Andy Gambles

I recently added the Tweetmeme buttons to my Posterous blogs. If you want to add Tweetmeme to your Posterous blog then take a look here.

I wondered if it was possible to take this further and include Tweetmeme within my actual email campaigns using MailChimp. I use the RSS-to-Email system within MailChimp to send subscribers updates from the ServerTastic Blog. After a bit of research it was actually much easier than I thought.

All I had to do was add the following bit of code within the RSS tags where I wanted the Tweetmeme image to appear. You will need to replace the "source" variable with your own twitter username.

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I tested this in Outlook, Gmail and on the iPhone (According to my MailChimp stats this represents 71% of my subscribers).

This is a completely new experiment for me and it will be interesting to see if this generates any increase it tweets.

 

I have not spoke about Rapportive before (I will post about it soon). Briefly rapportive is an Add-on for some popular email applications such as Gmail. It shows detailed information about the sender of an email you received collated from social networks.

For instance if you get an email from me you will see my handsome face, my recent tweets and links to LinkedIn and this blog.

However I also send out regular email marketing campaigns from ServerTastic using the amazing MailChimp system. This uses the email address list@ as the reply. For users with Rapportive installed (which I would not be surprised if it starts reaching the millions) they would get a blank profile.

This is a bit of a wasted opportunity. So I created a Rapportive profile for list@. It was simply a case of creating a Gravatar. Then logging in to Google Apps using the list@ email address (you can use anything where you have Rapportive installed) and then clicking "My Profile". I was then able to add the ServerTastic twitter feed and FaceBook page.

Now if a user receives my email marketing and they use Rapportive they get all this added information.

MailChimp is an awesome email service provider who I use extensively to send email marketing campaigns. (get $30 off via this link if you want to subscribe - yeah OK I get $30 as well!).

The new features in v5 means you can now target your subscribers by city and automate the sending of emails to a specific time within the recipients timezone. Video below for more details.

I just received an email from a company (GH Stationers Limited) I never heard of trying to sell me ink cartridges. No where does the email mention how they got my details. It does have the phrase

PS I hope this email isnt thought of as spam, we would just like to the opportunity to quote you 

We apologise if you have received this email in error. To UNSUBSCRIBE from further emails regarding special offers etc, please reply to this message and ask to be removed from the mailing list. Many Thanks.  to complete this, we need a few bits of information. 1) where in the country you are 2) email address that it is being sent to 3) when you revived your last email from ourselves. 

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