Link placement in email marketing newsletter

The place a newsletter or email marketing campaign a link appears at can be crucial for click-through. Consequently, which link goes where can be crucial for the success of any email marketing effort. So, you should experiment with link placement in your email marketing newsletter.

Get subscribers through cooperation with the competition

The primary source of opt-in subscribers probably is your Web site. Turn to the Web sites that people who might be interested in your newsletter are likely to visit. Cooperate with the owners of these sites in some way that can profit both of you. Exchange sign-up forms, for example, and append them to the site-specific forms. But make sure the content and target group of the two sites and newsletters are close.

Get newsletter subscribers with sweepstakes

Sweepstakes are a great way to build the lists, but if you decide to make use of freebies and prizes you should pay extra attention not only to quantity but also to the quality of the lists you build. The prizes should be compatible with your target group to attract primarily subscribers interested in getting your emails and not only people who sign up for the sweepstakes and then unsubscribe immediately.

Getting the names of anonymous subscribers I

Personalization is factor to success with email marketing. One simple, but important aspect is greeting recipients with their name. Generally, you will ask for the subscriber's name together with her email address. Some people are reluctant to give that information, however, or they are simply too lazy to type it, and if you do not require the name for successful subscription you end up with an anonymous user who you can only greet with ‘Dear Friend.’ Send a letter to those who have signed up for your newsletter. Make sure you don't mail the same person more than once with your request for personal information.

Getting the names of anonymous subscribers II

Some subscribers to your newsletter won't tell you their name when they sign up. You can ask them for their name directly by sending them a mail. This often works fine, but you may be concerned that recipients could perceive this as Spam and an invasion of their privacy. Then you can use your regular newsletter as a means to find out more about your readers.

Interpret email newsletter open rates

When it comes to email marketing and newsletters, one statistical favorite is the ‘open rate’. This number, whose goal it is to indicate how many people open a certain mailing, does have its value, but you should be aware of how it is generated, and what this means for the open rate's interpretation. The generation of open rate statistics relies on images in HTML emails, downloaded when the message is opened. Receipients whose email clients do not support HTML or receipients who are not online when they open the message are not counted. Most email programs have a preview pane where messages are opened - and counted - whether the recipients actually reads them or not. The open rate can be an indicator on a broader scale, though. It can be particularly interesting to watch the trend, for example, and surprising declines probably indicate a distribution problem.

Few Websites Links of Internet Email Marketing Software & Tools

http://www.massmailsoftware.com
Bulk email marketing software for direct mass emailing. Internet email advertising with Atomic email extractor, bulk mailing utilities, email harvester and mailing list manager.

http://www.mailthem.net
Bulk mail software for newsletter email marketing.

http://www.bulkemailsoft.com
Bulk email software for your online bulk email marketing campaigns.

http://www.infacta.com
GroupMail & GroupMetrics - group mail, bulk email, direct marketing and tracking tools.

http://www.marketing-2000.net
Bulk email marketing software for mass email advertising.

http://www.emailsmartz.com
Bulk email marketing software mass emailing list newsletter senders free download Emailsmartz.

http://www.mailout.com
Mailout Business : Mailout.com - your complete communication manager.

Choose HTML or plain text newsletter

Everybody love HTML newsletters, but the recipients, your customers, may not like them that much. They may not even open them. So, you should put them in control and offer a text version of all your mailings your recipients can subscribe to instead of the HTML version.

Include an easy unsubscription link in email marketing newsletters

No newsletter publisher or email marketer likes unsubscriptions. There are at least two good reasons why you should make it easy and fail-safe to unsubscribe, though subscribers who are not interested and never open your message (and who would unsubscribe if they could) are worth nothing and the resources for sending them mail are wasted. Subscribers who want to unsubscribe but fail to do so will turn to you in the end, which means high, unnecessary administrative costs if you have to take them off the list manually. That's why you should make it as easy as possible for your readers to unsubscribe. Still offer a way to unsubscribe via email.

Inform your ISP about your email marketing activities

If the ISP does not know what you are doing and that it is legitimate, and if the number of complaints keeps rising with the number of subscribers to your newsletter, the ISP may eventually pull the plug. That's why it's a good idea to inform your ISP early about your email marketing activities. If they know you and your activities, chances are your ISP will defend you against those wrongly accusing you instead of disconnecting you. If your current ISP does not agree with your email marketing activities, look for another one that does, and don't stop looking before you have found the perfect match. Your Internet connection and the connection to your service provider both are crucial to your success.

Instruments of email marketing

Email marketing is immediately associated with personalized bulk mailings, and possibly newsletters.

Make easy for subscribers to change their email address

In spite of web-based email services and personal domains, email addresses change frequently. If somebody likes your newsletter, they will want to get it at their new address, too. Make this as easy as possible, or you may lose a reader. If your system requires subscribers whose email address changes to unsubscribe the old address by hand and then sign up again with the new address (maybe even being asked nasty questions again), chances are even the most avid reader will wonder whether your newsletter is worth the trouble. So, you should provide subscribers with an easy to way to change their address. The most simple approach is on the page that allows readers to unsubscribe, offer another field where they can subscribe a new address (carrying over all their data) and change the link to that page in the newsletter from unsubscribe to unsubscribe/change address.

Make landing pages fit your email marketing campaign

Landing pages are an essential part of every email marketing campaign. If I follow a link from an email marketing message, I expect purchasing to be easy (by finding forms prefilled with relevant data for example), and I expect the landing page to fit the design of the email I got. If it does not, I'll be irritated and reluctant to make a purchase. That's why you should make sure the design of the landing page matches the design of the email campaign it belongs to. Pay attention to the colors, the images, font size, but also to the wording and tone of the landing page.

Make sure email marketing newsletters have corresponding content

Sending your email marketing newsletters and marketing campaigns multipart / alternative gives you the best of both worlds, you can send richly formatted messages, but your recipients can opt for the plain text if they prefer. This is one good reason why you should make sure the basic content of both parts is approximately the same.

Spammers like to fool junk mail filters by inserting random words, poems and what not, possibly in the plain text part only so that the majority of recipients will never see them. To counter this trick, some spam filters check whether the contents of the text/plain and the text/html parts do match. To make sure your message is not regarded as spam, make sure this is so. Of course, you can include a link to a full-graphic version on your web site in the plain text part.

Remove Unsubscriptions immediately from the mailing lists

Have you used a sign-off form of a newsletter that stated that it might take a day or two for the unsubscription to be processed and in effect? This is annoying, and it is even more annoying if this is indeed the case. Still getting the newsletter you have just unsubscribed from makes you feel.To make sure your newsletter or email marketing messages does not leave this spam-like impression, you should process sign-offs immediately or make sure your email marketing service provider can ensure unsubscriptions go into effect the moment they are submitted.

Motivate customers/recipients to sign up for your marketing newsletter

Making visitors of your Web site sign up for your marketing newsletter is getting increasingly difficult as people are more reluctant to give away their email address (and they're perfectly right facing all that spam). Bonus can motivate people/recipients to sign up for more marketing newsletter. For example, you could offer a white paper or - preferably - a detailed case study for all those who subscribe to your marketing newsletter, or new subscribers get a special tips and tricks edition of the newsletter, or a funny Winamp skin. The possibilities are endless, but make sure the bonus is the right bonus for the right people. Whatever you offer, it must be directly related to the newsletter. The motivation to sign up for the newsletter is the same as the motivation for getting the bonus, and the bonus acts as a multiplier, not as a separate motivation.

Ask to users in email marketing newsletters

Questions from the customers or users are great ideas for email marketing newsletter content. They are specific, they are interesting, they are relevant, and the resulting article will certainly be useful. Put on the user's shoes and ask such questions to come up with relevant content ideas for your marketing newsletter.

Press summary in email marketing newsletters

Newsletter subscribers are always looking for something valuable. Fortunately, it can be surprisingly easy to deliver value even if you're short of a breathtaking story just now: Collect, link and probably annotate relevant content. This is a useful service for newsletter subscribers if they can trust you to show them exactly where the latest must-read for their industry, profession, hobby or interest is - and they can trust you, can't they. Incidentally, the very press summary is a display of your expertise and knowledge in the field.

Prefill forms on landing pages of marketing newsletters

If you want to make customers to buy something in an email marketing campaign, the process must be as easy as possible. For that you should not only set up landing pages for individual products and link to them directly from the email message. But you should also use any information you have about the customer to make the purchase a simple experience for them. You also can use Prefill forms with name, shipping address, and other information you already know.

Prioritize email marketing newsletter content for more clicks

The interests and habits of your newsletter subscribers are different. You can't write a special marketing newsletter for every recipient, though, and developing extra content for particular interest groups is still expensive. Fortunately, there's a neat trick that lets you personalize the newsletter for individual recipients with minimal effort. ‘Prioritization’ is the magic word that turns one and the same newsletter into an optimized experience tailored at the single reader.

To prioritize newsletter content for more clicks aggregate click-through data for each user. As soon as certain patterns are visible, move the content categories that garner the most interest to the top. Newsletter prioritization makes it easier and faster for recipients to find the content they are most interested in. If certain categories attract no clicks ever from a particular reader, you may drop them from their newsletter completely.

Put marketing newsletter sign-up option in email marketing newsletters

One way to build your list is via your Web site, and this way is as easy and cheap as it gets. To make sure it is also as efficient as possible, you should make it easy for visitors to sign up. Not everybody enters your site on its main page. And not everybody knows from your home page alone that they want to sign up for your newsletter.

Also put a marketing newsletter sign-up box on every single page of your web site.

Reply to requests/ inquiries/ responses at the earliest

Responding to individual customer requests is an instrument of email marketing, and a crucial one, too. If somebody sends you an email it means they have investigated and have an interest in your products or services. If you do not reply promptly, you will not only miss the opportunity but you will probably lose a customer for life.

Even worse, they'll be telling others. To avoid this and to ensure you're not missing any opportunities, make it a top priority to reply to all incoming mail at the earliest.

Frequency of sending email marketing newsletter

How often is too often? How often is not often enough? Your subscribers know best how frequently they want to hear from you. They'll let you know by means of unsubscribing. To prevent that, consider asking them for a perfect frequency, and maybe ask those who unsubscribe for their reason. To get started, consider this rule of thumb like everything less often than at least every other month is not often enough; people will forget about you, and the surprise of a marketing newsletter from you showing up after a year will probably result in a surprise unsubscription; everything more often than once a week is too often unless your subscribers specifically agreed more frequent mailings; people will get tired and annoyed by your emails, and unsubscribe even if they like your content.

When to send email marketing newsletter

'What's the best day to send an email marketing newsletter?'

This question faced by every newsletter publisher is probably overrated. Nevertheless, here's a simple rule of thumb to help you answer it. If your marketing newsletter is of vocational interest and read at work, send it on Wednesday or Thursday. If your marketing newsletter is primarily read at home and focuses on spare-time activities, send it on Sunday.

Sales pitch makes no newsletter

If you offer a marketing newsletter as a way to keep in contact with your customers, make sure it is a newsletter. An email newsletter is defined by valuable content, and this is what subscribers will expect. If somebody subscribes to a newsletter, he does not expect product offers without context, or a magazine ad turning up in her Inbox.

If a 'newsletter' consists of nothing but an ad for a some other product, it will quickly find its way to the trash. If the newsletter contains an interview with a great artist, some ideas, tips and tricks, and a detailed guide of some technique then the subscriber might get interested.

Send email marketing newsletters at least once in a month

Email is an ephemeral medium. While it can be appropriate for a scientific journal to be published twice a year, for an email marketing newsletter, this will usually be disastrous. Not only do you risk that your subscribers forget about you, if your marketing newsletter is sent very infrequently - less often than at least once per month, it also stands a big chance of being perceived at spam.

The result may be lots of puzzled faces, unsubscriptions and complaints to your ISP calling you a spammer - all that in spite of your subscribers demanding and liking your content. That's why you should send marketing newsletters at least once a month to prevent bulk unsubscriptions and being perceived as a spammer.

Send email marketing newsletters on time

If part of your email marketing involves sending a weekly marketing newsletter, you should stick to that weekly schedule.

If at all possible, you should not only send your marketing newsletter at the same day of the week each week, but also at the same time. If you promise a weekly marketing newsletter, recipients expect a new issue in their Inbox every week.

If you cannot fulfill that promise, this will reflect on your credibility not only as a newsletter publisher, but also as a merchant.

Send email marketing messages as multipart/alternative

Should you send your newsletter in plain text and abandon the advantage of rich HTML formatting? Or should you risk annoying some who detest HTML more than anything else?
Fortunately, email has an elegant and almost universal solution to this dilemma: multipart/alternative messages.

Multipart/alternative emails contain both a plain text and a HTML part. Which part is shown to the user is determined by their email client, and (in some cases) by their choice.

If an email client cannot render HTML messages, it will display the plain text version. HTML-enabled email programs will usually show the rich HTML version, but some let the user decide which they prefer.

With multipart/alternative messages just about everybody gets the best of both worlds, and you don't have to ask users for their preference and maintain two separate subscriber lists. The only disadvantage of multipart/alternative messages is their (slightly) larger size, but as network capacities grow, this is almost negligible.

To send your email marketing messages as multipart/alternative: Make sure your email marketing software or service provider supports multipart/alternative messages. Compose both a rich HTML version of your message and a plain text equivalent. Send them both together as one multipart/alternative message.

Send email marketing messages as multipart/alternative

Should you send your newsletter in plain text and abandon the advantage of rich HTML formatting? Or should you risk annoying some who detest HTML more than anything else?
Fortunately, email has an elegant and almost universal solution to this dilemma: multipart/alternative messages.

Multipart/alternative emails contain both a plain text and a HTML part. Which part is shown to the user is determined by their email client, and (in some cases) by their choice.

If an email client cannot render HTML messages, it will display the plain text version. HTML-enabled email programs will usually show the rich HTML version, but some let the user decide which they prefer.

With multipart/alternative messages just about everybody gets the best of both worlds, and you don't have to ask users for their preference and maintain two separate subscriber lists. The only disadvantage of multipart/alternative messages is their (slightly) larger size, but as network capacities grow, this is almost negligible.

To send your email marketing messages as multipart/alternative: Make sure your email marketing software or service provider supports multipart/alternative messages. Compose both a rich HTML version of your message and a plain text equivalent. Send them both together as one multipart/alternative message.

Successful email marketing is 1-to-1 permission marketing

When it comes to email marketing, many think plain bulk email: essentially the same message is sent to a large number of recipients. This is simple and cheap, but there's one problem with it: it does not work as good as it could and should, and it doesn't take advantage of email's strength.
Email's strength is personalization. Instead of the same boilerplate message going to all of your house list at the same time, truly successful email marketing consists of personalized messages being sent to customers individually.

These messages take into account what the customer is interested in, what she bought in the past, how often she buys on average, her budget, etc. This is one-to-one marketing.

In order to find out all this, and to enter and continue the dialog at all, you need her consent. The recipient gets only the marketing messages she is interested in, and you get her attention and, if you get it right, eventually her money. This is called permission email marketing.

Successful email marketing is 1-to-1 permission marketing

When it comes to email marketing, many think plain bulk email: essentially the same message is sent to a large number of recipients. This is simple and cheap, but there's one problem with it: it does not work as good as it could and should, and it doesn't take advantage of email's strength.
Email's strength is personalization. Instead of the same boilerplate message going to all of your house list at the same time, truly successful email marketing consists of personalized messages being sent to customers individually.

These messages take into account what the customer is interested in, what she bought in the past, how often she buys on average, her budget, etc. This is one-to-one marketing.

In order to find out all this, and to enter and continue the dialog at all, you need her consent. The recipient gets only the marketing messages she is interested in, and you get her attention and, if you get it right, eventually her money. This is called permission email marketing.

Test the marketing newsletter with other email clients

If you have found a newsletter format that is easy to read, grabs the reader's attention and makes them click through to your site, that's no reason to celebrate and lean back contentedly. First you have to test that layout in as many email clients as possible on as many platforms as possible.

Don't forget about Web-based email services like Hotmail or AOL or Yahoo! Mail or Rediffmail.

Make this layout and rendering test a routine.

Whenever you make a change to your newsletter template, test it. The smallest changes can have the most surprising effects.

Test the links in of email marketing messages

It is embarrassingly simple. But still I often get email marketing messages that make me click, but the click takes me nowhere. Sometimes a '404 error' comes up, or a redirect to the home page.

This is not what you want! Make sure the links in your email marketing campaigns and in your newsletters work. Test them routinely and religiously, test them again, and let somebody else test them, too. If the links don't work, your call to action leads recipients nowhere, and the success of your campaign or newsletter turns into failure quickly.

Use proper template for email marketing newsletter

It sounds obvious, but there are also some good reasons to use a template for your email marketing efforts. If you use a template users know what to expect, users recognize the newsletter, you have a template to cling to newsletter editing is less error prone Of course, your design should and will not be carved in stone once you have put together a template. But try new designs and testing alternative approaches.

Use absolute URLs in email marketing newsletters

The following is a tip only if stating the obvious can be a tip. But being used to working with relative URLs exclusively on Web sites, I've been caught using them in email messages a few times, too.

Unfortunately, relative URLs fail miserably in email messages, and if you use relative URLs in your email marketing messages the results will be miserable, too. So make sure you always use the full, absolute URLs in emails (HTML or plain text, it doesn't matter) not just "landing.asp" or "/landing.asp"

Use bold face for emphasis in email marketing newsletters

If you send an email marketing campaign with HTML formatting, you have the opportunity to grab your reader's attention by applying formatting to your copy.

To emphasize important points you should stick to bold face.

Italics, the way to emphasize in printed text doesn't work as well on a computer screen, and underlined text looks bad and is hard to read, on-line or off. Additionally, clickable links are traditionally underlined, and non-clickable underlined text may confuse some readers. That's why you should use bold to emphasize.

Use your brand text in the subject line

Using the From: line of your email marketing messages is a great way to make sure the recipients recognize it and are comfortable with opening your email.

The Subject: is another place where you can make use of your brand. Incorporate it in your Subject to spark trust, comfort, and interest, and to maximize the open rate of your newsletter.

Use your name in the from in email marketing campaign

People usually won't take any sweets from strangers, and they don't read mail from anonymous email address. This is why you should use your name in the From: field of all email marketing messages you send. Recipients will trust you more and they are less likely to delete your emails without a second thought.

User questions mean good content for email marketing newsletters

You are selling instant water, and you know a lot about your business. That's why you started your newsletter which combines useful content with marketing for your products.

If you wonder about the "useful content" part, pondering what could be most interesting for your readers, turn to your email archive and look for recent questions that your users had.

Chances are you can answer them easily, and chances are the answers make highly useful pieces of information for not only the person who submitted the query but for all your newsletter subscribers. You can even install a periodic Q&A column to retain the original and approachable format of a dialog of question and answer.

Write short subject only

Sometimes, messages we send are very short ("Spare coffee in room 407" for example). They are so short that they fit in an email's Subject header perfectly.

While there is no reason to repeat the very message in the body of the mail, you should tell the recipient that the subject is already the message. Most email clients display a summary of mailboxes containing at least the sender and — the subject.

To convey to the recipient that they need not open the message, you should
* put "(EOM)" (End Of Message) at the end of the Subject line.

You can also use "(SIM)" (Subject Is Message) or any other convention you coin, but EOM is the most commonly understood indicator.