One of the first steps in purchasing a new software system is buyer education.

When it comes to marketing software, there is some confusion between email marketing and marketing automation software. Many buyers see the two as synonymous, but in reality, the systems are very different, with a varied feature set designed for different types of buyers.

First, let’s just break down the features:

From the feature list comparison, you can see that while there is functional parity in some areas, marketing automation is far more sophisticated. While email marketing systems are designed to track interactions related to email campaigns, marketing automation systems track the chain of interactions across multiple channels and can then make intelligent decisions based on the buyer’s behaviors.

Once you understand the features of each system, you have to reflect on your company and its needs to see what will work best for you. I suggest examining the three C’s: cost, complexity and content.

• Cost – Most email marketing systems run around $20/month. Marketing automation is a much larger investment that can range from a several hundred dollars a month to several thousands. However, the investment is worth it if the system is going to help you win more business.
• Complexity – Companies with limited resources and a fairly homogeneous customer base simply don’t need marketing automation. An email marketing system will provide them with all the tools they need to reach out to clients on a regular basis, promote offers and deals, and attract new business. A company with a less uniform customer base might want to look into marketing automation.
• Content – Email marketing systems require little in the way of content: create standard templates and refresh them with new content every once in a while. With marketing automation, content is the gas that fuels the engine. A key feature of MA is lead nurturing, which is all about providing targeted messages and communication to a customer to guide them through the buyer cycle. Without strong and consistently delivered content, MA will fail.

For the full article, please check out the MASG blog.

By: Email Marketing Reports

The world is full of sensible advice that’s hard to put into practice.

Do more exercise.

Reduce your stress levels.

Accept that salt and vinegar flavor chips are not, in fact, a mainstay of a well-balanced diet. (Damn).

Oh, and keep your tweets and subject lines short.

Actually you can argue about that last bit of advice. But if you have something to say and have two equally impactful ways of saying it, then pick the shorter one.

Often it’s just a question of practicality.

Shortening your Tweets makes it easier to fit the message within the 140 character limit. If you can get the length down further, then you leave enough space for people to retweet your message in its entirety*.

Shorter subject lines avoid the pitfalls of email software arbitrarily cutting off your words.

But…how do you actually keep subject lines and Tweets short?

I’m hoping you’ll offer your own suggestions in the comments, as there’s not a lot of practical advice out there beyond, um, “keep it short”.

But here a few tips I’ve picked up over the years…

1. Rewrite

The famous quote commonly attributed to Blaise Pascal runs something like this:

“I have made this letter longer than usual, only because I have not had the time to make it shorter.”

My biggest challenge with copywriting emails, for example, is not finding the words, but finding fewer words to express the same meaning.

Your first line of text probably does communicate what you want to say, but it takes rewrites to communicate it succinctly.

2. Synonyms are your best friends

Rare is the word with no alternative. We often fall into patterns and habits, where we favor particular words simply because they’re the ones we’ve always used. Perhaps you can find shorter synonyms? For example:

Excellent article on
Great article on
Top article on
Top post on (9 spaces saved)

Purchase
Buy (5 spaces saved)

Difficult
Hard (5 spaces saved)

Lots of
Many (3 spaces saved)

Last year
In 2011 (2 spaces saved)

A few
Some (1 space saved)

But take care…

Not all synonyms are truly identical and a different word can introduce asubtle change in meaning.

Even true synonyms can draw a slightly different emotional responsein the reader. In subject lines, particularly, it pays to test variations to find the choice that elicits the best response.

These two concepts apply to many of the tips below, too, so keep them in mind.

By: Email Critic

After a consumer has connected with you and handed over their email address, what kind of welcome do you give them? It could be they bought something from you, subscribed to your newsletter, or downloaded a whitepaper. No matter the action they take or if you’re selling B2C or B2B, there should be some kind of response to their action. What’s yours?

If you’re like some companies, your response might be a dry form letter confirmation…or no confirmation at all. And that, dear colleagues, is akin to a cold shoulder and missed opportunity.

If you’re still on the fence and thinking a welcome email is an unnecessary step in the email marketing process or one not worth your effort, here are 12 reasons to persuade you to think otherwise:

1. You’ll engage: It is the age of engagement and ISPs now look at how much interaction your emails generate. A good welcome email gets you off to good start by engaging that new subscriber or customer right away.
2. You’ll enjoy a higher open rate: Studies have shown that welcome emails have higher open rates than marketing emails. That alone should be reason enough to make them part of your email marketing program
3. You start building that relationship: The person who signs up for your email has already raised their hand and said “yes, I want to hear from you.” Who better to extend a warm welcome to?

E-Mail Marketing Associate @ JK Moving Services

The E-Mail Marketing Associate is responsible for developing and implementing a comprehensive and robust e-mail marketing strategy that engages new and existing customers and promotes incremental sales while developing actionable customer segmentation and effective contact strategies.

QUALIFICATIONS:

• Degree in Marketing
• 2+ years of experience in an email marketing or comparable role
• Experience using CRM programs
• Basic knowledge of HTML.
• Proficient in Microsoft Office, including Word, Excel, and PowerPoint.
• Ability to develop and implement marketing strategies and drive change.
• Strong quantitative and analytic skills.
• Strong product management skills and attention to detail.
• Experience with online testing.
• Ability to drive results in a cross functional environment.
• Excellent written and verbal communication skills.
• Hands-on and in-depth experience across the end-to-end email marketing process.
• Knowledge of how to use price, product and segmentation and to create compelling offers that increase new customers, traffic, revenues, and profits.
• Ability to optimize performance of email campaigns by split testing subject lines, body copy and images, etc.
• Strong background in Search Engine Optimization
• Proven experience using SharePoint.

Email Marketing Analyst @ Adconion Media Group

The Email Marketing Analyst will exercise discretion in making email deployment decisions to assign databases and creating data-driven analyses to successfully deliver targeted email marketing campaigns for clients. Actions and discretion will be performed within the policies and operations as set forth by the management.

Key Responsibilities:

• Monitor campaigns to ensure ongoing campaign success through reporting and analysis
• Analyze data from previous campaigns & measure the effectiveness of specific email promotions
• Create daily and weekly campaign schedules based on past database and campaign performance
• Optimize campaigns and report revenue and database numbers to management
• Identify and solve problems in a fast-paced environment and communicate solutions to superior
• Interpret, analyze and make recommendations against campaign and database metrics
• Apply mathematical operations to such tasks as frequency and distribution of campaigns
• Collect data, establish facts, and draw valid conclusions on campaigns performance
• Realize maximum revenue opportunity in accordance with goals and objectives of company
• Report stats and recommendations for company growth to management on a weekly basis

Director – Email Marketing @ American Express

The Director of Email Marketing will be part of the Direct Marketing team within CCSG New Member Marketing.  The overall responsibility of this team is to drive profitable acquisition of new Card members across consumer products and continue to promote strong engagement in the first 15 months of Card membership. This director will lead our New Member Email Channel marketing initiatives including lead generation and management, prospect acquisitions, targeted email campaigns and event-based marketing to existing Card members.  S/he will drive the overall channel strategy and execution, monitor and report on results, and maintain forecasts and budgets.  This director will lead a team of managers and analysts and will be expected to profitably grow the email marketing channel while finding innovative solutions to enhance reach and effectiveness.

Responsibilities:

• Overall ownership of the Email channel for New Member Marketing – Including acquisition and the first 15 months of Card membership
• Set the strategic direction for the channel
• Set goals and monitor progress
• Partner with Risk, Finance and internal acquisition partners to drive bottom line metrics
• Lead and inspire a team of managers and analysts
• Own the channel budgets and forecasting
• Work directly with creative agencies and email vendors

By: VerticalResponse

Let’s talk about Outlook. Microsoft’s venerable email client has a pretty steady grip on the email inboxes of Americans, probably due in no small part to Microsoft’s prevalence in the enterprise sector (and, being bundled with MS Office).

If your subscribers sit in an office cubicle in the U.S., they’re very likely to use it. Considering it’s been around at least since 1997, Microsoft has had plenty of time to improve its product, and by most measures has done so.

However, HTML rendering in Outlook stinks. Outlook 2003 uses Internet Explorer 6 to render HTML, which is pretty bad by modern standards. Outlook 2007 & 2010 render HTML using Word (yes, the word processor), which is an oil-tanker of offal come to dump its cargo full of suck on your day. If you’re an email marketer, email designer, or find yourself in the B2B client space, you’ve probably encountered some form of Outlook error. Your email looks pristine on your shiny iPhone, Android device, or web-based email client, but suddenly blows up when you open it up in Outlook. We’ve been there. We’re here to help.

I have two disclaimers. First, this article is for intermediate to advanced coders. You should be able to write and read HTML without a graphic interface to help you. Second, if you’re in the B2C space, or have a younger audience not privy to the whims of a corporate software buyer, you may be safe. At some point, the reward for investing the time designing and coding an email to beat Outlook’s messy rendering doesn’t pay off. If 1% of your client base is going to get a slightly less than optimal user experience for the extra 6 hours of work, you may find it worthwhile it to ignore Outlook entirely. Now that we’ve cleared that up, let’s move on to the good stuff.

Things Outlook Doesn’t Support

Background Images: Outlook won’t display them at all. If you use a repeating background image, keep it fairly monochromatic and apply a background color as a backup. This is essential to keep HTML text displaying legibly.

Animated GIFs: Outlook will freeze an animated .gif on its first frame. (Boo)

CSS: CSS code displayed with the <head> tag can display erratically or not-at-all in many email clients, but it’s particularly nasty in Outlook. Keep your CSS styling in-line.

By: MediaPost

A friend of mine recently shared with me an article that her office was sending around. Titled “7 Signs of a Dysfunctional Company,” it was distributed by her company’s executive management team, who asked staffers to comment, honestly, on how they felt their company fared against the criteria mentioned in the piece.

As I read through the article, two thoughts immediately struck me.  First, one had better watch out for the sorry suckers at her office who step in that landmine.  I mean, c’mon. Executive management asking the staff if they meet the definition of dysfunctional — isn’t that, in and of itself, dysfunctional? My second thought was that these criteria could also describe dysfunctional email programs pretty succinctly.

There are two ways of looking at this: one, to examine the dysfunction of email program operations; the other, to look at the content and strategy of the program itself. I figure we all know that email operations are grossly dysfunctional — so I wouldn’t be sharing anything new if I focused there. So instead, let’s dive into the email programs themselves.

I have chosen four of the seven signs that I believe align best.  If you say “yes” to any of these flaws, then you may just be dysfunctional (er, your program — not you specifically).

Ivory tower effect.  That’s when email content reflects the directive of the company and does not recognize or care about what the customer actually wants or needs. Organizations are doing an increasingly better job at recognizing that their marketing efforts (email included) are no longer about what wares they want to tout; it is the age of the customer. If you believe that your marketing messaging and email content is about company directives, though, then your program is likely an ivory tower (and probably not performing as well as it could).

By: Clickz

Mark Twain once wrote in a letter in 1897, “…the report of my death was an exaggeration.” This too can be said of email with so many experts proclaiming its demise. The reality is, email marketing isn’t dying just yet, but it is changing. It’s becoming more efficient, especially when integrated with your other marketing channels. The trick to being successful at it in today’s socially-engaged world is that the marketer has to understand their audience, not just a demographic.

With the growth of social media, experts were proclaiming that surely this was the channel that would kill off email. That couldn’t be further from the truth. People still subscribe to email lists because they want to get that information right to their desktop; they don’t want to have to go out and search a social community or go to a search engine to find the information that they are interested in. There’s a convenience factor to email that a large segment of the general population still finds attractive.

Unfortunately for the user, there’s no way to communicate back with an email in a way that appeals to social channels, and most emails come from a generic email address that a human doesn’t man. This is where integration comes into play. Remember with your email list you already have a captive audience that is interested in your message; make sure that you give them every opportunity that’s available to become engaged with you. This means using a more enhanced means of email marketing than the old-style “list serve” system.

Email Marketing Has Become “Socialized”

No longer is email marketing about a plain text email being sent out, which is why the rise of very affordable email services like MailChimp, Blue Sky Factory, and Constant Contact has taken place. These types of services offer an array of “social add-ons” where you can make sure your email marketing message can be engaged with on your available social channels. They also make it easy for any small business owner to launch a socially-engaged email campaign.

Some of these services allow you to segment your email lists by way of how subscribers are socially engaged. For example, if you were running a specific campaign just on Facebook, you could send out a very targeted email campaign to subscribers on your list that also use Facebook with that same email address.

By: Adestra

A friend of mine asked me recently “how do I get my email lists going?”.  He knew he needed to get his message out to more people, but wondered how you go about building up your own lists without buying in any data? Not only is this a common question from start-ups and small businesses, but often one asked when clients of ours have established email programs where their list size may be stagnating or even shrinking. I had also just finished reading this excellent article on the same subject over at EmailCritic.com which inspired some thoughts here.

A great phrase I can borrow (doffing my cap to Tim Watson, Email Consultant, in the process) is don’t fall in to the trap of “FIRE! AIM! READY!” which is often what people do when they realise they need email addresses. That is to say, put together the plan of what you want to try to achieve first before going about implementing any random new scheme to collect addresses.

One of the fine people you’ll find on Word To The Wise, Laura Atkins (one of the people in the email world I respect the most) – says “Have all your emails, templates, offers and processes in place before you collect your first email address.” When doing so, there’s some key things most people don’t do and then regret it. Below you’ll find a list of all the points I chatted to my friend about – some through experience and others I gathered from a variety of sources from around the industry. Hopefully it will get your cogs turning too!

• Ready the database – by this I mean make sure that you have a system in place that you can put all the email data into. So, all new collection points should funnel the data in to ONE pot. Don’t end up with data sitting in several different places. Make sure also that you can adapt and update this database. All very well having chosen your pot and then to find out you can’t add that crucial ‘date of birth’ field your strategy hangs off.
• Flag the source of collection in the data – A personal soap box of mine, but also incredibly important. If you end up with two, three or ten places/systems that data is going to be collected, make sure you can write this information into the data. It will mean you can track success of the collection process, and you can easily personalise emails for those who (for example) sign up off the website versus, say, an in-store card they filled in. Moving forward you may be able to then track the success of your marketing against these sources. So not just how many people filled in the various forms you have, but compare which source ends up making the most money.

Over the holiday season, I used my mobile phone more often than usual for a variety of tasks: checking email and Facebook, shopping online, browsing the internet. Being stuck in a car for 10 hours and away from your office for over a week necessitates some creativity when it comes to staying connected. Because I was stuck using my mobile device almost exclusively for these tasks, I became more aware of the frustrations associated with email messages and websites not designed with the mobile user in mind. And while this subject has been discussed before, I think it’s worth revisiting, especially as we enter a new year and begin planning new email marketing campaigns. So, without further ado, here’s my list of the top five ways to keep your mobile users happy.

Big Buttons

Fingers are much less precise than mouse pointers. Make it easier for your mobile subscribers to open and click by making buttons fat finger friendly.

Space Between Clickable Elements

Another problem that arises when you’re using a finger instead of a mouse is clickable elements placed too close together, resulting in mis-clicks. By adding additional white space between clickable elements, you can reduce the likelihood that users will find themselves waiting for the wrong page to load.

Important Information Visible Without Scrolling or Enlarging

When you have dozens of emails to catch up on, it’s important that you are able to grasp the main idea quickly. Test your email messages on a mobile device to ensure that font sizes are readable and that the user doesn’t have to scroll either vertically or horizontally to see your main message and call to action.

Single Columns

HTML is much less flexible than CSS when it comes to re-ordering columns and content blocks. Make it easy on yourself and on your subscribers by sticking to a single column that will display appropriately on a mobile screen.

Hide Unnecessary Content

It’s great to include social sharing buttons, links to your social media pages, and other secondary content in your email messages. But on a mobile device, all that extra content makes it more difficult for your subscribers to get the main message. Make mobile emails easier to scan and read by hiding images, text, and other content that isn’t strictly necessary.

As you’re designing new email campaigns for 2012, eConnect Email offers flexible design options, image management, templates, and inbox previews to help ensure that each message displays exactly as intended. By catering to the unique needs of mobile users, you can ensure that an increasingly mobile audience will continue to read and interact with your messages.

We provide top-notch email deliverability, competitive pricing and free live support 7 days a week.

By: AWeber

Email marketing is designed to help established businesses connect with their customers on a regular basis – whether it’s through promotions, sales or a friendly newsletter. But in some cases, email marketing can actually be your business.

There are plenty of big sites out there that began their business as an email list. How did they do it? Can you do the same with your own list? Let’s look at the ins and outs and important considerations of using your email campaign as a business venture.

Starting Out

Every business venture starts out with a plan. Even if your mailing list is your business, you still need to plot out how the content of your emails can earn you money.

Your email content is your product. And just like growing a business, developing content that’s worth paying for takes time. Get feedback everywhere you can – from friends, from family, from current email subscribers. Making email your business takes hard work and testing.

A quick disclaimer: Keep in mind that a lot of these companies we’re using as examples aren’t relying on an email campaign as their sole source of income. Many of the people who started these lists own (or work for) other businesses. But they do serve as examples of earning cash on the side with your campaign itself as your product.

By: Business 2 Community

One of the most frequently asked questions I have been presented with while out on the road with iContact’s Crash Course in Email and Social Media Marketing UK tour is, “How do I grow my list?”

Our clients understand that they cannot use purchased or other dubiously acquired lists. This isn’t an issue for most of them. At the end of the day, they hate spam as much as we do. But for many marketers, poor list growth is a major roadblock en-route to greater email marketing success.

My answer is simple: Be aggressive in your approach to list growth and ask for permission at every available opportunity.

9 Quick Steps to Help You Grow Your Email Marketing Lists

1. Improve Your Website Conversions: Make it as easy as possible for visitors to your website to register for your email newsletters. Place your subscription form on every single page (not just the home page). Never hide your subscription form behind a link in your website navigation – very few people will actually click here. Remember once someone has left your site, it is very hard to get them to return.
2. Get Social #1: Drive subscribers to your email marketing list via your social media activity. While it is easier to grow your following on Facebook or Twitter than collect email addresses, email marketing has the potential to drive more significant ROI. Be sure to add an email subscription form to your Facebook pages.
3. Get Social #2: Make it easy for your email recipients to share your emails with their friends and family by adding social media share buttons to your newsletters. This will ultimately send more traffic back to your website which if optimised as per point #1 will help drive email subscriptions. The best way to encourage sharing is to invest time in creating great content.
4. Keep on Blogging: An active blog gives your website a pulse, aids your SEO efforts and helps your business stand out in a sea of static website content. Don’t forget to include your email subscription form on every page of your blog.

By: emarsys

Email deliverability can be a complex issue that involves a multitude of different factors. Success in this field requires changing one’s perspective – instead of seeing only the sender’s side, one must also consider the recipient’s view.

Although a lot has been written about this topic, many marketers and senders still hold the following beliefs:

• The more emails sent, the higher the response will be
• As long as I have a legal opt-in I can send what I want and ISPs have to deliver.

Unfortunately, this point of view does not reflect reality and shows only one side of email marketing.

For those familar with the concept of sender reputation and recipient (re)actions – which are the basis of the fomer – this advice will be a reminder. For those unfamiliar with these concepts, it should serve as guidelines for how to perform successful email marketing – by sending relevant emails to users who appreciate them.

Try to think like an ISP
All businesses need to keep their users or customers happy. Cluttering their inboxes will have ISP users switch to other ISPs which provide better filtering. However, false positives must also be avoided. An incorrect categorization of wanted emails as spam will have the same effect as filling the inbox with UBE/UCE. All major ISPs are constantly adding more criteria in order to determine which emails are actually wanted and which are not. In recent years providers have done a really good job in this area. ‘Cheating’ ISPs, so that they deliver large amounts of unwanted emails, has become virtually impossible.

ISPs search for factors in their customers’ behaviour to determine if they want the email messages you are sending. Positive reactions to your messages (among which are opens, flagging emails as important and many more) improve your sender reputation. Almost all actions which can be performed in a recipient’s mail account are used to weigh your reputation, either in a positive or negative way.

Email Marketing Manager @ Magazines.com

The Email Marketing Manager is responsible for the development and implementation of email marketing strategies to drive growth, customer engagement and lifetime value. He/she will be responsible for planning, execution, creative talent management, analytics and the source’s financial management.

PRIMARY DUTIES AND RESPONSIBILITIES : 

1. Manages the creative and execution processes for the email marketing channel, including content, segmentation, and testing.
2. Manages the source against budget, including planning, forecasting and monitoring campaign results.
3. Performs strategic planning for email marketing, including lifecycle marketing, customer-driven trigger campaigns and other activities that optimize the company’s relationship with customers.
4. Collaborates with and manages email vendor.
5. Works closely with other marketing team members to identify opportunities, align resources, and optimize merchandising.
6. Collaborates well cross-functionally within the marketing team, and with other departments such as IT, Operations and Customer Service.
7. Project manage a cross-functional team of copywriters, designers, production, IT, and email vendor to deliver on time and on budget.
8. Reacts productively to change.
9. Performs other duties as assigned.

Emailing Marketing Specialist @ Interactive Business Systems Inc.

Interactive Business Systems (IBS) is seeking an email marketing specialist for a temporary contract position. This contract is currently for six-months but could last at least a year for the right candidate.

We are looking for someone who is just above entry level who has had some experience with managing email marketing campaigns. This is a great opportunity for a recent grad or small-business owner to add some experience to their resume.

Responsibilities will include: 

• Manage external vendor Silverpop solutions and day to day relationships to execute and monitor email marketing campaigns and resulting site traffic and visitor behavior
• Develop, maintain, and provide performance reports that track the efficiency and effectiveness of email campaigns
• Collaborate with other teams to ensure a cohesive marketing message across all channels
• Develop, debug, improve, and monitor all email business related internal systems ensuring the key functionalities of all the systems are working correctly.
• Plans, coordinates and implements marketing and corporate email communication activities.
• Audience development initiatives (including list building, merge/purge, selection/segmentation)
• Utilize web analytics tool to analyze email customer behavior, producing customer segmentation, providing suggestions to Email
• Support regular email marketing operations including campaign development and launch, segmentation, list coordination, and maintaining CAN-SPAM compliance

By: MarketingVOX

Transaction emails—that is, those emails that confirm orders or that a product has shipped, for example—can be an additional layer to a company’s email strategy. Just tread carefully to make sure you don’t cross the line into outright marketing.

The US CAN-SPAM Act exempts transactional and relationship emails, writes Fawn Young, marketing strategist at Bronto. These, however, are rigidly defined as:

• Facilitating or confirming a commercial transaction;

• Providing warranty, recall, safety, or security information about a product or service;

• Providing information about a change in terms or features, account balance information regarding a membership, subscription, account or loan.

But while a transactional email must stick to its mission, it still can be used as a marketing vehicle, Young says. “Just be sure that the marketing portion of the email is below the transactional or relationship information and not the dominant message of the email.”

In addition, keep the 80/20 rule in mind, she also wrote—meaning that 80% of the message is transactional and 20% is promotional in nature

By: Business 2 Community

It’s the age old story of subscriber meets email campaign. Sometimes it’s love at first sight. Sometimes the relationship takes a little warming up first. And sometimes, it’s just one relationship buzzkill after another.

Is your campaign irritating subscribers more than connecting with them? It could be if you’re making any of these mistakes. It’s time for email marketing couples therapy to save you from turning off your subscribers. Here’s what you need to avoid:

“Info” As Your From Name

Believe it or not, these emails are from two different senders. The “info” sender on top is a museum and the bottom “info” sender is a fire department. These emails just happened to send back-to-back on the same day. Without referencing the subject lines, can you tell which is which? I didn’t think so.

Come on, man. Who are you trying to kid? Info’s not your company’s real name! Why don’t you tell me who you really are? Otherwise, you’re just like all the other generic marketers out there. Don’t be like them. Connect with me using a legitimate company name. It makes you look more trustworthy.

Constantly Changing Your “From” Name

This one’s just as bad as the “info” shtick. A personal touch is one thing, but if you have that many people writing for your email campaign, just stick with a simple company name instead. Otherwise you risk confusing your subscribers and having your messages deleted – or worse, marked as spam.

There may be a few situations when you need to change your from name. But a from name that’s always changing says you’re fickle and not ready for commitment. Huge turn-off. Plus, if you’re always changing your name, how will I recognize you in the inbox? Keep it simple. Pick a good from name and stick with it.

Email marketing is a critical component of a strong lead generation strategy, and lies at the very core of lead nurturing.  But with all the messages that are inevitably piling up in your leads’ inboxes, how can you make yours stand out from the crowd?  Here are 10 ways you can increase the likelihood that your prospects and leads will open, read, and take action from your emails.

1. Better segment your list.  Email segmentation is important because it allows you to deliver only the most relevant, customized content to your subscribers.  The more specific your segments get, the better able you are to deliver content that speaks directly to their interests.  If you’ve implemented a lead management program, you can continue to collect information about your subscribers based on their on- and off-site behaviors that will allow you to learn more and more about them, and then deliver more personalized emails that align with their stage in the buying cycle.

2. Map your content.  This is why you segment your list! Now that you know to whom you’re sending your email, consider what content they want, and use that for the offer you send them. Mapping relevant content to your list ensures everything you send to your subscribers is as relevant as possible, decreasing your instances of unsubscribes due to irrelevant content.  If your offer speaks to your recipient’s needs, it’s a no-brainer that you’ll get a higher click-through rate.  Plus, content mapping lets you identify and fill in holes in your content strategy as you notice shortages in assets mapped to certain segments.

3. Perform email frequency testing.  First of all, just as you should let your subscribers select the types of emails they receive, you should also let them adjust the frequency with which you can communicate with them. Let your email recipients tell you the right frequency for them — whether it’s multiple times daily or just once a month — so you don’t end up bombarding their inbox or leaving it too scarce for their tastes.  However, not all of your subscribers will tell you how often they like to be emailed by your company, so be proactive and perform email frequency tests to determine optimal frequency. If you haven’t performed an email sending frequency test, reference this guide to get your first experiment up and running.

4. Test your subject lines.  Click-through rate is often used in email marketing to refer specifically to the click-through rate of an offer in the body of your email.  But you first need to get recipients to click into the email.  Once you’ve nailed email deliverability, start A/B testing the subject lines you’re using.  Subject lines that are personalized, actionable, clear, brief, and consistent with the message content tend to perform the best.

5. Remember: less is more with copy.  Write shorter emails to increase the likelihood that your email recipients will encounter your offer before getting bored and deleting it.  You can also help combat this by frontloading your best copy.

6. Include social sharing options.  Even if your message recipients are not interested in your email’s offer, they might know a friend who is.  Adding social sharing buttons to your emails can drastically increase your click-through rate by allowing your subscribers to pass along your content to others in their networks.  In fact, a study by Econsultancy found that including just one social sharing option generated 30% higher click-through rates, and 3 or more sharing options bumped up click-through rates by 55%!

7. Personalize your emails.  You can further target your list and the content in your email by including elements of personalization. Part of effective lead nurturing is knowing about your prospects’ and customers’ purchase history, download history, satisfaction score, and website activity. This will allow you to provide the most relevant offers that will receive more click-throughs due to the targeted nature of your email.

8. Remove distractions.  Just like when you’re building landing pages, it’s important to remove distractions from your email template.  Although it might seem like a good idea to include multiple offers in the hopes that at least one of them will appeal to your viewers, this really means that your email doesn’t have a specific enough goal.  Focus on the one thing you want the reader to do, and make that your only call-to-action.  Don’t give readers the opportunity to get distracted by your blog posts, product pages, or any other part of your site.

9. Make your CTA obvious.  On that note, since your main goal is to get your email recipients to click-through on your offer, you should make your call-to-action highly noticeable.  Ensure that your CTA is above the fold, bright, bold, and impossible to miss.  It’s unlikely that your subscribers will take the time to look for your CTA, so if they can’t see it right away, chances are pretty good that you won’t be getting many clicks to it.

10. Closely tie emails to landing pages.  The landing pages to which you’re directing clicks to your calls-to-action should match your emails in terms of headline, copy, and content.  The look and feel of your landing pages should also be consistent with your emails in order to limit confusion.  Your visitors should be able to tell immediately that the offer they clicked on in your email is the same one that they’re seeing on your landing page.  Also, make sure you’re utilizing tracking tools to see which emails and landing pages are performing the best, so you can optimize your next ones accordingly.

Takeaway: So what are you waiting for?  Get started with these optimization techniques, and before you know it, you’ll be watching your click-through rates climb the charts.

By: MailerMailer

1. Identify your audience and create a customer profile that includes your target audience’s attributes, interests, demographics, etc.
2. Determine what the purpose of your message is going to be. For example, will the email serve as an educational newsletter or be used as a sales tool to introduce and market new products?
3. Put an email marketing plan together in which you identify what kind of content you will write and how frequently you will send the newsletter.
4. Design an email newsletter that best represents your brand and website. Be sure to also incorporate your site’s colors, themes and logo for a professional look and feel.
5. Add a list sign up form on your company’s website and blog in order to collect email addresses.
6. Never buy or borrow an email list as this may have negative effects on your account and reputation. In most cases such lists may not be 100% opt-in or targeted for your specific audience (though they may make such claims).
7. Use a double opt-in method for all list members (subscribers). This means you should be confirming with each list member that they want to receive your newsletter.
8. Send a welcome email to all new list members thanking them for signing up and letting them know what they will get in your newsletter.

By: HubSpot

Calls-to-action (CTAs) are one of the most important elements of lead generation, and they should be used in each and every one of your marketing tactics: emails, social media updates, press releases, trade shows … the list goes on. In fact, whenever you want to ensure your team is moving in the right direction, pose the question, “What’s the call-to-action we’re using to drive people’s behavior?”

Once you have a strategy in mind for which calls-to-action you’ll feature on your website, you’ll probably start obsessing over their design. In this blog post, we present you with some guidelines to master the design of successful calls-to-action.

1. Size Matters: Make Your CTA Big 

The goal of your call-to-action is to attract the attention of website visitors, and one way to convey its importance is by enlarging it. “You want your button to be large enough to stand out without overwhelming the design,” writes graphic designer Cameron Chapman.

Size shouldn’t be determined independently of other factors — it is tightly related to the context of the page and the other characteristics of your call-to-action. For instance, the CTA will naturally be large if it includes a graphic or an image that strengthens the message. This is what we do for HubSpot’s blog: the call-to-action placed at the end of each article is bigger than your standard CTA button because it is contextualized and adds value to the article. Just scroll down to the bottom of this post to see for yourself.

2. Spatial Effect: Give it Room to Breathe

You know how they say that, sometimes, less is more? Well, that can definitely be true for calls-to-action. If you want to attract more attention to your CTA, you should give it some white space (or in the case below, orange space). Don’t crowd the language unless the information around it is key to taking the action.

Simple logic dictates the ‘amount of white space’ decision. Separating the CTA from the rest of the content on a web page will mean it’s a separate item. If there is a tight connection between the call-to-action and some other web page element, then maybe there should be less white space between the two.

“The more white space there is in between a call-to-action button versus a surrounding element, the less connected they are,” writes Jacob Gube in SmashingMagazine. “Therefore, if you have other elements that can help convince users to take action, reduce the white space in between those elements and the CTA.”

Another tactic here is to fill your call-to-action with warm background colors, such as red and orange, which appear larger than colors suggesting coldness, blue and green. Warm colors appear closer to the viewer.

By: Entrepreneur

Email marketing can help businesses keep in touch with customers and prospects. But there’s a big difference between simply adding people to your contacts list and running a savvy campaign that drives traffic to your website and generates sales.

Here are some tips to help you maximize the power of your email marketing:

1. Split test your opt-in forms.
Split testing can be a powerful tool in the online marketer’s arsenal. You can test different variables on your website and in your marketing campaigns to determine which combinations will generate the most email subscriptions.

For example, if you can’t decide where to place your opt-in form on your website, or what color to use for your “Sign Up Now” button, a split test can pit various choices against each other and determine a statistically significant winner.

To get started with split testing, consult your email management program’s help section. Most top-tier list management programs — including Aweber, MailChimp, iContact andConstantContact – offer split testing as a default function.

2. Split test broadcast messages.
Your “broadcast messages” also can be useful candidates for split testing. These are the messages you send spontaneously, unlike scheduled follow-up emails that go out at a set time.

Because broadcast messages usually announce timely information such as product launches and sales promotions, it can be important to make them as effective as possible. Consider split testing both the subject line and call to action in your broadcast messages.

Even small improvements in open and click-through rates can make a significant difference in the ROI for your email marketing.

Are you looking to increase your opt-in email subscribers list? After hearing so many positive comments about lightboxes or pop-ups we decided that we would test one.

We chose PopUp Domination since it came highly recommended to us. It has great features and supports most mailing list services – including AWeber, iContact, GetResponse, MailChimp, and Constant Contact. We plugged ours into ExactTarget.

This is what our original subscription box looks like:

We added a lightbox to display on all pages 10 seconds after a visitor lands on the site. It looks like this:

The lightbox provided by PopUp Domination is very customizable, with template choices to design your own look and feel. Great scheduling features allow you to select the timing, frequency and category locations that best suit your preferences.

Once installed, you can see there was a significant increase in newsletter sign-ups.

Prior to adding the lightbox, we were getting 80-100 new subscribers per month on our home page subscription sign-up form. With the lightbox added, this number immediately grew remarkably:

• 388 in August
• 478 in September (a 482% increase)
• 413 in October

We then removed our subscription form from the home page. Here are the sign-ups that followed:

• 250 in November
• 162 in December
• 174 in January

In retrospect, the two items together – lightbox plus home page opt-in form – were the most effective. Nonetheless, our numbers six months after adding the lightbox are still very strong when compared with previous sign-up patterns. Next, we’ll test what happens when we add back the home page opt-in form.

The impetus to write this post was from a series of questions we received from DJ Waldow @djwaldow, asking about the use of lightboxes. One question was, “Have you received any complaints?” and we’re happy to report that no one has complained yet. I think any anger usually associated with pop-ups has been curbed since we have set this one to only show once every 7 days.

The benefits of having the lightbox far outweigh those of not having one. As with all technology, your own mileage may vary. We suggest testing it yourself to see if ‘the proof is in the pudding’.

Takeaway: Adding a lightbox to your subscription process could increase your email list sign-ups. It has grown ours by as much as 400% or more each month.