Read articles on the best practices of email marketing written by Michelle Keegan, our own Email Marketing Diva™. Become an expert email marketer yourself by following her actionable tips and advice on everything from creating a subject line, to testing and measuring success.
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» BENEFITS OF EMAIL MARKETING
4 Tips to Turn Readers into Clients - Is it easy for those readers to make the connection between your fabulous newsletter content and the valuable services or products that you provide? This connection is very important because it's the one that will convert your readers into clients or customers.
5 Good Reasons to Outsource Your Email Send - When a business tells me they are already using some form of email marketing to communicate with their target audience, the question I ask is: "how are you executing and managing your email campaigns?"
Keep Your Customers with Email - I have been to a few tradeshows and seminars lately and have taken the opportunity to talk to a wide variety of small businesses. One question I always ask is "how do you communicate with your customers and prospects?"
Get Going with Email Marketing - We can all learn from another company's experience and benefit from the email marketing knowledge they have gained through their own trial and error. Our friend and customer relationship management expert, Chris Selland, tells his story and gives us some practical advice on email marketing…
'Tis the Season - Eight Holiday Tips - Thanks to the immediacy of email marketing, there's still time to get your piece of the pie. Use email marketing to make the most of the spike in holiday traffic and spending, and create a positive impression of your company that will last long into next year…
The Holiday Gift That Keeps On Giving - The holiday season is fast approaching and with it comes a strong demand for shopping, both online and offline. Don't leave your customers out in the cold! Use email marketing to make the most of the spike in holiday traffic and spending, and create a positive impression of your company that will last long into next year…
Why Email Marketing? Five Great Reasons. - Email marketing is one of the most powerful marketing tools available to businesses of all types and sizes. No matter how you define success, you can achieve outstanding results with email marketing while investing only a small amount of time and an even smaller amount of money…
What we have here is a failure to communicate - In the movie Cool Hand Luke (1967), Luke said, "Sometimes nothin' can be a real cool hand." Maybe that's true in poker, but not when you're talking about communicating with your customers…
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» BUILDING YOUR LIST
5 Tips for Building a High-quality List - Finding new ways to grow an email newsletter list is always a hot topic for email marketers. After all, the bigger your list, the higher the impact on your business…
You're Only As Good As Your List… and What You Email To It - Your email list is one of your most valuable assets, but building one can be a slower process than some of us might like. In this issue, our friend and marketing expert, Nancy Michaels, gives her advice on increasing your email marketing effectiveness, and recommends the top ten people who should be on your email list…
Grow Your Email List - My inaugural issue of Email Marketing Hints & Tips way back in March of 2001 addressed the importance of building an email list. Almost two years later, many companies have not managed to gather the email addresses of all of their customers and prospects, nor have they asked for permission to use email addresses for ongoing communication. If this sounds like your company, what are you waiting for…
New Year's Resolution - Collect More Email Addresses - Did you know there is an Email Marketing Hints & Tips Archive? I have selected what I believe is one of the most useful articles in the archive to re-publish for this final issue of 2001. It just happens to be the very first one I wrote - way back in March…
Building your list, checking it twice, 4 easy steps - Any season 'tis the season to build your email list of prospects and customers, but there's no time like the present. This issue of Hints & Tips is all about helping you build your list quickly and easily so that you can start reaping the benefits of communicating to your targeted audience…
A Site Visitor is a Terrible Thing to Waste - If you're not collecting email addresses on your homepage (and anywhere else you can), you are missing out on opportunities to turn one-time visitors into your best customers…
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» PERMISSION
How Anti-spam Laws Apply to You - This issue of Hints & Tips is designed to help you make an educated evaluation of your current email address collection and emailing processes and feel confident that you are following both the law, and the best practices of email marketing (they happen to be the same thing)…
10 Tips on Getting and Keeping Permission. - Today's issue of Email Marketing Hints & Tips is part one of a two part series on permission. "Why two whole issues on permission?" - you might ask. "Isn't it pretty clear?" "You either have it, or you don't. You're a permission based email marketer, or a loathsome spammer. End of story."…
Permission - How to "do the right thing." - In April of last year I wrote a Hints & Tips on permission - the right way to get it and the right way to use it. All of the points in that article still hold true. Congruently, permission is still a subject of heated debate among email marketers and email recipients alike…
Extractors and Crawlers and Bulk, Oh My! - If these words sound unappealing, they should. They are terms commonly used to describe software that snatches email addresses from all over the Web and sends "UCE" or Unsolicited Commercial Email - better known as spam…
Permission: Getting It and Using It - Just because you collect an email address, doesn't mean you have really gained permission to use it…
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» ELEMENTS OF AN EFFECTIVE EMAIL CAMPAIGN
The 7 "Redeeming" Values of Coupons - Coupons are an effective way to introduce your business to new customers or send a reminder to your existing customers.
7 Tips to Wrap Up Holiday Sales - This holiday season brings an abundance of opportunity for you to further your business. Learn how email marketing can help.
Make Your Promotional Emails Worth Reading - Is your email useful, timely, relevant, entertaining or unique? Does it make the reader feel special, important, or privileged?
The Lowdown on Email Opens - Plus 3 Tips - Most email marketers have seen a decline in open rates over the last year or so. The open rate tells you how many people opened your email. It is most commonly calculated by taking the number of emails opened in a given email campaign as a percentage of the total number of emails delivered ("delivered" meaning not blocked)…
6 Tips to Get Your Email Opened and Read - According to a recent Doubleclick study, consumers increasingly value permission email marketing messages and prefer them to other types of marketing…
The 7 Components of Effective Web Marketing - when it comes to web marketing, it's all about 'conversion' - how many of your site visitors you can convert into a lead, a sale, a member etc. Companies lacking a well conceived and well implemented website conversion strategy, are failing to leverage the most important marketing medium of the twenty-first century…
Crafting Effective Subject Lines - Ideally, our email campaigns begin a two- way dialogue with prospects and customers, making follow-up email an important tool for nurturing relationships. So, the subject line of your follow-up emails that are sent individually should be just as good as the ones you use in your email campaigns that are sent to a list of recipients…
7 Tips to Make Your E-newsletter Sell - In my role as Email Marketing DivaTM for Constant Contact®, most of the questions I answer every day have something to do with email newsletters. Today, our friend and newsletter expert, Debbie Weil, does the talking. She's got 7 hot tips on the content of your email newsletter and how you can make it sell…
Checklist - 25 Questions Before You Send - The email marketing landscape has certainly changed over the past year or so (the most significant changes being the increase in email blocking and filtering and the signing of the new Federal Can Spam law). These changes have resulted in updates to email marketing best practices that all legitimate email marketers should follow…
Your Subject line: fabulous or filtered? - As promised, this issue is all about the "Subject" line and how to make sure yours serves as an advantage in getting your emails delivered and opened, not an obstacle. Here's our friend and marketing expert, Nancy Michaels, with some great Subject line tips…
Your From line: benefit or barrier? - In this issue of Email Marketing Hints & Tips, we'll cover the From line, and what you can do to make sure your From line serves as an advantage, instead of an obstacle…
Get More Clicks With a Good Call-to-Action - What do we mean by "clicks" or the click through rate? Click Through Rate (or CTR) - The percentage (number of unique clicks from an email divided by the number of opens) of recipients that click on a given URL in your e-mail…
"Email Promotions that Deliver Results." - I have covered the elements of effective email promotions in several past issues of Hints & Tips. This time, let's take a look at a holiday promotion that not only exemplifies those elements, but even better delivered a click through rate of more than 22%…
I Get a 'Click' Out of You: Writing Email Copy - Like any hit song, good email copy can capture the attention of your recipients, striking a chord that makes them take action and click through to your site…
I've heard that line before… - A great "Subject" line will keep you from getting denied and keep your email from getting deleted…
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» EMAIL NEWSLETTERS
Five Ways To Speed Up Newsletter Production - To get the maximum benefit from your newsletter, you need to email your list on a regular schedule. If your mailings are primarily promotional in nature you can send them once or twice a month without annoying your subscribers. Here's some tips to speed up production of your newsletters.
Real-life Small Business Newsletter Tips - It has been said that experience is the best teacher. So, for this issue, I went in search of a small business owner who could share real-life email newsletter experience. That's when I found Betsy Harper, CEO of Sales and Marketing Search - a small business owner who has been publishing her "Framing the Issues" email newsletter for more than three years with great success.
Strike One. . . You're Out! - Whether you are considering starting your own E-newsletter, or already have one in place, it is important to remember one thing: Your devoted and faithful subscribers have working unsubscribe links - and they are not afraid to use them…
The 4 Secrets to an Effective E-Newsletter - It's no secret that offering value to your customers in the form of useful information is one of the best ways to initiate, develop and solidify relationships. But, how do you continue, issue after issue, to make your newsletter stand out in the crowd and keep your readers reading? Our friend and newsletter expert, Michael Katz, tells us how…
I Hear You Knocking, But You Can't Come In - How to get more subscribers by sharing relevant information up front. Our friend and newsletter expert, Michael Katz, tells us how…
Newsletter Tips: Teasers or the whole article? - Whether you're thinking about starting an email newsletter, or have already launched one, you may have considered whether to include entire articles in your newsletter, or go with a teaser that links to the full article on your website. In this issue, our friend and newsletter expert, Debbie Weil, shares some tips that can help you make the right decision - according to your audience…
Are You Listening or Just Talking? - Your email newsletter doesn't have to be just another outbound communication to your customer base. You can use it to encourage two-way communication that will bring you closer to your customers and increase your understanding of what they want and need. Our friend and newsletter expert, Michael Katz explains…
I Read the News Today, Oh Boy - Part II - When I wrote part one of "I Read the News Today, Oh Boy" - way back in July of last year, I didn't necessarily expect to be writing a part two. But, "oh boy," do I see a disturbing trend…
"E-Newsletters That Work." - I get a lot of questions about email newsletters from Hints & Tips readers, so this week I asked good friend and newsletter expert Michael Katz to share his thoughts on the subject. Michael surprised and delighted me with his new e-book: E-Newsletters That Work. It is a valuable guide that provides straightforward, how-to information on creating a powerful newsletter that begs to be read, and forwarded…
More Newsletter Tips and a Real-world Example - Whether you are in the midst of developing a newsletter, or tinkering with the one you already have, you can benefit from taking a look at what makes other email newsletters successful. Check out the TimeShareValues newsletter and you will see what I mean…
Holiday Greetings Are Not Enough - As an email marketer I am duty bound to extol the virtues of holiday greetings sent via email rather than direct mail. Email greetings are less expensive, easier to create, quicker to deliver and likely have a better chance of being opened than any direct mail these days. But, a holiday greeting alone cannot compare to the results you can achieve with, say, an email newsletter. Our good friend Michael Katz of Blue Penguin Development agrees. Here is what he has to say on the subject…
I Read the News Today, Oh boy… - Email Newsletters are growing in popularity. Why? Because companies of all sizes know that offering value to their customers in the form of information is the best way to initiate, develop and solidify relationships. Whatever the size of your company, you too can develop your own email newsletter…
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» PLANNING, TESTING & TROUBLESHOOTING
Simple Segmentation. Serious Results. - Want to stand out in the inbox? Then you’ll need to test, measure and refine every email you send. Part of the testing process involves segmentation…
Send two emails and call me in the morning - Sending too many emails, too often is enough to make some of your subscribers downright sick, so make sure time is on your side when you hit the send button…
When Bad Things Happen to Good Email Marketers - I first started writing Email Marketing Hints & Tips in March of 2001 and I remember when, much to my surprise and disappointment, I received my first spam complaint…
Tips on planning for 2003 - As we quickly approach the end of 2002, we look forward to the beginning of a brand new year filled with promise and opportunity. This brief lull between holidays is a great time for setting goals and planning your email marketing strategy for 2003…
Testing, Testing... 1, 2, 3 - If at first you don't succeed, "try, try again" and "test, test again." One of email marketing's greatest advantages is that it is easier (and much less expensive!) to test than any other marketing vehicle. This means with just a little effort, you can increase the effectiveness of your campaigns and get the results you're looking for. Email marketing author and expert, Kim MacPherson, explains how…
Achieving the perfect consistency… - Variety may be the spice of life, but perfect consistency is the key to a successful marketing mix. Consistency will not only save you time by helping you simplify and focus your marketing efforts but, more importantly, it will help you set and routinely meet the expectations of your customers and prospects. And that equals a positive impact to your bottom line…
Campaign Testing 1, 2, 3's - Kudos to savvy expert email marketers who consistently meet or exceed the goals of every campaign. For the rest of us, however, email marketing is not an exact science, but an ongoing learning process. That's where testing comes in. And, it just so happens that email marketing is easier and less expensive to test than any other marketing vehicle…
Sometimes It's Good to Get Ahead of Yourself - The execution of a single effective email campaign, much less your entire email marketing strategy, requires some serious thought, planning, scheduling and tweaking. So, take some time to look ahead and develop an email marketing plan to keep you focused and on track to meet your goals…
If you have a USP, it may be contagious! - Your USP is what makes your company, product or service the best solution to a problem, the best way to fulfill a need or desire or the best way to achieve a goal…
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» RESOURCES
Top Ten Email Marketing Hints & Tips - Confirm that you’re an email marketing expert, refresh your knowledge or learn something brand new that will help you dramatically improve your email marketing results! This Top Ten List of Email Marketing Hints & Tips covers practical and actionable information that every good email marketer should know.
Five Tips for Getting to Know Your Prospects - Be sure your B-to-B email communications are targeted to your prospects' interests and relevant to their jobs. Marketing expert, Diania Huff, provides you with five tips on getting to know your prospects.
Your Most Important Lessons Learned in 2004 - Our customers share their top email marketing lessons learned during 2004. Gain valuable insight into how our customers maximized their email campaigns…
Top 20 Email Marketing Terms You Should Know - Part Two - In today's issue, you will find 20 additional terms to expand your email marketing vocabulary. Learn these, and your coworkers may deem you an email marketing Guru or Diva…
How Anti-spam Laws Apply to You - This issue of Hints & Tips is designed to help you make an educated evaluation of your current email address collection and emailing processes and feel confident that you are following both the law, and the best practices of email marketing (they happen to be the same thing)…
"Top Tips to Write a Persuasive Case Study" - Case studies, when written and used correctly, can be very powerful marketing tools. The reason being, a good case study can bring even the most abstract concept to life, illustrating how your company, product or service solved a real business problem for a customer. In other words, the proverbial "proof is in the pudding." Our friend and email markeing expert, Debbie Weil, gives us the recipe…
Knowledge is power, so feed your head. - Many of you smart marketers are already planning your online marketing strategies for the fast approaching fall and back-to-school season. And chances are, you will need resources and information to assist you in formulating and executing those plans. Well, here is some expert help…
Top 20 Email Marketing Terms You Should Know - If you have ever felt out of your depth in a discussion about email marketing, rest assured you are not alone. The top twenty common email marketing terms and definitions below will help you expand your email marketing vocabulary and make you look and feel like an expert…
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» SPAM, BOUNCES, FILTERS & BLOCKING
What You Need to Know About Authentication - Email authentication is the latest in tactics that will be used by some ISPs and corporate domains to decrease spam and to increase the number of permission-based emails that make it to the inbox.
The Truth About Blacklists and How They Affect You - I thought it would be useful to clear up some possible misconceptions about blacklists and their effect on your email deliverability. Email blacklists, a.k.a. blocklists, can affect your email deliverability, but not as much of an impact as you may think.
5 Tips to Increase Your Email Deliverability - Your email deliverability is important because customer acquisition is expensive, and undeliverable emails could mean the loss of customers and prospects that you paid dearly to acquire. Since it is fifteen times less expensive to market to an existing customer than it is to acquire a new one, your efforts to understand and decrease your email bounces - no matter why the bounce occurred - will be well worth your time…
How Anti-spam Laws Apply to You - This issue of Hints & Tips is designed to help you make an educated evaluation of your current email address collection and emailing processes and feel confident that you are following both the law, and the best practices of email marketing (they happen to be the same thing)…
Seriously Dude, Where's My Email? - In a previous article entitled "Dude, Where's my email?," I gave an overview of all types of email bounces. Today, in the sequel, I want to cover a few of the hottest subjects in email marketing today: email blocking, email filters and false positives. I'll define the issues and terms, explain what industry experts are doing on your behalf and tell you what you can do to make sure your permission-based email gets through…
Dude, where's my email? - Undeliverable emails, email "bouncebacks" or "bounces" for short, are becoming more and more of a challenge for email marketers these days. Why should you be concerned? Because customer acquisition is expensive, and email bouncebacks could mean the loss of customers and prospects that you paid dearly to acquire…
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» ONLINE MARKETING MISCELLANEOUS
Building Better Website Conversion - Part 2 - The elements of your website are strikingly similar to those of your email campaigns. In fact, you can apply website expert Mat Greenfield's advice to any email campaign and get great conversion.
Building Better Website Conversion - An effective email marketing campaign is a powerful tool to drive additional
traffic to your website. Establishing your credibility as an expert,
highlighting your great prices and value, etc. can all be accomplished via
email, and can create a click.
Create a Website that Draws a Crowd -How do you create a new website or improve your existing website to increase your online success? This week our friend, and award-winning business writer and author, Sheryl Lindsell-Roberts gives us some great tips on writing and designing a website that gets results!…
Search Engine Marketing Tips, Tricks, and Strategies - We've talked previously about ways to build your email list. One is providing a way for your website visitors to opt-in to hear from you. Great idea, right? But as rocker Tom Petty once said "the waiting is the hardest part." Where are those elusive site visitors? And how can you attract more of them so that your list (among other things like sales and brand recognition) grows faster? Our friend and search engine expert, Kevin Lee, explains…
7 Tips to Get Online Mileage Out of Your PR - Public relations is all about making contact with members of the press, freelance writers and anyone else who influences your target audience. A good PR strategy will attract attention to your company, create a buzz with a viral effect and ultimately drive more traffic to your site or store. It's easy to incorporate public relations into your email marketing strategy. Our friend and online public relations expert, Renee Shallis, gives us some great tips…
Online Marketing on a Shoestring Budget - If your tight marketing budget has you at the end of your rope, try marketing on a shoestring with these suggestions from our friend Hollis Thomases from WebAdvantage.net…
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