SmartInsights tool review: Touchstone

Rumour has it that the next Indiana Jones film will see our favourite archeologist searching for the greatest undiscovered treasure of modern times: the perfect subject line. In the meantime, we're left looking for guidance on how to improve subject line performance by using the "right" words. Do we say "free" or "no cost"? "Summer" or "Summertime"? "Deal" or "Offer"? Any tool that helps us consistently pick out the best words or phrasing would, of course, have two huge advantages: The benefits go straight to your bottom line: subject lines have a big influence on opens, clicks and other success metrics. You can skip a lot of A/B subject line testing: A/B tests are not always easy to do right (and can give misleading results if done wrong). Unfortunately, the tools or reports offering advice on subject line wording tend to suffer from two critical flaws. First, they commonly base recommendations on a review of past subject lines and the…

Examples and techniques for integrating video with your email marketing

It doesn’t take a scientist or even a marketing expert to know that most people check their emails every day. Your friends, your coworkers, your mom, your grandmother, her grandmother. Email is used by virtually everyone regardless of age or any other demographic you can think of.

Email marketing is critical to your brand’s success and is still the best way to engage your audience and keep customers coming back. According to eMarketer, one of the top benefits of email marketing is that it yields a wealth of data about who a company’s best customers are.

Marketers can target those people and offer incentives or discounts to encourage them to share with their friends and advocate on behalf of the brand. Add video to your email marketing campaigns and you have an inexpensive, visually appealing and adaptable marketing medium for…

Is the linking, embedding or animated GIF technique best given recent email client enhancements?

You can embed video in emails. But just because you can, does it mean you should?

For a long time the possibility of playing video directly within an email had such limited support it wasn’t an option worth considering. The classic approach has become to include a still image of the video and a play button, which when clicked takes you to a landing page. The video doesn’t play inside the email.

Smartphones and in particular iOS supports video within the native email client using standard HTML5. This plus the fact that 50% of all emails are read on mobile devices means the question of whether to use embedded video or just link to video from the email is once again relevant to…

Gmail Promotions Tab Grid View: The Lowdown

Brace yourself, email marketers, Aaron Rothman, Product Manager at Google, recently announced some more major news on the Gmail blog which follows on from Gmail's move to default image display. The announcement explains that Google is testing a new feature for its email service, making the promotional tab more visual. With one click users can switch to a grid view and can see the pictures used in promotional newsletters straight away. You can see the visual impact from this mockup from Google (click for animation):

The thought behind this and what excites us most is that this will make it easy for Gmail subscribers to quickly scan through their promotional messages and find the ones that look interesting. And why do they look interesting? Because the content is engaging.…

Creating Email CTAs with Impact with Tim Watson

In this video, regular contributor Tim shows that too many email campaigns contain calls-to-action (CTAs) which focus on what to do, rather than the reason to click. This 99 second video shows how to improve email CTAs via top tips, examples and a simple formula on how to avoid mistakes, thinking about CTAs as mini value propositions. // // To get more tips on email best practices, read Tim's Zettasphere blog, sign-up for his email or check out the Smart Insights online copywriting course. …

Practical ideas to test in the often neglected preheader

The small kid with glasses that gets picked last for the football team? That was me. And that's the email preheader, too... At least that's what it often feels like: it's there to tick the box on the "what goes in an email?" checklist, but it doesn't get much copywriting love. In case you're wondering, the preheader is the line or two of text, usually in a smaller font, right up the top of an email. Here's the preheader at the top of a National Express mail: It's one of the elements I cover in the email module of the Smart Insights online copywriting course, and its potential value stems from two plausible marketing roles. First, while an inbox display typically focuses on the from name and subject line of each email, it may also include the first…

Making your emails more relevant by appealing to different reader personalities

In Part 1 we introduced using Personas for Email marketing based upon motivation, in Part 2 I'm going to review the 4 main different personality traits that are common to everyone and show how to apply them to email creative. Aristotle was one of the first to identify them and named them: Melancholic, Phlegmatic, Choleric and Sanguine, however we will be using more descriptive names for these personalities in this post. By leveraging both personas and personalities, you not only know where to place content, images and set tasks but also know how to speak to them (TOV), what offers to deliver and help them to accomplish their task the way they feel comfortable doing so – thus enabling higher and potentially quicker, conversions. (Image courtesy of Henk Wijnholds) Based on the well-known…

Using staff email signatures to communicate your brand messages - a case study of British Red Cross

My journey with staff Email Media started 3 years ago when I rocked up to start a new job and had a loooooong list of induction meetings, one being with my Email Media Account Manager Tamsin. Now I will admit something here, I like to think that I have a good understanding of email marketing, transactional email, and trigger emails, but I was feeling slightly red-faced that I didn’t know much about what you could do with your employee emails.

Email Media is simply a technology that links up with your employee email system such as Outlook, google apps or lotus notes etc., it adds dynamic (and trackable) footers and headers to all employee emails which supports the brand and your business objectives.

In my role at the time I used Email media to support revenue,…

6 simple techniques to build business relationships through email marketing

Even though email marketing continues to be a core business-to-business (B2B) communication for sales and marketing teams, the market continues to grow from a solely email marketing approach to that of integrated marketing communication.

Rather than using email as a means in which to provide one-way communication the goal is provide marketers with the ability to track, build relationships and manage digital campaigns whilst monitoring a flow of leads - known as Marketing Automation.

Successful marketing automation campaigns consist of three core elements: 1. Email marketing 2. Lead generation 3. An effective marketing database. In this article we're going to look at some basic techniques to build B2B relationships through email. Join our free B2B Email marketing webcast for more details and examples. …

Video in Email: benefits, myths and best practices

This infographic from Email Monks and Email on Acid showcases some interesting stats on video email. It may surprise you that HTML5 Video is now supported by 58% of email clients. Our new infographic also reviews some of the myths of using video in email marketing and summarises some best practices. Some of the many business advantages of using video in your email campaign are: Stand out from the crowd: Using video in email gives you the first mover advantage and helps you stand out from the competition. Increased ROI: Research has shown that video email receives a better response in terms of open rates and very high click-through rates compared to traditional emails. Better Branding: Using video email leads to increased website traffic, increased conversion rate, brand awareness, and more referrals in turn. Matches Human Touch: Videos…