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

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

The Viability of Targeted E-mail newsletters

Posted on July 6, 2016July 8, 2016 by deborahj100

Email newsletters are still effective and according to a recent survey conducted by The Future of Email Marketing, “76% of marketers “see email communication completely personalized” and 74% see email as still having one of the highest returns on investment in a marketing arsenal.”

“Hyper-personalization” of email is becoming a reality as data science makes reporting on, and tracking consumer activity, even more precise. Marketers are collecting massive amounts of data that allow automation to streamline email communication and deliver targeted content. More robust Email automation tools are on the way according to Daniel Codella of Zurb. These tools will seamlessly integrate with mobile strategies and allow marketers to capitalize on trends and immediately connect with their target audience.

A UK company, B&Q, is poised to produce the next email standard – “Kinetic email”. Each user has a unique member ID and barcode. An interactive carousel changes with each mouseover and displays different items. This would assume that the user base is mostly mobile – since only mobile devices can get in on the action. But who isn’t mobile these days? As always, content will be of paramount importance in this Tsunami of strategic communication.