iPhones and Email Marketing: Tips & Tools

I was just browsing through Globe’s new 3G iPhone subscription plans yesterday, and it occurred to me… With more and more Filipinos jumping on the iPhone bandwagon, it might be a good idea to consider how well your emails (and websites, for that matter) display on an iPhone. 

• Consider internet speed. Remember, this is the Philippines. If the iPhone user’s internet connection is slow, images and HTML will take longer to show up, so keep your email file size as small as possible. 
• Make your links and buttons finger-friendly.  iPhone users aren’t using a mouse, and fingers come in different sizes, so try to position your links and size your buttons accordingly.  Links are best placed at the end of a line or paragraph - or better yet, on a line of their own with some white space around.
• Forget Flash.  This doesn’t apply as much to your emails as to the webpages your email will direct readers to.  The iPhone doesn’t support Flash (they say it’s to save on battery), so make sure your webpage has an alternative image for iPhone viewers (or other people who don’t have the Flash plug-in) to see.
• Test!  Add the iPhone (and other mobile devices) to your list of pre-campaign email environment tests, just to be sure. 

Some testing tools you might find handy:

IPhone Tester - This is a pretty cool website with an iPhone simulator. Just type in your web address (or the archive link of your email) to see how it will display on an iPhone or iPod Touch.

Mailchimp - Mailchimp has an Inbox Inspector add-on (3 tests for $39) which tests your email design (and content) across 34 major email environments (including mobile). 

How Much are YOU Losing in Potential Profits because of Bad Email Data?

About a month or so ago, I helped Digiprint - a popular photo services company - clean out their loyalty club email lists, and we discovered that almost half of their email database (which was manually encoded) was made up of bad (or invalid) email addresses.  

Building Interest (and Business) with Autoresponder Emails

It’s been said that a prospect must hear your message an average of seven times before making a purchase. Bit of a bummer if you only mail out once a month… so there’s a solution many email marketers use to address this - AUTORESPONDERS.  

A Sequential Autoresponder is a program designed to collect email addresses and then send out a series of pre-written messages to subscribers at timed intervals. (Note that this is completely different from the one-off autoresponders we normally set up to send “Im on vacation” messages and the like.)

Autoresponders are just plain AWESOME.  If used correctly, your autoresponder program can be one of the most powerful tools in your email marketing arsenal — allowing you to literally ”sell while you sleep.”  Once you set up your messages and your signup form, you can pretty much just forget about it. (Just make sure to check for any replies or questions they might generate.)

If you think autoresponder marketing might be a good fit for your company, here are a few tips to get you started:

• Get your signup form right.  Tell people EXACTLY what they’re signing up for, and ask only for the information you actually need (in most cases, just the email address and first name will do, but you can add more fields if you want to personalize your messages further).  Remember that the more fields subscribers have to fill up, the less likely they’ll go through with the process.

• Craft a non-threatening welcome message.  No one likes a hard sale, so just chill.  You are not meant to “score” on the first date.  Don’t try too hard, and don’t come on too strong.  The welcome message should come immediately after signup, and just … welcome.  Thank them for signing up, introduce yourself, and set some expectations.  You might also use this opportunity to ask people to whitelist your email address (i.e. add it to the email program’s address book or list of approved senders).

• Plan out your timing.  The frequency will always depend on what you have to say - and who your audience is - but in general, you want to space out your messages so you don’t end up irritating people and causing them to unsubscribe before they get to the end of the series.  It might also help if at the end of each message, you let subscribers know what’s coming next, and when.

• Start with an informative message – a message that educates the reader in some way on the topic that your product or service is related to. At the bottom of the message, include a link to the sales page for your product. Use that first message to focus on the problem that your product or service can solve, with just a hint of the solution.  

• Build up from there, moving into how your product or service can solve a problem, and then with the next message, ease into the benefits of your product – giving the reader more actual information with each and every message.

Autoresponder marketing is an art, and it may take some time to get it right - but it’s definitely worth it. If you play your cards right, by the time the potential customer reads the last message in that series, they’ll be convinced enough to make a purchase!     

It’s important to note as well that the same guidelines that apply to newsletters and other forms of email marketing apply to autoresponders too: 

• Give people a way out!  Always include an unsubscribe link in your emails. 

• Personalize.  As I’ve said before, the beauty of email marketing is that you can make a message sent to a thousand people feel like it was written for just one.  So if you have data you can use to personalize your message, use it.

• Make your message about the customer (not about you).  Focus on benefits, not features.

• Provide valuable, relevant information that subscribers can actually use - even if they don’t actually end up purchasing. If at the end of it all, all you’ve done is create awareness (and maybe a budding relationship) - that’s still success.  When time comes to actually BUY - even if it’s a month or a year later - people are more likely to purchase from a “friend” than from a stranger.

If you’d like to try out autoresponder marketing, but don’t have the software for it, have a look at Interspire’s Email Marketer, or check out Getresponse.com.  Another popular autoresponder service is Aweber.com. 

To see autoresponder marketing in action (and maybe pick up a few things along the way) you might want to sign up for this 7-day email course from GetResponse.  (You can always unsubscribe after) It’s a bit of a hard sell in my opinion, but a good guide nevertheless.

The 5 P’s: A Recipe for Excellent E-Newsletters

Premium beer distributor Global Beer Exchange came out with its very first e-newsletter this weekend - check it out at http://cdemails.com/globalbeer - and honestly, I think it’s awesome.  (Apparently I’m not the only one who thinks so. Within ONE MINUTE of pressing the SEND button, GBeX Beertender Jim received his first order. And after 5 minutes, he got another inquiry from a restaurant wanting to carry his products. Who knows what else is in store once people come back to the office from the long weekend?)  

So what makes an excellent e-newsletter, you might ask?  I once read that the recipe for great newsletters could be summed up in three P’s:  promise, personality and payoff. I’ll add a couple more -  permission and personalization  - and I think that makes it complete.  

Permission.  It’s really quite simple, and I don’t think I can say it enough.  You shouldn’t be sending a newsletter at all if you don’t have your recipients’ permission.  Without it, you’re just a scumbag spammer, and that just knocks away all the brownie points you could potentially earn. 

Promise. Every newsletter starts with a promise, and this is normally made when you invite people to sign up. What promise did YOU make?  Whatever it might be, bear in mind that this promise is the ONLY reason your subscribers deigned to to trust you with their email address and other details. So breaking that promise could be disastrous.  At best, you’ll lose their interest — at worst, their trust and patronage.

So when crafting your newsletter, ask yourself “What are my readers expecting from me?”  — and be sure to deliver.

Personalization. An excellent newsletter takes into account the little details that subscribers provided upon signup, and makes use of these to create warmer, more relevant content. With the right software and enough details, you can actually make the newsletter you’re sending to a thousand people seem like it was created for just one.  If you don’t have the snazzy software or the extra details, you can at the very least show that you know your subscriber’s name.

Note:  The online version of the GBeX newsletter uses a generic “Dear Friends” - but the actual emails sent to their subscribers were all personalized with the subscribers’ names.

Personality.  This is something that the Global Beer Buzz newsletter had in droves, and that’s why I liked it so much.  Read it (even the fine print) - taking into account it was meant for a beer-drinking audience - and you’ll see what I mean.  

Does your newsletter stand out from the rest of the Inbox crowd — or is it just a different-colored clone of all the others?  If you want your content to be read (and better yet - forwarded) take the time to inject some personality onto the page.

Pay-Off.  A great newsletter makes subscribers feel rewarded for having received it.  The reward doesn’t have to be big or expensive  - it could be as simple as a good laugh, or a feeling of being ’in the know” about things that non-subscribers will never find out. But whatever it is, it matters.  

Give your readers a reason to look forward to receving your email, and you’ll see that any reward you choose to bestow will pay for itself a hundred times over.

Marketing Sherpa Needs Your Input!

Please take 5 to 10 minutes to answer Sherpa’s annual Email Questionnaire:
http://www.surveygizmo.com/s/59338/2009-email-benchmark
survey

1,210 marketers took the questionnaire last year – making this the biggest study of real-life email practices in the world. The resulting data has proven enormously useful for the marketing community. 

Creating Awesome Incentives for Email Subscribers

One of the most fascinating things I learned at my Email Marketing certification course was that there’s actually a FORMULA for email messaging effectivity: 

Relevance (offer + incentive) minus (friction + anxiety)

Without going into too much detail (you’ll have to take the course for that), the point is that if what you have to offer is good enough to overcome any doubts and fears your subscriber may have, then you’ve got it — you’ll achieve the goal…  conversion to a signup or a sale.

As with most things in life, email conversions often go by the “you scratch my back, I’ll scratch yours” rule, and in most scenarios, it’s usually the incentive that tips the scale.  The incentive you use will depend on many factors (among other things, your budget and your subscribers’ interests) but whatever the case, in this day and age of spoilt subscribers, it’s almost criminal not to offer people something for giving you permission  to contact or sell to them. 

So think about it, and be creative!  Here’s a great example I picked up from a blog post in The Email Wars: a free drink for signing up.  Not only does it reward subscribers, it also guarantees foot traffic to the bar offering the reward. (Click on the pic for a larger view)

Neat, right?  Now go check your own ”inventory” and figure out what you can offer.  Some tips:

• The higher the perceived value, the better. (Note: the actual value doesn’t have to be all that big)
• Match the incentive to the audience. 
• Take advantage of the opportunity to build brand awareness

And lastly, remember that the quest for permission is an ongoing challenge. It doesn’t end when people sign up — because they can always choose to unsubscribe at any time. 

To keep permission, reward often, and reward generously.  If you can keep your subscribers happy, at the end of the day you receive the biggest rewards of all.   

New Study: Email Increases Brand Favorability and Awareness

Datran Media just released the results of a branding study conducted with online dating site eHarmony, which shows that  email inbox advertising can provide significant branding benefits:

• Inbox advertising increased brand awareness in 37.7% of respondents

• Unaided brand awareness increased 11.5 percentage points.

• Brand favorability increased 7.3 percentage points.

• Brand awareness and favorability both improved when those researched were exposed to the campaign more than once.

More than many other channels, inbox advertising gives companies the ability to deliver highly targeted messages to opt-in consumers. Because it significantly increases the chances of delivering the right message to the right consumer at the right time, inbox advertising can have the additional benefit of creating a more favorable impression of the company’s brand.

It’s not exactly breaking news, as this is something I’m sure we all pretty much suspected anyway - but it’s always good to have solid research to back our assumptions up.  To view details of the study, visit www.datranmediabrandstudy.com

The Top 5 Reasons Subscribers Hit the Spam Button

 Good to know: Your email doesn’t have to actually BE spam for your recipients to treat it as such.  Have a look at the results of a 2007 study conducted by Marketing Sherpa and Q Interactive: (Click the pic for a larger view)

The first is a given, but the second - that the email just wasn’t interesting? - poses a real challenge to email marketers: Be relevant… or beware!  Today’s consumers won’t think twice about reporting your mail as Spam (even if they signed up for it) if it ceases to deliver on the promises you made when you invited them to sign up in the first place.  

So think twice before you send that next newsletter (”just for the sake of sending one out”).  Is it engaging? Does it offer information that your clients can actually use, that they would be happy to receive?  Will they feel rewarded for being on your mailing list? If the answer is no, TRY AGAIN… or skip the newsletter altogether until you actually have something valuable to impart.

For more details (and some key takeaways) from the Marketing Sherpa study, click here.

Internet & Mobile Marketing Summit on August 13-15

A quick plug… I’ll be giving a workshop on Email Marketing at the IMMAP’s 2nd Internet and Mobile Marketing Summit, August 13-15, 2008 at the Hotel Intercontinental Manila. 

For more info on the summit, visit http://www.interactivesummit.com.ph.