When you deliver exactly what subscribers are expecting, you keep them comfortable, giving them a positive experience with your brand. Therefore, it’s important to make sure their expectations match what you plan to deliver.

You can start setting the right expectations for your campaign from the get-go, during the sign up process.

But have you ever considered ways to keep adjusting expectations throughout the rest of your campaign? It’s something we’ve only seen a handful of marketers do. We’ve been pleasantly surprised to see marketers provide this in three different ways.

The Straight-Out Statement

The simplest and most common way to set expectations in your emails is to just state what’s coming next. For example, take a look at this note Steve from soap-making-resource.com included in one of his intermittent broadcasts:

In follow up messages, you can even let readers know what day they’ll get their next email from you with the use of global fields.

And if you’re afraid your announcement will get lost in your message body, use a postscript – it’ll be one of the most read parts of your email.

The Investment Summary

We all know that our “free” newsletters aren’t really free for readers – they cost time and attention.

If you send long emails, you can acknowledge the investment subscribers are making, plus give them a heads up as to how long it will take by including a time-to-read estimate, like Project Agency does here.

A time estimate can improve your subscribers’ experience with your brand in a few ways:

• First, it’s courteous. Readers will appreciate the heads up, and they’ll credit your brand with thoughtfulness.
• Second, it puts a number on the minutes they’d have to spend – most likely, a small number. In the grand scheme of things, 2 minutes is very small – with that adjustment of perspective, your email may be more likely to get read.
• Finally, your subscribers will be able to make an informed decision to skip the emails they don’t have time for, thereby improving their overall experience with your brand.

One thing you have to watch out for here, though: people read at different speeds.

To get a general idea of how long each email takes to read, time how long it takes for several people read it and take an average – don’t just rely on your own estimate.

The Publishing Calendar

If you follow a regular email routine, you may want to represent your schedule in your emails for subscribers’ reference.

Daily Worth sends five days a week, and their emails indicate what kind of content they’ll send each day. This gives readers the context around the day’s message and prepares them for what’s coming next.

The Herald of Change

Occasionally, you may need to revamp your emails. Maybe your from name needs fixing or your design is too 1999. If you go ahead with significant changes unannounced, you may lose some subscribers who don’t recognize the new you.

So, depending on how drastically they change your readers’ experience, you may want to announce upcoming changes in your emails, whether it’s a new type of content you’ll include, how frequently you’ll send, your template design or your from name.

The Invitation For Your Ideas

Taking care to make sure you’re setting subscribers up with the right expectations can save them some inconvenient surprises down the road, and keep them happy with your emails.

Do you know of any other ways to keep providing the correct expectations after the sign up process is over?

Did you know that zombie email addresses might be sucking the life out of your email deliverabilty rate?

This isn’t a teaser for some email marketing horror flick. These zombies are throwaway email addresses that can then end up on your list and prevent your emails from getting to the real subscribers. This can create a domino effect, because once the real ones stop getting your emails regularly, they may become inactive with your business.

Sounds a lot like a formula for horror movie, doesn’t it? We’re here to help you realize what’s happening to your list, who’s at risk and what you can do to keep your delivery rate alive.

The Zombies

Zombies start off as real people (don’t they all?), but not for long. They seek a cure for their hectic inbox, but they still want to be able to sign up for things online. Fortunately for them, there are plenty of options to create an email account that’s disposable or temporary or one they can just leave open but never check.

For example, Google lets you set up as many addresses as you want. I have three different email addresses on Google. I use two of them to sign up for mailing lists when I don’t want to give away my REAL address.

Zombies can also be people who entered their real address to begin with, but later when they change their address they don’t update their subscriptions.

The Victims

Why would someone not want to give their real email address? It could be because they just want the incentive that you’re offering. It might also be they don’t want to commit to your company or what you’re offering. Instead they want to put one of their throwaway email addresses in there and check back on it later… at some point. Maybe.

Any form can have a zombie email address added by a real person, but some forms are more likely to get bitten. Let’s examine some patients.

Name: Spice Islands

Symptoms: Asks for a lot of information such as full name, address, and even number of children. For all that information they’re asking, subscribers aren’t getting many details in return.

In Danger Of: Email addresses that aren’t checked regularly. People may want to sign up for postal mail, but since the form asks for both, they submit a throwaway address.

Name: Dairy Queen

Symptoms: Offering a coupon for their signature Blizzard treat for subscribers plus a BOGO coupon on your birthday.

In Danger Of: Fake email addresses or addresses that aren’t checked regularly. While birthday emails might be enough to get subscribers going back to their inbox, it may not stay like that for long if they decide to say their birthday is soon.

Name: Smoothie King

Symptoms: Form emphasizes the incentive three times. Instead of convincing visitors why they should want to sign up, the focus is on just entering an email address for a free smoothie.

In Danger Of: Fake email addresses. Subscribers just want the free smoothie, not the emails.

You Say You Aren’t Afraid?

You might be saying your subscribers are the bread and butter of your email marketing, so you’d rather see those high numbers and take your chances. After all, they aren’t real zombies.

Of course that’s true, but that doesn’t mean you shouldn’t be concerned.

ISPs are looking at engagement more and more when they decide to deliver an email to the inbox or not. This means if your list is full of addresses that aren’t responding, you can see lower deliverability.

Email addresses that are undeliverable or with domains from known disposable email address services will also hurt your deliverability.

Stayin’ Alive

While you can’t pop through the screen and explain to the visitor why they shouldn’t use a bad email address, you can take other steps to encourage them to use their real one.

First, you have to explain what’s in it for them. You’ll need to give them a reason to want to receive your emails. Talk about what you plan to offer them in your emails, or even offer them choices at sign up.

Here are some examples of effective web forms that get subscribers excited:

Whole Foods allows you to choose what newsletter you’d like to sign up to. You can choose anything from recipes to how you can help poverty; 5 different newsletters total. They’re offering an incentive as well, but allowing visitors to pick what information they receive can help get that real email address.

Applebee’s gives a brief description of what’s in their emails, then takes that a step further with the sneak peek of one of their emails. Applebee’s is another company that wants to know your birthday, but this time visitors can check out what they’ll be receiving on other days, which will make them more likely to provide valid information.

Lake Champlain Chocolates takes incentives to a whole new level: every a month a subscriber is drawn for one of their gift boxes. This is not the only way they’re getting attention either – they’ve also included “5 Sweet Reasons To Sign Up” right in the form.

These are just some examples of what you can do, so think of how you can make your audience excited about your mailing list and put it in your form!

For further protection, you may want to:

1. Send out a confirmation message. The best way to make sure you have real addresses is to set up a confirmation message that reiterates what they signed up for and asks subscribers to confirm if they would like to receive your emails. In order to respond to this message, they’ll need to log in and open that email.

2. Monitor your subscribers. Whether you’re using confirmed opt-in or not, some addresses are bound to go inactive. The 2011 MarketingSherpa Email Benchmark Guide found that removing inactive subscribers was “very to somewhat effective” in improving deliverability according to 98% of the marketers surveyed.

Check out who hasn’t opened your messages in awhile, and send out a reactivation message to that segment. You can then remove the inactive subscribers who did not respond.

So How Do You Keep Your List Alive?

Have you checked your list for zombie email addresses? How do you keep your list active?

Sometimes it feels like a hassle to manage subscribers on more than one email list. How can you make sure that the right customers are getting the right information from the right list?

Let me introduce you to automation rules. When you need to send the same weekly newsletter to more than one list or make sure that your prospects and customers are getting different emails, automation rules can make things easier.

Just like an autoresponder series means less work when following up with a big customer base, automation rules mean less manual work when managing subscribers on several lists.

First we’ll find out how they work, then we’ll see some scenarios where they’ll work in your email marketing campaign.

How They Work

Using automation rules makes it easy to manage which lists your subscribers are on at any time. You select the lists to shuffle your subscribers around to, and the rules take care of the rest. Automation rules can move subscribers from one list to another, add them to more than one list at once or unsubscribe them from two lists at once.

Our Knowledge Base tutorial lists three different kinds of automation rules you can apply to your list:

Subscribe-on-subscribe: You have multiple lists. When someone subscribes to one list, they’re automatically subscribed to one other list as well.

Unsubscribe-on-subscribe: When someone subscribes to one of your lists, they’re automatically unsubscribed from another list.

Unsubscribe-on-unsubscribe: When someone unsubscribes from one of your lists, they’re automatically unsubscribed from another one of your lists.

Keep in mind that for each action a subscriber takes, only one rule can be triggered. For example, if you have a blog email list, you could set up a rule that subscribes readers to either your weekly newsletter or your daily tips email, but not a rule that subscribes them to both.

Now that you know what each rule does, let’s look at some scenarios when you might use them in your campaign.

When To Use Them

Automation rules can make a number of list-management tasks hassle-free:

Several Lists, One Newsletter

Let’s say you’re a software company and you send your customers weekly newsletters about new features and improvements. You also have several free email courses your customers can sign up for to learn how to use your software.

You want the customers who sign up for your courses to also get your newsletter. You could do this by including the course lists when you send a broadcast to your main newsletter list, but maybe you don’t want to add that extra step every week.

Using the subscribe-on-subscribe automation rule for your course lists eliminates the extra step on your weekly broadcasts. When a customer signs up for a free course, they’re automatically added to your weekly newsletter so they won’t miss important updates. Just be sure to make it clear on your web form that your customers are signing up for both a free course and a weekly newsletter.

Customized Welcome Messages

The subscribe-on-subscribe automation rule also works if you want a customized welcome message or follow-up series for a special event.

Suppose you’re at a conference and you get a lot of sign ups for your email list. You want to send a welcome message or some autoresponders referencing the conference.

You could create a new list specifically for the conference subscribers with a tailored welcome message and use a subscribe-on-subscribe rule to add the names to your main list too.

Separating Prospects From Customers

Let’s say you’re a fitness gym and you have two email lists – one for your members and one for non-members. Ultimately, you want non-members to buy a membership, so your emails to them promote the benefits of joining your gym.

What happens when they buy a membership? The emails targeted to your non-member list aren’t relevant to them any more. Use an unsubscribe-on-subscribe automation rule on your non-member list to automatically remove them from the old list when they sign up for a membership and member e-mails.

Unsubscribe-on-subscribe is the most common automation rule because of how it moves subscribers between lists. Once your prospects buy from you and turn into customers, this rule ensures they’ll be on the list with the most relevant emails to follow up their purchase.

Streamlining Your Unsubscribe Process

Let’s say you write a blog. You have two email lists – a monthly newsletter and a bi-weekly blog broadcast. Many of your email subscribers are on both lists.

If a reader unsubscribes from your blog broadcasts, they’re probably not interested in still receiving your newsletter. Using an unsubscribe-on-unsubscribe automation rule will courteously unsubscribe your readers from both lists at once, saving them some hassle.

Do They Work For You?

Automation rules aren’t ideal for every campaign. Sometimes it’s easier to include or exclude additional lists instead, like on a one-time newsletter mailing. Include/exclude also gives you more control per email, letting you target specific lists or send to lists on different days. Automation and finer control both have their own benefits, but which one fits your goals better?

How are you using automation rules in your own campaign?

Dr. Jeffrey Lant popularized the rule of seven for advertisers: It takes seven interactions with your brand for a customer to remember you and make a purchase.

It’s easy to adapt this principle to your email marketing by branding your campaign. Every interaction you have with your email subscribers should stay consistent with the rest of your online presence to reinforce your brand identity.

Let me introduce email marketing’s rule of 6 – the six places where your branding can shine through in your campaign!

Thank You Pages

The thank you page, where new subscribers land when they sign up to your list, is your campaign’s launch pad before landing in the inbox. It’s easy to use a default thank you page, but your customers get a more consistent experience when you take the time to design your own.

Keep your thank you page design consistent with the rest of your site by using the same colors, fonts and your company logo. Using the default page that AWeber provides is fine, but designing a page that stays true to your brand is better.

Click image to see in full

Whole Foods designed their thank you page to look just like the rest of their site, right down to the fonts and link colors. A thank you page that’s in line with the rest of your site design presents your brand cohesively from the start.

Sender, Subject, Snippet

Your customers need to recognize you the moment you show up in the inbox. Cover all your bases with the 3 S’s: sender name, subject line and snippet.

Establish your brand in the inbox from the start by using your company name as your sender or “from” name. That way, subscribers will know exactly who they’re interacting with before they even open your message.

Brand your subject line with either your company’s name or the name of your newsletter. Lonny Magazine brands their subject lines with their name:

…while Yoga Journal takes the second approach with their company name as the sender and the subject line reflecting their newsletter.

The third “S” is your snippet, the first line of text that shows up in the inbox preview right after your subject line in some email clients. This email from online retailer Giggle demonstrates how the snippet text looks in Gmail:

Giggle takes the snippet opportunity to include their brand name, tag line and additional information about the message content. Use your snippet to brand your message similarly and always keep it consistent.

Message Body

There are plenty of considerations when it comes to branding the message itself. Your template, your logo and the font you choose can all create a strong representation of your company in the inbox.

Livingsocial plays up these elements in their daily deal emails:

Click image to see in full

Livingsocial’s branding makes their emails unmistakeable:

• They use the same colors as their web site
• They stick to the same fonts
• They lay out their email template to reflect their site’s layout
• They use the same button designs and colors
• They place their logo at the top (which you can do just as easily!)

Keep the same considerations in mind when choosing or designing your email template. If you choose a pre-made template, select one that reflects the theme of your web site or a color scheme that complements your logo. The more consistently your company presents itself online, the better your customers will recognize and trust you.

Unsubscribe Page

Customers appreciate a company that pays attention to details. Carry your branding through to the last campaign detail – your unsubscribe page.

An unbranded unsubscribe page feels jarring and impersonal. Imagine clicking through a designed and branded email and landing on an unsubscribe page that looks like this:

Where was I again? Whose emails am I opting out of? Which company is this? I’m a little lost.

But when I unsubscribe from Copyblogger’s campaign, I get a clear reminder about who I’m dealing with:

…plus the content I’m opting out of. The simple addition of the logo and reference to the email content provide a better customer service experience and a good reflection of their brand.

If you’re using AWeber, you can add your logo and descriptions of your mailing lists with the “Personalize Your List” option on the “List Settings” page. Upload your logo in the “Company Branding” section. We’ll host your logo and add it to your unsubscribe page for you.

Take advice from Copyblogger’s unsubscribe page by uploading your logo and including a clear description of the list your customers are unsubscribing from. They’re a customer of ours, so if you use AWeber, your additions will look similar to this example.

Sure, you don’t want them to leave. But let them leave on a good note with the extra step of branding your unsubscribe page if they’re leaving anyway.

Take It Further

Have you seen any A+ examples of email campaign branding in your own inbox? How do you approach branding your own campaign? Where do you see some room for improvement?

If you have people unsubscribing from your list at about the same speed you’re getting new ones, then your list isn’t going to grow. Fortunately, there are things you can do to fix that.

After I worked with customers to optimize their email campaigns, I was able to put together a list of effective email marketing tactics. I’ve already shared tips for getting more subscribers, but that was only the beginning. Now the focus turns to keeping those subscribers on your list.

In the hundreds of campaigns I’ve looked at, I’ve found three strategies that will help keep subscribers on your mailing list.

Set Expectations

We’ve stressed the importance of setting subscriber expectations plenty of times before and there is a reason why- it works. I noticed campaigns with high subscriber retention all explain what the subscriber will be getting right from the start. When subscribers understand what’s going on, they are less likely to unsubscribe or complain.

Here’s how you can set expectations:

• Start with your web form
  
  The web form is where the sign up process begins, so you need to do a good job explaining what the potential subscriber will get for entering their information.

  Check your form and make sure it lets subscribers know what they’re signing up for. You want to detail what you’ll be sending them and how often they can expect to receive messages from you.

• Have subscribers confirm
  
  The confirmation message is sent immediately after the subscriber submits their information. You can customize the confirmation message so the subscriber knows what’s going on, and what to do next.

  A previous blog post included examples of effective confirmation messages, so you can take a look at those before you start your own.

• Welcome new subscribers

  After subscribers have signed up and confirmed, it’s time to welcome and remind them what they signed up for.

  The welcome message should reiterate what you’ll be sending them, how often they’ll be receiving messages and what they can do if they ever want to stop getting your messages.

• Assess and re-assess your campaign

  After you have set expectations you need to periodically assess your campaign to make sure you are following the guidelines you’ve set.

  For example, if you said you’d be sending twice a week, make sure that’s what you’re doing.

As long as you stick to the expectations you set, you shouldn’t have any subscribers leaving your list due to misunderstanding. However, there are still a couple other things you can do to increase retention.

Create Brand Loyalty

When people begin to associate your brand with positive things, they’ll stick to you.

Everything that comes in contact with your subscribers should have your brand represented. Subject lines can be branded by including your company name in them, and messages can be branded by putting your logo at the top like this example:

Keep in mind that whenever you interact with subscribers and customers, you’ll be creating opinions about your brand. Zappos, for example, has successfully associated their brand with superior customer service. Same goes for AWeber.

Pay Attention to Subscriber Behavior

If someone purchases something from you, they are more likely to purchase from you again.

Keeping this is mind, AWeber allows you to track who’s opening messages and who’s clicking on links.

Setting up analytics will take this one step further. You’ll be able to track sales, clicks through your site even if that URL wasn’t specifically in your message and downloads.

Tracking subscriber activity allows you to use their information to send more personalized messages by sending to segments. Sending messages that are more personalized will help encourage subscribers to remain on your list.

You might also want to consider setting up subscriber preferences right at sign up.

IKEA is a good example of this:

Giving subscribers the option to enter more detailed information about who they are and what they’re looking for will allow you to create messages relevant to what they need.

If you want to learn subscriber preferences right away, you can set up custom fields in your web form and use that information for segmenting, or even to place the subscriber in the appropriate list.

You’re on Your Way!

Using these tips to keep subscribers on your list along with the tips to get more subscribers, will help make your list grow faster. There’s more to come though, so be on the lookout for the next optimization post that will have tips on how to improve your messages.

Fill out the form below to join our blog newsletter and you’ll get the next optimization post right in your inbox.

We’ll also periodically send you the other email marketing tips we publish here. The blog newsletter goes out 2 times per week.

Most of us probably even follow similar morning routines. We wake up, drink our coffee and get a move on with our day – squeezing in a few minutes to check our email either before or after we reach the office.

Believe it or not, those self-imposed procedures that we follow repetitiously have a lot to do with how we respond to the email marketing efforts of the companies we follow.

Some companies understand this and set proper expectations for their readers, while others aren’t quite there yet. Keep reading to see who gets it right, and how you can do the same with your own email marketing campaign!

Why Set Expectations?

It’s important that subscribers recognize your messages and form an attachment to the times and formats that you send them in. You want readers to expect certain things in your emails because when they do they tend to open, click and share the emails with others.

Long after you send your first autoresponder to your subscribers, you continue to create expectations whether you try to or not. Before a subscriber signs up, you create expectations by offering samples of your newsletter or explaining exactly what a subscriber will receive on the thank you page.

A few months later, your subscribers aren’t going to remember what you promised to send them. Most likely they won’t bother to return to your website to find out, either. So, what should you do?

Keep It Consistent

Recognition is a huge component of successful email marketing. Everything from the subject line and from line to the template that you use is important when setting expectations. You want your readers to identify your emails when they see them in their inbox.

Jay, who runs our webinars, gets emails from Tiger Direct on a regular basis. He loves gadgets, and loves getting them at affordable prices even more. Normally, Tiger Direct sends heavily styled messages that show glossy laptops and TVs like this one:

The other day, however, this plain text message landed in Jay’s inbox:

He happened to click on it, but really had no idea who the message was coming from or what it was regarding. It was even signed by the company’s president, Carl Fiorentino, but since none of the other messages mention his name, Jay was clueless.

While plain text messages certainly have many helpful benefits, when they show up out of the blue they can still be overlooked and ineffective. Make sure that your emails are consistent. Whether they are plain text or HTML, the appearance of your messages will become a trademark that your readers will recognize.

Set a Routine

We talk about the importance of sticking to the schedule a lot, yet this is an approach I’ve never encountered before. Daily Worth, a site dedicated to helping women manage their finances responsibly, keeps their schedule crystal clear for readers and email subscribers.

In each message that they send, they include an image at the top of the email to indicate the subject matter of the message. The content is the same every week on the specified day, making it easy for subscribers to identify the message and decide whether or not they want to continue reading.

You can easily do something similar with your own campaign, creating an image that mirrors your content schedule. Just be sure to include the day, the content and what they can expect to receive the next day.

How Do You Set Expectations?

Do you set expectations at sign up with your web form? Carry that through to your newsletters?

We’d love to hear how you keep subscribers informed and ready for your next messages! Let us know in the comments below.

Saying “thank you” is something we’re taught to do as children. This important lesson is something that can be carried over to your email marketing campaign as well. And what better time to start than right after someone joins your list?

The thank you page is the page that a potential subscriber will land on after filling out your web form, making it the second point of contact you have with them. It’s an opportunity for your business to make a good impression, set expectations and get subscribers on their way to becoming customers.

Here are 3 businesses that do a great job thanking their potential subscribers while also answering a few questions for their subscribers: what happened, what happens next, and what they need to do now.

Wilmington Travel Helps Prospects Activate Their Email Subscriptions

Perhaps the most important feature of a thank you page is the instructions for what the potential subscriber needs to do next. You want to make the subscriber experience as easy as possible so they can start receiving your messages.

Philip Patete runs the email campaign for Wilmington.net and has a creative solution for making sure instructions are clear:

Including an image of what exactly the potential subscriber needs to look for in their inbox and what they will need to click on can make the whole sign up process easier. Notice how features of the image are highlighted so the potential subscriber will be able to see the from address, subject line, and what they will need to click on.

You can do this too by taking a screenshot of your confirmation message, and then use image editing programs such as Skitch or GIMP to highlight certain areas.

It’s also important to set subscriber expectations in the thank you page. If subscribers know what to expect from the start, you will have a more engaged list with less people unsubscribing or complaining. The Wilmington thank you page handles setting expectations by incorporating them with their instructions:

The potential subscriber understands what needs to be done next and knows when they can expect to receive the information they requested.While these potential subscribers need to confirm in order to get a guide, you can also set this up to remind them that they need to confirm before they can begin seeing the value of being on their mailing list. Our next example also makes sure to set expectations in the thank you page.

BarnYarns Breaks Down Their Email Content and Sets Frequency Expectations

Iain MacPherson runs the email campaign for Barnyarns.co.uk, and this thank you page does an excellent job with setting expectations.

Part of their thank you page includes a description of what the potential subscriber can look forward to in their newsletters:

The potential subscriber already showed interest by signing up to the mailing list, so adding further details about what they’re going to be getting helps build anticipation. They even take it one step further by including how often they send newsletters:

Potential subscribers are aware of what they can expect from these newsletters and how often they can expect to get them. This means there won’t be any surprises for subscribers that could lead to unsubscribing or marking an email as spam. Our next example takes this concept one step further by incorporating the most recent newsletter in the thank you page.

Invested Central Gives Out a Sample Newsletter

Chris Hopkins runs the site http://www.investedcentral.com, and he sets expectations by allowing potential subscribers to get a sneak peek at what the newsletters look like:

Giving subscribers a look at what they can expect to see is a great way to start off on the right foot. They’ll also be able to see the value your messages can have for them, making them more likely to confirm.

You can get a web based version of your message when you check off the “Social Media/Sharing” checkbox at the bottom of the Broadcast edit page.

Of course, in order for your potential subscribers to get these valuable newsletters you need to make sure you’re in their address book, otherwise you may end up in the spam filter. Take a look a look at how Chris handles this:

We’ve talked before about the importance of getting in your subscriber’s address book, and the thank you page is just one of many good places to remind them.

Thank You Page Keys:

• Make sure you say “Thank you!”
• Setting expectations always helps
• Give subscribers directions
• Make the sign up process as easy as possible

What else do you think a thank you page should say and do?

Did your New Year’s resolution involve overhauling your email marketing campaign?

Maybe you resolved to get on the ball and send more often. Or maybe you suspect you’ve been overwhelming your readers, so you plan to send less.

Either way, you’ve got some decisions to make. Do you tell your readers to expect the change in frequency? If you do, where, when and how do you tell them?

Let’s take a look at how Threadless handled a recent frequency change. Would you do things the same way?

The Announcement

When Threadless increased their frequency from 2 emails per week to 3, they let subscribers know.

Better Off Alone?

There’s a lot going on in this message, with the swirling vortex and all. Many readers may have skipped right over that lovely yellow box. Should Threadless have announced the change in a separate email?

Pro: A statement that arrived solo would be sure to be seen. Plus, it would become the natural topic for the subject line, so subscribers could observe the addition even without opening the message.

Con: On the other hand, giving the announcement such serious real estate might annoy some readers. They signed up for these emails to see fun t-shirts, and they get a schedule announcement? Disapproval or even unsubscribes could result if the message doesn’t meet their expectations.

Knowledge Is Power…Too Much Power?

The box gave the facts about the extra emails, then gave readers the option to decline them. Should Threadless have forgone that second step?

Pro: With the veto power granted here, subscribers can control which messages they receive. (You can do this for your own subscribers, if you like.) This gives them a sense of ownership over their subscription, which may mean they’ll appreciate these emails more.

Con: But what if they choose to opt out of the extra emails? Will Threadless miss out on potential sales? And what if readers evaluate their preferences and decide, “Actually, I’ll just unsubscribe?”

Out? In? Which Way to Opt?

Notice that readers were invited to opt out of the extra emails, not into them. For general list subscription, that’s widely considered a bad practice. How about for frequency changes?

Pro: Subscribers who don’t open the message, see the box or change their preferences will start getting the extra emails, giving Threadless more opportunities to persuade them to buy.

Con: For those subscribers, the extra messages will appear seemingly without request or warning. If they notice, and if they mind, they may feel annoyed and unsubscribe.

How Do You Change Frequency?

Have you ever changed how often you send your marketing emails? Did you let subscribers know beforehand?

Did you offer them the option to choose which frequency they’d prefer, perhaps by switching lists?

How else could you handle the situation?

Spam complaints can tell you a lot about your email marketing campaigns. One thing they can indicate is that it’s unclear to your subscribers what they are signing up for and how when they’ll receive your messages.

So how can you minimize spam complaints from the get-go?

Keep reading to find out how a few of your fellow email marketers do it by setting expectations!

When evaluating the cause of a spam complaint, the first step is to take a look at your web form.

It’s absolutely crucial to set expectations throughout the life of your email campaign, starting with your web form.

Your web form must explain exactly what your subscribers will receive, the benefits of subscribing, and when subscribers can expect to receive your messages.

Let’s take a look at how Print It Party, a party decor site, sets expectations with their web form:

To make certain that important details are not overlooked, they place information not only in the header of the form, but above the form as well. With your own form, if you can’t explain in full detail what subscribers will receive in just the header, include a description near the web form on the page.

This web form includes the benefits of what the subscriber will receive – “free printables and contests, extra-hip party tips and secrets and new products alerts.” They make their newsletter sound special and exciting while describing exactly what is to come.

Using a subscriber counter has shown to be a successful tool in gaining subscribers. A potential subscriber viewing the counter will see that others are benefiting from your newsletter. This establishes your information as a reputable source.

Battlefield Equipment, an equipment rental site, sets expectations using this method.

Battlefield Equipment’s subscriber counter builds trust and sets expectations about the quality of their “Battlefield Equipment eNewsletter.” Potential subscribers can see Battlefield already has a significant following and they will be more inclined to trust that the messages and content they will receive are valuable.

Just as Techbite describes when subscribers will receive messages, Battlefield notes that subscribers will get “seasonal” specials. If you do not send each week or month on a specific day, you can still use detailed words to describe “when” messages will go out.

Including an image on your email sign up form can increase recognition and help you to maintain consistency throughout your campaign.

Take for example the web form on the homepage of the brain games and fitness company, Braintraining. Braintraining’s form includes imagery and lets subscribers know they respect their privacy.

Their attention-grabbing lightbox form includes an image of the Brain Training Power Pack. Including this picture allows subscribes to visualize what they are going to receive.

The form also contains a link to Braintraining’s privacy policy. Include a link to the privacy policy in your own web form to assure subscribers that you are sending a safe and private newsletter.

These forms do not simply say “Sign Up for My Newsletter.” They include valuable and descriptive information to begin an honest relationship with subscribers.

You can see a little detail goes a long way in setting expectations. To prevent potential complaints, make it your priority to set expectations right off the bat.

How do you set expectations at sign up?

Or it can be a disaster. Cross-promotion is a bit like a minefield: you have to step carefully.

Trent Reznor of Nine Inch Nails has impressed us in the past with his fan-focused, grassroots, defy-The-Man marketing. But when his campaign recently invited subscribers to a new list, someone wasn’t watching their feet carefully enough.

To keep yourself on solid ground when cross-promoting your lists, you’ll need this guide. Follow it, and the only explosion you’ll see will be the size of your list.

Your Guide to Cross-Promotion

We recently got this email from Nine Inch Nails. When we clicked the call to action, this is what we saw:

In some ways, this process is handled well. In other ways, not so much. Here’s what to take away for your own cross-promotions – and what to leave behind.

Want to Learn More?

For more information on email marketing for musicians, view our complete Email Marketing for Musicians Guide.

Have You Ever Invited One List to Another?

How did you present your invitation? And what kind of response did you get?

If you’ve ever cross-promoted one campaign with another, tell us about it below!