Archive for February, 2009

How to build a successful newsletter

Friday, February 27th, 2009

In the last post I gave you 5 reasons to start building a newsletter. As a continuation of that post, now, I’m going to give you the basic points to make your newsletter a successful one:

Define your goals

The first and most important thing to do before you start the newsletter is setting up your goals for the newsletter. The rest flows from this. What do you want to achieve with your newsletter?

  • Drive traffic to your web or blog?
  • Create a community among your readers?
  • Build a list to “sell” to?
  • Create brand equity?
  • Make money through advertising?

The content of the newsletter will vary depending on your goal. If you want to develop a community, you should provide some special and exclusive content to your subscribers, different from the content you publish in your blog, to make them fell special and showing them that been part of your newsletter gives them some extra value. I just want to increase the traffic of our blog, knowing that most of our readers don’t know about rss feeds, send a summary of your posts of the month.

Make clear what the newsletter is about

It is important to make very clear to the subscribers what is your newsletter about, in order to create the right expectations about what they are going to receive. If your newsletter is a summary of your blog posts, don’t be afraid and say it clearly. It is better to have less subscribers that now exactly the information they are going to get,. This is not a game of quantity of contacts, it is a game of quality of contacts.

Always use double opt-in subscription

It is very important that once you have started your newsletter, you use the double opt-in subscription technique to gather new subscribers. This way the subscribers have to confirm the subscription from an email sent to them, increasing the quality of the contacts of your list. Once again, you could get less contacts but higher quality contacts.

Add Value

The people wont stay subscribed to the newsletter if they don’t find any value or any need met. You can add this kind of value with exclusive content that you don’t publish in your blog, special offers and discounts only to your newsletter subscribers, and a lot of other ways depending on your audience.

Work your subject line

The subject line of your newsletter is the first thing that your subscribers will see, and in most of the cases what will make your subscriber open or not open your newsletter. We recommend:

  • Not very long. Try to keep it between 20 and 50 characters.
  • Never use all Caps. It will look spammy
  • Give information about what the newsletter is about
  • Never use multiple exclamation symbols !!!! or $$$

Track and analyze the results

Using a tool like Pixelnews will make very easy to get a lot of information about how your subscriber interact with your newsletters. Knowing who is opening your newsletter will allow you to test different subject lines with the subscribers that are not opening. Tracking the links in your newsletter will tell you which are the topics that interest the most to your readers and to which readers, helping you to segment your list, and sending more targeted and personalized messages the next time.

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Posted in How to, Newsletter, email marketing | 1 Comment »

5 reasons to add a newsletter to your web or blog

Friday, February 27th, 2009

Even though is pretty clear that email is one of the most powerful and effective online marketing techniques, too many times when I talk about it with clients and friends, I still keep hearing questions like:

•    Isn’t email old –fashioned?
•    Isn’t rss much more direct?
•    Isn’t is better to get into social media marketing?
•    Doesn’t blogs substitute newsletters?

I understand that a lot of people are jumping into de new social media marketing bandwagon because I think it will be something huge in the near future. But, what I don’t understand is why all these people are throwing away the communication channel that is, and will be for many years, the most important in the internet, and also the online marketing technique with the biggest ROI: the email. These are the 5 reasons to start a newsletter:


Newsletters create loyal users or readers

Most of the readers or users of your web or blog never come back. Despite your best efforts, a big majority of your traffic arrive from search engines, another web or blog, a social networking site, consumes what they want and leave.

If you don’t find a way to hook your visitors of our web or blog, most of them will never come back, not because the web or blog is bad, but because they will forget about it and wont have a way to remind themselves about your site.

Offering a newsletter subscription you are giving your visitors the opportunity to sign up and be part of your list. That way yoi will be able to remember them about your web or blog inviting them to come back. The same can be said about rss feeds, but I talk about this below.

Newsletters drive page views and traffic

Newsletters generate a lot of traffic the day that are sent and the next day. You can use our newsletter to highlight new posts on our blog or new sections on our website.  If we are launching a news product and we need a burst of traffic the newsletter can be great for this and will help with the take off of the product.

80% of your readers doesn’t know what is a rss feed

Most of the tech savvy guys know what an rss feed is, but no all of them really use it. Outside, in the real world, almost no one knows about rss, in fact, just the 11% of the people knows. On the other hand, 100% of the internet users know about email, and use every day. Unless your audience is very tech savvy, the email newsletter subscription will be much more efficient.

You can segment and target your audience

Using a tool like Pixelnews to run your newsletter will give you access to a lot of stats and information that will help you know what your reader and users are interested in. Tracking the opens and the links will allow you to segment your readers by interest and will help you to target and personalize much more your messages.

You can monetize it

The newsletter opens a new way to get some profit for your website or blog. You can either use it to promote affiliate programs or you can also sell ad space in it. Advertisers are willing to pay a high CPM because newsletter readers are more loyal and will pay more attention to those ads.

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Posted in Newsletter, email marketing | 2 Comments »

The dashboard in an Email Marketing application

Tuesday, February 24th, 2009

I personally love dashboards in web applications. I find essential to have a place in the app where I can see a summary of my activity at a glance, as well as a place from where I can access the most important sections of the application. The exact same happens in an email marketing application. In Pixelnews, the first thing you’ll see when you login will be the dashboard. We analyzed an decided that the most important elements are:

Last campaigns

 

One of the main reasons to access to my email marketing application is to check how my last campaigns sent are doing. That is why we have added a table to the dashboard that shows: 1. which are your last campaigns sent, 2. When you sent them and 3. A direct access to the reports of the campaigns.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

List Activity 

 

List management is other of the main features in email marketing applications. Knowing how my list are growing or shrinking is really important for email marketers. In Pixelnews dashboard we´ve added a table that shows the latest activity in your lists since your last access to the app to know how many new susbscribers, unsubscribes and total contacts you have.

 

Direct Access

The other two main features in an email marketing application are the campaign and list creation. We have’ve considered that the user should be able to access those features with just one click so we added big buttons in the dashboard to make extremely easy to start creating a campaign or a list.

 

 

 

 

 

 

Credits

I also think that the total credits (1 credit = 1 email  or sms) that the user has left is something that has to be clear somewhere in the app, and for me that place is the dashboard. In Pixelnews we made it very clear and to see how many credits you have left in the dashboard.

 

 

 

Information

Finally we added some direct link to our Help and FAQ sections and to the articles sections to show the user the most frequently asked questions and also de most the read articles with the best practices of email marketing.

 

 

 

 

 

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Posted in Dashboard, email marketing | No Comments »

Email Marketing for Hotels and Resorts

Tuesday, February 17th, 2009

Inspiring myself in this great post of Johana Cavalcanti about email marketing for hotels and resorts, I decided to write a series of post of the best practices of email marketing for different markets and sectors. All the business around tourism could generate great brand equity, more sales, more loyalty from existing customers and also get news customers, with a good email marketing program.

These are the few things you should know to start a successful email marketing program:

Create and build your own list:

It is very important that you build your list organically with the permission of all your prospects to send them de campaigns in order to get the best results out of your email marketing. The first step to start getting email addresses is having a clear subscriber form in every page of your website. To improve the subscription rate:

•    The subscription form should not be long. Not more than 5 fields. If it takes too much time to fill out no one will submit it.
•    You must clearly specify the benefits of been part of your list: better offers, special discounts, special information, etc.
•    You could encourage people to sign up by offering an extra gift like a travel guide or by entering a draw to win a price like a digital camera.

The hotels deal directly with the customer, what makes easy to get email addresses offline:

•    You can ask for email address during the check-in or check out
•    You can leave a welcome form in the room
•    You can leave a form on the table the first breakfast
•    You can have forms in the Gym, Spa, Golf, etc.

The trade shows are also a great place to collect email addresses offline.

Segmentation and Schedule

Setting the right frequency for your campaigns is key for the success of your email marketing program. Too many emails will get your subscribers tired of you, unsubscribing or even worse, flagging you as Spam. Sending a newsletter once a month is the best. You should schedule as well all the events, bank holydays, concerts, etc. in your area for special campaigns. You can also send a welcome message for the customers that are coming to the hotel in the following days and a thank you message a few days after they leave the hotel.

The segmentation of your list is also one of the most important things. Every campaign is not relevant or interesting for all your subscribers, that is why you have to segment your list by age, sex, interests, geographical area, etc.


The campaign creation

The sender and the subject of the campaign will be the first thing our subscribers will read, therefore the sender must be familiar to the subscriber and the subject must refer to the content in the campaign.

The layout of the campaign should be very similar to your web page, with the same logos and colors, and should at least have the next components:

•    Always send a text version of the email
•    Use the “alt” tag on every image
•    Always include a link to the campaign to be seen on the web
•    The main content should be in the top left corner
•    Always include a visible unsubscribe link
•    Include a “Forward to a friend” link

The Stats

Once the campaign is sent you have to check the next stats to know what’s happened:

•    Open Rate
•    CTR (Click Through Rate)
•    Conversion Rate
•    Unsubscribe Rate
•    Viral Rate
•    Bounced emails

All this data allow you to know what is more interesting for each of your subscribers, who is unsubscribing, who is forwarding your message, what is the best day and time to send the campaigns and much more in order to improve the campaigns, the content and also improve the segmentation of your list.

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Posted in Case of Study, Contacts management, Hotels and resorts, Lists, Segmentation, Vision and Purpose, email marketing, social media | 1 Comment »

How Apple could improve their email marketing

Tuesday, February 10th, 2009

I am a big Apple fan for a lot of reasons: the way they revolutionized the personal computer market, the way they revolutionized the Music industry, how they started a new revolution in the cell phone market, the design excellence of their products, the capacity to build a culture and a brand, and the list goes to the infinite.

Apparently Apple is a perfect marketing machine. However the last emails that I’ve received from them, shows me that they don’t get how email marketing has changed. They can improve a lot in this specific field. The last campaigns sent by Apple show an absolute lack of personalization and segmentation.  Let’s analyze the email I received from them during Christmas (it is in Spanish, I will translate):

The Subject: Equip yourself with Apple in 2009

I bought a MacBook from Apple store more than 2 years ago. Just taking this fact in account, the subject line would’ve been much more personal If they’ve written: Equip your MacBook for 2009 or Find the best accessories for your MacBook in 2009. Just this little of personalization of the subject line would’ve given a much better open rate, CTR and even conversion rate.

The Layout:

The first problem that everyone can see is that if you look at the email in your preview panel, with no images, the email looks empty. The main message is in a big image that doesn’t have an alternative text, so I cannot even intuit what is it about. The second big missing part is a link that allows me to see the message on the web in case my email reader cannot display the design properly. These two things can make your open rate drop.

Once we download the images of the email we can see a beautiful html design  (I don’t expect less from Apple), with a lot of  “call to action” elements that will lead me to the store.  However the design of the main message is more than 700 pixels wide, what will make me horizontal scroll to see the full message in most of the preview panels in email readers. That could be improved.

The Message

The thing that surprises me the most is the complete lack of personalization of the message. More than 70% of the email tells me about accessories for an iPod, iPhone and iPod Touch that I’ve never bought. Knowing that what I bought from them was a MacBook, they could’ve offered me the coolest, best sold, cheapest or whatever accessories for my already bought MacBook.   They could’ve even offered me to change my old MacBook for the new one.

That is not all. To the no personalization, I can add that the message had no value at all for me. They didn’t tell me about a special offer, a good discount or any valuable information for a MacBook user. They just blasted a publicity email with links to their online store, maybe to remind me that they have an online store. That doesn’t have any value. I know the online store is there. I’ve already bought stuff there.

Conclusion
I think Apple is taking advantage of their strong brand and is not taking care of the details like the one I just explained. Email marketing is an extremely powerful way to create and reinforce strong brands, establish relationships with the clients and in the end, increase sales. But you have to care about the details, care about your consumer base and care about your community, and this kind of impersonal email campaigns with no value are not the way.

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Posted in Case of Study, Contacts management, Segmentation, email marketing, social media | 2 Comments »

Contacts management in Email Marketing applications

Tuesday, February 3rd, 2009

In our first post about the vision and purpose of Pixelnews, we talked about the importance of creating a simple product that solves a real problem. After a deep analysis of the real needs of our users, we have established 3 big block that are going to be the core of the application: contacts management, campaign creation and reports.

In this post I´m going to analyze the contacts management:

The list creation and management in an email marketing application has 3 basic goals:

Import and export easiness

We want to make getting their already built contacts lists into Pixelnews really easy to our users. Most of the small companies manage their lists with excel files, so we will be keeping the basic functionality to import excel, .csv and text files. However, the number of small companies managing their contacts with CRM applications grows fast every day. In order to make it as easy as possible for them, Pixelnews will be prepared to import and synchronize contacts from the most important CRM applications in the market. This way, the users wont have to manage two different lists in two different applications.

We think it is very useful for the user a feature that makes easy to create a subscription form and embed it into a web, blog or social network profiles. This way every new sign up will be directly added to the user´s Pixelnews lists.

Finally, we are adding a feature that also exports the contacts to excel, .csv and text files.

Segmentation

One of the best ways to get better results with your email marketing campaigns is the segmentation of the lists. Because each user follows different criteria to create the segments, Pixelnews makes easy to customize the fields for each list.

Once the user has the custom fields, it will be easy to create the different segments within your lists (e.g. sex, city, age, etc.) in order to send more focused and personalized campaigns.

Reports:

We want the user to know how the lists perform over time. Pixelnews will provide reports where the user will see the evolution of sign ups, unsubscribed and bounces.

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Posted in Contacts management, Lists, Vision and Purpose, email marketing | No Comments »

Email Marketing and Social Media, friends or enemies?

Tuesday, February 3rd, 2009

In the last year I have seen a big euphoria about the opportunity that social media is for companies as a marketing tool. There are a ton of articles and posts out there lately about how to use Twitter, Facebook, Myspace, etc, to build your brand, establish relationships with your users, and much more. Within that euphoria, I have heard voices claming that social media y the new king, and that email marketing is dead.

However, since the moment you need an email address to sign up for any social network, that is completely false. Email and social media are good friends and not enemies. Both of them have an important and different role within our online marketing strategy.

I see social networks as a party, where you meet a lot of people and get in a lot of conversations. That is a really good way to build a community and to find an audience. But, the people that really care about what you do, is the people who are going to sign up to your email list, and the people you are going to start a more direct and personalized relationship with, engaging them with the value given through your emails.

What do you think?

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Posted in email marketing, social media | 1 Comment »