2. Newsletters bring the most value per visit
of all traffic sources
Subscriptions show trust in your brand
Trust breeds loyalty
High quality ROI traffic
72% of consumers check email more than 6
times a day
What is a newsletter? I want one!
3. What are your goals for a newsletter?
Have a Great Subject line
This often is the difference between
ignored and opened
Offer something different
The mail must be share-worthy
Maintain Your Database
Curate your audiences for their
needs
When to Send
Know the optimal time to mail your
community
4. Subject lines
Test your subject lines will greatly assist
with improving your open rates.
Audiences are different
Depending on your industry open
rates will differ
Test Subject Lines
Trial to 10% of your database
Measure Results
Winning subject line goes to the
other 90%
5. Offer something different
You don’t want to run with the same stuff
week in week out.
Don’t just Sell Sell Sell
Sometimes this hammer approach
can harm your brand
Build your brand
Offer cool testimonials, videos,
jokes & stories work
Experience Rules
If they have enjoyed your mail, they
are more likely to open the next one
6. Maintain your database
The quality of your database will provide a
lot of insight to your marketing
Bought Databases
Very bad idea considering you know
nothing about these users
Bounce Rate
High Bounce means your domain may
be identified as a spammer
Quality over Quantity
Higher quality means higher opening
rates
9. Managing your newsletter?
Get comfy with HTML editors and bulk mailing tools
MailChimp
Touchbase
Groupmail
Touchstream
Important features to look out for
Compatibility Testing
Reporting
Bounce Management
Spam Testing
Split Testing
10. Keep it simple
Keep to your CI colours and fonts
Use a standard Web-based Font
Provide Continuity
Optimize images for mail
Should not exceed 500kb
Style guidelines
12. Content guidelines
Your content determines if you get that click,
or be ignored. These guidelines will assist.
Avoid
Spammy keywords: free, call now, sign up
Excessive punctuation and CAPITALISATION
Link text such as “click here” instead use “more info”
Include
Unsubscribe option
Legitimate Sending From & Reply to Address
Social Profile Links
Personalised Mails with the receivers name.
13. Content strategy
One mail a quarter is better than none.
No excuses!
Plan Ahead
Seasonality
Events
Projects
Frequency
Strategy Dependent
Daily is extreme
Weekly
Fortnightly
Monthly
14. Test Email Compatibility
Html is interpreted differently depending on your browser or mail
program
Test for Functionality
Are your links working, do the images display
correctly
Test Tracking
Use Google Analytics to track links clicked
and behaviour thereafter
Stuff to do before you send
15. Html depends on your
browser or mail program
Outlook 2003 is different
to Yahoo Mail
You have to cater for the
a bunch of programs
Outlook 03, 07, 10, Mac Mail,
Gmail, Hotmail, Yahoo
Mobile Testing for Android and iOS
Mail is still predominantly read on desktops but the growth of mobile
cannot be ignored
Compatibility testing
16. Functionality will also be different depending on your browser
Raw text cannot appear on a background image
Only web safe fonts can be used
.gif animations only work on browser based mail
Flash will not work in email
Javascript will not work in email
Some CSS may work but is not recommended
Test for spam
Single image emails = spam
No unsubscribe link = spam
Checkout www.emailspamtest.com
Functionality testing
17. You don’t just click the send button and forget about it? You
need to analyse the results! Make sure you have tracking.
Tracking testing
Google Analytics offers tracking tools for links on
your newsletter – Google “analytics url builder”
These tags will show up in your analytics as links
from your email campaign
Now drill down to see what those users did
Manage Bounces, Unsubscribes, Most popular links
clicked, Social shares, follows etc
19. How to increase your database
Position the signup box above the fold
Visible without scrolling
eCommerce sites have PopUps using cookies to only appear once.
Offer an incentive to sign up
Use coupon code to get a discount
Weekly specials delivered to you
Signup and you could win
Value to customer
Market the newsletter on all channels
Offline pamphlets and leaflets
Social media
Branding
Still the most utilised marketing tool online.
Users trust your brand, then become promoters and can forward and share you content.
Repeated communication builds a personal relationship. Take care of them.
Increase opens with these 4 methods.
Remember that on some browser based emails the subject line is cut off after so many characters.
Be original and know that your customers have trusted you with their details, make sure you look after not only their business needs, but maybe something else.
Bounces, user quality, purchasing databases. One way ticket to being labelled a spammer.
High quality databases will have up to a 50% open rate, and less than a 10% bounce rate. Try and fit in here.
To make sure we’re not messing around, here’s a graph
Graph 2
Managing the newsletter on a platform of your choice will take some getting used to. With so many things to look out for it will take some time to get to know the systems and interpret the important data from it.
Simple emails work best.do not confuse the user with multiple fonts, colour schemes and imagery. Maintain the corporate identity throughout all your website, branding and correspondence. You need the user to know that its you trying to get his time.
Continuity displayed through one of the largest online shops. Same logo’s banners, tabs, fonts, header, style, rounded corners, headings.
Content is king and the only way you can get the users time to spend on your mail and then your site. It’s the first barrier to conversion and if your mail doesn’t get through the spam filters you’ve fallen at the first hurdle.
Some people think their brand has nothing to post. Which is simply not true. Whether its news in your industry, or a newsworthy even you may want to comment on. There is so much content flying around and the only issue is how you need to stand out.
Testing and further testing.
Compatibility on browsers and mobile devices.
Rules for functionality, background images, div’s, css, styling types etc.