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If you prefer, the Email Marketing Education and Training Center content found on this page
is also available for download as a PDF document.
Please click
here
to download the PDF document now.
Welcome to the advanced email marketing education and training center. Here you will learn what
few people know about being a successful email marketing campaign manager.
We have written this to accommodate the first time marketer, e-marketer, and email marketer as
well as the advanced marketer. We are providing the highest level of email marketing knowledge
available to everyone today.
Viper Logic has created this detailed step-by-step document to help you and our customers become
an expert in email marketing and using our email marketing software service product ViperMailer.com.
Email marketing service providers are known as ESP’s (Email Service Providers) which are safe,
professional yet low cost way of delivering you messages to your clients, organization members,
guests, and future clients.
The education and training center is for those that want to obtain advanced results for their
marketing campaigns over a period of time. However if you would like to just get started and
come back to the learning center later, we have launched a Detailed 19 Steps to Launching a
Successful Email Marketing Campaign at our Email Marketing Help web site. You can visit this
website now to get started at www.EmailMarketingAuthority.com
Ok Great! If you have read this far, then you are ready to start from the beginning and advance
to becoming one of the most informed online marketers in the area of email marketing.
While taking this email marketing education and training course, you can now open a FREE no
obligation trial account here so you can build
a fully functional campaign or offer and apply your skills while you learn by sending it to
friends or coworkers when completed.
When you signup for the trial, there will be a slight delay in approval process so signup
now and continue reading. Your confirmation should arrive in your email box shortly so you
can build your fully functional email marketing trial campaign.
Below is a directory of sections so if you have already gained expertise in some of the beginning
levels, you will be able to quickly find the correct starting point section for you to begin
gaining advanced email marketing skills.
Email Marketing Directory:
- Email Marketing Defined
- Email Marketing Adds Value to your Current Marketing Plan
- Marketing Basics (Branding) to your Overall Business
- Email Marketing Services (ESP) Email Service Providers
- Profiting from Email Campaigns through Repeat and Referred Business
- Email Marketing Building Trust with Recipients
- Collecting Email Addresses Honestly and Legally
- Building a Valuable Email Contact List
- How Often to Send and When to Send Email Messages to your List
- Keeping your Message Short and Easy
- Building a Winning Email Template and Message
- Creating a Call to Action with Promotions, Coupons, and Loyalty Plans
- Developing a Subject Line that gets your Message Through
- Creating the “From” Address that your Recipient will Recognize
- Adding Images and their Strengths and Weaknesses
- Learning Headlines, Fonts, and Internal Template Navigation
- Building Informative, Educational, User Tips and Advice Campaigns
- Email Marketing Result Tracking
- In Closing
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Email Marketing is an electronic form of direct marketing for staying in contact with
your commercial clients or organization groups. Emails sent to your compiled list of
recipients must have a request to Opt-out (Unsubscribe) feature built into each email
message you send. The purpose of the Opt-out requirement is that it allows your
recipients to remove themselves with ease to your future messages and is commonly
referred to as Permission Based Marketing.
Each Email message must also comply with the United States Governments CAN-SPAM Act of
2003. Please visit email marketing companies SPAM Policy at:
ViperMailer Spam Policy
Or you can read the entire CAN-SPAM Act of 2003 law at:
CAN-SPAM Act of 2003 Law
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Email Marketing is a very cost effective means of delivering your message to a targeted
audience on a consistent ongoing base. You can build an email marketing campaign on
your own, or you can apply the use of an (ESP) Email Service Provider also known as an
Email Marketing Service and utilize the tools with ease that the service providers have
built for you to succeed through the use of advanced intelligence.
Email Marketing will allow you to retain and attract client awareness by offering
important information about your products and services while building on you’re branding
through a continuous brand awareness program over weeks, months, and years.
Here are 3 major reasons recipients want you to contact them:
- You offer Products and Services that are unique or they are new and they need
to be placed in front of the recipients for awareness.
- You offer Products and Services that are well known and easily available so
you want to share why buying from you is a better choice then the competitors
in your field.
- Your notifications keep the requirements aware of event or scheduled functions.
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Important in all of your communications to prospective client or member is your branding
consistency for everything your company might be known for. For example they might know
your offerings or your personal name or even your company name but the recipient likely
does not know 2 or even all 3 things about your brand.
Starting with your business card, letterhead, and envelope as these are the most common
items all of us have, then moving into your order forms, web site, signs, receipts and
packaging. Even your email signature on every email should have your logo, company name,
company slogan, web site address, phone number and physical address if applicable
consistently placed in the same colors, fonts and if possible, the location on all
marketing mediums. For example your logo and company name should be located in the
upper left hand corner on absolutely everything. The rest of the information can be
placed anywhere else so you can balance out your overall marketing piece look.
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You have a goal to becoming an email marketing expert and you know that everyone is
holding you accountable for results. Whether you are the director of marketing, PR
firm, marketing company for your clients or an independent business handling among
all things the marketing for your product or service, then here are the reasons you
would want to utilize an Email Marketing service.
Email Marketing Services (ESP) allow you to store your email lists in strict confidence
to be used for you personal activities only. You can start with only a few contacts
(email addresses) or start with or build up to 500 or even more then 100,000. See
pricing plans of a typical email marketing service provider here at
ViperMailer Pricing.
These providers will protect you from sending the same recipient duplicate emails through
their email list management tools. This eliminates the chance that your recipient
receives the same offers multiple times. Next these providers offer free templates
that allow you to select and customize a professional colorful graphic template with
ease from a vast variety to cover most email marketer’s requirements. You can even
personalize your offer or message with the recipients first and/or last name for a
more personalized approach.
Next these providers are CAN-SPAM safe senders with great relationships with most ISP’s
(Internet Service Providers). Recipients of messages or offers sent out through an ESP
can Opt-Out with a single click at the top or bottom of each email sent through their
service provider. Generally they also offer a forward message button so recipients can
easily share the email message with friends or coworkers.
Finally these (ESP’s) Email Service Providers have easy to understand email campaign
result reports which include tracking graphs and charts. With these message tracking
reports, you can see which email addresses were not delivered or bounced back, see who
did or did not receive your offer or message, and even track who clicked on the links
from within your offer.
The services that EPS’s provide are also Green Friendly. When you and your organization
utilize Email Marketing as a part or for all of your marketing efforts, you eliminate
the use of paper, ink postage and the transportation to deliver your message or offer.
This is taking responsibility by doing your part to keep the planet green.
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Living in the day and age of in-your-face marketing, it is the best of times to
be building an email list of potential clients and these lists actually add a big
value to your business. Sending email messages or offers is a relatively inexpensive
method of marketing as it provides a real effective means of staying in touch with
your customers regardless of the size of your business.
Repeat business is great business but being sure to stay in front of your return
clients is what email marketing can do for you. Many times clients are unaware that
you have a new product or you are expanding the services that you can offer these
clients so sending a periodic email message asking them to either come into your
business or to visit your web site is a great way to accomplish this task.
You might even offer repeat clients a customer loyalty percentage discount. As you
know, repeat clients cost you less then acquiring a new client. Next is the referral
client. This is when you ask your clients to share your message or offer with a friend
by forwarding the email. Referrals are the second least costly way to add sales to
you business.
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This section is a very important method to keeping you in good graces with your
recipients as no one wants to be bombarded with a bunch of self serving messages
from you or your organization.
It is important to offer the correct value to your recipient. If you offer copying
services and you also sell light bulbs, then you need to consider separating your
email list into 2 separate lists (groups).
Identifying your clients purchasing preferences when they make a purchase is very
important. If your copying service client has purchased only copying services from
you, then you should only offer them those services and the same goes for the light
bulb side of your business. Your client is going to feel important that you are
offering them a loyalty message that will accomplish 2 things for your business.
- The client will have your brand awareness in front of them in addition to the
times they go online or come into your business.
- The client is more out to purchase from you sooner rather then later because
you stayed in front of them offering the things they needed anyways.
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To understand Spam you can read the CAN-SPAM Act of 2003 here at
ViperMailer Spam Policy
The information you read here basically says you should never send email unsolicited
in commerce. You should always have a single step Opt-Out feature in all group list
emails you send out. You should also have an electronic form on your website that
authorizes you to send related offers from time to time that these participants have
acknowledged and interest in receiving from your organization.
What you do not want to happen is one of these following experiences:
- The recipient does not know you or your company.
- The email does not look like it is from your company because you did not
carry over your familiar branding like having your logo in the top left
corner which we will cover in the coming sections of this report.
- You send too many messages or offers and your recipient becomes irritated.
- Keeping your hard work of building an email list valuable? This means
keeping your recipients from reporting you as SPAM.
- You did not provide an easy Opt-Out or unsubscribe link in your message.
Here are great ways to build your email contact list:
Be sure when a recipient signs up on your website that they receive a thank you email.
This way they will better remember your company and that they signed up to receive
value from your organization. When a prospect sees a signup box on your website,
they still might not give up their first and last name, and email address just because
the box is there for them.
The way to get the website visitor to signup can take a few shapes:
Have some text next to the signup box that explains if you signup today, you can have
access to our education center for how this or that is done. Or create some text that
says by signing up today for our monthly e-newsletter, you can receive our printable
book on how to build a successful email marketing campaign available only to our
subscribers. Using an (ESP) Email Service Provider will provide email authentication
helping you down the road as being a trusted email message or offer provider.
Using an (ESP) Email Service Provider, they will provide you a piece of software code
to incorporate into your website signup form. This software will take these leads and
place them directly into your Email Service Provider account. On your web site main
page, order forms and additional information forms, be sure that you have a box for
them to Opt-In to receive related offers from time to time. This will keep you in
good relations with your recipients.
Always have a confidentially guaranty not to share the prospects information or sell
their information with any other party. This is a great way to begin building a trusted
list of prospects for your email campaigns.
Remember to send all of your new contacts a welcome and thank you message for joining
your email campaign where we will be sharing valuable ideas, tips and how to messages
with you. It is a great idea in this welcome email to let your prospect know how often
you will be staying in touch with them. This will greatly reduce being identified as a
SPAM sender.
Before you just start saving those email addresses, be sure that you are storing them
in one of the more popular formats so you can manage and utilize them with ease. When
you select the (ESP) Email Service Provider also known as the Email marketing service,
be sure you are storing your list in a format that they support for the ability to
upload them into your account in their email list management system.
Here is a list of the most supported formats ESP’s will support:
- Outlook
- Outlook Express
- Excel
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We recommend that you join your industry trade groups, seminars, chamber of commerce’s
and your local business groups. And also don’t forget that each person you talk or
meet with, gather their business cards and explain that you would like to share
(ask for permission) your business information with them from time to time. You can
also gather names by operating a booth at trade shows that city’s, chambers, and
convention centers hold from time to time as well.
If you are operating a business where you receive foot traffic like a gift shop,
restaurant, theatre, or boutique to mention a few, then have a paper form explaining
what you are gathering this information for and that you will be keeping in touch via
email. Also explain that you will be sharing similar items or services these prospects
have shown an interest in learning more about. You can manually add these prospects
to your managed email list service at your ESP.
Maybe you call 10 to 20 prospects for your business or organization 3 days a week,
this is a great time to gather the prospects email address. While talking with this
person, they are not going to just pony up and release this protected email address.
However if they seem generally interested in the conversation with you, this is your
chance to pitch what providing their email address to you will do for them. Maybe you
could offer a periodic email with helpful tips and how-to topics. And at the bottom
of your helpful messages you could have a website link to learn more helpful tips or
a link to your website via a small image of a product you offer that goes with your
helpful tips.
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We can all relate to receiving too many unsolicited emails from all over the world
and for every item under the sun. So this section is to train you to use some common
sense and to help you realize that although we are very excited about what we have to
offer, the recipient may not be at our same level of excitement.
After years of being in the Email Marketing industry, we have learned some things about
frequency and timing our messages to gain not only the best deliverability but to also
gain the highest (ROI) Return on Investment for our efforts. Starting with the
frequency, we will explain a few various clients that ViperMailer.com provides email
marketing services for.
Monthly Notifications:
The typical business or organization client is doing the best in delivering one message
or offer per month. This tends to be within the recipients toleration level for not
agitating them too much. To see a few examples of clients that are not within the one
per month safety rule, please click here at Spec 3
or see two other examples below.
Weekly Notifications:
There might be a weekly garage sale management company that sends their members a list
of featured garage sales and since these are typically on weekends, you would find
yourself sending these out each week. So in this example, the one message per month
concept would not apply to you.
Occurrence/Event Notifications:
On the other side of this, your product/service might be seasonal only. Your company
provides driveway snow removal services that needs to contact clients just as the snow
has fallen and therefore you would send emails out for scheduling these services every
time the snow falls in your clients area. If your email list falls under the standard
once per month the delivery time, this can play a big roll in customer acceptance and
also cause these same recipients to take the call to action of your message or offer.
You can break your list out into five smaller equal groups and send each equal group
the same message or offer over the full five day week and track to see which group gave
your specialized offering the best response. This best results day would become your
knowledge you could apply each month.
If you use an (ESP) company, then you can easily set each group up in a sending
scheduler and have these messages or offers go out at the same time on each day of the
week automatically. We will share the ViperMailer.com email marketing company’s
knowledge base of email marketing accounts, though these clients names are keep
confidential and their email list management is kept under guarded protection from
everyone. We can share the most popular times of day and the most popular days in
the week to send your prospects a message or offer.
If your email list is primarily comprised of work email addresses and your offer is
not a weekend special, then you might want to stay away from Mondays and Fridays. This
leaves you 3 days and we find that Tuesdays and Wednesdays are the best business days
of the week. Setting up the best time to send your messages is a little more tricky
especially if your list is comprised of the various US or International time zones.
However we know that our database and client interviews shows that on average if you
send your list out after the beginning of the morning, the recipients have had a chance
to download and clean up their pending email. This way you avoid being deleted with
all of those Spam messages that await us all each morning. On that note, you also want
to stay away from the later afternoons. You can experiment with this over a few months
of trying a few different sending times to determine which time is best for your
recipients.
In the following sections, we are going to get into the complex areas of ultimately
closing the sale. Now that you have figured out what email marketing can do for you,
how to hire an email marketing service provider, how to stay SPAM free, how to collect
your valuable email addresses, how to add trust, how to promote branding and lastly how
to retain repeat while building referral business, it is time to step up the attack.
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Building an email marketing campaign can be easy and fun but you want to build your
campaigns by keeping the template simple. Your email messages and offers are going
to be an ongoing effort to build on your branding. You want to keep your campaign
from becoming a burden so you will keep up on your marketing efforts and not create
a difficult time consuming chore.
Warning:
All businesses and organizations have a lot of information to share with prospects
and it is easy to build a novel just sharing your knowledge about your company.
Also keep your recipients from having to scroll down your message for great
distances. We recommend applying the notebook size piece of paper as a good rule
of thumb for your message or offer length. Knowing this, here is a great solution
to providing lots of information without sending it all in your message or offer.
Build your template with landing page links. A landing page link is a hyperlink to
the specific location on your website where the details or educational information
is directly located. You could have several hyperlinks to landing pages located
together in your email template with each being very descriptive with perhaps a lead
in sentence under each link.
Here is a good example of providing a lot of information in the form of a directory
table of contents with less text.
- How to buy a great domain name:
Item 4
- Selecting the best words for your name:
Item 4
- How and where to buy a domain name:
Item 8
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The goal of your message or offer is to stay in front of the prospects in the least
intrusive way. We best describe it as putting out the welcome mat.
Laying out your email template:
Select from the 5 most popular email message themes:
- Basic
You want to just build a simple template with some organization and a little color.
- Event
You want to have people aware of a date sensitive function periodically.
- Newsletter
You want to build a message with newspaper type 2 or 3 columns.
- Press Release
You have company related or product wise information to share.
- Promotion
You want to offer a coupon, discount or share a new product line.
Fortunately ESP’s through their Email Marketing services have free easy to apply
colorful graphic templates and most offer the 5 main email template categories
listed above for you to select from. To get started right away, you could select
a provided template and then alter it to fit your needs. These templates are
designed for you build upon the existing layout and customizing them by uploading
your logo, typing in your message or offer, adding some images, building some links
to your main web site. The web link or hyperlink could be to your landing page
that best fits your offering, be it a product, a technical specifications, shopping
cart or even a sign up page.
ESP’s also allow you to upload your own templates so long as they are built in HTML.
Your webmaster that built or maintains your website can create your very own template
in HTML. You can simply upload your custom built HTML template into your ESP account.
Then you can customize it within your ESP account anytime you want without any
knowledge of HTML programming.
Your template HTML note:
The email marketing service software in your account will allow you to make content
changes to your template. The software works similar to building a word document
but with a lot more features. This interface will convert your template changes
to HTML for you.
Email templates are broken down into 3 important sections and these are in order
of importance:
- Header
This is the banner across the upper top of your template.
- Body
This is the center section content and images are placed throughout this section.
- Footer
This is your closing at the very bottom of the template.
Now that you have built your own template or selected a professional email template
from an ESP, you are ready to begin the best approach to build your delivery email
product.
Step 1: Header Logo
Your company logo and company name you apply on all of your marketing materials (we
discussed this earlier) should be placed at the top of your template and if possible,
to the left because the human eye is trained to scan from the top left to the right.
If you are utilizing a banner type logo that runs across the width of the page, then
be sure to center it. People look at emails in a similar way that they look at a web
site so when you build your logo into your template, be sure to hyperlink it to your
web site home page.
Remember that people you have worked with or communicated with are more out to remember
your logo or company name over anything else.
Step 2: Header Headline
The main headline or statement should also be placed at the top just below the logo or
company name on the left side or centered of your templatel. This headline should
clearly express what your company is, does, or offers.
Example: “Creator of the finest baseballs in the world”
Step 3: Header Action
The reason for sending your message or offer is the “call to action” and is what you
would like the recipient to do with your email. If you want them to click or visit
an important action located in the lower portion of your message, then you need to
write a small instruction explaining this action. This small instruction can be
placed below the logo and below the headline on the left hand side of the template.
But if this prime area of the template is looking too heavy, then you can place an
equally important component to the right hand side of your template and still obtain
great results.
Step 4: Body Eye Catchers
An eye catcher is the anchor of your email in the form of a graphic image, icon, or a
series of bullet points. These components are great for directing the recipient’s
attention and capturing interest in your email message.
The goal is to place an icon or image with some text next to or below it describing
what is important that you are sharing with the recipients. It is a good idea to
build the image and text within a box perhaps with a color background tying these
2 together. These type of eye catching image, icon, and text combinations will
promote the recipient to read more of your overall message. One or more of these
components can be used side-by-side and they should be placed just below the header
and at the top of the body section of your template.
Your ESP, Email Marketing Company allows you to host your image files so they are
available for you to utilize when creating your next template. The wording used in
these boxes can direct the recipient to either chick on a hyperlink or point to
something in the heavier content feature lower inside of the body section of your
template. Keep these images relatively small in proportion to the template to
prevent from losing your recipient because they do not see the associated message.
These images can also be clickable links to your website if your image and text push
for a call to action.
Example: Buy a baseball today and receive 1 free or Click the baseball to win it free.
Important Note:
The 4 steps above when completed should all be viewable in the preview pane that is
the 2 or 3 inch area that appears when you receive an email (before you click to
open it). This procedure when presented correctly will give the viewer several
visual hints about whom and what they have received including the time or date
sensitive type of call to action.
Step 5: Body Content
Building the body section is the details of your message that are important to seal
the deal. What ever you have placed down in this section can be anything from printable
coupons, instructions, helpful tips, monthly group or organization news, or various
products (say from a family of a particular product line).
Regardless of what you are going to offer, it is important that it be laid out properly
and in a style that is normal to the reader’s familiarity with other current reading
materials they receive.
Examples: Like a news story you should use either a 2 or 3 column layout or Family
of products offerings should be laid out like a catalog.
Important Note:
Organization of your template for best results is really important and ESP services
offer tables that are made up of cells and columns (these are like content dividers)
as part of you building process of your own template. This content organization helps
structure a professional presentation that will help you gain the recipient’s trust
and confidence.
Step 6: Footer
The message footer can be a couple of inches or less in height and the width of your
template area which is located at the very bottom of the overall template. You should
build this as a message box and add a color background where the color should match
the header color for continuity and to separate it from the body section of your
template. What is really important here is to offer your web site main page address
MyCompany.com, your physical mailing or business address, a link to your web site
driving directions or map page, your phone and fax number and email address.
Your ESP Email Marketing company will host your templates as you create them so that
you can use them over again. This is important because once you have created your
branding through colors, logo, font types, and other familiar characteristics, you
what to keep this theme for use on each campaign you send out and just make some
minor changes to the template while changing your messages or offers. (Brand Retention)
Note:
Be sure to archive or print a copy of prior offers so you know to keep your offers ever
changing and enticing.
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Welcome to where you ask for the order. You have up to this point, built a really
impressive and informative email message or offer, so through email we are now going
to make money.
Important Note:
You have worked hard to build your email address list and we have mentioned how
important throughout the Email Marketing Education and Training Center what these
email addresses are. Even though you have convinced prospects to divulge their
trusted email address to you, they are expecting to receive relevant offers,
educational tips, and loyal client only offers etc. It cannot be stressed enough
that you need to be considerate and not inundate your prospects with too many
messages or irrelevant offers, otherwise you will become an annoyance and they
will unsubscribe from your list.
Now we are going to touch on providing your prospects with even more specialized
information then they were expecting, this way you will exceed the expectations
of your recipients.
We are now ready to focus on the main body of your message or offer. Let’s start
with segregating your prospects into categories. For an example, let’s say that
you are selling hand tools, auto parts and jewelry. So as you collect your
prospects email addresses, you can add them to the appropriate category of interest
by separating your contacts into 3 separate groups which in this case, we would want
to create 3 templates. Each template would be for each product line since these 3
examples are so vastly different from one another. However towards the bottom of
your message, you could mention: Did you know we also carry this and that? Click
on the picture to see these great product lines. Then have a couple of hyperlinks
that takes them to those offerings.
Promotion:
Here is a great way to create action. You are running a coin collectors store and
you also sell metal detectors so you send this offer out to people that have
purchased coins from you in the store or online in the past. Then you could offer
your prospects to visit your store and find a coin promotion where the prospect
simply comes in for the opportunity to test the metal detectors. But to entice the
prospects to come in, you have a giant sandbox filled with dirt or sand and the
prospect can keep the coins they find just for trying the metal detectors out. Why
would the coin dealer give away some moderately valuable coins? He is actually doing
5 things that come to mind.
- The dealer has you in his store where you have bought coins from him in the past.
- He is familiarizing you with metal detectors that he sells.
- He is familiarizing you with other product lines that he carries.
- He is building on your trust by interacting with you.
- He is keeping his brand in front of you.
Coupons:
We will explain 2 types of coupon offers here.
- Coupon Offer 1
This is the traditional coupon where you offer a discount or percentage
incentive where just by printing out the coupon and bringing it into the
store, they can save the amount on the coupon by a certain date. Also if
your offer is a really great one, you could ask the prospect to forward it
to a friend that would like to take advantage of this great offer as well.
Note: People tend to hangout with people with their same interests and people
love to talk about and share their interests.
- Coupon Offer 2
Online promotional coupons that are only available for online purchases.
These coupons cannot be used in the store because the discount offer is so
low. This reduces cost to you while adding convenience for the prospect.
These coupons have a promotional code on them. When the prospect clicks on
the coupon, they are taken to your online storefront where they are asked to
enter the promotional code. You have already built this box on your web
sites store front and the prospect is taken to a special online store page
only after they enter the code.
Loyalty:
While applying the above coupon offers to existing customers, loyalty incentives also
work very well. Be careful though because you should really take a small percentage
of these loyal clients and ask a few questions of them. Ask them why they buy from
you? Ask them what they would like to see you offer them? The reason we recommend
doing this is because sometimes people view coupons as cheapening the product or
service.
The loyalty program is for clients that already buy products or services from you and
they have established a likening and trust to you. You are really just accelerating
the customer return experience, implanting your brand awareness and building on the
trust they already have with you. When you treat people as special and important,
they like it very much so treat them this way. In your messages, promote client
awareness by telling them how you value them so much that they are being offered
something special only for them.
This is a Classy Example:
Dear Robert, you might already know our store is closed on Sundays however this Sunday,
we are sharing the latest releases to you as a loyal or longtime client of ours and we
will be serving fresh snacks and drinks. We will also have the creator of this or
that here for you to meet and ask questions. Please click the VIP button here or call
us here to let us know you will be coming to this special event.
Personalization Note:
Message personalized for Robert above. This ability provided by email marketing services.
Reminder:
There are a few ways to add value and you do not always have to give away anything or
require your recipients to buy something right away. Actually you might mix it up
over a period of months keeping your name in front of your prospects. Just keep the
messages informative, educational, and caring.
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The subject line is typically less than 50 characters and appears in your emails
“SUBJECT” box which is near the “FROM” box when viewing the email message. The
subject line is usually the first thing the user reads before deciding to open
the email to read the entire message. So realizing how important this message
needs to be and that the subject line needs to be less than 50 characters in
length, good planning is very important. Do not worry about the subject line
character limitation as we point out throughout this training document that it
is crucial to try to reframe from writing a novel, as in the case of busy people
your recipients are busy with their lives and the old adage Less is More truly
applies to email message and offer sending. What you write in the subject line
is how the recipient is going to determine if they are going to the delete,
open, or send it to Spam.
Caution:
Anti-Spam software and email service providers look for keywords that are flags
to Spam it. Most of us know to stay away from symbols and common spamming keywords
such as penis, sex, blue pill, cheep, lowest, discount, and so on. So try to never
use these types of words and you should be successful in getting your messages to
the recipient before we even begin to build our subject line.
Special Note:
You can and should change this subject line and track your open rates though your
ESP’s tracking system to see if by making changes to your email marketing campaign
subject line, the results show your email open rate increases or decreases.
Now let’s build an exciting subject line to get your email message or offer opened.
Your absolute concentration on wording here is not to promote what you are sending
but rather be totally devoted to getting the message opened. You want to express
urgency to open your message but you will need to convey what it is that is urgent.
Here are a few examples of incorrect and correct subject lines:
Incorrect: Investor prices are soon to rise so act fast
Correct: Gold investors should act now, gold prices are rising
Incorrect: Bottled water is better for you then tap water
Correct: Learn today how to protect your family with ACME bottled water
Incorrect: Email marketing service offers training center
Correct: Today only Email Marketing service offers training center
You can see that the Incorrect lines lack having a clear description and do not
have a call to action. There is also no urgency so even if your message might
escape deletion, it still might just be passed over.
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When you create a “From” email address, it is a serious violation to mislead or
misrepresent your recipient. As per the Can-Spam act of 2003, it is also illegal
to attempt hide or mislead the user by using inaccurate or false information for
any fields in the message header including the From (Sender) email address.
Now you need to determine how your recipient’s best know you. They either know
you by your name because you are John Paul and account representative for a
particular product or they know you by the company name you work for or represent.
With this in mind, you would want to use a From address that look like this.
From: John Paul – ACME Company.
People may even forget your personal name but they are more likely to remember
the company name so this format works very well. If your company has a web site
address (URL) that is in abbreviated format such as VL.com, you should spell out
the name so the recipient sees it the way they best know your name such as Viper
Logic.
Warning:
You should not send your message or offer out using an (ISP) Internet Service Provider
or Free Email Service provider such as Hotmail, Gmail, AOL or your Cable/DSL company
email account etc., because these types of addresses lack providing the recipient
enough details to identify our business as the sender and reducing your results
greatly.
It is the best practice to use and email address for your own name or company.
Example: yourname@YourCompany.com
If you do not have a company or personal email address but would like to obtain one,
you can visit the web site below to purchase a custom domain name and creating some
personal email accounts for you to use for your business and your Email Marketing
campaign.
Visit the following website to see if the domain name you want is available at
ViperGate.com
Now with your own domain name, you can create your personal email addresses as
specialized accounts:
Examples:
events@MyCompany.com
sales@MyCompany.com
newsletter@MyCompany.com
information@MyCompany.com
discounts@MyCompany.com
You get the idea. Now you have a customized email address plus you have your own
company name as well. This will provide you with a much more professional image
while describing what your offer is representing and keeping you away from using
that information lacking (ISP) email address.
Please remember per the Can-Spam Act of 2003, the email address you do use regardless
must be a working email address that must also respond to unsubscribe (opt-out)
requests in addition to an unsubscribe link at the bottom of each message you send
out.
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Ready to add some properly placed and sized images to really dress up your message
while helping to convey your message/offer to your recipients. Great! Then let’s
go over a few pluses and minuses involving images.
If you are building your own HTML template, be sure your images are formatted to 72
dpi (dots per inch). It is very common to receive images from your designers that
are 300dpi which are for printing purposes so it is very important to reduce this
to 72dpi which is the display resolution on your computer. Properly sized images
at 72 dpi will produce very good quality image that are matched to your display and
will also be optimized in size. The main reason you want to keep the image resolution
small in size is because we want your message to get delivered quickly and not cause
the recipients computer to slow to a crawl. Remember, you do not want to inconvenience
your recipients otherwise you will loose them.
If you use an email marketing company (ESP), your images can be stored in your personal
account. Many ESP’s will also automatically resize your images for you when you upload
them to your account or at least warn you that your image sizes are too large.
Reminder:
Add a link from all images to those areas on your web site because we all like to click
on images, logos, and icons.
Special note:
Not very common but if you are sending a message that contains image(s) that need to be
printed out in 300 DPI (dots per inch), a method to handle this is to direct your
recipient to your web site. You can place some directions on the message image to
explain to click the image/hyperlink to take then to your web site where they can print
this image or offer or whatever you want the recipient to accomplish at your landing
page.
“A picture tells a thousand words”, is a true statement and since we keep sharing with
you to keep your template and overall message content size to the size of a sheet of
notebook paper, we know you want to share more then this space allows. This is when
images and/or photos really come in handy.
Be sure to select the best picture(s) to share your story. You do not want to use
pictures that are not in your control, so if you do not own the picture just ask the
owner for a copyright permission. Pictures from your web site are great to link to if
you are not going to upload them into your Email marketing services account. If you
are going to use photos from someone else’s website that you do not have control over,
then be sure that you have a trusted relationship with them. Websites make changes
from time to time so you should really not take this approach because of the image not
found error possibility.
Types of photographs that are great to use. These can build on your brand recognition,
visual aids, clear perception and factory capabilities, to mention a few of those
thousand words a picture can tell.
- You might use an employee group photo.
- You might use product photos.
- You might use service photos.
- You might use a building picture.
Besides photos you might use icons for showing a car, boat, and sporting goods to
mention a few. Besides photos and icons, you might use animated GIF’s which are a
series of images that are in a constant rotation so you could place these eye catchers
where you really want to draw series attention.
Remember for the best bang for your efforts, keep this very high profile animated GIF’s
in that 2 to 3 inch area we talked about earlier the “Viewing Pain”. One more positive
note about using an animated GIF is you have a rotation of images running on the same
amount of space (footprint) in your template as a single picture.
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Headlines:
Also known as the title, this text should always be in bold letters and should be
placed at or nearest the top of your message or offer. They are sure to be read
and should convey a clear enticement to capture the recipient’s attention to read
more of what you have to share with them.
Headlines can also be used for each paragraph as the recipient will scan your
messages and read these bold larger titles to see if they have an interest to read
the detailed paragraphs below. Next is to keep these paragraph titles short but
add more important information as you might even need to add a subheading such as
the following example.
- Ford Motor Corp Vehicle Owners Offer
- Your Next Oil Change is on us at Palm Springs Ford
Then start your paragraph right below the title and or paragraph heading. You might
try to use 2 to 4 of these bold paragraph headlines within your message or offer.
This way the recipient can speed through your message or offer and quickly
determining which items on your message are worthy for them to continue reading the
whole paragraph.
Fonts:
Below is a list of the fonts that most computers will display. This restriction is
the safe way to insure that your message or offer gets through and displays correctly.
If you decide to use a font that is not listed below, the recipient is likely to not
have that particular font installed on their computer so the message content and/or
layout they see may not appear as you would like it to.
- Arial
- Times New Roman
- Verdana
- Tahoma
If you like to use fonts that are not common fonts on the recipients computer, you
can create a graphic of any font for say a title or paragraph for example and upload
the graphic and the recipient will read this fine.
Next you can add color to your fonts to allow them to really stand out as an important
must read item, title or paragraph title. Add some color to some important content
you want your recipients to see right away. This can also be applied to words that
are hyperlinks to your web site.
You can apply sparingly the ability to italicize some words periodically but again be
sure there is a purpose for this activity. The use of too many different types of
fonts can take away from your overall message and will cause you to loose your theme
and organizational look.
Internal Navigational Links:
We mentioned earlier that you can build at the top of your message or offer, a
directory or table of contents. The kind we described here takes your recipient back
to your web site.
Now we want to share another method to use links for navigation within your message or
offer. These are named Navigation Links. Again you want to build this within the
preview pane height that is the 2 to 3 inch area that the recipient sees in their
inbox before they decide to open your trusted message or offer.
Let’s say you have four important categories or paragraphs detailed inside the content
body of your message. In the preview pain or right below the header of your template,
you could build a series of links to these four important areas and this way you would
create great titles for these links with attentive wording. When the recipient clicks
on one of these four links, they are taken right to the beginning of that paragraph,
image, or whatever you want them to be taken too.
Please only utilize this method when your message or offer is breaking the notebook
paper size rule. We encourage you to stay within this message body size when building
the content of your template.
Note:
Your (ESP) same as Email Marketing services provide this ability with your account so
you do not need to be an HTML programmer to perform this important task.
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This can be an issue with several types of campaigns where applying this sections
knowledge can keep your campaign running along with positive results. Your
campaign might be an offering for seasonal, annual or few times over a recipients
lifetime therefore you can apply this to your ongoing campaign to retain your
clients.
You might also have a product or service that changes or has ongoing advancements
in technology or breakthroughs that you can utilize this type of campaign as a way
to keep your recipients up to date.
Here is and example:
Viper Logic sells domain names and offers an educational web site with 11 educational
tips on how to buy domain names as investments and how to buy domain names that get
your company results.
The web site is very large and you would not want to send the whole educational web
sites content in your message. What you would do is send small snippets of facts and
details with a link to that page of the education center for example:
Welcome to the Viper Logic Domain Name Education Center.
We thought we would share our knowledge about buying domain names successfully.
This is our tip of the month number 2 of 11
Selecting your Domain Name:
www.domainnameassistance.com/#item5
If you missed tip number 1 please visit here:
Understanding what search engines look at:
www.domainnameassistance.com/#item6
In this example we have 1 message to send for each month. If you send 1 of the 11
lessons each month for almost 1 year, this will keep your branding in front of your
recipients while educating them. You are likely to increase sales.
Tip: Please Forward Message:
On educational messages, you should encourage these recipients to use the forward
message button that your campaign Email Marketing service (Same as ESP) provides
in your messages when you send them out. People like to learn things and we
believe that these type of informative methods of marketing are the most powerful
selling tools known.
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Unless you want to reinvent the wheel, you are going to want to utilize an Email
Marketing service as your ESP to provide tracking results reporting and campaign
statistics. ESP’s including www.ViperMailer.com offer a no obligation and FREE
full performance trial campaign builder for you to see what types of reporting
along with other services they offer.
We will go ahead and explain the types of result tracking possibilities. From
sending your campaign out and each campaign thereafter, you can hone your delivery
skills while gaining greater results. (ROI) Return on Investment, the ultimate
goal.
Here are 6 key tracking abilities:
- How many emails were delivered?
- How many emails bounced?
- Why they bounced, and what actions you can take?
- Which links they clicked through on?
- Who unsubscribed to be taken off your email list?
- How many forwarded your email to someone else?
Email Marketing service:
The ESP tracking in your account will do all of the calculating for you while
providing graphical graphs and charts of the results for each of your campaigns.
These results are printable and you can share them in meetings to keep everything
involved. You will also have these reports to compare one campaign with another
over time to see if the adjustments you make to your campaigns are helping you
retain and gain better results and sales.
In today’s work world where everyone is accountable for their work efforts and
results, having these tracking results and gradually showing improvements over
time is a great way for you as the person responsible for marketing in your company
or organization to show your contributions.
Email Open Rate:
Open rates are based on the type of industry you are involved in so these results
can vary from industry to industry. Examples of what your campaign open rate results
should be if you were say a Real Estate company should be around 25% and if you are
a nonprofit type organization, the open rate should be around 40%. However
E-Commerce, Retail and Technology companies tend to run in the 15% open rate as these
industries have the lowest percentage of message opening rates. However this means
to you as a marketer that with greater building on trust and client communication
through your messages, you have an opportunity to gain greater open rate.
Click Through web site tracking:
Also known as CTR (Click Through Rate), this percentage value is derived by the
actual number of unique users that clicked on a link contained in your message and
divided by the total number of email messages you sent out. For example if you
sent out 1000 messages and 50 people clicked on a particular link in your message,
your CTR rate would be 5% (50 user link clicks divided by 1000 sent messages =
.05 or 5%).
The CTR value is shown in your tracking reports at your email marketing service.
Keep in mind that a link click is only counted once per recipient regardless of
the number of times a single recipient may click on a link in your message. This
is also known as a unique visitor link click.
If you are offering specific items from your web site and your links are going to
specific landing pages within your web site, you can determine which products or
services are being clicked on the most through your email campaign and work over
time on the other less active links to increase brand awareness and sales.
Non electronic tracking:
For those that send their messages and offers with a phone call request or those
who send their offerings to invite recipients to a certain location like a new
store opening or the first 100 people to walk in the door or call this phone number
to win this or can have this with their orders, etc..
In the ViperMailer.com learning experiences in dealing with email marketing clients
as their ESP provider, we have heard a lot of success stories as well as a lot of
failing to close the gap problems. We want to share the experiences with you that
lacked some basic planning problems so you can develop a check list of sorts on
being sure you, your staff, and/or coworkers are educated on what the company or
organization is doing regarding promotions and offers.
Example of bad or no planning:
The biggest mistake we can remember is a giant sporting goods chain sent out in-store
product discounts and when the customers came in which a lot did to take advantage
of the great offer, the clerks and floor sales people were completely unaware that
this promotion was going on and the customs became irritated.
Example of good planning:
You are a tennis shoes company and you have a loyal following of repeat customers.
You began collecting email addresses from these customers by having your clerks ask
for email addresses and your floor salespeople gathering potential prospects email
addresses. The staff lets the customer or prospect know that you want them to be
included in the new tennis shoe releases and special customer loyalty discounts
program.
How you track who comes into your store after an email campaign was sent out is to
notify your clerks and floor sales people to simply ask the customer, “How did you
hear about us”. Also you can request via your message or offer that when the
customer goes to the checkout counter that they mention a special offer and receive
an instant 10% off or they have to print a coupon and bring it in with them in order
to receive the discount. By asking these questions and collecting these coupons,
you now have tracking built in.
Note:
When you build a campaign, it is important to have a check list for being sure you
have a way of monitoring incoming phone calls or walk in foot traffic to help see
the (ROI) Return on Investment for your marketing efforts. These same rules apply
to the phone callers and event attendees that call or come to you, and you can apply
this tactic with the same ease.
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This Email Marketing Education and Training Center document was created to
guide you through the online marketing world as a tool and email campaign
success builder. We will be adding updates and sections to this document
from time to time and encourage you to revisit the updates as they are
released.
These sources helped in the information gathering while building this email
marketing document.
www.ViperMailer.com - Email Marketing Service Provider
www.EmailMarketingAuthority.com - Email Marketing Help
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