriber #1: The Newbie

• Profile: This subscriber has just expressed interest in your company by signing up for your email list.
• Email Type: Send the newbie a welcome email that makes him feel appreciated and that encourages him to engage immediately.
• Email Goals: Encourage a first purchase, educate him about your company, promote your website, and let him know you’re glad he’s on board.
• Email Approach: Thank him for signing up and offer him a discount off his first purchase. This is also a great time to let him know what benefits he can expect to receive as a member of your subscriber list.

Subscriber #2: The Supporter

• Profile: This is the loyal gal who loves to shop at your store and opens every email you send.
• Email Type: Respond to the loyalty of this customer by giving her the VIP treatment. Make her feel like a valued customer and she’ll reward you with return visits and recommendations.
• Email Goals: Encourage increased purchasing, offer excellent customer service, and increasing loyalty
• Email Approach: Offer sneak previews for upcoming sales, give special valued-customer discounts, target email creation based on viewing history, send abandoned cart reminders, and provide immediate customer service interactions when appropriate.

Subscriber #3: The Bystander

• Profile: This person has been a member of your email list for a while but has no recent purchases and may fail to open or click on any of your email campaigns.
• Email Type: Seek to win back the loyalty of this subscriber with special offers and “we miss you” messages.
• Email Goals: Jump start re-engagement, understand her concerns, and keep her from transferring loyalty elsewhere.
• Email Approach: Solicit comments by asking for social media involvement or survey responses, offer incentives for purchases or website visits, and seek to make her feel like a valued member of your list.

The goal of lifecycle marketing is to segment your subscriber list based on their customer behavior and then to create targeted emails that encourage greater levels of participation. eConnect Email can help you reach these goals by managing subscriber data, analyzing list metrics, and building segments based on custom criteria.

A couple weeks ago I received an email from my favorite aquarium store. Being a fish geek, I’m always interested in fish store sales. But this particular email caught my attention with an explosive subject line that read “Fourth of July Blowout Sale!” Sadly, the subject line was all that was explosive about it.

Upon opening the message, I discovered that the image did not display in my email browser and there were no text tags to give me clues about this fantastic sale. Not even a link to the website. Being a sucker for fish sales, I typed fishstore.com into my browser and came up with nothing. After trying a .net extension and landing on a fish taxidermy site, I Googled said store and discovered that their website was “fishstore.us.” Okay. But here’s the real kicker. Nowhere on their site could I find anything about a Fourth of July Blowout Sale. Slightly disgruntled, I closed the tab and deleted the email.

So what’s the takeaway from this experience? I think there are several things to be learned about what to do and what not to do as you’re developing an email marketing piece.

1. Subject lines aren’t everything. We tend to talk about them like they are the holy grail of email marketing, but a fantastic subject line accomplishes nothing if it’s not supported by the email itself.
2. Always, always, always include alt text tags and links that communicate your message even if your image fails to display.
3. Don’t forget to include a link to your landing page in the body of the email, especially if your website has a weird extension like .us.
4. If you’re going to send an email about a sale, make sure sale information can be easily found on your website.
5. If you’re advertising a blowout sale, it better really be a blowout. If it’s not, people will begin to be skeptical of your email pieces and may skip them altogether.

Creating a stellar email goes beyond dotting all your i’s and crossing your t’s. You need a certain amount of creativity in order to be in touch with what will speak to your target audience. eConnect Email can help you design customized email templates, organize and integrate images, and test your emails before sending to ensure that they display correctly and accomplish the goals you have in mind. Don’t make the mistake of losing customers to a poorly designed email. Take the time to work out the kinks before you send, and you’ll not only increase sales, but also build loyal customers who look forward to your messages.

How successful is your email marketing campaign? That can be a tough question to answer, especially since so many elements must work together to create measurable success. The real question, then, should be how you can quantify success in order to know when you’ve got it and what you can change in order to generate it. And that’s what testing is all about.

Before you start testing every metric out there, let’s take a look at two of the most important measurements of email marketing success as well as some of the elements you can test to determine how you can improve.

Open Rates

Sometimes viewed as the holy grail of email marketing, open rates let you know just how many people actually open the messages you send. There are three primary elements you can test to improve your open rates:

• Subject Lines

Test content topics such as price, incentives, benefits, and offer end dates. Also, test different wordings once you’ve chosen the content.

• Sender Name

Try using your company name, a person’s name, or a combination of the two as your display sender. Beware of making drastic changes too frequently, however, since your subscribers may not recognize you or you may be tagged as spam.

• Send Dates/Times

It’s usually best to test just one element at a time (i.e., either date or time, but not both) in order to get a true picture of when you’re likely to get the most opens.

Click Rates

Click rate refers to the number of subscribers who click on a link within your email once they’ve opened it. Here are a few elements you can test to boost your numbers:

• Link wording

Keyword-rich links tend to do better than simple “click here” links, but the important thing here is what works. Test several options to find out.

• Link color

Make sure your subscribers can recognize your clickable text as a link. Test basic blue against other colors, perhaps matching them to your overall color scheme.

• Call to action

Call to action tests can deal with wording, button size, button placement, color, and several other elements. Get creative to determine what elements you might change to produce the best results.

There are plenty of other elements and metrics you can test to boost the success of your email marketing campaign. The important thing to remember is that testing is the only way you can gather the information you need to achieve that success. Take advantage of the testing options available from eConnect Email to view vital stats in real time as well as printable reports and campaign statistics.

As summer revs its engines, visions of pristine beaches, inviting pools, and sizzling barbecues now occupy the thoughts of all but the most stalwart of employees. Even the non-working adults on your subscriber list will be occupied ferrying kids back and forth to the pool or hitting the golf green rather than clicking through email. During summer, email marketing often hits a slump because there may be days or weeks at a time when subscribers aren’t checking their email, and when they do check it, marketing emails take low priority. The good news is that by changing up your strategy, you can still capture the attention of your audience, even as they prepare to hit the beach.

• Make the most of subject lines.

People will be more hurried as they scan through their inboxes during the summer, so capture attention with snappy, engaging subject lines emphasizing summer fun or special deals and giveaways.

• Use visual imagery to create positive associations.

Visual images such as your product featured in front of a pristine beach or another favorite summer pastime can create “feel-good” associations with your product, encouraging better customer engagement with your message.

• Associate your products with favorite summer activities.

Demonstrate how your products or services can make a summer vacation more relaxing or a backyard barbecue more inviting.

• Encourage link sharing with contests and giveaways.

If your products don’t lend themselves to summer associations, you can still vamp up the excitement by running a contest. This will not only entice subscribers to open your email, but will also encourage them to share your link with friends.

• Track user behavior and change send times if necessary.

As vacation season begins, peak open times may change. Track the behavior of your subscribers to find out whether your emails have a better chance of being viewed on a day or time other than your normal send time.

• Accommodate mobile users.

Because many people will be away from their computers for a portion of the summer months, it’s vital that you make your emails mobile friendly. Messages that can’t be viewed easily on a smartphone will be more likely to be discarded.

• Keep it short

No one has time to read lengthy emails in the summer. Get your message across with as few words as possible and keep content light and fun.

Summer months can present a challenge to marketers as their open rates and click throughs fluctuate. Let eConnect Email help you create the perfect summer campaign by designing custom summer templates, testing campaign effectiveness, and ensuring superior deliverability.

A few years back I subscribed to a newsletter from a gardening company. Each month, they sent me a well-written, informative article that included a plug for their website  and a relevant gardening tip. At the close of each email, they included a sentence that read: “Just ignore the ad. It’s how we pay the bills.” This little tidbit endeavored to reduce sales pressure while at the same time subtly promoting the link. The problem is that the message was undoubtedly a little too subtle—even discouraging. On the other hand, subscribers like me kept opening and reading the newsletter month after month, because it provided relevant information without being pushy. So where’s the balance? How do you create a newsletter that people want to read while still promoting your business and encouraging click throughs?

• Provide great information to keep people reading.

The best thing about the gardening newsletter above was that it provided thoughtful, well-written information. It included seasonally relevant tips that weren’t common knowledge, meaning that every month subscribers learned something new. Keep your subscribers clicking by giving them something worthwhile to read in every message.

• Reward readers for their loyalty.

The second best way to keep subscribers clicking is to provide incentives for them to do so. Don’t just announce an upcoming sale—give your subscribers exclusive access to early bird specials and other offers.

• Create compelling subject lines.

It doesn’t matter how great your content is if your subject line doesn’t communicate well. Avoid spammy phrases and make sure that you don’t over-hype your message. Try testing several different wordings to discover what style works best for your audience.

• Include personal touches.

In addition to using subscriber names, you can further personalize your messages by tracking user behavior and knowing what your subscribers have shown interest in previously with the goal of making each message as relevant as possible.

• Know what constitutes spam.

Show respect for your subscribers by avoiding the appearance of spam at all costs. Don’t flood their inboxes and make sure you’re current on the provisions in the CAN-SPAM act in order to maintain the loyalty of your subscribers.

The best way to earn and keep the trust of your subscribers is to treat them the way you want to be treated. People understand that the purpose of your newsletter is advertising, but they also want to know that there’s something in it for them. eConnect Email can help you create compelling email templates, manage your subscriber lists, and track the effectiveness of your newsletters as you seek to create email campaigns that will boost your click through rates.

With the advent of social media, online marketing arenas have been altered permanently and drastically. People love the instant gratification social media offers as well as the increased possibilities for conversation and relationship. For businesses, that means capitalizing on those aspects of social media that help increase trust and brand recognition among your target audience. However, don’t let the flashy attractiveness of social media overshadow your tried and true email marketing techniques. Instead, look for ways that you can intertwine the two in order to benefit both.

It’s a Big, Big World Out There

One of social media’s greatest attractions for marketers is that it grants potential access to millions of previously unreachable contacts. When people like your posts or share your articles, this is now visible to all of their friends, giving you the chance to win their attention as well. Savvy email marketers have begun capitalizing on this opportunity by posting an email list sign-up form directly on their Facebook pages. Not only do you reach friends of your current fans, but potential fans can find out immediately how to subscribe to your email list without having to dig deep. And Facebook isn’t the only way to gain greater visibility. Encourage fans to share your email campaigns by including options for them to easily share your messages on sites like Twitter, LinkedIn, Google Buzz, etc.

Mobilizing Your Email Marketing Campaign

Incorporating social media into your email marketing campaign is great, but statistics show that ever-increasing numbers of people check their social media accounts not from their desks or laptops, but from their smartphones. Mobile phones have become the go to resource for many people to stay up-to-date on all their digital correspondence, including email, Facebook, and other social media venues. In order to reap the most benefit from an email marketing effort that includes social media, you’ll need to make sure your signup form works with a mobile phone.

Great Openers Demand Great Follow-Ups

Once you’ve engaged the viewer’s attention enough for him to subscribe to your email list, it’s vital that you follow through with an excellent welcome email. Consider including a time-stamped special offer, encouraging readers to take immediate action for further engagement with your company.

eConnect Email can walk you through every phase of your email marketing campaign, from list  building, to email creation and testing, to autoresponders and support. As you start to plan your next campaign make sure to leverage social media.  If there is ever anything we can help you out with be sure to let us know.