Category Archive: Stuff that’s stylish
Are you ready for some email?
A peek at the New York Giants' email marketing strategy
This Sunday, millions of people will gather to watch the Super Bowl. For some, it’s all about the commercials. For others, it’s about critiquing Madonna’s half-time performance. And for the sports fans among us, it’s about the matchup of two football teams who had very different, and equally exciting, seasons. Regardless of which side you’re rooting for, Emma is proud to power the emails of this year’s NFC Champions, the New York Giants. The folks that handle the Giants’ premium ticket holder relations have knocked their email strategy out of the park, er, into the end zone. Take a look at a few of the ways Rachel Wohl and her team tackle email marketing.
The right message to the right people
The Giants’ marketing team understands the art of audience segmentation. With various levels of ticket holder, messaging has to be specific. By segmenting smaller groups based on ticketing level, the Giants ensure the relevancy of every message that hits the inbox. In turn, recipients trust that their time is not being wasted with unnecessary information. The Giants average open rate is a whopping 55% — that’s more than twice the industry average!
Taking time to target your messages can make a huge difference in your response metrics.
In short: While the Giants have built-in segments to work with, any business can find ways to get more focused with messaging. If you’re a nonprofit, consider creating unique audience groups for donors versus volunteers. Retail shops and restaurants can group by recipient preferences. And businesses with multiple locations can use zip codes to divide their database. Find what groupings make sense for your business and industry, and use Emma’s search and segment feature to make it happen. Then, test to see if segment-specific messages make a difference in your response rates.
Having fun with the brand
With a legacy that goes back to 1925, the Giants have established themselves as one of the most recognizable brands in the NFL. The block-style “NY” logo is as instantly familiar as their blue and red uniforms. In keeping with that tradition, the Giants’ email stationery boldly conveys the brand. And once you’ve got brand recognition, it’s easy to loosen up and have a little fun. The Giants call on Emma’s design team to occasionally adjust their existing stationery by adding subtle nods to various seasons. From hints of pink for Breast Cancer Awareness Month to leaves for fall and snowflakes for winter, the stationery stays true to the brand while delivering a little surprise and delight along the way.
Adding new elements to existing stationery is a fun way to change things up.
In short: If you’re getting bored of your newsletter’s look, chances are your audience is a little bored too. Why not get creative? Adding holiday elements for an end-of -year push is an obvious place to start, but any season or special event in your business or industry can inform a slight variation on your existing template. Send a design request to our team, and we’ll walk through the details with you.
Keeping the party going
The Super Bowl is a time to party, and that’s especially true for the Giants and their fans this year. As a special thank you for continued support, the Giants planned a party for their premium ticket holders. They worked with our design team to create a custom email that has the feel of an exclusive invitation, while incorporating brand familiarity. To manage the response, the Giants linked the invitation to an Emma-powered survey, which acts as an RSVP form. When recipients fill out the survey, all the information goes right into the response section in the Giants’ account, making it easy to track and follow up.
Pairing a survey with an email invitation makes tracking and follow-up a breeze.
In short: Consider managing your next event right within your Emma account. Create an email invitation, link it to a survey that collects all of your RSVP details, and then set up triggered emails to remind attendees about the event in advance. You could even create a follow-up survey after the event to gather feedback. Need help geting started? Our support team would be happy to show you how it all works together.
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As you watch on Sunday and get swept up in the gameday antics, take a moment to marvel at all the behind-the-scenes work that boosts fan engagement and participation. We’re thrilled to be partnered with the Giants, and we’re excited to see how their marketing team continues to smartly reach their fans.
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Ready to freshen up your email stationery? Request revisions from Emma’s design team.
Organizing Emma’s customer feedback
How Kindling helps make the best ideas happen
Emma customers are a bright, clever and vocal bunch. When you talk, we listen. And take notes. And then organize those notes in a not-overly-OCD way. Our choice for organization is a tool called Kindling. We add customers’ suggestions, feedback and ideas in Kindling for everyone at Emma to see. To date we have over 700 I-really-wish-Emma-woulds and What-if-there-was-a-way-tos. Many of these ideas are in development now, and many more are waiting for their chance at greatness.
It’s pretty simple for us to express our support for an idea in Kindling: just click a button to vote it up. More votes means more popularity and traction for an idea.
One of the most popular ideas in Kindling was just unveiled as a new feature in our Featurepalooza. “I’d really love to know when someone signs up for my email list,” you said. We heard this from many customers over time, so it’s no surprise that this idea rose to the top in Kindling. Now, notifications is a feature that’s available in our new system, and coming soon to your account, too.
Finding great ideas hasn’t always been so easy, though. Kindling’s newest case study recalls the dark ages of idea management at Emma, and how we adopted Kindling as a core part of our customer-focused culture.
If you’ve ever sent in a wish list, complaint, frustration or random musing loosely related to email marketing, we’re watching it in Kindling. If it’s popular, the next place you might see it is in your account.
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The anatomy of Emma’s response page
Understanding delivery stats, opens, click-throughs and more
Once you send out an Emma campaign, your response results immediately start building on the main response page. If you’re like us, you spend the next few hours obsessively refreshing the page to see how many folks are opening, clicking and sharing your campaign. It’s exciting stuff, for email marketing nerds anyway. But it’s even more exciting when you’ve got a solid handling on what you’re looking at — and what you should be striving for.
Let’s take a closer look at an Emma mailing, one of our Agency Insiders. I’ll break down Emma’s response page to explain each section and how you can use the data to inform next steps.
Here's a look at the Overview tab of our mailing's response.
The Trend
The chart at the top of the page gives you an at-a-glance account of the mailing’s opens and clicks. Click the upper right links to adjust the view (by default, it displays a 12-hour view), and hover your mouse over data points to see numbers. Read more about our interactive charts here.
What to look for: Scan the time of day that yields the highest open rates for your audience. In many cases, this will be three hours following the mailing’s send time; however, you might see different trends if you send your mailing very late at night, for example. Our mailing met expectations, as we saw the most opens in the first hour after its 11:00 am send.
Next steps: If you see open times contrary to what you expect, use this information to determine the timing of your next mailing. Perhaps you expected your audience to be opening your email during work hours, but they’re actually opening in the evening. Schedule your next mailing for 6 pm and see what happens.
The Send Off
At the server level, we track the number of emails sent, received or bounced.
When you send an email campaign, the response tracking is actually happening at two distinct levels: the server where your recipient’s inbox is hosted, and the inbox itself. (For more information on how email delivery works, take a look at this blog post by our delivery specialist, Art.) The numbers under The Send Off all happen at the server level. Emails sent refers to the number of emails we attempted to send (which will match the number of active email addresses in the audience group that you send to). Emails received refers to the number of emails that were successfully received by the servers on the other end. And the bounces include emails that were kicked back as undeliverable by the receiving servers. Read more about bounces here.
What to look for: Emma has an average 98% delivery rate so you should see that about 98% of your sent emails were received at the server level. If you’re working with an updated list of addresses, you’ll see even better delivery rates. (Our mailing saw a strong 99.4% delivery rate.) Keep in mind, however, that if you’re sending to an email list for the very first time, you may see a few more bounces, as Emma helps to weed out addresses that are no longer valid.
Next steps: If more than 3% of your emails bounced, click to take a closer look. If all bounces are from one particular domain, Emma may have had trouble connecting to that domain. Feel free to reach out to our support team to help you uncover any curious bounce patterns. And keep in mind that Emma handles soft and hard bounces a bit differently. Addresses that soft bounce will stay on your list, and we’ll mark addresses that hard bounce as “error” so you don’t waste time (or money) mailing to them next time.
The Response
A closer look at the response activity at the inbox level
Here you’ll notice response activity at the inbox level. You’ll see the percentage (and number) of folks who opened your email in a trackable way (read more about what that means here) and the number of people who clicked at least one link in your campaign. If you have a “send-to-a-friend” envelope icon atop your email stationery, you’ll also see how many folks shared your email with friends. (Not to be confused with Social Sharing via Twitter, Facebook and LinkedIn, which we’ll get to in a moment.) Finally, you’ll see how many new subscribers signed up and how many recipients opted out.
What to look for: The open and click-through rates are sort of like your report card grades. Have you met industry averages? That’s a solid C. But why settle for average? If open rates are lower than you expected, there’s a chance that a phrase or two in your email kept it from arriving in your recipients’ inboxes. Proof your content, and make sure to avoid spammy words and phrases. And if you’re doing well, think about how you’ll maintain momentum. We’re pretty pleased with a 37% open rate — and we’ll continue offering the sorts of content our audience responds well to — but that doesn’t mean we aren’t thinking about ways to improve it as well.
Next steps: It’s time to move the dial and go beyond proofing your content. Spruce up your subject line, surprise your subscribers with an unexpected format or dream up a contest. And, hey, ask them to share the email with their friends by using the send-to-a-friend feature, and thank those who do by sharing special content or a coupon.
The Clicks
A breakdown of the clicks across the campaign
This section shows the total number of clicks across all links, along with a link-by-link breakdown. In our example, we see 401 total clicks across 35 links (HTML and plaintext). Notice how, in the screenshot above this one, we see 255 unique clicks. Why is the number of total clicks (401) greater than the number of unique clicks (255)? Unique clicks refers to the people who clicked. In this case, 255 people clicked a combined 401 times, meaning certain recipients clicked the same link multiple times or clicked multiple links.
What to look for: Clicks tell you more than the sum of their parts. Your audience is communicating their interests to you — and their reading habits. Maybe your audience likes your video content more than your weekly wrap-up. Maybe they respond better to a call to action at the top left of the email versus the bottom. Whatever you see, pay attention and repeat what works. In our case, the marquee story, a guest post by Ilise Benun of Marketing Mentor, was the most-clicked link. It was also the story we chose to place at the top of the email.
Next steps: Use the data to guide future newsletters and content, but don’t forget that those clicks come from people. Consider following up in a more personal way every now and then. Save all members who clicked on a particular link as a search group, and reach out by email, on Twitter or even by phone.
Shares
The Shares tab shows the number of shares on Twitter, Facebook and LinkedIn. You can click the tab to see more details.
Let’s depart from the Overview tab and focus on Shares. If you enabled Social Sharing in your mailing, you’ll be able to track shares to Twitter, Facebook and LinkedIn on this tab. Moreover, you’ll be able to see how much traffic was generated from those shares. If you’re not sure about Social Sharing, read more here.
What to look for: If you enabled Social Sharing, we do hope some of your recipients shared your mailing! Take a look to see which networks are most-used by your audience, and which recipients are doing the sharing — these folks are likely some of your most enthusiastic brand advocates.
Next steps: If you’re not seeing as many social shares as you’d like, take some time to plan next steps. Just because the social buttons are atop your email doesn’t mean your recipients know how (or why) to use them. Give them a brief tutorial in your next mailing, or design a fun giveaway or reason for participating. For example, in last year’s April newsletter, we challenged our subscribers to share the Earth Day infographic we created. If we reached 100 shares (we did, thanks to our readers!), we’d plant 100 extra trees. That plan worked swimmingly, whereas this mailing didn’t see the same kind of success. It’s back to the drawing board for some new ideas …
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Want some more inspiration? Check out Carolyn’s post on making the most of response charts and our customer stories, highlighting a slew of effective email strategies. And let us know if you have any questions about your response rates — we’re here to help.
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A roundup of successful holiday campaigns
Taking a peek at four email campaigns by the Union Square Hospitality Group
If you crafted and sent out your holiday emails on time this year, give yourself a pat on the back. There’s a sense of relief that comes with negotiating the busy holiday season and getting your newsletter out before the new year. But make sure you haven’t checked the task off your list and forgotten about it. Now’s the time to review your holiday response rates and learn from them as you kick off your 2012 email marketing efforts.
Let’s take a look at a few email campaigns crafted by Emma agency partner, Union Square Hospitality Group (USHG). USHG includes some of New York City’s best known restaurants, including Union Square Cafe, Gramercy Tavern, Blue Smoke, The Modern and Maialino. These four campaigns carry representative looks and strong response rates — and serve as fitting case studies for welcoming in the new year.
Union Square Hospitality Group
In this snowflake-themed campaign, USHG has fun with a split test of sorts. Can you guess which button earned more clicks? In fact, the gift card button edged out the e-gift certificate button by just 2%.
+ Sent on Wednesday, December 21st at 9:00 am to 69,892 people
+ Subject line: The Perfect Last Minute Gift
+ Open rate: 19.58%
+ Click-through rate: 6.16%
+ Shares: 23
Why it works: There’s a sense of whimsy in the design — and the sentiment. Plus, the two buttons are a source of education for USHG; they’ll be able to see who clicked where and follow up with other relevant offers, if they like.
The Modern
This festive winter campaign, created on an Upload Your Own HTML template, captures the sophistication of The Modern and shares, among other things, details of its New Year’s Eve line-up.
+ Sent on Tuesday, December 20th at 11:17 am to 10,497 people
+ Subject line: Winter News from The Modern
+ Open rate: 31.33%
+ Click-through rate: 1.92%
+ Shares: 6
Why it works: The email provides a consistent brand experience with The Modern’s website, and with a mix of compelling content, it’s an easy email to navigate.
Gramercy Tavern
Gramercy Tavern’s holiday email is short ‘n’ sweet. It’s also personal, featuring a “season’s eatings” photo of the tavern’s employees (after the click).
+ Sent on Tuesday, December 20th at 9:00 am to 7,949 people
+ Subject line: Happy Holidays from Gramercy Tavern!
+ Open rate: 31.41%
+ Click-through rate: 47.39%
+ Shares: 4
Why it works: Talk about piquing curiosity. Nearly half of email openers clicked through to view the photo. When average click-throughs hover around 6%, a spike like this is a coup.
Union Square Cafe
Created on Emma’s blank template and utilizing an Advanced 7 layout, this campaign by Union Square Cafe follows the format of a traditional newsletter. A departure from their usual campaigns coded from scratch, the built-in layout allows them to revise each newsletter without pulling in a designer from their team — a definite time-saver.
+ Sent on Thursday, December 15th at 1:03 pm to 19,140 people
+ Subject line: Union Square Cafe Newsletter – Winter 2011
+ Open rate: 27.18%
+ Click-through rate: 14.96%%
+ Shares: 5
Why it works: The campaign makes use of space by providing short story blurbs that link to the full scoop elsewhere. Moreover, it plays with content placement. Convention would tell us that the top story in your campaign will earn the highest clicks; in this case, the link to the recipe for Ménage à Pommes is the most popular. Union Square Cafe’s audience is an engaged bunch, happy to spend some time with the campaign and comb it for their favorite stories.
Ready to interpret your holiday response rates? Here are some things to look for:
- Compare the numbers … Use our campaign compare feature to see how your holiday results stack up against the prior month’s mailing — or against your holiday results from last year. Then, see how they compare to industry averages.
- … But only the numbers that matter to you. It doesn’t make a lot of sense to compare click-throughs to your Facebook page if that wasn’t the one of the goals of your holiday campaign. Instead, focus on metrics that correspond to your intended goals. Look for places where you fell short, and adjust the approach of your next mailing.
- Plan a follow-up. When people click on links in your campaign, they’re telling you that they’re interested enough to learn more. Armed with that knowledge, make plans to send a smaller, targeted mailing to the audience members who are most likely to read and engage.
- Prepare for the next mailing. Do the response results of your holiday mailing seem interesting but inconclusive? Have a hunch about why your subject line enticed more people to open? Set up a split test in your next mailing to test your theory. Read more about subject line split tests in Cassie’s post.
If you have questions along the way, we’d love to help. Comment here, or reach out to our support team.
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A savvy agency gets acquainted with Emma’s new API
Tim Frick, founder of Mightybytes, talks about the integrations he's building for his clients
Tim tells us what's next for Mightybytes + Emma.
And we want to help simplify their jobs. As part of our Featurepalooza, we’re releasing a slew of new features to Emma accounts, and our new API is at the center of the action. Tim Frick, founder of Mightybytes, jumped at the opportunity to be an early API beta tester.
As a smallish shop with an eye toward design-driven marketing solutions, Mightybytes has many things to manage on top of their client workload. Tim quickly identified some integration possibilities using Emma’s API, and we were thrilled to have him share the details with us.
What are your clients looking for when they decide to start doing business with you?
We navigate the waters of corporate and nonprofit clients with equal proficiency. A lot of the clients we deal with are cause-driven – we help them prosper, grow and achieve their goals in a measurable way. We work with them on everything from strategic business and digital marketing consulting, which often includes email and social campaigns that build brand awareness, to developing and building online applications for core business function.
Why did you decide to get involved in our API project early on? Tell me about the work you’re doing and planning.
We’ve been exploring web-based product development for some time now. We’ve even prototyped a few things but haven’t brought any of our own products to market yet. The release of Emma’s API and the company’s invite to be part of the beta development program gave us the perfect opportunity to put one of our product ideas — a syncing tool for CRMs (like Highrise, Salesforce, SugarCRM) and email marketing systems — into full swing development.
We are currently working on two projects using Emma’s API. The first is an integration app called Swapley, which will manage communication between Highrise and Emma. We’re about 50% complete for version 1.0.
The second, which we’re mapping out now, will be an Emma module for a content management system (CMS), Drupal. The Drupal module will help us expand our service offerings and give customers better tools to integrate content marketing strategies with easy-to-use tools that support integration of multiple systems.
What are some of your goals for the Swapley and Drupal projects, and how do you see them working for your current clients?
Our clients turn to us for online solutions that integrate good marketing, design and content with other core online business functions (like a CRM, donations, content management and so on.) Having the ability to integrate Emma and Highrise features will not only help with our internal prospecting, but will also streamline efficiencies on solutions we build for clients.
Specifically, with our proposed Drupal integration, our clients will be able to easily create Emma-based mailings with branded templates from within a content management system. Also, many of these sites and tools have registered users. We envision the Emma/Drupal module offering would help customers cross-reference those who have registered on their site versus those who are email recipients. Eventually, it would be nice if this information could be easily shared with a CRM as well, so all systems are in sync.
How will this integration affect the way you think about on-boarding new clients and prospects?
Having access to the Emma API will definitely increase our productivity and allow us to build tools that make it easy for clients to choose Emma as a preferred ESP alongside other services we offer. Before, as a firm with a reputation for implementing technically challenging yet design-driven web solutions, we often wrestled with how to roll Emma’s great email marketing services into our process. The release of Emma’s API definitely set off light bulbs above our collective heads. We see huge opportunities to integrate Emma’s services directly into the solutions we build for clients via the API and apps we build with it. Mightybytes has already lined up several potential clients for our Highrise integration app and interest seems to be great there. Several other ideas for using the Emma API to build web apps are piquing our interest as well.
Do you have any advice for other Emma agencies that are considering whether to dedicate resources to API integration?
The new API documentation and forums should go a long way in helping developers understand the application development process. Using Emma’s tools makes it easier for them to bring new integrations to market. You all (Emma’s tech team) have been very supportive as we develop our own apps. We appreciate Emma’s commitment to good design and excellent usability — these are traits we share. With that in mind, agencies looking to create their own integrations should undergo thorough user testing throughout the entire development process to keep standards high and apps usable.
Learn more about Mightybytes:
- Visit their website.
- Signup for their newsletter, Mightymail Quarterly.
- Check out their blog.
- If you’re currently using Highrise and are interested in connecting with Emma, sign up for more information about Swapley.
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Ready to try Emma’s API?
We’re rolling out Emma’s new platform and brand new API on a limited basis. If you’d like to be first in line, let us know.
Every picture tells a story
How stock photos add visual appeal to your emails
Jessica enjoys a ferry ride from Victoria to Vancouver. (We're jealous.)
Today’s guest post is written by Jessica Hughes, social media and public relations specialist at Fotolia. Learn more on the Fotolia blog, or follow Fotolia on Twitter.
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When you think about your creative content, many factors come to play: your copy, your font choices, the layout and, of course, the images you choose to communicate your message. In short, looks count.
It’s no secret – incorporating an image is powerful! It’s a fun way to engage and capture attention. What’s more, including imagery boosts your campaign’s impact and drives traffic to your site. The key is finding the right image to match your message. Here are seven rules and examples that show how to pack the perfect visual punch.
Rule 1: Grab your reader’s attention. You only have a few seconds to get your reader’s attention, and a sharp image will reel them in fast. Use clever imagery to compel people to read on so that your overall message is delivered from soup to nuts.
Rule 2: Use visual aids to enhance communication. You know that old saying, “A picture is worth a thousand words?” Considering that you don’t have a thousand words to interest an email recipient, why not let an image state your case? Choosing unique visuals that tell the story for you is an efficient way to get your point across.
Rule 3: Be bold. Avoid being too literal. Yes, your image will be subjective and influenced by your content to some degree, but consider other angles to make an impression. There are millions upon millions of royalty-free images available to you, so enjoy your image browsing and dare to be different.
Rule 4: Consider images that feature people. People like to look at people. Studies show that one of the reasons Facebook is such a hit is because of our fascination with what other people do. By nature, humans feel a need to relate to others. Using images with a person increases your chance of drawing your audience in.
Rule 5: Stay current. As tastes and styles change, so should your mindset for the way you choose images. While your intention for a certain image may be to show that you’re edgy, you wouldn’t want to turn anyone off. Get a feel for the lay of the land before you send. What’s new politically, socially or stylishly? You can be retro and still be cool, but do keep up with the Joneses.
Rule 6: Know your (image) rights. Get your pictures from a source that specializes in royalty-free stock photography. As tempting as it is to snag a picture from a free source like Google, it’s just not legal. Stock photography sites give you peace of mind and creative license. When you have rights to an image, you can modify it and turn it into something that completely embodies what you want to communicate. The avenues for creativity are limitless, and you better believe no one else will have an image like yours if you play it up.
Rule 7: Mind your specs. Aside from selecting an image that suits your concept, pay attention to colors and contrast –- they’re part of the “wow” factor, too. The colors in your image should complement the remainder of your content, including font styles and other branding. Resolution, aspect ratios and formats vary, so check out Fotolia’s usage guide to help determine what kind of image is the best match for your project.
There you have it. Seven tips to help you pick a fantastic image for whatever your needs may be. Remember, your image should be the butter to your bread. The dynamic sidekick to your content’s super hero. Helping fight crime and take the world one villain at a time. Or, wait … What I’m really trying to say is that the right image can help your message resonate with a resounding “POW.” So sock it to ‘em.
Email design for mobile devices
Quick formatting tips for stylish emails in any inbox
Every morning, I get the French press ready and hop on my iPhone to check the barrage of emails I received through the night. More and more of us are doing this (maybe not the French press, but I highly recommend it); we check email on our phones even before we eat breakfast or open our computers. In fact, Litmus says that almost 10% of total email opens come from mobile devices.
When you’re building your emails, you may be considering the mail programs in which your audience is reading them (Outlook, Gmail, Mac Mail, etc), but it’s an equally good idea to plan for your emails to be read on a mobile device. Inboxes can be tricky, and making your email look good in all locations will take a little time and dedication.
Building an email for mobile readers isn’t difficult, though, and it may even mean making your job easier — the best emails utilize fundamental design ideas. Let’s talk about what you can do to ensure your mobile readers have the same reading experience as your desktop readers.
Simplify your content. Mobile screen real estate is valuable; keep your design clean and simple. Evaluate your content and remove some of the less-useful information. Think about if that sidebar of upcoming events or staff photos could be removed and used in another email. If you’ve got a lengthy description around your product, let images and/or links to your website do the talking.
If you have navigation toolbars, these can get squished, thus breaking your layout and making it hard for people to tap those links. Consider paring the links down to important places your reader can easily tap.
Include an easy-to-spot call to action. This is arguably the most important part of your email. It doesn’t matter how people are viewing it (mobile or desktop), you want folks to see your offer and click through. Keep your call to action easy-to-spot and above the fold. And consider using your subject line to give the reader a sneak peek inside.
Note: When designing for mobile, make sure the call to action is tappable (at least 44 x 44 pixels, per Apple’s Human Interface Guidelines).
Enlarge your fonts. Fonts for emails read on mobile devices should be considerably larger than those in traditional emails. iOS devices resize all fonts smaller than 12 pixels up to 12 pixels, which can break your layout. A good rule of thumb is to keep your headlines around 22 pixels and body text around 12-14 pixels.
Mind your images. Aside from the iPhone/iPad, mobile devices will automatically block your images and prompt the user to “turn images on.” Be sure to add alt text to your images. That way, the reader will see a text description of the image before it’s displayed.
Be purposeful with your layout. Let’s face it: Mobile devices are going to sizably scale down your layout. This makes it more difficult to tap on links and read the content. Try using a layout that has only one or two columns of content. Here are a few layout examples, two that are mobile-friendly and one that would be better-suited for desktop viewing:
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| Simple, clear layout | Perfect for newsletters | Sidebar + newsletter layout may be difficult to read on a mobile device |
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Since email for mobile is still a fairly new concept, there aren’t any hard and fast rules, but I hope these guidelines will help you design emails that look good in any inbox. For even more tips, read Anna Yeaman’s six mobile design tips, and share tips of your own in the comments section.
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Growing your email audience
A primer to start building your email list easily and effectively
Taco Mamacita wisely mixes required and optional fields in their signup form.
It’s a frustrating feeling to have a great announcement to make, but no audience to hear it — just ask any business owner who’s just beginning to build their email audience list. Your news may be more about software updates or new product lines than cupcakes, but the challenge remains: If the classroom doesn’t come to you, how do you find the right folks to share in your celebration?
Fortunately, there are plenty of ways to find the right audience members and play well with Emma’s permission policy, too. With a little advance planning, you’ll set yourself up to share your brand with the right folks — and engage them from the start.
If you’re new to email marketing and not sure how to attract subscribers, follow these tips to get your program up and running:
- Create a strong signup form. Your signup form is the perfect place to gather all the subscriber information you need to know. Make a clear distinction between what you must have (mark it as required) and what can be shared at your subscribers’ discretion. You might need to know their zip codes to send them accurate info about a store in their area, but you don’t need to send birthday coupons to everyone — just the folks who choose to fill in their date of birth. Remember, subscribers may abandon your form if they feel that the process is too long or intrusive. Also, let your subscribers know what to expect as a new member of your list. Will you be sending daily, weekly, monthly or on some other schedule? Will they see promotions along with newsletters? Can they pick and choose the news types they want to receive?
- Identify all of your customer touch-points, and get used to asking folks to join your email list. Think beyond your website for a moment. Does your company send transactional emails? Do you tweet? Have a Facebook page? You’ll reach the biggest audience by making your email signup forms as visible as possible in as many places as possible, so identify your points of contact. And think beyond your online presence. Put a fishbowl near your store’s register so customers can sign up by dropping in their business cards. Encourage your sales team to bring up your newsletter in their daily calls or demo classes. Even include a link to your signup form in your own email signature. Every interaction is an opportunity to build a relationship.
- Create a welcome trigger. Catch your subscribers when their curiosity is piqued: right when they sign up. Your automatic welcome emails can net four times the normal open rate and five times the normal click-through rate. A welcome email is the perfect time to reinforce the benefits of your newsletter, give subscribers a discount on their next purchase or simply thank them for signing up.
- Ask subscribers to share your emails with their networks. Then, provide unique and entertaining content so they can’t help but do so. Incentivize the share, too. Reward those who share with a special coupon or unique content from your brand. That’s a built-in loyalty program!
Give a little thought (and a lot more action) to these four tips, and you’ll be growing your email list in no time.
This is part one in our blog series on audience growth. In our next installment, we’ll talk about more ways to maintain a healthy, engaged list.
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Want to read more?
- Learn how to create a smart signup form
- Meet your customers where they are (and ask for their email address)
- See a few welcome triggers that work
- Read about Emma’s Social Sharing feature
Calling all business developers in Austin!
Emma's hiring in our satellite city
Emma’s hiring a Business Development Specialist to join our office in Austin, TX, and that means we’re looking for someone who will be deeply involved in the local community of businesses, nonprofits and agencies in Austin, and who is ready to help bring Emma to Dallas and Houston, too.
So what does a Business Development Specialist do, you ask? I think it’s best described as part marketing, part networking and part selling key accounts. You’ll also spend time building solid relationships with some existing local accounts. However you describe it, it means this person has his or her finger on the pulse of what’s happening in each of those business communities.
Come work with us. We'll photo-bomb all of your best holiday pictures.
Sweet gig, right? A day in the life of an Emma Business Developer is fast-paced, and it’s challenging, rewarding and engaging. Since Emma brings a stylish, branded solution to customers who understand and value that approach to email marketing, the position lends itself to working with some of the coolest companies around the country.
While based in Austin and focused on our own community, you’ll begin efforts to introduce Emma to Houston and Dallas, and will spend time on the road in each of those markets monthly. You’ll be on a team with other business developers around the country in cities like Nashville, Portland, New York and Chicago.
You’ll need to bring experience from past sales, marketing or business development roles — but it’s a learn-as-you-go environment, where you’ll be part of Emma’s entrepreneurial culture. You’ll be able to test the waters on marketing and business development programs and ideas that you dream up. You’ll be measured on success both as an individual and as part of a team.
Ready? For more details on the Austin Business Development Specialist role, and to apply, click here.
Video: Quick tips with Emily
3 reasons to test your email campaigns
Hello, fearless email marketer. It’s been a while, but I’m back with another video of quick tips to help your improve your email marketing efforts and make the most of your Emma account. In this edition, I’d like to share a few reasons why testing your emails before send-off is so important.
Your Emma account comes with a Test Group that allows you to store up to 10 email addresses, and sending to that group is always free. Play the video above to hear why I think the test group is a super helpful account feature, or read my reasons here.
Top three reasons to test your email campaigns:
- Testing ensures you’ve got a small group of people clicking on your links first — before they go out to your whole audience. These folks can confirm the links are pointing to the right websites. It’s what keeps you from linking your whole audience to Goggle.com instead of Google.com.
- Testing gives you the opportunity to see how your email will look on a mobile device. You can make sure the message is clear, even on that teeny tiny screen, and that the campaign is easy to navigate on a smart phone.
- Testing lets you get early feedback on subject lines, headlines, and of course, how it all looks together. That’ll ensure you have time to make any final changes to add some style before your audience receives the mailing.
So, go ahead, send to the test group included in your account, and test your mailings as much as you’d like. And tell us what other reasons you’ve found to make a good case for sending test emails. Comment here to share tips and stories.
See Emily’s first quick tips video here.
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