Five Common Email Marketing Mistakes

photo by Megan Ann

I've posted several email checklists before but I think it's always important to master the basics first before you move on to advanced techniques for you email marketing campaigns. When you have an opt in email list, you have a valuable asset that should be generating you recurring revenue every time you use it. If you abuse it, then you risk the opt out and won't get another chance to sell to someone who was interested in your product.

1. Using Words in Your Subject Lines that Trigger Spam Filters - Your email marketing message is completely worthless if it never gets there. Keep these words out of your email subject lines for better deliverablity.
2. Using Only Images and Little to No Text - Many users block all images in their emails. Some of them have email programs which do this automatically to every email address that hasn't been whitelisted. Don't assume your email list will have the images turned on or even that they'll turn them on to see what you sent. If you do, they may end up looking at a blank emails and you'll always get lower response rates.
3. Designing an email as if it's a website - This should be a simple email marketing campaign. Sure it needs to reflect your company branding but leave out the flash, javascript and any bells and whistles so that the message gets across and the email is rendered.
4. Adding the Wrong Reply Email - Yes, it happens. Sometimes by accident and sometimes even on purpose because people want to try and avoid spam filters. It's a bad idea.
5. Missing Information - Don't leave out the from name and contact information and especially your links back to your landing page.

Contact Orange Email Marketing for a free consultation about email marketing, bulk email software, email lists and online marketing.

Email Marketing Basics That Always Improve Results

photo by woodleywonderworks

In life, many times the "basics" still work. Saying please and thank you, treating others how you wish to be treated, drink water to be healthy, everything in moderation; so many of these things still apply.

In email marketing, the basics still work also. You need to make your campaigns look better for the boss? Let's go over a few basics that will always improve the results of any campaign.

• Scrub Your List - If you're wasting your time and resources sending to people who have no interest in what you offer, this will save time and increase both response and deliverability. Remove names from your email address list which have bounced three consecutive times.

• Segment Your List - So you've got a nice big list that you own. What if you could break your email list rental down into 6-10 segments which you can now send more customized relevant emails to? Your response rates will go up, guaranteed. You opt-outs will also drop.

• Write Good Subject Lines - Keep them short and sweet and make it clear what is in those email marketing messages. Look over your old campaigns to see what worked before.

• Find the Perfect Frequency - If you send too many emails you're asking for trouble. What is best for you? It depends on your market. Once again, the best thing to do is TEST. It might be once a month, twice a month or once a week. Test the response, track your results and then stick with your schedule.

• Send Emails on the Right Days - What are the right days? We've been seeing good results on Mondays and Tuesdays. Some clients actually see good results on Saturdays. Others on Thursday. Again, test for the best response and then stick to that day.

If you always follow these rules you'll always see the best results. Keep track of your data from your email blast software so you can see what is working and then stick to it. Sure your new campaign may be brilliant and your anxious to send it today, but if your data shows it's better to wait until Monday, then wait, or you're just lowering your success rate.

To learn how you can use OrangeFire Email Marketing Software to manage your email newsletter campaigns, please contact Orange Email Marketing.

Are You Sending Customers to Your Landing Page or to Your Home Page?

photo by derektabq

So you've got your email marketing campaign running. If you're really working hard to drive traffic then you may also have a PPC marketing campaign running as well. This is great! You've just laid down the tracks for an email blast of traffic to arrive at your website.

But where do those tracks lead? What will they find when the get there?

It seems simple. You're sending them to your website of course. The majority of email marketing campaigns are sending their clicks to "MyBussines.com", which seems like a good idea but may not actually be the best place to send them. You've spent all this time segmenting your email list, but then you don't segment your traffic! Why not?

You could be segmenting your traffic to different landing pages. If you're like most businesses, you offer more than one product or service. When your client clicks on a specific offer on your email campaign, they're saying "Yes, I want to learn more about this product or buy it right now".

Now what do you do then? Are you responding with "Let me take you to the front door of my store" or are you saying "Let me take you right to the aisle in my store where you will find exactly what you're looking for". BIG DIFFERENCE!

Can you guess which clickthrough is has a better chance of turning into a sale? That's right, the customer who was taken directly to what he was looking for is more likely to buy. It seems simple, and it is, yet so many marketers get this wrong.

When you send them to the home page of your site, you're probably giving them a whole bunch of options to choose from, a series of doors they have to walk through to get what they're looking for. If you want to make the sale, you have to make it as EASY as possible for your visitor to take the intended action.

Maybe the action isn't to buy, maybe you just want an email signup, maybe your want their contact info so you can do a follow up call. Whatever it is you want them to do, send them right to it! Remove all barriers to the desired action. Don't just count on the fact that they'll find it themselves. Don't make them search for it. Don't think that if you just drop them off on the main page, maybe they'll buy something else too. If you lead them to what they want and fulfill they need they want right now, they WILL come back on their own and buy more, or you'll get a chance to do a follow up later. For right now, GIVE THEM WHAT THEY WANT!

-----

For more information on email marketing or landing page design, please contact Orange Email Marketing for a free consultation.

Cross Promote With Your Email Newsletter

photo by Patrick Boury

An email newsletter is a great way to cross promote the other products and services your company offers.

Your email newsletter is for the soft sell; to establish and build your customer relationships, to showcase your authority in the marketplace. Your email list of newsletter subscribers are all people who have signed up to learn more about your company and to receive news. All you have to do is give them what they want.

The newsletter is the perfect place to introduce a new product or service to you readers. It doesn't even have to be a new product; you can write about an old product simply by speaking about a new feature, a redesign, a case study, a client success story and countless other ways. This helps you cross promote an older product to a newer customer without having it come off like you're trying hard to make the sale.

Writing up a client success story is a great way to cross promote your services to other clients. It acts as not only a testimonial but also demonstrates how others could also make money or improve ROI by using your service. That's what everybody wants to know anyway, "How will it benefit me?". Just demonstrate how it has benefited others.

Your satisfied customers won't mind giving you permission to write about them if you can offer them a benefit in the deal. If they're really happy customers, sometimes they'll just appreciate helping you out by being a case study. If it takes a little extra, usually the free publicity from knowing their business name will be blasted out to the thousands of monthly readers of your newsletter is incentive enough. Perhaps you could offer a discount on their next order to sweeten the deal. It shouldn't be hard to find a solution that can benefit both your customer and your business at the same time.

To learn how you can use OrangeFire Email Marketing Software to manage your email newsletter campaigns, please contact Orange Email Marketing.

Use Email Newsletters for the "Soft Sell"

photo by Paulo Brabo























A Newsletter is Not for the Hard Sell

If you are looking at your email newsletter as another chance to sell, then you should "dial down the sales pitch" because people have different expectations from newsletters. Your typical email marketing campaign is an appropriate place for your promotions, offers and trying to make a sale.

With the newsletter though, you should be approaching differently, and if you do, you'll see better results AND make the sale. It's a NEWS-letter, not a sales letter.

This should be a place for the "soft cell". Consider it like meeting a person at a cocktail party and they ask you about what you do. They seem interested so you tell them about your business. You have a friendly exchange, tell him a funny or interesting story and you give them your business card before parting.

There will be a chance to do a follow up another time, for now you just want to make a good impression and leave your potential future customer thinking "He was a nice guy. He seemed to really know what he was talking about. I should give him a call and see what he can do for my business."

You don't want to abuse your email list with too many offers, and you don't want to abuse your newsletter subscriber with the hard sell. The newsletter is a way to communicate messages and information without being "overly promotional". You don't need to. By showing them your knowledge, giving them useful free information and maybe even being a little fun and irreverent, you ARE promoting your business.

To learn how you can use OrangeFire Email Marketing Software to manage your email newsletter campaigns, please contact Orange Email Marketing.

Email Newsletters Build Customer Relationships

photo by Wonderlane

If you are not already utilizing email newsletters for your business, you should be. Email newsletters are a great way to build a relationship with your customers. It's a cost effective way to expand your email marketing campaign without appearing like you're trying to do a "hard sell" to your email list subscribers.

Email Newsletters have a higher open rate than your typical email marketing campaign. This is because your email list rental expect something more interesting than a promotional pitch when they get your newsletter. They expect to hear news, stories, tips and other interesting content.

It's a chance to remind them why they signed up for your list and why they wanted to learn more about your company. It's a chance to showcase why you're an industry leader. It's a chance to sell yourself as a leader, as an authority, as a trusted source of information.

Email newsletters are a chance to build a bond with your customers or potential clients. You can build trust and authority. You can get them to WANT to contact you, and to approach you when they're ready to buy or enter the buying process.

-----

To learn how you can use OrangeFire Email Marketing Software to manage your email newsletter campaigns, please contact Orange Email Marketing.

Most Popular Days for Email Marketing Campaigns

I spent a lot of time on email subject lines but I haven't much examined what days and times to send your email messages. I'm often asked "What are the best days to send email marketing messages?". We'll go into detail on that shortly but first lets start by looking at what the largest email marketers are doing for some insight.

chart by eMarketer.com

The most popular day to send email marketing campaigns are Monday and Tuesday. Thursday and Friday are not too far behind. Wednesday is the least popular business day to contact your email list and the weekend sees half as much volume as the first two days of the week.

Weekends are the least popular days to send email marketing campaigns due to the fact that many people won't be checking their email at work and that a large portion of email marketing is business to business.

I'm not saying that these are the best days to send your emails but it's good to see what the competition is doing. We'll examine the issue more in the future. And don't forget that besides sending your email on the right days, you can increase your opens by offering your list more options and keeping your marketing emails relevant.

-----

Contact Us today for information on email marketing solutions, email list rental, pricing, demo or to learn more.