Your sender reputation with ISPs is the key factor which determines what will happen to your email after you click “Send”. Your reputation is built on your email sending activity, and it’s much easier to spoil it rather than restore your good name.
Read more on Sender Reputation: Easy to Ruin and Hard to Restore…
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Have you ever thought about your subscribers? Who are they? What are their occupations? If they subscribe to your newsletters, buy your products, and respond to your offers, it doesn’t always mean they devote all their time to online marketing. Your subscribers or customers are quite different people with totally different jobs and mindsets. If they have a full-time work, they may access their computers for a short time on the evening or at night only.
Read more on 5 Real Steps to Easier Email…
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As the Subject line is one of the factors that make the reader either open or delete the message, we’re always wondering about the best way to write the Subject line. In one of my latest articles I shared several tips on how to write the Subject line to increase the email open rate.
Read more on Subject Line Personalization: Does It Make Sense?…
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Like the From field the Subject line is one of the most important components of a successful newsletter sending campaign. Together with the From line, the Subject line determines whether the recipient will open an email, delete it immediately, save file it for future reading, or report and/or filter it as spam. Plus, many anti-spam filters use the Subject lines to separate good emails from spam. So, because of a poorly written Subject the email may not even reach the recipient’s inbox in the first place.
Below are the tips to write Subject lines that produce higher open and click-through rates:
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So you got a great email message design, wrote a perfect Subject line, added your company name to the From field and you think you’re ready to send the email out. Wait a minute. You work may not be over yet. You probably will need to spend some time for optimizing your From and Subject lines. What does it mean and why is optimizing the From and Subject lines so important?
You know different email clients render the From and Subject lines in different ways. This is one of the challenges of distributing email newsletters.
Some email clients limit the quantity of characters if the From and/or Subject lines. So, if your Subject is too long, it will be cut off and may be unreadable for the recipient. In some email programs the From and Subject lines are interrelated – the longer the From field, the shorter the Subject line is allowed. The From field can be displayed either as Name + Email Address, or Name, or Email Address in different email programs.
It’s good if you know what email clients your recipients use to view your emails. You can then tailor your "From" and especially "Subject" lines to display properly for all the recipients. If you don’t have the information about your recipients’ email programs, try to optimize your message at least for the most common email clients listed in the table below.
Read more on Tailoring “From” and “Subject” Lines for Email Clients…
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For many Internet marketers email newsletters are one of the main means to not only promote their products or services but also to build and enhance relationships with existing and potential customers and generate leads. Achieving these goals is possible only if the newsletter contains valuable and trusted content for the readers, clients, partners or prospects. Otherwise, they won’t simply read the newsletter.
A newsletter that gives something of value moves the prospect or customer to the next level of the relationship, impels them to visit your website where they will probably take a desired action: download software demo version, subscribe to another newsletter, or maybe purchase some of your products or services.
Read more on 11 Tips for Better Newsletter Content and Layout…
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Now we’ll just remind all the tips for designing a HTML email message and give an example of a good, "healthy" email newsletter created in G-Lock EasyMail. So, let’s recap:
Read more on What a Good, Healthy HTML Newsletter Looks Like…
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This statement is taken for the rule by many email marketers. Despite of a magic power of this word that prompts the recipient to immediately act on your email, it’s generally believed that "free" is a pure spam word. Yes, there is a truth behind this. Every other spam message contains the word "free". But what is the most important is the environment this word is used in, i.e. the whole phrase with the word "free" matters.
Let’s look how two popular spam content filters – Spam Assassin and MS Outlook 2000 – work and handle your emails.
Spam Assassin, one of the main “test” spam filters, assigns points – positive and negative – to the message content and HTML code. Positive points mean potential spam, negative points mean the message content and code are not generally used by spammers. The score is calculated and if it exceeds a certain level, the message is filtered as spam. It’s about the Spam Assassin user to determine the level at which emails are filtered. It is generally believed that most companies/ISPs use a total score of around 10, but that some may go as low as 4.
In the Spam Assassin the phrases with the word "free" do get fairly high scores – 1 and higher. But the phrases commonly used in legitimate emails such as “free report”, "free download", "free upgrade", “free e-book” and “free newsletter” are not affected.
Unlike the Spam Assassin, MS Outlook 2000 Junk E-mail Filter uses a pass/fail method. It looks for “junk and adult” content in the message and directs suspicious messages to the Outlook’s Deleted Items folder. The common things that trigger the filter are the use of an exclamation point and the word "free" in the message Subject line.
The bottom line: Use the word "free" in your email newsletters wisely and test, test and test your message before sending it to the whole list.
Read more on Don’t Use the Word “Free” in the Message…
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Since email marketing is the cheapest form of marketing, many email marketers focus on building as big mailing list as possible believing that the bigger list they have the better results they get. Of course, obtaining new subscribers or customers is a good thing. But a smaller list of active, interested and motivated subscribers or customers is really what you should aim at. At least, take time to clear your list from invalid emails and reduce the energy you spend on your inactive members.
Here are a few tips how you can get the most out of your active members:
Read more on Bigger List, Better Results…
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OK, we’ve just described best email practices you should follow to pass as a good email marketer and get better delivery results. But you know there is nothing constant on the Internet. New methods are being adapted; old ones go out of date. Email delivery practices change as well. Email practices that were widely and successfully applied yesterday may not be so effective today.
With all that said, we feel it’s reasonable to get you familiar with email sending tactics that are no longer good. If you are using any of such tactics or may just be thinking about applying any of them, you may consider changing your mind and not engage into them.
Read more on Best Email Delivery Practices Gone Bad…
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If your mailing list contains a considerable amount of AOL subscribers, it’s important for you to be aware of the AOL service and email software specific features. You should get familiar with how AOL handles incoming email messages to be able to tailor your newsletter and overall email marketing process to the AOL specific requirements and issues. Below is a list of what you should take into account.
Read more on Optimizing Email Delivery for AOL Users…
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Before you start working at your correction email, think about the format and style of the message, what you will say in it and who will get it.
The format of the correction email depends on the type of the mistake you made in the original message. If the mistake was in the email itself, you can just resend the original email with the corrections made, but include a brief note at the beginning of the message and a subject line that refers to the correction. If the mistake is connected with your website (the page doesn’t open, the button doesn’t work, etc.), you can send a simple plain text email notifying people that the error or problem on your website is corrected.
Whether you resend the original email with an intro note, or prepare a separate correction email, the message should be concise and to the point. It should start with “We made a mistake”, or “Here is the fix”, or "The error is corrected" or something like this. You can also include a special offer for your subscribers when appropriate – “Here is an offer to make it up to you” – for example, an offer could be a free shipping, free access to an e-book, report, free download, discount for the next purchase, etc.
Read more on How to Compose a Correction Email…
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So now when you know how most of anti-spam systems work, you can start on your HTML newsletter. You really have to “think like a spam filter” when you design your emails. Spam filters read your emails, and look for similarities with known spam. You don’t want to get thrown into the junk folder, right? So, you have to remember some things that you must not do when designing your email.
And the best way to learn what not to do is:
Read more on Tips for Avoiding Anti-Spam Filters…
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How many people opened your email? An open rate from 20% to 30% is considered "average." Watch your open rate over time. Your first email might get a great open rate (like 50% to 70% or more), but over time will level off some.
Try experimenting with:
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With G-Lock EasyMail you can send a regular (daily, weekly, monthly, etc.) newsletter to your subscribers. It works great for that kind of stuff. You can use your current customer database to manage your recipients and segment them any way you want. Then you can link to your database directly from G-Lock EasyMail. The “external list” option is very powerful in G-Lock EasyMail. You can create a link to any ODBC compliant database and take the email addresses directly from the database without import-export. Or, you can export your list to a file and import it into G-Lock EasyMail. There is even a simpler way – if you export your recipients’ email addresses to a text file, you can load it into G-Lock EasyMail in seconds. Yes, so easy.
Plus, you can store any additional recipient’s information like the first name, last name, company name, job title, gender, age, etc, etc. You can filter the recipients in any way you want to easy management of your list. We’ve made G-Lock EasyMail so that is supports an unlimited number of email lists. That is you don’t need to clear the previous list of recipients before importing a new one. You can simply create a new list and import your new recipients in it. This also makes easy to segment your subscribers as you want: by buying habits, purchase history, location, account type, ISP (at-home vs. at-work), Gender, Age, etc. So, you can create and send focused, relevant email newsletters to each recipients list. Take your customer list, and send half in the morning, and the other half in the afternoon. Or split them into different days. Or try different subject lines, etc., etc. everything you can imagine.
Linking to externally managed lists from G-Lock EasyMail
The feature of G-Lock EasyMail to integrate with external ODBC compatible databases is an extremely powerful tool for experimenting with your email marketing. You don’t have to be a rocket scientist or mathematician, and you don’t have to program anything. You can simply use your own customer database to create multiple lists, and then link to those lists from G-Lock EasyMail and send separate campaigns to them.
From our experience we came to the conclusion that MS Access is one of the most popular databases for storing and managing email lists. So, we will demonstrate how to create a link to a database from G-Lock EasyMail address book at the example of a MS Access database.
To connect to a MS Access database from G-Lock EasyMail, follow these steps:
1. Open G-Lock EasyMail
2. Click on Address Book icon
Read more on Segmenting List Using G-Lock EasyMail Capabilities…
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A single opt-in method is one when users must take some action to subscribe. Typically, this involves filling out an opt-in form on a website. Thus, people consciously add themselves to your list. The downside of the opt-in method is that third party persons can (and they do) subscribe others to your list.
To protect people and yourself from such malicious subscriptions, setup your signup process in the way that the subscribers receive a confirmation email as soon as they were added to the list.
A confirmation email will allow them unsubscribe immediately if there was a mistake. They can unsubscribe by replying or clicking on a link within the email, for example like this one:
Read more on Double Opt-In vs. Single Opt-In…
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As an e-mail marketer you’re surely wondering what happens with your email after it is sent. Did your subscribers open it? How many people opened your message and clicked on your links? Not only do such metrics help us identify active and inactive subscribers on our lists, they also help us understand whether our email is relevant to the expectations and interests of our recipients. That’s why we collect email tracking metrics – to analyze them and search for ways to improve them.
Read more on How to Get Better Email Open Rate…
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With an ever-crowded inbox, email readers are used to make quick decisions on how to deal with email. They have become more sophisticated in the ways they open, read and delete email messages. You know most of your recipients aren’t sitting at their big desktops reading patiently every email message in their never-ending inboxes. Many email readers look through email on mobile devices like cell phones, and other handhelds clearing out anything that doesn’t grab their attention immediately.
What do you think how much time a reader spends to decide whether to read or delete a message? The research shows that the average reader takes 2 to 5 seconds to decide if the message is worth to be read or not. This tiny time interval is enough to look at the sender line, subject and any snippets visible. So, the sender line, message subject and snippet text is all you have to persuade the reader to open your email.
The importance of the sender line and subject is incontestable. You know that your email message must have a recognizable sender line and a powerful subject line. But what is the snippet text? How can it affect your open rate?
Open your own inbox and look at the first sentence in your email that is displayed after the subject line. This is the snippet text. Typically, the snippet text is the first line of an HTML message, or the first sentence of a text message. In Outlook the snippet is a short line of the text in autopreview. Gmail users see a shaded text after a truncated subject line. Yahoo displays a pop-up with a snippet text when you put the cursor on the subject line in the inbox preview on your Yahoo home page.
This tiny but significant piece of the text in your email message can help the reader make the decision in your favor when they are scrolling through their inboxes, looking for which messages to open and which to delete.
In the majority of email messages the first line after the subject asks the reader to click the link to see the web version of the message for better display, or contains a request to add the sender email address to the reader’s contact list. Here are a couple of examples: "Have trouble viewing this email? Click here" or "Click here for a web version". These are legitimate services, but they shouldn’t be in the top line because none of these sentences tells the reader about the purpose of the email, leaving the reader to decide on the subject line alone. And furthermore, the statistics show that people simply aren’t clicking on the links to the web versions.
The above examples of the snippet text share two common mistakes: they neither refer to the actual content in the message nor include the company name or brand. If that’s what your readers see in the top line, you’ve lost another opportunity to stand out in the crowd and make the reader stop at your message.
Instead you can make a valuable use of this space. With a snippet text you have more space to build brand recognition and relevancy beyond the subject line alone. A correctly worded snippet adds a value to the message, arouses interest and excitement and helps your reader decide whether to save the message or to read it immediately.
In a commercial email, you can repeat your offer – discount, free shipping, and invitation to view a new product – with link to the web version, for example "[Program Name] upgrade deadline – for a special discount coupon, click this link".
If you send a regular newsletter, it is appropriate to put a headline in the top line with the link to the web version. Example: "To choose HTML email templates from our exclusive collection, click here".
For an email message confirming a transaction, you can refer to the action and thank as appropriate: "A special thank you from [Company Name]". The transaction confirmation does not require a link unless you maintain a "thank you" or "order confirmation" page on your website.
Before you do a mass mailing with your new snippet text, it is reasonable to verify how it will show in different email clients and web mail services as well as on different platforms.
A lesson here is that with a never-ending flow of emails in our inboxes, you cannot afford a luxury to waste a single line in your email message. The top line is another great opportunity to persuade the reader that your message has value and is worth to be read. If you aren’t taking the full advantage of this line, you’re likely missing a chance to make your message stand out in the reader’s inbox.
Read more on Stand out in the Reader’s Inbox by Using the Right Snippet Text…
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Do you have any experience of e-mail marketing? So, how was it? Well, I don’t want to make myself out to be an e-mail marketing expert and teach you how to improve your e-mail campaigns. I just want to share with you some of my personal observations on how you can ruin your e-mail marketing campaign completely.
So, here they are:
Read more on Top 10 CAN-Spam Law Violations That Will Surely Get You Blacklisted…
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