How Hotmail users will control graymail

The primary change to Hotmail’s handling of graymail is that newsletters will be automatically marked as such by the email service. This designation will enable Hotmail users to perform tasks such as:

• Scheduled Sweeps—Designate an expiration date for mail from specified senders, with automatic deletions when the message expires. This action also allows Hotmail users to sweep newsletters directly to a subfolder or to delete them altogether

• Inbox Unsubscribes—Unsubscribe from a mailing list directly from Hotmail’s inbox. Hotmail will handle the unsubscribe process for you, or simply block the email

• Instant Actions—Delete, flag, mark read, or sweep messages to a subfolder simply by hovering over the message in your inbox

What this means for marketers

While news of Hotmail’s new graymail controls may cause initial panic for email marketers, the truth is that the success of your email marketing campaign will continue to depend on the same thing it always has: value for the subscriber. Your customers wanted your email once; by making each email communication relevant to your subscribers, you can continue to keep them engaged with the marketing emails you send.

Keeping subscribers happy

The knee-jerk reaction to an announcement like Hotmail’s is often,“How can I get around the system?” But that’s the wrong question to ask. Instead, you should be asking, “How can I keep my subscribers happy so they continue to value the messages I send?” Start with these foundational principles for successful email marketing:

• Get Permission—Use double opt-ins whenever possible. A quality subscriber list will yield far better results than quantity

• Communicate Expectations—Will the subscriber receive a message daily? Weekly? Monthly? Don’t flood his inbox with unwelcome messages

• Cut the Fluff—Every email you send should provide value for the subscriber. A discount, a special sales announcement, an informative newsletter—just make sure your emails are worth opening

eConnect Email can walk you through the e-mail creation process from start to finish in order to ensure that each message you send communicates value to your subscribers. In addition, every client receives the benefits of our stellar deliverability program which includes white-listing, permission-based list building, and human reviews.

I’m bored already.

If you’re prepping an email campaign, then you already know that if you don’t have an interesting subject line, you’re dead in the water. There’s more to email campaigns than “Laptops Are On Sale.”

Strong active verbs help make your subject lines taut and exciting. If you’re cold emailing a sales lead, or following up with an existing customer hoping for follow-through sales, strong action verbs are absolutely essential.

What is an action verb?

An action verb is simply that: a verb that denotes an action. The opposite of an action verb is a passive verb, a verb that doesn’t denote an action. Jump is an active verb. Punch. Explode. Grab. Run. Scream. Smile. Active verbs do something.

Am, is, are, was, were, be, being, been. Those are passive verbs. They don’t do anything. They just sit there. You have a five to ten word subject line to get your readers’ interest, and passive verbs won’t get the job done.

Why is an action verb better than a passive verb?

Active verbs do exactly what you want your customers to do: act. It doesn’t matter how gorgeous your marketing email appears. It doesn’t matter how many animated .gifs you put in, how many links to your Facebook page you add, how much you paid your graphic designer to make it look like Saul Bass designed the piece. What your customer sees first is the subject line, and that email is just as easily deleted as it is opened based on these few words.

Passive verbs simply lack the ability to inspire readers like action verbs do; to grab the reader’s attention in less time, engage with rich content and ultimately take action.

How do active verbs help my email campaign?

Active verbs function to strengthen the most vital, and hardest to dizzy up, part of your marketing email: the subject line. You cannot add graphical pizzazz to a customer’s inbox. The only tool at your disposal is the English language, and you can only select a few simple words. Make those words count.

In short, you can strengthen the value of your marketing email by using action verbs in your copy, and especially in your subject line. An action verb is easy to remember: it’s a verb that does something. If you want a call to action, then you need to drive your customer to do it with an action verb.

• Deeper Customer Engagement

By engagement, I mean two-way conversation. Email marketers must focus more stringently on involving subscribers in dialogue, speaking with them, rather than at them.

• Relevant Content

List segmentation will take top priority in 2012 as subscribers expect email messages to increasingly reflect their personal preferences and needs. Creating targeted lists based on subscriber behavior such as email clicks, website browsing, and previous purchases will enable businesses to send content that remains high on the subscriber’s priority list.

• Mobile Optimization

As people increasingly use mobile devices to check email, businesses will need to create messages that acknowledge the unique aspects of mobile design. Single columns, larger fonts and buttons, and increased space between clickable elements all make emails easier for mobile users to navigate.

• Automated Campaigns

While many businesses already use triggered responses for email receipts and welcome letters, automation will gain a whole new level of sophistication in 2012. Increase customer engagement with your brand by using automation for cross sell and up sell offers, birthday/anniversary greetings, purchase recommendations, and more. By utilizing multiple triggers for your automation campaign, you can keep loyal subscribers engaged on a consistent basis.

• Social Media Integration

No longer will email and Facebook operate in parallel universes. Social sharing will become an intrinsic part of email marketing strategies in 2012 as businesses seek to create multi-channel communication. Enabling subscribers to share message content via social media icons will increase the likelihood of your message reaching an ever broader audience of targeted prospects.

• Email Marketing Becomes More Important, Not Less

Ultimately, despite speculations that email is dead, email marketing will gain greater importance in 2012 than ever before. Email messages will be more personal and relevant based on subscriber data, making them an integral part of a multi-pronged approach to overall customer engagement.

eConnect Email remains on the cutting edge of email marketing technology and stands ready to help you incorporate these vital elements into your strategy. By starting out on the front edge of evolving email technology, you’ll be ready for whatever new developments 2012 brings your way.

• Marketing Email

Use your emails to promote sales events, offer limited time only specials, give discounts to your best customers, and remind subscribers about special deals and offer deadlines.

• How-To Email

Keep subscribers interested in the messages you send by showing them how to do something, providing expert tips on a particular topic, or building credibility with industry knowledge.

• Event Management Email

Manage both online and in-person events by using email to send invitations, provide conference or webinar details and reminders, and ask for feedback after the event. Your subscribers will love the personal, interactive touch, and you’ll love the ability to receive instant responses from subscribers.

• Branding Email

Sometimes, your subscribers just need to see your company name and logo in their inboxes in order to strengthen their familiarity and trust with your brand. Branding should be part of every email you send as you seek to retain current subscribers and make new contacts.

In addition to specific types of emails, you can also use every email you send to accomplish multiple purposes. By avoiding the rut of single-purpose emails, you can accomplish all of the following and more:

• Gain customer data

Keep an eye on key performance indicators such as open rates, click throughs, forwards, and unsubcribes for each of the various types of emails you send in order to determine which ones are most effective.

• Build relationships

People love to know you’re thinking about them. Give them chances to interact with you via email and you’ll build lasting relationships based on loyalty over the long term.

• Determine email ROI

ROI is much easier to monitor for email marketing than it is for social media venues. With a good analytics program, you can determine exactly which email formats and strategies lead to the greatest sales and conversion results.

At eConnect Email, we make monitoring your email campaigns simple using easy-to-understand analytics reports and statistics. We’ll also help you design custom emails that deliver your message in a unique and memorable format to every subscriber, every time.

1.  Failing to Design for Mobile Devices

With roughly 20% to 30% of users checking the majority of email on their phones and almost 90% doing so at least occasionally, you can’t afford to fall off the bandwagon. To get you started, here are some quick tips that will make your next email more mobile friendly:

• Use fonts that can be easily read on tiny screens.
• Put space between clickable elements to accommodate touch screens and clumsy fingers.
• Enlarge the call to action buttons, making it stand out from surrounding content.

2.  Sounding Too Formal

Email is a much more intimate communication venue than, say, a magazine ad or even a Facebook post. Your writing should reflect that intimacy by sounding less formal, more relaxed, and more playful where appropriate. In other words, write like you speak.

3.  Subject Lines That Don’t Communicate

What’s wrong with the following headlines? “Grab a great deal!” “Re:News.” “Hello!” “The perfect gift.” These email subject lines, all of which appeared in my inbox over the past month, all make the same mistake: they don’t give the reader a clue about what’s inside.  By choosing a generic subject line, you encourage your subscribers to skip over your email or simply click the delete button.

4.  Failing to Showcase Your Unique Value

Every marketing campaign should center on your unique value proposition. In other words, it should communicate what makes you better than the competition. And that, in turn, should show up in every interaction you have with customers. Do you offer free shipping on orders over $50? Highlight that!

5.  Relying on Gimmicks Rather than Substance

Sure, it’s great to try new ideas such as including an interactive interface, linking to a video, or creating a game to get people to engage with your message. But when the message becomes obscured by the gimmick (people love your game but have no idea who you are), it has outlived its usefulness and it’s time to focus on better content creation.

If you recognize your emails in this list, it’s time to start planning your email marketing strategy more proactively. eConnect Email can help you craft your email from start to finish, including customizable templates, image hosting, managing, and editing, campaign testing, and inbox previews, all with the goal of making you stand out from the crowd.

• Ask for a vote

Whether it’s a vote on a new ice cream flavor, a cutest photo contest, or a new logo, asking for a vote gives readers a chance to click a button and get involved!  It also makes your subscribers feel valuable by encouraging them to influence the decision you make as a company.

• Include Video Links

While embedding a video in the body of your email isn’t a good idea, you can include links to videos hosted on your website. Ideally, you should include a linked screenshot of the video to arouse interest rather than a text-based link. Videos can engage subscriber attention by offering how-to demonstrations, funny clips, or new product demonstrations.

• Ask for Subscriber Input on a Marketing Concept

You can spin subscriber input a couple of different ways. If you’re brave, ask for subscriber submissions—photos, content, designs—and promise to include the winner on your site or in your next email. Or, you can simply ask subscribers to share experiences and ideas in a comments section on your website, giving them a link to click in the body of your email. This is an excellent option to showcase testimonials.

• Consider a Secondary Call to Action

If your email is primarily sales oriented, a secondary call to action can seek to engage subscribers who may not be quite ready to buy. Use any of the ideas above as your secondary call to action or simply give them an opportunity to find out more. The goal is simply to get them interacting without the commitment of hitting the buy button.

Subscriber interaction with your emails can provide excellent opportunities not only to direct people to your website, but to build anticipation in your audience for the emails that you send. Using eConnect Email’s tracking tools, you can test which campaigns produce the best results in order to generate emails that gain the attention and involvement of your subscribers.

• Guaranteed Exposure

Does your post make it on your fans’ news feed? With Facebook’s algorithm, only the pages deemed most popular or relevant will make it on the “worthy to be seen” list. Even if you do make it, your post will disappear from your fans newsfeed within hours. Email, on the other hand, always makes it to your subscribers’ inboxes (forget about bounces for now), giving you a better chance of grabbing your subscribers attention with a carefully crafted subject line. In addition, even unopened emails can remain in an inbox for days, with each new visit by the subscriber an opportunity to snag his attention.

• More Intimate

Email is an inherently more intimate venue than social media, simply because communications in your inbox are not broadcasted for all the world to see. For this reason, most people guard their email addresses more closely than their Twitter accounts. Once you’ve earned their trust enough to get them to subscribe, you can take advantage of that relationship with special offers and incentives.

• More Opportunities for Creativity

There’s only so much you can do in a tweet or a Facebook post. But with an email, you can combine graphics, copy, animation, and whatever else piques your interest to create a fabulous eye-catching message designed to engage the  subscriber to take action.

• Easier to Track

Email allows you to track such vital information as open rates, bounces, unsubscribes, and click-throughs, helping you make key decisions about what’s working and what isn’t and how you can make your campaign better. It’s much harder to track user engagement on a Twitter feed.

• Ability to segment your audience

It’s tough to create a one-size-fits all message. And if you try, it will rarely perform as well as a message targeted specifically to certain types of people. With a Facebook post, you’ve got to reach as many people as you can with one message, while email allows you to segment and even personalize your messages, making the subscriber feel more valuable and more closely connected with your company.

The reality is that both social media and email have a specific marketing niche to fill, and neither can perform the function of the other. In order to make the most of your email campaigns, take advantage of eConnect Email’s list segmentation feature, tracking options, custom email templates, and dynamic email creation to deliver tantalizing emails that your subscribers can’t wait to open.

Why a Single Call to Action?

Simply put, too many calls to action paralyze the decision process. For instance, one email I received offered me the opportunity to donate, review new merchandise, visit the store website, and make a purchase, all in the same email. Just reading it burned through my allotted attention span for this email campaign; forget about actually deciding which call to action was most enticing. Studies show that you’ll make more sales by offering fewer choices than you will by offering a smorgasbord of options. Why? Ever try to choose between twenty-four different flavors of barbecue sauce? After a while they all start to taste the same.

What Should the Call to Action Accomplish?

Of course, the goal of any call to action is the click. To accomplish that goal, you must persuade the subscriber that clicking is worth his while, and therefore, you must show him how he will benefit by clicking. The single most important question in the mind of your customer is: “What’s in it for me?” Answer this question effectively and you’ll convince him that your product is worth spending money and/or time on.

How Can I Strengthen My Call to Action?

Strong calls to action employ descriptive action words designed to communicate benefit. Some great calls to action include:

• Try It Now (implies low risk)
• Learn More (piques interest)
• Help Me Choose (places focus on reader’s needs)
• Shop Sale Items (implies a great deal)

Above all, avoid the ubiquitous “click here” that asks the subscriber to take an action without communicating any benefit or purpose whatsoever.

The best way to determine which call to action will work best for you is to run some tests. eConnect Email can help you create and test your emails to ensure that the call to action you choose generates the greatest possible response from your target audience. Evaluate your call to action’s effectiveness by measuring click through rates, forwards, unsubscribes, and more.

Subscriber #1: The Newbie

• Profile: This subscriber has just expressed interest in your company by signing up for your email list.
• Email Type: Send the newbie a welcome email that makes him feel appreciated and that encourages him to engage immediately.
• Email Goals: Encourage a first purchase, educate him about your company, promote your website, and let him know you’re glad he’s on board.
• Email Approach: Thank him for signing up and offer him a discount off his first purchase. This is also a great time to let him know what benefits he can expect to receive as a member of your subscriber list.

Subscriber #2: The Supporter

• Profile: This is the loyal gal who loves to shop at your store and opens every email you send.
• Email Type: Respond to the loyalty of this customer by giving her the VIP treatment. Make her feel like a valued customer and she’ll reward you with return visits and recommendations.
• Email Goals: Encourage increased purchasing, offer excellent customer service, and increasing loyalty
• Email Approach: Offer sneak previews for upcoming sales, give special valued-customer discounts, target email creation based on viewing history, send abandoned cart reminders, and provide immediate customer service interactions when appropriate.

Subscriber #3: The Bystander

• Profile: This person has been a member of your email list for a while but has no recent purchases and may fail to open or click on any of your email campaigns.
• Email Type: Seek to win back the loyalty of this subscriber with special offers and “we miss you” messages.
• Email Goals: Jump start re-engagement, understand her concerns, and keep her from transferring loyalty elsewhere.
• Email Approach: Solicit comments by asking for social media involvement or survey responses, offer incentives for purchases or website visits, and seek to make her feel like a valued member of your list.

The goal of lifecycle marketing is to segment your subscriber list based on their customer behavior and then to create targeted emails that encourage greater levels of participation. eConnect Email can help you reach these goals by managing subscriber data, analyzing list metrics, and building segments based on custom criteria.

Before you start testing every metric out there, let’s take a look at two of the most important measurements of email marketing success as well as some of the elements you can test to determine how you can improve.

Open Rates

Sometimes viewed as the holy grail of email marketing, open rates let you know just how many people actually open the messages you send. There are three primary elements you can test to improve your open rates:

• Subject Lines

Test content topics such as price, incentives, benefits, and offer end dates. Also, test different wordings once you’ve chosen the content.

• Sender Name

Try using your company name, a person’s name, or a combination of the two as your display sender. Beware of making drastic changes too frequently, however, since your subscribers may not recognize you or you may be tagged as spam.

• Send Dates/Times

It’s usually best to test just one element at a time (i.e., either date or time, but not both) in order to get a true picture of when you’re likely to get the most opens.

Click Rates

Click rate refers to the number of subscribers who click on a link within your email once they’ve opened it. Here are a few elements you can test to boost your numbers:

• Link wording

Keyword-rich links tend to do better than simple “click here” links, but the important thing here is what works. Test several options to find out.

• Link color

Make sure your subscribers can recognize your clickable text as a link. Test basic blue against other colors, perhaps matching them to your overall color scheme.

• Call to action

Call to action tests can deal with wording, button size, button placement, color, and several other elements. Get creative to determine what elements you might change to produce the best results.

There are plenty of other elements and metrics you can test to boost the success of your email marketing campaign. The important thing to remember is that testing is the only way you can gather the information you need to achieve that success. Take advantage of the testing options available from eConnect Email to view vital stats in real time as well as printable reports and campaign statistics.