In this article we will give you several tips that can help you in improving your open and click-thru rates.

1) Open rate

In order to your email campaign be successful the first necessary thing is that people open and read your email newsletter. Online publishing is very similar to traditional publishing. When you buy a daily newspaper, you probably don’t read everything. You don’t have that much of free time and not every subject is equally interesting for you. If you are a sports fan you will read the sport section but you might skip an article about latest movies . In most cases you will decide what you are going to read upon subject titles.

Same thing with email newsletters. One of the two most important factors that influence whether or not your subscriber will open your email newsletter will be your subject line. In order to have good open rates and click-thru rates you have to know your audience. Your message has to be well targeted.

There are several rules you have to follow in order to make effective subject lines.

Subject lines

Your subject lines should be short and snappy to get attention of your subscribers. Many people receive dozens of emails every day and some other people that have web sites and often make posts on different places like web forums, discussion lists, publish articles, can get more than 100 emails per day. So your message will have a very big competition in your subscriber’s inbox. That’s why your subject line has to grab attention of your subscriber. This doesn’t mean that you have to use usual spam techniques. On the contrary. Avoid using words FREE, GUARANTEED, Make Money Fast, Limited Offer and other get-rich-quick schemes words. Not just because of your subscribers. If you use these words it is most likely that your emails will never even reach them. Their ISP will take care of that with their spam filters. Also don’t capitalize every letter and don’t put several times exclamation. You don’t need to shout, people will “hear” you if you know how to “tell” them your message.

So your subject line has to be short and snappy, best thing is that you include one title from your articles in your subject line. It can be some breaking news or exlusive interview. People like to read breaking news or exclusive interviews that can’t be found anywhere else. Also, people often read how-to articles (for example - How To Choose The Right Email Marketing Software) or so called “number” articles (for example – 7 Tips For E-publishers On A Shoestring Budget).

Good thing is that you put your newsletter name in brackets, at the beginning of your subject line in order to be easily recognized from other emails in inbox.

Please bear in mind, that your subject line has to be consistent. What do I mean by that? Of course that you will change the title in your subject line but you have to find the best subject form and stick to it. For example:

[NewslettterName] Your Subject Title, Issue #x, Date

Don’t forget, in order to make effective ads and this apply to subject lines, as well you have to remember 3 words – test, test, test! You have to experiment with different models and find out which work best for you.

From field

Beside Subject line, From field is another info that your recipients will see in their inbox. People have to trust you in order to decide to read your emails. You don’t open your doors to every person who knocks, don’t you?

If you are well-known person, trusted expert in your industry, for example some reputable Internet consultant and you are the only person that is involved in creation and publishing of the newsletter put your name in From field. If several people are involved in that process and if it is a corporate newsletter, use your company name.

Most important thing with From fields is that you don’t experiment with it. Choose one From field and stick to that. It is very un-professional that you often change your From field and beside that, in that case, your open rate will decline.

Useful tip is that you ask your subscribers to make a filter rule for your email newsletter, based on your email address, From field or some part of your Subject line. For example, they can put [YourNewsletterName] in a filter rule for your newsletter or your From field name so every time they get the email newsletter that matches that rule it will be moved to a specially designed folder, for example YourNewsletterName. So this way your newsletter won’t end in their Bulk folder. That is also one of the reasons why you should be consistent with your From field and subject line.

2) Click-Thru Rates

Clicks come once your email newsletter is opened. With good open rate you have finished only one part of the job. Now, your newsletter has to be well designed with appropriate content and concept, and most important, well targeted in order to have a decent click-thru ratio (CTR). You have to know your audience. You can increase your CTR if you put your most important articles and ads at the top of your email newsletters. Don’t write too long articles. It is better to write articles where you will list several tips. Also, don’t overload your newsletter with ads. People want to read useful things and not lots of ads.

Also, you know that a picture is worth more than 1000 words, so it is good that if you publish a HTML newsletter that you include photos that will be relevant to your articles and that are clickable. Click-Thru rates get higher if you give some value-added services to your subscribers. You have to make a good relationship with them. Treat them well, write useful articles, give exclusive discounts to your subscribers and they will show their appreciation.

Different types of email newsletters have different click-thru ratio. Click-Thru ratio is important, but it is not the most important. Just because many people click on your follow-up article or offer doesn’t mean that they will actually buy your software or service. In some cases, lower CTR can get you more sales than some good CTR. Think about that next time you start your email campaign.

Let’s face it. Email marketing is here to stay. Many people use email in their daily communications, many use it even more than a phone. Many companies use email to build and strengthen connection between them and their customers, to have good customer relationship. How effective is direct email marketing compared to traditional marketing? You will find out in this article.

Advertising and marketing online and offline have at least one thing in common - you have to know your target audience. Market segmentation is very important because you don’t want to loose your money sending your ads to someone who has no interest in it.

Cost/benefit

With direct email marketing, you can have 1-1 communication with your customers and prospects. With Group Mail product, award-winning email marketing, you can start creating your email marketing campaigns inexpensively. You will have ability to send HTML email newsletters in order to get better conversion rates and to include your graphics. Also, if you prefer hosted ASP services you can use services like Constant Contact, Vertical Response or some other quality service.

Using Opt-In Manager from Group Metrics package you will be able to get the necessary info from your subscribers and store it in your database. Importing data from existing applications or databases couldn’t be easier. Group Mail can import practically any file type, text, CSV, binary, databases, and email address books. At present any database that supports ODBC or OLEDB (SQL Server, Oracle, MySQL, Access, FoxPro, Excel, etc.) can be imported directly into Group Mail using the free Database Importer plug-in. This is very important in order to create highly-personalized campaigns, and with the advanced IF THEN ELSE personalization you will have real 1-1 communication.

Using Group Mail for your direct email marketing campaign you will be able to create unlimited lists with unlimited recipients in each and to make list segmentation. So this way you can send different emails to your prospects, clients, business partners, press or any other group about your company.

Traditional marketing is much more expensive than direct email marketing. If you want to start a direct mail campaign you will have costs for creating and printing your brochures and delivery expenses. Not to mention TV or print advertising. Beside that it is much more expensive, it takes much more time to create and implement any of the traditional marketing campaigns or offline advertising and response ratio is usually much lower than with using email marketing. If you use double opt-in practice for getting subscribers (we always recommend that practice), so that you require that people confirm their request to be on your list, it means that they are interested in what you have to say so they will be interested in your products, too.

Imagine that you want to announce your new software product, update, conference or webinar. You want to inform your business partners and clients because it is most likely that they will be interested in it. You have two choices: to use email to notify them or to use traditional techniques like sending letters or using a phone? What is better for you? You already know what is cheaper.

Tracking

The second advantage using direct email marketing compared to traditional marketing is tracking. Practically, you can find anything about your email marketing campaign with Group Metrics product. You will get detailed statistics about how many people have opened your emails, what is your click-thru rate, which articles or ads were the most popular in your email newsletter. You can get some of that data without services like Group Metrics but there is more hassle. For example, you can embed a 1×1 pixel in your email newsletter and you will count the open ratio. Also, you can use PhpAdsNew for tracking clicks on your links.

There are no such precise techniques for tracking in traditional marketing. Can you know precisely how many people have seen your last TV commercial? No! Can you know precisely how many people have seen your last radio commercial? No! It is the same like with advertising in print magazines. There are some techniques like using equipment like “people meters” or some surveys regarding popularity of certain programs in which your ad was broadcasted but it is not so accurate, at least not that accurate like email marketing tracking. In this case you will usually have to pay to some marketing agency that will make that research. Another option is to include a special phone number or web site in your offline campaigns but even then you won’t know exactly how many people have seen your ad.

Getting feedback

Another advantage that you get using email marketing is in getting feedback. With products like free PollDaddy you have ability to easily create polls and to get feedback from your visitors, prospects and clients, whether you want to use it on your web site or email newsletter. Using polls in your email marketing campaigns, you will get feedback about your company or products very fast and inexpensively.

How about if you want to get feedbacks from people using traditional survey techniques? Depending about your survey size, you will have to hire people who will ask questions. Later, they will need to make survey analysis. You already know that this way your costs will be much higher and you will get the feedback much later than using email marketing.

Unless you use the Internet only for surfing and never use your email address you’ve probably received something that is called spam. There are different definitions for spam but I will say that spam is unsolicited email commercial. Many people harvest other people’s email addresses on email and web forums and send them info that they didn’t request. This is very frustrating because you loose your precious time deleting those unwanted messages. In this article I will explain how NOT to appear like a spammer.

Opt-in

If you have an email newsletter it is very important that you don’t appear like a spammer. If you want to stay long in email publishing business your newsletters have to be based on opt-in method. It means that a subscriber chose to receive your newsletter and that you have their permission to send them your newsletter. It is called Permission Marketing. I would suggest that your list be double opt-in. Now what is double opt-in? Double opt-in means that your subscribers have to confirm

their request to join your list. Confirmation is done by replying to the message that you send to everyone who had initiated subscription. Beside replying, people can confirm their request by clicking on a certain link. This ensures that one person can’t subscribe another person against his or her will. Also, never buy so called opt-in lists and also never sell or rent your members base.

Welcome message

I would suggest you that you ask your new subscribers to save your welcome message. There you can put the necessary info about your list and list management: list description, subscribe/unsubscribe address, digest address, owner’s email address, list rules…

This is important because of the following. Many people promote their newsletter for some time, until they get enough subscribers and then publish the first issue. However, it is most likely that someone who had subscribed to your list several months ago forgot that he or she actually requested to be a member of your list. And then, they can accuse you that you are a spammer. If they save a welcome message they can see that they required to be your subscribers.

Subject line

Subject line is very important in email newsletters. Beside, From field it is the most important thing for someone to decide whether to open your newsletter or not. I would suggest that your subject line consists a title of your article, issue number and date. If your From or To field doesn’t consist your

list name than you should put your list name in Subject line, too. Preferably in brackets. If you have your subscriber’s first name in your database you should definitely put their name as the first

thing in the Subject line. Then it is more likely that they will open your newsletter. Never use spam techniques like putting Re: at the beginning of your Subject line so that people think that they sent

you an email and you are sending them your reply. Nobody is fool.

Filtration

Many people use email programs with powerful email filter options. Many people set their filters to delete messages with get-rich-quick-schemes, porn and similar content so it is wise that you don’t put that kind of text in your messages if you want that people read it. Also, don’t

capitalize your words like FREE, MAKE MONEY, GUARANTEED… I wouldn’t suggest that you use this or similar words in the first place beacuse these words are often used by spammers.

If you have an option that in To field be your subscriber’s email address and not, for example your list name, that would be ideal because some mail washer programs automatically flag messages which don’t have a recipient email address as possible SPAM.

List management

Always provide very clear information regarding list management in your newsletter. Very important thing is that your list management provides very easy way of unsubscribing. For example, some email newsletters have at the very bottom an unique unsubscribe address for every subscriber. It can be something like leave-yourlistname-111327893L@yourlistserver.com This way, your subscribers can unsubscribe only with one click and they don’t have to worry if they sent unsubscription request from address which is in your subscriber list. Good list management is, also,

useful because you won’t loose your time explaining to your subscribers how to do something, for example unsubscribe or set receiving messages in digest mode.

Also, it is wise that if you use advanced email marketing software like Group Mail to include important information about your subscribers in every issue of your email newsletter. In other words, to personalize your newsletter.

For example, you can make a section at the beginning of your email newsletter where you will write several text lines so that your subscriber see that he or she really chose to be your subscriber.

Many email marketing software have an option to include a code in your issue that will be automatically parsed after sending so the subscriber will see his or her info.

Something like this:

_____________________

MEMBERS SECTION

Your name: !*COMPLETE_NAME*!

Member since: !*MEMBER_SINCE*!

From IP address: !*IP_ADDRESS*!

_____________________

And in your Editor’s Section you can start your writing with:

Dear, !*COMPLETE_NAME*!…

That’s why personalization is very important.

At the end, you can read several spam messages and - do the opposite in your email newsletter.