Unfortunately, one of the most overlooked parts of most email marketing programs is in the opt-in process. How you prepare your opt-in pages and forms will impact your list growth, as well as the quality of your list.

The Opt-In Page

During the opt-in process, asking for too much can deter subscriber opt-in. But you certainly can collect more than a name and email address. Consider these simple steps when you collect data, and you’ll find your subscriber list to be stronger and more relevant.

• Keep it Simple. Your goal is to get the site visitor to opt-in, so don’t clutter the page with any unnecessary information. The page should present a confident, professional business to reinforce the trustworthiness of your brand.
• Tell the subscribers how you plan to use their data. Disclose the frequency at which you will email them, what kind of messages they can expect and how they can edit or remove themselves from the subscriber list.
• Create Value. Announce what valuable types of content a user can expect to receive: newsletters, discounts, coupons, sweepstakes announcements, other incentives, etc. For added value, provide special deals or offers only available to newsletter subscribers!
• Provide a sample. Link to an example of a previous email so users know what to expect.
• Privacy Policy. Adopt a Privacy Policy and provide a link to it from your opt-in page.

The Opt-In Form

The form itself requires a lot of consideration. You need to capture the data required to segment, personalize and optimize your campaign. However, you don’t want to risk turning away potential opt-ins with a lengthy form. In order to get the best results from your opt-in form, consider these best practices:

• Ask for only the information you need. At minimum, you should collect first name, last name and email address. If you plan on using other data to segment your lists, such as location, ask for that as well. However, do not ask for data that you do not plan on using. The more you ask for, the more wary the subscriber becomes. You can then follow up with an email asking for more information, or you can ask subscribers for more information when you have a good use for it.
• Do not pre-check opt-in boxes. You can trick people into signing up, but do you really want subscribers who are on your list only because they have been tricked? This has potential to annoy recipients, increase your spam rates and potentially have legal repercussions. Let the user opt-in him- or herself.
• Send a welcome/confirmation message. After sign-up, send a confirmation email with a thank you and reiterate how their data will be used. Make them feel secure that they are dealing with a legitimate marketer and that being part of your list will be beneficial to them.

Where to Use Opt-In Forms

The opt-in form can live in many places. However, the more relevant the placement, the better the results will be. Consider the following potential placements for your opt-in forms:

• Home Page.. If you want to grab the attention of all site visitors, add an opt-in form on your home page, or provide a clear link to it from the home page.
• During Registration. If you have a registration-based web site, ask for opt-in permission during the registration process.
• During Download. Do you have something available for download on your site? This is a great place to acquire new subscribers. If you are providing something valuable enough that a user is taking the effort to download it, then they will likely be willing to opt-in to your list as well.
• During Checkout. Selling something on your site? Provide an opt-in during the check out process. Offer something valuable to those that opt-in during checkout, like a discount on a future purchase.

After the Opt-In

Once you have the data you need, you can use it wisely.

• Deliver on what you promise. Once you have opt-in subscribers, respect their privacy and continue to deliver relevant, interesting, usable content.
• Timing is everything. Make sure you have the resources and budget to communicate to your opt-in database on a consistent basis. Make sure there’s not a dramatic time gap between the opt-in and the first communication.
• Respect your database. Make sure your opt-in subscribers understand they are valuable to you. Respect their privacy and treat them as you would want to be treated.

Optimizing your opt-in process can deliver significant results. Take the time to do it correctly. Try testing different creative, copy and form fields to see which provide the best results. Once you achieve the outcome you desire, take the same time and effort to maximize the value of your messages. Careful preparation of your data and campaigns can lead to great success in email marketing!

Best Practices for Optimizing the Email Opt-In Process is a post from the Mass Transmit Broadcast Blog. Subscribe to receive blog posts via email. Connect with us on Facebook, Twitter and Google+!

By June of this year, more people will read email on a mobile device than on a desktop computer or webmail client. The survey, conducted by Return Path, is part of the study  “Email in Motion: Mobile is Leading the Email Revolution.”

The study tracks the surge of mobile email usage, which increased 82.4% year-over-year from March 2011 to March 2012. Smartphone ownership tripled from 2010 to 2012. Currently 44% of all Americans age 12 and over own a smartphone, representing half of all cell phone owners. As of August 2012, there were 234 million mobile users in the US. Apple devices account for 85% of all opened mobile email.

. . .

> Read the Article in Direct Marketing News

> See the Return Path Infographic

. . .

[Sources: Return Path, Edison Research, eMarketer]

Mobile Email Will Overtake Web and Desktop Email by June [Study] is a post from the Mass Transmit Broadcast Blog. Subscribe to receive blog posts via email. Connect with us on Facebook, Twitter and Google+!

As soon as email became an indispensable part of daily communications, it also became a ubiquitous means of file dispersal. Beyond personal photo sharing, inspirational and spiritual PowerPoint presentations, business Word proposals, and vcards, however, lurked phishing scams and virus-laden Trojan horses. As email traffic increased, so too did the burden of mail servers and networks. The potential sinister nature of attachments and infrastructure load has made email attachments a deliverability liability.

The Problem

Email attachments have become a main source of computer infections. When virus carrying emails first appeared, unsuscepting recipients would open files, even executables, without thought. As the public became aware, people stopped opening files from senders they did not know. However, viral attachments still were received from friends and colleagues who did not know their files were infected. Emails sent from hacked or spoofed email accounts further enticed recipients to open attachments as the sender was supposedly trusted. To mitigate the impact, many corporate email infrastructures scan and destroy attachments or reject the email if infected. Given the load of some email systems, however, the virus scanning became burdensome to the servers. Many have simply opted to deleting all received email attachments.

Not only does virus scanning burden destination mail servers, the sending of an attachment, infected or not, is taxing on the sending server, receiving server, and the networks in between. A typical email is a file about 5K in size. An HTML email newsletter is on the order of around 30K. This excludes images as they are not sent with the email. The size of an email with an attachment is the basic email size plus the size of the file. If the file is not text, it must be UUencoded in order to be placed in the email. UUencoding is a process that converts binary data to a series of text characters. This process typically increases file size 35%.

Size Matters

If you wanted to send a 750K PDF file, in the email it would be about 1MB. Now let’s say you want to send this to 1,000 people in separate emails. You are making your sending email server send 1000MB = 1G of data (we’ll ignore the size of the email without the attachment for this example). This is in addition to its normal load. Now say 100 of those recipients are under the same email domain. That destination server now has to accept 100MB of additional data. Those files end up in the users’ mailboxes which they access over POP or IMAP (or HTTP in some cases). This data now must be housed on the incoming mail server and sent over the network to the user’s desktop. The big issue here is this onslaught of traffic was pushed. It was not requested by the recipients. To manage server and network load, companies’ mail infrastructures will defer delivery or increase spam scores to emails with attachments. Abusive senders will be added to blacklists.

The Solution

A person needing to disseminate files to many people should post the file on a web server and email the link to that file. This will alleviate the barriers to delivery as described above. It also designates a single source for that file. This is helpful in managing file versioning. If an update is needed, simply replace the file on the server and ask the recipients to download the file again. No longer do the recipients have to search through their inbox wondering which email has the correct version.

Deliverability is the foremost endeavor of any email marketer. Attachments are a liability to delivering emails.

End Your Attachment to Email Attachments is a post from the Mass Transmit Broadcast Blog. Subscribe to receive blog posts via email. Connect with us on Facebook, Twitter and Google+!

To provide more insight into this shift towards mobile email we’ve compiled this list of smartphone, mobile platform and mobile email marketing statistics.

MOBILE/SMARTPHONE USER BASE:

• Global sales of smartphones will grow about 46% this year to 687.9 million units and top 1 billion units in 2014.
Source: Reuters (April, 2012)

• Smartphone Ownership Has Tripled in Two Years
• 44% of all Americans age 12 and over own a smartphone, representing half of all cell phone owners.
Source: Edison Research (April, 2012)

• There are 234 million mobile users in the US.
• Of the 234 million, 90.1 million are smartphone users
• The 90.1 million smartphone users represent 38% of all mobile users
• The 38% of smartphone users represent 28.8% of the US population
Source: eMarketer (August, 2011)

MOBILE PLATFORM MARKETSHARE:

Smartphone operating system marketshare:

- 48% Google Android
- 32% Apple (iPhone, iPad, iPod Touch)
- 11% RIM Blackberry
- 4% Other (Windows Mobile, Symbian, Palm, etc.)

Source: Nielsen (March, 2012)

MOBILE EMAIL MARKETING:

• 82% of smartphone users check and send email with their device.
Source: Google (April, 2011)

• 90 million Americans access email through a mobile device, with 64% doing so on a near-daily basis.
Source: ComScore (January, 2012)

• 27% of all emails are opened on a mobile device. 20.6% from smartphones, 6.8% from tablets.  This is up from 13.4% in Q4 2010.
• iPhone and iPads combine to account for over 22% of all email opens. Android phones and tablets account for just under 5%.
• The iPhone accounts for nearly 70% of all email opens on a mobile phone, the iPad accounts for 97% of all opens on tablets.
• Over 95% of emails are only opened on one device. Very few users open emails on mobile first and save for desktop later.
Source: Knotice Mobile Email Opens Report (April, 2012)

• In February 2012, customers using the Litmus Email Analytics product saw an even split between mobile, desktop and webmail opens.
Source: The Mobile Future For Email (March, 2012)

• 90% of smartphone owners access the same email account on mobile and desktop.
Source: Exact Target 2011 Channel Preference Survey

• 43% of mobile email users check email four or more times per day compared to 29% of those who do not use mobile email.
Source: Merkle “View From the Digital Inbox 2011″

• 70% of consumers delete emails immediately that don’t render well on a mobile device.
Source: BlueHornet “Consumer Views of Email Marketing” (January, 2012)

• 38.5% of mobile internet internet time is spent using mobile email.
Source: Nielsen (May 2010)

• 35% say they are “somewhat likely” to make a purchase from a mobile email
Source: Marketing Vox (April, 2012)

• Some 16% of US smartphone owners say they have complete at least one purchase as a direct result of a marketing message they received on their smartphone.
Source: ExactTarget “Mobile Dependence” (2011)

• Special offers (27%), vouchers (21%) and realtime tracking (21%) are most preferred email types to receive on mobile. Newsletters are the fifth most preferred type with 12% of respondents saying they like to view that email type on their mobile the most.
Source: Edialog “The Future of Mobile Messaging” (2011)

22 Amazing Mobile Email Marketing Statistics is a post from the Mass Transmit Broadcast Blog. Subscribe to receive blog posts via email. Connect with us on Facebook, Twitter and Google+!

The speakers will share their marketing story highlighting The Challenge, The Solution, The Aftermath, and ultimately, leave the audience with a Lesson Learned. Questions for the panelists will be collected during an interactive social media break and then answered during a lively panel discussion.

Nathan Richie of NR Creative and Brandon Uttley of Command Partners will moderate. Both are co-hosts of The Marketing Squad podcast.

The other panelists include:

• Doug Lebda – Chairman, CEO and Founder, LendingTree.com
• Erinne Kovi Dyer – VP of Corporate Communications & Corporate Health and Wellness of Carolinas HealthCare System
• Desiree Kane – co-founder of The PPL, public relations for the Democratic National Convention
• John Bauersfeld – VP of Business Development, Roush Fenway Racing
• Bruce Hensley – Charlotte Restaurant Week and President of Hensley Fontana Public Relations
• Josh Oakhurst – Creative Director, Skookum Digital Works

marketCHARLOTTE will take place from 6:00-8:30 on Tuesday, April 24th.  Follow on @marketCLT twitter, or follow the event at hashtag #mktCLT.

Holden-Bache speaking about mobile email marketing at marketCHARLOTTE is a post from the Mass Transmit Broadcast Blog. Subscribe to receive blog posts via email. Connect with us on Facebook, Twitter and Google+!

Image: Isometrica

Americans Love Social Media

4 out of 5 Americans access the internet. (We wonder what the offline 20% do with their time). 65% of adult Internet users have an account on at least one social network (an 8x increase from 2005). 80% of active Internet users visit social media and blogs. (PewInternet)

Americans spend 23% of their Internet time on social networks and blogs, and just 3% on current events & global news. Social networks and blogs account for nearly a quarter (22.5%) of the time Americans spend online, more than double the time spent playing video games games (9.8%). (Nielsen)

. . .

We are Mobile Social Users

Close to 40% of social media users access it from their mobile phones. For example, more than 250 million people access Facebook through their mobile devices. (jeffbullas.com)

. . .

Social Media Stats

Facebook is the top social network, reaching 70% of active Internet users, who spend more than 53 million minutes on the social network. Facebook averages 405 minutes per visitor per month. (Technolog)

Tumblr and Pinterest capture a significant 89 minutes of our time per month, roughly a quarter of the time the average user spends on Facebook. (Business Review USA)

71% of adults who go online watch video. (PewInternet)

Foursquare boasts 20 million users and recently hit 2 billion checkins, seeing a million new signups per month. (The Next Web)

Pinterest passed 10 million users, growing 40% year over year. (BusinessInsider).

Instagram has 30 million users (and, as everyone knows by now, the 18-month-old company was recently sold to Facebook for $1 billion).

Flickr hosts over 5 billion images. (Flickr)

Twitter has over 500 million users. (Twopcharts)

This phenomenon is not limited to the US. In a sample of 10 global markets, social networks and blogs reach at least 60% of active Internet users. (Nielsen)

SinoWeb (China’s Twitter) has 250 million registered users. (Forbes)

. . .

Marketers are Making Significant Social Media Investments

94% of marketers surveyed recently are employing social media for marketing purposes. (2012 Social Media Marketing Industry Report)

Gartner projects that the social CRM market will reach $1 billion in revenues by the close of 2012, up from $625 million in 2010. (MarketingProfs)

Social Media Nation is a post from the Mass Transmit Broadcast Blog. Subscribe to receive blog posts via email. Connect with us on Facebook, Twitter and Google+!

Mass Transmit has developed the unique group-buying website Groupromo.com.  Groupromo offers group deals on logo products. The site features several amazing deals each week featuring products that marketers can customize with their brand logo.

Mass Transmit provided all development and marketing services for the site launch including web site development, email marketing integration, social media channel setup (Facebook, Twitter, Google+ and YouTube) and search marketing.

Learn more about Groupromo by watching the Groupromo video and sign up for Groupromo Daily Deals emails.

Mass Transmit launches Groupromo.com is a post from the Mass Transmit Broadcast Blog. Subscribe to receive blog posts via email. Connect with us on Facebook, Twitter and Google+!

First, many of us assume that a Business-to-Business email needs to be full of corporate speak and approached with a business-like mentality.

Second, most of us, even marketers, see more B2C messages than B2B ones, so we unsuccessfully try to implement B2C style tactics in our approach (design, layout, copy, etc.).

So, to get back on track with your B2B email campaigns, here are ten tips:

1. Be a human. Consider writing your B2B email in the same way you’d approach a personal communication. Show some personality. Write it like it’s a conversation. Be upbeat. A lively writing style from a person and not a brand can be a game-changer. At worst you’ll be remembered for being unique.

2. Have a goal. Too many messages are sent simply because someone is covering their ass. The sender’s only goal is to make sure they don’t get blamed for not sending the email. If that’s you- stop it. Have a reason for sending your email. If you don’t know what it is, don’t send it.

3. Consider the recipient’s goals. Most likely, your B2B email isn’t about branding or a special offer. It’s there to help recipients with a vital function of their job. Put yourself in the recipient’s shoes and create a communication that benefits the recipient by providing valuable information, saving time or saving money.

4. Segment. If you’re trying to reach multiple audiences, you may want to do it with multiple iterations of the email, allowing each to be short, focused and goal-oriented.

5. Not everything needs to be a newsletter. You don’t need to send a newsletter-style email with 5 articles and 50 links just because you’re a business. Try testing different amounts of content- maybe its better to send 1 article at a time, 3 days a week than one monthly newsletter with 12 articles. Mix it up. Try to be different. Stand out.

6. Tell a story. Yes, it’s okay to include real-world stories in your emails. The recipient is a person. People like stories. Give your readers something they’ll like.  Story-telling is a great way to engage and earn your reader’s attention.

7. Be consistent with delivery. When recipients see your emails arriving consistently at the same time each day, week or month you’ll get a higher open rate. Why? Because it makes you look like you know what you’re doing. And if you give off that impression people will notice and react.

8. Offer solutions. Business professionals are presented with challenges on a daily basis. If you can help solve them, you become valuable. In your emails, show you your product or service can solve common business problems.

9. Include social content. If you have quality content from your social media channels, highlight your most commented post, most watched video or most re-tweeted Tweet in your email. If your social contacts find it interesting, your email audience probably will too.

10. Encourage feedback. If all else fails, ask the recipients what they want or allow them to select it themselves. Surveys are also a good idea. Ask users how much content they want and when they want it. Just be prepared to implement or act upon the feedback you receive.

B2B email marketing isn’t rocket science- if anything the audience is more consistent than B2C recipients. So take the initiative to adjust your B2B approach- you’ll likely see the effort in your improved campaign results.

10 Tips To Improve Your B2B Email Marketing is a post from the Mass Transmit Broadcast Blog. Subscribe to receive blog posts via email. Connect with us on Facebook, Twitter and Google+!

Here are 8 tips to make your subject line Don Draper not Al Bundy, caviar not tofu — in a word, better.

. . .

Test for bad words:
Over 35% of spam is detected from email subject lines because of spam trigger words. Free, sex, video,  trial, sample, mortgage. Just say no. There are lots of ways to test against spam triggers. SpamAssassin is one of them. Here are longer lists of spam words from Mequoda, MarketingTech Blog, and SpamAssassin.

Keep it short:
The average email client only displays 38 to 47 characters in a subject line. And your beloved subscriber has a short attention span. Brevity is the soul of wit and the muse of a good subject line.

Use a brand or buzz:
A Marketing Sherpa study found that emails with branded subject lines are among the most opened and shared emails. Use your brand or the brand name of that study you are sharing. Or add something buzz-worthy.

Use content that resonates:
Content-related subject lines (“March Powertool Bonanza”) work better than generic ones (“March Newsletter”). You can use Google Analytics (or other analytics tools) to assess what content (pages and keywords) website visitors were most interested in. These are the topics that resonate with your audience — and a good place to start with your subject line.

Focus on the benefit of offer:
If your loyal subscribers open the email, what’s in it for them? A few examples:
Boost ROI Tenfold with Segmentation
10 Tips for Mobile Emails
Look Your Best – On Us

Find the controversy or intrigue:
Give people a reason to open that email by focusing on something memorable, intriguing or just plain outrageous. For example:
Eating French fries makes you healthier
10 reasons why the stock market will collapse in 2012
Introducing the 4-Hour Workweek

Make sure the rest of the email doesn’t suck:
As @Copyblogger puts it, “There’s something special in this jaded digital age about being invited into someone’s email inbox.” Don’t take that invitation or granted. Your subject line is only as good as the email that follows it.

Never stop testing:
Do A/B testing, look at what competitors are doing, look at open rates and other metrics, bottom line results, keep a log of subject lines you like.

. . .

Send us your favorites — and the worst subject lines you’ve ever seen.

. . .

A Better Subject Line in 60 Seconds is a post from the Mass Transmit Broadcast Blog. Subscribe to receive blog posts via email. Connect with us on Facebook, Twitter and Google+!

According to the DMA Response Rate Report, the average open rate for a B2B house list is 15%. So, if your house list has 25,000 names, that means you are on average only reaching 3,750 per campaign, leaving 21,250 prospects on the table. I think you will agree, it is time to take strategic action to re-engage your non-responsive audience and increase the marketing value of your list.

The steps to re-engagement are as follows:
1. Determine Inactive Period. Determine the inactive subscriber period to gauge, such as 6 months.
2. Pull Records. Pull from your list(s) all email records that did not open or click on a link within that time period. Increasingly individuals are reading emails from mobile devices that may cause their email opens not to register. By selecting clicks along with opens you are less likely to email an individual who is engaged though their opens may not be registering.
3. Decide on a Motivator.  Based on list demographics and your product or service, decide what motivation appeal your email campaign will contain. Some good motivators are:

• Guilt
• Reward
• Fear
• Subscription Preference
• Opportunity
• Voyeuristic
• Voting

4. Create a “Call to Action. ” Remember to tie in the motivator with the email’s “call to action.” In addition, it is best if the call to action has an expiration date.
5. Create a Compelling Subject Line.  As with the “call to action” the email subject line needs to be tied into the motivator and should be compelling.
6. Follow-through. Complete any action you promise within the email in a timely fashion.
7. Test. Take a segment of the inactive group and test approaches, including using different subjects and different “calls to action.”
8. Include Inactives in Email Strategy. Set up an automatic ongoing inactive re-engagement email program inclusive of timing and triggers.
9. Remove Inactives. If inactives still don’t respond after your re-engagement campaign, remove them from your list(s). This will result in cost effective email campaigns that yield better quality metrics.

It takes time to set up a re-engagement strategy but is well worth the effort. If you have set up a successful re-engagement strategy, let us know!

Re-Engagement Email Campaigns: 9 Steps is a post from the Mass Transmit Broadcast Blog. Subscribe to receive blog posts via email. Connect with us on Facebook, Twitter and Google+!