It’s easy to find tips on how to improve your marketing, but it’s not as easy to find tips that you can easily apply today. Of course you want to do whatever it takes to see better results with your email marketing campaign, but you only have so many hours to work on it.

Today, we’re guiding you through 10 ways you can improve your account NOW. In fact, most of you will be able to have this done by lunch.

1. Make Sure Your Sign Up Form Mentions Your Email List

Do you offer a free guide or other material to visitors who fill out your form? If so, make sure you highlight that it’s a bonus – the emails are the real reason they should be signing up.

Why do this: If people aren’t 100% sure what will happen when they give you their information, that puts you at risk for spam complaints or people who simply aren’t going to read your emails, both of which can cause problems with getting your emails delivered.

How to do it in AWeber: All you need to do is make the change on the Web Forms page in your account. It will automatically update if you use the Javascript snippet on your site. If you used the raw HTML, you should change the form in your account, but you’ll need to repaste the code in your website. Before you do, make sure you take care of #2 and #3 on this list, as they also require changes in this section.

2. Change That “Submit” button

Most sign up forms have a button that says “Submit” for when visitors are finished entering their information. Nothing wrong with it. It gets the job done. But it could be something else, too.

Why change it: Small changes, especially with the words you use in your call to action, can make a big difference. For example:

Visual Website Optimizer published this test by Veeam. “Request pricing” brought in a 161.6% increase in clicks. Veeam surveyed their audience and found that most people wanted an easier way to find pricing on the site. This test confirmed by changing “quote” to “pricing” that people were looking for that word.

How to do it in AWeber: Make the changes in the Web Forms page in your account. It will automatically update if you use the Javascript snippet on your site. If you used the raw HTML, you should change the form in your account, but you’ll need to repaste the code in your website.

3. Let Visitors Know The Form Submission Was Successful

After someone submits their information in your form, something has to happen. If the page simply reloads, that can be confusing. Did the form work? Make sure it’s clear to new subscribers they have successfully submitted their information.

Why this is important: You want to keep people interacting with your website, but not at the expense of having them try to submit their information multiple times. You can create a special page just for new submissions. It doesn’t need a lot of copy; just enough to explain what happened.

How to do it in AWeber: You can enter the URL of a custom thank-you or landing page in Step 2 of the Web Forms page. If you can’t quickly create your own page, use one of ours. Full instructions available here.

4. Send Subscribers To A Custom Confirmation Success page

People just added to your list will get a confirmation message. They are required to click a link to confirm they want to receive your emails and that link has to do something.

Why a custom page: They just confirmed, so they’re obviously interested. Take advantage of that! Tim Carter did… and got profits climbed over $11,000 in 16 months.

How to do it in AWeber: First, create a page just for this and then enter the URL of that page in the List Settings of your account.

5. Include Social Sharing Buttons In Your Emails

Social media has made it so referrals are no longer done on a one-to-one basis, but a one-to-hundreds basis or even more. You should make it easy for them to accomplish this.

Why social sharing buttons: With just a click, people can share your emails on the social media platform of their choice. It’s free advertising for you!

How to do it in AWeber: In the drag-and-drop message editor, just drop in the “Sharing” icon, pick which networks you want to include and indicate what you’d like to have shared (the email or a custom link). Read step-by-step instructions here.

6. Include A Link To A Web Version For All Emails

You’ve probably noticed at the top of some of the emails your receive a link that says something like “View in browser.” That link allows you to view the email as a web page.

Why it’s good to have: Some people prefer to click on that rather than turn on images in their email. If it’s important they see all the content you have presented, it’s good to offer this option.

How to do it in AWeber: Use the Personalization button in the drag-and-drop editor and select “Archived Web Version” or insert {!archive_url} as the link for the “View online here” text.

7. Link Your Blog To Your Email List

Instead of taking the time to create both a blog post and an email from scratch, you can set it up so your blog posts get turned into emails automatically. You can then set it up so the emails are sent automatically or you can go in and add some things before sending.

Why this is great: Doing this will ensure content will be sent to your subscribers regardless of how busy your life is. It’s incredibly easy to set up and people that use this feature report it brings more traffic to their website.

How to do it in AWeber: This feature is called the “Blog Broadcast” and it can be found under the Messages tab. Full instructions are detailed here.

8. Include A Sign Up Form In Your Archive

An archive lets you store as many emails as you want in one place and visitors can click to see your emails as web pages. You can include a sign up form on your archive page so visitors can also sign up to receive your emails.

Here’s what it looks like:

Why this is a must: If people are visiting your archive, they must be interested in your content. If they like what they see, they’ll want to sign up. Instead of directing them to click on a bunch of links before getting to a sign up form, reduce the barriers by letting them do it right there.

How to do it in AWeber: In the List Settings of your account, there’s a checkbox to include a form in your archive. You can find more details about setting up the archive here.

9. Send An Email To People Not Opening

Not everyone will open your emails, but it doesn’t mean they aren’t interested. Fortunately, you can send a reminder email to people who haven’t opened as a way to get them caught up.

Why you should do this: It’s pretty much guaranteed to boost your results. Different time zones, schedules and other factors may cause someone not to open your email the first time, but sending another one on a different day and time could do the trick. You’re bound to catch some of the ones you missed the first time.

How to do it in AWeber: When you open a sent broadcast, you have the option to look at unopens. From here, you can click to send an email to these subscribers, and this will take you to the message editor. This new email will be pre-set to send to unopens only. Full instructions here.

10. Put Your Brand On Everything

Every page and every email you control gives you the opportunity to put your logo up for people to see. Make sure you do it!

Why this is important: You want people to be able to easily recognize your business instantly. People like familiarity; if your brand becomes familiar, they’re more likely to be loyal.

How to do this in AWeber: For your archive and unsubscribe pages, you can set this up in the List Settings page. For emails, use the drag-and-drop editor to drop in your logo and it will also be saved in your gallery.

Now Go Do It!

It’s great that you’re reading what you should be doing, but the actual results come from doing the work. You know what you need to do – so do it!

Corey Koehler didn’t plan on making music his career. He was the guy that picked up the guitar by the campfire for fun, but his friends saw talent and encouraged him to record. He now has a full schedule of shows and music sales on his website. Smart email marketing helped get him where he is today.

Why Email Marketing?

“Somewhere along the line, I heard the phrase ‘the money is in the list.’ Once I had a deeper understanding of what it meant both monetarily and for relationship building, it was a no-brainer,” says Corey.

Overall, Corey wanted to use email to help better establish his audience. Musicians especially rely on a loyal audience to thrive and email is perfect for cultivating that audience. Corey explained, “I want to be as authentic and as open as possible while keeping an eye on sound marketing practices.”

Corey knew he had to both attract subscribers and keep those subscribers interacting with his site and music. There are three important things he did to reach these goals: set up a pop up form, make the welcome message more clear and send emails to people who were not opening.

The Tried-and-True Pop-Up

If you’ve been reading marketing blogs and case studies for awhile, you’ve probably come across a pop-up form success story. For those of you who haven’t heard of them, pop-up forms appear above the web page and visitors can either close out the box or fill it out. Why do these forms do so well? Most likely because:

• They focus visitors’ attention on the form. Some types, like the one Corey uses, will even gray out the rest of the page.
• Visitors are forced to take some sort of action when the form appears.
• Unlike pop-up ads, which might not be relevant to the website, these forms offer more information on something the visitor appears to be interested in.

Since Corey put the form up, there has been an 80% increase in subscribers.

This graph shows the growth on Corey’s list for the past year and at what point the results were affected by the pop-up.

Another factor for growth rate is whether or not subscribers stay on the list; if you have a high turnover rate you won’t see as much growth. The next two things help Corey keep subscribers on his list.

A Welcome Message Remodel

The welcome email can do great things, and when Corey asked me to look at his, I was eager to share my thoughts.

The welcome email is the first email a subscriber will get. A good welcome email should:
1. Deliver on any promises you made at sign up (like free downloads).
2. Reiterate what subscribers will get out of your emails.
3. Set expectations for future emails and how often you plan to send.

Corey’s email did the first item, but left out the rest. His email was also all text, making it harder to skim. Here’s what I recommended:

• Use a template to make the email more visually appealing and keep the width contained to less than 600 pixels. Anything over will most likely get cut off on subscribers’ screens.
• Add images to break up the text monotony and make the email less intimidating to look at.
• Add the welcoming text I described earlier.
• Make the links stand out so people know what to click on.
• Include a photo in the signature to make the email from a real person.
• Add social media buttons to get people to spread the word.

Here’s what the updated email looks like:

This email has brought in almost 20% more clickthroughs than the previous version.

Success With Sending To Specific Groups

Corey often sends emails to subscribers who haven’t opened a particular email. “For larger campaigns, I send an email broadcast on a Monday morning, then send the “unopens” the same email on a Wednesday evening and then the remaining “unopens” on a Saturday or Sunday morning when they may have some extra time to sit down and read the email with a cup of coffee,” says Corey.

Corey set up like this because he believes that what time you receive an email will affect what you do with it. He’s not alone. Laura Vanderkam talked on Money Watch about how her emails get open more on Sunday afternoons.

The Marketing Experiments blog also talks about timing and how it all depends on your industry. Copyblogger takes a similar approach, calling across-the-board rules on timing “B.S.”

Based on all these sources, it’s really about finding what works best for you.

Corey reports this tactic has nearly doubled his open and click rates compared to past campaigns. Here’s a look at how one of these Monday-Wednesday-weekend sends turned out:

Notice that the second send brings in the most new opens. If you’re looking to boost response rates, consider sending to unopens at least once.

The Benefits of Email Marketing

“The biggest thing for me has been the relationship building,” Corey said. “As a musician, it’s very powerful for me to be able to be accessible and have an ongoing, open dialogue with people who can relate to my music.”

“For example, I recently had a women reply to an email to tell me that my music was helping her get through chemotherapy. Sure, this sort of thing happens without an email marketing mechanism in place, but it is a hell of a lot easier for someone wanting to reach out to hit ‘reply’ and send a message than it is to hunt down contact information.”

“In addition to that, it has helped me gauge the success of my marketing efforts and create a recurring stream of revenue – which, for musicians, is not the easiest thing to do these days.”

Want To Improve Your Marketing?

If you found this story helpful, you should join my new email list.

I love helping people get the most out of their marketing campaigns, and I’m constantly researching the latest tips and trends. My email series comes with a free guide, “25 Ways To Collect Subscribers,” tips on how to grow your audience and design effective emails, plus you’ll get exclusive, in-depth case studies not available anywhere else.

If you don’t have a designer, it might be hard to get that sweet look you want for your emails, blog and website. We’re going to make it easier for you today, with some links to free images you can use in your design.

Smashing Magazine is a site for professional web designers and developers. Here’s what they say about the free images they offer: “We love to release freebies. Every release helps to make the Web a nicer place, which is why we support designers and challenge them to release something for free in order to be featured on Smashing Magazine. And the results are quite often pretty impressive.”

Here are some of our favorite freebies from their site…

Your One-Stop Resource For Images and Social Icons

Social Media Hearts

Want to ask for some social media love in a fun way? Try some hearts! This set contains icons for 22 different platforms.

Get These Hearts

Fun For Foodies

Does your business have to do with food? These social media icons shaped as cakes and popsicles can be a tasty addition to your design.

Get These Icons

Something For Everybody

This collection offers a wide range of images, and not just social media icons. This set includes stock food images and general purpose images.

Get These Images

Be Ready This Christmas

If you want to make your holiday emails more festive this year, these images are for you. From traditional to comical, you’ll find something to deck your emails with.

Get Holiday Images

Some Social Media Booze

These social media icons come served up in wine or beer glasses. There are 12 different icons in this set, perfect for anyone in the entertainment industry or if you have something to celebrate.

Get These Icons

More All-Purpose Sets

This is another set that has something for everyone. If you’re in music or gambling, there are sets specific to you as well. You can also find some more creative social media icons.

Get These Images

Artsy Fillers For Artists

If you’re in the arts, this set probably has something from you in this 34-image set. Images for painters, photographers, filmmakers and writers are a sample of what’s included.

Where to Look

Some Fun and Animals

Want to break from the norm? This article shares images perfect for that. You’ve got some wildly cute animals, The Simpsons and other fun creations. There are also some of the usual all-purpose stock choices.

See More Ideas

Cute Twitter Birds

You may have seen these blue birds hanging around another website. Adorable and popular, here are 12 images to encourage your audience to follow you or spread the world around you on Twitter.

3 Steps to More Sales

Where Do You Get Your Images?

Do you take your own photographs? Hire a professional? Or do you have a great resource others can check out for free images? Let us know in the comments.

Imagine you’re at your doctor’s office. Your doctor starts explaining the state of your health with colorful slang, maybe some expletives here and there, leaving you a little uncomfortable. Your doctor is supposed to use a professional tone, not a casual one.

This situation can happen to your subscribers as well. People have an idea about your brand, hopefully it’s an idea you helped shape, and when you go against the norm it can be off-putting for your audience.

Let’s take a look at what tones you can be taking, how other businesses use these tones and how you can establish the right tone for your business.

The Formal, Professional Tone

Who it works for: Doctors, lawyers, schools and non-profits, or if you have a high-end product that you want to be taken very seriously

Why use it: If your subject matter tends to be on the serious side, you’ll want to match the tone with your content.

Example: Kokua Hawai’i Foundation

How they accomplish a professional tone:

• The design is colorful and eye-catching, but the text is formal
• They refer to themselves in the third person
• They use language you’d expect from a professional interaction

If you don’t want to go the professional route, you can try the opposite…

The Casual Tone

Who it works for: Restaurants, sports clubs, bands

Why use it: If you want to be a subscribers go-to hangout spot or work-out spot where they can feel like they’re going to a friend’s.

Example: Rosso Trattoria Italia

How they use the casual tone:

• It reads like a note from a friend
• They use first person – it’s from Kristian, the owner
• There are slang and colloquial language

Of course, you don’t necessarily have to do professional or casual. You could do something in between…

The Professional-but-Friendly Tone

Who it works for: Professional services like photography, construction, real estate agents and salons

Why use it: You have important content to communicate, but you don’t want to come across as stiff and formal.

Example: Yoga Journal

How they pull this off:

• They engage the reader in a conversation starting off with a question
• They share information specifically geared towards helping their readers
• They use a newsletter format

If you’re looking to sell something, you might want to take your tone in a completely different direction…

The Sales Pitch Tone

Who it works for: Retailers, attractions, travel agents

Why use it: If your company is based on product(s), you may want to adopt the sales pitch tone.

Example: GAP

Why it’s a sales pitch:

• There is not a lot said
• The email is highly visual
• The goal is clearly the sale

Keep in mind you can blend the sales pitch with another tone though…

The Friendly Sales Pitch

Who it works for: Retailers looking to add warmth to their brand

Why use it: For big business retailers like GAP, they have no problem sending hard-sell emails out to their large customer base. For smaller businesses, you may want to look at developing a relationship with your subscribers while you’re trying to convert them.

Example: Daily Candy

What makes this work as a friendly sales pitch:

• They use friendly, personal language
• You get to know the company
• The end includes a link to the product they talk about

Note that Daily Candy is a news site – they’re not the ones actually selling the product – but they way they present the product in the post is perfect as a friendly sales pitch.

So Should You Change Your Tone?

If one of these examples matched what you’re trying to do, you might be eager to try it out. For those just starting out, this is the perfect time to set the right tone for your emails. For those that have been emailing awhile, one study found that it might be good to try out a different tone.

If you’re in the latter boat, keep in mind that it will be very confusing for subscribers if you talk to them one way and the next week you talk to them in a different way. Try to figure out what your brand means to people. Are you active on social media? If so, the jump to casual emails may not be that high.

Regardless, any change you make in tone should start as a subtle shirt here and there until you see how your subscribers respond.

What Tone Do You Respond To?

Do you like businesses that talk to you like a friend, or do you prefer more formal interactions? Does it matter what the business does?

This got me thinking – will animal pictures and references bring more traffic for non-animal businesses? I thought it would… and I was right.

Operation: Animals = More Traffic

As a writer for a marketing blog, I realized I couldn’t go too overboard. People aren’t subscribing for cute animal pictures; they want marketing advice. So last year I developed a plan to create a few blog posts that tie marketing advice to cute animal photos. I would compare the traffic to those posts with the traffic to other posts in that time frame. And so it began…

Post #1: Animals in Email Design: The Trick to Grabbing Your Readers’ Attention?

It made sense to kick off with a post presenting the theory to our readers. I pulled examples from both big and small businesses to show how they use animals in their email design.

The Results: The post received 40% more traffic than average that quarter.

Post #2: I Can Has Subscribers? 10 Things LOLCats Can Teach You About Email Marketing

This post was a fun one to create. I took images from LOLCats and turned them into lessons about email marketing.

The Results:The post received 28% more traffic than average that quarter.

Post #3: Anatomy of a Compelling Email from Dog’s Best Life

I was able to get creative with this one thanks to AWeber customer Sara Hansen who runs the website Dog’s Best Life. I noticed she had cool emails, so I shared one and compared it to the anatomy of a puppy.

The results: This one had the biggest response with 112% more traffic than average that quarter.

Post #4: What Our Pets Teach Us About Marketing Relationships

This post was similar to the LOLCats post, but I used personal pet photos from my fellow AWeber team members.

The Results: This post received 14% more traffic than average that quarter.

The Science Behind My Theory

In January 2013, Yahoo! published an article called “‘I Wanna Eat You Up!’ Why We Go Crazy For Cute.” The article reported on a study where participants were given bubble wrap and watched a slide show. Whenever a slide with a super cute animal came up, more bubbles were popped.

Maybe these popped bubbles can relate back to my results. If people are eager to move their hands and do something, maybe on the internet that equates to clicking to share it?

So Am I On To Something?

It’s tempting for me to declare that I’m 100% sure the results I got were directly related to the animals. But, alas, I cannot. Some factors that may have played a role:

• My writing tends to improve when I’m writing about something I’m excited about
• People may be more interested in one topic over another
• Certain subject lines are more catchy than others

Rest assured, I’ll continue to monitor this. And here’s something to take the cuteness level of this post up a notch:

What Do You Think?

Is this something you’d try in your own marketing? Are you more likely to read a post with a cute animal in it? And how cute is my cat Sassy?

Wasn’t that cool? I made you scroll for a really long time.

Scrolling used to be considered a hindrance to conversions on most sites, but not anymore. Facebook, Twitter and other social networks made it okay, even enjoyable.

That explains why you’re seeing more and more sites that look like this. Saucony’s website design is known as parallax scrolling. This is a design technique that makes background images move slower than images in the foreground, creating the illusion of depth and immersion for the person scrolling on the site. You can see more examples of it here.

But this is website talk. What about emails? Is it better to have longer emails? Well… maybe. Let’s dive into this concept a little further.

Why Scrolling IS Working on Websites

Here are the three main reasons this type of design has really picked up in recent years:

• It’s visually appealing – you’ll notice that the length does not mean it’s content-dense. These websites rely more on images and whitespace to achieve their desired effect.
• It tells a story – we know that people like stories. On the communication theory side, Walter Fisher’s Narrative Paradigm theory says that all meaningful communication is a form of storytelling. On the marketing side, we see it trending in content and businesses are paying to keep up with the trend.
• It’s fun to interact with – yeah, it’s pretty awesome.

What About Emails?

Traditional best practices in email marketing will tell you to keep your emails short. People have short attention spans and you have to plan for that. Some people even use scripts to block emails that have too many words.

But remember that sites that use parallax scrolling don’t have a lot of words. It’s the design elements that make it so long. That makes this something to consider for email.

Here are three takeaways for applying this technique to email:

• More whitespace and images might be worth a test, even if it makes the email longer.
• The call to action doesn’t have to be “above the fold.” Many of the websites include a call to action at the end of all that scrolling.
• Look at what keeps your subscribers engaged. Are they more likely to click on your links if you have something fun that leads them down to your call to action?

What Do You Think?

Do you think this design on websites will lose its magic? Do you think longer, more image-heavy emails will start to emerge?

It depends on how you do it. There’s a right and a wrong way to do everything in marketing, and this is no exception.

The best way to take your marketing to the next level is by using email and social media together to cover what’s happening. We’ll share examples of emails that successfully stand out, ones that miss the mark and what the deal is with real-time social media coverage.

Be a Winner by Planning Ahead

Some of these popular events can spark some cool content ideas. It lets you take a break from the traditional newsletter or sales pitch, and focus on something exciting and timely. Being the fun, cool company can help your brand image, so when people are ready to get back to business, YOUR business may be the one they turn to.

Doing something different can also be more fun for you. If you’ve been feeling uninspired, these events can help bring some life back into your work.

Here’s an example of what Universal Music did with their email after the Olympics:

Highlighting music used in the Closing Ceremony was perfect for their audience.

Here’s a different example from Habitually Chic after the 2013 Oscars:

Habitually Chic knows their audience loves fashion, and this is a fun way to highlight a recent event for their subscribers.

Make Sure Your Ideas Will Work

There’s a problem when it comes to using these events in your content: it’s overdone. Tons of companies do it. You can only stand out if:

• You can relate it to your business without looking “desperate.” If you’re just name-dropping, that’s not actually relating the event to your business.
• Your audience is actually interested in the event. You can use surveys and social media to figure out what events your audience are most excited about.

Here are examples of companies that dropped the ball…

Terrain sent out an email with the subject line “A Sale of Olympic Proportions,” and the email that followed looked like this:

No fun Olympic theme, no other mention of the Olympics, just a summer sale. Is this bad? No. But how often do you see this the word “Olympics” in your inbox during the Games? With so many companies doing this, people don’t respond to simple name-dropping.

You also have companies like Beauty Encounter that successfully incorporate an event into their marketing… but incorrectly. Here’s the 2013 Beauty Encounter Oscar email:

Great idea, right? Except the “Oscar Celebrity Scents Sale” features Katy Perry, Lady Gaga and Beyonce; a group that’s better suited for the Grammys sale. Even changing this sale to something like the “Red Carpet-Ready Scents Sale” would have been more on track.

So, you’ve got your emails set up for the days leading up to the event. Should you stop there? You could. Or…

Social Media During Events: Real-Time Marketing

If you’re up for a challenge, the up-and-coming trend is to use social media to respond to popular events in real time. Think of how Oreos handled the blackout at the Super Bowl. It was pretty genius:

Real-time marketing isn’t for everyone though. Sarah Hofstetter, president of 360i, talks about it in this article and says: “Investing in preparation for real-time response requires significant investment and preparation, so carefully choose moments that align with your brand and community. If the event doesn’t warrant the investment, think about how you can create event-specific content in advance so you can still be timely without the inherent risks and costs of being ‘real time.’”

Sarah notes that ‘real time’ really means real time. After Marco Rubio’s famous sip of water during the Republican rebuttal to the President’s State of the Union address, Poland Spring responded… 14 hours after it happened. They were mocked a bit.

You can also check out Convince & Convert’s Jay Baer’s article “17 (mostly failed) Brand Tweets From the Oscars.” For example, Stella Artolis tweeted a few images like this:

While they were timely, it’s not clever or especially shareable. Jay points out that it doesn’t really do anything for their brand.

Have You Tried Leveraging These Types of Events?

Do you plan out content for popular events? Have you tried real time marketing? Let us know in the comments.

Regardless of whether you want people to join your email list, make a purchase, follow you on social media or read the rest of an article, you’ll most likely need them to click on something. This “something” is how you call your visitors and readers to action.

There are many ways to do this, and the words you choose can have a big impact. You’ll need to do some testing to find what gets the best response from your audience. To give you an idea of where to start, here are 10 case studies you can learn from.

1. Are You Asking or Telling?

ABTests reported on a test Rypple ran on the text in their buttons:

“Respond Now” brought in a 13% more clicks than “Give Feedback.” This might be because “Respond Now” sounds more direct, and influences the person to act promptly, especially with the exclamation point added at the end. “Give” also tends to entail more sacrifice, i.e. you give gifts to people.

2. Does “Free” Trump “Try?”

ABTests reported on a test Firefox ran on their button text:

“Download Now – Free” had 4% more conversions. This might be because of the word “free.” Other tests have also shown that using “free” can bring in more results.” It’s possible that the results were close because “Try Firefox 3″ sounds less intimidating than downloading something – the next study will show why that might be the case.

3. Do Your Words Scare People Away?

We posted on our blog about a test the Cabot Heritage Corporation ran on their sign-up form buttons:

“Start my free subscription” decreased conversions by 22.9% in just two days. The word “subscription” entails more commitment, and that can scare anyone away. Notice the winning text also has the word “Free” in it.

4. Is It Clear What You Want To Happen?

ABTests reported on a test Dustin Curtis ran on his link text:

The latter brought in 172% more clicks. This could be because it was more clear what was happening. “I’m on Twitter” could have just been linked to Twitter’s homepage, which wouldn’t be very helpful. The winning link makes it obvious you will be set up to follow Dustin Curtis on Twitter if you click that link. It’s also more actionable; it tells you what you should do.

5. Does “Free” Always Win?

ABTests reported on a test InDefero ran on navigation bar links:

“See plans and pricing” had a 52% increase in clicks. “Free Hosting” is certainly desirable, but it doesn’t communicate that a lot of information would be shared. It would be interesting to run this test somewhere other than the navigational bar; visitors may be looking for specific information in navigation links, so a special offer may be better in a different spot on the page.

6. What Does Your Audience Want?

Visual Website Optimizer reported on a test Veeam ran on a link in their sidebar:

“Request pricing” brought in a 161.6% increase in clicks. It’s actually pretty easy to determine why this happened; Veeam surveyed their audience and found that most people wanted an easier way to find pricing on the site. This test confirmed by changing “quote” to “pricing” that people were looking for that word.

7. Are You Using the Right Vocabulary?

ABTests reported on a test Gamesforlanguage.com ran on their button text:

“Instant Demo!” increased clicks by 83%. While “play” sounds more fun, “instant” means it will be quick and less time-consuming. “Demo” has a helpful connotation – I’ll learn what it is I’m getting into before being thrown into it.

8. Is It Better To Be Personal?

ABTests reported on a test Xemion Web Designer Directory ran on their navigation link text:

“Add Your Company” increased clicks by 43%. Both of these communicate the same goal, but “Advertising” doesn’t speak in terms of “your company.” This personal touch makes it feel like Xemion is speaking to you, not at you. “Yes, I would love to add my company to your directory,” might be the answer in the visitor’s mind.

9. What Role Does Relevance Have?

Unbounce reported on a test WriteWork ran on button text:

“Read Full Essay Now” is the winner; “Get Instant Access Now” decreased conversions by 34%. This is most likely an issue of relevance – people are reading part of the essay and want to read the rest of it. “Read Full Essay Now” satisfies that need better.

10. Do Multiple Requests Impact Each Other?

Sometimes the words of other calls for action you have included can influence click-through rates. Visual Website Optimizer reported on a test by Artsy Editor that demonstrated this:

Artsy Editor’s goal was to get people to their pricing page. The first one had the best result – 47% increase in click-throughs to that page. The second one brought in a 17% increase and the last one had no improvement. Having the price in the button could have created more friction; people weren’t thinking about the cost until they saw it in that button. Artsy Editor might want to test different price points, but it’s clear that people prefer a demo/trial offer over a pitch to buy something.

Don’t Forget To TEST!

Researching case studies and experiments done by other companies is a great way to figure out what you should test. Keep in mind that you won’t necessarily have the same results – your audience is your audience and they might respond differently. These results are not rules you should be following; think of them as inspiration to run your own split tests.

Do You Have Test Results To Share?

We love to hear about test results! Please share what you’ve found in your own testing – be it emails, sign up forms or website pages.

Download The Free Guide!

Need help getting visitors to sign up on your web form?

This guide walks you through how to split test the web forms on your site. Whether you want to test the design, the call to action or different images, this guide will help you with where to start and includes more case studies.

There are only 24 hours in a day, and if you like spending some of that time sleeping, it can get stressful and frustrating for small business owners to find the time to get everything done.

But many small business owners out there are succeeding. They’re able to do it all by working hard (of course), but also by using the tools they have in smart ways.

Take Stan and John, for example. Two business owners who merged their blog with their email marketing to grow their audience and keep customers interested.

Blog Broadcasts: The Time-Saving Tool You’ll Love

The blog broadcast will take content from your blog and automatically create that content in an email newsletter.

The way it does this is by checking your blog’s RSS feed. When you have a new post, the blog broadcast tool will pick it up and create a broadcast message for it. You can set your message to send at a certain time or after a certain number of posts.

You can also choose a template for your blog posts to appear in. The RSS variables will automatically pull your blog post, but you can also set up your own text in the template that will stay the same until you change it.

Stan’s Story: Building an Audience

Stan Horst owns Cabin Creekwood in Virginia. He shares articles on his website about local attractions to encourage people to book one of his cabins.

When asked what his email marketing goals were, Stan said: “To build a list of faithful readers to whom we can stay connected so that when they think of a getaway, they think of us.” Since most people enjoy the great outdoors in warmer months, Stan also wants to increase business during the slower season.

So, Stan set up a blog broadcast.

Now, what he puts on his site…

…gets sent to email subscribers:

And it’s working out great. “It has enabled me to have regular contact with guests and prospects, without the effort required to write a newsletter from scratch,” says Stan. “The best part is it is a one-time setup.”

John’s Story: Increasing Sales

John Brand owns Buckaroo Leather, a tack store. He has big plans to increase his sales and online presence in 2013… and the blog broadcast is going to help him get there.

The Buckaroo Leather blog lets visitors see what’s new and what’s on sale. The blog is an excellent place to share this information; blogs are often the entry points to websites.

Here’s what it looks like on the Buckaroo Leather site:

And this gets sent to email subscribers:

Why does John like this feature? “It allows us to communicate with a large number of people with very little effort in a consistent and timely manner, sending updates, specials and our informative newsletter.”

He also appreciated how easy the feature was to use. “We like the ability to quickly choose a template and then just fill in the blanks, no designing required. Just find a template you like and you are done,” says John. “I also like the ability to post the blog broadcast on my various social media outlets.”

Recap: How Blog Broadcasts Help You

Based on Stan and John’s stories, here’s what we learned about the blog broadcasts’ benefits for business owners:

• It’s an easy feature to use
• It keeps subscribers engaged
• It saves time
• It can help grow your audience
• Templates make it look good

Want to start using this feature in AWeber? Get started now.

What Tools Help You?

Is there a feature or some other tool that has made your life easier as a business owner? We’d like to hear about it!

It’s wise to keep tabs on what your subscribers are doing. If you look at your stats and see some subscribers aren’t clicking on your links or even opening your emails, it’s time to take action.

We’ve talked before about how to handle inactive subscribers, but you have to be careful. Good ideas executed badly will not bring you the results you’re looking for.

Here is a cautionary tale about one big businesses’ misguided attempt in waking up sleepy subscribers.

A Surprising Discovery in My Spam Folder

I love Edible Arrangements. They make great gifts, especially when I can help eat them. I purchase from them a few times a year; not a lot, but I figure I’m a decent customer. Last summer I decided to subscribe to their email list, hoping for some sweet deals.

This made me surprised to find this email in my spam folder a few months later:

Why It Confused Me

First off, I like this company. I buy from this company. Why the heck would it be spam?

Oh, maybe it’s a duplicate confirmation message, and I already received one back when I signed up, so maybe my GMail sends duplicates to the spam folder? What’s going on here?

I looked at the bottom of the email and saw this:

Since August was a few months ago, this made me think it would be pretty weird to have a confirmation message, duplicate or otherwise, go out this late.

Then, I noticed something. The blue button says “I still want to hear from you.” They know I have been hearing from them. I suppose I didn’t interact with their emails enough and was put on an “inactive” list. Fair enough.

I checked it out in the subscription settings Edible Arrangements set up:

The “adding segment for existing subscribers” makes me pretty sure they were sending this message to their inactive subscribers.

Why Is This Marked As Spam?

Deliverability is a tough nut to crack. Any number of reasons could have put this email in my spam folder. But what I imagine is that many people marked this message as spam. I almost marked it as spam. And why? It wasn’t clear what was happening. I knew I had confirmed, so I was suspicious as to what this email is about. Clarity can make a huge difference.

How Edible Arrangements Should Have Done It

There are a few changes I would recommend:

• Take out “Please confirm your subscription” in the header – That line only belongs in a confirmation message. The kind you get right after you sign up.
• Change the buttons – Right now they’re “Confirm” and “Cancel” which is continuing the (misleading) idea that this is a confirmation message. Instead, they could try something like “Yes, I want to keep receiving your emails” and “No, I’d like to cancel my subscription now.”
• With the emphasis being placed on continuing instead of confirming, it would clear up a lot of confusion.
  

  What Mistakes Have You Seen From Big Businesses?

  We often look at major retailers and big corporations for ideas on how to market the right way… but that doesn’t mean they’re perfect. What cringe-worthy tactics have you seen?

As you can imagine, farmers aren’t spending too much of their time online. But Earth Fortification Supplies Company (Earthfort), a business that helps with management of soil biology for agriculture, markets to farmers.

So it’s no surprise that most of Earthfort’s subscribers come from offline sources. But what might be a surprise is that Earthfort has a lot of people confirming their subscription and reading their emails, and have 0 complaints on all emails sent thus far.

Earthfort’s goal with email marketing is to increase sales – and that’s exactly what they’re doing.

How do they do it? By doing things right.

Ask Customers To Subscribe

Earthfort gets most of their email subscribers through their soil sample submission forms:

Clients send their soil samples to Earthfort’s lab in Corvallis, Oregon. You’ll notice on the form that there is a box that needs to be checked in order to add someone to the email list. Earthfort isn’t adding everyone that mails in a sample to their list; only people that specifically request to be added get added.

Takeaway: Make sure you ask for permission.

Think of how many mailing lists you’d be on if every single business that had your email address added you to their list. And think about how frustrating it is when businesses add you to their mailing list when you didn’t ask to be.

Have Subscribers Confirm Their Subscription

For both offline and online subscribers, Earthfort sends a confirmation message for people to verify they want to be added:

This confirmation ensures that:
1. You have a valid email address – if you send to email addresses that aren’t valid, it can hurt your sender reputation.
2. The person is really interested – you know they will be more likely to purchase something from you.

On average, over 60% of Earthfort’s new subscribers confirm their subscription.

You can also use the confirmation to get them back on your website. After they click the link to confirm, have them go to a special page on your site that thanks them while also providing easy links to your products and other pages.

Takeaway: Customize your confirmation process. Make sure your confirmation message is clear and personal. If you can, set up a special page for subscribers to land on after they confirm. This page has brought great results for some businesses.

Send Emails Subscribers Want

“We choose to emphasize positive stories and offer information,” says Scott Smith, CEO of Earthfort. “Our content may be an inspirational story of the success on one of our clients, or we may provide technical information or how-to tips.”

This strategy gives Earthfort an open rate average over 70%. That’s pretty high for an audience that spends more time outside than on a computer. Earthfort also lays out what’s in each email:

The content summary at the top makes this perfect for their busy audience. Scott reports an increase in sales whenever an email newsletter is sent out.

Takeaway: Write for your readers. Earthfort markets to farmers. Who do you market to? Make sure you create your emails with these people in mind.

The Biggest Challenge?

There’s always room for improvement. Scott said that Earthfort’s biggest challenge is consistency. “We need to be consistent in communicating (e.g. not miss a regular newsletter update).” That’s a problem many small business owners can relate to, but there are also plenty of tools to help you out.

Another challenge? Getting all their customers to realize Earthfort has an email campaign and its benefits. By incorporating the check box in their submission forms, they’re doing a good job tackling this problem. If you have mostly offline customers, make sure they see your sign up form in your store or office, and talk to them about the benefits.

How Do You Grow Your List Offline?

What do you do to ensure you have valid, interested subscribers added to your list?

Valentine’s Day is most known for love and romance – do you know how your business fits into this intimate holiday?

Whoever you are and whatever you do, we have some suggestions for you. We looked at Valentine’s emails from some larger businesses to help spark ideas for all businesses.

If You Sell Valentine’s Gift-Worthy Products…

You have the easiest job! Last Valentine’s Day, people spent on average $126.03 on their significant other. People like gift ideas and you can present yourself as the perfect solution to their gift-giving woes. You just need to find a way to show off what you’re selling. People like seeing images of the products they’re purchasing, so don’t rely on simple descriptions alone.

Harry & David does this nicely in their email. The products are the main focus and it’s all laid out beautifully.

If you’re an AWeber customer and want to have this look in your email, check out the “Store” template. You can find it under the “Retail” category when you’re viewing templates in the message editor. This template allows you to easily show off images of your products (or whatever you want) in your emails.

If Your Business Makes For A Good Date…

Restaurants, theaters, museums and other attractions also have an advantage – they’re great places to spend Valentine’s Day. If you’re a business that attracts people to do or experience something, remind subscribers you’re open on the big day.

Spirit Cruises does this by creating a special evening complete with a rose and champagne toast. Subscribers can click to reserve right in their email.

If you plan to offer a coupon, discount or gift to subscribers who book with you, make sure you highlight that in your email. You’ll have plenty of competition that day; make sure you stand out.

If You Can Help With Valentine’s Plans…

If you don’t have a solution for what to give or where to go, help them figure out what to do. Valentine’s Day can also be about planning parties and cooking meals. Your role can be sharing tips on party planning, decorations, recipes or card-making.

Food Network did this perfectly by providing great recipes and a party suggestion.

If you don’t want to lose the opportunity to promote your own products or services, you can provide a coupon or some other “gift” as a Valentine’s gift to your subscribers. This fits the holiday theme while also making the push for sales.

If You Want To Make Your Products Fit Into the Holiday…

You might not have much advice to dish out if you’re a retail store, and you might not be selling products that make for popular gifts. This means you need to get a little creative.

Take Converse, for example. Converse shoes don’t make the top 10 Valentine’s gift list, but they still found a way to be relevant during the holiday by allowing people to design their own shoes. Converse showed how these shoes could be “relationship themed:”

If your store sells merchandise such as clothing or home decor, you can do a little work to make your products fit into Valentine’s Day. You might not have the resources to allow for customization, but if anything you sell is red, pink or contains hearts, you can tie it into the holiday.

If Your Business Can’t Relate To Valentine’s Day At All…

Not everyone can pull off one of the ideas listed above. You might find yourself in a place where your business has nothing to do or help with Valentine’s Day.

Alex’s Lemonade Stand fell into that category. As a charity helping kids fight cancer, they took a completely different approach to Valentine’s Day: asking people to take the time to think of the sick children and send some love to them.

Nonprofits can easily take the “don’t forget about us” approach with any holiday. If you’re not a nonprofit, you can still take a similar approach. For example, a financial consulting firm could let subscribers know their firm can help customers save money so that next Valentine’s Day their subscribers will have the money to buy more expensive gifts.

What Does Your Business Do?

If you’re looking for some sweet Valentine’s Day designs to send, check out these new templates.

We’d also like to know how you integrate the Valentine’s Day holiday into your emails – please comment and share!

(If that’s not true, learn how to manage your time and emails better here and how to attract more subscribers here.)

Effective emails bring results you want, such as more sales. In order to determine if an email is effective or not, look at your reports. We’ll discuss what you can learn from these reports and how you can improve them to make 2013 your best year yet.

Why Reports Matter

Most email marketing service providers keep detailed reports on how your messages perform. You can see how many people opened your message and clicked on links, and whether those clicks brought you traffic, sales, downloads or unsubscribes.

Your open rate is important; it lets you know how many people opened your message out of the total you sent it to. In order for the subscriber to click a link to purchase your product or visit your website, they first have to open the email.

Once a subscriber has opened your message, you’ll want them to read and take action. Whether it’s a product your selling, an article you posted or a download you’re sharing, you’ll need them to click on something. Click-through rates can tell you what happened after a subscriber opened your message.

Some email service providers let you set up advanced analytics to track where subscribers go on your website, and what they purchase or download. If you have specific goals for your email campaign (more sales, more traffic), make sure you set this up so it’s easier for you to track progress throughout the year.

And last but not least, you should be able to see how many people clicked to unsubscribe from your emails. Keeping track of this can tell you what content people appreciate and what turns them away.

If you have the time, you should think about calculating another stat: the click-through rate on the number of people who opened your message. This can be done by dividing the number of people who clicked by the number of people who opened your message. This will give you a more accurate idea on how your messages are performing.

So What Do I Have To Do?

Here’s what you need to work on in order to get the results you want:

A good way to think about it is this: can you summarize the benefits of your email in one short sentence? That’s your subject line.

• The subject line – most likely the direct reason whether or not someone will open your message. The subject needs to catch your subscribers’ attention while also communicating what’s in the message. Some businesses accomplish this by asking a question, offering a solution to a common problem or offering to teach something.You should test your subject lines to find what works best for your audience. Sometimes the results may surprise you.
• Who the emails are from – this will also get noticed immediately. The key is to stay consistent. If that means having the email come from a business name instead of an individual’s name, that’s better than switching the from name frequently.You should also consider the length of your from line. Email clients have different display lengths, so keep that in mind when you’re picking the name to display.

Remember to continue to test everything throughout the year and build on what you learn from each test.

• Time the email goes out – this is a tricky one, as different businesses often report different results with regards to when readers open emails. For instance, this article reports that people are more likely to engage with emails between 8 and 10 in the morning and 3 to 4 in the afternoon. As for AWeber, we’ve found our own campaigns are best sent between 2 and 3 in the afternoon instead of 9 and 10 in the morning.
• User experience – what’s the initial reaction when opening your message? Is the email visually appealing? Do subscribers know what you want them to do? These are all questions you need to ask about your email.How you present your content is just as important as the content itself – if subscribers get a headache just looking at your email, it won’t matter how good the information is.
• Images vs. text – and speaking of visually appealing, should you include images or stick to just text? More than half of people surveyedsaid they will turn on images in their inbox, so people seem to appreciate a break in the plain text monotony.Not sure how to use images effectively? Get some inspiration from other businesses.
• The link, button or whatever it is you want clicked – it’s not as simple as sticking a link in an email. You have to draw attention to your links (or buttons and other images). Often times this requires some crafty copywriting. You don’t have to be a professional copywriter in order to write good calls to action, but it might take practice and some expert tips.

A word on expectations: Subject lines, from lines, send times and your email design certainly have an impact on your opens, but meeting subscribers’ expectations will also have an impact. Make sure you’re sending subscribers the content you promised at sign-up.

No Excuses This Year

Now that you have a plan, you’ll be on your way to making 2013 a successful year for your email marketing efforts.

If you have other suggestions for keeping marketing resolutions on track, please share them below.

A flat line is better than a declining one, but every business owner wants to see their growth going UP. And maybe for 2013, you’ve vowed that you will do something to make sure that you will see growth throughout the year. Now you need a plan. Here it is:

1. Check Your Sign Up Forms

The first thing you should do (yes, in January) is work on your online signup process. Most email marketing service providers will show you how your sign up form is performing. It might look something like this:

What you should focus on is the number of people signing up based on unique views. Total views will include people that have returned to your site (which you want), but unique views will count each person once. This will tell you how people react to your form, and the number that subscribed/number of people who see the form is your conversion rate. In the image above, that’s the S/UD column.

Keep in mind, most conversion rates on websites are pretty low. If your rate is greater than 10%, you might want to skip ahead.

If you need to improve your conversion rate…

Split test your sign up forms. Split testing provides a means of comparing two or more unique strategies for opt-in forms, side by side, in a controlled experiment. The idea is you’ll be able to find what your form should look like and say in order to bring you the most conversions possible. If you don’t test, you won’t know.

By testing and then analyzing results, you can get a better understanding of what your website visitors and subscribers respond best to.

And it’s not always about finding the right color or words that attract the most people. It also involves learning what problems are preventing people from signing up. Are you asking too many questions? Is the form easy to access? Testing possible pain points will let you know if your sign up form is living up to its fullest potential.

Check out this guide to split testing and get started.

If your conversion rate is high, but your subscriber growth is low…

Your sign up form is doing its job, but people may have trouble finding the form on your page. You can try:

• Adding a pop-up form to supplement the form you already have stuck on the page. These forms tend to outperform the ones you see stuck on the page. You can play with the settings so the form will come up only once per person, every time or every x number of days.
• Changing the location of your form. If your form is at the bottom of the page, try moving it to the top. Or if you have the form on your “contact us” page, try moving it to the homepage.
• Adding additional forms on other pages of your site. Along the same lines, try adding forms to multiple pages of your site for maximum exposure.

Testing and experimenting with location isn’t a one-off task. You should continue to fine-tune your sign up forms throughout the year. Make time once a month to look at your stats and figure out some tests for the next month.

Your sign up form plays a huge role in your growth rate, but it’s not the only factor…

2. Seize Offline Opportunities For Growth

Once you’ve worked out a plan for making your forms better, it’s time to look at your offline efforts. Do you have a store or office that people visit? These visitors can become subscribers, so think about all your offline interactions and how you can get subscribers out of them.

You can have a sign up sheet available for people to fill out, such as this one:

You can hand out cards like this:

Or you can use the OnSpot Social app on your iPad to collect subscribers:

These suggestions don’t only apply to permanent locations; if you travel to conferences and trade shows you can also collect subscriber information. Just make sure you are only adding people who specifically requested to be added to your email list.

3. Encourage Social Media Followers To Subscribe

Over half of Americans have a profile on a social media site. Because of this, most businesses know they should get on social media as well. And they do: 94% of all businesses with a marketing department use social media.

Social media platforms are another place to collect email subscribers, and another area you want to focus on right away. You can:

• Get people to sign up on Facebook. Most email service providers will allow you to put up a form on Facebook, and that form will live in one of your tabs. You can also use an app such as GroSocial, which allows you to set up custom tabs, one of which helps you to turn likes into subscribers.
• Use Pinterest to show off your “gated” content. Some Pinterest users have set it up so their pinned content (covers, art, crafts, downloadables, etc.) takes people who click on it to a page that requires an email sign up. Keep in mind that you must give them access to what you promised if you use this method.
• Mention and link to your email list on sites like Twitter. You can easily pass along the link to your website or sign up page and tell people why they should sign up to your list.

Make sure you check back regularly throughout the year and push your email campaign to your social media followers.

Want more options for collecting subscriber information? There are many apps out there for shopping carts, social media, CRMs, etc. that work with email marketing services. If you’re an AWeber user, check out your options here.

Next Up: Improving Your Messages

Are people reading your emails? And if so, are they then clicking on your links? We’ll look at how to determine how your emails are doing and what you can do to improve. Sign up for email updates below so you don’t miss out.

Maybe you had lofty goals to achieve high click through and open rates, increase conversions and get more sales. Or maybe you just wanted to email subscribers more often.

This year, we’ve got your back. In this 3-part series, we’ll cover what you need to do to stick to your resolutions this year. Let’s start with how to make sure you email subscribers as often as you want.

When You’re Just Getting Started…

The scene: Excited about getting started with your email marketing, you set up a sign up form on your site. You’re even more excited when you notice a lot of visitors are signing up. You make a mental note to send a new email out soon to keep these newly interested subscribers engaged. Days pass by with no emails and subscribers lose interest. You need to find a permanent solution to keep new subscribers engaged with your business.

The fix: autoresponders, or follow up messages.

These messages can be set to go out at the intervals you choose. You can sit down for a few hours and create several of these messages, then set up a schedule. Most business owners use the first message as a welcome for subscribers. The second one might go out the next day, the third a few days after that, the fourth a week after that and so on.

Most follow up sequences cover a relatively long time period; it’s not uncommon for business owners to have a couple months worth in place.

Here are a few businesses that have found success using follow up messages:

• Hockey Strong’s follow up campaign outperforms their newsletters
• The University of Sussex started a successful follow up series for new students
• Hawaiian Isles shares 27 helpful emails over a month

When You Blog…

The scene: It’s midnight, and you just finished a blog post. You know your subscribers want to be updated when you have a new post, but it’s late and you don’t have time to create an email for it right now. Or the next night. Or the next…

The fix: Most email service providers can also connect with your blog and send out your blog posts as emails without you doing a thing. This feature is great for busy business owners.

Some businesses will create a separate list for blog subscribers, while others let subscribers know at sign up that emails will include recent blog posts. Most email marketing services let you set up how often to send these blog emails, so if you choose once a week, that email will include all the posts you put up in the last week.

Writer’s block? Allow for guest authors to write for you, it’s a good way to network with others in your industry. You can also create round-up posts like this one of popular topics you’ve talked about before.

When You Can’t Find The Time…

The scene: Your business relies on timely announcements. Right now you need to let subscribers know about a product you’re about to launch. You quickly become flustered and frustrated when you realize how hard it is to throw these emails together last minute.

The fix: If you look at last year, you might find that lack of time or a plan was the biggest issue. Your email service provider can only go so far, so something has to be done to ensure subscribers are getting the emails they signed up for year-round.

At the start of 2013, when you’re fresh and energized about the New Year’s resolutions, sit down and plan out your content for a year. Giving yourself a schedule to stick to will make it much harder to skip deadlines than if you force yourself to sit down and create an email from scratch.

You should also keep track of where most of your time goes. You might be surprised to learn that you aren’t spending it in the areas that matter most, so keeping a diary can help you locate time-suckers.

These tools can also help:

• Google Calendar or Drive – Google has lots of free tools like these to use, great for keeping everything organized.
• Rescue Time – A service that tracks your online activity and helps you spot when and where you become inefficient.

Next Up: Grow Your List

Have you checked out how well your web forms are converting? Has subscriber growth been stagnant? The next post will cover what you should do to keep your list growing throughout the year. Sign up to our email list below to make sure you don’t miss it.

But what if your emails don’t make it to the inbox? Deliverability concerns often get pushed aside, but Return Path reported that 20% of legitimate, non-spam emails will never reach the inbox.

You want to avoid being in that 20%. According to Return Path, you hold a lot of power needed to control that, as most deliverability problems are based on sender reputation. We’ll look at the five main factors that affect reputation and what you can do to help yourself.

1. The Number of Your Recipients

You won’t be surprised to hear that spammers send emails in high numbers. Internet Service Providers (ISPs) flag large volume sends because of this, making it harder for businesses to get through.

Not only will you be flagged by the subscriber’s ISP, your own ISP may flag you for violating send limits. As of November 2012, Here are the limits listed for a few of them:

• GoDaddy – 100 emails/day
• Gmail – 500 emails/day
• Comcast – 1000 emails/day

This one is a pretty easy fix: use an email marketing service provider (ESP) such as AWeber. One thing that ESPs do is ensure that you can send all the emails you need to without it hurting your sender reputation. You won’t be able to go from 0 to 50,000 in one day, but you will be able to gradually build your list up to however many subscribers you wish to send to.

2. How Many People Complain

You’ve all probably noticed, and even used, the little button in your inbox that lets you mark an email as “Spam” or “Junk.” It deletes the emails while making sure other emails from that sender don’t end up in your inbox again. But you may not realize all that goes on in the background. The sender’s ESP will note that you have clicked this button and report it, and ISPs keep track of the information for deciding where to place emails from that sender in other people’s inboxes.

If a lot of people are complaining about your emails, that indicates something is wrong. If you use an ESP, you can see how many complaints an email got. Subscribers who complained will also be unsubscribed from your list so they can’t do it again.

But what an ESP can’t fix is WHY the subscriber complained, which is up to you. So what can you do?

• Make sure you set proper expectations – you should be upfront about what you’re going to send to subscribers. The sign up form, thank you pages and welcome email are all excellent opportunities to discuss your content and frequency.
• Send only relevant content – if you tell them you’re going to send them gluten free recipes, don’t throw in an email about your soap products. You may want to mention other aspects of your business in a side box in one of your regular emails, but it should never replace the content subscribers are expecting.
• Have subscribers confirm to be added to your list- The best way you’ll be able to make sure you have legitimate, interested subscribers is if you have them click a link to confirm they want to be on your list. You won’t get 100% of the email addresses submitted to confirm, but you will eliminate invalid emails and people signing up solely for an incentive or bonus gift.
• Make it easy to unsubscribe – Make sure the option to unsubscribe is easily visible for the subscriber. ESPs will automatically add an unsubscribe link on the bottom of your email, but you can make it even easier by including one at the top as well. If subscribers aren’t sure how to unsubscribe, they’re most likely going to mark your message as spam instead. While this will end your emails to them, it also impairs your emails getting to other subscribers who are still interested.

Taking these steps will reduce the likelihood of complaints.

3. Spam Trap Email Addresses

ISPs will set up decoy email addresses to act as traps for spammers. These email addresses are never published or shared anywhere. Spammers obtain these addresses by data harvesting and selling to others. If you’re emailing to one of these “trap emails,” it indicates you aren’t properly managing your list.

If you have purchased a list, you’re in greater danger. Purchased lists also often contain inactive, useless email addresses that will only slow you down by causing bounces, which we’ll talk about soon.

Here are other ways to avoid getting spam trap emails:

• Only add subscribers who have specifically requested to receive your emails – if you’re not sure how you got an email address, don’t add it to your list.
• Direct people to sign up on your web form – you can do this by handing out a card with a short URL for people to visit or use an app such as OnSpot Social.
• Monitor your list and remove inactive subscribers – most ESPs allow you to see who’s opening your messages and who’s not. You can routinely go through and delete subscribers who haven’t opened in 3 months, 6 months or whatever you feel comfortable with.
• Use confirmed opt-in – again, the easiest way to ensure it’s a good email address.

Note that the problem with spam traps is not that you need to learn how to identify and remove them from your list, but rather you should be obtaining email addresses from people who specifically request to be added… and spam traps don’t belong to people.

4. High Bounce Rate

There are two types of bounces that can occur:

• Soft bounce: The email can’t be delivered due to a temporary issue such as a full inbox.
• Hard bounce: The email can’t be delivered due to a permanent issue such as a closed account.

ISPs are most concerned with hard bounces. This is similar to the spam trap problem, only these email addresses aren’t tools the ISPs are using.

Because of the similarity to spam traps, you should follow the same steps to avoid having a high bounce rate. An ESP will unsubscribe bounced email addresses for you, but even having one email come back with a lot of bounces can negatively affect your deliverability.

5. Are You Who You Say You Are?

Email authentication acts like a signature on a credit card receipt – it verifies your identity and allows you to claim responsibility for the mailing. Spammers often try to forge their email “signatures,” and authentication helps to prevent that and tells the ISP that you really are the sender you’re claiming to be.

You should pay special attention to Sender Policy Framework, or SPF. You can edit your domain’s SPF record via your web host. Sender ID and DomainKeys Identified Mail are also important for authentication.

Some email service providers do the authentication for you. If you use AWeber, no need to worry as AWeber authenticates via all three methods above.

How Do You Keep Your Deliverability High?

We talked about how sender reputation is important and why, but what have you done to ensure your emails make it to the inbox? What has been the most/least effective?

Click to enlarge

And you should be. MarketingCharts reported on an Epsilon study that showed subject lines with the word “coupon” in them brought in the highest open rates during the 2011 holiday season. Another study done by the National Retail Federation found that 36% of shoppers said the most important factor in deciding where to shop are the sales and discounts.

But emailing out these sales and discounts is an art. And to help you master the craft, we’ll cover what you should do to get the best results.

How To Hook Them: Subject Lines

The Epsilon study mentioned earlier indicates that using “coupon” in your subject line is a smart move during the holiday season. But the world of marketing is never that cut-and-dry. Smart Insights reported on a study on subject lines (not during the holidays) in the Ecommerce sector, and that study found that “coupon” was not effective, but “free,” “sale,” “save” and “% off” all performed well.

Bottom line: you’ll need to test to find what works for your audience. But here is some inspiration from some big brand subject lines:

Olive Garden: “Enjoy 2 for $25 Dinner for a limited time”
Papa John’s: “Hurray, 4 Days Only: Add a Second Large Pizza for $9.99! Order Now”
Newegg: “Black-November COUPONS: 13 Categories Up to 30% OFF, 20% OFF Select HDDs + MORE”
Banana Republic Factory: “TODAY ONLY: Extra 30% off ENTIRE purchase!”
Petco: “72 Hours to Save 14-40% SITEWIDE – Beat the Black Friday Rush!”

How To Appeal To Them: The Design

How you present your deal is going to have an impact on whether or not people use it. Sounds trivial, but something as small as the color of the link can make all the difference.

Here’s an example of how different design techniques can impact results:

Maryann’s Gifts sends a flyer with their latest deals. These flyers tend to get high click through rates; over 20% of the people who open the message will go on to click through. Here’s what it looks like:

Burger Boy takes a different approach. They’re sending coupons embedded with other information. They also have a good click through rate, but their coupon only gets a quarter of those clicks. 75% of readers are clicking on other links. Here’s what it looks like:

Is Burger Boy doing it all wrong? Not necessarily. People are still clicking links to see the menu and other information. “The coupon is there to get them to open the email,” says owner Ken Simmons. “Once they open the email they immediately see a great picture of our food, then click to go to the menu and place an order. I’m perfectly happy if they don’t use the coupon and just order their normal order at the regular price.”

Whether or not your coupon gets clicked might also be a question of prominence. Visual Website Optimizer reported on one business that saw a 64% increase in conversions by making an obvious button for visitors to click on.

How To Woo Them: The Content

Next, you’ll want to think about what your coupon or button should say and how much of a discount you want to offer people. Here are three major components you should focus on:

• Set an expiration date for the sale. Expiration dates build urgency, giving subscribers the feeling that they should act now. By limiting the duration of particular sales, you’ll also allow yourself more flexibility for the types of deals you’re offering.
• Limit the fine print. Think how annoying it is when you want to use a coupon and you have to read all the exclusions and limitations in the fine print. Or worse, you go to use the coupon and are told you can’t because of something in the fine print. If you need to say anything, make it short and sweet.
• Give subscribers something to be excited about. Are you excited about getting $1 off a purchase? Maybe you would, but 10% off may actually sound more desirable. If the product or service in question is $10.00, these amount to the same discount. However, 10% off sounds like it will be more valuable since 10 is greater than 1. Consider this when you’re deciding how much of a discount you plan to offer.

How To Keep Their Attention: Frequency

Unbounce reported that 54% of email subscribers will unsubscribe from a mailing list because they’re getting too many emails. But how much is too much?

There’s not actually an answer to this question. Some companies have found success doing “daily deal” emails, while others have not. The real answer is: it depends on how you present it to your subscribers.

You have a few options:

• Decide on a number and stick to it. This can be once a week, twice a week, every other week or whatever you feel comfortable with. Make it clear in the sign up process you plan to email subscribers that often.
• Allow subscribers to pick their frequency on your web form. For example, they can opt in to a list that gets daily emails, weekly emails or monthly emails.
• Invite subscribers to join a new list later. If you want to start off with once a week emails for everyone, you could decide to increase later and invite current subscribers to opt-in to the new list with more frequent emails.

Communication is important when it comes to frequency. The more subscribers know and the more control they have over that decision, the less likely it is they’ll unsubscribe.

How Do You Structure Your Deals?

Let us know what has worked for you and what hasn’t performed as well. And what have you seen other businesses do that you found compelling?

The life of a business owner is hectic, and it may be hard to make those weekly or monthly deadlines for your email newsletter. But what happens when you let time lapse? The strong relationship you’ve worked to build with your subscribers starts to fade and loyalty wanes. But you can fix this.

Here’s a detailed game plan to solve this problem in five steps.

1. Establish Your Identity

Hopefully, prior to your hiatus, you were working on establishing your company brand. But even if you haven’t, you can begin by making sure you have the following in your email:
“Brands are psychology and science brought together as a promise mark as opposed to a trademark,” said Forbes contributor Scott Goodson. “Products have life cycles. Brands outlive products. Brands convey a uniform quality, credibility and experience. Brands are valuable.”

• Your company logo
• What your company does (this can be incorporated in the logo, side bar or footer)
• A reminder of how subscribers signed up

You should also pay attention to your from line and subject lines. The from line should stay consistent so subscribers won’t be confused about who the email is from. The subject line can also be used to remind subscribers of who you are and what you’re offering.

Including all or most of these in every email will help imprint your brand in subscribers’ minds – so they won’t forget you even if you forget them.

2. Explain What Happened

In a nutshell, here’s what you should cover:

• You realize you haven’t emailed when you were supposed to
• The value of what you were sending, for example, “It’s been awhile since you got x from us”
• Your plan to avoid this problem in the future

Ignoring the lapse in emails will send the wrong message to your subscribers; it’ll seem like you aren’t paying attention. You can use this explanation as a springboard to get subscribers pumped for what’s to come. If you were busy developing a new product, give them a hint as to what you’re working on. If you’ve developed some valuable new content, talk about that. Let subscribers know how the break benefited them.

With the explanation out of the way, you can focus on other important factors that will help get subscribers excited again.

3. Include a Prominent Unsubscribe Link

This might seem counter-intuitive; you want to reengage these subscribers, not show them the door. But the subscriber may no longer be interested in what you have to offer, and that’s not their fault. In this case, reengaging means getting them to make that decision right now.

After the explanation, follow up with a quick link to your unsubscribe/subscriber options page. Subscribers who want to stay on your list will appreciate the honesty and the ones who don’t won’t be a deadweight for your list.

If people don’t want to be on your list and can’t find a way out, they’re likely to report you as spam just to stop your emails. These complaints can hurt your deliverability, and the best way to avoid that is by making the exit strategy visible.

4. Share Your Most Valuable Content

For subscribers that wish to stick around, it’s time to give them a good reason to do so. This means providing the best possible value you can, and depending on what you do, you have a couple options.

You could focus on educational resources related to your products or service. You can:

• Type up a detailed description of your content and link back to your site
• Provide an ebook via a service such as Dropbox
• Send them to a video

This sharing will encourage subscribers to trust you, hopefully enough to do business with you, or at least enough to reestablish their trust. Social Media Examiner used valuable content to build their business and it worked well for them.

You could also share special coupons and discounts. Restaurant owner Chef Tony focuses on these in his emails, and it’s helped him get people in his restaurant.

And don’t just one-off the top quality content. Keep the momentum going by continuously delivering what they want and respond to, and let them know when they can expect to get more of it.

5. Set Expectations For the Future

Once you’ve covered the above, it’s time to set sights on what to expect now that you’re back in action. Subscribers may have some concerns: are you going to stick to the original schedule? What will the content be?

Here’s what you can do:

• Set up an editorial calendar and see how much you can plan ahead.
• Based on where you stand and how often you can take time to create new content, decide on the frequency.
• Provide a teaser of what’s to come so subscribers get excited about your emails
• Let subscribers know what the planned frequency will be

Whatever you do, don’t promise that you will never forget them again. You can’t promise that. As you’ve learned, things come up. What you can do is set up a schedule that works for you to ensure it’s most likely not going to happen again.

What Do You Recommend?

Have you ever had to email subscribers after a break? How did you handle it? And how did your subscribers respond?

With the 2012 holiday season just around the corner, now’s the time for businesses to kick their marketing into high gear. But, it’s easy to maintain the status quo, and many fail to take advantage of the great opportunities to connect with customers in new, unique ways during the holidays.

If you’re in need of inspiration and motivation (and perhaps a little holiday spirit!) take a look (or a listen) to this recorded slideshow.

30 Ideas In 30 Minutes from AWeber Communications on Vimeo.

You’ll hear about:

• The top holiday marketing trends to try this season
• Stories and examples from past successful holiday campaigns
• Quick ideas and tips you can apply immediately to your business

With 30 ideas in 30 minutes, you’re guaranteed to find a few just perfect for promoting your brand.

We wish you happy listening, and happy holiday marketing!

What makes a good email newsletter? Is it the content? The design of the email itself? In reality, both of these elements need to be in top form in order for an email to be considered good; no one will care about an email with a lousy offer, just as people won’t call a disorganized email a good one.

So your job as a marketer is twofold: you need to create content that’s relevant with offers people want while designing your emails to be aesthetically pleasing.

To give you insight on how to do this, we’ll analyze three example emails with help from User Experience Designer Jessica Ivins.

The Container Store

Right away, you see the benefit The Container Store has to offer their customers: an easy solution for organizing kids’ stuff. This answers the “what’s in it for me?” question that runs through everyone’s mind when they open an email. The Container Store is offering a solution to a problem.

For those already sold on this idea, there’s a link to their store right at the top. For those that need more convincing, there are images of some of the products that can help solve this problem.

“I dig the images and labels for most of the modules in this layout,” says Jessica. “However, I noticed that the top two modules Easy as ABC and Happy Organized Home Sale seem very busy, just a little overwhelming on the eye. There’s quite a bit of color and typographic variation which comes across as a little unpolished.”

The Container Store could test a toned-down version that’s not quite as busy up top, and see if that increases click-through rates.

ASPCA

As a nonprofit organization, the ASPCA’s goals are slightly different from retail stores, but ultimately they share the same end goal to convince readers to take action. Their opening paragraph jumps right in talking about the benefits of vaccinations – the main topic of this newsletter.

To further convince their readers, they included a small Q & A section, making the most visible sections ones that answer “what’s in it for me?” The navigational links in the right sidebar complete the user-friendly experience.

“This layout’s nice and clean. It’s easy to scan, which is great,” says Jessica. But if you’re looking for a friendly or personal letter from the ASPCA, that’s not happening. “The tone of the this email is very dry and clinical,” she adds. “It just doesn’t seem very friendly or engaging. I’m not sure if this is something they’d want to consider changing, but this ties more holistically into content strategy and branding.”

House of Bespoke

Unlike the last two examples, House of Bespoke has short, to the point emails that require zero scrolling. However, they do still present the benefit to subscribers. In this one, House of Bespoke is suggesting a Father’s Day gift idea and has a ‘swatch sorter’ to help you find the right fabric.

But is short good? “Of the three, this seems the most unfinished to me,” says Jessica. “The right column (black area) seems self-contained and isolated from the rest of the layout, as if it were tacked on. There seems to be no typographic system in place. Font choices are pretty basic and don’t adhere to the sophistication and style of the logo.”

Jessica’s not sold on the call to action either: “The content also does not seem to be very actionable. As a general rule, you want to give people enough information and context to take the next step. There’s a generic photo of a man in a suit that doesn’t illustrate anything specific or support the features touted.”

House of Bespoke would benefit from testing short vs. long copy, in order to see if more information will bring more action.

Need Help With Your Emails?

Check out these two guides:

Have you ever opened an email and found no way to contact the sender or even get to the company’s site? Follow this guide to make your emails as user-friendly as possible!

Your calls to action are the point of decision for your subscribers to click or not to click. You want to encourage clicks, but how? Use this guide to find out.

Over half of email readers turn on images in the emails they receive. Surprised? Combine this with Email Marketing Reports’ study on how image-heavy emails can outperform the alternatives with the right execution, and you’d be right to think twice about sticking to your plain text, no-frills design strategy.

If you’re ready to start incorporating more images in your emails, you’re in luck. First, AWeber offers image hosting so you can easily upload any of your photos to use in your emails. And second, we love to share ideas that will help our readers’ with their emails.

So today, we have several examples of businesses using images in ways that make sense while also being fun and effective. Take a look, get some ideas, and use the image hosting option to upload your own images.

Indigo Wild – Showcase Your Products

Here is a colorful email from Indigo Wild, a natural products store. The first image is a lot of fun; anytime you can incorporate a pet into your images it’s guaranteed you’ll get some smiles.

But Indigo Wild also gets down to business with photos of their actual products for sale. When people are making a decision on whether to buy or not, consumers prefer to see what it is they’re buying before clicking that “Purchase” button.

Dr. Susan Rubin – Share a Cartoon

This email is entertaining. Dr. Susan Rubin does something similar to Indigo Wild with the fun, personal photo at the top. She also included a cartoon, which is very eye-catching and amusing.

Surprise your readers with something purely for entertainment. You can find and upload something you found to be funny (make sure you give proper credit by including your source) or use Apple app Paper by FiftyThree or bitstrips.com to make your own cartoon. You can also use a program like Skitch to mark up images.

Mazzone True Value – Share Event Photos

Mazzone True Value sent this email out to let people know about their PumpkinFest. Hosting events such as these are an effective way to establish customer relationships and also attract new customers.

By sharing pictures of the event, Mazzone is establishing themselves as a people-friendly business. Those that attended the event will be excited to see if there are photos of themselves while others will enjoy the candid, non-stock images.

Chef Tony – Tantalize Subscribers’ Tastebuds

Chef Tony wants to get people to eat in his restaurant. So what does he do? He sends coupons with photos of his food and restaurant. This makes sense – it’s a way to show off his product – and it’s also highly effective in getting tummies rumbling.

All Chef Tony had to do was snap some photos of the delicious creations he was cooking up and upload them into his emails. Subscribers who have eaten at the restaurant may think “Yes, that was the best dish I ever had. I must go back!” while new customers may think, “That looks like it will be the best dish I ever had. I must try it!”

Get Images In Your Email

Follow these instructions to easily start uploading your own photos and using them in email. You can also check out Smashing Magazine’s “How To Use Photos To Sell More Online.”

What do you think would be good to share?

The new editor has been great for our core customers: small business owners who don’t necessarily have the HTML skills they need to create the messages they envision. The drag-and-drop interface makes it easy to add images, buttons, text blocks and more. What’s more, you can play with different themes even after you started adding your own content.

So maybe you drag-and-drop items in and make your perfect template. What happens when you want to use that template again? Or what if you made a broadcast message and want to use the same template for a follow up message? Or for a different list?

Solutions To Your Problems

The template manager now allows you to save any message you create as a template:

This means no more copying and pasting HTML code in different sections! It’s all there no matter what type of message you’re creating.

But there’s more.

That template will also be available in all your lists.

So you create a broadcast in one list, save it as a template, and that template is now available in all your lists for both follow ups and broadcasts.

How Do I Do This?

It’s really easy! You just need to:

1. Make sure you are using the new message editor, and
2. Click on the “Templates” button to choose a template or access the save option.

Want Your Own Custom Template?

You can actually have a designer load a custom-built template right into the template manager, and then load it up – for any list – to type in your message and upload your pictures.

That’s what happened for this frustrated baker, who was better at cooking up pies than cooking up custom designs:

Stay tuned – on Wednesday we’ll talk about the template manager’s more advanced features the designer you hire will love!

We’ll look at how each of these sins applies to email marketing and provide instructions for finding your way back on the right path.

LUSTFUL For More Subscribers

While it’s perfectly natural to have the desire to grow your list, when your desire involves shirking best practices, you could run into trouble down the road with spam complaints.

How to put your lust to good use: Get excited about attracting the right subscribers. Research ways you can optimize your sign up process, utilize social media, split test your web form and put a form on every page of your site.

GLUTTONOUS With Emails

You know those companies, the ones that keep sending emails like there’s no tomorrow. And not just any emails – poorly designed, not helpful and sending-for-the-sake-of-sending emails. We understand that happy feeling of pushing that “Send” button, but marketing should be about quality over quantity.

How to curb your appetite: Have you heard about the silverware with weights to make you think about eating? There are tools like that in email marketing as well: checklists. Use this handy checklist for every email you create and you’ll find yourself improving the quality of your messages.

GREEDY For More Sales

Making a profit? Necessary. Relentlessly going for the hard sell? Not effective and not necessary. No one wants to do business with someone who is only interested in the bottom line.

How to get more sales the right way: Think of every sales pitch as a conversation with your subscribers. Use a conversational tone as you explain your offer, how it helps your audience and why you or your company created it.

Too LAZY To Send Tests

The only way you’ll know if your marketing campaign is the best it can be is if you test. Even if you start off using tips many marketers swear by, you’re not going to know if you can do better.

How to start testing the fast way: Think you don’t have enough time? There are services that make it easy to test! Unbounce for landing pages, Padiact for forms, and AWeber offers split testing for broadcasts and web forms. Start with some simple changes and go from there.

ANGRY With Unsubscribes

People are going to unsubscribe, and that’s okay. However, with all the hard work you’ve put into your email campaign, it’s hard not to take it personally.

How to soften the blow: Think of this as a learning experience. You can have them comment why they are unsubscribing, and use this information to better your email marketing. Or, you might find that they no longer have a use for your product or service, in which case they’re just clogging your list.

Too PROUD To Take Suggestions

While you know what’s best for you, your email marketing campaign is for your audience and they know what’s best for them.Piggybacking off the solution for the anger sin, you have to remember to listen to suggestions and complaints you hear and don’t discard them.

How to make it a positive experience for everyone: If people reply to your emails with suggestions, look at it as an opportunity to build relationships with your subscribers. Thank them for their advice, try it and share the results with them. If you’re B2B business, you can even return the favor and offer them some suggestions you’ve found work well.

ENVIOUS Of Competitors’ Campaigns

It’s wise to keep an eye on what others in your industry are doing. However, this also makes you vulnerable to envious feelings if you find someone doing things better. You’ll need to separate these feelings while you’re snooping around, because your campaign is not going to get any better by wishing it was something else.

How to turn your envy into a good idea: If you really like something, figure out how you can apply the feature or idea to your own campaign and make it your own. For example, if you think the “7 Deadly Sins of ___” title works well, think of how you can use that in your blog.

Are You Guilty of a Deadly Sin?

Have you ever found yourself guilty of one of these sins? How did you remedy the situation?

Copywriting. It’s a word that can strike fear in the heart of any small business owner or beginning marketer. It’s an important part of creating your emails and other online content.

Pam Foster, owner of ContentClear Marketing, has made her career in copywriting. Before starting her business in 2006, she wrote copy for companies such as L.L. Bean and Idexx. Now, she helps a lot of businesses improve their web and email copy and their marketing tactics in general.

“I really take a scientific approach to make sure I’m advising my clients with the latest findings on what really works best. There are always exceptions, but why not start with what has been tested and proven to work best and then take it from there,” says Pam. So what does this scientific approach look like?

5 Tried and True Tips

1. Offer the big promise and then clearly deliver

Your subject line will be the first thing the subscriber sees in their inbox, and this is your chance to catch their eye. You want to make a promise that will compel them to open and read your email.

“ Pam found that ‘free shipping’ performs better than a ‘% off’ offer.

Based on the findings at MarketingExperiments, Pam has learned that subject lines with a “get” phrase outperform ones that tell readers to do something. The psychology behind this is that “getting” something is an appealing benefit. She’s also found that “free shipping” performs better than a “% off” offer.

Don’t forget that your email will need to deliver on the promise to keep subscribers happy and interested.

2. Avoid lengthy paragraphs

Staring at a huge block of text can be very intimidating. It looks like work.

Don’t make reading your emails look or feel like a chore. Break paragraphs up into something easy to digest and scan quickly if needed. You’ll notice our blog posts have short paragraphs that usually max out at four lines for this reason.

3. Write for your readers and address their wants and needs

How well do you know your audience?

The key to writing emails that your subscribers are excited about is to write about things they care about. Do you have a solution for a problem they all face? Have a service that can help improve their lives? Tell them about.

And if you aren’t sure what your audience wants, now is the time to get to know your subscribers.

4. Make sure everything is clean and easy to read

Keeping paragraphs short is only part of what makes an email easy to read.

Bullet points and sub headers are great additions for a more scannable email. If you have navigation links, never put them on the right side of anything (website or email). And make sure the color scheme you are using is easy on the eyes.

5. Be consistent

“ Subject lines with a ‘get’ phrase outperform ones that tell readers to do something.

If you write in a conversational tone, keep it like that. Don’t change things up from one message to another.

You should also maintain your identity by branding your message with the same logo, tag lines, and format. A familiar look will be welcoming to subscribers and remind them they like reading your stuff.

How It Looks in the Real World

Pam launched a new email campaign for her pet copywriting service and put her own advice into action. She also followed the advice of Jay White on how to create autoresponders with conversational copy. Here’s how it looks:

And in case you’re interested: this particular follow up has about a 60% open rate and 63% click through rate.

Need More Copywriting Help?

This page shares Pam’s game plan for tackling marketing campaigns, so feel free to check it out to learn more about her tips and service.

If you have any copywriting tips that work for you, feel free to share them!

Recently we talked about gamification becoming a popular marketing tactic. We introduced this concept with some fun games we found in emails. But now it’s time to turn our eyes to the more complicated games popping up everywhere.

While it may seem crazy to create a game that forces your audience to regularly take time out to participate, these games work. People can’t get enough of playing to earn points, win awards, challenge others and show off their skills. Some big brands are jumping on this bandwagon, and you can too, thanks to many new platforms that allow you to easily manage these types of games.

The benefit of long-term games is pretty obvious: they keep people involved with your company. But, that sounds similar to email marketing campaign goals, right? Well, as with social media, gamification and email marketing go hand-in-hand. We’ll take a look at why that is and how companies are using email with these new games.

Why Email is Still Important

When people start playing your game, they’ll be concerned about:

1.How to play it
2.How to do well at it
3.How well they are doing compared to others

This is where your email campaign comes in. You can answer all of these questions with follow ups and newsletters that cover:

• Explanation of rules
• Leader boards and awards
• New challenges
• Tips for getting ahead

However, if you have something like a loyalty club, you might not have the need to share too many tips. If that’s the case, just make it an option to get extra tips that subscribers can choose to receive. For example, here is the RecycleBank form:

This form allows subscribers to receive consistent updates and tips, or just opt for the monthly newsletter. This way, subscriber aren’t receiving information they don’t want or need. Hint: You can set this up by creating a list selection field in your AWeber web form.

First Things First: Welcome Game Players!

Regardless of what your game is, you want to welcome new players and make sure they know what’s going on and how to get information they need.

Nike+ decided to turn getting fit into a game that benefits them and their customers. Here’s the welcome email from Nike+:

Notice how Nike:

• Welcomes you to their game
• Explains how you can set goals and track your progress
• Mentions you can share your victories with others

Helping Players Along

People might sign up and then forget about the game. Or, they may not realize all the games open to them. Or maybe they’re stuck and need your help. That’s where the rest of your emails come in.

Take a look at Nike’s next email:

This email focuses on how you can participate in specific Nike+ events and introduces products that can help you along the way.

Ready To Start Gamifying Your Business?

As we mentioned earlier, there are services that specialize in helping you do that: Bunchball, Badgeville, BigDoor and Zoop!r, to name a few. Get started on this up-and-coming trend, and don’t forget your email campaign!