Be Relevant!

Five Reasons why Content Strategy comes before Social Media

Here are five important reasons why a content strategy needs to be considered before integrating social media into your marketing plans. 

Social media = I hear you + I'm listening to you + I understand. Now replace "social media" with "publishing" or "content strategy". Works, right? 

Now try this...content strategy = I hear you + I'm listening to you + I understand + successful marketing goal and content measurement. This cements the fact that you are producing this content, not only to be shared by your customers and prospects, but to accomplish a significant marketing objective.

Read the full article here: Five Reasons why Content Strategy comes before Social Media.

Winning back inactive subscribers in 7 steps

Your inactive subscribers don’t necessarily represent dead wood, uselessly clogging up your database. They are past and future customers who were once engaged with your program.

Chances are, it will cost you less to reach out and re-engage with these subscribers than it will to acquire new ones, so don’t leave good money on the table.

In this article, Margaret Farmakis provides these simple steps to win them back:

Step 1: Dive into your data and find out what portion of your database is inactive and how many non-responders you have.

Step 2: Break the inactive segment into smaller sub-segments. You’ll need to create a win-back strategy for each.

Step 3: Test a variety of content and offer strategies. Some subscribers will respond better to discounts, others to information on new products.

Step 4: Make sure you recognize their inactive status with a special headline in the creative and a customized subject line that lets them know you want them back.

Step 5: Track your performance metrics to learn what’s worked and what hasn’t.

Step 6: Next, remove persistent non-responders from your database. If you’re not quite ready to make the cut, consider sending out a final re-permission message. This email should clearly state that the subscriber hasn’t been opening or clicking on your messages. Include a link to reconfirm that they would like to remain on your file. Be clear about how long they have to reconfirm and what will happen if they don’t; you’ll then be    able to take the final step and remove them from your database.

Step 7: Take proactive steps to identify and reach out to your non-responders in the future. Create triggered messages that will engage with your inactive segments on a methodical basis, ideally after a defined period of time. If the subscriber hasn’t opened or clicked in 30 days, send them your win-back offer. If a customer hasn’t made a purchase in three months, send them a special incentive to get them shopping again.

Read the full article here.

Turning Your Email Program into a Dialogue

In this article, Wendy Roth shares some tips to liven up emails and add the element of conversation. Here’s a summary:

• Add contact links to your emails: your email address, your customer support contact and call center contact details, your main office telephone numbers...
• Add a feedback link to your emails where readers can express opinions either about your products, company, or anything related to your market niche.
• Start a user forum. Link to it in your email messages, even in your transactional messages. Incentivize customers to join and clearly explain the benefits of such a community.
• Publish reader comments or product reviews. Publish these in your email messages, or devote an entire message to reader opinions. This can work in tandem with the feedback link to ensure these comments are worked into relevant reviews.
• Answer reader questions in the newsletter. Share knowledge on how-tos. Answer questions about your products, editorial policy, or whatever is on readers' minds. For every one person who writes in, maybe 100 or 200 are thinking the same thing.
• Use polls and surveys. Post mini versions in your regular emails, or link to a poll or survey at your site. Swap out one of your regular mailings for a reader-dialogue issue.
• Blog in your newsletter. Publish a blog post or comments in your newsletter and link back to your blog's site. Allow comments without moderation, except to remove messages that are libelous, in poor taste, or obvious comment spam.

However, all of this dialogue-building is useless, unless you...
Pay attention and respond! Your subscribers and customers are talking, you are now paying attention -- but what about taking some action?

No matter how many channels you use to join the conversation, you have to monitor and participate in all of them. Otherwise, there could be a perception that you are not truly engaged.

Read the full article here.

Forget relevance - it's about value!

As usual, Dela Quist of Alchemy Worx has decided to turn things on their head and not accept the 'norm'. In this case he's being irreverent to the holy 'relevance' mantra of email marketing....and he makes a good point.

In the latest issue of email-worx,, he talks about replacing 'relevance' with 'value' - as without value, it is very hard for your email program to be relevant. As he says 'Subscribers expect - and should get value!'

He goes onto say that an easy way to add value to your email program is to offer something which you can only get by being in the mailing list - that is, you can't get it by going directly to the website. This of course can be information, whitepapers, special offers, reduced shipping etc...

Watch the video here

More Email Marketing Resolutions for 2009

A couple of weeks ago, Chad White posted some great tips for your email marketing program in 2009. Here's a summary:

1. Each month replace one of your previously planned broadcast emails with a targeted email to a segment of your list. A well-crafted, targeted email can generate as much sales as a broadcast email, while simultaneously increasing engagement and reducing list fatigue. However, a targeted email does take a little extra effort to create.

2. Schedule a review of all your email forms and triggered emails. Sign-up forms, preference centers, welcome emails, triggered emails -- if you haven't done an inventory of these pages and emails and reviewed them to make sure that they're accurate and up to date, do it now. These tend to get set up and then forgotten about - sometimes for years.

3. Speak to the subscriber and not from the point of view of your business. Make sure that your emails and forms address consumers with them in mind. What's in it for them? What's appealing to them? And how does your email program help them?

4. Redesign your email templates with image blocking in mind.

5. Segment out your inactive subscribers. Send them different messaging than your active subscribers and at a lower frequency. Also consider sending them emails with a different template, one that has an unsubscribe link at the top, or offering the choice to opt-down to a lower frequency. After a long period of inactivity, you may also want to send a reactivation campaign, asking them to opt in again in order to continue receiving emails.

Read the entire article here.

Elements of a Successful Email Marketing Campaign

Here are the slides of my presentation at the Brussels Email Marketing Forum yesterday where I talked about the things I look at when I evaluate an email campaign. Let me know if you have any questions!

Elements Of A Successful Email Campaign Tamara Gielen

View SlideShare presentation or Upload your own. (tags: email marketing)

Think Global, Speak Local

As I sit at Heathrow Airport awaiting my flight back to the U.S., what a truly global village we've become - even in email marketing.

As I spoke with clients from Germany, Holland, the UK and elsewhere - the challenges, opportuniities and even lexicon was all very consistent. Terms I had thought were very American - "batch and blast", "pray and spray" and others were widely used by my Silverpop peers and clients.

And of course challenges such as deliverability, proving ROI to management, having enough resources to deploy "world-class" programmes, etc. were also frequently discussed. But the opportunities to maximize the email channel, delivering increasingly relevant content, integrating email with social networks and taking advantage of the explosion of the growth in mobile devices was alsu universal.

But as I edited my Powerpoint presentation for a UK audience, I was also reminded of another maxim - "Think Global, Act Local." It was a great reminder that even when we think we speak the same language - we don't. And email is no different - with increasing customer choice, it is vital that email marketers speak to their customers not just in general terms - but in a voice that resonates with each individual on your list....and off to my plane...

Email: Isn't It About Communicating?

The global financial meltdown reminds us again how important good communications are in our societies.

In 1929, the United States experienced a major stock-market crash, which precipitated disastrous bank runs – thousands of account-holders descended on their local financial institutions, demanding their life savings in cash – and contributed to what we now call The Great Depression.

As news spread over the last few weeks about potential failures in the financial markets, the specter of the bank run rose again as people talked again about withdrawing their hard-earned money before it disappeared.

But it didn't happen and isn't likely to happen in most countries throughout the world. I believe we will avoid failure because of the systems and protections enacted throughout the world to avert these runs and because of the instantaneous nature of communications.

While TV, radio and the Internet alerted people to the financial-system meltdown, customers could go online and read press releases from the affected banking institutions and government bodies and be reassured that their savings were either insured or protected.

Where does email come in to play? I personally have direct relationships with three financial institutions (not including credit-card issuers, mutual funds, etc.). Only one of them has reached out to communicate with me about the market turbulence in the last few weeks.

This company has sent me three separate emails, all meant to educate and reassure me about my accounts and status of the financial markets.

One of the other institutions is, in fact, a well-known bank that has been in the headlines in the last few days as pieces of the bank will be sold to another bank. But nary a communication from them. Nothing. Zilch. Nada.

As marketers, we spend most of our time talking about things such as customer acquisition, conversion rates, average order size, revenue per email and other short-term top-line-oriented metrics.  But, at its core, email is still a communications channel from consumer to consumer and between businesses and consumers.

The emails I received from the one financial institution recognized that we had a relationship and sought to strengthen it through timely, candid and reassuring communications.

My point here is not to talk about the quality of crisis communications but to make us think about all the ways to use email beyond the typical approach of sell, sell, sell.

For most businesses and consumers, email is still the most efficient and quickest way to communicate. When developing your email program and communication cadence, build in the aspect of basic, value-added communications: keeping your subscribers and customers up-to-date on both good and bad news.

It might be as simple as a notice that a popular product is out-of-stock, a bulletin that seminar registration is full, a Web site will be down for maintenance, or you have to add a fuel surcharge because of higher jet-fuel costs.

At its core, email is a communications vehicle, not a just billboard for your latest free-shipping offer. Use email for all it can be.

Make Your Call-to-Action Stand Out: 4 Tips

In this article on the Email Experience Council's blog, Lisa Harmon explains how to make your call-to-action stand out:

1. Stay focused.
Design the entire message to direct recipients towards the CTA. Don’t distract them with too many equally-weighted links and offers. Select imagery that draws the eye toward the point of conversion. Make the path appealing and clear, and make sure that it extends beyond the email itself to the landing experience.

2. Keep it direct and clear.
It’s fun to write clever copy, but make sure that even the quirkiest wording is to the point. 

3. Make sure it’s above the fold.
Keep the CTA above “the fold,” or in the part of the message that’s visible without any scrolling. While the fold location can be hard to predict with all the varying preview panes and computer monitors out there, put your CTA up top where it gets the attention it deserves.

4. Make the CTA stand out visually!
Keeping it above the fold is a good start, but go further. Make your CTAs stand out visually. Try using HTML buttons as opposed to text links. You’ll grab more eyes that way and generate a higher CTR. For more on buttons, check out Lisa's article on “The Bulletproof Button”.

Read the full article (including examples) here.

How to Encourage Readers to Interact with Your Emails

There are many ways to encourage readers to interact with an e-mail newsletter or Web site and just as many ways to use the resulting content. In this article, Jeanne Jennings offers a few tips for getting started:

Surveys, Polls, and Quizzes

Jeanne often recommends clients include a survey, poll, or quiz in each issue of their e-mail newsletter. The question can be based in fact or opinion; multiple choice questions work best, as this makes it easier for readers to respond. If you want to collect additional information, ask an open-ended question or two after readers have responded to gather more detailed information about the answer.

Results of a survey, poll, or quiz can be used in a number of ways. Some marketers report them in a future issue. If you have more resources, include the results in an article that delves further into the issue. Often, answers to the open-ended questions asked in addition to the original poll or quiz will be information you can include in an article or publish separately.

Discussion Boards

If you have discussion boards on your site, there's an opportunity to pull content from them directly into your e-mail newsletter. Including a particularly interesting post, along with a link to join the discussion on your Web site, is a great way to engage readers. It also drives more visitors to the discussion board to grow that community.

Many e-mail newsletters include a generic discussion-board link back to the site. This isn't an effective way to pull people in. The idea of a discussion board isn't interesting. The value lies in the actual discussions going on there. By pulling actual posts into the e-mail you provide readers with a reason to get involved.

Article Comments

Many e-mail newsletters feature a "comment" button at the bottom of articles, but I'm often disappointed when I click through to see what others have said. Too often, there are no comments at all. When comments do appear, they're frequently not substantial ("Great article, really enjoyed it.") or self-serving ("Great article, my company offers a service like this, contact us at...").

If you hope to get substantial comments, a link to comment isn't enough. Ask some open-ended questions at the end of your article. Make the article a jumping-off point to begin a discussion of the topic on your site. Even better if the author or another member of your staff helps to manage the discussion by chiming in with additional thoughts or comments.

Content From Readers

The holy grail of UGC is having readers submit entire items, articles, or stories for publication in your e-mail newsletter. People like to see their name in print, and more than you expect are willing to provide content. Your job is to make it as easy as possible for them.

One way to do this is to focus their efforts. Give them a situation to write about. If there's an industry event coming up, ask readers to write a synopsis of one of the sessions and send it to you. Or give them an open-ended topic, such as "your most successful marketing campaign" or "a time when you found the silver lining in a bad experience." Don't require a long piece. A couple hundred words is easier to write and can be just as effective. Response probably won't be overwhelming, but if you publish submissions the program will build on itself.

If it makes sense for your industry, you can also request visual input from your readers. If you make or sell cameras, encouraging readers to send in photos and publishing the best images in your e-mail newsletter with attribution is a great way to leverage UGC.

Source: ClickZ

Welcome Emails: Dos and Don'ts

The first e-mail you send to a new subscriber is where you set and manage expectations. Your efforts will be rewarded if you do this successfully and then meet those expectations.

In this article, Derek Harding lists the dos and don'ts for writing and delivering a welcome message to new subscribers.

The what, when, and how of that first message is key. It sets the tone for the relationship. As with any relationship, you never get a second chance to make a first impression.

Explain Why

This takes on added importance if there's a time lag between subscription and first message. Remind recipients when, where, and how they registered. Otherwise, they may not remember having subscribed or they may not connect your e-mail with the Web site they visited a few days earlier.

Sometimes an e-mail address is shared by two or more family members. Providing the details can avoid a situation where an angry spouse complains of spam. Whatever the reasons, the more you tell recipients about why they're receiving your message, the fewer complaints and issues you'll have.

The number one way to reduce complaints among new subscribers is to provide a clear and accurate explanation of why someone is receiving a message.

For example, something like this doesn't count and won't help: "You are receiving this message because you signed up on our Web site, or that of one of our affiliates, or contacted our customer support, or in some other way indicated a desire to receive e-mail from us."

However, this will: "You are receiving this e-mail because on Saturday, August 24 at www.example.com you signed up for our product updates newsletter."

Don't Delay

Your confirmation message should be sent quickly. Ideally, that means immediately upon receipt of the subscription. There can be reasons why a message takes time to work its way through your internal systems, but it's vital to make this happen as quickly as possible.

The greater the delay, the greater the disconnect among subscribers between their subscription behavior and the received e-mail. This leads directly to an increased complaint and opt-out rate.

Offer an Opt-Out

If you aren't using confirmed (double) opt-in, at the very least ensure there's a clear and easy opt-out mechanism in your confirmation message. Sure, it can be argued that this isn't legally required because the message is transactional in nature, but this is when recipients are most likely to change their mind.

When someone wants off your mailing list, making it hard -- or even fighting with that person -- does more harm than good. If you don't let them easily unsubscribe, many will use the TIS (this is spam) button instead, which harms your reputation, may result in delivery issues, and -- most importantly -- irritates your customers and prospects.

Explain What

This is your opportunity to set expectations. Even if your signup process discloses what someone signs up for, it's worth repeating. If you send daily offers, yet subscribers don't expect them, subscribers will find out pretty soon and may be upset. Tell them up front what they're going to get, and how often, so they can choose to join or not.

If you offer a profile management center, this is also a great place to get new subscribers to ensure their profile is accurate and that their subscription preferences are what they really want. If you send a variety of communications, your subscribers may or may not realize just how many of them they agreed to when they first signed up. This is especially true for off-line subscription processes.

Source: ClickZ

12 Content Ideas for Your Email Campaigns

If you’re just getting started with email marketing, if it’s been awhile since you sent an email because you aren’t sure what to send, or if you’re looking for new content ideas to help you move beyond an email newsletter, this list is the perfect starting point:

1. Interview an executive.
2. Create a series about your product/service.
3. Write educational, how-to tips and articles.
4. Interview a customer (or member, or fan).
5. Write about an event you’re attending, from the event.
6. Share some behind-the-scenes information about your company or product.
7. Promote thought leadership articles.
8. Share company successes and awards.
9. Repurpose content from a seminar.
10. Showcase a partner company or service.
11. Interview an employee.
12. Broadcast news from your industry.

Source: the Emma blog

Tips for Using Email to Send Press Releases

As the saying goes, when all you have is hammer, everything looks like a nail. Such is the case with e-mail. It is pervasive in all corporations and an often preferred method of contact by editors, reporters and analysts. As with any e-mail program, corporate PR e-mail starts with considering the needs of the audience. These same media magnets are inundated with e-mail press releases every day. If you want your important news to get opened—and more important, to get covered—follow these best practices:

• Stop including the entire press release in the body of the e-mail. Research reports you have less than six seconds to capture attention in the preview pane. Press releases can average five or more paragraphs. Instead, include a teaser of the release and a click-through to a hosted version on your Web site.

• Don’t include attachments. They can be deliverability killers. Corporate e-mail filtering systems are often more stringent in their rules than even the largest ISPs. Attachments from outside sources are often confused with viruses or attacks. Leave data sheets, photos and other release-related attachments to an expected, person-to-person e-mail so you’ll be ensured they get delivered.

• Think carefully about “from” and subject lines. Remember the rule: The “from” line tells the recipient whether or not to delete the e-mail and the subject line tells the recipient whether or not to open the e-mail. If an individual at your company has a relationship with the media, test using that person’s name in the “from” line instead of the company name alone. Write an engaging subject line and include first name personalization. Recipient first name personalization has fallen out of widespread favor in the b-to-c e-mail world, but in b-to-b, it’s still another way to catch the recipient’s attention.

Once the e-mail gets opened, the relevance of your message takes over. Just because the media recipient list may be smaller than your customer retention or acquisition lists doesn’t mean relevancy rules don’t apply. If your message isn’t important to the recipient, you’ve lost their attention today and maybe in the future as well.

Source: btobonline.com

12 Ways to Reel Inactive Subscribers Back In

In a recent whitepaper, Spring Clean Your Email List: 5 Easy Steps, marketing technology company Lyris touches on 12 ways to reel these inactive subscribers back in.

1. Special offers. Consider offering discounts or free shipping for retail or a motivational whitepaper for B-to-B communications, suggests the whitepaper.
2. Survey subscribers. Find out why inactives have become disinterested in your e-mail communications.
3. Update profile. Using incentives, drive subscribers to their profile update pages where they can change preferences and personal data.
4. Understand their demographics. Many of your inactives could share common traits—they opted in as part of registering for the same whitepaper, seminar or promotion; a majority are the same sex, age, ethnicity, etc. Find ways to connect better with their demographics.
5. Try different send days/times. Different people respond better at different times of the day, week or year. Send out e-mails at different times to see if it spurs response.
6. Modify frequency. Considering adjusting your frequency. Maybe inactives are receiving so many solicitations that they’ve become annoyed. If so, tone it down. Or maybe interested customers are not getting enough e-mails to make an impression. In that case, try sending out more.
7. Create new content. Perhaps the content these inactives signed up for has become stale or their needs have changed. Offer different and new content to re-engage them.
8. Try different formats. Test using a text version, suggests the whitepaper, that is very simple but with specific links and messaging intended to drive action.
9. Test different subject lines. If the subject line doesn’t catch their attention, chances are the e-mail goes straight to the trash or junk folder. Try changing the subject line for inactives to see if it triggers response.
10. Monitor seed/proof lists. The whitepaper advises sending your messages to proof and seed lists for key domains. Monitor delivery in case content or images are causing your messages to be filtered or treated differently with specific ISPs and companies. If problems are detected, develop different versions of the messages that may not trip filters.
11. Send a postcard. Send a postcard that offers an incentive for inactives to update their e-mail preferences and profiles.
12. Move re-engaged to active status. After each e-mail message sent to inactives, change the demographic status of those recipients that clicked a link to “active.” This helps keep your focus on converting the inactives and tracking your success.

Source: Target Marketing

Your Newsletter: The Basics

When designing your newsletter always keep in mind the amount of time you can expect your reader to spend viewing your newsletter. Everyone today is information hungry, but always in a hurry. How you display your content within your newsletter can capitalize on this assumption.

What Information Should I Include in My Newsletter?

Obviously, this will depend on your business and the audience in which you are marketing, but here are three recommendations:

• Announcements: Include recent information about your company and/or products that impacts your readers. For instance, you can include a link to an upcoming tradeshow where your company will be exhibiting or perhaps a seminar that your company will be sponsoring.
• Article: Include an article that relates to your products or services and helps your readers. It is also a great idea to develop a resource library that contains additional articles and provide a link for your readers so they can find more information on similar topics.
• Case Study: Provide an example of a client who has achieved great results while using your products or services. This will help build credibility with your readers. Again, provide a link where your readers can view additional case studies.

Those are three key items to include in your newsletter. If you include these, you are keeping your readers up to date on recent information about your products or services, including an article providing value on topics affecting them and by providing a case study you are proving to your readers that others are achieving success by using your products or services.

Making Your Articles Easier to Digest

Think of how we read newspapers; the same holds true for how we read material on the web. We skim headlines looking for something that interests us and only then will we begin reading an article. We also stop to view photographs and any visual cues offering greater insight as to the information held within an article.

I see far too many articles within newsletters that are very long (greater than 900 words). When writing your article try to keep it at 800 words or less and break each section into smaller, easy to read blocks with bolded headlines over each section. This will encourage your reader to skim your article and stop at each section they find interesting. If you are finding it impossible to trim your article simply find a good point within 800 or fewer words and provide a link to a webpage that contains the article in its entirety.

Sharing Your Newsletter with Others

Always give your readers a reason and a means to share your newsletter with others. By providing valuable and relevant content to your subscribers, they will be inclined to share this information with others by forwarding your newsletter. Most email marketing platforms provide a "Forward-to-a-Friend" feature that inserts a link within the footer of your message allowing your readers to easily forward your newsletter. The goal is to obviously reach out to as many people as possible by providing valuable, relevant, timely content and an easy way for your readers to share this information with others.

Source: iContact's Email Marketing Monthly

What Makes a Relevant Email?

There are several tactics you can take to increasing e-mail relevance, all relying on marketing ingenuity and information contained in your customer database. These tactics can be broken down into six key elements that characterize relevant e-mail, and are guaranteed to increase customer engagement and e-mail productivity.

1. Segmentation - Why broadcast an e-mail campaign if you have the ability to target specific audiences? Use the data you have on customer demographics, preferences, location and behavior to segment individual groups who share the same attributes. Your audiences will be smaller but far more qualified and responsive.
2. Personalization - You would be surprised how many companies are not even marketing to customers on a first-name basis. Use the customer data you have to personalize the content based on profile, attributes, location, status, preferences and behavior.
3. Lifecycle management - Is the customer new to your business, a loyal shopper or no longer active? Being able to key your messages to a person's place in the customer lifecycle will help you refine your programs and optimize retention efforts.
4. Triggers - Whenever possible, your e-mail marketing should include programs that are driven by customer status and behavior. There are applications that enable you to automate these programs, ensuring consistency in the way you handle welcoming new customers, up-selling certain products or following up with those who abandon their shopping cart.
5. Interactivity - Indulge your customer's curiosity and feed her need to be entertained. Include a clear call to action as well as interactive elements that engage customers, such as a preference center, survey or information links. Always leave the customer wanting more.
6. Testing and measurement - Understand the impact your e-mail program has and how to improve it by employing valid control groups, A/B testing and any available metrics.

Relevance isn't easy. It requires a confluence of customer data, targeting tactics, marketing expertise, process, and technology. But as an email marketing strategy, the impact relevance can have on both customer engagement and profitability makes it worth the effort.

Source: DMNews

Using Email to Promote Conferences and Events

E-mail is one of the most popular ways for b-to-b marketers to publicize conferences or other events they’re hosting or attending.

In this article Tara Lamberson provides some tips to make the most of your event-oriented e-mail campaigns:

1) Make sure the right people get invited to events they’d care about.
If you already have established groups of people who come to conferences, e-mail is a great way to retain those attendees and give them information about upcoming seminars or conferences.

If you’re just beginning to gather subscriber data, use surveys to determine what kinds of events customers and prospects would be interested in. Tapping advanced relationship marketing and behavioral targeting also can provide intuitive recommendations for relevancy, she said.

In addition, marketers are moving away from sending long newsletters listing upcoming events for the month or quarter, Lamberson said. “Marketers assumed the user would scroll through and pick the one that’s relevant for them,” she said. “The trend now is to send a targeted communication that has only two events instead of 10 to a customer who might be more likely to check them out.”

2) Timing matters.
Marketers that send messaging out too far in advance run the risk of participants forgetting about the event. But if there’s too short a window, there’s a strong likelihood the e-mail recipient won’t attend.

If the event is offline and participants need to book travel or seek budgetary approval, It is recommended to send an initial notice between six months and 90 days in advance. For online events, messaging 90 days in advance gives interested recipients enough time to put it on their calendar.

Sending out reminders as the event nears is important, too. Some companies ask people who sign up when and how they’d like to receive reminders—for instance, more e-mails or a text messagemeaning texting via cell phones?

Personally I think 90 days for an online event is way too long. One month is more than enough notice in my opinion.

3) Keep event announcements concise.
A short e-mail is critical. The top of the message should contain a brief sentence or two describing the event. Then, use a bullet format to tell e-mail recipients why they should attend, she suggested. Add a link to another site for more detailed information, and always have a call to action in every e-mail so recipients can sign up immediately if they want to.

4) Don’t focus exclusively on the acquisition end of the event.
Most marketers focus all their energy—and budget—on drawing people to their company’s events. However, there’s also great value in connecting with attendees via e-mail once the conference is over. She suggested sending attendees from a recent event an e-mail with a link to an online survey to provide feedback. “It’s a great way to capture quantitative data, get testimonials and find out if this kind of event is still relevant for them going forward,” Tara said.

One more tip:

If you are trying to get top-level executives to your event, try to make the email as short and as personal as possible: 

• go for a short, simple text email that focusses on the benefits of them attending the event. Remember, these people typically have hundreds of emails in their inboxes and they will very likely read your email on a blackberry or smartphone.
• if relevant, put a familiar name in the sender name to make it look like the email came from someone that they know, or have heard of eg. your CEO.

Source: btobonline

How to Make Sure Your Email Campaigns Are Relevant and Effective

In their whitepaper, The Retail Marketer’s Playbook: Your 180-Day Email Marketing Game Plan with Top 5 Plays, Responsys offers five “top plays” to make sure your e-mail marketing campaigns are relevant and effective:

1. Refine segmentation tactics.
Segmentation allows for more targeted e-mail messages. The white paper provides some tips on how to segment:

• Segment based on consumer behavior, not just demographic information.
• Use whatever data you have available, and send more relevant content to subsets of subscribers.
• Create different versions of your messages.
• Perform continual testing.
  

2. Improve transactional messaging.
Transactional e-mails are highly relevant and very likely to be opened and read. Therefore, they should offer the customer something, furthering his or her relationship with you. Recommend additional products or services the customer might want or need; offer a subscription to your newsletter; and send transactional messages in HTML format to reinforce your brand.

3. Strengthen welcome messaging.
In e-mail, it’s imperative to make a good first impression: “The moment you acquire a consumer’s e-mail address is a key point of engagement—quite possibly the most relevant and defining moment in the relationship.” Suggestion: send new subscribers a series of well-timed and well-designed HTML e-mails that grab attention.

4. Reengage customers with a win-back program.
With the cost of attracting new customers so high, it’s important to keep existing customers coming back. Every e-mail marketing team should implement an automated win-back program. Let customers know you’ve noticed that they haven’t made a purchase in a while; send surveys to solicit feedback, and make an exclusive offer that’s too good to pass up. The more you engage your customers in a positive way, the more likely they’ll stick around.

5. Recover revenue with a cart abandonment program.
Shopping carts are great tools for e-mail marketers, but just because people put items in their cart doesn’t mean they’ll buy them. However, the interest is there, so Responsys suggests you help nudge these would-be consumers along with these tips:

• Trigger the timely delivery of e-mail messages to potential purchaser who abandoned their shopping carts;
• provide easy access to saved shopping carts;
• include quick links to more information about shipping and return policies or alternative methods of ordering; and
• offer a special discount to accelerate the buying cycle.

You can download this whitepaper here.

Source: Target Marketing

Linking to Video's Can Have a Positive Impact on Email Performance

Although it’s still as good as technically impossible to embed actual videos into email messages with reliable success, linking out to hosted videos can have a positive impact on email performance.

In this blog post on the EEC blog, Lisa Harmon provides these 3 tips:

1. Reference Video in Your Subject Line. Including the word “video” in your subject line can help inspire opens.
2. Use Strong Visual Cues to Indicate a Link to Video. Recipients respond best to obvious treatments like play buttons, and frames that look like Windows Media or Quicktime video players.
3. Match Your Video Content to Your Message. Video needs to support your ultimate goal, whether that’s to build your brand or inspire a direct response.

Read the full post here.

10 B2B Email Marketing Best Practices

A B2B email campaign is very different from a B2C campaign. According to Simms Jenkins there are three major differences:

1. Your tone should be much like it would be in a face-to-face meeting with your prospects: direct, professional and in a manner that makes your audience want to do business with you. Don't waste your time building up to the pitch -- state why you are sending this message and what's in it for the recipient.
2. The message should clearly articulate the purpose and value to the subscribers while making it easy for them to identify and act on any call to action. Don't bog them down with too many cross promotional messages or secondary marketing messages. Allow them to scan the email and find out what's in it for them.
3. Your main measurement analysis should not be based on opens and clicks but on how many leads are generated. Careful attention should be paid to forwards and any additional email subscriptions generated from the campaign. A high open and clickthrough rate but lack of leads could mean you put up too many barriers to capture the lead. Ensure your landing page and relevant gateway pages (for example, the white paper sign-up page) are easy to find and utilize. This may take some coordination that goes outside the realm of a typical email manager.

Simms lists these 10 best practices in B2B email marketing:

• Know your audience: If you are mailing to IT network administrators, an image-heavy newsletter probably will not be well received. Instead, send a text-only message. Follow the cues of what your audience is like and don't take a one-size-fits-all approach.
• Mobile email triage is real: An increasing number of business executives use their mobile devices/PDAs to perform email triage. This means that if you have a weak message or lack something compelling or of immediate value to your email, you may have the busy exec delete your email while in a meeting. On the flip side, a unique email with a relevant purpose may get saved for the executive to read in the office.
• Make it easy for the mobile audience: Click here to read on your mobile phone is becoming more commonplace on B2B emails and may help you escape mobile email rendering snafus.
• From & Subject lines: Emails from a CEO to a fellow executive tend to resonate. Ensure your From line is from someone who matters. Combine this with a short Subject line that can break through the clutter while demonstrating a reason for the user to read this email.
• Short and sweet: Whether read on an iPhone or laptop, make your message count. That means make sure it gets read. Long emails without clear calls to action will get skimmed and deleted. Make your value proposition above the fold and obvious to the people that will browse over your email looking for a reason to read (or delete).
• Don't oversell: Too many promises, customer raves or pricing information may overwhelm your audience and diminish your opportunity to have people click on a link where they can find the details of the service or product being offered.
• Respect the audience's time: Frequency is a significant issue for all mailings, but if a business subscriber doesn't respond to the first two messages, it doesn't mean you should send to him even more frequently.
• Test: I received seven different emails from a lead generation company in the span of five minutes this morning. The emails actually contained decent messaging and links to at least one relevant case study. They had me until hello occurred seven times. Someone was asleep at the wheel when the campaigns were segmented and set. Do your due diligence before an email is sent as these campaigns did more damage than good.
• Offer something unique: A white paper can often work, but they are everywhere, aren't they? Provide access and perks that are gold to the C-suite audience. For example, one client attempting to register business executives for an annual event tested pricing breaks versus admission to a VIP event. Remember, the B2B audience usually isn't spending its own money so you can guess which offer performed better.
• Remarket: Create a follow-up campaigns based on how each user responded (or didn't) to the initial campaign. Using your metrics can guide you to a better and more relevant strategy.

Source: iMedia Connection