5 Tips for Optimizing Email on Mobile

Posted on April 15, 2017April 15, 2017 by deborahj100

“…Campaigns with personalized subject lines
achieve higher open rates than those
with subject lines that are not personalized.”

Technology Market Research firm, The Radicati Group, predicts that by 2018, 80% of email users will access their email accounts via a mobile device. That sounds about right. Walk down any city street and practically everyone is glued to a smart phone. In New York, people walk out into traffic while on their phones. I’m not saying that’s an ideal scenario but I witness it daily. The upshot? Mobile email opens will surpass that of desktop and webmail. As a result, responsive design can’t be an afterthought. Right now, Email opens on mobile devices have risen from 27% in 2011 to over 50% in 2016 That’s a significant percentage and smart marketers are busy devising strategies that will capitalize on a mobile movement that is dependent on email.

People search mobile devices for the most relevant information they can find. It doesn’t matter who delivers the message; if it’s the right message, it’s a win. This demands marketers become adept at delivering relevant content to a specific audience at the right time. Responsive design is a part of that conversation. Once you know who your audience is and what they want, you can refine the message for responsive email.

According to the 2017 State of Email Report by Litmus, it’s essential to create mobile-friendly emails along with mobile-friendly landing pages. How to do that? Personalize the mobile experience. “Mobile-friendly” assumes a level of personalization that consumers have come to expect. Along with this, streamlined design and targeted messaging are non-negotiable, particularly with Goggle’s move late last year to put mobile-indexing ahead of web.

Also, late last year, iOS 10 began to include list-unsubscribe at the very top of every email. This makes it a snap for subscribers to opt out of your newsletter. That’s even more reason for content to be appealing and focused.

According to Shelley Kessler, Manager of Reporting and Analytics for Experian Marketing Services, “Consumers expect their interactions with a brand to be dynamic and personally relevant … a brand that recognizes a subscriber by name in the subject line of an email is able to establish an immediate, personal connection with that subscriber … campaigns with personalized subject lines achieve higher open rates than those with subject lines that are not personalized.”

What were the numbers? Experian found that personalized subject lines resulted in a 49% increase in transaction rates and 41.8% increase in open rates. A “mobile-first” email strategy is just plain smart. As you think about what to implement for mobile email success, here are 5 things to keep in mind:

1. Keep copy short and concise
You’ve got lots of room on a desktop to wax poetic but real estate on smart phones is demonstrably smaller. Distill your content to include the most relevant points. Make sure key benefits are visible in the first few lines of your message.

2. Don’t forget to optimize your preheader text
The preheader is the short summary text directly after the subject line of an email. It’s automatically pulled from the first 75-100 characters of your email copy and displayed underneath the sender name and subject line in a subscriber’s inbox. In desktop email clients this would be called the “preview pane”. To avoid the automatic display of administrative content such as, “Having trouble viewing this email?” make the first lines of copy about the message.

3. Design a mobile only landing page
A separate page for mobile users is mandatory. Consumers using mobile are accessing what they need, or want, while on the run. Plus, they are probably multi-tasking so your email is competing with tons of distractions. Every element has to deliver. If you want conversions on mobile, you need landing pages created for mobile users.

4. Keep email design simple [no op-ups] and your CTA clear
Use one column to avoid stacking on smaller devices. Single-column layouts should be no wider than 500 to 600 pixels. Links and buttons need to be at minimum, 44 × 44 pixels. White type on black is evil – never, ever do it. Stick to fonts that will render across most devices like Helvetica, Arial, Trebuchet MS, or Verdana. Also, make sure your CTA [Call to Action] is big and has enough white space around it so that it’s easy to click.

5. Make Conversion Seamless
According to market research company, Latitude, 63% of people plan on doing more shopping on their mobile device. The problem is that an average of 69.23% mobile shoppers will abandon a transaction if the experience is not optimized, according to web usability research institute, Baymard. I know that’s true because I’ve abandoned lots of mobile shopping carts for being too clunky.

It’s safe to assume that adapting a “mobile-first” email strategy is going to top the list of marketer’s “must-do”. Once Goggle’s “mobile-first” index is fully implemented there will be no more choice. It means Google will consider mobile versions of web pages as the primary page to index, leaving desktop versions in second place. Will you be ready?

If you need an email strategy, let me know. Cheers

5 tips to optimize email on mobile

The Best email closing line you may not be using [infographic]

Posted on April 2, 2017April 2, 2017 by deborahj100

Image by Dương Trần Quốc

8 Top Email Closes

I’m guilty of email glut. By that I mean I just don’t open all my emails in a timely manner. I let them flounder in any one of several inboxes. My intentions are honorable. I sign up for everything that interests me and look forward to boundless missives of revelation, information, calls to action, free offers with restrictions, and promises that never truly materialize. I don’t mean to infer that a bulk of email is not valuable – a lot of it is. But alas, a lot of it isn’t. Of course, I answer client email immediately but I have the luxury of waiting to respond to everything else. Most people do the same thing. They have multiple email boxes to help weed out the wheat from the chaff – so to speak. So what makes me more likely to respond to an email when it isn’t essential? Evidently, it comes down to a few simple words.

Productivity software provider, Boomerang, conducted a survey earlier this year and discovered something interesting. The right closing line in an email could compel subscribers to respond. Of course, it’s not just the closing line that determines response rate. Marketers know they’re competing for attention in very cluttered inboxes so emails have to be focused and targeted to the right community. Every word counts. That’s why the final words are so important.

Brendan Greenley, a Boomerang data scientist, looked over 350,000 email threads to determine the closings and respective response rates. Eight email sign-offs appeared over 1000 times each but one stood out as the clear winner. “Thanks in advance” turns out to be the most effective email closing. “Emails that closed with a variation of thank you got significantly more responses than emails ending with other popular closings.”

It’s just like your mother always told you. Remember to say “Please” and especially, “Thank you”.

Email best closing infographic: D. Johnstone

Responsive Email: 6 Tips for Success

Posted on March 26, 2017March 26, 2017 by deborahj100

Responsive Email

Just seven short years ago “responsive” design entered our lexicon via web designer Ethan Marcotte. He observed that the web functions as a supreme disrupter making transience and inconsistency a normal state of affairs. We’ve had to adjust for a plethora of screen sizes, tech advances, operating systems, and user preferences. As a result, responsiveness has become mandatory; we are permanently at the edge of another digital footprint and mobile is leading the way.

By 2018, 80% of email users will access their email accounts via a mobile device (The Radicati Group “Email Statistics Report, 2014-2018”).

As mobile devices have proliferated, content has adapted to accommodate smaller screens and our somewhat abbreviated attention spans. Mobile commerce makes up 30% of all U.S. ecommerce according to recent Hubspot stats and “more Google searches take place on mobile devices than on computers in 10 countries including the U.S. and Japan.”

What does it all mean? People are searching their mobile devices for the most relevant information they can find. It doesn’t matter who delivers the message; if it’s the right message, it’s a win. This demands marketers become adept at delivering relevant content to a specific audience at the right time. Responsive design is a part of that conversation. Once you know who your audience is and what they want, you can refine the message for responsive email. Here are 6 tips for the process:

1. Use Simplicity. Be concise and economical with content and design. Use fonts like Helvetica, Arial, Trebuchet MS, or Verdana. These fonts render correctly across multiple platforms and guarantee most people will see the page correctly. Your email should also mimic the design aesthetic of your website and include your logo – that’s a surefire way to build brand. Make sure your logo or header clicks back to your website or landing page.

2. Be Specific. Get to the point. People using an iPhone 5SE, for instance, have a very small window. Distill your content into a precise message and let subscribers visit your website for more in depth information.

3. Have a Call to Action [CTA]. Make the CTA visible and near the top of the newsletter. This increases the changes that subscribers will visit your landing page. To avoid misclicks, leave enough white space around the CTA and make the CTA button at least 44 pixels wide.

4. Don’t forget to optimize your preheader text. The preheader is the short summary text directly following the subject line when an email is viewed. It is automatically pulled from the first 75-100 characters of your email copy and displayed underneath the sender name and subject line in a subscriber’s inbox. In desktop email clients this would be called the “preview pane”. If you don’t add preheader text, make sure the first thing a reader sees is a compelling message. The one thing you don’t want subscribers to see is, “Having trouble viewing this email?” To avoid the automatic display of administrative content, make the first lines of copy concise. It can mean the difference between someone engaging with your brand and deleting your email.

Preheader on mobile

5. Use columns sparingly. To ensure your email displays across mobile devices, opt for two columns maximum. Using more will stack and squish on mobile displays.

6. Use correct HTML and templates. Your email service provider will have a complement of responsive email templates that you’ll be able to modify.

LITMUS provides a free download of responsive email templates available below.
[The download is a zip file]

Download Responsive Email Templates

How to make subscribers forward your newsletters

Posted on March 20, 2017March 20, 2017 by deborahj100

It’s all About Segmentation

Build your email list by providing relevant content that people want to share. How to accomplish that? Segment your lists and send targeted messages. Never send a blanket email to all subscribers. Your clients will be at different stages of their journey and will respond to appropriate messages sent at the right time. Incentivize your subscribers by sending specific and targeted information. Just sold a cloud computing service? Why not forward a white paper to that client explaining how to manage server settings? Chances are they’ll forward that to a friend or colleague who is still shopping for cloud computing.

Offer special promotions via email once the customer is in the sales funnel: “Ask about our special factory incentives only available over the phone.”

How to do it

1. Design Different Opt-ins for Each List.
2. Create triggered messages to immediately respond to subscriber behaviors, particularly purchase cycle and buying frequency.
3. Personalize your content by revising your sign up form to ask specific questions such as location, age, gender, and education. Check out Hubspot’s segmentation tactics
4. Have Facebook posts, tweets, and emails, pre-populated with content. Then all you are asking the reader to do is click. Make it easy for subscribers to share.
5. Use a dedicated “Forward to a Friend” call to action.

More than 50% of people view their email on a mobile device so you may want to dedicate a specific section to a prompt that asks users to “share content”. You also want content to be as focused and relevant as possible. Don’t forget that recent service updates, account changes, whitepapers, and events can all be used to reach out to targeted subscribers. Your goal is to let subscribers know about your value without spamming them with unnecessary information. Segmentation accomplishes this task.

— D. Johnstone

B2B Marketers Depend on Email and SEO for Lead Generation

Posted on February 27, 2017February 27, 2017 by deborahj100

Social media advertising accounts – or will soon account – for $31 billion in advertising budgets worldwide. Still, 46% of B2B marketers believe that social media channels fail to generate revenue for their businesses. It’s one thing to have millions of followers on Facebook and another thing entirely to generate quality leads.

According to DemandWave’s 2017 State of B2B Digital Marketing Report, the top objective for digital marketers is cultivating qualified leads over raw leads and Email out-paces other channels as the top ROI producer. This makes sense. The #1 metric used to measure digital marketing performance is “Conversion rate (from lead to customer)”. Though social media attribution models are becoming more robust, B2B marketers still see email as a better predictor of leads that subsequently become customers.

A recent MarketingSherpa report highlights the power of personalized B2B email. Ferguson Bath, Kitchen & Lighting Galleries, serves both professional contractors and homeowners looking to remodel. They are a 14-billion-dollar company with contacts in HVAC, waterworks, plumbing, and industrial.

Mary Abrahamson, Email Marketing Manager, and her team came up with a brilliant strategy to engage all segments: New holidays that offer the opportunity to share the history of different industries. “We hand pick which [holidays] make the most sense for social, which ones make sense for email, landing page, digital signage,” she said. The result was “National Bathtub Day” [on Monday] a terrific antidote to the barrage of Black Friday deals after Christmas, “WATERQUIRKS”, an email that provided a brief history of public water systems that appealed to industry connections as well as customers, and a “Year in Review email for Pro Plus members”. A little ingenuity goes a long way and specific content was devised for each channel.

The takeaway? There is no one email that appeals to your entire list. It’s about cultivating and maintaining relationships, learning about your customers and/or partners, and constantly analyzing metrics. Need a newsletter overhaul or a campaign? Get in touch and let’s talk!