Tag : Target Subscribers

Create the Perfect Email Newsletter – Subject Lines

Posted by TravelMailer at 12:25 pm

What’s the best eShot subject line?

There isn’t one! Sorry it’s true. Think about it. There must be a infinite number of combination of content out there in the emails you get. Can you sum all of them up with the same subject line? No. The same runs true here. However there are a few things you could to “help” with your open rates. People who are new to email marketing often ask us, “What is the best subject line for me to use?” or “How should I write my subject lines so that more recipients will open my emails?” So we have got some examples for you to look at to get a good idea of what works and what doesn’t. The “highest” open rates were in the range of 60%-87%, while the “lowest” performers fell in the dismal 1%-14% range. Do you see a pattern below?
Best Open Rates (60%-87%)

* [COMPANYNAME] Sales & Marketing Newsletter
* Eye on the [COMPANYNAME] Update (Oct 31 – Nov 4)
* [COMPANYNAME] Staff Shirts & Photos
* [COMPANYNAME] May 2009 News Bulletin!
* [COMPANYNAME] Newsletter – February 2009
* [COMPANYNAME] Newsletter – January 20096 [ *|FIRSTNAME|* *|LASTNAME|* ]
* [COMPANYNAME] and [COMPANYNAME] Invites You!
* Happy Holidays from [COMPANYNAME]
* ATTENTION [COMPANYNAME] Staff!
* ATTENTION [COMPANYNAME] West Staff!!
* Invitation from [COMPANYNAME]
* [COMPANYNAME] Jan/Feb 2009 Newsletter
* Website news – Issue 3
* Upcoming Events at [COMPANYNAME]
* [COMPANYNAME] Councils: Letter of Interest
* [COMPANYNAME] Coffee Exchange – Post-Katrina Update
* We’re Throwing a Party
* October 2009 Newsletter
* [COMPANYNAME]: 02.10.09
* [COMPANYNAME] Racing Newsletter

Worst Open Rates (1%-14%)

* Last Minute Gift – We Have The Answer
* Valentines – Shop Early & Save 10%
* Give a Gift Certificate this Holiday
* Valentine’s Day Salon and Spa Specials!
* Gift Certificates – Easy & Elegant Giving – Let Them Choose
* Need More Advertising Value From Your Marketing Partner?
* [COMPANYNAME] Pioneers in Banana Technology
* [COMPANYNAME] Moves You Home for the Holidays
* Renewal
* Technology Company Works with [COMPANYNAME] on Bananas Efforts
* [COMPANYNAME] Update – A Summary of Security and Emergency Preparedness News
* Now Offering Banana Services!
* It’s still summer in Tahoe!
* [COMPANYNAME] endorses [COMPANYNAME] as successor
* [COMPANYNAME] Holiday Sales Event
* The Future of International Trade
* [COMPANYNAME] for your next dream home.
* True automation of your Banana Research
* [COMPANYNAME] Resort – Spring into May Savings
* You Asked For More…

Observations

On the “best” list, you’ll notice the subject lines are pretty straightforward. They’re not very “salesy” or “pushy” at all. Some people might even say they’re “boring.” On the “worst” list however, notice how the subject lines read like headlines from advertisements you’d see in the Sunday paper. They might look more “creative,” but their open rates are horrible. It’s as if those email marketers assumed that subject lines have to jump off the screen and “GRAB THE READER’S ATTENTION!” or something. Unfortunately, most people get so much junk mail in their inbox, anything that even hints of spam gets thrown away immediately.
Setting Expectations

So does that mean your subject lines should be really stale and un-creative to get high open rates? We don’t think so. We actually saw some campaigns that used more “creative” subject lines (like the ones on the “bad” list) but they had pretty decent open rates. The difference seemed to be in the expectations that were set for the emails. Email newsletters, or eShots are for soft-selling. They build relationships with your customers, and they’re great if your products have a very long sales cycle. Use them to slowly soften your customers for the sale, or to make them feel really good about your brand. If your recipients signed up for these kinds of emails, don’t expect them to be very enthusiastic when, out of the blue, you send an email with a subject line like, “10% Discount! Open Now!” For newsletters, keep your subject lines simple, straightforward, and consistent. On the other hand, if your subscribers specifically opted-in to receive “special offers and promotions” from your company, there’s nothing wrong with saying there’s a “10% off e-coupon inside.” They’ll be expecting a “hard sell” from you. It’s when marketers send promotional emails to their entire “newsletter” list when things go wrong. The idea is to create a totally separate opt-in list for those who want to receive promotional emails. Furthermore, segment your promotions list into smaller, more focused groups before you send your campaign (don’t send an offer for purses and high-heel shoes to the men on your list).
The Secret Formula for Subject-Lines

So what’s our advice for email subject lines? This is going to sound “stupid simple” to a lot of people, but here goes: Your subject line should (drum roll please): Describe the subject of your email. Yep, that’s it. Always set your subscribers’ expectations during the opt-in process about what kinds of emails they’ll be receiving. Don’t confuse email newsletters with promotions. If your email is a newsletter, put the name and issue of the newsletter in your subject line. Because that’s what’s inside. If your email is a special promotion, tell them what’s inside. Either way, just don’t write your subject lines like advertisements. When it comes to email marketing, the best subject lines tell what’s inside, and the worst subject lines sell what’s inside.

Taking the surprises out of the campaign approval process

Posted by TravelMailer at 9:33 am

Have you been importing email addresses into your subscriber lists in TravelMailer? You may have noticed that when you import lists larger than your approved list size, a warning appears, noting that you will have to complete our campaign approval process prior to sending your campaign. The benefit is that you will no longer be caught out by the need to get your campaign approved, just as you’re about to send that time-critical email newsletter.

Our approval process is in place to ensure that everyone enjoys reliable deliverability and service. By having our approval team check that lists abide by our anti-spam policy, we can maintain permission best practice and great deliverability for all campaigns.

If you import a list above your current approved list size, then you will see a warning like this (“Your account has not been approved for a list of this size”):

Once you have imported the list, an email will be sent to us, explaining that you will need to go through our approval process before you can send a campaign.

You will have to have to go through our approval process. This involves answering two short questions regarding your list, which we will then review prior to approving your first campaign to a list of this size:

You will only have to do this once in order to send to your new subscriber list. Read more about how the approval process works.

Please note:

The approval process is actually a campaign approval just as much as it is a list approval. Meaning we actually need to see the actual campaign being sent (in its completed form) as part of our review, that’s why we can’t just check the list when it’s imported.

This is important for us to be able to know that the creative itself meets our policies (isn’t content that violates our terms of use, has a visible unsubscribe, etc) and is relevant to your list permissions.

Using the preference center to retain & target your subscribers

Posted by TravelMailer at 2:53 pm

Not sure if your subscribers prefer to receive campaigns about soccer or snooker? Would they hang around if they received updates on country music, over calypso? There are immense benefits to knowing your subscribers’ interests, desired email frequency or even location, two of them being better targeting of your subscribers and less unsubscribes. Plus, in order to reduce email churn, you will want users to be able to update their active email address. Thankfully, you can achieve this and more, simply by using TravelMailer’s preference centre feature.

The preference center in a nutshell

Even if you’ve had an existing subscriber list for a while now, collecting preference information and giving subscribers the option of changing their preferences instead of simply unsubscribing is easy, with a little know-how as to how segments work. In an earlier blog post, we discussed how useful segments can be – if you haven’t tried segmenting your lists yet, do give this post a read.

Setting preferences is akin to allowing your subscribers to subscribe and unsubscribe to sub-lists – a subscriber to a widget store newsletter may be interested in Arduinos, but not Faraday cages, and therefore may only want to receive newsletters solely about Arduinos. Having a preference center allows the subscriber to state this:

Another benefit to setting up a preference center is a reduction in email churn, being the number of emails in your list that become inactive as people discard their email addresses. On average, 15-25% of all valid email addresses are discarded each year as people move to a different ISP or change jobs – with a preference center, subscribers can change their subscribed email address without completely unsubscribing from your list.

Setting up the preference center

In this example, we will set up a preference center with the three interest categories above, being ‘Arduinos’, ‘Faraday Cages’ and ‘Gewgaws’.

In your account, click on ‘Manage Subscribers’, then your subscriber list, then click ‘Custom Fields’. Under ‘Edit field’, create a new field with Data Type, “Multiple Options (can select many)’ and enter your desired preferences. Ensure “This field should be visible to recipients when they edit their settings in the preference center” is checked:

Subscribers will now be able to subscribe to these preferences, and you will be able to segment your subscriber list accordingly:

Customizing the preference center

To change the colors, header graphic, message and language of the preference center, click on ‘Client Settings’, then ‘Preference Center’. You can also preview the preference center:

Adding a link to the preference center in your email

Linking to your preference center is as easy as adding the following tags to your email content. When we send your campaign, we’ll convert this into a personalized link for each of your subscribers.

HTML emails -

this will be a link

Plain text emails -

[preferences]

Note that the preference center is only available to subscribers once the campaign is sent – in order to test the preference center link, you will need to send the campaign to subscriber list that includes you as a subscriber.

Editing your subscribe form

When creating a subscribe form, you can also add custom fields so that subscribers can state their preferences when they sign up for your email. In ‘Manage Subscribers’, click on your subscriber list, then, ‘Create a subscribe form’. Check the custom field you wish to add, generate the code and you’re off:

So.. How do I get my subscribers to edit their preferences?

Using our above example, say you wanted to start sending the special-interest newsletters (‘Arduinos’, ‘Gewgaws’…) to your subscribers. Here are some tactics you could try:

For existing subscribers – Consider sending an introductory email, suggesting that your subscribers update their preferences in order to receive more relevant updates on their favorite products. Also remind them that they can change preferences or their subscribed email address at any time. All future emails should contain a link to the preference center.

For new subscribers - In the confirmation, or welcome message, make sure the subscriber is made aware that they can change their preferences, or unsubscribe at any time. It doubly helps if you have already edited your subscribe form to reflect the preferences on offer.

Finally…

Preference centers are a very powerful addition to any email campaign as they not only encourage subscriber retention, but allow you to profile your subscriber list by interest, gender, or whatever field you please.