Email Marketing: A Case for Text Newsletters
Here’s a comment that I received from Ron Schmidt last week on our Support Desk…
I wanted the newsletter but I couldn’t read it in the HTML code in which it was received. Please resend the newsletter. Thanks.
UGH.
I do know better than to send out my newsletters only in HTML format, but the truth is that I’ve gotten lazy over the past several months — assuming that everyone accepts HTML newsletters now. Well, you know what they say about assuming anything… and in this case the only *ss is me. 
What is really dumb is that I often neglect to include a link to the blog entry where the latest newsletter is posted.
So, to make matters right, from now on I’ll send my email newsletters either in both HTML and text formats, or as text only. It’s not like that’s hard to do using the Aweber autoresponder interface… it’s actually incredibly easy.
And although Ron’s message made a significant impression, the following email that I received just a few days later, really brought the point home…
<?xml version=”1.0″ encoding=”UTF-8″?><affiliate_transaction>
<kagiAffiliate>myaffiliateaccountname</kagiAffiliate><transaction_id>CH21UVFKTG4G&
lt;/transaction_id><customer_ip_address>77.195.xx.161</customer_ip_address><total_
sale_currency>EUR</total_sale_currency><total_sale_amount>23.92</total_sale_amount
><products><product_detail><product_name>ProductName__Standard_Edition</prod
uct_name><product_quantity>1</product_quantity><product_currency>USD</produc
t_currency><product_price>29.95</product_price></product_detail><product_det
ail><product_name>VAT_France_EU372000052_TVA</product_name><product_quantity>1&
lt;/product_quantity><product_currency>USD</product_currency><product_price>5.8
7</product_price></product_detail> </products> </affiliate_transaction>
<human_readable_note>You are the affiliate for a transaction that was recently processed. The above XML provides the transaction details. The affiliate fee earned from
this transaction will bedisplayed in the monthly payment data
file.vh1200</human_readable_note></xml>
My favorite part of the above email is the ‘human readable note’. Did you see it?
Anyway… point taken.
Popularity: 44% [?]
Aweber Feedburner Integration
Aweber announced yesterday that their RSS-to-email tool now integrates with Feedburner’s tracking and publishing service.
By result, bloggers who use both services and convert their feeds to email newsletters using Aweber’s Blog Broadcast will now see their subscriber statistics within the Feedburner interface. They will also see a spike in subscriber numbers displayed on the Feedburner ‘chicklet’.
Justin Premick, Education Marketing Manager at AWeber also predicted that “The more subscribers you can boast, the more likely new visitors are to subscribe to your blog, and the more likely companies are to want to advertise on your blog.”
This is excellent news for those of us who have wanted to connect with our Feedburner subscribers on a more personal level by customizing the email that we send out to them… and now with the help of my all-time favorite autoresponder service provider, Aweber, we can!
Popularity: 4% [?]
Holiday Greetings: Justin Makes a Great Point
Sure… we all appreciate our clients and customers and want to send them our very best wishes for a happy holiday season.
But SHOULD we send those greetings as a separate email? Or, are our SinterKlaas, Christmas, Hanukkah and New Years greetings better received as an inclusion within a regular newsletter?
Justin Premick posted a great article on this topic at Aweber, titled “Holiday Marketing Tip: Don’t Send Pointless Greetings!”
Although the title reveals Justin’s slant and the article justifies his reasoning, I want to add a few thoughts of my own on the matter.
One of the commenters on the Aweber blog made a good point against sending denominational greetings because not everyone on your list will celebrate Christmas. That should be SO obvious, yet how many “Merry Christmas” emails did you get last year?
In a similar vein, email marketers should also make themselves aware of when certain holidays are celebrated in countries.
Case in point.
I received an Inbox full of “Happy Thanksgiving” emails on or about the 4th Thursday of November. That would have been nice except for the fact that I live in Canada and we celebrate Thanksgiving on the 2nd Monday in October… so those greetings came about 6 weeks late.
Those marketers need to figure out how to parse their lists geographically and send their messages accordingly.
For more reasons not to send pointless holiday greetings, read Justin’s article here and check out the comments.
Popularity: 23% [?]
AWeber Live Webinars
One of the biggest mistakes affiliates make is that they aren’t building subscriber lists - and the main reason (excuse) appears to be that figuring out how to build an autoresponder series is either too much work or too confusing.
Well, no more excuses.
Whether you’re just starting your site and need to know how to begin building your opt-in list, or you’re want to learn more powerful email marketing techniques, you should check out Aweber’s Live Webinars.
Aweber is holding one live webinar per week and those taking place over the next few weeks, include:
- How To Get Started (x2)
- Create and Send Effective Email Newsletters
- Get More Subscribers With Optimized Opt-In Forms
The webinars are free and include a toll-free telephone call. Sign up for Aweber’s Live Webinars today!
Popularity: 5% [?]
Are You Alienating Your Subscribers?
How irritating is this? You get an email offer or see an offer (for something you actually want) on a website, click the link and end up on a page that says something like, “Offer not available in your area”.
Otherwise, you send out an offer like the Maxim magazine offer (pictured left), and your non-U.S.-based subscribers get redirected to SurveyScout instead.
Residents of Canada, the U.K., Australia, New Zealand (or anywhere else that isn’t the U.S.) end up on those pages far too often when marketers send U.S.-only offers to their entire list of newsletter subscribers.
There are two big downsides to this.
First of all, you may lose those subscribers through alienation.
Secondly, your affiliate manager may terminate your affiliation with their program when they receive thousands of invalid clicks which then wrecks their EPC.
If you accept newsletters signups from all over the world, subscribers from countries other than the U.S. probably represent a HUGE percentage of your list.
Here are a 3 ways you can avoid losing those subscribers and your affiliations.
Popularity: 11% [?]
Online Dating Site Owner Arrested for Spamming
As reported in a January 18th Sophos press release, the owner of a Japanese online dating site has been arrested for sending 5.4 billion emails to promote the website.
“Japanese authorities arrested 47-year-old Yoshimitsu Hirono, president of Tokyo-based dating website Takumi Tsushin, along with three other suspects. Approximately 90 million spam emails a day are said to have been sent promoting the site over a two month period” and according to reports, the four men have admitted the allegations against them.
Hirono and the other men are said to have remotely used a bank of 128 computers located in China’s Heilongjiang province in order to send the spam messages.
Ros comments: Hmmm… wouldn’t that be a great list to have to promote Asia FriendFinder?
But as Mr. Cluley, senior technology consultant for Sophos, said, “Companies need to know that by spamming they could find themselves drawing attention from the international law enforcement agencies, and end up with a unpleasant date in court.”
Unpleasant indeed. Think ‘jail’ the next time you’re feeling inclined to move away from your honest efforts to build a list.
Popularity: 5% [?]
The Best Day to Send Marketing Messages
Which day is the best day to send out marketing messages to your newsletter subscribers? According to eROI’s just released Q2 ‘06 report on email statistics, that depends on whether it’s a B2C or a B2B message.
Turns out that … Read more
Popularity: 4% [?]
Email Marketing Secrets from the Underground Seminar - Ssshhhhh…
Can you keep a secret?
I took 12 pages of bullet-point notes during the Underground Seminar, even though I missed Day One of the seminar completely!
Twelve pages may not seem like a lot of note-taking, but each attendee also received a big black binder crammed with the speakers’ presentation notes and Power Point slides.
I have it all in my hot little hands to share with you, but you gotta promise not to tell…
OK?
Alrighty then… here are “those secrets.
Ssshhhh…
Ros
Popularity: 4% [?]
