Before delving into forecasts on the future of email marketing, it will be useful to have a look at where email "stands" amongst other digital channels. In recent years, email marketing has sometimes been overshadowed by mobile and social media's rising popularity, often categorized as an "old school" (aka boring!) marketing channel. Email marketing is anything but tired or dated - for example, a Pew survey in 2011 found that email has been consistently ranked as one of most popular online activities, alongside search:



Again, anything but tired, as new platforms and devices have significantly changed the web landscape over time, the power of email as a key marketing channel has remained constant. An email address, sometimes seen as the social security number of the digital age, is a highly sought-after commodity by advertisers and marketers. Check out this infographic from SmarterTools, which captures how email accounts and sends far surpass other posts and tweets from social networks like Facebook, Twitter and Google+:



Of course, email marketing should never be a standalone effort. What this infographic really suggests is how the intersection of web, email, mobile and social provides a very exciting opportunity for marketers in 2012. Research has shown, for example, that incorporating emails that have social sharing links have a significantly higher clickthrough rate (115% higher than emails that didn't incorporate social sharing), as uncovered in a study by GetResponse Email. Yet, the study found that only about 20% of email marketers actually include social sharing links in their emails, which could be for a variety of reasons, but if your target customers are active on social media, email can be a fantastic way to engage with your brand and encourage sharing.

If the future of email marketing is multi-channel (web-mobile-social-email), what exactly does it mean for marketers? Some experts in the email marketing community have provided their own advice on what to watch out for in 2012. Here's a snapshot of some of those insights:

•  "The efforts to continue to integrate email with social signals (and search as well) need to escalate. Online marketing has become so “un-siloed” in the recent past and it is important to make sure that there are KPI’s in place to at least monitor the impact or influence e-mail efforts has on social / search and vice versa." - Frank Reed, Managing Editor at Marketing Pilgrim.

•  "Expect further focus by webmail and ISPs to sift and sort inboxes and spam folders based on user engagement metrics. [...] The tools and compute power to do this in realtime are out there and growing in sophistication every day." - Tom Kulzer, CEO of AWeber.

•  "I see integration as the issue [...], now we can segment, but the smart marketers will figure out the interplay between email and social. They have to…these things are not siloed anymore." - Will Reynolds, Founder of SEER Interactive.

•  "The biggest challenge for all marketers, email marketers included, will be truly developing valuable, relevant and compelling content so those emails keep getting opened and, ultimately, driving sales."  - Joe Pulizzi, Founder of Content Marketing Institute.

Value, relevancy, context and social seem to be four priorities woven through many of the predictions on the future of email marketing. What are your top email marketing priorities for 2012?

Email marketing plays a fundamental role in today’s
marketing efforts.  Whether it’s attracting new customers,
nurturing leads, developing loyalty or transactional messaging, there are standard best practices for email content.  Marqui’s email content best practices can be applied to all emails including promotions, e-newsletters, triggered campaigns, drip campaigns, win-back or client education programs.

The following lists the tactical approach Marqui recommends to all email marketers with regard to email content best practices:

Trust Elements  

•    Is the privacy policy clearly accessible?
•    Can recipients easily control their email subscription?
•    Does the “From" line contain a recognizable company name?
•    Does the email let the recipient know why they are getting it?

Engagement

•    Does the subject line communicate value?
•    Is the subject line too long (< 50 characters)?
•    Is the message self-explanatory without graphics?
•    Is the relevant content above the preview pane fold?
•    Will the content properly display on mobile devices?
•    Are there quick ways to read the email?
•    Does the look and feel integrate with your brand?

Action

•    Is there a clear call-to-action?
•    Can the user complete the promised action?
•    Are you tracking for conversion optimization?

Word-of-Mouth

•    Are members motivated to forward the email?
•    How easy is it to subscribe?

Metrics

•    Does the deployment ensure short and long-term measurable results?
•    Do you have a plan to continually optimize your content to improve results?

Following these best practices for email content will help you ensure that your campaigns are engaging and effective.  A Marqui email audit can help you determine how best to implement these practices and invigorate your marketing efforts. Talk to a Marqui Email Strategist today.

We just finished today's email marketing webinar, presented by our Key Account Manager, Penny Greening. The presentation was all about email best practices and optimizing your current email strategy. Here are some of the highlights from the webinar:

Marqui's Approach to Email Marketing

1. Each email campaign delivered should support your overall business goals
2. Email analytics can help you improve on future campaigns only if you choose to accept what isn’t working, then do something about it 
3. The rules of email are always evolving , you need to stay on top of your game to get ahead of the competition

Protecting yourself against spam flagging

Understand Canada's FISA Bill, Bill C-28

FISA | Fighting Internet and Wireless Spam Act

By September 2011 Bill C-28 is expected to be passed into Legislature. It requires senders of email within or into Canada to have, or to obtain, explicit permission from their intended recipients. Protect your business with proper opt-in and unsubscribe procedures.

The 7 Characteristics of an Effective Email

1. Understand & respect target audience needs
2. Respect the list 
3. Subject line has a clear call-to-action
4. Compelling content | design best practices
5. Test on multiple email ‘clients’
6. Enhance tracking with landing & goal pages
7. Measure and improve when needed

If you want to know more about email marketing best practices, you can listen to a recording of the webinar here.

We love when we come across examples of well-timed email marketing and follow-up and recently I came across a great one from the clothing company Urban Outfitters. Early last week I spent some time browsing their website, but I ran out of time before I got around to buying anything. I left the products I was interested in to sit in my cart and left the website. Within a few hours the company had started emailing me to follow-up and continue engagement and I ended up returning and buying something due in large part to their campaign (which I've put into a timeline below):

1. January 4th – I visited UrbanOutfitters.com and set up an account using my email address, I left the site with items still available to me in my shopping cart.
2. January 4th – I received the email shown below thanking me for signing up to receive emails and letting me know about some free offers, a link to their blog and info on company news.


3. January 5th – I still hadn’t returned to buy the items sitting in my cart, so I received the email below. The email titled, “Did you forget something?” reminded me that I had items in the cart and added some extra incentive by mentioning that some of the times were on sale and might sell out if I don’t go back to the website soon and purchase them, while at the same time offering additional items that I might be interested in and adding images of the products I had in the checkout. 


4. January 6th – When I still hadn’t returned to the website to purchase the company sent me another email entitled, “It’s on us! (Well, part of it…)” offering me 10% off my purchase with a coupon code which was unique to my email address. 
5. January 7th – After finally giving in (offering me a minor discount off items I already wanted in the first place was a good incentive for me) I received the final email below thanking me for purchasing and offering me another 10% off of my next purchase again with a coupon code specific to my email.

So—what did Urban Outfitters do right?

1. They had appropriately timed emails based on my actions which increased in value to me until I chose to convert on the campaign.
2. They brought me back to their website after I’d clicked away and eventually convinced me to purchase. 
3. They gave me an incentive to return to their website again to shop by offering me a “thank you” coupon. 
4. They offered me suggestions to up sell me on products I might be interested in based on items I already liked on their website. 
5. The emails were simple and to the point. 
6. The emails offer the option to unsubscribe and change email preferences so that I can choose to opt-out of some of the emails or all of them.

Did they do anything wrong?

1. In my opinion the emails came a little fast. Even though I ended up purchasing, 4 emails in 3 days is a bit much.
2. The emails weren’t personalized with my name. This is a minor detail (and it didn’t bother me for the email that was personalized with images of what I like) but since the company already has my information (I signed up with an account) it would have been a nice extra touch to address the emails to me.

All in all I though the campaign was effective (obviously, since I ended up converting) and I think there are definitely some cues that both B2C and B2B organizations can take from nurturing campaigns like these. While I'm not making any commentary about the design of the emails (I do think there's room for improvement there) overall the campaign worked.

A recent study released by ReturnPath on email deliverability benchmarks for 2009 highlights the key issues that still plague organizations using email as a main marketing channel. ReturnPath, an email deliverability solutions provider, developed the study by reviewing data from 131 internet service providers (ISPs) in the United States, Canada Europe and Asia Pacific Territories in 2009.

Key highlights from the study show that:

• Deliverability remains an issue with non-delivery rates as high as 20% across the globe
• The second half of 2009 shows an inbox placement rate of just 80.1% for permission-based commercial email in the US and Canada
• Only 75.2% of email is delivered when being sent to business email addresses

The report goes on to give some reasons why deliverability is still a major issues for organizations that use email:

1. The bounce rate myth. According to ReturnPath, senders are generally given reports month after month that show a "delivered" metric that tends to be about 95%-98%, but in most cases, that metric is usually the bounce rate because the system they use is reporting the number of messages sent through the pipe and subtracting the number that return a hard bounce.
2. Revenue masks a lot of sins. ReturnPath says that email generates a lot of revenue and this tends to hide the amount of money lost due to deliverability failures.
3. Change is hard. Many senders are still choosing to stick to their old methods of email sending, rather than taking on new and emerging best practices to help their deliverability.

The main points of the report are here, but it has some great graphs which are worth taking a look at. The only critique we have of the report is the section regarding the "bounce rate myth". We agree with the rest of the challenges, we certainly see customer who use our email software having difficulty implementing and using best practices and having a strong idea of their real revenue from an email campaign. However, the "bounce rate myth" sounds like it's the issue with some systems, not all, and it seems unlikely that it is an global issue across the majority of email marketing platforms.

You can download your own copy of the report on ReturnPath's Website.

Smart marketers know that to be really successful with any of your marketing tactics, you need to be testing them. Testing allows your campaigns to be optimized based on what works and what doesn’t for your specific audience. Testing can help to improve the effectiveness of your email marketing campaigns when done correctly and can help you to quickly see tangible results.

Why is email testing so important?

Optimizing your emails can help to improve your response and conversion rates and help to generate more leads and, hopefully create more opportunities and sales. Testing has been proven to help increase the effectiveness of your email campaigns and can help to turn your email initiatives into a lead conversion machine.

Fundamentals of testing

When it comes to email testing there are several different areas you can optimize for.  Today we’re going to focus mainly on improving conversions and response rates, but, before we move on to that, it is important to remember that testing to ensure that your emails make it past your recipients’ spam filters is an important first step. If your email never makes it to an inbox, then it is impossible for anyone to interact with it. To help ensure that your emails are getting to the inbox we suggest using tools like Spam Assassin which can help to show you some of the things you’re doing that may be getting you into a junk or spam folder.

When it comes to what you should be optimizing to increase your conversion and response rates, it depends on which areas you’re weakest in to begin with. This means that to reach the point where you know what to test, you need to fully understand your email campaigns from the time they land in your recipients’ inbox, to the time that they do or do not convert.

If you’ve been running your campaigns for a while now, then you probably already have a good idea of your weaknesses. If not, you can take a look at past campaigns and try to establish the areas that are working, and the ones that aren’t.

For instance, if your messages aren’t being opened in the first place, maybe you need to work on creating more compelling subject lines, or, if you find that people aren’t converting you can try optimizing your campaign with a different offer, developing more eye-catching copy or making your call-to-action more urgent.
If you don’t know whether your current metrics are strong or not, you can use resources like EmailStatCenter.com to find benchmark data on different aspects like click-through and open rates.

There are many different issues your emails can have at many different stages of the email cycle, and understanding these can help you with your optimization later on. Clearly measuring metrics like open and read rate, click-throughs and conversions can help you to figure out which areas need improvement, where you’re falling short, and where your current tactics are working.

How to test

The best way to test is to set up multiple version of one email by setting up variables related to the aspects you want to optimize. By testing variable elements on a single page (moving calls-to-action, modifying email copy etc) and then sending that single email out to different subscriber groups, changing the variable each time, you can get a good idea of which campaign achieves the results that you’re looking for from your campaigns. The variable you choose to test will depend on what you’re trying to optimize for. 

The easiest way to use this testing method is to segment your database into different subscriber groups and to then assign a different version of your email to each group. These results will tend to be fairly generalized, but they will help you to get a basic idea of which version of the campaign has the most success. If you have a large enough list, you can choose a small portion of it (10-20%) to perform tests on, and then, once you’ve learned which emails work the best, send the optimized campaign to the remaining percentage (80-90%) of your subscriber database.

Image by Fletcher Prince on Flickr.

As usual after each of our bi-weekly webinars we write a blog post to recap the most relevant questions we answered during the webinar and to answer the ones we didn’t have time to get to.

1. Is there a best practice for how many times you can use a primary call-to-action in one email? This is going to be fairly subjective based on the content of the email itself. Depending on the length and size of the email you’re sending you may want to have the call-to-action repeated more times than someone who’s sending a shorter email. Having said that, it is usually best for an average length email to use the primary call-to-action 2-3 times and to use it in both button and text hyperlink formats.


2. I’ve head of double opt-in is this more effective than single opt-in for getting subscribers? There are benefits and downsides of using double opt-in subscription, but in general it can be a good way to get you a highly engaged subscriber list. Because your subscribers have to choose twice to subscribe, those that do are generally quite interested in receiving communications from you, however, be careful as sometimes it can be seen as overkill. 


3. Isn’t it better to just have an email that doesn’t need any scrolling at all rather than worrying about keeping your important information above the fold? This is also subjective depending on the purpose of the email. Some emails, like those inviting subscribers to  register for a piece of collateral or a webinar can benefit from being short and to the point, however if you’re asking for something with more of a commitment from the subscriber, like asking them to attend an expensive seminar, they will most likely WANT more information from you, and your conversion rate will benefit from a longer email. No matter how long your email is as long as you have your important information above the fold along with a call-to-action you should be fine. 


4. We use the same landing page for multiple email campaigns, will this reduce its conversion rate? That depends, if the landing page is relevant to each of those email campaigns, then it should still have a strong conversion rate. However, this situation becomes an issue if you’re using one generic landing page for all of your email campaigns, this is not only a bad practice but can have negative effects on overall conversion rate.

Thanks to everyone who attended our webinar. You can register for our next webinar, "SEO Basics: Closing the Loop from Design to Build to Marketing," here.

We’ve written before about how you can combat list fatigue to keep your email list engaged, but often, despite your best efforts, there are subscribers who become inactive, or "emotionally unsubscribed" without actually unsubscribing themselves from your list.. These are the subscribers that receive your emails but don’t open your messages, don’t click-though and essentially don’t interact with your emails in anyway, but—they haven’t unsubscribed. This type of inactive subscriber is a re-engagement opportunity waiting to happen for marketers and shouldn’t be overlooked.

Having a large number of inactive subscribers  is completely normal for most companies' email lists.  Your subscribers are busy people who receive hundreds of emails a day and it isn't unlikely that some of them have just let their interest in your messages slide.  According to a recent study from Merkle Interactive Services, even permission based emails are deleted 55% of the time by recipients without ever having been opened.

Why should you care about inactive subscribers?

1. They make it harder to track your email marketing performance. If your email list is riddled with inactive subscribers it makes it very difficult for you to get a good idea of how successful your campaigns actually are. Metrics like click-through and open rate will be skewed by the users who are inactive (who were never going to open your emails anyways).
2. It costs you money to send unwanted emails. Depending on your email service provider, you may be paying on a per email basis. If that's the case, then you are spending money to send emails to people who are unengaged with your communications and you are wasting money which could be spent on recipients who are interested in receiving your messages.
3. They are an opportunity. If you're using opt-in email tactics (which we highly recommend) then the recipients you have who are inactive would have been engaged enough at some point to give you their contact information. In that case, inactive subscribers are actually an opportunity to re-engage jaded subscribers and potentially renew business relationships. 
   
4. Inactive subscribers can harm overall deliverability. ISPs are beginning to take into consideration whether people are sending emails to recipients who never respond. Inactive email address become associated with dormant accounts and often fall into spam traps. When you then continue to send messages to these accounts you risk getting blocked or labeled as spam.

So—how can you re-engage your inactive subscribers? 

1. Analyze the situation. The first step in addressing your inactive subscribers is to establish who the inactive subscribers actually are.  You can do this by analyzing their subscriber history or profile for certain characteristics like: email activity,  engagement and interaction levels with online content and purchase history.
2. Segment inactive subscribers to adjust campaigns accordingly. Once you've determined who your inactive subscribers are, it should be a simple matter to segment them into separate groups so you can send them specifically targeted re-engagement campaigns (we'll go into more detail about this below). Segmenting these subscribers into separate groups allows you to regulate the frequency of their emails, send them specific campaigns and to monitor and analyze the results of your re-engagement strategies. 
3. Send re-engagement-specific emails. Sending email campaigns specifically targeted to re-engaging inactive subscribers can be an effective way to grab their attention. Email campaigns which features things like surveys requesting feedback and content suggestions, offers for free whitepapers and other collateral and rewards or discounts for re-engaging can be easy to implement with relatively quick results. 
4. Measure these campaigns to determine what works and what doesn’t. Since your segmenting your email list and sending out campaigns targeted towards inactive subscribers, it's essential that you take your campaigns to the next step by measuring them and optimizing them so you can re-engage the most subscribers possible.
5. Monitor inactives so you can catch them early. By regularly monitoring your email list and subscribers over time you will hopefully be able to begin to spot subscribers that are becoming less engaged before they actually become inactive. If you can achieve this, then half of your battle is already won!

There is also the option of simply deleting your inactive subscribers out of your email database to ensure that they don't have any of the negative effects we mentioned above on your email list and deliverability. While this is a quick fix to the situation, it does little to stop the problem from arising again in the future, and potentially costs your company business opportunities with people who were interested in your company at one point in time.

Image by Nathonline-Beta on Flickr.

As social media continues to grow in popularity, it also continues to erode email’s use, despite the fact that it has been proven again and again that email is a reliable communication channel for engaging with prospects, leads and customers. Many people believe that social media and email can and should work together (including us) but  instead, many people are moving away from email altogether in favor of a completely social media-based approach.

We think that this is probably because in the face of the hype surrounding social media, email tends to look like an outdated option, and instead businesses are trying to connect with their audience using the newest, popular medium.

Don’t forget about email!

Email is still the biggest and simplest way for marketers to connect with their target audience. It’s also the base of many social media sites, can you think of a single social media account you signed up for that didn’t require you to have an active email address where you receive email updates and company information? I can’t.

Why is email so great?

1. It’s permission based (or at least it should be). If your email list grows organically, through subscriptions and opt-ins then they have given you explicit permission to email them with relevant information. This means that they have REQUESTED to receive emails from you and a connection is already established. If someone has asked to receive communications from you then they are more likely to open, click-through and read your emails which can lead to higher ROI.
2. It’s targeted. Because email is subscriber driven, it’s easier for you to send out targeted, relevant communications based on your subscribers’ preferences, rather than a general message that will hopefully appeal to a large number of your target audience, as with social media. 
3. It’s personalized. While social media communications reach a large number of subscribers quickly, it doesn’t have the same, personalized and segmented abilities of email which is one of the major highlights of using email communications, especially for lead nurturing. 
4. It’s easy. Sending out permission-based, segmented, personalized emails is relatively easy, especially when you’re using an email campaigns software product designed for non-technical users.

Now, we’re not saying you should ignore social media either. What we’re saying is that it’s important that you don’t lose track of the importance of email as a marketing tactic in the face of the popularity and low barrier of entry of social media. In fact, when you integrate you social media and email marketing you can actually produce better ROI than either of those tactics alone.

Image by Xurble on Flickr

There’s been a lot of talk lately about whether or not email is becoming less popular (and effective) as a marketing tool with the newer channels like social media being utilized more frequently as part of marketing strategies.

Well a new report by Xobni and Harris Interactive shows that this isn’t the case at all, in fact, we’re still overwhelmed by emails. The report says that of that 2,200 adults surveyed 72% indicated that they check email during their time off and 50% said they check it during their vacation time. Why is this?  Because many of the survey respondents felt that they had to ease their workload during the week; they had guilt, fearing that they were going to miss some relevant or important communication; or they said that they had to because they couldn’t handle the volume of emails they received if they didn’t.

While we strongly advocate taking time to unplug to help refresh your energy these statistics definitely show that email is still going strong as a communications and marketing tool (something we’ve believed for a long time). Real-time marketing tools like social media as well as the increasing use of smartphones means that we are staying  in-touch online and connected more and it doesn’t looks like email marketing isn’t going anywhere, anytime soon!

If you want to read further information, check out Mashable’s article on the topic, “The Truth about E-mail: We Check it All the Time.”

Lead nurturing email campaigns are a great way to front of mind with your leads, but only if they are implemented effectively. Lead nurturing is the process of building a relationship with your leads through multiple touches to move them down your sales funnel until they are ready to become a customer. So what are the essential elements of an effective lead nurturing email campaign?

1. Create compelling thought Leadership Content. Creating compelling, educational content is an essential aspect of your campaign. When you’re sending emails on a regular basis, you need to make sure that you consistently have something of value to offer them, like educational, thought leadership content.
2. Be Personal. Make sure that each of your emails is personalized based on your recipients preferences and past content interactions. 
3. Keep emails targeted and relevant. Each email you send should be targeted to a specific topic and should feature a prominent call to action.
4. Be concise and to the point. Your lead nurturing emails are just meant to keep you front of mind. Keeping your emails short and focused on one topic stops your recipients from getting frustrated and allows the purpose of your email to become clear as quickly as possible. 
5. Ensure your touches are well-timed.  Using a marketing automation tool allows you to segments your database according to buying roles and behaviors and to send out automated emails based on behavior or action triggers when a prospect enters a new stage in the buying process. This is an essential aspect because since you’re sending out a consistent flow of emails, you need to make sure they aren’t coming too often or inappropriately or recipients will become frustrated. 
6. Develop your campaign to have a natural progression. When creating your lead nurturing campaign it’s important that you carefully plan the flow of your emails to ensure that your overall campaign progresses smoothly to unobtrusively pull your leads through the sales funnel. 
7. Monitor lead activity to measure your campaign. The purpose of a lead nurturing campaign is to ultimately deliver qualified leads to sales. As with any other marketing campaign, to reach your goals (in this case, nurturing leads until they turn into sales) you need to measure the results of your campaigns and the effects that your campaigns have on your recipients.

Image by Dux_Carvajal on Flickr

Every email that you send should have a goal or purpose. Whether the email is just to stay in touch with a prospect or to inform your clients about a new product, the content of your email is a deciding factor in how successful your email campaign is. Writing effective email copy can be tough, to help out, here are 6 steps you can use to improve your email copy.

1. Analyze your subject lines. The subject  line is the shortest piece of content that you need to write for your email, but it’s also one of the main factors which determines whether your email gets read or not. Writing an effective email subject line is one of the most difficult aspects of your email. It's important that your subject lines are concise, that they create a sense of urgency and that they are intriguing enough to attract your recipients attention. You can read more about creating effective email subject lines here.
2. Create strong calls-to-action. In general, it’s a good practice to keep the calls-to-action in your emails to a minimum and to ensure that each of them tells your recipient exactly what you want them to do. It is usually easier to get your readers to convert on your campaign if you don’t overwhelm them with multiple calls-to-action. This post has more information about improving calls-to-action.
3. Include benefits to Inspire action. Telling your recipients what benefits they will get when they convert on your campaign is a key to inspiring action. If your readers don't feel like they have a reason to convert then they won't.
4. Ensure that you are promotional and educational. Many emails are sent with the intention of promoting a product or service, an upcoming event or company news. It's important to remember that you should provide readers with informational, non-corporate copy on top of your promotional copy (like a link to a thought-leadership interview on a related topic). This both adds credibility to the subject of your email and helps provide your recipients with some additional resources on a topic which, if you've done your email segmenting correctly, they are interested in.
5. Edit to be succinct.Your subscribers most likely receive hundreds of emails daily. By keeping your emails short and to the point, and directly explaining the purpose of your campaign it is more likely that your email will be read and acted on.
   
6. Proofread for errors! Having grammatical errors is one of the quickest ways to erode the credibility of your email campaigns. It's important to check for errors and to have someone else proofread your work before pressing send! 

Image by Mzelle Biscotte on Flickr.

Nobody wants to receive emails that aren’t of interest to them. Non-targeted emails and spam are a common occurrence within the B2B industry and are one of the fastest ways to decrease your email conversion rate. One of the best things you can do to ensure that your emails are going to be relevant for your recipients is to break your email list down into smaller segments for more personalized, targeted campaigns. The more a recipient can associate with the content of an email campaign, the more likely they are to act on it.

How can you get started?

The basis of segmentation involves achieving a better understanding of your subscribers. Segmenting, by definition, requires that you learn what makes your subscribers individuals and how you can group them into subsets. To determine the ways in which you are going to segment your list, you need to do some research into how your product is perceived by different groups. For instance, segmenting by gender is irrelevant, if gender has little to do with how buyers react to your product.

To get started, a good idea is to choose one single attribute to divide up your house list and to then continue to segment into smaller and smaller like-minded groups. A good example of a starter attribute might be, subscription date (older subscribers vs. brand-new ones). Once you’ve done this initial segmentation, then you can further break down these two groups based on more specific attributes like:

• Demographics (age, gender, occupation, income etc.)
• Geography
• Interest-based preferences 
• Acquisition channel (where did you email subscribers come from?)
• Purchasing history (what product lines have they purchased in the past?)
• Past email open or clickthrough rate (CTR)
• Online behavior
• Customer type (repeat, inactive, new etc.)
• Event-based
• Interest-based preferences (interest preferences chosen by the subscriber during the subscription process)

One of the easiest ways to segment your groups is by activity history. Breaking down your list by subscribers who have acted on an email campaign in the past (read, opened or clicked-through), is an easy way to target your subscribers based on their interest.  Once you move into more advanced segmentation you can begin to break these lists of interested subscribers into smaller segments based on which campaigns they interacted with and which they didn’t, to make even more specific target groups.

We know that it sounds a bit complicated, but proper segmentation is actually one of the simplest and easiest ways to create relevant interest from your house list and to increase the CTR for your email campaigns. Our advice is just to start small, and then to slowly graduate to a more in depth complicated segmentation process and remember to always test, to determine which segmentation methods work best for your organization.

Image source: www.emarketer.com

The subject line of an email may be the shortest piece of content that you write for your email campaigns, but that doesn't mean it isn't important. In fact, email subject lines are one of the most important elements of your emails, and they are often the deciding factor on whether or not emails are opened and read by your recipients. Unfortunately, they are often also one of the most difficult aspects of your email copy to write. The challenge when it comes to subject lines, is to create interest in your email’s topic and convey the purpose and content of your email, all in 50 characters or less (all the space that you have in a typical subject line).

We know this is difficult, we all face the same hurdles when coming up with interesting subject lines as much as the next marketers. To help make your lives a little less difficult, here are our  tried and true tips for creating effective, gotta-open-it subject lines for your email campaigns:

1. Know your audience and what they’re looking for. You know your target audience better than anyone else, so use that information to create targeted email subjects for your recipients. You know if your audience is more interested in informative, educational emails, e-newsletters or promotions (and if you don't, it's probably time to do some research). Utilize this information to give your audience what they're looking for and they will be more likely to open your emails.
2. Create a sense of urgency to drive action. People are much more likely to open your emails if you leave them feeling like they will miss out on a valuable opportunity if they don't open your email right away.
3. Be your own guinea pig. We all get hundreds of emails a day, many of which we don't bother to open and often barely even glance at. However, once in a while a email comes along and its subject line really grabs your attention and you feel a strong desire to open it. Keep track of what has worked on you in the past, and you can probably get a good idea of what works in general.
4. Be personal. Subject lines are an easy aspect of your email to personalize. You can target your subject line based on product or content preferences of your recipient, or on past interests, clickthroughs, purchases or actions on your website.
5. If it ain't broke, don't fix it. Keep track of what types of email subject lines have worked for you in the past and stick with them. Email subject lines that have had success in the past are probably on the right track and are likely to continue to be successful in the future.
6. Be concise and get your point across.  When it comes to email campaigns, you only have one opportunity to make an impression on your recipient and you generally, according to size requirements of most email providers, only have 50 characters or less to do so. If you're email subject lines are too long, or the relevant information is at the end of the line, there is a chance that it will get cut off and your message won't be communicated properly.

Most marketers understand that email is still one of the most effective and inexpensive tools you can use for your lead generation, but, while email is important it has some specific limitations, one of the largest being that it is restricted to the size of your email list.

Social media on the other hand, another inexpensive lead generation tool, doesn’t suffer from this restriction. When it comes to social media, sharing content and information is its fundamental purpose, and so when you share content within social media you’re not only reaching your contacts (followers, fans, subscribers etc.) but also their contacts. 

So how come too many marketers don’t put these powerful mediums together?

When properly combined, social media has the power to expand your reach beyond your current marketing database and ultimately give you the opportunity to reach a much wider lead pool.  

Here are some of our tips for integrating your email and social media.

1. Figure out which social media sites your customers use. Do you know what social media sites your customers use? It’s important that you know exactly where your target audience likes to share their content and that you have active corporate accounts on those sites with links to your email subscription form.
2. Use your e-mail list to build your social media following. Your email list is a great place to start finding relevant social media contacts. People who have already opted-in to receive information from you and who are already using social media, are usually excellent candidates to follow you on social media. 
3. Add links in your emails to each of your social media profiles. This relates to the point above. Remember, it’s not just about following your email list, but giving your subscribers the opportunity to follow you on social media. This also gives anyone they forward your emails to the opportunity to follow you as well. 
4. Find out what your target audience is talking about. One of the best ways you can use social media is to listen to what your target audience is saying. Understanding current issues, conversations and topics of interest within your target audience, can give you the information you need to send out more targeted, relevant email campaigns, which in turn, can help you ensure that your emails get opened more often. 

Graph Source: E-marketer

Email is still one of the most effective marketing channels available to organizations today. We’ve spoken and presented in the past on the mistakes marketers make with email, and how to avoid them and most of those mistakes involved actually getting your email into an inbox and opened. However, once your email is opened, there are still many more problems that can arise based on your emails' aesthetic aspects. Here are our top 8 tips on how you can optimize your email's design for better conversions.

1.  Keep it simple! Emails should be relatively basic to ensure that your message gets across as quickly and with as little effort on the part of your recipient as possible. The simpler the design, the easier your email is to code, test, and the less of a chance there will be problems between different email service providers.
2. Design for preview panes. When designing an email it is safe to assume that the majority of your readers will read your email in a preview pane rather than actually opening it to read it (especially in the B2B industry). As a result, it’s important to keep your email design no wider than 600px. 
3. Include a link to the web version. Your recipients will be viewing your email in a wide range of programs, and using a variety of different devices. Some of these may have outdated or poor HTML capabilities. To avoid difficulties, adding a web version link can allow this portion of your audience to read your email as it was intended. 
4. Keep copy brief. No one likes to open an email and see huge paragraphs of text. It makes reading the email seem like too much of a commitment on the part of the recipient because of the effort involved to read the whole email and scroll down the entire screen. This is especially an issue if they are reading your email in a smartphone which has a much smaller screen resolution. 
5. Stay above the fold. This is a pretty standard design best practice whether it is for webpages or email. Keeping your key content above the fold ensure that regardless of smaller monitor size or preview panes the important content in your email will still be viewed. 
6. Keep images to a minimum. Remember, not all of your readers download the images you include in your email. It is important to make sure that your email still looks professional, and still conveys your message whether your recipient downloads the images or not. 
7. Test every time you send. Designing emails can be a long process, but that doesn’t mean you can cut corners and ignore testing. You need to make sure that every time you send your email, your links are working and your email is rendering properly in different email providers. 
8. Use a consistent template. This is a design tip that can save you time and convey your emails’ credibility. Creating a template once and using it consistently afterwards ensures that you minimize the errors that can occur (although you still need to test each time) and that your company’s branding and message are communicated properly.

There are many different reasons why a subscriber might start disengaging with your emails: your emails are getting caught in spam folders, recipients can change their emails or have dormant email accounts etc. For the most part, in those cases, there isn’t much you can do to re-engage readers.

Instead, it's important to focus on the subscribers that have stopped opening your emails because they just become disinterested with your content. These subscribers haven’t officially unsubscribed and they don't want to end their relationship with you, but their interest has faded. When this happens it is often called “list fatigue” and it means that your list has become less responsive to your communications over time.

While it  is unlikely that you will be able to stop list fatigue altogether,  there are some things you can do to decrease its effect.

1. Provide fresh, engaging content – the single most important thing you can do is to provide quality content in every email. Something new, fresh, educational and relevant will help to engage your readers.
2. Don't over promote – Promotions aren’t bad, but they need to be accompanied by enough relevant content to keep your list interested.
3. Regulate email frequency – if you’re sending your emails too frequently it’s easy to overwhelm readers. Only email them when you have something worth saying. 
4. Focus on subject lines – Your subject lines are the deciding factor on whether your emails will get read or not. Take the time to ensure that your subject lines give your readers a reason to open your emails.
5. Make unsubscribing easy – Making it simple for a person to unsubscribe from your list is extremely important. Of course you don’t want to lose a subscriber, but if they’re not engaged, it’s better to let them go and focus on subscribers who actually read your emails. 
6. Continue to grow your list – Demographics and interests change. There is nothing you can do to prevent this. The only way to keep a high percentage of active readers is to constantly sign up new subscribers who are interested in your topic.

If you want to learn more about common email issues, check out our recent webinar, “Top 10 Email Mistakes and How to Avoid Them.”

We just finished out latest webinar, "Marqui's Top 10 Email Marketing Mistakes and How to Avoid Them" and we're glad to say that it went off without us making any of the errors we mentioned in our blog post from earlier this week:  17 Ways to Screw up a Webinar.

For those of you who couldn't join us, here's a quick glance at our top 10 list:

1. Not optimizing for blocked images and preview panes
2. Having un-inspiring email copy 
3. Not testing for email client compatibility
4. Using broken / misleading links
5. Incorporating weak calls-to-action and landing pages 
6. Sending irrelevant communications
7. Not ensuring CAN-SPAM compliance
8. Not making it to the Inbox 
9. Not using benchmark data
10. Focusing on list size vs. participation size

If you want more details about each point, or to learn how to take your email marketing to the next level, you can check out the full recording here.

Image from Flickr.

Most organizations know that email marketing is one of the most effective mediums to build relationships with their customers and prospects. Unfortunately, many of these companies aren’t making the most of their email campaigns and don't know what to improve.

We recently came across a study by Forrester Research  which shows that while 83% of companies attempt email marketing, less than 5% are successful. This is a pretty intimidating statistic, and we wanted to share our ideas to help you get in the top 5%.

To help you understand whether or not you're using email marketing successfully, we're presenting a webinar to highlight our list of top 10 email marketing mistakes, and a how to guide on how to avoid making them in the future.

The webinar is on  Thursday April 29th at 10:30 am Pacific / 1:30 pm Eastern and you can register for it here. 

The presentation will help you recognize which email marketing mistakes you could be making, and help you optimize your email marketing tactics.

This complimentary, live webinar will cover:

• Marqui's list of top 10 email marketing mistakes
• Simple fixes to avoid these pitfalls in the future
• How to take your email marketing to the next level

Hope to see you there!