8.The Rebel's Guide to Email Marketing_ Grow Your List, Break the Rules, and Win ( PDFDrive )

• The perfect email only happens when you’ve tested every aspect until you know what works for your audience You’ve learned that beauty is in the eye of the beholder when it comes to email design as well. Whether you send mostly text or mix in images and graphics, compose letters as opposed to newsletters, use or refrain from using one big image, slice and dice your email design, or put the unsubscribe button in the footer or elsewhere, some audiences will respond to the counterintuitive way of thinking. You’ve even learned that some of the popular no-nos of email marketing (using pop-ups and single opt-ins and even sending emails to addresses of people who haven’t yet opted in to your list) aren’t always no-nos. In fact, they might be the absolutely right thing to do, depending upon your situation. You’ve also gone to school about how email and social media go together like Batman and Robin, providing the Gotham City of your marketing with double- barrel, caped-crusader protection. Finally, you’ve looked with us into the future of email marketing. What trends and changes do you need to be ready for? You have them in this book. The only thing that’s left to do is take all your newfound knowledge and put it to work for your business. What Now? You don’t think we’re going to leave you with that, do you? Love ya, Nike, but we’re going to be a bit more specific than, “Just do it.” What you need now is an actionable to-do list to follow after you put this book down, or it might wind up being one of those books that was really awesome to read, but never really made it past the drawing board in helping you beyond a good pep talk. The challenge for us in giving you one is making sure that you have these items to do no matter where your company is along the continuum of email marketing maturity. Four Steps to Email Marketing Success So, without further ado, here is your four-step guide to take The Rebel’s Guide to Email Marketing and put it in practice now.

1. Grow Your List First things first. Go to your website now. If a potential customer wants to be added to your email list, how would they do so? Do you make it easy or is it a challenge to find the opt-in form? Do you give folks a reason to subscribe or do you just slap up a form with a submit button on it? Next, actually go through the opt-in process for your company’s website. Enter your email address and any other information that’s required. What happens next? Are new subscribers sent to a landing page thanking them for opting in and telling them what to expect next? Do you receive a welcome email immediately? Finally, think outside the box a little bit. We’ve discussed many ways to grow your list. Pick three to five of them today and make it your goal to test them out for a few months. Keep the ones that perform the best, ditch the others, and add three to five more into the mix for the following 30 days. Remember: Growing an email list is not a one-and-done type of thing. Thanks to list churn, fatigue, and inactive subscribers, it has to be an ongoing process.

2. Plan Your Content What are you going to include in your email campaigns that is going to have your subscribers say, “Holy cow! This is awesome. I can’t wait for the next email to land in my inbox”? What is going to be so compelling in your emails that folks are going to set their alarms to read it first thing in the morning (like some Help a Reporter Out [HARO] readers do)? Be ready to pivot. The content you include in your email campaigns today is bound to get stale over time. Just like your business, you always need to be looking ahead. When your subscribers become disinterested in the content of your email campaigns, reeling them back in is a challenge. Don’t think about the content that you would like to see, unless you represent your average customer. Focus on content that matters to your audience.

3. Determine Success Metrics Determining what constitutes success is one area where many email marketers fall off the cliff. Why are you engaging in email marketing? What is your goal? If it’s to get people to open your emails, start building trust so that when they see the From name, they open without hesitation. If you want people to read your emails, see step #2: provide them content that will “wow.” However, if you want subscribers to take some type of action on your emails, ensure that the call to action is clear, obvious, and in-their-faces. Remember: Your success metric is not necessarily the same as the metric for the person or company down the street. Just as with best practices, what matters most to you is not always what matters to others. Make sure your success metrics are clearly outlined before jumping into email marketing. If you are already actively sending emails to your list, step back and think about how you are going to measure whether it’s working. Our bet is you’re so busy sending email, you’ve forgotten why you are doing it. Take that step today. Write down your goals and track towards them.

4. Send, Test, Analyze, Adjust, Repeat Finally, don’t get complacent. Email marketing, at both the macro and micro levels, is evolving. As we talked about throughout this book, the key is testing what works best for your audience. Is it possible that the best practices of email marketing truly are best for your audience? Sure. But the only way you’ll know this to be true is if you send, test, analyze, adjust, and repeat. We hate to break the news to you, but this process never goes away. Are you finding that your list is not growing at a fast enough pace? Try popups. Are people not opening your emails as much as they used to? Test using all caps or longer Subject lines. Are your spam complaints on the rise? Consider moving the unsubscribe button to the top. Go ahead, be a rebel and break some rules—as long as you are testing to ensure they work best for your audience. And Now, It’s Your Turn So you have the knowledge to be an Email Marketing Rebel. You have a to-do list to take that knowledge and put it into action that can start improving your email marketing efforts right now. Before you put the book down, though, go back to the earlier four-step list and put step 1 on your calendar for tomorrow. Set an alert or reminder so a bell goes off to remind you about the calendar item. Then do the same for the next day for step 2, or even next week if you need some time to get through step 1, and so on. Incorporating the to-do list into your actual, daily, get-things-done process will help you follow through. So get that calendar out and add away! We’ll leave you with one last bit of inspiration, which was also much of what drove us to write this book. You’re always going to have experts telling you how or why to do this, when or where to do that. Taking advice isn’t a bad thing. Following your experienced predecessors isn’t bad, either. But you are not incapable of developing your own best practices for your email marketing, or even your digital marketing, social media, advertising, or any other area of your communications. You have everything it takes to read and react to your audience, the market, competitors, and more. Instead of following the conventional thinking or trying to push the easy button and doing what the thought leaders and experts say, do what a rebel

would do—think for yourself. “There’s a rebel lying deep in my soul. Anytime anybody tells me the trend is such and such, I go the opposite direction. I hate the idea of trends. I hate imitation; I have a reverence for individuality.”—Clint Eastwood2 Don’t be an imitator. Be an innovator. And wear the title of Rebel proudly. Endnotes 1. Pew Internet & American Life Project. “Generations 2012,” http://www.pewinternet.org 2. Rand, Yardena. Wild Open Spaces. Maverick Spirit Press, 2005.

A. Your Prize GO TO ar.gy/prize TO CLAIM YOUR PRIZE!

Index 1-800-Flowers.com, 141-142 A accounts (email), total number of, 5-6 addresses (email) required for social media usage, 205-208 advertising in email headers, 78 AirTran, 89-90 Alchemy Worx, 126-128 alt text in image-only email messages, 148-150 anchor links, 82, 85 anchor tags, 61 Angie’s List, 73 animated headers, 77-78 Apple, 146 AppSumo, 86 assumptions, challenging, 167 Athletics Alberta, 230 Atkins, Laura, 116, 194 attrition rate, 14-16 B BabyCenter website, 33 BabySteals.com, 220-222 Barnes & Noble, 197-198 Batman and Robin analogy, 204-205 Bella Soleil, 218-219 Best Buy, 154 best practices, 107-108 Subject lines, 113-114

King Arthur Flour (KAF) example, 118-121 length of, 123-129 Tumbleweed example, 121-123 words to avoid, 114-123 subjectivity of, 108-109 testing, 109-110 “ugly” email messages, 133-134 image-only email messages, 143-152 plain-text email, 134-143 “pretty” email messages versus, 164-167 Publisher’s Clearing House example, 163 unsubscribe link placement, 152-160 blogs integration with email marketing, 245 lightboxes on, 175-176 Borders, 197-198 Brogan, Chris, 100, 140 Brownlow, Mark, 3, 124-125, 144, 147, 172, 240-241 BustedTees, 92-93 buttons as calls to action, 91-96 buying email lists, 193-198 C call to action (CTA), 61-62, 86-90 buttons versus links versus images, 91-96 email compared to other media CTA, 86-87 secondary calls to action, 62-63, 88-91 testing, 87 Cangialosi, Greg, 205 CAN-SPAM Act, 6, 101-102, 187, 194 Carnival, 154 challenging assumptions, 167 Chapman, C.C., 35 checklist for email marketing, 250-251

churn rate, 14-16 Coburn, Daniel, 189 Comerford, Eoin, 155 commercial email. See also email marketing delivery rate of, 6 interaction with, 5 confirmation email messages. See double opt-ins connecting. See social connecting content, planning, 250-251 content filtering, based on Subject lines, 114-123 Copyblogger, 217-218 Costco, 101 creativity, increasing opt-ins with, 29-31 CruiseDeals.com, 35 CTA (call to action), 61-62, 86-90 buttons versus links versus images, 91-96 email compared to other media CTA, 86-87 secondary calls to action, 62-63, 88-91 testing, 87 D Daniels, David, 4, 146 Daniels, Lee, 205 DAZ 3D, 211, 223 Digitwirl, 27-28, 87-88 double opt-ins, 92 advantages, 182-183 defined, 181 moving to single opt-ins, 185-186 single opt-ins versus, 180-186 Ducharme, Jim, 194 E

eAppend, 191-193 Eastwood, Clint, 252 Einstein, Nicholas, 228 email email marketing versus, 7-8 ubiquitous nature of, 1-3 percentage of people using email, 3-5 total number of email accounts, 5-6 email accounts, total number of, 5-6 email addresses required for social media usage, 205-208 The eMail Guide, 174-175 “email is dead,” Google results for, 3 email lists buying, 193-198 growing. See list growth email marketing. See also commercial email best practices, 107-108 Subject lines, 113-114 subjectivity of, 108-109 testing, 109-110 “ugly” email messages, 133-134 checklist for, 250-251 current state of, 238-239 email versus, 7-8 future of, 239-245 list churn, 14-16 list fatigue, 14-16 list growth asking visitors to subscribe, 26-29 checklist for, 250 ease of sign-up process, 23-25 explanation of sign-up process, 48-49 first impression, importance of, 54 humor usage, 29-31 importance of, 13-14

incentives, 37-39 offline signup, 40-42 opt-in research activity, 21-23 popups, 172-180 pre-checking opt-in boxes, 46-48 sending welcome emails, 50-53 single versus double opt-ins, 180-186 smartphone apps and QR codes, 31-34 social media usage, 34-37 tactics for, 17-19, 171-172 unsolicited email messages, 186-198 via social promoting, 230-233 ROI of, 8-9 social media and Batman and Robin analogy, 204-205 email address requirements, 205-208 Expedia and Copyblogger examples, 216-218 increasing Facebook likes and revenue, 218-222 J. Hilburn example, 227-229 King Arthur Flour (KAF) example, 233-234 social connecting, 208-210, 216 social promoting, 212-213, 229-233 social sharing, 210-212, 222-227 email messages, components of, 57-58 call to action, 61-62, 86-90, 91-96 footer, 64-65, 100-102 header, 60, 75-78 preheader, 59-60, 71-74 secondary calls to action, 62-63, 88-91 social sharing options, 63-64, 98-100 Subject line and From address, 58-59, 68-72, 113-114 table of contents (TOC), 60-61, 82-86 EmailIsNotDead.com, 3 Emma (email service provider), 103, 105 Expedia, 217

explicit permission, implicit permission versus, 187-189 F Facebook. See also social media growing email list and, 35-37 increasing likes, 218-222 sharing email messages via, 99-100 Fairbanks, Angie, 221-222 Feedburner, 92 Ferrell, Will, 30 first impression, importance of, 54, 67 footers, 64-65, 100-102 unsubscribe links in, 102-104 From address, 58-59, 68-72 Funny or Die website, 30-31, 177-179 future of email marketing, 239-245 G Garrett, Chris, 38-39 Ginsberg, Jeff, 174-175 Godin, Seth, 186 Google+. See social media Gouldey, Crystal, 122 Groupon, 128, 158-159 growth of email list checklist for, 250 explanation of sign-up process, 48-49 first impression, importance of, 54 importance of, 13-14 popups, 172-180 on blogs, 175-176 Funny or Die website example, 177-179 increasing opt-ins with, 174-175

Park City Mountain Resort (PCMR) example, 179-180 sending welcome emails, 50-53 single versus double opt-ins, 180-186 double opt-ins, advantages, 182-183 single opt-ins, advantages, 183-185 Village Voice Media (VVM) example, 185-186 tactics for, 17-19, 171-172 asking visitors to subscribe, 26-29 ease of sign-up process, 23-25 humor usage, 29-31 incentives, 37-39 offline signup, 40-42 opt-in research activity, 21-23 pre-checking opt-in boxes, 46-48 smartphone apps and QR codes, 31-34 social media usage, 34-37 unsolicited email messages, 186-198 buying email lists, 193-198 eAppend, 191-193 opt-out messages, 189-191 via social promoting, 230-233 H Halpern, Derek, 50-51, 137-138 Handley, Ann, 83, 85 Hardigree, Scott, 229 HARO (Help a Reporter Out), 95, 141-143 Hatch, Rob, 140-141 Hauwert, Ron, 185, 190 headers, 60 content of, 75-78 Help a Reporter Out (HARO), 95, 141-143 Henchy, Chris, 30 Hoffman, Eric, 180

Holland, Anne, 129 Home Depot, 76 hotels.com, 208-209 HTML email messages, text email messages versus, 134-143 humor, increasing opt-ins with, 29-31 I Ibex Outdoor Clothing, 94-95, 151-152 image-only email messages, 143-152 King Arthur Flour (KAF) example, 146-147 readability, 147-152 alt text, 148-150 “slice and dice” method, 150-152 images as calls to action, 91-96 implicit permission, explicit permission versus, 187-189 inactives on email list, 14-16 Inbound & Content Marketing Made Easy (Sheridan), 37-38 incentives, growing email list and, 37-39 Infusionsoft, 229 in-line forms, 173. See also opt-ins J J. Hilburn, 227-229 Jenkins, Simms, 123 K KAF (King Arthur Flour), 118-121, 146-147, 233-234 Kaplan, Bill, 192 Keath, Jason, 138 King Arthur Flour (KAF), 118-121, 146-147, 233-234 Knobloch, Carley, 27-28, 87 Knuttel, Graham, 231-233

Kollas, Spencer, 109 Kordek, Andrew, 107, 241-242 KSL.com, 189-191 L Lands’ End, 98-100 legal issues implicit versus explicit permission, 187-189 pre-checking opt-in boxes, 48 length of Subject lines, 123-129 lightboxes, 172-180 on blogs, 175-176 Funny or Die website example, 177-179 increasing opt-ins with, 174-175 Park City Mountain Resort (PCMR) example, 179-180 popups versus, 173 likes (Facebook), increasing, 218-222 LinkedIn. See social media links as calls to action, 91-96 list churn, 14-16 list fatigue, 14-16 list growth checklist for, 250 explanation of sign-up process, 48-49 first impression, importance of, 54 importance of, 13-14 popups, 172-180 on blogs, 175-176 Funny or Die website example, 177-179 increasing opt-ins with, 174-175 Park City Mountain Resort (PCMR) example, 179-180 sending welcome emails, 50-53 single versus double opt-ins, 180-186 double opt-ins, advantages, 182-183

single opt-ins, advantages, 183-185 Village Voice Media (VVM) example, 185-186 tactics for, 17-19, 171-172 asking visitors to subscribe, 26-29 ease of sign-up process, 23-25 humor usage, 29-31 incentives, 37-39 offline signup, 40-42 opt-in research activity, 21-23 pre-checking opt-in boxes, 46-48 smartphone apps and QR codes, 31-34 social media usage, 34-37 unsolicited email messages, 186-198 buying email lists, 193-198 eAppend, 191-193 opt-out messages, 189-191 via social promoting, 230-233 Litmus, 135 LKR website, 24-25 LockerGnome website, 32 Lopp, Jameson, 134 Lynch, William, 197 M Macy’s, 192-193 Magill, Ken, 188-189 MailChimp, 182-183, 229 Marketing Over Coffee (MoC) podcast, 164-167 MarketingProfs, 83-85, 93-94, 209-211 Martin, Tom, 184 McCloskey, Bill, 182, 239-240 McCormick, 208-209 McDonald, Loren, 155, 243-245 McKay, Adam, 30

Message Systems, 71-72 messages. See email messages, components of Michaels store, 41 MoC (Marketing Over Coffee) podcast, 164-167 Moody, Chris, 92 Moosejaw, 155 Moschetti, Jess, 151-152 MoveOn.org, 72 Muller, Paul R.J., 157 MySpace. See social media N Naslund, Amber, 213 NetProspex, 196 Newman, Niall, 231-233 Niendorf, Molly, 151 O offline signup, growing email list and, 40-42 1-800-Flowers.com, 141-142 open rates, 59 importance of, 71 for plain-text email messages, 139 opt-ins asking visitors to subscribe, 26-29 double opt-ins, 92 advantages, 182-183 defined, 181 moving to single opt-ins, 185-186 single opt-ins versus, 180-186 ease of sign-up process, 23-25 explanation of sign-up process, 48-49 first impression, importance of, 54

humor usage, 29-31 incentives, 37-39 including in email messages, 101-102 increasing on blogs, 175-176 Funny or Die website example, 177-179 with lightboxes, 174-175 Park City Mountain Resort (PCMR) example, 179-180 offline signup, 40-42 pre-checking opt-in boxes, 46-48 research activity for, 21-23 sending welcome emails, 50-53 single opt-ins advantages, 183-185 defined, 181 double opt-ins versus, 180-186 smartphone apps and QR codes, 31-34 social media usage, 34-37 opt-out email messages, 189-191 opt-out links. See unsubscribe links P Park City Mountain Resort (PCMR) Facebook page, 35-37 popups, 179-180 Patel, Amy, 156 pausing email messages, 154-156 PCH.com example, 160-164 PCMR (Park City Mountain Resort) Facebook page, 35-37 popups, 179-180 Penn, Chris, 48-49, 105, 149-150, 157-158, 164, 175-176, 225 Permission Marketing (Godin), 186 permissions. See unsolicited email messages

Petco, 148-149 phone calls to unsubscribers, 159-160 Pilbeam, Chris, 142 Pinterest. See social media Pirillo, Chris, 32, 71 Pizza Express, 150 plain-text email messages, 134-143 HARO (Help a Reporter Out), 141-143 open rates, 139 testing, 137-138 planning content, 250-251 Polivy, Dave, 222 pop-overs, 173 popups, 172-180 on blogs, 175-176 Funny or Die website example, 177-179 increasing opt-ins with, 174-175 lightboxes versus, 173 Park City Mountain Resort (PCMR) example, 179-180 pre-checking opt-in boxes, 46-48 preheaders, 59-60 content of, 71-74 unsubscribe links in, 74 “pretty” email messages, “ugly” email messages versus, 164-167 promoting. See social promoting Publisher’s Clearing House example, 160-164 Q QR codes, growing email list and, 31-34 Quist, Dela, 16, 123, 127 R Raven, Frederick, 72

readability of image-only email messages, 147-152 alt text, 148-150 “slice and dice,” 150-152 Red Hanger dry cleaner, 40-41 REI, 73, 90-91 renting email lists, 194 return on investment (ROI) of email marketing, 8-9 Robbins, Elaine, 218 Roberts, Joanna Lawson-Matthew, 165-167 Roeder, Laura, 24-25, 224-225 ROI (return on investment) of email marketing, 8-9 Rosenberg, Craig, 195 Rubin, Karen, 116 S SafeUnsubscribe, 103 Scheiman, Gretchen, 47 secondary calls to action, 62-63, 88-91 sending welcome emails, 50-53 Shafer, Jay, 121 Shankman, Peter, 142 Share With Your Network (SWYN). See social sharing sharing. See social sharing Sheridan, Marcus, 37-38 shrinkage of email list, 14-16 sign-up process (email lists), explaining, 48-49 Silver, Halley, 119-121, 146 Silverpop, 141 single opt-ins advantages, 183-185 defined, 181 double opt-ins versus, 180-186 Village Voice Media (VVM) example, 185-186 SkyMall website, 52-53

“slice and dice,” image-only email messages, 150-152 SmartBrief, 226-227 smartphone apps, growing email list and, 31-34 snippet text. See preheaders “snooze” feature, 154-156 social connecting defined, 98, 208 email marketing relationship, 208-210, 216 Expedia and Copyblogger examples, 216-218 increasing Facebook likes and revenue, 218-222 social media email marketing and Batman and Robin analogy, 204-205 email address requirements, 205-208 Expedia and Copyblogger examples, 216-218 increasing Facebook likes and revenue, 218-222 J. Hilburn example, 227-229 King Arthur Flour (KAF) example, 233-234 social connecting, 208-210, 216 social promoting, 212-213, 229-233 social sharing, 210-212, 222-227 growing email list and, 34-37 sharing options in email messages, 63-64, 98-100 social sharing versus social connecting, 98 usage statistics, 203-204 social promoting defined, 208 email marketing relationship, 212-213, 229-233 King Arthur Flour (KAF) example, 233-234 list growth, 230-233 social sharing defined, 98, 208 email marketing relationship, 210-212 J. Hilburn example, 227-229 tips for, 222-227

social sign in, 207 Sonic Foundry, 129 Sony, 210-211 spam content filtering, 114-123 defined, 5-6, 187 rate of, 6 spam filters, 144 SpamAssassin, 144 Starbucks, 77-78 Starzan, Patrick, 30, 177-179 Stewart, Morgan, 108 Subject lines, 58-59, 68-72 audience expectations, 71 best practices, 113-114 King Arthur Flour (KAF) example, 118-121 length of, 123-129 Tumbleweed example, 121-123 words to avoid, 114-123 success metrics, 251 SWYN (Share With Your Network). See social sharing T table of contents (TOC), 60-61, 82-86 Tahoe Mountain Sports (TMS), 222, 231 Talavera, Karen, 192-193 Tasting Table website, 26-27 Teletext Holidays, 156 tertiary calls to action, 62-63, 88-91 testing best practices, 109-110 King Arthur Flour (KAF) example, 118-121 plain-text email messages, 137-138 Publisher’s Clearing House example, 163

Subject line length, 125-129 Tumbleweed example, 121-123 “ugly” versus “pretty” email messages, 164-167 CTA (call to action), 87 importance of, 251 lightboxes, 175-176 success metrics, 251 unsubscribe link placement, 152-160 text email messages, 134-143 HARO (Help a Reporter Out), 141-143 open rates, 139 testing, 137-138 TheSalesLion.com website, 37-38 Thorpe, Andy, 74 Thrillist website, 31 TMS (Tahoe Mountain Sports), 222, 231 TOC (table of contents), 60-61, 82-86 trigger words in Subject lines, 114-123 Tripi, Sal, 162-163 TrueRemove, 103 Tumbleweed, 121-123 Twitter. See also social media growing email list and, 35 sharing email messages via, 99 social sharing, 224-225 usage statistics, 204 U “ugly” email messages best practices, 133-134 image-only email messages, 143-152 plain-text email, 134-143 unsubscribe link placement, 152-159 subjectivity of, 160-167

challenging assumptions, 167 “pretty” email messages versus, 164-167 Publisher’s Clearing House example, 160-164 unsolicited email messages, 186-198 buying email lists, 193-198 eAppend, 191-193 opt-out messages, 189-191 unsubscribe links in footers, 101-104 placement of, 152-160 in preheaders, 74 Urban Outfitters, 127 V Vascellaro, Jessica, 1 Vaynerchuck, Gary, 159 “View from the Digital Inbox 2001” (Merkle), 4 Village Voice Media (VVM), 185-186, 190-191 W Wall, John, 164 Wall Street Journal, 1 website visitors, asking to subscribe, 26-29 Webster, Joe, 227 welcome emails, sending, 50-53 WhatCounts, 224 “What’s In It For Me?” (WIIFM), 37-39 WhatToExpect.com, 74, 78 WhichTestWon.com, 129 Whitaker, Austin, 219-220 White, Chad, 116, 141, 242-243 “Why Email No Longer Rules” (Vascellaro), 1 WIIFM (“What’s In It For Me?”), 37-39

Williamson, Matt, 183 Winder Farms, 219-220 WP Super Popup Pro, 176 Y Yastremski, Anne, 84 Z Zappos, 82