Email is one of the most powerful mediums that you can use to talk to visitors, customers and prospects. In this article I will discuss 12 best practices that you can use everyday in your email marketing activities.

1. Spam Filters
The majority of large Internet service providers now use many spam protection mechanisms to trap unsolicited email before it gets to the inbox. Spam filters generally “rank” each email by criteria, and, if that email rates above a certain level, then it is flagged as spam and deleted.
To make sure your emails don’t get flagged as spam — and deleted before they even get to your subscribers — avoid using words such as ‘Free’, ‘Save’, ‘Discount’, etc in the subject line and content of your email.

2. Click-Thru Rates
Emails can contain a lot of text and graphics, and this sometimes makes it harder to get your subscribers to perform a certain task, such as clicking on a link to see your special offers.
Research tells us that the majority of Internet users respond better to a plain, bold, blue text link, opposed to a banner or button. Therefore if you are going to include links in your emails, make sure they are bold, blue and underlined. This will mean that more subscribers click through, meaning more conversions.

3. Personalisation
If you were standing in a crowd, which of these would get your attention: “HEY, YOU!” or “HEY JANE” (assuming your name is Jane). The power of personalisation can and should be used in your emails. Starting your email with “Hi [subscriber name]” can increase both your reading and click-thru rates by up to 650%. This is because your subscribers feel like they already have a relationship with you as you’ve addressed them by their first name.

4. One-Click Unsubscription
It is highly recommended that you have: a double opt-in process, and a quick way to unsubscribe. It is actually mandatory by law that every email has an unsubscribe link in it. The unsubscribe link should be prominent at the top of the page and take the recipient directly to a page where they are then removed from your mailing list.

5. Signup Confirmation
Always use a double opt-in confirmation process. Double opt-in means that after someone initially enters their email address to subscribe to your list, you then send them a “confirmation” email. This email should contain a link back to your email-marketing program, which will then verify that this visitor did indeed sign up to your mailing list.

6. Tuesday / Wednesday
Studies conducted by online research have shown that the best days to send mail to your lists are Tuesday and Wednesday. This has proven to be the time that most people are more receptive to communication. This means they are more likely to read your content, click on your links and therefore convert to more sales.
Mondays tend to be people catching up after the weekend and Thursdays and Fridays, people are already too busy looking forward to the weekend. The optimal time, producing the best results has been proven by sending out around 2-3pm on a Wednesday.

7. Repeat Email
An auto responder is an email that is scheduled to be sent at a certain time after someone signs up to your mailing list. Auto responders are a great way to automatically follow up with your subscribers or provide them with more information on your products/services.
An example of this could be if someone signs up for your emails, you could setup a number of follow up auto messages. The first could be sent 1 hour after they subscribe, this may contains a thank you message and a link to get a certain % off.
The second is sent 24 hours after they subscribe informing them about upcoming offers, and the third is sent 72 hours after they subscribe, in which you can offer them an extra special deal.

8. Consistency
If you’re running a newsletter or frequent email publication, make sure you keep the look and feel consistent from issue to issue. By keeping the look and feel consistent, you help to maintain and strengthen your brand and your image to your subscribers, which again will make it easier to close sales when you need to.

9. on Time, Every Time
Always make sure that your emails are sent on the same day, at the same time. With this in mind your subscribers will come to expect your email to arrive in their inbox on the same day at the same time every week and look forward to what you are sending.

10. The Preview Pane
Popular email clients such as Microsoft Outlook show a preview of an email when it’s selected in your inbox. Try to always put your most interesting content at the very top of your email, as this is the part that will show in the preview window of your subscribers email program. If it catches your reader’s attention, then your subscriber will open your email and continue reading.

11. Link-Click
When creating marketing emails, try using different text for both content and links. Another tip is to re-position images such as logos and buttons. After sending about 3 different emails, compare the click-thru stats and see which one worked best.

12. Email Marketing Needs to Reflect Your Corporate Design
This ensures that recipients can make a connection between the emails the get and the sender’s other projects such as their website. The company image and the image created by the email marketing efforts can interact and maybe strengthen each other.
If the email marketing does not reflect the corporate design, this can have a bad effect not only on the success of the email campaign, but also on the image of the company as a whole.
By implementing the 12 best practices described in this article, you can take your email marketing to a whole new level attracting more subscribers, and building both your brand equity and credibility at the same time.

No matter what you call them these are tools you can’t go anywhere with out these days, as I mentioned earlier in a blog post social marketing sites such as facebook are more important to children these days than their family. Social networking is now a commodity to add onto phones, and is now part of the marketing plan and advertising staple.

Engaging in some form of social networking, media marketing is now a necessary evil. However there are different communication strategies to consider in the social media arena.

Twitter

In general, the game is to express your message within the scope of 140 characters. You can choose to tweet using the customize Twitter site or you could resort to using the various Twitter desktops.

Until now the majority of people engaging in Twitter were more interested in followers. Don’t follow too many people at once, as they can drown your brands message. Take time when choosing who you want to follow, are these people you would like to talk to. If you can create a targeted community of followers who will retweet your message to their community then you are hitting your market place. Its not about volume its about quality.

Don’t send spam tweets and remember be courteous, there is no need to be rude about someone on twitter you’ll get blocked.

Facebook

Facebook is very much a different creature from Twitter. You don’t post one line sentences in Facebook and expect your message to be amplified, people on Facebook are more concerned about genuine relationship.

A recent report confirms that people are spending more time using Facebook than Google. This alone gives them the upper hand in advertising, and the “Like button” holds great promise, though not yet realized, in changing the marketing landscape in providing ads that we actually care about.

The 55-65 female age group is the fasting growing community on facebook.

LinkedIn

LinkedIn caters to the professionals. When you use this Social Media, you have to put on a different hat.

If you want your brand taken seriously, forget about small talks and gossips. Leave the informalities to Facebook.  Engage your audience in a professional manner

If you would like more information about a social marketing strategies please contact anne@armadillo-creative.com

At Armadillo we’ve been tweeting and blogging for our clients for sometime so we thought we’d share some positive reasons why you should be using social media sites such as Twitter, Facebook and Linkedin. You can now interact with people you would probably never get to see normally using standard prospecting techniques; this may be because they live in a different country, time zone, are too senior or have too many gatekeepers.

Twitter and Facebook are great listening tools, you can follow whoever you want and people are genuinely happy to have as many followers as they can get. In this Internet, Facebook and Twitter era there is no excuse not to have found out something about the person you are about to meet. Our lives have become increasingly public as people add information on line, information you would struggle to glean on a first appointment.

Social networking websites like Twitter are more important than family to children, a survey has found, commissioned by National Family Week. The survey reveals the influence of technology on youngsters – and the extent to which parents underestimate it. Some 28% per of the 8 to 15-year-olds questioned cited websites such as Facebook, Twitter and MSN as the most important thing to them. Use these social marketing tools, after all your competitors are more than likely doing so.

So if you want to keep up with the latest Armadillo news, videos, photos whilst on Facebook join our group

Armadillo on Facebook

5 years ago Berry Burgess and Lee Skinner formed Armadillo after choosing the name from a recipe book in Berry’s kitchen, (it could have been Tomato, Lemongrass or Red Snapper Creative!)

From our first creative day in July 2005 we understood that it was not just great ideas that were important, but great communication delivering effective results for all our clients, large and small, time and time again.  We have grown from small shoots to a respected strong team covering all marketing and creative genre including advertising, brand, design, web, e-marketing, SEO, and everything else in-between, which is a success story in this current climate.

Hard working and determined, Berry Burgess has never let his guard down, creating some of the most successful design and marketing campaigns to date, producing results for many successful companies. His finger is constantly on the pulse of what motivates people to respond to advertising, and he has never missed an opportunity to capitalise on getting the right message across for his agency clients.

We’re all looking forward to another 5 great years.

Picture the scene: England are playing Portugal in the semi-final of this year’s World Cup. The match has gone to a penalty shoot-out. The score is tied at 1-1 as Wayne Rooney steps up to take the kick that could break our 44-year hiatus. All over the country, football fans hide heads in hands, unable to watch – as do the marketing men from the companies selling food, beer, replica football shirts, flat-screen TVs and garden gnomes dressed in the England kit.

So with the hype building, some businesses may be tempted to work the event into their marketing strategies/platform to attract some of the football feel-good factor to their brand. But when it comes to the World Cup you should be wary.

The use of Fifa’s World Cup branding/trade mark is strictly prohibited, and businesses can enter dangerous waters if they attempt to refer to it in their marketing or communications materials, from trade mark infringement through to damages. Despite vigilant policing by brand owners, ambush marketing is also a problem for Fifa and others. Ambush marketing was first recognised during the 1984 Los Angeles Olympic Games, when Kodak sponsored ABC’s television broadcasts despite Fujifilm being the official sponsors. This has since become a recognised marketing strategy, where a third party attempts to piggyback on a leading sporting event for commercial gain.

One of the most well-known examples of ambush marketing was by Nike during the 1996 Olympic Games. Nike bought up billboard space around the venues, constructed a Nike Village next door to the athletes’ village and handed out flags bearing Nike’s logo, “ambushing” Reebok, the Games’ official sponsor.

In England the tournament is everywhere; billboards, radio stations, televisions and the internet, nowhere and no one is safe. The timings of the England matches lend themselves very well to UK working patterns and the World Cup will spur a wave of consumption as England progresses

So where does this leave UK SME’s and how can they capitalise on the World Cup to promote their products and services?  Consumer-facing firms B2C may find it easier, by using football to broaden their appeal to customers.  However, it must tie in with the business message.

•Email Message For example, training firm could send a direct mail message about selecting a good team; an insurance firm could use a sports injury analogy.
•If you’re sending out merchandise or direct mail, consider including a match schedule on the back to capture customers’ attention, or something about other sports on the TV to attract non football fans eg Wimbledon.
•Use your social media to comment on the last match, game summaries on your blog, Twitter, Facebook page.
•If you are holding any events during the World Cup, try combining the two. Consider hiring a room with a screen so that delegates can watch the match before or after – this could double your numbers. Excellent opportunity for networking groups.
•Ensure that you have a contingency plan. Make sure your marketing doesn’t depend on England being in the tournament, as they may get knocked out in the first round. Last time this happened was 1958.

According to Fifa’s website, research has indicated that customers are more than 50 per cent more likely to buy a product that feature sports events.

Between the opening ceremony on June 11 and presentation of the trophy one month later, almost 100 hours of live football will have been broadcast by TV stations around the world.

It’s not only football fans that will be glued to their television screens this summer: finance directors, analysts and macroeconomists will be too

If you would like information about how your marketing can capitalise from sporting events. Please contact Anne Woodcock, anne@armadillo-creative.com