If you have an Etsy store or thinking of opening one, then you might want to use email to help you grow your shop and your sales. And there is really no reason not to do so because email is an inexpensive way to market to your customers. Or better yet, come up with a regular e-mail newsletter.

A regular email newsletter or just a simple e-mail can help you grow your shop, get more customers, and ultimately earn more. What are the ways to do just that? Here are five easy strategies to grow your Etsy shop using email:

1.  Email helps make one-time shoppers become loyal customers.

How many times have you sold something to a customer whom you are sure is very satisfied with your product or service, only you never hear from him or her again? If you sell unique and high-quality merchandise on Etsy, and a customer does not buy anything from you again, chances are high that it is not because of a bad experience with you or your product. It is most likely that the customer simply forgot about you. That customer may still have the product from you, but when he or she gets asked about it, you’re just “somebody from Etsy.”

Keeping in touch via an e-mail blast is a good idea to give your customers top-of-mind recall. Whenever they need your products, you are the one that comes to mind first when they think of suppliers and sellers.

You could email them with interesting and informative stuff. For example, if you own an Etsy shop that sells handmade jewelry, you can send your customers e-mails on how to clean them, or how to wear them with the right clothes, or what hairstyles would go perfectly with a pair of earrings.

This will not only keep you on their minds, but this will also show your customers that you care about them enough to educate them.

On the other hand, if a one-time customer does not hear from you again, you risk losing out on all the repeat businesses, simply because the customer has forgotten about you and your Etsy shop.

2. Let them get to know you better.

Using an email autoresponder, you can tell your story, or your shop’s story, to your buyers.

Once they purchase something, send them an email thanking them for their purchase and then giving them a little history about yourself, your Etsy shop, or your products.

It could be something really personal, such as telling them how you came up with your Etsy shop name or how you started creating fine pieces for sale. Or email them something that serves as an indirect marketing of your products’ special features, like “We make our own buttons from recycled material” or “We get our raw materials only from organic farmers.”  Give your customers a little backstory to your products.

This is actually a very good way of highlighting your products and how they are made, making them even more unique and valuable to your customers.

3. Get loyal customers by turning your e-mail newsletter into a VIP loyalty club.

A good way to encourage customers and other people to sign up for your newsletter is to offer freebies, discounts and deals that are exclusive to your subscribers.

Even if they have not bought anything from you, tell people to subscribe to your newsletter. Encourage customers to sign up for bargains in the future.

This can help you increase the sales from your Etsy shop by offering more attractive prices, discounts and even free stuff to your subscribers. In turn, your subscribers will think that they are getting a good deal from you and will thus buy your products.

A good example is to give customers or visitors to your shop free delivery coupons when they sign up.  This will certainly encourage them not only to sign up, but to also actually purchase something from you in order to avail of the free delivery promotion.

4. Let your customers do the marketing for you.

Giving your customers regular updates, informative articles and even product updates can help establish trust on their part.

This will make it easier for your customers to recommend your Etsy shop to friends and family.

What’s more, if you constantly send out great articles that people can learn from, your customers will be forwarding these to their friends to spread the knowledge.

In short, by keeping in touch with them through really useful content, you are letting your customers do the selling and the marketing for you.

5. Use your email newsletter to feature other sellers.

It may be counter-intuitive the first time you look at it, but if you really think about it, it makes a lot of sense. Feature another Etsy seller who also has his or her own newsletter. Because if they are featured on your newsletter, these other Etsy sellers are bound to invite their own readers to subscribe to your newsletter, too. The same thing happens when you ask other Etsy sellers for an interview or to write a guest post for your page or your blog.

Now who do you feature? Certainly not your competitors. This will only take customers away from you.  Instead, feature a seller of a product that is closely related to yours. For example, if you sell jewelry, feature a seller who specializes on other sorts of fashion accessories, like handmade headbands, or belts. This way, you can get a fresh list of subscribers AND potential customers. Plus, because you have related products, your subscribers will still be interested in what you have to feature and what you have to sell.

Bonus: Email is very effective and is not costly!

With the right tools, e-mailing your customers does not have to be time consuming on your part.  What’s more, recent reports have found that for every dollar you spend on e-mail, you get to sell more than $40 in return. That is certainly not bad a return for investing in and using a tool that is easy to use and allows you to build long-term and profitable relationships with your customers and subscribers.

And we’re not alone…Marketers everywhere must go through these same tasks to broadcast their news electronically over their digital channels. After 10 years of sending these monthly newsletters, most of the steps are second nature. While it takes no more than an hour to get an email sent out (once the story is written that is) it wasn’t always the case. When we reflected on earlier days, the tasks above seemed downright scary! So, this month we figured we’d take you on a journey to learn just how these Dog Paper newsletters get delivered to you each and every month and more importantly, share a few shortcuts along the way.

1. Writing the Content

   Figuring out what to write about each month takes the most amount of time and energy. But there are so many amazing writers and bloggers out there so don’t be afraid to use their concepts for inspiration. In fact, if others are writing about it, then it’s a good sign that folks want to hear about it too. Use these trends to your benefit. Chime in with your position. Here are some resources we tap into when formulating a topic.

   Shortcut of the day: Find blogs, websites and feeds posted in your industry or segment. Use these portals as a guide to take the pulse of your industry. Use them for inspiration (but don’t plagiarize of course and cite or credit accordingly)!

   Word to the Wise – helpful tips all about email, delivery, spam and more
   Email Marketing Reports – A collection of stats and information on the popularity of different webmail services and email in general.
   Marketing Sherpa – Resource that publishes useful news, case studies, and best practices data about internet and integrated marketing.
   MarketingProfs – One source for online marketing resources, marketing articles, online seminars, case studies, conferences and events for marketing professionals.

2. Populating the Blog

   Currently the Dogmata blog is powered by WordPress, which is fabulous and very easy to use (once installed). If you’re not blogging yet, maybe it’s something you should consider. In fact “77% of Internet users read blogs according to Universal McCann” And the best part is, you can integrate your blog into Facebook and Twitter to increase your readership.

   Shortcut of the day: Make your content work double-duty for you. Strategize how your content for your email newsletter can be integrated in to your other media channels. These alternate channels can help you with your SEO initiatives and building your online presence!

   Recommended DIY Blog Creators:
   WordPress – The No.1 best blog management tool
   Blogger – A free blogging tool for web designers
   Weebly – Free website and blog engine

3. Creating the Email

   Working for Mail Dog, we’ve got the easiest, most flexible email creation tool on the block (and over 250+ great looking customizable templates). This means, creating the HTML code for my email design is a breeze. That being said, there are some tips to make your life easier when creating HTML messages, regardless of who creates your code.

   Shortcut of the day: Take a look at the emails you like to get best. What do you like about them? What motivated you to take action or say, “hey, that’s a darn good-looking email!” We like to subscribe to lots of marketer’s lists so we can see what’s happening in design and functionality to keep us fresh.

   a) NEVER use text that had been copied directly from Microsoft Word, an email, a web site or anywhere other than Notepad. Doing so will inadvertently add messy, yucky, and unruly code to your email which can negatively affect the way your email looks in the inbox. The easy fix is to simply paste your text in Notepad (pc) or SimpleText (mac) prior to inserting into your HTML editing wizard OR if you are a Mail Dog client, use the “paste from word” icon installed inside your HTML editor tool. I promise, this little step will save you much heartache in the long run.

   b) DON’T go crazy with formatting fonts. Sure you need a bold or an italic here and there. But adding 6 different fonts with varying sizes and colors not only looks unprofessional, but also can get your email flagged as spam in the inbox (because it looks like spam).

   c) KEEP things short. No one reads long blocks of text in an email. Include 2-3 paragraphs of the most compelling content inside the email and include a “click here to read more” link. In the Dog Papers, we send people to our Dogmata blog to read more, but you can use your website, facebook, blog OR if you don’t have web hosting capabilities you can use Mail Dog’s Landing Page Publishing tools to host additional webpages inside your account.

   d) PLAIN text version is a must. There are still some users who can’t receive HTML coded messages, so always include a plain text version and send the email with MIME encoded. Mobile readers are also on the rise, who sometimes only get the text version. If you’re a Mail Dog client, we do this for you automatically; if you’re not a client then what are you waiting for?

4. Take a Coffee Break

   Yes, a breather is needed every now and again and what better than a nice, large cappuccino. Yumm! Use this break to research and poke around online at what other folks are doing – this way your break is completely legit! Ok, now back to it…

5. Format Images

   Finding the perfect image to support your text is a must. We like to use Google Image, Istockphoto.com, or Mail Dog’s FREE Stock Gallery when searching for the perfect image. Always use ALT Tags when using images in an email. It allows for text to be read even if that image is disabled inside the users inbox. Even, if you don’t have the luxury of Photoshop, Mail Dog clients can use our FREE integrated Image Editor. Not a Dog client yet (what a shame!), you can try using one of these recommend online image resizing websites:

   Pixlr – Free – quickest and easiest way to get the job done
   SplashUp - Free – offers a fun and casual image editing experience
   Picnik - Free, easy to use, fabulous, fun and powerful editing tool
   Adobe Photoshop Express - Free – offers some slick advanced tools

   Shortcut of the day: Ask your art director or graphics department to create low resolution (72 dpi), email-ready images when they are preparing promotional materials so you’ll have things handy when you need them. Create a folder on your computer of cool images that you ‘might’ use at some point so you can go there in a pinch as well or just use Mail Dog’s Image and File Library to host documents and images directly inside your account for easy access.
   

6. Test, Test and Re-Test

   We cannot stress enough the need for everyone (yes, we mean you) to always send tests of your message before you hit send. And always send to someone who is better at grammar than you are. Proof read, spell check, click all the links and make sure the email is rendering properly in multiple readers. Don’t just rely on your inbox to do the testing. Test to free and corporate inboxes as each might render (or display) your email just a tad bit different. OR if you are a Mail Dog client use our FREE integrated Image Preview and Render Tool and you can see just how your email will look in 28+ email readers.

   Shortcut of the day:  The great thing about the Mail Dog’s platform is we can schedule campaigns in advance. So thanks to a little pre-planning and Mail Dog’s future scheduling tool we could be in Tahiti while you are reading this. We’re not, but we could, so that’s kind of like being in Tahiti, right?

   We hope you learned a few shortcuts. Feel free to shout out if you need any other tips. We’re here to help you with your own email adventures!

Transactional emails.  You just got to love them because no other type of email communication is more anticipated than this one. Especially in this busy holiday season with B2C businesses ramping up to fulfill online orders and subscriptions. Read on to learn how to maximize your transactional emails with marketing chops barely visible to the naked eye!

Transactional emails are those that you send to somebody who has just ordered your products or availed of your services, or those who have just signed up for your newsletter.  So basically, you send out transactional emails when you:

1. Confirm purchases made by the recipient.
2. Notify them of shipping arrangements and other information about how they are going to get the merchandise.
3. Welcome new signups or memberships.
4. Give out product recall notices.
5. Inform subscribers of subscriptions that are expiring or have already expired.
6. Give them a running total of their account balances.

Transactional emails tend to be more factual and more personalized than other types of emails.  Plus transactional emails are sent to your customers when they expect to get them, instead of being surprised by your email popping up in their inboxes.  This is the reason why so more recipients open them and click on links that are included in the e-mail.

Just consider the statistics: studies cited by EmailStatCenter.com reveal that …

transactional e-mails often have close to seven times more
click-throughs than bulk emails.

This also means that revenues are higher with transactional emails, which are estimated to be between 3 to 6 times better than bulk mailings in this area.

Given that transactional emails are being read by your recipients, you would want to do it right (and ninja-like).  While the Mail Dog platform is designed for marketing email communication, rather than the delivery of transactional emails (see tip #5) email is email and we’ve got some tips that you could use to make your transactional emails even more effective!

1. Ensure that your transactional emails are delivered

This is very important for email marketers that regularly send out promotional emails to a sizable list because your IP might be blocked by your customer’s ISP.   To get around this, use a different IP when you send transactional emails and they are more likely to be received.

2. Use an existing, valid email address with a concise and accurate subject line

This will make it easier for your recipient to identify where the email came from and what it is for (even find it later).  This would also drive the recipient to open your email.

For the subject, put the purpose at the start instead of the end, because most people just scan the subject line, while mobile displays cuts the subject line short.  So always put important terms such as Shipping Confirmation or Subscription Details first.

3. Your main purpose is to acknowledge the transaction and thank the customer

Make sure to keep in mind that the primary purpose of a transactional email is not to market your other products and services. Instead, thank your customer for expressing interest in your products and services or for subscribing to your newsletter.  This should be one of the first things you say on your email.  Also remember to put in the important details of the transaction.  For instance, if you are confirming an order, include the products ordered, a brief description of each product, prices and order numbers.

Also, you might want to be proactive about their questions.  For example, if you are sending them an email confirming their purchases, you might want to include information on how long it would take for their orders to arrive, what numbers they can call to track the shipment and other questions related to the transaction they completed.

Bonus tip: It might be tempting to include every little matter in your email but be sure that your copy is not only easily readable and scanned over with short and clear sentences, but that it should also cover the most important details of the transaction and what happens next.  Use bullet points when necessary.

4.  Mind your layout

The content is the most important thing in a transactional email and if you arrange them as suggested in the previous item, you should have no problem.

However, you should also mind your layout.  For example, put your logo in a very visible place on your email to let your recipients know that the email is from your company.  This would also help differentiate your mail from those sent by spammers.  You might also want to include a link to your website as well as a privacy statement to assure your customers that personal information is being kept safe. Mail Dog can help you come up with an HTML layout for your transactional e-mails.  This would take care of the design aspects of your e-mail.

5. Deliver your transactional email immediately

Transactional emails are ideally sent right after your customers check out their purchases.  If it is a little longer than what they are accustomed to, they might find this a cause for concern. Tie in your transactional emails with your order system or mailing list system to ensure that the email is fired off as soon as the transaction is completed.

6. Market with transactional email

Surprisingly, even as transactional emails bring in more revenues than bulk mail, very few marketers are using it to promote other products and services or even get new subscribers.

With its high open rate and clickthrough rate, it would be a great idea to promote your other products in a transactional email.  But make sure that you push for similar or complementary product.  For example, if your recipient bought dishwashing liquid, you might want to promote your line of dish rags rather than outdoor furniture.

Other things you have to keep in mind:

a. Put your offer near the end of the email.

This helps you keep the transaction details at the top of the fold, while keeping promotional content secondary.  In a study made by Ecommerce Benchmark Guide, they found that your recipient will view marketing and promotional content included in a transactional email positively if they can see the details of the transaction first.

b. Do not over promote.

Resist the temptation to promote just about any relevant product that you have.  At most you can devote only 20% of your entire email to your other products.

More links means more SEO value, which means more people know about your product

We don’t really need to explain the value of getting good SEO value or why building links to your site is important. But what we want to stress here is that you need to take advantage of sources you are already using, in order to improve the number of links and your SEO value.

Here are some great tactics you can use that will cost you little (if any) money, and really won’t take much time. Take a tour with us through Building Links University!

Email Link-Building 101

Obviously, in your emails, you want to have direct links back to your site, or even to some specific blogs/articles within your site that the user can find useful. These links drive value back to your site, especially if you use good anchor text and you point to the right pages on your site. Make sure you also use brand links that point directly back to your home page too. And you definitely want to have links to your social websites, which might not have much SEO juice, but it certainly provides word-of-mouth value.

Intro to Embeddable Content

Depending on what kind of site you run, there can be plenty of different ways to use embeddable content. You can offer them badges to post either on their Facebook pages or on their own blogs/websites. It could be a badge saying they’ve been a member of your site for one year, or that they are a Frequent and Valuable Visitor. Maybe they’ve made five purchases on your site – get them to brag about it with a badge! Encourage them to complete their profiles on your site, and then offer a badge for that. The more information they give you, the more you can learn.

Do you have a tool on your site that people find useful? Ask them to share that on their site. They win, their customers win, and you win. If they have a company, they might even be inclined to share to with their customers over THEIR email list.

I just blew your mind.

Advanced Course on Infographics

Infographics have become an incredibly useful tool for many people on their websites, and you should take advantage of this trend by adding them to your emails.

Be  proactive and explain in text above the infographic if they share this infographic, how it will help their readers, friends and customers. This is a nice way public relations can work with marketing. Your efforts promoting infographics are bound to be more successful than a traditional link request, at least from a statistics perspective. They’re definitely more palatable and enjoyable to read, and it’s much easier to remember stats when presented in picture form.

First, you want to be personable in your opening paragraph, using their name if you have it, and showing some warmth. Then, make sure you have the embed code right there, available to them in the email, so they don’t have to hunt for it. The embed code should already link back to your site.

Finally, you should make sure you add your domain name, not just the brand, inside your infographic. That way, if they upload and use the infographic and choose not to link it to you, you can still get some direct visits. You always want to brand with a domain name.

Anatomy of Email Lists

A great way to get an up close and personal relationship with some of the people on your email list is to dig down into the list itself, and grab the domain names of your users’ email addresses. First, discard anyone with a gmail or a hotmail account. Those are personal accounts, and while they might be used by business people, it’s difficult to learn anything from them.

Instead, go after the ones that have subscribed with their work email addresses. You’ll generally know those because they are domains that don’t offer up free email accounts! These could be B2B sites, other marketers or even owners of other sites. And now – you have a direct email address of business people already interested in your product!

Now, separate those sites into ones that already link to you (friends) and those that have not yet linked to you (soon-to-be friends).

For the first group (friends), see if there’s a way you can help them also, possibly with a link on your site. Or maybe write a blog reviewing something of theirs? Then email them to form a connection and see if there’s something you might be able to work on together. Show them your appreciation for their patronage.

For the second group (soon-to-be friends), well, we consider these even more valuable, strangely enough. We’re fickle! We always want what we don’t have!

Put these domains in a spreadsheet sorted by the ones with the largest domain authority up top. See if you can reach out to them – which you should be able to do since you have their email address already! They care about your business, and they’ve made themselves accessible. Take advantage of that!

Get social with them and prove that you care about helping them as well. Find their Twitter accounts, Facebook pages, Google-Plus pages, blogs and websites, and engage with them socially. Commenting on their site shows you are serious and you’ll have a better chance of getting a link back through engagement.

By using these tips and tricks to build links through your email list, you are on schedule to graduate and get your Masters in Email Marketing!

Remember when you were a kid in school and you passed a note to a girl you had a crush on? And the note said, “Do you like me? Check ‘YES,’ ‘NO’ or ‘MAYBE’?” And then you watched that girl open up the note and giggle hysterically with her friends as she crumpled it up and tossed it in the trash!?! … No? That didn’t happen to everyone? Dang!

Luckily, Facebook doesn’t have a ‘NO’ or a ‘MAYBE’ box – and they can’t crumple up your website and throw it in the trash. But what they do have – is a LIKE button! And for a business – either an online business or a brick-and-mortar company – getting someone to LIKE your site is even better than traditional advertising.

• It’s free (and in this case the priceless kind of free)
• Chances are very good that the person who liked your business page has friends within the same demographic that will also like your products.
• It’s exponential in that for every click to like, it will be automatically seen by way more than the original “liker”

You’ve already built your Facebook business page, but how do you get more people to LIKE it?

1. Put a LIKE box on your website

You already know that the people on your site are interested in your products, so they are already more apt to share your site with their friends! You can also install a LIKE Badge on your site for an even better look. Get one now! Facebook Like Box

2. Ask your Facebook friends to LIKE you

Post a status update on your personal page asking your friends to LIKE your business page. This isn’t improper by any means, as it’s something you obviously hold great interest in and something you would talk about anyway. If your friends feel like you are spamming them because you are promoting your own site, those are some over-sensitive friends. Just be smart about it. Always try to post something interesting in your status update about your business that might interest your friends. If news or current events are relative to your page, then discuss it. Try not to post requests for people to like your page too much though — once a week should be fine. You can even mention that. “Here’s my once-a-week request to my friends to LIKE our page! Thanks!” Letting them know you are only posting this notice once a week will keep complainers quiet.

3. Place a link to your Facebook page everywhere

That includes your email signatures, your blogs and articles, your forum signatures or anywhere else that you comment frequently/infrequently. Print them out on your business cards and on your letterhead. Let people know there’s a community page that people can share. Make sure you add the link to the boilerplate section of your press releases.

4. Give incentives for people to LIKE you

Offer up some incentives for people if they LIKE your page. Hold a contest and give out some swag to a random fan. You can also make it a more pointed contest, asking people to comment on a particular product and how they were able to enjoy it specifically. Ask them to upload pictures of them and your products, while also tagging your page. 9 Tips for Running Successful Facebook Contests

5. Bring Twitter followers to Facebook

Make a concerted effort to convert some of your Twitter followers over to your Facebook page. Obviously, on your Facebook page, you’ll be able to share larger pieces of content in a more aesthetic way than on Twitter, so discuss what your Twitter users might be missing out on by not being a fan.

6. Put out a personal request

Send a personal request to all of your close friends, but not ALL of your friends. Invite just the ones you believe would be open to your request, and happy to both LIKE your page and possibly share it on their sites. You might consider sharing links to their pages first, to put them in a generous mood.

In fact, while you’re at why don’t you LIKE Mail Dog.

7. Find business connections

Connect with some of the group admins of message boards or forums that are associated with your business. Explain why their members would benefit from liking your Facebook page.

8. Add Facebook links to your email newsletter

Do you send out a newsletter? Announce the existence of your Facebook page and welcome your readers to join it. This could also be a regular area in your newsletter in which you discuss things that have happened on your Facebook page.

9. Use contests, sweepstakes and promotions to increase LIKES

Running a “Fan of the Month” promotion or doing other “Fans Only” contests is a great way to build numbers. There are companies like Wildfire that will help you launch promotions, contests and sweepstakes with ease. Posting trivia contests also helps keep the fans engaged, which shows their interaction with your site on their page, which may entice more people to join. Think about giving away T-shirts and mugs, which will help your numbers climb, while also advertising your site.

10. Add LIKE US links to transactional messages

Capitalize on the customers that already use your site/products by posting a Like Us message on the Thank You page after your customers have made a purchase. They already like and trust your product, and this helps you squeeze a little more value out of each purchase.

11. Tell people why they should LIKE you

Don’t be afraid to post a page on your site listing all of the great reasons people should LIKE your Facebook page. Be informative, but show some personality. If they like reading that page, they could be more inclined to LIKE your page.

Certainly, you can see the advantages of getting people to LIKE your Facebook page, and these 11 ways are really just jumping off points. Be creative and think ahead. What news or sporting events are coming up that you might be able to tie in with your company? Are their holidays on the horizon that you can incorporate into some fan contests on your site? Getting fans to your page is one step, but don’t forget that you want to keep them engaged and coming back often, as well.

When you send out your HTML email, you have made sure that not only did the layout look right, but also that everything was in place.  However, do not be shocked to find out that the same email would look different on another reader or client (and for the record, a client is a software program installed on your computer to read email, like Outlook for example).

This is not a problem with your HTML email (nor is it a glitch on your email service provider aka Mail Dog).  Instead, it shows just how different email clients handle HTML code.  Some email clients strip images, while some do not have HTML support at all.  Others have problems handling and displaying CSS, while some do not show link colors or even font changes. The other, and popular, way of reading mail is through a webmail client like Gmail or Hotmail. These have their own set of parameters and rules when rendering your emails.

Different email clients display HTML differently.

So while your email may look good on Outlook, it might not look the same on Gmail, or even Eudora.  The reason for this is that HTML was developed as a standard for Web pages.  However, email is NOT strictly a Web page!

Another reason for this are spammers.  Spammers are making life difficult for us legitimate email marketers.  Some layout options are being used by spammers to disguise their emails so that these do not look like spam and therefore won’t be sent to the spam folder. As a result, some common HTML tags and formats can be highly scored by spam filters, making deliverability problematic.

HTML is not the only problem area. CSS is too. In fact, you would be surprised at how some of the most popular email clients stack up when it comes to CSS compatibility.

How the most popular webmail services render CSS

Among the four most widely used webmail services, Gmail is the most non-compliant to W3C standards.  But that does not end there.

How desktop email clients rendering CSS

Luckily for email marketers, there is a group that strives to correct this.  The Email Standard Project is looking to have a standard to make email display correctly, no matter what client is used.  They work with the developers and the designers to come up with standards and compatibility.  Unfortunately, we are bracing for a long wait before that could happen.

The Project does have a useful reference of which email clients are compatible or not:

Indeed, even e-mail marketers and other seasoned professionals make mistakes when they first start out on social media. The good thing is that you can learn from the common mistakes other businesses make.

So if you are still a green apple in all things Twitter and Facebook, read on!

What Email Marketing Can Teach You About Social Media Marketing

1. Respond to questions and comments

Does it make sense for you to blast an e-mail communication to your list and not reply to any questions or comments? Nope. The same goes for social media. When you get a question, a comment, a complaint, or just about any opportunity to interact with your customers, seize it!

Key Learning: Reply promptly and show that you and your company cares.

2. Moderate yourself

Sending out too many e-mails to the same list in too short a time is a cardinal sin in e-mail marketing. Social media has this rule too. You may be tempted to fire off a status update one after another or perhaps share pictures of your products, but resist the temptation. When you post one thing after another right away, your followers and your fans will see you as spammer.

Key Learning: Spread out the updates so customers can interact fully before seeing new content.

3. Mind your manners

You never ever send out an e-mail with too many glaring grammar and spelling mistakes, right? The same should be true for social media. The atmosphere and conversations on social media might be a little more laid back than the ones happening on e-mail, but do make sure that you proofread your updates and replies first before clicking on that submit button.

Also, if you think that your tweet or update is a little bit too negative or too controversial, you might want to read it again and again so that there would be no room for misunderstanding. If you are not sure, don’t send it.

Further, make sure that you are not posting your updates and tweets in ALL CAPS. Like in e-mails, all caps and exclamation point signify shouting. As such, it is considered rude.

Key Learning: A bit of spell check and proof reading can go a long way.

4. Segmenting is key

One of the most important steps in e-mail marketing is list segmentation. Knowing which people belong to a certain list and all the demographics behind that list, you could tailor-fit an e-mail message that would be most relevant to the people in that list. Same thing with social media. If you are using posts that are meant for everyone, you are losing the chance to engage more deeply with your fans or followers. For instance, if you sell clothes for everyone, there is nothing wrong when you sometimes post an update that would appeal to women only. The effect would be that your female fans or followers would be able to relate more to your updates if these speak directly to them, rather than a vague and confusing post that is targeted at everybody.

Key Learning: Try getting specific with your posts to engage users rather than everyone as a whole.

5. Use images and creativity to enhance your posts

You spend a lot of time with your e-mail layout and finding the appropriate image to help you deliver a strong message to your recipients. Admittedly, you would be quite limited with social media sites. But if you are creative enough, you can certainly capture their attention in 140 characters or less. Use word play or find ways to capture your customers’ attention.

Or you could opt for an easy way out, which is to post an image together with your update. In Facebook, for instance, you are given the chance to choose an image with any link you are sharing. Do not just use any random image with your link, but instead look for something relevant to what you are sharing. Also, you should erase the link you are sharing if you can. In Facebook, when you paste a link, you usually get a preview pane popping up. When this preview comes out, erase the URL you wrote into your status update box and write a more engaging and appropriate text to help introduce your link.

Key Learning: An extra 5 minutes of creative exploration can boost customer attention.

Common Social Media Mistakes Beginners Should Know and Avoid!

1. Forgetting that it is SOCIAL media

Remember that social media is indeed social. You should be engaging your customers in a conversation about what you do and what your business is all about. Posting press releases and links to your website would hardly qualify as engaging. This means that you should be monitoring the Facebook page you have to make sure that everything there is relevant to your business.

2. Having hashtags for your Facebook updates

Hashtags are commonly found on Twitter and has absolutely no use on Facebook. If you do not have time to create status updates for your Facebook fans and rely on crossposting from Twitter, then maybe you should not be on Facebook.

3. Liking every post you make

It might be trivial, but resist the temptation to like every post you make on Facebook. It makes you look desperate.

4. Not having a custom URL for your page

Custom URLs are the first thing that you should have for your Facebook page. Not only will it help people find your business easier on Facebook but it will also allow you to put your branding on the URL itself. What’s more, if you put your Facebook page URL on your business card, it will be easier for people to type it out.

5. Reacting badly to a negative comment

It is very tempting to defend yourself when somebody leaves a negative comment on your page. However, see to it that you respond in a professional manner and try to resolve any issues that the customer may have. See it as a chance to do some customer service. Never ever pick fights with a customer because you will end up at the losing end, no matter what.

So why would the images in an inbox be turned off? The majority of inboxes now a days are automatically set-up this way as a security setting for the user, for example, Gmail, Outlook, Hotmail, and Yahoo to name a few. Also, some recipients are opting to turn images off when they are browsing using a slower Internet connection or to prevent images from spam emails coming through (you know the ones we mean).

While recipients can turn the images on, e-mail marketers can do themselves a great favor by making sure that their e-mails are still very readable even with the images turned off. Not only will this help you increase your clickthrough rates, but it will also ensure that you do not miss out on an interested customer and still be able to tell him or her about your offers.

Here are nine best practices in making sure that your e-mail looks good even with images turned off!

1. Always assume that embedded images in your e-mail will not display or will not appear correctly.

Take a look at your e-mail and imagine that your images are not loading. Instead, tiny red X’s are showing up where your images would be. If you are reading this e-mail, would you be able to understand what the e-mail is all about?

You should have enough text to get your point across even if the images fail to load for one reason or another.

An added benefit of having enough text to balance your images is that it allows your e-mail to bypass spam filters. If you do not have enough text to balance your images, there is a smaller probability that your e-mail will trigger spam filters.

2. Use HTML to deliver your main message.

Whether it is to have them buy a product or subscribe to a newsletter, be sure to have the main message of your e-mail in HTML or text form. Do not embed your offers in an image.

3. Specify the height and width of your images.

Never leave the height and width tags in your images blank. This way, even if your images do not load when your e-mail is opened, the overall layout is preserved. This means that the text and other elements of your e-mail will appear where they should appear.

4. Always provide an alt text for your important images.

Alt texts are shown when your images are not. So make sure that you give a brief description of what the image was about. Better yet, you can use the alt text to tell a reader what you are offering.

5. Provide an alternative for your background images.

If you use a background image for your e-mails, then be sure to provide an option so that your e-mails are readable even if the background does not load (Outlook 2007 & 2010 do not support background images). For instance, if you are using an overall dark background, use a solid color to display in lieu of the background image.

The good thing about using HTML is that the image and the color are specified using the same background tag, so that the e-mail client can display one or the other depending on its compatibility.

6. Always provide a call to action link.

If you have been doing A/B testing and mailing for quite some time, you might have noticed that arrows, attention-seeking graphics and certain colors make the best accompaniment to your calls to action. This is the reason why most e-mails have an arrow graphic, for example, pointing to their call to action (buy this product now).

Even with a call to action graphic used in the e-mail, be sure to include a text link leading to the same page nearby.

7. Create a Web-based version.

Always have a copy of your e-mail hosted on your site so that you could direct your subscribers to it when they encounter problems with their e-mail clients. It goes without saying that you should also make sure that your Web version displays properly and the link you used is correct!

8. Always put your offers first.

It is always a good idea to put your offers above the fold. This way, your recipients would have an incentive to turn the images on.

This way also, you get to avoid having a big white space where they should be reading all about your offer!

9. Test, test, test!

You should always test how your e-mails look with both images turned on and off using different e-mail clients such as ThunderBird, SquirrelMail and Outlook, and web-based email services such as Yahoo Mail, Google Mail, AOL and Hotmail.

This will help you see how your e-mail looks like when viewed from different browsers and see if they are readable no matter what version is read!

To help you a little, we have compiled what we know about popular e-mail clients in one nifty table.

Desktop clients Images displayed by default Renders ALT Text

Put them all together…

Let’s look at real campaigns and see how all these best practices work together:

The link to the Web version is very visible and is the first thing you see. The offer is right above the fold, giving you a great teaser of what to expect. What’s more, the call to action is rendered in text, but it looks like a call to action button! All images have an alt text telling the reader what the picture is all about. Plus all dimensions are entered in, so the layout stays the same.

This is the QYPEdeals e-mail with the images on.

As you can see, even with the images turned off, you basically know what the offer is all about. The image here, however, helps make the email more eye-catching and interesting.

Now you know what you need to do, the next step is doing it! As a Mail Dog client, we have all these tools already integrated into your account. Plus, every account comes with a Campaign Booster tool to show you first hand how your email is rendering in over 33 different email readers with images turned on and off. Learn more about the tools Mail Dog has to offer by scheduling a live demo today!

How many times have you lost sleep over open rates and click-through rates?  As an e-mail marketer, you probably take these two metrics to gauge just how effective your marketing efforts are.  Open rates and click-through rates are good measures because you could easily increase these using some best practices.  If you have an e-mail service like Mail Dog, you can also gain insights on just how your e-mails are working.  With the reports you get from Mail Dog, you do not only get to know the numbers, but you also get help on how to improve these numbers.

In 2011, MarketingProfs.com reported that open rates for all e-mails fell 9 percentage points to 17% in 2010.  But taking a look at the different industries tracked by the report, it showed that those with the highest open rates at more than 20% are pharmaceutical, insurance, government and financial.  Three industries that fell flat, registering only open rates of less than 10% are entertainment, retail and technology.

So while we have an accepted average of what a good open rate is, that can change depending on a lot of factors, including the industry your company belongs to.  This means that a published average might not be applicable to your e-mail efforts because of the following factors that change what a good open rate is for you.

Factors Which Can Affect Your Open Rates

• The size of your address list.
  Bigger lists are known to have lower open rates.
• The people in your list.
  If your recipients are typically busy people, then you should not be worried about lower than average open rates.
• What you are sending.
  Newsletters typically have higher open rates than marketing and sales messages.
• Images turned off by default.
  Open rates are measured by tracking how many times a particular image in your e-mail was accessed.  If the recipient turns off image loading on their e-mail clients by default, there is no way to know that unless they click on something in your e-mail.When looking for a benchmark for your open rates, try to look for an average that is relevant for your company.  For example, if you are sending out marketing messages for a clothing line, take a look at the averages for the fashion industry.

Best Practices To Increase Open Rates

• Downsize your list.
  Break down large lists into smaller ones so that you could further fine-tune your e-mail message and make sure that a larger percentage of your list is targeted and interested in what you have to offer.
• Use a sender and subject line that works.
  These are the only two elements that push a recipient to read your mail, so make sure that you get a feel of what works for your lists.  At the beginning, do some A/B testing on different subject lines and sender names to get to know what would drive more people to open your e-mail. 

  Header Tips
  a. Do not use marketing@yourcompany.com as the sender name.  Instead use a real employee’s name, such as Christine Mullaly.  Better yet, set your list so that it looks like the e-mail came from the CEO or a known company representative.
  b. Avoid using “free,” “reminder,” “help,” and “discount” in the subject line.  Instead of saying Free Information on ABC Product, why not make it more interesting such as 4 Facts About ABC That You Can’t Live Without.
  c. Provide the local area in your subjects, i.e. Try this great restaurant in New York City.
  d. Do not reuse subject lines.
  e. Short, simple and direct to the point subjects are the best.

• Avoid setting off spam filters.
  Spam filters look for common phrases and words in your e-mail to determine whether it should be sent to the inbox or the spam folder.  Do not use all capital letters and having too many exclamation points anywhere.  Also, choose any one of Mail Dog’s e-mail templates to make sure that you do not use sloppy HTML, which would trigger spam filters.With Mail Dog’s reports, you can actually know which of your e-mails are opened and by who.Take into consideration if a lot of people from the same mailing service do not open your e-mail.  For example, if you notice that in your list of 1,000 people, nobody with a yahoo.com or gmail.com e-mail account opened your e-mails.  This might mean that your emails are being marked as spam, if they are delivered at all.
  
• Do not think that it’s a waste to remove an e-mail address.
  Mail Dog’s reports tells you what e-mail addresses are not working for you: those that don’t get delivered, and those that do not consistently open your e-mail.  You might want to remove these from your list, or try to engage them more by sending them a different type of e-mail that would tell you what they are interested in.

 Click-through rates for all e-mails, according to a MarketingProfs.com article,  averaged at 3%.  With the lower number of open rates, it is not unusual to have a click-through rate that is in the single digits.

A higher click-through rate is indicative that you have a good e-mail marketing campaign.  So if you have a lower CTR, do not fret, you may need to do some changes that could improve it.

Best Practices to Increase CTR

You could apply the best practices for improving open rates to your CTR, but in addition to that, you should:

• Optimize your e-mail for mobile devices
  Your e-mail should be a teaser of what you sell.  If you have a low CTR, you might be giving away too much in your e-mail that there is really no reason to click on any links to find out more.  Either that or your e-mail is boring them. Another way to optimize your e-mail is to make sure that it displays well both on desktop computers and mobile phones.
• Tailor your newsletters by your users click-actions
  Mail Dog’s reports tell you what links are being clicked and by whom.  This should give you an idea on what type of links are working.  Is it a graphical call to action button?  Is it the link placed prominently on the page before scrolling down or the one at the bottom of the e-mail?  You can take your cue from this insight and do more of what works for your recipients.
• Add plenty of links
  Make it easier for your recipients to find a link in the screen that they are viewing and you are sure to increase your CTR.  Some recipients might not even bother to scroll all the way down or up your e-mail to find a link to click.
• Check out your open rates and compare it to your CTR
  Another insight you could gain from Mail Dog’s report is whether you need a better copywriter for your e-mail content.  If you have good open rates but have a dismal CTR, then there must be something wrong with your content.  If this is the case, you might want to write e-mail copy that packs a punch, or you might want to make sure that your call-to-action is strong.  You might also want to create a sense of immediacy or urgency for your readers by offering a discount on a limited time basis.

A Quick Guide:

Average open, click-through and click-to-open rates that you can reference:

Apples or oranges? Mayo or Miracle Whip? Salad or hamburger? Life is full of decisions, which in most cases, get made in an instant without second thought. But, as marketers, our decisions greatly impact open rates, conversions, sales, company branding and reputation. So, which will it be … green logo or red logo? Two-column or single-column email newsletter? Everything matters.

Our own personal feelings or intuition can only take us so far. Just because you prefer the red logo doesn’t always mean your subscribers will react the same way. So, why not ask them? By creating an A/B split test you can learn firsthand how your subscribers will react to your test subject.

A/B testing is simply a test wherein you divide your list into two groups modifying the content for each group to figure out which marketing variables give you better response.

With two versions of a marketing element (A and B), the goal is to find a way to quantify and define success for each. For example, you have two email layouts and you would like to find out which one is better at getting people to sign up to your newsletter.  You send one layout to half the people on your email list, and the other layout to the remaining half on your list.  Then see how many sign ups you get from each.  You then ultimately select the version that works better.

In the end, this saves you a lot of time and money when doing e-mail campaigns because it tells you what works and what does not.  It allows you to fine tune your email format, call-to-action buttons and whatever elements you want to test.  More than that, it increases both your conversion rates and return-on-investment.

But how do you do this?  Here are 10 tips on how to start your own A/B testing campaign:

1. One at a time, please.

When you are starting out, it is easy to identify a lot of variables to test thinking that if you test them all at the same time you could save costs.  But this could only lead to confusion on which element really works for each group.  For example, did you get more signups in Group A because the layout was better, or was it because of the bright design of the call-to-action button?  Test only one variable at a time to be sure.

This is also important if you are going to test email campaigns that lead to the same landing page.  You would not know what caused the higher conversion rates if you conduct more than one test at a time.

2. Test the minor revisions.

Some marketers think that they should only conduct A/B testing when they do a complete revamp of their website or create a wholly different layout.  But in email marketing, the slightest changes you make to the layout, or font, or colors could affect your conversion rates in a big way.

3. Check out other data too.

To do A/B testing, you should identify a single measure of success.  For example, one call-to-action button took more people to your landing page, but the other one gathered more sales from the few people that it took to your landing page.  Which one weighs more to you?

In this case, you might realize that the first button might not be better as it may have given your recipients wrong impressions about your products that led them to click on it, and when they got to your landing page, they found that it is not exactly what they are looking for.

4. Split your email list randomly.

The original version of your email format, call-to-action button or landing page would be your control group, while the newer one will become your treatment group.

You should be sending one version to half of your email list and the other version to the second half.  Ideally, these two halves should be more or less equal such as how long these recipients have been in the list, demographics such as gender, age and income, and other characteristics.

Admittedly, going through all these is going to take a lot of time.  The good news is that you can just randomly assign recipients to either half and still get valid results.

5. Test both groups simultaneously.

Timing affects your conversion rates. The day and time you sent it, or which month of the year you sent it, would affect whether your recipients would open it or not.

If you do not test both of your groups simultaneously, you would never know if the success of one was due to the call-to-action button, or the different time of day they received it.

6. Just how much better is better?

Let’s say that your control group has 75 signups, while your treatment group has 77 signups.  Is the treatment group necessarily better than the control group?

Be sure that you brush up on your statistics and check out the statistical significance of the difference in the two groups.  Aim for a high statistical significance: 97% – 99% is typical.  Again, the Internet comes to the rescue of the numerically challenged marketer: there are online tools that can help you test the significance of your results such as this one: http://visualwebsiteoptimizer.com/ab-split-significance-calculator.

7. Remember your branding.

If you have been using the same format for your emails, then you might want to check whether the changes you want to implement would shock or distract your recipients.  This is especially true for your website.  If you have a strong and regular following for your website, you might want to test it out on new visitors.  This is because the variations might not sit well with your branding and these might not even be implemented in the end.

8. Do not preempt the results with what you expect.

You might be surprised to find out that the winner of the A/B testing you have is the dark horse. For example, you might think that the new call-to-action button is ugly and not easy on the eyes.  But you may be surprised to find out that it results to more conversions.  Not preempting makes you more open to implementing the changes.

9. Set an appropriate time frame for your A/B testing.

You should take a look at your past email campaigns to see just how long an A/B testing should last.  Ending your testing too early might mean that you miss out on the signups that occur after that date, while making it drag on a day or two too long would mean that you are serving your email recipients a format that is not converting too well and you lose out on these conversions.

10. Make it consistent.

You might be testing a call-to-action button on your e-mail that also appears on your landing page and in other places on your website.  Make sure that this call-to-action is consistent across all places where your recipients can see it, so that your results will be conclusive.

Most marketers will tell you that A/B testing is difficult to do when you are starting out, and you are bound to make mistakes.  But with these tips, you are sure to avoid making the usual mistakes that most marketers commit.