I attended the Online Marketing Summit on June 25th, and yesterday I wrote about a few of my takeaways from the event. With all of the valuable content from the presentations and sessions, I had to split the things I learned into two posts. So, here are additional gems of knowledge from the event:

• Use your transactional emails, like your “Forgot your Password” email, wisely. These are the most read emails, so pretty them up with branded HTML, and feel free to add something interesting, like a link to an upcoming webinar or a special offer, to them. Just be sure the transactional part is the main focus of the email in order to comply with CAN-SPAM.

• Always use snippet text (also called a pre-header) at the top of your emails that states your call to action and entices your subscriber to read more. You don’t want the first thing they see in their email preview or mobile browser to be your view in browser link – boring!

• Dare to make your unsubscribe link large and prominent. This could significantly cut down on your “emotionally unsubscribed” group and your complaint rate.

• Need some creative inspiration? Check out this site.

• According to a Return Path study, 46% of all email sent is illegitimate (think spam), 33% is unknown, and only 20% is legitimate email. Of that 20%, only 0.63% is commercial email. That’s some big, bad competition!

• Know the difference between cadence and frequency. Cadence means sending more relevant emails when your subscriber is in the market.

• You must earn subscriber permission every time you send an email by providing relevant, interesting content. With each email you send, you help to further build that relationship.

• Include the Share With Your Network social media links on every email campaign you send to further increase your email reach. Instead of placing these links in the footer of your email, like most do, test putting it at the top of your email or next to your main call-to-action to prompt more uses. Learn more about Share With Your Network (SWYN) here: http://www.blueskyfactory.com/swyn.aspx

Again, I highly recommend this event, and am already looking forward to next year’s!

Last week I attended the Online Marketing Summit (OMS) 2009. The purely-educational event was fantastic as I try to gain an even deeper knowledge of email marketing in general, as well as wrap my head around the new technologies affecting email, including social media and SMS. I attended several presentations from industry leaders and took lots of notes - so many that I’m making this a two part blog post! Here are the first of a few gems of knowledge I walked away with:

• The new rule of thumb is “Email Plus”. Email is the backbone for 1:1 communication. Email is social. Social needs email. Facebook, Twitter, LinkedIn, etc don’t exist without email. Email is not dead – in fact, social media is driving more email!
• Globally, there are 330 million opt-in subscribers of email. Whew!
• According to Forrester Research, those who buy products marketed through email spend 138% more than non-readers of email.
• Cool idea: post a video of someone using your product on YouTube, and link to this video in your email campaign. To encourage sharing of this email, make it fun or educational. One example of this for food product marketers is to tape an amateur cooking show where a recipe is made using your product. This could lead to a whole series of cooking videos showcasing the multiple uses for your product.
• Don’t be afraid to ask clients/customers to supply content for your blog. They have some great stories to tell!
• SMS is growing to be the next big thing. Start collecting those opt-in mobile numbers now so you are ahead of the game. (Check out Blue Sky Factory’s SMS capability!)
• According to “Email Marketing: An Hour a Day” by Jeanniey Mullen and David Daniels, the value of an email address is $180/year.
• 28% of an office worker’s day is spent dealing with email and other messages. Make sure your email campaign stands out from the crowd!
• Getting an opt-in is like dating. Don’t move too fast or you’ll scare them off. Start with collecting just an email address, and ask for more information later. If you nurture the relationship properly, you’ll have plenty of time to learn more about them.
• If you do collect more information about your subscribers, use it! Don’t ask for additional information unless you plan to use it to make your email campaigns more targeted and relevant.

All-in-all, a great conference, and one that I highly recommend you attend. This year’s “Regional Whistle Stop Tour” is now over, but if they come to your town next year be sure to check them out! Visit www.onlinemarketingsummit.com for more information, and stay tuned for more gems (coming soon).

Email marketing is all about relationship building. One of the best ways to build and maintain a good relationship with your subscribers is to just say “hello” from time to time, and show them that you appreciate them. That’s exactly what the Improv Comedy Clubs did this past Father’s Day with their Jeff Dunham email.

The purpose of this email was simply to wish their subscribers a “Happy Father’s Day” and offer them free Jeff Dunham e-cards to send to the dads in their lives. That’s right – free. This email didn’t try to sell anything, but instead worked to merely spread good wishes to their subscribers. Crazy, right? Not so. These types of greeting emails can often be the some of the most successful campaigns in terms of growing and nurturing your subscriber lists.

What could the Improv have done better? Next time, I would suggest including the ability for subscribers to share the email with their social networks or forward to a friend in their greeting emails to increase the viral aspect of their campaign. Also, include a link to subscribe so those people that receive the email via a forward can sign up to enjoy future Jeff Dunham emails. Encouraging your subscribers to forward this fun email to their friends and family will help to spread the word about Jeff Dunham, and will allow for subscription list growth.

Keeping in constant, consistent contact with your email recipients is one way to ensure you maintain a list of active, engaged subscribers.  Our client, TSC Direct, does a great job of this.  Recently, they started a 90-day touch program where automated emails are sent at scheduled intervals based on when the subscriber first requested an auto insurance quote online. 

Campaign details:

• Day 1 (date of initial quote request):  Subscriber receives the insurance quote and more information about TSC Direct
• Day 2:  Subscriber receives a reminder email with a call to action to apply online or via phone 
• Days 4, Day 12 and Day 17:  Emails describe additional benefits of TSC Direct auto insurance, all the while keeping the consistent call to action of “Click or Call to Apply Today”
• Day 30:  TSC Direct introduces another offer - homeowners insurance - to their subscribers in order to expand their client potential
• Days 60 and 90: Email content returns to the auto insurance offer, reminding the subscriber again of the benefits and cost savings associated with TSC Direct insurance

Why we like this email campaign:

This series of email campaigns allows TSC Direct to remain in frequent contact with their subscribers, meaning they are always at the forefront of their prospects’ minds.  This means that when subscribers are ready to make a decision about their new insurance company, the first company they think of (because they just received an email from them yesterday!) is TSC Direct.  Email creative is eye-catching yet simple and to the point.  Making the call to action clear and consistent within all designs allows the subscriber to focus on the message and easily take the intended action.  And the best thing about it?  It’s all automated using our Publicaster 7 auto-response tool!  Email campaign set-up was easy, and now the email campaigns run on a daily basis without any additional work needed from TSC Direct.

Lycos Europe recently announced that it will be shutting down its Lycos Mail online email application on February 15, 2009. Click here to view a list of the affected domains. Note that US-based Lycos domains will not be affected by this shutdown.

It is recommended that you do a scan of your email list for the affected domains. Act quickly to retrieve updated email addresses for these subscribers, as you will lose the ability to communicate with them at their Lycos Europe domain after Sunday, February 15. Please note that if you do not obtain updated email addresses for these subscribers, you will likely see an increased bounce rate for your emails after February 15, 2009.

As always, feel free to contact our support team at bsfsupport@blueskyfactory.com if you have any questions or concerns about this shutdown.

Valentine’s Day – my favorite holiday – is fast approaching. Show your clients some L-O-V-E by sending them a festive Valentine’s Day greeting! Here are some creative ideas to get you started:

• Overwhelmed with red and pink this time of year? Up to your ears in images of roses and candy? This year is all about being minimalistic, so instead of doing a total revamp to your email template, try simply spicing up just your header image to show the love. Think of how Google adds to their logo on www.google.com for holidays and events. Even just adding an image of Cupid or hearts to your header image or logo will make a fun impact without being overwhelming.

• Money is on everyone’s mind this year, so provide your readers with some low-cost alternatives to normal Valentine’s Day activities. If your main focus is food products, come up with some fun love-themed recipes for two that they can make at home. Or if you provide a kid-focused newsletter, include some kid-friendly crafts to make instead of gifts this year.

• Consider providing coupons or free shipping to encourage those money-minded shoppers. Show your most loyal customers or subscribers some serious love by offering them the best discounts.

• Remember that not every email you send has to be promotional. Why not just send a Valentine’s Day greeting to your clients and subscribers, reminding them that you heart them? You could even include some V-Day jokes or facts in these emails to bring a smile to their day.

• If you send a health-related email, remind people that February is also American Heart Month. Tie in the Valentine’s heart theme with tips on getting healthy to prevent heart disease. Show your body some love!

• Don’t forget the men on Valentine’s Day – they need some loving too! Highlight products that “the man in your life” might enjoy. Or, to make the male readers’ lives easier on Valentine’s Day, showcase your most popular products, or group several products that could go together (for example, matching perfume and body lotion, or diamond earrings to go with that fabulous diamond necklace).

• Have fun with Valentine’s Day! Consider creating a microsite with a love-themed interactive game (for example, name that romantic comedy quote, or match celebrity couples, or see how many hearts Cupid can pierce with his arrow in 30 sec). Even those down on love this year will appreciate this distraction!

• Encourage subscribers to send you their most romantic stories now, so that you can feature them in a special Valentine’s Day issue of your email newsletter. Consider offering a prize or special discount for the best story (voted on by your subscribers).

• Finally, remind your subscribers of last days for shipping or reservations in time for the big day. A series of helpful reminders leading up to the date will help shoppers remember to show the love.

And to all of our male readers, consider this your reminder to send flowers, candy, or a card to that special person in your life on February 14th! You don’t have to tell them we reminded you. We promise - we won’t tell! Happy (early) Valentine’s Day from everyone at Blue Sky Factory!

Remember when we called email the “red headed step-child“? Well, it’s time to show email some respect! You can do this by starting now on your 2009 email marketing schedule. Get a plan out there that your team buys into so that email is no longer an after-thought to a larger marketing campaign.

Here are five tips to help you get started now on your 2009 email schedule:

1. Start Small. If planning for the entire year is too daunting, start with the first quarter, or the first 60 days. Know how many email campaigns you are going to send each month. Will they be newsletters or promotional emails, or both? If you have several departments sending emails, be sure to check with each other first to make sure your emails aren’t going out on the same day. This will keep your recipients from being overwhelmed, and perhaps annoyed, by the number of emails they receive from your company.

2. Think About the Bigger Picture. How will your emails fit into the overall marketing schedule? Use your company’s annual marketing plan as a jumping off point, making sure that your email schedule fits in well with the rest of the marketing pushes. Also, keep your organizational events in mind and be sure to schedule emails around these dates.

3. Remember the Holidays. Plan to send your subscribers holiday greetings, even for the smaller holidays like Valentine’s Day and Fourth of July. This will help to build the relationship further and will make sure you are always in the forefront of their minds. Remembering the holidays also means remembering the “black-out” days. For example, if you are specializing in B2B emails, you should probably avoid emailing on the Friday before Memorial Day weekend or the Wednesday before Thanksgiving, as many people leave work early on these days to extend their holidays.

4. Work Backwards. Once you have your email launch dates planned, work backwards from there to determine when the recipient lists, final copy and creative, subject line, etc. will be due. Add in a little buffer time, just in case. Get your team to buy into this, and there shouldn’t be any last-minute work or surprises. Gosh, wouldn’t that be nice?! To help you get started with this, remember that if you are sending a managed campaign through Blue Sky Factory, we ask for at least 48 hours turnaround time to set up and test campaigns. Please remember to add that time into your schedule to ensure we hit your target launch date.

5. Plan for A/B Testing. You should be performing split tests routinely to determine the best subject line, creative, call to action, landing page, etc. that works for your recipients. A/B test campaigns require a few more days turnaround than straight campaigns, as you need to allow for a few days for the test results from the initial sample group to come through. Buffer this time into your A/B campaign schedules, and plan on doing at least one A/B campaign each quarter. Read more about planning an A/B test campaign here.

Bonus tip: Get Started Today! Before you know it, the holidays will be over and 2009 will be here. Be proactive and get started on your 2009 email schedule now. The sooner you have your schedule developed, the sooner you can start benefiting from it. If you need help developing your email schedule or strategy plan, contact your Blue Sky Factory Account Manager.

Do you remember learning the Scientific Method in middle school chemistry class?

1) Make Observations
2) Formulate a Hypothesis
3) Design an Experiment
4) Test the Hypothesis
5) Accept or Reject the Hypothesis

A client recently contacted me about A/B Testing in their emails. They were struggling with getting started on a test and what the steps should be. It occurred to me that the Scientific Method can be applied to A/B testing in email (and you thought you’d never use chemistry again!).

Here’s what I mean:

1) Make Observations
Review your current email program and results. How do your current results differ from your desired results? What do you think could alter those results? Write down everything you can think of!

Struggling to get started?  Here are some great tests to consider:

1. Date/Time (weekend versus weekday, morning versus evening)
2. Subject Line (short & vague versus long & descriptive)
3. Email content/images (people images versus non-people images)
4. Call-to-Action (button versus link, % discount versus free shipping)
5. Landing Pages (busy versus simple, color schemes)

2) Formulate a Hypothesis
Decide on one aspect that you think could be changed to make a difference to your email results.  For example, “I think my subject lines are boring and not enticing people to open my emails.”  Use this hypothesis to design the test (step 3). Remember to only test one aspect at a time, so that you have a true control group and a true test group.  Other aspects can be tested in future tests (a series of tests is more than ok!).

3) Design an Experiment
Let me now explain how an A/B test should work.  Aspects A and B should be tested to a small, random portion of your email list.  In step 5, you’ll measure the results to determine the winner.  The winning aspect will then be sent to the remainder of your list.

Back to step 3, where you set up your emails and segmentations.  If you are testing something in the email creative, you’ll need to set up two different email versions.  Set up a segmentation in Publicaster that pulls a random number of people.  If you need help with this, feel free to contact bsfsupport@blueskyfactory.com.
4) Test the Hypothesis
Time to launch your email(s) to the two test groups - A and B.

5) Accept or Reject the Hypothesis
Here’s the most important part of this process - the analysis.  Gather the results of both aspects.  How did the results between the two aspects differ?  Focus on the main area of your results that you were trying to improve with the changed aspect. For example, if I tested subject lines, I’d focus on open rates; if testing landing pages, I’d focus on conversion rate.

Here are some results you can look at:

1. Open Rate
2. Click-Through Rate
3. Conversion Rate
4. Website Traffic
5. Inbound Sales Calls/Emails

From the results, determine the winning aspect, and email that version to the remainder of your list.

If you have additional aspects to test, start the process over again.  The more you test, the more perfected your email campaign will become!

So, as it turns out, chemistry was worth our time and pain in school!  Now, can anyone say the same for trigonometry?!?

Have you had success with an A/B email test?  We’d love to hear about it!  Leave us a comment below.

This month we did a little shuffling of responsibilities at Blue Sky Factory, and I was asked to be the main contact for any Publicaster support issues.  While I loved speaking with each and every one of you, I realized there are some commonly asked questions that seem to come up over and over.  In an attempt to streamline the process, I’d like to go over a few of them here. 

I hope that this quick list of common support topics will help you as you use our Publicaster application.  Please do not take this as a hint that we don’t want to hear from you - we really do!  If you ever have questions about Publicaster or email marketing in general, we are here and excited to help!

Without further ado, here are the Top 5 Most Common Support Topics:

1. Your Mailing List Data File

When you are ready to import data into Publicaster, make sure your data file is in one of these formats: Comma Separated Value (.csv) or Text Tab Delimited (.txt).  The first row of your data must be the column headers (Email, Firstname, Company, etc).  These column headers must match what you have in your Publicaster database.  Go to List Manager > Manage Databases > Edit to see what field headers you currently have set up.  As an example, the column header in your data file for Email cannot be spelled “E-mail” or “e mail”.  Spaces and hyphens matter!

2. List Import and Manage Existing Data Counts

Once you have uploaded a list, Publicaster will show you a count of how many records were uploaded.  This count removes any duplicate or invalid records from your original data file.  By invalid record, we mean that Publicaster will check to make sure all email addresses are in the name@domain.com format.  Any email addresses that are not in this format will not be uploaded.  Here’s something new to look forward to: In Publicaster 7.0, you will be given more in-depth counts.  You will be shown how many invalid or duplicate email addresses were removed, and you’ll be able to click through to view those records not uploaded.

Once you’ve uploaded your list data, you can go to Manage Existing Data under List Manager to get Quick Counts on your list(s).  Note that these list counts include ALL records on your list, including Active, Hard Bounced, Opt-outs, etc.  If you want just a count of the Active records on your list (the ones that Publicaster will send emails to), change the Subscriber Status drop-down menu to “Active”.  Note that segmentation Quick Counts automatically give you only Active records, so be sure to keep this in mind when comparing segmentation counts to mailing list counts.  Also note that the Quick Count from the Send/Schedule Emails screen will always give you the Active count.

3. Using Personalization in Emails

You do have the ability to personalize your emails.  This is achieved by using snippet codes, just like you do for the Forward to a Friend and Opt-out links.  For example, if you want your email to read, “Dear (firstname)”, here’s how you would do that:

Dear [~Firstname~]

This would personalize your email for the recipient, as long as you have that “firstname” column in your mailing list and there is a valid first name associated with that recipient’s email address.  For any record that has an email address but not a first name, you can set a default value for this personalization.  You have the opportunity to do so once you’ve saved the email.  Hint: You can also use personalization in subject lines by simply typing the snippet into the subject line text box when setting up your email.

4. Sending and Scheduling Emails

When you go to the Send/Schedule Email screen under Launch/Manage Emails, you have the option to either Deliver Now or Schedule Delivery.  If you want to schedule an email for the future, remember to schedule it at least 15 minutes in advance.  Also, if you are sending a test email to your test list, be sure to choose your test mailing list from the Mailing List drop-down menu at the top of the page, and also to select “Yes” for the question at the bottom of the page, “Is this a test?”.  By selecting “Yes”, this will put the word “Test” in your subject line.  When selecting this option, you can also choose to send separate versions, which allows you to receive and review both the HTML and Plain Text versions of your emails.

 5. Reporting Metrics

The most commonly looked at metric is the Open Rate.  Opens are recorded only if images are downloaded.  (Note: this is an industry standard.)  This means that recipients can receive and read your emails without downloading images, and this would not count as an open.   Alternatively, if someone breezes by your email in their preview pane and has images turned on by default, this would count as an open, although the recipient may have barely glanced at your email.  Because of these two points, we typically recommend that you pay closer attention to your click-through rate.  This metric is much more accurate, since a click can only be recorded if your recipient physically clicks on the link.  This also shows that your call to action was effective and that the recipient is truly engaged in your emails.  And remember, the best way to gauge your email success is to compare yourself against yourself (not against others or the industry average).  Watch your own email metrics over time and try different things to improve upon them.  If you need suggestions for some A/B tests to run, contact your Account Manager directly.

Hopefully these tips will help you as you use Publicaster.  If you still need assistance, or just want to talk to a live person, we’d love to hear from you!  Please contact us at bsfsupport@blueskyfactory.com or 1-866-216-BLUE.  Until then, happy emailing!