The Shocking Truth About Welcome Letters

The most important email you’ll ever send hasn’t changed, it’s still the Welcome Letter. Whether you are offering a service, selling retail or running a nonprofit organization, the goals are all the same. Increase the customer, client or member base and keep them happy and interested.

You want to increase that number with people who ideally are invested in your business, service or cause. To keep these folks invested, it seems one would have to take time to cultivate and maintain their interest, even after they hired you, purchased that dress or donated their time and money. It’s worth the time and effort to do this because happy, invested folks act as your agents, speak about you to their friends and family, which will ultimately grow your list.

Unfortunately, few businesses and organizations take the time to develop a relationship with their new list member right after the new subscriber purchases, hires or donates. What the business should do, and I have written about this before, is welcome those folks with open arms, or in the digital sense, with a personalized inspirational Welcome Letter.

Saying Welcome to your new list member and telling them what they can expect from future emails, may not be enough. You want to grow this relationship, so start by telling them that you really appreciate their interest and list subscription. Make them excited that they joined so they look forward to your next correspondence.

The Basics: There are three reasons to send a Welcome Letter:

Acknowledge their new membership
To thank your new member for joining
Set their future expectations by explaining the purpose of your email list

How the Welcome Letter is executed is just as important as sending the Welcome Letter. Make them feel comfortable with their decision by writing a Welcome Letter with positive attitude and language and give them:

A genuine warm, heartfelt Thank You and what they could look forward to
The reason that they made a great decision and why
Details on their purchase or contribution
Useful information and features of interest

The Welcome Letter

Decisions, decisions: which email format will be well received by your new subscriber? Is Mobile or Html the way to go, or should you considering emailing in plain text, which can be perceived as being more friendly and personable to some recipients. To decide on the format, consider this:

Are you trying to build familiarly with your brand or are you communicating on a personal level with a new list member who joined to support your charity? Where a colorful HTML email that would work in one situation may not work in another. Whatever you decide to use, allow your subscriber to express their preferences, with a link to their profile page.
Consider using a person’s name in the From Address. Which, do you think, looks more personable; receiving an email from ZYDcharity@lists.com or Judy@zydcharity.org.
Do you under-use the word you? Your newsletter is for them, not you. So take “you” out of the equation and write to them. Limit the use of the word, “I”, or remove it altogether from your message.
Your Welcome Letter is not a novel. You probably have a lot to say, but most people do not want to invest a lot of time reading one message. Keep it short, simple and get to the point. Add website and social links to your letter: your recipient may want to know where else they can find you.

The most important email you send, your Welcome Letter, should be designed to Welcome your new recipient to your company/organization. A Welcome letter, genuine and sincere can eliminate buyer’s remorse and sets the stage for a long term relationship. You can read about my other suggestions for a Welcome Letter here. And if you want a sample, join our mailing list.

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4 E-mail Marketing Mistakes You Don’t Know Your Making

Quick Tips / Pat

4 E-mail Marketing Mistakes You Don’t Know Your Making

There are Email Marketers who seem to get better results than the rest of their peers. They know what to avoid and what their subscribers like and dislike. By sending emails that comply with the known best email practices they continue to get the responses every e-mail marketer hopes for.

Here are 4 ways to capitalize on their knowledge:

When someone signs up to receive your email, email them right away (besides your welcome letter); they expect it. If your campaigns go out that day, make sure your new subscriber is on that list.
Begin your messages with your intended offer. Don’t drag on and on until the very end.
Do not ask personal questions beyond a name and email address when someone first signs up to your newsletter, leave that option open with a link to a profile page: when they are ready they will fill it out.
Do not tell them what to do, at least not several times. Remind them to whitelist your address once, then leave that reminder in the footer.

“Your tech support was awesome.”
Luci, Foot and Ankle Association

– See more at: https://mailinglistservices.com/testimonials/

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not By Invitation Only – Because You Can Never Have Enough Subscribers.

Discussion Lists / Pat

not By Invitation Only – Because You Can Never Have Enough Subscribers.

Even with the many different social tools available, email is still the number one choice for online communications. Email becomes a more valuable tool when this communication is between smaller groups, like committees and project planning teams. These groups typically include individuals that are interested, not only in the main subject but also in specific issues that support it. One such organization that has found email discussion lists an essential tool for planning events is the Old Mill Museum located in Dundee Michigan

The Old Mill Museum, a nonprofit organization, hosts various events throughout the year to support the historic Henry Ford Old Mill Museum. To organize these events, such as the upcoming Para-fest, Old Mill Museum committee members rely on email discussion lists to organize and plan this event. They have searchable archives from the previous years to research, they know who needs to do what and when, and all the while list members are updated on the progress of each committee, who utilize a smaller “committee” discussion list to organize their piece of the affair. Additionally, they use their Old Mill opted-in announcement mailing list to invite the segment of subscribers interested in this event, easily selling advanced tickets and emailing discount coupons.

Why does the Old Mill use discussion lists, why not forums, which are more popular and usually free. They do so because of all the items mention in Is Your Discussion List On All The Popular Search Engines? (AND) the Old Mill Museum mailing lists are used by the Staff, volunteers and as a vehicle to send announcements to interested parties. Plus, there is privacy. The main discussion list, intended for official Mill communication, is a totally private moderated list. Their opted-in announcement list is open membership, because one can never have enough subscribers..

Organizations such as The Old Mill Museum, prefer communicating using discussion lists over forums for some of the following reasons:

A list member can effectively filter incoming email to go directly into a labeled folder, making email more of a manageable communication tool than its forum competitor
List members do not need to have several different accounts if they are interested in different subjects, or if they are on different committees in the same organization. They just need to send an email to join or can be added by a list administrator. Forums require a user to create an account and password, and to use that information each time they visit.
A list administrator can add and/or remove a list member when needed, or the member can unsubscribe themselves. Forums on the other hand, normally don’t readily support this behavior.
Different discussions within the same mailing list can be split into various parts to cover different issues. The list member can choose to read and answer an email by topic. Forum members have to log into their Forum website and look for the discussions they are part of.
Every member on the mailing list receives the conversation (they only have to choose to read it, answer it, file it, or discard it). Forum members need to remember to visit the web forum during the week to participate.
Mailing lists are flexible. Members can select the web browser of their choice, receive list email directly delivered to their inbox or log into a web interface to access the list.
In additions Discussion Lists do not demand a great investment in time. They are pretty straight forward and run on, for the most part universal commands. Forums utilize a different type of software platforms; commands are not universal from one forum to the next.
Then there’s SPAM. Forums are a more lucrative target for spammers than discussion lists because the spammer can add links to the forum site, which when picked up by search engines are indexed and listed. This can really screw up your SEO if that’s what you were going for.

Discussion lists really don’t have the same type and level of SPAM issues that forums have. Members are opted-in, unless you subscribe a spammer to your list, SPAM is not a normally a problem.

And one of the most important features the Old Mill Museum enjoys while using Discussion and Announcement Lists hosted by Dundee Internet; their mailing list leaves the control to its users, while a forum locks their members in with the restricted features it provides,

If you would like to explore the advantages of having your own, private, moderated (or nonmoderated) discussion list just click on this link, fill out the form and we will set up a no obligation demo list for you. Test it, evaluate it, use it. You’ll find its easy and your list members will love it.

not By Invitation Only – Because You Can Never Have Enough Subscribers. Read More »

Open This Email

Email Marketing / Pat

Open This Email

According to most sources on the internet, in 2015 Email Marketing continues to be on the rise, while during that same time period. email deliverability declined. This observation came from several online marketing authorities, including Return Path who published their findings in the Deliverability Benchmark Report for 2015. Return Path writes in part “deliverability rates fell to 79 percent, down from 83 percent in 2014. The news was even worse for U.S. email marketers: overall deliverability fell from 83 percent in 2014 to 76 percent in 2015.”

Did you see a decline in your deliverability rates? And just to make sure we’re on the same page, the deliverability rate is one way to measure the success of an email campaign, in other words did your email campaign actually delver those sent emails to your subscriber? How would you know?

Email deliverability does not mean the inbox, it means the email sent is delivered, whether it lands in the inbox or your recipient’s junk or spam folder. As long as it got to the designated email address it’s counted as a positive delivery.

Conversely email that cannot be delivered, usually caused by the lack of a viable destination email address is normally termed undeliverable email.

Keep that undeliverable number down with consistent list hygiene such as:

Integrity checking. Are email addresses in the right @ format, do they end with a .com, .net, .org or other domain. Do you have role address, such as president, info or sales instead of a destination person like websplat@gmail.com.
Upfront vetting and common sense. Was there typos when the email address was entered, so that email address for that recipient just doesn’t exist, perhaps the user did enter the right email address then switched accounts or left the company. Maybe their email box was full and not accepting email. *
Automatic bounce handling, which should be part of your ESP offering. Without it you must, on a regular basis, remove bad addresses from your list. (Dundee’a email platform handles all error mail, including bounces (transient and permanent failures)
Questioning. Was your ESP having connection issues, black list issues or other technical difficulties?

Email deliverability, of course, will affect your open rate percentage.

Open Rate =
email open/email sent- bounces

Here too the percentage of open rates, like many other statistics, is not an exact science. It’s not 100% accurate.

When you send text only email, if opened and read, your email hosting provider does not record this action. For some ESPs, when someone reads your html message in their preview window, i.e. Outlook, unless the recipient downloads the image(s), that email cannot be recorded as an open. I’ve also read that some mobile devices don’t report opened messages properly.

Opens can be recorded differently. For example, Dundee Internet ListManager email hosting platform defines opens as the number of unique recipients who opened the message using an email client which can read HTML. If a recipient opened the message in two different clients, or with a client and a web browser, only one open will be registered. Tracking statistics will show how many people opened a particular message, clicked on a tracking link or who has gone from one of the mailings you sent to other pages on your website.

Open rates may be more important than deliverability, but of course you can’t have one without the other. Higher open rates indicate that your email marketing efforts are working. Even if deliverability rates are on a downward trend your opens are important and if they are higher you’re doing something right.

I welcome your comments.

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5 Reasons Why Your Purchased List Might Suck More Than You Think

Quick Tips / Pat

5 Reasons Why Your Purchased List Might Suck More Than You Think

You may end up paying for duplicate services, as one ESP may not just be enough to get the results you want or expected. And then when you do get duplicate services the results still suck.
Buying several domains to send from can be expensive.
Switching IP addresses and staring all over again will not guarantee a good delivery rate.
Does a purchased list fit into my marketing plan?
Spending money on a list hygiene company will not take a purchased bad list and magically create a purchased good list.
The majority of your emails will either be blocked or sent to the SPAM Box

I’ve read blogs that support the practice of purchasing email marketing lists from reputable list brokers. Granted these blogs are written by someone in the “said “company who is in the business of selling lists. Their logic is good, but the results aren’t, as these legitimate “lists” normally guarantee a 3% or at most a 5% open rate. (And that’s out of thousands of email addresses.) Purchasing an email list, probably will increase your site traffic a bit, but only you can decide if the cost is worth it.

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easy steps to keep list churn down So Pay Retention!

Internet Marketing / Pat

easy steps to keep list churn down So Pay Retention!

You worked for hours to create the best offer ever, it’s so good, so compelling, you even impressed yourself. Who knew you were so creative to come up with a “call to action” that most people would have a difficult time saying no to. You’re anxious to see the results of this offer and can’t wait to get it into the hands of your customers. The vehicle you use to do this, email. Unfortunately, you will not get the response this ad piece deserves because your mailing list is not quite up to par. In fact, it probably takes less effort to build an effective” opted-in” list than it takes to create a great offer, so let’s review how easy it is to maintain and continue to build an effective opt-in email list so you can concentrate on creating great offers.

First there is list building,

Successful list building requires a combination of on-going subscriber retention and new subscriber acquisition. Two different actions that work together toward the same goal. First, realize there is no typical size for an opted-in email list. Member size is attributed to many factors including:

Size of the company
Is there an established email marketing strategy
What are your email marketing expertiseRetention
In house control or using and ESP
How addresses are collected and as you can imagine there’s so much more.

Regardless of the size, the common goal for all list owners: keep list churn down and retention up. It’s not unheard of to lose 30% of your opted-in list to churn, and if you are not successful adding new list subscribers regularly, well there goes your ROI

Retention is simply

(try) Maintaining the same level of subscribers each month.
Keeping list churn low.
Adding new opt-in subscribers

With minimal effort retention is easy if you avoid working against it. Do not add uninterested subscribers to your list. Instead set up automatic subscriber tools. You can set up a single opted-in form on your website for your potential list members. Before they are added to your list the form requires an action on the part of the potential subscriber; normally entering their name and email address and then click on a “Subscriber” check box. This will leave you with a subscriber who is interested and engaged in your future email.

Even better is the confirmed subscription or closed-loop opt-in (also known as double opted-in) options, this follows the same process as the single opted-in method, except, a confirmation email is sent to the subscribers before they are added to your list. The new list member must verify they want to join your list by confirming their membership.

Between the two methods mentioned, closed-loop opt-in has always been considered one of email marketing’s best practices. Both single and closed-loop opt-in programs are designed to provide automatic list growth and email address verification which in turn, gives positive support to your good sender reputation. .

Retention centers on, not only best email practices, but also on high-quality, relevant content. Keep your list churn down by keeping content engaging and special. Go that extra step for your readers, so for example, what they receive from you, cannot be easily obtained from other sources. (i.e. your store offers a 20% discount to walk-ins, you present your list subscribers with a 30% discount coupon)

Engaging emails are good, but make those special emails great with segments. The use of segments is by far, is one of the best email tools available. Segments allow the email marketer to target specific groups or people with relevant content that directly address their needs, wants and interests.

As you target those specific groups of people do not stray from the value you originally promised your list subscribers. When someone signed up for your weekly “tips and hints on dog grooming”, make sure you deliver a newsletter every week, with “tips and hints on dog grooming.” Moreover, to keep that list churn down and your retention numbers up: Email communications should be consistent.

Don’t make the mistake of taking time off or mail sporadically
With each mailing, use the same format and logo*
Keep the same FROM address on each marketing piece
Send fresh content, to keep your audiences interest.
*From time to time revise your presentation, graphics for example
Analyze your current email campaign results and use that data to streamline your next campaign

And, to keep your campaigns going and growing, utilize all opportunities to add new subscribers to your lists, opportunities that are both off and online

Landing pages, should always include an opportunity to join your list, especially for those folks referred to that page by a friend
Confirmation pages, whether sent in response to a white paper download or a sales receipt, provide a way for the recipients to subscribe to receive future communications from you
Website, using analytics, place opted-in opportunities on the pages with the most traffic
Include an opted-in offer to join your list on all your social networking pages. Include them with your mobile marketing efforts too
In house employees, train each and every one to offer a customer or potential customer the opportunity to sign up to your company newsletter
All printed materials, from yellow pages (are they used?) to brochures, fliers, sales receipts and coupons, include a url to login and signup for your newsletter

There are other methods for list building, depending on how it’s done, who you do it with and how well it’s received. These include;:

List rental (not always recommended)
Guaranteed lead programs
Paid search engine marketing
List bartering

By implementing some of these methods your company will (economically) build a concrete subscriber list that has become so critical for email marketing success.

Questions? Feel free to comment below.

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12 Secrets of Email Marketing You Need to Use

Announcement Lists / Pat

12 Secrets of Email Marketing You Need to Use

Have you noticed the volume of monthly emails you receive from your favorite retailer have increased significantly just after Halloween? As retailers step up their game in anticipation of Holiday sales, their one email a week/month has turned into two or three.

Internet statistics support this growth worldwide, reporting that early season marketing emails have increased over 70% compared to last year. So far, open rates remain fairly stable indicating subscribers of all types of retail newsletters continue to accept this increase with open arms.

If you’re in the retail email marketing race because the majority of your sales occur in November and December you’re not alone. There’s plenty of competition and the email marketers who captures the subscribers eye and wallet, wins.

So, how do you stand out?? Let me show you how. . .

Holiday emails are not equal, and timing is everything. Start your campaigns at the beginning of the Holidays, right before Halloween. At this stage your you’re looking to attract and maintain interest for future sales and want to keep the momentum going. Expect a decline in open rates on certain days; Thanksgiving, Black Friday, Cyber Monday. Compare your data from last year’s Holiday’s email campaigns to make intelligent marketing decisions. Was you emails better received on Black Friday, or were your subscribers occupied with mass shopping and early in-store deals?

You’ve heard it before, segment your list. You will get better open rates, click-throughs and referrals. A focused message sent to a targeted group within your list, is the most powerful email tactic available to you. Using segmentation you can target your non-active subscribers, the ones, for example who purchased once during the year, to those subscribers who purchased bathing suits for their winter vacations last week. Segmenting your list is a great way to market: mailing personalized segments with triggered mailings, you can’t go wrong.
Do your emails yell “this is urgent, do this now?” Create emails that have a sale deadlines, offers that expire, coupons that are only valid with an in-store purchase or free shipping if they buy now. Use call-to-actions that require your subscriber to visit your landing page to fill out a form to receive a coupon or a free in store consultation.

Friend- a- tize your messages. Create offers for your customers that are easy to get. You might offer free gift wrapping – include a check box to select the color, a box of candy- ask if they want that to ship to a different address, or recommend a complementary product to go along with the one they just purchased, add a link to the wallet that matches the purse they selected, with a simple checkout- out method for all.

Always send a confirmation when someone buys; use please and thank you for best results. Explain your return polices in your confirmation letter so you know they read them.

Keep up with technology. You read marketing emails on your mobile device, why would your customers be any different? Use the right template for the right campaign, and if you’re not a designer, contact Dundee, we have the template you need.

Encourage your list members to share their good deal with their friends on social media. Add social media sharing icons in your message, make it easy for them to pass on your coupons and share your in-store sales with others.

Keep in mind the Internet could make your company a world-wide retailer. State your international policies online, preferably on the landing page associated with your email campaign. If you don’t ship overseas or rather not deal with our bordering neighbors, say so.

Just because your call-to-action ended your sale on bathtubs on December 15, it’s no reason to stop sending your marketing campaigns on December 15. Make sure some of your offers cover January too. Remember, shoppers never stop shopping until that last return has been exchanged, upgraded or refunded and most of that takes place in January. Have offers ready and keep those campaigns coming for those post-Christmas sales. Dundee allows you to create triggered emails so you can send a follow up offer to a purchase on your time table.

And what about gift cards? Offer a 5% – 10% discount on an after Christmas gift card purchase. Don’t let those cards expire as they represent not only a purchase, but an opportunity to up-sell with complementary items.

Suggest to the savvy shopper that they deserve a gift too. When you have those special personal items on sale, target those readers who fit into that segment. Target your female members with offers especially for them, perfume, jewelry, hot cocoa. Whatever you sell, sell it to your list members.

It’s never too late to start a Holiday Campaign: everyone likes something fresh and new. If you missed the October rush, don’t disappear, you have several weeks to catch up.

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Is this Puppy REALLY from the IRS ? … that’s what his credentials say.

Blog / Janet

Is this Puppy REALLY from the IRS ? … that’s what his credentials say.

The Dundee Internet Mailing list servers work exclusively with email. You can personalize your messages by including the list members name along with their email address and use other profile information as needed but the mail is delivered using an email address.

Email addresses are normally the basis for online communication, used by almost everyone, everywhere. They are prolific by nature but also disposable, forgotten and changed, inviting fraud and can be vulnerable to attack by unscrupulous individuals.

To keep your list of addresses safe Dundee Internet Services, Inc., takes all the maximum measures we can to assure the security of each and every email address in each and every list we host on our servers. Nevertheless email addresses travel outside the realm of our servers as email is a tool that your customers, including yourself probably use every day.

Email therefore is indispensable, especially to the digital marketer. This type of marketing has a positive impact on your business when you have a clean list with opted-in list members; becoming the core of your marketing plans and a primary sources of revenue for your company. However this type of marketing as with so many email based programs is subject to email fraud, which when successful may have a negative impact on your business.

Depending on how the fraud is perpetuated email fraud can destroy your email marketing programs, with lies and pretense resulting in loss customers as they lose trust in your company, service or product.

Email fraud can be caused by:

1. Spoofing
2. Phishing
3. SPAM

Spoof email has the appearance of coming from someone when in fact the addresses are forged and the email is actually coming from someone else. It only takes a little know how to discover As-Seen-on-ABC@beatmake.win is sent from someone in the Czech Republic and not ABC television. Spoofed email comes in with bad intentions; from illegitimate marketers to virus borne attachments using a disguised sending identity to get into an inbox.

Customers who receive spoofed email, if they believe it’s from (for example) a company they do business with, will normally trust the message, open it and click on the embedded links and maybe download a virus. – There goes their trust in future emails from that company.

And if your company address is compromised and used to Spoof emails, you might witness an influx of bounce back emails coupled with a low percentage of open rates. Maybe your email address will not be used to spread a virus, but instead, used to send SPAM in your name, resulting in customer unsubscribes.

Phishing: An effort to procure sensitive data and credentials for malicious reasons. Such data can include passwords, bank account number, credit card logins, social security numbers and so forth.

Phishing is usually accomplished by spoofing an email from a source that would need or have access to sensitive information. These type of emails can be crafted in such a way that there’s little or no doubt it’s really from your bank, IRS or favorite retail store.

The Phisher will usually spoof the From Field by changing the display name to one they want you to believe (IRSrefund) and use a legitimate company domain (@irs.gov)
The Subject may be enticing. “Mr.Jones we owe you a back tax refund”
The letter may include legitimate looking logos.
The body of the letter may include a links to a landing page that will ask you to verify your information: social security number, date of birth, mailing address.
There may also be attachments which contain malicious content.

SPAM as we all know is a relative of the junk mail your parents received in the home mail box, however modern day spam is more widespread, costly, time consuming and can be computer deadly (Affect your computer with a bad virus).

Some SPAM are attempts at Phishing, others lead the recipient to websites containing malicious software, some have attachments with viruses and others just want to sell you another hose.

How do SPAMMERS get email addresses?

They buy them
Trade lists with other SPAMMERS
Harvest them from websites that use email addresses for example in conversations on public forums
Capture email addresses with the promise of free services or other items

Online communication with email is great. It is especially great for digital marketers and the bottom line. Once that email communication has been compromised and a customer perceives they can no longer trust the origin of that communication the digital marketer loses that communication: The email subscriber

Coupled with the lost subscriber comes lost revenue. And in some cases will cause damage on intellectual properly by tarnishing the reputation of the company and its brand reputation.
The best way to avoid the potential of email fraud: use email authentication programs like SPF, DKIM and DMARC along with customer education. Take time to write to your customer list and tell them you will never ask for (passwords, addresses, social security numbers and so on).

If you have more questions feel free to contact a Mail specialist at Dundee Internet.

Is this Puppy REALLY from the IRS ? … that’s what his credentials say. Read More »

I’m Subscribed to a Cat Lover’s List but All I Get Is Dog Food.

Email Marketing / Pat

I’m Subscribed to a Cat Lover’s List but All I Get Is Dog Food.

The numbers are typically against you. According to most online sources, each year you will only keep 70% of your subscriber base, while the other 30% will change their email address or just stop checking it altogether. Welcome to List Churn, notorious for list devastation and one of the many causes of:

Lower Deliverability
Decreased Click-Throughs
Open Rate Shrinkage
And general bad overall performance rates.

List Churn is expensive. Because, you’ll want to replace those lost (30%) email addresses. And normally, you do that with acquisition campaigns, which costs time and money.

Can you stop List Churn in its tracks? Probably not, because;

People like to move, travel and experience. They may change their Hotmail for a Gmail email address or change jobs that offer a company email. Whatever the case may be at some point the email address you have for these estimated 30% of subscribers becomes invalid.
It’s not them, but maybe it’s you. You’re sending too many emails or you have lost the initial focus of your email messages causing list fatigue. Or you’re not sending enough email to your subscribers’ and they have forgotten you.
You’re renting lists or borrowing your friends list. You are just plain practicing poor list hygiene by adding unsubscribes back into the fold because you just can’t let go.
You are sending Cat food campaigns to the people who opted into the Dog Food List on your Pet Food Site.

As annoying as List Churn is it’s a fact of life. Everyone has it. But there are a few things you can do to lessen it:

Make it easy to subscribe to your list. Don’t ask a million questions upfront, just get the basic information with a link to a preference page that your new member can fill out at their leisure.
Always confirm each address before they are added to your list database.
Inform your new list member what type of information they can expect from your list and how often they should expect to hear from you with a Welcome Letter.
Present a clear, easy to find opted out method for your current subscribes. And say goodbye when they do opt-out; never re add them to the database.
Run a few test emails before each campaign to make sure everything is A-Okay. You want to make sure all the links you have included actually work, the pictures aren’t too big and the formatting looks great from phone to PC.

Your efforts will not go unrewarded, but note you will always have invalid addresses and non-responsive list members. You can’t do anything when an address becomes invalid, except remove it when it’s discovered. You can, however resuscitate non-responsive list members with well-planned out re-engagement campaigns. When successful with these campaigns, make sure you recognize your revitalized members; Send a Welcome Home letter with coupons and contests.

Don’t forget to ask your revived list members why they lost interest in the first place. Useful information for any list owner. Offer a link to a preference page, so they can tell you what they are interested in to how often they want to hear from you. You may find your newly responsive list members are more active with your emails once they realize that you really do care about them.

Contact the specialists at Dundee Internet: we will help you with email list problem even if you use a competitor.*

*excludes competitors tools i.e. HTML formatting editor.

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How To Increase Email Campaign Engagement in 4 Ways, Even if Your Subscribers Are Finicky.

Internet Marketing / Pat

How To Increase Email Campaign Engagement in 4 Ways, Even if Your Subscribers Are Finicky.

Email is a marketing phenomenon. It’s uncommon to find someone who hasn’t joined an email list at least once in their lifetime: even those in their 80s and beyond.

And in our lifetime, undoubtedly, email marketing is historic in itself. The amount of subscribers worldwide is astronomical, the number and types of mailing lists are uncountable which, in the long- run, can be a real problem for email marketers. Why?

Because, as more competitors’ join the email marketing bandwagon the odds are your “open rates” will decline.

You agree, that there is only so much a person can and will read. Depending on how many lists your subscriber actually subscribes too, your email messages may be in endless competition for reader attention. You may find out the local Pizza joint, who emails weekly coupons has better open rates than your special email coupon of the week-or-your biggest competitors newsletter always gets a second read while your newsletter is deleted. What can you do? To compete on an even playing field with those other coupon specials and rival “newsletters” your focus should start with the inbox.

When consumer expectations’ aren’t well thought out, your campaigns will suffer resulting in low inbox rates: subsequently, low engagement levels. As a marketer it is prudent to consider consumer expectation as you develop your email campaigns. Here are some suggestions:

(ONE) Plan Your Work and Work Your Plan.

Always send a Welcome letter to new subscribers, “to acknowledge their new membership with a timely, well thought out messsage; to thank your new member for joining, set their future expectations by explaining the purpose of your email list and most importantly – to start a subscriber relationship with them”

Create a simple mailing schedule with emails that have a themed subject. Your subscribers will get in the habit of expecting your newsletter and immediately recognize who it is from.

Design a email newsletter program that has your readers lined up to read the next in the series: Take a cue from the soap operas.

(TWO) Segment Your Members

Create mailing segments based on subscriber history, such as active subscribers who are engaged with your list versus those who are not..

Consider mailing from two separate domains, your main domain address, for those happy engaged list members and from a sub-domain or secondary domain to those who need to be stimulated, as they are less engaged.

When mailing from a secondary domain, the results of segments directed to those less engaged can easily be monitored. You can also experiment with mailing frequency, volume, subject line such as with A/B split testing. You will find that a secondary domain address comes in handy for different email campaigns too.

Even with A/B testing and secondary domain addresses, the more emails sent, the more it becomes essential to keep your audience happy with personal, relevant messages. Expect higher email campaign engagements such as increased open rates when you selectively send email based on this type of segmentation. This works well even with the most finicky subscriber.

(THREE) Data Dust

Avoid all those nasty spam traps, invalid accounts and other issues that hinder deliverability by keeping your data clean.

Use an opt-in process to avoid problems, made sure your lists are yours, not rented or purchased.

(FOUR) Just in Time

Add trigger email campaigns to your marketing mix

A triggered email is an essential part of customer service as they demonstrate to the subscriber that they come first, evident by your quick response.

Triggered messages increase customer loyalty, as rapid responses to any relevant action has the overall effect of increasing the importance of your brand. And trigger email campaigns offer endless opportunities to engage with prospects and customers at the exact time when they’re thinking about your brand.

All four approaches can go a long way toward ensuring engagement and high inbox delivery. Any of these strategies, alone, you will find is not enough if you’re losing ground. That’s when you need an email marketing program that includes all four tactics and more. Need help or more information, call us at 888-222-8485 or email pat@dundee.net

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