Inbox Ideas: Email Marketing Tips by AWeber

Inbox Ideas | Email Marketing Tips by AWeber

Archive for the 'Email Template Design' Category

Improve Your HTML Emails - 6 Tips from Our Email Design Whiz Bob

by Justin Premick on September 22nd, 2008

Our web designer Bob recently shared some of his expertise with web design blog and tutorial site NETTUTS.

While many of our users take advantage of the HTML email templates that he and fellow design whiz Eric have created, for those of you who want to design your own great-looking HTML emails, this article is a helpful resource to refer to as you create your own template.

We’ll be back with more of our regularly scheduled email marketing tips tomorrow – in the meantime, check out Bob’s email design advice and the other helpful tutorials at NETTUTS.

Comments: 3

3 Tips For More Clicks and Website Traffic

by Marc Kline on May 2nd, 2008

Sometimes our emails are focused on a single goal, aiming the entire message at driving to a specific landing page.

Other times when our purpose is more general, it makes a lot of sense to take a broader approach, aiming to get our subscribers back to nearly *anywhere* on our website. We can let them choose their own adventure from there, hoping they’ll eventually complete a site goal (e.g. ordering, membership sign up, etc.).

For those times, here are 3 techniques that could significantly boost your click through rates back to your website:

Continue reading “3 Tips For More Clicks and Website Traffic”

Comments: 45

Tags: call to action, design, traffic

Here’s An Easy Way To Do Video Emails

by Justin Premick on January 30th, 2008

Videos are a great marketing tool — they get your prospects’ attention, they let you show (not just tell) about your products, and they get passed around (helping you to get more subscribers virally).

However, as many people have found out, creating “video emails” by embedding the video directly in an HTML email (like you would on a web page) doesn’t fly. It’s simply not reliable because most email programs disable or strip out the video.

But that doesn’t mean you can’t take advantage of video’s appeal in your emails!

You just have to get a bit creative…

Easily Send “Video Emails” Using Image Links

In a recent addition to our Knowledge Base, we’ve shown step-by-step how to drive your email subscribers to watch videos that you’ve posted to your site or video hosting sites like YouTube.

How Can I Add Video To My Messages?

A Couple Pointers

I recommend using an image to link to your video — you can use text, too, but the image will naturally draw the eye and increase your response.

That said, not all of your subscribers will have images enabled in their email programs.

So, remember to put appropriate ALT text for your image, so that if they have images turned off, they know there’s a video to click to.

Example:

Have You Used This Tactic?

Has linking to videos this way worked well for you? Have you learned anything along the way that you think our readers could benefit from when creating their own video emails?

Share your thoughts below!

Comments: 27

Tags: call to action, design, video email

What Can Barack Obama Teach Us About HTML Email?

by Justin Premick on November 7th, 2007

As an individual? Probably not much. But as a marketing example, possibly quite a bit.

A couple months ago, we posted about a possible compromise in the Text vs. HTML debate.

Inspired by a MarketingExperiments study on formatting, we discussed the idea that not all HTML was created equal, and that you might improve response by using a “Lite” (or if you prefer, “Text-y”) HTML — taking some advantage of HTML’s formatting flexibility while preserving much of the overall simplicity of Text.

Continue reading “What Can Barack Obama Teach Us About HTML Email?”

Comments: 3

Tags: design, examples

Email Testing For Quality Assurance and More

by Marc Kline on November 1st, 2007

If we didn’t test our messages before sending them to our subscribers, I’d be in a lot of trouble! I can’t tell you how many times I’ve had typos and broken links caught only by reviewing messages before sending.

Not only do we all make mistakes, but sometimes when we look at our work only from our own perspective, we don’t see the forest for the trees.

Testing can help with both problems. I’d like to briefly share a few ways successful email marketers test their messages, including benefits and limitations of each:

Continue reading “Email Testing For Quality Assurance and More”

Comments: 6

Tags: rendering, testing

Text and HTML: Why Not Both?

by Justin Premick on September 25th, 2007

Lemon and Lime Just when you think a hotly-debated topic like whether to send messages in plain text or HTML has died down, along comes another angle to look at.

This time, the folks at MarketingSherpa bring us a case study from minor-league baseball where a combination of Text AND HTML messages boosted ticket sales over 260%.

So how do you incorporate this new data into your decision to use Text or HTML?

Continue reading “Text and HTML: Why Not Both?”

Comments: 10

Tags: design, examples, usability

Even Microsoft Can’t Design For Outlook

by Marc Kline on September 20th, 2007

This morning, I was checking the Windows Live Hotmail address I use for testing. I also receive messages from XBOX Live at this address, since using it made the sign up process for the Microsoft’s gaming service easier.

I was curious to see how Microsoft would communicate with a new gaming customer. Would they try to immediately sell me on a longer billing term or related products? Or, would they provide value, such as information on how I could best use my account.

So, I opened a message I received from them to see what I could find.

Continue reading “Even Microsoft Can’t Design For Outlook”

Comments: 8

Text Vs. HTML: Is Moderation The Key?

by Justin Premick on August 2nd, 2007

The debate over whether to use plain text or HTML never really stops, it just gets quiet for a while before someone brings it up again.

MarketingExperiements just brought it back up by blogging their recent research on how well each version converts.

Their team makes an interesting assertion:

Continue reading “Text Vs. HTML: Is Moderation The Key?”

Comments: 18

Link Design, Pt. 1: Placement

by Marc Kline on June 12th, 2007

Email readers, like web surfers, are ruthless in their decision making. They aren’t going to search around in our email for something to click on, nor are they going to sit and make a drawn out decision on whether or not to click when they see one.