Big Splash Mail’ss 2011 Editor has been released for all our clients, giving you new features such as image editing within the newsletter builder and about 300 cool new templates to choose from.

Upload your own template, choose one of the tried & tested ones, or import content directly from your blog. You can even drag and drop individual elements in some templates. How’s that for flexibility!

What is in it for you?

• On-the-fly image editing

• Create and edit text inside your images

• Drag-and-drop functionality

• New easy template selection process

• Access almost 300 free templates

• Templates are tested across all major email clients

The ability to work in layers means you can change the text within images – which is especially useful when working to produce email newsletters for multiple languages or for different segments in your mailing list.

With the 2011 Big Splash Mail Editor; images, structure and branding all work to help you win readers over during those crucial first-look moments.

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Facebook can benefit your marketing efforts in lots of ways; such as letting you share content and engage with clients socially. It can also be used to grow your emailing list. With 750 million users and counting, Facebook’s power to help boost your subscriber count can’t be underestimated.

Putting a newsletter sign-up form on your page

Facebook pages are a great advantage for business marketing since these are designed for brands who want to connect with their audiences via more than just a regular profile.

Pages also give you the ability to include a sign-up form for your email list.

Big Splash Marketing can help you create a sign-up form on Facebook that allows fans to subscribe, just as they would on your website. And we can easily link it to any email newsletter provider.

How to get prospects and clients to opt in

Ask your fans to subscribe by posting reminders once a month about the fact that your next email newsletter edition is about to launch and they should sign up for exclusive news and offers.

Make brief status updates from time to time explaining the benefits of your newsletter while including a link to your sign-up form.

People aren’t interested in only hearing about your email campaigns all the time, but the more active you are, the more interesting you will appear to fans – who will then want to know more about what you have in store. So instead of asking fans to join your list at every opportunity, engage them in conversations and get them interacting with your brand.

Eventually they’ll want to receive your emails and Facebook subscription forms give them an easy and convenient way to opt in.

Integrating email with social media isn’t the answer for every marketer, but the platform could be the solution to bolstering your overall marketing efforts. Once you begin engaging fans on Facebook effectively, you’ll be surprised at how many new subscriptions you’ll get.

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The clock is always ticking in email marketing campaigns. If you want to connect with prospects in today’s crowded marketplace, you have to make sure you’re sending the right message at the right time.

But with email reading habits varying from person to person, how can you determine that exact moment when recipients are most engaged, most likely to be in their inboxes and most likely to take the action you want?

Sending timely, relevant content is critical in a landscape in which most people on a website are just there to research (though many of them will eventually buy from you or a competitor). This means you have to listen, you have to educate, and you have to help them on their conversions path – all at the right moment in time.

Many people who make use of email marketing software try to bypass reality by relying on applying an urgent calls-to-action on everything they send. But this strategy can backfire if your emails hit the inbox at the wrong time or if you are not allowing a sufficient period for subscribers to read and react.

So here are a few great ways to achieve synchronization with your customers:

Send at the time that people usually respond – You can track your responses by time and so understand when customers may be more likely to be opening your emails. By analyzing the timing data, you can group individuals who habitually open and/or click at specific dates and times and then be able to better optimize your sending timing to that specific segment of email subscribers.

Provide advance notice – If you’re sending out an on-the-day sales event notice then you can expect the majority of subscribers may not even be able to read it or take action before it’s all over. While you might not want to let your competitors know too early about your special events, you also want to give your customers a chance to shop before its history. It’s up to you to find where this fine balance point is.

Specify dates and times – While the phrase “Special offer today only” has a lot of zing to it, the first question your audience might be asking is; just when exactly is “today”. Remember that many of your customers may only be opening the email days after you’ve dispatched it, and then it’s either already too late, or even worse, it’s not too late but a lack of basic information is preventing them from purchasing.

Adjusting for buying cycles can be particularly tricky, since they vary due to many different reasons. But you can change your email marketing timing from guesswork to fact and improve your general response rate by following these tips.

For more information on permission-based email marketing, contact us at info@bigsplashmarketing.com, or visit us at www.bigsplashmarketing.com.

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We have just launched our new 2011 Easy Editor (beta)
With our new 2011 Editor, we also simplified our newsletter menu (see the video below). It’s now even easier to create, edit and manage your newsletter.

Take advantage of a host of new features and improved usability:

• Drag n Drop functionality
• On the fly image editing
• Create and edit text inside images
• Simplified interface
• New easy template selection process
• Access over 300 free templates
• Templates tested across all major email clients

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While the internet is rife with studies regarding our daily habits, complexes, spending impulses, demographics, cultural dependencies and just about every other imaginable social and domestic factor that can be (somehow) tied to how we gravitate towards a certain brand/service/product over another, not much has been put to print about what our own bodies have to say about all this.

During the last decade, bulk email communications and social networking technology has had a profound influence on the scale of which people share information, and has vastly increased the ease with which we can connect. It’s not uncommon for Twitter and Facebook users to have thousands of fans/followers (and to be a fan/follower of thousands) just as it is for bulk mailing lists to contain heaps of addresses. Now Bruno Goncalves from the University of Indiana has studied the network of links created by three million Twitter users over four years. After counting tweets that are mutual and regular as signifying a significant social bond, he found that when people start tweeting, their number of friends increases to a saturation point until they become overwhelmed. Beyond that saturation point, the conversations with less important contacts start to become less frequent and the tweeters begin to concentrate on the people they have the strongest links with.

So what is the saturation point? Or, in other words, how many people can tweeters maintain contact with before they get overwhelmed? The answer is between 100 and 200.

The bottom line is that high frequency communications, such as social networks, bulk email and bulk SMS-ing allow us to vastly increase the number of individuals we can connect with, but can’t change our physically-defined communication capabilities. It doesn’t matter what we do, we cannot maintain close links with more than about 150 people, that is, until somebody finds a way to increase the human brain size.

Marketers are always looking to secure their brand in consumer top-of-mind nirvana. Having a big mailing list counts, as does the constant effort to inflate your subscriber numbers. But unless your brand poses real value to the individual, you’ll be shelved down with the shoes whenever he or she receives an email from you. As this research shows, it’s a biological fact.

This is all another reason why finding and nurturing quality contacts through your opt-in mailing list is vital to ensuring that your communications are making an actual impression. It doesn’t mean that you’ve hit a brick wall once there are 200 names in your pocket, it simply means that effective list building really comes down to how much the people you’re signing up care about what you have to say, which is always something you can improve with an appealing marketing message. Limitations are an unwelcome concept to digital age thinkers who are used to punting infinity, but the key is to refine identifying and targeting your core market. Then cultivate your mailing list out of this fertile land to avoid wasting time and send credits.

So the important thing to ask is: are you a part of the recipients’ inner inbox circle (or aiming to get there) or are you just another brand in the chain?

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You sign up for our email marketing services because you want to be ahead of the pack, with an email marketing campaign that gives you outstanding results and email newsletters that will leave your competition behind.
Sadly, quality design is harder than it looks.  At least, it used to be…

In an effort to simplify the process of creating an html email newsletter, we’ve released a brand new drag-and-drop editor!

The new drag-and-drop editor is aimed specifically at those clients who do not have HTML knowledge or aren’t familiar with design tools.  This wizard editor should make your life a whole lot easier.  Simply choose one of the drag-and-drop templates which have all been designed in neat blocks, and edit each block as you’d like.  You can insert images, move it around, or keep it simple.

You’ll find it in your account under Neswsletters > Create.  Check it out and let us know what you think!

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Email marketers are constantly evolving and adapting to a changing digital landscape. During 2010 many tested the efficiency of send welcome emails. (The web was a-buzz with statistics, findings and articles on welcome emails.) The results were impressive, and we believe it’s now safe to say that welcome emails have become a commonly-used tactic in email campaigns.

Welcome emails typically have very high open rates (often up to 50 – 60%); probably because they’re sent at a time when subscribers are interested in communicating with your brand (the minute they sign up to your mailing list). It’s a good point at which to get your relationship with your subscriber off to a good start, and also show them that you plan on engaging them through your email campaign, rather than just sending them the obligatory promotional mailing every once in a while.

The difference between a welcome email and a confirmation email

A confirmation email is an email that’s usually generated and sent automatically when someone’s subscribed to your newsletter. As the name implies, it confirms the subscription. If you follow a double opt-in process, this email will contain a verification link the recipient has to click on. It’s usually just a few lines.

A welcome is a more comprehensive email (like your newsletter) that welcomes the recipient to your campaign. It’s more similar to your newsletter (or other email marketing emails) than a confirmation email.

A few things you can include in your welcome email

Set expectations: Tell your new subscriber what they can typically expect to get from your newsletter; whether it’s tips, industry news, company news, promotions or product updates. Also set a frequency expectation by telling them how often you’re going to be sending them these emails.

They want to communicate: People sign up to your newsletter because they want you to communicate with them. Unfortunately, when they reply to your bulk email send, you might not pick up the email among all the other replies in your inbox. Provide all your basic contact info in your welcome email – everything from your general admin email address to your phone number and social accounts.

Privacy assurance: With spammers hard at work everywhere people can be reluctant about handing over their email address. Provide them with assurance – tell them exactly what you’ll be using their email address for and that you won’t hand it out to any third parties.

Show them what they’ve missed: Provide a link to your newsletter archive so that they can get an idea of what your past newsletters have looked like and read up on interesting info they’ve missed out on in previous sends.

An option to unsubscribe: If they don’t like your newsletters, they will unsubscribe eventually. So be honest and up front about what they can expect from future mailings, and give them the option to unsubscribe immediately if they don’t like the sound of it.

Include a friendly reminder: Remind your subscribers to add you to their address book or whitelist your email address. Don’t risk your emails landing in the spam folder!

Don’t forget to say “thank you”!

A few tips for sending welcome emails:

• Send your welcome emails as soon as possible after the signup.

• If you have an automated confirmation email you don’t want to change, send your welcome email immediately after the recipient has clicked on the verification link in the confirmation email. It’s worth testing what works best for your mailing list – sending a combined confirmation and welcome email, or sending the two separately.

• Some email marketers have had success with sending a series of welcome emails. If you try that, be sure to stipulate in your confirmation email (or in your first welcome email) that you will be sending the recipient a series of welcome messages and tell them how they’ll benefit from reading these welcome emails.

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Any post on growing your mailing list will tell you to remember to get people to sign up in person, when they’re in your store and at your events.

As with most growth strategies, this is easier said than done.

People who sign up to your list via a subscription form have visited your blog or your website, they’ve shown an interest and made a conscious decision to sign up to your mailing list. They might not have made a purchase, but they’ve shown intent.

People who visit your store or events have visited you, they’ve shown an interest, and made a conscious decision to sign up to your mailing list.

They may also have:

a) made an impulse purchase/returned something they no longer want

b) come with a friend or shown up for the free food/booze (if it’s an event)

c) signed up because they felt sorry for the poor sucker who’s manning the mailing list

d) felt obliged to sign up simply because you asked them too and you can’t “Close” a person the way you can a pop-up subscription form

e) written their name down weeks ago and forgotten about it by the time you captured the emails in your mailing list

I think it’s even more important to stick to a double opt-in when people sign up in person. When people sign up via your subscription form you usually send them an automated confirmation message. You can do the same thing with in-person sign-ups, especially if you usually wait a few days before adding these new contacts to your mailing list. Send them a confirmation email with a reminder message (“Hi, you signed up to our mailing list at our event last week. Please verify your email address by clicking here. If you’re not interested in receiving communication emails from us, please ignore this email.”)

The same practice can be applied to email addresses you get at industry networking events, tradeshows and conferences.

Any email you acquire at an event is not necessarily someone to add to your mailing list. At events, people either give you your email address because they’re interested in your product or service, but often it’s because they’re interested in you as a business contact. Don’t just capture every email on your mailing list, evaluate why they gave your email address first. It might be better to send them a personal email first, and you can always include a sign-up link for your newsletter in the email. Also remember that the participant or attendee email lists provided by event organizers have NOT opted in to your mailing list! You may send them a private email inviting them to sign up for your mailing list, but it’s not okay to add them to your list without getting explicit permission. (That is, unless the organizers have provided opt-in sections on their sign-up list and you can prove that these people have in fact opted in to your mailings.)

An interest in your product and handing you their email address, unfortunately, does not count as an opt-in sign up. It is only a sign-up when the person handing you their email has given you permission to send them email marketing emails.

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Yes, you want a visually impressive email. But it’s not all just about a pretty picture.

When it comes to the visual side of your email, email marketers tend to take the lead from their websites, because by doing so they not only enhance brand awareness, but also extend the trust their clients have in their brand to the inbox. So – if your email should look similar to your website you already have the outline for your email design. However, the trick is not in designing the visual…

The best email design is the one that’s centered around the subscriber. By anticipating how your subscriber is going to react to every element of your email, you can stay one step ahead of them to give them exactly what they’re looking for. And if they like what you’re sending them, they’re that much closer to engaging with your campaign and spreading the word.

So let’s climb into the mind of your subscribers to see how you can optimize your email design.

First impressions: Your From name

When you open your inbox to view unopened emails, the first thing you look at is who sent you these new emails. Generally, when sending marketing emails, we tend to stick to brand names for the “From” name – like Big Splash Web Design.  The reason for this is that your subscribers have already demonstrated trust or interest in your brand by signing up for your emails. By sending emails from the brand name you increase the chances of recipients automatically opening your email purely based on recognition.

Hooking them in with the subject line

The next thing email recipients tend to look at is the subject line. While it’s good to look at certain subject line-writing tips, the best thing you can do for your subject line is to run a split test on it. Make sure you know what you’re testing, e.g. shorter subject lines vs. longer ones, repeating the brand name in the subject line against not doing so, only calling out the main article or listing all the different things you have in your newsletter, etc.

An impressive preview

Every subscriber will view your email differently according to which email client they use. Most email clients give them a sneak peek at your email before opening it through a preview pane. The portion of your email shown in every email pane will differ depending on the email client and the settings your subscriber chose. Generally, it will be roughly the top left 400 x 300px that will be displayed.

If you view your emails in a preview pane, you will notice that the images are usually blocked. Remember to insert descriptive ALT text for your images so that those readers who view the email with the images turned off will still have an idea of what’s going on.

An email in two parts – 1

When someone opens your email, they only see the top part of it. We refer to that part as the part above the fold; it’s anything you see on your screen before having to scroll down. With emails the trick is to get your subscriber to read the full email. Now that they’ve moved past the From name, subject line and preview pane and have actually opened your email, your email needs to deliver the content they’ve hoped for. If your email is relevant and well-written, designed well, concise and contains some value for them, you’ll have a better chance of getting them to give your email their undivided attention.

An email in two parts – 2

If the first part is above the fold, it only makes sense that the second part is below the fold. If you’ve convinced your subscribers to scroll down to the second half of your email you’re doing well. If needed, repeat your call-to-action (more on that below). Make sure that your email isn’t too long – your subscribers are busy and have a full inbox to attend to. Give them what they need and direct them to your site for further details.

Click-click. Your call to action

Why are you sending out an email newsletter? Think about whether you want to generate traffic to a specific page of your website, or whether there’s a desired action you want them to take (like making an online purchase or booking). This is your call-to-action (CTA) and to ensure subscribers react to it you have to design it so that it stands out – subscribers won’t respond to a CTA they didn’t see. Ideally, CTAs should also be straight-forward and to the point. Use your words wisely.

Email marketing campaigns that incorporate strategic design are a lot more likely to relate to subscribers. When designing your campaigns, think like your recipients – you’re guaranteed to have a better response rate.

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If you run a business and you own your own domain name, chances are you send email marketing emails and automated mailings from more than one email address under that domain.

…

Huh?

Say you run a B&B with its website, www.sweetdreams.com. You probably have a few email addresses linked to that domain, like admin@sweetdreams.com for general and press enquiries and sending your email newsletters, bookings@sweetdreams.com for, well, bookings, and accounts@sweetdreams.com for payments and invoices.

In the past Yahoo would monitor three aspects when evaluating a sender’s reputation. They’ve always monitored the sender’s domain name and IP address for inbox deliverability, but as of December they also monitor the from address. What this means is that each of the email addresses you use under your domain name will now be monitored for their own reputation. It’s resulted in many senders (who’ve had whitelist status for years) seeing their emails sent from certain addresses landing in the bulk folder.

Now there’s no need for mass panic, but senders who recently changed their from address and haven’t built up a reputation for that from address yet, could experience some deliverability issues. The same goes for senders that use multiple from addresses – if any one of those addresses have a bad reputation it will affect the deliverability of emails sent from that address.

Bottom line?

Be careful what you send! Your reputation is key in getting your emails delivered to Yahoo subscribers.  With Yahoo no longer just looking at the general reputation of the sender, but actually considering your own email address too, you’d best steer clear of spamming and protect your own reputation too. It’s the best way to ensure your emails make it to the inbox.

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