Tales of a Marketing Intern

Email Marketing Tips

I recently attended a Lyris and AMA Marketing webinar featuring Andrea Scarnecchia. After recently taking over most of the email marketing here at Windward for 2011, it has definitely tested my patience and time management skills. Here are my top five takeaways from the webinar and personal experience.

1.       Contact List maintenance and organization is key to a long life for email marketers. Figuring out a way to simply update, segment, and integrated all of your contact lists, will greatly reduce the amount of time you spend banging your head on the desk.

 

2.       Learn the basics of HTML.  Without this knowledge it is hard to design the template to accommodate different email services. Gmail renders HTML differently than MS Outlook does, knowing the HTML and can help make your emails look great in all inboxes. Another good tip is to add title tags to all of your main pictures. Since most people that open your email blast do not download the pictures, you need to get your point across without them. The title tags put text on the blank picture so you can still explain the point of the picture.

 

3.       Have a compelling subject line. Make sure to keep them short and sweet, under 50 characters is the most effective. Make sure your companies name shows up in the from line so you do not need to have it in the subject line. Watch for words that trigger spam filters and excessive punctuation, especially the word free and to many !!!!. Here is an example of the last subject line I used.

From: Windward Reports <mkting@windward.net>

Subject: A New Approach to Dynamic Charting

 

4.       Stay relevant and segment email lists. Andrea Scarnecchia noted that 75% of people say that biggest reason to opt-out of email marketing is lack of relevance. This sounds fairly obvious but is still a big mistake made by a lot of companies. An easy way to fix this is to segment your contact list, either by leads, prospects, customers, or specific types of users. In the case of Windward it would be Business Users, Tech Users, VAR, and OEMs. Segmenting lists does require a lot more preparation, but the benefit to the increased number of opens and clicks will make it worth the effort.

 

5.       Stay updated on laws and email best practices. Anti-Spam laws are always changing, go to ftc.gov to see an updated version of the CAN-SPAM Act.

 

Intern lesson of the day:

Make sure to get a desk by a window

 

Don’t forget to Comment, let me know what you think and if you have any other email marketing recommendations.

Stand Out From All of the Noise: Childish Ways to Make Email Blasts Interesting

 

Who knew that finding creative ways to connect with customers could let me relive my childhood? I for one would not have guessed that I would be using crayon and spelling Windward with a Backwards R.

During November and December of 2009, I send out two Holiday blasts to existing customers. One featuring a hand turkey, media of choice, colored pencil.  The other featuring hand cut note card snowflakes and beginners cursive writing, media of choice, crayon.

Finding creative ways to connect with customers is a great way to build relationships and trust. Where I got the idea to send out hand turkey drawing to all of customers, I have no idea. Nevertheless, it was both fun for me and very well received.

I feel that creativity is under utilized and that disrupting norm is essential to bring your business to the front of the crowd, especially in our current economy. It is important to show your company has personality and is more than just a product.

So enjoy my interpretation of modern email blast art

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Intern lesson of the day:

Don’t hold back on ideas, no matter how crazy they might seem at the time

Dashboards: More Than Just a Pie Chart

Businesses accumulate data every second of everyday, some more than others depending on the particular industry. The true test is deciphering the noise into actionable ideas, tactics and overall strategies to grow your company. This applies to all sorts of datasets and data sources whether it is website analytics, accumulation of invoices, or any aspect of companies operations.

While there are thousands upon thousands of tools to help sift through the fog of data, one aspect that should not be overlooked is the tools ability to provide customizable real-time dashboards. Dashboards get their name from providing the essential information to keep your car running at all times. Business dashboards need to work the same way by giving you enterprise level access to decision criteria. Allowing a manager to visualize condensed high-level amounts of data will keep the business focused on keeping the sum of its parts running efficiently. 

As the mastermind behind the ClickTracks analytics data at Windward Reports I find myself constantly trying to figure out the most effective and dynamic ways to present our analytics data to the managers. At the same time insuring that, the information is aimed at our company’s specific business objective. I apologize in advance for being a little clique but sometimes people forget that every business works differently. Thus, cookie cutter dashboards that some tools provide are not nearly as effective as ones that allow for specific customizations.

Business communities run, make decisions and correspond differently and the business dashboards need to be able to reflect your organizations decision-making style. 

Intern Lesson of the Day:

Always take advantage of free lunch day at work