Email Designers

If you've got five minutes to read below then you've done your part for the day to improve your email marketing campaigns. The author promises that you can read it, master it, and implement it in five minutes.

1. Design your email to look like a “quick read”.  If they have to scroll down to see the whole message, or scroll side to side to see graphics on a mobile phone, it doesn’t look easy or quick.
2. Draw your readers in with compelling content.  That means a subject line that grabs attention without being misleading, and a first sentence that is directly relevant to your audience.
3. Make it easy for them to take the action(s) you want.  Don’t put the link at the very top – it’s like proposing marriage on the first date.  And don’t clutter the email with a dozen thumbnail images and half a dozen links.  One or two links are plenty.  One topic per email.

• 3 main paragraphs
• Simple, clean design with no more than two images (including your logo)
• 1 single-sentence paragraph, two paragraphs of different lengths, but no more than four sentences in a paragraph.
• Clear, benefits-oriented call to action at the end.
   

Behavioral triggered email, based on action (and non-action) of your customers, often yields much higher open and click through rates than non-triggered email.  So, it makes sense to get the most out of it.  Here are some ideas for doing just that. Using customer behavior effectively in every aspect of your email-marketing program can help lift your results from "so-so" to "spectacular."

Behavior triggers highly relevant emails that reflect what your customer actually does, such as opting in, purchasing, browsing your website or downloading a file. But you must know where to find and collect the data and integrate it into triggered email messages. Before you take the next step, study up on these rules of the road that will help you make the most of your behavioral data:

1. Capture behavioral data everywhere. You know already that you should track what your customers do online, whether it's in email, on your website or in your social networks. Now, think beyond Web and email, though. Offline and mobile channels can yield data gold via call-center interactions, response to direct mail, check-ins, coupon redemptions or event attendance.
    
2. Turn your email message into a dynamic content platform. Transform your emails from static promotions to dynamic, relevant messages with product reviews that reflect either past purchases or customer recommendations, social-media posts and other online activity. Integrating offline data can trigger emails that match content to customer activity, such as following up on store visits, issues handled at the call center, email opt-ins or abandoned carts.
    
3. Marry data to action with automation. Effective behavior-based messaging requires a marketing automation platform. These technology solutions integrate with third-party CRM, analytics, ecommerce and other systems and add features such as contact scoring. Messages are triggered automatically in a series of “tracks” based on if/then statements.
    
4. Solve your biggest business problem first. Instead of making incremental changes, decide what your greatest challenge is and how to solve it with behavior and automation. Don't worry about being perfect right out of the gate. You can always refine your abandoned-cart reminder later. When you ask the C-suite for the resources you'll need, emphasize the financial gains or business goals this behavior and automation approach will deliver. Show the big picture -- and save the details for the case study you'll write when you succeed.
    
5. Think in terms of series and programs, not stand-alone messages. You'll generate better results from behavior-based messaging when you expand a one-off email into a series -- or better yet, tracks that respond to additional recipient behaviors.
    
6. Generate multiple follow-up messages from a single message triggered by demographic data. March brings me a shower of birthday emails and offers. So far, though, nobody has sent me any follow-up emails urging me to act on my offers before they expire. Add behavior-based tracks that are triggered by recipient action and non-action to your event- and demographic-based messages such as anniversaries and birthdays.
    
7. Design for the platform or message context. People use their smartphones to scan QR codes. So, if someone scans your code for more product info, be sure the follow-up email you send is also designed for the customer's small screen, not a 21-inch desktop monitor. Also, consider the message context. A cart-abandonment email should convey a friendly sense of support, not the message that Big Brother is watching everything your shopper does online.

Read the rest of the rules here.

The beauty of automated behavior-based messages is that once you set them up, you never have to push the send button. So while you are on the golf course or lying by the pool, these emails are flying out the door and producing results.

 

HTML, CSS, and coding - these words seem to be the scariest and costliest thing for marketers to hear, but HTML emails are the best way to get the exact email you want. The main idea to take away from the following article is: keeping a low image-to-text ratio and sending multipart messages are just two ways to keep deliverability high.

 

In this day and age, most people check their email on their iPads, cellphones, and smartphones - because of this all of our clients want to know what they can do to make their emails mobile friendly. We work with each client to taylor their email campaigns to look fantastic across all email platforms, including mobile devices. In lieu of a personal consultation with an email marketing agency, check out some basic tips to help make your emails more mobile friendly. 

Via WebTraffic ROI: E-mail marketing, with 92% of the U.S. internet users sending and reading e-mail, according to Pew Internet and American Life Project, it’s a no brainer.

Right? Yes and no. E-mail marketing no longer reaches your audience the way it used to. People used to sit at their Gateway desktops every night, dial into their Netscape and check e-mails while watching Family Matters.

The story is now a bit different. One in five marketing e-mails is opened on a smart phone. This changes a few things for your e-mail marketing campaign. Though you may have to modify a bit, you can and should make it work in your favor.

Give Your Newsletter a Mobile Lift

More than ever, it’s now important that you design your newsletter in a way that can be read easily on a smart phone.

As more people get into smart phones, studies show it has become the predominant way to check e-mail. Comscore said that 70.1 million U.S. users check their e-mail via smart phone every year.

Luckily for you, as smart phone technology grows, so does the phone’s ability to properly display a regular e-mail. Simply changing the coding and creating a narrower design may be enough.

Provide Interesting Snippets

There is a certain amount of scan and move on that happens when the e-mail immediately pops into someone’s inbox. People are most likely to read your business newsletters while they wait to get their hair cut or meet with someone. Thus, by getting your most important information into the intro clip, you can avoid the immediate deletion.

Then later, while they are watching TV on the couch, or sitting in traffic, they’ll take the time to click through the full article.

Offer Discounts, Coupons, Etc

Now that you know you’re readers are often out and about while checking e-mail, take this opportunity to get them shopping. Offering coupons that can be used right off the smart phone will make their decision to buy your product much easier.

This in turn gives them more incentive to buy. Scoutmob, a growing mobile application, offers their deals directly off the smart phone, giving users easy access to the coupons. I once went to a restaurant simply because Scoutmob offered a deal I couldn’t pass up. With easy access I was in and out.

Make it Convenient to Complete Online Transactions Later

When someone is lazily reading through your e-mail before a meeting, it isn’t likely that they’ll make a purchase from their phone. Online purchasing holds a large spot in the e-commerce world, 80% of people in their early thirties to mid forties make frequent online purchases, according to FifthGear.

However, this has yet to take hold on the mobile platform. On the newsletter, provide your customer care phone number in a click to call manner, give them access to their “shopping cart” to buy later, or allow a sharing feature to make it easy for them to share products.

E-mail marketing still holds an important spot in every company’s business marketing plan, as it should. We are seeing, though, that it’s time to shift the model a bit.

As with everything, technology is changing the way your customers function, which means you must make a slight shift as well.

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With the marketing  mix becoming  much  more varied - as online technologies mature - and previously separate marketing channels become far more integrated, it easy is to get caught up in the latest trends and lose sight of the things that make business to business marketing successful.

2011 saw social media rise to new heights and it was inevitable that it would soon be adopted as a core business tool. Social media marketing in many ways reinvigorated firms' online marketing efforts and allowed them to refocus their aims on producing far-reaching campaigns that spanned a plethora of different platforms. It was this 'all inclusive' attitude towards social interaction that set the pace of marketing in 2011, which is why we saw firms returning to tried and tested methods - like B2B email marketing - but using them in fresh, integrated and innovative ways.

While there were a number of new tools also pushing their way into the mainstream - such as online video and the rapidly growing platform of mobile marketing - it is clear that underpinning all this innovation were familiar techniques and methodologies. While content was to remain king for 2011 web-based marketing strategies, data was the cornerstone of B2B marketing - in particularly, segregated, up-to-date, highly-organised business lists.

It is this underpinning of sound business data and insight that meant so-called 'traditional' marketing platforms - like email - remained extremely popular. This looks set to continue in 2012 with email marketing is set to undergo something of a resurgence and staying high on the agenda for digital marketing specialists.

Interestingly, one of the key reasons that email will have such as successful 2012 is because of the rise of new methods of communication which were previously seen as rivals - namely social media and mobile. Far from undermining email as a rock solid business to business marketing tool, social media and the rise of smartphones and tablets have, in many ways, made it far more useful to the marketing professional.

For starters, access to email has become both instant and continuous. People can check there emails 24/7 using any number of new technologies - you can even gain access to it through your TV and mp3 player. This 'always on' view of email has cemented its reputation as the all-pervasive communication tool of choice. Its benefits over and above social media marketing are clear. It is targeted - if you have the right business data to underpin it - it can be easily personalised and it is easy to measure the success of it. What's more, with the clever use of new technologies, it can be far more responsive than it has been in the past.

So what will the key goals be for the email marketing professional in 2012?

First up, businesses need to get the targeting of their marketing messages right. Email marketing is ubiquitous and millions of messages will simply go unread or be blocked by spam filters - particularly as a result of poor email design. This means the data used for your mailshots needs to be high quality. It is no use going into 2012, spamming potential clients and customers from lists that have out-of-date information on them. Businesses will need to start using their B2B marketing data lists more intelligently if they are to boost email penetration rates.

Secondly  there is the design. Many messages are deleted because they don't display properly or cause inboxes to malfunction. Email design will continue to be a hugely important factor when it comes to business to business marketing. With the rise of mobile technologies you must also consider smaller screen resolutions if you intend to run  mobile email marketing campaigns.

Read more here...

Image: digitalart / FreeDigitalPhotos.net

Earlier this fall I was invited to speak on a panel at ExactTarget's Connections 2011 User Conference entitled "Bridging the Divide: Internationalizing Your Marketing Efforts" where I presented a case study of how ListEngage has helped Parametric corporation with their monthly international email sending needs in 9 different languages and solved some specific challenges. Collectively the panelists offered some great insights. Charlie McAtee from ExactTarget summarized them well. Here they are:
Thanks to Charlie for his insight and great breakdown of the session! Have an email dilemma of international proportions? Email us and we'll share our thoughts.

Earlier this month, I read an article about Research in Motion, or RIM as most people know it – the company that designs and manufactures the Blackberry brand of smartphones and tablets… and the guys who used to be the leaders in the booming world of mobile devices. The article was entitled “The Real Reason There Was No Email on the BlackBerry PlayBook” and it made me stop to take a look, since I used to be an avid Blackberry user. The gist of the article, and the huge underlying issue for Blackberry – is that they designed a product that won’t let them use an email address on more than one device. They’ve seemingly backed themselves into a corner.

Back when Blackberry first designed their operating system for mobile devices, the Blackberry team could not begin to fathom a day when a user would want or need to access their email from more than one mobile device, ever… and that is how they set up their operating system architecture. 1 email user = 1 device. No room for add-ons.

Now, I’m not saying that I would have been any better at projecting that users would want to access anything from multiple mobile devices, let along native email… but then again I’m not a smartphone manufacturer, I’m an emarketer so my radar is pointed in a whole different direction. Either way, I still think there’s a lesson to be learned here:

Technology moves fast, and it doesn’t help that it’s cyclical – technology pushes consumers to want new technologies and devices, and the consumers push back with new wants and desires that push technology further forward. Within this, we’ve seen many companies thrive and many more rise to the top and then give up the lead due to some “minor detail” that turned out to be a pretty major one.

Though it’s impossible to tell what the “minor detail” may end up being, I think it’s important to learn from the companies that keep evolving versus the companies that may internally resist the evolution revolution. It seems to me that the companies that grow the best listen to all ideas and allow many to contribute, they reinvent themselves the fastest, and they don’t spend time trying to resuscitate ideas-gone-bad.

Though I don’t know for sure what will happen with RIM/Blackberry, I can say that their problem really made me stop and think: How could they have seen this sooner? What could they have done differently?

Maybe those questions are too hard to answer yet, but the lesson that we are watching unfold with RIM is intrinsically tied to all business: adapt and evolve.

Let’s see how they react, and learn from their next moves.

Full story on Blackberry Playbook, and its missing native email support.

Ok, let’s talk turkey: this holiday season, if it gets to be December 24th and you’re two steps away from sending your 55th email of the season to “All Subscribers” you certainly may have gotten every message you wanted across, but you also might not have any subscribers left!

The holidays are a tough balance for email marketers: consumers want deals and email marketers want to send them every deal they have on the planet, but most subscribers don’t want their inbox stuffed fuller than a Thanksgiving turkey from November through to New Years!

Here are 5 suggestions for Engaging (and Saving) Subscribers During the Holidays:

Analyze recent campaigns and see what’s working –If you take some time to look through your tracking results and see, for example, that your open rates are better with “exclusive” subject lines or your click-through rates are higher in more graphic-rich emails then design the rest of your emails with these elements in mind.

Keep an eye on increased holiday sends -“Every fatigued subscriber who opts out in December is someone who won’t see your emails at all next year,” warns email marketing expert Suzanne Norman. If you immediately started mailing 5x a day on Black Friday, then keep tabs on your unsubscribe rates, and tone it down a notch if rates start to spike.

Make your emails as colorful and assorted as your Thanksgiving plate! – Make your subscribers want to open your emails. Whether you use dynamic content to populate each email for your subscriber’s preferences; offer new and exciting reasons to open your emails; or send them flash sales or contests, the more variety in the campaign the more your subscribers will want to engage.

Use your sign-up page to promote exclusive holiday offers only subscribers receive. With the right incentives, you might build your list and be able to reach out to a whole new customer base throughout 2011.

Make it easy for everyone to spread your holiday cheer! Add a “ShareThis” button, or highlight the “Forward to a Friend” feature. With people relying heavily on social networks for shopping ideas and advice, having your content in this space puts you a step ahead of the competition.

Just in case you hadn’t turned on your laptop lately, or walked out the front door in awhile, we thought it would be helpful to let you know that it isn’t the 1950’s anymore. Things are moving fast, people are getting bombarded with messages and information at lightning speeds, and businesses now have to cater to a global clientele in order to keep up.

The further we venture into the 21st century, the more we’ll see not only just how important email marketing and online presence will become – but we’ll also begin to see how essential it is to get your message across in the right language as well. We live in a global economy – and it’s hard to sell a product when users can’t understand the language that you’re speaking to them in.

A client of ours, Parametric Technology Corporation, or PTC, is one shining example of how to cater to multiple audiences the right way, by using email marketing. Several years ago, PTC approached ListEngage with a problem: they wanted to send a monthly newsletter to customers around the world, but they didn’t necessarily have a language of choice database for each subscriber. Here’s where we came in: ListEngage helped PTC to design a process that allowed the creation of one newsletter in 10 different languages that would be emailed to subscribers by country. People in Italy would receive the Italian version and their audience in China would receive the Chinese version .

But what if a reader in China received the email in Chinese and wanted to view its content in English? ListEngage helped PTC streamline this problem by creating a “language bar” at the very  top of each email which links  a specific language to a web page version of the newsletter that is posted as a HTML document  in that particular language. So, if a reader in Italy wants to read the newsletter in Spanish, all they have to do is click on “Español” and their  newsletter will pop up for reading right there. The multi-language emails are great for readers and even better for PTC who can connect with more prospects and possible customers with just one click of a button.

PTC “Maintenance Minute” readers can currently enjoy their emails in English, German, French, Italian, Spanish, Chinese, Korean, Taiwanese, and Russian.  And though ListEngage doesn’t have the talent to read and translate in 10 different languages, our platform and employees certainly have the expertise to coordinate the “heavy lifting” of getting emails like these out the door in a timely fashion.

James Winokur, Director, Business Development Global Maintenance Support had this to say about the email creation process and ListEngage’s efforts: “[ListEngage] now helps us with all aspects of the 10 language versions of the Maintenance Minute that we send out world-wide on a monthly basis. ListEngage has had a huge impact in our monthly production of this newsletter endeavor and has made this… a success for us.”

With 2009 about to draw to an end, we here at List Engage just wanted to take a moment to congratulate our clients, friends, and fellow businesses on growing and thriving through the unprecedented economic climate of 2009– and to wish everyone a happy and healthy 2010!

With businesses looking to expand their eMarketing and social media budgets in 2010 — on everything from email marketing design and services to developing niche followers on Twitter — List Engage has something to offer any business, big or small. Why not make one of your resolutions to join us on the cutting edge of eMarketing success in 2010!

Recently, Seattle based outdoor clothing retailer Filson came to ListEngage with a challenge—create an email marketing campaign that reached their valued customer’s inboxes with a time sensitive offer and in turn help them increase their campaign performance and sales. They wanted to see positive results, and ListEngage delivered!


By following best practices in email design and rendering, smart list segmenting techniques and moving away from an all-image based email to a combination of images and text seen above the fold ListEngage was able to achieve a much higher success rate than average email marketing campaigns. The campaign generated much better open and click-through rates and even reported “higher than expected sales” – the ultimate dream for any online retailer and what every e-marketing company should strive for when helping clients with their online marketing efforts.

To learn more about Filson, or to sign up for their exclusive offers and events click here.

To learn more about ListEngage and our “Don’t Go It Alone” philosophy or to sign-up for our newsletter click here.

When creating and designing emails, it is often difficult to determine what makes for the “best” note to be viewed in several different email clients: While Gmail and Yahoo may render the email perfectly, Outlook might align images left or perhaps display the font type incorrectly. Meanwhile, while you’re viewing your *perfect* newsletter in Internet Explorer with a big smile on your face, it might be rendering completely backwards in Firefox!

Although you never know for certain until you click send (or you make this your vocation, like us!), there are some “tried and true” practice for email design and rendering which will certainly help eliminate some of the guesswork and “aftermath” headaches of email marketing– and we’ve outlined the Top Ten in our most recent newsletter..

Take a look for the Top 5 Best Rendering and Design Tips, or dowload the Whitepaper here.

The data day is a half day event that brings together industry experts on all five facets of data as it flows in a marketing organization. It was a day long event packed with interactive sessions on five core elements of data intelligence in a direct marketing organization:

• Data Cleansing, warehousing and archiving
• Data Acquisition
• Data & Compliance
• Data Integrated Marketing
• Data Capture & Harvesting
• Data Enabled Selling

Altaf attended and conducted the Data Integrated Marketing session. Please email us at info@listengage.com if you are interested in a copy of his presentation.

Here are links to educational emarketing materials that Altaf gave away at The Data Day.

• E-Marketing Tips and Techniques
• Design Tips For Outlook 2007
• Co-Registration Do's and Don't's
• Deliverability Top Ten
• Transactional Email Marketing