In Marketing Sherpa’s Email Marketing Benchmark Report for 2012 (note the free excerpt offer!), email marketers reported an average clickthrough rate of 26%. If your rates aren’t that high, don’t fret – rates are going to vary somewhat by industry and by audience. But that’s not to say you can’t make efforts to attract as [...]

The new year is the perfect excuse to freshen up your email campaign, and we have a free gift to help with your improvements. Animated GIFs in emails are getting more and more popular – about 40% of retailers use animation in their emails at least occasionally. You can use them to liven up your [...]

Of course you want subscribers to open and read your email newsletters. Everyone wants that. But what you want even more is for them to take action, right? When I was working with customers to optimize their email campaigns, I was on the lookout for strategies that help improve message. You first need to get [...]

When you send out your marketing emails, you probably have some hopes for response. You may also have a few thin-lipped expectations. And there’s always that fond dream of your content going viral.

All of which means you probably use the urgency tactic once in awhile. You know, the “six hours only!!” sale or the announcement of “just three copies left!!”

And this can certainly work. But if anyone opens your message too late, it thuds like a drop in a hollow bucket. Worse, if they try to click through to purchase, they could be cranky when they realize they’re too late.

What if you could magically make the email content adjust itself to the situation so when latecomers open it after the fact, they see a completely different message?

The “Oops! It’s Over” Announcement

First of all, keeping your message current like this is just good customer service.

Secondly, it shows you’re on top of things, which can only benefit your reputation.

And finally, it shows that the urgency of your offer is for real – if subscribers want your deals, they’d better open faster next time.

If you’re a product shown in your email sells out, create an image that reflects this and swap it with the previous image. Like in this email from women’s retailer Chadwick’s.

When your sale is over, replace your sale announcement with a notice that they missed it, but you’ll have others soon! And in the meantime, give them something else to do, like Home Depot did in this email.

And you don’t have to be a giant chain store to do it…you can just be one guy in front of a computer, or the tiny cafe down the street. It just requi

res?

Swapping Out An Image

You can update any information in your email, as long as it’s in the form of an image.

Why? Because images don’t actually live in your message. They live on the web page you uploaded them to.

Think of that page’s URL as the image’s address. When someone opens your email, it displays whatever image it finds at that URL. So all you need to do to update your email post-send is change the image that lives on that URL.

To make the magic happen, you’ll need to be hosting your images on your own site manually, or via a content management software like WordPress. (This doesn’t work on public image hosting sites.)

If You Host Images Manually

This is an easy fix: after the sale or other event is over, use your FTP client or other file management software to upload the new image.

The advantage to this method is that you have complete control over the file’s URL; the catch is that it does require you to be familiar with using an FTP client or other file management soft

ware.

If you’re not familiar with FTP, here’s an article and a video on using it.

Here are a couple of FTP clients that you can use for this:

• FireFTP (a plugin for the Firefox browser that works on Windows or Mac)
• Cyberduck (software for Mac or PC)

If you don’t want to manage the file upload yourself, have a developer handle it for you, or try using a content management system like WordPress.

If You Use WordPress

Note: before you use WordPress to manage this, check to see if you’re organizing your uploads into folders based on the year and month you upload them. You can do this at the “Settings” > “Media” page in your WordPress admin area. If you are doing so, it may be better to not use WordPress for this, because in some cases you won’t be able to overwrite the original image properly from within WordPress.

1. Upload your original image into your media gallery. Use the URL assigned to that image to place it in your email, as usual.
2. When your sale is over or your product sold out, prepare for the switch. Important: give the replacement image (the one that says “sold out!” or something similar) the same name as the original.
3. In your media gallery, delete the original image. Immediately upload the new image with the same name. Now when someone opens your email, it will follow the URL you’ve put into place and display the updated image.

Something to Consider

Remember, this method is only good for images. But if you make the entire email one big image, it might trip a spam filter. So only use images for the parts you’ll want to update later.

Just make sure the rest of your email looks good around both the original content and the update, and you’re good to go!

What Else Could You Swap?

Once you get this process down, you can get creative with how you use it. Announce the end of sales and sold out products. Change your price if something’s not selling (or selling too much at too low a price!)

Would you ever make these updates by swapping out the images? What other changes might you make?

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There are a lot of reasons why those people may answer “no” when your web form asks them to sign up for your emails. But change the design of your form, and some of them will answer “yes” instead.

It’s true. Here are the stories of two companies who netted huge increases in their subscription rates just by testing a design change.

Take a look at what they tested, then keep reading to find out what you could test to get results that are just as big.

Talking Avatar: + 131%

Small Business Trends, an online entrepreneurial publication, needed to find the right face to represent their newsletter in its sign-up offer.

They alternated a photo of the editor, Anita Campbell, with a talking avatar that resembled her.

Avatar Anita popped up as soon as the page loaded and talked for 20 seconds about why the viewer should subscribe, giving visitors much more information than the photo form provided.

And she converted 131% more subscribers than Photo Anita.

Red Light, Green Light: + 46%

Internet marketer Eric Graham, aka the “Conversion Doctor,” wanted to design the ultimate submit button.

He ran several tests. For his final split, he tested a simple red border around the button against a red border that changed to green when hovered over.

Red Border

Red Border, Green Roll Over

The color-changing border got 46% clicks more than the simple red border.

According to Graham, the button showed that it was clickable by reacting to the mouse. When the red outline turned green, he theorized, viewers interpreted the change as a “stop” signal changing to “go” – so they did.

Your Design Changes: + ?%

Granted, you have a different audience than SBT and the Conversion Doctor, and a different site. You could make the exact same changes and probably not get the same results.

But there are plenty of things you can test that could turn up results that are just as significant. Try:

Which category do your site visitors fall into? Change your button’s design, and find out!

Have You Tested Your Form?

Have you ever run a split test on your web form?

If not, what are you waiting for? What could you test today?

If you have, what did you find out? We’d love to hear your story!

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Everyone makes mistakes – even email marketing geniuses (hard to imagine, we know ).

Yet with so many things to double and triple-check before sending a campaign, it’s easy for important components to slip the minds of seasoned pros and newbies alike.

In fact, The Retail Email Blog regularly posts about the mistakes and “oopsies” of big email marketers on their blog, so if in fact you do mess up from time to time, you are still in good company!

All joking aside, it’s always best to avoid a mistake before it happens. Here’s a list of things to steer clear of in order to make your campaigns run more smoothly than you ever thought possible.

1. Buying Email Lists

Effective email campaigns cater to specific demographics, tastes and interests. Using confirmed opt-in to obtain the proper permission from people who are truly interested in your targeted emails ensures that they really want to hear from you.

When you buy an email list, there’s no way to guarantee that those people are really interested in your messages, so you must avoid purchased lists at all costs. You can never assume anything about the addresses of random people that are not given to you directly by their owners.

2. Hard to Recognize “From” Names and Subject Lines

Once subscribers are on your list, you want to make sure that they open your messages regularly. Your subject line and from name/address are your only chance to grab subscribers attention in their jam-packed inboxes.

To help jog their memory, always use the same email address and contact name so that there is no confusion when your messages arrive. Your subject lines must clearly present the value of the emails while staying consistent with your past subject lines to evoke recognition and familiarity.

3. Avoiding CAN-SPAM Compliance

The Can-Spam Act requires that all messages contain the sender’s valid physical postal address, but some home-based and international businesses are hesitant to include this information in their campaigns.

Aside from the legal obligation, putting your contact address in your emails is the best way to show subscribers that you have a legitimate identity and that you won’t run for the hills as soon as they make a purchase from you.

4. Irrelevant and Infrequent Emails

Sending emails that don’t relate back to their original request for info irritates readers and is a guaranteed way to rack up a high number of unsubscribes. Add an infrequent schedule to the previous scenario and you have a recipe for email disaster.

As a rule of thumb, if you haven’t contacted subscribers in 6 months, delete them from your list. Revisit your landing page from time to time to assess your email content and make sure it matches up with your original offer. Set expectations so that subscribers know what to expect from you, and when to expect it.

Expectations are easiest to address in three stages:

1. Create Subscriber Expectations Before The Opt-In
2. Create and Reinforce Expectations Right After The Opt-In
3. Create Subscriber Expectations Over Time

5. No Call to Action

With all of the emphasis placed on quality content and sharp design, it’s understandable that marketers sometimes miss the obvious. When a reader opens a message and they’re interested in learning more, don’t forget they will be thinking, “What do I do next?”

Give them a way to move forward easily. Include multiple calls to action and links back to your site so you don’t lose them. Set up your products favorably, and remember when creating your messages that there must be a logical sequence of events – you want readers to open, read, click-through and ultimately buy.

6. Not Testing Before Sending

With all of the time spent prepping marketing emails, typos can easily go unnoticed. Testing your messages before sending them only takes a minute or two and can help you pinpoint problems before they materialize.

Send test copies to test accounts at several different email services to ensure that the message is readable, the images are viewable and the links are functional.

Are You Making These Mistakes?

We know email marketing isn’t always easy. Like we’ve said from the get-go, everyone makes mistakes.

If any of the situations on the list above hit close to home, try changing your approach; you’ll be amazed at the impact a few simple changes can have on your campaign.

Once you put the changes into practice, come back and leave a comment to let us know how they have worked for you!

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In ancient times, yoga was practiced by ascetics seeking higher consciousness.

Today, everyday folk perform asanas in your studio – if they can find the time. Amid the thousand responsibilities of work and home, yoga can be overlooked.

But sometime in their day, your customers probably check their email. Finding a message from you can help bring their practice back into focus.

The Yoga Garden is a studio that email markets with a combination of diversity and sameness. Apply this balance to your own email marketing campaigns to keep your customers engaged, responding and staying on the path to enlightenment with you.

Use a Variety of Messages

Since email is a conversational medium, you don’t have to go for the hard sell the minute you have a customer’s permission to email. Instead, design series of messages that speak to the needs and interests of your customers.

You can do this in infinite ways. Here are three methods you can mix and match to get started.

Regular Newsletters

On a consistent basis, send an email packed with helpful information. Update customers on new classes and instructors; discuss the health benefits of each pose; address yoga for kids and injuries.

Give your subscribers knowledge they didn’t have before, along with a reason to practice.

Special Notices

Send these between your newsletters for information that can’t wait. Announce special events or cancellations, highlight special deals on retreats and share mentions of your studio in the press.

Follow-up Series

Create a list for each type of class you offer (Yoga for Strength, Qigong and so on). When members enroll at the beginning of each new rotation, ask them to sign up for that list.

With a follow-up series for each list, you can prepare students with tips they can use to succeed that particular discipline, clothing suggestions, links to buy any special equipment they’ll need and a short biography of their instructor.

Create Unity With Static Elements

Though your email efforts may include different types of messages, you can balance their differences by keeping some parts of every email the same. You’ll save time designing each email and the familiar format will create familiarity for subscribers.

Orienting Information
Provide your address, phone number, even a brief statement that lets them know what to expect.

Calls to Practice
Fill a column with upcoming workshops and your current roster of classes.

Signatures
Add personal connection with a signature from the studio owner or class instructors.

Pictures
Display close-ups of peaceful images for simple ambiance.

Attain Harmony With Templates

Perhaps the easiest and most effective way to create similarity among your emails is to create each in the same basic template.

AWeber customers have access to an ever-increasing library of email and web form templates. We recently added a matching, yoga-centric email/web form set in your choice of seven colors. Enjoy!

How Do You Email Yoga?

Do you have a yoga studio? What topics do you email your customers? How do you get them excited about your studio?

We’d love to read your ideas, so share them below!

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Your call to action is a key component of your email marketing campaigns. It’s where you ask for a response from your subscribers, and where they choose whether or not to give you that response.

The call to action is your chance to convert readers who aren’t interested, reinforce interest for those who are and sway those who are unsure.

That’s a lot to get done with a few words in a fairly small space. Make the most of that space with these tips for creating effective calls to action.

Alignment

Positioning your call to action above the scroll (the point where readers need to scroll down to see more) gives you the opportunity to draw response from more subscribers: those who aren’t interested in reading to the bottom and those in a rush who scan the preview pane and move on.

With your call to action up high, they can just glance and click. Remember, different ISPs, preview panes and mobile devices have different points of scroll, so plan accordingly.

To let readers click through whenever they feel ready, provide multiple calls to the same action. Keep your wording consistent so readers aren’t confused and scatter them strategically through the email.

Calling for only one action keeps the email from being overwhelming while repeating the call several times gives the suggestion more weight, as you can see in this example from marketing consultant Michael Fortin.

When you position these calls to action, consider your layout. Place your call to action directly in readers’ visual path. Use the other elements in your email to guide readers’ eyes and surround the call to action with plenty of white space so it stands out.

Approach

The words you choose to approach subscribers with your call to action are critical. You’re making a request, and the “voice” you use sets the tone for your subscriber-marketer relationship.

To make a strong impact, incorporate some power words. These are words that prompt specific reactions and clarify exactly what you’re asking readers to do.

Blogger Dustin Curtis’ call to action started as a passive statement. He rewrote it with power words that showed force and personality, and his response rate grew 173%.

Be careful, though, that the words you choose create the effect you are looking for. Try considering them from your readers’ point of view . What does each one ask of your subscribers? How does it feel to be asked to “submit”, “subscribe”, “donate” or “join”?

Words are important, but even the format of your offers can make a difference. When Evo, an outdoor outfitter, tested $50 off against 15% off (worth approx. $50), the dollars-off email had a 72% higher conversion rate.

Finally, it’s important that your call to action reflects your usual brand voice – the way you write in your newsletter, your blog and your other marketing efforts.

Your brand voice is familiar to your subscribers. They like it – that’s why they stick around – so use it.

Appearance

Once you design that powerful combination of words to spring subscribers into action, draw attention to it.

When Insurance.com split test two email designs, the call to action was barely noticeable in the first creative, but appeared on a big, red button in the second version. Guess which one got more conversions?

(Note, however, that large, red buttons prompt alarm elsewhere, so make sure to test what works for your own campaign!)

Part of your call to action’s appearance is its format. Should you use an image, a button, a text link? Your answer will depend on your campaign. Take a look at AWeber’s button vs. text link experiment for ideas on how to test format for yourself.

Another aspect of your call to action’s appearance is its size. How does it compare to other elements in your design? If you have several calls to action, which should you make more prominent?

Have a look at Get Elastic’s thoughts on testing size, among other elements, to create an ideal call to action.

And Keep In Mind…

Your campaign is unique. No one else has your combination of audience, industry, brand and purpose. And not every call to action created with the above guidelines will work for you.

Marketing strategist Jeanne Jennings‘ advice: “You’re never really gonna know what works for you unless you test it…Make sure that what works for the majority of marketers works for you.”

So take inspiration from these ideas, pay close attention to what your subscribers want and consider your business goals. Plan your calls to action accordingly, test them out and watch your conversions rise.

Alternative Ideas

When designing your own calls to action, have you come across any standards that seem to work well? Do you have any tips that fellow email marketers could benefit from?

If you do, we’d love to hear them!

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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.

7 Split Tests

Give these a try and see how they affect your subscribers’ response (not to mention your perception of your subscribers).

See our Knowledge Base for instructions on how to create a web form split test and a broadcast split test.

1. Create one signup form where you ask for name first, then email, and one where you ask for email first, then name.

   See if the order that you ask for information affects how many people sign up.

2. Send one broadcast with personalization in the subject line, and one without.

   Do subscribers respond to personalization, or do they see it as a “gimmick?”

3. Split your next message into three broadcasts with different sending times: one between 8AM and 9AM, one between 12PM and 1PM, and one between 4PM and 5PM. Compare open/click rates for each message.

   Find out what time of day your subscribers prefer to hear from you.

4. Try using a different call to action on your signup form besides the old classic “Submit.”

   Come up with 2-3 short phrases, create your forms and compare opt-in rates (a couple options: “Sign Me Up”, “Send Me _____”, “Keep Me Informed”). Keep whatever you’re using now too, and make it the “control” in your experiment.

   Not everyone wants to submit to getting email from you. Find out what trigger they respond to.

5. Add a privacy statement (i.e. “we will not share your email address…”) to your signup form. Create another form where you instead link to a privacy policy on another page of your site.

   Compare opt-in rates for those forms against a form where you make no privacy statement.

   Are visitors more likely to sign up if you tell them you will treat their inbox with respect, and differentiate your email practices from others’?

6. In your next HTML email, test using a button for your call to action against using a text link.

   Is a well-written text link more compelling than a colorful, more prominent button?

7. For your next broadcast, add a permission reminder (“you’re receiving this email because you signed up at ____” etc) in the message. Compare your clickthrough rates, and your spam complaint rates.

   Does reminding people why they’re receiving an email make them any more likely to recognize and trust you? Does it make them more likely to read through your email and/or click on links in it?

You might have some interesting findings (if so, please share them!)…

…but even if you don’t — even if you run all 7 of these split tests and none of them bring immediate, significant changes to your campaign — you’ll still be more familiar with split testing than you were yesterday, and better prepared to test and improve your campaigns in the future.

What Do YOU Split Test?

Are there other split tests that you run regularly?

Share them with your fellow email marketers!

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:

Include Some Website Navigation Links

If your site uses a navigation bar, most likely every page of your website contains those links in a predictable place, allowing visitors to select from at least a few things that might catch their interest, so why not experiment with adding them to your email newsletter?

Adding links to the most popular sections of your website in a consistent way across all messages might bring more overall traffic to your site.

As Chris Lovejoy points out, even if the specific topic of your newsletter doesn’t speak to someone, they may be interested in checking out more general (or specific) information section at your website.

Great tip, and definitely worth a split test.

Link More of Your Text

It’s called “the web” for a reason. Most websites aren’t structured hierarchically or in a linear way where a single page leads to just one other page, which leads to another, and so on.

Instead, pages are linked together from one another in a web, where a single page can link to many others, and many others pages can link to a single one.

A single email can link to several pages in this same way.

Hyperlinking Contextual Words and Phrases

The -> Click here < - type of linking strategies have gone out of fashion in favor of more relevant and contextual approaches involving words and phrases found directly within the paragraphs of the content (often strategically placed).

You probably already do this to some extent on your web pages. Have you ever tried this out in your emails with your headings and paragraph text?

Link Your Images to Relevant Web Pages

This tip is like icing on the cake, and because plain text messages are just that — plain-text — it’s an option only available to those of us sending HTML versions of our newsletters.

If you are sending in HTML, take a look the images in your messages. Readers’ eyes are naturally drawn towards them, and often times, so are their mouse pointers.

So, the difference between them seeing a (non hyperlinked) or (hyperlinked) pointer can ultimately make a minor or sometimes a significant difference in the click through rates for your campaigns.

It is especially important to link your logo, which people tend to expect is directed to your homepage, whether its seen on your website or in your email.

Related Resources

The above tips are for the established newsletter sender who already has a regular flow of traffic to their website. Not there just yet? Here are a couple of Knowledge Base articles that could help you out:

How Can I Drive Traffic to My Website?

How Do I Put Links/URLs in Messages?

What Works Best For You?

Have you experimented with different tactics and strategies to drive traffic to your website using email marketing? I know I haven’t covered them all, so I hope you’ll join the discussion.