Optimize your E-mail Marketing for Social Results (via Mashable)
Posted by admin
Marketers plan to increase spending on e-mail and social media marketing more than any other tactics in 2011, according to a recent survey.
As marketers find opportunities to build audiences, conversation and conversions with clever cross-promotion between the two mediums, e-mail and social media tactics are becoming increasingly popular and intertwined.
Incentives Drive Clicks and Conversions
Dingo, a pet food company in Ohio, created a promotion that rewarded customers with a $20 coupon if they signed up for the company’s newsletter and “Liked” its Facebook Page, with the catch being that the page needed to get to 5,000 fans (from a base of around 300) for the promotion to kick in. Mike Halloran, the owner of Dingo, says it reached its goal within three days, as pet owners found out about in the Dingo newsletter and forwarded it to their friends and “liked” Dingo on Facebook.
Of all channels, e-mail marketing and social media go hand in hand better than any other, getting your customers to share your message with friends is the most effective way to grow your business.
The company’s e-mail newsletter — which has more than 100,000 subscribers – recently featured a promotion to win a free bike, helmet and messenger bag to fans of the company’s Facebook Page. So far, the opportunity has driven more than 6,500 clickthroughs to the giveaway, versus just nine clicks (yes, nine) to the company’s prompt that encourages e-mail subscribers to become Facebook fans.
Promotion Works Both Ways
These promotions can also work the other way, however. Shoe retailer Crocs not only promotes social media through its e-mail newsletter, but also promotes its e-mail newsletter through social media. For example, the company will inform its Twitter followers or Facebook fans about a special offer that’s only available to newsletter subscribers. The company also lets Facebook fans sign up for its e-mail newsletter from an app that’s built into its page, something that Andrea Stow, senior global eMarketing manager for Crocs, says has resulted in a “gigantic leap in our e-mail subscribers.”
Stow continues, “Our strategy is understanding and knowing that there might be duplicates [subscribers to multiple mediums] — but the more customer touch points, the better conversion we’ll have.”
That reach, says Stow, gives Crocs the ability to stay in touch with customers year round — important for a company that only expects its average customer to buy new shoes two or three times per year at most.
E-mail Will Only Get More Social
Although companies like Crocs, Timbuk2 and Dingo are still relatively early movers in the integration of e-mail and social media.
Concludes Schmulen, who was also a co-founder of NushellMail, “What we’re seeing today [is the] social call to action [becoming] the primary call to action inside of newsletters.” Expect that trend to continue as marketers start to realize the benefits of doing so and technology providers continue to integrate e-mail and social tools into one package.
4 Best Practices for Email Marketing
Posted by Ryan Johnson
Curious about email marketing? Wondering if you are bombarding your customers, or not sending enough? Take a look at these 4 best practices for email marketing and let us know what you think!
1. Best Time of Day
Easy answer? There is none. However, we can advise you not to send emails on Monday mornings — human beings on average don’t crack our first smiles until 11:16 a.m. that day. An overstuffed inbox would just further delay the process.
On the other hand, perform some basic analytics about your business’ customers or users. Does your blog or business target parents? Send an email update on Sunday evenings when the family is relaxing with a movie. Do many of your purchases come from another country? Consider setting your email updates to that time zone. Does your service list weekend events? Don’t wait until 4:55 p.m. on a Friday afternoon to send invites.
Sure, many of these tips seem to follow common sense. But as an avid online shopper, you’d be surprised how many emails from Urban Outfitters I delete while feeling the crunch of a Tuesday afternoon deadline. Perform basic demographic analysis: as a gamer, financial analyst, retiree, college student, etc., when would you be most likely to click through promotional emails?
2. Best Wording
“Check this box if you’d like to receive our newsletter.” Let’s point out everything wrong with this all-too-common option: It’s vague, it’s boring and it lacks incentive.
First off, encourage customers to opt-in by advertising what your company’s email newsletters will include. Maybe your company allows its customers to subscribe to specific lists, designated by interest or gender, for example. Can they expect promotions, deals and product updates? Make sure to emphasize the inherent value in receiving regular email notifications from you.
Second, use punchy language to turn vague into enticing. Subject headings are key in this regard — weekly newsletters with identical subject lines lack click appeal. If customers get the feeling they’re about to read the same thing they read in a previous email, they won’t open it in the first place. Instead, highlight the most important or eye-catching piece of news or product update in the subject line. After all, SEO is key these days.
Finally, customers love a good deal. When inviting customers to subscribe to or open an email newsletter, be sure to emphasize savings. Not only do JetBlue’s $39 flight subject headings get me every time, they inspire me to daydream about travel in the first place.
3. Best Unsubscribe Etiquette
Consider that 91% of email users who have subscribed to a company’s email newsletter later decide they no longer want to receive the emails. Bleak, but useful data.
Even more telling, 54% of email subscribers say they unsubscribe when they feel the emails come too frequently. It’s important to be upfront with subscribers about the frequency that email newsletters will appear in their inbox. Depending on the customer’s interest level, even weekly may be too often. Consider offering several options for email frequency. If a customer clicks the unsubscribe button, try to sell them on a lower frequency mailing.
Which brings me to my next point: Sooner or later, you are going to get dumped. But, you can go out the bigger person. My biggest pet peeve is having to search for or jump through hoops to unsubscribe. Etiquette, business integrity — and most importantly, the law — demand that you always give customers the right to opt out.
That doesn’t mean, however, that you can’t ask that customer her reason for unsubscribing. A simple check-box survey can provide information as to why your audience is vacating: unsubscribe explanations can include email frequency, irrelevance, repetition or product dissatisfaction, and they can help you improve the experience for remaining and potential subscribers.
4. Best Ethics
One of the most controversial debates around email involves a user’s opt-in confirmation. Users and security filters alike usually consider spam any email users didn’t approve for delivery. Your business should steer a wide berth away from unethical email solicitation practices as well.
Not only will the unethical use of email addresses earn your business a bad reputation, but chances are those users will be part of the 91% who unsubscribe anyway.
The trick is making your newsletter’s content engaging and valuable while maintaining your integrity.
:Courtesy of Mashable
5 Reasons to Use an Email Service Provider (ESP)
Posted by Michael Herman
Email marketing has been around for over ten years now, but with all the changing technology available, there are many new techniques and strategies you can apply to email in order to achieve an even higher ROI and conversion rate than was attainable in the past! In fact, one of the MOST important things you can do for your email marketing campaign is to invest in an ESP, or email marketing service provider. Even if your email list is small, start out with a reliable ESP so once your list grows to a few hundred or more recipients, you'll have the technology already in place to automatically handle subscribes, bounces, and deliverability issues!
Here are a quick list of reasons you should be using an ESP instead of a regular email client such as Outlook.
1. List Management: Make it easy for yourself and others to subscribe to your list! With ESP's you can automatically have new contacts added through your website, Facebook page, and more! As you are growing your list quickly, this will be very helpful!
2. High Deliverability: Your email client is not meant to sent out bulk emails to contacts and your messages may end up labeled as spam by ISPs, not even arriving into your recipients' spam folders, much less their inboxes. ESPs are approved by ISPd as a legitimate, CAN SPAM compliant, permission-based email delivery service.
3. Ability to Create and Send HTML Messages: Most ESPs include several well-designed HTML templates for you to customize and use for your email campaigns. Save these templates to use over and over again so all of your messages are consistent!
4. Segmented Lists and Personalization Features: Target those individuals on your list with messages that are most relevant to them. This increases your click-thru and conversion rates - therefore increasing your ROI! With ESPs you can easily insert your recipients' name, company name, past purchase history and other information directly into the message or subject line!
5. Automatic CAN SPAM Compliance: ESPs make CAN SPAM compliance easy by automatically inserting your physical address and unsubscribe information in the footer of the email, as well as automatically removing unsubscribes immediately so that you are in compliance with the 10 day rule!
There are so many other features that make an ESP your top choice for your email marketing! Give us a call and we can review more with you!
The Best of 2010 – Email Marketing Campaigns
Posted by Michael Herman
Every year I see hundreds of great email campaigns sent from clients, and one of my favorite things about being an Account Manager is seeing how our clients utilize Digital Street's email marketing platform to it's fullest potential.
Below are five of my favorite email campaigns that were sent out through Digital Street. All of these email campaigns have a very clean feel to them, not too much clutter! It is also important for companies to maintain their brand identity by staying consistent. Sending out entirely new looking emails every other week is only going to distract your contacts from remembering your brand!
Digital Marketing in 2011
Posted by Michael Herman
With the rise of digital marketing, it can leave you wondering how you can improve your web presence and where to start! Let us give you some quick tips....
The Obvious Social Network Route
As the movie The Social Network hit screens, the time came to reflect on the phenomenal success of Facebook and other social media sites. Facebook has an estimated 500 million users and this is likely to increase even further. Twitter now has well over 100 million users and is attracting an average of 300,000 new users a day. This makes it plainly obvious as to your main 2011 social media strategy. Facebook seems to attract users in the ‘right’ age group for marketing purposes, so dedicate a considerable amount of your budget towards setting up campaigns both on Twitter and Facebook.
Video Kills The Behind The Times Company
Yet it is important to push yourself to the front of the queue when it comes to jumping on the video marketing bandwagon. A recent whitepaper by Cisco suggested that more than half of all web traffic will be video-related by 2014. The days of the 30 second advert are dying out with more and more consumers skipping these dull and unimaginative productions. Sites like YouTube need to used more frequently with thought provoking and lengthier adverts the key to success. If you want someone to buy your cereal, don’t depict a happy family with 2.4 children eating the product by the kitchen. Edgy, new and deep will sell in future where fast, predictable and cheesy once ruled.
Email And Mobiles
As one might expect, email marketing is moving with the times. An extraordinary 97% of American households use email so a well constructed email campaign will reap dividends. It is a fact that social networks such as Facebook, YouTube and Twitter are being integrated with email. The smartphone, Android and iPhone are linking even more users to their mail. The challenge facing digital marketers is to find a way to tailor their campaign for customers who view their email on a mobile device. The best strategy is to use a tool such as Litmus to find out more about your audience and tailor your campaign to them. This is necessary because it is difficult to find a current strategy that will work well for all mobile users.
SEO Is Still King
Believe it or not however, despite the huge budgets set aside for the all of the above, Search Engine Optimization (SEO) is still top of the list when it comes to 2011 digital marketing tactics according to a poll carried out by Top Rank. Yet in order to get your content to the top of the search engine ladder, you still have to know your targets and audience. If you know your audience but not their triggers, start surveying. If you know what you want to market but have no idea to who, check out sites like eMarketer for market statistics. It should be remembered that no amount of marketing will work if your content is poor, sort it out. Oh, and avoid those nasty “please stay on my page and click on cancel for something special” pop-ups, these REALLY annoy consumers!
So where will this leave your marketing strategy for 2011? All four of these pieces will make your marketing plan come together and keep up with the ever-changing trends for digital marketing.
Connect
Pages
Tags
Categories
- Digital Marketing
- Email Marketing
- Food and Beverage
- Google updates
- internet marketing
- Real Estate
- Search Engine Optimization
- SEO
- Social Media
- SXSW
- Technology
- Video Channel
- video marketing