Marketing Virgin

Last week I sent out an email to a specific group of partners in Europe. I needed a subject line that would grab their attention, without sounding like a Sales call.

“See You At Symposium Europe” was the line I tested. I figured the term “See You At” may catch the attention of the reader who will think, “what did I sign up for?”

Well, it worked. The email had a 54% open rate, which is amazing.

Great new tips from MarketingSherpa.com…

1. Email headlines: 35 characters or less
-Especially when you’re using a call to action

2. 70% of email users use a preview pane

3. Don’t forget to use table cells when designing an email
-Put images near each other so you don’t have a bunch of “x’s” through your email

4. Embed links in the top, right-hand side

I received an email from a company that specializes in marketing software. Many companies use a targeted “to” field such as “Dear John” or “Dear Mr. Smith”.  

This email said “Dear FirstName”.

Always, always, always scrutinize your emails before you send them out. 

Below is a list of the pro’s and con’s of conducting an e-mail marketing campaign to iPhone users, courtesy of the geniuses at MarketingSherpa. 

Some of the Pro’s:

1.      The iPhone accepts HTML

2.      Readability – zoom, scroll, etc.

3.      You can see who is visiting your landing pages from Apple’s Safari browser

4.      They work internationally

Some of the Con’s:

1.      Email access isn’t quite as fast

2.      AT&T’s network is slow

3.      Your “order now” button needs to be large – to accommodate larger fingers

4.      No Flash capabilities

For more information and to get the full list of pro’s and con’s, visit Marketing Sherpa.

Do you have a hard time pressing the “send” button when executing an e-mail campaign? We do!

Do you ever wonder what time of the day you should you send an e-mail to get the best open rate?

Matt O’Laughlin, Marketing Business Analyst for Second Act LLC, thinks he has the answer. According to his test results, 9AM CST fared 15.63% better than 4PM and 9.4% better than 12PM. 12PM CST fared 6.9% better than 4PM.

We are using these results to test our e-marketing strategy. So far, so good. Make sure you conduct your own testing as results can vary from B2B to B2C.

Top 100 words NOT to use in your subject lines:

1. 100% free
2. 50% off
3. act now
4. all words that relate to sex or pornography
5. all words that related to cures or medication
6. amazing
7. anything that looks like you are YELLING
8. apply now
9. as seen
10. as seen on Oprah Read the rest of this entry »

    

Here are 11 tips to improve your e-mail reputation — and thus your inbox delivery rate:

1. Send only relevant content. Send only e-mails that will build a positive reputation with your subscribers. Anything that they will view as irrelevant will hurt your reputation, so stay targeted.
2. Don’t send more e-mails than necessary. When subscribers receive too many e-mails from you, they may not unsubscribe, but they will no longer open most of them. Since ISPs such as Yahoo, MSN, Gmail, and AOL can track both open rates and click-through rates, your ISP reputation will suffer — fewer e-mails will be delivered — and your recipient reputation is degraded, fewer e-mails opened.
3. Set up feedback loops with major ISPs, such as AOL, Yahoo, MSN, Hotmail, etc. so you can immediately unsubscribe recipients that tag your e-mail as spam — and so they don’t receive another e-mail and hit the spam button again.
4. Remove recipients with excessive bounces from your list. If you keep sending to bad e-mail addresses, it hurts your reputation with the ISPs.
5. Find ways to woo back subscribers with special offers in the subject lines for those who no longer open or click-through on your e-mails. Opens and click-throughs can be tracked with many e-mail marketing services. Inactive subscribers are much more likely to tag your e-mail as spam than those who regularly open and click-through on your links.
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Many companies send out newsletters to their customers and prospects. These e-mails are often embedded with links to URL’s where more information can be found. The question is: what language do you use to get a better click-through rate? A or B?

A.)    Direct call to action:

“Click to Continue”

B.)    Indirect call to action:

“Continue with Article”, “Read More…”

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These days it’s almost impossible to get someone to read your e-mail. I’m a pretty difficult subject myself, half the time I don’t even read the e-mails my own friends send me! Then again, all I get from them is…(Fwd:Fwd:Fwd:Fwd:Fwd:Read this!!!). So in business, how do you get your prospect to open your e-mail?
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