A wise man once said, “You never get a second chance at a first impression.”

I’ve always thought this old adage is particularly true in email marketing. Once your email reaches your recipient’s inbox that email needs to make a favorable impression - or risk being deleted into the great online oblivion.

When your subscribers decide whether to delete, read or respond to your email, they ask themselves:

    1. What is the email about?
    2. What’s in this for me?
    3. What should I do now?

If the answers to these questions aren’t clear to them within seconds of opening your email, they delete and move on to the next item in their inbox.  So, what is the best way to answer the questions in the space allotted?

Let’s apply some strategic thinking people.

The answer to all these questions should be clearly visible in your email.   So keep it in mind while designing the email. By designing I don’t just mean the creative visual elements – I mean the layout, text and balance of text and images.  Your readers’ eyes should be drawn straight to the point.

One of the first things subscribers see of your email is the subject line.  Create strong, clear subject lines that are interesting or relevant to the recipient.  Subject lines should be short and simple, convincing the subscriber to open the email. (You can read some more tips on how to write effective subject lines here.)  

As well as seeing the subject line, they also see some kind of introduction to your email – be it in the form of a preheader or a preview pane.  Like I said, one of the most important questions to answer is “What should I do now?”  Be sure to have a clear call to action in your email and make this apparent from the preheader or visible in the preview pane, so that readers know what to expect even before opening.  If nothing else your call to action should be clearly visible above the fold, so the reader can easily find the answer to their third question.

Often a call to action requires a click-through, like if you want subscribers to click through to a promotional landing page, or to an affiliate’s website, or to your site’s booking page or payment gate.  Make sure that these click-through opportunities are clearly marked and that it’s clear to readers how they’ll benefit from clicking through, e.g “Click here for 50% discount on our new range of trainers!”

Believe it or not, simply ensuring that your email is clearly associated with your brand could be enough incentive for your subscribers to open, read and act on it.  When your subscribers recognize your brand they may immediately know what your email is about.  If you send out regular, consistently branded emails with quality relevant content (i.e. products that cater to their interest and needs and perhaps offering regular specials, promotions or valuable product information) the subscriber comes to trust that there is always something in the email for them.  As an added plus, they’ll come to know that in order to get to that promotion or information, they have to click through to your site and will be more susceptible to your call to action.
Of course, all this can only be achieved if you make an effort to get to know your subscribers and what interests them.  Having a good relationship with your audience makes all the difference.

Another very effective way to boost your open and response rates is to try sending emails on different days, at different times. See which gives you the best results and continue to send on those days or at those times.  In fact, you can make use of our A/B split testing feature to also test variations on your subject line or design to see which yields the best results.  Subscribers and the market place evolve continuously and through regular testing your email campaigns can evolve with them.
   
Basically, the key to a successful, efficient email marketing campaign lies within the answers to the three big questions. Your job is simply to make sure that the answers to the questions are easy and encouraging for readers to answer.  Once you’ve given them the answers, they’re sure to give you the results you’ve been aiming for.

Have you ever noticed when opening an email that the email client (i.e. Gmail, Outlook, Hotmail, etc.) usually displays a link “Display images below”?  If not, you’re one of the 33% of all email recipients who have your images displayed by default (as reported in a recent article by Marketing Sherpa) – all other email recipients have their images blocked.

Do you take this into account when you design your newsletters? Have you ever had a look at what your email newsletter looks like when the images have been blocked?  Usually the images in your header and at the top of your email say a lot about the content. It contains your logo, and often the title text is included in the image.
Consider the following, should your recipients’ images be blocked:

Will they recognize that the email is from you?
Without the top image, is there some text to pull them into the email?
Will it be clear what the email is about?

When the images are turned off the only text visible at first glance tends to be things like “Trouble viewing this email?”, unsubscribe links, links to the mobile version of the site, anti-spam messages – admin, basically.  With nothing to entice your readers, will they bother reading your email?

So how do you get around this?

Bear in mind that when your images are blocked, the content of your email is shifted down.  So try and place your headlines above images in the content, that way it will show up even when the content is pushed down.  Also remember to make as much use of rich text in your emails as possible.  Rich text is displayed even when images are blocked, so (even though including text in images may look impressive) include some rich text in the headlines to make sure your message still comes across.

Another important consideration is that many of your recipients probably have a preview pane activated in their email accounts.  The preview pane is a window in their inbox that previews the contents of a selected email – as I’m sure you can imagine, that makes it a key player in piquing the subscriber’s interest enough that they read your email.  The key to pulling readers into your preview pane is to check what effect image blocking has on the contents of the pane.  Make sure that the text they see when the images are turned off is still a good indication of the content of the email, and that it’s enticing enough to convince them to read further, or at least enable the images.
Keep an eye out – we’ll be launching an email preview feature soon that will enable you to preview what your email will look like when your subscribers open them in various email clients, including what it looks like in the preview pane.  It will help you assess how to go about your email design, but in the mean time, I’m sure following the tips above will help you engage more readers with your newsletter. 

Once you’re in the habit of testing how your email renders in different email clients, you’ll quickly learn how to work around image blocking.  Remember that there is a person on the receiving end of your newsletter – and people are often too busy or simply not interested enough to read your email.  By taking this into account when designing your newsletter, you can make a dramatic change in your campaign statistics.

If you missed last week’s interview with our Head of Design, take a look.  He gives some excellent professional tips on how to approach your newsletter design.

I just found these amazing stats online!

45% of all internet users check their email every day.  It’s an easily accessible communication channel, and it allows you to interact with your subscribers in their personal sphere.  Your newsletters are an opportunity to take relevant and interesting information on your products, service offerings or events directly to these potential customers’ inboxes – a zone which, to them, is trusted and personal, and that they access on a regular basis.

The graphs also indicate social media as a key online activity – just another reason to make sure you integrate your email marketing with social media through including social widgets in your footer and making use of social share.

Ruan Benade, our Head of Design, answered some questions frequently asked by email marketers when trying to decide on a design for their email newsletters. We picked his brain for design and technical tips, handy resources and advice on how you can design your newsletters for optimal results.

Do I need to be a designer to create and edit an email newsletter?

Yes and no. Firstly we need to differentiate between “designing” and “building” a newsletter. The former requires some creative skill and an ability to use design principles to create a striking and engaging experience, the latter requires knowledge of HTML and CSS as well as experience in how emails render differently to say, websites.

So, to answer the question, it will certainly help to be a designer if you want to design great looking websites… or to have experience in coding to build emails that display consistently across all browsers. On the other hand anyone can edit or modify an email newsletter using the kind of software that GraphicMail offers.

I want to design an email that’s visually appealing for my subscribers.  How do I go about that?

A designer will use a combination of layout, graphical elements, color and images to make an email visually appealing. A novice will often cram a design full of graphic elements and colors in the belief that it lends impact, whereas the extra clutter will ironically end up detracting the user from the true content and images. So my advice to non-designers would be to keep the layout very clean with maybe a splash of color here and there, and use images. Great images combined with large catchy headings are your best weapon. Also remember to place your best image at the top of the newsletter where it will be seen first.

Do I use more images, or more text, or equal amounts of both?

There is no general rule here. A photography business or online product shop will feature more images, whereas a financial company will have more copy. It is important here to know your market and to understand what they are looking for in your newsletter. If you are showing pictures of generic smiling business people to your clients, when they are in fact looking for up to date market info then you are not providing valueto your subscribers.

What are my options online for buying or sourcing "free" images?

You can buy images for a set fee (royalty free) from the bigger online image banks like www.gettyimages.com or you can use pre-purchased credits to buy images from the new generation of cheaper image banks like www.istockphoto.com or www.123rf.com. These sites sell photos, illustrations, video files, sound files and even flash files. Keep in mind that the cheaper images are not yours exclusively to use and so your competitors are free to go and use the same images that you have just spent days building a campaign or look with. Here you truly get what you pay for.

Most images online are subject to standard copyright laws. “Free” online images are usually licensed under the “creative commons licensing agreement” which has various requirements, for instance that you have to credit each picture you use.  (Read more about that here.) You can find free images supplied by the public on sites like www.sxc.hu and www.morguefile.com.

How can I edit my images? Are there any free online tools?

Designers traditionally use powerful software programs like Adobe  Photoshop, but for simpler editing work there are a number of free online options. Check out www.sumopaint.com, www.picnic.com or www.pixelr.com. Stay tuned as we will feature a review of free online editing tools on our blog in the coming weeks.

Should my emails look as similar as possible to my website?

Your branding should always be as consistent as possible across all your promotional media whether print or online. An email newsletter or e-flyer should not try to be an exact copy of your website but a simpler introduction to what your business and website offers. Your logo, colors and corporate personality should be instantly recognizable no matter what the medium.

What should I avoid when creating my newsletter?

Needless to say avoid creating dull and uninspired email communication :)
On the technical front there are a number of things to avoid.  I would need a whole new article to cover this so that’s another blog article in the making. Generally emails need to be coded in tables and should feature inline styles as far as possible.  Don’t use floats or PNGs and avoid background images. Oh and wrap your whole email in a table or div with inline styles or Google will strip out your background color.

What can I do to be sure my email renders well across all email clients?

Be informed on what to avoid when designing and building emails. Then test the emails before sending.  There are 20+ email clients and as there are no email standards in place, they will all render your email differently. 
The most comprehensive testing option is to pay for an online testing service. You send a test email to a given address and you get to see previews of how it is rendered in all the existing email clients. One such a service is www.litmusapp.com.  GraphicMail has partnered with a trusted testing provider and will soon provide this as a paid for service.
Of course you always have the option of signing up for free testing accounts on online email clients, but that still leaves the Mac and PC platform and their respective default email clients. Not to even mention iPhone and other mobile clients as well.

Which is better: Customizing a free template or having a custom template specially designed?

A custom template designed and built by a professional is definitely the best option. This is of course a once-off cost. After that you should just save a draft and edit your draft newsletter every time you need to send.
If, however, you are on a tight budget then there is the option of modifying a free template and adding in your branding and content.

Any other handy tips you can share with us?

Always provide alt text for images. So even when most email clients block images by default you will still be able to see the alt text descriptions.
Be warned that there are still a few email clients that don’t display alt tags when images are blocked. 

Good luck!

Feeling particularly patriotic? Show it with four newly designed 4th of July templates. We’ve already given you World Cup themed templates, and while we’re still caught up in the fever, we thought we’d offer you something with a bit of American spirit as well!

These templates are perfect for you 4th of July promotion, event or holiday update.

We truly do have templates for every occasion—and if you still don’t find what you need, our designers can create custom templates based on your specifications.

Wishing you and yours a Happy American Independence Day!

Part 2

On Friday I posted the first part of this blog (referring to an article published on iMedia) discussing some highlights and pointers on strategies big brands use in their, very successful, email marketing campaigns. 

The last one I mentioned was Timberland and their excellent approach of looking at click data and using the information to make sure that their campaigns are relevant to their subscriber’s behavior and interests.  The question I left you with on Friday was “how do you track this data and measure your subscribers' preferences?"

You can, of course, look at your GraphicMail reports, but if you want a general overview of your website’s visitors you can set up a free Google Analytics account.  It’s a free tool that allows you to see what people do when they visit your website – like what pages or features they click on most frequently, i.e. what captures their interest.  GraphicMail also offers free Google Analytics integration, meaning once you have a Google Analytics accounts you can link it to your GraphicMail account.  That way, you can also track what links people click on in your emails, if they go through to your website and even if they then made a purchase on your site.

It’s a great way to send them follow-up emails based on their past purchases and preferences, thereby personalizing your campaign!

Banana Republic has improved their campaign through extensive testing.  Subscribers are a whimsical bunch – what works for one might not work for the other and what worked today might not work tomorrow.  Banana Republic’s campaign has been continuously refined to suit their market’s preferences.  Test your own campaigns through A/B split testing.  It’s a way of testing subject lines and newsletter variations against each other to see what works best.  You can see which of your test emails yielded the best results (opens and click-through rates) and adjust your email newsletters accordingly.  Play around by testing subtle changes in design or content.  If you’re planning on drastically revamping your emails, it’s also a good idea to test the new format to see how well your readers respond to it.
The secret behind Banana Republic’s effective testing, is that they do so continuously and regularly.

Boyd also commends Banana Republic for their timely responses and immediate welcome and thank you emails.  I know you’ve heard me rant and rave about TriggerMail, but such automated welcome and thank you emails really are very easy to set up!  It shows your subscribers that they’re recognized and valued.

Of course, no email campaign will succeed without well-crafted content.  The article contains many valuable points on what can be viewed as winning content and draws examples from the brands mentioned.  A relevant, clear message (in good writing!) will go a long way in ensuring that subscribers stay tuned into your emails, rather than just skimming and deleting. 

Take some advice from the big shots and apply some of these strategies to your own campaigns – you might surprise yourself!

Part 1

Ever wonder what a good email campaign actually looks like?  I blog about various aspects of email marketing and on how to build newsletters and campaigns on a regular basis, but this isn’t something I’ve actually pointed out.

iMedia Connection published this article by Dylan Boyd in which he looks at winning email marketing campaigns by seven well-known brands.  I think it’s a good look at how the basic email marketing principles we preach are put into action.  Of course, it’s alsouseful to get ideas on how to implement these strategies in your own campaigns.  (In fact there were so many valuable points made that I’m splitting this post in two – catch part 2 on Monday!)

The first brand whose campaign he comments on is National Geographic, stating that their attention to subscriber preferences in terms of personalized information and what kind of emails they’d prefer to receive, as well as how much effort they go to ensure that there are multiple ways in which to opt-in to their emails.

These are good strategies (I have in fact written quite a few articles lately on the benefit of personalizing campaigns and gathering subscriber data) and can be easily applied to your own campaigns.  Make sure that you place visible subscription forms on all channels available to you – like your website, blog and newsletter.  Don’t just ask subscribers to sign up, use the opportunity to get to know them.  You can customize your sign-up and subscription forms to collect subscriber data relevant to your business, for instance age, location, product preferences, etc.

Another interesting brand email campaign is Timberland’s.  Boyd attributes this to a number of factors, like consistency, a font that’s easy on the eye and easy navigation.  All valid points, but what particularly intrigued me was his mention of their “clear block copy”.  It’s a valid point to highlight – a clear, simple structure carries a lot of impact and looks like less effort to read.  It’s basic, but effective.
Have a look at your standard email newsletter template and assess whether it meets this criteria.  Why not play around with our Drag-and-drop editor (beta version)?  All the templates are designed according to a block theory, so the layouts, no matter how you wish to edit it, remains in a clear structure.

A very important point noted about Timberland’s campaign is the following:

“It appears to me that Timberland is taking the click data and helping focus the offers into a very relevant stream. Whether it is gender, style, frequency, or size, I always feel like it has me taken care of.”

Again, it’s all about engagement and personalization.  Now I’ve recently focused quite strongly on these points, telling you how you can apply them through TriggerMail and segmentation – but how do you track this data and measure your subscriber’s preferences?...

I’ll leave you with that thought!  The answer to that very important question will be posted here on Monday – along with some more tips on how to apply some of the winning strategies of bigger brands to your own campaigns using GraphicMail tools and features.

You’ve probably noticed that I’ve been singing the praises of social media a lot lately!  I’ve told you how and why to integrate your email marketing and social media campaigns and now I can also give you cold hard facts.  Other organizations are already on the integration bandwagon — time to jump on!

Online marketing site, MarketingSherpa, recently released a chart displaying the percentage of organizations that are integrating social media with other marketing tactics.

The majority of organizations, 52%, are using social media in conjunction with their online and offline marketing campaigns. 31% of organizations are integrating social media with online marketing and a lowly 16% say that they do not integrate social media with other marketing tactics (they’re missing out, but you already knew that, right?).

A few weeks ago I introduced you to our new social share feature.  It’s a tool that enables you to publish your email newsletters on Twitter!

By now you’re probably up to date with the online social revolution – I think most of our clients probably have a Facebook fan page or a very active Twitter presence.  You practice social media marketing, and you practice email marketing.  So:  

Why would you want to publish your emails on Twitter?

It’s just more effort, right?

Have you ever thought what the difference (marketing-wise) is between social media and email?  Social media speaks to the masses – email engages customers on a more personal level. 

However:  Through social media you have access to a whole new audience of potential clients, plus there’s the benefit that you’re likely to reach people who are actually interested in your product.  Social media is the way I tell my friends what I “like” and if one of them recommends I follow a particular topic or person, I take them at their word.  After all, who would know my interests better than my social contacts? They’re bombarded with my status updates every day!  So, if someone recommends I follow your company on Twitter, I probably will. 
But how much information am I getting on your products in a 140 character tweet? And is it really enough to convince me to buy into your product/service/company?

So, our social share tool makes it easy for you to integrate your email and social media marketing.  When you send out your email newsletter, we give you the option to automatically post a tweet from you GraphicMail account that contains a link to your full newsletter.  That way, all your Twitter followers can also stay in touch with your latest news and they can get more insight into your company.  Ideally, they might become one of your subscribers, giving you the opportunity to target them more effectively. 

Still a little unclear on how that works?  Well, just to make life a little easier, we’ve added a video on social share to our YouTube channel!  It shows you how to set up social share for your newsletter and you get to see the feature in action.  Happy viewing!

Earlier this year, our South African team went into a blogging frenzy with a 6-part series to celebrate the launch of our TriggerMail feature.  From experience I know that it sometimes takes you a while to adjust to a new feature, hey?  But given my recent articles (and that case study!) on the conversions you can reap simply through segmentation, I thought it might be a good to look into what you can do with autoresponders, or TriggerMails.

If you’re not sure what TriggerMail is, have a look at our video or the blog series.

I know you’re aware of the obvious benefits of sending automated emails (saving time, building customer relationships through saying ‘Happy Birthday’ – things like that), but if you’d paid attention to the segmentation blog article, you might have picked up on something else.  Triggered or prompted emails are a way of targeting your subscribers – much like with segmentation.

How do I go about it?

You don’t have to jump in the deep end!  If you’re not sure if this approach is entirely for you (although I do strongly recommend it), simply start off by setting one or two TriggerMails. Say for instance you’ve captured your subscribers’ birthdays on your subscription form – why not set an email to be sent to them a week before their birthday with a ‘birthday wishlist’ containing a few items they can get a discount on in the week of their birthday?  Or simply send them a birthday discount voucher?  Quick tip: Birthday email messages have proven to generate a very good response and revenue!

Basically you can integrate your segmentation and TriggerMails to monitor a customer’s past purchases, the anniversary of their account, if they posted reviews or comments on your site, payment reminders, even their wedding anniversaries and then set TriggerMail to automatically send them a relevant email related to the occasion.  Anything from congratulations and best wishes, to discounts or product information on something they might find interesting.

If you find that your subscribers respond well to these emails you can always find ways of integrating more TriggerMails into your campaign.

Why would I want to set these TriggerMails? 

It’s just an added excuse to contact your customers and develop their relationship with your brand – except instead of blasting off emails that might not be relevant to them, you pique their interest by showing them that you do keep track of their interests.  You’re emailing them more frequently, but with more relevant emails.  Surely a customer is more likely to read and respond to an email that benefits them personally, like offering them a birthday discount or telling them more about a product they’re particularly interested in? 

Won’t I be bombarding my readers?

Yes, you’ll be in touch with them more frequently, but remember that because these emails are prompted by an action the subscriber took or by a date or product specifically related to them, not all the contacts on your list will be receiving the email.  You’ll only be sending out emails to small portions of your list.  However, because these emails are more targeted, they should give you a greater ROI than your bulk email sends.

But should I then still be sending out mass emails and newsletters?

Of course!  Your newsletter or you bulk sends is how you gather more subscribers.  After all, it is the one all your subscribers sign up to initially.  Using TriggerMail just helps you refine those relationships more and push potential customers to become actual customers, or existing customers to new purchases.  Autoresponders merely complement your email campaigns by balancing your bulk broadcast emails with relevant, targeted emails sent to small portions of your subscribers.  And because they’re automated it frees up time to focus on other things – be it a cup of tea or a promotional strategy.

Simply put, adding TriggerMails to your campaign helps you send the right message at the right time to spur your subscribers to action.