About the Author: Adam Costa is the Editor in Chief of trekity.com, a killer new travel site. If you like to travel, follow him on Twitter for adventure and intrigue. Creating a profitable newsletter requires a little planning. But once it’s set up, a newsletter continues to engage your readers for months or years to [...]

2011 was a big year for social media (big changes to Facebook and the introduction of Google Plus), integrations (like our PayPal app and Facebook Connect), and discussing the future of email. Let’s take a look back at some of our top posts from this year. Here are our top 6 blog posts and top [...]

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 [...]

Do you know why you’re using email marketing? Email marketing can be incredibly valuable for business. But you need to ask yourself how it can be valuable for YOUR business. When you realize how email marketing can be valuable for you, you’ll get a better idea of where you need to start and what you [...]

Online retailers rejoiced at the news their email marketing campaigns are eagerly read by consumers. This report showed that nearly half of those surveyed said they look forward to finding the latest deals in their inbox.

The question is: are you creating compelling messages that make subscribers keep coming back for more?

Roller Warehouse has their aggressive skating crowd interacting with them regularly, thanks to their email campaign. Their biweekly deal approach has brought them a great return on investment, customers are interacting with their business like never before, and they were eager to share their results and strategies with fellow online marketers. Here they are…

The Biweekly Deals from Roller Warehouse

Roller Warehouse sends out their deals on skating equipment and apparel every Tuesday and Friday.

The Tuesday email usually looks like this:

Tuesday’s email requires a phone call to order the sale item:

Roller Warehouse explains that the reason the deal can’t be done online is because their price is too low to publish. This is a great way to get customers on the phone and talking to you. That offer also gives a sense of urgency, since the deal has an expiration date.

The Friday deal the subscriber can order online:

This approach can appeal to subscribers that are interested in getting deals, but maybe don’t want to call in to order. Another consideration is that subscribers may have more time on the weekend to think about their hobby.

There is also the advantage that online orders can come in while offices are closed for the weekend.

This deal also has a sense of urgency, since it expires once the weekend is over.

Results from the Biweekly Deal Approach

Roller Warehouse is proud of the campaign’s performance so far. Since implementing this method they’ve had:

• 8-10% increase in sales after each email deal is sent out
• Facebook fans increase 32%
• 30-35% increase in blog traffic

Why This Works and How To Apply it to Your Campaign

1. Consider the Audience

Roller Warehouse’s target market consists of kids and young adults. Roller Warehouse looked at reports of when subscribers were opening the messages, and that’s how they found Tuesday would be a good send day. Friday was picked as the second day because most of their audience doesn’t have school on the weekends.

Are you looking at when your subscribers are reading? Use your reports to find out what day your subscribers open messages, and send your emails keeping that information in mind.

2. Utilize Social Media

Roller Warehouse promotes sharing their deals with others by including a link to share with Facebook friends:

With one click the deal can be shared with friends, allowing even more people to interact with Roller Warehouse. You can do this by uploading the Facebook logo as an image in your email, then hyperlink that image using this:

http://www.facebook.com/share.php?u=<url>

Just replace the <url> with the link you want to share.

With social media becoming an increasingly more valuable tool for marketing, you want to make sure you’re using sites like Facebook and Twitter to promote your business

3. Build a relationship with subscribers

Roller Warehouse does not just go for the hard sell in their deals. They use a friendly tone and even create cool videos for the products they’re promoting:

You can click to view one of their videos below:

Roller Warehouse also keeps in mind that not everyone will be attracted to the featured deal, so they include other products that are on sale as well:

Along with that, Roller Warehouse includes news from their blog so subscribers will still interact with the site even if they aren’t interested in the current deals:

Take a look at your last email and make sure you’re working on building a relationship. Are you having a conversation with your subscribers or is it an advertisement? Are you asking for feedback? Do you provide materials your subscribers will find interesting?

Have a friend look over your messages and let you know if your personality comes out in it, or if it sounds like a salesperson.

4. Stay Consistent

If you don’t set expectations for valuable messages, subscribers won’t be reading. Roller Warehouse has set a consistent schedule for their campaign, which means subscribers know when to expect getting the deals. All their messages include either the phone deal for Tuesday or online deal for Friday, and they make sure to include product demos in all their messages.

Make sure you have set expectations for your campaign early on, and stick to the schedule and material you promised!

Have You Tried Frequent Email Deals With Your Campaign?

Roller Warehouse likes how their biweekly deals are performing, while companies like Groupon and LivingSocial have found daily email deals work great for them.

What results have you seen from email deals? What other tactics have you tried to increase sales?

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This is a guest post by Andreas of London Cyclist.

He contacted me asking if he could share how he’s achieved increased open rates for his email marketing campaigns. I think you’ll enjoy his story and advice.

Take it away, Andreas! -Justin Premick

Listening in awe to a highly accomplished blogger about how she built her email list, I only had one burning question in my mind.

When the presentation was over, I eagerly worked my way through the crowd and asked: “I’m getting email open rates between 60-70%… what can I do to get it higher?”

The blogger looked at me a little shocked.

It Turns Out 60-70% Constitutes a High Open Rate

She sat down with me and we pinned down the key things that were contributing to the success.

Four of these you can easily implement in the next hour, while the last one will take a little longer.

Whilst I wouldn’t recommend you use email open rate as your only key metric, it’s one of those things that as email marketers our eyes can’t help drifting towards.

Here’s how I maximize mine.

Find Your Perfect Time and Stick To It

Through testing I’ve found the perfect time to send out my emails. Now, I stick to it religiously.

To achieve the same result, try split testing your emails and seeing which one receives the highest engagement.

Once you’ve found the perfect time, deliver on it consistently. This way subscribers come to expect it. Most of my subscribers get to work, flip open their email and grab a cup of tea while they read my newsletter.

Use The Headline and First Sentence Effectively

We all know a well written headline will tempt someone to open an email. But did you know there’s a another key thing subscribers see when they are deciding whether to open your email or not?

It’s the first sentence inside the email. I’m often disappointed to see most email marketers are missing this opportunity to lure people into reading the email.

I typically receive emails where the first line inside the email reads: “Click here if you cannot see this email correctly”. Hardly attention grabbing!

The first item in my email newsletter is my logo. I’ve set the alternative text inside the logo to a secondary headline I use to lure people into the email.

The HTML You Need For This

Deliver Exclusivity

My subscribers often receive content that is not available on the blog.

Whether that be an exclusive competition, a new article or something a little bit more personal about me or the site that I wouldn’t share on the blog. This gives subscribers an extra reason to be vigilant about opening my emails.

My open rates often skyrocket when there is content in the newsletter that cannot be found elsewhere.

Draw People Into the Next Email

Another method to make sure people are opening the emails you are sending out is to point out what is coming up next. If one of the topics in your next email strikes their interest then they’ll look out for it. I do this by simply having a “Next Week” section at the bottom of my e-mails.

The Big Secret

The above four techniques can be instantly applied to great effect. The final suggestion takes a little longer.

If you sat me down in a quiet cafe and pushed me further on the techniques that have worked I would lean back, scratch my head and tell you this:

Treat your email subscribers like you treat your best friends. Take an interest in them, learn what their needs and fears are and then create content and products that will suit them perfectly. Then they will always be eager for your next email.

Your Steps to Take for Higher Open Rates

• Create an email schedule. Deliver emails consistently and make sure readers know when to expect them
• Make sure the first sentence readers see isn’t “Click here if you cannot see this email correctly”
• In your next email think about what extra content you can give that hasn’t be seen before
• Hint towards what content is coming up to draw people into the next email
• Get to know your audience so you can cater your offers and content to them

Andreas Kambanis started London Cyclist when he saw the need for a place for casual cyclists to meet and exchange tips online. He uses email marketing to sell his own products such as the London Cycle Routes eBook and affiliate offers. You can check out his newsletter here.

Does it really matter if you schedule your emails for specific days and times?

Some marketers think so. Others don’t. You can certainly peruse your reports for days and times that draw good response in your own campaign. But what if you don’t find anything conclusive?

To help you figure out your scheduling strategy, we took a look at when some of the Big Guys send. Do any of their approaches work for you?

Weekday Mornings

Newegg sends on weekdays, two or three times a week. With the exception of some (strategically planned?) Black Friday emails, they send between midnight and 8 every morning – perfect timing for pitching their electronics and digital products to the 9-5 techie crowd.

Weekday morning sends can also work for promoting office supplies and industry equipment or sharing job postings.

Friday Afternoons

The Container Store, before mid-June, sent with haphazard timing. Since then, they’ve sent every Friday afternoon. Their emails arrive just as their readers’ focus is shifting from the work week to managing life at home – a good time to suggest containers that can help one do so.

Friday afternoons can be ideal for sending emails about local events, home remodeling tools, concerts, art shows – anything useful for planning weekend activities.

Several Times a Day

Bluefly offers a different deal every day, sent at 7 a.m. More often than not, they also send a reminder around 3 before subscribers go offline for the evening.

Such a high frequency can work for limited-time offers or for sending out updates during an event. But be careful with this frequency. You’ll need to provide a lot of value for subscribers to put up with two or more emails in a day.

(Almost) Every Day

Yoga Journal sends Tuesday through Sunday. On Mondays, people are busy digging out from work accumulated over the weekend. After they’ve caught up, YJ sends them a new idea to try in their spare time each day, whether it’s a backbend to battle fatigue or creating yogic space with natural materials.

Subscribers who are counting down to an event or working their way toward a goal may appreciate a daily (or almost-daily) nudge. Whether to skip a day of the week depends on your readers, so check your open rates to see if it makes sense for your campaign.

At Lunch Time

Offbeat Bride sends daily, so brides-to-be get as much advice as possible before the Big Day (and the wedding-obsessed get their fix). OB emails arrive around noon for fun lunchtime reading.

Other ideal lunchtime content might be lighthearted news reports, quick tips or advice, daily inspiration or hobby-related digests. Who doesn’t want something fun and uplifting to read while they chomp?

As News Breaks

Fox News sends updates throughout the day, whenever a big story breaks. Subscribers choose their categories of interest, getting an email or two for each on any given day.

Immediate emails could work well in fast-paced industry, with alerts for software releases, real estate listings and the like? The immediate timing assures readers that they’re the first to get the scoop.

To Schedule or Not to Schedule

Do You Already Time Your Emails?

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Think you know the best day and time to send your email newsletter?

Ever wonder if your fellow email marketers are all sending at the same time you do?

Convinced your open rate is too low (or amazingly high)?

Some recent statistics pulled from all AWeber users may help you answer these questions:

What Kind of Open Rates Are People Getting?

If you’re sending HTML emails, you probably use your open rate to help gauge your success.

Even though it’s not a perfect measure of whether people are actually opening and reading your emails, it’s useful as a relative measure:

If it goes up over a short period of time, more people are probably reading

If it falls over a short period of time, it’s almost certain fewer people are reading.

Plus, all other things being equal, it can give you some motivation (if your open rates are lower than other senders’) or satisfaction (if your rates are higher).

So, here goes…

When Is/Was The Best Day To Send?

You’ll often hear (at least, I often hear) that Tuesday is the optimal day to send, because on Monday people are catching up from the weekend, and that on Tuesday morning you’ll have their undivided attention before they jump into their work for the upcoming week.

Do the numbers back up that theory? Let’s see.

The breakdown of open rates by day of the week:

Last month, Tuesday was actually the second-worst day to send, at least if you’re measuring by open rates.

(While we’re breaking assumptions, I should point out this, too: the hour of the day that got the best open rate was not 8-9AM, or 9-10AM, but in fact 2-3PM Eastern Time — email newsletters sent during that hour last month enjoyed a 19.1% open rate.)

Does This Mean I Should Switch My Campaigns To Thursdays?

In a word: No.

In both March and February, Thursday newsletters got the 3rd-worst opens vs. the rest of the week.

I hesitated a little to publish these stats, because I’m concerned that people might flock to sending their newsletters at the day or time that happened to get the best results lately.

Please, don’t drastically change your sending times/days just because you see that the average last month, or any month, happened to be higher on a different day or time.

Yes, you might eventually be able to shift your sending schedule, or split test some broadcasts, but if you up and move everything, you may throw off subscribers who are used to hearing from you at the usual time.

“It’s So Busy, Nobody Goes There Anymore”

To get at the other reason for not shifting your sending based on these stats, let’s paraphrase Yogi Berra (see above).

If everyone switches their sending schedule to send on say, Thursday, then recipients will start getting a ton of email that day, and start paying less attention to each individual email.

One possible reason for Thursday’s success last month may be that it wasn’t as popular as say, Tuesday or Wednesday for sending email:

Those higher-volume days mean more emails in readers’ inboxes, which might contribute to reduced open rates. Following that reasoning, some people may look at the low weekend volume (more email newsletters were sent on Tuesdays than on Saturdays and Sundays combined) and see an opportunity to get their audiences’ undivided attention.

My main point in showing these is to point out that our assumptions about what works are often quite wrong, and that you ultimately have to test for yourself to see what best suits your audience.

Some Inspiration… And Some Help

Are you getting better open rates than this?

If so, GREAT! Give yourself a pat on the back…

…but don’t get complacent. Open rates aren’t the be-all, end-all of email metrics. They don’t guarantee that people are reading your emails, only that they have images turned on and that they probably saw your email for at least a moment.

Plus, there’s always room for improvement, right?

Some ideas that can help you raise your open rates:

Ask people to add you to their address books. Some email programs will display images from senders who are in the recipient’s contact list.

If you are putting pictures in your emails, use the ALT text for those images to pique readers’ interest in what the picture is, so that they enable images. Or, just directly ask readers to turn on images!

Add a picture of yourself to your emails, near/next to your signature. People like seeing your smiling face, and if they see it in one of your emails, they may be more likely to turn on images to see it again later.

What statistics/benchmarks would you like to see and/or learn more about?

Share your requests below or email me your suggestions or drop me a line on Twitter!

In the comments of a post discussing our recent FeedBurner integration, Mike Hill asked a great question about email subscription options:

The scheduling would be more useful if it can be setup by the subscriber, not by me as the publisher. Is that a possibility with any subscription services on email?

To me, this would be far more useful to my readers than me picking when to get it. I’d even consider subscribing some of my blogs on email instead of RSS if this was available.

View this comment on the original post

While creating a signup form that gives subscribers an unlimited number of frequency options would be tough to pull off without making the form look awkward and intimidating, it’s easy to offer them a couple of different options.

All it takes is a little HTML know-how and a few minutes to set up an extra list or 2.

First, Create 2 Lists

In this example, we’re going to give our blog’s email subscribers the option to sign up for daily emails, or weekly ones.

First, let’s create lists for each of those subscriptions. I’ve named mine blog-daily and blog-weekly. You’ll need to choose different names, but you’ll probably want to follow a similar naming scheme.

(Need to learn how to create a list? See the Getting Started section of our Knowledge Base.)

Next, Set Up 2 Blog Broadcasts

Now, you need to create 2 nearly identical Blog Broadcasts (one in each list).

The only difference? You’ll schedule emails for your daily list to be sent daily, and the ones for your weekly list to be sent weekly.

Daily Posts (list blog-daily)

Weekly Posts (list blog-weekly)

Now, Set Up Your Web Form

Create a web form in one of the lists. It doesn’t matter which one, because we’re going to edit the HTML to let our readers pick which list to subscribe to.

Need help creating a web form? We’ve got a Knowledge Base entry on that, too.

Once you’ve created/saved your form, get the HTML for it:

Note that we use the HTML in the lower box, not the JavaScript in the upper box.

We’re going to let our subscribers choose daily or weekly posts from a radio button.

Find the line of HTML in the form for the box where subscribers put their Email Address:

Just beneath it, paste the following:

Replace my sample listnames (blog-daily and blog-weekly) with your daily and weekly lists.

Finally, delete this line of HTML from your form:

and publish the form to your site. You’ll get something like this:

Whenever subscribers fill out the form, they choose how often they want to hear from you, and the form adds them to the appropriate list (in this case, to get daily emails or weekly ones).

What If I Have a Message I Want to Send Everyone?

No problem — just create a broadcast and use our send to multiple lists feature to get in touch with all of your blog’s email subscribers.

RSS Subscribers: discuss this post or share it with others.

Around the web and in conversation with ambitious new email marketers, we often hear of our company cited as either an “autoresponder” or an “email newsletter” service.

You say “toe-may-toh” I say “toe-mah-toh”, right?

Well, we often describe our service as a “permission only email marketing solution”, because autoresponders and newsletters are only two of the many features we offer. With that said, we’re not overly concerned about how our service is referred to.

What we are concerned about is how this limited perception sometimes holds back many new and even some experienced email marketers from reaching their campaigns’ potential.

Starting on the Right Foot …

With an understanding of some of the benefits of email marketing, new customers often join us with a single, very focused goal. Often it is something like:

“I’d like to send an email newsletter for my website”

“I’d like to send an automatic series of messages to convert prospects into customers”

These are great ideas, and they describe perfect applications of both our broadcast feature (for newsletters) and follow up feature (for a series of messages) for helping a business to grow.

Not clear on exactly clear on what makes these features unique? Read more on the difference between follow up messages and broadcasts and how they can be used.

The problem is, once these ideas reach fruition and some success is evident, too many marketers stop there.

What Else Would They Do?

Whether an email campaign has series of follow ups with no broadcast messages — or vice versa — it is missing a critical piece for optimal success.

A while back, Justin published an article discussing why email newsletter publishers need autoresponders, meant to motivate senders who focus solely on newsletters (broadcasts) to also schedule a few follow up messages.

A new article in our Knowledge Base takes a slightly different approach, explaining why all email marketers should use both follow up and messages:

Read More About Why Email Campaigns Need Both Follow Up Messages and Broadcast Messages

This is also one of the many topics we cover with new email marketers in our weekly, free getting started live training seminar, along with others tips, like what to write in your messages as you get your campaign set up.

Only Using One or the Other?

If you’re sending only follow up or broadcast messages and not both, don’t fret. Today you can use this opportunity to do something quite simple that will boost your results.