Internet Marketing

Email delivery problems are predicted to increase as the growing complexity in email filters drives a greater chance that your message is going to be incorrectly marked as SPAM.

So why not start to monitoring deliverability across your known large audience ISP’s in your list to see how your email marketing is fairing. Normally it’s not a featured report in your email marketing software and it needs a bit of MS Excel wizardry but in a few moments you should know if you are arriving where you think you should.

Need some help with MS Excel to crunch these stats ?

Have a look here. It’s a tool well worthy of a download.

Here’s my take on how can the online space help you select and manage your customers.

Last week I delivered this presentation to a great audience in Christchurch. Here’s an online version for my you to virtually peruse.

I’m sure my email address is not the target spot of every person wanting to commit online fraud out there (but I could be mistaken) BUT I’m receiving a mass more phishing email marketing than this time last month.

Now I see from the latest graph below from the Anti Phishing Working Group that I’m correct : the stats are heading north.

Here are two (Citibank and Suntrust) that arrived over the weekend purporting to be someone they are not. How are you managing to inform your customers on the ways they can recognize legitimate emails from you?

Did your last message arrive as you thought it should?

If your not sure what email clients are being used to read your messages (isn’t that all of us) then why not put in some insurance to your copy and include a web link for those that have a “mangling” email client to live with.

Plus, by helping people to put your sending email address into their address book there is a better chance the next missive from yourself will make it through. Here are just two images of this in action.

Just two small changes to your next message and YES something I need to do with my own email newsletter.

I have been using Articulate to help me impart information for a few months now. Way back in August I ran a quiz that achieved a great response from my email newsletter readership. Here it is again for those that weren’t on the list then.

If you business is about helping people absorb information than Articulate is well worth a peek.

Have you seen what your email message looks like when viewed in Outlook 2003? Give it a go, you may have to cringe at the result.

By default this email application suppresses any images coming through. And this is all fine and dandy unless the images you use are not size defined then your format can just blow right out of proportion.

Here’s an example of the problem. Email shown when suppressed images inside Outlook 2003. Now once open see what was supposed to be viewed.

Christopher Knight publishes a great email newsletter on email newsletter. It’s frequent but pertinent and worth having a peek and a place in your Inbox. Here are some short tips on HTML newsletters that are work a look.

I receive messages from a bunch of retail email marketers including the Gap. They are usually good snapshots of what’s on offer that make me sit and hope that there was a store in Auckland.

BUT as always there is possible room for improvement. Look at what I see when I preview the message in my default setting version Outlook 2003. All those boxes and not a hint of what the message contains.

In idle moments I click to a full open and look closer, when I’m in a hurry they get missed. Some HTML preview copy could be handy to tempt me to go further. What does your messaging look like in the preview pane sans images??

I use audio quite a bit in my own and my customer’s email marketing.

Why? Well from the feedback I have it seems to provide a closer connection point with a fair sized bunch of subscribers.

But how about streaming audio and video at the same time? Well it seems it’s coming soon. Have a peek yourself and get ready to see my ugly mug chatting away.

This classic question comes across my desk about once a week. And yes if email was like postal mail there would be such a list out there.

But it isn’t, so there aren’t.

People like you and me I don’t are want to receive email messages from people we don’t know. And anyone that crosses the line is in the same smelly swamp as the others those their shonky wares this way.

Nope I recommend you forget about using an email as way to kick off a relationship with a prospective customer. It’s more a tool to nurture the relationships you already have.

Perhaps it may be time to stop spending online marketing dollars searching for new prospects when it could be better to focus doing more with the customers you already have?

There are a very few email messages that make it to my printer. Usually the content is so good that it deserves some paper so that I can work my way through it while eating lunch at the café nearby. Out of the hundred I receive each month a handful are treated this way.

The ones that make it paper do so because they are packed with so much good content that they deserve the extra attention that paper provides.

This leaves the large majority to be skimmed and pulled apart visually on screen while I search for golden nuggets of content.

Too often I see email marketing that covers so much content that it needs paper to perform. And unfortunately as I believe that too few subscribers will take up this option, the bulky message misses its mark.

I wrote this article a while ago to help publishers concentrate their newsletter content down to some key points to impart via email. It’s still valid today and worth a read If you are struggling with too much rather than too little content for your own email marketing.

Have fun

“Look, can I think about it?”

That one sentence spoken by a prospect can strike fear into many a sales person. But as buyers ourselves, we all know that sometimes we really do want time to mull over our options.

Yet, you must admit that conversation is often last we have had with the sales person. So many sales people are poor at following up with their prospects. And isn’t it also true that those sales people that consistently, but politely, follow up are usually more likely to clinch the deal?

Well, email could be the hidden tool to make even your most “time challenged” sales person become a follow up “super-hero”. What’s more, it could all work on auto-pilot!

Let me explain.

For this system to work, you need to have a sales cycle of some reasonable length to let it work its magic. If your prospects frequently “think about it” for a couple of days, then you’re out of luck. You need a few weeks or more.

Frequently, however, prospects take time to make their decision, especially if those decisions are complex or of a high value. In these cases, weeks can turn into months as prospects go through all the available options. These situations are ideal for email to be put to task.

To start, let me show you how the autopilot system could work. Then I’ll give you some examples of the content your follow-up messages could contain.

To make this all work, you will need a special type of email application. Called an “auto-responder”, this tool allows you to send out pre-written messages to a list of contacts over a specified time interval. There are many available and Permission can help you choose the right one for your needs.

Once you have chosen the correct tool, you will need to design your ideal prospect follow-up program. Your content needs to focus on what your prospects may be “thinking about” as they mull over their options.

Maybe you could reassure them through third party testimonials that they are not the first customer of their type looking for a similar solution.

Or you could send them information that helps reaffirm your capability and what differentiates you from your competitors.

Each of your messages should build on the content described in the sales presentation with a slight twist to push them into making a decision your way. Nobody wants to receive messages that just repeatedly ask for the order!

An email follow-up system could deliver a message each week for a month or so, perhaps supplemented with the occasional phone call. Do this and your sales people will be on track to help those “thinking” into those buying.

So next time your sales people ask for the order and get, “Can I think about it” as the reply, why not let them counter this with: “Do you mind if I follow up with you via email?”

Once back at the office, they can dive onto the Internet, add their new lead to the follow- up auto-responder system and va va voom – they are transformed into follow-up superheros.

Spending money on optimizing your web site for search engines just got another point of justification. MarketingSherpa’s recent report reveals the amount of influence search has in attracting B2B audiences and more. Worth a click and read.

Before coming to New Zealand I spent the first 21 years growing up in southern England. So it is with great delight that I can see email marketing is becoming a force to be reckoned with back home. This article on e-marketer reveals all with pie and bar charts, plus the occasional smattering of text.

Are we missing another metric from our analysis? How about click to open ratios? Learn more here. Subscribe to this newsletter if you are interested in looking forward with your own email marketing; the content is always worth a read.

A few weeks ago I was called in by Anton de Waal to guest lecture for the e-Marketing course at Unitec. It was fun. So much so that I offered to sponsor the marketing plan competition they were running as part of the course. Permission put up some Borders vouchers for the top three teams. Here’s the results and some photos.

First place was Anna King and Tina Andersen then came Kristy Birch and Lisa Convey (Lisa was absent for the photo) with the third place getter being made up of Suet Yeen Yap, Afang Xie and Heng Zhou.

There are just two key themes that I think make up good email marketing. The first is “skim readability” the other is the provision of content that provides mutual (you and your subscriber) value.

When all you have is 3 seconds of subscribe attention to convey your message a design that allows for the skimming eye is essential. Plus once the subscriber has read what you have on offer they should be willing to spend another 3 seconds on your next offering.

Are you placing too much content load on the 3 seconds you have on offer? One item pushed hard is so much better than three thoughts crammed together with neither working well

But which item should you choose to air in my messages? Well that’s where good planning comes into play. When you know where you want to lead your subscriber it is an easy choice to pick the content for your message.

Have fun