Eureka Email Marketing Sunny Side Up

Help! I want more subscribers, but I'm not doing anything right.

Here are some common mistakes that others make:

1) Uncooperative website.

You are fixated on your open rates and miscellaneous metrics, and forget to make sure your sign up "call to action" is visible on your website. Or your web developer is not your friend.

2) No promises.

You ask people to blindly opt-in without providing compelling reasons for them to do so.

3) Overly nosy

You ask way too many questions on your opt-in forms.

4) Being shady

You don't provide a privacy policy and/or don't detail what you will and won't do with your subscribers information.

5) Not seeing other opt-in opportunities.

You did not include everyone in your organization on your opt-in strategies. Front desk, support desk, accounts and admin, networkers, telemarketers....the list goes on.

6) Badly designed offline opt-in forms

You  provide little scrappy forms at your front desk that do not provide enough space for email addresses.

7) Unfinished business

You don't add opt-in's collected from your offline forms because they are a pain to decipher. You may find that they have piled up so much that it may be 3 months later that subscribers are finally included.

8) Crappy content

You provide such crappy content that no one wants to forward your emails to their friends.

9) Really crappy content

You provide such crappy content that people unsubscribe in droves.

10) Simply hostile

You go with one click unsubscribe, and have no strategy to persuade anyone to stay a bit longer.

"Here's another e-zine you might find more relevant"

Well done! You've just done yourself out of a job.

-- What else are you doing wrong? Let's make this list grow to 20 points.

The subject line -- Is there a science to it?

A recent research of subject line effectiveness in over one billion emails shows that shorter subject lines do generally perform better than longer ones.

In addition to subject line length, the study suggests that subject line word order, word choice, brand and audience awareness are also critical success factors. Additionally, it is crucial that marketers perform subject line testing to increase open and click rates.

Too little time may be spent thinking about and testing subject lines, compared to the resources and time devoted to content. The reality is that more people will see a subject line than its accompanying creative.

1) Put the most important information at the begining.

2) Keep the subject line short, but convey the message.

3) Use longer subject lines only if you have to.

4) When in doubt, test.

If you would like to conduct a test, you will need to divide your list to 10%, 10%, 10%, 70%. Try 3 different subject lines to the first 3 lots of 10% and then use the subject line that generate the most opens for the 70%.

This is known as A/B testing in the industry.

E-newsletter trumps all in B2B email marketing.

A subscriber to an e-newsletter is more valuable than one that has subscribed to promotions.

The "call to action" is short-lived in promotional emails and customers unsubscribe more often.
Quite simply customers see promotional emails as spam when the need for the products are no longer relevant to their current needs.

Maintaining and extending customers life cycle is the motto of B2B businesses. Which is why B2B marketing predominantly use e-newsletters because their content and format focuses on retention.

Apart from nurturing current customers, e-newsletters are highly effective in shortening the sales cycle. When potential customers sign up as subscribers they provide you with permission to keep the relationship alive. These subscribers are your low hanging fruit.

Businesses that previously sent out printed newsletters are moving faster than ever to an online approach. Often the key driver is the cost savings, but the available metrics and the obscenely obvious ROI quickly elevate it from a mere cost cutting exercise.

Also businesses who in the past weren't publishing newsletters at all, are now getting on board as this media has become an affordable option to catch up on their stronger competitors, and as technology has made the step much easier.

Even businesses that don’t have have an e-newsletter strategy in place are adding an opt-in form to their websites in an attempt to capture potential contacts in advance of implementing this highly effective strategy.

Spam thoughts for breakfast.

Every morning I read my cereal box while eating my breakfast. You do that too? How uncanny!

Here is the wisdom:

As an email marketer, every morning you must read your junk mail's subject lines. Unlike any other netizens, your job MUST include receiving spam. Spam is your Friend. They teach you what spammy words to avoid today.

If you are lazy you can google spam words list, but its nothing like having it first hand 8AM in the morning.

So keep your junk filter on and visit daily. It is your treasure trove.

And if you are one of the smarter marketers make sure your email service provider automatically checks for spammy words before a broadcast.

Finding art in the subject line.

Working in tandem with the from line, the content of a subject line is one of the the key determinants for whether a recipient will open an email, delete it immediately, ignore it, file it for future access, report it and/or filter it as spam.

The subject line content is also a major component in the algorithm of many ISP and recipient-level spam filters. In other words, a poorly written subject lead may not only go un-opened, it may not even reach the recipient’s inbox in the first place.

Six points to keep in mind when determining your subject line:

1) Tell it as it is

Subject lines should convey something important, timely or valuable; and should say to the recipient: "If you don’t open and read this email, you’ll miss out on something of real value."

2) Create Curiosity

Your email is competing with 50 to 100 or more other emails for the recipients’ attention. To increase the chance of having YOUR email be opened it must intrigue the recipient, the same way a well written headline does. It must stimulate some part of the recipient’s brain, prompting them to open the email immediately.

3) Gain trust

Your subject line can support or hurt your brand image. Subject lines that over promise or mislead will ultimately destroy trust with recipients, damaging your brand and driving customers away.

4) Be relevant

While your emails may be distributed to thousands or millions of recipients, they are being received by individuals. Subject lines must recognize this and "speak" to the needs and interests of your recipients as individual customers, readers or prospects.

5) Togetherness (Subject Lines and From Lines Must Work Together)

Largely because of the dramatic increase in spam email in the last year or two, recipients increasingly look at a combination of the from and subject lines to determine whether it is from a trusted source. As a result, the job of a subject line now must not only entice someone to open an email, it must discourage the recipient from deleting it as an unwanted email.

6) Avoid the Generic:

Too many people get lazy and simply write something along the lines of: Newsletter for XYX Company, Edition 12. I can almost hear the collective yawn of subscribers immediately followed by the resounding click of the delete button. You have probably spent considerable effort putting the content of your newsletter or campaign together so don’t attach it to lead weight for a subject line.

Considering how much time this subject line will spend in the inbox of the reader before getting opened or deleted, getting it right is crucial.

Voila! This is the art of writing a Subject line.