Thursday, December 31, 2015

Inbox Placement Rates 2015: Detailed Analysis

Every year Return Path does the analysis of inbox placement rate.Related Articles

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Wednesday, December 30, 2015

Inspirational Feeds for Your 2016 Email Campaigns

Favorite go-to destinations for inspirational content.Related Articles

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The 10 Must-Read Email Marketing Posts of 2015

From confirmation emails to connecting with customers, we’ve covered a lot of hot topics on the blog in 2015. So in light of the new year, we’re counting down the best of the best (as determined by your clicks, tweets and shares):

10. Quick Ideas for Emails You Can Send Today

Bookmark this handy email cheat sheet, filled with quick ideas for emails you can send today.

9. How to Write an Autoresponder Email Series

Autoresponder emails have a ton of time-saving and business-growing benefits… and yet 75 percent of businesses aren’t using them. Add a follow up series to your email marketing strategy today and get ahead of the curve.

8. 10 Easy Ways to Grow Your Email List and Revenue

Whether you’ve grown your list to 10, 100 or 1,000 subscribers, it can be hard to reach that next big goal. Here are 10 easy ways to kickstart your email list growth.

7. 5 Time Tracking Tools to Take Back Your Day

Take back your day with these five time-tracking apps that will help boost your productivity, maximize your time and let you do more of the things you love.

6. Twenty Tools to Help You Design Better and Write Smarter

From Canva to Buffer, here’s our comprehensive list of tools to help you design better, write smarter and create engaging content faster.

5. How to Engage Social Followers Using Facebook’s New CTA Button

With Facebook’s new call-to-action feature, it’s easier than ever for your followers to do things like sign up to your email list or start shopping with the click of a button.

4. 6 Ways to Connect with Customers through Email

You’re sending emails in order to make personal connections with people. And if you truly want that kind of relationship with your email audience, it’s essential that you keep these tips in mind before hitting “send” on your next message.

3. How to Reactivate Your Email List in 5 Steps

Considering that the average email marketing list depreciates by 25 percent every year, how can you be sure that the people on your list really want to be there? With a reactivation campaign, of course!

2. Writing Confirmation and Welcome Emails People Love

Whether you have a lot to say and don’t know where to start (or you’re just dealing with the worst writer’s block ever), content is one of the biggest hurdles for first-time email marketers. This blog post will help you get started with the two emails you should create before you begin collecting new subscribers: the confirmation email and welcome email.

1. Holiday GIF Guide

We’ve created more than a dozen GIFs you can use in your holiday promotions (and beyond!), plus tips for using them in your emails!

What’s Next

What do you predict the top 10 trends of 2016 will be? What would you like to see more of on the blog? Let us know in the comments!

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The 30 Most Viewed, Shared, and Savored Blog Posts of 2015

222!

That’s the number of blog posts we published for you this year – excluding this one.

Here are the top 30 based on views, shares, likes, retweets, claps, cartwheels, and uncomfortably long hugs. In case you missed any, enjoy!

Email

25 Comical Subject Lines + Tips for Funny Writing – Stand out from the crowd and engage your contacts by using this list of tips and examples to write humorous subject lines.
5 Subject Line Tips You Haven’t Heard – Need a little help creating subject lines? Use these five out-of-the-box tips as a guide.
5 Tips to Creating a Sense of Urgency in Your Writing and Emails – How do you get people to take action quickly with your business? By creating a sense of urgency in your writing.
4 Aspects Every Outstanding Product Announcement Needs – The key to getting your audience excited about your latest business offering is by answering these four questions in your next product announcement email.
12 Months of Inspiration for Engaging with Your Email Subscribers – Surprise and delight customers with these creative email campaign ideas for 2016.
Emails That Encourage Customer Engagement – Check out these four hassle-free emails that can increase customer engagement and boost sales.
6 Design Tips to Make Your Email Newsletter Visually Appealing – Use these six simple design tips to create an email newsletter that draws your audience in.
75 Email Newsletter Content Topics You Can Use ASAP – To keep relationships going strong, provide your subscribers with consistent and interesting content. Here are 75 topics you can use in your email newsletters right now.
Tips for Email Newsletter Campaign First-Timers – Part I: Content – Even a first-timer can create a successful email newsletter campaign by following these three golden rules centered around content.
List Segmentation By Campaign Activity: Why Do It and How to Get Started – Aim to reach more people, but don’t send one email message to everyone. Here’s why list segmentation at the campaign activity level makes sense and is easy to do.
5 Tips to Increase Your Email Delivery and Open Rates – If you’re suffering from bounce rates or spam complaints, improving your email delivery rate is key. Read on for five tips to make sure your emails get delivered.

Social Media

11 Words & Phrases to Avoid Using on Social Media and What to Say Instead – Avoid sounding like everyone else on social media and stand out from the crowd.
3 Things You Can’t Do on Facebook Anymore – Learn about the three biggest Facebook updates that could impact your business page.
4 Ways to Use Social Media to Increase your Email List – Boost your email contacts through social channels.
Social Media & Your Business: Choosing the Best Platform – Tap into your key demographic by incorporating these basic principles into your social media journey.
9 Social Media Hacks Every Small Business Can Benefit From – Learn how to increase sales and customer engagement with these nine social media hacks.

Non-Profit

10 Crowdfunding Websites Every Non-Profit Should Know – Looking for ways to raise money for your non-profit? We have a list of ten crowdfunding sites you’ll want to check out.
9 Emails Non-Profits Should Send to Attract and Maintain Donors [GUIDE] – A look at nine emails that can help non-profits attract and maintain donors.

Retail

10 Retail Marketing Ideas to Boost Sales – We assembled ten retail marketing ideas to help bring increased sales and more loyal customers.
5 Customer Appreciation Emails Retailers Should Send – Share some love. Show your customers that you appreciate their business with these five customer appreciation emails.

Customers First

10 Questions to Ask In Your Business Demographics Survey – Having a better understanding of your customers is critical for success. Here are ten questions to include in your business demographics survey.
5 Ways to Create Added Value for Customers – Here are five ways to create added value that can improve your customers’ experience.

Event Marketing

You’re Invited: 6 Components of a Successful Event Email – Make sure your next event email brings in guests by using this handy cheat sheet.
5 Event Ideas that Attract Customers – Wondering how to get customers to attend your next event? Here are five event ideas to attract customers and get the word out to make your next event a success.

More Marketing Tips

Why Certain Marketing Words Sing, While Others Just Stink — and How to Tell the Difference – More than knowing what to say and what not to say — learn why! Here is the breakdown on why certain words are powerful while others are useless.
The Ultimate Guide to ‘Google My Business’ – Learn how to set up, use and get the most out of Google My Business.
Making Content Marketing, Email and Social Media Work in Harmony – Understand and master these three approaches to make your online marketing plan come together beautifully.
6 Free SEO Tools to Boost Your Search Engine Rankings – A list of tools to help you land a better spot in search results.
Calls to Action: 50 that Sell and 10 that Repel – Need a little help writing an effective call to action for your next email? We’ve got you covered.

Our team is focused on offering you more great articles to help your business grow in the new year. Thank you to our customers, hundreds of thousands of newsletter subscribers, and millions of blog visitors.

We wish you all the best and much success in 2016!

The post The 30 Most Viewed, Shared, and Savored Blog Posts of 2015 appeared first on Vertical Response Blog.

Tuesday, December 29, 2015

[Podcast] Episode 003: How do I get more email subscribers when starting from scratch?

We are quickly approaching the new year, and with each new year comes new beginnings. If you’re planning to start a new business venture in 2016, then you’ll definitely want to listen to this packed-to-the-brim episode of Ask Me About Email Marketing.

This week’s question comes from life coach, Dr. Wasi Saleem, who recently launched his brand and is looking to attract more email subscribers. To answer his question, we’ve recruited Brandon Olson, Content Marketing Manager at AWeber.

In this episode, you’ll learn:

How to optimize your website by determining your primary goal
What elements to split test to boost conversion rates
Common mistakes that can sabotage conversions
How to use email automation to deliver valuable content
The importance of opt-in form consistency
Ways to integrate email marketing with social media

Listen below to hear Brandon’s response.

Want to be on the show? Here’s how you can participate:

Use the widget below to record and send us a question about email marketing.
We’ll select a question from the submission pool and track down one of our in-house email marketing experts to provide an answer.
We’ll record their response, package it up with your question and release it as a new podcast episode each week. Plus, each episode will include bonus resources to help you level up your email marketing.

There are so many topics to explore in email marketing. So if you’re struggling with design, content, analytics or just getting started, leave us a message with a specific question and we’ll start answering!

A few notes on submitting:

Introduce yourself, and your business/email marketing venture. Please don’t share any spammy URLs.
Keep your question brief. Anywhere between 60-90 seconds would be ideal. Two-part questions are okay, too!
Keep it clean. We won’t accept any submissions with disrespectful or vulgar language.

If we select your questions, we’ll air it. By submitting a question, you are agreeing to allow us to use your full, submitted audio clip on our podcast and in marketing the podcast and AWeber.

Ready to ask a question? Click the green button below!

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A Heart of Business with Rose Bowl Parade Colored Glasses

We talked to William Flinn, the Executive Director of the Rose Bowl Parade, about the event and all the prep that goes into it. It's a great look into community, tradition, event planning and so much more.Related Articles

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Do You Know How Your Email Open Rate Is Calculated?

Okay, I admit that this isn’t the most exciting topic when it comes to email marketing. You want your data, and you don’t care too much about how it’s obtained.

But it is important to consider if you’ve switched (or are thinking of switching) email marketing service providers (ESP). And here’s why: not all ESPs calculate email open rates the same way, and that can change your view on how your emails are performing.

Where ESPs and pizza places intersect

Switching to a new email marketing provider is kinda like finding a new pizza spot. Even though you have a whole new menu, you still expect certain elements to be the same. But then you realize your new pizza hangout creates their sauce differently, and nothing makes sense anymore. Even though it’s still pizza, something just seems off in comparison.

Well, moving to a new email marketing platform can be a similar experience, such as when you start reviewing your open rates on recently sent emails. Just like how no two pizza places follow the same recipes for the same pies, not every ESP uses the same formula for calculating open rates.

While this won’t impact how many people are opening your emails, it can portray different pictures of how successful your emails are.

But first, what’s an open rate?

Open rates represent the percentage of subscribers who opened your email compared to the number of emails that were delivered.

To track opens, ESPs that provide analytics add an invisible tracker image within HTML emails. As long as the email is opened using a provider that doesn’t block images, the open rate will be tracked.

This data is helpful as it provides insight into how effective your subject lines are at convincing subscribers to open your emails. It can also tell you the best times to send emails to your subscribers; if your open rates are higher between 2 pm and 5 pm on Wednesdays than any other time of the week, you might want to start sending future emails during that time.

How open rates are calculated

While ESPs track opens the same way, the road begins to split when it’s time to calculate the open rate. Here are the three most used formulas:

1. Unique Opens / Total Number of Subscribers

This approach (which we use here at AWeber) means the open rate is calculated by taking the unique opens (i.e., the total number of unique subscribers who open your email) and dividing it by the total number of subscribers on your list. So regardless of how many times a single person opens your email to look back at its contents, it will only count as one open.

For example, if you send an email to 100 subscribers and 20 people open it, your open rate would be 20 percent.

2. Total Opens / Total Number of Subscribers

With this formula, one person might count as multiple opens if they open your message more than once. Let’s go back to your email you sent to 100 people. Now, if 20 people open your message, and one person opens your message five times, the open rate would be 25 percent using this formula.

So even though the same number of individuals read your message as the previous example, the results are quite different since total opens are referenced. And this has a couple of pros and cons:

Con: The disadvantage with this number is that your rates might be skewed higher than normal if someone opens up your email a number of times.

If you were to send out an email with a link to a new ebook, someone who isn’t ready to read the whole thing might go back to that email multiple times to grab the link. Someone, or multiple people, might be re-opening your email 10, 15, or even 20 times! As a result, your open rate might seem as though more people are opening your emails, when it’s really just the same few individuals.

Pro: Total opens can also tell you more about how engaged your subscribers are with the content in a particular email. If someone goes back to your email 10 or more times, there’s something about the content that urges them to do so.

3. Unique Opens / (Emails Sent – Emails Bounced)

Sometimes your emails never get opened because they don’t make it to your subscriber’s inbox in the first place. Emails bounce due to a number of reasons, like an invalid user, invalid domain name, permanent bounce backs, etc. As a result, some ESPs calculate open rates by excluding the number of emails that bounce from an Internet Service Provider (Gmail, Yahoo!, AOL).

Let’s say you send your email to 100 people, 20 people open it, one person opens it 5 times, and 9 emails bounce. Your open rate will be calculated as follows:

20 / (100-9) = 22% open rate

You’ll notice that this open rate is again different from the previous two results. Depending on how many emails bounce, this formula might present a slightly higher open rate as the number of recipients who received your email gets smaller.

So, what’s the best approach?

That’s sort of a trick question, because there is no single right way to calculate open rate. Each formula will paint a slightly different picture of how your emails are performing, and being aware of what the story is telling you is the first step to understanding your analytics.

To get deeper into the data and learn more about how your subscribers are interacting with your emails, check to see if your ESP provides more in-depth reporting. AWeber users, for example, can view breakdowns of both unique and total opens for sent emails. This allows you to gather more insight in addition to the percentage that is presented to you.

How are your open rates calculated?

Check with your email service provider to see how your open rates are being calculated. If you’re planning on switching to a new ESP, be sure to research how they determine the rate as well.

For more tips on how to improve your open rates, here’s another great read from our blog.

Have any questions about open rates? Ask away in the comment section!

The post Do You Know How Your Email Open Rate Is Calculated? appeared first on Email Marketing Tips.

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Monday, December 28, 2015

4 Email Marketing Best Practices to Stay Relevant in 2016

By the end of 2016, it’s predicted that there will be 4.6 billion email accounts.

Wow. That’s a huge audience! As more people embrace email, you need to change the way you engage with your subscribers to keep up with their changing needs. To stay relevant, your email marketing best practices need to adapt to your audience.

To help you into the New Year, we have four email marketing best practices for 2016 to make your emails the coolest and most relevant in the inbox. Keep reading to learn how you can win with email marketing in 2016.

1. Contextual Emails

In 2016, 7 percent more emails will land in the inbox. So your job as an email marketer will become more difficult because audiences will be distracted by a downpour of emails. How can you be heard above the storm? Create contextual emails.

What are contextual emails?

Contextual emails are personalized to your subscribers. You can accomplish contextualization by sending emails based on the unique qualities of those subscribers. With contextual emails, subscribers receive the right email at the right time.

To create that awesome, contextual email that drives sales, write emails that subscribers feel were made exclusively for them. One easy way to do this is to segment your emails. When you segment your email lists, you are sending different emails to subscribers based on their varying pain points or interests.

Because specific content will resonate best with different subscribers, segmenting allows you to send the best content to the best recipient, creating more personalized and more effective emails.

You could segment your audience by their favorite color, their geographical location or even by their New Year’s resolutions for 2016. Learn more about sending personal, contextual emails.

2. Mobile Matters

Sixty-six percent of brand marketing emails are opened on mobile devices. Makes sense, right?

Just think about how many times your friends or family missed what you were saying because they were staring at their phone. When they finally look up from their phone screens, their glazed eyes say it all: mobile controls attention.

To grab your audience’s attention, you need to reach them where they are most reachable, and according to research and observation, that’s on their mobile devices.

So what’s the best way to drive email engagement on mobile devices? We have a few tips:

Responsive Emails

Use responsive email templates instead of mobile friendly emails. A responsive template will respond to the device that it is read on, while a mobile friendly email will not.

For example, if you read an email on your cell phone, a responsive email template will resize the font and images and even change the layout of the email to fit the small screen. A responsive email often looks different on a cell phone than on a laptop, because the template may convert two-columns into one-column to increase readability.

While responsive emails respond to different devices by converting text size and layout, mobile friendly emails appear the same on every device. Since their design doesn’t change for small devices, mobile friendly emails often contain text that is too small to read unless you zoom in.

Below on the left is a responsive email. The text is more readable and the images fit the screen better.

mobile responsive mobile friendly

Brevity

Keep your emails short. Subscribers checking email on mobile typically have a few minutes to skim an email or two. Brevity is key. Otherwise, they won’t reach the end of the email.

Subject Lines

Optimize email subject lines. A good subject line is like spotting an adorable puppy in a room full of llamas. You pick up the puppy because who wants to get spit on by a llama.

How can you write a good subject line? Keep the subject line short (30 characters or less). Shorter subject lines have higher open rates.

Additionally, personalize subject lines by including the subscriber’s first name in the subject line or using a location-specific subject line. Personalizing your subject lines is another way to create appealing, contextual emails.

Finally, construct time-sensitive subject lines by stating when an offer ends. With a time-sensitive offer, you will create a sense of urgency for your reader. When they know they have limited time to act, they will act more quickly. For more information on subject lines, check out our tips on writing engaging subject lines.

Preview Text

Make your email preview text captivating. Behind your subject line, your preview text is one of the first things your subscriber sees. It’s like the kitten that’s next to the puppy in the room full of llamas.

3. Motion

In 2016, emails with videos and GIFs will capture more engagement than static emails.

Video

By 2017, video will control 69 percent of consumer internet traffic. If you video it, they will watch it.

But does video encourage engagement? Yes. Businesses that use video in email campaigns report a 55 percent increase in click-through rates.

Although videos may not play in the inbox due to video compatibility problems, there are still many creative ways to incorporate video in your email marketing campaigns. If you’d like a few ideas, check out our guide to creating awesome videos.

GIFs

Besides using video, add motion to emails with GIFs. GIF stands for graphics interchange format. To create the illusion of motion, GIFs rapidly display multiple images.

Because they are widely supported across email clients, GIFs are frequently sent in marketing emails. The motion in the inbox creates a standout email with increased engagement.

gif

4. Wearables and Email Marketing

Wearables like the Apple Watch transform the marketing landscape. To best reach your customers, you now need to send emails that are optimized for a tiny screen on someone’s wrist.

By 2016, 9 percent of adults will have smartwatches like the Apple Watch, which means you can’t ignore wearables. Thankfully, there are plenty of tips out there on how to create great emails for smartwatches. We recommend experimenting with plain text emails, optimized subject lines and brief content.

Email Marketing in 2016

Our email marketing best practices for 2016 include personalizing your emails, optimizing for mobile devices, using motion like GIFs and video and writing emails geared toward smartwatches.

But we’d love to hear from you! What email marketing best practices do you think will be important in 2016? Share your opinions in the comments section below.

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Thursday, December 24, 2015

New Features & Updates: Free Images, Quicker List Building, and Faster Delivery

We’ve added new features, made some enhancements and bug fixes. Check out the highlights of the December 9th, 2015 release:

Editor

Finding the right, high-quality image for your email is important, and also challenging. A nice visual can help you communicate your message and get your reader to engage more. The quality of the image can affect how subscribers perceive your email – whether it is professional or not. This is why in our latest release, we’ve integrated Pixabay free, high-quality image search into the VerticalResponse email editor. Now you can:

Browse by category and search over 530,000 royalty free images
Automatically insert images into your email without copying and pasting, or downloading and uploading

Contacts

List growth is a major component of successful email marketing. Our new quick ‘add contact’ widget allows you to type or paste contacts in seconds. You can enter names and email addresses up to three at a time, or cut and paste (up to 50 email addresses at once). This is great if you used to send your newsletter from your own email client but have since “upgraded” to sending from VerticalResponse.

Signup Forms

Signup forms on the web are another great way to grow your email list. The best practice is to clearly explain why the visitor should join your list and then ask permission to collect whatever data is necessary (email address, name, location, etc.). With our new update, you can choose, right up front, if you want to publish your signup web page on Verticalresponse.com, or if you would rather indicate the data you want to collect during signup and generate the HTML code that can then be embedded on your own website. The choice is now yours.

Billing

New credit card? No problem! It happens, your credit card expires, and you get a new one. Or perhaps as a marketing consultant you want to charge VerticalResponse account fees to a client’s credit card. Now you can log in and update your billing info: add, update, and delete cards from your account.

Chrome Browser

Google recently updated the Chrome web browser, and some customers had difficulty with the email editor. We’ve resolved these issues by improving compatibility with the Chrome web browser. Creating emails is now back to smooth sailing.

Delivery

Customers with large audiences (greater than 50,000 contacts) can now get campaigns out faster – twice as fast in fact! Contact us to learn more about our high-volume pricing plans!

All product updates can be found here.

The post New Features & Updates: Free Images, Quicker List Building, and Faster Delivery appeared first on Vertical Response Blog.

Forecast: Top 4 Email Challenges Your Enterprise Will Face in 2016

Be prepared to up your email game as we head into 2016.Related Articles

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Wednesday, December 23, 2015

How to Win Back Your Subscribers

There are steps you can take to see what when wrong, prevent this from happening to other people, and maybe even win back that unsubscriber.Related Articles

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How To Care For Your Email Template

Water daily, direct sunlight, and lots of love. Okay, just kidding, but I really do LOVE to code and design email templates, and there’s lots you can do to care for your email template to make sure you’re getting the most out of it!

Emails thrive better in some environments than others. As an email designer, I do my best to code templates that will work well across all email clients, browsers, and apps. If you’ve ever tested your emails to different combinations of browsers, email clients, and apps, you may have noticed your emails display differently depending on where it’s being rendered. You may have also noticed that some email clients are more difficult to work with than others.

So what can you do to take proper care of your email template?

Copy and paste with caution

Copying and pasting content is a common practice, but it can introduce some pests into your email code. It’s best to type directly into the editor, or to only copy and paste from plain text sources which will strip out any extra code picked up in the copy process.

For example, when I copy some text from one of our blog posts into the editor, extra tags are being added into the code. Note <h1></h1><p></p> below. While these are common HTML tags, different email clients may handle these tags differently than the browser where you’re creating the message.

5 Essential Design Tips for the Non-Designer

As a writer, I can’t believe I’m saying this: Visuals are the foundation of your business. Consistend, empowering branding helps to draw in prospects and keep customers coming back for more. It’s your first opportunity to make an impression.

It’s your brand identity.

Here’s another example of the code when I copy it from our blog, then paste it into a plain text editor. I’m using TextEdit with Plain Text formatting selected, as opposed to Rich Text formatting:

5 Essential Design Tips for the Non-Designer
As a writer, I can’t believe I’m saying this: Visuals are the foundation of your business. Consistend, empowering branding helps to draw in prospects and keep customers coming back for more. It’s your first opportunity to make an impression.
It’s your brand identity.

The extra code is not being embedded into the editor and will yield better results across a wider variety of email clients and browsers.

Keep it simple

Overdoing your message can cause your engagement to wilt. Keeping things simple will allow for you to have a clear, concise message.

Avoid overemphasis – don’t confuse or distract your reader by adding too many font sizes and styles, like underlines and bold text, throughout your message.

Use a simple color palette – try to keep the font colors to a minimum to avoid distraction. Pick a headline color, font color, and link color and stick with those colors throughout your message.

Limit the number of images you use.In some cases image-heavy emails work, but too many images may not only be distracting, they may also impact load times. If your message doesn’t load within a couple seconds you risk losing the attention of your readers. Another thing to remember is that some email clients will block images by default, so relying on images to convey your message isn’t recommended.

Make sure your images aren’t too wide – most of our templates are 600 pixels wide. If you upload an image that’s wider than 600 pixels, consider using the Optimized or Thumbnail option for the best results. If you have columns in your email, make sure the width of the image isn’t “breaking” the width of the column.

Avoid using too many links.In many cases you will want a clear call to action within your message. Offering too many links can actually prevent your subscribers from taking action.

Test your messages

Test your email in a variety of different environments. Create test accounts with free email services, and check to see how your email renders in those clients and different browsers. There’s also services, like Litmus, which will run dozens of tests at once to save you some time.

These are some of the most popular email clients, and I suggest trying to test to these if possible:

Desktop Email Clients

Remember, not everyone will be using the same version and rendering may vary from version to version

Outlook
Apple Mail

Webmail

The browser being used may also affect rendering – always test a variety of browsers like Chrome and Firefox

Gmail
Outlook.com
Yahoo!

Mobile Apps

While all of our email templates are designed to be responsive, some email apps will display a mobile friendly version

Mail App for iPhone
Gmail App for iPhone
Gmail App for Android

Need help cultivating your email template?

Did you know we have a team of email design experts who can help you troubleshoot rendering issues, and even design custom templates to match your brand? Let us help you grow your brand!

The post How To Care For Your Email Template appeared first on Email Marketing Tips.

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List with a Twist: 50 Creative Tips for Gathering Customer Emails

If you don’t have a strong email list for your customer base, you’re missing out on a great marketing tool that’s both reliable and free.

Compiled correctly, your list should represent a significant captive audience that’s already interested in your offerings.

“It gives you the opportunity to contact your prospects at any point in the future with any kind of messaging you want — and you’re not bound by search engine rankings or social media algorithms,” notes Jayson DeMers in Forbes.

Building up your list can seem difficult and time-consuming, but it’s worthwhile to include only those who have chosen to engage. Buying lists from another vendor is a bad idea, since emailing anonymous contacts can come across as invasive and often results in complaints, bounced addresses and unsubscribes. Your list will be most effective if you gain trust by not sharing subscribers’ info with other firms and creating emails with useful or exclusive information and valuable offers — not just sales pitches.

“Your content needs to be amazing if you want people to stay subscribed and forward your emails to their friends, family and colleagues (not) already on your email list,” notes Andy Pitre on HubSpot.

Consider the following list of email list-generating ideas.

1) Add an email signup offer to the back of your business cards.

2) Include opt-in forms as well as forwarding options on every page of your website, blog and social media networks. Don’t forget “about you” sections.

3) Include a link to your sign-up form in every personal email signature.

4) Add your sign-up form link to all your printed receipts. Better yet, consider offering emailed receipts (vendors include Transaction Tree and yReceipts).

5) Bring a sign-up book to tradeshows, Chamber of Commerce events and “lunch and learn” type gatherings in your local business community.

6) Offer a birthday or anniversary club with a premium for those who sign up.

7) Pay employees commission for valid addresses from willing subscribers.

8) Gather addresses via a discount offer with Groupon or similar daily deal site.

9) Solicit addresses when your business appears at fundraisers, festivals and artisan markets.

10) Ask customers for new subscribers’ names in exchange for a discount.

11) Retrieve bounced-back emails, sending postcards asking contacts to sign up again.

12) Place your opt-in link in another business’ newsletter, doing the same for them.

13) Optimize your website for your keywords, striving for the top of the organic search results for those seeking your products (see Google Adwords).

14) Use your list of snail-mail addresses to request email opt-ins.

15) Stage pop-up requests for those leaving your website or blog.

16) Include forward-to-a-friend links in all emails to make them easier to share.

17) Archive newsletters on your website so subscribers know what they’ll get.

18) Consider a platform like BuddyPress for WordPress (and add opt-ins), creating a community that fosters interaction among customers.

19) Ask every caller to your business if you can add them to your list.

20) Invite customers to enter business cards into a counter fishbowl for a weekly prize drawing, logging their addresses and announcing winners in your email newsletter.

21) At trade shows, collect business cards and (with permission) scan them for addresses.

22) At retail locations, set out a sandwich board asking for emails.

23) Ask for emails on the credit card receipts signed by customers.

24) Stage a contest asking customers to produce one-minute videos about why they like your product. Others can vote for the winner on your social media pages, accessing opt-in invitations.

25) Use your smartphone to add addresses on the go.

26) Place opt-in invitations in product shipments.

27) Add similar invitations to customers’ shopping bags.

28) Nonprofits: Include an email-address line on donation envelopes/forms.

29) Retailers: Ask customers for addresses during in-store promotional events.

30) Solicit personal friends and business colleagues as subscribers.

31) Send requests to other Chamber of Commerce members.

32) Offer a free e-book or informational guide for signing up.

33) When speaking at an event, offer listeners a free consultation with newsletter subscription.

34) Conducting a survey? Include email sign-up info.

35) Include an opt-in form on invoices.

36) Place an opt-in on your WordPress site or blog.

37) Give discounts when a customer buys from you and then mentions it on Foursquare via their mobile device. Get the address for the “mayor” and give them a big discount each month.

38) Offer insightful comments on blogs or forums your prospects or customers would visit, adding links to your opt-in form.

39) Make sure your website’s sign-up landing page is appealing, easy to use and outlines the value of signing up. Note that requesting too much information too soon discourages sign ups.

40) Create a video about your business, adding a URL to your opt-in form and posting it on YouTube. You can also add note boxes and speech bubbles using YouTube’s “Annotations” function, and/or link your video to another video, playlist, YouTube channel, or Google+ profile involving your business.

41) Make sure even transactional emails (i.e. order information or shipping updates) include a link to your email sign-up.

42) Survey current email subscribers about likes and dislikes, using the data to create more effective email content and up-front value propositions.

43) Online tool Rafflecopter runs Facebook giveaways that automatically glean email addresses from participants, starting at $13/month.

44) Online tool Justuno automatically provides customers a coupon code for your products or services if they provide their email; price is up to $40/month for small businesses.

45) Online tool Binkd gathers email addresses from participants who tweet a message about your brand, then you randomly select a prize winner. Price: Up to $2 per day.

46) Online tool Woobox sets up Facebook quizzes participants can share on their timelines, then you gather emails and draw prize winners. Small businesses spend about $49 to $99 each month.

47) On Pinterest, pin coupon codes, e-books, guides, video series, online training seminars, checklists and webinars, and include calls to action for your email list.

48) While it may seem counterintuitive, weed out the disinterested parties by sending contacts a new opt-in promising to remove their name if they don’t respond.

49) Publish links to your opt-in page on your LinkedIn company page and/or in relevant discussions on LinkedIn.

50) Co-host a project like an e-book or webinar with an appropriate business partner, then cross-market it with both businesses to solicit emails.

Finally, understand that maintaining a viable email list is bound to be more a marathon than a sprint.

“Your email marketing database degrades by about 22.5 percent every year,” notes Pitre. “Your contacts’ email addresses change as they move from one company to another, opt-out of your email communication, or abandon that old AOL address they only use to fill out forms on websites. As a marketer, it’s your job to make sure you’re constantly adding fresh contacts to your email marketing campaigns so you can keep your numbers moving up and to the right.”

To get inspiration and more tips on how to market your business, join the weekly VerticalResponse newsletter.

The post List with a Twist: 50 Creative Tips for Gathering Customer Emails appeared first on Vertical Response Blog.

Tuesday, December 22, 2015

[Podcast] Episode 002: How do I convert my social traffic into loyal email subscribers?

We’re back with another episode of our podcast, Ask Me About Email Marketing.

This week’s question comes from Deonne Kahler, a photographer who sees a large amount of shares on social media, but is looking to convert that traffic into loyal email subscribers.

To answer her question, we’ve recruited guest expert Scott Richardson, Motion Graphic Designer at AWeber.

In this episode, you’ll learn:

Ways to best ask for more subscribers without being too pushy.
Some experiments to run with your optin forms.
Tips for getting more subscribers via Instagram.

Listen below to hear Scott’s response.

Want to be on the show? Here’s how you can participate:

Use the widget at the bottom of this page to record and send us a question about email marketing.
We’ll select a question from the submission pool and track down one of our in-house email marketing experts to provide an answer.
We’ll record their response, package it up with your question and release it as a new podcast episode each week. Plus, each episode will also include bonus resources to help you level up your email marketing.

A few notes on submitting:

Introduce yourself, and your business/email marketing venture. Please don’t share any spammy URLs.
Keep your question brief. Anywhere between 60-90 seconds would be ideal. Two-part questions are okay, too!
Keep it clean. We won’t accept any submissions with disrespectful or vulgar language.

If we select your questions, we’ll air it. By submitting a question, you are agreeing to allow us to use your full submitted audio clip on our podcast and in marketing the podcast and AWeber.

Ready to ask a question? Click the green button below!

The post [Podcast] Episode 002: How do I convert my social traffic into loyal email subscribers? appeared first on Email Marketing Tips.

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2016 Holiday Email Marketing Calendar

Benchmark Email has put a holiday email marketing calendar together for all of you to put to use in 2016.Related Articles

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Quick Tips Video: What to Write in a Re-Engagement Email

With the new year quickly approaching, it’s the perfect time to review your overall email marketing strategy and make plans for a fresh start come January 1.

And what better place to start than with your subscriber list?

Cleaning up inactive subscribers from your email list is an easy way to set yourself up for success for the new year. It ensures that you’re emailing the people who want to hear from you, and it’ll help improve your overall engagement.

To find out if your subscribers want to remain on your list, you’ll need to send them a re-engagement email. Watch the latest episode of Quick Tips to find out what you should include in your message:

Here’s the transcript in case you missed anything in the video:

M: Hi, welcome back to another episode of Quick Tips. I’m Monica.

O: And I’m Olivia. As yet another awesome year comes to an end, I can’t help but look back and feel a bit nostalgic.

M: Me too. But you know, I’m excited for the new year; starting fresh with a clean slate.

O: As you’re wrapping things up for 2015 and getting your plans together for next year, there’s one thing that comes to mind that could probably use a little refresh: your email list.

M: Now don’t get us wrong; a growing email list is great. But as your subscribers increase, you might notice that your open rates aren’t looking so hot.

O: This might occur for a few reasons. Usually, it’s a sign that you have a high number of inactive people on your list.

M: We refer to inactive subscribers as those who haven’t opened a single email in the last 6 months. Since the key to a healthy email list is regular maintenance, removing inactives is one way to boost email performance.

O: But you shouldn’t just delete them and say sayonara. First, you’ll want to send them a re-engagement email to give them a chance to stay on your list.

M: So what do you write in your email?

O: Let’s break it down piece by piece, starting with the subject line.

M: Your subject line should get right to the point. In a recent re-engagement email we sent to our inactive subscribers on our blog list, the subject line read: “Do you still want to receive our emails?”

O: It seems like an obvious choice, and that’s the point. A simple, direct headline is all you need.

M: The same can also be said for the main content of your email too.

O: In your email message, avoid fluff and be direct about why you’re emailing them. Tell subscribers that you’re reaching out because you want to make sure they still want your emails.

M: This is also a good time to repeat the value of your emails. Whether you send blog post updates, company news, event announcements, or promotional emails, remind subscribers what they’ll miss out on if they unsubscribe.

O: Once you’ve taken care of those content must-haves, it’s time to write a clear call to action. To make it easy for subscribers, we recommend including only one call to action.

M: Check out our re-engagement email to our blog list – notice the CTA specifically tells them that by clicking the button, it will ensure they remain on our email list. Think of it as a way to re-confirm their commitment to our email list.

O: You’ll also notice copy below the CTA that states they will be automatically removed from the list if they don’t click the link in 7 days. This eases the subscriber’s fear of what will happen if they don’t click the button. It also gives you a timeline for when to remove subscribers who no longer want to be on your list.

M: And that’s all you need for your re-engagement email! Simple, right?

O: Now for your Quick Task: As you gear up for 2016, take a look at your subscriber list to see how many are considered inactive. Write a re-engagement email and start cleaning your list so you have a fresh start for the new year.

M: That’s it for today! If you have any questions, feel free to leave a comment below. To make sure you never miss an episode, subscribe to our YouTube channel!

O: Thanks for joining us, we’ll see you back in a couple of weeks.

The post Quick Tips Video: What to Write in a Re-Engagement Email appeared first on Email Marketing Tips.

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Heart of Business Round Table: A Look Back & A Look Ahead

a good wrap moment to end the year as we took stock of how far email marketing has come in twelve months and we left excited for the year to come. Listen and enjoy.Related Articles

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Monday, December 21, 2015

Connecting 40Nuggets + AWeber for Email Lists of Gold

The following is a guest blog post written by Yael Brygel, Customer Outreach Manager at 40Nuggets, a SaaS company that helps businesses get quality leads from their websites through opt-in messaging and sophisticated targeting. Yael loves reaching out to new clients to help them meet their conversion goals.

The key to any successful email marketing campaign is a killer opt-in subscriber list, filled with people who will are excited to open your next email. And when that list is filled with the right prospects, you can engage in a long-term journey with these individuals, moving them along your sales funnel so that they ultimately become loyal customers of your product or service.

As we all know, building a great list can take many hours and some occasional frustration. You can’t expect to receive a high quality email list on a silver platter – but with the right strategy, it also doesn’t have to be hard to obtain.

With the help of 40Nuggets, you can use sophisticated targeting to significantly bulk up your AWeber email list with quality subscribers and prospective customers that fit your business. It may not be a silver platter, but it’s certainly easy to set up.

Through our beautifully designed screen overlays, banners, slide-ins, or lead capture widgets, you can collect subscribers straight from your website. Our seamless integration with AWeber passes their data directly along to the subscriber list of your choice. The best part is, you don’t need any coding or special technological skills to do it.

Once this is done, the fun begins. You can create a tailored, multi-step engagement journey for each site visitor over a period of time, making relevant offers to every visitor on your website.

Smarter Targeting, Better Leads

If you know the characteristics of your site visitors – how each one got to your site and where they came from – you can relate to each of them as an individual, in the language he or she speaks (literally).

With 40Nuggets, you can make offers that are unique and relevant to each customer’s needs and interests. Think about the way you would be treated at your local coffee shop – where the baristas greet you warmly, and maybe even remember your order if you are a regular. This customized approach can maximize conversions and get more leads into your AWeber lists.

40Nuggets offers the following targeting tools. Keep in mind, we do all the work for you. With the click of a few boxes in the Segments section of our Dashboard, you can decide how to greet and interact with every one of your site visitors:

Traffic Source: SEO and paid advertising will bring relevant visitors to your website. Nuggets close the loop, helping you track ROI and present relevant offers. With this feature, you can uniquely target direct traffic and visitors coming from social media, paid campaigns, or a particular search engine. Make your marketing dollars pay off by greeting paid traffic differently than organic visitors.

Visitor Type: Tailor your engagement strategy based on the number of times the visitor has been to your site in the past. 40Nuggets can help track this so that you can target new visitors, returning visitors and loyal visitors differently. For instance, you may choose to create an email campaign with special promotions for customers that come to your site regularly. Create a Nugget for those loyal visitors, while showing new visitors a low-key offer to sign up to your newsletter.

Location (Geo-targeting): With our Dashboard, you can target site visitors based on which state or country they live in. This way, you can send relevant messages to different populations. Let’s say your store in Maryland is having a special in-store-only promotion. You can show a Nugget announcing the sale to visitors from the immediate area, and show out-of-state visitors a Nugget with a small discount for online orders. Show people what is relevant to them, and they’ll be more likely to convert.

Language: 40Nuggets can detect the browser language of the website visitor and allow you to use that information to target specific visitors. Speak to your visitors in their native language to make them feel welcome. If you know your target audience includes a lot of Spanish speakers, you can make a special Nugget that will be shown only to visitors whose browser language is set to Spanish. Offer them a special discount offer, which you can follow up with an automated email describing when and how they can use it.

Demographics: This sophisticated 40Nuggets feature enables you to target people according to household income, home value and whether or not they have children. This will help you segment your offers, such as offering a luxury item to high-income visitors versus low-income visitors. Understanding different demographics in these way can help boost your conversions.

Device: Targeting according to device – desktop computer, mobile phone, or tablet – enables you to engage visitors differently and optimize your offers based on the device.

Special Parameters: You probably already have valuable information about your website visitors, subscribers or customers. In order to leverage this information and engage with your website visitors intelligently, you can pass along data to 40Nuggets so we can better target your site visitors.

If a website visitor is already a subscriber to your newsletter, you wouldn’t want to show them a newsletter Nugget when they come to your site. Offer them something else to upsell them and keep them engaged. We’re here to make sure each engagement is meaningful and goal-oriented.

Connecting 40Nuggets with AWeber

When you use 40Nuggets to provide the best offers on your website for your visitors, you can attract quality email subscribers and grow your list with AWeber. For more ideas on how to use 40Nuggets with AWeber, watch this quick video below:

The post Connecting 40Nuggets + AWeber for Email Lists of Gold appeared first on Email Marketing Tips.

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New Feature: Custom Footer

The latest addition, is the ability to customize the footer in your email campaigns.Related Articles

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New Feature: Custom Footer

The latest addition, is the ability to customize the footer in your email campaigns.Related Articles

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Friday, December 18, 2015

Sign-Up Forms Can Be An Important Piece of Your Email Marketing Program

According to Wikipedia, email marketing is a ‘direct channel used to market commercial messages to groups of people through email.’ The key phrase says it all here: ‘Groups of People.’ Similar to other areas of marketing like social, mobile and even print, connecting with your core audience is essential for success, especially as you’re getting your business off the ground.

And in today’s digital age, if you want to build a following, a sign-up form is a must-have as part of your strategy for acquisition and retention.

Say Yes to Sign-up Forms

Sign-up forms allow customers to ‘sign up’ to receive more information about your business and stay up-to-date on your company’s latest products and services. A useful tool to build your email marketing list, sign-up forms can be used across a multitude of marketing channels including most popular social media platforms as well as your website or blog.

In the video below, we show you how easy it is to setup and customize a sign-up form in VerticalResponse to fit your specific business needs.

If you’d like to check out sign-up forms for yourself, sign up for a free account today!

© 2015, Vertical Response Blog. All rights reserved. Unauthorized use and/or duplication of this material without express and written permission from this blog’s author and/or owner is strictly prohibited.

The post Sign-Up Forms Can Be An Important Piece of Your Email Marketing Program appeared first on Vertical Response Blog.

#EmailChat Recap: Pairing Email and Social Media Marketing

Another week, another AWesome #emailchat!

Yesterday, we discussed the ways you’re pairing social media with your email marketing efforts, covering everything from tools and platforms to content strategy and tips for growing your list. ICYMI, here are your top 7 trends for a winning email and social strategy:

1. You’re using social to drive traffic and awareness to your signup form.

social-q1

I use social to drive traffic to my site (which hosts my main content.) Contextual optin forms do the rest! @tnrt

Adding a sign up form to your FB page is an awesome way to promote your list on social. @krisasaurus

Using social to promote incentives and giveaways in return for their email work wonders! @kelseypaone

2. Your biggest challenge is getting your followers to see the value of your emails.

social-q2

Getting each individual invested enough to want to see more of you. @JeromyABailey

Convincing them there is added content in subscribing that they aren’t already getting on social… @AgentPalmer

Getting their attention. Incentives definitely work, but nothing beats some well-designed social-optimized visuals. @tnrt

3. Twitter is your social platform of choice, but you’re open to up-and-coming platforms, too.

social-q3

Twitter has been the most effective at building relationships. @AgentPalmer

Twitter and Instagram! You can really show off your brand’s personality in both tone and imagery. @kelseypaone

Twitter cards and Facebook closed groups are really solid. @StephenCaggiano

Twitter continues 2 be an awesome space 4 developing new partnerships. Love @periscopeco 4 giving brands live TV! @LeavURImge2FDP

I’m all about @blab right now. It’s the best way to interact with real people in real time. Made some great connections. @tnrt

4. You’re using social contest apps to grow your email list.

social-q4

If you wanna grow your list with a contest, try @heyo. Or use @tryinteract for a quiz! Both sync with social & your ESP. @missmontesa

@heyo is perfect for creating FB contests & driving entrants to your email list! @krisasaurus

And some of you are not.

No. #WORSTANSWEREVER @tnrt

(Psst… It’s ok. We’ve got you covered with our App Showcase.)

5. You like to give your followers a sneak peek at what to expect in your emails.

social-q5

Tease your best content & tell your social followers to sign up if they want to see more! @krisasaurus

I’ve actually been writing @Medium articles and giving extra thoughts on the articles in the email list. @JeromyABailey

6. You gave props to brands who are winning the email/social game.

social-q6

I love the way @glossier features social content from fans in their emails! @missmontesa

@jcrew @everlane @madewell1937 and @glossier do a really good job of being consistent on all their channels – including email. @oliviadello

I <3 @ponchoIRL’s social & email strategy. @krisasaurus

You guys? Doh! @jwrigley1 (Ed. note: Aw, shucks!)

7. You stressed the importance of showing value to both your email and social audiences.

social-q7

Added value… Build community, and don’t play them both as the same… Make it special… @AgentPalmer

Identity the right audience, including potential ambassadors/influencers. @Wee_Wan

Offer free stuff! Promote similar goals. Add value. Create community! @JeromyABailey

Thanks to all who joined in! We’re taking a break next week (enjoy the holiday!), but we’ll be back on Twitter on Thursday, December 31 at 12pm ET to discuss our email marketing resolutions.

Don’t forget to follow us on Twitter (@aweber). See you there!

The post #EmailChat Recap: Pairing Email and Social Media Marketing appeared first on Email Marketing Tips.

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