We recently announced the addition of our Google Analytics feature to Publicaster.  This feature allows you to track clicks from your Publicaster email campaigns to your website activity in your Google Analytics account.  

After receiving valuable feedback from our clients, we are moving this feature to be an option under the Account Preferences section in Publicaster.  As of today, under Account Preferences, you will be able to choose whether or not you’d like the Google Analytics feature to appear on your Send/Schedule Emails screen.  By default, this option will be turned “off”. 

To read more about this feature, read our blog post.

If you have any questions about this updated feature, please contact your Account Manager or email Customer Support.

How do you match up to your peers?  We’ve added a BSF quick survey to our monthly newsletter.  Take our most recent survey on what matters most in email marketing.  Once we’ve collected all the results, we’ll report back on the outcome.  Check back in to see how you compare to your fellow marketers!

When your email hits the inbox, does it stand out from the crowd? Is your email creative rendering correctly across all email clients? Are you up-to-date on all of the latest best practices of email design?

Join us for our “Design for the Inbox” webinar to learn how to design emails that make a real impact.

This webinar is for you if:

• You want to maximize readability and visual interest
• You are interested in increasing your email return on investment
• You are new to email marketing design, or want a refresher on best practices

Click here to register!

Details:

Date: Wednesday, May 14, 2008

Time: 3:00 PM - 3:30 PM EST

Presenter: Melanie Sims

System Requirements
PC-based attendees
Required: Windows® 2000, XP Home, XP Pro, 2003 Server, Vista
Macintosh®-based attendees
Required: Mac OS® X 10.3.9 (Panther®) or newer

You’ve done it all right so far.  You have built up (and monitored!) your sending reputation, minimized the “spamminess” of your email, set up authentication, and sent the email to a true opt-in list.  The only step left is the final gatekeeper: Your subject line.

I was reminded recently that subject lines can be powerful not just for your emails, but for blog posts as well.  The other day some BSF staffers were taking a look at the highest clicks into Thinking Inbox blog posts from RSS.   Take a look at the top 10 winners:

The Email Standards Project
Growing Your Email List
Combat List Fatigue
10 Email Marketing Resolutions for 2008
New Year’s Resolution: ­ Improve Your Email…
Writing and Designing an Email Newsletter
Issue Brief: Mobile Email Marketing
When Best Practices Become Requirements
9 Ways to “Make Nice” with ISPs and Network Operators
The Anatomy of a Lousy Email   

Clearly the subject line of the blog post is the gatekeeper as well, provoking a click or getting passed by.  The Email Standards Project was an unintentional winner, since that was the name of the site (and just so happens to be compelling all on its own.) The rest are very clear and straightforward in their intent, just as a good subject line should be.

Which of your subject lines is winning in opens?  What can you change to bring the others up to that level?  Every audience is different, so observing the trends of what makes your subscribers open or not open the emails should give you insight into what you should do in the future.

You may have noticed a new addition to the more recent issues of our newsletter, Factory Direct.  By adding BSF quick surveys to our newsletter, we hope to provide you a way to stay up to date with the most recent email marketing trends. Our first survey focused on our readers’ daily email behavior and activity.  Listed below are the questions along with our readers’ responses:

·  On average, how many hours each day do you spend writing and responding to emails?
o  6.3% spend zero hours
o  68.8% spend 1-5 hours
o 18.8% spent 6-10 hours
o  6.3% spend more than 10 hours

Stay tuned for more surveys and results!

Last month, we announced the addition of our Email Folders feature to the Publicaster Email Library.  After receiving valuable feedback from our clients, we will be moving this feature to be an option under the Account Preferences section in Publicaster.  As of this morning, under Account Preferences, you will be able to choose whether or not you’d like the Email Folders option to appear in your Email Library.  By default, this option will be turned “off”.

Another improvement we have made is that your Email Folders, should you choose to use them, will be listed in alphabetical order. 

To see a sample of how the Email Folders feature would look in your account, please click on the image to the right.

If you have any questions about this updated feature, please contact your Account Manager or email Customer Support.

Did you know that many email clients display not only the subject line of a new email arrival, but also the first line of text within the email? Take a look at your current email design. What’s the first line of text? Does this first line of text get your message and call-to-action across, or is it just fluff? If it’s not grabbing your reader’s attention, it’s time to add some snippet text!

The first line of text, or “snippet text,” as it’s been coined, has come up recently as a new way to grab your reader’s attention and display the call-to-action of your email. Here’s an example of the snippet text in action: If you use Microsoft Outlook, you have the option to receive pop-up alerts in the bottom righthand corner of your screen when a new email arrives. This pop-up states the email’s Friendly From Name, Subject Line and the first line of text. Gmail uses this same information to display your email details in the list of Inbox emails.

Click on either of the two images for examples of what not to do. These samples show how your email alert appears in Outlook if you only use a View in Browser link at the top of your email, and also how the email description would appear in your Inbox list in Gmail. As you can see, having a relevant and interesting snippet text above any other links or images in your email is very important to grabbing your reader’s attention.

It has become best practice to add snippet text to every email campaign that you send. This will help you get your call-to-action across, even when the recipient quickly scans through the emails in their inbox. This also helps to relay the message of your email when images are blocked, as this snippet text will come through at the top of your email even when images do not.

Here’s another tip: Make your snippet text different from your subject line so that your recipients aren’t simply seeing the exact same message twice. Maximize the message you can get across in this valuable email real estate. And have some fun with it … try testing different snippet texts to grab your reader’s attention and see which one performs best. Give this best practice a try, and let us know your successes by leaving a comment below.

You may wonder, what does a widget have to do with email marketing? Truthfully, when I first took the job at Blue Sky Factory my knowledge of a widget included the definition I knew from the Looney Tunes writers. But after a few months of working here, the discovery of RSS feeds (yes…I was very web-naïve) and one iMac later, I now know what a widget really is and I have realized the importance of the ever-changing facets of online marketing.  To brush up on your widget knowledge, click here.

Miss an issue of Factory Direct? Click here to receive our monthly newsletter!

Most of you have noticed that we redesigned our Factory Direct newsletter drastically a few issues ago. While the general motivation for this was to refresh the overall look of Factory Direct, there is purpose behind the different elements of the design.

While what may work for Factory Direct may not necessarily work for you and your email campaigns, the general message is: don’t be afraid to think outside the email newsletter box! Take the step like we did and inject some personality into your newsletters, along with some elements of uniqueness. If all the positive feedback we’ve received from our readers is any indication, our Factory Direct redesign was a success.  Click here to read more about our re-design and how it could benefit your email marketing campaigns.

Click here to make sure you don’t miss another issue of Factory Direct!

Many of our clients have signed up for our Delivery Assurance Solutions program and seen significant improvements in their email program.  One we’re particularly excited about is the success Caribbean Tours & Cruises has seen.  They diligently use both the Campaign Preview and Mailbox Monitor tools to tweak and improve their emails for maximum deliverability.  Recently, they hit the 97.9% mark for their Inbox Deliverability!  That is often unheard of in the email industry, and certainly something to be proud of.

Check out our case study to read more.

If you are interested to learn more about how our Delivery Assurance Solutions can help your email program, click here.