Email Newsletter Resource Center Blog

Email Newsletter Best Practices

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12 Email Newsletter Best Practices for 2012

It is that time of year. We are revisiting our best practices for email newsletter publishing. Two major trends of note: mobile devices continue to grow as an email-reading platform and Google+ is coming on strong. Details on these trends and more below.

First, make sure you use an email service provider with the latest tools for mobile delivery and social media. We recommend iContact. You can try iContact free for 30 days at this link.

To adapt best practices in publishing your e-newsletter, consider the following:

Keep your list targeted. Use list-building strategies that focus on getting more sign-ups from your ideal target market. Always use an opt-in approach to building your list and double opt-in is even better. Visit this link, for more information on how to build your list of email newsletter subscribers.

Integrate Social Media. Make sure you run your social media campaigns and your email newsletter program to feed off each other. Despite the early predictions, social media is not going to “kill” email newsletters or email marketing. In fact, in 2011 Marketing Sherpa reported that 75% of social media users said they preferred companies contact them via email rather than social media channels.

Develop a Google+ (G+) strategy. Experts predict that Google’s new Search Plus Your World (SPYW) will becoming an important social media channel. With SPYW, G+ content will be dominant in Google searches. Sites and email newsletter publishers adopting a strong G+ strategy will be clear winners. We will be discussing more on G+ next month. In the mean time, check out this link to see why you should care about G+ for SEO.

Adapt a mobile strategy. Increasingly, busy business execs are monitoring and triaging their email through mobile devices. From the mobile device, they delete unwanted email. They save preferred email for reading more completely back at the office. Place important and valuable messages early in your email to survive this triage process.

For mobile-accessibility, keep messages short, or, offer a mobile-only version with a “click to read on mobile phone” links at the top of each issue. If you have valuable and rapidly changing content, think about creating an iPad App. We’ll have some top tips for insuring your email is mobile-ready in future issues, so stay tuned.

Select the Right ESP. We recommend that companies send their email through an email service provider (ESP). These systems are inexpensive and handle the tech issues of sending to larger lists. All your work will go for naught if you send through the wrong ESP. A good ESP today will offer tools facilitating mobile email delivery.

Also, to insure your legitimate email gets past SPAM , check that your ESP is using DKIM authentication. In a nutshell, DKIM is a system that authenticates you are who you say you are. With DKIM, the ISPs are assured that a sender is not spoofing another domain, which is a key trick of spammers. You can learn more about DKIM at this link

Visit this link for information on how to select the right ESP.

Select Strategic Subject and From Lines. Use a compelling subject line. Your subject line should not be “January Issue of Our E-Newsletter”. Use one of your articles as the subject line, such as “Tips for emailing to mobile readers and more”

To make sure you have the best subject line, test to determine the line that gets the most click-throughs. You can also test what name in the “From” line gets the most click-throughs. Research shows that email from a CEO or recognized company exec gets a higher open rate.

While you should test from lines, once you have a winner, use it. You should also develop the same format for your subject lines. By having consistent formats, your recipients can more readily recognize your valuable email newsletter.

Keep your articles short. Use short sentences, bulleted lists, etc. People read email quickly. They are also usually reading it on small screens (in the preview pane or on a mobile device.) If you have a lot to say about a subject, make the longer version a blog post. Summarize it in your email newsletter and link to the post.

While you do want to keep it short, we suggest you have more than a series of links to articles. If you do not provide enough good content in the email to encourage the reader to engage with you, you risk recipient’s deleting your message.

Avoid Hype, but don’t forget a CTA. Do not make the content all about you. Yes, your email is a marketing tool. However, if you only include info on your company (new projects, staff and awards, etc.) you are not providing real value.

While you do want to provide useful information, do not forget to add your own call-to-action (CTA). If you do not give recipients a reason to contact you, you are unlikely to get inquiries from potential prospects.

Need help writing compelling CTA’s? If so, request information on our new ebook, “How to write a Killer Call-to-Action” by sending an email to inquiry@marketwise.net with the subject line “CTA ebook”.

Create an editorial calendar.Make sure you plan several editions ahead to ease the production process. When you plan future content, you can use one issue to promote upcoming topics.You can use many online resources, such as Google Trends or your own web logs, to see topic trends. When you discover that folks are looking for a subject the same time every year, plan to publish information in your blog the month before. You can then push out the info in your email newsletter and maximize your traffic.

Develop a content acquisition plan.Once you have your editorial calendar, plan on how you will acquire content. Will you write it in-house, hire a ghostwriter, ask for a guest author? We suggest a combination of several strategies. You may also find it helpful to develop a dynamic content idea portal for capturing relevant information. We will provide more detail on how to develop a content idea portal next month.In the meantime, if you need help with content acquisition plan, send an email to inquiry@marketwise.net with “acquisition plan help” in the subject line.

Reward Engagement and Encourage Sharing.
Add forward-to-a-friend options and share buttons to your newsletters. You want to make it easy for your recipients to share your content with their network. Research consistently shows that providing e-newsletter sharing features can boost email distribution by more than 40%.

Remarket and Cross Market Content
Get as much traction as possible for your valuable content. You can create smaller “snack size versions” of email articles as tweets, place longer versions as blog posts, develop a slideshare presentation, etc. Do make slight changes to each version of the re-purposed content. Avoid placing the exact same content on websites, blogs, online forums, etc. or you will lose some SEO juice.

Create iPad App for Email Newsletter Delivery

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Email Newsletter Publishers Using Custom iPad Apps

An email newsletter publisher, PinHawk, LLC, announced recently the launch of an iPad app for its email newsletters. With this App, subscribers to the publisher’s email newsletters get easy access to past content. The publisher’s App also enables subscribers to personalize their experience by selecting targeted information.

Should you think about an iPad App for your company?
The answer depends on the timeliness of your information and the habits of your subscribers. If you frequently send out very timely information to an audience that is on the go, an iPad App makes sense.

Top Factors for Developing an App

Set the goals for your App. Do you want to encourage more engagement with subscribers, get more subscriber feedback, encourage social media, or attract more subscribers? Set your priorities and let that guide your development. Keep it simple to start.
Develop a Content Integration Plan.
Think about how your subscribers interact with your email newsletters. What information do they view as most important and/or most popular? How can you easily give information to past relevant content? Will you need to change your archival system to group articles by topic rather than by issue?
Enable Personalization for On-the-Go Readers.
If you provide periodic updates on several hot topics, allow users to specify what topics are important to them. Enable users to flag important information and to customize what information they receive.Also, remember that people will be reading your email newsletter everywhere, at the office, in coffee shops, on the subway, in a chair at home, etc. Make sure your email iPad App delivers your info in very easy-to-read formats.
Keep Your Navigation Simple.
Stick with navigation schemes that are most familiar to your readers. Take a look at the most frequently used Apps, such as news readers. Look at the simplicity of those designs when you develop your App. Avoid a lot of splash and flash that interferes with content delivery. After all, your valuable cotent is why folks subscribed to your email newsletter.

Subscribers are very familiar with standard Web site designs. A home page helps them grasp the topic of your email newsletter. Use a magazine style to design the home page. Highlight important articles and allow expansion of the articles that most interest your readers.

Make Tap-links Obvious.
Make sure folks can easily understand with words to tap to get additional information. Build sufficient space around the tap-links to get readers easily to the next bit of content after they tap a link.
Build it or Outsource?
Think about whether you have the resources to build your own App. Apple makes it easy to get the software. To code the App, your developer should have some experience with iPhone Apps. Apple’s iPad development software (iOS SDK, software development kit) is inexpensive, at this moment is less than $5 and runs only on Mac computers with OS X version 10.6.6 or laterIf you do not have the resources in-house, look for local developers or search elance for an experienced iPad App developer.

Should You “Gamify” Your Email marketing?

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Gamifying involves applying gaming techniques and concepts to a non-game interaction. Companies use gamifying when they want to encourage a desired audience behavior.

While the idea of making email marketing more engaging is not new, gamifying takes the fun factor to a completely new level. This new approach adds reward-based incentives to elicit the desired visitor or subscriber outcome.

You can use games to build visitor loyalty under the guise of play. To design a winning game strategy, you should:

Define the behavior you want to encourage (sign up for a enewsletter, visit the site more often, browse a web page, view a Webinar at length, refer friends, “like you” on Facebook, etc.)

Decide the value of the behavior. Think about your sales funnel. What leads a visitor to make the final purchase? Place a higher-value on the activities closer to the bottom of the funnel. A visitor signing up for a demo is probably worth more than a visitor downloading a PDF.

If you want to get more engagement for your email newsletter, you could encourage user-generated content. Ask readers to submit a case study or event based on your industry. Post the submissions on your website and ask visitors to rate each entry. If you sell customer service software, for example, you could ask folks to submit the oddest customer support question they ever received. You could ask viewers to vote on the best “odd” story.

Think about the potential prize. What will you give for the desired behavior? Example: encourage people to refer friends to signup for demo and offer the folks with the most referrals a coupon, credits toward purchase, a free (valuable) ebook.

Determine the games mechanics. The best gaming tactics allow players to see their game progress and score. For example, award points for properly taking a short quiz at the end of a Webinar. Post top scores on the game page and send reminder emails to keep players in the game. If you run a game for several months, you can publish updates in each weekly or monthly e newsletter.

A Gamifying Example:
A local TV station in Washington, DC continuously promotes a “like us on Facebook” contest. Each week the station announces a new contest. Last Sunday they offered to give away an iPad in a random drawing of viewers who newly “liked them” by Friday. During the 6pm broadcast, they announced the winner on the air.

While you may not have the reach of a metro-market TV station, you do have regular touches with your market place. Once you launch your game, announce the contest and awards in multiple places (your email signature line, website pages, blog, twitter account, etc.)

Keep it simple and make it fun.

Posted in Content Marketing | Leave a comment

New tool to engage viewers of online e-newsletters

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If you link to a blog from your email campaign or e-newsletters, here is a new tool to enhance visitor engagement.

A soon-to-launch service called Highlighter, from Unique Blog Designs, allows visitors to comment on specific sections, highlight those sections, and share the highlighted section with friends.

The tool works on a variety of blog platforms WordPress, Blogspot, Tumblr, etc. Users sign-up by linking to their Facebook or Twitter account.

Once the blog publisher adds Highlighter, visitors can share content (or a specific passage or image) by highlighting the content. After the visitors highlighted a section of content, they select the channel to use for sharing (Twitter, Facebook, email, etc.).

Visitors can also comment on your blog about the highlighted section, if they too have a highlight account.

Blog publishers can customize how the highlight appears on their blog.

This tool is still in beta; but looks very interesting. You can read more about it at this link.

Posted in Subscriber Engagement | Leave a comment

Get Your Email Delivered, Opened and Out of the Spam Folder

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Your email campaign (or newsletter) will not work if the recipient’s firewall blocks it or the receiving system sends it directly to the spam folder. Here are some top tips to insure recipients receive your message.

Steps to take when you create your email:

Use creative and relevant subject lines.
Place an individual’s name (or company name) in the from field and be consistent, test which works best. Make sure the reply email works.
Include an “add to address book” at the top of your email. When recipients place your email in their address book, you will avoid the SPAM folder.
Place your physical address and phone number in the footer (required by the CAN SPAM Act).
Get more Tips on Creating An Email Newsletter in our Ebook.

Steps to take before you send your email:

Follow standard double opt-in to build your list and give recipients a clear path to unsubscribe.
Make sure the IP sending your email is not on a blacklist. You can check your sending IP with a variety of tools including MXToolbox.
Check your sending reputation. SenderScore is a free reputation service that grades the sending IP.
iContact provides good information on how to insure email deliverability. They think sender authentication is an important in reaching the inbox and use 3 vital authentication keys (SPF, Sender ID,DKIM). Read more about iContact’s authentication keys at this link.

Steps to take after you send:

Make sure you honor any unsubscribe requests quickly. A good ESP should do this automatically for you.
Watch your stats for bounces, opens and clicks.
Be ready to respond to replies after you send out. If you are using a call to action, have your response email ready to go.

If you follow these best practices, you are well on your way to building a successful email campaign or email newsletter program.

Posted in Email Newsletter Content and Design, Sending Email Newsletters | Tagged email sending tips | Leave a comment

Integrate Email Marketing and Social Media Easily With Vertical Response

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Vertical Response (VR) announced yesterday that its system now enables customers to include social sharing icons in their email messages and email newsletters.

If you use VR, you can use these tools to allow email newsletter recipients to spread your message easily to their Facebook, Twitter and LinkedIn networks.

I think this integration is a great step forward in merging two valuable communication channels. If you want to build a robust communications program with your customers and prospects, you must use both email marketing and social media.

Email marketing gives you more control of the message channel and social gives your message an amplifying effect. Similar to the ripples in a pond after throwing a stone.

VR’s system will also allow customers to track which recipients share an email message with their social networks. By watching the number of Facebook Likes, Twitter Tweets (and Retweets) and LinkIn Shares, you can measure how far your “ripple effect goes”.

If you have not yet added social media to your customer outreach, consider this as an easy first step. Set-up your corporate accounts for FaceBook , Twitter and LinkedIn.

Ask your current email service provider how they integrate with social media. If they do not have a robust integration package, you should take a trial run of Vertical Response.

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Email Subject Line Best Practices | 5 tips for improving subject lines

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5 top tips for improving email subject lines:

Every email newsletter or email marketing message you send, carries a subject line. Your recipients read the subject line and make quick decisions about whether or not to read the body copy of your email message. Here are 5 tips to improve the open rates of your email messages.

Deliver what you promise. Make sure you subject line adequately reflects what the user gets in the click through. The objective of the subject line is to get recipients to open your email. Once they read your email, your objective is typically to promote click-throughs to your Web site.
Your subject line should be intriguing but not misleading.

As hubpages said in its post on the subject line
“If after you’ve tested a number of variations and you still get low open and click through rates it’s not the fault of the subject line – it’s probably your offer. Writing bait and switch subject lines won’t change the eventual results either; they will just make people leery about reading your next email.”
Match the audience. Make sure your subject line appeals to your audience. I just got an email promoting consulting services for biotech companies. We have nothing to do with that.
If you have a large list, you should break your list into subsets and make a subject line separate for each subset.
Consider a longer subject line. Marketing Experiments provides a case study for increasing the length of the subject line. In their published case study, the clicks increased when they increased the subject line text.
In their case study’s first email, the subject line read: “First Look at New Products, Technology, and More.”

In this case study’s second email, the tester added the company’s name to the subject line. Results the second sending increased open rates by more than 8%.

You can read more about the case study at this link.
Avoid SPAM subject lines. We have a new ebook on how to create effective email campaigns that includes a long list of SPAM trigger words to avoid. If you would like more information on our ebook, please contact enrc@marketwise.net. Below is an interesting word cloud graphic of SPAM words to avoid:

Email SPAM words to avoid in subject line. Source: 100 Junk mailed Mac emails, by Thomas Hawk
Always test. We provide a full chapter about testing email subject lines. You should create two slightly different versions of your email. Send one half of your list an email with one subject line. Send the other half an email with the same body copy; but include the slightly different email subject line.
You can get more information on writing and testing email newsletter subject lines in our new ebook on how to create effective email newsletters.

Posted in Email Newsletter Content and Design, Uncategorized | Leave a comment

Content Ideas for B2B Email Newsletters

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Benchmark posted great tips on developing good content for b2b newsletters. I’ve listed their six tips below and re-ordered them based on what gives the greatest value to a reader.

Interview Clients
Publishing an interview with a top client is a great idea. It’s a win-win. You give your top client some PR. Your interview should focus on providing useful tips to your readers. If your article allows, use the interview to show case how your product or service helped your client solve a problem.

Discuss New Products
Do mention any upcoming launch of a new service (or product). One word of caution: don’t over sell. Make sure your information is not merely a sales message. Include some great info on how the new service helps solve a common or significant problem in a unique way.

Summarzie Relevant Recent News
You should use your B2B email newsletter to show your team is keeping up with your industry. You can do this by highlighting important industry news. If you establish a content idea portal, as we suggest, you will find this type of article easy to pull together. You can also use this section to list important events in your industry. I get a local email newsletter that lists all of the upcoming local events related to marketing. I watch for that email newsletter every month.

Spotlight Trends
In addition to news, you should include your commentary on what you see as important trends in your industry. In the email newsletter industry for example, two trends are very hot right now: email to mobile devices and integrating email and social. We use our newsletter and blog to keep readers up to speed on these trends. Think about what’s important to your readers.

Give Tips for Coping with Future Trends
Provide information on how your company will help customers adapt to future trends. You may not want to get too far ahead…but, if you share plans for helpful new products and services, you show your company is forward thinking.

Respond to FAQs
You can also use your email newsletter to address commonly asked questions. This can save your service team time and can help clients that face similar issues. You can also use this section to solicit questions from your readers. This is a great place to use Twitter or Facebook.

As Benchmark says in its post, “B2B marketing is all about content. Your emails need to be engaging, entertaining and above all, informative. The more informed your business customers are about your products and practices, the stronger and more lucrative your relationship will be.”
You can read the full article at this link.

Posted in Email Newsletter Content and Design | Tagged b2b email newsletters, email newsletter content | Leave a comment

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Should You “Gamify” Your Email marketing?

New tool to engage viewers of online e-newsletters

Integrate Email Marketing and Social Media Easily With Vertical Response

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