The “commercialisation of social networking” is the next wave and while many brands and businesses are dedicating time and resource to Business profiles on Facebook, Twitter etc; there is a lack of activity and personality to a huge number of profiles.

A study by Weber Shandwick found that while 73% of Fortune 100 manage a total of 540 Twitter accounts, 76% “tweet infrequently” while 52% were “not actively engaged.”

The statistics mentioned are not surprising to us – in the early days we personally dedicated a huge number of hours per day in managing our own profiles. Businesses know they can benefit from social media profiles and speedily set up their profiles then fail to ‘tweet regularly due to the time commitment. The 73% “Tweet infrequently” statistic is therefore not a surprise. Over the last few months we have worked hard on creating a solution that can actively assist Businesses with their profile management.

A New Mobilize Mail Service – Social Media Solution

Mobilize Mail has a new service now online. Our social media solution actively manages your business social networking profiles, via automated rules set up to push information to your profiles (twitter, facebook) from your blog or website. Our social media solution can also be integrated with your email marketing so your newsletters can also be generated and delivered automatically.

Our Social Media Solution is perfect for Businesses. They can now manage their Twitter and Facebook profiles efficiently without committing hours in manual management. We know the future of marketing is with social media and our solution enables all Businesses to participate effectively.

For more information on our Social Media Solution contact Donna – via our Quote page click here

Tags: social media

Alan Rusbridger of the Sunday Star Times reported yesterday the top 10 communications milestones for the decade. The list is extraordinary – and we now can not live without these technologies here are a few of them…

In the No.1 position is: GOOGLE -

“In 2002 Google did not have a business plan….four years later it was earning $20 billion a year.”
Guardian News & Media

In the No. 2 position is: WIKIPEDIA

Launched in 2001 Wikipedia was considered a “half-baked crazy idea” of Jimmy Wales yet now it is 25 times larger than Encyclopedia Britannia. Anyone and everyone can contribute to Wikipedia and that’s what makes it so successful and worthy of the number two position.

TWITTER – What is that? A recent quote from All Black Manager Graham Henry sums it up nicely…..

“I had to find out what bloody Twitter was, I thought he was the new five-eighth playing for England”
Graham Henry

Considered another dumb idea – that has over 18 million people hooked and though some say Twitter will not last – others are convinced it is a stage on from Google.

IPHONE – have you got one yet? Launched in 2007 the iPhone has it all with over 1 Billion downloadable applications it is so much more than just a phone. I have always had a Blackberry and last year I upgraded to a Blackberry Storm – what a mistake, clearly I was in denial thinking Blackberry can do anything Apple can do when it comes to handheld devices I am reminded of my poor choice every day and inevitably will be moving to the iPhone soon.

CRAIGSLIST – up till 2000 this classified listing site was for the region of San Francisco. However during the last decade it expanded throughout America and globally where it now covers 600 cities in 50 countries. This site has been said to be singlehandedly responsible for the demise of local newspapers. Though maybe not in New Zealand…..yet.

FACEBOOK – What can I say – pure magic! If Facebook was a country it would be more populated than Japan! While many people still consider Facebook and Twitter ‘a waste of time’ clearly many people and now businesses are benefiting from it.

And finally iTUNES – launched in 2007, I can not believe it was only 2 years ago – it seems like iTunes, has been around forever. Of course iTunes and SPOTIFY which launched this year have killed the CD market. SPOTIFY is said to be more life-changing than iTunes. All the music is free. Hear whatever you like – if you are willing to put up with the occasional advertisement you never need to pay for a song again.

Onwards and upwards – I am looking forward to the next decade of inventions.

Continuing on from “Create Professional Content for Your Business Emails” in this part we will cover the science of email subject lines, sender address and personalisation.

Subject Line & Senders Detail

There is no simple template to follow to ensure higher response to your emails however we can offer you some wisdom below when looking at your subject line.

Bad examples of a subject line are:

“Monthly Newsletter”

This subject line doesn’t provide any information as to what the newsletter is about and whom it is from.

“Special Offer $10 Off – Buy Today!!!!!”

This subject line contains a dollar sign and exclamation marks. Both of these will cause the newsletter to have a high chance of being blocked by a spam filter.

Below we set out some factors that contribute to a winning subject line.

Length:
Shorter subject lines seemed to work better than long subject lines. It is often enough to communicate the value of opening an email.

“Have the best holiday in the World!”

A long subject line is better for information-based emails where the subscribers are expecting or “know” the sender well. There are reports that an email campaign with a long subject line written well can sometimes provide smaller open rates but a large percentage of click throughs to opens. The logic to that statement is due to subscribers using the subject line to decide whether to open the email or not. Those that do open the email have seen something in the subject line that they are interested in hence the high click throughs.

“Best-value holidays in Argentina; European accommodation cost-saving tips; and win a trip to Hawaii”

But subject line length should not be driven by some arbitrary word or character limit. Therefore, use as few characters as you can while still allowing the subject line to do its job.

A winning subject line is as short as it can be while still achieving its objective.

Objectives:
You cannot set about writing a subject line until you know what that subject line should achieve. The main objective is not only to get people to “open the email”, but to clearly set out the objective of the email (eg new event, special offer, etc).

Therefore your subject line is looking to generate Recognition, Interest and Action.

1. Recognition: Your subscribers need to recognise that the email is coming from you and is something they have subscribed to receive. If they don’t recognise the sender the email is more than likely to get ignored, deleted or worst of all, reported as spam.If your subscribers recognise the email then all the positive expectations and experiences you built up through your brand will come into play and encourage the subscriber to explore further.The most important contributions to remember are the sender name, subject line and what will appear in the preview panels (the top of your content of your email).
2. Interest: This deals with sparking interest within the subscriber to open the email. Most subscribers scan down the subject lines in their inbox and subconsciously ask the question “Is it worth looking at what’s in this email now”.Your subject line needs to give them a reason to answer that question with a “yes”. But remember, the interest you generate must be rewarded by the actual content of the email. You do not want to raise expectations that you cannot meet and leave the subscriber disappointed.
3. Action: The subject line should encourage some sort of action, for example a click, a purchase, a reply, etc.The main aim of the subject line is to create recognition and interest. But it can also pave the way for the action that you are looking form. But be careful, you do not want to weaken the subject line’s other objectives by going for a hard sell right away.

Branding:
If your main aim of the subject line is to ensure your email is recognised. It has been proven that subject lines with company names in them were recognised and opened. Put in your brand name, the newsletter name, your business name, etc whatever is likely to trigger your recognition most easily.

Recognition is not achieved through the subject line alone. Your subscribers viewing the email usually see a sender line, a subject line and a snippet of text or a preview pane.

The From/Subject/Preview Combination:
If your preview panel, pre-header text and from line are all set up to allow your subscribers to quickly recognise the email or sender, then you have more freedom to ignore the recognition issue in your subject line, you can leave out your company/brand name.

You can use a combination of brand recognition in the from line and the title to your newsletter in the subject line. For example:

Sender: Mobilizemail

Subject: Monthly News & Tips

If you are going to put your company name in the subject line, it is best practice to put it at the beginning so that it stands out and allows your subscribers to easily recognise you.

Personalisation:
Personalising the subject line potentially gets present subscribers attention and interest and can imply relevancy. But this also prevents a couple of problems.

Firstly a lot of spammers put first names in the subject line.

Secondly, you have to be sure that your data is accurate. There is nothing worse than addressing an email to the wrong person.

Surveys have shown that it is better to leave out personalisation in subject line in most case, apart from birthday greetings, reminders, surveys and similar messages (eg A special Birthday Wish for Marc from Company Name).

Copywriting and Inspiration:
There is no one single formula that guarantees success, but there are approaches and concepts that have proven useful in creating a good subject line.

Things to focus on are:

1. A good subject line is driving interest first and action second
2. Clearly state the offer
3. Describe the subject of your email – the best subject lines tells what is inside
4. A good clear concise, specific description of the emails contents

Remember if you use teasers in your subject line, and you do not deliver the reward or curiosity effectively, then it quickly turns to animosity.

You can also draw on insight from other parts of your business:

1. What are the most popular Blog titles?
2. In your Website, what are the calls to action that drives most clicks?
3. What are your most successful headlines?

Another point to keep in mind is – what works in one campaign might bomb with the next, remember to find the right formula for each campaign.

Characters and words to avoid putting into your subject line:

1. Avoid use of + and ?
2. Avoid using exclamation points (!)
3. Avoid using your email address again in the Subject Line
4. Avoid using the same word twice in a Subject Line
5. Avoid using similar words together (eg “offer” and “sale”)

Remember that it is past behaviour and receiving relevant and useful emails that drive future success, so think carefully about what you send.

HTML or Plain Text, or Both

Most email clients today have the ability to display HTML messages. We recommend that you still use the option to send your messages by both HTML and plain text.

We have discovered that some clients who have the ability to view emails in HTML have turned off this feature. Mobilize Mail has created an easy way for you to turn your HTML into a plain text version, by the push of a single button.

We have discovered that if clients have their HTML display turned off or cannot receive HTML emails, then the newsletter will either show up “blank” or as garbled HTML codes.

Point Emails to Landing Pages

If you have great animation, a movie or a flash file to show your subscribers, just send either a link or a clickable image to a “landing page” within your email content. A “landing page” works just like a normal web page so you can have all the fancy stuff like Flash, movies, ActiveX and JavaScript that will not work in the subscribers email application.

Location – Location – Location

Ensure the most compelling content should be at the top (and preferably the top left) of the email. A lot of people view emails in a preview pane without bothering to open the email message in full. That means you have about a couple of inches to entice your subscriber to open the entire message.

Below is a message viewed in Outlook 2007 with the right preview pane enabled – not much space eh!

And below is the same message viewed with the preview pane at the bottom.

And finally here is an email that used a big flash and expensive image at the top of their email to grab the subscribers attention.

Don’t forget up to 50% of your subscribers will view your message with images not displayed.

Test – Test – Test

We cannot talk enough about the need for testing before you send your subscribers an email. If you mess up too many times your subscribers will start unsubscribing.

Subscribers are now use to quality HTML emails with great content. To make sure your content looks good send test emails to yourself and even your workmates to get their feedback.

There are over 20 major email applications used by the bulk of people these days. Below are a few you would have heard about – note that each one will present your HTML email content differently.

1. AOL email application. Not of major use in New Zealand and Aus
2. Microsoft Outlook 2000/2003 and the dreaded destroyer of HTML – Outlook 2007
3. Microsoft Outlook Express
4. Mozilla Thunderbird
5. Apple Mail
6. Apple’s Entourage (Microsoft Outlook for Apple)
7. Lotus Notes
8. Eudora
9. Yahoo!Mail
10. Hotmail
11. Gmail

If you have access to these email applications then it would be a good idea to send your email content to each one to see how the email content looks. If you don’t have access to a range of email applications then contact us and for a small fee we can run your email content through our test lab and send you a test result report with helpful information.

Things Not To Do

Below is a list of what we consider to be no-no’s for your email content:

1. Do not at all cost send out an email whereby the only content is an image. Not only are most versions of email clients blocking images by default now (which means 100% of your content is invisible) but also you are almost guaranteed that the SPAM filters will block your emails.
2. Avoid being creative with your spelling, because the spammers do that all the time (how many m0rtg4ge refinac3 messages are in your inbox right now?). Even a simple word such as “fr’ee” will get you into trouble.
3. Going crazy with font sizes and colours. I could count on one hand the number of subscribers I know that enjoy receiving email content that
   looks like a child’s coloring-in book. Keep to at most 3 different colours and only increase the font size if you are presenting a heading.
4. Trying to make your HTML email work like a web page. You cannot send HTML forms, JavaScript, Flash or other embed objects within an email. Full stop.
5. Don’t try and send attachments. There has been a heighted alert to attachments containing viruses so the SPAM filters are very aggressive
   towards bulk commercial emails containing attachments.
6. Send content which offers no benefit to the subscriber. Seriously, would you be interested in an email that talked about how wonderful the sender was?
7. Always – always think before you send! Put yourself in the mind of your subscribers and ask yourself if you would find the content of interest. If you say no then imagine what your subscribers would think.
8. Test – Test – Test – Test. Send your email to yourself at least once before you send it to your subscribers. It really is worth the effort and it takes only a few mistakes with your subscribers to have them click the unsubscribe button.

How we can help you

Mobilize Mail provides email marketing services to New Zealand businesses including promotional landing pages, surveys, integration with third party applications, Facebook, Twitter and blogs to name a few. If you like the idea of having a professional New Zealand based team that you can ring and talk to then check out their web site here: www.MobilizeMail.com

If you would like more hints and tips please sign up to our monthly Email Marketing Hints and Tips – click here to subscribe (you can unsubscribe at anytime).

Tags: email marketing best practices

Continuing with the series on Email Marketing Best Practices Mobilize Mail has provided hints and tips on the presentation of the content for your commercial emails such as newsletters and promotional emails.

Now that we have covered your Why Do It?, the frequency of emailing your subscribers and tips on the content lets take a look at how to style and present your content to the subscriber.

Have you ever visited a businesses premises and seen the staff looking tired and poorly dressed? Did this affect how you perceive the business?

Having shoddy looking staff would mean that they provide a shoddy service – right?

Sending emails to your subscribers that contains shoddy email content has the same effect.

Subscribers today expect and do get very professional looking email content from businesses. The bar has been raised very high for professional looking emails due to the ability for email applications to present all manner of styles and formatting.

Your commercial emails represent you and your business so its vital that you present your business in a professional manner through your email content.

How do you achieve a professional looking email?

Below are some hints and tips for creating professional looking emails.

Email Width

Try and keep the width of your email template to about 500-600 pixels. Most subscribers will look at your email through their “preview pane” which is usually a small potion of their available computer screen (see image below).

Simple Layouts and Tables Work Best

You wouldn’t believe it (but its true) that every email application in existence will present your email content differently!

What is even more amazing is that an email application can present your email content differently between versions! For example Outlook 2003 has far better support for CSS that Outlook 2007! In fact Outlook 2007 broke many a fancy email template that looked beautiful in Outlook 2003.

Our advice is to keep the layout real simple by using HTML tables to position your content.

CSS in HTML Email

CSS (Cascading Style Sheets) is a beautiful thing for web sites, but don’t put too much faith in it with HTML email. For instance, don’t expect DIVs to work, and forget CSS positioning. Always use Inline CSS for formatting.

What about Flash, JavaScript, ActiveX, movies and other fancy stuff?

Basically forget it.

Most email applications will not run these and most will be blocked by your subscriber’s anti-virus software applications even before the subscribers email application has a chance to reject it.

Fonts and Colours

Try and avoid at all costs USING CAPS and excessive punctuation with loads of different colours and fonts.

Unless you want to have your email content look like a children’s colouring-in book then avoid using excessive use of different colours. It looks unprofessional and spammy. Try and stick with 2-3 different colours within your content and use the colours to represent section/article headings or important information.

In regards to font styles and font sizes most email applications only support a limited amount of fonts. We recommend sticking with Helvetica, Arial, sans-serif and verdana and keep the font size between 8pts and 14pts.

Using Images within Email

Below are some interesting facts about using images within your email. The end result is to not rely anymore on the bulk of your subscribers viewing the images within your email content.

“Study Finds Emails of 23% of Retailers Are Completely Unintelligible When Images Are Blocked” Source

“A recent survey we ran to over 2,000 of our 300,000 strong customer base revealed 59% of regular e-newsletter readers had images blocked by default in their email program. A further 9% didn’t know whether they had them blocked or not.” Source

Make sure when you are creating your email content that the subscriber will be able to fully understand your message without images being displayed.

And a final tip of images is use “alt” text for all images and always includes the width and height so blank placeholder images don’t throw your design out when images are disabled.

Below is an image of an email application that has blocked images from being viewed. Notice the text in place of where the image should be – that’s the ALT text.

Some people are quite creative with their ALT text – for example:

“So you don’t want to see our great deal we have for you?”

Now for some people that might be enough reason to view the images!

Below is the same email content with image blocking turned off.

Amount of Content

Watch how much content you have within your email. Providing too much content can turn your subscribers off. It may remind them of the boring long-winded textbooks they had at school.

We recommend no more than an A4 page of content within your emails. If you have more content then use landing pages (see section below on landing pages for more information) or link to a web page on your web site that provides the full content.

You should only provide the first 1-2 paragraphs of each topic within your email content then provide a link to either a landing page, web page or a downloadable file that contains the whole content.

There are a few benefits to this approach:

1. The email content is compact and doesn’t scare the subscribers off from reading it.
2. All the “read more” links are tracked by our system so you can see what your subscribers are interested in via the email campaigns click statistics. This allows you to concentrate on providing content that is read by your subscribers.
3. If the entire content is provided on your web site then you have already moved them from the email to your web site where you can offer them more options and content.

Whats Next?

Next week we will continue with Part 4 of Email Marketing Best Practices. We will cover the science of email subject lines, sender address and personalisation.

Mobilize Mail provides email marketing services to New Zealand businesses including promotional landing pages, surveys, integration with third party applications, Facebook, Twitter and blogs to name a few. If you like the idea of having a professional New Zealand based team that you can ring and talk to then check out their web site here: www.MobilizeMail.com

If you would like more hints and tips please sign up to our monthly Email Marketing Hints and Tips – click here to subscribe (you can unsubscribe at anytime).

Tags: email marketing best practices

So far you have defined the reasons why you want to contact your subscribers and the frequency with which you will contact them via email.

Now its time to work out what type of content you will be sending them that will not only stop them from unsubscribing but create a perception that encourages the subscriber to react the way you want them to.

The best approach we can recommend in order to provide great content to your subscribers is ask yourself the following two questions:

“What would I be interested in receiving?” and “What would I not be interested in receiving?”

Common sense in this area is fundamental to success. For example would your subscribers be really interested in an email that only contained the following:

1. How fantastic your product/service is.
2. How many awards your product has won.
3. How fantastic you are.
4. How bad your competitors are.
5. How fantastic you and your products/services are together.

Would you like to receive an email from a business that just contained sales talk?

We wouldn’t and we know most of your subscribers wouldn’t either.

What they would like however is:

1. Interesting and helpful information about the product/service they are interested in hearing about.
2. Great deals on your products/services.
3. Other news or information covering the topic of interest. For example if you are providing information about computers then a good idea is to supply information about topics that would be of interest such as the latest virus or the latest gadget.

A Word on Personalisation

Personalisation can be very powerful when used within email content. For example using “Hello Marc” instead of just plain “Hello” gives a perception of intimacy with the subscriber and makes the subscriber feel that the message is purely for them.

However you can quickly go over the top with personalisation and in fact scare the subscriber off! For example if you are a mortgage broker and through legitimate means you knew if your subscribers had mortgages with the top banks:

“Hello Marc,
Since you live in Wellington, New Zealand and have a mortgage with BNZ we would like to offer…”

Now as a subscriber would you be worried about what the mortgage broker is doing with your private data?

Research conducted by the College of Business at the University of Illinois on the subject of personalisation within emails further enforces our recommendation.

1. Displaying a recipient’s personal information just for the sake of it can backfire: recipients may feel threatened.
2. If you do display personal data, only do so where there is an explicit connection between this data and the email’s content. Like this:
   “As a resident of Wellington, we’d like to invite you to the opening of our new store in town.”
3. The more useful your emails, the more recipients tolerate sub-optimal practices.
4. Most important:Personalisation is more about tailoring your email’s content based on what you know about the recipient (demographics, past clickthrough behavior, purchase records etc.) and less about showing off to recipients how much you know about them.

Placement of Important Information within Your Email

When thinking about the content for your email campaign we suggest you prioritise the different topics in order of their importance. The more important the topic the closer to the top of the email it should be.

Research has found that information “above the fold” will have higher clickthrough rate than information at the bottom of the email. It makes sense but not many people put it into practice.

“Above the Fold” is a term used to define the part of the email that appears in the preview pane of an email client (see image above for an example).

Tags: email marketing tips, Email Message Design

Last week the NZ Herald published a very interesting article on our online social networking habits. We are said to be “obsessed” with online social networking sites and we are becoming more trusting of what we read online.

“A Research International-TNS poll of local internet users found nine out of 10 participate in social networks and more than a quarter have made a major purchase based solely on online product reviews.” Source

Consumer behaviour is changing and “interactive marketing” sites are highly frequented and a trusted source for product and service reviews. Users are searching online and reading reviews on products found in discussion forums and blogs and making a purchase decisions based just on the reviews.

“Sinton presented the firm’s findings to an online marketing conference, Digital Now New Zealand 2009, in Auckland this week. He said 97 per cent of internet users now researched online before making a significant purchase. Twenty-eight per cent bought goods as a result of reviews they read on the web and 34 per cent said they changed their mind about a product after reading a review online.” Source

Technology companies like Vodafone and 2degrees say they have had success using social networking sites to communicate with consumers. Getting a response to a product query is said to be much faster from Twitter than phoning the company”s customer support line.

Want to learn more about Interactive Marketing for your Business? Contact Us

Create interactive surveys from your Mobilize Mail account. Take advantage of our Survey Triggers feature to be alerted to specific survey question responses. Download your survey results to other applications or graphing tools.

Create Surveys From Your Account

With Mobilize Mail you can create surveys within your account and send the survey to your subscribers in minutes. Re-queue your survey message to reach new subscribers or deliver your survey in an auto responder message.

You can also engage our team of experts to assist you with your Surveys – providing ‘hands on’ and ‘hands off’ options for your business.

Easy-To-Use and Option Rich

The survey feature is packed with options for you.

A survey can support unrestricted HTML code, JavaScript, images and other formatting options.

Each survey can be custom branded.

Flexible Question Choices

Survey questions can be presented as a free form textbox, radio buttons or a drop down list.

You can have unlimited questions for your survey and up to 20 responses for each question. The questions can be presented in any order you.

Survey Triggers

Mobilize Mail provides a unique feature for surveys called “Survey Triggers”. A survey trigger can be applied to a question and depending on the subscribers selected response to that question additional tasks can be performed e.g. send an email stating the subscribers selected response option.

This is a valuable feature for feedback when you need to know if a subscriber selected “No” to a question e.g. the question may be “Are you happy with our customer support?”.

Skip Logic

Our surveys support skip logic at the question and page level.

With skip logic your respondents can bypass irrelevant questions so the survey is faster to complete and more targeted.

Easy To Add a Survey to Your Messages

Once you have created your survey – you need to get it out to your intended recipients. With Mobilize Mail you can select the survey tag in our TAG library to any email message created and delivered from your Account.

Visual Presentation of Statistics

View in real-time the survey results either in text or graphic form.

Download the survey results straight to your spreadsheet application for further use.

Key Techniques for Growing Your Mailing Lists:

1. Website home page ’sign up’ subscribe facility – and thoughout website
2. Signature Link in emails
3. Subscribe Link in all Mail Out messages
4. Lineage in all marketing campaigns
5. Run regular subscription promotions

Website Subscribe Facility

A high percentage of website visitors never go beyond your homepage so put the ‘call to action’ on your homepage to capture these visitors on your mailing list. Once they are on your mailing list you can communicate with them (compliantly) on a regular basis with relevant information. Two very effective methods of capturing your website visitors onto your mailing list are:

1. An animated banner as seen in figure 1. The animated banner is hyperlinked to the subscription page so the visitor can self subscribe to your email communication.

(figure 1)

2. A text link – as seen in figure 2. The text is hyperlinked to the subscription page for self subscription.

(figure 2)

Ensure you have the subscribe facility also on other key web pages throughout your website. Repetition is good! (contact us at [business:Mobilize Mail] to discuss your options)

Signature Link in Emails

Ensure you have a hyperlink to your subscription page in your email signature and your signature is attached to your email replies as well as your new messages. An example of a hyperlink subscribe email for our own mailing list is:

Email marketing tips and news

The actual URL link to the subscription page is hidden behind the “email marketing tips and news” so it is more attractive and in theory/practice results in more clicks to view the webpage.

All members of your team can be driving your key message and increasing your mailing lists by adding a link in their email signatures e.g. 5 members of your team sending out 50 messages a day = 250 emails with your mailing list subscription link.

Subscribe Link in all Mail Out messages

All mail outs should contain a link to your mailing list subscription page. You may send ‘text only’ or non-template messages occasionally – we suggest you ensure there is a link to your mailing list subscription page so these messages enable new subscriptions.

Lineage in Marketing Campaigns

In your print, tv or radio marketing campaigns put in a few words about your newsletter subscription. E.g . “Visit our website and sign up to our finance tips and latest news”

Run Regular Subscription Promotions

Once or twice a year a promotion to grow your mailing list can drive the numbers upwards. Consider providing a discount or free gift for subscription. I know a business that provides a free e-book to every people subscribing to his newsletter and he now has over 15,000 relevant subscribers.

Five easy steps for you to take immediately to replace the unsubscribed subscribers and grow your mailing list in 2009 and beyond.

Tags: email marketing tips, Email Message Design

Now that you have defined a reason as to why you are emailing people you need to work out a mail-out frequency and stick to it!

We recommend for commercial emails not to have a weekly mail-out frequency. If you do then be prepared to see your mailing list quickly dry up. Ask yourself if you would like to hear from a business every week.

A fortnightly mail-out frequency is risky but if you have great content that your subscribers love more than their family pet then go for it.

However based on our experience a monthly mail-out frequency is standard and generally the expected norm. This does not let you off the hook in terms of providing great content – that is still very much expected from your subscribers.

When you setup a mailing list within your account make sure you add in the “List Description” field the mail-out frequency so your subscribers know what they are letting themselves in for. The “List Description” field is mentioned in the confirmation emails the subscriber receives.

Tags: best practices, email marketing tips

Great news – according to Adotas and Emarketer – email & interactive marketing is increasing in popularity and getting more of the spend than other channels.

EMarketer notes that budgets were more likely to be cut than increased for traditional media such as TV, radio and direct mail, but more respondents said they would up their investments in e-mail marketing, search and interactive than said spending would be reduced

With confidence running high and spending up for email and interactive marketing – I’d like to introduce you to our new ‘Interactive” marketing channel – BusinessBlogs. We have created this NEW marketing channel for you!

“Click to read our Story” and learn more about the progressive move from Outbound to Inbound Marketing.

While currently print media still has the largest slice of the pie, email marketing is increasing in popularity and will continue to erode the large segments of the pie held by print, and the other traditional media channel for advertising.

Check out our new Interactive Marketing Solution for you – “Reach more quality NZ Eyeballs” click here