Tuesday, December 11, 2012
Email Marketing strikes many as old-fashioned. More fashionable venues like social media and mobile marketing get all the attention, and some people will even try to tell you that email marketing is dead.
Unfortunately, reality doesn’t agree. In fact, with a strong content marketing approach, email is more powerful than ever thanks to social media. Why? Because it moves the conversation about your business or information product to a more personal environment — the in-box.
Email provides you the most direct line of communication for conversion to sales … which is why the most savvy online marketers have no intention of giving it up any time soon.
It’s also amazingly cost-effective. With an ROI of around 4,300% (according to the Direct Marketing Association), email practically pays for itself … and saves a tree or two. It’s what you use when you want to move from “conversation to commerce.”
What makes email content work?
All of us are far too familiar with email newsletters that waste our time, pitches that annoy us, and downright spam. Those don’t work.
What works is a value exchange — your valuable information for your prospect’s valued time. Your subscribers need to know they can trust you … that you’re not a soulless self-promoting spam-bot.
Good email content deepens your relationship with your audience through effective subject line writing (getting your messages opened), your distinctive voice (getting those messages read), and delivering quality, niche specific content your prospect needs and shares with others (inspiring referrals and word-of-mouth)
When I wrote a few weeks ago about making your email so good it can’t be stopped, a few readers wrote to ask for more specifics.
It’s an understandable request, given the percentage of permission-based messages that are being thrown away by email service providers.
So beyond providing killer content, what can we do to give our messages the best shot of getting through?
Build trust before you pitch.
Remember, the success of any email marketing program depends on genuinely compelling content. You want your readers to dig through spam filters, complain to their email providers, and do anything they can to make sure they’re getting your content.
Most email newsletters are pitchfests, which makes them no fun to read. Make sure yours is nicely loaded with cookie content, so readers begin to be trained to open everything you send.
If you don’t build this trust and credibility with great content, the rest of the techniques won’t work very well. But there are a few practical things you can do to give your messages the best possible fighting chance.
1. Start every newsletter with a great autoresponder
The autoresponder feature of your email provider lets you create defined sequences to send to your readers. The millionth subscriber has the same experience that the first did.
This means that no matter how busy you get or what disasters you might be coping with this week, your new email subscribers are always well taken care of.
A great autoresponder builds a strong foundation for your relationship with your new subscriber. The old cliché is true: you never get a second chance to make a first impression. The warm, friendly feelings you’ll establish with your first 10 or 15 messages will carry over throughout your relationship.
2. Use a single warm, personal message early on
This is a trick I learned from Product Launch Formula founder Jeff Walker, and it creates a really nice rapport with your list.
Early in your autoresponder sequence (I usually put it at message two), include a cheerful, warm, individual-sounding message. Something informal, like, “Hey, really good to see you here, hope you enjoy the content.”
You’re not trying to fool anyone that this was an individually typed message for that recipient, but you are trying to create the same feeling of personal relationship. Invite questions, comments, and feedback at this point, and let them know that you’d love to hear from them.
I typically create this message as text only, rather than HTML. This is also a good spot to use technique #3.
3. Ask them to white list you
No matter how good your email provider is, some messages end up in spam filters. The best defense against that is to convince your readers to add you to their list of “safe senders” or their “white list.” And the best way to do that is simply to ask them.
I send a text message in one of my sequences right before a message with a few red flags in the content. (The message has the audacity to talk about making money. Shocking, I know.)
The message explains that the next email in the sequence is a little more likely to get trapped in a spam filter, so this would be a great time to add me to their safe senders list.
Some readers immediately white list me, which is great. Others don’t, then the message is caught in a filter the next day and they see that adding me to their approved senders list would be a good idea.
Obviously, it’s smart to get yourself onto the white list as soon as you can, so you’ll want to bring the subject up early on.
But if you do have a message you can’t reasonably lower the spam score on, this technique can give you a good reason to ask a second time.
4. Conversations have two sides
Make sure you’ve got a real human being monitoring any replies to your email marketing, and that that person is giving thoughtful, personal replies to each message they get.
It’s also smart to use an individual person’s name in the “From” field, rather than the name of a company. Anything you can do to capitalize on the intimate nature of email just makes sense.
When I started adding the words, “Just click reply to ask me a question, your message will come directly to my personal in-box,” I noticed that more people felt comfortable doing just that. And not only do questions and feedback build nice rapport, they’re also a fantastic window into what your customers want and need.
5. Pay attention to spam triggers, but don’t obsess
Most good email providers will let you know if your content has certain hot buttons that are likely to be flagged as spam. Some of them are obvious, like pharmaceutical brand names.
Others are annoying, because they tend to be the words and phrases that have the most selling power. For example, links that say click here can make your content look a little spammier to the filters, precisely because savvy marketers know that explicit calls to click here get better results.
This is one good reason to put a long sales message onto a landing page, rather than an individual email message. The last thing you want to do is to use less persuasive language just to keep a spam filter happy.
Always remember that you’re writing for people, not filters. When you make your readers happy and deliver the content they need and want, no spam filter can stop you.
We all know we need them, and we all have specific ideas about how to capture them.
Ethical bribes, free eBooks, special reports, pop-up forms, Internet radio shows.
But if you want to have a truly fantastic conversion rate, you need to look deeper at the mind of the email subscriber.
You need to find out what causes them to hand over their email address to complete strangers.
Today I’m going to show you three simple ways to get into the heads of your potential email subscribers.
Becoming obsessed with email subscribers
When I first sold a blog for $20,000, I was obsessed with traffic and Adsense clicks. All I cared about was getting more people to click on those little blue ads.
Looking back, I wish I had focused on email subscribers instead of sending valuable visitors away every time they clicked on a Google link.
Make no mistake, it’s those who have an ongoing relationship with you (and email subscribers in particular) who are the most likely to allow you to build significant income.
It’s your subscribers who have the strongest foundation of trust with your content. It’s your subscribers who let you carry on when you run into snags (like getting de-indexed from Google). And it’s your subscribers who will become the bulk of your buyers.
Now I focus on getting sign-ups. I don’t care about traffic unless I am certain I can convert it. And while I don’t necessarily want you to become obsessed with capturing emails, I do want you to start thinking carefully about the factors that are actually going to build your business.
And if you’re doing business online, there is a good chance it is going to be that mailing list.
Getting into the heads of email subscribers
Of course, people hand over their email addresses all the time. Each day I use my email to sign up for blog subscriptions, forum accounts and so on.
But have you ever sat down and thought about what goes on inside a person’s mind when they are deciding to sign up for something?
More important, have you ever thought about what emotion or logic prevents them from signing up?
Here are some things you need to know about the mindset of a subscriber.
1. Harness the power of groups
Human beings are obsessed with groups. We need them.
Even those kids who dress up with black eye-liner and want to totally disassociate themselves from the establishment end up hanging out with other kids in black eye-liner.
We get married, make families, join sporting teams. This is vital to keep in mind when thinking about email subscribers.
When a person is on your blog or website and is thinking about handing over their email address, the first thing they are going to think about is whether they are alone in doing so. Has someone else gone before them? Are they signing up to a blog that is too old-school or too passé? This phenomenon is called social proof, and it is a very powerful tool.
When you’re just starting out, you need to seem bigger (in subscriber numbers). When you are slow, you need to appear busy.
Your visitors need to see that other subscribers have validated their decision to join you. Until you show them that in a variety of ways, you are going to lose most of your potential subscribers.
If you don’t have a big subscriber number to show yet, try one (or several) of these instead:
- Using testimonials in your sign up area. Why not show them what other people are saying about becoming a subscriber? This is especially effective if you can get a testimonial from someone respected in the industry. Don’t leave your testimonials to your testimonials page, put them where people need them.
- If you have a good number, display it. If you get a lot of comments, be sure your comment number is displayed at the top of your posts. If your number of monthly visits is reasonably impressive, make that prominent. If you have a good twitter following, highlight that. Large numbers immediately help new subscribers feel like they are becoming a part of something.
- Use exclusivity. In your call to action, you might talk about why signing up means becoming part of an exclusive community. Being part of a group is good. Being part of a group that other people don’t know about is even better.
- Use social media. Encourage the happy readers you already have to tweet your content, like it on Facebook, and otherwise use social media tools to demonstrate that you’ve got good stuff.
2. Use a direct call to action
Henry Ford (founder of the Ford Motor Company and developer of the manufacturing assembly line as we know it) was once quoted as saying,
Any customer can have a car painted any color that he wants so long as it is black.
Ford knew that (within reason) telling customers worked better than asking customers.
So how does this relate to email subscribers?
Most of us try to be polite and respectful, and that makes us ask rather than tell. But there’s a case to be made for telling, at least some of the time.
A direct call to action usually converts better than a soft one that is trying to please everyone. No, it shouldn’t be obnoxious, but it does need to instill confidence.
Let’s look at some examples:
- Soft: Why not subscribe by email? vs. Direct: Enter your email today and get started
- Soft: Get a free ebook vs. Direct: Download your free ebook now
When we are given strong “orders” by an authority figure, we often feel more secure and safe, because we assume the person knows what they are doing. When you use direct language for email sign ups you are conveying the message that they are doing the right thing.
3. Face objections head-on
Selling is about overcoming objections.
When a person is faced with a decision in life, their brain cells start to fire off messages about whether or not it is a good course of action.
The famous neurologist Jonah Lehrer called it the “Oh shit!” response.
If something is a little bit off (based on past experiences) the cells will fire and tell the person not to proceed. This is otherwise known as an objection killing your sale.
(And getting email subscribers is a sale, even though you don’t directly exchange money. You’re still exchanging two things that are valuable — their permission to email and your content.)
What kinds of experiences cause our email subscribers’ brain cells to fire off those warning messages?
- Too many updates
- Messages that aren’t in line with what was originally promised
- Messages used for a purpose contrary to the call to action
- Email subscriptions that make it complicated to unsubscribe
- The worry (rational or otherwise) that our email address will be sold to spammers
If you want to convert more readers to email subscribers, you need to not only encourage them to sign up, but to overcome their mental objections.
Address their concerns head on, and you’ll find that people will be quite happy to give you their email address.
A reader of your blog and a loyal subscriber gets a new mobile device.
No problem: You’ve taken great care to make your site mobile friendly.
You’ve even taken the right steps to convert more mobile readers to your email list.
So you feel pretty confident that all your bases are covered.
Until your subscriber gets her first email from your latest marketing campaign. It’s all squished up on the screen, it’s impossible to click on any of the links, and the message overall is terribly hard to read.
Your loyal reader really wants to get the benefit of your great content. So she spends some time fumbling around trying to make sense of it.
But eventually frustration wins. She gives up and hit the red “delete” key.
Think this doesn’t happen? It sure does. I’ve seen it, more than once.
Mobile email marketing design is smoking hot. If you can manage to make sure your mobile readers are satisfied with those subscriber-based emails, then you have covered what may be the largest of your readership. And here are some tips to help you out.
1. Include a plain text version of every message
Including a plain text copy of every HTML message you send will help eliminate potential issues for those subscribers with mobile readers that do not support HTML.
Any good email marketing service lets you include a plain text version, make sure you’re using it.
2. Keep links uncrowded
If your email message has links that you want your readers to click on, such as navigation back to your main site (recommended), then make sure those links stand out on their own.
In other words, keep them uncrowded so it’s easy to click them within a very small space.
Imagine your loyal reader flicking around on a tiny screen to get to that link — and how frustrated you get when the links are so close together that you can’t land on the one you want. If you want clicks, make it easy.
3. Pull the reader in with your subject line
Hop on over and read Brian’s article on the three key elements of irresistible email subject lines.
Now … actually use those three key elements for your email marketing messages.
Like any headline, an email subject line has to capture attention quickly and drive the reader to click through.
By the way, the current best practice for subject lines for mobile devices is to keep it within 5 words. That’s right, you have about 5 words to grab the attention of your reader. Why? Because after about 5-7 words, the subject line gets truncated and thus it’s a lost opportunity.
4. Use the right tags for your images
If your email marketing message includes images, make sure you include an alternative (alt) tag to describe what the image is. (You should be doing this for any HTML content you create — mobile readers aren’t the only users who may not be able to see your images.)
Don’t stuff this tag full of keywords, it doesn’t work. Use it for what it was meant for — to briefly describe what the image is, in a way that lets your reader make sense of it if the image isn’t visible.
Many devices can display all your images correctly, but not all of them will, so it’s just smart to use alternative text to make sure every reader gets the message that image was supposed to convey.
5. Is your call to action clear?
People using mobile devices spend a little less time taking in the content due to the smaller screen sizes and the fact that they are usually on the go, so make sure your email marketing has a clear call to action.
Put it either near the beginning or somewhere where it will stand out. Don’t make it hard to find … after all, it’s the key to getting the response you want.
Last thoughts
You might be wondering how to know what your email message will look like on all these devices. Just because it looks great on an iPhone doesn’t mean it won’t be mangled on a Blackberry. There are some great simulators out there that let you see how things will appear on the various devices. A Google search for “mobile device simulator” will give you lots of options.
Whatever email marketing service you use, spend some time in settings area and explore the various options they have for delivery. Now that you have some tips to keep in mind, you never know what options they have that you just didn’t see before
On Copyblogger recently we’ve talked about why it’s so important to make your website mobile-friendly.
And we’ve hammered on how critical it is to get people onto your email list.
But there’s a problem: it can be really hard for your mobile visitors to sign up for your newsletter.
Here’s why:
Most mobile-friendly themes (in WordPress or other content management systems) hide the sidebars. They show just the main content area. For example, in the mobile theme I used for one of my sites, there’s a built-in way to share posts with Twitter, but there’s no way for a visitor to see the signup box in my sidebar. No matter what they do, they just can’t get there.
Even if you’re not running a special mobile theme (for example you’re depending on the built-in mobile-friendly goodness of a framework like Genesis) your visitors are still just looking at your main content column.
Why? Because even though they see your full page when they initially arrive, the first thing they’re going to do is “double-tap” on the content column to blow it up to a readable size. That pushes those sidebars out of sight and out of mind.
Also remember that if someone is reading your site on a mobile device, you probably don’t have their full attention. So don’t expect them to take the initiative and hunt around for your signup box. They won’t.
How to fix the problem in two easy steps
The solution is simple. You need a call to action for your newsletter at the bottom of your content column.
Not in the sidebar. Not in the footer. You want it right there at the bottom of your text, so it’s the first thing people read after they finish your post.
Step one is to copy the code of your signup box and drop it onto its own page. Give it a sexy name like yourblog.com/subscribe. Add some content that lets people know why it’s a good idea to subscribe. And be sure to test that it works.
(Here’s an example if you need one.)
Step two is to get a call to action and a link to your new signup page onto the bottom of every single page you create. You can do this manually, by typing or pasting it into every post, or you can do it automatically by editing your theme.
I actually prefer doing it manually. (That’s also how they do it on Copyblogger.) I like to vary the call to action depending on the content of the post. And writing it reminds me to make sure that the rest of my content is mobile-friendly.
For example, if I’m showing a video hosted on my own site, I’ll provide a link to a copy on YouTube, so people on iPhones or iPads can see it. And if I’m using a Flash-based audio player, I’ll provide a link to download the MP3, which also allows it to play on mobile devices.
If you’re comfortable with code, you can insert the signup link into your regular theme with a hook or a widget so it shows at the bottom of the content column. Then it will show up automatically on every post, past and future.
But if you’re using a mobile theme, I don’t recommend modifying the code. That’s because your mobile theme is probably a plugin or a module, and any customizations you make will be overwritten when you update the plugin. For normal human beings, the chance that you’ll update your mobile theme without remembering to reinstall your customizations is pretty high, and unless you visit your site frequently on a mobile, you won’t notice the mistake for months.
Getting people onto your email list should be a major goal with every post you write. No matter what device someone uses to read your content, you can make it easy for them to get to your signup box.
It takes just a couple of minutes to copy your signup box onto a standalone page, and only seconds to add a link at the end of each blog post. Start doing it now, because mobile traffic is only going to increase … and you want to be sure you’re there to capture it.
I was a little surprised this morning when, after I’d given a talk on business blogging, a seminar attendee asked if I’d seen the Newsweek article this week on why it’s impossible to make money with blogs.
“Guess I’ll give it all back, then,” was my off-the-cuff answer.
But out of curiosity, I picked the mag up on the way back to my room. If you haven’t seen it, Daniel Lyons, a talented blogger known for two years as “Fake Steve Jobs,” has an editorial that explains why none of us can make money blogging.
Big traffic, no money
Fake Steve Jobs’ best month came with a traffic spike. His actual identity was revealed in the New York Times, sending more than a half-million people to his site in a single day.
His payout? For that half-million-visitor day, about a hundred dollars in AdSense earnings. For the entire month, he made $1,039.81.
Not quite what he was hoping for when he became a celebrity blogger and earned an impressive amount of attention and notoriety.
So if Fake Steve Jobs can’t monetize a blog, the rest of us are doomed, right? He worked hard, he created quality content, he had a terrific angle that went nicely viral. He was at the pinnacle, and he’s broke. So we will be too.
It must be true, he said it in Newsweek.
I learned the hard way: while blogs can do many wonderful things, making huge amounts of money isn’t one of them.
The expert weighs in
The article then tapped another source for a little expert credibility, Paul Verna, an analyst with eMarketer.
Verna’s take was that the real issue was “the lack of a clear business model that can generate substantial revenues.”
Verna’s on the right track, but we’re still a long way from the core problem.
If your business model is “I want to make money on the Internet,” you’re not going to get very far. The Internet is profoundly indifferent to your desire to make money with it.
Please notice that this does not mean that “there is no possible viable business model for any blog, other than a few fortunate exceptions that prove the rule,” which was the conclusion Lyons reached.
It just means that Fake Steve Jobs didn’t come up with a working business model, so he didn’t make any money.
Blogs are not television
I’ll confess, I have no idea how to monetize Fake Steve Jobs. His readers aren’t coming to his site to solve any kind of real-world problem, other than “how can I kill 10 minutes before my boss gets back from lunch?”
Television networks produce entertainment. They either make money from advertising or, for premium cable channels, from subscriptions.
If you want to watch Lost, you have to watch ads. Tivo dented that model considerably, but it still works well enough for now.
Advertising can work on some content web sites, but it usually works best when the reader is coming to the site to figure out a solution to a problem. If an ad presents a relevant solution to that problem, the ad can be effective.
For a complex bunch of reasons, advertising isn’t especially effective on most blogs. Unless there’s a terrific message-to-market match, ads on blogs tend to underperform wildly.
If you want to make money in the real world, solve real problems
Too bad Lyons wasn’t a Copyblogger reader. He might have seen Brian’s post about the smartest monetization strategies for blogs and content sites, and why advertising is no longer on that list.
It’s not about trends in advertising or trends in the blogosphere. It’s about returning to a fundamental marketing truth.
If you don’t offer customers something they dearly want, whether it’s to gain some great pleasure or escape some great pain, you’re not going to make any money.
People do want entertainment and relief from boredom, but selling pure entertainment online is tricky. Right now the expectation on the web is that entertainment is free. You’ll have to get creative to escape that context, the same way musicians had to get creative to make a living when free music sharing became the norm.
It’s time for online business to grow up
For a long time, we believed that “online was different,” and that we didn’t need to accept any of the normal rules of business. We’d put something on the web and Magic Internet Dust would come along and make up for our total absence of business knowledge.
“Leap, and the net will appear,” was the mantra.
That sort of worked for awhile, but it doesn’t work now. If you don’t have a solid understanding of who your market is, how they’ll find you, and what problems you solve for them, it’s now “Leap, and the floor will appear.”
So focus on what does work now, and has always worked.
Provide value. Solve actual problems. Uncover what’s bugging people and fix it for them.
The real Steve Jobs sells beautiful, easy-to-use, loveable tools that make his customers’ lives better. If Fake Steve Jobs wanted to make money, he would have had to do some work to figure out how he could do the same
one who makes a living improving search engine rankings, I can tell you that there is a lot of bad information out there about SEO. What if I were to tell you that the road map for achieving top rankings was within your grasp? The holy grail of rankings is not imaginary. As is true with any major success, it leaves clues.
By working with literally hundreds of small and medium sized websites, I have found that top ranked sites have a number of factors in common. What are they? I’m about to share these factors with you and explain what separates those in the top Google positions and those that are never found on page one of search results.
The first search engine ranking factor has to do with the anchor text of all inbound links to your website. Google and other search engines use the anchor text from other sites linking in to determine what your site is about and what it should rank well for. If websites link in only using a URL, and not your keywords in the anchor text, email them and ask them to update your link. The link should always appear with your most important keywords.
The second most important ranking factor is using keywords in your title tag and other meta tags. Meta tags still have an impact on your search rankings. Although the weight of meta tags may be minimal, they are effective in categorizing your page and identifying what search engines should expect to find when they spider web site pages. Make sure your tags are constructed properly and include you keywords.
The third ranking factor to consider for your web site is link popularity. This phrase has been talked about in search engine circles for a while but can be equated with Page Rank. The concept of Page rank or link popularity for that matter take a number of factors into consideration to identify the quality of web pages from an external perspective. The largest factor that influences search engine rankings is the number and quality of links that are pointing to a web site or web page.
The fourth ranking factor is the diversity of domains that link to your web site. For many search engines, it’s not only what links you have to your site but making sure they are from different domains. This represents more popularity associated with you web site and therefore is judged to be a better search result. When link building, try to focus on generating inbound links from different websites.
The final ranking factor is keyword use in root domain. Although it’s possible to use subdomain or dedicated pages to get your keywords in a URL, nothing beats having them in your root domain.
All of these factors are important for top search rankings. Don’t overlook any of them if trying to improve your search rankings for particular keywords or keyword phrases.
Also, be sure to continually read up on the subject or consider any one of a number of SEO training programs, or even San Diego advertising agencies, that can show you how to have more impact with your optimization efforts.
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