The Spanish Association of Electronic Commerce and Marketing (AECEM)  has published a White Paper about Electronic Commerce. The book (in Spanish) deal with interesting online marketing practices.

Whether you have an online store or not, I recommend reading this book. You will see many ideas about how to sell online and communicate your products and services.

Section 6.9 talks about e-mail marketing in a clear and concise way. You will find many useful advices that we expand in The eMailing Experience: databases, open rates, subject line... There are four pages with very specific points to keep in mind the essence of e-mail marketing.

Tell us what you think about the book!

In my last post I was talking about the importance of a good segmented database in e-mail. This is also true for other media too.

Take for instance banners and on-line advertising.

Now, you're probably wondering "Why in earth should I segment my banner advertising?, There is no database in this case...". And probably you'd be right. But if you offer different discounts to different targets you must be pretty sure that you segment the different ads so that they do not show up at the same time in the same portal or webpage.

Take this example I've seen in The daily WTF:

Am I right when I say that you must be careful even with banners? ;-)

Segmenting your database is always important to achieve better results in your campaigns. But sometimes it's even more important due to technology issues.

Maybe you already know it, but recently GMail - the webmail from Google and the one a good share of your subscribers is probably using- has incorporated a new feature to automatically translate emails on the fly. You must add it explicitly to your GMail account through the "Labs" tab in "Settings":

Once this useful feature is finally incorporated to the product by default you'll need to be very careful with the layout issues that will arise.

Expressions/sentences in different languages are normally very different in length, so if your design or layout depends heavily on text you must be careful. If your recipients are translating your mail automatically your design could be easily scrambled.

Take for example this simple e-mail in English:

Click on image to zoom

It contains a headline and some text. The headline uses a quite big text that obviously is intended to fit in a single line.

Let's see what happens when I press the translate link and got my email translated to Spanish:

Click on image to zoom

The headline now uses two lines, and the email is not so beautiful.

This could get much worse on longer phrases and on emails that rely excessively on the size of text fit between images. So take it into account.

If you segment your database well and send contents in the right language to the right people, then -apart from probably getting a much successfully campaign in any conditions- this effect will be minimized.

By the way, the GMail translation plug-in doesn't translate links at this moment. I've reported it through the feedback option and hope that it gets fixed soon :-)

I am going to write about the "Subject" line again, though I have told about it  in many times.

I will not talk about the importance of the subject line to rate opening, or writing, or keywords you must use ... I just going to focus on the size.

 You must focus on one sentence the content of your messages, not write a genuine body of the message in the subject field with full stops, semicolon, punctuation marks .... This never will increase your rate openin. I say it as a person who works in e-marketing and, above all, mainly as a plain e-mail user.

These are real "subjects" in my "Inbox":

• ULTIMAS PLAZAS - PROXIMOS CURSOS XXX XXXXXXXX XXXXXXXXXXX - BANK SIMULATIONS - MADRID - BARCELONA - MAYO - JUNIO - JULIO 2009
• GRUPO XXXXXXXX XX XXXXXXX - JORNADA SISTEMAS DE INFORMACION SAP EN LA EMPRESA - 09.07.2009 - 17:30 HS.
• CURSOS GRATUITOS PARA TRABAJADORES DEL SECTOR XXXXX. NUEVA CONVOCATORIA DEL PLAN FORMATIVO DE XXXXXXXX
• Revista GRATUITA XXXXXXXXXXX - 218 páginas Ya disponible. Viajes, Artículos, Fotografías, Vida marina, Buceo y mucho más. Oferta Maldivas y Mar Rojo Sur.
• NUEVOS SERVICIOS XXXXXXXXX: CENTROAMAERICA-CARIBE-MEXICO-US GULF-USEC Y MEDITERRANEO.
• A la atención del departamento de xxxxxxxxx - Servicios xxxxxxxxxxx de calidad - Especialistas en libros de texto y profesionales
• JORNADA DE PRESENTACIÓN DE LA FERIA INTERNACIONAL DE LA PYME DE CHINA (XXXXXX) EL DÍA 21 DE ABRIL EN XXXXXXXX XX XXXXXXXXXX

Do you want to open some? Why? All the information is in the "subject"  ;-)

This is a post to refresh you the best way to optimize your campaigns by collecting some tips from our previous posts, so you will increase your CTR and ROI and avoid being tagged as Spam:

1 - Don`t use Outlook

Don`t send with Outlook (or similar software), use only professional email marketing software. But if don’t mind what I say and you do, remember that BBC field is your friend.

2 - Align your interests with your recipient’s ones

How? by choosing the right words for the subject and the message to get a closer email.

3 - Optimize your html

Optimize your html, create it with a specific html editor and use the proper image size & formats. Remember, text is text, images are images. Don’t write text into images, don’t send ‘just-one-image’ emails and be sure that your email is comprehensible without images.

4 - Create a killer subscription list

Don’t buy email lists (god kills a kitten each time you do), create yourself recipient's list by including a form into your website and giving incentives to your subscribers.

5 - Don’t send big attachments

Big attachments increase the email weight and will be sent and downloaded slower. Put the attachment in your server and link it, your email’s weight will decrease and you will be able to track who downloads it.

6 – Choose the proper day and hour

Doesn´t exist a perfect day for every case, but Tuesday, Wednesday and Thursday are usual to be the better days, and the period between 10 am and 12 am the better time. Test, test and test to find the better moment to send your campaign.

7 - Read theemailingexperience.com

Subscribe to our RSS and you’ll improve your email marketing skills and will get happiest recipients.

¿Have I forgotten any tip else?

Recently I received in my inbox an invitation to draw for a cruise "only" registering on a website. Like many users, I clicked thinking "a second to lose and maybe win" . The fact is that when I open the link I received the following form:

23 fields to participate!? I am not going to waste my time...

I think many users stop in this moment their check in.

In short, my advice is that if you want to do some kind of e-mail marketing action like this (highly recommended, to increase your recipients), be sure to provide facilities to your target. E-mail, name and surname are enough. Another actions will come to know something about them.

Knowing all the information about your recipients is great, but this is not the way. You can not ask for"blood". You take the risk that the e-marketing action don not get results.

Everybody says that the email is a cold way to communicate. I disagree.

We will not forget the limitations of email, but  there are many resources  to transmit emotions through an email. I am going to focus on the text:

-Orthographic symbols are enough to express feelings: exclamation marks, question marks, suspension points ... Everything communicates.
-Bold, italics and underlined: a classical. Emphasize on what interests you.
-Words you use in your email will say the tone: distended or formal. Choose it looking at your target and your organization.
-Phrases. Short one, build a dynamic text; long one,a  formal text. All depends on what you want to say.
-If you finish your sentences with a "smiley" will give feelings to the language, expressing your mood. Be careful! Do not fill your email  with happy and sad "little faces" Remember, less is more

Analyze how you are doing el-communications with your customers. Do not think you can put something  of life in your emails? ;-)

One of the key to make successful marketing campaigns -and successful sales- is know our target. Everything you can. Why not ask them? If we subtly do it we will get many results.  That is the way...

An e-mail marketing campaign  or a newsletter with appropriate links can bring us first-hand information such as what our customers interest and need. For example, products that we must promote or  discounts we must offer How decide it? Publish it in your newsletter .  All people who  "click" will be a great target for a future e-marketing campaign. Be sure.

Use e-mail marketing as more than a tool to promote products and attract potential customers. With imagination you can get more from e-mailing. Look for the feedebacks.  And remember: do not let your recipients discover it ;-)