Category Archives: Email Marketing

I am getting more email writing queries these days

More queries about email writing services

I have an optimized web page that constantly draws traffic from Google for my email content writing and copywriting services. On an average, I would get 2-3 queries every month, and this is when my page appears on the first page on Google for search terms like “email writing services”, “email content writer” and “email writer service”.

Suddenly, on an average, I’m getting one such query everyday from people who want help with writing emails. Many of them are about writing copy for email marketing, but I’m also getting queries for day-to-day email correspondence.

My rankings haven’t suddenly spiked and although the traffic has been increasing in the past weeks, it isn’t because of traffic related to email writing services.

I think more people are realizing the importance of professionally written email messages. For example, I received a query from a person who has been promoted to the post of systems administrator. He said he would have to write email multiple times a day and he wants someone to refine them so that there are no errors and confusion in his messages.

He didn’t reply when I sent him the quote, but I’m getting many such queries.

Has business increased from people who want to hire my writing services for emails? Although conversion rate among people who want copywriting for their email marketing campaigns has certainly gone up by 20-25%, no conversion has happened among those who are looking for someone to help them with their day-to-day correspondence. It could be logistics – the hassle of sending the points and then waiting for my draft – or the fear of having to spend lots of money if there are many messages per day.

No matter how much the conversion rate is, what’s interesting is, more people want better written email.

How to prevent your emails from looking like spam

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Prevent your emails from looking like spam

One of the biggest reasons why your email marketing isn’t working is because both your recipients and their email clients conclude that your email is spam.

There is still some scope if your recipient decides whether your email message is spam or not, but if the email client (Gmail, for example) itself takes charge, sometimes your recipient doesn’t even realize that he or she is missing your messages.

There are many ways you can prevent your email messages from looking like spam and consequently, being marked as spam both by human and machine.

Here are a few things you can do

Build your own mailing list – patience pays

For successful email marketing, nothing is better than building your own mailing list.

It takes time.

It is like building a house or a building, brick by brick.

One of the biggest benefits of building your own mailing list is that you can request your subscribers to “white list” the email ID from which they are going to receive your email updates.

When someone submits his or her email ID to your subscription form, he or she is taken to a thank you page. On this page, you can instruct the person on how to white list your email ID so that your messages are not redirected to the spam folder.

Another benefit is that when people subscribe to your updates, they are fully aware of what they are going to receive.

When you subscribe to my Credible Content updates, you are fully aware that you are going to receive updates on content marketing and content writing. So, when you get these updates, you are not caught off guard and in frustration, you don’t mark my messages as spam.

At the most, when you don’t want to hear from me, you will simply unsubscribe. Which is much better.

Don’t offer something lucrative to make people sign up for your updates

I have seen that even reputed and well-known businesses, individuals and publications use this tactic – they offer a useful e-book or a white paper in lieu of getting a new subscriber for their newsletter.

If you have an e-book or a white paper or a case study that you think might help your current and prospective customers and clients, just give it to them.

Offer them something for which they would like to subscribe to your updates, as a long-term value, not as an instant bait.

Preferably, encourage them to join your mailing list or newsletter for the quality of your content.

When you offer something lucrative, people simply sign up for your newsletter, download the e-book (or whatever you are offering for subscribing) and then unsubscribe, or simply mark your messages as spam later on when they cannot make out why you are sending them messages.

Make it very clear why they are subscribing – this is one of the best ways of preventing your email from looking like spam.

Avoid using words and expressions that are frowned upon by spam filters

Over the years, spam filters have developed a huge collection of words and triggers that they use to consign messages to the spam folder.

Expressions like “earn extra cash”, “double your income”, “make money”, “online degree”, and so on, automatically get your message marked as spam.

You can search on the Internet to find lists of words that you should avoid using, especially in the subject line.

Provide quality content through your email

Remember that people subscribe to your updates because they expect to receive some valuable information that they can use to improve their lives.

Stick to the theme you promised at the time of the signup. Continue to send quality content that is highly valuable to them.

Be regular and stick to a routine when sending out your email campaigns

Another reason why your recipients may think that you are sending them spam emails is that they lose track of who you are and what business you represent.

For successful email marketing and to make sure that your messages are not marked as spam, you need to be regular and you need to stick to the schedule.

For example, if you send out an email every Wednesday, then make sure that you send that email every Wednesday.

I have often observed with different clients that they send out emails whenever they feel like. Sometimes, they simply send one or two haphazard emails in a month. This doesn’t work.

Making sure that your email messages are not marked as spam involves lots of precautions but your content, and the way you generate your mailing list, are the most important ones.

Importance of email marketing for content marketing success

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Email marketing is important for content marketing success

In this blog post you will learn why email marketing is an integral part of content marketing and your content marketing is in complete without email marketing.

Although there are many reputable email marketing services, including MailChimp which I use, an average person relates email marketing to spamming.

Even those who want to use email marketing think that it means sending promotional and marketing messages to a bunch of email ids hoping that some of the recipients would purchase.

Since this approach rarely works, people conclude that email marketing doesn’t work.

For whom email marketing works, they know how to do it.

Content marketing works

They know that email marketing is not about promotion, it is about nurturing relationships and providing valuable content in people’s inboxes.

These people understand that content marketing and email marketing are inseparable.

Why you can’t ignore email marketing for your content marketing to be successful?

Because it is one of the most potent content distribution tools.

According to this Radicati report, by 2020 (this is January 2019) 3 billion people will be using email.

Do you think everybody is on Facebook and hence, people aren’t quite crazy about hearing from you via email?

According to this Forrester report, people are twice as likely to sign up for your email list as staying in touch with you via Facebook.

This Smart Insights report reveals that the email marketing conversion rate is higher than conversion rate from search engine traffic and social media marketing, combined.

Anyway the purpose of these links is not to throw numbers at your face, it is just to prove that there is a reason why businesses use email marketing even when everyone seems to be crazy about social media and social networking.

Coming back to the topic of the relevance of email marketing for successful content marketing.

Have a look at these statistics from Emarketer:

Email marketing ROI is much greater

As you can see, the ROI of email marketing is far greater than the combined ROI of social media, direct mail, paid search and online display advertising.

One of the biggest challenges of content marketing (aside from creating high-quality content on an ongoing basis) is delivering your content to your target audience.

No matter how awesome your content is, unless it reaches its target audience, it isn’t much effective.

Hence, content publishing and content distribution go hand-in-hand. One doesn’t exist without the other.

People won’t come to your website on their own.

One way is to make it possible for people to find your content on various platforms including search engines and social media and social networking websites.

The other way, more effective way, is broadcasting your content using email marketing, the mailing list that you have created.

The key phrase here is “the mailing list that you have created”. This is very important. Unless you build your own mailing list, there isn’t much content marketing success to be experienced through email marketing.

Building your own mailing list for content marketing success

Now, you may think, how are you going to build your own mailing list unless you get traffic and for traffic, you need your content marketing to succeed, and here I am writing that for successful content marketing, you need to depend on email marketing.

Yup, I know, it sounds like a vicious loop.

How to build your mailing list for content marketing success

These days lots of start-up companies approach me for quality content writing and content marketing.

I tell them that they should start gathering email ids from their website as soon as possible and for that, they must open up an account with one of the renowned email marketing services as soon as possible.

As goes a Chinese proverb, “the best time to plant a tree was 20 years ago and the second best time is now,” if you haven’t already put up a sign up form on your website or blog, now is the time to do so.

As you persistently publish high-quality content on your website and you use the available channels with you – search engine optimization, social media marketing – other forms of promotion – you will draw people to your website.

These people would like to subscribe to your updates in case they don’t want to miss out on the wonderful information you are publishing.

They can’t be tracking your website all the time. They would like to receive an update from you whenever you publish valuable content.

For example, if you want to keep a tab on what I am publishing on my blog or website, you must subscribe to my updates because whenever I publish something new, I use my mailing list to broadcast it.

This is how your mailing list grows. People come to your website. They see what a wonderful job you’re doing with your content. They don’t want to miss your content. They subscribe. You build your mailing list.

Why email marketing is the most effective content distribution tool?

More than 85% of adults in the US send or read email every day.

When you check your email in the morning, you are in the right frame of mind. You are expecting to receive emails and this is why you are checking emails.

Of course, some emails are annoying, especially when you’re expecting business related messages and your inbox is full of promotional messages.

This is why, it is highly advised that you refrain from sending promotional messages unless they are very specific (an offer you wouldn’t like people to miss).

Content marketing means publishing and distributing valuable content – content that helps people. Hence, automatically, when you use email marketing for content marketing, the content that you broadcast through your emails, must also be content that helps people.

When you broadcast helpful content (or content desired by the recipients), naturally they are pleased to get your messages in their inboxes.

Are you using email marketing for experiencing content marketing success?

If you are, well done.

If you’re not, you should start right now.

It is not very difficult.

And forget about spamming people. Spammers are totally a different breed.

As long as you are broadcasting quality content, content that helps people, nobody is going to mind hearing from you.

Besides, you will be sending your messages to only those people who have opted to receive messages from you. Remember your mailing list, above?

Even if you don’t want to use any email marketing service, there are many add-ons even in Gmail that allow you to broadcast your messages using regular email.

For collecting email ids, you can use a normal form and put it on your website.

The success of your content marketing depends on ensuring your content reaches your target audience, and using email marketing is the best way of doing it.

How to increase your email open rate

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How to increase your email open rate

In my previous blog post I mentioned that email marketing is an integral part of content marketing.

Rumor has it that for every $ 1 spent on email marketing, successful marketers earn $ 44.25.

But the success of your email marketing depends on increasing your email open rate.

When you send out emails, it has to cross many hurdles before it can make a positive impact on your bottom line. These hurdles include

Not ending up in the spam folder due to certain email service settings.
Arriving at the most appropriate time.
Getting noticed by the recipient amidst the deluge of other email messages in the inbox.
Grabbing the attention of the email recipient.

The opening of your email message is very important. Unless someone opens your email message, nothing much can happen.

How do you increase your email open rate?

How do you prompt people to click on your message in the inbox?

Here are a few things you can do to increase your email open rate…

Offer something compelling in the subject

Make a good offer in the subject line to increase your email open rate

Something compelling doesn’t mean offer something that would be unbelievable. Normally, you would know what sort of email messages your recipient is expecting from you if you have been building a mailing list of your own.

Make that offer in the subject line.

If someone has subscribed to your email updates to get notifications on some great discounts, then definitely use “10% discount on…” in the subject line.

If someone has subscribed to your updates to improve his or her SEO, have something like “Improve your SEO with this technique right now” or something like this in the subject line.

Make it compelling enough to open your email and check it out.

You can also use different emotions to compel people into opening your email.

This Constant Contact blog post gives many suggestions regarding what all you can include in the subject line:

Ask a question: “What will you do with this extra saving of $50?”
Give a command: “Open this message immediately or regret for ever!”
Teaser: “So, this is what you’re going to miss if you don’t read this email.”
Give a list: “20 sure short ways of making money with this simple tool.”
Make an announcement: “We have finally released the upgrade you have been waiting for!”

Here is another blog post that gives you 10 best email subject line formulas.

Make your subject line easier to read on mobile devices

Use mobile friendly subject lines to increase email open rate

Around 83% people might be checking your emails on their mobile devices. If your subject is too long to fit on their screens, they may skip your message.

Your subject message must be compelling, but it should also be shorter.

Use a name for the “From” field

Use the actual name in the From field

People are more prone to opening emails when they get them from individuals rather than from organizations and businesses.

There is a greater chance of people opening the email if it comes from “Amrit Hallan” instead of simply “Credible Content”.

Pay more attention to your analytics data

Pay attention to email analytics

Almost every email marketing service, MailChimp, for example, gives you data on when people open your emails.

23% emails are opened during the first hour of delivery, and this I have noticed myself. The greatest number of my emails are opened within 30-40 minutes of me sending out the campaign.

If you have been sending your email campaigns for many months, you can import, or manually enter, the details in an Excel sheet. Once you can see all the timings and the number of people opening your emails on those particular times, you will be able to arrive at the best time and this way you can increase your email open rate to a great extent.

Use icons and emojis in the subject line to increase your email open rate

Use icons and emojis in the subject line

Although I don’t believe in gimmicks as I think that people should open your email on its merit rather than for what sort of icons you have used in the subject line, it is a good way of standing out.

Don’t overdo it. If you use icons with every email you send out, it may diminish their utility value. They need to be very relevant to the message that you’re sending.

Ask your recipients to put your email ID in the safe list

Request the recipients to add your email ID to the safe list

Many of your recipients may never receive your messages because their email client, whether it is Gmail, Outlook or Yahoo mail, might be directing them to the spam folder.

This is why, when people have just subscribed to your email updates, request them to add your email ID to their safe list so that your message don’t end up in the spam folder.

The data on this blog post (slightly old) says that more than 20% marketing emails never make to the inbox.

How much email is consigned to the spam folder differs from region to region, according to this SlideShare presentation. 66% emails reach your recipient’s inbox in Asia compared to 86% in Europe.

By asking your recipients to put your email ID (the one that is used for your email marketing campaigns) in the safe list or telling them how to tell their email clients that emails from you are not spam, can considerably increase your email open rate.

Personalize your email subject line to increase your email open rate

Personalize your email messages

Using first language, using the name of the recipient, also increases your email open rate.

When your recipient sees his or her name in the subject line, it conveys to him or her that it is not a machine-generated message (although, such messages can also be machine generated).

When people see their names, directly or indirectly it gets communicated to them that at some stage they must have interacted with you and that is why you know their name. Or at least, they themselves have subscribed to your updates. This increases your email open rate.

Use email segmentation

Use segmentation to send out email campaignsfor

Recently I wrote about the importance of email segmentation.

Again, if you see the analytics given by your email marketing service tool (like MailChimp) it will tell you various aspects of your email recipients, such as, how many of them opened your messages, how many clicked the links in your message, in which regions they opened your message, and such.

For example, if there are certain email recipients who regularly open your messages, you know that they are interested in hearing from you. You can send them custom campaigns.

Those who click the links within your email campaign are interested in knowing more about your product or service. You can send them a different email message to increase your email open rate.

Build your own mailing list

The best way of increasing your email open rate is to build your own mailing list.

When people subscribe to your updates on their own they are more likely to open your messages. This is because they themselves want to receive your messages. They will also go to extra lengths to make sure that your messages don’t end up in the spam folder.

Keep refining your email list

Keep refining your mailing list

No emails are ever opened from certain email ids? Repeat bounces from certain email ids? Wrong spelling? Wrong email ID is just to download your e-book?

Remove these email ids.

You may feel reassured that you’re sending your email marketing campaigns to 10,000 recipients, but if only 2000 recipients are likely to open your messages, you should focus on those recipients. You will get a better email open rate like this.

Use a consistent schedule for sending out your emails

Maintain a consistent emailing schedule

This is something that I don’t do, but should. Actually, my email broadcasts are dependent upon the blog posts that I publish or the new content that I publish on my website and, I know this is contrary to what I often suggest in my writings, it is not a regular activity.

When you set a day and time for your emails people, unconsciously, begin to expect your emails on that particular day and at that particular time. This can have a big impact on your email open rate.

Interact with your mailing list subscribers

Regularly interact with your email subscribers

Don’t just send marketing messages. Ask your subscribers questions. Encourage them to respond. Try to know about their interests. Make an emotional connection.

When you make an emotional connection, you become familiar to them and when you become familiar to them, they readily open your email messages.

Occasionally you can conduct surveys asking 1-2 questions.

You can send them useful information you come across on other websites – for example, I can share with you an insightful blog post or article on SEO if I find it on another website, instead of constantly sending links from my own blog, and then ask you your opinion.

Never compromise on the quality of your content

If you constantly broadcast quality content your subscribers will be waiting for your messages.

When you subscribe to my email updates you expect to learn more about content writing, content marketing and in general, promoting your business online.

If I keep sending you good quality content on these topics, there is nothing to prompt you to ignore my messages if you happen to notice them in your inbox.

Concluding remarks on increasing your email open rate

Tricking your email subscribers into opening your messages may work once, may even work twice, but ultimately, it is the content that you provide that matters and contributes towards increasing your email open rate.

It isn’t just about increasing your email open rate, it is about delivering value to your email subscribers.

But, opening your emails is the first step. If they don’t notice your messages in their inbox, if your messages get buried under other, less important messages, if your messages are redirected to their spam folders, no matter how valuable content you send them, they’re not going to receive it, they’re not going to benefit from it.

Importance of segmentation in email marketing

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Importance of segmentation in email marketing

Email marketing is good. Segmentation makes it better. Here I’m going to explain how you can use segmentation to your advantage when implementing your email marketing strategy.

According to this Radicati report, 34% of the people in the world, that’s about 2.5 billion people, use email. Contrary to predictions that email marketing might be on its way out due to social media, the number is projected to increase to 2.8 billion email users in the next 2 years.

The same report says that 196 billion emails are sent daily and out of these, 109 billion are business emails. Even if a major part of this deluge of emails is spam, still, it is a big number to consider.

Why is the use of email so prevalent? Even to open social media and social networking accounts you need an email ID. Useful information is constantly being sent via email. When you get an important notification from your office, provided you are not using a tool like Slack, it comes via email. Teachers are sending homework via email. Banks send OTP via email.

Everyone has an email. If someone uses the Internet, he or she has an email account.

Despite online chat, instant messaging and Twitter, consumers prefer to communicate with brands through email. A Marketing Sherpa study revealed that 72% consumers don’t mind receiving promotional messages through email, provided the messages are useful.

Marketing Sherpa email marketing graphic

Why doesn’t email lose its sheen? Despite different means of communication popping up almost every week, why does email sustain? Here are a few reasons:

Most of the email services are free: Email services like Gmail, Yahoo mail, Outlook.com and Hotmail have made sure that everyone can have an email ID free of cost.
It’s very easy to use email: Email can be used on mobile phones, tablets and computers with equal ease. In fact, these days, email apps for mobile phones have more features than their PC and laptop counterparts.
Email is very personal: Every email account is protected by a password, and these days, even 2-factor authentication. The information exchange in an email remains confidential. Sharing your email password still remains an intimate act of trust and hence, it is rarely done. Nobody can access your email unless you are hacked or you willingly allow access.
Email is instant: In most of the cases. The moment you send out an email, it is received by the recipient.

Precisely this is the reason why email marketing still remains a hot activity among online marketers and it is an inseparable part of content marketing.

It’s segmentation that makes your email marketing effective

To be effective and successful, email marketing needs to be data-driven and scientific. If you simply build a mailing list and then go on sending out messages, although you may elicit some response, you won’t be tapping into the full potential of email marketing.

According to a Campaign Monitor finding, businesses have experienced an increase of 760% in their revenue through segmented email marketing.

What’s segmentation?

Segmentation means sending out emails based on the behavior of the recipients, or based on some action that they have recently performed or based on something that is going to have an impact on the way they respond to your email message.

How do you know their behavior? You can’t just know it.

There are many ways of creating segments.

For example, you may have a different sign up form (to build your mailing list) on your Facebook business page. You may have a different subscription form link for your Instagram campaigns.

On your website or on your blog you may have a different sign up form.

I have a signup form on my website and on my blog. People can subscribe to my email updates on their own.

In my contact form I have a checkbox that allows people to tell me if they would like to subscribe to my email updates. The information submitted through the contact form is saved in a Google Docs spreadsheet and then later on I manually add these email addresses (for people who have checked the checkbox) to my mailing list.

I also have a “Hello” bar at the top and people can use that bar to subscribe to my email updates. Once in a month I log into my Hello account, download the email addresses of people who have subscribed using the Hello bar, and then manually add them to my mailing list.

Recently I have started associating tags to different sources so that later on if I want to send an email message to those people who opted to subscribe to my mailing list from my contact form, all I have to do is, segment my campaign using that particular tag.

Then, if you have an online business you may have email ids of people who have registered themselves but have never shopped.

Some email ids may belong to people who recently abandoned the shopping cart.

Some people have just shopped and you would like to send them related offers.

Segments can be created based on people’s job titles or the organizations they work in.

These segmentation methodologies fall outside of the ambit of your email marketing campaigns management tool or service.

You can also create segments according to the way people interact with your email campaigns. You can have different messages for people who clicked a link in your email and those who never clicked.

You can also have different messages for people who opened your last email campaign and those who didn’t.

You get this data gradually, sometimes even after sending your first most campaign. But, the more data you have, the more precise your segmentation gets.

Almost all email marketing services provide segmentation these days

As far as using email marketing services like MailChimp and Constant Contact go, they allow you to create segments very easily, out of the campaigns that you have already sent. You can also send campaigns – in many cases – to people residing in particular regions of the world. For instance, you can send Christmas greetings to your European or American subscribers and Diwali greetings to subscribers living in India.

As mentioned above, you can even create segments on people who opened your email messages on a specific day of the week – for example, those people who opened your message on Wednesday no matter when you send out your messages.

Does segmentation mean creating multiple emails for your email marketing campaigns?

In most of the cases, yes. If you want to increase the effectiveness of your email marketing, one, segmentation is must, and two, highly targeted messages need to be created. This often means creating multiple campaigns. But the effort is worth it.