Inbox Ideas: Email Marketing Tips by AWeber

Inbox Ideas | Email Marketing Tips by AWeber

AWeber Love, Just in Time for Summer!

by Marc Kline on June 26th, 2008

OK, so I love AWeber, but of course I’m biased. On top of a fun work environment with cool people, I owe this company some love for my paycheck and the fortune of still being able to put gas in my tank — even at 4 bucks a gallon. *sigh*

That wasn’t the reason we got Bob, one of our designers, to come up with these “I Heart AWeber” buttons. I don’t need more AWeber branding for my lifestyle. I already have a couple of AWeber shirts and several pairs of AWeber socks. No lie — AWeber socks.

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Comments: 8

Tags: affiliates

Store a Backup Credit Card

by Justin Premick on June 23rd, 2008

Like many business owners, you probably have your credit card information on file with a bunch of different service providers.

What happens when your card expires, or you lose/cancel it, or there’s another issue with it?

It’s helpful to have a backup plan.

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Comments: 1

Tags: New Features

6 Social Networking Tactics for Email Marketers

by Marc Kline on June 20th, 2008

There are plenty of people writing about how to leverage social networks for profit, so I won’t waste your time rehashing them.

Instead, I’d like to share some tips about what I know best - email marketing - and some ways to bridge some social networking tactics to your campaigns that can make a real difference in the results you see at the end of the day.

Take a look and see if you can implement some or all of them to your campaign today.

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Comments: 30

Tags: list building, multichannel marketing, strategy

Do Readers Love Your Emails?

by Justin Premick on June 19th, 2008

Timing is a funny thing.

In last week’s email relevance webinar, I gave an example of a company that does quite well at using customer behavior to create more relevant emails: Amazon.

Then, this week I stumbled across this post by Jon Dale comparing Amazon’s email campaigns with those of another major bookseller, Barnes & Noble.

He makes a useful comparison of the two companies’ email practices that I’d like to expand on and share with you.

Continue reading “Do Readers Love Your Emails?”

Comments: 15

Tags: examples, relevance, strategy

7 Split Tests You Can Implement Today

by Justin Premick on June 10th, 2008

How many times have you heard “you should test to see what works best for you” or something to that effect? Probably too many to count, right?

The reason you hear it so often is because when it comes to email marketing (as well as any other marketing channel), testing separates the pros from the Joes.

It’s one thing to think we know what works best, but when we apply a little bit of scientific method to our marketing, we not only find out for sure, we learn more about our visitors and subscribers — and that helps us predict more accurately what will work in the future.

The challenge for a lot of people (including us at AWeber) is deciding what to test. There are simply so many small changes we can make to our forms, messages and other parts of our campaigns, that it’s easy to get stuck on deciding where to start.

So, to help you get started with split testing (or to get back into it if you’ve gotten complacent and stopped testing regularly), here are seven split tests you can run on your website to get and retain more subscribers, lower spam complaints, and increase response.

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Comments: 23

Tags: call to action, list building, split testing

Track Clickthroughs Using Your Own Domain

by Justin Premick on June 5th, 2008

If you’re anything like me (like just about all email marketers, really), you want to know how effective your emails are at getting subscribers to open and read, click through to your site, and make purchases.

On the other hand, you may be concerned that your tracking links are getting fewer clicks than a link straight to your own domain would, because:

Links that go to a tracking domain, instead of to your own website directly, may cause some subscribers to not trust a link that doesn’t point straight your website, causing them to not click through.
If your readers are aware of (and sensitive to) the fact that their response is being measured, they may be less likely to click through.

So how do you get the best of both worlds? How do you track response while maintaining trust?

In this short video, I’ll show you how you can do just that with one feature of our new Email Web Analytics tools.

Continue reading “Track Clickthroughs Using Your Own Domain”

Comments: 35

Tags: email statistics, email web analytics, New Features

Email Marketing: Not Such a Blast?

by Justin Premick on June 4th, 2008

One of the great joys of participating in this blog is interacting with people who approach email marketing ethically.

I love not having to continually remind you that opt in email marketing campaigns is more effective and rewarding than sending spam. We share a common “opt in” mindset that lets us move on to more useful conversations about how to increase the effectiveness of your campaigns.

Unfortunately, not everyone out there is as committed to that mindset, and it shows in the language they use when talking about email marketing.

When that language starts to creep into the vernacular of ethical marketers (as it sometimes does), otherwise good businesses sound like spammers.

It’s time we take a step back, look at some of the inappropriate email terms that are getting thrown around out there, and see if we can’t come up with some better lingo.

Let’s start with one of the most-abused terms…

Continue reading “Email Marketing: Not Such a Blast?”

Comments: 32

Tags: relevance, strategy

Do Others’ Poor Email Practices Hurt You?

by Justin Premick on May 28th, 2008

If I heard it once as a kid, I heard it a hundred times: "You’re known by the company you keep."

Lately I wonder if as email marketers, and as companies with a web presence, we don’t give enough thought to this, and how it affects how our subscribers perceive us (and how they treat our messages).

The online actions of other businesses, who may not have any association with you, can give you — can give all of us — a bad name.

It’s up to us to make sure that your visitors and subscribers know how you differ from the “bad apples” — because otherwise, you may suffer the consequences of someone else’s poor email marketing practices.

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Comments: 20

Tags: list building, strategy

Email Web Analytics: Understand Your Subscribers

by Justin Premick on May 20th, 2008

Two of the biggest challenges you face when running an email marketing campaign are:

Understanding your subscribers’ needs and wants.

Tailoring your messaging to address those needs and wants

Email marketing in 2008 is about relevance.

The only way you get more relevant with your messaging is to be able to know what your subscribers are clicking on and then be able to laser focus additional messages to that subset of your list.

Introducing Email Web Analytics Tools

Today, we’re rolling out brand new tracking and targeting features that enable you to better understand and address your subscribers&’ needs and wants.

We’ve been teasing you for weeks about them, and today, they’re ready for you.

Here are just a few of the things you’ll be able to do in both plain text and HTML emails:

See exactly when subscribers click on links in your message so you can focus on the right time to send your message.

Send a broadcast to only subscribers who didn’t open or click on your previous broadcast.

Send a broadcast to only subscribers who did click on your order page, but didn’t order.

See which subscribers are responding to your campaigns — which messages they’re opening, which links they’re visiting, and where on your website they’re going after clicking through.

Target subscribers by sending broadcasts to only those who responded (or didn’t respond) by clicking or opening a specific message or link.

Track revenue generated by campaigns and subscribers to see which subscribers and campaigns are making you money, helping you create future campaigns that are more relevant and valuable

Continue reading “Email Web Analytics: Understand Your Subscribers”

Comments: 53

Tags: email web analytics, New Features

Coming (Very) Soon: Email Analytics, AWeber Redesign

by Justin Premick on May 19th, 2008

After months of hard work by our Development Team, and plenty of suggestions by our beta testers, we’re happy to announce major updates to AWeber that should make it easier for email marketers everywhere to run the most effective, profitable campaigns possible.