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Getting Responses With Email Marketing - Part Four
Oct 12th
4) Images: Let Pictures Tell The Story
So we’ve all heard that a picture is worth a thousand words. What does that mean for your E-Newsletter?
Your graphics can be the difference between someone paying enough attention to your email marketing to click a link or read an opening paragraph, or moving on. Always make sure that whatever you use is directly or obviously connected to your feature, story or promotion. Don’t make people have to “work” or guess what they are viewing and how it relates to the content…unless of course this is part of a well-thought out marketing plan! And simpler is typically better.
Finding good photos or illustrations online certainly isn’t hard these days. (With almost 100% broadband coverage now, video and audio are now a component of some E-Newsletters too, but more on these topics another day.) One of the top and fairly inexpensive options is iStockPhoto.com, although many other libraries exist. And don’t forget the multitude of royalty-free images available on Google, Flickr or Yahoo Images. (But you should always be sure to double check that the images you are using aren’t copyright protected.)
Following our theme of trying different options until you find one that works best for More >
Getting Responses With Email Marketing - Part Three
Oct 5th
3) Your Links Are Important!
So you’ve gotten your recipient to open and view your E-newsletter with your subject line and offer. But are they clicking your links? That’s the real purpose of course!
You know by now that your E-news needs to be rich in links. It doesn’t cost you anything to include links within your content, and you have much to gain. Make sure your links are relevant to what you are trying to communicate, of course, but unless the article becomes difficult to read due to an extreme overabundance of links, you should be including them.
So if your E-newsletter has 5 links to your offer, why not try including 5 more - and see if your response increases? And also be mindful of the previous tip, and make sure that many of your links are happening above the fold and not below!
You can then look and compare how many more times the links higher up in your copy are being visited as opposed to the ones that are lower on the page. Then ask yourself a question: Are these the links that matter most to your business? If not, here is another great opportunity to make adjustments to your newsletter, More >
Getting Responses With Email Marketing - Part Two
Sep 28th
2) Change Up Your Offer!
So, you’ve followed our first tip, and have gotten the reader to Open your email campaign. Good first step! But what if they don’t respond to what they see and read? Try changing up your offer.
Why not send different offers along with your various subject lines we mentioned earlier? Maybe try a % off with half of your email list, and a flat dollar-amount savings with the other half? Once again, it’s all about apples-to-apples COMPARISONS…finding out what your readership will respond to best.
Or maybe you run a test with free shipping vs. no free shipping, or one campaign with an expiration date vs. one without?
You can even send to smaller samplings of your list first; review your Open rates in real time; and then roll out the “winning” offer to the rest of your addresses.
The bottom line — especially at the beginning of your journey into email marketing — don’t be afraid to try new things!
If it works, great. And if not, now you know yet “another way to NOT invent the lightbulb” with your readership, as our old friend Thomas Edison would say.
NEXT TIP: Your Links
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