Facebook has been hyped to the point where some marketers have pronounced email to be dead. Of course, it should be intuitive that as long as people still have email addresses, email can’t be dead. Email marketing reaches people where Facebook can’t. Just like Facebook reaches people where email can’t. That’s why the two must work together to reach the broadest possible audience. Facebook reaches the “everyone else” of email marketing, and email marketing reaches the “everyone else” of Facebook. Successful marketing campaigns must learn to integrate the two for greatest effect. Here’s how to get started:

• Provide email signup options on your Facebook page and Facebook like buttons in your emails. Make it possible for people to engage with your company wherever they encounter you. Asking them to sign up for additional marketing options keeps your company in the forefront of their minds as often as possible.

• Promote Facebook contests in email and announce the winners in an email newsletter.  Let your email subscribers know what they’re missing out on by not being a fan on Facebook. You can use Facebook pictures to showcase your winners, but always get permission and give the subscriber an opportunity to choose which picture he wants you to use.

• Promote email marketing contests by asking people to provide their email address on your Facebook page.  Again, let people know they’re missing out by participating in only one of your marketing venues. If you intend to add these addresses to your subscriber list, make sure your viewers know that up front or you could end up with disgruntled subscribers.

• Use the same design in both places for continuity between venues.  People shouldn’t wonder whether the email they got was delivered by the same company who created that awesome Facebook page. It’s important to create brand recognition across multiple venues, so make sure your social media and email follow the same basic design structure.

• Recognize the differences between Facebook and email.  Email remains much more personal than Facebook—perhaps even more so since people don’t have to give their email addresses out in order to stay in touch. Most people guard their email addresses much more closely than their Facebook pages and will unsubscribe quickly if you bombard them with unwanted messages. To remain on the nice list, keep emails on point and make sure each one provides something of value.

Email and Facebook can work together to accomplish the same marketing goals as long as you recognize and respect the differences between them. eConnect Email can help you create opt-in forms, manage subscriber preferences, and create custom email templates that will keep your audience engaged, no matter where they encounter your brand.

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.

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!

As the average person’s email habits have evolved over time, the goals and strategies of email marketing have had to evolve as well. People no longer open and read every email they receive and they often maintain two or more accounts to help them filter out promotional messages from personal ones. In order to continue reaching their target audience via email, savvy email marketers must keep up with rapidly changing strategies while maintaining tried and true best practices that win reader loyalty.

• Respect Your Subscribers

Considering the irritation and even anger with which most people view spam, it’s puzzling why so many companies still attempt to send unsolicited emails. If a subscriber asks to be removed from your list, remove him and don’t send additional messages. eConnect Email’s list management options allow you to stay on top of reader preferences and build trust by respecting privacy.

• Target Your Audience

You can build a list of subscribers who are tuned in to your messages by being up front about your email intentions and then by asking them to forward messages to their friends or share it via facebook, twitter, etc. If you provide compelling information, you’ll be able to organically build your subscriber list as newsletters and articles get passed along. eConnect Email offers a social sharing option that allows readers to pass messages along, while also allowing you to track user activity.

• Craft a Compelling Subject Line

Before a subscriber ever clicks through your email, he’ll make a decision about whether your message is worth his/ her time based on your subject line. Avoid clichés and over-the-top claims that readers will ignore. Instead, focus on building well-crafted, concise subject lines that entice the reader to find out more.  For additional tips on how to write a killer email subject line visit the link provided.

• Balance Education and Promotion

One newsletter I received included a statement at the very top that instructed the reader to ignore the ads, explaining they were just there to pay the bills. You know what? I did ignore them. I never bought anything from the company and when I changed email addresses, I didn’t bother to re-subscribe. The company undermined their goal of selling a product by apologizing for the ads in the hopes that subscribers would continue to read. The lesson? Don’t overwhelm readers with ads, but don’t let them off the hook by foregoing a call to action altogether. eConnect Email can help you craft dynamic content for your emails in order to achieve results for your email marketing campaign.

Keep it Interesting

With so much competition in the inbox these days it’s even that much more important to compose great content with catchy subject lines and impressive graphics.  This process is made easier with professional email marketing companies like eConnect Email.  Just remember to have fun and deliver campaigns that you would like to receive because most likely your subscribers will have similar tastes and interests as you.  As always, if you have questions along the way we are here to help!

I wish there was more we could do to get email marketers to use the tools available to them to help increase reader response. So much effort is put into making campaigns look beautiful but often the technology to help increase reader statistics are never used. So, on your next campaign, please consider the following tools to help make your emails a success.

1. Split Testing

This one is a no-brainer.  How awesome would it be to be able to test which headlines or titles would be most successful before sending a newspaper or book to print?  I guarantee if an author could do this he would because more purchases equal dollars in his pocket.  With email marking, this is easy and it’s called split testing. With split-testing, any reputable email platform will allow you stage a few options, hit send and let the system pick the winner based on the criteria you choose (opens and click-thru’s) and then delivers the remainder of your campaign to the winner. We’ve seen open rates at 20% spike to 45% and click-thru rates jump from 4% to over 10%, just by trying two different subject lines.

Benefit? Find out quickly what works and get a better response rate.

2 . List Segmenting

OK- another no brainer: Targeted emails are obviously more well received so let’s stop batching and blasting those emails to the entire mailing list and take a minute to segment that list.  By importing contacts into a single list with relevant fields of data for your market you can then search for specific criteria within that one list.  For instance if you would like to send an email to everyone on your list with a 92009 zip code you can, or even what products or services a group purchased previously and so on.

Benefit? Cleaner management of data, more targeted mailings, greater response rates.

3. Triggered Mailings/Auto-responders

Let your email marketing go to work for you…and forget about it.  It just takes a little time to set up a series of timed emails but once it’s done you can put your feet up and know that your customers are being informed or reminded of your services automatically.  Scenario: Someone visits your web site and requests a white paper or a trial of your software or perhaps they made a purchase.  Connect that information to your platform and stage mailings to “auto” deploy based on the criteria you set.

Benefit? Let technology go to work for you and keep the right (timed) communication in front of your audience.  Multiple touches and BAM!  They take action!

4. Personalization

This is email marketing 101, but do it in a creative fashion.  Think outside the box and work with the data you know about your subscribers.  Why not personalize an email with some details you know that wouldn’t be what you’d typically store in an email database.  Here’s one, “Hi Brett – we feel horrible.  Your birthday was yesterday and we were late.”  How clever.  Now, I may know intuitively you automated this somehow, but you cleverly spin it to sound human (we made an error!).  Have a purchase history on your customers stored somewhere?  Why not use that to merge the last product purchased or the last interaction with you.

Benefit? Email is all about relevancy.  You must know who your prospects and customers are, right?  Why not demonstrate that?  You’ll keep them engaged MUCH longer.

5. Social Follow & Social Sharing

At this point, if you are not working your email marketing and social networking together, you’re probably living under a rock.  You have to go where the eyeballs are and email/social is a powerful one-two punch.  If you have a Twitter feed or a Facebook fan page like us, you need icons in your emails to not only prompt your customers to follow you, but also to share the content inside your emails with their networks.  Forward to a friend is still a standard and many subscribers will use this, but the NEW forward is really the share feature.  It allows folks to connect this with their personal and professional networks quickly and easily and may garner you some new subscribers.

Benefit? Everyone knows hundreds, sometimes thousands of people you or I don’t. Why not tap that? Let them remarket on your behalf.

So there you have it.  These things are within your grasp today, and as always, the eConnect Email marketing platform lets you set these things up quite easily.  If you need help setting any of these things up in your account, as always, you can reach out to us at anytime.