To kickstart your email marketing for the new school year we’ve included our FREE back to school email marketing primer.  Swot up on the basics for a successful email marketing campaign – it includes how to increase your mailing list, design a top-marks newsletter and your test cheat sheet, we’ve even included tips to boost your campaign. 

It’s easy to follow and childs-play to implement – download your free Back To School Email Marketing Primer here.

One of the most-often repeated questions I get is “ What is the prime sending time for my email newsletters; Monday?  Wednesday? Friday? ”

I suppose the REAL question is………… is there a ‘BEST’ time ?
 
 One of the most important components in your email marketing campaign is controlled by your subscribers – the part where they DO or DON’T open your email. So much of your time and effort has been put into the creation of your a newsletter – the images, text, layout, the research for information and yet, all of that could be valueless if the recipient just simply deletes it, or dismisses it as junk.

This is the time to consider timing your sends! Give some thought to what your subscribers would be doing on your scheduled send days. Will they be have the time to open and read your email? 

Many studies have shown that the most beneficial days to send are the middle of the week, mainly because this tends to be the busiest, so it would follow that your email has the most possibility of being opened and reacted to on those days. This is an observation but not a rule.

Monday and Friday should also be in your thoughts. As far as Monday goes, with plenty of week-ahead planning meetings, colleague catch-ups etc., it’s best to plan your email to arrive in the afternoon so that your subscribers have more time to read it.
Friday being a day when business people receive less email and, if they are able, they may invoke the ‘Poet’s Day’ rule (Push Off Early, Tomorrow’s Saturday) so send your message earlier in the day – or later if your mailings are B2C and you expect them to read it at home in the evening or over the weekend. So, what about the weekend? This is a bit more risky and you should only send if your stats have shown that sending (maybe to selected segments) at this time gives you a good response. If they do not show as active, it may be that they have been received and not checked and then lost in the Monday Mass of emails and possibly consigned, along with most of them, into the recycle bin.

 As you can see from this, each day has its own benefits and disadvantages. The rule here is Research and feedback (check reports & statistics). Experimentation is acceptable and could be considered part of the research. It’s important that you send to suit your subscribers in preference to your own preferred schedule.

One of the main factors in achieving a positive result from your email marketing campaigns is the quality of your mailing list. So the art is to acquire the email addresses of those people who will consider your email to be of value. This “Opt-in” list will, of course, increase your response rate which enhances your reputation and prevents you being labeled as a spammer and, having a positive reputation is a sure pathway to increased business. The alternative, buying an “Opt-out” list which is comprised of people who receive a mailshot which they have not asked for with the ‘excuse’ that if it is unwanted they can “Opt-out” meaning they unsubscribe. As users of this “Scattergun (let’s pull the trigger and see if we hit something) Approach” have discovered; the vast majority of recipients DO NOT want to receive the message, the recipient’s ISP is NOT IMPRESSED and the sender waits an indeterminate period in the misplaced hope that some of those ‘hits’ will respond by buying ‘something……… anything ! ’.

So how do you go about complying with “Best practice” ?

First - spamming should be looked upon in a similar way to theft because, if someone gets an email that they have not opted-in to receive, this amounts to their email address having been ‘stolen’. As someone who is sending marketing emails, it makes sense to have a working knowledge of international spam laws – this, together with knowledge of local legislation helps to maintain your credibility. Whilst some countries legally require ‘Affirmative Consent’, in the USA the CAN-SPAM Act of 2003 demands that all recipients have given their Express Consent to receive the message. According to this act, all bulk emails are considered to be SPAM when containing material which may be offensive to the recipient, it displays no unsubscribe option, the [from] address is not visible or not correct, has a subject line which is misleading or the recipient email address has been stolen from other websites or online locations.

Second - It would be pointless to spend hours creating an email newsletter without a list to send to which makes it essential to create your own ‘houselist’. The very best and safest way to gather new subscribers is to create a signup form and direct people to it. It is very acceptable to incentivise this, which can be done very cost effectively if you offer one of your own products or services which has a much lower cost to high retail value. It is recommended that you go for the double opt-in ( DOI ) process. This means that the subscription application will generate a confirmation request email which they need to click to activate their subscription and by following this simple system you will avoid falling foul of the ISPs. Another good idea is to add a { signup to our newsletter } link in the email signature of everyone in your Company, also have it printed on the bottom of your quotes and invoices and posted to a company blog. Why not collect email addresses over the phone to add them as subscribers ? If you do this, put a column in the data specifying the date, time and who took their details,  in case you need to provide the “ OPT-IN “ proof

Third – as more than 80 percent of participants prefer to do business with organisations that use the opt-in, permission-based system to send them emails it is essential to provide a clear link to the privacy policy in your signup form. This optimization can be further enhanced by use of a ‘thankyou’ page or a pop-up displayed to new subscribers – it can also be used to welcome them and point them toward the newest release or tell them when to expect their first email / newsletter. If you are using double opt-in, this page can supply the link to click and confirm their subscription and once subscribed you can direct these confirmed subscribers to a ‘confirmed page’ to see incentives such as a promo-code, corporate gifts and vouchers.

What to avoid when gathering email addresses - 5 DON'Ts 

1 – Don't opt-in to the opt-out approach

Financial pressures can convince otherwise law abiding marketers to consider sending bulk emails to those who have not agreed to receiving emails from them. This is a big mistake as the emails are usually not relevant or valuable to the recipient. Big lists do not mean good lists. The problems that this ‘opt-out process’ causes are not immediately obvious but they can have a very long-term detrimental effect on your company’s brand and deliverability. Recipients of emails that they have not agreed to may not make their complaint directly to the sender but may make their complaint directly to their ISP or, even their social network; Facebook and Twitter are great platforms for posting such complaints.

2 - Don't buy lists of email addresses

The list you are intending to buy may have been collected from a Market Research Exercise, from financial institutions or even obtained from websites by ‘automated crawlers’. These bought-in lists most often result in SPAM complaints which damage your reputation with both the ISPs and prospective clients. Email marketing is all about building up long-term relationships not just one blast, so it’s imperative that you have the patience to build up a quality list.

3 – Don’t overlook those non-active addresses

It’s after your houselist is compiled and you have sent out your first couple of campaigns that the real fun of tracking begins! As you check your reports & statistics you will notice a number of recipients who haven’t ‘joined in’– no interaction; no purchasing, no opens, no clicks. Doing this task regularly will highlight those in your list who haven’t taken any action over a long period, so it’s important to be aware of them and to take action; it’s important that your list is maintained and kept clean as some of the older, inactive ones may lead to blocking or filtering by ISPs, so best to act before you are labeled a Spammer. In a recent survey by the Messaging Anti-abuse Working Group, 22% of users admit that emails that they once asked for but no longer want, they now treat as Spam. Your action can be to either remove them or start some retention marketing which could result in reactivating them, so send them a quality ‘special offer’, a survey or a specially targeted message. Maybe don’t email them as often and spend a bit more time personalising the content for that particular audience. The secret is to segment your database so that you can easily contact active and/or inactive addresses as required.

4 – Don't expect instant results

Your list is comprised of subscribers who have agreed that they want to hear from you but don’t expect a flood of activity from day one! Your list is not a target for a major sales drive, it will need to be tested constantly to cement your customer’s loyalty to your brand. Seek advice from experts, pay attention to what your peers have to say and check what the competition is doing. Sending a generic message could give a response of 0.3% whereas a well thought-out message sent to a highly-targeted, segmented niche list could score in the region of 50%.

5 – Don't separate your email campaign from your overall marketing strategy

When considering growing your database and online community it’s best to integrate your email campaign within your overall marketing strategy. Pull together all the alternative marketing opportunities; press releases, competitions, event sponsorship and attending trade shows.

In conclusion; it is always worth remembering that it is more costly to acquire new customers than it is to look after the existing ones. It always makes sense, and much more so in the current economic climate, to encourage your existing customers to remain loyal to your brand

As we are regularly providing you with hints, tips & features which we hope you will use to enhance your email campaigns, we thought you may be interested to see a case study from a major media company who optimised the entertainment email that they send out every week, with a series of small changes that they found showed incremental lifts in key metrics, including four tactics that were aimed at simplifying the overall template look and clarifying the calls-to-action. 

•    They reduced the number of articles in the newsletter.
•    They moved the images and the calls to action so that they displayed above the email fold.
•    They added a navigation bar so that it appeared at the top of their newsletter.
•    They applied A/B split testing so that they could test the effectiveness of differing subject lines – one against the other.

If you would like to see how they implemented these changes and the results that were yielded for their campaign click here. Once you have done that, why not try implementing some of the changes yourself using the GraphicMail tools and features? 

Here are some ideas to help and inspire you:

•    Conduct A/B split tests
•    Read the blog article on forward-thinking email design
•    Create a call to action by adding social widgets
•    Learn how to become an email marketing pro

 Click here to read the full article

It’s been 10 years since email marketing came on the scene, popularised by the growth of online communication. It was a very different entity back then with mass emails being sent out on the on the expectation that ‘with all these, someone is bound to reply!’ only to find that they were easily sidelined into spam boxes.

In the intervening period of trial and error, message based marketing efficiency has greatly increased with respondents being much more thoughtful. Email marketing has consequently become a highly valued way to reach consumers.

Some of the changes in the email marketing industry can be read in this article by Wendy Roth which will, no doubt yield you some big results when allied to the following tips from the past 10 years :

1.    The way to measure success is by the activity of your mailing list and NOT the number of subscribers. So the thing to consider is how productive your list is - not how large it is.

2.    Every messages should be personalised. You will find that recipients respond to a personal message - so always use targeted e-mails as this will encourage interaction. Invite feedback from your subscribers and ensure that you always act upon that feedback to create a dialogue with your readers.

3.    Be respectful of the wishes of internet service providers. Be responsible when e-mailing – honor all recipient requests, act on complaints, obtain addresses in an honest and fair way. If you do these things, ISPs will respond by being more likely to cooperate with your email marketing campaigns.

4.    Always remember that there are many different ways of viewing email. There are many different users with many different browsers. There are also a myriad of personalised settings - some of those do not allow graphics, some of them peak at your newsletter through their preview pane, some will disable HTML. It’s a good idea to keep this in mind when creating and delivering your message.

5.    There are a plethora of Smart-phones giving the ability for their owners to check their e-mail from almost any location and as these download and display messages much differently from computers, it is wise to design your e-mails accordingly.

6.    Before you send your message, give some thought to what you want to achieve -  the purpose of the message!  Make your subscribers appreciate the value of belonging to your mailing list.

7.    Target each of your customers! Gather data on every e-mail recipient then tailor your messages to fit those preferences.

8.    Measure success not by the number of people who have read your message, but their reactions after reading it. Do they just delete the message, or do they take some time and maybe click through to your website? gaining the involvement of your recipients is paramount.

9.    Involve yourself in social media - but do it productively give your readers some incentive to become followers.  Why should they follow you on Twitter or become a fan on Facebook? Offer discounts, downloadable coupons, special offers or breaking news to the ones who show their loyalty through social media.

10.    Ensure that all of your marketing channels are working in cooperation. The most rewarding marketing departments are run like well-oiled machines with all e-mailings, websites, printed material and broadcast marketers working in unison. Coordination leads to greater profitability!

Are you experiencing problems with your deliverability?  If so, the header can often shed some light on the issue. The header is basically a tracking record of all the route the email you sent took and all the stops it made along the way to get to the inbox.

Just like sending something across the country by post emails also need to stop off at various points, the headers show you this exact route and reveal these stops. They also show the details of the sender and the recipients. Headers also reveal more about the different ISP's through the information they chose to include

Every email landing in an inbox is given a header. So why haven't you seen one? This is more than likely because each email client (that's the service or program you use to read you emails - like Outlook, Hotmail, Googlemail etc) hides these headers in a different way. They are hidden from view because unless you're an email marketer trying to find out more about your email deliverability, the header is not that interesting to see. So with each email client hiding them differently and being tricky to find we thought we'd ask our own deliverability guru, Shaun Swanepoel, to assist you in the search.  True to form, he immediately pointed us in the direction of this guide to finding the headers in popular email services, clients or programs. 

If you’re still in the dark as to what deliverability is or how it works, you can watch our YouTube video.

Everyone tells us that using Graphicmail is as easy as ABC – well here’s another slant on that …… it’s called A / B testing. It’s here to help remove most of the guesswork out of “What to say, what to send “ and to get you some feedback BEFORE you send – how’s that for a great feature ??

Before A / B testing you had to send out your mailing, then check your reports & statistics in order to analyse how the opens/ click throughs compared with previous sends so you could work at improving your next mailout. After all, your newsletters are all designed using a similar template layout aren’t they? Well you now have a friend in Graphicmail = the split test feature

A/B split testing has been developed to help you to assess which strategies and techniques work best for your email marketing campaigns, which, roughly translated, means that you can now test what your subscribers like best.

It works like this; you draw up different variations of your newsletter, then you send each of these different newsletters to separate percentages of your contacts.  This allows you to see how each of those percentages reacted to the different newsletters. You can then select the one that worked the best and send that particular newsletter to the remaining subscribers in that list. 

So, A/B split testing gives you two options:  The first one allows you to select 5 newsletters to compare – maybe they have the same content, but each having a different image or subtle changes in the layout/design or content.  (You don’t need 5 different newsletters in fact, you can just do a couple if you prefer.)  You can, as an alternative, test up to 5 different subject lines for the same newsletter – using different tones or varying the length.

So, if you choose to send the test to 10 % of your mailing list and you want to compare 2 newsletters, then 5 % will receive Newsletter-A and 5 % will receive Newsletter-B.  When you’ve checked which one was most effective/successful, that’s when you send the ‘winning’ newsletter to the remaining 90% of your mailing list and, as the system keeps note of those who received which version of the test, nobody receives your newsletter twice!

Wondering how to assess which one worked the best? 

It’s really easy, and it’s also your choice!  You decide what is most important to you and to your business:  You just check how many recipients clicked to open your newsletter, or how many clicked the link to your website.  The A/B split test automatically assesses according to your settings and you receive a report showing the statistics and the status of your send.

There are no restrictions, you can use A/B split testing as often as you like, in fact, the more you use it to test and improve, the better will be the results of your campaigns, increasing the likelihood that you will stay on top of subscriber trends.  The more, the merrier!

When you signed up for the Graphicmail email marketing service little did you know how it would benefit you, well here is the proof; your advance notice that designing templates just got easier!  

Launched today. The ultimate in simple HTML newsletter template creation ………… Introducing the new Drag & Drop editor.

This Drag & Drop Editor is the direct result of our awareness of those of our users who are unfamiliar with design tools or have no knowledge of  HTML coding. If this describes you, then let’s hear it for GraphicMail. This new wizard editor is about to make your life simple beyond your wildest expectations. All you have to do is select one of the drag & drop templates, which you will notice, have all been designed in neat blocks – then you just edit each block as you wish. You can keep it simple, input images or move it all around

So where is it - this piece of magic ? It’s in your account. Click on ‘Newsletter’ then click ‘Create’ and off you go. Let us know how impressed you are !

Video 7


- you know what this is.  Or you think…  Well, it’s when you - okay, you take a segment and…  No, no that’s not it, wait…
Still not quite sure yet, hey?  That’s okay, we find many of our clients, particularly novice email marketers, think they understand all our features, but when it comes to it they’re not sure how to implement them.  They loose out on all the amazing power tools we offer!

Hopefully, you’ve allocated some time to watch the videos that we created in order to turn more of our GraphicMail features into benefits that you will use. The latest one is all about Subscriber segmentation. This will benefit you because it will allow you to group sections of your contacts together according to your specific criteria

The video will show you in much more detail how to go about it as well as explaining the added-benefit that you get for your marketing campaign. This is what is really meant by targeted email marketing.

Although this is the last in our series of video blogs, don’t think that’s the end of your viewing entertainment – these are just the start – there’s more on the way in April.  Happy viewing!

Video6

So, you’ve found that email marketing is beginning to have a positive impact on your business. You’ve investigated our FeedMail service and RSS sounds pretty impressive and the sort of thing you should be getting into. So take a few minutes out now and we’ll proceed together. The Graphicmail FeedMail gives you the ability to send live newsfeeds giving the latest activity on your blog or website straight to email - that’s simply what RSS feeds are ! Like a mini headline that’s sent directly to the inbox of all your subscribers who can then click on the link to be sent straight to your blog or website to get the complete story.

This technology allows your subscribers to be always up-to-date with all that’s happening with you; new promotions, special offers or added services and you get an expanded and much more targeted contact with all your subscribers over an extended range of communication channels. An absolute win, win situation.

So now’s the time for the video - to clearly see how FeedMail operates!  It not only explains the service, it also shows you where to locate it in your account – so grab that coffee or Tea and take a few minutes to relax and view that video