1. Understanding Your Audience

1.1. Segmenting Your Email List

One of the cornerstones of effective email marketing is understanding your audience. Not all subscribers are the same, and sending generic emails to everyone on your list can be a recipe for failure. To improve your email marketing campaigns, segment your email list based on various criteria like demographics, purchase history, and engagement levels.

Segmentation allows you to send targeted, relevant content to specific groups, increasing the chances of engagement and conversions. For example, you can send special offers to customers who have made previous purchases, while educational content can be sent to subscribers who have only engaged with your newsletter.

1.2. Personalization

Beyond segmentation, personalization is key to effective email marketing. Subscribers appreciate messages that are tailored to their preferences and behaviors. Use the recipient’s name, recommend products based on their past purchases, and acknowledge their previous interactions with your brand.

Personalization not only makes your emails more engaging but also enhances the customer experience, which can lead to increased trust and loyalty. It’s a win-win for both your brand and your subscribers.

2. Compelling Content

2.1. Catchy Subject Lines

Your email’s subject line is the first thing subscribers see, and it plays a crucial role in determining whether your email gets opened or not. Craft subject lines that are attention-grabbing, concise, and relevant to the content inside the email. Using humor, urgency, or curiosity can also pique the reader’s interest.

Avoid using all caps or excessive exclamation marks, as these can trigger spam filters. Additionally, it’s important to stay honest and not use clickbait subject lines. Misleading subject lines may increase your open rates in the short term but damage your credibility in the long run.

2.2. Valuable Content

The heart of any effective email marketing campaign is the content within the email. Regardless of the purpose of your email, whether it’s a newsletter, a promotional offer, or an informational update, the content needs to provide value to the recipient. Here are some tips for creating valuable content:

• Educate and Inform: Share industry insights, how-to guides, or tips that are relevant to your audience.
• Entertain: Engage your subscribers with entertaining content, like stories or humor, especially if it aligns with your brand.
• Solve Problems: Address common pain points your audience experiences and provide solutions.
• Inspirational Content: Share success stories, customer testimonials, or inspirational quotes to motivate your subscribers.

2.3. Mobile Optimization

With the increasing use of smartphones, it’s crucial to ensure that your emails are mobile-friendly. Most people check their emails on mobile devices, and if your emails don’t display properly, you risk losing a significant portion of your audience.

Here’s how you can optimize your emails for mobile:

• Use a responsive design that adapts to different screen sizes.
• Keep your email width to around 600 pixels to fit mobile screens.
• Use legible fonts and maintain proper font sizes.
• Make sure call-to-action buttons are easily clickable on a touchscreen.

3. Design and Layout

3.1. Responsive Design

A responsive email design ensures that your emails look great and are functional on a variety of devices, from desktop computers to smartphones. Responsive design adapts the layout, images, and text to fit the screen, providing a seamless user experience. This is essential for retaining and engaging your subscribers.

3.2. Clear Call-to-Action (CTA)

Your email’s call-to-action (CTA) is the element that drives conversions. Whether it’s encouraging readers to make a purchase, sign up for a webinar, or download an e-book, your CTA needs to be clear, compelling, and prominently placed in the email. Use action-oriented language and consider using buttons or hyperlinked text to make it easy for subscribers to take the desired action.

3.3. Consistent Branding

Your email should be an extension of your brand. Maintain consistency in your email design by using the same colors, fonts, and branding elements found on your website and other marketing materials. This helps subscribers recognize your emails instantly and fosters trust in your brand.

4. Timing and Frequency

4.1. Finding the Optimal Send Time

Determining the best time to send your emails can be a bit tricky, as it depends on your target audience and their behavior. It’s essential to analyze your email performance data to identify patterns in open rates and click-through rates based on the time and day of the week.

Keep in mind that the optimal send time can vary from one industry to another. As a general guideline, many businesses find success with mid-week sends, such as Tuesday or Wednesday, during late morning or early afternoon.

4.2. Avoiding Overload

While email marketing is an effective tool, bombarding your subscribers with emails can be counterproductive. Overloading your audience with emails can lead to unsubscribe requests and even complaints. Strike a balance between staying in touch and respecting your subscribers’ time and inbox.

5. List Management

5.1. Permission-Based Lists

Building a high-quality email list is essential for email marketing success. It’s vital that your subscribers have given explicit permission for you to send them emails. This not only ensures compliance with laws like the CAN-SPAM Act but also leads to a more engaged and responsive audience.

Avoid purchasing email lists, as they often contain invalid or uninterested recipients and can harm your email deliverability. Instead, focus on growing your list organically through your website, social media, and other marketing channels.

5.2. Regular List Maintenance

Your email list is not a static entity; it evolves over time. Subscribers may change their email addresses, lose interest, or become inactive. It’s important to regularly clean and update your email list. Remove invalid email addresses and segment subscribers based on their engagement levels.

Sending emails to a list that contains a high percentage of inactive or disinterested recipients can negatively impact your deliverability and sender reputation.

6. Testing and Optimization

6.1. A/B Testing

A/B testing, also known as split testing, is a powerful technique to optimize your email campaigns. It involves sending two variations of an email to different segments of your audience to determine which one performs better. You can test different elements, such as subject lines, content, images, CTAs, and send times.

By continuously A/B testing your emails, you can refine your email marketing strategy, improve open and click-through rates, and better understand what resonates with your audience.

6.2. Analytics and Tracking

To measure the success of your email marketing campaigns, it’s essential to track key performance metrics. Some of the key metrics to monitor include:

• Open rates: The percentage of recipients who opened your email.
• Click-through rates: The percentage of recipients who clicked on a link within your email.
• Conversion rates: The percentage of recipients who took the desired action (e.g., made a purchase).
• Bounce rates: The percentage of emails that couldn’t be delivered.

Use email marketing analytics tools to gain insights into the effectiveness of your campaigns. Pay attention to these metrics and adjust your strategy based on the results.

7. Compliance and Privacy

7.1. CAN-SPAM Act

If you’re sending marketing emails in the United States, you must comply with the CAN-SPAM Act. This law sets rules for commercial email, including requirements for opt-out mechanisms, accurate subject lines, and physical mailing addresses. Failing to comply with these regulations can result in significant fines.

Make sure your email marketing practices align with the CAN-SPAM Act to avoid legal complications.

7.2. GDPR and CCPA

If you have subscribers or customers in the European Union, you should be aware of the General Data Protection Regulation (GDPR), and if you have subscribers or customers in California, you should be aware of the California Consumer Privacy Act (CCPA). These regulations have specific requirements regarding data protection and the rights of individuals to control their personal data.

Ensure that you have processes in place to handle data privacy requests, and that your email marketing practices comply with these regulations.

8. Wrapping It Up

Email marketing is a valuable and cost-effective tool for businesses of all sizes. By understanding your audience, creating compelling content, optimizing design and layout, and following best practices in list management, timing, and compliance, you can create highly effective email marketing campaigns that deliver results.

Remember that email marketing is an ongoing process of testing, optimizing, and staying current with best practices. By continually refining your strategies and focusing on delivering value to your subscribers, you can build stronger relationships and drive the success of your campaigns.

In a digital world filled with marketing noise, email marketing remains a personal and direct channel to connect with your audience. With the right strategies in place, it can be a driving force in your overall marketing efforts. So, start implementing these best practices to unlock the full potential of your email marketing campaigns and take your business to new heights.

The post Email Marketing Best Practices for Effective Campaigns appeared first on Mobile Marketing Watch.

On February 16, this Chinese New Year will celebrate the eleventh zodiac sign: the dog. Known as man’s best friend, dogs are America’s most popular companion animal — just as email is the most popular communications channel for business. As we approach the Lunar New Year email marketers can learn from these four tips to push their programs forward in 2018.

1) Understand Subscriber Preferences and Plan Accordingly

In Chinese astrology zodiac signs are paired with a rotating natural element, like fire and water. This year is considered the Year of the Earth Dog and people born this year are predicted to be communicative, serious and responsible at work. In order to emulate the Earth dog in campaigns email marketers should learn what content is most useful to their subscribers and take feedback into account while planning campaigns ahead of time.

As email marketers continue to add new subscribers to their lists it is important to adapt programs to meet the changing interests of these new consumers. To ensure they’re communicating content that consumers wish to receive, marketers should send a yearly survey asking them to rank what content they find most valuable, how often they wish to receive emails, and what products and services they are most interested in. This gives marketers better insight about subscribers and helps them develop planning calendars with deadlines and messaging that will resonate and ensure a regular communication frequency.

2) Learn From the Dog’s Lucky Times

There are zodiac beliefs that people born during a specific time of day will be more successful. Similarly, email marketers know that certain times of day are better than others for sending content to receptive readers, and that they can use this information to optimize their open and click through rates.

Marketers should note popular times to reach subscribers when developing their next campaign. For example, a recent Deloitte survey found that 40 percent of people check their email within five minutes of waking up. However it’s important that email marketers also trust their instincts and not send emails at inappropriate times, like 1 a.m. They should utilize tools like A/B split testing to determine the best time to reach subscribers and automate campaigns to hit their inboxes accordingly.

3) Don’t Pair Dogs With Roosters and Sheep

Chinese belief holds that certain character traits associated with the zodiac signs mesh well with others, but this is not the case for all. For example, dogs are considered adventurous by nature and rabbits are seen as curious — traits that complement each other and are believed to be an ideal connection. On the other hand, roosters are known to strut and be the center of attention, while dogs prefer to seek out intimate and loyal connections, traits that clash and can lead to trouble.

Similarly some subscribers are more responsive to specific content than others. Marketers can use segmentation and A/B split testing to match certain subscriber segments with the email content they’ll be most receptive to. A Campaigner survey found that the majority of millennials are interested in coupons, so marketers should segment their audience by demographics and pair millennial recipients with coupons when possible. Email marketers can also utilize A/B split testing to determine what content is most compatible for subscribers. By looking at how open and click-through rates differ for specific variables, marketers will be able to determine what content, subject line and even color palettes pique the interest of each subscriber group.

4) Treat Loyal Subscribers

As a symbol of good luck and best wishes in the New Year, it is customary to give friends and family a red envelope called a hongbao, which are typically filled with money. The act of receiving a red envelope is to invoke happiness and prosperity for the year to come.

Marketers should similarly reward loyal subscribers with special discounts and promotions to strengthen their relationship. Offering coupons to subscribers not only wishes subscribers luck in the New Year, it also helps marketers see an increase in ROI. Shopify found that merchants with coupons are 8 times more likely to make a sale. In order to capitalize on this year’s Chinese New Year celebration, marketers should offer discount codes that reflect the holiday with themed words such as loyal, lucky and fortune. Consider making these discount codes scannable so customers can use them in stores, and ensure they can be used online as well as offline.

As we enter the Year of the Dog, email marketers can align their stars to maximize the success of their programs. By developing a marketing planning calendar, sending at optimal times, and utilizing tools like segmentation and A/B split testing, marketers can create a strategy and content that builds brand loyalty and captures the interest of their subscribers. They should continue to experiment and develop content that can increase ROI, building good fortune for the new year ahead.

The post Email Marketing Lessons to Learn in the Year of the Dog appeared first on Mobile Marketing Watch.

The round, led by Arthur Ventures, is to be invested into product expansion and hiring, we’re told.

250ok joins Arthur Ventures’ growing portfolio of leading marketing technology companies, including Infusionsoft and Terminus.

“With more than 3 billion people projected to use email by the end of 2017, 250ok’s analytics and deliverability solution sets companies up for profitable and secure email marketing initiatives,” said Patrick Meenan, partner at Arthur Ventures. “The industry’s need for higher email standards has only become more prevalent and 250ok is poised to become the market leader.”

250ok provides marketing teams with advanced insights that maximize the performance of email marketing programs.

To learn more, click here.

The post 250ok Secures Millions to ‘Transform Email Analytics’ appeared first on Mobile Marketing Watch.

The solution in question allows publishers to easily implement pay and registration walls, enabling them to drive more revenue directly or capture valuable audience data.

Today’s publishers face more challenges than ever before in growing their digital revenues. As digital advertising continues to present issues for publishers, many have sought out more sustainable digital revenue models. Implementing pay and registration walls has been a way for publishers such as The Boston Globe and The New Yorker to successfully get new readers and more subscribers.

“We understand many publishers are feeling revenue pressure due to industry trends such as declining programmatic revenue, ad blocking, and distributed content platforms intermediating the audience relationship,” said Tony D’Anna, CEO of PostUp. “PostUp is laser focused on helping publishers diversify their revenue streams as well as grow and monetize their direct audience. Our email products, such as our Audience Development Solution, have been pivotal in helping publishers establish and grow direct relationships with their audiences. We are thrilled to offer Dynamic Content Wall, which gives publishers a near-turn-key solution that retains all the benefits of their existing ad driven business model while allowing low risk experimentation and optimization of a parallel subscription revenue model. Publishers are already familiar with content personalization. What is unique about Dynamic Content Wall is that it allows for personalization of the business model, to maximize the revenue outcome for each individual audience member.”

PostUp bills itself as the only Email Services Provider (ESP) focused on the publishing and media industry.

We’re told that NewBay, a leading source of information and marketing solutions to the B-to-B professional and enthusiast communities, will be among the first to benefit from the new solution.

“PostUp understands our business,” said Meg Estevez, Vice President of Audience Development at NewBay. “Their solutions continue to drive real results, consistently boosting audience growth and engagement. Dynamic Content Wall is the perfect solution for our focused publications with their invested and loyal readers.”

The post Digital Marketing Innovator Helps Publishers Drive Revenue appeared first on Mobile Marketing Watch.

The report, created by GetResponse and Holistic Email Marketing, an email marketing consultancy led by CEO & Founder Kath Pay, will help businesses improve the effectiveness of their email marketing, discover benchmarks for specific industries, and help compare and identify where to improve.

“This report helps email marketers pinpoint areas in need of improvement within their own marketing departments,” says Simon Grabowski, GetResponse’s Founder and CEO. “These findings can be applied to their campaigns and programs to meet and exceed consumer expectations.”

For the study, GetResponse and Holistic Email Marketing surveyed over 2,500 email marketers from across the world. The percentage of marketers involved in business-to-business marketing was 19.1%, business-to-consumer marketing was 41.8%, with 39.1% managing both.

“Of course, it’s important to look at one’s own current benchmarks with the goal of steady improvement over time,” added Grabowski. “But what this report will do is provide some guidance on where marketing efforts are succeeding and where they are falling behind—in comparison to other industries.”

To download the complete report, click here.

The post GetResponse Publishes 2017 ‘Email Marketing & Beyond: Global Industry Benchmarks 2017’ Report appeared first on Mobile Marketing Watch.

“Starting in May of 2017, all of Advantage’s email conquest campaigns will be monitored by Orbee to ensure email conquest campaigns send the highest percentage of real human traffic interested in purchasing or servicing a car to a dealership’s website,” a provided statement reads.

Bot traffic and ad fraud cost digital advertisers $7.2B in 2016 and based on Orbee’s bot traffic report. 40% of paid digital advertising in the automotive industry consisted of bot traffic.

Additionally, we’re told that Orbee is also working to release a full-attribution machine learning algorithm that Advantage will utilize to track each individual shopper through their entire experience.

The post Advantage Taps Orbee to Improve Email Conquest Marketing for Automotive Marketers appeared first on Mobile Marketing Watch.

As to be expected, research shows that internet users are the most likely to unsubscribe from email lists because they get too many emails in general. In an October 2016 survey, MarketingSherpa asked US adult internet users why they unsubscribe from email lists and found that 25% did so because they received too many emails.

The question then remains how many emails is too many. According to an August 2016 survey from  Mapp Digital Internet users said that receiving emails twice per week was the preferable amount, while the second most popular response was receiving emails only once per month.

It’s not only the email frequency, but also the content of the email that swayed consumers answers. if an email was irrelevant to users, if it’s constantly pushing a sales message, or if the content of the email is boring or repetitive one in five users said they would unsubscribe. And apparently emails aren’t that useful to users in the first place. According to October 2016 research from Fluent LLC, only 15% of email users said they find marketing emails “often” or “always” useful, 29% said they were sometimes useful, and more than half (57%) said they were “rarely” or “never” useful.

eMarketer analyst Jillian Ryan explains, Maintaining a high level of list health and subscriber quality, as well as including relevant, personalized messaging, can combat some of these (email marketing) concerns.”

The post eMarketer Explains Why Why Consumers Get Email Fatigue appeared first on Mobile Marketing Watch.

As a Gold level member of Oracle PartnerNetwork (OPN,) Shaw + Scott now offers new Oracle Marketing Cloud solutions, such as advanced support of Oracle Responsys and deep technical and strategic expertise on both Oracle Maxymiser and the Oracle Data Management Platform.

According to an emailed statement, these responsive solutions allow the agency more agility around planning, marketing orchestration and optimization.

“Our clients engage us to design, develop and deliver holistic and integrated digital marketing solutions. In order to do so, we must constantly take advantage of critical technological innovations, such as the Oracle Marketing Cloud,” said Jamie Frech, President of Shaw + Scott. “Through this collaboration, Shaw + Scott can be more agile in leading our clients to marketing success quickly and effectively.”

With the addition of new Oracle Marketing Cloud specializations, Shaw + Scott offers its clients a one-stop shop for digital marketing solutions, handling strategy, creative, user experience and now, the most advanced marketing technology platforms in the industry. Through the addition of these tools, Shaw + Scott can streamline the optimization of web, mobile and apps, create cross-channel and cross-device customer experiences and transform the resulting data into actionable audiences. Already, the agency has seen success driven by the use of these platforms.

“As our campaigns become increasingly personalized and granular the tools we use to create and send them become more complex. To get the most out of our Oracle investment I rely on Shaw + Scott’s deep bench to advise on everything from setting up, integrating and plain old troubleshooting. I’ve yet to bring them a problem they can’t solve,” says Jared Stivers, current client and Senior Manager of Email Marketing at ModCloth.

The post Shaw + Scott, Oracle Help Expand Digital Marketing Solutions appeared first on Mobile Marketing Watch.

“The new year is a perfect time to forecast the trends that will drive successful email campaigns and the report will help marketers apply these trends to their upcoming campaigns,” reads a provided statement emailed to MMW.

For a limited time, eTargetMedia is offering a free consultation to customers who mention the report and 20% off new email list orders.

As for key highlights from email marketing trends for 2017, here’s what we can tell you:

• Email continues to be the fastest-growing channel for marketing ROI and is the biggest driver of Customer Acquisition and Customer Retention.
• Email marketing has real power, even with Millennials. According to recent surveys, Millennials have stated that they want to receive brand communications via email. Most millennials check email from mobile devices and even though millennials love social media for communicating with friends they specifically cited email as their primary communication vehicle with brands.
• Email Integration is a big trend that will continue to grow this year. Integrating email messaging into other marketing channels, promoting email content across social media pages and including social sharing buttons on emails are trends that will be seen in email marketing campaigns.
• Mobile has changed where and when consumers check their email accounts. Optimizing email campaigns for mobile viewing is going to be a huge factor in successful email campaigns.
• Email personalization, email automation, responsive email design and interactive email elements are all factors that brands should be implementing in their email campaigns this year.

“Email is thriving,” stated Harris Kreichman, Managing Partner of eTargetMedia. “Smart brand marketers need to evolve their email tactics to cater to a new audience in 2017 and beyond. Every email marketers’ resolution for the new year should be to implement these trends into their upcoming email campaigns.”

The post eTargetMedia Publishes 2017 Email Marketing Trends Report appeared first on Mobile Marketing Watch.

Now email marketers are getting in on the act. According to the 2016 Email Marketing Insights Study, 22.5 percent of marketing professionals plan to use video this year.

Liveclicker, a company that offers video commerce solutions for retailers as well as email services, has more information. The firm analyzed 2,500 campaigns sent by its clients in the year leading up to June, 2016.

What did Livelicker discover? For starters, that the most common way for email marketers to include video in email messages was by sending animated GIFs.

“Forty six percent of the campaigns studied used silent animations to embed video content,” reports eMarketer. “But almost as many offered full-screen video (44 percent), including 33 percent of campaigns that required two clicks for playback. Only 11 percent had full-screen video with playback available after just one click. And only 8 percent placed the video inline in the email.”

A poll from Email on Acid showed that nearly a quarter of U.S. marketing practitioners said they planned to add HTML 5 video to their email campaigns. One boon to help the trend is this: Apple’s recent iOS 10 release supports video in email.

Email marketing may be the oldest form of digital advertising, but it continues to offer strong ROI and still enjoys favor among many U.S. consumers.

“Email is about as old-school as digital marketing gets,” notes eMarketer, but (still enjoys) high acquisition and retention rates, particularly for small- and medium-sized business. About four-fifths of these professionals said email marketing helps contribute to this outcome over other tactics from organic search to social media.”

The post Making Email More Fun: Twenty Two Percent of Marketers Using Embedded Video appeared first on Mobile Marketing Watch.