Follow these simple steps to make sure you don’t end up in the same place as the emailed pharmaceutical ads.

Make sure your mailing list is clean

It’s never okay to use purchased lists, and reputable email clients (such as Mail on the Mark) won’t even let you use them. Purchased lists have unverified emails and may contain SPAM traps. If you send your email to a spam trap, you can end up on a spam list… ensuring your emails never end up in your subscriber’s inbox.

One way to make sure your email list contains only people who want to be receiving emails from you is to have a two-step sign up so that subscribers have to opt-in via a confirmation email once they have subscribed. Read more about permission to send here.

Ask to be whitelisted

Having people add your “From” email to their address book is an easy way to make sure that it doesn’t end up marked as spam. You can add a note saying, “Don’t forget to add myemail@mydomain.com to your address book” right alongside your signup form.

Use a recognizable “From” address

Speaking of your “from” address, make sure it’s obviously from you. People are less likely to recognize your mailing if it’s from some random email address they’ve never heard of. Avoid changing your “from” address from mailing to mailing to ensure people identify it, recognize it, and receive your newsletter.

Allow people to unsubscribe or change their preferences

If someone is no longer interested in your mailings, give them a way to get fewer mailings or to unsubscribe altogether. This way people aren’t marking you as spam when all they want to do is hear from you less or have changed their interests.

Unsubscribe links are included in all Mail on the Mark templates and anyone who chooses to unsubscribe is automatically and immediately removed from your lists. However, you may want to consider giving an alternative that is less final than completely unsubscribing; consider having an option to receive less frequent emails.

Send frequently

If you don’t send an email for a long time, people may forget they subscribed in the first place. Your subscribers are signing up for your newsletters because they want to hear from you, don’t let them down. It’s most critical to send your first email quickly after someone subscribes to your list. It’s easy to automate this using auto-responders so you can capture their attention while they are most highly interested. Don’t forget to feature valuable content in the emails you do send out.

Connect your emails to your brand identity

People are overwhelmed with email and may not remember your business or organization when your email arrives in their inbox. But if they are able to quickly recognize your brand, they are more likely to remember who you are and how they got on your mailing list. Using consistent design elements not only enhances your brand image, it decreases your chances of accidentally being marked as spam.

Pre-header text (also known as preview text or a snippet) is the short text that displays below the sender’s name and subject line in your inbox.

This little bit of text is key in catching your recipient’s attention and is a huge deciding factor on whether or not your email gets opened and read. It’s often overlooked or not given as much consideration as the subject line, even though they’re usually viewed at the same time. In an email research survey, 24% of respondents look at the preview text first when deciding if they will open an email.

Here are a few tips to help you make the most of your pre-header text:

Don’t leave the pre-header empty!

If you leave this empty, some email readers will just pull in the first few words and make an awkward sentence. Other classics you’d like to avoid are “view this email in your browser”, “having trouble viewing this email?” or even worse, “not displaying correctly, click here.”

Create something that engages the recipient and makes them want to read more.

Don’t repeat the subject line

Frankly, repeating the subject line looks a bit lazy or as if a mistake was made.  More importantly, you’ve wasted a great opportunity to give your readers a taste of what’s inside. Your pre-header text is a way to build on your subject line with supporting information.

Are you covering multiple topics? You can detail some of them here. Or, reference a secondary offer you’ll be mentioning inside the email, “free shipping over $50” is a great example of that.

Test your pre-header text

You can send yourself a preview to see how much text displays and where it is cut off when opening it with different email clients. The number of characters that show can vary greatly, from as few as 35 characters in Outlook ’13 to 140 characters in Apple Mail.

And yes, some people have their email set so that the pre-header text doesn’t show at all—so if something is important, repeat it somewhere else in the email as well.

steal from the best

Go take a look at your email inbox. Chances are, like in our graphic above, there’s a wide range of copy in the preview text. Which ones pull you in? Which ones would pull your customer in? Are there any you find especially inspiring (or dispiriting)? Keep those in mind the next time you’re stuck on writing that copy.

The pre-header text is something that should help your readers know what to expect, and encourage them to open. It’s a little thing that can pay big dividends, a lot like your newsletter.

Are you overwhelmed with all the details that can make your newsletter a success? Reach out, we’d love to help.

12? 7? 3?

If it wasn’t the number you planned on back in January, now is the perfect time to think about how to meet your e-newsletter goal in 2018.

Here at Mail on the Mark, we talk about e-newsletters with a lot of people. For some reason, it’s most common for them to say they want to send out a monthly newsletter.

But when people get busy, there always seems to be something else that takes priority. It might be a critical client work, writing a proposal, or a family vacation that throws everything off kilter. It might be simply not knowing what to say. And who hasn’t thought, “I’ll work on this later”? Until suddenly the month has slipped away.

Infographic: Should You Outsource Your E-Newsletter?

You might even see yourself somewhere in this infographic…

Infographic: Should You Outsource Your E-Newsletter?

As we come to the end of the year, it’s a good time to review whether you actually sent out your e-newsletter as you planned.

Spoiler—you probably didn’t.

Your e-newsletter is likely something you know you should do—it can mean getting your name in front of prospects over and over—but you aren’t doing it.

We can take over where you leave off

Ask yourself why not. Do you not like to write? Are you not sure what to write about? Is it too hard to make the newsletter looks good? Are you just too busy? What keeps you from hitting send?

All of these are things our clients have said to us. Knowing why you aren’t doing this all-but-guaranteed marketing project on a regular basis is the first step to getting them done. Because once you know that, we can help. We can research, write, design, and send your newsletter on whatever schedule you like, or we can do just one portion of that. Your email list is made up of people who have already indicated they’d like to hear more from you—why not take them up on it in 2018?

Set up a free consultation where we’ll map out an email marketing plan and provide a free estimate for getting your newsletter into your prospects in-box on a regular basis.

People are busy—make sure the first paragraph is the best in the newsletter because some readers may not make it past there. Instead of starting with a rambling introduction, start out with a strong statement that pulls readers in.

And it goes without saying: a strong subject line is required to get your readers to open your email in the first place.

2. Short sentences

Short sentences are powerful. They can pack a punch and grab attention.

Readers are bombarded by loads of information all day. People have short attention spans; get to your point quickly before they move on. Short sentences and short paragraphs make your statements easy to understand and easy to remember.

3. break up your content

Nobody wants to open their inbox to a 30-paragraph wall of text. Break up your content to make it easy for readers to skim and jump to the topics that interest them. Use headings, photos, graphics and dividers to help break up your text into pieces that are easy to skim and digest.

But… as tempting as a bulleted list may be, they don’t translate well across all email browsers so our suggestion is to avoid them all together.

4. Make it clear what to do next

Include a clear call to action (CTA) so your readers can take action easily, even if they are just skimming. Make the CTA stand out visually. It should be graphically different (buttons work well), and not be crowded in with other content.

The CTA should be easy to understand what will happen when they click. For example, if you are providing a resource to download, which makes more sense, “Download now” or “Begin journey”?

5. consider the voice

Before sitting down to write your newsletter think about the voice you will use. For example, you may use a very casual, fun tone if you are an ice cream company announcing a new flavor in your newsletter, where a bio-engineering lab announcing new research findings would not want to use that same tone.

Also, it’s ok to write using the first person (“I”) if you are a solo business owner, or the e-newsletter is supposed to come from one person. It will feel more authentic than saying “we.”

6. Mobile-ready

As mobile increasingly dominates how we access and read email, all of these guidelines become even more important.

To begin, make sure your design is built using responsive techniques (not just mobile friendly) so it will look good on everything from large desktop monitors and small phones. Then realize that people are scanning their email more quickly and in a more distracted way when using their phones. The ability to quickly scan, clearly understand and then easily act are even more acute when reading your newsletter on a mobile device.

Struggling to write your newsletter?

If you are having trouble generating content that gets your readers engaged, or just can’t find the time to get it done, Mail on the Mark can do it for you. Get started.

If you’re hoping your newsletter has impact as it flashes into your readers’ inbox, design matters.

10 Design tips for better e-newsletters

1. Keep it simple. The name “newsletter” may conjure up a picture of multiple stories, columns and sidebars, but people don’t have time for that. Choose one main story per newsletter for the most impact.
2. Make sure it’s mobile optimized. More than half of all email is read on phones nowadays. So your newsletter needs to look good on a small window, but everything just can’t shrink down. Type sizes must stay readable even as column widths get narrow; so styles within your e-newsletter system should be built using a responsive technique that changes based on the window size. Don’t worry, here at Mail on the Mark all of our e-newsletter are built this way.
3. Match your brand identity. Your e-newsletter is a great way to give repetitive exposure to your brand. In fact, even if someone opens but doesn’t read your e-newsletter, you can gain positive visibility for your brand. So make sure that the colors, fonts, logo, etc. match your brand identity. Your e-newsletter design should closely match your web site design.
4. Make your call to action clear. The goal of most newsletters is not just to be read, it’s to push the reader to take action. So pick one thing you want the reader to click on, and make that link bright and bold. It’s best to have it look like a button, not just a text link.
5. Avoid cheesy stock photos. Pictures are great because they engage people, but if they are too generic they just feel like a space filler. Remember, cheap photos just look…cheap. I doubt you want to have your brand portrayed as cheap, so find quality photography or skip it altogether.
6. Keep sentences and paragraphs short. If you’re used to working in Microsoft Word, what seems like a reasonable looking paragraph, will feel excessively long in the more narrow format of an email newsletter.
7. Use each piece of the email structure to its max. Every email has a sender’s name and subject line. You should also be able to control the snippet that previews in most email clients. And of course there’s the content of the newsletter itself—including headlines. Don’t repeat similar text in all these places. Use each piece of text uniquely.
8. Make social sharing clear and easy. Most people want to grow their e-newsletter list, so make it easy for your readers to share your content on Facebook, Twitter or other channels. When you put a little Facebook icon in your newsletter, be clear whether you’re asking someone to like your Facebook page or share the content of your newsletter on their own timeline. Both are great! But make it clear which action you’re prompting people to take.
9. Remember that many links will default to blue. There are many email clients that will default to a blue color and underlined style of hyperlinks. Even if you set it to another style in your e-newsletter composer, it may still look blue and underlined to some of your readers. So, avoid putting a text link on a blue background, because it will be difficult to read.
10. Make it professional looking. Choosing the various fonts, setting up the layout, and selecting or creating imagery can lead to a mess. If you’re hoping your newsletter will promote your brand, think about the impact that your unprofessional-looking newsletter may be having on your prospects. Don’t get so caught up in the pride of doing-it-yourself, when hiring a professional e-newsletter firm will make the improved effort worth the costs.

Your e-newsletter should be thought of as the foundation for a successful content-marketing strategy that includes blogging, social media, article-writing and PR. Email marketing can make or break promotional campaigns.

Pros and cons to outsourcing your newsletter

You’ve worked hard to build your business, and it can be hard to trust others to get the job done right. But here are some reality checks of the real risks and benefits of outsourcing your e-newsletter.

“No one knows my business or my personality well enough to write this for me. I’m a niche expert.”

Reality check: Choose a professional firm who will take the time to learn your niche and be responsible for your e-newsletter. In the amount of time it would take you to prepare one newsletter on your own, you can get a professional writer entrenched in your field. Brief phone calls and reviewing someone else’s work is always easier than writing from scratch.

Clearly, not just any firm can handle complex work. Look at examples of the types of clients they’ve worked with in the past. While it’s a real benefit if they’ve already worked with another firm in your industry (because they should already know specialized jargon and trends), if they can demonstrate an ability to master the complexities of other niche fields, you’ll be in good hands. You can expect, as you work together over several months, they will learn your lingo as well as provide fresh insights into your sector.

Plus, a professional can help you write succinctly and develop a voice that is appropriate for your brand. They’ll also help you avoid embarrassing typos and grammar errors.

“New graphics and images will cost me too much money.”

Reality check: You’re using low-quality images that are not truly connected to your own brand identity.

Professional designers have resources to help you find or design better looking graphics that will make your newsletter stand out from the rest—from access to greater photo libraries; to creating info-graphics, to adjusting a chart to match your own brand. These are the details that really make your e-newsletter represent your brand in the best way possible.

“I’ll lose total control of my email marketing if I outsource.”

Reality check: You might like to keep control over your e-newsletter, but it never gets done!

If you are spending too many hours working inefficiently on your newsletter, recoup that investment in billable, profitable work by shedding your e-newsletter from your to-do list. Focus on higher priority, billable work, while someone else manages your newsletter.

Email marketing only works when you actually do it!

We challenge you to look back over the past year to see how many times you actually sent out an e-newsletter to your list. Typically, people have a goal of sending monthly e-newsletters, but only successfully send about 3 or 4!

Next, think about how long each one takes you to write, create images for, and send. Now multiply that number of hours times by your hourly rate. Did your stomach turn a bit there?

We’ve had clients using DIY platforms that spend 2, 5 or even 8 hours to get their e-newsletter looking good. By the time they fixed the colors, wrote the text, checked the links, uploaded their latest contacts, it was a huge amount of time. It’s a headache-inducing experience, and honestly the end result is not something that looks really good, either!

Has your e-newsletter been on your to-do list for too long? Are you intimidated and frustrated with the process? It’s time to delegate your e-newsletter.

According to a survey of nearly 1500 adults, 64% said that what makes them open an email from a business or nonprofit is who the email is from.

When respondents were asked what makes them open an email from a business or nonprofit, the organization the email is from (64%) and the subject line (47%) were far more popular than other factors such as liking the offer (26%) or the first few lines of the body of the email (14%). I just came across this stat even though it is a few years old, but I’m guessing it still rings true today. Face it, people are making a decision to open your email before they even get to the meat of the content.

What does that mean to you, as you create and send your e-newsletter?

Two factors in recognizing the email sender

When your recipients receive your e-newsletter, there are two factors that influence whether it is recognized by email servers and by the real human reading your content.

1. Is your specific email address recognized by the email server and email client of the recipient? The computer systems powering email are looking at the name@domain.com and checking whether it is a known and trusted address. Depending on how your recipients get their emails (Gmail, private email server, via your shared hosting plan, etc.), there are multiple layers of technology that are deciding whether or not to send your email through to your recipient’s inbox. It may be stopped by a firewall, stopped by a domain-based spam filter, or it may be redirected based on the individual’s rules set up for their own inbox. This is why you want to maintain a known and trusted email address as the from email on your enewsletters.
2. Will your email reader recognize your personal or business name? Assuming your email has been delivered to the recipients inbox, the decision to open it is made based on the real name that shows. For example, you may start sending your e-newsletter out using the email address jane@domain.com. Then, you decide to change the sending address to news@domain.com, but you keep the same visible name: “Jane Smith” —your email readers will decide whether to open your email based on that personal or brand name rather than the email address.

5 Tips to keep your brand relevant by email

1. Choose the right “from” address for your e-newsletter. If you’ve had personal contact with most of your recipients, you should use that email address as the “from” address of your e-newsletter. This is what we advise for most professional services firms.
2. Don’t change the “from” address of your e-newsletter without considerable thought. We’ve seen it happen where an e-newsletter starts out coming from a specific person’s email address, but as their list grows they make the decision to change it to something more generic like info@ or news@. Remember, that any new email address will be less familiar to both the human recipient and the software that the reader uses as their the email client. Sometimes you need to bite the bullet and change your “from” address, but do it with care.
3. Your current clients are most interested in hearing from you. You probably already guessed that, but reaching out to them keeps you top of mind and introduces them to new products or services you are offering. You will have a higher delivery rate because they will already have your email address white listed. You may be surprised that some of your customers only think of you when considering purchasing the exact product or service you already provided. Introducing them to other services will be beneficial. This is why that old adage holds true that it is easier to sell more to current customers than to sell to new customers.
4. Reach out to new subscribers quickly. When someone joins your e-newsletter list, they’ve just had an interaction with your brand. It may be by making a purchase, joining your list from your web site or from accessing special content and offers like a white paper or promotional coupon. At that time, they are aware of your brand. If you wait a long time to send them anything by email, they may no longer remember who you are or why you have their email address. So, try to email them again within a day or two of their initial contact. The easiest way to do this is by setting up an auto-responder so that every person who joins your email list automatically receives an email from you.
5. Continue sending valuable content. As you can see by these stats, the majority of people are making a decision about whether to open your email or not before they get to the content or offer. Essentially, they are forming an opinion based on previous email communication from you. You’ve earned their trust, don’t ruin it!

It’s January, which means a time for reflection and resolutions. For many Americans, there is an urge to simplify and de-clutter. This includes dealing with our overflowing inboxes. Not only are we thinking about New Year’s resolutions, but many people are also returning from time away from the office which makes the email overload feel particularly acute.

This past week I heard several people remark, in person or on social media, about needing to unsubscribe to unwanted emails and tame their inboxes. Personally, I’ve spent considerable time setting up lots of rules in my Mac Mail to filter out less important emails and unsubscribing to unwanted emails and notifications.

Expect an uptick in your unsubscribe rate in January. And here are some tips to minimize your list churn and avoid the New Year’s purge.

Stay Relevant in the New Year

On the positive side, this time of year is a time for self-reflection and goal-setting. So people are receptive to educational and informative messages if they feel it can help them. If you create an offer or educational series that connects with people’s natural pursuit of improvement, January is a great time to launch it.

If you’re cranking out newsletters just to adhere to a pre-determined editorial schedule, but not really feeling any passion for it, it’s likely that your readers will catch that vibe and unsubscribe. This is not a time to send something out just to meet your quota, it’s almost always better to deviate from your schedule (and send less frequently) if it means producing something better. Just don’t put it off too long!

The most important piece of advice I give people is to put themselves in their readers’ shoes. This sounds so basic, but too many people think completely differently about what they want to send compared to what they’d want to read. They easily label other people’s email as junk or a waste of time, but never consider that their own emails may have that same perception for their readers.

A time to rethink and refresh

The new year is a good time to take a fresh look at your email marketing.

Examine the structure and content of your newsletters. For example, are the length of the articles and the type of subjects still working with where your business is headed and is it resonating with readers? Simplifying your approach by showcasing less content in each newsletter can be a relief to you and an easier-read for your recipients.

Consider delegating the work. Are you running out of ideas or interest? Writing an e-newsletter is challenging and if it’s feeling like an increasingly hard burden, you may want to delegate the work. If the newsletters are well-received, but you just don’t have the time to write them anymore, consider working with an outsourced e-newsletter service like Mail on the Mark. Your time may be better spent working on another area of your business.

Rethink how your e-newsletter connects with your web site and social media. Your e-newsletter, your web site / blog and your social media channels should all work together as a unified marketing effort. Ideally, this means less work with better results. Do you make it easy for readers to connect from one of these media to the next with linking and sharing? Do you repurpose content between the channels? Is there a consistent brand identity to all the pieces? Web sites and social media continue to change rapidly so take a fresh look at how you’re connecting these channels to your e-newsletter.

Finally, make sure that your e-newsletter is mobile optimized or responsively built! More and more, people are reading their email on their phones, but it needs to look good on their large monitors as well. People are much more likely to delete or unsubscribe to something that is challenging to read because of poor formatting. Even the best content in the world can’t overcome that!

Let me know: Are you unsubscribing to more e-newsletters this January, and how did you decide which ones got the axe?

Simplify and shorten

The term e-newsletter came from the fact that newsletters used to be printed, and when they became electronic they took on the name e-newsletters. Don’t let this old idea of what a newsletter should look like get you stuck.

Your e-newsletter should be an education-driven, content marketing strategy, but don’t make it look like a newsletter of yesteryear.

You are much more likely to have success with the simplified layout on the right.

Consider these typical statistics. Let’s say you have a list size of 1,000 people with a typical open rate of 30% (300) and you usually get about 50 people to click through from your e-newsletter to your blog. With an e-newsletter that features 3 articles, you’ll split those clicks, and the top story will probably garner about 75% of your click-thrus. Now, let’s imagine that you actually had sent 3 separate e-newsletters (spread out weekly, for example). It’s likely that your CTR (click thru rate) will not be reduced down to one third. In fact, it may even rise. So now you’ve reached 50 people with 3 pieces of content rather than just one.

I challenge you to try this in 2017.

Target, Segment, Personalize

There is a lot of buzz right now about how powerful segmenting and personalizing your email marketing campaigns can be. You often need an expensive marketing automation platform to do this in a robust way. However, even some basic changes to your workflows can help you take advantage of why more targeted emails are more effective.

• Collect more information. You need to collect (or build) beyond just an email address. In the past several years, many companies have asked for the most minimal amount of information: just an email address. But if you don’t collect any other data, you cannot do any segmentation or personalization. Think about what other information would help you. It doesn’t have to be full contact information (as people don’t like to share that), but consider adding a question about their area of interest, their industry or their general geographic location.
• Create multiple lists and segments. You can’t take advantage of segmentation if all of your emails are in one big list. An easy way to segment people is to create forms at different places throughout your web site, that populate to different lists. Additionally, you can continue to segment based on interaction (who opens, what they click, etc.). We have some more in-depth information about lists, cross-checking and segmentation in this post.

Make every snippet count (even with non-opens)

We are all bombarded with too much information and too much email. We are quickly looking to determine what we want to read and what we want to delete.

Subject lines and snippets (or preview text) warrant your full attention. Check out these two screen shots from my email program.

Poor use of subject lines and preview text.

This top screenshot shows three poor uses of the snippet preview. These mistakes are all too common. The first features the web-based link to the e-newsletter content. The second shows when someone forgets to override the default preview text (ha!). And the third is all about white-listing the sender’s email address. None of these add any value to the email, or prompt me to want to open it.

Now let’s look at three effective subject lines and snippets.

Effective use of subject lines and preview text.

Each of these emails quickly tells me why I may want to click thru for more details. They offer clear information or offers.

Let’s look at the Hootsuite one (bottom) in detail. Without even opening the email, I have learned that Hoosuite is announcing a product development and I can see what the feature is generally about. Without even opening the email, I have experienced another positive brand touchpoint and it’s planted the seed about their product innovation. When they review their email marketing reports, they may see a big “0” next to my name as not having opened or clicked, yet they’ve made a positive impact on me.

Summary

In short, we’re all overwhelmed. With too much to do, and too much information bombarding us from all angles, we seek clarity. Use meaningful graphics and engaging writing to make your emails stand out.

You may also like to read about 2017 Web Design Trends on the Visible Logic blog.

There are many reasons you may want to divide your lists and then select only specific groups to send to. Even if you are providing the same general information or offer, the more you customize the message to the recipient the better engagement you’ll have. You can read more about segment examples here.

Mail on the Mark features many useful list tools to make it easy for you to send to just the right list. Let’s walk through these features, using the scenario of promoting an upcoming conference or event.

Unlimited lists

Mail on the Mark has no limit to the number of lists that you can create.

We encourage our clients to divide and label their email recipients into as many useful lists as possible. To start with, it’s good practice to create different lists for the different ways people join your lists. For example, you may have one list for people who registered for a previous event, another for people who join by using the form on your web site and another for contest entrants. As people buy tickets for your upcoming conference, you can create a new list of ticket buyers. If anyone ever wonders how they got on a list, you have a record of where they signed up.

Additionally, you can create your own lists based on other information you have about the recipient. For example, you could divide your list by geographic location or industry sector if you’ve collected that data.

Cross Checking

Cross checking your email lists is one of the most essential features of Mail on the Mark. If you’ve taken our advice and created multiple lists for your recipients, it’s likely you’ll find that some people are on more than one list.

Mail on the Mark’s Cross Checking tool automatically scans across lists and detects if an email is a duplicate and only sends one email.

Let’s say you have a customer that you have multiple touch points with—they originally signed up for your e-newsletter using a form on your web site, then they purchased a ticket to a previous event, then they entered a contest or give away. If you have been creating multiple lists to track all of these signups, that person is now on three lists.

Isn’t it annoying when you get the same email twice (at exactly the same time) from an organzation? That won’t happen with Mail on the Mark.

Excluding

Excluding can be very helpful when you need to make sure someone doesn’t get an email.

We use this function a lot when doing event promotion. Consider this scenario: Initially, you announce your event to all your lists and encourage them to buy tickets. Once people start buying tickets you start building a second list of current ticket buyers (aka attendees) only. You may not want to send emails to promote buying tickets or special ticket offers to those who have already purchased them.

In this case, you would exclude ticket buyers. By hovering over a list or segment in Mail on the Mark, you will see the option to exclude them from the campaign.

Segment your list to build better engagement

These are a couple of useful tools to make sure that your recipients are getting only the content that’s relevant to them. This helps your emails feel more personal and helps build trust with your subscribers. Remember, a more customized email marketing strategy leads to more engaged readers.

Have a question about a feature of Mail on the Mark, or want to know how this tool could help your business? Get in touch, we’d be happy to talk with you about your email marketing.