Important Aspects of Email Marketing Templates

In today’s email marketing arena, email templates are quickly becoming an important and integral part of any serious campaign effort. The stage is set for the digital world and all of its facets, and email marketing is the shining star when it comes to reaching your customers quickly and directly. Because of this, your choice in style and presentation of your individually sent emails, or email blasts, will be most crucial in determining how your current or potential client might view your company.

Here are just a few things to consider when decisions are being made regarding the most effective strategies and the best templates in your market.

Because of the success of email marketing, many businesses now focus a lot of their efforts and marketing budget towards that avenue. With a template, your emails will stand out from other would-be competitors, adding style and a more subtle opportunity to brand your services with every communication sent out.

Another thing to consider is that even though other businesses may be sending out email templates as well, many don’t choose templates that look great, fit the message of the campaign, or sometimes even have no bearing on the company branding image already in place. It is important to implement the colors and overall look and feel of your company’s branding with your graphical email templates. Some graphics software available on the market can take your chosen colors and design elements, and shift them around to create different templates on the fly that retain your original business or campaign design objective.

Custom email templates, when implemented correctly, can help to carry the identity of your company over to many current and potential customers. For this reason, it’s important that your few seconds of email exposure makes an impression and serves its point – to get you company noticed and remembered.

If you are looking for a company who can help you manage and deploy successful email marketing campaigns, consider iContact. It’s a powerful platform that generates sophisticated results with the simplicity of a point-and-click interface. With more than 240,000 businesses and 99.8% email delivery rates, iContact is your best choice for business email marketing software.

Keep Track Of These Three Email Stats For Higher ROI (Part 3 of 3)

You can find this number in one of two ways– by dividing the total number of clicks your landing page receives by how many individuals opened your message that invited them to do so or by taking the number of clicks the link in your email received by the number of emails you sent out. It really just depends on what is easier for you and how you have set up your campaign. If you find that you are lacking in this area, the most likely cause is that your copy, meaning the text surrounding your link, inviting the reader to click, is not doing its job. To test this theory, you will want to try some different wordings and see if that provides you with the click throughs you are aiming for.

Split testing your campaigns in another good way to gather information about your campaigns and use what you know to make them better. Split testing means you segment your recipient list and send out messages that try to accomplish the same thing but go about it in a slightly different manner. Split testing is most effective when you only change one variable at a time so that you can better see what is causing any differences in responses from the two groups.

Make sure to take demographics into consideration when you are splitting your list. Don’t split by zip code or any other defining factor that might influence your results. This will allow you to effectively test different elements of your email messages such as subject lines, personalization techniques, images, and even colors and format styles and see what performs the best. The best thing that you can do for your campaigns is to never stop finding new areas and elements to test and refine while improving the growth rate and segmentation strategy of your email list.

If you are looking for a company who can help you manage and deploy successful email marketing campaigns, consider iContact. It’s a powerful platform that generates sophisticated results with the simplicity of a point-and-click interface. With more than 240,000 businesses and 99.8% email delivery rates, iContact is your best choice for business email marketing software.

Keep Track Of These Three Email Stats For Higher ROI (Part 2 of 3)

Your open percentage keeps you clued in to how many individuals on your list are opening your emails and is a helpful statistic for several reasons. This number is found by dividing the number of emails that were opened by the amount of messages you sent out. The percentage that it gives you will tell you if a campaign did well, just okay, or poorly. It will also, over time, help you to determine members of your list that are just generally inactive, that is, people who never open any of your emails. Having the information that this provides will help you to better split up your list so that you can communicate differently to those who are consistently opening (or not opening) your messages and even offer them different specials and incentives based upon their activity level. It can also help you to determine good and bad times and days to send your messages and also to determine if your messages are ending up in spam folders instead of inboxes.

The important thing here is to always look at your statistics with the understanding that statistics don’t always mean what they may seem to mean on the surface. For instance, if a campaign gets opened by no one, you might assume that your subject line needs a serious rewording when, in fact, you simply included too many images and all of your messages wound up getting blocked as spam by your list members’ email providers.

The third statistic that you need to make sure to keep track of is your click through percentage. Most, if not all, of the email campaigns that you send out will have a link embedded in them that you would like for your recipients to click on and follow. This will typically be a page where they can sign up for your service, buy your product, or check out an affiliate of yours.

If you are looking for a company who can help you manage and deploy successful email marketing campaigns, consider iContact. It’s a powerful platform that generates sophisticated results with the simplicity of a point-and-click interface. With more than 240,000 businesses and 99.8% email delivery rates, iContact is your best choice for business email marketing software.

Keep Track Of These Three Email Stats For Higher ROI (Part 1 of 3)

If you are in the Internet marketing business, your success will hinge on having an effective email marketing strategy. The only way to get to that point is by educating yourself on what works and doing continuous, organized testing in order to fine tune your campaigns and overall strategies and update them to fit an ever-changing marketplace. When you are just getting started trying to institute a logic way to follow and assess the effectiveness of your email marketing efforts, there are three percentages that you should always be tracking: your sign up percentage, open percentage, and click through rates.

Your sign up percentage is important because it reflects how many of your visitors sign up to join your email list. As individuals opt-in to receive your emails, your sales and conversion capabilities will go up accordingly. Your sign up percentage is calculated by the number of sign ups you get, divided by the number of people have navigated to the area of your website or landing page where they are offered the option of signing up.

This percentage will differ depending on what demographic your product of service caters to. However, in general, if you have a sign up percentage that is sitting at twenty percent or more, you are doing something right. If you find that your percentage is adding up to significantly less than that, you might what to change some elements of your sign in page around or try adding a new incentive to encourage more users to sign up. Remember to base your statistics only on unique visits to your page. This means you won’t count repeat visitors into your sign up percentage, doing so will cause your results to be inaccurate and will usually make for much more depressing numbers.

If you are looking for a company who can help you manage and deploy successful email marketing campaigns, consider iContact. It’s a powerful platform that generates sophisticated results with the simplicity of a point-and-click interface. With more than 240,000 businesses and 99.8% email delivery rates, iContact is your best choice for business email marketing software.

The Importance Of Email Signatures (Part 2 of 2)

Your business’ email signature should be no longer than nine lines of text with no more than 60 characters to a line. If you go over these standards, especially in line length, you’ll run the risk of having your words wrapped incorrectly which will result in a startlingly poorly formatted signature or only a portion of your message showing up.

Important information for business email signatures to include is your company name, your name, your title, your email address, you company’s website address, your phone number, fax number, and physical address.

Another great element to work into your email signature is your company’s catchphrase that highlights some benefit that you can offer clients. This can be very simple and straightforward, such as “bringing you quality footwear since 1992” to something witty like a ditch digging company with the phrase “We Can Dig It” worked into their branding.

Just remember that some things don’t belong in your email signature line. These no-nos include hard sales tactics, unnecessary information, and outdated information. So remember to keep it straight to the point always update your email signature line as soon as any information changes, especially as far as the contact information is concerned. Also, stay away from fancy fonts that might make you signature difficult for recipients to decipher. Plus, using a less common font will increase the chances that it will be received by someone who doesn’t have access to that particular font on their computer, this means that their system will substitute an alternative font in the place of the one you chose. This could give your message a very different look than you intended.

Once you have settled on your companies business signature, make sure you use it at every possible email occasion. Set up you email program to automatically insert it at the bottom of every email and make sure it is properly formatted. Email signatures are a quick and easy way to increase your companies image and visibility.

If you are looking for a company who can help you manage and deploy successful email marketing campaigns, consider iContact. It’s a powerful platform that generates sophisticated results with the simplicity of a point-and-click interface. With more than 240,000 businesses and 99.8% email delivery rates, iContact is your best choice for business email marketing software.

The Importance Of Email Signatures (Part 1 of 2)

You won’t find too many successful business owners walking around without any business cards. Business cards are invaluable because they help cultivate a positive image for your company while allowing a way to stay in front of prospective clients and current customers alike so that they are more likely to think of you before the competition the next time they are in need of your product or service.

In the online world, email signatures serve as your cyber business card. The digital version of the useful business card has its own advantages– no reordering! In addition to the benefit of never running out of them, email signatures are free also. Don’t let these positive qualities like free and endless make you think less of them– they are just as effective as a business cards when it comes to being able to be referenced by those who have received any correspondence from you.

Just like with business cards, the goal is to get as many of them in circulation as possible. That means every email you send, every forum you post to, every comment you leave, and every article you write, should all be followed by an effectively designed email signature that will serve as a reminder of your company, product, and/or service that you can provide. The more frequently current and potential customers see your calling card and branding, the more likely it will be that they will choose your company instead of the competition the next time they are in need of your particular product or service.

If your company has employees that will have contact with your client base via email communications, you should create a standardized business email signature for each person to utilize in all of their business related correspondences. As you start about the task of designing your companies email signature template, there are some tips and guidelines you should understand before you begin.

If you are looking for a company who can help you manage and deploy successful email marketing campaigns, consider iContact. It’s a powerful platform that generates sophisticated results with the simplicity of a point-and-click interface. With more than 240,000 businesses and 99.8% email delivery rates, iContact is your best choice for business email marketing software.

Tips To Professional Looking Email Marketing Campaigns (Part 4 of 4)

Similarly, do not abuse the exclamation point. It is important that you only use exclamation marks in quantities of one or three. No more than three (3) (!!!) should ever follow any word or sentence, and even then, the triple dose needs to be saved for some seriously exciting news or you’ll run the risk of making your message look like it should be being pitched by an infomercial host. Additionally, they should never appear at the beginning of sentences, provided you are speaking English.

Spell Check Every Time, Then Have It Proofread

When subscribers receive a message that contain obvious oversights in spelling and grammar, it affects the way that they see you and your company as a whole. They are more likely to associate companies that put out correspondence with proofreading errors all over the place as uneducated and low-level rather than a leader of an industry or credible, successful business. Putting in the time it takes to make sure the messages you are sending to your current and potential clients meet a certain level of quality, will show your readers that you are refined and have high standard when it comes to the quality of your products and services, all the way down to your emails.

Next time you find some marketing pieces from other companies in your inbox, read through them and see what sort of an image the messages give you about the company. Then try to determine what elements of their correspondence were responsible for conjuring that image in your mind. Keep these things in mind when your are creating your own email marketing messages, along with the general rules I have presented. Your customers will notice the extra care you put into your messages and your performance statistics will reflect it as well.

If you are looking for a company who can help you manage and deploy successful email marketing campaigns, consider iContact. It’s a powerful platform that generates sophisticated results with the simplicity of a point-and-click interface. With more than 240,000 businesses and 99.8% email delivery rates, iContact is your best choice for business email marketing software.

Tips To Professional Looking Email Marketing Campaigns (Part 3 of 4)

Many popular email clients such as Outlook Express give you the option to set the line wrap to any length you want. This way you will just enter the desired line length and forget all about measuring and hitting the enter key every time you reach 60 or so characters.

Proper Font Selection

Some fonts come standard with almost every computers and word processor but others are not quite as commons. When you are selecting your fonts, keep this simple fact in mind. If you choose a font that is “perfect” for your campaign but it happens to be one that only half of your recipients have installed on there system, 50% of your subscribers may well receive a message that looks completely different from the way that you intended.

Errors like this can really wreak havoc on your statistics if you’re not paying attention. You might think that your campaign was much less effective than it actually was if you don’t take your font selection into careful consideration and always think about how your usage of it may be affecting your campaigns in difficult to see ways. To be on the safe side, look up a comprehensive listing of the most used fonts and stick close to that home base when designing your campaigns. In general, simpler, easier-to-read fonts will get a better response and make you look more credible anyway; so at least as far as your font choices are concerned– stay conservative.

Don’t Touch That CAPS LOCK!

WHEN PEOPLE WRITE IN ALL CAPITAL LETTERS IT MAKES IT SEEM LIKE THEY ARE PAUSING BETWEEN EACH WORD AS THEY SHOUT AT YOU. THIS IS NOT APPROPRIATE FOR… WELL… ANYTHING.

Actually, I think the caps lock really should be phased out of keyboards altogether. If you are using capital letters responsibly, you most likely will not need to capitalize more than one word at a time and even those should be few and far between, if not avoided completely. Frankly, there is usually better ways to draw attention to lines and words than hitting the caps.

If you are looking for a company who can help you manage and deploy successful email marketing campaigns, consider iContact. It’s a powerful platform that generates sophisticated results with the simplicity of a point-and-click interface. With more than 240,000 businesses and 99.8% email delivery rates, iContact is your best choice for business email marketing software.

Tips To Professional Looking Email Marketing Campaigns (Part 2 of 4)

Wrap Lines At 65 Characters Or Less

There are a wide variety of programs that email users utilize in order to read and send their electronic mail. For this reason, you can never be sure what the text in your campaign message is going to look like by the time it gets pulled up on their screen, with their email provider, and subject to their preset display preferences. One such preset that can wreak havoc on marketing messages is word wrap. Word wrap is often built into email providers for the purpose of automatically arranging lines of text according to a pre-set number of characters. If any of your subscribers has their word wrap set to a shorter number of characters than yours and you haven’t set your word wrap setting at 60-65 characters to avoid any such issues, the message the subscriber receives is very likely to look something like this:

This is not the way professional emails look.
Correspondence such
as this gives a very bad first impression. Improper
word wrap makes
text very hard to read, which makes the
person receiving the
message much more likely to delete it before ever
reading it.

Another good reason to wrap your words at 65 words tops is to make your text more appealing to readers and require less reading effort on their part. It is common for individuals reading text on a computer screen to cause eye strain. However, the shorter the lines of text across your page makes for easier reading, and a higher likelihood that the recipient of your message will take the time to read it.

If you can’t set your word processing software to word wrap automatically. You can easily create lines of the proper length yourself by entering some characters, 60-65 of them, at the top of your page for use as a reference point. Next, simply paste or type the desired text below it and use the enter key to end lines after 60-65 characters.

If you are looking for a company who can help you manage and deploy successful email marketing campaigns, consider iContact. It’s a powerful platform that generates sophisticated results with the simplicity of a point-and-click interface. With more than 240,000 businesses and 99.8% email delivery rates, iContact is your best choice for business email marketing software.

Tips To Professional Looking Email Marketing Campaigns (Part 1 of 4)

Successful email marketing campaigns give your subscribers an impression of your company that they will base much of their purchasing decisions on. This simple fact should be all the motivation you need to focus your marketing campaigns on providing your current and potential clients a positive experience that will leave them with positive thoughts about your business or company. If you aren’t diligent about using proper etiquette in your email marketing communications, you will run the risk of ruining your chances with your subscribers and potentials. This is why striving to make your emails as pleasant and enjoyable as possible for your readers is so vital to your marketing efforts.

The main purpose of proper etiquette, is to set the stage for comfortable and enjoyable interactions. Etiquette in email marketing campaigns are no different, and should be treated as if your business’ marketing plans depend on it for success– because they do.

Successful email marketing campaign are built to earn the respect of clients and potential clients. The reason for this is simple– respect makes sales. This is another area where the rules of email marketing etiquette will come into play in allowing you to achieve this goal. Though these rules may seem simple, failing to institute them can be the downfall of your marketing efforts, cut into your ROI in a very significant way, and ultimately cost you new and existing customers.

If you are looking for a company who can help you manage and deploy successful email marketing campaigns, consider iContact. It’s a powerful platform that generates sophisticated results with the simplicity of a point-and-click interface. With more than 240,000 businesses and 99.8% email delivery rates, iContact is your best choice for business email marketing software.