Email MarketingHints & Tips

Topic: Elements of Effective Emails

Here's where we get down to the nuts and bolts of your email. Read articles on every element of a successful email campaign and learn how to make sure your email gets delivered, opened, read and clicked through.

3 Ways to Drive a Stronger Bond with Customers

Too much of a good thing is exactly that. Consumers are already stressed about paying for gas and groceries. Throwing everything you've got at them including the kitchen sink (even if you're shipping it for free) isn't going to be effective.

Instead of overcommunicating with customers, use the challenging economy as an opportunity to drive stronger bonds with them. How can you do that? Here are three creative ways.

3 Ways to Maintain Your Growing Email List

How is a permission-based email list like a Philodendron plant? You want both to grow in size and expand their reach. And, like a Philodendron, a growing email list needs some care and maintenance along the way to ensure healthy growth continues. Giving a little TLC to your list also helps reinforce that you're continuing to send relevant information to each of your subscribers.

6 Tips for Better Subject Lines

It happens all the time: You've written the content for your newsletter. You have all the articles perfectly squared away and laid out. Then you're faced with the task of writing a compelling subject line so irresistible that readers can't help but open and read your email.

The good news is you can craft powerful subject lines and article headlines that will attract readers. Here are six key steps to making it happen. 

A Look at Click-Throughs

You've got to love your email click-through rates. They give you valuable insights into the minds of your customers. Want to get more out of your clicks? This article will give you a better understanding of what click-throughs are, how to analyze them, and what you can do to improve yours.

Achieving the perfect consistency...

Consistency will not only save you time by helping you simplify and focus your marketing efforts but, more importantly, it will help you set and routinely meet the expectations of your customers and prospects. And that equals a positive impact to your bottom line.

Are People Talking About You?

Want to know an effective way to grow your customer base? Get your current customers and members to talk positively about you to their friends and family. Word of mouth is a main tenet of referral marketing and a task made a bit easier with today's many social media tools.

Big Fish, Little Pond

Targeting content more specifically to a narrower audience can be a challenging proposition for an organization. It's true that you can exclude some of your audience by writing to more specific needs and desires, but read on as email newsletter expert, Michael Katz, shares the many benefits...

Branding Is Smart Business

Picture this: A prospective customer sees your logo, your email newsletter, or your ad, and in a split second thinks, "Oh! There's that great company again. They have just what I need. I'm going to buy from them today."

Sounds good, right? It's what every company wants? brand recognition. And with a little effort, you can build it for yourself!

Break Through the Clutter - 3 Tips on Writing Email Copy

So how do make your email newsletter stand out as a "must read" issue after issue? Learn how to make your email newsletter stand out with email newsletter expert, Michael Katzand.

Checklist - 25 Questions Before You Send

Worried about email blocking, filtering, and the Federal Can Spam law? Here are 25 questions which address email marketing best practices that all legitimate email marketers should ask themselves before hitting that send button.

Consistent Branding Is Key

Your brand and all of its building blocks -- logo, colors, voice, how things are communicated -- is so critical to your business and organization. It differentiates you from your competition and helps build loyalty and trust among your customers and members.

Elements of Email Design

Don Lutkus and Sally Moren work together on Constant Contact's marketing and advertising creative. Combined, they have more than 40 years of experience in design and creative strategy. Who better to ask about email design? In a recent interview, I asked them to answer some questions about the key elements of design.

Email Branding & Design Checklist

How do you present your business or organization to your audience? Does your brand say "conservative and trustworthy," "bold and innovative," or "whimsical and inviting?" The colors, graphics, and words you choose to promote yourself are crucial to creating the image you're selling.

Engagement on the Go

Use of smartphones and mobile devices has grown at a rapid pace over the past couple years. Just look around the next time you go to a mall, coffee shop, airport, or when you're just walking down the street: Everyone, it seems, is looking down at an iPhone, Android, or another mobile device.

Recently, the Pew Internet Project found that 83% of American adults own a cell phone, and 42% of those people own a Blackberry, iPhone, or similar smartphone. The study also found that 87% of smartphone users access the internet or email on their device, including two-thirds who do it daily.
 

Finding Success with Targeted Email Campaigns

You know the challenge you have as an email marketer: to make your emails as relevant as possible to those receiving them. The first step is to segment your list into groups. The next step is to create relevant email campaigns for each targeted segment. This approach to email marketing allows you to focus on the specific needs or interests of each group.

From Good to Great

You already know email marketing is a worthwhile investment with a great return. And you are good at it! But in today's market "good" just isn't good enough.

Get More Clicks With a Good Call-to-Action

The call-to-action is a determining factor of your click-through rate. It is an important component of your email copy because it answers three important questions for the recipient.

Getting Your Emails Opened More Often

You can have the greatest, most relevant content in your emails, but if no one opens them, then it all goes to waste. So what are some ways to ensure that your emails will be opened and read by your customers? Let's look at five of them.

I Get a 'Click' Out of You: Writing Email Copy

There's no magic formula, but here are some hints and tips on writing email copy. I hope you get a 'click' out of them.

Is Your Content Human?

As the holidays get ever-closer, inboxes will start to be flooded with special offers and coupons. Consumers everywhere will grow immune to all the sales pitches as one business offering a 20% off coupon becomes indistinguishable from another one. Breaking through that noise and standing out from the competition would seem to be a challenge, but it doesn't have to be. Sharing more personal content that doesn't sell as much as it does educate and illustrate why your business is different from others is one way to do it.

Learning from Email Metrics

One of the chief benefits of using an email service provider like Constant Contact is the ability to get insight into what people are doing when they receive your communications. You can see if they're opening, forwarding, clicking, sharing -- in other words, if they're engaging with your messages and content.

But to reap any rewards from your metrics, you need to know what they mean, what trends to look for, and how you can leverage the information provided to improve your communications and better target your subscribers.

Making Email a Two-way Communication

Are your subscribers interacting with your email campaigns? Yes, you can look at open and click-through rates to see if people are reading and clicking, but how do you know if your readers are truly engaged?

Making Your Email Your Own

It's hard enough sometimes to figure out what to say in your emails, so who wants to worry about design too? Thankfully, with more than 400 customizable templates, Constant Contact has taken some of the challenges of finding the right look for your message out of the process.

Meaningful Metrics

As a marketer, small business owner, or nonprofit manager, you're likely obsessed with numbers. Usually those numbers have to do with sales, donations, event attendees, or operating costs. But there are other ways to gauge how successful (or not) a marketing program has been.

Email marketing and social media offer a wealth of options and success metrics. It's one reason why both have grown in popularity in recent years. After all, you can see how many people open an email, but you can't see how many people open an envelope.

Not Running From Customer Feedback

As the name implies, Fleet Feet Sports is dedicated to runners and walkers, offering footwear, apparel, and accessories at three St. Louis-area stores. Beyond selling technical running shoes, Fleet Feet prides itself on working with customers to help them become better runners, walkers or to just improve their lifestyle. It does this by providing tips, advice, and clinics on everything from stretching to overcoming injuries to the proper diet to power athletes through their workouts.

People Are Talking

There's a lot of talk these days about the value that social media has when it comes to your email marketing campaign. We've previously discussed how sites like Facebook, LinkedIn, and Twitter can help you broaden the reach of your content and increase the number of people on your mailing list. But, to quote the late-night pitchmen: "Wait, there's more!"

Quick Campaign Ideas to Spur Your Marketing

It's a busy time of year, with a number of events and holidays approaching -- Memorial Day, Father's Day, graduations, Fourth of July, and summer itself. But you don't need a significant event like a holiday to plan a smaller campaign that will spur donations, get consumers to visit your store or web site, or will just say, "Thank you."

Ready for a New Year?

With the hubbub of the holidays over and new 2010 calendars already broken in, chances are good that you've already started to execute your communications plan for the new year. But if you were too busy with end-of-2009 wrap-up and didn't get a chance to look forward, it's not too late to put together an outline of your marketing communications plans for 2010.

In fact, this is a great time to decide what topics you will cover in your newsletter, when you will send your messages to ensure maximum engagement and relevancy, and how you will collect feedback from your customers and members to know you're meeting their needs. Having a plan and a strategy for your communications will save you from scrambling as the months fly by, and will allow you to concentrate on the day-to-day operations of your business or organization.

Here are some tips for pulling together an effective communications plan.

Referrals by Request

Everyone knows the classic saying "If you want something, you have to ask for it." It holds true when it comes to getting your email recipients to forward your content on to their friends, family, and associates: You have to ask them to do it.

Speak to Me!

When you're using email marketing to communicate with your audience -- as in, you're not just trying to sell them stuff -- you're building customer relationships. And relationships flourish when two parties engage in a dialogue. That's true of your best personal friendships, and it's also true in business.

Special Edition:Thoughts on Small Business & Entrepreneurship

Gail Goodman Interviews Rieva Lesonsky, Editorial Director, Entrepreneur Media Inc.

Steps to Create an Easy Email Communications Plan

Do you have an email marketing communications campaign? Creating one isn't as hard as you might think.

Success Story - Berkshire Organics

For Berkshire Organics in Dalton, Mass., segmenting its email marketing list is essential to giving customers exactly what they want -- in terms of both content and deliciously fresh fruits and vegetables. Aleisha Gibbons and her husband, Brian, started the business in 2008 to offer locally grown and organic produce to residents of Berkshire County in the far western corner of Massachusetts. They operate a 1,500 sq.-foot storefront and offer a weekly basket delivery option for customers who want a unique array of fresh produce brought right to their home.

Success Story - Marc Gordon, Fourword Marketing

For Marc Gordon, an author and speaker, and the owner of Fourword Marketing in Toronto, video has become an effective way to market himself and his company in way that he believes cannot be accomplished with words alone.

"The impact of video is far beyond what you can do in a written blog," Marc explains. "You can present things on so many different levels and illustrate examples in settings that people can visually understand, which can be challenging to do in a written blog."

The 4 Secrets to an Effective E-Newsletter

How do you continue, issue after issue, to make your newsletter stand out in the crowd and keep your readers reading? Learn how with our friend and newsletter expert, Michael Katz.

The Economy Is Down. What's Up with Your Customers?

It's hard to imagine any business that hasn't been touched by the recession. Auto makers, corporations, big-box retailers, franchise owners, entrepreneurs, nonprofits, and Main Street shops alike are all asking themselves, "How are we going to survive this economy?"

The Secret to Relevant Emails: Segment Your List

According to a 2006 study by Jupiter Research, engaging your audiences in more relevant communications could increase net profits by an average of 18 times*. That's why, as email marketers, we need to do everything possible to make our emails relevant.

Times Are Tough. Do Your Customers Know You Care?

Here in the Constant Contact Customer Support center, we have the benefit of connecting with our users every day -- either by phone, through live chat, or via email. We've been listening carefully to what they're saying about how the economy is impacting their businesses and their lives. And you know what? We've learned something very interesting and extremely valuable to any business or organization:

Use Video to Drive Email Engagement

Do you like to watch videos online? You're not alone. According to comScore, the average U.S. Internet user watches 186 videos every month. (Yes, that's every month.) I recently saw a woman watching a YouTube video on her iPhone while in line at the lunch counter. Video is everywhere.

Now video can be added to your Constant Contact email campaigns with a few clicks of the mouse. Our new Video Insert feature allows you to easily link to a video hosted on YouTube, Vimeo, or Blip.tv by automatically pulling in a thumbnail image, adding a player overlay to the image, and making the resulting image clickable.

What Do Your Email Results Mean?

Every week or month you send out what you think is great content to your email subscribers. But do you really know if your messages are resonating with readers? If not, the reporting features included with your Constant Contact account can help you determine what messages are being opened, what links are being clicked on, and, ultimately, what your readers are truly interested in.

Why Am I Getting This?

If you want to see your email communication get results, you have to invest some time and energy into ensuring that what you are communicating is valuable to those receiving it.

Why Signups on Your Website Are Like Blind Dates

Like our real-life relationships with spouses and significant others - business relationships with customers need to be nurtured. Any long-term relationship starts with a good first impression.

Writing Compelling Promotional Copy

Good copy helps your readers understand what you are offering them and gives them a clear way to respond. These copywriting tips are ones that the pros know well and will help you to create compelling copy that will engage your readers.

Your From Line: Benefit or Barrier?

In this issue of Email Marketing Hints & Tips, we'll cover the From line, and what you can do to make sure your From line serves as an advantage, instead of an obstacle.

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