Email Marketing Tips

A quick word on the subject line. It’s your opportunity to intrigue, grab attention and prompt a click. So be intriguing, be creative and put as much thought into your subject line as you do you email headline. Think of it like this - if your email subject made front page news what headline would the editor use to prompt his readers to pick up the paper and read the story?

Here’s a few tips on writing an effective subject line:

• 40-50 characters max’ - so be concise
• be creative - intrigue your recipient
• DON’T USE ALL CAPS - IT LOOKS LIKE SPAM
• Don’t overuse punctuation such as exclamation marks!!!!
• Don’t overuse the word “Free” (’at no cost’ is usually better)
• Don’t lie or pretend to be something you’re not - that’s a spammers trick

This year, rather than buy all those bottles of wine for our customers and clients, we’ve decided to contribute to a worthy charity instead. I don’t want to give too much away but we’ll be running a quiz and sending a link to all our friends in December via www.LiveWireCampaign.co.uk

Look out for it; we expect all our LiveWire users to play the quiz. It’s a bit of fun but for every question you get right we will donate £1 to our selected charity. We think it’s a very worthy cause and also very appropriate for the time of year.

De-duplication (de-duping)

The process of de-duplication involves comparing sets of data, typically personal details, and stripping out identical sets.

Delivery Tracking

The number of delivered messages by format. Plus the number of messages that could not be delivered by type (bounce backs, invalid address, and delivery error).

Demographics

Demographics are specific data describing individual characteristics about a certain audience.

Double Opt-in

To double opt-in a subscriber volunteers to become a member or subscriber to receive email messages and/or commercial advertisements by entering their email address. A message is emailed to them for confirmation ensuring the email address submitted is truly owned by the initiating subject.

Dynamic Content

The ability of an email marketing solution - either outsourced or in-house - to deploy highly targeted messages to very numerous yet small customer segments based on business rules associated with its database.

A lot of emails arriving in my in-box recently have all had a common trait - they’ve been extremely long and verbose. Just a quick glance told me that I didn’t have the patience, inclination or remaining lifespan to read them. Like most business people, I’m too busy. I don’t read the manual or the small print and I don’t want to wade through pages of waffle.

So cut to the chase, get to the point and do it quickly, I don’t have all day. In fact I don’t even have 30 seconds.

Here’s what I try and do when writing email marketing copy. Write it, cut it in half and knock a third off. Seriously, it’s always worth the effort, makes the proposition more powerful and increases ROI.

Summarise

I also try and break the copy up with sub headings that summarise the message so you get the gist of it from a split second scan.

There is a classic formula used by marketers called AIDA. Though it was initially implemented in print advertising it is just as valid for your email marketing campaigns.

Attention
Interest
Desire
Action

If you follow this formula in every email marketing campaign that you send, you will greatly increase your chances of success.

Attention – the first thing your ad needs to do is grab the reader’s attention. You achieve this with your headline.

Interest – once you’ve got their attention, you need to create an interest in your product or service.

Desire – There is a big difference between being interested in a product or service and desiring it. You need to convert the reader’s interest into a strong desire for what you are offering.

Action - Even if someone desires what you have, it is not enough until they take action. At the end of the ad you need a call to action. Tell people exactly what they need to do to follow through and make it easy for them to do so. This is where many people go wrong. Even if you have a good ad, you still need to tell people precisely what to do - how to take action.