Are you Wasting Your Money on Mobile Emails that Don’t Work?
Email marketing is one of the most lucrative online channels. And it looks like the combination of mobile is a powerful team.
According to a recent report from HubSpot, “43% of people on mobile devices check their email over four times per day”.
That presents a huge opportunity to reach people instantly at any time, and any place. But the problem is that an email that looks great on your laptop will look terrible on a mobile device.
So you need to improve your email marketing, and make sure that what you’re sending will perform on any device. Otherwise, you’ll be wasting your time (and money).
1. Write a Killer Headline
The headline is the most important element of any email marketing campaign.
How important?
According to a recent study from MailChimp, average open rates are only around 10 – 30%.
That means that 70 – 90% of the people didn’t care enough about your headline to even open the email.
People today don’t have time. So they don’t read everything. They scan and only open things that look interesting. If your headline doesn’t grab their attention, then they’ll never open it. And the the first step to making more money with an email marketing campaign is by improving the open rate.
Start with Copyblogger’s guide if you need help.
2. Focus on One Goal
The screen on a mobile device is really small. You literally only have an inch or two to get your point across. So keep it really simple. Pick one goal for each email you send, and focus only on that. This will drastically improve your Click-Through-Rate (CTR) for that one element.
Most people try and put several calls-to-action in one email. They want people to click a link to their website, become their Facebook friend, and buy something all in one email. That doesn’t work on a tiny screen. And the goal of your email isn’t to sell. You just want to pique your reader’s interest enough so they click through to a landing page.
Once you have them on your mobile site, then you can worry about converting them.
About the Author: Brad Smith is the founder of FixCourse.com, a blog about online customer acqusition and how to grow your traffic, generate leads, and make more sales.
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Why You Should Use Free eMail Marketing to Keep Sales Going Beyond the Holiday Season
Businesses of all kinds are giving free email marketing a try for first time. Many have decided to give it a go with the goal of cashing in on the shopping frenzy that accompanies the holiday season. This is easy to understand when seeing how it is great for keeping in touch with customers, enticing them with offers, and providing stellar after-sales service as well. If you are thinking about abandoning this tool once all the shopping is done, get it out of your head. This article will explain why free email marketing has value that goes beyond the holiday season.
It Fits in the Budget
Some businesses will give email marketing a whirl for the holiday season. Several will throw in the towel and go back to what they were doing previously. Why? Because they can’t fit the extra expense into the budget. Even though email marketing is very cost effective, it is another expense, one that some businesses cannot justify in this economy. If a strained budget is what attracted you to free email marketing in the first place, then you should definitely keep at it when the holiday season wraps up. You can use this tool to support a sizable portion of your overall marketing needs, and invest in other critical areas with the money you save.
It Still Drive Sales
Although many of the big sales end once Christmas comes to a close, the shopping continues for some time after. In fact, some retailers enjoy even more sales once the holiday season officially ends by cleaning up on the leftover traffic. During the months of January and February, stores are often packed full of people who are redeeming gift cards and taking advantage strategically timed sales offers. Free email marketing can keep you in touch with these ambitious consumers. Whether you are trying to get rid of your last bit of inventory from the holiday, or move a line of entirely new products, it can keep them connected with whatever you’re selling.
It’s a Great Learning Tool
What were the results of your holiday email program? Was it an overwhelming success, or did you come out of it feeling like your strategy was in need of some fine tuning? If you thought the results could have been better, sticking with free email marketing is probably the best thing you can do. The more you continue to use it, the more familiar you will become with aspects such as campaign creation, list management, and tracking. By the time the next holiday season rolls around, you could potentially be a seasoned email marketer with the savvy to take on the world, or at least your target audience.
Who Needs Free Email Marketing?
Free email marketing does not discriminate. It can be an ideal solution for a small business, a large enterprise, a non-profit organization, or an entrepreneur with only a handful of clients. Find the right service provider, and it could be the solution that enables you to thrive year-round.
About the Author: Aidan Hijleh is a freelance copywriter and serves as the Non-Profit Partnership Liaison for Benchmark Email. Aidan advocates free email marketing services to assist with the flourishing of grassroots organizations.
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5 Ways To Ruin Your Business Rep With Email Marketing
As a small business owner, you know what it means to have to fight for your share of the market. Competition is everywhere and you only have a few chances to set yourself apart to show that you are the company that deserves attention.
So what sets you apart from the next guy? I would say that the two things a business should be judged on are it’s products, of course, and it’s level of customer service. That’s always important!
But take a step back and think, what do you get when you combine those two elements? What do your consumers really consider before they choose who to do their business with?
Reputation. That’s what it all boils down to.
If your company has a good reputation, any number of small sins can be forgiven, and you can be sure that you’re in good standing with most, if not all, of your customers. On the same hand, if your company has a rep that’s the equivalent to an Atlantic City loan shark, well, odds are, you aren’t going to be in business very much longer.
So, what does this have to do with email marketing?
Well, people can tell a lot about a company by how they market themselves, and with email marketing being one of the most effective options for small businesses these days, it’s important for you as a small business owner to make sure your email marketing campaign isn’t hurting you when it should be helping.
Here are a few examples of what NOT to do. Avoid these hazardous practices, and you’ll be on your way to not only a successful marketing campaign, but a successful business.
Start Fresh
An email marketing campaign needs one thing to get off the ground – emails. Now, gathering emails can be a tricky business, and, of course, while everyone wants to get their marketing campaign up and running as soon as possible, buying a pre-gathered email list is pretty much not allowed.
Think of it this way: you will be sending emails to people who never asked for them. I’m sure part of that sounds great, I mean, who wouldn’t want a crack at roping in new customers, but what it looks like on the customers’ side of the street, is SPAM, and nobody trusts a SPAMmer.
Double Opt-In
I hate to sound like a broken record, but this helpful little hint is very closely related to the last one, and will go a long way when it comes to separating you from the SPAMmers out there.
Always use the double opt-in method when gathering email addresses. Basically, all the double opt-in method entails is sending everyone who subscribes to your mailing list a confirmation email, making sure that they signed up on purpose. If you don’t use double opt-in, you are opening yourself up to SPAM complaints which, like I mentioned above, are one of the quickest ways to lose your customers trust and ruin your rep.
If You Love Them, Set Them Free
People get antsy when they don’t have options. Just because someone signed up for your email a year ago, doesn’t necessarily mean that they want to keep getting it this year. Make sure that each and every email that you send has an easy to see “opt-out” link (usually at the top or bottom of the email). Again, if you don’t give your subscribers this option, you are treading dangerously close to SPAM territory.
Tell The Truth
Another way to ruin your business’s rep is to go back on promises that you’ve made to your subscribers. Anything that you tell your readers, from the length of a warranty to a product description to the amount of times they will be receiving an email from you, is a form of promise. Once you start breaking those promises, you may as well say goodbye to whatever reputation you had.
Keep It Fresh
The very first thing you learn when you enter the world of email marketing is: Content is King.
Everyone knows it. Some version of that phrase is in pretty much in every email marketing guide and article that has ever been written.
Why?
Because it’s true. The minute you start sending out sub par content is the minute your readers begin to lose interest in you, and your business will become stagnant, stale, and out of date. If you want to keep your reputation strong, deliver the fresh content every time.
About the Author: Daniel Cassady is an experienced freelancer, guest blogger, and frequent contributor to a blog hosted by Benchmark Email, one of theworld’s global email marketing company.
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Photo Credit: chintermeyer
The 3 Steps to Starting Your Email Marketing Off Right
Recently, Small Biz Bee posted 5 ways to bore your email marketing subscribers – what not to do. So the question is, what should you do to get results from your marketing emails?
The experts push for split testing and segmenting, and those are important – later. For now, if you only have a handful of subscribers and are still finalizing your initial set of messages, you need to start with the basics.
First, sight your goals
If you don’t have a clear destination, you’ll never get to it. Your message stream won’t be focused, your web forms may not match your follow ups and any inconsistencies may bruise your brand’s reputation.
“What are your goals?” is a broad, vague question. You may want to use these more focused questions to help you find your answers.
Once you’ve determined those goals at the end of a path ahead of you. What steps do you need to take to get there? List them out and scratch them off as you go. Stick to your path and eventually, you’ll get to your destination.
Then, decide how to track your progress
You can gather a whole lot of data on your campaign’s performance. Email service providers track opens, clicks, downloads and more, and Google Analytics provide even more depth.
In theory, this data shows you what to improve for better results in the future. But if you focus on all of it, you’ll be scrambling around tracking every upswing, downswing and flatline that appears, wasting energy instead of making decisive, effective improvements.
Instead, use those goals you’ve determined, you can figure out what you want to focus on tracking. This guide breaks it down.
This data can tell you a lot, especially if you have time to really break it down and make improvements based on the results you see, but it shouldn’t be your main focus – that should be somewhere else.
Focus your gaze on the people around you
It’s people who sign up for your emails, who buy from you, who link you up and talk you up when you wow them – or who, if you don’t impress, don’t.
So focus on them. If they reply to your email (you’re letting them, right?), respond. If customers ask for special treatment, give it to them (within reason).
If you have the time and manpower, link up with your supporters on Facebook or Twitter display your brand as more of a personality. (If not, focus on building relationships through email conversations.)
Once you get “there,” go further
That destination we mentioned earlier? I’ll tell you the secret to success. Don’t stop when you get there.
Reset your sights, perhaps on finding on ways to create emails efficiently or strategies to automate how your lists interact.
And by all means, make sure you go back to split test and segment. 
Photo Credit: Biscarotte
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Why Your Email Funnel Should Have a Custom Thank You Page & How to Start One if Yours Doesn’t
There are many reasons why you should consider creating a custom Thank You page for your email funnel. For one thing, a custom thank you page is more personal, creating a one on one atmosphere between you and your visitor. Read more
Job Search Best Practices – Keys to Landing Your Next Gig
Okay, folks, it’s true: losing your job can be a devastating experience. You can expect to go through a range of emotions, high and low. Chances are you will cycle through anger, fear, bafflement, acceptance, relief and even exhilaration. All of these will affect your mood.
However, your mood will not help you find a job. So, what will you do? Will you scan through the newspapers every day? Or, do you plan to fire off your CV or resume to prospective employers? Will you try to phone recruitment consultants–who may not even answer–because they are also laying off staff?
Well, guess what? That’s what everybody else is doing, and look where the crowd has landed up–in a limbo. Do you really want to be like them?
Or, will you choose to take a more proactive approach?
Proactive job search methods are different.
They include (but are not limited to):
- Networking for introductions to decision-makers in the company of your choice.
- Approaching employers directly.
- Volunteering for unpaid work experience in the expectation that your value to the company will be discovered and you will be offered a job.
Using a proactive approach to your job search increases the likelihood that you will be one of only a handful of applicants for a job. And the fact that you demonstrated initiative will stand you in good stead. Effective targeting is one of the two essential components of your job search–the other being, well, first-class self-presentation.
Target and Research
You cannot be proactive without targeting accurately, because you won’t know where to target your efforts. In order to target well, you need to know what companies are out there, and what you offer that they need. This means that you need good research.
Whichever industry or sector you are seeking to work in–whether a private company, public company, or voluntary organization–you need to know who the main players are, what is happening in their business or activity at the moment, what weaknesses they have–which you will be able to strengthen–and who their key decision-makers are.
Keys to a Successful Search
A successful job search requires you to carry out several activities simultaneously. Thus, you will need to be adaptable, flexible, imaginative and creative.
There is little doubt that networking is the most effective method for securing a new position. However, many people tend to shy away from it. After all, networking does not appear to be the first thing on your radar screen.
Even so, estimates among career professionals indicate that between 50 to 70 per cent of people get jobs through their contacts, and this figure rises even higher during recession.
By contrast, less than 20 per cent get their jobs using recruitment agencies or responding to advertising.
It is obvious why networking is even more effective during a recession. The very activity of recruiting someone is expensive. So, when times are tough–and firms are not sure whether they really need to fill a position–that can be enough to make them decide against creating a vacancy.
However, if you introduce yourself to them, and you have what they need, there there is a possibility that they will decide to give it a go and take you on a trial basis.
Networking gets you access to vacancies before they are advertised. Possibly, even before they are known. Once the recruitment process is in the hands of the HR department, it becomes much harder to secure an advantage through networking.
Try to establish contact while the recruitment process is still in its earlier stages. Networking is not about asking and taking. Rather, networking is a collaborative activity and it is self-perpetuating.
As you do it more, so your network grows, and this opens up opportunities that would not otherwise have presented themselves. Yes, even those opportunities which arise completely out of the blue.
Crucially, people generally like to help others if they can, especially if they can give advice. This is important to bear in mind. When you network, you are not asking for a job. Rather, you are asking for advice and expertise of a third party.
If you ask for a job, the process can lose steam: if someone can’t offer you a job, well, they can’t help you. So, don’t let fear hold you back. Just go out there, network, and it is only a matter of time before your career takes off.
About the Author: Archan Mehta is a freelance writer, outdoor enthusiast, meditation practitioner, foodie, and hobbyist, but does not maintain a blog yet. However, feel free to write to Archan at: archanm@hotmail.com
Photo Credit: Photomish
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Photo Credit: Mzelle Biscotte
5 Simple Ways to Optimize Your Email Marketing Campaigns
It’s easy to just shoot out any mass-email to people on your mailing list. If you have a high volume of emails, you’re likely to make some money from your campaigns. But if you have an email list, why not optimize your email campaigns?
You already have people’s information, and you can communicate with the 10,000 people on your email list better than you can with 10,000 new people who you’d have to somehow reach through other means (i.e. advertising, media, etc.). Optimizing your email campaigns means lower costs and more money in your pocket. There are many simple ways to make sure you’re making more from your campaigns.
1. Segment email subscribers into ‘buckets’
Understand their demographic, their purchasing preferences, if they’ve purchased before, and how well they received your product or service. Then tailor specific messages for each of the ‘buckets’ to give them relevant and interesting offers. Let them know you understand their situation and that you have the proper solution to their needs.
2. Record when customers last purchased and target times to re-sell
The customer needs time after they last received product to be ready to purchase again. Depending on your offering that time can be less than 1 day, a whole month, or maybe even a year. Make sure to follow up with them with new offers and deals when they are ready to purchase again to remind them to turn to you for needs fulfillment.
3. Depending on frequency, you will have to adjust your offers – more frequent emails mean more compelling offers
If you send an email immediately after someone has purchased something from you, you need to make sure the offer is compelling enough for them to pay you more money, because they are less likely to purchase again in that immediate time since they’ve just spent money with you. But you do not necessarily have to have less compelling offers if you email your list less frequently.
4. Test different email subject lines and body templates
Testing different headlines and messages is important to improving open rates and conversion rates. Send test emails (perhaps only to 5-10% of your email list) to see how well your consumers react to the different messages. Then you can figure out what are the best messages which will lead the remaining people on your email list to open and convert at a higher rate.
5. Have permission email lists – past customers, people that downloaded a whitepaper, signed up for an update, etc. Don’t buy databases and SPAM. No one appreciates that
Online consumers are becoming more and more tech- and web-savvy. They’ve learned to use their email filter better and have also learned to tune out most unfamiliar sales messages. Sure you can buy huge email lists, get a 0.01% open rate and a 0.005% conversion rate and get some sales because you played the volume game, but the quality of your email list will always be better if you opted for permission marketing. You also save money because you didn’t pay for a HUGE (and sometimes worthless) email list.
This article was written by the Chief Evangelist of Blank Label, Danny Wong.
Blank Label co-creates men’s dress shirts online for stylish professionals and suave dressers. You can read more about what he’s doing at Blank Label and fashion musings on the men’s fashion blog.
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