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).

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.

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

We have ranted on about treating your subscribers with respect a few times now.

One of our recommendations is to always send your subscribers content that they subscribed to receive and nothing else. If you subscribed to receive information on the latest wine specials from New Zealand wineries you would not expect to receive special deals on trips to Fiji.

Well, one company did send their subscribers content that a subscriber thought was not relevant and found out that sometimes this can massively backfire especially if one of the subscribers is a very influential blogger.

David Meerman Scott was so incensed at receiving what he believed to be unrelated content that he wrote about the experience in a blog post titled “Sleazy opt-in email tactics from otherwise reputable organizations”.

The word spread so fast that the company in question removed the entire email campaign for review and attempted to clean things up by commenting in David’s post.

Don’t let this happen to you. The fact that we are now commenting and linking to the post has increased the readership of the mentioned company even more and we are just one blog of over 100+ million blogs around the world.

As a refresh we recommend you read our “How being a bit smarter with your email marketing can bring great returns” here.

David’s post can be read here.

Recent research on business email marketing has revealed the five practices that can end any chance of email marketing success. We suggest you keep this list handy when you are email marketing so you can avoid making these easy-to-do mistakes that can sever any chance of successfully using email to market your business.

Avoid these common mistakes:

1. Use a “Do Not Reply” email address as the email sender. Our latest research shows that up to 20% of your subscribers will click the reply button to your email message. The usual reason is that they want to ask you something regarding the email you just sent them or even better they want to place an order with you because your email did its job. By electing a noreply@yourbusiness.com email address you are in fact giving your subscribers the perception that you do not want to hear from them. Even worse, if the email address is not monitored, you may lose a sale or even worse lose a subscriber.

   Mobilize Mail Recommends….
   Ensure your ‘From/Sender’ address is regularly monitored for email replies from your subscribers.

2. Send your subscribers content that is only of interest to you. Who still enjoys receiving emails from businesses stating how fantastic they are and how bad their competitors are? Subscribers are inundated with email every day and their patience wears thin when they open your email and see your sales.

   Mobilize Mail Recommends…
   Email messages that are ‘targeted’ – where the content is directly relevant to the subscriber/email recipient.

3. SPAM your subscribers. If stated that you would only send one email per month and you are sending at least one message per week you are spamming your subscribers by not sticking to your agreement. Increasing the frequency of your emails without asking permission from your subscribers is one of the worst actions you can take.

   Mobilize Mail Recommends….
   Seek permission from your subscribers prior to increasing the frequency of your messages.

4. Send your email without testing it first. Email presentation changes with each email application e.g. an email message looking great in Outlook 2003 does not (and normally will not) mean it will look great in other desktop email clients such as Lotus Notes, Thunderbird, Apple Mail nor will it look the same in the web based email clients such as Yahoo!, Gmail and HotMail.Therefore sending your email without testing it first may result in your subscribers receiving a message that is not your best and this may reflect poorly on your business and brand.

   Mobilize Mail Recommends…
   Test your email message by sending it to as many mail clients as you can BEFORE you send the message to your subscribers.

5. Send your business newsletters via your desktop email application. A sure fire way of getting marked as a spammer is to use your desktop application such as Outlook to send your newsletter to all your subscribers at once. Why? Because most desktop email applications will send your email via your Internet Service Providers mail servers which many, at any given time, are blacklisted. This means there could be a very good chance that 30% to 50% of your emails are not getting to your subscribers!

   Mobilize Mail Recommends….
   Use an ESP – email service provider to deliver your bulk email. Check out our case study of what happens when you send your email via your ISP Click here

If you are interested in how Mobilize Mail can help your business please check out our Feature Tour – click here.

Email sign-up web pages have often been overlooked when businesses are looking for ways to improve their interaction with customers and prospects. Your email sign-up web page is just as important as your web site home page in attracting people.

With that in mind we have provided some tips that you can implement right now.

1) Add testimonials to your sign-up page. Most people will read testimonials from people who have already dealt with your business so why not add some of the key testimonials to your sign-up page. If you have positive feedback from your email campaigns add those comments to your sign-up page as well.

2) Show how your email campaigns have benefited your current subscribers. If you have the data add statements such as "Our subscribers on average save $300.00 per year on purchases by taking advantage of discounts offered only to email subscribers." – this is of course if you provide exclusive discount benefits to your email subscribers only. Or if you don’t offer exclusive discounting what about "Our newsletter articles helped subscribers sell their home 30% faster".

3) Display the current subscriber count of your mailing list(s). People always want to feel like they are not missing out on something so if you can say something like "Over 5000 people have benefited from their email subscription with us. Why don’t you join them?" that is a powerful incentive for people to join and not miss out.

4) Use your company branding on your sign-up page. If you have a professional looking web site and use a third party provider to host your sign-up page don’t neglect to have the professionalism extend to your sign-up page as well. There is nothing worse than visiting a professionally crafted web site only to be directed to a dodgy looking text based sign-up page provided by some bulk email marketing service. With Mobilize Mail your sign-up web pages can handle all your web site branding assets such as CSS, images, Flash and JavaScript requirements.

5) Provide detail on what your subscribers are going to receive and the frequency of the emails. No one likes signing up for a to a companies "monthly" newsletter only to be spammed every 7 days by the business and their "partner companies" with useless garbage they did not expect to receive. State the email frequency on the sign-up page such as weekly, fortnightly or monthly and don’t forget to stick to that frequency! Another great idea is to provide a web version link to an existing email message so people can see the type of content and style they will be receiving.

In summary your email sign-up page is an important part of your web site so it should be designed to get the maximum amount of signups by having a professional look and feel and provide incitements such as testimonials or benefits to being on the mailing list.

Click here to learn more about how we can help you with your email marketing…

The survival of magazines is online says eMarketer. 2008 saw many magazines fold and overall revenue from advertising drop by 7.1 percent. While this information is for the American market – it’s hard not to see a similar pattern here in New Zealand. We have more consumer oriented magazines per capita than any other nation. As spending tightens the purchase of magazines follows suit.

ACP Media Magazines

“The shift in print advertising revenues to other media, particularly the Internet, will continue to thin the ranks of publications, and 2009 will be a year of survival for only the fittest publishers.”
Source

With print advertising revenue falling the print magazine market is being hit twofold. Less magazine purchases and less advertising spend. The magazines that are offering an online service will more than likely be the survivors in tough trading times. Consumers can access the magazine website and get the online magazine for a small subscription fee, and the advertisers potentially receive 24 x 7 coverage of their campaigns providing more bang for their buck.

Email marketing ties in nicely with the online magazine, where a template branded in the style of the magazine can deliver a snapshot of the latest articles and news to drive the recipients to the website.

Mobilize Mail provides customised email marketing integration services for automated email content filled messages – click here to read more

Listening to the feedback you get from your customers is key to winning, and retaining business.

The frequency of feedback from your customers on your services and what what you choose to do with the information can make or break your business. The key to keeping your customers close is to seek their input by asking for feedback on your services and products regularly.

Of course asking for feedback is only part of the process. Your customers will want know what you have done with the information you got from them so how you respond is also a vital part of your customer service.

How can you get regular feedback from your Customers?

Create and Deliver a Survey via Email

1. Create a Survey - click here to learn how to create a Survey using your Mobilize Mail account
2. Set up an Email Auto Message to Deliver Your Survey – and in that message include a link to your Survey. The message can be pre set for delivery. We call this process ’set and forget’ email marketing.
3. Set Up a ‘Thank You’ Auto Message – including the incentive or bonus points earned for providing the feedback.

For more information on our Survey and Auto Message Features – contact us

The key to getting regular feedback is to ‘make it easy’ for your customers to respond to you. Limit your survey to under 10 questions and ensure your survey includes at least one question with a ‘free text’ box so your customers can say what they want to say openly over simply responding to your multi choice answers.

Finally ensure you have included an incentive so your customers happily complete your Survey requests. As Sir Francis Bacon uttered in 1597 “Knowledge Is Power” – ultimately what you do with the knowledge from your customers will determine your ability to win and retain business.

A panel of email marketing professionals were interviewed recently who work closely with SMEs. A key question was asked: why should an SME put scarce resources into email when times are tough? Here’s some answers that emerged…

Easy low-cost entry

Email marketing is something businesses have done without breaking the bank, starting off with a simple approach and ‘testing the waters’ before committing more resources to it. The cost of sending email through an email marketing service, like Mobilizemail, is very low these days.

Great ROI – if it’s done right…

It’s been well established that email marketing – done appropriately – brings in the money. Its ROI performance gets a lot of good PR, even though it may decrease in times of recession, it has still ‘blown all other direct response methods out of the water’. But… poor results have been experienced by businesses who don’t know how best to use email marketing to further their business success. ROI doesn’t even count the value of email as a long-term relationship builder…

Valuable potential business grown from existing customers

Many small businesses rely on the personal touch and great customer service to build relationships and sustain business… commonly a differentiator over bigger companies. Regular contact with customers and clients through email newsletters and campaigns has effectively enabled this.

It has been well established that the cost of finding new customers is up to five times higher than up-selling or cross-selling to existing customers. Email marketing has been found to be a solid business marketing tactic for this as it is extremely low-cost to market to contacts already in a business database. Email marketing trends emerging in 2009 show a focus on improving relationships with current customers to build sales.

Quickly measurable results enable adjustment for improvement

There’s an old saying in marketing – “I know I wasted half my advertising budget, I just don’t know which half.” With the measurability of email marketing, businesses don’t have to live with this hit-and-miss syndrome any more. Depressed economies have encouraged more careful use of scarce dollars so businesses can zero-in on why their advertising worked (or didn’t) faster. As businesses learn more about their audience, they can adjust their marketing pitch accordingly to increase sales.

Getting ahead in recession

Recession has been shown to be a great opportunity for smart businesses who know how to capitalise on the situation to do really well and out-do those who are retreating…

Ever gone to the website of a company you’ve had previous dealings with and requested some product or information only to be confronted with yet another form asking for the same information you’ve already given them? What about an e-commerce site where you lose the order screen somehow and when you get back to it the data you painstakingly entered is lost and you have to start again? Grrrrrrr

Make forms easy – don’t frustrate people and drive them away

When designing forms, we need to minimise ‘friction’ or ‘red tape’ making it no harder than necessary for customers to give us the information we really need, so we don’t put them off.

As we said previously, getting customers to tell us their interests and preferences gives them a sense of power of choice and enables us to target our marketing via our CRM (Customer Relationship Management) system.

But once you have the information, don’t ask for it again, e.g. if you send out an email with a link to some new product or information, don’t thrust a form in front of them asking for their email address or other information they’ve already given you!

Pre-populate your forms to make it easy

The answer is to ‘close the information loop’ so that when they arrive at the form, it already has their email address and other relevant data pre-entered so they only have to enter new information. How does this work? Well, Mobilizemail have a system you can use where email links have a customer-specific code embedded in them so when they click through to your landing page, the Web server recognises them and pre-populates the form with relevant information, making it user-friendly for them.

Profit from un-subscribes – they can actually help you!

People un-subscribe from email newsletters for various reasons but sometimes it’s because of disappointment or annoyance over some failure in your services. So you’ve lost a customer – but what’s more, disgruntled customers can often tell a lot more people than a happy one does, so let’s find out the problem before we get disillusioned customers multiplying. They talk about viral marketing that spreads the good word and attracts heaps of business, but it can also work against you, so there’s a lot at stake here.

The answer? Have a user-friendly unsubscribe form asking departing customers to leave you valuable information on why they’re leaving, but don’t force them as this could frustrate them if they’re not already. This tells you about problems you can fix before you lose more customers. Why pay for market research consultants when you can get free marketing intelligence from your customers – absolute gold! Make sure you provide a large text box to make it easy for them to tell you as much as possible, and thank them for it – leaving them with a last impression of a courteous company who cares about their satisfaction. Ever had this kind of positive experience that makes you feel almost sorry to unsubscribe? This leaves the door open to returning later if things change for them.