Wednesday, November 24, 2010

Tips & tricks to optimize your email marketing campaign with Neo e-Watch Media

You got a mail
Optimizing your existing email marketing campaign is a great way to boost conversions, traffic and interest in what you already have to offer. Continually assessing and making small, but worthy, improvements is key to driving better results in your business. There are a several areas to assess and improve when aiming to optimize your email marketing in your business.
When optimizing your email marketing campaigns, you want to think about the goals that you intend on accomplishing. Getting your message to the inbox isn’t exactly a goal; having recipients take a certain action should be. Think beyond the message and think about the campaign and the purpose of why you’re emailing customers and prospects. These are some specific suggestions to help you optimize your email marketing campaigns for better engagement.

Use tight subject lines

Short and direct subject lines perform best. Personalization is a helpful tactic when you have a special offer and even using “FREE” or “50% OFF” in caps can be effective. Some of the conventional thought around using this type of email subject has changed as more B2C companies frequently leverage it within their messages. People are comfortable hearing direct messages from brands they trust in their inbox. Above all, make it relevant and attractive for your audience to receive your emails. Aim for 50 characters or less, unless you are sure that a longer subject line is crucial to the message.

Optimize images for fast loading

A chunky email is one that has slow-loading, big images inside of it. While pretty much everyone is on broadband these days, you want to consider the mobile devices (iPhones, Blackberries, Androids, etc.) your recipients use. Mobile devices often support HTML messages and will try to show images whenever possible. Compress and resize images to fit the email for the recipients. An awesome and super-easy tool for this is Smushit, powered by Yahoo. You’ll notice a massive improvement in the speed of images.

Use Alt text to describe your email with images disabled

Alt (“alternate”) text is used to describe an image when images don’t load. It dates back to the early days when broken images on the web were a common issue. In email, Alt text is used strategically to tell readers what’s behind the image or the call to action. Nearly all email marketing apps today let you easily add Alt

Reinforce the subject line and email itself with a Pre-header

Pre-headers contain text and a link to the web-version of an email and are a great way to increase open rates on your emails. A pre-header is used to summarize the contents of the email and reinforce the subject line. Email clients like Gmail will show the pre-header on the right side of the subject line and is a subtle way to disclose more purpose into every email message.

Consider using shorter, more direct copy

Revising your copy to be shorter is a great way to convey better relevance to your subscribers. Short copy is great because it forces you to share your ideas more clearly. The best part about short copy is it will entice your audience to take action once they understand what you want them to do. Being direct and not overly-persuasive is key to writing shorter copy in your emails. Besides, who wants to read long emails?

Make landing pages relevant to exactly what they clicked

Making sure your landing pages closely match what the person clicked is important. Studies have shown the more accurately a headline matches the referring link, it will have a favorable boost on conversions. For instance, the link “Sign up for a demo takes you to a landing page which is relevant and keeps the visitor focused on the call to action.

Utilize images to support the intent of the email

If you tend to not use images in your email, you’re missing out. A good picture in an email can jog a powerful emotional/psychological response that complements the contents of the email.
The best part about optimizing an email messages is the ability to measure the results. Results don’t only mean sales, it could mean better qualified leads (less junk in the pipeline) and a strengthened, longer-term email relationship.

Implement the advice above as you build your next email marketing campaign. Our training team has built a great online tool to help you build your email marketing campaign. It’s ideal for mass mailing campaign, but anyone can give it shot to build a campaign. It’s perfect if you’re looking to build an informative and helpful email marketing campaign with Neo e-Watch Media's email marketing team.