Category Archive: Stuff that’s stylish
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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What’s in an email subject line?
Ten tips for effective and memorable subject lines
As is the case with many puzzlers, coming up with a winning subject line is a hit and miss operation. Thoughtful experimentation will help you hone in on what works for you and your audience. And while there are no hard and fast rules about subject lines, a little know-how goes a long way. I’ve compiled ten of my favorite subject line tips and included links to some further reading, if you’re so inclined.
- Plan ahead. Don’t make writing the subject line the last thing on your list. As you’re dreaming up your next campaign, why not start with the subject line? After all, it’s the only part of your email some recipients will see. Moreover, crafting a descriptive subject line from the get-go will bring your overall campaign to a focus. When you’re waffling about word choice, check Google to see what terms trend highest.
- Mention your brand. Studies show branded subject lines really work, so if you aren’t including your business name, website or publication in the subject line, start now. Branding your emails will result in increased familiarity with your organization and remind recipients why your email is in their inbox.
- Stay relevant to the campaign’s goal. Make sure your subject lines express the overarching theme and purpose of your message. Decide what you want the recipient to do as a result of reading your email, and begin drawing them toward that action in the subject line (think verbs!). There isn’t a one-size-fits-all formula, but descriptive subject lines that match the tone of the content inside will be most effective. For a content-rich newsletter, informative subject lines work best. Similarly, event invites need to say what’s special about the occasion and provide a registration deadline. And if you’re sending a purely promotional campaign, be upfront about the value inside to convey a sense of urgency, like “Fairytale Books: Celebrate Dr. Seuss; 40% Off Today Only.”
- Pay attention to your audience. Writing subject lines people love may seem like magic, but unless your audience is made up of Muppets, “a la peanut butter and jelly sandwiches” won’t cut it. Nevertheless, put yourself in the Amazing Mumford’s shoes for a minute and think about why everyone remembers that line. Jim Henson knew a thing or two about childhood appetites, and you’re likely to have the inside track on what your audience likes, too. So have a little fun and design a subject line that puts your audience’s interests first.
- Be enticing without being pushy. Avoid subject lines that read like something Mr. Radio Announcer Guy would squawk over the airwaves louder than your toddler in the back seat. Email recipients can spot a hard sell a mile away, so anything that sounds like it belongs in the Sunday circular should be rewritten. If you’re struggling to figure out which email subject lines are most likely to convert, try running a few pay-per-click ads with various subject lines to see which one has the highest click-through rate.
- Avoid spammy words and slogans. Including the word “free” may seem like a good way to get customers in the door, but since spammers throw “free” around like cheap lipstick, your email could wind up in the trash if you combine it with other frequent spam offenders like gratuitous exclamation points, typing in ALL CAPS or terms like “blowout” and “cheap.”
- Be clever, but don’t get too kooky. When getting attention is the name of the game, it’s tempting to write a Page Six worthy subject line. But since subtlety is lost in the inbox, your reader may pass over your line before taking a moment to get the joke. Check out Matt’s tips for more advice on creating a catchy hook.
- Test, measure and repeat. Testing variables such as branding, length and punctuation can demonstrate what subject lines carry the most weight with your audience. Coming soon, Emma’s Split Testing feature will give you the ability to send up to three subject lines to a portion of your audience and automatically distribute the winning subject line to the rest. Read more about Emma customers who split test, and learn about Emma’s split testing feature (and a whole slew of other cool enhancements coming your way).
- Review past results. Emma lets you compare the results of up to five mailings at a time so you can see at a glance just which campaigns — and subject lines — performed the best. Use this information to craft your next subject line, and keep an eye on how it stacks up.
- Steer clear of industry clichés. One surefire way to stand out from the crowd is to find an original way to state the obvious. Think about it: If a person has signed up for your emails, they probably have emails from similar brands in their inbox. To make sure yours is the email they read, find out what the competition is saying and do something different – tell your audience something they don’t know.
Ultimately, though, a winning subject line can’t stand alone. A successful campaign depends upon the audience’s level of engagement with your brand, the relevance of your previous campaigns and at least a dozen other factors ranging from time of day and general busyness to the blood sugar level of the recipient. The subject line and “from” name, however, are the two main factors in encouraging recipients to open or delete. Sure, there’s no secret formula that will work for everyone, but these ten principles are what great subject lines are made of. Next time you’re grasping at straws, put one of these tips to the test, and don’t forget to report back — we’d love to hear what’s worked for you.
This is part six in our holiday series where we answer email marketing questions provided by our customers. Visit part five here.
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Visually appealing emails win every time
How to make your email pop in the inbox
We’re big fans of style, particularly when it comes to making your email stand out in your subscribers’ inboxes. Your brand is unique, and as you’re crafting the perfect email, pay mind to carrying over the look and feel of that branding you’ve worked so hard to achieve.
Let’s focus on some ways you can improve the look of your campaign without breaking a sweat. Implement these, and your subscribers can’t help but pick up what you’re putting down.
Emma's mailings provide variation while capturing our signature style.
- Make use of Emma’s world-class design team. One of our designers will work with you to create a design that reflects your brand’s personality. A custom, recognizable stationery establishes your campaigns in the mind of your customers, so they’ll take the extra moment to pay attention. Request your own Concierge-level Design or Studio Design today. Oh, and do you already have a stationery design, but want to freshen things up? It’s a good idea. Read about one customer’s email makeover.
- Make your own stationery header, DIY-style. Even if you’re not a Photoshop pro, you can use a tool like Picnik.com to create your own stationery header, which can be uploaded into a blank stationery. If you’re particularly fond of your design, our design team can also turn it into a permanent stationery option (removing the need to upload it each time). Submit your design through our online request form and we’ll get to work.
Consistency is key. When your campaigns have a consistent look, both throughout your email and also from one campaign to the next, your readers will become familiar with your style and appreciate it. Find a format that works for your brand to make your campaigns more readable. If recipients recognize and grow to trust you, the odds are in your favor that they’ll take the time to read what you’ve got to say.
- Format your text to work for you, not against you. You may be a fan of bright, bold multicolors, but they don’t always work in an email — at least not when it comes to its main text. Leave the rainbows behind and create a consistent look to your campaigns with a nice, readable font type, color and size throughout the email, perhaps with an accent color thrown in to draw attention to links or important bits of information. Your judiciousness will make your email easy on the eyes and also keep the attention of your readers.
- Consider putting a little work into your images on the front end. A consistent look and size of images will create a campaign that is pleasing (and easy!) to read. Our image editor offers the option to resize images to small (120 x 120 pixels), medium (240 x 240 pixels), large (360 x 360 pixels) and x-large (480 x 480 pixels). If these sizes don’t work for you, or if you need to crop the images, we recommend Picnik.com, an easy-to-use online image editor where you can upload, resize and save your images (and also add fun filters, text and borders), and then upload them to your campaign.
Your email is good enough to eat — so make it easy for your readers to digest. We’re busy. We’re bombarded with emails, social networks, phone calls, texts, you name it, all day long. If you have a lot of information that needs to be sent in an email, you can help out your readers by using a table of contents and landing pages to get them to the good stuff a little faster.
- Use a table of contents to help your readers get to the articles they’re interested in right away. A table of contents at the top of an email can easily direct a person to exactly what they want to look at without needing to scroll through everything. You can use Emma’s jump link feature to easily add a table of contents to your campaign.
- Use landing pages to tell the rest of your story. It’s an email, not a novel. Landing pages and “read more” links are used to shorten the email that’s sent to a person’s inbox while still giving them the option to click to view all of your content. It’s also a great way to measure the popularity of your content with Emma’s click-through reporting. Read about how to create a quick landing page using Emma.
Of course, there’s always a little wiggle room for you to add your own stylish flair to your email campaigns, but if you keep these tips on your radar, your emails will be runway-ready in no time. And if you’ve got some more tips for creating visually appealing emails, please share in the comments here.
This is part five in our holiday series where we answer email marketing questions provided by our customers. Visit part four here.
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Optimized email signup forms look smart, and act even smarter
Six tips to make your opt-in form do more
We see lots of consternation over list growth, and we get it. Inbound marketing is a two-way street with a single point of access — permission to engage. That’s why you’ve optimized your website six ways to Sunday and deployed a small army of pay per click (PCC) ads to bring traffic, right?
Visitors are primed for engagement when they hit your site, and your email signup form has mere seconds to snap up that attention; in short, your signup form is the nexus of your conversion funnel. So make sure you’re optimizing it to attract the right leads.
Here are six tips to optimize your form for new subscribers:
- Generate curb appeal. Your signup form needs to draw the viewer’s eye. Lead site visitors to your form by placing it in a high-traffic area where it doesn’t have to compete with other centers of attention. Making sure your signup form is seen is job #1, and it never hurts to stack the deck. Gilt Taste has a very welcoming homepage, with not one but two places to subscribe above the fold.
- Build trust. Of course, you wouldn’t sell someone’s email address or share it with another company. We know you’re better than that, but potential subscribers may not. Tell them in no uncertain terms that you’ll respect and maintain their privacy.
- Lead with the benefits and explain what’s in store for subscribers. An email address is a precious commodity so make this an appealing transaction. While you can and should employ your brand’s signature wit and wisdom, your pitch is about what’s in it for subscribers. Do your emails make people smarter than the boy next door? Will joining your list score a table at Sunday brunch? Giving people an idea of the email goods you’ll deliver (and when) will head buyer’s remorse off at the pass. Creative firm Rule29‘s newsletter signup form does this very well.
- Be quick on the uptake by limiting your form to three or four fields. We marketers and our precious databases are insatiable when it comes to numbers. Be aware that for every required field, there’s a 20% decline in signups. Put the email field front and center, and unless you require additional information to survive on a desert island, don’t ask for much more before subscribers click submit.
- Encourage self-segmenting. Enabling your audience to choose from a menu of available groups during the opt-in process is a great way to show you care about their preferences, and it’ll sustain their interest over time. If your content strategy has more than one track and your sending schedule’s hopping, let people decide for themselves what they’d like to read and when. To learn more about newsletter menus, see this Ask Emma article.
- Ask politely to learn more about subscribers. It’s quite possible to collect email addresses and demographic data without turning people off. Consider sending a survey with your welcome trigger to give new signups an easy way to tell you their likes and dislikes. If you’re hooked up to Emma’s API through a custom web form, why not create a multi-tiered signup process to keep the opt-ins *and* the data flowing? You’ll want to put the email field on the first page, next to the benefits and submit button. After people click submit, you’re free to direct them anywhere to share their birthday, favorite ice cream flavor and what-not. Lastly, be sure to thank subscribers for what they’ve shared. Read more about thank you pages here.
Gilt Taste's signup is pretty irresistible .
Rule29's signup has perfect pitch.
No sizzle, no signup, no sale
Inbound leads are personal now. It all begins with an email address and, if you’re lucky, a name. An optimized website deserves an equally optimized signup form. So take that signup form off the blocks, test until you find what works best for your audience and watch the people meter wave them in.
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If you like this post, take a look at these:
- Molly highlights an opt-in form that leaves an impression
- Megan shares five ways to jazz up your signup form
- How to add an email signup form to your Facebook page
Stepping out of the inbox
Give your email campaigns a second life with social media
Here’s an interesting question: When you set out to create your company’s newest mailing, do you think of it as an email or as a campaign? Of course, your audience will see it as an email among others in their inbox. But you’re not just creating an email — you’re creating a message that’s worth sharing. And that message (or series of messages) can go beyond the inbox. If you think of it as a coordinated effort or campaign, you’ll realize it’s worth spreading through other channels, too.
Take a closer look at your social media presence on Facebook, Twitter, LinkedIn and more. I’ll bet you’ve got more combined followers than you realize. Do all of them know how to receive your email updates? Have they heard about your latest campaign?
It’s easy to expand your email’s reach beyond the inbox by enabling Emma’s Social Sharing feature, which allows subscribers to share your email with their social networks, and it’s about to be easier for you to post your email to your social networks, with the release of our new Social Posting tool this winter. With a few clicks, you’ll be able to send a mailing to your subscribers and simultaneously post it to Facebook and Twitter. It’s an easy step that makes a big difference. In anticipation, let’s take a look at a few companies who’ve made an art out of extending the reach of their email campaigns via their social channels:
GOOP
GOOP shares a link to their emails on Facebook, generating lots of fan dialogue.
Gwyneth Paltrow’s lifestyle-oriented email newsletter, GOOP, won’t turn you into an Academy Award-winning actor/singer/cookbook author, but it might make you feel like you’re having a weekly teatime chat with one. GOOP carries on lively conversations with its audience via its Facebook page, and when the latest issue hits the inbox, you can count on a timely post with a concise, appealing teaser.
GeekChic Daily
GeekChicDaily plays hard to get with a Facebook teaser.
Like GOOP, geek culture email newsletter GeekChicDaily thrives on email engagement. But GeekChicDaily takes an interesting approach to extending its email newsletter’s online lifespan through social media: It tells, but doesn’t show. Take a look at this Facebook post. If you’re hooked by the promise of news from the Jim Henson Company (and really, what self-respecting geek wouldn’t be?), then you’ll have to sign up to get the word.
Brite Revolution
Brite Revolution manages to work the sizzle & the steak into one tweet.
If you monitor your emails’ response activity over time, you’ve probably noticed a trend: an early spike in activity (usually in the hours immediately after the send-off), followed by a steady decline in new activity over the course of the first 24 hours. However, as the folks at Brite Revolution know, last Friday’s email content will still be fresh on Tuesday for those who didn’t receive it in their inbox. They’ve packed a lot into this tweet: In addition to linking to both their newsletter and their signup form, they’ve set the expectation for how often they email — and communicated a clear benefit for joining. Not bad for 131 characters!
As email and social media become increasingly intertwined, it’s important to remember that they evolved to answer different but complementary needs. As you join the conversation with your followers on social networks, remember that your email campaigns are a unique opportunity to share sophisticated, content-rich updates. And Facebook and Twitter’s link-friendly environments mean that email updates may prove remarkably well-suited for your social media audience.
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See what we’ve got in the works this winter at Emma. It’s a Featurepalooza!
Does the arrangement of your email’s content matter?
Simple steps for more compelling emails
This isn’t really news, but it’s worth stating: Come holiday time, anyone with an email address is bombarded with marketing messages from retail, nonprofits and services. As an email marketer, it’s extra important that the emails you create and send are arranged in such a way that they grab hold of the recipient’s attention and hang on to it.
Sure, the style of your emails is key, but consider also how you package and display the information you’re wanting to convey. It’s the holiday season after all, and the presentation of the gift is half the fun, right?
- Determine the main point of your message and create a call to action. Think about the emails you currently subscribe to and what it is about them that keeps you reading. Something special stands out about them, right? Similarly, your email should tell a memorable story. And make sure to include a call to action that’ll pop. If you’re a local boutique, entice customers with a special holiday sale. If you’re a nonprofit putting the word out about an upcoming fundraiser, give your recipients a way to donate online. Adding buttons to your campaign to *go shopping* or *donate now* is a simple and stylish way to present a call to action. Take a look at the seasonal buttons recently put together by the Emma design team for inspiration.
- Maintain a healthy balance. We recommend an even ratio of text and images. A text-heavy campaign may be overwhelming to the reader, and an image-heavy campaign can affect the delivery of your campaign. Some servers look for that balance between text and images before deciding to accept the message and deliver it to the recipient’s inbox.
- Place the important content “above the fold” — but encourage scrolling too. Many recipients see their emails in a preview pane first so they’re catching the top of your message before anything else. Include important info at the top to catch recipients’ interest, but don’t stop there. Encourage scrolling by including teasers, a table of contents or animation. StyleCampaign recently shared a few tips, like incorporating vertical lines or arrows to guide the reader down the page, and Cody wrote a post here on the Emma blog about adding animated gifs to email campaigns.
- Make your campaign mobile-friendly. Most mobile devices now operate on touch, rather than the scroll and click of a keypad button. Fonts come across small, and it’s easy to fumble your thumbs when moving around the email and clicking links. Avoid stacking links at the top of the email, and use a larger font size for the intro line. And while more folks are using smart phones, it’s still a good idea to pay attention to the plaintext version of your campaign. Older smart phone and Blackberry users might not have the ability to load images, so make sure that plaintext version is user-friendly, too.
- Have a backup plan if images don’t load. Not all users will have their email settings configured to display images by default. If you send an email campaign with several images or perhaps your message is just one big image, your readers are going to end up opening a blank email. As backup, you can add alternative text to the images you upload into your Emma campaign. Alt text guarantees that something will display when the campaign is opened, even if the images don’t. What text should you use, you ask? If the image you’re loading has text on it, you may want to use that as your alt text descriptor. Or you can create your own description of an image.
Beyond these tips, have a little fun with your campaign! Try alternating images from left to right or pick a layout with a sidebar so you can incorporate images down the side with corresponding stories alongside them. Just remember to consider your own habits when reading marketing messages, and apply that self-awareness to your own emails. The rest will fall into place.
This is part three in our holiday series where we answer email marketing questions provided by our customers. To see part one, click here. And visit part two here.
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Send a stylish holiday greeting this season. Order a holiday design from Emma’s design team.
It’s Emma’s Featurepalooza!
Take a peek at the new features coming soon to your Emma account
If you’ve been reading here and over on Emma Tech, you know we’ve been hard at work to make Emma simpler, speedier and better for our customers. We’ve shared info about our new platform and changes to come, and today, we’re delighted to give you a closer look at the features and enhancements you’ll find in your account over the next few months.
We’ve got all the details — including sneak peek videos — on our Official Featurepalooza Page, so check it out and let us know if you’d like to be the first in line to try the features.
Drive traffic to your site with free seasonal buttons
Add these downloadable buttons to your campaign for a stylish call to action just in time for the holidays
With Halloween behind us, it’s suddenly time to start digging in and really preparing for this year’s holiday season. If you’ve read Molly’s post, you’ve already learned some handy tips for crafting your holiday email strategy. But what about spicing up your copy with some visual content?
In the spirt of holiday giving, we’ve created 12 free buttons that you can download right here to use in your own mailings. These buttons will work as a fabulous call to action for your readers, attracting more attention than a simple text link – and therefore driving more traffic to your site.
And so, if you’re planning on treating customers to a holiday special to drive your end-of-year sales (and really, why wouldn’t you?), try replacing your normal call to action with one of these. We’ve created a number of styles from vintage to modern that work with a variety of designs and fit with multiple holidays.
Are you promoting a sale that will span from Thanksgiving to New Year’s? Just use one of the holiday-neutral buttons to cover the full spectrum. Advertising a December-only special? Try one with a more season-specific color scheme or wintry design to play up the immediacy of your promotion.
To access the buttons, download the zipped package and simply decide which design(s) you’d like to use. From there, upload the PNG file for your chosen button to your Emma mailing, then link the image to your website and you’re set! And of course, these are saved with transparent backgrounds — so don’t worry if your content area has a background color other than white.
You don’t have to stop there, though. Check out this year’s holiday design offerings to request a special seasonal design that will go perfectly with that shiny new button. And if you find yourself staring at a blank page when you sit down to write your message, take a look at our content templates for key email campaigns to give you a jumpstart.
With these tools, I hope that your holiday email plans will go smoothly, and that your holiday stress will be limited to detangling icicle lights. (Have you heard of pre-lit trees, my friend?)
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Want to help your favorite nonprofit this holiday season? Check out last year’s free buttons specifically for charities!
The results of Emma’s holiday survey
How you responded & what we've got in store. Plus, we announce the winner!
Last month, we asked you to take our holiday survey and tell us a bit about your email marketing goals, habits and interests — especially as they relate to your holiday marketing plans. We were thrilled to receive so many thoughtful responses, and I’d like to share the results with you. Some of the answers really surprised us, and the experience highlights just how important it is to eliminate assumptions and ask your audience.
Take a look at how you answered below, and hear what we’ve got in store this season to assist you. Plus, find out a few tips for creating your own surveys and the winner of our survey prize!
1. Choose 3 things from the list below that you’d like to learn more about.
Since we asked you to pick three answers, we knew there’d be a healthy split among them. And we’re already thinking of ways to provide quick tips and to make your holiday emails look as fresh and festive as possible. Take a look at Mary’s five tips for retaining and attracting subscribers. Then, head on over to Emma’s 2011 Holiday Design Spectacular, and check out the holiday templates we’ve designed for your seasonal invitations, promos and greetings.
2. What article types on the Emma blog are most beneficial to you? Choose all that apply.
We’re glad to know that you continue to find value in our posts with email best practices and tips, and that you like our design showcases as much as we do. Throughout the holiday season, we’ll provide even more, including this recent holiday design showcase.
3. Where do you most often read your emails?
There’s lots of talk about designing emails for mobile these days, and with good reason — nearly 31% of mobile users in the U.S. access email on their phones. But, it’s also important to remember that the vast majority of subscribers haven’t booted email activity on their computers in favor of their phones. If we’re ever in a pickle where we must decide between how an email looks on a desktop computer versus a mobile device, we can make a case for designing for our desktop readers.
4. How many email inboxes do you manage? (Choose closest answer.)
This response surprised us more than any other. Boy, you guys are busy! Three inboxes is a lot to manage, and 14% of you manage even more than that. Your responses encourage us to keep our Emma Roundups packed with solid offerings each month — we want to make sure ours is an email worth opening.
5. How many emails do you send out from Emma on a monthly basis?
These results are a fairly close match to the sending behaviors of our entire customer base; in fact, more than 60% of our customers send 5,000 emails or less each month. In an industry where it’s easy to get hung up on list size, remember that it’s the quality of your list, not its size, that matters.
6. Which social network do you use most frequently?
Another surprising answer. We expected Facebook to lead the pack, but we didn’t expect it to lead by such an overwhelming margin. Perhaps it’s a false consensus bias of mine: I use Twitter so frequently that I wrongly assumed that more of you did, too. This becomes a question that could launch a separate survey. We’d love to know more about why you use Facebook most frequently, if you manage a personal or business account and, if you use multiple social networks, how you differentiate your usage. And do say hi to Emma on Facebook, too!
7. What sites, blogs and resources do you use to improve your email marketing?
We had two motives when asking this question: to find out which sites you find most useful and to add some new sites to our everyday reads. We received too many great answers to list them all, but here are some of the sites that came up again and again (go ahead, add ‘em to your Google Reader): Mashable, HubSpot, Email Experience Council, iMedia Connection, MarketingProfs, Marketo, Inc., Fast Company, ClickZ, CMO, Which Test Won, American Marketing Association, Sender Score, Open Forum, Marketing Sherpa, Seth Godin’s blog and eMarketer.
8. Fill in the blank. When it comes to my holiday emails this year, I’m most concerned about ______.
Based on your response to this question, we’re excited to be planning some style-specific articles for your holiday email campaigns. Stay tuned, and in the meantime, check out these articles:
- 5 tips for better-looking campaigns
- Stylishly formatted campaigns, parts one and two
- How can I make my plaintext pretty?
- Building a slice and dice campaign
9. Say that Santa has a magical elf who only answers North Pole mail dealing with email marketing questions. What would you ask him?
This was a fun one! We received so many excellent questions — some serious, some a bit silly — and we’ll be featuring the most common in a series of Q&A posts this season.
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Want to send a survey to your customers? Here are five tips:
- Provide some intro text to explain the purpose of the survey, how long it’ll take to complete and what respondents should expect to get out of it. If you neglect to provide this information, why should anyone respond? You’ve got to know your purpose first, then design and promote the survey.
- Start with a few fun, engaging questions. This helps to hook respondents and set momentum right off the bat.
- Design questions that get at what you really want to know. When I first designed our survey, question #6 asked, “Which social network is your favorite?” A colleague pointed out that it’d be a difficult question for respondents to answer — Favorite right now? Favorite of all time? A network I like the most but maybe don’t use a lot? — and that it wouldn’t provide information we’d be able to draw reliable conclusions from. So, instead, I changed the question to “Which social network do you use most frequently?” This more clearly gets at what I want to know — where folks spend most of their time.
- Save demographic questions for the end — and make them optional. Putting your demographic questions at the beginning is boring at best and alienating at worst. Leave them for the end, and give folks the freedom to answer some or none of them.
- Keep it short. Appreciate that your customers are busy, and they’re probably not inclined to take a survey that requires more than five minutes of their time. You can still collect very valuable information in 10 questions or less. Giving yourself a limit also forces you to cut out the fluff and make each question matter.
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Who won the survey prize, you ask? We used random.org to pick a winner at random, and the winner is … Lauri Young of Quantum Bank. She’s won a month’s worth of free emails on us. Congrats, Lauri!
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Get into the holiday spirit. Request a Readymade design from Emma’s design team.
Trick-or-treat, email marketing style
With Halloween around the corner, here are a few sweet moves to try & a few sticky situations to avoid when it comes to your emails
With Halloween just three days away, the holiday season is officially upon us, and we’re kicking things off with an email-friendly set of tricks and treats. As you prepare your fall- and winter-themed campaigns, consider implementing the three treats below — and avoiding the three tricks. Your campaigns will bewitch your subscribers (in a good way).
And, remember, if you’re looking for some design inspiration, you can request a $25 Readymade holiday design from our design team all season long.
TREAT: Birthday triggers that turn a profit
If you’re capturing your subscribers’ birth dates, consider sending birthday coupons by way of an email trigger — it’ll increase engagement and profits, especially in the months leading up to Christmas. And it may have unexpected bonuses. Take this, for example: I recently received a birthday email with a coupon for a free breakfast sandwich from Star Bagel, a bagel shop here in Nashville. It’s one of my favorite places so I was thrilled about the email. While I was busy running a few holiday errands (I’m starting early this year!), I redeemed my birthday coupon, and then I ended up purchasing more. (Nice work, Star Bagel.)
Read more from Clickz about birthday triggers bringing in the business.
TRICK: Not taking advantage of social media
Are you interacting with fans and followers on social media sites? If not, you could be missing out on an opportunity to boost customer loyalty and increase customer spending by 20%- 40%. Starting conversations on Facebook and Twitter is likely to increase the engagement of folks who may not engage with you in other ways (on the phone, for example), and as the become more engaged, they’re likelier to turn to you for your expertise. (Engaged customers also spend more. See that bit about me and the bagel shop.)
Check out a solid 12-step social media plan by MarketingProfs here. And if you need a hand getting your email and social media working together, stop by to ask us on Twitter and Facebook, or send a note to our friendly support team.
TREAT: Using video to mix things up a bit
We recently posted a video blog, and we recorded and produced the whole thing with just a laptop and iMovie. Have your own computer camera or smartphone handy? Give video a try. It’s a great way to add a human touch to your posts. And there are lots of helpful how-to’s out there. Our friend, Tom Martin, shares 8 tips over on Social Fresh for creating a video with an iPhone alone.
Read how one online floral retailer boosted response metrics and conversions just by adding video to email campaigns.
TRICK: Forgetting your images’ alt text or creating image-only campaigns
I recently got an email in my inbox with the enticing subject line “Get Dressed.” I clicked to open, and to my surprise, I landed on a blank white page. If your campaigns are filled with images, make sure to include some alt text. (If you fill out all of the fields when adding your image to an Emma layout, alt text will be automatically generated.) Alt text ensures that you’re providing some context to readers who don’t have images displayed by default. It’s much better for them to see “Click here to view our gallery of outfits,” than nothing at all.
And make sure you’re designing your campaigns to render beautifully without relying solely on images. Marketing Sherpa found that click-throughs increased over 83% when tables were used to add color and design to emails that had images blocked.
TREAT: Enable Social Sharing to grow your audience list
This might just be the easiest treat of all. With a simple click of the Add Social Sharing button atop your email campaign (in edit mode), you can add the ability for your subscribers to share your email on Twitter, Facebook and LinkedIn. Oh, and in doing so, you could be increasing your campaign’s click-through rate by 30-55%. Not too shabby.
Want a refresher on how to enable your subscribers to share the love? Grab our Social Sharing how-to here.
TRICK: Sending your campaign to your audience without testing
Giving your campaign the once over and clicking a link here or there in preview mode might seem like sufficient testing when you’re pressed for time, but it’s not enough if you want to ensure a solid delivery. Your emails will render a bit differently in the major email programs, and it’s a good idea to test all links from the inbox. Plus, getting another set of eyes on your email’s content and formatting will help you spot typos and formatting inconsistencies. Emma makes comprehensive testing easy by way of your free Test Group. Store up to 10 addresses there — try to represent a mix of different email programs — and send unlimited campaigns without affecting your monthly sending total.
If you need a hand getting your Test Group set up, visit our Help Guide.
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I hope these treats and tricks have sparked a few ideas of your own. Please share your tips with our community in the comments here. And if you’d like to show off your holiday-themed campaign, share the link, too. We’re ready to see the spooky and the spectacular. We may just feature yours in an upcoming post!
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