Friday, March 4, 2016

[#EmailChat Recap] Video Marketing 101

It’s all about that video content. Here’s some fast stats:

In this week’s #EmailChat, we were joined by Wistia’s Community Manager, Margot, who helped reinforce the reasons why video is such a great tool for marketers.

Missed the chat? We’ve rounded up seven reasons why video should be in every email marketer’s toolkit:

1. It’s expressive.

Key Takeaways:

  • Video lets you tell your message in a simple and relatable way.
  • It’s engaging – you can show your readers, not just tell them.
  • Video helps you express what words can’t.

2. It’s great for lead generation.

Key Takeaways:

  • Use your video to capture leads by adding a sign up form.
  • Wistia’s Turnstile feature makes this easy. Bonus: It integrates with your AWeber account!
  • Using YouTube? You can link to your sign up form using cards.

3. It’s personal.

Key Takeaways:

  • Experiment with creating specific videos for different email segments.
  • Make an impact by addressing your customers directly.
  • Create content with your subscribers’ needs in mind.

4. It can boost your open rate.

Key Takeaways:

  • Using the word “video” in your subject line leads to a higher open rate.
  • Try using emojis to add some flair to your subject line.
  • Action words and phrases are also fun to experiment with.

5. Clear call-t0-actions, ftw!

Key Takeaways:

  • Make sure your call-to-action is clear and direct.
  • The play button can be a CTA in itself.
  • Keep things short and sweet.

6. These brands are the definition of #videogoals.

Key Takeaways:

  • If you’re not already on Wistia’s email list, sign up here.
  • Brands like Glossier and PureWow do a good job using video within their emails.
  • Look to companies like aescripts for product tutorial inspiration.

7. Avoid these rookie video marketing mistakes.

Key Takeaways:

  • Don’t be boring – your videos should be actionable and engaging!
  • Thumbnails are your first impression. Use them wisely!
  • Keep your video length to a minimum.

Coming Up

Next week’s #EmailChat topic is… content curation! Meet back up with us on Twitter next Thursday, March 10 at 12pm ET.

Follow us on Twitter for the latest and greatest from AWeber HQ.

How have you been using video and email? Or are you just getting started? Either way, leave us a comment to keep the conversation going!

 

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Thursday, March 3, 2016

5 Split Tests You Can Run Today to Write More Engaging Email Content

How can I make the best, most engaging email ever?

That’s a great question. To answer it, there are a few options.

You could send various versions of emails to your subscribers in the hopes that you’ll magically hit upon an email that performs better. But this doesn’t guarantee you’ll find a solution and it takes a lot of time.

Or you could search Google to see what other companies say is the secret to the best email. But, unfortunately, online research only tells you what worked for other email marketers’ audiences, not necessarily what will work for your audience.

Well then, how do you discover the secret to the best email ever? It’s actually easier than you’d think.

All you have to do is split test your emails.

Defining a Split Test

Split testing (or A/B testing) is a method by which you can scientifically test the effectiveness of your email marketing.

When split testing, you create two versions (called variants) of an email to determine which email performs better statistically. Once you find which email variant performs best, you can update your email strategy to include the winning email. This allows you to identify what emails engage your subscribers best, which can ultimately help you increase conversions and revenue.

Let’s take a closer look at how it works.

To set up a split test, you first create two different versions of an email. Then you send variant one to a percentage of your subscribers and variant two to an equal percentage of different subscribers. If one email has a higher open rate, click-through rate or conversion rate, you know that’s the email that your audience prefers.

For example, let’s say you’re a blogger, and you send an autoresponder email series to every new blog subscriber. But you notice the first email in your series has a low click-through rate, and you want to improve it. You hypothesize that the reason for the low click-through rate is the color of the call-to-action button, which is the color black.

To test your hypothesis, you create a variant of that email and change one thing: you switch the color of your button from black to green. You then send 50 percent of your list the email with the original black button (your variant one) and 50 percent the email with the new green button (your variant two).

After sending your emails and waiting a day or two, you go back and see that email two had a click-through rate of 26 percent, while email one had a 12 percent click-through rate. You determine that variant two is more effective and change the button in your email series from black to green.

splittestblogpostFor the split test example above, we sent variant one to 50 percent of our email list and variant two to the other 50 percent. However, this isn’t the only way to divide your list.

You could also send your split test to a subset of your list and send the winning email to the remainder of your list. For example, send variant one to 10 percent of your list, send variant two to another 10 percent, determine what email performs better and then send the winning email to the remaining 80 percent of your list.

And the best part of split testing? You can test and improve almost any element of any email, from CTA buttons to subject lines to font colors and sizes. And once you start split testing and begin seeing the positive results, you may find that you never want to stop.

5 Split Tests You Can Try Today to Improve Your Email Copy

Email content is one of the most important aspects of every email. While a good subject line can intrigue your subscriber and convince them to open your email, bad copy will chase them away faster than you can say, “I didn’t split test.”

Here are five email copy split tests you can try today to improve your email click-through rates and conversions:

1. Headline vs. no headline

Does having a bold and colorful headline at the top of your email content grab your subscribers’ attention and keep them reading?

To find out, try sending two emails: one with a standout headline and one without a headline.

For example, if you’re a fitness blogger, and you’re sending an email about the five stretches you recommend before a workout, you could run a split test with one email variant that has no headline and one email variant with a headline at the top of the email content that says, “5 Pre-workout Stretches to Prevent Injuries.”

2. Personal salutation vs. no salutation

Does your subscriber like to feel that their emails were written specifically for them? Run a split test to find out!

Try using their first name in the salutation of your email (for example, “Dear John,” “Hi John,” “How’s it going, John,” etc.) and see if you get a higher click-through rate.

Pro Tip: If you have an AWeber account, you can easily add a first name to your email subject line or content to personalize your messages.

3. Images vs. no images

Are your subscribers visual people that like images in their emails? Or do they find images distracting?

Images can actually enhance your email copy by improving readability and illustrating the points you are trying to convey, which makes your copy more compelling. Or they could distract your readers from your main message. Which is it for your subscribers?

Create a split test where one email variant has an image(s) and the other does not. Compare the results of your test and see whether your subscribers love email content with images or email content without images.

4. Long content vs. short content

Perhaps your subscribers are in a hurry and want short emails that get straight to the point. Or maybe they need a lot of information before they’re ready to make a decision.

Find out with a split test that compares two email copy variants: 1) a lengthy email that describes all the details of your offer, or 2) a short and easily digestible email that summarizes the same information.

5. P.S. vs. no P.S.

Many email marketers discover that including a P.S. at the end of their emails boosts their click-through rates because a subscriber may skim an email and only read the P.S.

To see if this is true of your subscribers, send your first email variant without a P.S. and your second email variant with a P.S. at the bottom of your content.

Split Testing Best Practices

Although you can test almost everything in your emails, there are rules you should follow to get the most accurate results from those tests. Here are some best practices to keep in mind:

1. Test one element at a time.

When split testing two emails, aim to test one variable (or change) at a time. If you have multiple variables in your two email variants, it’ll become difficult to identify which variable caused a positive or negative result.

For instance, let’s say you’re a blogger who writes about gardening, and you decide to split test an email’s subject line to improve your open rates. You want to find out if longer, descriptive subject lines or shorter, direct subject lines perform better. You also want to see if including a subscriber’s first name in your subject line will increase your open rate.

So you write two variant subject lines. Subject line one is “3 Ways to Stop Weeds from Growing Before They Start,” and subject line two is “John, Stop Weeds Today.” After looking over your analytics, you find that variant two performs better. Great!

But there’s a problem with your test. While neither of these subject lines are bad and these are good tests to run, you don’t know why variant two performed better. Was it because of the first name? Or was it because the subject line was short and direct?

To guarantee this confusion doesn’t happen, test one variable at a time.

2. Have a plan.

While you could test every element of all your emails, you probably don’t have time to do that. Instead, prioritize your tests. Run split tests for your most important and most frequently sent emails first and know what you want to fix about your emails before you run tests.

Create a split testing plan where you conduct one email split test a week or one email split test per month. Then stick to your plan.

3. Act on your results.

Split testing is pointless if you don’t implement what you learn. Keep records of the email split tests you’ve performed as well as the results of those tests.

Not only will this keep you accountable for implementing changes, it will allow you to look back on what did and didn’t work.

4. Keep split testing.

You are never done split testing. Why? Because even if you find something that may be true of your subscribers now (e.g., they like shorter subject lines), that may not be true three months or a year from now.

So test, test and keep testing because the more you refine your email strategy through split testing, the more you improve your emails – and your bottom line.

Start Split Testing

Now that you have a few tests to start with, you can begin improving your emails and your bottom line.

Want to learn even more about split testing? Like how to run split tests that will improve your subject lines, preview text, sign up forms, email design and much more?

Check out our free Minimalist Marketer’s Guide to Split Testing to learn everything you need to know to become a split testing master.

Minimalist Marketer's Guide to Split Testing

The post 5 Split Tests You Can Run Today to Write More Engaging Email Content appeared first on Email Marketing Tips.



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Using Backlinks to Gather New Email Subscribers

Using your links within your content as another custom designed way to spread your message and attract new subscribers.Related Articles
  1. Announcing the launch of new Benchmark Email!
  2. New Industry-Specific Email Templates
  3. New API Methods


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Wednesday, March 2, 2016

The Two Most Powerful Way to Think About Your Subscribers

As you roll into the next month, create an email marketing campaign strategy that caters to both new and existing subscribers.Related Articles
  1. A Sneaky Way to Build Your List and Educate Your Customers
  2. The Weekly Wrap: Lord of the Inland Empire
  3. The Importance of Segmenting & Testing Your Email Subscribers


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Take Your Website to the Next Level – Data [Infographic]

In our first two installments of Take Your Website to the Next Level, we talked about design and messaging. In this final post, we’re going to talk about what to do after you’ve designed a clean and captivating site, created engaging and useful content, and have been up and running for a period of time. Now it’s time to find out exactly how your website has been performing and make the decisions about what to do to improve it further.

If content is king, then data is queen. 

What do you know about the traffic on your website? Do you know which pages are visited most often? Do you know how frequently visitors are returning to your site and which CTAs (Calls-To-Action) are most effective? If you’re not currently monitoring your data, you’re missing out on important information about your website visitors. Tools like Google Analytics are easy to use and available for free so you can get started right away and make the most out of your web marketing.

Once you know how most of your customers are finding your business, the better you can sharpen the messaging the customer sees when they come to your website. Discovering which keywords most resonate with your customers can inform your content. If you find that certain pages or content aren’t working, then you can begin to make changes to improve your website performance.

If at first you don’t succeed, try again.

But, what changes should you be making? What do you focus on first? Is your new idea better than your last idea?

Before you start blindly rebuilding your website, try split testing various pages and elements. Create a radical variation on your homepage and call it “Homepage-A.” Create a second “Homepage-B” that is different than your current homepage, but with mild differences and updates. Using a tool like Optimizely will allow you to have the different versions of your homepage running concurrently. A third of your audience will see the new Homepage-A, a third will see Homepage-B, and the rest will be served your old page as a control. This will allow you to test how your new ideas stack up against each other, as well as how they stack up to what was already there.

Started from the bottom, now we’re here.

Once you’ve implemented analytics and A/B testing, and become a data-ninja, you can use your new skills and insights to maximize user traffic to your website. In the last section, we’ll talk about what you can do to increase a customer’s likelihood of finding you through search engines such as Google, Bing, Yahoo, Ask, etc.. 

SEO (Search Engine Optimization) is a giant ball of string. It’s complex and easy to get lost, but, there are some easy things you can do to unravel it in the right direction. You may even start seeing immediate improvements in your website’s performance.

Keywords – Keywords and phrases are information that search engines will specifically target. Let’s say you sell beaded jewelry. You have a website that shows your current stock. Someone looking for “beaded jewelry” may type words into a search engine, such as; beaded necklace, colorful earrings, fun bracelets, casual jewelry. Search engines will allow you to buy into certain keywords and in return, they rank you higher when these keywords are searched. Your initial goal may be to get in the top three pages, with the eventual goal of getting on the first page of a search term or keyword.

These keywords are words that you will want to pepper throughout your site in copy, meta-data, maybe in some headlines and page titles, and possibly even in some of your internal URLs.

If your business is ready for more advanced SEO, we highly encourage you to hire a professional. Deluxe SEO Services will direct customers to your website, get you front and center on search engines, and produce immediate results. Get started by telling them about your business.

© 2016, James Hummel. All rights reserved.

The post Take Your Website to the Next Level – Data [Infographic] appeared first on Vertical Response Blog.

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Tuesday, March 1, 2016

Vote For What You Want To See Benchmark Email Cover at SXSWi

I really had a blast live blogging MarketingSherpa Summit and sharing that wealth of information with all of you. That’s why I’m heading to SXSWi.

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[Podcast] Episode 011: How do I grow my subscribers with social media?

Growing your list is crucial to scaling your business or brand. On this episode of Ask Me About Email Marketing, I interview Amy Schmittauer from SavvySexySocial.com to learn how she managed to grow her list of email subscribers by tapping into her 2.3 million views on YouTube.

Amy shares her social and email marketing expertise, letting us know how to form lasting relationships through the inbox.

In this episode, you’ll learn:

  • The importance of clarity, and the value of simply asking
  • How to use specific YouTube tools to help drive traffic back to your site
  • How contextual lead magnets can captivate a casual audience
  • How to optimize content from your archive for list building
  • A few emerging social media networks to keep an eye on

The future of email is simply more personality. - @savvysexysocial
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Listen to this episode below:

Here are a few links referenced in the show:

Ready to ask a question? Visit aweber.com/podcast to drop us a line!

The post [Podcast] Episode 011: How do I grow my subscribers with social media? appeared first on Email Marketing Tips.



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