Tag - marketers

Email marketers seek to create winning subject lines

Email marketers seek to create winning subject lines

Compelling subject lines are crucial to crafting an effective campaign. As 2014 begins, marketers will continue trying to master the science of messages that recipients can’t resist clicking on. Through years of trial and error, experts are beginning to pinpoint which kinds of lines lead to more clicks and sales. BizJournals recently laid down the ground rules for writing subject lines that will catch the eye of every name on a business’ email contact list.

Customers respond to concise email subject lines
Nobody wants to spend extra time sifting through their inbox to find updates from their favorite brands. BizJournals urged email marketers to capture customers’ attention by sending emails with short subject lines that get the point across in only a few words. While marketers might be tempted to give a detailed rundown of the enclosed newsletter or discount notification, readers are most intrigued by a brief preview and will likely click through out of natural curiosity. In addition, popular email clients such as Gmail and Microsoft Outlook tend to display only a small portion of a subject line, especially on smaller platforms like tablets and smartphones.

So how long does an email marketer have to convey their message within a subject line? BizJournals suggested less than 50 characters as the best range for businesses to spark the interest of their recipients. Keeping subject lines short will not only save customers the hassle of trudging through excess language but will pay off in the long run when marketers find that more people are clicking on emails and following through with online purchases.

The best email subject lines are more exciting than informative
Emails with urgent subject lines are bound to stand out against a sea of bland notifications and unwanted spam. By giving messages the tone of a pressing issue, marketers can make customers think that they might miss out on an offer if they don’t open the email immediately. BizJournals emphasized the importance of numbers in creating the pressure of a short timeframe.The eye is drawn to numbers on a screen cluttered with letters, so subject lines that include digits will more likely convince readers that the email is worth opening.

While including specific information in emails is critical to educate customers about upcoming sales, events and discounts, email marketers can’t forget that subject lines are meant to prioritize excitement over everything else. BizJournals noted that the best subject lines include a minimal amount of product information while emphasizing newness and exclusivity. Businesses were also urged to test a wide range of possibilities to see what lines draw the most attention from readers. Common methods include A/B tests and running individual pilot campaigns that can target a specific audience or demographic.

Where email marketers go wrong when creating subject lines
Sadly, there are some emails that rarely ever get clicked on. To help email marketers avoid sending out ineffective messages, Business 2 Community compiled a list of the most common mistakes businesses make when creating their newsletter subject lines. Excessive use of caps lock turns out to be one of the main offenders for inbox browsers. An email should be intriguing, not make customers feel like they are being yelled at. Businesses can capitalize the first letter of each word in a sentence to convey importance but should avoid steer clear of using capitals in every email.

Business 2 Community also cited unusual punctuation as something that can annoy email recipients. Including too many question marks or exclamation points is a waste of characters and can make a subject line appear unprofessional. To find success in email marketing, businesses need clever, exciting lines to hook their customer base.

Email marketers get personal to ensure successful campaigns

Email marketers get personal to ensure successful campaigns

Internet trends come and go, technologies appear and fade , but what stays the same when it comes to effective email marketing? Determining strategies that stand the test of time is a challenge that business leaders tackle year in and year out. Clickz recently revealed what they believe to be the ultimate in email marketing wisdom, but will these tips remain relevant as the years pass by?

Smart marketers keep the customer’s situation in mind
Email marketing has changed with the times, but the customer’s desire to be acknowledged as an individual will always be there. Too many businesses opt for an impersonal, mass-distributed newsletter or promotional email that fails to make anyone feel like they are unique. Customer service is all about making the consumer feel respected, and this absolutely applies in the context of email marketing. Clickz reminded strategists to use every bit of personal information they gather in their email database to address customers as distinct members of the brand community.

The key term here is relevancy. According to Clickz, this translates into understanding the customer. A well-crafted message will take into account a number of specific factors that will separate one client from the next, including purchase history, browsing preferences and other personal touches that will inspire a sense of urgency for the consumer. When promotional offers and product information are framed in a way that directly applies to the customer’s situation, they are much more likely to respond in a positive way.

Other ways of making email marketing campaigns relevant for specific customers is to take advantage of any extra knowledge a business might have about a buyer. These bits of information could include age, geographic location, education or family and relationship status. Smart email marketers also shift the message of their campaigns based on world context such as weather, political circumstances or current economic situation. Clickz pointed out to strategists that there is such thing as too much personal information, however. Including details about how businesses gathered buyer preferences (such as observing internet history) can come across as creepy and intrusive.

Business strategically leverage channels according to audience
Clickz urged marketers to never underestimate the power of email marketing, especially in light of hype surrounding social media platforms as the next big trend. Simply because new channels of communication are available, businesses should not abandon their traditional methods by virtue of their being older. The article mentioned a client that still saw most of its business come from direct mail catalogs. Of course it would be unwise for them to get rid of this marketing strategy. The same goes for email as social media becomes more prevalent.

With this in mind, social media platforms can be an excellent way to supplement email marketing campaigns, according to a recent article from Business2Community. The piece referenced a report from researchers ExactTarget that showed 77 percent of consumers preferring to receive sales and marketing messages via email. Regardless, social media can be an excellent way to get new consumers interested in a brand and sign up for an email contact list.

Marketers can pique the curiosity of consumers by letting social community members know what is available for them when they sign up as email recipients. This can be as simple as posting a Facebook status that mentions an interesting exclusive available to members of the list. Business2Community also recommended that strategists experiment with offering different kinds of content based on the kind of campaign they’re running. Video, slideshows and live webinars are just some ways to get online communities eager to opt-in on an email list.

MARKETERS OPTIMIZE IMAGE USE IN EMAIL CAMPAIGNS

MARKETERS OPTIMIZE IMAGE USE IN EMAIL CAMPAIGNS

The rise of mobile applications such as Instagram and SnapChat has confirmed that digital culture is becoming increasingly visual. Across social media platforms, search engines and email, marketers are looking for ways to incorporate compelling, quality imagery that will drive consumer interest and convert online visitors to returning customers. A recent report from WishPond explored the reasons why focusing on the visual appearance of Web content will pay off for businesses in the long run.

People respond to the power and simplicity of images
Wading through paragraphs of text can be tedious, and many of today’s email recipients have little patience for long-winded messages. WishPond revealed the science behind this trend, explaining that visuals account for 90 percent of all information transmitted to the brain. Images are also a fast way to get important ideas across to recipients, as visuals are processed by the brain 60,000 times faster than text. While marketers should not forget about including written content in their messages, visual elements are not to be overlooked.

WishPond also mentioned video as an effective online marketing technique that can help convert interested consumers. According to the news source, conversion rates on landing pages increased by 86 percent when a video was included among text. A similar increase was seen when marketers implemented photographs, but companies with the extra budget room should try including links in their emails that lead browsers directly to a video.

Crossover potential with social media platforms
Nearly every successful marketing campaign these days incorporates some element of social media into its strategy. Thankfully, much of the visual content used on social networks can be recycled in email newsletters and vice versa. WishPond stated that online posts featuring a visual component receive 94 percent more views and better rates of engagement than their image-less counterparts. This figure should be taken to heart by any marketer who wants to fully capitalize on an email distribution list.

Implementing visual elements into email marketing campaigns doesn’t have to be expensive or complicated, but according to The Next Web there are ways that strategists can better optimize their imagery to maximize consumer engagement. Marketers must first understand their demographics and segment email marketing lists to make sure they are sending the best possible images to their audience. Rigorous testing is also necessary to discover which visuals are most successful in drawing people in. Remaining adaptable and creative is the key to perfecting the art of compelling visual implementation in email newsletters.

HOW EMAIL MARKETERS CAN BEST ADDRESS TABBED INBOXES

When Gmail introduced multiple tabs for user inboxes, email marketers shared their anxieties about how the change would effect their marketing campaigns. Would recipients fail to see promotional emails because the messages would not arrive in their main boxes? Would online conversions decline now that consumers had the option to avoid emails from brands altogether? While these concerns are indeed legitimate, marketers should not toss their business email lists quite yet. Consumers are still looking for promotional emails and there are ways to keep campaigns from fizzling out. Here is what email marketers need to know about the tabbed inbox and how best to handle it.

How recipients responded initially
There is no doubt that tabbed inboxes have changed the way that consumers find and open promotional emails from businesses. Just as email marketers feared, fewer and fewer of their messages made it to primary inboxes after Google implemented the tabbed system with a dedicated ‘promotions’ box, according to a study from Return Path. Of the commercial messages tracked in the report, 90 percent went directly to the promotions box while only 0.3 percent found their way into the Primary tab. Nine percent of these emails landed in the social inbox and the remaining 0.7 percent were delivered to other, customized tabs.

Gmail was undoubtedly successful in its efforts to channel commercial emails into tabs other than the primary inbox, but what did this mean for marketing efforts? At first, strategists actively resisted the change with “move-me” campaigns encouraging consumers to move their promotional messages back to the Primary tab. Return Path noted that these efforts were largely ignored, failing to make an impact on Google and quickly forgotten. Of the 65,507 emails sent with the purpose of being sent to the Primary inbox, only 61 actually made it there. At less than 0.1 percent, it was clear that consumers had made the choice to accept this change – marketers would simply have to adjust accordingly.

Where does this leave marketers?
While the primary inbox was effectively rendered a no-fly zone for commercial messages, this shift actually benefited email marketing campaigns in a way that many strategists did not expect. Return Path explained that consumers are now clicking on their promotions tab with the sole intention of looking for offers from their favorite brands. This kind of deliberate search puts recipients in a more receptive position in which they are actively seeking the benefits of marketing campaigns rather than trying to avoid them in their normal inboxes. In addition, the rate of This is Spam (TIS) reports dropped significantly in the Promotions tab as only 0.12 percent of those emails resulted in a complaint. Primary inbox messages saw TIS reports at a rate of 0.26 percent while the Social tab had the most with 0.87 percent.

Spam filters were also less discerning when it came to the Promotional inbox, according to Return Path. An impressive 93 percent of commercial messages managed to avoid the spam folder on their way to recipients while only 77 percent of messages headed for the Primary inbox made it to their destinations. This means that email marketers are actually more likely to reach their intended audiences with the help of the Promotional inbox as it allows more emails to make it through unscathed. Of course, campaigns will meet more competition when they arrive, which is why Business Day reminded strategists to keep messages engaging, interesting and relevant to user preferences. Social media should also play a major role in beefing up email marketing lists.

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