Simple Guidelines for a Successful Email Marketing Campaign

One of the many hats I wear at Thrive is the campaign fulfillment manager – every email campaign that is launched through our system is displayed on my screen, at least once. Talk about information overload!

Until recently, I also managed results. Again, every campaign that was launched appeared on my screen once more, when I reviewed and posted the open rates. Many campaigns unfortunately failed, but the successes were often statistically phenomenal! As a marketing company, we want to help every client’s campaign be an amazing success – there is nothing more rewarding than receiving the client phone call telling us to STOP his campaign, because he can’t handle the leads its generating!

How do I gauge success? In many cases, the three major statistics we provide are strong indicators: the final campaign open rate, click-thru totals and opt-out totals. A high open rate indicates that the Subject Line and From Mask were likely relevant to the list selection and contained information that the recipients were interested in finding out more about. A large number of click-thrus demonstrates that the creative gave the reader a clear reason to visit the website/landing page and learn more. A low opt-out count is also a relevancy and interest indicator. For example, our list composed of Hunters and Fishermen list may not have many individuals interested in Duck Hunting… so the Duck Call you’re selling that generated 10 click-thrus and 125 opt outs from our campaign may not be the best product for our list!

Seeing so many campaigns succeed and fail, I began noting trends of characteristics present in each category. I thought it would be appropriate to share some of these characteristics with our clients and prospective clients in order to aid in the campaign development process.

First off, characteristics of poorly performing campaigns:

• Non-descript Subject Lines and From Masks – Subject: “Check this out!” From: “Awesome”… likely not going to work.
• Deceptive Subject Lines and From Masks – touting new shoes from Tom’s in the Subject and From, but then offering Soccer balls in the creative will win you no sales and likely get your email deleted with no clickers.
• High SPAM Assassin SPAM Scores – SPAM Assassin is a widely used SPAM Filtering engine which investigates the content of a message and scores each email based on a set of carefully crafted rules. It’s best to test the score of your creative with a free score checker online.
• Poor creative design –yellow test and a pink background typically don’t go together… and your recipient knows it.
• Improper Grammar / Misspellings – You’d be surprized at the nummer of blatent mspelligns thatt sho up in e-mAilcampaignns. Proofread!
• Image-only Creatives – while using images enables you as a designer to control more of what your recipient sees, an image-only creative often results in a blank ad on his/her screen.
• Email Addresses in the Creative – email addresses included in a creative often snag a few SPAM Assassin points right away. Avoid using an email address and include a landing page (we can help with that!)

And, of course, now those of successful campaigns:

• RELEVANCE! – Relevant list pairing to your product or offering.
• Clear From Mask and Subject Lines – The FM and SL are in the “front line” when it comes to getting the recipient’s attention… they state what the email content is about and from whom it originates and often dictate whether the recipient will open or delete your email. Think about how your sort your daily snail mail…
• Clear Call-To-Action (CTA) – Blatantly provide the recipient with the next steps to take if they are interested in your offer. Simply inform them of what they should do if interested in your product.
• Design Consistency – Allow your creative design to flow from the recipient’s inbox to your website or landing page. This prevents the visitor from being concerned that he is visiting the incorrect website.
• Repetition – Multiple viewings have proven over time to increase response rates.
• Images with ALT Text – As discussed above, many email clients will hide images by default; this is detrimental to your ad, especially when the images are important to
• Colors – Extreme colors, such as fuchsia, yellow or lime-green will often trigger SPAM filters and reduce deliverability.
• Timing – Timing is critical on many fronts. If running a campaign to inform the public of a timed-event, such as a sale or webcast, send initial notification 2-weeks in advance. As the event nears, send follow-up reminders to the same recipients.
• Appropriate Text to Image ratio – Images will make an email creative “pop”, but don’t include too many images that sacrifice the deliverability of your email campaign or the appearance of the creative for those email clients that block images by default.
• Personalize, it’s free! – Where appropriate, include the recipient’s name in the email to grab their attention. Would be more likely to continue reading an email with the greeting “Dear Consumer” or “Dear [first_name]”?

As you read, many of these points may seem like common sense. Often though, it seems they are forgotten in the midst of pulling all parts of a campaign together. Prior to scheduling your campaign, review each of the above points to see if you’ve forgotten something – one minor edit may make your campaign a knock-out success!

That’s right folks, technology and the internet are evolving more rapidly than ever and with that, new marketing opportunities are being created every day. If your business isn’t taking advantage of online video, social media, search engines, email marketing and online community involvement, there is room for improvement in your marketing plan.

If you could use some fresh ideas to generate more business, contact me today at 615-469-2272 x 101 or rob@thrivemg.com for a free, no pressure, no hassle, no obligation and confidential 30 minute strategy session. I promise you will get more than you paid for.

Search Engine Optimization (SEO) is an increasingly important part of internet marketing.  Make sure your website is designed to be SEO-friendly so search engine users can find you easily.  Contact us today to get a free, no pressure, no obligation SEO Analysis Report for your website!  Many of our competitors charge $499 or more for this service!  This report will show you how to improve your site to be SEO-friendly.

Now is the time for companies to be increasing online marketing, and there are plenty of ways to do that without increasing your online marketing budget!  Here are a few of my favorite things:

1. Get advice. There is nothing worse than investing money and seeing no return on it, but unfortunately, it happens to a lot of businesses.  The online marketing opportunities businesses have grow more each day as the internet continues to sprout new marketing mediums and strategies.  It is hard for businesses to keep up with it.  I recommend seeking the advice of experts who can point you in the right direction.  Thrive offers ecommerce consulting and emarketing consulting, and it is not free, but you can save thousands of dollars by getting educated on what works and what doesn’t work.  Let me give you an example.  Thrive recently consulted a new client that sells digital scrapbooking supplies.  They are a brand new business and have a small online marketing budget.  They have a well-developed website and blog, but had no idea how to get the best “bang for their buck” with their marketing dollars.  As a startup business, it is important for them to spend their marketing dollars wisely.  They had plenty of manpower (or womanpower in this case) also known as “time” to do marketing for themselves, but had a small budget.  They decided it would be best to get some advice before spending anything.  In 2 hours, Thrive’s team educated them on six different mediums that could be used to market their products for no extra cost (other than their time)!  So instead of spending $400 on a marketing campaign that may or may not work, they were able to learn about six mediums they could start using right away to see immediate results.

2. Get Social. Two years ago, the term social media didn’t exist.  We can thank our younger generations for wanting to be more connected because today there are well over 100 social media websites out there that offer businesses great opportunities for affordable promotion.  There are studies that show customers want to learn about who they are buying from, and social media helps with that need.  If you have the time, set up accounts with several social media websites (you can see a list of our favorite ones at the bottom of that page).   Two of my personal favorites are LinkedIn and Facebook.  If you don’t already have accounts on those two sites, go GET THEM NOW.  I bet you will be able to find many people you know already using them to promote their businesses.  If you don’t have the time, you might consider hiring a social networking / social media expert to manage your company’s accounts for you.  It is important to keep your profiles on these sites updated regularly.  Whenever you make a change to your profiles, these sites almost always give you a chance to broadcast your changes to the people connected with you.  Think of it as a chance to get your name in front of the eyes of your friends, partners and customers for a very low cost (notice I didn’t say free, that’s because your time is worth something).

3. Buy Marketing Packages. Ask your marketing partner if they offer any marketing packages, or deals that give you a higher value for the same dollar amount spent.  Often marketing companies will package services together because they can perform them more inexpensively if they are all done together.  For example, at Thrive, we package email marketing campaigns with an email ad design and offer a 50% discount on the ad design.  It makes sense because we can do the design in house and have it ready the next day.  The ad designs produced by our graphic design team are optimized for success!  The important thing to note here is that we can afford to offer this discount because a great deal of our cost is incurred by trying to get ads designed by others to work in our system.  Often, clients will provide us with an email ad they have designed that is not optimized for email marketing.  For example, the call to action may be weak or the ad may contain many phrases not to use in an email marketing campaign.

Every business is different.  Some things will work great for some products or services and very poorly for others.  We would love the opportunity to talk to you about the options your business has.  If you are interested, schedule a free, no pressure, no hassle consultation here.  The tips in this blog post are just a few of the many things businesses can do to increase online marketing without increasing their budgets.  Please stay tuned for more!

Buying an email marketing list can be a fantastic way to generate quality sales leads for your business, if you find the right list. If you’re considering purchasing an email list there are (surprise!) some important questions to ask.

1) Where did the email list come from? How was the information gathered? This is one of the first and most important questions to ask when you find an e-mail list for sale. There are all kinds of ways to gather personal information from people. Likewise, there are all kinds of individuals trawling the internet digging up whatever they can find to try to sell to unwary customers. For obvious reasons, an email list containing old or outdated information, or one that has been pieced together by scanning various public forums in every corner of the web is likely to yield poor results in an email marketing campaign. Thrive’s email lists come from reputable companies whose patrons have asked to receive information on a variety of subjects. A few of Thrive’s affiliate companies include The Home Depot, Expedia.com, and Careerbuilder.com.

2) Is the email list Opt-in? As outlined above, consumers on opt-in email lists have chosen to receive email offers or advertisements pertaining to particular areas of interest. All of Thrive’s consumer email lists are double opt-in, meaning that they have not only chosen to receive these offers, but that they have also responded positively to a follow-up email confirming their wish to receive offers in the future. Very few business email lists are opt-in lists. While the majority of our business email lists are not opt-in (although some are), for business to business marketing the success of the campaign rests much more heavily upon the strength of the product and the relevance to the business receiving the email.

3) What information, records, and fields are included in the email list? In order to have the best chance of response from a prospective client, you should know as much as possible about him or her. It’s nice to at least address the individual by name at the opening of the message. What if your offer is gender specific? Thrive’s consumer email lists include the following fields: Email, First and Last Name, Postal Address, Opt-in Time Stamp, Source of Opt-In, and Double Opt-In IP Address. Many contain additional information such as Birth Date, Gender, and most contain Phone numbers. These fields can be very helpful in segmenting your list for optimal results.

4) Is the email list clean? The age of the list is also a consideration, albeit less important if there is a regular cleaning of the list going on. How is an email list cleaned, you ask? Reputable companies who sell or rent email lists will have a means of testing them to find bad email addresses. Additionally, some of the best lists for email marketing campaigns are used quite frequently and are therefore carefully cleaned to remove any individuals who no longer wish to receive them. Most of our email lists are cleaned daily to ensure accuracy.

5) Is there an accuracy guarantee? If you are considering an email list rental or purchase and the seller does not offer any type of guarantee as to the accuracy of the data, it’s best to move on. Because of the nature of transferring data and the sheer quantity that is often sold, having a guarantee is essential because there’s no way to check each record yourself prior to purchase. Furthermore, ask for references of clients who have previously purchased or rented the email list. Thrive proudly offers a 100% email accuracy guarantee. In the event that an email list does not contain 100% valid email addresses, Thrive will provide extra email addresses to ensure full deliverability.

6) Is the list going to deliver a good return on investment? Put another way, does the email list have a good price vs. performance ratio? Consider carefully what your use of the email list will be and whether or not the cost to purchase it outweighs the usefulness for your particular application. One way to ensure that your ROI will be high is to know your marketing strategies when looking for an email list for sale. If you are marketing a niche product or service, look for email lists that are very specifically targeted. Our database affords our clients a wide range of business and personal interest categories to choose so that they are sure to get the most out of each email list.

7) How (and how quickly) will the email list be delivered? Email lists can be very large files and, depending upon your email account capacity, may not make it to your Inbox. Additionally, the file needs to be openable. If it is a file format your computer does not recognize the seller of the email list should provide a different format. In addition to the accuracy guarantee, a guaranteed delivery time is equally important. We send your copy of the purchased email list within 48 business hours of payment processing. It is downloadable via a link in the email so your Inbox is never going to be clogged. The document will be in CSV format, which can be opened in Microsoft Excel.

Today I am proud to announce the launch of Thrive Marketing Group! Thrive is the new brand of Ad-Site.com, an email marketing company I acquired 3 years ago on January 1, 2006. Traditionally we have specialized with email marketing and consulting. After seeing low quality work and high prices on other marketing-related services such as web design, printing and social networking, we decided to offer them ourselves! Here is what we promise to offer our clients:

We offer you an alternative. We offer you a marketing firm that won’t leave you playing phone tag and constantly waiting for a return call. We offer you a marketing team who can (and is eager to) accomplish any online marketing task you set before us. We offer you an organization of business professionals concerned first and foremost about your success and your bottom line. We offer you a new approach to marketing on the web and beyond, an approach that takes into account the big picture: your goals, your aspirations, your vision, and your budget. We offer you the Thrive Marketing Group. We hope that you will accept our offer.

I invite you to take a look around our website (www.ThriveMG.com) to see what we can do for your business! Please check back often as I will be offering a wealth of great information here!

Sincerely,

Rob Bellenfant