Mobilize Mail Opinion

Deals rate highly with social media users but it’s not the only reason they follow businesses on sites like Facebook and Twitter.

A recent survey by MarketingSherpa gave ‘Specials and Deals ‘top billing as the most desired reason for following a brand online. However learning about a brand’s service, new products and features also rated highly in second place. See image below for the results.

The table above illustrates the top motivations of two distinct social media user types following business brands on sites like Facebook and Twitter. In the table we see the ‘max connectors’ (users with more than 500 followers) are more motivated to follow a brand to learn about their business, services, features and new products. The ‘daily users’, on the other hand, are more motivated to follow a brand to learn of new deals and specials.

Essentially the results suggest a brand will see greater results from their social media profiles when they get the ratio of broadcasts matching the results in the table shown above. We suggest a business creates a social media broadcast plan to get the right mix of posts occurring to achieve maximum return from their social media marketing.

Contact Us to set up & manage your social media marketing solution

The success of social media marketing campaigns is often unpredictable, and that’s all down to human behaviour. Humans usually have a balanced approach to their daily lives but now and then we make decisions that don’t quite make sense. So, it can be difficult to know whether your campaign is going to be successful. However, with good planning and integration you’re on the right path to a successful campaign.

Social media is a great tool with many different components that can be used to achieve just about anything. And if you integrate this into all of your marketing tools, you’re onto a winner.

For example, if you produce a regular newsletter or direct mail campaign you already have a database of your clients set up to receive social media campaigns. All you need to do is point them in the direction of your online existence.

Firstly, you should have a good look at all of your online and offline marketing campaigns and how you can integrate them.

The aim is to use offline (printed resources) to drive your clients to your online campaigns and for the online campaigns to compliment your offline resources.

It’s all about building a stronger connection between the two and getting them to work together effectively.

Once you know what you’re working with, you need to make a plan. It doesn’t need to be set in stone and can be built upon as you work through your integration.

Tips for integrating your ‘offline’ marketing

A good way to start this process is to ask the question: “How can I promote my online social media presence through my printed resources (offline)?”

It’s really quite simple.

You will almost certainly have some printed resources you use to promote your business, e.g. business cards, loyalty cards, advertisements, til receipts and shopping bags.

All you need to do is include information about how your clients (or prospective clients) can find you online. Include your twitter, facebook, blog addresses on printed material and you’re half way there. You could also offer an incentive for people to visit your online presence, i.e. free gym membership for a month, free samples of your products, exclusive offers and discounts.

Just wait for the tweets and messages to flood in!

Tips for integrating your ‘online’ marketing

This side of the integration process can often be more complex than offline integration, but don’t be put off, it also offers more possibilities and we are here to help you!

Firstly, have a good look at what online marketing methods you are already using.

Email newsletters: Include a link from your Facebook page and website asking people to sign up to your newsletter via a sign up form. Explain what they will get from the newsletter if they sign up, e.g., up to date information, exclusive offers or discounts.

Pay per click: If you are using pay per click (PPC) as part of your online marketing campaign the most important thing is to ensure your landing pages are up to scratch and up to date. Ensure your landing page includes links to your Facebook, twitter and blogs.

Search Engine Optimization: It’s important to include key words in your website, facebook, twitter and blogs to enable people to find you easily. Promote your online social presence at every possible opportunity.

And remember if in doubt contact us - Mobilize Mail specialises in smart email & social media marketing solutions.

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

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).

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).