As the administrator of the PictureMe Portrait Studios account, I see hundreds of replies to emails that are deployed using Publicaster 7. Admittedly, the majority are automatic out-of-office replies, but you must shift through those to get to the important ones.

After a recent Father’s Day email campaign I received a reply stating the satisfaction of the customer, but it also included a request.  As happy as the customer was with PictureMe Portrait Studios, they were asking if it was possible to supply a particular 10 x 13 size photo that had been offered in the past.  The customer suggested that maybe the offer could be made again in the future as part of another email campaign.

PictureMe was very responsive to the request of this particular customer as well as other customers.   It appears that this was not the first time this request had been made in recent weeks. As a result of the feedback, PictureMe launched an additional campaign for Father’s Day that included the 10 x 13 size photo.

It is important that email remain a two way street.  By having a valid reply-to address that is monitored and acted upon, your customers know you are listening and not just talking.  It’s appreciated.

Kudos to PictureMe on their quick response to a customer suggestion.

My last blog focused on subject lines, and I’ve been discussing this subject (no pun intended) a lot with my customers.  The Asheville CVB, located in the beautiful mountains of North Carolina, had two instances where subject lines were used in very positive ways to impact their email marketing campaigns.

Subject Line 1

One of the top priorities of a convention and visitors bureau (CVB) is to entice people to come visit their location.  With the approach of the vacation season upon them, the Asheville CVB wanted to get as many Visitor’s Guides into the hands of their contacts as possible.  By being visible early in the minds of their readers, the potential opportunity to get their audience
to visit would be higher.

So how could they get this done?  The use of the word “Free” in a subject line can initially bring to mind a spammer trying to trick you into opening the email.  However, in this case the word “Free” was instrumental in getting contacts to request a Visitor’s Guide.

In January, the subject line “Get Your Free 2009 Visitor’s Guide” was used for the monthly newsletter.  The increase in requests for the Visitor’s Guides skyrocketed. From the first week in January, where requests were approximately 1,400, to the combined total of over 4,000 in just the last 4 days in January when the newsletter was deployed, the increase of Visitor’s Guide requests was almost 65%.  The word “Free” did not result in any negativity with the Asheville CVB audience.

Subject Line 2

We are all very proud of Publicaster’s A/B split testing feature.  I absolutely get a tingle when someone uses it and it gives unexpected results.  The clients that have used it thus far have mostly done subject line testing and I have heard this more than once, “The subject line I thought would get the most opens and win ended up losing.”  See what I mean about that tingle?  Testing can be fun and very enlightening.

The Asheville CVB decided to test subject lines for their monthly Foodtopia newsletter.  They wanted to test to see if a teaser subject line would get more opens than the standard subject line they use every month.  In this instance, the subject line they thought would win did, in fact, win.  The two subject lines were: “April News From the Asheville Foodtopian Society” and “A Taste of Asheville: Herb Festival, Local Hotdogs & A New Cafe.”  The teaser of a new cafe resulted in that link getting hit more than the other links in the newsletter.

Take Away Thoughts

The fact that the Asheville CVB has a handle on their readers, and didn’t perceive the word “Free” in the subject line as a risk, is a testament to them and how well they know what their readers want.  The relevance of the free Visitor’s Guide was apparent, and we all know relevance is key in getting readers to open and read your emails.

The willingness to try the new A/B split testing tool for subject lines will likely lead to the testing of creatives and other subject lines.  The ease of use of the A/B split testing feature was key in trying this approach for the first time.

So what is this Render Rate? It’s a proposal to adopt a new industry-wide standard that will more accurately measure how engaged a subscriber is with an email.

The metric so widely relied upon now is the open rate, and while it still serves a purpose, it can pose problems in the way it is calculated. With the increased use of mobile devices that don’t render images, this alone can affect the accurate measure of a true open.

The Measurement Accuracy Roundtable of the Email Experience Council is asking for feedback on this metric.

Go here to download the render rate document and give your feedback.

I’ve never been much for the making of New Year’s resolutions. My way of thinking is more “if a change needs to be made, do it now, don’t wait.” However, as we wave goodbye to 2008 and shake hands with and welcome 2009, we still have a tendency to want to start anew and make changes for the better. So if you want to make a resolution for your email marketing strategies, the best one I can think of is a face-to-face meeting with your ESP.

You can no longer approach your email marketing efforts with the “spray and pray” philosophy. Your ESP is there to provide you with valuable insights on what works, what doesn’t and why. Take advantage of the opportunity to build that relationship with your ESP. What better way to do this than to set aside a half day and meet with your contact at your ESP? Granted, us ESP’s live for emails - we communicate with friends and family via email, make reservations via email, purchase via email, and basically do just about everything via email. As grand as that is, you tend to lose the human side of the relationship, which is so vital to maintaining the account.

More than once I have been a part of a scenario where an account was retained or saved due to the existing relationship between an account and their vendor. You cannot successfully build that relationship purely with phone calls and emails. You must have some face time - it’s critical.

Let’s face it: a one-on-one meeting with your ESP would be a perfect place to start strategizing for your 2009 email marketing campaigns.

I can’t begin to tell you how many different types of interactive and stand alone media I am involved with (from email to Twitter to blogging).  Suffice to say less than 50 more than 25.  In the last month one of the most discussed issues I’ve seen is the email subject line.

Let’s take a look at subject line length.  How many of you out there reading this have subscribed to the notion that shorter subject lines are better?  I would be interested in your answer if you feel inclined to post your response below.  Admittedly, I am one of those people that subscribed to the notion of shorter is better.

Take a look at a study conducted by Alchemy Worx.  It gives detailed insight into subject line lengths and the conclusions reached.  In a nutshell, the study found that if you wish to optimize open rates then shorter may still be better, however if you wish to optimize click-to-open rates you might be better served by using a longer subject line.

Subject lines with 60 or less characters garnered the higher open rates while subject lines of 70 or more characters garnered the higher click-to-open rates.

Bottom line, you can not rely ONLY on what you read or hear.  Each email campaign is striving to accomplish individual results and only you as the marketer know the results you hope to achieve.  The best way to achieve those results is to read, listen, and test.

Maybe less is not more in the realm of email subject lines.

Organic, “arising as a natural outgrowth” ; Viral, “of, pertaining to, or caused by a virus“.  Ok, let’s put the two together in the context of email marketing and show you how this can help grow your list.

Organic list growth is a term used to describe a method of growing your list without using purchased or rented lists.

Viral email marketing simply means that recipients on your list are forwarding your email to their friends, colleagues or contacts that they feel may be interested in your content.

There are several ways to set up your email campaign to go viral. One such way is coming up with a giveaway or incentive that will be relevant to your readers.  As a very basic example, in your next newsletter, explain that you are sponsoring a contest that awards a prize to the individual that forwards the email to the most new contacts.  Make the forward link very prominent in the email, by making it both a text link and an image that stands out. And make sure your incentive is clear. The tracking for such an incentive should be rather easy with any modern ESP platform.

If the content is relevant and the incentive is attractive, leave it up to your loyal readers to do the rest.  Your loyal readers will be the ones that know which of their friends that will be interested. Another tactic to be sure to include in order to get the most out of a viral campaign, is to make sure you have a way to make it easy for the recipients of the forwarded email to sign up for your list. After all getting readers to subscribe, who find your content relevant, is the highest compliment you can receive.

I watched a customer increase her list with every newsletter edition that she sent using a similar approach.  Her giveaway did not break the bank but was very relevant to her readers, and something that she was able to include in every mailing.  Just last week I offered this approach to a new client.  Based on their  product and the availability of extremely inexpensive, but very relevant prizes, it is a perfect way for them to begin to grow their list.  She has already implemented the process, and I will post the results of her efforts in a few weeks.

This is a simple strategy to help get your audience to spread the word about your organization and your newsletter, and remember a new subscriber is the ultimate result!

Here’s hoping that your next viral email marketing campaign will help you grow your list the organic way.

We hear all the time about how email marketing works to drive revenue streams and how it is one of the most cost effective ways an organization can market.  All true, but have you ever thought about using email marketing as a communication tool amongst volunteers within a very small organization to be more efficient?

I know of one such organization that wasn’t sure if email marketing was for them. Their existing database was very small and they were not sure if they could benefit from the services.  In the end they decided to take the plunge and to give it a “try”.

The organization began gathering emails just like any customer does and before they knew it, they had built the database to over 200 volunteers.  Being able to reach over 200 contacts with one keystoke and sending an email did wonders to promote this volunteer organization and meet it’s needs.  The results have been tremendous.  One email was sent to the list of volunteers requesting specific items to fulfill a specific need.  The cost of the combined items was approximately $1000, a lot of money to ask volunteers to secure when there is no budget to buy these items.  I’m told that the email was sent on a Wednesday and that the items arrived at the organization on Sunday.  Pretty powerful way to communicate.

If you are passionate about a cause that you work with and have a relationship with an ESP, it might be worth a call to see if they are able to offer you a discounted rate on an account dedicated to your cause, or some other creative partnership option. Not only does email marketing work in the business world but it works in the volunteer world of extremely small email databases.  It may not provide large monetary revenues but it provides rewards that are just as big.

Proceed with caution. Having worked with databases since 1990, I know the risks and the rewards associated with using an append file. Should you want to institute this approach to increase your email list, make sure to follow some simple but extremely valuable guidelines.

Keep the append list separate from your house list until it is thoroughly cleansed and tested. Research the vendor you will use to do the append for you to find out how do they obtain their data, how do they perform a match, how often they update their files, and how do they handle bounces, unsubscribes, and complaints. Also, make sure you only send active customers to the vendor for append purposes.

Spencer Kollas has written a very extensive and informative article on this subject, Use Caution When Adding to Your List. In addition to list appends he also details the risks and rewards of email list rental.

Keep in mind the quality of your list is very important to your brand. In trying to increase the quantity of your list you can lose quality if you are not careful.

Summertime is made for vacations. Whether you go for spontaneous weekend jaunts or carefully planned extended stays, vacation is always something to look forward to. Travel and tourism destination emails are valuable tools to help prospective visitors gather information about your destination. With the economy on a downturn you want to make sure your email is noticed. An AOL/Zogby Travel Survey showed that 57% of Americans will be spending less on vacation in 2008 than they did in 2007. So how are you going to lure these prospective visitors to come and vacation with you?

When promoting a travel destination you want to make sure you give your contacts time to prepare for upcoming events. These folks have signed up to receive information from you so make it count. For recipients that are planning extended vacations you have a wider window of opportunity to send relevant content. If you have not done so yet, try segmenting your list by people that travel with children versus people that do not. For instance, the season opener of a theme park might be targeted to people that travel with children. Not to say we don’t all love to ride a roller coaster when given a chance but individuals with children would be more apt to interact with that announcement than others.

One of the easiest groups of travelers to target are the weekend travelers that decide at the last minute to get out of town. If you have an event or special happening on a weekend and you want to promote that event quickly, send an email out around Wednesday before the weekend event. Also, make sure to segment and target to contacts based on geography. Only target the email to folks that are within easy driving distance of your destination. Not only does this give the recipient time to make plans to attend said event, they will be able to get there in a short amount of time.

Even though there is no tried and true day and time to send an email you must make sure if you are promoting a particular event that the recipient receives the email in plenty of time before the event to make plans to attend. I recently received an email on Sunday June 15th, Father’s Day. The offering was a listing of restaurants that were promoting Father’s Day dinner specials. Seeing as how I rarely check email on the weekend I did not receive the offer till the Monday after Father’s Day. Poor planning, as I was obviously not going to be able to act upon the offer.

Be sure to include a very visible link to a calendar of events on all your emails. If your reader is not able to plan a visit that weekend or within the near future, a link to the upcoming events will allow them to peruse what is happening and make plans accordingly.

Have a safe and fun summer.

So you think that your emails will be successfully delivered if your sender reputation has been carefully built over time, you use a permission based email list and you have exhaustively tested until you know your email renders across multiple email clients?  Don’t be too too hasty.  According to Marketing Sherpa’s Email Marketing Benchmark Guide 2008 AOL, Gmail and Roadrunner tend to give 100% consideration to sender reputation, while MSN/Hotmail only gives 32% to sender reputation.  The remaining 68% consideration for MSN/Hotmail is given to content. 

Just because your message makes it through to a users inbox does not mean it may not get reported as spam, so how that message is perceived is very important.  Readers are so cautious these days that any email that is suspect can and does get reported as SPAM.  Even though your email has passed all the SPAM tests you can run and has gotten past the email client content filters, it’s the ultimate action the end user takes that can that can make content filters adjust their rules.  If enough readers perceive your email as SPAM and report it as such, then the content filter rules adjust based on the content and your deliverability can ultimately be affected.  Even if the content is valid and relevant, perception of the email is key.  Stefan Pollard expounds on this very issue in his most recent ClickZ article, Why Content Is Still an Issue.  He gives a very detailed example of how content filter rules change based on readers actions.

It is imperative to be diligent in creating the content of your email.  Make sure that you understand what triggers a SPAM report, should your emails get reported as SPAM.  By understanding this you can take action to correct what might be causing the user to report the email as SPAM.  The most basic rules still apply when trying to create an email that your reader will not report as SPAM: a branded “from” line, an accurate and concise subject line, design for preview pane and blocked images, respectful frequency based on user preferences, the ability to let a reader unsubscribe easily, SPAM check performed before you send, and if possible the use of a deliverability monitoring service.

Contact your Account Manger if you have any questions concerning your content.