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9 Tips for E-mail Marketing Design

October 27th, 2009

from: http://www.entrepreneur.com/marketing/onlinemarketing/article194474.html

In today’s visual world, good design is a must. Here’s what you need to create e-mails that look great and get results.
By Gail Goodman   |   June 05, 2008

The good news about e-mail marketing is you don’t have to be a design expert to create great-looking campaigns. Most e-mail marketing service providers offer pre-designed templates you can choose from (that are created by professional designers). But even with templates, you still have some design decisions to make: what colors and fonts to use, what size to make the fonts, and how much text you should include, to name a few. Follow these nine tips and you’ll create e-mails that not only look great, but also get great results.

Tip 1: Include your logo in the same location each time.
Build your brand with every marketing e-mail you send. One way to do this is to include your logo in all of your e-mail communications. The best practice is to include it in the same location each time you send out an e-mail. It may be in the header or somewhere else in the e-mail (preferably above the point where a reader would have to scroll down to see it, but don’t take up the whole preview screen).

Tip 2: Keep the preview pane in mind.
A recent study by Marketing Sherpa found that 70 percent of recipients that have the capability to read e-mail through a preview pane do. What this means is your subscribers may only see a portion of your e-mail before deciding to open it and look at it in its entirety. Make sure your logo, as well as some enticing information about the e-mail contents can be seen in the preview pane.

Tip 3: Use color for emphasis
While it might be tempting to use a lot of colors in your e-mail campaigns, resist. When deciding which colors to use, start with your company’s colors. All of your e-mails should represent your visual brand, and a key component of that is using your colors consistently.

Colors outside your brand should be saved for emphasis. Use it to call attention to something that is important in the e-mail–to make it really stand out to the reader.

One of our designers here at Constant Contact likes to use a cooking metaphor when he talks about using color. He makes the point that just because you have every spice on your rack doesn’t mean you use each one. You use a little bit here and there to add a little flavor. It’s similar with design; you want to use colors to add flavor.

Tip 4: Limit the number of fonts you use.
A good rule of thumb is to use a max of two fonts in your marketing e-mails. You may use one for the body and another for the headlines and subtitles. Use standard fonts like Arial, Times New Roman or Verdana for the greatest readability. If you use a less common font that not all the people on your list have, their computer will make a substitution that can change the format of your e-mail.

Tip 5: Make your point clearly and quickly.
When it comes to writing the copy for your e-mail, get to the point quickly. The reality is that most people scan. They don’t give you much longer than a second to capture their attention. If it takes much longer than that for them to engage, you may lose them. With every moment, a reader is determining if he or she will keep reading or abandon your e-mail.

In the case of newsletters, your copy will be longer than with a promotional e-mail, but the concept of getting to the point still applies. I’ve found that most first drafts of articles can be chopped down to as much as half their original word count while still conveying the article’s message.

Tip 6: Pick photos that support your message.
Including images in an e-mail campaign can make it more attractive and help you communicate your message. (A picture is worth a thousand words.) But this isn’t true of any image. If there is too much going on in your photo or if it’s poor quality, it can distract the reader and reflect poorly on your business.

When choosing an image for your campaign, look for something that is simple and easy to focus on and relates directly to your content. You don’t want readers to look at an image and question what it has to do with your message. If the image doesn’t support your message, it will only take away from what you’re trying to communicate.

Tip 7: Don’t embed your text in an image.
Many of the programs people use to receive and read e-mail have images turned off by default. To ensure that people with this default setting get your message, include text in your e-mail that is not embedded in an image.

Tip 8: Remember that white space is your friend.
What is white space? It’s a resting place for the reader’s eyes. Without it, your reader will not know where to look. Make sure that you have plenty of room between headlines, articles and any other content you’ve included in your e-mail.

Tip 9: Keep it simple.
In design, less is more. E-mails that are uncluttered visually and have a clear message get a better response. The goal of your e-mail is to get your readers to take some kind of action. You want them to visit your website, buy now, get more information, etc. A well-designed e-mail will get your readers to pay attention and make it easy for them to take the action you desire.

Gail F. Goodman is the “E-Mail Marketing” coach at Entrepreneur.comand is CEO of Constant Contact, a web-based e-mail marketing service for small businesses. She’s also a recognized small-business expert and speaker.

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Marketing to the 7 Deadly Sins

October 27th, 2009

from: http://www.entrepreneur.com/marketing/marketingideas/article198244.html

When it comes to recession-proof businesses, vice is nice.
By Justin Petruccelli   |   October 29, 2008

Sin is in. It’s not just a clever little rhyme, because sin is always in. That’s what makes it one of those bulletproof commodities that no one ever talks about. And among all the little things we do to misbehave, there are seven transgressions deemed throughout the ages to be worse than the rest–the seven deadly sins: pride, lust, gluttony, greed, sloth, envy and wrath. They’ve been immortalized in classic art and in modern pop culture, and they’re also great foundations for a successful business. Here’s a look at seven businesses that are making good on helping people be bad.

Pride: Spitfire Communications
They say pride is the sin from which all the other deadly sins arise. But for Olivia Fox-Cabane, it’s both an art and a science. She’s the founder and sole proprietor of Spitfire Communications, where she serves as a charisma-coach-for-hire to high-powered executives.

Justin Petruccelli“Imagine a CEO, how much more powerful he becomes if you turbo charge his level of charisma,” Fox-Cabane says. “He becomes more influential, more persuasive. What we look at is everything from the most minute items of body language to small items of appearance to a strategy of manipulation–the complete aspect of how to go from zero to trust in 30 seconds.”

Fox-Cabane, 29, has applied her background in research and behavioral science to business, and it’s paying off to the tune of $500,000 in revenue for this year. She’s spoken at Harvard, Yale, MIT and even the United Nations. Executives spend entire weeks training with her in New York before important presentations. It’s enough to make a person wonder why pride gets such a bad rap.

“Charisma is a very hot topic,” Fox-Cabane says. “Because we all have this inherent desire to be magnetic, as soon as we hear that it’s actually possible to learn this, there’s a natural, instinctive, primal desire to want to get that.”

Lust: Life of Reiley
Justin PetruccelliIs any sin easier to sell than lust? Not likely. But Amy Reiley’s not taking any chances. She has a master’s degree in gastronomy from the world-renowned Le Cordon Bleu culinary academy, where she became an expert in romantic foods and aphrodisiac cuisine. After starting out as a freelance journalist and then moving on to speaking engagements, she combined her knowledge and enthusiasm for food and sex in her 2006 book Fork Me, Spoon Me: The Sensual Cookbook and has been sought after as an expert in the field ever since.

“We need to eat and we need to have sex in order to survive,” Reiley says. “It seemed like a smart idea for that reason. I just really wanted to get people more interested in food and wine and making more interesting choices. How better to excite people than to get them excited?”

Reiley’s website, eatsomethingsexy.com, employs a stable of writers and works with up-and-coming culinary stars from Le Cordon Bleu’s Los Angeles facility. She’s also working on a new book as well as merchandising and television projects, and she’s working with doctors to teach people how they can use proper nutrition to improve their sex lives and save money on expensive drugs in the process.

“People are never going to want to stop making themselves feel better,” Reiley says. “What I do is cost-effective. I get to save people money and they have better sex. It’s a good life.”

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Maximize Your SEO

October 27th, 2009

from: http://www.entrepreneur.com/magazine/entrepreneur/2008/december/198608.html

5 simple secrets can make the most of your search engine rankings.
By Gwen Moran   |   Entrepreneur Magazine – December 2008

Need a little search engine love? Liam Scanlan, author of The 12 Habits of Highly Effective Websites: A Primer on Search Engine Optimization for Non-Technical Executives and founder of SiteLeads.net, a website consulting and content firm, shares five simple secrets to search engine optimization.

  1. Get a good domain. It’s best if your domain relates to your product, advises Scanlan. “If you are selling handmade dolls online, but your domain is acmeproducts.com, that doesn’t help the search engine.” Don’t forget that you can register multiple domain names. To avoid running into issues with search engines that may overlook numerous domains pointed to the same page, direct them to separate landing pages with links that will draw visitors into the site. That can help your rank.
  2. Take care with titles. Scanlan says the biggest and most common mistake that small businesses make in their SEO is having an incomplete title or missing title tag. Most sites are created using traditional HTML editors that don’t flag weaknesses in site creation, he says. Plugging in page titles is an easy way to attract search engine algorithms that look for titles on multiple pages of the site. Using the doll example again, it’s far better for one of your pages to be titled “Barbie” than “Page 7″ if you’re targeting the doll-buying set.
  3. Use keywords wisely. Yan Lyansky has bumped up the Google rank of his $3 million company, Downtube, a folding-bicycle manufacturer and distributor in Bensalem, Pennsylvania, by integrating keywords throughout his website. “You can’t have ‘folding bicycle’ [over and over] or people won’t read it,” says Lyansky, 37. But the company does include those words in product titles and descriptions, page headers and wherever else they can be used without being a turnoff to customers.
  4. Make your contact information obvious. To prevent spam, some companies design their contact information as a graphic so that it can’t be picked up by programs trolling for new e-mail addresses. That’s a mistake, says Scanlan. “You need to make your contact information easy to find online, especially if you’re trying to get your ranking up for a specific region.” Opt for text-based contact info instead and embed e-mail information in a hotlink.
  5. Link up. The more relevant links you have between your site and others in your industry, the higher the rank, says Scanlan. Lyansky beefs up his results by building pages that compare the attributes of his bikes to his competitors–and including links to those competitors. He says, “When someone searches for one of our competitors, this helps our site come up pretty high in the rankings.”

Gwen Moran is co-author of The Complete Idiot’s Guide to Business Plans. Reach her at gwen@gwenmoran.com.

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Keep Your Eye on the Prize: Customers

October 27th, 2009

from: http://www.entrepreneur.com/marketing/onlinemarketing/article199450.html

If your customers don’t give your marketing a warm welcome, its impact is lost. Here are 4 tips to help you avoid that fate.
By Gail Goodman   |   January 12, 2009

I speak with dozens of entrepreneurs a week and am regularly struck by the passion with which they talk about both their businesses and their customers. Uniformly, entrepreneurs want to understand how their marketing impacts their customers, and their first rule is to do no harm. Nearly every small business owner I meet wants to avoid unwelcome marketing borne of their own lack of experience. Below are four tips on how to protect your customer relationships, increase your customer base, create a feedback loop and avoid over-communication. Following these suggestions will help ensure that your marketing will be welcome, thereby forging a stronger relationship with your customers.

1. It’s all about the customer. The underlying message for businesses of all sizes, especially in the current economic climate is simple: Hang on to your customers. The most important actions businesses can take right now is to stay in contact with customers, assure them that your business is here to stay, listen to their needs and treat them like they are valued. Try to focus your communication on informational content that adds value to them–not just promotional content. Make every customer touch point count.

2. Grow your list. Keeping a customer is less expensive than attracting a new customer.  Customers want valuable information from you; you just have to make sure they know it’s available. Capturing their e-mail addresses and getting their permission is essential.  Begin by making every connection count–in person, on the phone and online. When prospects visit your website, enter your place of business or call, be sure to get their contact information so you can expand your relationship. Offer them useful and meaningful information about promotions, special events, new products or offerings related to those products and services they already enjoy. Be sure to let them know what they can expect from you in terms of frequency and content and stick to your promises. Remember to ask for permission before you add them to any distribution list.

3. Create a feedback loop. We’re all in this rocky economic environment together. So, now is the time to engage in a personal conversation, ask customers how they are faring and listen to the answers. In this climate, going above and beyond expectations can mean offering customers more than they expect, letting them know that you appreciate their business and thanking them for their patronage. Surveys are a good way to assess how particular programs or products are being received. But old-fashioned one-to-one communication can also be a powerful way to measure the strength of your activities. Simply asking a customer in your store how things are going or placing a phone call to key customers can give you insight and reinforce your commitment to their satisfaction.

Take what you hear to heart. Passionate customers can be your best source of new customers. Integrate feedback into everything that you do, so your business gets smarter, stronger and more valuable to customers. Seeing that their feedback adds to your success will give customers a sense of ownership and pride, increasing the likelihood they will become an evangelist for your business.

4. Balance the need to communicate. Businesses must balance the need to communicate with the risk of overdoing it. Too much communication can be as damaging as too little. Be deliberate and judicious in your communications. For instance, in e-mail marketing, over-communication can lead to high “unsubscribe” rates, which can diminish the value of your list over time. A communications calendar can help manage the frequency of communications, and metrics such as e-mail open rates can help measure the effectiveness of programs.

Despite the gloomy forecast, there’s great hope and opportunity for savvy, determined small businesses in the months ahead. Entrepreneurs’ natural instincts make them particularly likely to succeed in this environment, so keep your eye on the prize and keep marketing. Sixteen of the 30 corporations that make up the Dow Jones’ industrial average were started during recessions. The next one could be yours.

Gail F. Goodman is the “E-Mail Marketing” coach at Entrepreneur.com and is CEO of Constant Contact, a web-based e-mail marketing service for small businesses. She’s also a recognized small-business expert and speaker.

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How to Advertise Now

October 27th, 2009

from: http://www.entrepreneur.com/marketing/marketingcolumnistkimtgordon/article199484.html

Unsure what to cut and what to keep? This smart, 4-point checklist is your guide to recession-era advertising.
By Kim T. Gordon   |   January 13, 2009

When money’s tight, the knee-jerk reaction for many entrepreneurs is to cut back on advertising. Unfortunately, the businesses that stop advertising simply drop out of sight, taking these entrepreneurs from slow sales to no sales–fast. It’s a risky move many may not recover from. Rather than eliminate your advertising in a recession, cut the fat from your campaign, and focus on the right media choices for the highest ROI.

To figure out what to cut and what to keep, use this checklist to choose the right media for your business in this challenging economy.

  1. Advertise where prospects look first.
    Where will your customers look when they’ve decided to buy what you sell? A vast majority of Americans research purchases on the internet before buying online or in a brick-and-mortar store. Placing advertising on search engines may be an important part of your scaled down campaign. Other search media include trade and industrial directories, both online and in print, newspaper circulars, classified ads, and shopper sections of specialty magazines. By advertising where prospective customers look, you’ll shorten your sales cycle and lower your cost per sale.
  2. Use media that touch prospects often.
    Even when your customers aren’t in search mode, they still interact with other important media. Discover which media touch your best prospects throughout the day. Do they read a particular newspaper? Which TV and radio programs do they enjoy and at what times of the day? If you’re targeting B2B prospects, zero in on the industry publications they rely on for information. Both business and consumer prospects have favorite websites they frequent. Armed with this vital information, you can strategically place ads in media you know play central roles in their daily lives.
  3. Put your ads in context.
    Not all media that touch your prospects will be smart advertising choices. The issue of appropriate context is critical when making this evaluation. Choose media that reach your prospects when they’re in the right frame of mind to be receptive to your message. For example, your best prospects may dine out frequently and be exposed to the ads inside the restroom stalls of popular restaurants. But the location of this media may be an inappropriate context for advertising your type of business. It all depends on when and how you want your customers to think of your business. Pare down your campaign to the media that put your message in the right context, and your response rates will climb.
  4. Advertise for maximum memorability.
    The very best use of limited advertising dollars is to spend your money where your campaign can be a standout. That requires sufficient ad size and frequency. With the abundance of clutter in all major media, it can be challenging to stand out with small-size, fractional-page ads. Larger ads will give you more bang for your buck because they’re more likely to be seen and remembered. Rather than run small-space ads in many publications or websites, reduce your media choices to those in which you can afford to buy larger ads and advertise frequently. Narrow your broadcast selections to fewer radio stations or TV programs, and advertise to your core audience with frequency so your message is sure to penetrate. By the time the marketplace rebounds, you’ll be in a solid position to expand your campaign once again.

Kim T. Gordon is the “Marketing” coach at Entrepreneur.com and a multifaceted marketing expert, speaker, author and media spokesperson. Over the past 26 years, she’s helped millions of small-business owners increase their success through her company, National Marketing Federation Inc. Her latest book, Maximum Marketing, Minimum Dollars, is now available.

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