Archive for the ‘email marketing’ category

HTML Email Images

November 27th, 2009

HTML Email Images

Images in HTML emails can be really useful at helping to convey the message you are trying to put across, they turn an ordinary plain email into something that can stand out in an already crowded inbox, we all want our email subscribers to act on the message we are sending and images can help to do that, whether it be a ‘20% discount’ type of banner or an image of a location or attraction.

Images off in email clients

The only draw back with using lots of images in your emails is that many email clients are set to ‘images off’ as default, or if you are receiving an email from someone not in your contacts list images are blocked.

This normally would not be a problem, if for instance just your email header wasn’t shown, or perhaps a few small images throughout the copy did not appear. However it does become an issue if the bulk of your email message is made up of one or two big images and little or no text.

For example, below is an email I received to my Yahoo email account recently. By default my images are turned off, so this is how the email displayed when I opened it.

images-off-message-lost

After getting me to open the email with an incentive driven subject line I’m left feeling slightly let down that the email does not contain what it promised.

Let’s see what it looks like with the images on

images-on-promo-details

Quite a bit of a difference I think you’ll agree.

Now this might not seem like a big deal – there is after all a nice button at the top offering me the chance to view the images, but lots and lots of people are worried about their privacy (which is why email clients block images in the first place), and do not fully understand that it’s probably ok to view the images. So at best your email gets deleted, at worst it gets classed as junk or spam as both Hotmail and Yahoo make that button nice and prominent in their interfaces.

Never send image only emails

So as a rule, never send your email entirely as one image, a good balance of text and images will mean that your message still gets through even if the images are blocked, like in the example below

Email with balance of copy and images

Although a big chunk of the images are blocked I can still understand what they want me to do, I am still able to see that website address and understand what the offer is.

Many ESP have services available that let you check how your email renders in a host of different clients. It’s worth running your campaigns through these every now and again (there is normally a cost involved) to check how your email looks. Of course you could always set up some test accounts and set them up with images off by default and see how your email renders

It’s also worth noting that emails with images off can screw with your open rates. HTML emails place an invisible tracking image (usually about 1 pixel by 1 pixel) that when called from the web server helps your ESP know that the email has been opened, if images are blocked the image does not get called and an open not registered. (that’s why you can’t tell the open rates of plain text only emails)

Hosting Email Images

Make sure that you host the images on a web server. You can’t embed or attach the images as if you were sending the email to a friend. All image paths should be absolute e.g. http://www.mywebsite.co.uk/image/myimage.jpg and not image/myimage.jpg

So to recap:

Never send an email entirely made up of images.
Many email clients block images in email be default – especially from non contacts.
A balance of text and images usually works best
Test your email in different email clients with images on and images off
If your ESP provides a service to test how your email renders in different email clients, use it regularly to test your creative
Remember that blocked images can mess with your open rate metrics
Always host the images on a web server, never embed or attach, use absolute paths

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Posted in email marketing

Tags: email email client email clients email images ESP hosting email images html email html email images

BT internet email address problem

November 19th, 2009

BT internet email addresses causing hard bounces

There’s been a global issue with BT internet email addresses over the last few days. This means that email sent to those email addresses has been producing a ‘hard bounce’ The problem was first noticed late last week and at present it’s not clear if the problem has been resolved.

Many ESP’s have a threshold on the number of times that an email address can hard bounce before it is put into quarantine. This is to stop problems with you becoming ‘blacklisted’ and therefore not being able to send emails to a specific domain or domains.

Check your email reports for high hard bounce rates and if you can, find out what email addresses are affected. Work with your ESP on the best course of action.

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Posted in email marketing

Tags: black list bt internet hard bounce

What is email marketing

November 3rd, 2009

What is email marketing?

Put really simply it’s the use of electronic mail for marketing purposes. Of course it’s a little bit more complex than that. Email marketing is a form of direct marketing, it allows companies too easily and cost effectively communicate with their customer base and target and acquire new customers.

Email marketing is often used in conjunction with other forms of traditional marketing such as direct mail and newspaper and magazine ads.

The advantage of using email is that it’s a lot quicker to get your message to a large number of people, it’s certainly cheaper and more often than not you see the results of email campaigns a lot earlier than other forms of traditional marketing.

Now that sounds wonderful but it’s not without its disadvantages. Practically anyone with an email account will have been plagued by ‘spam’ or ‘junk’ email at some point; email marketing messages can often be seen as such. It can sometimes be difficult for the recipient to determine what a legitimate email is and what ‘spam’ is

Because of this it’s imperative that you have someone’s permission to email them (it’s actually a legal requirement) without it you cannot email them, it’s really that simple.

I will be adding separate posts on each of the main components of an email marketing, from list growth to sending campaigns and measuring results, I’ll also make it available to download later.

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Tags: email campaign email marketing marketing

The multipart-alternative-MIME-format

August 17th, 2009

You may have heard the term multipart message, but do you know what it is?

When sending an email to your subscribers you don’t know whether they can actually receive HTML or just plain text emails. Many email clients are set up just to read plain text, if you only send in html your message is lost.

Sending in multipart format basically means your email server bundles your html and a plain text version of your message and sends them at the same time, if your subscriber can read html they get that version, if not the plain text version is delivered.

Top Tip: Send welcome emails in plain text only, that way your first contact with a new subscriber is not lost.

If you’ve never sent HTML emails there are a couple of things to remember.

1. You can’t just attach an html version as you would if you were sending your email to single person. Email clients will break paths to things like images and your email won’t render.
2. Use tables for layout – most email clients really don’t support much CSS; you certainly can’t use an external style sheet. Keep CSS light and make sure it’s inline.
3. Images – many email clients now default to images off so be careful when planning your message. Is your important sales message in a nifty image or banner? Chances are your subscriber won’t see it.

I’ll be covering the basics of HTML email design in another post.

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Tags: html email MIME format multipart message

Email Deliverability – Reputation.

August 9th, 2009

If you sent a customer a piece of mail in the post, you would expect – unless the postman had an off day, that that piece of mail would get delivered.

When you hit the ‘send’ button on your campaign your email goes through a number of different processes that determine whether or not your email is actually delivered to the inbox.

Getting into the inbox is not as easy as you may think, there are a number of different factors involved, some are under your control and some aren’t.

Beyond your control are things like email authentication which we will cover later. The thing you can control is your reputation.

Reputation covers a number of different areas; I’ve listed them below

• Spam complaints
• Unsubscribe mechanism
• Subscriber’s profile management
• Bounce rate monitoring
• Creative & content
• Addresses collection processes

Put simply the better your reputation the better your chance of getting into the inbox

Spam complaints

Keeping the number of ‘this is spam’ hits to a minimum, there will always be the odd person on your list who hits the junk or spam button because the can’t be bothered to look for your unsubscribe link, these are sometimes known as ‘lazy unsubscribes’

You can help to combat this by putting your unsubscribe link at the top of every email. Always make sure you have a valid reply to email address and that this address is monitored. Add your postal address to the bottom of every email.

Spam traps – These are dead or dormant email addresses that the ISP’s monitor to see if email is still being sent to on a regular basis.

Unsubscribing

Make the process as simple as possible, one click unsubscribes work best, don’t make it complicated for people to unsubscribe, it just leads to frustration and probably a complaint.

Always honour any unsubscribe requests that are sent to you, whether they are replies to your email, unsubscribe link or website preference panel.

Make your unsubscribe link visible, don’t try to bury it in the depths of your email footer. Try adding it to the top of your email, if people want to unsubscribe let them go.

Bounce Rate

Monitor your bounce rate closely. Remove any hard bounces from your list, if you continue to send to email addresses that are returning hard bounces can often lead to getting blacklisted.

Check your list for soft bounces, make sure you don’t have any email addresses that are incorrectly formatted, things like www at the beginning of the email address or misspelt domain names (htomail, yaho, alo) will all cause an email address to soft bounce.

Add your sending address to contacts list

Ask your subscribers to add your email address to their contacts list. Do this on subscription confirmation pages and in ‘welcome’ emails. Add instructions on your website for subscribers who may not know how to.

Creative and content

Limit your html email to 500 to 600 px wide. You must use basic html (4.01) many email clients do not render some CSS, if you need to use CSS keep it within the body tags. You’re back to tables for layout, yes they are horrible but at least your email with render as you want it too. Keep your creative as light as possible, generally under 100kb is good and never ever send your whole message as an image, if the email client is set up to ‘images off’ by default, your message is lost.

When sending your campaigns make sure that they contain both plain text and html (also known as multipart messages) not everyone will want to receive a html version or may of configured their email client only to receive plain text.

When writing your subject lines make sure you don’t use consecutive exclamation marks or periods. For instance Open now for 50% off….. Open now for 50% off!!! These are often classed as spam.

Collecting Addresses

When asking people to subscribe to your email list, make it as easy to subscribe, generally don’t ask for too much information at registration, the very basic is email address and first name. You can always ask for further information at a later date.

Let your subscribers know when and how often you are going to send them emails and who the email will be from and the email address that the email will be sent from.

If possible make sure you use some form of validating email addresses, so that correct syntax is maintained. If you use an ESP they will often do this for you as many have their own inbuilt form builders.

Ask people to ‘double opt in’ where by the subscriber must click on a link in their ‘welcome email’ to verify their subscription to your newsletter.

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Tags: bounce rates campaign email email address html email reputation spam spam traps unsubscribe unsubscribing

Introduction to email marketing

August 8th, 2009

Email marketing has fast become one of the most powerful online marketing tools, not only is it quick to set up and send an email campaign, it’s also very easy to see almost instant results. For example, a sales email sent at the right time targeting the right people can be generating sales within minutes of the campaign being broadcast.

To get the best out of your email marketing takes time, it takes effort and it takes expertise. You can no longer blindly send emails to your whole data base and hope for the best, sure you’ll get some return but you won’t get the best return and you just might damage your reputation in the process.

To help people get the best out their email marketing I’ll be posting articles on all of the main areas of email marketing. I’ll be covering things like (in no particular order)

Design of HTML emails
Delivery
Reputation
Best Practice guide
Opting in
subscribing and un subscribing
List growing
Spam/Junk email
Content
Timing
Segmentation
Subject lines
Open and click through – measuring
Sender score – deliverability
Email distribution platform
Bounces and how to reduce them

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Posted in email marketing

Tags: delivery email marketing junk email reputation spam email subject lines subscribing un subscribing

The power of email marketing

August 2nd, 2009

Before I get into the nitty gritty of email marketing, the do’s and the don’ts and the technical aspects of running a successful email campaign I wanted to give a simple demonstration of how effective email marketing can be.

How email marketing can work for you

My wife runs her own fitness company, she is a personal trainer. She has a list of clients that have previously had either personal training session, attended a fitness class or made a general enquiry. She had previously sent emails on a rather ad-hoc basis.

We decided to re activate this list and ask if people still wanted to receive health and fitness advice by email.

I created a simple email campaign, it explained why they were receiving the email, and gave them the option to unsubscribe from further communication at the beginning.

I then explained that we’d be sending the newsletter on a weekly basis, what to expect and when to expect it.

As a ‘thank you’ for staying with us, we offered a free download (a workout) which has proven to be popular.

The real gem however, is that the email went to someone who had previously enquired about personal training and for one reason or another had decided to proceed at that time. The email prompted another enquiry, which has now turned into a paying client.

The beauty of this is that to write the email, build and schedule the campaign and broadcast it took about an hour and a half and has already paid for itself.

Rather than spending time chasing new clients or customers, it can be beneficial to look at those who have already either bought from you or enquired about your product or service. They obviously liked your company enough to make a purchase from you previously so why not again?

Getting Permission to Email

If you don’t have your customers permission (or aren’t sure you do) it’s important that you get it. Email them and ask them if it’s ok to start emailing them, give them the option to opt out of receiving further communication from you and offer them an incentive to stay with you. You may be pleasantly surprised by the results.

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Tags: email campaign email marketing power of email marketing

Welcome to my Email Marketing and SEO blog

July 29th, 2009

My name is Phil and I have been working in online marketing for over 5 years, the bulk of that has been involved with email marketing, something I am passionate about. I’ve been in everything from campaign planning, deliverability, segmentation to the design and build of emails and analysis of results.

I decided to write this blog, firstly to cover some of the basics for anyone who is new to the field of email marketing and secondly to keep people up to date with what is a fast moving area of online marketing.

For the last 18 months I have been heavily involved in web development and Search Engine Optimisation, there is so much information out there, some good, some very good and some down right ridiculous! I’ll cherry pick the best of what’s good and post it here too.

I’ll draw on my own personal experience as well as researching the dozens and dozens of articles I have amassed over time.

Please feel free to comment or get in touch about anything on this blog, I’d be interested to hear from you.

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Posted in Search Engine Optimisation, blog, email marketing

Tags: email marketing search engine marketing