By Justin Gray, Maas Impact

First we had Five Tips for “Outside of the Inbox” Email Marketing from Justin, and then we had Four More Tips. That makes nine. Marketers like nice round numbers so that simply won’t do.  The 10^th tip for improving open rates, engaging prospects and customers and, of course, nurturing a revenue producing sales funnel is, as you might guess, the final jewel in the email marketing crown.

10. It’s Called an email Message for a Reason – Campaigns start and finish with a compelling message.  Long drawn out email messages that don’t contain a clear, concise and VISIBLE (!!!) call to action aren’t messages at all.

Any idea how simply moving the call to action above the fold in email preview panes effects response?  Here’s a clue – it’s in the double-digit percentiles.  Even more comprehensive efforts, like a newsletter or customer service follow-up, need to be easy to navigate and click through.

After all, that’s what we want in our quest to become omniscient marketing gods isn’t it?

We want to compel the reader to take the next step and begin tracking that behavior in an effort to translate that to a lead score.  With that said, take a look at our tips for creating compelling content that converts the time-starved executive to a ravenous content-hound, quickly leaping to the top of your sales funnel.  Click here for more…

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Justin Gray is the Chief Brand Officer for MaaS Impact.  Justin’s vision is to transform traditional ‘grassroots’ marketing efforts through the use of cloud based marketing solutions. MaaS Impact  specializes in outsourcing the core functions of a marketing department either through on-demand solutions, consulting or both.  www.maasimpact.com .

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Like most email marketers, you’ve probably obsessed over your subject lines, trying to pack in as much compelling information as you can while keeping the subject as short as possible.

But have you ever thought about the other half of what your email subscribers see when they find an email from you in their inbox?  The “from” line that you use with your emails can impact the success of your campaigns, but it doesn’t get nearly as much attention from email marketers as it merits.

For starters, have you ever thought about how long your “from” line should be?

It’s an important consideration. After all, if your “from” line is too long, your subscribers’ email programs will cut it off, making it harder for subscribers to know who’s sending them that great email.

After receiving several emails with really long “from” lines recently, I set out to do some testing to see exactly where the cutoff points are in major email programs. So I created an email with a long “from” line (32 characters) and sent test copies to addresses in a variety of email programs in Windows, Mac and mobile environments.

So how long can your “from” line be before subscribers’ email programs truncate it?

Here are the cutoff points from my test. Operating systems are in parentheses.

Yahoo! (Windows XP) – 22 characters

Yahoo! (Mac OSX) – 22

Gmail (XP) – 24

Gmail (OSX) – 24

Windows Live Hotmail (XP) – 23

Windows Live Hotmail (OSX) – 21

AOL Webmail (XP) – 24*

AOL Webmail (OSX) – 24*

Microsoft Outlook 2007 (XP) – 32**

Mozilla Thunderbird (XP) – 32**

iPhone Mail (iPhone) – 20

Gmail (G1 Android mobile phone) – 24

* AOL Webmail shows the sender’s email address, not their name.

** Outlook and Thunderbird displayed the entire “from” line. I did not test to see just how many characters they would display. It should be noted that I used their default settings when testing, but that individual users can easily widen or narrow the “from” column in those programs.

So what does this mean?

1. When possible, try to keep your “from” line to about 21-24 characters. That way, it will display it its entirety, both in desktop environments like Outlook and all of the major webmail environments.

2. If you do go with a “from” line longer than 21-24 characters, make sure that you can still clearly see who the sender is in those initial characters. Use the name of your company, or another highly recognizable element, in the first part of the “from” line.

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Justin Premick is the Education Marketing Director at AWeber. Read more at his blog, www.aweber.com/blog .

Email is where it's @.

What are your objectives in your email marketing campaign? What formats are most effective to communicate these objectives? How often should you send the emails?

Constant Contact, an email marketing solutions company, and the company we at 60 Second Online University use for our weekly eNewsletter, offers a way to match the formats you choose based on the objectives of your email campaign. Here are:

• three typical formats
• the informational objectives that work well in those formats
• a suggested frequency for sending those emails.

1)      Newsletter Format: Use this format when your objectives include:

1. Enhance awareness
2. Increase interaction
3. Educate recipients

Send a Newsletter monthly or quarterly.

2)      Promotional Format: This format works best when your objectives are to:

1. Motivate purchases
2. Generate traffic to a storefront
3. Generate traffic to a website

You’ll want to send promotional emails bi-weekly or monthly.

3)      Announcement Format: These press releases or new product offerings are effective with objectives such as:

1. Increase event attendance
2. Increase donations/contributions
3. Improve public relations

Since these are usually event-based, send an event invitation with multiple communications allowing for recipients to first “save the date”, then sign up, then get a reminder. Announcements, of course, would only need a single communication.

Constant Contact reminds us – track your responses to be sure what you think is effective really is effective. If the campaign isn’t getting the results you expected, check your format, check you objectives, check your timing, and see if you can tweak.

1. Use an attention-getting subject line: Include exciting words, “Free”, or anything that will differentiate your email from all the others your customers receive.
2. Explain the problem/need: Educate the recipients on the problem they have, just to be sure they are aware of it.
3. Describe solution: Now that they know they have a problem, they want a solution. Tell the recipients what your product will do to help them.
4. Explain benefits: Be sure your potential customers know how your solution will benefit them.
5. Ask for action: It’s an old saying, but true: “ask for the sale.”

These five steps don’t need to be elaborate. In fact, the simpler the email, the better. Keep it strong but minimal in words, and powerful in impact.

Lyris mentions that there there are a number of email marketing myths that are simply not true. Here are the top three email myths and why you can ignore them.

Myth #1 — Never Use The Word “Free”: Contrary to what has been reported in the past, the word “free” wil not cause any of the major spam filters to reject your email. According to Lyris, when used correctly, the word “free” can provide a powerful boost to your results.

Myth #2 — Don’t Send Emails on Weekends: In general, distributing your business emails on Tuesday, Wednesday or Thursday is a good rule of thumb. (Interestingly, in an online poll of the 60 Second Marketer community, our readers prefer to receive the 60 Second eNewsletter on Fridays.) All that said, if your company’s offering is particularly relevant to your subscriber’s weekend lives, consider testing different distribution times on Saturday and Sunday.

Myth #3 — You Can Improve Your Results by Growing Your List: Increasing the size of your list is often a good thing, but a quality list of active, interested and motivated subscribers/customers is really the end game on which you should focus. Consider taking steps to clean out the dead wood in your list. At a minimum, you should reduce the energy you spend on your inactive members.

There’s a great deal of information in the Lyris White Paper and we’ll be providing 60 Second Sound Bites of it in the future, but if you’d like the whole ball of wax, be sure to download it by clicking the link.

That survey (which is still live on our home page, by the way), prompted us to revisit an article on the 60 Second Marketer entitled What Are the Best Days of the Week to Send Email Campaigns?

In case you haven’t had a chance to read the article, here it is posted on our blog in its entirety:

One of the most commonly asked questions about email marketing is, “What are the best days to send out emails?” But studies designed to answer this question have proven inconclusive. No two email campaigns are the same. As such, what might work for one test audience will not necessarily apply equally for another, due to different campaign objectives or target audiences.
With that in mind, we took a look at each day of the week and analyzed the positives and negatives that might help you determine which days will work best for your needs.
Monday
Positive: Office work has not filled inboxes yet

Negative: Consumers are in “work mode” and won’t be focused on non-work tasks

Best Practice: Send emails late Monday morning, after consumers have cleaned the weekend spam from their inboxes
Tuesday
Positive: People have organized their week, and can find personal time for emails

Negative: Emails poised for a weekend response may be too early

Best Practice: Use Tuesday for emails that request action during the workweek
Wednesday/Thursday
Positive: Consumers are planning their weekends and gearing up for personal time

Negative: Time during the workweek is running short, and requested action may be pushed     back to the following week, or even forgotten about

Best Practice: Focus leisure and weekend notifications during these key weekend planning days

Friday
Positive: Studies indicate fewer total emails sent compared to the rest of the week, increasing visibility among the myriad of other messages

Negative: Consumers hurry to leave the office early, and may not take time to view non-work related emails

Best Practice: Send emails early in the day to give consumers more time to take action.  An unopened email from Friday will sort to the bottom of an inbox on Monday, and is often discarded

Weekends
Positive: People check emails on weekends, too, so weekends may have untapped potential

Negative: A weekend email may seem overly-intrusive to some people

Best Practice: If possible, try to avoid Sundays and focus on Saturdays, which may have a better response rate

The most important point to keep in mind for an email campaign is a proper and thorough evaluation of a test group. By making a practice of consistently testing your email campaigns, you’ll be sure to get the most bang for your marketing buck.

One of the key questions we get asked at the 60 Second Marketer is “What metrics should I measure in my email marketing campaign?”

With that in mind, here are the top 18 things you should measure in your next email marketing campaign. These are pulled from an excellent white paper put out by Lyris|HQ called “Guru’s Guide to Email Marketing Success”:

1. Open rate
2. Click-through rate
3. Click to open rate (number of unique clicks/number of unique opens)
4. Bounce rate
5. Delivery rate (emails sent – bounces)
6. Unsubscribe rate
7. Referral rate
8. Number of or percent spam complaints
9. Net subscribers
10. Subscriber retention
11. Web site actions (number of visits to a specific web page or pages)
12. Percent unique clicks on a specific recurring link(s)
13. Number of orders, transactions, downloads or actions
14. Percent orders, transactions, downloads or actions of emails sent or delivered
15. Total revenue
16. Average order size
17. Conversion rate
18. Average dollars per email sent or delivered

For the full report, be sure to download the “Guru’s Guide to Email Marketing Success.” It’s an excellent white paper with tons of great information.

Of course, the only real way to see if your email marketing is successful is to develop an A/B Split Test for one of your campaigns. Once you’ve done one test, you’ll take the winner (i.e. the Control) and test against that one until you find a new winner.

With that in mind, it might be worth checking out our Email Marketing Benchmarks video from the 60 Second Marketer. It outlines some general rules-of-thumb that you can use until you develop an A/B Split Test of your own.

Good luck!