What is true email marketing?

The true email marketing includes branding, relationship building with your clients and subscribers, adding value, sales/lead generation today and in the future, and other efforts that are used to:

•    Position your company as one that understand your prospects needs
•    Keep your brand name top of mind so when prospects are ready to buy, they think of you.
•    Establish a better relationship with your prospects, increasing their comfort level doing business with you

Why most of the companies don’t do true email marketing?

Most of the companies focus on short-term sales and lead generation. This is because they see how with a simple promotional email get some good sales. However the return will decrease every time you try it. If you send a promotional email and you get 100 leads, that doesn’t mean that a weekly send will give you 400 leads per month. These promotional emails have a limited audience: people that are ready to buy in the precise moment of the campaign, or people that are investigating to buy.

True email marketing has a wider audience because it is not strictly focused on direct sales and lead generation, and have a big influence in medium and long term sales. The conclusion is that commercial emails are just a small part of a global email marketing strategy.

In the internet world in general, and the email marketing specifically, is much easier to measure precisely what results you are getting out of your email marketing efforts. I’m going to explain which are the main data you should be watching after you send the next campaign or newsletter:

Open rate

This ratio will tell you the effectiveness of your subject lines and also the trust and strength of your brand. Using an A/B test, sending the same message with one subject line to half of your list and a different subject to the other half of the list, and then analyzing the open rate, will tell you which kind of subjects work better with your audience.

Unsubscribe rate

This ratio will tell you how relevant your messages are, and also the quality and value of your content. If you are not meeting the expectations of your subscribers this ratio will increase.

Bounce rate

This ratio informs you about your list hygiene. Using a double opt-in system to grow your list will decrease dramatically this ratio

CTR (Click Through Rate)

This ratio will help you to segment your subscribers by their interests and also help you to improve the design of your campaigns.

Conversion Rate

This ratio will tell you the actual profitability and ROI of the campaign and also can help you know if you have the right “call to action” elements in the design of your campaign.

Forward ratio

This ratio will tell you the subscriber interest and viral nature of your message/offer.

During the last couple of moths it looks like in every conversation that involves internet, marketing or both, there is always a common denominator, something everybody is talking about, that has become the hottest thing: twitter. It is almost impossible that a day passes without me reading a story or post talking about a new feature of twitter, new desktop application for twitter, a new iPhone app for twitter, some curious story about twitter, etc.

For me, twitter is a new way of communication, therefore, a new marketing channel through which I can engage with my customers and give them extra value. The fact that is new doesn’t mean that it replaces established marketing channels. That is the reason I wanted to write this post, and explain different ways to combine twitter and email marketing, and how they are more powerful together:

1. Add a link to your company twitter account in every email communication

Add a link in the footer of your newsletter or autorresponder to let your subscribers know that they can follow your company in twitter. You can also add a link to your company twitter account in your signature for transactional emails.

2. Link to your newsletter subscription landing page from your twitter account

It is also important that all your twitter followers know that they can subscribe to your newsletter to receive more quality content from you. So, from time to time, add links to your newsletter subscription form landing page. This way you are converting your twitter followers in your opted-in email subscribers.

3. Post links to your newsletter articles in twitter

Instead of only including one twtit that says: “Check out the latest newsletter”, try to send links to the individual articles of your newsletter over a period of time (a week for example). With a tool like Hootsuite you can schedule all the twits in advanced. This way you give more importance to each article.

4. Add a link in your newsletter articles so that your subscribers can easily “tweet” about them

The same way is important that you add a link in your newsletter to make easy for your readers to forward your message and increase virality, you should add a link that makes easy to your subscribers to twit about the articles in your newsletter. You just have to add a link like this one http://twitter.com/home?status=, and after the “=” you write your under 140 characters message. For example: http://twitter.com/home?status=How to combine and empower twitter with email marketing  http://ow.ly/5nOJ

5. Use twitter as a source of information to write better articles in your newsletter

Twitter is a great way to know in real time what your clients or subscribers think about your product or service, and also a channel to solve different problems and questions. Use this information to write articles in your newsletter with better information to solve those problems and questions and therefore giving more value to your subscribers with your newsletter.

-    Unqualified leads
-    Devalues your brand
-    Disingenuous relationship with customer (what would the email say? “Hello! You don’t know me, but I bought your email…”)

Buying a contacts list wont get us anywhere. Someone with a high quality list will take care of it and tightly control that it is not abused with a lot of promotional emails. For that reason, when someone is selling you an email list (remember that he is selling it to everybody who is paying for it) 99 times out of 100 you are getting a spam list. That’s a list of addresses of people who have not agreed to receive messages like yours, or who are on a list that’s been blasted to uselessness by other mailers.

So when you see offers like 1 million addresses for 100$ you better ignore it if you don’t want to lose your money and harm the image of your company.

However, the consumer is getting immune to this traditional advertising, just completely ignoring the ads or blocking them with technologies like TiVo or DVR. Every day gets tougher to get the consumer’s attention, and the best way is adding value to the message.

The value – attention axiom works perfectly in email marketing. To build a solid permission –based subscribers list you must provide value, either by producing great content or through big discounts or offers in products that the subscribers are really interested in.

It is this perfect combination of value+permission what makes email marketing get great conversion rates and be a way to strengthen the relationship with your subscribers, getting your casual clients into loyal clients and loyal clients into evangelizers of your products.

Once the importance of value+permission is clear, here you have some tips on how to add more value to your newsletters:

1. Establish the right expectations

The subscription process is the first step of your strategy to get news subscribers. It is very important that you set at this point the right expectations about the content that the subscriber is going to get and the value that it contains for the reader. Also provide links to past issues of your newsletter so that subscribers can see exactly what to expect.

2. Have a Personality

The fact that you are producing a corporate newsletter doesn’t mean it can’t have a personality. You want the reader to feel that there is a real person on the other end of the newsletter. Establish someone as the editorial face and allow him to give it a more informal language, so that he gets closer to your subscribers.

3. Tricks, Tips and Best Practices

B2B newsletter readers love tips. No matter what profession, workers are always interested in receiving practical ideas and best practices that they can really use.

4. Statistics and Benchmarking

Your subscribers want to know how they are doing compared with other companies in their market. Providing Benchmarking information and industry statistics will keep your subscribers attention.

5. FAQ / Ask the expert

Articles devoted to answer questions are a great way to generate the interest of your subscribers and to establish yourself and your company as an expert in your field.

6. Case of study

Readers never get tired of practical examples of success stories and strategies, and they always want more and more.

7. Use your Click-Through Rate (CTR) data

Monitoring which articles are giving you the most click help you to refine your topics and write more about the most interesting for your subscribers.

8. Use surveys

Send surveys a few times a year asking directly to your subscribers which content they prefer.

9. Partners, clients and experts

Solicit articles from your clients, partners and industry experts.

Your subscribers will look at the “Form” field when they receive the campaign or newsletter to be sure they recognize the sender name or email address, and only if they recognize it they open the email. That is why I recommend you to use the name of the company as the sender of the campaign, or a very well known person in the company, whose name will be recognizable by all of your subscribers.

I think that a good strategy to write the subject line of your campaign or newsletter is keeping one part consistent in every email and  a variable part that changes every campaign. This way your subscribers will recognize your newsletter, and at the same time get a little taste of what they will find in the content.

Here you have some examples of bad subject lines:

• This is the permission based Email Marketing Monthly Newsletter for May, 1 2009 by Pixelnews

This subject line is very long. My recommendation is to keep the subject line between 20 and 50 characters. This one above has 80 characters and most of the email clients will cut it off and the chances of getting blocked as spam by the filters are higher.

• (COMPANY NAME)’S NEWSLETTER FOR MAY 2009

In this case the subject is in all caps, which increases the chances of getting blocked as spam by the filters.

• Cooking tips

This subject gives too little information about the content

• Special offer – save 80$ buying now!!!

This subject line contains both exclamation points and a dollar sign ($), which also increases the chances of been blocked as Spam. If the message gets through, it is also very probable that the subscriber consider it as Spam anyways.

Here you have a revised version of the subject lines analyzed before:

• Permission based Email Marketing Newsletter for May
• (Company Name)’s Newsletter for May 2009
• Monthly cooking tips – How to bake the best Brownie
• Special offer – 20% off today

Too complex design

You have to realize that designing an email campaign is not the same as designing a website. Don’t try to use fancy flash or java scripts or try to embed a You Tube video, it just doesn’t work, and you will get crazy trying to make it look ok in the different email clients. Try to design a layout as clean and simple as possible with the correct links that will get your subscribers to the website or landing page you want.

Adding the wrong reply email address

It is pretty common to find mistakes in the reply email address or marketers that prefer to introduce a false address to avoid to get their inboxes full. Receiving feedback from your subscribers is one of the best ways to improve your campaigns and your product/service, so you cannot afford to miss that replies.

All Image, No text

I’m tired of seeing email campaigns that only have an image or a few images and no text at all. This campaigns hace two main problems:

•    Are very likely to be considered as Spam by the main ISP (Yahoo, Hotmail, Gmail)

•    Most of the email clients don’t download the images automatically so your subscribers will receive a blank email. Then they will delete it or worse, mark you as spam.

Spammy Subjects

More marketers than I thought still hasn’t understood that using subject lines with all caps, using words like WIN, PRIZE, FREE or using multiple exclamations!!! will make their emails look like Spam.

Wrong Links

The last of the most common mistakes that I’m used to see is when I click on a link in an email and it get me to a blank page with big letters that say: 404 error: Not Found. Before you send out your campaigns make sure that you have introduced the links correctly.

The economic situation that we are living today makes you analyze even more the ROI (Return on Investment) of every of your marketing actions. Don’t let these avoidable mistakes make you lose sales or decrease your reputation.

What is what every restaurant owner who wants to get advantage of the effectiveness of email marketing should be doing? These are the basic steps you should be taking to implement a successful email marketing program:

Create and build your own list

Every email marketing program starts building the contact list in an organic and natural way. It is very important to be patient, realizing that this is a matter of quality and not quantity. Buying or renting an email list is a really big mistake. You also want to make sure that you get permission from your subscribers. If you don’t get the permission you’ll be a spammer. You can start getting email addresses organically and with permission using the next techniques:

The first step is setting up a 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 pdf wine guide or by entering a draw to win a price like a nice Moet Chandon Champagne bottle.

You can ask for email addresses in your restaurant. When your clients ask for the bill the waiter could give them an small form and tell them about the advantages of been part of the list.

Insert a card promoting your email campaigns with your takeout and delivery orders. Simply add the url of your website and ask people to go there to subscribe.

You should promote your email program or newsletter in every promotional piece that you have like paper menus, cards, flyers, etc also directing people to the website to subscribe.

When someone is calling to make a reservation means that he/she has an especial interest in your restaurant. When the reservation is made you can also tell this customer about the promotions, discounts and news he could be getting if he/she were part of your emailing list.

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, etc, for special campaigns. You can also partner with businesses around you like theatres or cinemas and send campaigns like Tickets + dinner with especial discount.

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

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.

•    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.