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Email marketing effectively builds customer relationships, creates brand awareness and generates sales. Mobile email marketing gives us access to new markets and helps us to better reach our customers. It is imperative that emails should be as accessible on a mobile device as it is on a desktop or a laptop.

Let us consider a few mobile email marketing optimization techniques to make your email design more mobile friendly:

Short Subject Line: The shorter the subject line (not more than 15 characters) the easier is is  for a mobile user to view it and decide whether he should open the mail.

Simple Layout: Limit the email size to 50k because mobile devices are slower to load. Creating an email with a multi-column layout or heavy data content would make the reader abandon the email before it loads. 

Easily Readable: Use fonts and sizes easy on the eyes. Your reader may be on the move and if your email is not easily readable he may ignore it. Use white spaces and bullet points for easy readability.

Mobile Friendly Landing Pages: If your email offers the ability to click through on a link, make sure the page you directed them to is also mobile friendly.

Easy Handling: Mobile users use their thumb to navigate. So make sure while adding call to action links and buttons make sure they are positioned where it is easy for the reader to navigate to.

Click-to-Call: Add a regular text phone number or a buttonto your message for a "call to" function.  Mobile users will prefer to call rather than type a reply.

Quick Sharing: Icons for sharing social media information should be placed where it is easily accessible to the reader. Do not put them at the end of the email, place them within the content, as relevant, so they can share if need be.

Text Version: Always have a plain text version available. Place a link above your message so subscribers can 'view it online' in case their phone does not display the email correctly.

As a marketer, you have to keep experimenting to increase your sales. With the right optimization techniques, it is easy to tweak your email to see what works for your readers.

I love testing. I love finding out what works and what doesn't. It's amazing the things you learn by watching how your recipients interact with your content.

The problem? Not enough email marketers try it. Even within my own client base at Delivra, only a handful have chosen to run valuable test scenarios with actual takeaways. This just blows my mind: why are marketers so hesitant to start? It does take time and effort. You will need to be dedicated to your email marketing strategy to run valuable tests. But the rewards are worth it!

So what can you do to get those gears grinding? Below are 3 tips to get started:

1. Get brainstorming on improvements you can make to your email marketing content.
   Know what your competition is doing. Subscribe to other email lists and pay attention to what they're sending. Would aspects of their email newsletters be relevant to your own audience? What is it about your own content that is not living up to your competitor's? This is a great starting point to brainstorm on - what you could, or should, be changing in your emails.
    
2. Have a plan.
   It's not worth your time to blindly test different aspects of your content with no goal in mind. Know the different ways to test your content with multivariate or email AB split testing, and figure out what aspects of your content would benefit from a change.
   
   Let's say you're testing out 2 different subject lines: Don't simply split your list and send one subject line to each half. Where's the benefit in that? Instead, know why your subject lines are different and set up a test group beforehand. Say you send each subject line to 10% of your list. Give yourself enough time (I usually advise 3 days minimum) to review the email analytics and send the 'winning' subject line to the remaining 80%. Using this information, you'll see a much better response to your email campaigns.
    
3. Don't be afraid.
   Yes, there is a chance your recipients will not respond well to change within your content. But if you don't test it out, how will you know what you're sending now is the best content possible? No email marketer wants a negative result, but even knowing what doesn't work for your recipients is valuable information.

What have you learned about your audience through testing? If you haven't tried testing your content, why not? Comment and let us know!

When Mark Zuckerberg founded Facebook, he probably didn't consider what a tremendous opportunity this social media website would present for corporations all across the country and even across the globe. In conjunction with Twitter, Blogger, LinkedIn, and more recently, Google+, social media platforms are quickly becoming crucial components of any successful Internet marketing strategy. 

Despite the opportunity offered by these social media websites, reports have shown that many email marketing consultants are failing to take full advantage by connecting professional email marketing with social media marketing for ultimate exposure. If you want to enjoy greater exposure and subsequent success for your own company, consider the following tips for leveraging social media in your professional email marketing campaign. 

Provide Easy Sharing Features

If you want your emails to be shared more often, you can start by simply making your emails easier to share. If you're thinking, "But our emails already include a 'forward to a friend' feature," you are part of a surprisingly large group that is missing out on incredible opportunities for brand exposure through social media. According to a 2010 study by eMarketer, 48 percent of marketers allow email recipients to forward the email to a friend, while just 13 percent offer special features for sharing emails on social networks. A study by MarketingSherpa discovered that the simple addition of social media sharing buttons in a managed email marketing campaign led to a 25 percent increase in reader interaction and dramatic surges in Internet traffic to a company's website. With the promising results of this study and the slow pace of the competition, integrating easy sharing could dramatically enhance your company's professional email marketing campaign. 

Cross Promote

Cross promotion is a highly effective strategy for maximizing exposure. If there is an unusual imbalance of subscribers on your accounts, this likely indicates that your company could be doing a better job at cross promoting. For example, if your company has 16,000 Twitter followers and only 2,000 email subscribers, it's likely that not all of your subscribers are aware of the benefits of subscribing to your email newsletters. Encourage your subscribers on each social media outlet to subscribe to receive emails from your company and stay connected through other social networks. Asking nicely may not work every time, which brings me to my next point: 

Offer Incentives

Despite the fact not every company makes it easy for consumers to share emails on social networks, nearly every business in the country has at least one social networking account. This poses a problem for businesses because tougher competition leads to higher selectivity from consumers when choosing which corporations to follow to prevent cluttering news feeds with promotion after promotion. To successfully encourage more email subscriptions, or to follow you on social networks, you need to be able to answer the tacit question of the consumer, namely, "What's in it for me?" Incentives can include discounts, sweepstakes, freebies and other attention-grabbing benefits of this nature. 

Because trends in both email and social media marketing change at a rapid pace, an email marketing agency is the most effective way to maintain momentum and stay ahead of the competition. With a world of opportunities available through social networking, your professional email marketing campaign could generate more attention than ever before. 

Newsletters have been considerably popular vehicles of information for businesses, clubs, societies, and various organizations since before the Internet was even a concept. Although the advancement of technology could have easily caused newsletters to become obsolete, they survived - or rather, successfully adapted to - the digital age for one very simple reason: both subscribers and organizations continue to find them useful. In accurately describing the power f the newsletter, "useful" is actually a mild characterization of the many benefits that come from this medium. Newsletters grant organizations the opportunity to share current promotions and reviews of previous events in a friendly, journalistic tone. 

Why It Works 

While the underlying purpose of the newsletter is to increase subscriber interest and ultimately generate more business, the conversational nature and structure of newsletters gives companies the opportunity to build a more personal and relaxed relationship with consumers and partners. Although newsletters come with several inherently positive qualities, they have even greater potential than the average professional may be able to recognize and uncover. A newsletter is more than just formatting and content - it is an opportunity to expand your business and improve customer outreach. 

Staying Consistent

The potential for greater success is not something that an opportunistic company would or should take lightly. With managed email marketing by a well-trained and highly experienced email marketing agency, crucial marketing tactics and strategies can be applied to your company's newsletter to ensure a consistent message and maximum appeal to the consumer. Effective email marketing requires more than just creative content and an attractive newsletter design, but requires supervision from an educated and experienced email marketing consultant to integrate specific strategies, tactics and various idiosyncrasies involved in professional email marketing. 

Email marketing practices are not something learned overnight, either. Keeping up with popular marketing trends and monitoring the competition are two highly important elements of a successful managed email marketing campaign. Marketing trends aren't always black and white. In other words, what may be an effective strategy for one industry many not be as effective for another. Often, determining the most effective marketing strategy requires a continuous cycle of trial and error to create a solid set of appropriate tactics. With the fast pace of the Internet marketing sphere, these strategy trends change on a weekly, even daily basis. 

Get Results

Since time is money in the world of business, most companies can't afford to sacrifice the time (let along the effort or expertise) necessary to create effective newsletters on a regular basis. The cost of hiring a highly qualified and well-experienced email marketing consultant at Delivra is affordable and logical for businesses of all sizes due to the impressive return on investment (ROI) that comes with this business decision. The Direct Marketing Association reported that ROI for email marketing at $40.56 for every dollar invested in 2011. Although this figure is projected to decrease slightly in the year 2012, it is expected to still remain highly substantial at $39.40 for every dollar invested. With the promise of high returns and effective, competitive strategy integration, the question you should be asking is: Could my company's newsletter generate a more successful response and greater impact with the benefits of professional marketing? 

 

What could be more appropriate in finishing up our series on industries benefiting from email marketing than a spotlight on government? With the upcoming presidential electing approaching rapidly, political interest and publicity is on the rise. Organizations involved in government on multiple levels can all use this heightened interest to their advantage through professional email marketing. In fact, many of them already are. 

It's so easy to see why managed email marketing might be appealing to governmental entities. For one, an email marketing agency can specially tailor an organization's marketing campaign to approach the issues in an effective, personalized manner. For example, say a government-sponsored public housing sector was looking for support in expanding a certain kind of housing into another district. Residents of the affected district would have to be approached from a  more sensitive angle than those in surrounding regions unaffected by this expansion. Under the supervision of an experienced email marketing consultant, candidates can depend on customized messages regarding these types of sensitive political subjects. 

Complementing the personal approach taken through email marketing, government also has the advantage of cost-efficiency when integrating this strategy. In an environment where government funding is increasingly limited, this components especially appealing. In addition to the more obvious reasons why an organization in a governmental entity might find managed email marketing useful, the strategy has already proven to be effective for governments in other less immediately obvious ways. 

According to several studies comparing the efficacy of email marketing among multiple industries, government ranks higher than the majority of measured industries in several components of email marketing. One particular study, conducted in December of 2010, revealed open rate of 25.66 percent for email marketing campaigns of governmental entities. This rate is higher than ecommerce at 14.98 percent, recruitment and staffing at 15.21 percent, sports at 19.54 percent, and even business and finance at 15.47 percent. This high open rate indicates subscribers are both interested in the issues and concerned about what the local, state and federal government agencies have to say about these issues. 

The click-through rate for the government is also comparably stronger at 5.37 percent for all emails received. This statistic might seem low from a general standpoint, but it ranks nearly 2 points higher than the average click-through rate of 3.7 percent. Since click-through rates indicate how compelling the message is to the reader, this puts government at a significant advantage in terms of general public interest regarding government issues. Government also has considerably lower rates for abuse complaints and unsubscribers at 0.04 percent and 0.20 percent, respectively. 

Ensuring the public's awareness and involvement in government issues is an important component of building stronger communities and a stronger country. With managed email marketing, this goal is made easier than ever for organizations in government, while also offering a convenient outlet for the public to receive word and speak their peace as well. 

       

The advancement of technology and Internet marketing has been highly beneficial for the photo and video industry for perhaps fairly obvious reasons. With email and social media marketing, professionals in this industry are able to share their work quicker than ever with greater detail. Having a strong email marketing campaign, in an industry where aesthetic quality has the heaviest influence on whether or not a consumer chooses that particular business, is key to enticing the buyer to take advantage of current promotions, discounts and new techniques or services offered by the company. Although there are a number of reasons that might account for the photo and video industry's email marketing success, consider the following top three contributing factors.

1. More Subscribers Open Their Emails

It may seem like a no-brainer, but the success of many professional email marketing campaigns in the photo and video industry is in part due to the high open rate this industry has overall. Studies indicate a 28.93 percent open rate for all emails sent by companies in the photo and video industry, which proves strong interest among the general public. Even ostensibly more popular industries, such as retail and education, rank considerably lower with just 17.8 percent and 16.64 percent, respectively. Greater interest means greater profit for any business, and for the photo and video industry this certainly holds true.

2. More Subscribers Click the Links in Their Emails

Any experienced email marketing consultant will tell you the click-through rate of an email marketing campaign is one of the most important factors for measuring its success. For the photo and video industry in particular, studies reveal a click-through rate of 5.7 percent. For those who aren't well versed in proper measurement of click-through rates, this figure is exactly 2 percentage points above the average of 3.7 percent. The population used to determine an average click-through rate included several other notable industries, including real estate, insurance and legal industries.

3. Fewer Subscribers Complain or Unsubscribe

An irresponsible or inexperienced use of email can lead to abuse by overwhelming the consumer with excess emails in a manner technically classified as spamming. When email is abused in this way, it often results in customer complaints and a surplus of customers unsubscribing to the company. Although this abuse of strategy, should rightfully only affect the company at fault, it can often have a negative effect on the customer's perception of the entire industry. With the photo and video industry, abuse complaint rates and unsubscribe rates remain significantly low, with a measured 0.07 percent of the former and 0.26 percent for the latter.

Although the nature of the photo and video industry likely helps contribute to its email marketing success, a well-trained and experienced consultant can often have the biggest impact on compelling subscribers to open emails and further encourage them to click the link embedded in the email. In addition to these highly important components, managed email marketing also decreases the likelihood of abuse, which can frequently have a detrimental effect on the campaign overall. Since statistics indicate email marketing favors the photo and video industry's, companies who are currently taking advantage of professional email marketing opportunities can continue to expect positive returns in the future.

I hadn't flown Southwest for a long time. As this was the best choice for scheduling from Indy to Seattle, I boarded the two-leg 6-hour flight. 

As the beverage and snack service came by, I grabbed a bag of peanuts and noticed the call to action, "Find out about our next BIG Sale with click 'n save emails. Text your email to 83793." (See Photo)

Delivra staff routinely get asked how to build an opt-in email list. Our answer, simply put, is to ask for them at every customer touch point. Southwest Airlines is not a client, but they have certainly got the message.

Of course, I texted my email and received the following acknowledgement,

Thanks for signing up for 
SWA Click 'n Save. You'll
never miss another deal in 
your inbox!

Want to try text to subscribe to acquire email addresses for your organization? Contact the email marketing experts at Delivra and we'll show you how. 

Extra thought: Read the book Lead with LUV written by Ken Blanchard and SWA president Colleen Barrett. In it, you will discover more secrets of success. 

There were more good email marketing tips available at this one-day event last week than one blog post can handle so I've decided to focus on: How to execute a winning trigger-based email marketing program.

Jim Moore, President, CEO and Founder of Birkenstock Central, a website that sells shoes, showed us how he ratcheted up sales with a series of sequential emails aimed at shoppers who abandoned their shopping carts. 

Through a series of tests and adjustments he has settled on a five-email cadence beginning three hours after a shopper leaves their cart. 

That reminder is followed by four additional emails spaced days apart. Of course, he stops the triggers to those people who buy. The first two reminders have no incentive, the third incorporates a 5% discount, the fourth and fifth a 10% discount. 

All show a double digit return which is surprising in that you would expect a declining return after each pass. 

That begs the question, "If the fifth trigger is doing so well why stop there?" 

You guessed it. Jim is planning to test number six and seven in the future. 

Extra tip: Jim found a free socks offer performed better than a discount in his initial welcome email to new subscribers. 

Interested in finding out how you can benefit from email triggers? Schedule a consultation with a Delivra email marketing consultant. 

Think email marketing is only to inform your leads and customers about your products and services? Think again! Email marketing, apart from being one of the most effective forms of communicating online, can be used to suit as many occasions as you can think of. Here are some of the ways you can use the same old email technique to connect with your customers: 

Email Newsletter: Email newsletters come in the form of direct mails that are sent regularly to a list of subscribers or customers. They contain information about the company, its product and services, free or discounted offers for customers, latest news in the industry, etc. A newsletter should contain valuable and interesting content in an easy to read format and have catchy subject lines. This is the most common format used by email marketers. 

Catalog Email Marketing: The primary goal of a catalog email is to entice customers to purchase. It lists particular products and their rates and often, offers for the week. Catalog emails are like hard copy catalogs; the only difference is they are sent through email. 

Press Releases: Press releases are used to divulge your company's latest achievements. You can use press releases to announce the addition of a new product or service in your company or to announce a particular event or a change in leadership. You can send press releases to the media or to a dedicated group of customers and subscribers.

Survey emails: Surveys help you track down the challenges or problems your customers may have. By encouraging their feedback, your customers will feel you genuinely care about their problems and are interested in finding a solution. 

Invitation emails: Thank you emails help you show gratitude to your loyal customers and are a way to ensure they stay connected with you. Thank you emails are sent to customers who have already used your products and services. These can convey your pleasure in having them as your customer. You can include current and future offers to them and even offer a discount towards their next purchase as a token of gratitude. 

Different types of email marketing strategies work for different businesses. If you want a craft one which is just right for you, call the email marketing experts at Delivra. 

Recently, I had to call the pharmacy to make sure they had been able to refill a prescription for me. The lady was very nice and said it was ready. In addition, she asked if I would be interested in signing up to receive a text message when my prescriptions were ready in the future. 

Of course!

How convenient to be able to get a text message when my prescriptions are ready for pick-up. CVS also allows you to sign up to receive emails to better manage your prescriptions, receive health information, and receive special offers throughout the store. And that's just one example! They're taking advantage of several different types of marketing channels to make their program more efficient for customers. Many email marketing firms are encouraging their clients to expand into other channels to increase their reach to audiences. 

Only working in one channel right now? Pairing with an email marketing agency, like Delivra, can help you implement other programs in addition to your email campaigns. It might make sense to set up an SMS program (outbound test messages) as a way to communicate with you audience. Or they might be able to help set up a text to subscribe program as well. Text to subscribe refers to having people text you their email address to join your email marketing list. It's a great way to build your email list without much effort on your part. 

For the best email marketing results, incorporate it with other channels, whether that's mobile marketing, social media marketing, blogging, or all of them!

I'm looking forward to receiving my first update from CVS via text and email (now that's I'm signed up for it). Want to learn more about managing your email marketing and incorporating some additional channels? Reach out the email marketing consultants at Delivra today! 

My colleagues Doug, Lavon and I traveled to sunny Hollywood, FL last week for the ever-exciting Email Evolution Conference sponsored by the EEC. In her last blog post, Lavon described it as an "email pep rally" and she's spot on.

There were three extremely prominent themes for this year's conference that I picked up on:

1. Rededication to Email Marketing Fundamentals
2. Mobile Marketing
3. Email Marketers are FUN people! (an observation, really)

It's somewhat of an oxymoron to say marketers need to rededicate themselves to email marketing fundamentals and yet have their eye on the new "shiny object" which is mobile, but that's reality. Marketers are faced with these priorities every day.

The key then is to tackle realistic, bite-sized projects to move you closer to your overall goal. (you do have email marketing goals, right?)  It's unrealistic to think you'll return from a conference to employ every single tactic you fell in love with. And, sometimes tactics you love may not be right for your space.

So, here are my top three realistic takeaways and tactics from the conference:

• If you've not read Seth Godin's Permission Marketing since 1999 or ever- do it NOW!
• Budget for an email audit. If you have internal analysts and email experts who can block off a week or more for an email audit- Bravo, you are among the very fortunate. For most marketers, email is just one of the many tactics which fall under the job description. If that's the case, make sure to carve off some budget for an indepth email analysis each year.
  An email analysis should paint a clear picture of how you're performing in all key areas of email marketing (i.e.List Growth, List Health, Engagement, Deliverability, Analytics and ROI) as well as clear recommendations for improvement and measurement.
• Mobile adoption in unavoidable. According to Jessica Harley from GiltGroup, over half of their email is opened on a mobile device. Wow! How many of you know what percentage of your subscribers are viewing your emails via mobile (this includes tablets)? If you don't know, find out now.

Intimately knowing the successes and deficiency of your email program will enable you to employ more advanced -shinier- tactics. For more ideas and themes from the conference check out the full agenda, including my presentation called, Combining Text and Traditional Marketing Channels to Boost Subscribers and Sales. We were very lucky to have our wonderful client, Anthony Scott with us from the Eiteljorg Museum to present their personal story with Text 2 Subscribe.

Until next year EEC...

A week ago, three members of the Delivra team and one of our clients attended the 2012 Email Evolution Conference. On several occasions, I heard the conference referred to as "an email pep rally." It was exactly that - a place to meet and network with others in the industry, learn more about the latest email trends, and represent our email marketing agency. 

As a group, we shared amongst ourselves information we gleaned from the different presentations we went to. I attended Auditing Your Email Marketing Program to Improve Performance presented by Jeanne Jennings of JeanneJennings.com and Sanije Gjokaj of Scholastic and Essential Email Prospecting Strategies to Test in 2012 by Jay Schwedelson of Worldata. They were both incredibly informative presentations and left me with tangible advice I could consider implementing into our email campaigns. 

Unicode: In Jay Schwedelson's presentation he mentioned emails that included Unicode in the subject line received an increased open rate of 18%. Not a perfect fit for all email programs, but perhaps a good addition to some email campaigns. If nothing else, it should be monitored and tested. 

Exclusivity: Again in Jay's presentation, he mentioned that a subject line which mentions exclusivity generates an additional 27% open rate in email campaigns. Whether it's presented by 'Invitation Only' or 'For CFOs Only' - might be something to consider testing. 

Improvement: Among other things, Jeanne recommended in her presentation to improve how email marketing is managed and measured by justifying sends and by implementing test programs. We've been focusing on the processes of our email marketing program at Delivra for some time now. It was good to be reminded of and motivated by the importance of doing so. It was also helpful to leave with information about how analyzing data can enhance performance. 

Anthony Scott from the Eiteljorg Museum and Delivra's Director of Marketing, Megan Glover, were also in the presentation line up. Their presentation was about Combining Text and Traditional marketing Channels to boost Subscribers and Sales. It was a real use case of how Eiteljorg Museum was able to use Delivra as their email marketing consultants to help build and implement a text-to-subscribe program in addition to their email campaigns and other traditional marketing efforts. Based on this success, the museum now plans to expand the text-to-subscribe campaign and include SMS (outbound messages) as well. 

Find out more about setting up a text-to-subscribe program or SMS. 

Although email marketing has proven effective across a wide range of different industries, the strategy has recently shown especially notable promise in the restaurant industry in particular. This promise is evidenced partially by a recent study that revealed a 20 percent open rate of all emails sent by restaurants in 2010. This may not sound like an impressive statistic by itself, but when compared with other industries surveyed, it ranks considerably higher. For example, the entertainment industry came in at just a 16 percent open rate, followed even further behind by the medical, dental and healthcare industries, which have a 13 percent open rate.

What Email Offers

Again you might be thinking: What's the big deal if customers are opening more of their emails from restaurant companies? According to Forrester Research, this open rate increase is complemented by a 17 percent revenue increase from each customer in this population. This inference is based on a study conducted by Forrester Research, which revealed that there is a 17 percent increase in purchase value of email subscribers versus non-subscribers. Although opening an email may not necessarily solidify a sale right then and there, it can still have an influence on the customer in the future. A reported 87 percent of consumers in the same Forrester Research study claimed email marketing impacted their future purchasing decisions.

The Proof isn't in the Pudding—it's in the ROI

Investing in managed email marketing is something both small and large restaurants truly can't afford to miss out on because of its proven efficacy in generating more business. According to the Direct Marketing Association, email marketing generates ROI of $57.25 for each dollar spent on the service. Compared with alternative options for online marketing, such as social media marketing, the ROI for email marketing is 150 percent greater. Looking at it from a purely objective point of view, it's difficult to argue with an investment generating such a substantial return.

A Recipe for Success

If the proven efficiency of hiring an email marketing consultant isn't enough of a motive to take advantage of this highly lucrative service, consider the fact that many other restaurants in the industry are already following this recent trend. According to a study by National Restaurant News, an average of seven out of ten restaurants in the industry are actively pursuing an email marketing agency for their own campaigns. This statistic indicates that restaurants which don't incorporate professional email marketing may lose customers to restaurants which are more accessible, and thus could be left behind by the competition.

Intuition Matters

The success seen in the restaurant industry is likely due to the widespread popularity of using Internet resources to find information about a particular restaurant. Studies show that 89 percent of customers always research information about a restaurant online before dining there. The benefit of email marketing is it can bring this information directly to the customer, which increases the customer's convenience and improves the chances they will choose that particular restaurant over another requiring an active search to acquire the same information.

With the prevalence of Internet usage today, it's increasingly important for all kinds of businesses to maintain a presence in the same spheres consumers frequent. Since email is a primary form of communication among so many people, and because of the proven potential of email marketing, the benefits restaurants can enjoy from following this trend are immense.

It's that time of year again - Valentine's Day. For many, it's filled with roses, boxes of candy, and cards telling that someone special how much they mean to you. You wouldn't send those things to someone who ignored you, would you? You would not put in the effort to show them how much they meant to you if they were not going to return it, right?

Should you consider having this same mindset when thinking about your email subscribers? Perhaps. 

An unengaged subscriber is one who does not engage with the email campaigns you send. They don't open your emails let alone click through them. Based on their zero engagement with your emails they are likely not interested in receiving what you are sending. 

So, the question is? Should you continue to send to these people? My suggestion is: 

1) Work with an email marketing agency to create a re-engagement email campaign. Send to everyone that is unengaged, encouraging them to start engaging with your emails. This might include offering an incentive to motivate them to come back. 

2) If they responded...great!  Try to send them an email reminder to update their preferences to determine how often they would like to hear from you. Then start creating those campaigns with the idea they may still need to be motivated to open and click through your emails with catchy subject lines, bold copy, or more incentives. 

3) If they didn't respond? Perhaps it's time to suppress them from future mailings.  It might help your statistics and deliverability to not send to these people. However, you might want to consider continuing to send to them for the off chance THIS time will be the time they open, click through, and buy. 

It's a judgment call. To send flowers or not to send flowers? That is the question :-) 

Gosh, it has been a while since my last post... but things have been a little busy at Delivra. And, there's one thing in particular making us smile.

For the past couple of months, we've been focusing on our own email marketing program. As a best practice, we believe it's very important to do a data clean-up every year, as well as evaluate all email content being sent. What was a relevant email schedule last year (or even last month) may not be so relevant anymore, and this is exactly what we found.

To ensure our data was clean, we did a re-engagement email campaign to our subscribers. This consisted of a few emails over the course of three weeks which asked email subscribers to update their preferences.




Once we had the data in place, we were ready to start drafting content and send schedules. One of our goals for this process was to do a better job incorporating highly relevant and personalized content in our emails.

Delivra's email marketing software has a feature called Conditional Content. What this feature allows us to do is create one email and swap out pieces of content or images based on data unique to the recipient.

For our own emails, we decided to use this feature to swap out Account Owner information. Many of our retail clients use this feature to swap out product information based on things like region, buying behavior, age, interests, occupation...the sky is the limit! Here's an example of what our email looked like:



Overall, the email "felt" good but ultimately, it's up to the data to let us know how we performed.  Some of the basic metrics we look at:

• Open Rate
• Click-through Rate
• Engagement Score
• Unsubscribes

We look at these metrics compared to data collected from previous mailings, we call these baseline metrics. Having these metrics are super important when you change any aspect of your strategy.

Finally, we can't forget the ultimate intent of the email. Our goal for this particular email was to raise awareness about new software features and gauge interest among our client base. In order to collect this data, we created a unique form-submit landing page that funneled info into Salesforce, our CRM. As the clients filled out the form, they were immediately put in the appropriate campaign and their Account Owner was notified.

Such a simple user experience, and yet, it allowed us to gather feature interest and another layer of data to determine the success of the mailing.

So, what were the results of our efforts?

• 14% increase in Open Rate
• Doubled our Click-through Rate
• 5% Conversion Rate for people interested in new features.

All of this goes to show that with a little effort and a lot of thought, you can take an existing list and re-invent results.

With all the Super Bowl craziness going on in Naptown this week, it's a little hard to catch your breath! As an email marketer though, you probably know the feeling. This week's madness is really no different than what you normally deal with on a regular basis at the office while trying to send out immaculate email campaigns to your subscribers. 

Do you feel overwhelmed sending out emails because you alone are the entire email marketing team or because you only have a handful of burned out help? It might be a good idea to look into an email marketing agency to help manage your email marketing program who offers more than just the software. An email marketing company can act more like your email marketing partner and offer services to help ease some of the pressure and stress from your team.  Some of those services at Delivra include: 

Consulting. Who wouldn't appreciate an email marketing pro offering advice on how to make your email marketing program the best it can be and boosts your long-term results? 

Design. We have a design team at Delivra who is dedicated to making client email campaigns look professional and get them results. 

Account Management. Each Delivra customer has a dedicated account manager who is paired with them to answer questions, provide email marketing insight, and assist in long-term goals and objectives. 

To find out what else Delivra can help you with, click here: http://www.delivra.com/managed-email-marketing/.

 As the Super Bowl makes its way to Indy, it's hard to miss the preparations taking place around the city. Personally, I can't wait to see how well Indy hosts such an event. As an email marketer, are you trying to get in on the Super Bowl action too by sending out an email to your subscribers about the big game? 

Papa John's is. As a sponsor of the NFL, it's' not a huge surprise they are, but I was interested in how they were incorporating the email aspect. (For full details about the giveaway, click here to read the full article from PizzaMarketplace.com.) In short, they are doing a Coin Toss Experience with fans where America guesses whether the coin toss will result in Heads or Tails. If they get it right, everyone enrolled in their Papa Rewards program will receive an email with instructions on how to claim their reward. 

Planning on sending out a Super Bowl email? Here are a couple of things to keep in mind: 

1. Make it fun. You are going to be in the inbox with a lot of competition. Not that this, in particular, is anything new, but you'll be competing with several other companies trying to get a piece of the Super Bowl pie. 

2. Rewards. To keep people engaged with your email through the Super Bowl and beyond, include a reward. Papa John's is engaging their audience by incorporating a poll, a reward, and a follow-up email. 

3. Buzz. Once you have established your contest, reward, or poll, etc, start creating some buzz around it. Share the news on social media, blog about it, add a CTA on your website, and send reminder emails. Talk it up! 

4. Test, test, test. You'd hate for a big email campaign around the Super Bowl to flop, wouldn't you? Be sure to test first. 

What examples have you seen of Super Bowl emails? I'm always interested, so send them my way! 

As a marketer, we would love for everyone to actually subscribe to our email updates so we can reach out to them every week to keep our brand in our consumers' minds. However, email is one of the most prominent aspects of our daily working lives, where we are inundated by work emails, social media updates, and email advertising campaigns. Therefore, getting someone to actually subscribe to your email can be tough. 

Instead of immediately asking someone to subscribe to your email updates, my suggestion is to ease them into the process to give them exposure to the types of emails you are sending out. Here are 2 ways to do this: 

1. Use social media to promote your email. 

Every email has a link associated with it, generally located in the header or footer of the email. Use this link to share your most recent email via social media. Mention the most important content of the email, and make sure to ask people to subscribe to your updates. Think of the most important content in your emails as almost a blog post - if people like what's being said, they will most likely subscribe to your blog, or in this case, to your email.

2. Have an email archive widget/page on your site. 

One of the best ways to let more people read your emails is to have them on your site. My suggestion is to have an archive widget on  your site, either located on the sidebar, or having a page specifically dedicated to your email archive. I would organize this by month, week, or whatever works best for your email campaign. You can create an RSS feed for your emails so they automatically show up in these sections. 

I know some brands might be skeptical doing these things since it might decrease email conversions, but they of it this way: if visitors like what you're saying, they will want more. Why wouldn't they want to subscribe to your email updates if the only other option is to continually go back to your site or social media networks every week to read your newest email? 

Email marketing is permission-based marketing at its core. Giving your potential consumers an idea of what content you are providing will allow them to make a more educated decision when subscribing to your email updates. As a result, you will have more dedicated subscribers and less unsubscribes.  

Guest Blogger | Jenn Lisak 

Jenn is a relationship manager with DK New Media. Jenn consults and manages marketing strategies for clients and speaks and writes on marketing and social media. 

Recently, I received a direct mail piece from my dog's veterinarian. It was a Healthy Pet magazine featuring William Shatner (Of course?). Although it was a direct mail piece, there are still relevant lessons that can be transferred to using personalization in emails. See the image of the piece below.
I enjoyed several aspects of the mailing...

1. Personalized Image. The picture of the dog on the front looks exactly like my Henry - down to the crazy pug eyes and the tongue always sticking out. It was perfect and got my attention right away. 

2. Name. I noticed they had included Henry's name on the front as well. (Even though it was spelled wrong, but more about this later.)

3. Last Visit. If you glance through the pages, you notice the vet also included the last appointment date we had.  I added it to my planner right away as a reminder to schedule the next one. 

Here are some factors to consider if you plan to use personalization in your email program...

1. Correct Information. Using personalization can be tricky. You need to be sure you have the right information before deciding to incorporate it. For example, I loved how they used Henry's name, but part of the effect was lost on the fact I was distracted by the misspelling. If you are going to use personalized pieces in your email be sure you have the correct information for everyone in your database. Otherwise, it may not turn out well when sent. 

2. Permission. This is a tidbit specifically for using personalization in emails - make sure you have permission before sending them any kind of emails. Using personalization will be the least of your problems, if you have not previously obtained permission. 

3. Social Media. There were several mentions on the mailing to visit their Facebook page. I assumed it meant for my specific veterinarian, but no. When I got there, it was basically an empty site. I made it to the appropriate one, but still it lost some of it's pizazz. When incorporating social media into your email, be cautious of all sites and aspects. You don't want your subscribers to go astray. 

If you are like me, you love your mobile phone. I like having so much information at my fingertips, whether it's my email, my social networks, or just being able to Google anything! As most people move towards mobile phones today, you should definitely start considering mobile when discussing any marketing plans. Text-to-Subscribe is one avenue to consider and I'm going to give you three reasons to love it! 

1. It's Universal. If you have an audience with mobile phones that allow them to text - you are in. Text-to-Subscribe isn't limited; it works with every major US cellular carrier, such as Verizon, AT&T, T-Mobile, and Sprint. 

2. It's Easy. For example, all you have to do to sign up for Delivra's emails is text Delivra to 71813. Any company can create a Text-to-Subscribe program equally as simple and just like that, people can start subscribing to your email list with their mobile phones. It's instant gratification! 

3. It's Quick. Joining a mailing list by using text-to-subscribe is quick too. Dealing with long lines during the Holiday season? Invite people to sign up as they are waiting in line at a store. Giving a presentation at a conference? Have people sign up as you're speaking. In a rock band? Have concert-goers sign up during a show! j

Setting up text-to-subscribe is easy and the benefits are huge! It makes it so quick and easy for people to subscribe to your mailing list. So, what are you waiting for? Contact Delivra today to get started!