Category Archives: email marketing

Crafting the Subject Line that Will Get Your Emails Opened

content marketing, email marketing, Small Business Marketing, Social Media Marketing,

With email as the primary method of communication in most businesses, the average working professional gets 100 or more messages per day. So, how can you get your message to stand out head and shoulders above the sea of others in your subscribers inbox? That’s where the subject line comes in.  You’ll have to craft a great one to get your subscribers attention and get your emails opened!

An Infographic to Help You Get your Emails Opened

The following infographic lays out how and why to implement a subject line that can help you get your emails opened:

subject-line-to-get-your-emails-opened

This post was made by Peter Marino, the owner and CDO of reelWebDesign.com, a mobile website design and digital marketing company in White Plains, NY that offers social media and SEO training.

5 Tips For Successful Email Marketing

content marketing, Copywriting, email marketing, Small Business Marketing

Email marketing can be a powerful social tool. Many online marketers conceptualize email marketing in a somewhat strange way:  If you send enough emails to enough people, it will get your name out there.  Other common recommendations promote quantity and consistency over quality.  The downfall with many of these email marketing campaigns is the “good enough” philosophy regarding the content quality.  Make subscribers excited to see your emails instead of spamming your subscriber base by following some of the email best practices listed below:

1.    Keep specific goal in mind

Sooner or later, your subscriber base will catch on that your exciting blowout sales actually refer to the discount section of your online store.  Another aspect of making email marketing seem more like spam than quality marketing occurs when when subscribers are somehow coerced into subscribing.  Offering fiscal incentives can build positive public perception for a short time even if the email marketing campaign is not a hit.  However, making subscription mandatory to view a website is often counterproductive.  First, prerequisite subscription can dissuade viewers from browsing your site.  Second, you are more apt to get an email address meant for spam.  Subscribers often have a difficult time getting excited about a business when they are not exactly sure what the business is.

2.     Put a strong social element in email marketing

Think about the types of emails your target audience typically gets from their peers, family, and friends.  Try to replicate the tone, length, and lingo typically used.  Be the brand that your audience can identify with and connect with on a person-to-person level.  Don’t worry about responding to every email from your subscriber base within the hour.  Sporadic responses can be part of the allure for effectively building a community around email as shown in this case study.

3.     Encourage conversation

Email has a very social element that is often overlooked.  Encourage your audience to actively participate in discussions, contests, polls, etc.  Keep the data flowing, and build a community around your brand.  Try to keep almost everything relevant to the persona that initially attracted your audience to your brand.  There is nothing wrong with sending an individual email to a single subscriber for a tactful, personal touch.  Be the voice behind your brand.

4.     Make sure everything works

Send an email to your personal account to double-check that everything works as it should.  All clickable links should go to the correct website; all images should show up on your smartphone; and reading a mass email just one more time can help you make it perfect.

5.     Write engaging content

It is important to recognize that engaging content does not have to be verbose.  The content in an email marketing campaign can be as simple as an effort to reach out to your audience on a more personal level.  Send industry-related jokes, factoids, or other items you might share via email in a personal context.  Remember that email marketing campaigns should give people a chance to connect with the voice behind the brand.  Be personable, but do not focus on your personal life per se.

Takeaway points

Do not settle for an email marketing campaign that is only OK.  Strive to build a community around an engaged and excited subscriber base.  Also, stop spamming people.  It gets old.

Our guest post, by Dorian, is a Search Analyst at digital marketing firm, Wpromote and has always had a particular interest in content marketing and coming up with creative ways to help businesses grow.

New Advertising Ideas To Help Your Business

Blogging, content marketing, email marketing, guest blogging, interactive ads, Small Business Marketing, , , ,

Innovative Advertising IdeasSavvy business owners are always on the lookout for new forms of advertising, and unique ways to surprise potential customers. In recent years, we have seen the advent of the QR code to engage mobile phone users. Another popular method of advertising in recent years is having a viral sensation, the way the new Old Spice man has been.

Here are some other new advertising ideas that may give you some ideas of your own for your business:

Interactive ads within a magazine

You know about scratch and sniff ads, or the peel-open perfume ads. But that is just the beginning.  Forbes magazine recently made an issue Wi-Fi-enabled, which means that the reader carrying it around could get free Wi-Fi. Microsoft sponsored the ad, along with T-Mobile to provide the technology to make the magazine Wi-Fi-enabled.  Springwise says that “the campaign, created with advertising tech firm Americhip, simultaneously promoted the validity of Microsoft’s cloud-based program and gave Forbes’ readership another reason to carry the publication with them – killing two birds with one stone.”

You may not have Microsoft’s budget, but try to think of some interactive way that you could reach out to readers. Even something as simple as asking potential customers to identify a photo or quote, and directing them to your website to potentially win a prize, could help engage them in what you do.

Marketing to bloggers

A small business with a small budget does not have the money for a big advertising or marketing campaign. But they can easily get some good buzz by marketing to bloggers. Here’s what you can do – reach out to bloggers in your area, or your field. For example, if you market baseball t-shirts related to the New York Mets, a good way to get your product out there is to offer a free t-shirt to any blogger who gives you a plug in the blog.

There are several reasons why doing so can be appealing to you:  bloggers are easier to reach than their counterparts in the mainstream media, they have a fan base and a good number of readers, and they generally are savvy in social media as well. This can help promote your business, and if the bloggers like the product, they will tell their friends, and their friends will tell their friends, and so on and so on.

Email advertising

You may already be doing internet advertising. Email advertising is less well-known, but can provide a terrific bang for the buck. Think about it – whether on a desktop computer, laptop, smartphone, or tablet computer, people will check their emails on all of the devices. So if you have an ad running in, say, a newspaper’s “Top 10 Articles of the Day” newsletter, the reader will get to read the ad wherever he or she is.

In addition, email ad platforms like LiveIntent will seamlessly update the ads, if need be.  So if you had a Memorial Day sales ad in an email newsletter, but the reader does not actually open the ad until late June, you can switch out the ad dynamically to reflect the new ad in the old email.

That is just the beginning of new marketing and advertising ideas out there. Tell us about what you new ideas you have tried with your business.

Lisa Swan writes for a variety of tech and business sites, including Huffington Post. She lives in New York City.

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