A small business owner with big ambitions.
I help businesses and SME owners use the internet to increase profits and sales.
AGUK Solutions Ltd - Internet Consultancy, Mentoring and Training
ServerTastic - SSL Certificates and Server Software
TRADE ORGANISATIONS
Leeds, York & North Yorkshire Chamber of Commerce
Scarborough and District Chamber of Trade & Commerce
This is an interesting application from iconix.com. PayPal just emailed me about this service which provides a icon to identify legitimate emails.
Not sure if this is the way forward to prevent phishing emails though.
Yesterday the world of Gmail came to an end (well for a couple of hours at least) when Gmail went offline
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I have just posted this months article on AGUK titled 8 Email Marketing Mistakes.This provides a few of the most common mistakes I see in the email newsletters we receive.
There is plenty of scope for getting things wrong with email marketing campaigns; the focus here is on the most common errors made.
Poor Subject Line
Getting recipients of your email to open and read it is key to your marketing campaign’s success. It follows, therefore, that of primary importance is the field marked “Subject”. Yet research shows that the content of this title bar is often the last thing considered, and sometimes it is even left blank. What a wasted opportunity.
Equally important as not leaving it blank is devising a suitable subject. Headings such as “Free Coupon” tend to perform badly against simple descriptive titles such as “[Company] Newsletter.” My advice is to describe the content honestly, rather than “sell” it with a gimmick.
Unrecognised Source
Some email campaigns originate from unrecognisable email addresses, or companies with bizarre names few have heard of. Emails from unidentified sources are usually instantly deleted. If your company is known to everyone on the data base you are using, ensure its name (or yours) appears in the “From” field. You certainly don’t want the words “Mailing List” appearing as sender.
Awful Presentation
Emails have to be easy on the eye for comfortable reading, so how you format text is important. Central alignment of content makes text very hard to read. Similarly, choosing an unusual font is a bad idea as it may not be among the listed styles on your recipients’ system and will consequently not display properly. Play safe – stick to the common fonts, and the standard “align left” for content.
Outsize Images
Promotional emails are sometimes simply a scan of a company’s leaflet, with a huge image embedded with little or no worthwhile text. Don’t commit this crime. Many email programs do not display images by default, so such emails can appear empty or blank. They also run the risk of being deleted by spam filtering systems. Use images only if they are necessary, and keep them down to 10% or less of your email content.
Badly Coded HTML
This is a technical issue but worth mentioning to anyone with coding knowledge, or in-house programmers. Emails are single or multi-part templates with many HTML emails using CSS and <HEAD> tags for text coding and display commands. However, some email programs (especially web based ones) strip out <HEAD> tags to prevent security problems. Any style code commands listed here will be stripped out, thus mangling the coding and making the email impossible to read. To add style to your email, make sure inline CSS coding is used. Be aware, too, that HTML exports from some programs, such as Microsoft Word, Publisher and PowerPoint, can create very bad HTML that does not work in email.
No "Unsubscribe" Link
There are pointless risks run with either not offering an “unsubscribe” link, or putting a “Reply with Unsubscribe” link in the Subject/title bar. Recipients of such emails will instantly hit the “Spam” button, and you could get blacklisted. Instead, make it as easy as possible for recipients to leave your list by providing a simple “one click” instant unsubscribe link. That way they will think better of you, and you will not be wasting your resources emailing uninterested people.
Spam Appearance
Marketing emails that are blatant promotional messages will resemble spam and, like all junk mail, end up being deleted. It is wise, therefore, to steer clear of highlighting text in bold, to refrain from displaying content in capitals, and to avoid using too many colours. Using the word “free”, particularly in bold or coloured text (whether in capitals or lower case), can also trigger automated spam filter systems if usage in ratio terms is out of proportion to other words used.
Unfamiliar Contacts
If it has taken far more than a year to build up your list of leads, and if you are not in regular contact with everyone on it, will they remember you? Don’t email infrequent customers and prospects out of the blue; some may have forgotten you, been replaced or changed their email address. Instead, turn a potential negative into a positive by sending a short and sweet re-subscribe email along the lines of: “We know it has been a while since we were in touch. If you are still interested in hearing from us, please click here to subscribe.”
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Full original article: 8 Email Marketing Mistakes
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I have for some time been using Google Apps for our domains email service. It was cheaper to run than the Exchange set-up and means I do not have to worry about keeping the mail server up to date, spam filtering, restarting the server when it all goes to ahem!
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I regularly attend a large number of business networking events and seminars. During such events I get handed business cards from the people I meet. It is incredibly surprising how many businesses use a free ISP email account rather than their own business domain.
By ISP account I mean such as @aol.com or @btinternet.com. I have even had business cards with @hotmail.com on them. This is a completely wasted opportunity. Many of these same business cards also have the company website on them which is a properly registered and branded domain. So why waste this branding opportunity.
By using your ISP as your email address you are effectively advertising their services everytime you use your email. Instead get your email set-up to use @yourbusinessdomain.com. This means that everytime you email someone you re-affirm your brand identity to them. It is your business address they will see in their email software, it is your business address they will need to type when they email you. It is effectively free branding.
Setting up email to use your own domain is very simple. A quick call to your web host or domain registrar will provide you with details of how to do this. Of course alternatively you can get in touch with us AGUK Solutions Ltd and we can happily advise on what you need to do.
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