Even before the sound of those New Year Bells has subsided, people in their millions have already begun to break one or more of those resolutions that have become a familiar part of the season’s activities; the resurgent desire to improve upon the past year, be that our health, wealth or emotional standing. To be fair on ourselves, maybe some of those ‘promises’ were just too unattainable to be called ‘Resolutions’ but, at least the good intention was there. On that same theme, here is a short list of email resolutions that you may want to sustain. Hopefully, unlike the ones we’ve just talked about, you will find these easier to follow – mainly because they are more a recap of important email marketing advice
1. Wealth – cleanup your mailing list and save money
Don’t continue wasting your send credits on those recipients who don’t read your email. Some can’t be bothered to unsubscribe, others have forgotten their subscription and now consider you as spam. So now’s the time to check your Reports and Statistics and make that decision about which of those ‘offenders’ to delete. If you delete any that haven’t read your newsletter for 6-months but are truly interested, you can be sure they’ll track you down and re-subscribe
If you have become too attached to any and can’t let them go then send them a nicely worded email asking if the still want to receive your newsletter and if they don’t ask them for reasons that they don’t – you’ll probably pickup some great tips + hints – you may also retain some of them.
2. Emotional - make use of the advanced features and Save time,
Take full advantage of the powerful advanced features on the GraphicMail system - they’ll save you time and make your life a great deal easier.
Some of the advanced features are :
a) Subscriber Segmentation: A powerful tool which allows you to profile your customers according to criteria you have set. Use the tools that allow you, for instance, to send a newsletter about animals to just subscribers who are interested in animals. You’ll need to test it to find out more!
b) Connecting to an external datasource: This allows you to link to your database and pull out information needed for your email campaign. With this function you don’t need to upload your datasets and maintain your data in more than one place.
3. Emotional - Stay "cool" - integrate your email newsletters with social media
For those of who you do not have a social media strategy in place – now is the time to get one! You can start with the two most basic & popular websites – Twitter and Facebook. With GraphicMail you are can easily integrate your subscription form onto your Facebook page. By Including social media links in your email marketing message you can gain subscribers through your own social media pages. These are two free reach extenders that will yield fantastic results. The rumour is that 2010 will be the year of the application and social media, even more-so than 2009 so now is a good time to start and tweak your current campaigns.
4. Emotional - Save face, monitor your Reports & Stats, check for hard bounces and make improvements
Being marked as a spammer will get you get a bad reputation. To avoid this nasty label spend some time deleting old subscribers from your mailing lists - they could be marking you as spam. Time spent analysing your stats carefully and studying ways to improve your open rates is never wasted. Personalise your subject lines making sure you avoid using use key spam terms with words such as "free", "bonus" or "order now". The only way you could possibly get away with using these words is if you combine them with strong keywords – or maybe create an image to display to word instead of text. And NEVER, NEVER put your subject line in capital letters. I also advise that you ensure that your recipient/s know who the email is from. Do this by amending the “from” line.
Analyse the design of your email to improve click-through rates. Do your links stand out? Are they clear? Do they look like links? Do they give your reader a reason to click them – use words of encouragement, even enticement!
5. More Emotion - Check your image, engage your subscribers
There are lots of ways to engage your subscribers – you just need to think outside the box! Focus on the content. Is it well written and funny? Or is it long and dreary? You need to grab your audience straight away – your readers will not waste time reading a newsletter that is uninteresting or boring, so use bold headings in articles and use bullet points as they’re easier on the eye and more simple to read. When using images, use strong and emotive ones; a stretched, pixilated image looks very poor and unprofessional – also ensure that you have a good balance of both text and images.
Conduct a few tests. Send out one newsletter with a quirky subject line and look at your stats. The next time you send, use a longer subject line and cross compare the two.
Think about other aspects : the time of day you send your newsletter. Are people going to open your newsletter at 5 pm on a Friday? No! The most faithful of your subscribers is probably halfway out the door by then - and come Monday morning your newsletter is lost amongst the hundreds of emails that have made their way onto his monitor screen ( probably to be deleted on the basis that “If it’s important they’ll send again” ) they won’t have the time to read a newsletter. Any later than that and they have forgotten about it!
So - spend some rewarding time working on that subject line!
6. Wealth – Make savings - use new metrics such as the ROI calculator
Use GraphicMail ROI calculator to determine the Return On your Investment from each campaign. All you need to do is fill in the fields in the calculator; and the more accurate your numbers, the more realistic and meaningful will be your result.
7. Wealth - Retain your popularity - Get more subscribers
Offer competitions, promotions and viral campaigns to draw in the masses. Promote these on your website to build your own brand awareness. The result will be an increase in your readership !
8. Health – Save your sanity – set reminders
This is a really good idea ( which also works well for other lifestyle activities ) - Enter an aide-memoire notes within your diary– at 3-month intervals, “Re-read my email Resolutions list” – this will just give you a nudge which will make sure you at the top of your game with these ‘Resolutions’
Good luck - Make 2010 your year!
