Ignore Email Marketing ‘Best Practices’, Period.

Before you disregard this post due to its title, humor me and read through the first paragraph. If you agree, disagree or have something to say; please comment. This post is more for brain food than expertise for you to follow. Understand; there are many “good practices” or “general practices” within the email marketing space, but not all apply to every company’s needs or even the needs of the general email marketing populous. Still reading?

“Best practices”, the phrase, is a bit misleading.  It leads one to assume that what’s good or ‘best’ for one is just as good for another – that’s false.  My suggestion is to use the general practices of the industry to create a solid foundation for your email program as a beginning. If you’re already waist deep in a program that’s in need of new life, I recommend you remove practices one at a time till you can pin point where the program lacks and apply what’s generally working to fill the void. Sound dumb?

I hope not, it’s not where it ends. From that point, application of the “best practice” for that program is where the difference is made. Defining key indicators and recipient trends will reveal where the real jewels are. That’s your “best practice”; what’s best for your recipients, customers, prospects and partners is the motivation. Finding what they like, react to, spend time/money on and garner value from is your programs “best practice”. Make sense?

Relationship and expectations are what drive email success. It’s in your best interest to not take the short cut and follow a “best practice” that’s not yours.

Viva la Email!

Email Marketing Overkill

The cartoon below brilliantly illustrates indiscriminate email marketing tactics, run amok. Enjoy.

Kudos to Bryan at Email Marketing Voodoo who first spotted it on bradcolbow.com. I found it on Return Path’s Club Inbox.

Let’s Play The Unsubscribe Game

Bonnier Corporation is a publisher of lifestyle magazines and online properties. Of their 50+ titles Sailing World, TransWorld SKATEboarding, and SNOW are among my favorites.

However, when I recently attempted to opt-out of one newsletter I noticed a host of missed opportunities and one big problem. Take a quick look at the following image and tell me if you can easily find the unsubscribe link:

(By the way, don’t even get me started on the rendering of the links in the footer)

Once you’ve finally found, and clicked on, the unsubscribe link imagine that you’ve entered your email address (which is completely unnecessary by the way) and click submit. Which button on the bare-bones page below would you pick?

If you’re anything like me you would either A) click the first button (which I did two weeks ago) or B) hit enter on your keyboard. In either scenario the window simply closes. No confirmation. No nothing. Note: Perhaps you’re smarter than me or maybe I’m busier than you. No matter the case, I was surprised to see the very same newsletter in my inbox this morning.

I’m an email-friendly guy so I don’t want to hit the ‘report as spam’ button so I tried unsubscribe again only time I took a bit more time, read more carefully, and clicked the correct button. Voila. I see by the confirmation message below. And that’s all I see.

Granted, I live and dream email marketing but I’ve seen firsthand that a well crafted opt-out process will allow marketers to gather valuable intelligence, reduce attrition, improve deliverability, and even gain more loyalty.

My advice to Bonnier Corporation?

1. Don’t be sneaky. Don’t try to be sly with the opt-out language in the email and placement of the unsubscribe button. (Not to mention the lack of confirmation when I clicked the misplaced unsubscribe button.) If I want out, let me leave. Otherwise you risk damaging the reputation of your brands and certainly that of your email deliverability (this is the big problem I mentioned).
2. Don’t make me feel like a second-class citizen. The lack of the effort you’ve put into the opt-out page screams that you no longer care about me. You should. Simply because I no longer want this particular newsletter it doesn’t mean that I don’t buy your magazines or the products of your advertisers.
3. Learn from me. Survey me or ask me set my preferences (i.e. weekly, monthly, never). Maybe I like the newsletter, but not the frequency? Or perhaps, I’m no longer in the market.  You’ll never know of you don’t ask.
4. Try to keep me. You could use humor or some other devise, perhaps coupled with an incentive, to get me to stay. GroupOn does an excellent job.
5. Profit from me. For starters, brand the opt-out pages. It’s free money. Ask me to buy something, subscribe to other more relevant publications, or join you on the social networks. Hell, why not display ads? You’ve got my attention. Capitalize on it.

As I mentioned, I’m busy so I’m fairly certain that I’ve overlooked several other missed opportunities. I’d love to hear your thoughts.

Knee-Jerk Reaction: Polldaddy Personalization

Here’s a perfect example of email personalization, gone bad. Unknown?!?! Why does Polldaddy feel the need to bruise my already fragile ego? Why?

Don’t want to be this guy? Check out the The Power of Personalization.

GoDaddy Attempts Re-Activation

As a matter of disclosure, GoDaddy.com is who I host my blog (ScottWritesEverything.com) through. And, as a paying customer, I am on their email list. I would classify GoDaddy as pretty aggressive in their campaigns, always harping on discounts and deals to get additional sales. My being a sole-domain-long-term customer, I am clearly not their bread-and-butter customer.

That said, their creative stands out to me sometimes. Like the following message:

What stands out to me as positives:

• The subject line got me to open immediately. “Was it something we said?” is clever, and I opened without hesitation.
• Solid use of a top banner… even if “Exclusive offer from GoDaddy.com” is a little considering it’s a different deal each week. A little like the “Boy who cried wolf.”
• A reminder of the value proposition in the body copy is good.
• A prominent deadline and prominent calls to action are well-placed both at the top and bottom of the main message.

What I don’t like:

• I own a single domain and have purchased hosting and the domain name for 5 years. I’ve made no other orders before or after, and it’s been nearly 9 months since that purchase. What sort of engagement metrics are being used to push further orders if I’m a single purchase customer?
• The image-laden header is way too big in my opinion. Their use of alt-text is really good, but they’re pushing the image on me. Which is a bit funny, because the GoDaddy backend is anything but. (I’m a fan and happy customer, so don’t get me wrong.)
• Seems odd that the message would be signed by Bob Parsons, the founder. I know as customers we’ve become sophisticated to the point that we acknowledge it’s all “marketing” anyway, but I would always push for a level of credibility in the voice if at all possible. And I doubt that Bob is concerned about a 25% off of $60 purchase deal.

All in all, this is another message that has some solid work put into it.

++++++++++

About the Author: Scott Cohen is the Marketing Copywriter for Western Governors University. He also writes on email marketing, fatherhood, sports, and politics on ScottWritesEverything.com and contributes to the Email Zoo Blog.

So Did They Just Scan A Brochure?

I’ve been ordering contacts from Contact Lens King (CLK) for years – their site wasn’t the best, but they were cheap, they shipped fast (and free) and they sent timely email notifications about my order.

Those notifications were always in plain text, but I figured that was just because it’s a transactional email being spit out of some system probably written by the same guy who wrote the copy in the notifications. Not ideal, but hey, they’re not 1-800-CONTACTS (I don’t even remember how I found them, but I haven’t run into anyone else using them) and they probably don’t have a huge marketing budget.

Sending plain text transactional emails is fine, but if you’re going to make the jump to HTML for your marketing emails, please do some research first. Otherwise, you end up with something like this:

(Click image for full size)

“But The Green Bar Still Says ‘Click to Display Images’…”

(Disclaimer: I promise I did not Photoshop this.)

Yes, and were the image in this email hotlinked from CLK’s website, you wouldn’t see it while I still have images “disabled” in Gmail.

But that’s not what CLK did. They embedded the image (see excerpt from the message HTML) instead.

In all fairness, the image did display for me, but this is certainly not something I would suggest doing – embedding the image significantly increases the size of the email, and in some email clients it will not display at all.

Also, the quality of this image? Not so good. It looks like this image was either scanned from a brochure or resized poorly – notice the “fuzzy” feel to the image, especially around the text in it.

Making Me Jump Through Hoops

What really gets me about this email, though, is that it’s just one big link to the homepage. There’s no way for me to jump directly from this email to any of the contacts shown.

Plus, I’ve ordered from CLK many times. I always get the exact same contacts. Why even show me all these other ones? Just tell me you’ve cut the price on mine!

With this email, I’d have to go to the site and search for my contacts just to see if the price had changed (assuming I remembered what the price used to be). I did none of those things.

It’s emails like this that underscore the importance of educating new email marketers. This email could have easily been converted into HTML text, not to mention made more relevant.

It could have been a better experience for the subscriber – even if they would have had to enable images.

How to Write Good Email Subject Lines that Get Your Message Opened

Are your emails getting low open rates? Then you have to find out why. And reinvent your strategy. In my 10-year Internet experience I learned there must be a solution for any problem – all you need to do is to find it.

Why are open rates that important anyway? There’s no secret about this; low opens lead to low or no clicks at all. Which translates into zero profit for your business.

Since 95% of business owners quite within 5 years, your aim is not to survive but thrive, even in a bad economy!

And believe it or not email marketing, when done right, will put your business on the profit map. But it’s not that easy, if you’re expecting instant results.

Motivational speaker, Brian Tracy, once said… “There is no elevator to success. You have to take the stairs.”

Can you imagine that the majority of email marketers think about subject lines as the shortcut to high open rates? Stumbling upon some “killer” lines and using them in your email campaign, “as is”, is a sure-fire way to failure.

While I dislike to critique I’m keen on giving practical advice for email campaign improvement. All the clients I consult with are “magically” starting to see results from their subject lines and wonder why they didn’t come at me sooner.

This is not a sales pitch, just straight facts. Look, you are reading this because you want to learn the “secret” to writing good email subject lines. I won’t give you any “tricks” here, just simple methods that get your message opened.

Good Email Subject Line Writing – Method #1

GET INSPIRATION FROM OTHERS

Take our title for example – How to Write Good Email Subject Lines that Get Your Message Opened – you can easily turn that into winning subject lines, by changing one word. Let me give you an idea:

How to Write Winning Email Subject Lines that Get Your Message Opened

Here’s another twist:

How to Write Good Email Subject Lines and Get Your Message Opened

Small tweaks lead to greater results. Keep this in mind when writing your lines.

What I want you understand is the constant “routine” of observing your competitors, as well as the experts in related and non related industries. We can all get good subject line ideas from their mailings, headlines, article titles and blog posts.

Good Email Subject Line Writing – Method #2

ADAPT AND FIT IN

There’s not enough to copy-cat somebody else; we’re not thieves, but creative human beings. Writers. We observe, then reinvent and adapt.

This is the second step to writing winning subject lines and one of the quickest and easiest way to jolt your open rate.

American country music singer, television host, actor, and businessman – Jimmy Dean – said “I can’t change the direction of the wind, but I can adjust my sails to always reach my destination.”

Good Email Subject Line Writing – Method #3

TESTING IS KING

Did you ever have the feeling a subject line you spent countless minutes to craft would do wonders, only to find later on it was a dud?

This happens all the times, particularly to people who do not have a keen understanding of their niche audience most pressing problems, wants and needs.

That’s why you can’t afford to forget about testing, tracking and tweaking your subject lines. Today’s professional autoresponders make it a breeze.

What you should be testing right away, in each email you send out:

1. Your open rates [do a split test]
2. Your clickthrough rates [do a split test]
3. Your user-feedback [run a survey]

If you have any questions or comments about this post, please share your feedback with me in the comments section! I can’t wait to hear what you have to say!

—————–

Article written by Codrut Turcanu: email follow-up specialist, blogger and copywriter.

Download his FREE special report – “99 Good Email Subject Lines” and discover 99 email subject lines that will magically skyrocket your open rates and boost your clicks…

http://www.email-subject-lines.com/99freedwld.html

Email List Rental Done Right

Here’s a great example of email list rental from Surfline and Rip Curl. It demonstrates how the publisher (Surfline) can provide value to the marketer (Rip Curl), all while winning the hearts and clicks of their subscribers.

From Name: Surfline
Subject: Rip Curl Micktory Prize Pack Giveaway

Landing Page

While I’m on the email list topic check out The Truth About Email List Rental.

- Scott Hardigree | Indiemark

Sending Survey Emails? Learn From Orbitz’ Example

Orbitz has been my online travel site of choice for years – I’ve strayed occasionally, but they always seem to be where I end up booking.

Most recently, I booked a hotel room in Philadelphia through them for New Year’s Eve. The day I checked out, this email arrived in my inbox:

Triggered survey emails like this are a nice touchpoint that can help a brand learn more about its customers and create a better experience for them in the future.

The challenge, of course, is getting people to:

1. Actually take the survey; and
2. Provide useful information.

Sure, you can offer a reward to people for completing the survey (this takes care of #1), but you’re likely to get people flying through the survey just to get the reward (which causes a problem with #2). So how do you get quality survey data from a high proportion of your subscribers?

I think this email does a great job at achieving both aims. Here’s why:

It’s Timely

This email showed up while the stay was fresh in my mind – Orbitz sent it the day my reservation ended.

Had they waited (either intentionally or due to an inability to generate and send the email promptly), the experience I had at the hotel might have faded from memory – meaning I wouldn’t have felt comfortable sharing my thoughts about it, or simply wouldn’t have cared enough anymore to bother doing so.

It’s Easy To Use

This is a beautifully simple email. It tries to do one thing – get me to click to the survey form – and it focuses solely on that. Yes, there are some navigation links at the top but they don’t distract from the point of the email.

And Orbitz was smart about the call-to-action: they realized that I might try clicking any of three places to get to the survey form…

• “Take our hotel survey”
• “Click Here”
• The image of the survey link

… so every one of those is linked to the form. No chance for confusion there.

It Sells The Survey Effectively

Upon receiving emails like this, I typically have two questions:

• What’s in it for me if I fill this survey out? They’re not offering me any discounts…
• What do you do with this data? What’s the point?

Orbitz anticipates and answers those questions cleanly, right in the email body. They even remind me that I’ve probably used others’ feedback to make the best choices when booking my own stays (and they’re right, I do). The appeals to karma and reciprocity make it hard to not take a few minutes and share my thoughts on the hotel.

Other Quick Thoughts

There’s a lot I could say about this email, but the important thing is that it’s focused, relevant, timely and effective.

A few other things that came to mind:

• I like that they personalized the email body with the hotel name – good thinking, since I might have stayed at multiple places (perhaps not booked via Orbitz) during my “trip.”
• Human review of this message should have caught the broken HTML in the bold-text line of copy at the top.
• Interesting that they put information on how to add Orbitz to my address book in both the preheader and the footer – and I love the “learn how” link that accompanies it. (Here’s where it goes.)
• I’m not crazy about the subject line. Technically, I didn’t take a trip (I live outside of Philadelphia, and I did not book any airfare through Orbitz as part of this reservation). I also think that adding the hotel name might be helpful. I’d test the current subject line against variations like “Tell us about your stay, Justin!” and “How was Club Quarters at Philadelphia?” to try to increase response.
• I wonder what, if anything, Orbitz will do to personalize future emails to me based on my responses. Will they suggest similar hotels? Email me in 10-11 months to see if I want to stay there again for the next New Year’s?

All in all, this was a quality survey email and I’d love to see more like it.

- Justin Premick, Director of Education Marketing at AWeber

EMAIL-VILLE: Social Gaming Companies Set to Take Plunge into Email CRM

Tired of getting notifications about lost black sheep from distant cousins and ex-girlfriends from high school on Facebook? Don’t even trip. All notifications will be going away (both app-to-user and user-to-user) within the next month as Facebook revamps its platform.

But what does this mean for juggernaut social gaming developers like Zynga (Mafia Wars, Farmville) and Playfish (Restaurant City, Pet Society) who’ve been relying on notifications to communicate with users? According to Jon Wirt, Marketing Product Manager at The Casual Collective, social games generated $835 million last year and will rely heavily on email marketing going forward.

Jon states, “Facebook has already begun prompting users to opt-in on application pages [see image below] and will continue to do so as the notifications are phased out. The big question from a CRM standpoint, however, is how good of a job will the current big name companies do at keeping their users engaged?”

Like any good email marketer Jon understands that, more and more, email deliverability relies on subscriber engagement. And if social gaming companies start including non-relevant messaging, try to promote offer games to heavily, or worst of all, start sending  *GASP* third-party offers, vital communication with their users may be toast.

- John Getze | @johngetze