A lot of importance is placed on deliverability in email campaigns.  What this refers to is the percentage of emails that actually make it into the subscribers’ inboxes.

But another important metric is the actual mix of email clients your subscribers are using to view your emails and how each of them displays your message.  Even people who have been doing email marketing for a long time sometimes don’t pay enough attention to this.

For example, many email clients (“email client” means Gmail, Outlook, Eudora, etc.) will have a default setting that turns off all graphics in the preview window.  The reason for this is spam-related, the details of which are beyond the scope of this post.  And since most email campaigns have graphical banners at the top, those banners won’t load when graphics are turned off.  If you’re not aware of this, and you don’t design your email template the right way in order to compensate, your viewer might see just a big blank box in their preview window.  Clearly not what you want!

Some people might say, “But isn’t that why we also include a text-based version?”  While it’s good to include a text version, the reason for doing so is not what you might think.  The text based version is for people who specifically need text-only emails for accessibility or bandwidth reasons.  HTML is text too, from a technical standpoint.  Turning off graphics in an email client still renders the HTML properly, it just doesn’t download and display the images rendered via the HTML <img> tag.

Here’s one final tidbit to seal the deal… mobile devices do not load graphics in the email program, at least my iPhone doesn’t.  It doesn’t even LET me load graphics!  And guess what?  The iPhone is the second most popular email client for one of my lists.   My ESP (E-Mail Service Provider), which is MailChimp, tells me what email clients are used to view my emails.  Take a look at the chart, Gmail is #1 and iPhone is #2.  It would behoove you to check your own list to see what your email client mix is.

Another activity you should consider is email client testing.  Any time you change your email template, you need to retest it on at least the top five email clients that are used by your subscribers.  It’s easy enough to create accounts for yourself on these different clients, and send tests to those accounts and just view them.  View them with graphics turned off and then on.  View them in the preview window and the full reading window.  View them on different devices if you can (Windows vs. Mac vs. iPhone/iPad, etc.)

Yes, this all sounds like a bit of a pain, but isn’t it worth it if it means just a few more of your subscribers will actually have a better reading experience?  For all you know some of your readers are opening your email just to see a blank box (your header) and with 100 other emails waiting to be read, yours might just get passed by.

I don’t want that to happen to you any more than you do.  If you need help, or have a question about this, just post a comment and I’ll be happy to respond with more details.

Myth #1: E-Mailing My Customers Will Annoy Them

[This is part 9 (the final installment) of the series "Debunking the Myths of E-Mail Marketing."]

The number one thing I hear from business owners when I talk about email marketing is “I don’t want to annoy my customers.” Neither do I! And the good news is it’s REALLY EASY not to do this.

Permission-Based Marketing

Permission marketing is a term made popular by Seth Godin with his book of the same name. At it’s very basic level, it simply means you ask for and get explicit permission from people to market to them.

This concept manifests in many ways, but most poignantly in e-mail marketing. This is where the concept not only makes a lot of sense, but absolutely shines!

So picture this… you walk up to a person at a networking event and they ask you, “What to you do?” You tell them, “I am a small business accountant,” or “I help businesses with their Internet marketing,” or “We help homeowners going through life changing events to de-clutter their homes in order to cope better.” Then you ask “Would you like to learn more about what I do for my customers?” If they answer yes they have just given you permission to deliver your marketing message to them.

The same goes for electronic marketing. If a visitor on your web site enters their email in a form and clicks the button that says “Add me to your newsletter,” you can safely assume that they want to hear what you have to say!

So as long as you only add people to your email list who have given their explicit permission you will not be spamming them when you send out your emails.

Don’t Over-Promote

Another very important point is that you have to make good on your promise. The people on your list have said they trust you, and you need to protect that and respect it. You need to add value to their lives, not just sell to them. Nobody wants to walk into a place and get pounced on by a sales person. It’s creepy and annoying. Help people, they will learn to trust you, they will respect you and they will buy from you.

Once you have proven that you are trustworthy and have earned their respect, more and more people will want to join your list. Your list will grow… and you will do it all without annoying anyone.

Use the Appropriate Frequency

Emailing your customers every day is probably going to be too much, and you will definitely annoy them. Unless of course that is their expectation. For example you might offer a daily tip of some kind. As long as your subscribers signed up knowing that’s what they were getting, then it’s a perfectly awesome way to stay in front of them!

However, if you are offering a newsletter, you want to be more discerning. Besides it’s time consuming and unless you have 4 hours a day to write newsletters, it’s not practical. I personally send my big robust newsletter once a month. I know folks who send theirs once a week. Both are fine, do whatever you can handle and your customers want/need/will accept.

On the other end, you can’t wait too long between emails. Some of your subscribers, especially the new ones, will forget they signed up for your list if you wait three months to send them the next one. They may even think you added them without permission and report you for spamming them.

So be practical and respectful of your audience. Somewhere between twice a week and once a month is reasonable.

How To Annoy Your Customers

My definition of spam is “Repeatedly send people irrelevant, ad-filled junk e-mail without their permission and without giving them a way to unsubscribe.”  (Here’s the Wikipedia definition if you’re interested.)

You probably picked out the key components…
1. irrelevant
2. ad-filled
3. without permission
4. without an unsubscribe option

The bottom line is if you avoid all of these nasty things, you will be on the right track. Go for it.

Thank you for reading all 9 installments of this series. It was a lot of fun to write and I hope it helped you ignite your desire to do e-mail marketing. Truly it is the number one way to do effective internet marketing, and no small business should be without it in their e-marketing mix!

If you have any questions at all, just post a comment in the box below and let me know, and I’ll be happy to answer you. Or email me privately.

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Check out my new eBook, “The 3 Secrets of Online Marketing Success” which you can download for free at FreeWebMarketingEbook.com.

Myth #3:  E-Mail Marketing is Just Another Form of Advertising

[This is part 7 of the series "Debunking the Myths of E-Mail Marketing."]

The best kind (really the only good kind) of email marketing is the kind that adds value to your audience.  For different people and for different types of business, value is delivered by a wide variety of offerings.

If you are offering weekly coupons and deals, that can be valuable to the right audience.  It doesn’t work for every kind of business.  Generally speaking, the best value to give your e-mail recipients is information. Information that helps them, educates them, or is otherwise interesting or entertaining.

Be Interesting

Being informative and interesting is the best way to get people to not only read your message, but to share it with friends.  With enough helpful, usable information people will start looking forward to receiving your emails.

Build Familiarity

Educating your readers also builds credibility.  People start to feel like they “know” you.  They become familiar with and comfortable with you, your company, and your brand.  All this means that people will remember you and trust you, and when it comes time to either make a purchase or a recommendation, your name will be the one they think of.

So always include something informative in your newsletter.  Articles, tips, teaser links to your blog posts, interviews, and best practices are all good ideas for newsletter content that informs and educates.

Motivate Action

Finally, give your readers something to do.  Get them to take action.  If they act on your message, even if they don’t buy, it forms an additional bond with you.  Taking action is a commitment, and causes people to internally justify their relationship with you.  So give them links to click, videos to watch, or polls to participate in.

In the end, good e-mail marketing is not about advertising, it’s about building trust.  And having an audience who trusts you means you have an inventory of people who have a good likelihood of buying from you.

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Check out my new eBook, “The 3 Secrets of Online Marketing Success” which you can download for free at FreeWebMarketingEbook.com.

Myth #6: You Need a Big List to Succeed

[This is part 3 of the series "Debunking the Myths of E-Mail Marketing."]

In E-Mail marketing your list is everything. Everything.

However, a big list, just like a large number of Likers for your Facebook Business Page, won’t do you any good if you didn’t acquire the subscribers the right way. And by the "right" way I mean organically and relevantly.

In this case bigger is not better. Better is better.

A good-quality list is one that is mostly made up of people who are likely to buy from you. If you only get people on your list who join because they’re your friends and they wanted to be nice and help you out, you’ll never get any conversions. Therefore you have to constantly work to find people who want what you offer and motivate them to join.

A high quality list could potentially get you a 15% – 20% response rate on your newsletter. If that list has 1,000 readers, that’s 200 people clicking on your links and reading your messages. Isn’t that much better than a 2% response rate from a poor quality list with 5,000 readers. (I’ll do the math for you, that’s only 100 clicks.) And on top of that you are risking annoying a whole lot of people who aren’t really interested in your message.

I will give you one very strong word of advice — don’t buy an email list. Purchased lists don’t work, plus they’re a huge risk. Many of those people won’t recognize your brand when they suddenly start receiving your e-mails, and they will mark it as SPAM. Many e-mail providers automatically report the sender of e-mail that gets marked as SPAM, and if you get enough of them you could potentially be investigated. To say nothing of the damage to your brand because those people now have acquired a negative attitude toward it as their first impression. That can be hard to recover from.

So, you ask "if I don’t have a list, and I can’t buy one, where do I get one?"

You build it. This takes time so start now (well, as soon as you’re done reading this). I have a whole segment in my workshop on how to build your list, but here are some tips for you on how to do this:

• Consider every single one of your customer touch points. Use this list of touch points to determine when it’s best to ask both customers and prospects to sign up for your list. For example if you own a retail store you might want to ask them at checkout, but probably not when they walk in the door.
• Make sure you have a subscribe form on your web site. It’s ideal to have it on every single page.
• Promote the value of your newsletter, print it and hand it out at networking events, distribute it electronically as a PDF file, reprint your article in different ezine distribution sites and include a link to your signup form.
• Create a customer loyalty program. Customers sign up and get a set number of “credits” or points for subscribing. Then they get additional loyalty points for either forwarding your newsletter, or even making direct purchases. If you have an existing loyalty program you can tie your newsletter into it.
• Cross-promote your newsletter with business partners. If you have a business colleague whose customer base is similar to your own, you can offer to “exchange” promotions with them (they promote your newsletter and you promote theirs). This can be a little tricky because the two lists may not be of similar size (or quality), so you may need to add value in some other way if you’re the person with the smaller list.
• Offer a free gift to all new subscribers. This doesn’t have to cost you much, but it does need to be of value to the subscriber. I offer a few different free eBooks depending on where I’m promoting my list and who my target audience is. I know many businesses offer discounts or coupons. This is fine, just make sure they can’t get it somewhere else (the local weekly circular for example).

Just remember, as long as your offerings are both valuable and relevant to your subscribers, it’s relatively easy to build a quality list. There are lots of ways to build the list, and it doesn’t happen overnight.

But it’s very much worth it in the end.

For more info, read my two-part article series on “Every Business’s Goldmine.“

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Check out my new eBook, “The 3 Secrets of Online Marketing Success” which you can download for free at FreeWebMarketingEbook.com.

Myth #7:  E-Mail Providers are Expensive / Complicated

[This is part 2 of the series "Debunking the Myths of E-Mail Marketing."]

Most people I talk with about their chosen e-mail service provider tell me they use ConstantContact.  Yes that one is very popular, and it’s easy to use.  But it’s not cheap.

And it’s not the only one! I have a list of 50 of them, and Constant Contact is not even at the top of the list.  (Send me a message here if you want the list.)

Do you need event registrations and planning along with your e-mail marketing program management?  Then ConstantContact might be a great choice for you because they do that too.  But if you just need to have your email campaigns managed, then look elsewhere.

My personal favorite is a site called MailChimp which I started using because of their “Forever Free” pricing.  Forever Free means you get to have up to 2,000 list members and send up to 12,000 e-mails per month on their free plan.  Forever.  (Get it?)

I’ve been using MailChimp for 3 years and they’ve been awesome.  I can actually contact them (in a variety of ways!) and they get back to me.  I mean, a REAL person gets back to me, with REAL helpful information, not a script somebody wrote about a problem that was maybe similar to mine (but not really).

Did I mention it’s free?

I believe one of the reasons they’re so good is that they ONLY do e-mail marketing, and they do it really really well.

Plus, their little chimp mascot has a really fun personality and he makes people laugh.

Here’s a link you can use to save $30 if you every decide to upgrade after you’ve used their free version for awhile:  http://eepurl.com/bnWjT

Full disclosure:  yes, that is an affiliate link, but to tell you the truth I’ve never made a dime off of it, I just really like them and that’s why I recommend them.  (Maybe someday I’ll rack up a hundred bucks or so.  Woo hoo!)

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Check out my new eBook, “The 3 Secrets of Online Marketing Success” which you can download for free at FreeWebMarketingEbook.com.