With the Euro 2012 football tournament soon to start, we’d like to celebrate with a flash game for you all to enjoy. Get in on the action and have a shot at winning some great prizes. There’s a £100 Amazon gift voucher and a years subscription to InboxVision up for grabs!

This eCost.com email is an awesome example of creating some excitement to showcase hot, new products. The bright and energetic colour palette combined with the monolithic perspective of this piece of “tech” suggests a fun yet superior product. The content of the email uses a clean and easy-to-read design. The blank white background emphasises the rich quality of the images and decorative elements. Separating the different features by alternating the text and image alignments is a great idea; this forces the viewers eye to move from side to side to absorb the small paragraphs and headings rather than it appearing as a large boring block of features.

The subject line intrigues and encourages the reader to open up the email: “Special Offer: Super Slim Android 3D-Ready Multimedia Tablet $114”. This email has been selected from InboxVision’s “be inspired” Email Gallery, a small extract from their Email Intelligence database of a million promotional email designs.

View the full email details here Brand: eCost.com Market Sector: Retail & Wholesale, Technology Email Type: Customer Acquisition Subject line: Special Offer: Super Slim Android 3D-Ready Multimedia Tablet $114

Here are some of my other highly-commended email designs:

View the full email details here Brand: La Tasca Restaurants Ltd. Market sectors: Food and Beverage Retail & Wholesale Email Type: Promotions & Offers Jubilee Subject line: Have your own Royal Celebration with us – £14.95 all you can eat!	View the full email details here Brand: VeriSign Inc  Market sector: Technology Email Type: Downloads, Whitepapers Subject line: Download our white paper on phishing tactics and win a travel mouse
View the full email details here Brand: Jack Threads Market sector: Retail & Wholesale Email Type: Customer Acquisition Subject line: ✦ Super-Sale: Greatest Hits $9.99 & Up	View the full email details here Brand: Easy Spirit Market sector: Retail & Wholesale Email Type: Customer Acquisition Subject line: Easy Loves Red, White & Blue!

You may like to see some more email examples from our Technology section.

There’s much more to see in our trial! Try out InboxVision free for 14 days: Free Trial

Subject Line Alert – here are some recent notable subject lines

Enta Technologies Ltd.  - “Release your colour with iiyama”

BT Plc  - “Great HP laptop offer. Plus vote for your favourite brands to be entered into free prize draw”

Tweet Alert – here are some recent InboxVision Tweets

@InboxVision
Email Marketing Service: Factors Behind Success http://ow.ly/aB3Qp #EmailMarketing

@InboxVision
After day 1 of our 2012 penalty shootout Mike Robinson is currently leading with a time of 02:16. Can you beat him?http://www.inboxvision.com/sites/2012cup/pages/

There are many pitfalls which could land your email in the trash. Today’s post takes a broad look at how to produce more effective emails, from start to finish and beyond. For emails that we think are really great have a look at our “Email Design Hall of Fame 2012” as well.

At sign up:

#1 Clearly communicate your privacy policy.
Some customers may not give their email address if there is a chance you will sell it. If this is not part of your policy let them know!

What and How to send:

#2 Don’t overdo it;
Send a FEW relevant emails to specific customer segments. Define a maximum number of emails for each customer a month. Sending too many emails could be considered a nuisance and lead to a customer opting out.

#3 Send relevant content to customer segments
Make your emails more relevant to the customer by creating content based on customer profiles and what previous purchases or views.

#4 Send professional emails
Emails should be easy to understand and targeted. A confusing and irrelevant email could be damaging to your public image.

#5 Write engaging subject lines
This can often be a key element for open-rates. However don’t be tempted to draw people in with a false title just to get people to open it, not only will your reputation suffer, it’s actually against the law.

#6 Optimise for HTML or mobile devices
Spare a thought for what context your customers will view the email in. Image blockers and mobile devices could mean that your fantastic design could fall at the first hurdle. Try and limit the amount of images incorporated into the design and use html colours and text where possible, key information can be lost if you’ve used images to display text. Putting additional information at the top of your email can also be to improve click-through rates. It goes without saying that for text versions; emphasis to clear, concise and engaging copy is a must.

#7 Your primary goal shouldn’t always be to convert.
A customer may not always be interested in the key offer in your email, but they may be drawn in by something else. Providing various options and links of what you have to offer will help funnel prospects to your website.

#8 Abide by CAN-SPAM laws.
Don’t use false or misleading information this includes content and subject lines.
Tell recipients where you are located
Tell recipients how to opt out and honour these requests quickly.
Monitor contractors, you cannot contract away your legal responsibility to comply with the law.

What next?

#9 Create trackable campaigns and analyse results.
After each email campaign record and analyse your results. What were the click-through-rates (CTR) and rates of investment (ROI) and compare these to the day and time of sending. A good record of this can help assess why certain strategies did or didn’t work and further optimise your emails to greater rates of sales.

#10 Make your links easy to convert
If readers are clicking, where are they landing? Don’t waste a click by taking them to irrelevant pages. This landing page should act as an extension and provide more information and compelling benefits to the customer.

Oh Wait…!

#11 Test Everything.
With all of the changes and fine tuning that will inevitably happen whilst creating your email campaign; it is worth some scrupulous testing before your email goes out the door. Test that link destinations are correct and view your email in various browsers and email clients to make sure formatting stays consistent.

The three main points to take away should be:

- Optimise your designs for HTML and mobile devices.
- Provide links to some of your other offers, applying most weight to the subject offer so the email is easy to understand.
- Testing your design on all possible platforms and browsers.

Need some help writing your Welcome Email? Get some Email Intelligence and
Download our Free Expert Guide on “How to do a Welcome Email Well“

I chose this Play.com email because of its simplicity in quickly getting to the point. The content of the email is an excellent example of a clear and direct call-to-action – Shop now. The subject line was: “1 DAY ONLY DEALS – must end midnight! Hurry before it’s too late!” Why not submit one of your own email designs to info@InboxVision.com – be heard and join the InboxVision community – make sure you vote on this week’s email examples! I selected this email from InboxVision’s “be inspired” Email Gallery, a small extract from their Email Intelligence database of a million promotional email designs.

To help you check your emails against Email Design Best Practice advice, download the Expert Email Design Guide:

Here is the winning email:

View the full email details here Brand: Play.com Market Sector: Consumer Electronics, Retail & Wholesale Email Type: Limited Time Subject line: 1 DAY ONLY DEALS – must end midnight! Hurry before it’s too late!

Here are some of the other Highly Commended email designs from April:

View the full email details here Brand: GAP Outlet UK Market sectors: Retail & Wholsale Email Type: Coupons/Vouchers Subject line: 40% off everything + voucher!	View the full email details here Brand: Lenovo Inc. Market sector: Consumer Electronics, General Business & Manufacturing Email Type: Customer Acquisition Subject line: Performance you need. Savings you’ll love.
View the full email details here Brand: Greenbank Holidays Ltd. Market sector: Retail & Wholesale, Travel, Tourism & Leisure Email Type: Customer Acquisition Subject line: What’s your holiday wish list Mr Pitt?	View the full email details here Brand: Virgin Experience Days Market sector: Retail & Wholesale, Entertainment, Sport & Recreation Email Type: Customer Acquisition Subject line: Get Out and About from as little as £13.50!

Have a look at InboxVision’s full Retail & Wholesale email collection.

Try out InboxVision free for 14 days: Free Trial

Subject Line Alert – here are some recent notable subject lines

Brothers-All-Natural - “25K Likes on Facebook. Save 15% Off Fruit Crisps plus Free Shipping.”
Dell Inc.- “Days of Dell starts today”
Levi’s – “Our latest Men’s style obsession”

Tweet Alert – here are some recent InboxVision Tweets

@InboxVision
Four Tips for a Successful Call to Action [Slide Show]

@InboxVision
Get email inspiration for your Spring email promotions

@InboxVision
New post: How to write better subject lines

All of the email examples came from the InboxVision “be inspired” Email Collection which contains lots of free examples of email design. The gallery is a small extract from the InboxVision Email Market Intelligence database – you can read about the Free 14-day Trial or you can go straight to the Free Trial Registration Page.

This Compassion UK email is an excellent example of how to hit all bases in terms of design, well… pretty much! Unfortunately this email hasn’t been optimised for all browsers and has been received disjointed due to border settings on the linked images and setting correct widths for tables, let’s look at the top 6 reasons that made it this week’s winner:

1. Great email template design layout: This email has a strong structure. There are clear distinctions between the headers, body, video and calls to action.
2. Good use of video integration: With the recent trends of “beautification” of the internet and the increasing amount of on-line content we consume; a video is a great way to “tell your story”.
3. Simple well laid out Call To Actions: These options covering all possible outcomes, and the main desired outcome is made larger and repeated at the top of the email
4. Good  tie in with Mothers day (USA)
5. Great viral element where members get members: Remember, your content doesn’t always share itself. Sometimes it’s good to ask!
6. Excellent uplifting copy using true life story telling.

Over all a great email design, let down at the final hurdle by some poor HTML coding, but still we loved it and these guy
s do an extraordinary job helping children around the world.

Lets us know what you think!

 

I selected the email from InboxVision’s “be inspired” Email Gallery, a small extract from their Email Intelligence database of a million promotional email designs.

 

 

View the full email details here Brand: Compassion UK Chrisitian Child Development Market Sector: Non-Profit Organisation Email Type: Charities Subject line: Watch Elisabeth’s story

 For more examples of emails from Charities click here.

 

 

Here are some of my other highly-commended email designs:

View the full email details here Brand: Tate Foundation Market sectors: Entertainment, Sport & Recreation Email Type: Artistic / Bizarre / Sexy Social: Facebook Subject line: COMING SOON: Enjoy a bright, bold & beachy summer with Alex Katz atTate St Ives	View the full email details here Brand: CityJet Market sector: Transportation Travel, Tourism & Leisure Email Type: Customer Acquisition Promotions & Offers Subject line: Soak up the sun from £73
View the full email details here Brand: Aspect Market sector: Technology Email Type: Webinars Subject line: Webinar: How Aspect & Dell helped Golfbreaks.com hit a hole in one	View the full email details here Brand: Fiat USA Market sector: Automotive Email Type: Automotive Subject line: Come feel the sting

 

Subject Line Alert – here are some recent notable subject lines

Denny’s - “Happy Birthday! Enjoy this gift”
Information Today - “Learn Without Limits. Access 20,000+ Technology Books & Videos.”
Virgin American – “Earn bonus Elevate points on Mother’s Day flowers and gifts from FTD.*”

 

Tweet Alert – here are some recent InboxVision Tweets

@InboxVision
Get email inspiration for your Spring email promotionshttp://ow.ly/ayo8N #EmailMarketing #EmailDesign

@InboxVision
InboxVision tracks the email marketing of “Financial Services” companies 24/7 http://ow.ly/aylfS #EmailMarketing

 

 

Need more inspiration?

All of the email examples came from the InboxVision “be inspired” Email Collection which contains lots of free examples of email design. The gallery is a small extract from the InboxVision Email Market Intelligence database – you can read about the Free 14-day Trial or you can go straight to the Free Trial Registration Page.

The email subject line is vitally important. It’s the front door – it’s the place where readers are encouraged to “enter in” and read the email (or not with some poorly-written subject lines!). Here are 8 Top Tips to make your subject line better. For B2C and B2B subject line inspiration try InboxVision free for 14 days.

8 Top Tips for better subject lines*

#1 Test for bad words:  Over 35% of spam is detected from email subject lines because of spam trigger words. Free, sex, video,  trial, sample, mortgage. Just say no. There are lots of ways to test against spam triggers -  a Google search will provide many free spam word testing tools.

#2 Keep it short:  The average email client only displays 38 to 47 characters in a subject line. And your beloved subscriber has a short attention span. Brevity is the soul of wit and the muse of a good subject line.

#3 Use a brand or buzz:  A Marketing Sherpa study found that emails with branded subject lines are among the most opened and shared emails. Use your brand or the brand name of that study you are sharing. Or add something buzz-worthy.

#4 Use content that resonates:  Content-related subject lines (“March Powertool Bonanza”) work better than generic ones (“March Newsletter”). Use Google Analytics to assess what content (pages and keywords) website visitors were most interested in. These are the topics that resonate with your audience — and a good place to start with your subject line.

#5 Focus on the benefit of offer:  If your loyal subscribers open the email, what’s in it for them? A few examples:  “Boost ROI Tenfold with Segmentation”; “10 Tips for Mobile Emails”; “Look Your Best – On Us”.

#6 Find the controversy or intrigue: Give people a reason to open that email by focusing on something memorable, intriguing or just plain outrageous. For example:  “Eating French fries makes you healthier”; “10 reasons why the stock market will collapse in 2012″; “Introducing the 4-Hour week”.

#7 Make sure the rest of the email doesn’t “suck”: As @Copyblogger puts it, “There’s something special in this jaded digital age about being invited into someone’s email inbox.” Don’t take that invitation or granted. Your subject line is only as good as the email that follows it.

#8 Never stop testing:  Do A/B testing, look at what competitors are doing, look at open rates and other metrics, bottom-line results, keep a log of subject lines you like. (* The 8 Top Tips source: http://masstransmit.com/services/email-marketing/)

How to find inspiration for your subject lines

The easiest way to find inspiration is to subscribe to InboxVision - try InboxVision free for 14 days for B2B and B2C inspiration.

Say for example that you want to create an email campaign around “Spring fashion” and you need ideas for subject lines. Simply create a Search within InboxVision using the key phrase “spring fashion”:

The InboxVision system contains 156 campaign email Messages containing the words “spring fashion” in the subject line:

Using “List View”, the different email Messages (along with their subject lines) can be viewed in a tabular format (downloadable as an Excel file):

Using List View, you will also be able to obtain email marketing intelligence on broadcast times, broadcast days, and the recency and frequency of your competitors’ emails and your market in general – have a look at the columns marked in red and blue above.

You will be able to develop and test different strategic approaches – for example you may choose to develop similar subject lines to your competitors to take advantage of their sales momentum, or you may decide to take a completely different approach, one used in an unrelated sector in your marketplace. Armed with this important email marketing intelligence, the strategic choice is yours. Then do A/B split testing to test which strategies work best.

Within a couple of clicks, you will have access to a wealth of ideas for your own subject lines, plus some very valuable email marketing intelligence. It really is as simple as that to develop effective subject lines.

Try InboxVision free for 14 days for B2B and B2C Inspiration

To help you develop Relevant, Engaging, Authoritative and Directional content for your emails, download the our latest eleven-page Free Expert Guide

Also have a look at my blog on How to develop READ emails - Relevant, Engaging, Authoritative and Directional email content.

We’ve chosen this Great info-graphic to highlight the importance of the five top things to test for online. Today we will just our focus on the email sign up form and the email…

What ever makes up your funnel, whether you’re generating leads from an email campaign, calls to actions from Pay-Per-Click campaigns or landing pages, this process should be a smooth one. The info-graphic below provides some useful points on how to structure your sales funnel. Cut out the hurdles and make signup forms less of a chore!

Consider how the audience will read your funnel (Top to bottom and left to right). This may sound obvious, but structure is essential if there are other distractions on the page, such as external links. Could you be trying to cram in a little too much? If your email is HTML friendly, why not make it taller? This allows opportunities to divide key segments of information, much like you would if you were writing.

You may also want to get some in-depth email marketing intelligence, so have a look at InboxVision’s “be inspired” Email Gallery, a small extract from their Email Intelligence database of a million promotional email designs.

Online Testing Essentials

Got a burning question or a great topic to discuss?

Ask our experts for it to be discussed in future blogs.

Here are some more great info-graphics we’ve posted recently:

- Why Consumers Like and Subscribe
- Designing the Perfect Call to Action
- The Email Marketing Process

If Heston Blumenthal (the TV chef & three-star Michelin restaurant chef of the Fat Duck – voted best restaurant in the world, fame) ever turned his world class science-based culinary creative skills to designing HTML Email Templates, R.E.A.D. would “probably” be the recipe he would create. For help getting your emails R.E.A.D. Check out our latest Expert Guide.

Whatever successful tasks we undertake in life, we always need a “good recipe” and use “great ingredients” to achieve the best results. So, every successful HTML email template design needs a good recipe made up of the best ingredients, in our email digital cake mix, this equates to a great strategy, a good helping of science and a large cup of creative juices.

It’s easy to get caught up by the email ideas that your stakeholders and marketing people throw at you, but for an HTML email template design (ie creative and copy) to be successful it needs to first of all like all great mouth watering food, be visually appetising and to provide the best possible experience for the reader. For instance, instead of thinking about email list segmentation as a way to uncover more information about your subscribers, think of it as a way to provide a more relevant experience for them as individuals.

You’ll still learn more about your subscribers when you put their customer experience first, but you’ll also learn how to create an “email experience” that keeps their attention longer, earns their trust and drives them to move from a passive reader at the inbox to a converted click-through on your website landing page. You need to make your emails R.E.A.D.

For help making your emails R.E.A.D. download our latest eleven-page Free Expert Guide

How to find inspiration for your email content

To help you develop Relevant, Engaging, Authoritative and Directional emails you may want to look for inspiration for your email content, ideally by reading email campaigns from other businesses in your market.

The easiest way to do this is to subscribe to InboxVision  (Try InboxVision free for 14 days for B2B and B2C inspiration).

Say for example that you want to create an email campaign around network routers and you need ideas for content. Simply create a Search within InboxVision using the key phrase “Network routers”:

The InboxVision system contains 698 campaign email Messages containing  the words “Network routers”:

Within a couple of clicks, you will have access to a wealth of ideas for your own email content from companies in your market. It really is as simple as that.

Try InboxVision free for 14 days for B2B and B2C inspiration

This blog provides in-depth statistics on the “Why” and “How” of subscriber click-through actions. You may also want to get some in-depth email marketing intelligence, so have a look at InboxVision’s “be inspired” Email Gallery, a small extract from their Email Intelligence database of a million promotional email designs.

Why and How Consumers Like and Subscribe

Try InboxVision free for 14 days

For help getting your emails R.E.A.D. Check out our latest Expert Guide

As a reminder, here are some of the infographics I’ve posted recently:

Evolution of Email

Integrate social mobile and email marketing

The Past Present & Future of Email

The Rise of Mobile Email Marketing

Email Irritation

“Contra-Competitive” email timing is best

This blog provides advice and ideas about how to make your email Calls To Action more effective, by developing offers your prospects and customers “can’t refuse”. You may also want to get some in-depth email marketing intelligence, so have a look at InboxVision’s “be inspired” Email Gallery, a small extract from their Email Intelligence database of a million promotional email designs.

Designing the Perfect Call to Action

Try InboxVision free for 14 days

To help you check your own email campaigns against Email Design Best Practice advice, download my Expert Email Design Guide:

As a reminder, here are some of the infographics I’ve posted recently:

Email Etiquette – more than just manners

The anatomy of a perfect mobile email

The State of Email Marketing

How to create a great email template

The Best and Worst time to send your emails

Email campaign delivery checklist