Showing posts with label email marketing. Show all posts
Showing posts with label email marketing. Show all posts

Thursday, 25 October 2012

How to build a successful email marketing campaign

Working with a number of different clients on a regular basis, we at eSellution have found that one of the best marketing tools at a business's disposal is still email marketing. Although some people believe email marketing to be ineffective and intrusive, if done correctly email marketing can still be one of, if not the most effective way to direct traffic to your ecommerce store. 

So how do you go about creating the best marketing email possible for your business?

Research

First you need to think about what you are going to send and who you are going to sent it to. Is it going to be a promotion email? is it going to advertise new products? or a sale you are running? Once you have determined what the message of your email is going to be, you next need to look at who is going to be your target audience. Determining who your target audience is involves looking at many different factors. Is the email going to be sent to current customers or people you are looking to bring to your store for the first time? Also, are the majority of your customers a specific gender, age or people who have certain interests? If so, then you are going to want to create an email campaign that has a certain message such as what style you are going to write it in, what colours you use and what images you are going to include. 

Attention

Grab their attention
right from the off
Right out of the gate you need to grab the attention of the reader. This not only needs to stand out in the subject heading and at the top of the email, it needs to also be written in a way that is going to entice the reader in and compel them to read through the rest of your email. The best way to think about this is to imagine you are reading a newspaper. When you scan through a newspaper, what compels you to read an article? Usually it will be either the headline or the image that goes with the article. The inbox of the recipient is exactly like a newspapers, lots of messages all vying for their attention. You need to choose a subject heading that is going to allow your email to stand out from the rest. 

However, while you want to make it as interesting as possible, don't over think it or try to be funny. Simplicity is key. While you may think something is funny and clever, the likelihood is that your recipient won't. Keep it clear and to the point, while also being able to get them interested. 

Interest

Once you have their attention, you next need to perk their interest. This basically means you should start giving them the information in regard to what it is you are offering. For example, if you are running an online clothes store, you may be sending out an email advertising a new clothing range or an offer you are running on your site. To grab their interest you will begin to give the reader more information about what it is your store offers and what promotion you are currently running.

As success for your ecommerce store comes in enticing customers to purchase your products through high quality images of your products, don't forget to include this in your email. Having various images portraying the message of the email is a great way to increase a reader's interest and make them desire what it is you are offering.

Desire

Creating desire is the crucial part of any email. You could grab their attention, perk their interest, but if you can't seal the deal and make them want what you have, you're not going to bring them to your site. You need to make them feel like they have to have what it is you are offering. Again, using the 20% off promotional email idea, you have already explained to the customer the type of store you run and perked their interest by letting them know you are having a 20% off sale, now you can create that desire by telling them exactly what products are part of this promotion. Even if you aren't actually trying to directly sell them something, the principles work the same no matter what the overall message of the email is. You need to be able to tell them why they need to act on this email. 

Call to action

Leaving them all worked up with no where to go is going to be a waste of time for them reading through the email and for you creating it. At the end of the email you should have a direct link, allowing the user to act on their desire. If it is an email advertising the products in your store, you would add a direct link to your ecommerce site. If it is to try and boost your social media followers, you would include links to your relevant social media pages. Whatever the message of your email is, there needs to be an appropriate call to action that allows them to carry out some form of action. 

Split testing

To allow you to get the best possible results from your email marketing campaign, you may want to carry out a number of split tests. Depending on the ecommerce software you use, split tests allow you to essentially send a small number of recipients emails containing different messages and different subject headings. You can then see which subject heading and which email content provided you with the most opens and the highest CTR. You can the combine both of these aspects and send them as one email to the rest of your recipients, ensuring you have an email that will be as successful as you can possible make it.

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Wednesday, 26 September 2012

Everything you need to know about email marketing

The success of your online store relies on the ability for you to correctly market both your products and brand in order to create an interest in your customers, which then results in them visiting your store and making a purchase.

One of the most important aspects of promoting your business, especially if you are a small business looking to establish yourself is through email marketing. This form of marketing allows you to not only make people aware of your business who may not have come across your store through other channels, but also allows you to constantly engage with your current customers in order to help them become repeat buyers.

A recent infographic produced by iContact, has proven that despite what some people may think about email marketing, the marketing technique is very much growing from strength to strength. While there are now a number of different ways people can communicate with each other through social media, mobile devices and other communication tools, many people are still using email as one of the primary sources of communicating with both individuals and businesses. This is underpinned by the fact it is predicted that there will be close to a billion new email accounts created within the next four years. Although the vast majority of these obviously won't be customers to your ecommerce store, it just demonstrates the potential email marketing still has in being able to effectively engage with your customers to generate sales.

The most attention grabbing aspect of this infographic is the statistic showing the average return on email marketing. For every 1 dollar that a store owner spends on their email marketing, it will generate on average $44.25. For any business, whether it's a large established business or a small online store looking to get on their feet, this ROI is unbelievable and substantially better than what you would find through any other paid marketing channel.

However, you shouldn't just use email marketing to bring in new customers. You should be using this channel to send content to people who have already purchased from your store on a regular basis. This means sending them surveys on how they found the purchasing process, the latest news about your store and any promotions or offers that you are currently running. This will not only help you create relationships with your customers, but it also actively engages them and encourages them to come back to your store time and time again.


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Monday, 10 September 2012

The complete small business guide to marketing

So you've took the big plunge and have decided to give online selling a go. You have selected what it is you want to sell, who your target customers are and have completely set up your online store. Now that everything is set up and ready to go, the next step is to actually make customers aware of your store's existence. This is where marketing comes in to play.

In today's ecommerce world, the number of different marketing strategies you can look to undertake are substantial. While some are more effective than others, each should be carried out to ensure you bring as many customers as you possibly can to your ecommerce store.

Email Marketing


Really this is the bread and butter of marketing. No matter what your online business is and what services or products you provide, this is something you should be looking to do on a regular basis. When sending out an email marketing campaign, you should be aware that not everyone of those recipients will even open the email, let alone click on the link to access your store. A successful email campaign will have around a 15% open rate and a 1% to 1.5% click through rate. This will mean that around 10% of all the people who are opening the email are actually clicking through to your store. Although this doesn't seem like much, if you are sending out the email to around 15,000 customers for example, it means you are going to get 2,250 people open the email and around 150-225 people click on a link and visit your online store.

What you don't want to do is simply send out the same email time and time again to various customers. The key to a successful email marketing campaign is to develop and refine each email based on the previous campaign to ensure you achieve the best possible success. For example, if your last email campaign had a low click through rate, on your next email you may look to include more links to your store within the email or change the message to one that may be more appealing to your audience.

Social Media Marketing


Has become probably the most popular form of marketing due to the number of potential customers you can reach. While many people use this platform to develop social commerce for their business, creating your own business fan page can be just as effective. As you gain followers to your social media page, you then share content with your followers giving them information about the products you have on sale as well as any sales or offers you are running, providing them with constant direct links to your site.

When a customer finds a product on your website that they like the look of, they can then share this product on various social media platforms such as Twitter, Facebook and Pinterest. This then allows a whole new audience who hasn't even visited your online store to see some of the products you have for sale. This is a great way to develop not only your customer base, but your brand, allowing a substantial audience to become aware of your store in a short space of time. While email marketing may be the first subject I have touched upon in this article, social media should be your first port of call for any new business. You will then be able to send out an email campaign, providing links in the email not only to your web store, but also to your various social media platforms.

Forums Interaction


No matter what it is your online store provides, there will be numerous forums out there specifically dedicated to that specific category. When setting up your online store, you should then visit these forums and begin engaging with the community. It's no good just going on and creating a thread about your business as most forums frown against self promotion and your post will be quickly deleted. What you need to do is interact with the community by offering advice and suggestions to other users posts. When doing this there is no harm is telling a user about your online store if it is something that will help them make a more informed decision. For example, if a user has created a post asking people to recommend them a good store to buy clothing products from, if your store sells clothes, you call tell them about your store as well as providing links for users to access. This way you are not only advertising your store to the person who created the thread, but also to all of the people who then view the thread.

Another way to advertise yourself on forums is to include all the links to your business both on your profile and in your forum signature. That way, even if you post on a thread that has nothing to do with your business, people will be able to see information and links to your store through your signature.

Telephone Marketing


This is something that may not be achievable, it all depends on the size of your business. Clearly, if it is just you running your own online business then you are going to be unable to have the time to carry out telephone marketing. If your ecommerce business is big enough that you are able to employ someone to carry out telesales then it could be a good marketing avenue depending on the skills of the salesman. What this means essentially is ringing up various people to inform them about the products and services you offer and how they can get involved. What you need to remember is that the conversion rate for this form of marketing is extremely low. Some days you may ring hundreds of people and only find a small handful that are interested in what you are selling. 

Mobile Marketing


With the increasing popularity of mobile commerce, the power of mobile marketing has grown leaps and bounds in the last few years. Although creating a mobile version of your ecommerce store is incredibly important in taking advantage of this selling platform, you should also look at how you can increase your sales with mobile marketing. The main form of mobile marketing comes as SMS marketing. This is rather similar to email marketing but rather than sending the message to a users email address, you are sending it to their phone as a text message. However, with SMS marketing you cannot use HTML or images, only basic text. Also, the space you have for your message is much less meaning your message needs to be sharp and concise. Depsite these negatives when compared to email marketing, its greatest strength comes in the awareness it creates. Unlike an email, as soon as the person receives the SMS, they are instantly exposed to the message it contains. While many people instantly delete emails they think are spam, very few people will delete any text message they receive on their phone without first opening it up to look at it. What this means is that even if the person decides to delete your message within seconds after opening up, your message and brand is still gaining much more exposure than you would have originally done has the message been via email. 

To run an SMS marketing campaign you must employ the services of an SMS marketing company. You will then provide them with the message you would like to send out to readers and they will then distribute the message to various mobile phones on your behalf. The amount it will cost you depends on how many people you want the message to be sent to. Many companies charge around 5p per message that is sent out.

Blogging


While this isn't a conventional marketing channel, it is a great way to not only increase your websites standing in search engines, but also make your brand aware to a large audience. The articles which you produce for your blog should be ones that are to do with subjects that are related to your business (just like this one), they shouldn't just simply be sales pitches. However, there is nothing wrong with providing links at the end of the article giving users information about products and services which may be related to the content of the article. For example, if you run an electronics store, you may write an article on the difference between LCD, LED and plasma televisions. At the end of the article you may then provide a link to the section of your online store which will allow users to view the latest sales and offers you have on those TVs.

Offline Marketing


While your store sells exclusively online, you shouldn't only be marketing your business online. Offline marketing has a number of different tools which can help increase sales and drastically improve your brand awareness. However, you will generally find that most successful forms of offline marketing cost substantially more than their online counterparts. There are a number of different offline marketing methods such as:

  • Radio Advertising - One of the most expensive forms of marketing as your message will be sent to literally hundreds of thousands of people. As this has a broad audience, it will depend on what you sell as to how successful this platform will be for your business. If the service or products you offer are only aimed at a specific niche group, then you may find that radio advertising might not be too successful.
  • Magazine Advertising - A better platform for those businesses who may offer niche services and products as you will be able to advertise your business in a magazine that is specifically to do with your business. For example, if you sell fishing equipment, you will be able to advertise your products and services in various fishing magazines, meaning that you ensure that people who read those magazines will be interested in what you have to sell.
  • Posters - A very basic form of marketing, but one which doesn't cost much to do. This involves creating a poster and then visiting local establishments to ask if it would be okay for you to put your advert up in their window. The poster should contain concise information about what it is your store offers and contact details as to how they can access your store online to make a purchase.
  • Networking Events - These are both local and national events where you can attend in order to take part is various seminars or network with other business owners. When attending these events it may be a good idea to have some business cards created with your name, store name, contact information and store URL on them. That way, when you introduce yourself to other people, you will be able to give them your business card, allowing you to make a more lasting impression. If you are business to business store then attending these events is of vital importance to ensure that you are increasing your brand and also making the initial relationships needed to help your store grow.
  • Television Advertising -Probably the most expensive form of marketing that you can have. The price you will pay is dependant on which television channel you want the advert to appear on as certains will have larger audiences. Television also allows you to create a more indepth advert than other methods, allowing you to provide more information as well as making it more entertaining. This is the best way to create your own brand identity but it is something that should only be undertaken once you have built up a good customer base. Essentially this is a marketing tool you should only use once you have achieved success in all other areas. 
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Friday, 31 August 2012

Mobile marketing and the power it holds - Statistics included

While everyone tends to use email marketing to advertise their online business and the products they sell, many business tends to overlook mobile marketing as they believe that this form of marketing bears very little results. In fact, in some cases mobile marketing can be a much better promotional tool than it's email counterpart.

Here are a few statistics that may help to open your eyes about how successful mobile marketing could be for your business:

  • 61% of local searches on a mobile device then result in a phone call
  • 52% of all advertisements seen on a mobile device result in a phone call
  • 91% of all mobile phone owners have their phones within arms length
  • By 2016 mobile marketing will make up 15.2% of all global online advertising 


Although pretty much everyone has an email account, some people may only check their inbox once day. In comparison, the average user checks their mobile phone over 100 times a day. This means that when you are sending out a mobile marketing campaign, you have a greater chance of your message being seen by a user than you would if you were to send it out by email.

Following on from this, to view an email, the user has to actually willingly click on the on the link to then open it up. This means that your email needs to be successful in two different stages, the subject heading and the message itself.  When a person receives a SMS message on their phone, generally the users will first have to open up the message to then delete it from their inbox. Not only does this give your message instant exposure, but it also increases the likelihood of your message being successful, as the will be instantly exposed to your message. Even if they decide to then delete the message, they will still have become aware of your brand. 

Another benefit of mobile marketing is the ability to incorporate other forms of marketing into the device. With over 835 million smartphone users worldwide all using their phones to send messages, view websites and interact through social media, the ability to reach your audience has never been greater. It isn't just SMS marketing that can have success of a mobile phone. With 44% of Facebook's 900+ million users accessing the platform on their mobile devices, if you decide to run a promotion on a social media site such as Facebook and Twitter, the user will receive a notification on their phone regarding the post, if they already follow you. This 44% are also twice as active on Facebook as those who access the social media site via their desktop computers. While this is not strictly mobile marketing, more social media marketing, it just gives you an idea of the potential all forms of mobile marketing hold in gaining a brand image for your ecommerce store.



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Tuesday, 28 August 2012

How to give your emails the best chance of success

When creating emails advertising your online business and the products you have for sale, having the right subject heading is going to make or break your email. When deciding on what your message will be, the subject heading should be one of the first things you consider. If the subject heading isn't right, it's not going to encourage customers to open it and your email is not going to be seen.

An infographic created by email marketing company, Mailer Mailer, looked at the different aspects which make up a successful email. They found that having a subject line of between 4 and 15 characters gives you the best chance of success when compared with other subject headings of varying character lengths. The heading between 4 and 15 characters was by far the most successful with an open rate of 15.2%. This means that for your online store, you should look to create an appealing message that is within this character limit. However, you do not want your email to sound spammy as it will put people off opening it. This means try to not have a subject heading such as "Buy, Buy, Buy" as it may seem, from the point of the recipient, to just be random junk mail rather than a great opportunity to purchase from your store.

While these statistics suggest that it's something that every business should be trying, it is very much something that is dependant on who your customers are. Some small businesses, such as eBay stores, tend to find that short subject headings don't work, discovering that they engage with their customers though more thought provoking headings, consisting of well over 30 characters. By all means you should try out the 4 to 15 character subject heading to see if it is just as successful for your business. However, if it doesn't work out well for you the first few times, don't keep doing it in the hope that it will eventually work. Sometimes less isn't always more. 

If you are able to come up with 3 or 4 different subject headings and just can't decide which one you would like to use, this is where split testing comes into play. This means sending out small test batches of emails containing the various different subject headings. You then measure the success of each different heading and then send the most successful to the rest of your customers. This ensures that you are using the most success subject heading you can, rather than sticking all of your eggs in one basket and just randomly trying with one message to see what happens. 

Once you have sent out your email marketing campaign, the best time to measure its success is generally within the first 16 hours. The research carried out by Mailer Mailer found that around 70% of the total opens for your email occur within the first 16 hours. This means that if after 16 hours you have not achieved round about the number of opens and click throughs you were looking for, you email message may not have been correct. If this happens don't panic, analysing where your email let you down is easy enough. If your message had a lower open rate than you initially wanted, it is an indication that your subject message is what let the message down and something you should look to change for future emails. If it is the click through rate that was low, then it is the message contained within the email and the external links you provided.

Here's something that may surprise you. The research carried out found that the best day to schedule your emails in order to achieve the best opens and click throughs is in fact Sunday. Now the reason for such a high success rate on the supposed day of rest could be because people simply have more free time on Sunday than they do on any other day of the week, so are more likely to take the time checking the emails and purchasing products from various ecommerce stores. 


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Tuesday, 14 August 2012

Mobile Marketing vs Online Marketing

Although many people now consider mobile commerce to be the new face of online selling, many people are still shunning this form or marketing, choosing to stick with traditional methods as they believe it is these tried and tested ways that will bring the best results. Although online marketing is still a strong promotional tool to increase your business's brand and customers, mobile marketing provides you with just as many benefits, if not more.

vs Email Marketing



When you send out an email marketing campaign, you will find that on average, 88% of all the emails aren't even opened by the recipients. If you send out the same message via SMS marketing on mobile phones, 98% of all messages will be opened. As you can see from these percentages, the amount of people who will become aware of your brand and your message is substantially more through mobile marketing than email marketing. 

However, although the open rate for mobile marketing is much higher than in emails, you may find that the percentage of those people who do open the message, tend to read the information in the email more than they would do in the mobile message. Generally, most mobile users have the predisposition that if they receive a text message that is not from a friend or someone they know, they instantly open the message and then delete it straight away without reading it. In comparison, people who open up an email marketing message, tend to do so after becoming interested in what the email contains, through the subject heading. As opposed to opening the text message to then delete it, people open up emails because they wish to find out what information the email contains. 

vs Social Media


One of the huge benefits of social media is the ability to interact with a huge audience in a number of different ways. 49% of all people in the UK use Facebook on a regular basis. In comparison, 91% off all adults use mobile phones. When you compare these two numbers, you can see the how many more people use mobile phones everyday as opposed to social media sites. While social media's user numbers are less than those who use mobile phones, it is still a substantial audience that you should be targeting for your small business as it is a platform that you can use for free. Whereas, mobile marketing will cost you a certain amount of money to first set up and then employ a third party company to send the SMS marketing messages on your behalf. . 

While I'm not saying abandon online marketing and only market through mobile phones, you need to ensure that you spend a substantial amount of time researching the various marketing campaigns and tailoring your output to suit both platforms. Emails, social media and mobile messaging all have difference audiences which require a different style of output and a different type of message. Tailoring your message to each platform is going to give you the best possible chance of engaging as many customers for your online store as you can through each marketing tool. 

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Wednesday, 8 August 2012

The future of ecommerce selling and customer engagement

Every few years there is the next big boom that is going revolutionise the face of ecommerce selling forever. First it was the creation of a website, then it was the introduction of social media and now it's the growth of mobile commerce. As it currently stands, one out of every ten sales made from an online store are through a mobile device and this is going to continually increase until eventually it surpasses online selling. 

With 27% of all adults in the UK now using smartphones, you should look to invest in mobile commerce for your store if you haven't already. If you don't know what mobile commerce is, essentially it is making your website mobile friendly. If a person goes on a site through a smartphone that isn't mobile friendly, the website is displayed as it would be if they were viewing it through a browser on your computer. Mobile commerce changes how your store will look on a mobile phone, making it easier to navigate through the different pages and purchase a product. 

If a person tries to purchase a product on their smartphone from a store that doesn't have mobile commerce, they are going to find it very tricky to actually purchase the item as they will constantly have to zoom in and go through a number of different pages to actually get to the checkout stage. Having a mobile friendly site allows customers to purchase products much easier without having to zoom in on any pages and only going through a few simple steps to purchase a product. 

Having a mobile commerce option for your online store will great improve your conversion rate on that particular platform as customers will no longer become frustrated and bored by a non-mobile friendly process. With the amount of customers purchasing items items through mobile phones set to continue increasing, it is pivotal that you have a mobile commerce store to truly maximise your sales. 

The increase in the number of smartphone users isn't just changing the way customers purchase products, it is also changing the way store owners target those customers. Mobile marketing allows you to dramatically increase the presence you have in the lives of your customers. The restriction with most other forms of marketing is that, to reach their audience, they would need to actually be sat in front of a computer screen or television. As people are sat within arms reach of their mobile phone for 90% of an entire day, mobile marketing is allowing you to instantly reach your customers at any time. This reach is further amplified through the use of SMS marketing. Although many people consider this form of marketing to be a bit like spam, it ensures that your message is reaching a large audience.  When carrying out an email marketing campaign, your email could be sent out and then placed in the rubbish bin by all of your recipients without them even looking at your message. The benefit of an SMS message is that pretty much all of the recipients will read your message and become aware of your store, even if they then decide to delete the message straight after.

There are many benefits to running and marketing your store across mobile platforms. If you haven't already begun incorporating mobile commerce in to your online ecommerce business, you should now be looking to take steps to ensure you are planning to develop the mobile commerce side of your business in the near future. 



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Wednesday, 1 August 2012

Marketing Campaigns: Make Sure the Time is Right

In recent weeks we have looked at how you can expand your online ecommerce store by carrying out a number of different marketing strategies to increase your traffic and sales.

While sending out marketing emails and posting content on social media is important in attracting new customers to your online store, the time of day you actually send out this material can have a big impact on how many people it reaches.

Different social media sites have different times of the day when they are most popular, some are popular during the day, while others may only have increased activity during the morning and evening. It is important to send out your content during the peak times for each platform to ensure maximum exposure. If you send out content during a period of the day when this platform is quiet, you are going reach much less customers. 

In order to plan out when and where you are going to send out your marketing material, lets take a look when certain platforms are at their busiest.

Facebook 


One of the biggest social media platforms with over 900 million users. However, most of these users will only check their accounts on the morning and on an evening during the week due to work commitments. For this reason, you should look to post share your content on Facebook at around 8-9am in the morning and 5-6pm in the evening. This will ensure that your content is seen by the highest possible amount of users that 'like' your page. 

While the majority of businesses operate during the week, try to also take advantage of Facebook's weekend traffic. Now, I know that after a long week of working hard, the last thing anyone wants to do is spend time posting work during our time off, but releasing content on a weekend is going to seriously help your overall exposure. Facebook receives the majority of its traffic during the weekend as most people tend to have more free time than during the week. However, the same time frame during the week also applies during the weekend with one exception. Saturday night is probably the busiest time for people during the week, meaning that a large amount of people will be out socialising with friends on an evening rather than going on Facebook. Look to send out your content during the mid-morning period between 9-11am. This will make sure your content is seen by people on the morning, but will also be fairly high up on peoples news feeds during the mid afternoon period. 

Twitter


While Twitter has much less followers than Facebook with 175 registered users, the times of use are much more frequent. Twitter tends to be something that people use ongoing throughout the day, with the lowest traffic periods tending to be on an evening. To ensure maximum potential reach you should look to send out your content anywhere between 8am and 7pm.

If you have a large amount of content to send out such as numerous articles or sales information, look to spread your content out during the day. As Twitter is platform that people use for the entire day, spreading your content out across this period ensures followers are aware of your business throughout the day, rather than just getting two of three posts in the morning and forgetting about it later.  

Email Marketing


For any small business, email marketing is still the most effective way to reach customers based on the number of customers reached and the cost to send out the content. Like Twitter, most businesses tend to only monitor their working hours. Also, first thing on the morning is when people go through the majority of their emails. Sending out your emails on the evening, will result in them not getting read until the morning. By that time they will be in the pile with the rest of the other marketing and information emails that other businesses have sent out, reducing the impact your email will have.

For the best results you should look to send out your emails during midday, so roughly between 12-2pm. This will allow your emails to be opened during that afternoon, meaning you will no have your emails grouped up with other marketing emails the next morning. 

Mobile Advertisements


While this is something that tends to be only used by bigger businesses as it can cost a lot to be effective, with 10% of all purchases made on your phone, it is definitely something any business should start to consider for future marketing plans.  Like all other marketing platforms, mobile advertisements are no different in having its own time of the day when it is successful. However, what time of day this is exactly is dependent on what type of business you run. For example, if your business provides food services, you should look to have your adverts appear during breakfast, lunch and dinner times as these are the periods of the day when the majority of people tend to be thinking about food. While if you run a clothing store, evening and weekend advertisements may be the way to go as these are the periods of time when people tend to have more free time to browse and purchase products. 

Getting the right message, to the right audience and at the right time of the day, is going to ensure that your marketing campaign receives maximum exposure, ultimately resulting in greater traffic and hopefully increased sales. 

eSellution: www.eSellution.co.uk
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Thursday, 26 July 2012

The Subject is Everything!

When people are creating an email marketing campaign to promote their online business or store or the products they sell, many tend to focus on the actual content within the email. They want it to be bright, colourful, inviting and informative, giving the recipient as much information as they can to entice them to visit their store.

Obviously, what is in your email is incredibly important, but many people tend to focus so much on this aspect of the campaign, that they overlook all other parts of it, particularly the subject. 

The subject of an email is the tag line or heading for that specific email. This is the first thing a person will see when they come across your email. Your subject line is literally the difference between your email campaign being a success or a failure! You could have the most amazing, insightful and enticing content within the email that would make countless readers flock to your site instantly, but if your subject doesn't engage and create interest, this content will never been seen. It won't be clicked on, it won't be opened, it will simply be sent straight into the users trash bin.

Starting to see how important the subject is? Having a good subject heading will give your email the best chance of success, meaning you won't have wasted your time creating something that isn't even seen.

When setting up an email marketing campaign, once you know the message you want to include within your email, you next need to focus on how to draw them into that content through the subject line.

But how do you know what is a good subject line? 

A good subject line should be engaging, thought provoking and above all appealing, it needs to stand out from the crowd, instantly urging you to click on it. However, with the shear amount of email marketing that sent to customers on a daily basis, by trying to stand out, you simply become one of the masses. 

What I mean by this is that everyone is looking for this edge that will help their email stand out in your inbox. For example, if you are running a promotion or a competition for your store, you may think that having the subject heading "WIN WIN WIN" is going to be a great way to catch the customers eye, enticing them with the chance for free products. In fact, when people see this type of heading, they instantly think that your message is spam and will more often than not send the message to the it of despair that is the trash bin.

How do you find the right subject line?

The best way to find the right subject line for your business is through the use of spread marketing. This works by sending test emails to a small number of customers to gauge the success of the subject. For example, if you have a email subscriber list of  20,000 customers, you may create five different marketing emails, each consisting of a different unique subject heading. You will then send each of these emails out to 1,000 different customers. After the emails have been send out, you will the be able to see how successful each email was in enticing the recipient to open it up. 

Once you have determined which is the most successful subject heading, you then send the email with that heading to the rest of your 15,000 subscribers. This will give your email marketing campaign the best chance of succeeding. 

When embarking on an email marketing campaign, preparation is key to success. Randomly sending out emails here and there is going to result in you receiving little success. Take the time to plan out an email, test out the different parameters and ensure that you are doing everything you can to make it a success. Monitoring the opens, traffic and other statistical data that your email generates will give you a good indication as to the success of each  email campaign.

While the content within the email is important remember that the other aspects of the email are just as important such as the subject, when you send it out and who you send it to. 
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Tuesday, 10 July 2012

The Mobile Movement - Latest Technological Advancements


The latest infographics on how mobile is paving the way for digital marketing advancements

Digital Marketing is changing.  In an innovative, technologically advanced market such as mobile; its hardly surprising that new and more elaborate trends are emerging and changing the way businesses market.  If you plan to succeed and compete in this industry, I suggest you take note!
econsultancy.com posted a very useful article regarding mobile trends including global usage, mobile search, email and mobile commerce growth statistics.

Mobile Email


Marketing


As the number of people opening emails via their smartphones escalates (Per e-mail 9.29% of total opens comes from mobile devices, with an 80% growth from the previous six months of email opens via mobile devices - June 2011), it is imperative that your email marketing blasts are "mobile friendly".  Top tips highlighted to achieve this include:
  1. Enlarge fonts 
  2. Ensure the scale meets the screen size
  3. Enlarge the "call to action" font
  4. Streamline and simplify headers and design
  5. Minimise images to avoid blocking
  6. Put across a short and concise message
  7. Use a single-column template 
  8. Be touch screen simple - large links for fingers to click 
It is also essential that before you send out your email campaign, you assess how the mobile OS (Operating System) will handle and be viewed in each of the different smart phone devices, see image below:


 
Email Opens


litmus.com also found that a huge 97% of emails are only viewed once, further supporting the notion that there is no second chance, make your message count!









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