Considering Twitter’s Lead Generation Card for Email List Growth? CONSIDER THIS.

A few weeks ago, Twitter unveiled the Lead Generation Card, a useful digital marketing tool that allows its users to solicit email subscribers straight from their Twitter feeds.

lead-generation-card

As email marketers, we’re all fighting – I’ve even heard tales of scratching and clawing – for the same online impressions. And Twitter, the 11th most visited website in the world according to Alexa, has been what you could describe as an underutilized resource in the email marketing game.

Sure, you could always tweet links to your email sign-up forms, but those calls to action were limited, both in length and in visibility. The Lead Generation Card was a way for Twitter to solve both of those problems – longer posts and more screen real estate.

But as much as the Lead Generation Card seems like in a win-win for all involved, it’s not quite a one-size-fits-all digital marketing solution.

One variable is cost. Which isn’t to say implementing the Lead Generation Card is expensive – that’s a pretty relative factor. But it hints at cost per acquisition, and that’s where you need to make a critical decision. Is this feature going to drive your acquisition costs up or down? If it’s up, to what benefit? Your average corporate Twitter account has a couple hundred Twitter followers. So unless you have an “above-average” Twitter following, this resource might not make that much monetary sense.

A second variable is internal resources. Let’s say you’ve got the money to run this campaign. Do you have the resources? Is your email marketing solution equipped to handle the potential influx of subscribers. Do you have enough new content to go around? Have you set up an autoresponder campaign specifically tailored to this new audience? All of these questions need to be addressed before you invest resources in creating an effective Lead Generation Card, which is going to require creative, analytic, and technical resources on your end.

If you’ve done the research and necessary due diligence to ensure that a Twitter Lead Generation Card is a viable solution to grow your email marketing list, there are few tools out there that have as much potential. And, quite frankly, I envy your Twitter following and internal resources.

About the Author: Harry Kaplowitz is the Deliverability Product Manager for Vocus, an email marketing platform for small-to-midsized businesses. You can follow him on Twitter (@Inboxygen), or visit inboxygen.com.

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Gmail’s New Inbox: It’s Kind of a Big Deal!

Google announced it’s re-re envisioning of the inbox today. Why do you care? Well, you probably shouldn’t unless you’re an email marketer or inbox neat freak in which case I suggest you read on.

Attention Email Marketers

For many of us reaching the inbox consistently can be quite a struggle. With Gmail’s newest addition to the inbox getting your material in front of readers is going to be even more difficult – just skipping the spam folder simply wont cut it anymore. This means that we need to write email that has more value or connection. Give your people a reason to wait eagerly at their home screen for your e-letters.

Selling is great – and you should never be scared of selling your products or services if they have value – however it’s important to pepper in some free, actionable value in your messages.

Whether it be as simple as showing your subscribers a nifty subject line character using miscellaneous symbols to increase conversions ★ or just telling a story to put a smile on their face give them something to look forward to in your emails. Take a moment to think about who you’re mailing and what would be useful to you if you were in there shoes (maybe some tips on how to get better affiliates or a strategy you use in your business). By doing so you’ll see:

  1. Better open/click rates.
  2. Higher placement in the inbox/folders.
  3. Engaged customers and more referrals.

We’ve known it for awhile – but engagement is going to become king. Keep your readers interested and you will flourish.

Attenion Inbox Neat Freaks

One of the new releases highlighted features are inbox groups. Similar to Gmail’s existing system of filters, tags and folders your email can be separated into different categories depending on what type of mail it is.

Different is it’s interface. Now each folder will appear as a tab at the top of your inbox – better yet the Gmail mobile interface will feature an easy to navigate menu – something most mobile inboxes fail to provide.

You’ll have the ability to choose between displaying one to six different tabs that you can separate to your liking. I could see the most popular being social notifications, receipts invoices, educational newsletters, and sales messages. Best of all, Gmails new inbox can be toggled – meaning those scared of change or just stoked on their current setup can retain their classic view.

Will Gmail’s new inbox last? Only time will tell, but from the preview things are looking up and I don’t think it will suffer the same fate as AOL’s Project Phoenix. See more on Gmail’s newest feature via the original blog post or their dedicated product page at gmail.com/inbox..

About the author: Brendan Dubbels is the Postmaster and  Director of Advertising for ONTRAPORT.com 

 

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The (Now) Complete Guide to Modern Email Marketing Stats

Email Marketing Stats: The Final Chapter

Here’s the second and final installment of my one-stop-shop of noteworthy email marketing stats, L-M. Here’s Part 1.

Lists

The most common ways of capturing email addresses on websites (excluding checkout) are on a dedicated email page (58%) and on the home page (56%), followed by the header (15%), footer (38%) and pop-up windows (22%).
- Experian Email Market Study: Email acquisition and engagement tactics

In 2013, list growth continues to see slow but steady growth.  In a survey of more than 1,00 businesses around the globe, list growth for the previous 12 months was: 17% – Very positive, our list is rapidly growing; 50% – Somewhat positive, our list is slowly growing; 26% – Neutral, the gains balance out the losses; 6% – Somewhat negative, our list is slowly shrinking; 1% – Very negative, our list is rapidly shrinking.
- Marketing Sherpa 2013 Email Marketing Benchmark Report

Mobile

43% of consumers say they read emails most often on a smartphone (36.4%) or tablet (6.9%) as opposed to a desktop or laptop computer.
- BlueHornet Consumer Views of Email Marketing 2013

News

News-related terms in subject lines outperformed discount-related terms. “News” (16.2%), “update” (4.9%), “breaking” (33.5%), “alert” (25.9%) and “bulletin” (12.5%) all saw better than average click-to-open rates (as well as clicks and opens).
- Adestra Subject Line Analysis Report

Open rates

Email open rates increased 7.8% in the third quarter of 2012 compared with the year-earlier period, with average volume increasing 14.9%
- Epsilon/DMA Q2 2012 North America Email Trends and Benchmarks

Personalization

For promotional mailings, emails with personalized subject lines had an average open rate of 19.5%, compared to 15.1% for those without personalization.
- Experian 2013 Digital Marketer Report

QR codes

19% of US respondents (1 in 5) have scanned a QR code.
- eMarketer

Revenue

Email ad revenue reached $156 million in 2012, up from $213 million in 2011.
­- Interactive Advertising Bureau

Social media

Emails that include social sharing buttons have a click-through rate 158% higher than those do not (6.2% vs. 2.4%).
- GetResponse

Teens

In a 2013 study, 78% of teens have a cell phone, almost half (47%) of them own smartphones, and 23% have a tablet.
- Pew Research Center

UK

In 2012, one-third of UK brands generated more revenue from email than all other digital channels combined.
- Alchemyworx National Client Email Report 2013

The UK shows a strong increase in average email open rates, rising from 18.35% to 21.47% in the last 12 months. B2B emails achieved the highest open rates at 27.97%, while Sport & Leisure emails achieved open rates of 25.57% on average.
- Sign-Up.to’s 2013 UK Email Marketing Benchmark Report

Video chat

9% of mobile device users video chat at least twice a week on their phone.
- Qualcomm

Welcome emails

59.8% of email marketers plan to spend more on “welcome” email marketing.
- StrongMail ”2013 Marketing Trends Survey” 

X chromosome

Women click 10% more often than men on mobile emails.
- Tailored Mail 2012 Email Marketing Trends

Yahoo mail

November 2012 revealed a 16% year-over-year decline in user growth.
- comScore

Zip code

Next to first and last name, zip code was the most requested field, with 57% of marketers seeking zip code information.
- Experian Email Market Study: Email acquisition and engagement tactics

 

About the Author: Scott Hardigree is the Founder of Indiemark and Co-founder of BrightSpeed. Connect with him everywhere here.

 

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It’s Like They Want Me to Unsubscribe

It’s no secret that the major ISPs are getting more and more interested in list engagement. While elements like content and domain reputation are still pivotal to your deliverability, subscriber interaction seems to have leap-frogged those standards.

And that goes for both good interactions and bad interactions. Raking in those opens and clicks is key for inbox placement. Conversely, having your emails just sit in the inbox until the recipient eventually decides to de-clutter through deletion – well, that’s basically the Kiss of Death.

Unsubscribing!

“I knew it was you, Fredo. You broke my heart.”

And yet, in spite of this knowledge, it seems companies are doing everything in their power to get me to unsubscribe from their emails. Here are the three most common offenses.

The Deluge Tactic

As much as it sounds like a good idea, sending me an email every single day with an eerily similar offer is not the way to get me make a purchase. And those deal-of-the-day sites could use a lesson in moderation, too. If I’m not opening an email every day, maybe you should move me to your once-a-week list.

The Not-So-Monthly Newsletter

I think it’s great that you have a newsletter. But if it’s “monthly” or even “weekly,” stick to it. Don’t call it monthly and send me one twice a month. Don’t say it’s a weekly update only to have me go weeks without getting one. William Shakespeare once asked, “What’s in a name?” Expectations, Billy Shakes, that’s what.

The Too-Friendly From Name

There are a handful of warm-and-fuzzy companies out there that think they’re above using a familiar From Name. So instead of getting emails from ABC Widget Company, I’m getting emails from Joe Smith, their digital marketing manager. Sorry, Joe – as much as I love your company’s widgets, I have not committed its marketing team to memory, so I have no idea who you are. And if morbid curiosity is the only thing compelling me to open your emails, your inbox leash is very short indeed.

About the Author: Harry Kaplowitz is the Deliverability Product Manager for iContact, an email marketing platform for small-to-midsized businesses. You can follow him on Twitter (@Inboxygen), or visit inboxygen.com.

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The (Almost) Complete Guide to Modern Email Marketing Stats

Email Marketing Stats

We’re a society obsessed with statistics. We want to know the slugger’s RBI, our kid’s GPA, our own BMI, our car’s MPG, the cost of living index, etc.

Email marketing is no exception. And so (drum roll, please)… I present to you a one-stop shop, the A to Z of modern email stats. With so many stats to share, I’m presenting this in a two-part post, beginning with A-K. Ladies and gentlemen, start your number crunching now.

A/B testing

74% of email marketers report having an “excellent” or “good” ROI, compared to just 37% who do not test.
- Econsultancy/Adestra Email Marketing Industry Census 2013 (based on a survey of more than 1,300 digital marketers)

Automation

47% of survey respondents said that automatically sending an email based on a trigger is somewhat effective with 43% responding it was very effective.
- DMA Email Evolution Conference

B2B

For B2B companies, subject lines that contain “Money,” “revenue,” and “profit” perform the highest.
- Adestra

B2B buyers are most likely to share useful vendor content via email (79%), followed by LinkedIn (53%), Twitter (39%) and Facebook (18%).
- Earnest Agency (UK)

The average email metrics for associations include a 98.15% delivery rate, 32.36% open rate, 21.08% click rate, and a .051% unsubscribe rate.
- Informz 2013 Association Email Marketing Benchmark Report

Email’s conversion rate was 81% higher than the average (2.89% vs. 1.6%) and 42% higher than the next-best performer, referrals (2.04%).
- Optify’s B2BMarketing Benchmark Report

56% of businesses say they plan to increase their use of email marketing in 2013; email was second only to social media, which 60% of businesses said they plan to increase. SEO placed third with 41%.
- iContact, The Small and Midsize Business Email Marketing Survey 2013

64% of decision makers read their email via mobile device.
- TopRank

Copy

42% of online retailers perform copy optimization.
- 2012 International Email Marketing Summit

Day of week

Emails sent on Saturdays and Sundays had higher open, click, and transaction rates, but much lower volume. Monday emails had the highest revenue per email, but Friday had better click rates.
- Experian 2012 Q4 Email Benchmark Report

Deliverability

Only 40% of marketers have direct dashboard access to click-through rate and deliverability/inbox placement rate.
- The Relevancy Group, The Email Marketing Measurement Imperative

Ecommerce

Read rates by industry: finance, 27.5%, business, 24.3%; real estate, 20.1%; shopping, 15.2%.
- Return Path Email Intelligence Report Q4 2012

Email clients

March 2013:
#1 Apple iPhone, 23% (-0.45)
#2 Outlook, 17%  (+1.45)
#3 Apple iPad, 11%  (+0.27)
#4 Apple Mail, 8%  (-0.28)
#5 Google Android, 8%  (-0.12)
#6 Live Hotmail, 7%
#7 Yahoo! Mail, 6%  (-0.53)
#8 Gmail, 4%  (-0.03)
#9 Windows Live Mail, 3% (-0.18)
#10 Yahoo! Mail Classic, 1%  (-0.16)
- Litmus Email Market Client Share

Frequency

Consumers want more email: 27% were more likely to say their favorite companies should invest more in email (33% vs. 26%).
- ExactTarget

Gifs

1 in 2 marketers have used animated gifs in their email campaigns.
- Experian email market study

Hotmail (Outlook.com)

By the end of summer 2013, all 300 million-plus Hotmail users will be moved over to Outlook.com.
- CNN

iOS

In the last half of 2012, the iPhone and iPad represented 33% of all email opens.
- Knotice Mobile Email Opens Report

Junk email

This year, about 84% of all email traffic will be spam.
- Radicati

Keywords in email

A study of over 1 billion B2B emails showed that keywords such as “money,” “revenue,” and “profit” performed well in subject lines.
- Adestra B2B subject line analysis

 

>> Continue Reading (Part 2)

 

About the Author: Scott Hardigree is the Founder of Indiemark and Co-founder of BrightSpeed. Connect with him everywhere here.

 

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