Besides your inbox being inundated with requests to “stay connected”, has the spam stopped?  Mine has, a bit.  Though the guys in Kuala Lumpur didn’t get the CASL memo and are not following email marketing best practices.

I think there was a lot more made out of CASL than there should have been.  From a “50,000-foot-view”, CASL is actually good for your businesses – what!  That’s right, components of the legislation are good email marketing best practices that business should already be following.

Let me explain.  Your business should always keep a cleaned and scrubbed email list (essentially, your prospecting list), this is an example of one of many good email marketing best practices.  So, CASL actually forced your business to do what you should be doing anyway, “scrubbing” your email list (i.e. refining your prospect list).

Businesses have become lazy with email marketing because it is an affordable marketing channel; “whip” together some content and press “SEND”.  The common pitfall is that businesses look at email marketing as a mass channel – yes, I know it is.  However, if you actually view your email marketing strategy as a more focused strategy, by segmenting your list, your email campaign to 1000 segmented recipients will be more meaningful, with better results, than a campaign to a general list of 5000.

The truth is, a company with a strong marketing team is constantly “scrubbing” their contact lists and monitoring their sales funnels – so, CASL would have had minimal impact on them.  These companies have being doing this all-along; the hype is all for nothing to these businesses.

The other interesting side-effect of this law is that I believe you’ll observe more phone calls and personal interaction.  Cold-calling will probably increase.

Email Marketing Best Practices

In light of CASL, I want to outline some email marketing best practices that are fundamental for every company and marketing team.

1.    Collecting email addresses

It is imperative that you collect your email addresses legitimately.  Otherwise, your business will be in violation of CASL – and you will have ignored the whole purpose of this blog post!

2.    Segment Your List and Customize Your Message

Industry Tradeshow sign-ups should be kept separately from, say, your website sign-up.  Segmenting your list much more accurately allows you to create a more customized message and in turn, a better chance of engaging with your customer (a possible sale).  It is also important to know at what stage in the decision-making process the recipient is in – this is key to converting an email recipient from a prospect to a sale.  Isn’t that the purpose of marketing?

3.    Don’t ignore the metrics

After every email campaign, your marketing team should always pay attention to the metrics of that campaign.  The metrics are telling you who is opening your email, what are they reading, what emails are bouncing back.  More importantly, you’ll be able to identify what recipients are more engaged than others and which recipients may warrant a follow-up of some sort (another email, phone call etc).

CASL is not all bad.  It simply forces your marketing team to be more focused and get in-line with some good email marketing best practices.

The post CASL and Email Marketing Best Practices appeared first on GIANT Marketing Solutions.

Email marketing is a craft; it’s not a matter of jamming all the content you have into one email. It’s a matter of crafting a “message”, educating your audience and giving them an opportunity to “act” on the information you are providing them. To help you with your next email marketing campaign, I have outlined some fundamental email marketing principles to consider in order to improve your email marketing click-through rate.

1. Open Me!

The first step to improving your click-through rates is to ensure the email is opened! Ok, I know this might sound obvious, but it isn’t easy. Email delivered DOES NOT EQUAL email opened; a common misunderstanding amount business owners / marketers. These are two different stats that can have two different conclusions on the success/failure of your email campaign.

There are many ways to increase your open-rates; here are two that are important:

• From Field: Make it clear who the email is coming from; be sure to identify yourself. Common practice is to use your full name, company (or even both). Think of someone knocking on your front door but doesn’t identify themselves, how likely are you to open the door?
• Subject line: The subject line one of the most important factors and there is plenty of research on what works and what doesn’t. In a survey conducted by Adestra “discount” terms in subject lines generally performed below average, for example, “% off,” “discount,” “free,” “half price,” “save,” “voucher,” “early bird,” and “2 for 1″ all came in below-average. A strong, to-the-point yet creative subject line invites the recipient to open the email. Spend time on creating an effective subject line; without one, there is not chance to measure click-through if the recipient doesn’t open the email.

2. Mobile. Mobile. Mobile.

While we are all aware of the growing popularity of mobile devices, there are many companies in the marketplace still not adjusting their strategies to adapt to this trend. Your priority should be to create a responsive website; at the same time, adjust your email marketing strategy to ensure it is also responsive. That is, so that your recipients are able to read your emails on their mobile devices; smaller screens. A Litmus research study suggests 47% of all emails are opened on a mobile device. That makes mobile phones the most popular medium for reading emails.

Simply put, not preparing your emails for mobile is a mistake.

Also consider this… since mobile users “click” using their fingers instead of a mouse, be sure all of your call-to-actions are larger than 44 x 44 pixels; this is the average space a finger takes up when touching a screen.

3. Click Here or Not? Call to Action

A successful email marketing campaign has a clear goal. Once you’ve identified this goal, make sure your call-to-action serves that goal. So, using “Buy Now” and “Read More” in the same CTA are conflicting and not recommended.

Make sure your CTA fulfills the promise it is making; “contact us” should take the recipient to a page with contact info; not a page with product details.

By the way, “click here” is not very effective any longer as the vast majority of people understand what a hyper link is and does.  Use verbs and be descriptive.

Email Marketing is Not Dead

There is a school of thought in the marketplace that email is a dead marketing channel.  I don’t subscribe to that.  It is important to  ensure your list is clean and relevant; that the recipients can relate to your content.  The bottom line is, consumers enjoy receiving emails; at least 91% of consumers check their email everyday according to Litmus.  This makes email the leading communication channel compared to social media.

The post Effective Email Marketing Strategies to Increase Click-Through Rates appeared first on GIANT Marketing Solutions.

Email marketing continues to prove it is an effective marketing tool…when used appropriately.  Your goal is to get the recipient to open AND respond to the email.

One of the key’s to making an small business email marketing campaign successful is to focus on the subject line.

Subject lines are what all recipients see first.   If the subject line is appealing, they will open the email; this gets you one step closer to a prospect and ultimately, a sale.

There is no “magic” formula for a subject line, however, there are several factors that impact a a small business email marketing campaign, for example:

1. Use Action Words – e.g. “take two minutes to change the world”
2. Relevancy
3. Timeliness
4. Piquing curiosity
5. Creating a sense of urgency
6. Using creativity or humour

When you are planning your next email campaign, consider the following…

1. Does the email answer the recipient’s question? Have you given them a reason to open it?
2. Does the copy (i.e. content) meet the expectations set by the subject line?
3. What is the length of the subject line; what does the recipient actually see?  Shorter and accurate is better than long; if it has to long, “front load” with most important info
4. Test and Analyze your results – see what works and what doesn’t.

Real Growth for Real Business.

Reality Business Consulting (www.realityconsulting.ca) is a Toronto Internet Marketing Company who helps your business find customers and keep customers. We use sound and proven marketing principles to create a profitable online brand for your business by developing a high-quality and SEO-friendly WordPress website at the core of your online marketing strategy.

I am George Giantsopoulos, an accomplished entrepreneur and Principle of Reality Business Consulting. If you are searching for a team of knowledgeable and proven marketing professionals to grow your business, contact me for a complimentary consultation.

The post Create a Golden Subject Line For Your Email Marketing appeared first on GIANT Marketing Solutions.

According to an article posted by Search Engine People , this statement is TRUE. 

The study was conducted by ForeSee Results and concludes that email marketing is a more effective marketing tool as a traffic driver to your company’s website than social media.

This isn’t the first I’ve heard of this, either.  So, it got me thinking of some effective ways of crafting email campaigns that get results.  Here are four tips to writing an effecting email marketing campaign.

1. Design and Images

Be careful of using images.  A key guideline email marketing design is that the email not be too heavy with graphics or, even worse, that it has one giant graphic!  Keep in mind, 60-40; 60 percent text, 40 percent graphic. Also, do not send out an email that is one large graphic, not only because fewer recipients are likely to read it but also because you’ll get caught by spam filters.  As always, design is important, put some attention to it.

2. Strong Call to Action

The “Click here” call-to-action link does the job, but you can get more clicks if you try something more creative or stronger.  Try links that invites the recipient and lures them like, “Find out more on our Top-3 Valentine Gifts” or “To get the most out of your iPhone, keep reading.” Tease your customers a bit on where the link is taking them and you’ll see an improvement on your click-through numbers.

3. Optimized Landing Page

Email marketing has two goals…(1) To get the recipient to your website-“click-through” (2) To get the recipient to make a purchase.  As I have stated in a previous blog about lowering your bounce rate, your Landing Page is your store-front.  Just like if you were shopping at a mall, and you walk by a store-front that attracts your attention, you go in and browse.  It is the same principle.  Your landing page needs to attract the recipient and entice them to look around so they can learn more and eventually, make purchases.

4. Don’t go overboard with links

Packing your email/newsletter with links is tempting, but remember that you want to keep your customers focused. Too many links can overwhelm subscribers and turn them off altogether, giving you no data on their preferences. Instead of cramming 50 links in your newsletter, put in five focused ones.

Be an email marketer.  Be Real.

Reality Business Consulting (RBC) (www.realityconsulting.ca) is a Toronto-based Marketing and Website Design and Development company dedicated to helping small business grow. We do this by providing insightful marketing and sales knowledge, planning, execution and website design and development, on a small business budget. The foundation of our success lies in our strong business acumen and our ability to listen to and understand the needs of our clients, translating their ideas into a concrete plan of action; ultimately, delivering profitable results for them.

If you are searching for a professional and customer-focused marketing company with extensive work in website design and development located in Toronto, contact us for a “Reality Check; a no-obligation, no-charge consultation of your business.

The post 4-Tips to Improve Email Marketing ROI to Grow Your Small Business appeared first on GIANT Marketing Solutions.