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I recently listened to a webinar conducted by Dan Zarrella of Hubspot about “The Science of Email Marketing.” While he presented a variety of interesting statistics, the one that grabbed my attention was also the simplest statistic: 88% of people do not have separate inboxes for their personal and professional emails. As someone who does have separate inboxes for work and play, I find this to be shocking.

Let’s think back to the 1950s household where the wife was at home, while the husband was at work. The man worked from 8 a.m. – 5 p.m. Monday through Friday, and work was separated from his home life. This is definitely not the world that we live in today. There is no such thing as the “8 to 5” lifestyle anymore, we do not separate work from our personal life, and women are working just as hard (if not harder) as men to make a name for themselves.

As expected, this means that marketing has to change as well to adapt to people’s needs and expectations. Apparently, 88% of people are receiving both personal and business emails in the same inbox, which means that promotional items are included in this mix. As a marketer, how do you get your email marketing to stand out when your message is shuffled in an inbox with client or family emails?

Honestly, it's simple. Here’s some quick tips on getting your email marketing noticed:

1. Send in the early morning during the weekends.

Dan mentions in the webinar that you should send on Saturday or Sundays between 6 and 7 a.m. Why? People have more time to sit down and read what you have to say. Their inbox isn’t overflowing with work emails, and they are more likely to go to your business on a weekend (retailer). Therefore, sending at this time will result in higher click through rates and less chance of your email to get deleted right away.

2. Have a catchy subject line.

If an email has a clever subject line, I will most likely open it (even if I know it is from a business trying to sell me something). Be descriptive, get to the point, and tell people what they should expect by opening their email that is not “overly promotional.” As a marketer, you should be able to do this in a creative way to grab people’s attention.

3. Make the email simple for the subscriber to navigate.

Guide the subscriber to do what you want them to do. Provide clear and noticeable call-to-actions in the email, while providing them with a reason to visit your site.  Why would I want to go to your site if you’re going to make it hard for me? I’m much more willing to simply check out your site if it’s “one click shopping.”

All in all, it’s getting harder to marketers to get past the subscriber’s “auto delete” list. If you don’t want to get on this list, then make it appealing and easy for subscribers to read your emails.

Guest Blogger | Jenn Lisak

Jenn Lisak, Project Manager at Fusework Studios, is a recent graduate of Butler University, where she majored in Marketing and Business Development. She currently resides in Broad Ripple with her new kitten, Delilah.

Jenn's role at Fusework consists of client management, social media marketing, and creative development of the company. She loves helping clients reach their marketing objectives and she acts as an in-house social media consultant.

In the future, she plans to publish a novel and eventually own her own business.

Do you send to anyone in Canda? If so, you will want to make sure you are aware of Canada's new Anti-Spam Bill (C-28) that was recently signed into law on December 15, 2010. According to authorities, full details of the regulations will be published in January, here is what we have learned of this new regulation: 

1. The original bill was written and introduced in 2009 and intended to cover requirements of permission in sending email marketing messages. However, the final version passed also now covers additional types of electronic communication including SMS/Text, Social Media, and even instant messaging. 

2. This law has been dubbed by many an opt-in type of law meaning that if you have express consent or a pre-existing business relationship (at least within the last two years) that you can send these types of covered communications. HOWEVER, you must provide a mechanism in every communication with an easy-to-access and understandable opt-out. The law goes one step futher to detail that the easy-to-use opt-out must also be internet based as well as response based. While an existing business relationship may be permitted during this two year window, we at Delivra always recommend that you gain that permission and manage preferences, so as to keep that subscriber for the long term. 

3. Much like the US version (CAN-SPAM) all senders must clearly identify themselves using a very specific list of details in every message sent out. Meaning that sender name, address, phone number and a reply to address must be used on each and every send. Also in similar fashion to CAN-SPAM, un-subscribes must be handled quickly and processed within ten days of reciept to the sender. 

Those are three key areas the law outlines, but for more specific information, a good source to reference can be CAUCE which is an organization that works to maintain permission-based email practices in North America. Their website can be a handy resource for all types of regulatory and best practice updates. Here is a link to a whitepaper that will help guide marketers through the specifics of any FISA regulations. 

As we learn more about this and futuer regulatory changes this and future regulatory changes, we will be sure to provide you any information, insight, or advice we have available. If you have questions, please contact your Account Manager and they will help address any questions you may have. 

Carissa Newton | Marketing 

Content is an imperative part of a marketing strategy - this isn't a foreign idea, right?

There really is always something new to learn.

Writing great content isn't a new topic, but it has been brought back into focus and given even greater attention.  I've been to a couple of conferences that have had people discussing that content is, in fact, still significant and most marketers need to get back to working on great content instead of getting distracted by all of the latest widgets.

According to Junta42, "Content marketing is a marketing technique of creating and distributing relevant and valuable content to attract, acquire, and engage a clearly defined and understood target audience - with the objective of driving profitable customer action."

Recently, Delivra incorporated two new mailings for our clients.  The goal was to have them sign up for only the mailings they were interested in receiving.  The emails offer content that is valuable to those readers and will improve their own email marketing efforts.  Even here within Delivra we had people shaking their heads at our strategy, as if we were going to be providing too much content.  Funny thing is....we have seen the converse effect.  More people in our member lists are signing up for MORE content rather than less!  They want a resource they can turn to.

It's not just about creating content that is informative to your readers, but it's also doing it without selling them something every chance you get.  It's more about content that makes your subscribers more intelligent about a topic, it makes them stop what they are doing because they are interested in continuing to read more. It helps to build a relationship with your reader by enhancing their knowledge base and by being a resource that they know they can trust.

Along with other marketers, we have to constantly remember not to talk at our customers, but to try and provide them with information that they need and content that is valuable to them.

Is there information that you need from us and would like to see? Leave a comment and we'll get back to you!

Here are some additional resources for you to learn more about content marketing.

Ultimate Guide to Content Marketing

Content Marketing Today

Cost Effective Content Marketing

Content Rules

2011 Trends: Content Marketing is Critical

Lavon Temple | Marketing

In the past two weeks, our team has received heaps of "apology" emails from various companies, ranging from a consumer packaged goods conglomerate to a travel organization. Either email marketers are making a lot of mistakes -- or they are apology-happy. I think it's the latter.

This love affair with sending apology emails for the most trivial transgressions is perplexing. It could be that marketers are afraid of being 'outed' by fans and friends on various social media platforms. Although who would take the time to post -- or even read -- about being offended by being asked to update a driver's license that has not yet expired, as happened with one of the emails we saw?

Another explanation may be that marketers have a false sense of what's important to their customers. As Oliver Wendell Holmes stated, "Apology is only egotism wrong side out." It seems that an email apologizing for sending birthday specials that don't coincide with the receiver's birthday fits this description (another recent example). Special coupons and it's not my birthday, how offensive!

To read the rest of the article and learn best practices to guide your apology email decision making, click here!

Neil Berman | President & CEO

I am often asked two questions regarding email best practices:

1. What is the best day to send my email?
2. What time of day works best?

Boy, if I had a dollar for every time I have heard these two questions over the years I would be retired and on a beach right now!  There have been numerous industry articles that try to address this.  I think we all would like the magic answer to these long time questions.  The real answer to both is that it depends....it depends on your audience, their needs, and what they expect from you.

The best time of day to send and what day to send are two things that have long been debated, but not proven.  As many experts in the field would say, I completely believe this depends on your audience.  I even learned this at Delivra.  For years, I avoided Mondays and Fridays because many thought of those as throwaway days on email.  However, with Delivra I have learned the opposite!  Fridays around 10 am are our best days to send.  I do recommend that you test the results over the course of an email or two and let that be your guide.   Most regular/retail senders are sending overnight or early am.  Which means a flood of emails where yours might get missed.  That's why I think 10 am works because by this time most have done their first email check of the day.

The first KEY to all of this is to know your audience and what they expect.  Then the second KEY would be to test, test, test.  Combine those two and you will find the magic answer for each question for something that fits you.  Still have email best practice questions?  Contact us today at 877-915-9400 or at info@delivra.com and we will help you evaluate your email program to find what works best for you.

Carissa Newton | Marketing

I have started reading the email guide blog and have been intrigued by their new radio podcasts they have been running.  I thought I would share the info for an upcoming session you might want to join in to listen.

Next show: Tuesday November 2nd @ 1PM ET
Are YOU sending enough email?

Alchemy Worx CEO, Dela Quist joins Jeff & Jim to pose the question: Are YOU sending enough email?

Current thinking in email marketing is dominated by DM techniques with a particular focus on RFM; leading to an overreliance on relevance, timing and ever tighter targeting. In effect what we are trying to do is get everyone to open click and buy from a greater percentage of the email we send …… by sending fewer and fewer messages! But can less really be more?

Every single piece of research indicates that email is the number 1 way consumers like to be contacted by companies they buy from. Yet we seem to be persuading ourselves that less email is good more email is bad. But the simple fact is this; if you send more email by increasing your reach (growing your list), frequency (mailing your list more often) or both you significantly increase the likelihood of making the sale. Brand marketers use these tactics – because they work.

Dela Quist, has over 15 years of online media, advertising and marketing experience, the last ten of which have been in the email space. He is CEO of Alchemy Worx, a digital marketing agency with a 100% focus on email and a diverse portfolio of both B2B and B2C clients; including Intercontinental Hotels Group, Best Buy, Vodafone, Lilly, Virgin Holidays and AOL.

Carissa Newton | Marketing

In a world of multiple web platforms, companies are faced with having to decide which platforms to use when marketing to their current and potential consumers. Of course, they want to have a website where all of their information, products, services, and promotions can be housed, but as we all know, social networks and blogs have emerged as places where people go to find information. While social media has its marketing benefits, one of the simplest and often forgotten mediums is email, something that we use every single day. Even though social media can be more unique and appealing, I think that email still has some great benefits that people commonly overlook.  The benefits can be explained with a simple equation:

Email Marketing =Value + Consistency + Accessibilty

Here's why:

1. It's Permission Marketing

While you're always going to have those email subscribers who immediately delete the newsletters or promotions you send, you still have a list of people who specifically asked to receive emails from you. Take this opportunity to consistently stay in contact (and stay top of mind) with your subscribers. Furthermore, send them the information that's going to provide them with the most value. What's going on next week? What's in your store? What's on sale? How can you increase sales?

2. It's Branded

Most newsletters or promotional email templates are designed to look like the website and also guide visitors back to the website. This not only increases a company's chance of customer contact, but it educates the customer on what the company provides. Having this consistency between the website and email creates a positive correlation for the customer. The consistent branding gives the company an identity that potential customers recognize.

3. It's Everywhere!

Almost everyone has an email account, while not everyone has a Facebook or Twitter account. Furthermore, you have an email account in order to setup the social media accounts. Therefore, when marketing through email, you have much more accessibility to your designated target marketing. Your marketing messages can also be easily forwarded to friends, family, coworkers, etc. And you can send it to anyone as long as you have their email address. You don't have to be friends with them or following them.

So next time you think about immediately deleting a promotion from a company, stop and actually look at the email. The company is sending you the email because they have something relevant to say. It will provide you with relevant information, it will educate you about the company, and you might be able to help someone else. Remember, you were the person who subscribed to that newsletter or company's website in the first place. Why do so if you don't get anything out of it?

Guest Blogger | Jenn Lisak

Jenn Lisak, Project Manager, is a recent graduate of Butler University, where she majored in Marketing and Business Development.  She currently resides in Broad Ripple with her new kitten, Delilah.

Jenn's role at Fusework consists of client management, social media marketing, and creative development of the company. She loves helping clients reach their marketing objectives,and she acts as an in-house social media consultant.

In the future, she plans to publish a novel and eventually own her own business.

At Delivra, part of our account management process includes a quarterly review where we provide a report card summary of the clients e-mail marketing efforts over the last 90 days.  This report card covers topics such as sending volume, membership trends/health, complaint rates, mailings listed by engagement score, etc.  It gives us a great opportunity to talk about what is working, what is not, and discuss recommended changes or improvements to implement over the next 90 days.

I wanted to share a few of the topics and suggestions that have come up recently in my quarterly reviews with clients.

• Take advantage of your ability to track click-throughs.  If you don't give recipients anything to click on, it is impossible to see where their eyes are going.  Give them the teaser to the topic then offer up a "click here to read the full story".
• Make sure you are fully authenticated to maximize inbox deliverability.  We can help guide you through the SPF, DKIM and Domain Key setup, but we can't do it for you.  It is a simple process that can be completed in no-time flat.
• Make your social share feature stand out.  Put it towards the top of the e-mail. At a minimum make sure it is above the fold.  Draw attention to it, give them a reason to share it out to their social network.
• Want click-throughs to increase...use links to video.  Want your video link click-throughs to increase...then use a still image from your video with a "play" button on it.
• Test, Test and Test some more.  Our A/B testing wizard is not limited to any single test.  You can have two totally different looking pieces of content and test them against each other.

We are here to help...take advantage of these suggestions and I think you will be pleased with your next quarterly report card.

Scott Cramer | Director of Sales

I don't know about you, but email marketing isn't the ONLY marketing function I handle these days.  In fact, it is one function of about 500 others.  In addition to that, unless you go to school for Web design many schools never even cover email marketing, HTML, or even the web-based technologies that we are all using today to manage those hundreds of things we do.  I doubt anyone can disagree that email marketing, when done right, generates tremendous ROI.  According to the DMA just last year, email marketing can generate as much as $43 of ROI for every ONE DOLLAR you spend.  That's pretty powerful when you think about all of the other marketing methods and tactics that are typically generating one-to-one or two-to-one at best.  And isn't that what it is all about?  ROI-Return on Investment.  Here is a very simple video to learn the concept of ROI...

In today's economy if you are a marketer that isn't measuring each tactic and the results it generates, then you are likely headed for the same demise as the 8 Track Player, the Walkman, or even very soon, the CD!

So NOW you truly get it and you begin marketing by the numbers.  You know email brings the greatest result and you want to integrate more into your strategy, now what?  Well, if you are like me you are juggling all things marketing and cannot self-teach yourself HTML overnight.  there are still a few things you can do to be successful.  Here's my list of three things that will guarantee your marketing superstar status regardless of your knowledge of HTML:

1. Use an Email Marketing Service Provider (otherwise known as an ESP) to manage your campaigns.  You see, with an ESP you get the software to build, send and track each campaign with ease.  In fact, almost all ESPs have very user-friendly editors & templates in which you can use to build your HTML message.
2. Find resources that help you along the way...whether you design in Dreamweaver, FrontPage or in an ESPs editor, finding email marketing or HTML tips and guides to reference along the way will help you a ton!  Email Marketing Reports has an excellent article where they reference over 50 articles on HTML and email design.  The Email Experience Council offers research, blogs, and webinars for you to learn more.  In fact, even Delivra offers webinars to our customers now to learn more about the email basics and next steps.
3. Outsource your design work.  It's not unheard of!  We,  as marketers, outsource PR, web design, and many other projects....you can outsource your email design as well and be more effective with the strategy to implement each campaign.  Here at Delivra, we have a full-time design team that can provide advice, custom project-based services along with full-service.  Not only is it a great service for your investment, their design often makes mine blush!  You can even follow their tips, hints, and tricks in our blog in the Design Category.

Hope this blog post provided you some insight and resources to get started today!  Drive powerful results with email marketing today and let me know what questions or comments you have.  Comment today!

Carissa Newton | Marketing

Tales from a poor confused artist who thought school was finally over

I’ve been working at Delivra since last summer. I started with a basic e-mail marketing I.Q. of about 12, and considering how lost I get during conversations within the company or with other big-wigs of this particular market, that number does not seem to have changed much.  Fortunately, as a designer, my job is relatively straightforward and simple, but it does come with some memory-testing challenges.

The whole process seems to be like a never-ending finals week. You spend a few days studying (building the email), turning in homework (sending the client your drafts), you take the pre-quiz (send the test email), then panic your way through the final exam (send the email).  It’s stressful, nerve-wracking, and worth everything when it results in a perfect A+ (a happy client). And while it probably isn’t as nail-bitingly terrifying as that Psychology exam you just found out about, it is enough to give you nightmares about being eaten alive by HTML.

Fortunately, cliff-notes and study-guides are available in the form of blogs. Those come in really handy when an HTML-monster project comes along, and your usual weapons of choice aren’t cutting it. There aren’t many challenges out there that another designer hasn’t overcome, and they’re more than willing to help a clueless fellow out.

Before your next test (email), here are some things to memorize that'll help you out:

1. Paragraph and Header tags are evil. They sound like a brilliant idea, but really, they are not to be trusted. If you’re wondering why you have so much space between text, images or just space that doesn’t need to be there, chances are there is a <p></p> or <h1,h2,h3,h4,h5,h6></h> somewhere in your HTML code. P-tags will just show up uninvited if you hit enter after a sentence. Instead of enter use shift + enter; this will enter a break tag or <br />, which will move the cursor to the next line without inserting space that has no business being there. Also, instead of using header tags, just resize the text to match the size of your choice. Painless and a lot less hassle.
2. Keep your tables simple. You would be amazed how much havoc a complicated table can wreak. I got a lot of hate from an email I was working on, and could not figure out why until fellow designer Celeste looked at my code and pointed out how ridiculous my table was. I had all kinds of merged cells and spacing issues that looked ok in Dreamweaver, but neither email client or web browser were feeling it.
3. CSS: Embedded and External = Bad, Inline=Good. Styles in e-mail are becoming more and more common, but knowing which ones can or can’t be used is a little tricky. Not all email clients are created equal, and most clients treat CSS like a weird cousin who wasn’t invited to the family reunion but came anyway.
4. Convert Word Document or Copy to Plain Text before pasting into HTML editor. Doing this helps to prevent weird symbols popping up randomly throughout your email. No more question mark apostrophes for you!  Not sure how to do this?  One way that I often do this is to drop the text into Notepad, which is an application listed under your Accessories of your computer (Start | Programs | Accessories).  You can then select Edit/Paste from Notepad and take it right into the HTML editor without any pre-defined formatting that might not otherwise work in an HTML version.

Hope this helps you as much as it helped me!

Peace out!

Abby Alexander | Design Services

According to MarketingSherpa, 19% of online marketing budgets are now allocated to e-mail and 54% of marketers are planning to increase their email budgets in 2010, based on research from Econsultancy and a major ESP.  Companies are obviously noticing the importance of email and how, if done properly, it can strengthen current client relationships and grow your clientele.

A budget should include funds for list building, content creation, new technology, strategy and management reporting.  Don't just send more emails.  The goal is to send emails that are more planned and efficient.

Want a free assessment from a knowledgeable Delivra consultant? Call us at 866-915-9465 or complete the contact us form at http://www.delivra.com/getting-started/request-a-guided-tour.aspx.

Neil Berman| President & CEO

We spend a lot of time talking about and counseling our clients on obtaining permission. Having a good, solid program to allow people to opt-in to your mailings is critical to the success of your campaigns. Email marketing has matured to the point that most people understand that concept and agree that permission is absolutely essential to keep complaints low and connect with those people who want to receive the mailings.

But permission isn't the only thing you need to consider. The most common problem I see is a failure to set proper expectations about the type or frequency of emails. A few simple steps when designing your subscribe process that can avoid problems down the road are:

• Provide a link to the online version of a recent mailing (any item stored in our Delivra Content section can be linked to).
• Let your subscribers know when or how often you'll be sending ("We'll send your newsletter on the first Monday of each month")
• Let the user know what address you'll be sending from. ("Add newsletters@example.com to your address book"
• Send a "hello" message automatically after sign-up thanking them and reiterating all of the above.
• If you have multiple newsletters or options, allow your subscribers to choose at sign-up or modify their options down the road (Delivra can help create a profile form to do this.)

Setting the right expectations up-front can help avoid problems down the road.

Kris Dougherty | Deliverability & Operations

Last week, Delivra exhibited and attended the EEC's Email Experience Evolution Conference in Miami.  The conference was a chance to meet email marketers from around the world and hear their best practice insights for email marketing.  The event was an excellent chance for us to learn what email marketers are doing and what works.  The overriding theme of the event was email best practices and how email can serve as a bridge to multiple channels.  Here is a Top 5 List of what we learned at the event.

The conference opened with Brian Harniman of Kayak speaking about how they have used email marketing to efficiently communicate with travel subscribers around the world.  A relative newcomer to the travel marketplace, Kayak has to attract new customers in a highly competitive marketplace, but also do so efficiently given their size and resources.  A veteran to email marketing, Brian outlined how Kayak has built their email marketing efforts through the use of testing.  He emphasized that testing is one of the most important methods to employ to ensure you are engaging your audience regardless of size.

As the conference progressed, there were a number of helpful sessions outlining email best practices in testing, design, optimization, list management, incorporating new medias along with numerous case study presentations from companies successfully using email to generate ROI for their organizations.  The key takeaways from these sessions for me were:

Sometimes the largest list is not always best. The key is to ensure that you have engaged recipients and to do that, email marketers often have to trim their lists for best results.

Building a list is easiest when you engage your audience. Mailing to recipients that have requested your email is the BEST way to drive action from your email campaigns.

Testing is probably one of the most underutilized resources that an email marketer has to use. Testing for subject line, content and design are all important and should not be overlooked.  While this effort does take a little additional time, it can increase the effectiveness of your email campaigns ten fold.

Measurement of email success should be measured at every stage throughout the campaign. It is so much more than simply opens and click-through rates.  How effective is your email in driving action?  In driving results? Measure that and you will learn ways to make improvements and changes with every email campaign that will meet what your audience wants.

With all of the various methods to market, email STILL is one of the more effective ones out there. New medias are having an impact on email campaigns, but only if they are integrated throughout the marketing strategy.  Social media, video, rich media landing pages and other methods are all ways to further engage your audience and grow your list.  However, they cannot be viewed in isolation, but rather as part of a whole.

There you have it, Email Evolution 2010 in a nutshell.  Surprisingly, even with the wide spectrum of attendees, email marketers are all facing many of the same issues.  The takeaways may seem simple and common sense, but remember that when employed efficiently and integrated throughout your marketing strategy, they will drive results.  Which is after all why you try to engage your audience through your email.

Wrapping up the conference, Lisa Harmon of Smith-Harmon led a lively session titled "Email Idol" where a team of expert email designers evaluated two email campaigns (one for USA Funds and the other for National Geographic).  In their review, the team was challenged to review the email campaigns, redesign the email layout, call to action and update any content to ensure a higher success rate.  Interestingly enough some of the improvements made to the winning emails were simple changes, yet they changed the impact of each email entirely.  The team recommended the use of pre-headers in each email to ensure that regardless of rendering, the email's purpose is clearly understood.  Simplicity is better in both design and content.  Using too much information can often cause confusion and dilute the call-to-action within the campaign.  Keep it simple whether it is in your navigation, look and feel or even in your text.  Test multiple versions of a campaign with a sample of your audience to see what messaging and imagery speaks to your audience.  Mighty Interactive led the Email Idol face-off with clean and simple design that illustrated that less is truly more.

Closing the conference, Don Shula spoke to the attendees and covered the importance of setting and achieving goals. During his entertaining presentation Shula outlined his gameplan for success.  His quote,  "Strive for perfection and settle for excellence" couldn't be more relevant to marketers today.

Last, but certainly not least, Ali Swerdlow of the Email Experience Council awarded the 2010 EEC People's Choice Award to Mighty Interactive.  Congratulations to a clear leader in email marketing design and best practices!  To view additional coverage of the conference, read The Email Guide's Wrapup Report , the Retail Email Blog, or view the Twitter feed at #EEC10.

Excellent conference with so many resources available to marketers.  I hope this wrap-up provides you a glimpse of the event along with a wealth of actionable information you can use to improve your marketing efforts.  Looking forward to next year's event.

Carissa Newton | Marketing

As a busy marketer and mom, I can tell you that it takes a lot to capture my attention away from whatever my focus may be at the time.  Last night after checking my personal email account, I quickly scanned a whole host of emails (50-60 at least.)  Some of which, like Land's End and Borders I had requested. Others...not so much. And then there are the host of emails I receive as a result of having two pre-teen daughters that love to shop. I guess this is their way of tipping Santa off on their wish lists and I guess I can't fault the sender if someone else opted me in.  However, there were many that had compelling enough subject lines or offers that I kept them on file for my holiday shopping.

As I quickly scanned the email subjects and sender addresses, I was quickly able to determine the keepers. Retailers and marketers-take note! With information, offers, and messages everywhere we look, it is critical to capture attention on that very first shot. Without a second thought, while on my phone, I simply deleted the emails that weren't compelling enough to capture my attention in that subject line.

As I was later doing some research, the action registered with me as to how very important a subject line can be. Having been an email marketer myself for over ten years now, I have certainly pored over my share of subject lines, email content and design. However, looking at it from the perspective of a recipient starved for time and searching for compelling-well, I can tell you I will even think twice about my subject lines.  Here are a few quick stats...

• 38 to 47 characters is the average number of characters that show up in the subject line of 57% of all U.S. email recipients' email programs. -Epsilon (2009)
• 25% of marketers rated Subject line tests "very effective". - MarketingSherpa "2009 Email Marketing Benchmark Guide" (Oct 2008)
• Emails with shorter subject lines significantly outperformed emails with longer subject lines. - MailerMailer (2008)
• Emails that had only the subject line personalized (12.4% Open Rate & 1.7% CTR) did worse than those with no personalization at all (13.5% Open Rate & 2.7% CTR). - MailerMailer (2008)

Want to capture attention? Here are a couple of quick tips...

1. Make it compelling
2. Keep it simple
3. Mention your offer without sounding spamish (Words like "free" or "sale", Characters like "!" or "$")
4. Keep it between 30-50 characters
5. Know your audience...and speak to them

Still torn on what to say? Try testing two subject line variations and then send your mailing to the winning subject line. A/B or Split Testing can help you do this in your emails. Marketers often test variations in design or copy, but many overlook the need to test subject lines. I guess you can think of it this way...

Poor Subject Line 1,000 emails sent=40-60% Ignored/Deleted

Good Subject Line 1,000 emails sent=20-30% Ignored/Deleted

Excellent Subject Line 1,000 emails sent=10-20% Ignored/Deleted

No science here, just pure experience in my own emails and seeing results for other campaigns.  Subject lines are probably the most important piece of copy you will ever write-think smart and make it count!

Carissa Newton | Marketing

I'm often asked the question, "If I can't buy a list, how can I get people to opt-in?"   The answer is this:  There are limitless ways to build an email marketing list, but fist and foremost any organization must remember to choose the methods that fit your audience.  Today I will cover a sampling of five methods you can use.  Another great resource is the Email List Growth:  Benchmark Guide published this year by the Email Experience Council.

For many organizations, having enough to say is rarely the issue.  The issue often is building a solid permission-based list in which to communicate information of value.  The solution is easy....weave the opt-in process into all of the others ways you are marketing.  Email marketing is never a standalone marketing method, but rather a compliment to many other methods you may be using for your marketing mix.  Here's my top 5 list to build YOUR list:

1. Website Capture Form: In most organizations, the goal is to drive traffic to the web for information and then flow those leads into the organization.  Incorporate a quick sign up form on your home page or any other location where visitors might be looking for information. (Quick Tip:  Most email service providers offer an easy tool to generate this form AND when people submit their info, it populates your email platform!)  Here's a sample of ours.
2. Social Media Platforms: People underestimate the viral nature of these platforms.  Imagine for every 100 fans, visitors, members any organization could easily multiply their reach tenfold!  These are all potential recipients of YOUR information.  Make it simple, utilize the same form you use for the website.  See how we did it on Facebook...want to learn how?  Read Chris Broshears's post from last week on this very topic!
3. Email Signatures: Organizations don't always see this as a marketing tool, but think of how many emails an organization sends and how many different contacts see that information.  Use an email signature as away to gather subscribers...simply link to your web capture form with simple text-Sign Up Today!
4. Independent Landing Pages: In  a perfect world, all of the people searching for your organization or it's type of services would magically arrive at your website.  However, often searchers do not find your organization directly.  They may find it through other references to your keywords, why not make sure there are EXTRA ways to be found...an independent landing page can be a perfect way to drive those searchers to you.  Again, replicate your web capture form on this landing page and everyone that arrives there will have the opportunity to sign up.
5. Events, Trade shows, Point of Purchase: In others words, in person!  Use every possible touch point to spread the word.  Ask people if they want to join.  If you have information of value that fits that audience, you might be surprised at how many opt-ins you will gain.

There you have it....5 Quick ways to Organically Build an Email Marketing List!  Here's another resource you might find helpful.

Happy List Building!

Carissa Newton | Marketing