And that is – the Junk Folder and how to avoid it!

You see, email marketing can be so unfair at times!

You spend hours, sometimes days, creating and fine-tuning a blog post.

When you’re done, you’re pretty confident that you’ve come up with a killer piece of content.

You hit ‘publish’ and post a link to your article up on social media.

Then, as a serious and savvy blogger, you email your mailing list to promote all your hard work.

But in the next few days, the silence is deafening.

You start to feel underwhelmed and discouraged.

After all, you didn’t sweat blood and tears for a small spike in your website traffic and a few measly retweets, right?

The panic starts setting in. Your email analytics are showing some pretty dismal open rates.

You wonder whether your post was actually that good in the first place.

Or worse still, maybe you start to worry that you’re not cut out to be a blogger after all.

The worrying truth about Email Marketing

Well, hold on a sec.

The problem might not actually be with your content.

Maybe the issue is with your emails… and how spam filters see them.

We all know that content promotion is hugely important these days.

However, when it comes to emailing blog subscribers, we face 2 huge obstacles.

Firstly, having your emails land in a recipient’s junk folder is a really common problem.

Getting junked is arguably the most serious issue you face as a content marketer.

According to ReturnPath, only 81% of commercial emails actually reach an inbox.

When you consider that there are over 100 billion emails are sent and received every day, we’re talking about LOADS of unseen outreach (and untapped value].

The second problem we face is slightly more obvious.

The daily bombardment of emails makes it much harder for the outreach messages that actually do get delivered correctly to get noticed.

However, with both these problems, help is at hand.

The good news is that both issues are related and we can kill two birds with one stone.

With a few small tweaks to your outreach strategy, we can fix this and have you reaping the rewards that your epic efforts deserve.

That sounds more like it, doesn’t it?

The big, unseen barrier to the growth of your blog

You probably know how the whole email thing works.

We all have email, and every email service provider has a built-in spam filter to determine the credibility of each message that we receive.

When an email is sent to us, these email filters analyse a bunch of different factors.

Each factor results in a certain amount of points being scored.

Quite simply, the worse your email measures up against the filter’s criteria, the higher the amount of points it scores for each factor.

If the overall points total is too high then forget about it: the email is sent to the junk folder.

Now, it should be said that although email service providers are legally obliged to use spam filters, they’re also there to improve our email experience.

And I guess we should be grateful that spam filters do exist, otherwise we’d be constantly bombarded with daily emails hawking penis enlargement pills, get–rich–quick schemes and singles in your area!

So email filters can wreak havoc with an email marketing campaign, but they’re forcing companies to become more credible.

How to beat the email filters (and boost your blogging ROI)

So the million-dollar question is, what do email filters care about?

Email filters look at a range of technical and content-related things.

You shouldn’t have to worry about the technical stuff, especially if you’re using one of the common email service providers – the likes of MailChimp and AWeber won’t let you down.

Fact is, most emails are labeled as junk because of the content they contain.

Content-related triggers can be obvious or subtle, intentional or unintentional.

11 Email Marketing Tips

Follow this guide to craft the perfect outreach email that will reach your subscriber every time…

1. Take responsibility for your domain.

My first piece of advice is nice and simple: get your domain whitelisted.

You do this by getting a certificate from an authorised source.

Becoming white listed is a way of putting your hand up and saying that you’re responsible for your domain.

And email filters trust these certificates implicitly.

It’s a straightforward process; you just need to find a provider and apply. Certificates aren’t free, but they’re pretty cheap.

For a suggested certificate provider, I’d recommend EmailReg.

You just create an account and submit your domain.

They’ll then do some digging.

Assuming you’re legit, they’ll then sort everything out. A certificate with EmailReg costs $20 and lasts a lifetime.

It’s a total no-brainer; we’re talking about a 5-minute job that you’ll never have to do again.

You will find varying opinions about services like EmailReg online — All I can say is it works for me. I guess some people don’t like paying the $20.

We will discuss WhiteListing later in this post but if you suspect you have been Blacklisted – here is a guide on how to get removed from Email Blacklist.

One other thing – when selecting a domain name, always consider if any of the words used in the domain name are considered ‘spammy’ and likely to set of a spam filter (It has been known to happen)

Finally on this subject here is a rather large list of Email SPAM Trigger Words

Of course issues like this are one of the main reasons Email Marketers end up using Email Services such as Aweber.

2. Avoid using any bizarre email addresses

If there’s one thing that email filters love, it’s an email coming from a source with a clear and consistent brand identity.

Yahoo! mail is particularly well known for paying attention to the ‘from’ field addresses.

When picking your ‘from’ address, stay away from obscure names like ‘[email protected]’.

Instead, use clear, trustworthy terms like:

contact@

support@

hello@

[your name]@

Also, try not to ever change your address unless you really have to. Consistency is key.

3. Steer clear of any words with a potentially negative context.

Make sure that both the title and the content of your email are written well.

Also, watch out for spelling mistakes:

Remember I mentioned credibility earlier?

Well, one of the biggest culprits for triggering filters is the use of spammy words in your email.

Here is another list of words to avoid in email by Pardot but, in the main, it’s fairly common sense stuff.

For example, avoid phrases like ‘bonus gift’, ‘free prizes’ or ‘don’t delete’.

Got a word you’re not sure about? Then consider how you’d feel if you received an email with it.

Would you think it’s spammy?

Trust your gut. That’ll be the clincher.

A well respected finance guru here in the UK, is Martin Lewis from MoneySavingExpert.com

Mr Lewis is a perfectly credible email source – and at some stage in the past I signed up for his newsletter.

However that didn’t stop his latest email ending up in my junk folder.

Here was the title of the email:

It’s trying to say far too much.

Not only that, but it uses abbreviations and appears like a random collection of words.

This is like email junk bingo.

We’ve got ‘urgent’, ‘cheap’ (twice) and ‘£££’.

It would have been better if the title had used a ‘pipe’ symbol (aka vertical bar) as in example below:

4. Take pride in your brand and have a sense of style.

Interestingly, it’s not only the actual words you’ve chosen that set alarm bells ringing for email service providers.

It’s also the style they’re delivered in and how they’re portrayed.

With that in mind, try to avoid:

• Excessive use of capital letters, exclamation points, or other symbols.
• Using too many different font colors, or bold colors like red and green (I personally don’t see the need for anything other than black).
• Doing strange things with a combination of numbers and letters to try and cheat the filters (such as R3ad th1s 3ma1l!).
• Using font sizes larger than 10 or 12pt.
• Stuffing the copy with unnecessary keywords.
• Sending emails with a host of miss-spellings.
• Fancy symbols in subject lines* (see below)

*Opinions on using  “fancy symbols” vary – some consider it spammy, but others are Fans and using Unicode Symbols in subject lines is growing in popularity.

Ultimately, there’s nothing sinister about email filters. We all receive spammy emails and you can tell them a mile off.

Be authentic and original by all means, just have some awareness and use the eyeball test.

5. Double-check your domain name.

Email filters will look at your domain name very closely, more than the actual email address you’re sending from in fact.

Make sure your URL doesn’t contain any potentially offensive words.

This might surprise, this actually happens a lot by accident.

Take Pen Island Pens for instance, a business that specializes in selling custom-made pens.

They seem to operate out of Pen Island, one of the remote Canadian arctic islands:

With a URL like that, I’d love to see their open rates.

5. Go easy on the links.

Don’t incorporate too many links within your email, even if they are to your own site.

If you’re linking out to external sites, make sure that they’re reputable domains too.

Limiting links isn’t just something for the benefit of email filters either.

Frankly, it’s annoying to receive an email with a load of links.

Even if a message with too many links did reach the intended recipient, is it actually going to be effective?

It’s asking too much of the reader.

Having multiple links is like trying to open a conversation with someone by offering 10 possible topics to choose from.

It’s weird and it won’t help you reach your goal.

6.  Take care when including images within an email.

Email filters are also known to have a big issue with images:

M&M direct are another bona fide company who should have no problem in sending an email.

But they sent me too many images.

Looking at their email template, there was space allocated for at least 8 pictures, if not more.

I saw none of them.

Exceptionally large images will be a problem, as will having too many images stuffed into a single email in relation to the amount of text.

As an additional piece of housekeeping, ensure that any images you do include within an email are being hosted at a reputable site (something that’s often overlooked).

It’s worth knowing that a lot of email clients automatically block images.

Because of that, the chances are, even if your image-heavy emails do make it to the inbox folder, your recipients won’t see the pictures anyway.

7.  Give your recipients a clear ‘unsubscribe’ option.

This is a biggie.

Not having an obvious way of unsubscribing from your newsletter is email suicide.

This might seem obvious, but you’d be surprised at how many people don’t do this (either intentionally or otherwise).

And talking of intentionally trying to beat the system…

8. Never try to pull a fast one and trick an email filter.

Dealing with email filters is a little bit like dealing with Google in SEO.

Make sure that you DON’T:

• Have email subject titles with Re: or Fwd: and make out like there’s been a previous conversation.
• Create words out of symbols, such as F.REE.
• Send any misleading claims.
• Include any images that conceal text.

Here’s an unimaginative email title from a bogus ‘Barclays’ bank:

This is a better attempt, but with an attachment from an unknown source, it’s still going to fail:

9. Show your mailing list some love.

If ‘the money is in the list’ is the most over-used cliché in marketing, then ‘look after your list’ has to be the most under-used one.

For a quick win, practice good list management if you want to make sure that your email campaign is successful.

It’s a question of pure logic.

If you’ve sent a number of emails to a prospect and seen no engagement, they should be removed from your mailing lists.

Email filters look at open rates and bounce rates too, so if you don’t stop sending emails to inactive people, the situation is only going to get worse.

The more times you get marked up as spam, the more often it’ll happen.

With me, Groupon are the big losers in this area:

I bought one thing from Groupon about a year ago; now I get daily emails from them.

One probably got sent to my junk folder…

… but now they all do, because Outlook’s email filter is clever enough to recognise that I’ve not dragged anything back to my inbox.

Likewise with Smyth’s toys, the message is loud and clear:

10. Ask your email subscribers to whitelist you.

The elephant in the room.

Yup, one of the best ways to make sure that your mailing list receives your emails is right under your nose.

Just ask them to add you to their contacts!

Even if just a few subscribers do that, it’s a step in the right direction.

This technique is particularly useful at the beginning of your relationship with a new subscriber.

Simply send them a welcome email and ask the question.

Just remember that even if everyone on your email list has agreed to receive mail from you, you should still provide a prominent ‘unsubscribe’ link in your emails.

How to whitelist an email address with Gmail, Outlook.com or Yahoo! Mail

11. Use a tool and become an email Jedi.

There are a number of tools that can help you predict whether how authentic your email might appear.

For instance:

• SenderScore.org can give you an insight into what your customers think of your email campaign, and show you the overall health of your current program.
• Blacklist checks can help you to find out whether your IP has been blacklisted or marked by email providers.
• Tools such as MailingCheck, IsNotSpam and MailTester can evaluate the content of your email for spam.
  

Now you’ve got an action plan.

If your emails aren’t getting seen, then at best, you’re wasting time and effort.

At worst, you’re leaving traffic, revenue and growth on the table.

Are you happy with that?

Thought not.

Follow those 11 tips and the next time you’re ready to promote one of your babies, you can blast your mailing list without a second thought.

And that way, you’re next job will be a nice one.

You’ll be thinking of your next article rather than stressing over the last one.

You’ll be busy creating another masterpiece, not trying to justify starting this whole painful cycle all over again.

Author Bio: Matt Press is an experienced copywriter who has written words for some of the UK’s biggest brands, such as Sky, Three and Vodafone. He now runs his own copywriting agency, Splash Copywriters.

IncomeDiary Update:

1) GMAIL and Clipping your message

Gmail being the efficient service it is, clips HTML emails that are larger than 102 KB

Which means that if your message is greater than 102 KB you will see something like this: [referred to as Message Clipping]

Not exactly what the sender intended!

Not only does the receiver not see your intended message – they will often miss the ‘view entire message’ link.

Worse still, if they cannot see the intended message and an un-subscribe link, there is a real risk of your legitimate email being marked as spam!

A couple of tips:

(a) Stop copy and pasting your email from in particular a WORD DOC (it creates unnecessary HTML that bulks up the message size)

(b) Instead, create your email as a simple text file. A great online service you can use for this is: EditPad

With EditPad it is easy to download and save a clean text file to say your Desktop. Then it is just a case of Copy and Pasting the content of your email into AWEBER, Mailchimp etc.

More information here: Tips To Avoid Message Clipping In Gmail

2) It is a matter of balance

We had long suspected that using words like Spam or Inbox in an email triggered spam filters.  But that did not stop us using “How to avoid spam filters and land in the inbox” as an alternative subject line in a recent email to our subscribers.

As you can guess, a number of our emails ended up in the Junk Folder.

We learned two things from this…

1. A good number of people check their Junk Folder.
2. The open rate and clicks % for this subject line was actually higher than an alternative email we sent that did not include those trigger words.

It is a matter of balance – we know our audience wanted to know about Spam Filters – and sometimes if you want to reach people and get the interaction you desire you need to ‘break the rules”. In a busy world with a huge number of emails going into peoples inboxes sometimes you will have to take a risk with subject lines.

#Tip Always use alternative subject lines and measure the response on each. Services like Aweber allow you to email subscribers who did not open an email. When emailing the ‘unopens’ use an alternative subject line. It is not unusual to find that the second email to ‘unopens’ gets a better response.

You should also test sending at different times of day and days of the week.

More Email Marketing Resources

=> 29 Email Marketing Resources To Help You Master Email

=> 14 Ways to Make More Money From Email Marketing

=> Marketers Guide to Maintaining Your Email List

The post Email Deliverability: How to avoid spam filters and land in the inbox appeared first on How To Make Money Online.

This will help…

People are always talking about money being in the list.

But what good is a list of subscribers if you can’t get anybody to open your messages?

Email marketing is only a virtual cash machine when done right. 

But before you’re making the big bucks mesmerizing your subscribers, you need to build your list by capturing emails.

I highly suggest utilizing Popup Domination to do just that. 

It’s proven time after time to increase subscribers by 524% overnight. Over 35,000 websites are currently using it!

And while Popup Domination is a great tool to help build your list, you’re still going to need to get all those new subscribers to open your messages.

I’m not only going to show you how to get your emails opened but how to actually have people looking for them.

Here are 12 powerful tips to increase open rate:

#1. Make It Personal

These days, our inboxes fill up quick and a lot of times get flooded with junk mail. We all deal with it.

We sign up for some product or newsletter that looks promising only to be inundated with spam and nonstop affiliate offers.

One of the easiest tactical approaches many use to filter nonsense is seeking out their names.

Make sure you’re collecting first names with your email capture and personalizing subject lines with first name. This is an instant attention grabber and subtle trust builder.

#2. Have A Double Opt-in

I know it’s hard to choose between list size and list quality and I’ll be up front with you, your list will be smaller with a double opt-in. 

BUT…

It will be much higher quality!

Think about it, your subscriber just proved they’re opening and clicking your links. Whatever it is you’re offering they’re seriously interested.

If you offer something of great value, you don’t need a massive list to make a living. Just don’t forget your subscriber jumped through a couple hoops – reward them to show your appreciation.

#3. Get Mobile Optimized

Nearly everybody has a smart phone, in fact, there’s a growing belief that in the near future we’ll exclusively use phones for email, work, shopping et cetera.

133.7 million people own smart phones in the US alone and 43% of all email worldwide is opened on mobile devices as of April of last year.

People are using their phones to check email now more than ever…

And if the links in your email are always leading back to a site that’s not mobile optimized they’ll stop opening because it’s a pain in the neck to deal with.

#4. Use Enticing Subject Lines

This should be a no-brainer, but I still observe marketers using dry and boring headlines.

Just this week I was consulting a friend who’s getting his feet wet in online marketing… I suggested he get into it, because he’s a natural salesman.

I know he doesn’t have a sales background and asked if there was something specific helping him create fantastic headlines.

Without hesitation he says, “sea-puck.” He meant CPUQ. and it stands for controversy, power-words, urgency, questions.

Those are the only styles you need to utilize in order to craft irresistible headlines… And here’s an example of each:

Controversy	Power Words	Urgency	Questions
A Little Mistake That Cost a Farmer $3,000 a Year	YOU Can Make BIG MONEY EASILY	Warning: Read This NOW Or Kiss The Rest Of Your Money Goodbye	Free Website Review: What Do You Struggle with Online?
But What if You Could See Her Naked?	OUTSTANDING Methods Are The SPECIAL EDGE For Open Rates	What You Must Buy And Sale Now: The ONLY Way To Protect Your Weatlth	Are You Frustrated By Internet Marketing?
Nazi UFOs to attack U.S.	HILARIOUS CONFESSIONS Of Real DESPERATE Housewives	What You Must Do Immediately To Rank In Google	Are You Making These Blogging Mistakes?

#5. Offer Real Value Consistently

You’d think this is obvious, especially with how I opened this post saying email marketing was like a cash machine.

While I still consider that to be a spot on analogy, you have to understand it’s only possible by offering fantastic content from the get go and not stopping.

Once people understand that you care and truly want to share high quality information with the world they’ll be looking forward to your products and recommendations.

But nothing will get you marked as spam or unsubscribed from quicker than constantly pounding your list with offer after offer. The only people that get away with this are those with MASSIVE, 100k + lists that can afford to lose a few subscribers.

#6. Build A Relationship With The Reader

The best way to manage your online reputation is to build strong  relationships. That goes beyond email marketing, it should be your goal with all of your interactions online. 

You’re the premier representative of your brand so hold yourself to a high standard and your work will reflect that.

People will give you great reviews, testimonials and leave positive comments on your various content. You’ll find loyal fans silencing haters for you which is always  great for brand management.

Loyalty must be earned, it cannot be bought.

#7. Have An Open Loop

These are fun because you get to sharpen your storytelling skills.

Basically you build up anticipation by giving the impression you’re about to reveal some outstanding information and always make them wait until tomorrow by coming back around to the beginning of your story.

You’re giving information, but you’re disguising it…

For instance, here’s a really quick example. Matter of fact, what I’m about about to show you, took me 2 hard years online to figure out, spending thousands on products that were supposed to put my business on auto-pilot…

I nearly went bankrupt and then it finally hit me!

What I discovered was so blatantly obvious and simple, I made over 4k my very first day. And it didn’t cost me a penny.

All I had to do was use google trends and open loops to see a 720% increase in traffic, it was that powerful …  I could rinse and repeat forever.

I mentioned it to my friend who had been marketing for years, but he brushed off the thought of quality free traffic.

So I showed his little brother, a complete “noob.” I gotta tell ya, he’s the only 17 year old I know driving an M3 that he paid for – cash.

Not bad for open loops and Google trends?

You’re going to want to see how you can do what this 17 year old did… I’ll tell you all about it tomorrow.

See what I did there?

#8. Clean Up Your List

It’s normal to get inactive subscribers but sometimes they just need a refresher.

There are two simple methods you can use…

The first is send an email reconfirming they want to be on your list. You can do this through Aweber or whatever auto-responder you’re using.

The second thing I do when a subscriber has been inactive for a month is put them on a separate list where they’ll no longer be mailed daily.

I’ll hit them with 1 more daily email blast and a reconfirmation 7-14 days later, if neither get’s opened they’re removed completely. You can typically automate this entire process through your auto-responder’s “list segment” option.

#9. Remain Consistent With Delivery Time

When I’d send emails at inconsistent times the open rate was much lower compared to mailing at the same time daily.

All major auto-responders have an option to have your message sent out at a specific date and time.

I use Aweber and usually set my followups to “send 1 day after previous” which sends at the time the individual received that last email which is the same time they signed up. Be sure to have several emails queued in advance. 

#10. Run Split tests

If most of your content is the same for all subscribers, you can run several split tests to identify what resonates best with your audience.

I’ll test several different mail-out times based on time of day in PST, EST & GMT. Typically I’ll test 8am, 2pm and 6pm mail-out times for each timezone and set my broadcasts to the most active.

The second is test what CPUQs are getting opened the most and include that style in the subject lines more frequently.

The third thing to test is whether it’s best to have messages coming from myself or the brand. Typically it’s best to have your emails “from” a person, but I’ve seen otherwise, which is why I test.

#11. Great First Impression

How many times have you heard, first impressions are everything?

Well they are, and the same is true online. Your first impression is your best shot at earning trust and ensuring future emails get opened.

Assuming you’re already running a clean email capture software like Popup Domination to grab attention and build your list, it’s crucial to give away awesome content like problem solving reports, info-graphics, podcasts and videos.

#12. Have A Second Lead Magnet

This next tip is perhaps one of the most effective things I’ve ever done to dramatically increase open rate…

Creating a second lead magnet in the form of an eCourse, audio or video series spread out over several days is a clever and incredibly effective way to get your emails opened and consumed.

You’ll notice Income Diary employing this very method with their Free 7 day money making eCourse…

A great way of enhancing the relationship with your list is simply surveying them from time to time.

This will help clearly identify what problem it is that you’re audience needs solving. Once you identify what that “problem” is, make it a point to over-deliver on the solution.

Always try to empathize and respect your reader. You’ll have no problem earning a living online if offering high value is 100% of your mission, 

Don’t meet expectation, exceed it!

Success by choice, not by chance.

– David Aston

Read more: ‘10 “Fill In The Blank” Email Subject Lines (That Made Me The Most Money)’

The post 12 Powerful Tips to Dramatically Increase Email Open Rate appeared first on How To Make Money Online.

Santa.

That “stat” shouldn’t surprise you. Of course kids are going to open their presents. If only people opened their emails the same way.

Taking a closer look, I came up with four underlying reasons why all presents are opened and gathered ten relevant tips to help you improve the email marketing strategy for your blog.

The Likely Extent of Your Email Marketing Strategy

If you’re like most bloggers, you have an opt-in at the top of your sidebar. You have a couple dozen subscribers. And you consistently get a 20% open rate/8% click-through rate with emails that you send out sporadically every few weeks.

This is because you’ve focused on building a list without having a strategy for once you have one. I want to help you with that.

People Need to Expect and Anticipate Your Emails

Li’l Johnny is excited on Christmas morning because he expects to find a pile of presents. More importantly, he knows that those presents contain gifts that he’s been wanting for months.

1. Set Expectations in the Opt-In Area

Too many bloggers trick people into opting-in with a free gift only to barrage them with unrelated emails later. I don’t know about you, but I don’t open those emails.

If, however, you make it clear in your opt-in area that they’re also requesting to receive blog updates, then they’re going to expect and anticipate your emails.

Sure that might discourage people from opting-in, but there’s no value in having a list full of people who don’t want your emails.

See example:

Jay Baer, from ConvinceandConvert.com, makes it clear that you’ll receive a daily email with social media advice.

2. Remind Them Why They’re Receiving Emails

Once they’re receiving your emails, it’s important to remind them why they’re receiving them. Otherwise you run the risk of them unsubscribing or marking your emails as spam.

A good way to do this is to put their signup date and signup URL in the footer of every email that you send. These two reminders will jog their memory to answer the question, “why am I getting these emails?”

See example:

Pat Flynn, from SmartPassiveIncome.com, reminds his subscribers when and where they subscribed to his list in the footer of every email.

3. Send Your Emails Regularly at Consistent Times

What’s the best day and time to send an email to people around the world?

I schedule the emails for 6am EST so they’re at the top of the list when people open their inbox first thing in the morning across the US.

In the Income Diary Q&A, Josh Dunlop said,

I find that posting content at 9am West Coast time is best, because it’s lunch time on the East Coast and just after work in the UK, which are the biggest markets for my traffic.

People Need to Receive Your Emails Easily

All Johnny has to do to get his presents in the morning is wake up, climb down the stairs, and walk to the living room.

4. Create a Squeeze Page that You Can Direct People To

Having opt-ins in all of the popular areas (i.e. top sidebar, bottom sidebar, top of homepage, footer of post, etc.), is a good start.

You also want to have a page on your blog that’s dedicated to getting subscribers, also known as a squeeze page.

How come?

Because you and your readers can link to that page when you or they are recommending it to other people.

5. Link to Their Email System on Your Confirmation Page

After they fill out your opt-in form, they need to confirm their subscription.

This is the point where you typically say, “Before I can send you the information you requested, I need you to click the link in the email to confirm your subscription … yada, yada, yada.”

This page has one goal: Get them to open the email and confirm their subscription. Yet, few people ever optimize this small but pivotal step in the process.

How do you do that? Convince them to check their email immediately.

See example:

The confirm your subscription page on my blog, 14clicks.com, directs people to check their email immediately so they don’t forget.

6. Mobilize Your Emails with a Simple Text-Focused Email

According to Litmus.com, as of April 2012, 36% of email is opened with a mobile device and that number grew 80% in the previous six months.

You might fancy your 2-column, HTML email newsletters, but people who open them with their phones don’t.

To keep your emails mobile-friendly:

• Use a 1-column layout.
• No more than 550-600 pixels wide.
• Limit slow-loading images.
• If you link somewhere, try to make sure that the webpage is mobile-friendly.

See example:

The DIYthemes email is HTML-based but simple enough that it appears to be text-based so it shows up well on mobile devices.

People Need to Feel a Personal Connection

The moment Johnny unwraps a Barbie Doll, he’s going to be forever skeptical about whether or not Santa really knows him. He’ll think twice about opening the next one. Around the third or fourth Barbie Doll, he’ll stop opening them altogether.

7. Segment Your Lists by Interests and Activity

How do you personalize a mass-communication channel?

Every email marketing service lets you create multiple lists. Create different lists based on the interests and activities of your audience.

Consider segmenting lists for:

• General blog subscribers.
• Weekly blog subscribers.
• Potential customers.
• Paying customers.
• Etc.

See example:

WPBeginner.com, gives their readers six different subscription options based on their interests.

8. Use Your Welcome Email to Learn About Them

Aside from sending targeted emails based on interests, you also need to know who your audience is in order to build a personal connection with them.

One of the best ways to do that is to ask them to introduce themselves by replying to the first welcome email. Here are a few questions you can ask in that email:

• What are you struggling with right now?
• How do you expect me to help you?
• What types of content would get you to open every email?

See example:

This is Derek Halpern’s Welcome Email for SocialTriggers.com. Many of his subscribers reply to this email with their #1 struggle. This let’s him meet his new subscribers and gives him a better understanding of how to help his audience.

People Need to Value Your Emails

In the weeks leading up to Christmas, Johnny circles his favorite toys in the catalogs, creates a list of his favorites, and even visits Santa to tell him what’s at the top of his list. All of this to ensure that he gets exactly what he wants.

9. Include Subscriber-Only Tips through an Autoresponder

What reason does somebody have to subscribe if they can get all of the same content by regularly visiting or following you on Twitter?

To treat your subscribers to something special, set up an autoresponder series that gives them a comprehensive guide for information that they want.

See example:

Copyblogger.com offers an exclusive, 20-part autoresponder series to their subscribers that’s based on years of researching their audience to figure out what they need help with most.

10. Offer a Weekly Email Option

I don’t know about you, but I have a tough time keeping up with reading the posts from all of my favorite blogs.

To get around this, consider offering a weekly subscription option to your readers. That way they can get one email with summaries of that week’s posts and choose to read the ones that are relevant to them.

See example:

You’ll also notice that WPBeginner gives people the “WPB Daily” and “WPB Weekly” options because he understands that not every post is relevant to every subscriber.

How to Use Email Marketing

Email marketing has two functions.

1. To get to know your audience.
2. To send people your message.

Too many bloggers put too much focus on building their lists. Once they have a list, they don’t know what to do with it. So that list sits there and costs money.

I hope I’ve shed some light on this all-too-common problem and given you some ideas on how to improve your email marketing strategy. If I have, let me know in the comments.

As always, if you need help with implementing any of these tips, leave a comment and tell me which email marketing service you use.

Read more: ‘The Best Way To Grow Your Email List’

Photo by: Stuck in Customs

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