MindComet

Google’s Subject Line Tools

Google has two tools available that can help email marketers compose relevant Subject Lines and it’s been right under our noses for some time. Google’s Wonder Wheel and Adwords Keyword Tool, when used in conjunction with one another, can potentially increase open rates. The idea is to take what people are clicking on on the web and transplant it into your subject line to increase open rates.

Christopher Penn at Blue Sky Factory developed this method and goes into more detail on their blog here. It’s a smart idea and definitely worth trying for yourself. I, for one, will be utilizing this method very much in the future.

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Posted by Bryan Quilty on Feb. 09, 2010

Do you have a checklist?

Well, if you don’t, then you should. It’s 2010, people. Get into the habit of including a variety of things into every single email you manage. I’ve detailed my own list or “musts” for any email marketing send. Feel free to comment below and add your own!

Social Media / Network links
For any corporation in this new decade, promoting your business with Twitter and Facebook should be standard operating procedure. There should always be a number of various social media links within your emails to extend your brand’s reach.

If you have a small business and you’re just diving into the email marketing realm, make sure you use an ESP that can track your social media links specifically. Reporting and analytics are paramount to running successful campaigns online, so using a service that offers reports on email stats, as well as social media stats is cruical; I could not stress this enough.

Forward to a Friend
ALWAYS always always include a forward to a friend link or button within your email. Any ESP worth using should have a means to track how many times your email was forwarded through the system. The stats should be able to report who your key influencers are as well as how many new subscribers you have collected from your email. It takes little to no effort to incorporate FTF links in your emails, so stop stallin’.

Navigation
If you’re sending a monthly newsletter, for example, make sure your site’s navigation is reflected in your email. If someone’s signed up for your site, chances are they love your brand and visit your site somewhat regularly. The wireframe for the email should reflect the site’s design.

Preheader
The preheader should always consist of at least two things: a whitelist request and a view online link. A whitelist request asks the user to add your from email address to their contact list to make sure they will receive your emails. Easy enough. In addition to the whitelist request, you should also include a link to both an HTML version or a mobile or text version. Again, any ESP worth using should provide you the tools to do this with ease.

The preheader is so important to maximizing your reach and effort with email. If a recipient is blocking all incoming emails’ images, then the preheader is likely to be the only thing they’ll see. It’s the first thing any user sees, so it’s an undeniably important area of your email’s real estate.

Physical Address
In 2008, new CAN-SPAM rules were added to the original act of ‘03. One of the most notable additions has to be the mandatory inclusion of the sender’s physical address. If you don’t have your address present in the email and for some reason you get blacklisted from Spam complaints, you could get nicked and fined quite a bit of money. Save yourself the headache and add your physical address at the footer of the email.

Preference Update
And last but not least is the inclusion of a preferences link. This is hugely important if you want to retain users who initially want to opt out. If they’re receiving too many emails from you, and they see that they can limit getting sends to once a week, they’re more likely to choose that option than completely opting out. I reported on this a few months ago and I’m a big believer in this tactic.

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Posted by Bryan Quilty on Jan. 25, 2010

SpamAssassin Bug For 2010

If you use SpamAssassin or any tool using SpamAssassin’s back-end to check your emails before you hit the “send” button, (which you should) you may have seen higher-than-usual bounce rates recently. This was due to a bug in their code, designed to catch spam that is dated in the “future”. Well, 2010 is the future and it is here, folks.

You can find more information on the “FH_DATE_PAST_20XX” rule causing the issue here.

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Posted by Bryan Quilty on Jan. 04, 2010

Mother London Turns Spam On It’s Head

What happens when an ad agency sends out a seemingly spammy email claiming to give away $10,000 to hundreds of people? Watch below and find out.

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Posted by Bryan Quilty on Dec. 23, 2009

Must Subscribe: Crate & Barrel

This email knows who it’s talking to.

I visited a Crate & Barrel over the weekend and purchased a cocktail shaker for a friend for Christmas. Three days later, this wonderfully designed email dropped into my inbox, beckoning me to buy more. And what an email it is!

I’m not yet sure what it is about the email—whether it’s the cool blue color or the block formation of their products displayed—but I must have stared at it for a good three minutes (which is near-record time for me). It also may have something to do with the fact that this does NOT scream CHRISTMAS!!! at me, unlike the majority of the email landing in my inbox these days. I’m becoming numb to it all at this point.

This is undoubtedly a holiday-related email, but it has a sense of solidarity to it. It’s unique. It’s not leaning on any predictable holiday colors or icons like snow or trees. If anything, it’s more suitable for a New Years campaign than Christmas.

If you haven’t signed up to receive Crate & Barrel or CB2 emails, do yourself a favor and do so here and here, respectively. Their emails are always solid and classy and always offering good deals. And lets face it, they blow IKEA out of the water.

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Posted by Bryan Quilty on Dec. 16, 2009

2010 Marketing Budgets Increase Spending on Email Marketing and Social Media

We’re going to see a lot more focus put on Email & Social Media marketing in the new year. According to a study conducted by StrongMail, marketing budgets are increasing the most for email and social media in 2010. This is in-line with the continuing success and popularity of the two channels.

The integrating of the two is priority number one for most, right after improving performance and growing their opt-in lists and followers for email and social media, respectively.

27% of respondents claimed to already have a strategy in place, while 24% were still in the planning phase. 18% of executives who want to implement email and social media into their business plan, but don’t know where / how to begin.

The opportunities are bountiful for professionals in the email and social media game. If these predictions prove to be accurate, 2010 will be a stellar year.

Find out more at emarketer.com.

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Posted by Bryan Quilty on Dec. 10, 2009

My Best Practices: Coding

Here are a few methods and rules I abide by every time I code an email. Some of them are a bit lengthier than others, but all are useful to me when it comes to coding emails.

Much like web browsers and web sites, mail clients and emails are VERY specific with how they interpret and display code. Your code must abide by certain rules. We are at the email clients’ mercy.

Tools:
Emails are constrained to utilizing HTML, not CSS to layout their designs. Try to avoid using Dreamweaver or any other code generating app. Doing this will certainly cause your email to break in numerous email clients once you start testing (DW adds gratuitous code). If you don’t know already, learn simple HTML and learn how to code “by hand”. Use a simple text-editor such as TextMate.

Structure:
As a rule of thumb, always declare a specific width for every table and table cell. By not doing this, it will cause your message to display in a wacky fashion with specific email clients (shame on you, Outlook ‘07).

You don’t have to always include a height attribute for each row, but it doesn’t hurt. Also, make sure all cells in your row add up to the total width of your table.

Instead of utilizing colspan and rowspan, embed tables within tables… this will allow for a more flexible coding structure. It will also be easier to maintain with potential changes to your design, as well. If you feel like you will lose track of where you are with your code, use comments to tag different section of your email.

See the screenshot below for collapsed code from an email I coded:

Images:
Every image should have a few things:
a) its own table cell (in most cases)
b) width and height attributes declared
c) supporting alt text which describes the image or any text that may be embedded within it.

Backgrounds:
If you have to use a background image for your table or table cell, also declare a similar background color that matches the image as closely as possible. This is a good habit to get into since Outlook ‘07 doesn’t display background images. With a background color similar to your image in place, it appears less-broken in Outlook ‘07.

Text Styling:
Every link and block of text should have all of its attributes declared in-line.
With CSS, you can state your text / link styles in the header and have it applied to all IDs and classes below, but since we’re dealing with email we have to specify the style within the body of the email. To do this, wrap a span tag around a regular block of text. Like so:

The same applies for links, with an anchor tag instead of a span tag.

If you do all of these things from the get-go, testing will go so much more smoothly. I guarantee it.

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Posted by Bryan Quilty on Dec. 07, 2009