Author Archive: Carolyn Kopprasch
What we’re reading now: on autoresponders, iPad apps and more
The latest don't-miss articles for agencies and business owners
Today’s installment of our reading series contains some great agency- and client-specific posts that you may have missed. Kick back with a cup of coffee and check out the articles I’ve been bookmarking.
Marketing stats & ideas to share with your clients:
- Trigger email open rates soar: Chief Marketer reports that trigger emails, or autoresponders, have huge success rates among email audiences. If you’re an Emma agency, encourage your clients to set up welcome triggers, link-based triggers, a trigger series and more.
- 27% of emails are opened on mobile devices: Are you helping your clients design for mobile devices and tablets? These stats demonstrate that more and more folks are reading emails on-the-go; they’re even checking email during “off” times (late at night while in bed, for example).
- Twitter has the highest amplification rate; email has the highest conversion rate: Email and social go hand in hand. While the channels differ in strengths, they combine for an incredibly effective way to connect with your audience. This article helps you understand what to measure for each channel.
“Work smarter, not harder” is the theme of these three:
- 5 apps for working from the iPad: On vacation but still need to get work done? Here are 5 iPad apps that’ll help you save time and keep you organized.
- Getting clients: A List Apart recognizes that getting (and keeping) clients is the most anxiety-producing role that you have. Ranging from the simple (referrals and advertising) to the less-obvious (how to be pleasant but not nice), this article walks through the many ways agencies can keep those clients coming in.
- 7 entrepreneurial lessons from Shark Tank: Entertainment value aside, this show about the startup feeding frenzy teaches great basic lessons about entrepreneurship, like how to communicate your value and how to pitch with limited time.
As always, we’d love to hear what you’ve been reading. Tell us on Twitter with the hashtags #emmaagency and #readinglist, or comment here on the blog.
What we’re reading now
A roundup of articles for small business owners and Emma Agencies
If you’re anything like me, then your day consists of asking yourself this question countless times as you scroll through your Twitter app, Facebook feed, Flipboard and RSS reader: Is reading this article going to be worth my time?
Content marketing has afforded us more free resources, case studies and education than we could possibly have time for. In this roundup, I’m cutting through the noise and sharing some of my favorite recent reads.
Part one: for the small business owner
- 35 ways to make your business look bigger: While a small business has its advantages, be prepared to look just as professional as your bigger competitors.
- Your personal online reputation and your business: Even with privacy settings, your online life probably bleeds into your business, especially if you’re a solopreneur. This app scans your online activity and reports back any red flags.
- Look professional on video chat: Lighting, angle and technology matter; use these pointers to make sure your video chats with customers come across as polished as possible.
Part two: for the agency owner who’s managing multiple client accounts
- Email is not dead: All the stats you need (and more) when clients ask about the ROI and relevance of email in a social world.
- 25 questions to ask yourself about your email marketing: Use this checklist to put your email strategy through the ringer.
- Are you falling into the pricing trap? You’re not just pricing your services, you’re valuing them. Choose your rates wisely with this perspective in mind.
I’ll be back next month with more articles worth reading, tweeting and bookmarking. And please share your favorite reads with me in the comments section below.
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Become an Emma Agency: stylish email marketing for you and your clients.
Improving your email list
How to use advanced tools and strategy to nurture your growing audience
Yesterday, I offered tips for turning your email readers into buyers, but those tactics may not do you a ton of good until you’ve really engaged your audience. Today, we’ll look at a few strategies for nurturing your growing audience.
Make time to nurture your growing email list.
Your list is all grown up. What now?
At this stage, I imagine that your email marketing goals are more advanced. You’re keen to keep your original fans while attracting a larger crowd, but as you do so, you want to maintain strong delivery rates and engagement. Now’s the time to pair your goal of growth with additional measures like effective messaging, relationship building and higher delivery rates.
Here are a few ways to do just that:
+ Segment beyond demographics. Your audience list likely falls into more relevant categories than male/female and north/south. For example, a brand new subscriber may respond better to being treated like a very special newbie than simply receiving a particular demographic’s message. To kick off that relationship, develop a series of welcome emails for new subscribers that introduces them to your content and messaging. Retool a particularly successful past campaign or build a new one from scratch, or both. (For more ideas, Cody gives tips galore on segmenting your subscribers based on their relationship with you.) Alternatively, if you have a longer purchase cycle than traditional retail, you may want to segment based on your recipients’ place in that process. Read my perspective on segmenting based on customer lifecycle.
+ Elicit audience actions to help your emails succeed in filtered inboxes. Most popular webmail clients (like Gmail and Hotmail) do some automatic filtering for their users. Unloved email senders start to get filtered to the “unimportant” category — and sometimes right out of the inbox. To combat this, encourage your readers to perform the actions that say “this email is valuable” to the inboxes that use these algorithms.
A reply is one of the most powerful indicators to the inbox filter that your email is wanted. Ask your subscribers to reply to your email, vote in a poll or ask questions. Subscriber clicks are also powerful boosts for your reputation; craft situations where readers click, even if they’re not shopping or reading more. For example, let subscribers provide feedback by clicking on links right from your email. Keep in mind that every non-open hurts your reputation with all recipients at that domain, so send and segment wisely.
Email expert Mark Brownlow encourages subscribers to reply directly to him.
+ Measure past the click to learn what speaks to your audience. Your Emma response page shows you which links in your newsletter were the most popular. For an even deeper look into your audience’s preferences, tag your links using an analytics tool like Google Analytics to learn where your subscribers are ultimately landing. For a tutorial, read Cassie’s guide to implementing Google Analytics.
+ Develop a plan for non-engaged subscribers. Disengaged subscribers hurt your sender reputation. Periodic pruning of your list is a good idea. First, define what “inactive” means for your brand. Is it someone who hasn’t opened, clicked or engaged through any channels in three months? Six months? A year?
Next, create your plan of attack. Will you send a few emails asking folks to opt back in and then remove those who don’t? Is opening the reactivation email enough to be considered active? Give your plan a try, and then move those lifeless email addresses out of your regular sending list. You may decide to remove them completely or send less frequently for a while before saying goodbye. Just don’t be alarmed if your reactivation campaign doesn’t win the majority of folks back. With email address turnover these days, many of them may not be salvageable.
Moving beyond “one size fits all” messaging and saying goodbye to your non-openers isn’t always an easy transition, but your response rates will reflect the additional effort. Before you know it, those folks who stick around will be engaging with you in ways you may not have expected — and helping spread the word about you to new, attentive subscribers.
This is part three in our blog series on audience growth. Read parts one and two.
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Not yet an Emma customer? Send stunning emails that get noticed.
Clicks are only half the battle
Tips to convert your email audience into purchasers, donators and loyal visitors
As much as we love helping you figure out your email response rates, we know that your email marketing doesn’t stop there. In fact, for most messages, email is just a starting point for a customer who will then go on to purchase, donate, share, comment or RSVP. The great news is that these folks are your most captive audience. So how can you encourage them to complete a task (or buy something) without being too pushy? From the email itself to the “thank you” page, your success depends largely on the experience you create for your customers. These steps will help you shape an experience that’ll allow you to reach your conversion goals.
Present your message effectively
You’ve spent considerable time crafting your email’s content and presenting your product or service. Pay mind to these aspects, too:
Reach your conversion goals one click at a time.
- Optimize the “path” to the sale. You need to move your audience forward in a logical way. Specifically, help meet their expectations by providing a next step that looks and feels sensical. A call to action of “Donate now” should lead to your donation page, not your homepage, for example. That one’s fairly obvious, but if you’re looking for even more tactics, take a look at KISSmetrics’ seven conversion tips. In one example, breaking from your color scheme actually helps the reader see your “next” button and move forward. Additionally, test the copy on your button to find what speaks to people. If you always say Buy now, try Add to cart, Make a purchase or Go shopping. In one KISSmetric case study, Dell made an extra $25 million in sales by changing a non-committal Learn more to the more decisive Help me choose.
- Remove the will. Including the word “will” in your marketing anchors your message in the future. As Smart Insights points out, this turns your sentence from a now statement into a future promise, and that’s too abstract for some consumers. Remove the “will,” and your audience is more apt to visualize themselves in your statement.
- Let your prices do the convincing. Do you know how powerful the price you set is? It not only affects the assumptions people make about your product’s value, but also how likely they are to buy from you again — or even recommend you to others. How your price is displayed, which items and prices appear next to it and even the digits in the price can make all the difference in your sale. Not, er, sold? Check out ConversionXL for fascinating pricing experiments to consider.
Make it easy on your customer
Your job is to simplify the process as much as possible. Any frustration or disappointment sends your visitor back to Google to find another company who can deliver with less hassle.
- Reduce friction. Make sure your text size, colors and content work with, not against, you. Keep the copy digestible — remember, visitors are likely skimming, not reading — and focus on your visitors’ needs, not your own. Want more tips? KISSmetrics has 10 of ‘em.
- Close the gaps. Do you know where in the process your customers abandon you? Use an analytics tool (we’re fans of Google Analytics) to identify and patch up those holes. Eliminate these five weaknesses, and your marketing funnel will be stronger for it.
- Serve up pages as quickly as possible. Your page load speed is paramount in retaining visitors. Impatient shoppers will go elsewhere if they’re waiting around too long. And even if you’d like to showcase snazzy photos of your products, too many graphics mean a trade-off in speed — so consider them carefully.
Boost engagement
When folks receive your email or visit your site, most aren’t giving you their full attention. They’re multi-tasking, looking at another site to compare products or even talking on the phone. With endless ways to get distracted, you’ve got to work to keep them engaged. Here’s how to get it right:
- Be choosy about your links. When a recipient clicks a link in your email, they’re essentially leaving your email’s message behind — and they may not return to read more. So make sure you’re delivering them elsewhere for good reason. Rather than directing to pages of your site, consider creating custom landing pages that speak uniquely to your email audience. Remember, they know more about you than someone who finds you through a search engine. That means you can deliver them to a deeper place in your sales funnel. For even more uses of landing pages, take a look at this article from ion interactive.
- Don’t waste your images. Keep the look and feel consistent by building your landing page and emails with complementary styles and images. And don’t go overboard; images soak up valuable space and attention. In an email, for example, an oversize image up top steals the prime real estate in the preview pane. Consider the meaning behind your images, too. As “conversion scientist” Brian Massey points out, if you choose generic stock images just because it breaks up the text, you are directing readers’ eyes to something that’s not helping you sell.
These reminders will get you well on your way to more conversions, but also keep in mind that a certain amount of your audience is still in the research phase — so consider it a success that they’re “just looking.” If you make the experience a good one for them, they’ll convert when they’re ready.
We’d love to hear how you take a fresh look at your emails, landing pages and conversion goals. Share your experience in the comments below.
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Email click-throughs aren’t as elusive as you may think
Small changes in your campaigns can increase your click-through rates
Getting clicks on your newsletter is one of the elusive goals that requires a combination of the right information at the right time to the right recipient. No sweat, right? Well, it makes sense that the percentage of people who click is usually in the single digits. According to the Email Stat Center, the average click-through rate is 5.9%. You aren’t going to be able to meet everyone’s needs in the right stage of the purchase cycle. However, there are a few things that you can do to encourage those on the fence to go ahead and learn more.
Right off the bat, you need to know that you have very little time to engage the person who has just opened your email. Think about that person for a moment; she has just deleted 12 other emails, she’s drinking her morning coffee and she is checking her day’s schedule. Or maybe your recipient is wrapping up before lunch (because at least one time zone always seems to be at lunch). He is seeing your email amongst social media notifications, YouTube videos from his sister, and all he can think about is that club sandwich in his future.
All that is to say, after you spend the time perfecting the content of your email, consider that you only have two seconds to capture the attention of your subscribers. That means that you must share what you’re offering in a clear, swift and appealing manner.
Here’s a good test: Hand your email to a colleague who has not helped design or write it in any way, preferably one who’s unfamiliar with your campaign. To be generous, give him 5 or 6 seconds with it. At the end of that time, he should be able to answer the following questions:
- What are you offering me?
- How can I get it?
You don’t have to be offering a coupon for this test to be relevant. If you are offering your expertise on choosing a wine to pair with dinner, that’s valuable. It just has to be clear.
The “How do I get it?” question is where you really figure out if your message is effective and actionable. Here are some tips (and some of our favorite click-related articles) for optimizing your emails.
- Make it easy to find. Your “click area” should be immediately obvious. Is it a different color? Does it have a giant arrow pointing to it? Is the model in your image looking toward the button? (That has been shown to increase clicks.) It should be very obvious, and you should use visual design techniques to grab the attention of readers. Try different shapes, colors and sizes of your buttons. Experiment with different areas of the page, too. Put the button above most of your copy and see if more people convert.
- Make it easy to click. Again, an immediately apparent button is going to help. (For mobile readers, make sure that your button is at least 44 by 44 pixels and preferably a few lines away from another button to avoid mis-clicks.)
- Make it convincing. The text matters, and slight variations can really make a difference. “Learn More” and “Buy Now” may bring you to the same landing page, but they will appeal to people on different ends of the buying spectrum.
- Limit your subscribers’ choices. Giving too many places to click may overwhelm or confuse your readers. Remember, you only have 2 seconds!
- Use some psychology. Did you know that we lose far more joy by missing out on something than we gain by actually getting it? Consider this as you design your messages.
The small changes go a long way, so give one or two a try and report back — we’d love to know which strategies work best for you.
This is part four in our holiday series where we answer email marketing questions provided by our customers. To see part one, click here. Visit part two here and part three here.
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Emma Agencies weigh in on Facebook’s new metrics
With the recent changes to Facebook's Insights, our agency partners are learning more about their audience
In the past few years, Facebook has embraced marketers more than ever. And, recently, they rolled out several changes to the data available to page administrators. It provides an even deeper look into your audience. In fact, you may be able to extrapolate and learn a bit about your market in other channels, too.
We asked a few of our agency partners to weigh in on what these changes mean for marketers and their clients. Let’s take a look at the updates, and then we’ll see what our agencies have to say.
What’s new
As a page administrator, you have access to a tab called Insights. This has always been the destination to find, well, insights into the success of your page. Take a stroll over to that area now, and we’ll walk through the new data:
Facebook now shows Total Likes, Friends of Fans, People Talking About This and Weekly Total Reach
Total Likes: Likes are a familiar stat that’s been here before. Also referred to as fans, likes is the cumulative number of Facebook users who have ever clicked “Like” on your page.
Friends of Fans: This is a sum of your fans and all of their friends, a significant number because it represents the potential reach that your page could have if each fan talked about you.
People Talking About This: We consider this to be the page’s meat and potatoes (or its tofu and quinoa, if that’s your style). In the past, you’ve been able to watch your Likes and comments to get an anecdotal sense of how many folks were interacting with your page. Now, you can see the exact number of people talking about you, which Facebook explains as “the number of unique people who have created a story about your page in the last seven days.” More specifically, it includes folks who have liked your page or one of your posts, those who have checked into your Place and folks who have mentioned your page in a post or tagged it in a photo.
Notice that this metric is also a public number. Now, when someone visits your fan page, he will see both Total Likes and People Talking About This. This introduces a brand new success metric to report to your clients and to show potential fans.
Weekly Total Reach: With this update, you can find the number of Facebookers who have seen any content associated with your page. This includes fans who read posts by your brand and people who are not fans but saw someone on their newsfeed “talking” about you. It also includes people who saw your purchased ads. Naturally, as your talking metric rises and falls, your weekly total reach follows suit.
Post by Post: As you move beyond the large sweeping numbers, you can see more granular information too. Sorted by date, you’ll see how each individual post affected your audience.
- Reach tells you how many people were exposed to the post.
- Engaged Users counts everyone who clicked anywhere on your post, ranging from liking the post itself to clicking on a commenter’s profile.
- Talking About This tallies anyone who commented, liked or otherwise interacted with that post.
- Virality gives you the percentage of people who talked about your post compared to the number who saw it. This number allows you to compare your posts to each other to determine what type of content creates the most engagement.
Demographic Data: After you get a handle on the aggregate data, check out the Fans, Reach and Talking About This tabs. From there, you’ll see a breakdown of those people by gender, age range and location.
Facebook reports your fans by gender and age range, giving you more details about your audience
What these changes mean for marketers
Buzz data
As with any tool that marketers use these days, more data is better as long as it informs a greater strategy. While these changes may not upend your efforts, you’ll be able to track engagement and brand buzz at a much higher level.
People Talking About This provides both a new insight into the virality of your posts and a new metric by which others will judge your page. Craig Dunn, Vice President of Client Services at Music City Networks, one of Emma’s agency partners, weighs in on the sudden combination of Likes and this new metric:
People Talking About This may carry even more weight than Likes in some ways, but you have to look at them together. They point to success of different strategies and goals. Sometimes we’re trying to build an artist’s fans on Facebook, but sometimes we’d rather have people click to the website. People Talking About This will help us measure what’s generating real conversations and real sharing. Before, we could throw stuff out there and not really know what was compelling and what wasn’t. This metric extends Facebook’s numbers to be more like email, where you can actually see the direct results and drill down to what gets people excited.
Craig makes some great points. In fact, consider using the new data to inform your social media strategy in these ways ways:
- Better engage current fans by taking note of the types of posts that elicit the most response.
- Increase the reach of your page by encouraging discussion on topics that generate the most interest. (Compare your actual reach against your total potential, found in Friends of Fans. Then, use what you learned in the individual posts section and tailor your conversation starters to your audience.)
Giving your fans more of the content they love and react to is the obvious way to accomplish both. To get started, David Baser, a Product Manager at Facebook, recommends adding more photos and video in your posts, because those rich content categories are often more engaging. (Read the entire ClickZ interview with David Baser here.)
Polly Bibb, Social Media Strategist at JLB Works, one of Emma’s agencies, agrees that it’s vital to use the metrics to plan content:
You have to think about what’s going to stand out. You always want something catchy, but of course it depends on the company. This new tool is fabulous for knowing what works and what doesn’t. It definitely will encourage people to get more savvy with their status updates.
Demographic data
Beyond the buzz data, you’ll also be able to use the demographic details to watch as new segments of your audience pick up the conversation. Polly explains:
It’s going to help everyone in the online media world keep their game faces on because you’ll be able to see if you’re successfully targeting, or even if you’re bringing in a new audience you weren’t even aware of. It helps you assess and change your strategy a lot earlier than you otherwise could have.
Speaking of changing your strategy, keep the following in mind:
- Embrace new segments who are talking about your brand by including them in your messaging. They may become your best evangelists, and the Insights tab will help you pick up on that.
- Re-engage your core demographic if you are seeing a low response rate from them. Tune in to what makes them tick, or consider asking them what types of content they’d like to see. Brand updates, office pictures and videos, polls, events and questions offer a variety of ways to start a conversation with that group.
Onward
Ultimately, Facebook is still in the early years of its relationship with marketers, and we are going to see that relationship grow. Clients increasingly expect agencies to be experts on social media, and because these developments allow you to measure success a lot more easily, they will only enhance your expertise.
Julian Bibb, Principal and CEO of JLB Works notes:
Facebook is the rising tide that lifts all ships. It introduces the concept of social media and makes people more aware of all other social networks, like Twitter and YouTube. In years past, we were explaining to our clients what social was and why it was important. In 2011, they are coming to us with some of that knowledge. Facebook has become part of our clients’ public consciousness a lot more than it was in years past, and as time goes on, they will become increasingly aware.
We’ve heard from a few of our agency partners, and we want to hear from you! Let us know how Facebook’s changes are affecting your social media strategy, and how you’re using the new metrics to inform your clients. Comment here, or reach out to Emma’s Agency Relations team.
Want more details about Facebook’s changes? Download their Product Guide for Page Owners [PDF].
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Advanced email analytics with Litmus
Using Litmus and Emma to preview your email in various email clients and study engagement
Benjamin Franklin once said that the only certainties in life are death, taxes and the fact that various email programs display HTML differently. Well, he may not have been familiar with that last one. But as email marketers know, it’s a truth that adds a level of difficulty to designing for email.
Thankfully, we’ve got tools for that kind of thing. Litmus is a program that gives marketers a firsthand look at how newsletters render across the major email programs, and it also shows which ones your recipients are using. Last month, Emma took a Litmus for different kind of test drive. We’ve been using the system for quite a while now, but trying some of their more advanced features this time around gave us some fascinating insights.
Let me introduce two of the Litmus features that we found useful, as well as the results from our own newsletters.
Email previews
Because of the plethora of email clients out there, making campaigns look good everywhere is an uphill battle. Emma’s designers are stars at making your stationery display consistently, but once you add images and text to your campaign, you can bet that it won’t look exactly the same. And don’t even get me started on Outlook. (Here’s an example of Emma’s old newsletter in Outlook 2007.) To make matters more complicated, email clients span across three environments: desktop software (like Outlook and MacMail), web software (like Hotmail and Gmail) and mobile. For the purposes of this post, that’s all you need to know. But if you’re curious about rendering engines, which actually perform the task of displaying HTML, you can learn more here.
With a basic Litmus account, you send your email to a test Litmus address to see how your email looks on all major email clients in an instant. From there, you can browse through the clients, scroll on the mobile phones and even turn preview panes on and off to see all preference configurations. It really takes the guesswork out of it.
If you decide to go with a plus or premium account, you’ll actually see what emails clients are represented in your audience, and by what percentages. With this data, you can get a sense of just how mobile your subscribers are and how much your campaigns are affected by Outlook’s quirks.
Litmus allows you to preview campaigns in all major email clients.
Engagement
If you’re using Emma, you’re already getting a good idea of your reader engagement through the response section. Litmus gives you even deeper analytics, at their plus and premium levels. The report tells you exactly how many seconds your audience spends with your emails and categorizes the whole group into “read,” “skimmed” and “glanced or deleted.” It’s even organized by email client.
The results: Litmus in action
We used Litmus for two of Emma’s newsletters, our August Roundup (a newsletter sent to our entire community) and our Agency Insider (sent to our agency partners). (To subscribe to either or both of these, go right ahead here.)
Litmus’ email previews allowed us to test our campaigns before their send-offs. Then after sending, we dove into the engagement and email client details. We learned a few things along the way, including…
- The audiences for our community-wide newsletter and agency-specific newsletter are not that different. At over 80% for each test, desktop email clients are still king. Our general community has a higher percentage of Outlook users, while our agencies prefer Mac Mail; those were the #1 and #2 email clients for both.
- Our mobile readers, despite being a significant minority, were extremely engaged. Over half of mobile recipients fell into the “read” category, spending the most time with our emails. Maybe it simply takes longer to read and digest an email on mobile. Or, maybe folks who make time to check email on-the-go really want to receive the message.
- Our readers are environmentally friendly. Fewer than 10 readers chose to print out the newsletter.
Pretty interesting, right? You may find that you know your audience better than you expect — perhaps your assumptions are right on the money. Or, you may find that more readers than you realize are using mobile devices and that your mobile strategy needs a tune-up.
Even if the results don’t lead to major changes right away — we’re pretty pleased with how Emma’s data stacked up, for example — it’s useful to document the data as a benchmark. Gradual changes to your reports over time will indicate an evolving audience, and it’ll allow you to keep your content and formatting fresh. Got anything interesting to share about your own email testing? Please share any insights in the comments. We’d love to hear about it.
And for the record, we don’t have any special relationship with Litmus — we just think it’s a handy tool, so we wanted to share it with you.
Anna Yeaman’s 6 mobile design tips
How to create emails that retain their design and style on smartphones
It’s 3 a.m. Do you know who’s reading your email? A recent Return Path survey revealed 16% of email is viewed via mobile devices and 1 in 3 Americans own a smartphone. Chances are, at least one insomniac with a donut in hand will be reading your email. Design accordingly.
Since mobile is gaining so quickly, I asked Anna Yeaman, creative director at Style Campaign, to share her experience with designing emails for mobile devices. Read on for her six tips to optimize your email campaigns.
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6 simple mobile email design tips by Anna Yeaman
1. Rework your creative for touch
Fingers are less accurate than a cursor, so you’ll need to increase the size of your links and spacing. In Apple’s Human Interface Guidelines, they recommend a minimum target area of 44 x 44 points. Elements you’ll need to rework include CTA buttons and stacked links, e.g. table of contents and navigation.
Threadless CTA is large enough for your thumb to tap.
2. Push the contrast
Low contrast is not advisable on small screens, as elements become hard to read. Email on the Kindle is B&W Webkit, another reason to run a quick grayscale test.
Text becomes hard to read once scaled down.
3. Disable auto-scaling fonts
If your text is under 12px, the iPhone automatically scales it up, potentially breaking your layout. HTML navigation and pre-header text are particularly vulnerable.
To turn off auto-scaling add the following code:
style=”-webkit-text-size-adjust:none”
Better yet, make your fonts bigger. Windows Phone 7 recommends no smaller than 15 points; Apple recommends a 17 – 22 pixel font.
Here's a text-wrapping issue caused by font scaling.
4. Define the viewport
Safari on the iPhone uses a 980px wide viewport. This means any template hosted on the web that’s less than 980px wide will appear zoomed out. To correct this, you need to define the viewport for your mobile version and mobile landing pages.
Here’s the code:
<meta name=”viewport” content=”width=width of your layout, initial-scale=1.0; minimum-scale=1.0, user-scalable=yes” />
This is a mobile version without the viewport defined.
5. Put some content on the first screen
You don’t want branding and navigation to take up the first screen, burying the content users want.
It requires a lot of scrolling to get to the first article in the Smashing Magazine newsletter. While I like that the table of contents has jump tags, the links aren’t designed for touch.
This requires lots of scrolling.
6. Narrow the width
When email is viewed on an Android, only a portion of the screen is visible by default (roughly 320px). Unlike the iPhone, the Android doesn’t scale content to fit the screen. To make navigation even more difficult, the min/max zooms are extremely limited.
If 320px (iPhone 3 screen width) is too skinny, try a layout between 480px-520px. The Android, Windows Phone 7 and Blackberry all have popular devices that use a 480px resolution.
T.J. Maxx's email has a width of 520 px.
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Anna Yeaman is the creative director and co-founder of email creative agency Style Campaign. Visit Style Campaign’s blog for more ideas and examples, and follow Anna on Twitter at @stylecampaign.
The marketer’s link digest
Recommended articles about time management, professional development and more
As an avid reader, I often stumble upon good articles on all kinds of subjects relevant to my work life, even if not directly related to email. Instead of focusing on email marketing this month, I’m sharing some non-industry link love. I hope the following articles will intrigue and enlighten you. And, well, maybe you’ve also always wondered about those ridges on quarters.
Getting more hours out of the day, doing your best work and finding inspiration: The Professional’s Section
- Getting constructive feedback: The 99% blog shares how to get honest and helpful feedback from employees, peers and your boss.
- Manage your energy, not your time: Harvard Business Review offers tips to feel stronger, live better and work smarter.
- 10 things I learned from failure: Inc. Magazine shares what’s gained from entrepreneurial growing pains.
Understanding your changing role, creating a villain to market against and using your time and technology wisely: The Marketer’s Section
- What is your brand against? Harvard Business Review reminds you that sometimes the story works better with a bad guy.
- A hammer is not a house: Jay Baer points out a critical difference between the metrics we need to measure and the tools we use to measure them.
- The new roles of a marketer: ClickZ walks through the many roles marketers fill these days, and how to succeed at each.
Creating the perfect playlist, discovering what’s beyond happiness and why there are ridges on a quarter: The Trivia Buff’s section
- What’s beyond happiness? The New York Times reviews life milestones and teaches how to achieve joy at every stage.
- Create the ultimate exercise playlist: No matter the exercise, research suggests that music helps. Use Lifehacker’s tools to find your sweet beat.
- Why are there ridges on a quarter? Mental Floss teaches us why our 25 cent piece has a rough edge, why the other coins do not and why the number of ridges varies.
Love these articles? Have others to share? Let us know in the comments below!
Unopened emails “nudge” subscribers to action
It may come as a surprise that unopened emails can still be effective
An email can affect a recipient’s actions, even if the email goes unopened.
At first glance, that seems unlikely. Isn’t an unopened email akin to putting music on but not putting the headphones in your ears? Pretty much no benefit, right?
According to Dela Quist, the perception that only the opened emails affect purchasing behavior may be selling your subject lines and greater marketing efforts a bit short.
The simple effect of seeing your brand in the inbox reminds your subscribers of your existence, as well as your new product line, sale, or whatever else you mention in your subject line. That can influence people to visit your store, recommend you to a friend or even make a purchase, without ever opening your email. (Read the full article here.)
You can loosely measure this by comparing the direct success of the campaign to its indirect success. If you know the exact number of people who clicked through to make a purchase from the email, and yet you had a jump in purchases above that number, the nudge effect may have something to do with it.
Here are some recent examples from my inbox. Each of these campaigns went unopened, and yet the underlying message reached me.
1. Sender: Redbox
Subject line: New to Rent This Tuesday
Why it works: Even though I have a busy week coming up and I know that I won’t be renting a movie, it reminds me that a fast and affordable movie night is within walking distance. I can picture where my local redbox is located, and I think back to the last movie I rented. (It was Iron Man 2. I admittedly don’t rent a lot of movies.)
2. Sender: Vera Bradley
Subject line: Shop Summer Sale and ship for free (ends today!)
Why it works: I recently moved and have put a strict no-buying policy in place until I find a spot in my apartment for everything I already own. However, it has me dreaming of a new summery bag, and I make a mental note to check their site once the dust settles.
3. Sender: Amerigo (a local Italian restaurant)
Subject line: Join us on Memorial Day for a special offer!
Why it works: I see this one after Memorial Day, so I don’t bother opening it. But, just hearing the name Amerigo has me thinking of their tiramisu, which is bound to get me in there soon.
4. Sender: The Limited
Subject line: Save $15 Off Every $50! 4 Days Only!
Why it works: Due to my aforementioned no-shopping policy, I don’t open this one either. Before I remove temptation from my inbox, I can’t help but notice the math on that deal. 30% off is a nice deal, and I appreciate that they reward their email subscribers with a discount. Positive brand experience!
5. Sender: Amazon.com
Subject line: Amazon.com: Kindle with Special Offers from $114
Why it works: I’m already thinking of buying an e-reader, but I haven’t committed to one yet. Though I’m not quite ready to buy, I process the decreasing price of Amazon’s version. Due to the simple exposure of it, they’re my most top-of-mind vendor right now.
Pretty impressive how much I’m affected by these subject lines alone, right? Still, remember that the subject line’s purpose is to get your subscribers to open, not to do the email’s whole job. But, if you’re sending close to the deadline, on an unusual day, or just want to reach those non-opens for a change, try designing a subject line that stands on its own to remind your recipients why they buy from you.
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Want to read more strategy tips for reaching your audience? Consider segmenting based upon the customer lifestyle or split testing your emails.
Emma is a member of the Email Sender & Provider Coalition and the Messaging Anti-Abuse Working Group.
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