E-mail marketing Archives

Tag Archive for: E-mail marketing

Responsive email newsletters

Optimizing Your Email for Mobile Devices With the Media Query
Wide emails often require horizontal scrolling, especially when there’s a large image. This case study by Campaign Monitor explains how emails can be optimized for mobile devices using media queries and offers a couple of useful techniques and snippets to be used right away.

Responsive Design for Email, the Largest Mobile Audience
Another interesting case study that shows how the development team behind Beanstalk applied screen-size-specific media queries to target styles, and what design decisions were made to make the mobile email experience better.

Media Queries in HTML Emails
This article covers using media queries to target specific mobile email clients.

Guide to CSS Support in Email
Designing an HTML email that renders consistently across major email clients can be time-consuming. Support for even simple CSS varies considerably between clients, and even different versions of the same client. Campaign Monitor has put together a guide to save you the time and frustration of figuring it out for yourself. With 24 different email clients tested, it covers all of the popular applications across desktop, Web and mobile email.

by martin

5 steps to determine optimal e-mail frequency

E-mail marketing

5 steps to determine optimal e-mail frequency

You know there’s a delicate balance between infrequent email communications and bombarding your email recipients with messages to the point that they opt out. Maybe you’re interested in ramping up your email marketing in 2012 but don’t want to see all your hard lead generation work go to waste by increasing your sending frequency. How do you know what email sending frequency is the right frequency for your subscriber list?

If you guessed “test,” you’re right on the money! While we’ve performed tests and released research on email sending frequency, every brand’s email marketing campaign objectives and subscriber lists are unique and thus require fine-tuned testing to determine appropriate sending frequency.

So how do you get started with an email send frequency test? Many people have been nervous about performing this test for fear of ruining their lead generation efforts, but it really is quite simple. Let’s break down the steps you can take to perform this test so you can start understanding how often you should communicate with your email subscribers.

Step 1 – Establish Your Hypotheses

Take yourself back to high school science class, and channel your favorite lab partner. It’s important to determine what specific results you expect to see from these tests so you can identify success.

For example, you might hypothesize that increasing your email send frequency from once a week to three times a week will increase your click-through rate by 35%, or perhaps it will increase the number of “wheat bread” leads that move to the prospecting stage as a result of your nurturing by 15%. Or perhaps you have an unnervingly high opt-out rate, and you think decreasing your email send rate from daily to every other day will also decrease your number of unsubscribes. You can (and should!) create more than one hypothesis to make the most out of these tests, and be extremely specific with the terms of your hypothesis.

Step 2 – Choose a List Segment

Think of this as your sample size. Since your email list is already segmented (right?), select one segment that you will test, and ensure it is sizable enough to provide meaningful data. Make sure the list segment you select also aligns with the hypotheses you are testing. For example, if you are testing for an increased offer click-through rate targeted toward prospects, it isn’t wise to test on a customer list segment. Instead, you might decide to choose a sample (a sample, not the entire list) from your blog subscriber list that is not only sizable enough to provide meaningful data, but is also used to receiving emails with offers from you.

Step 3 – Establish Baseline Metrics

Now that you know what you want to test and on whom, you can establish your current performance metrics for that sample. This step is crucial, because you need something against which to measure the results of your test. Note the email marketing metrics you’ll need in order to determine success in your test such as your open rate, deliverability rate, unsubscribe rate, and click-through rate for that particular sample.

And don’t be afraid to expand your scope beyond traditional email marketing metrics to website performance metrics. For example, if you were to use the hypothesis of increasing an offer’s click-through rate, you would also be interested to know how many of the email recipients not only clicked through the email offer, but also completed the form required to obtain their offer.

Step 4 – Create and Schedule Your Test Emails

Create a handful of test emails to rotate through the list sample, following your regular email marketing best practices. Now is not the time to experiment with creative new subject lines, test a new sender in the “from” field, or create a new email template. These types of content changes can skew your results, and should be reserved for a separate set of tests.

Once you’ve created the emails, schedule them for the sending frequency you outlined in your hypothesis. For tests that exceed a week in duration, be sure to select the same days and times so as not to add another variable to the equation, as time of day and day of week has been known to skew results. Again, this is an important test to perform, but reserve it for another time.

Step 5 – Measure and Analyze Results

Measure your results against the hypotheses you established in the beginning and the baseline results you recorded. You should monitor results frequently throughout the experiment, too, so you can respond to any dramatic swings that may crop up because of your change in emailing frequency.

Are the results you’re seeing positive? Do they confirm the hypotheses you’ve outlined? Do they allow you to increase your email send even more to see positive gains to your bottom line without sacrificing things like the size or quality of your list? Or is a decrease in sending what’s in order? Now that you have a new baseline for success, iterate off of it by beginning a new email test, whether for frequency, template design, subject line, message copy, offer content, or any other host of items you can test to make your email marketing more effective.

by martin

How to integrate Search Engine and Email Marketing

E-mail marketing, SEO

In the world of inbound marketing, integrating tactics provides marketers with incredible leverage. However, integration can often be challenging because individual marketing tactics sometime exist in silos with little collaboration. This is especially true with an unlikely power couple, search engine optimization and email marketing.

Search engine optimization is likely a strong source of traffic and leads for you already. And email marketing is most companies’ primary inbound lead generation channel. While both tactics rock on their own, they experience some exciting amplification when combined. Let’s look at a few ways we can combine search and email for even more leads!

Here are 7 Ways to Integrate Search Engine and Email Marketing

1. Distribute Link Building Content Through Email – Yes, email is mainly about lead generation. But don’t be short-sighted in your lead generation efforts. Search engine traffic can provide a steady flow of quality leads over time. For many companies, email marketing is their largest channel for marketing reach.

Emailing lead generation-based offers is definitely a great idea, but by also distributing content like infographics or awesome blog posts occasionally via email, you can improve the reach and, subsequently, the inbound links and authority of the pages where that content resides. In the future, you could then replace the content on that page with an awesome lead generation offer to take advantage of all of the search engine traffic the page is getting.

2. Optimize for the Best Lead Generation Topics – Look at your email data. Which offers and topics have the best open and click-through rates? If you have been doing email marketing for a while, then you probably have great historical data related to your lead generation efforts. Use this data to help you prioritize your search engine optimization efforts. Then optimize for the top-performing keywords and offers from your email campaigns.

3. Test Offer Conversion Prior to an Email Send – You don’t have to email an offer to your list the second it’s completed. Instead, you can use traffic from search engines, pay-per-click (PPC) advertising, and your blog to take a look at the conversion rate of the landing page and the offer. Use this data to make tweaks and improvements to the content or its landing page before sending it out to your entire list.

4. Use PPC to Boost Email Click-Through Rate (CTR) – In the crowded world of inbound marketing, your prospects usually need to be exposed to your ideas several times before they will convert. When planning your next big email send for lead generation, plan a PPC campaign that starts the day before and lasts a few days after the email send to help provide additional support for the email and its offer. The awareness built through these PPC ads can help increase click-through rates for your emails.

5. Search Engine Optimize Landing Pages – Don’t hide your landing pages! Landing pages are key to your inbound marketing success. Make sure that, beyond sending them out in marketing emails, you take the time to optimize the content of your landing pages for search engines. This means killer page titles, a great URL structure, and relevant copy optimized with keywords on the page itself.

6. Focus on Email Sharing for Link Building – Part of building links for search engine optimization is getting your content in front of as many people as possible. Simply sending out content to build links just isn’t enough. Instead, add social sharing links to the content you are promoting in your email. Include a quick message that also encourages folks to forward the email to their peers.

7. Use PPC to Test Email Subject Lines – Subject lines are a huge part of email marketing success. Instead of simply guessing which subject line you think will work best, use PPC to collect data on subject line options. Create five subject lines. Run a different PPC ad for each subject line. After you’ve accumulated enough data, determine which subject line had the highest click-through rate, and use it for your email send.

by martin

Guaranteed ways to annoy your Email recipients

E-mail marketing

Without a doubt, email marketing can be a powerful lever in your inbound marketing mix. It can help you nurture prospects, connect with existing customers, distribute your content, and yes, generates tons of coveted leads for your business.

But that said, email can be tricky, and there is a fine line between sending contacts in your database emails they want to open and enjoy reading, and ticking them off. And the price of ticking them off? An email database that atrophies at a much higher rate. As you create your email marketing strategy and the specific emails that it includes, use this checklist to avoid rubbing your email recipients the wrong way.

12 Sure-Fire Ways to Tick Off Your Email Database

1. Violating CAN-SPAM Laws: Are you still emailing people who have already opted out of your database? Perhaps you’re just not making it possible for people to opt out in the first place. Do these things, and you’ll not only make your email recipients angry, but you’re also likely to get into some legal trouble. First and foremost, make sure you understand and adhere to CAN-SPAM legislation.

2. Failing to Include Your Company Logo or Visual Brand Recognition: Make it so your recipients can immediately tell who your email is from when they open it. Not including a company logo or some visually identifiable image that they automatically associate with your brand might cause them to believe it’s spam and prevent them from even reading your email in the first place.

3. Not Optimizing the Alt Text of Your Images: If your email client doesn’t display images by default, well…things can get pretty ugly. Be sure to edit the alt text of each image you include with descriptive keywords (not the default file name like img_3058), or you’ll come off as sloppy and unprofessional to your email recipients.

4. Having Nothing to Offer: You shouldn’t be emailing your database just for the sake of emailing them. People open email because they want to get something from it. Make sure you’re including an offer of some sort — whether it’s premium content, a discount/coupon, or some other special opportunity just for them.

5. Providing No Value: To piggyback off of number 4, you also need to make sure that whatever you’re offering in your email is valuable to your audience. Be sure you’re optimizing your emails to include your top offers. Emailing just any old thing is a guaranteed way to entice your email recipients to opt out.

6. Including Too Many Offers: Furthermore, including multiple calls-to-action for different offers in your email is the perfect way to confuse your recipients and encourage them to click ‘delete.’ As a best practice, stick with just one offer per email. You can include more than one call-to-action in your email, but make sure they are all promoting the same offer.

7. Not Segmenting Your List: Most likely, your email database doesn’t include a one-size-fits-all group of contacts. And likely, your products and services cater to different types of personas. Treat your email database that way. Segment your list into various groups, and send those groups personalized emails that target their specific wants and needs. Sending email messages that are broadly targeted, not relevant, and mostly impersonal is a great way to whittle your list down to nothing.

8. Making Emails Too Lengthy, Difficult to Read, and Not Easily Scannable: Chances are, your email isn’t the only one sitting in your recipients’ inboxes. Likely, your readers will only give your email a few moments to capture their attention, so make sure it’s brief, to the point, easy to scan, and has clear, concise language that makes it simple to read and understand quickly. Create an eye path with bold fonts, links, and bullet points to help readers skim; use colorful language; and communicate the offer with simple text, not fancy jargon.

9. Omitting Social Media Sharing Buttons/Links: If you’ve gotten the reader past the hurdle of reading the email and valuing its contents, don’t make it difficult for them to share it! If a recipient has to copy/paste links within your email to Facebook, Twitter, and LinkedIn, you’re doing it wrong. Include social media sharing links and buttons in every email you send to make it easy for your contacts to spread your messages if they want to, which will (BONUS) also expand your email’s reach!

10. Sending Emails When Everyone Else Sends Them: It doesn’t matter if your contact loves receiving and reading your emails. If that person’s inbox is flooded with emails from vendors all at the same time, they’ll likely bulk delete them just to purge their inbox of all that annoying “spam.” When sending emails, consider times when your competitors email and try counter-competitive timing so your email reaches recipients’ inboxes at time when they’re under less water.

11. Sending Emails Too Frequently (or Infrequently): Don’t spam your list! While our own data shows that businesses might not be emailing enough, don’t cross the line between being top-of-mind and annoying. Furthermore, understand the habits of your target audience. Every business and industry is different. Some audiences might be more receptive to more frequent messages, while others might tap out at a certain number in a given time period. Test your frequency to determine the optimal number of times to email your database in a given time. And be sure you’re segmenting!

12. Continuing to Email Inactive List Members: Every email database has inactive members. These are people who religiously delete the emails you send (or worse — mark them as spam) but are too lazy to opt out of your list. Continuing to email inactive members is annoying to those members, and it can also mess with your emails’ deliverability to other recipients who actually want to receive and read your email content. Take a deep breath, and just remove those contacts on your list who haven’t interacted with your email marketing in the last 120 days.

by martin

Ways to keep Facebook fans from unliking your page

Business, Communication, Social media

Your Facebook fan base is an incredibly powerful marketing asset. You should be aiming to grow the number of fans of your business page in order to continually expand your reach. At the very least, you should be looking to retain the fans you already have. But they already “Liked” your page, so you shouldn’t have to do much to keep them, right? Well, as it turns out, not only is this not true, but it’s actually a very dangerous assumption to make.

Last fall, Facebook came out with the “Unlike” button, which allows fans to unsubscribe from business pages. According to a recent study by DDB and OpinionWay, this button could have serious implications for your Facebook page, considering the study found that 2 out of every 5 Facebook users “Unlike” business pages.

A survey to find out why fans unsubscribe from brand pages revealed the following reasons:

In another study conducted by ExactTarget and CoTweet earlier this year, research revealed that the top 4 reasons for fans hitting the “Unlike” button were companies posting too frequently (44%), fans’ desire to get rid of the clutter of marketing posts on their wall (43%), content becoming repetitive or boring over time (38%), and that fans only “Liked” the page to take advantage of a one-time offer (26%).

With these daunting percentages, it may seem like the odds are stacked against you when it comes to retaining your Facebook fans. However, there are many things that you can do to avoid high “Unlike” rates.

4 Ways to Keep Fans From “Unliking” Your Page

1. Keep your posts interesting. The top two reasons fans unsubscribe from a page are because they’ve lost interest in the company or they’ve lost interest in the information the company is publishing. This means that your top strategy for retaining fans should be to publish interesting content. Don’t be repetitive or boring! No one likes to see the same messages in their news feeds over and over again. Facebook is social media, which means people are looking to have fun and read interesting things. Next time you write a status update or post a link to some content, ask yourself, “Does this sound exciting enough to make my fans want to read it?” If not, try to find a way to make it more interesting before you hit that “Post” button.

2. Publish relevant, valuable content. Not only should the content you publish be interesting, it should also be relevant and valuable to your fans. Make your posts informative and helpful. Think education, not marketing pitch. The point of content marketing is to establish yourself as a thought leader and educate your reader base, thereby enticing them to want to learn more about your product and offers. So don’t use Facebook for direct sales. Use it for engagement that generates leads.

3. Find a good balance for publishing frequency. Another top reason fans hit the “Unlike” button is because the company publishes too often, which gives fans of the page the feeling that they’re being flooded with updates. This can very easily become overwhelming and/or annoying, making it far more likely that fans will choose to unsubscribe from the page. On the other hand, though, 14% have “Unliked” a page because the company didn’t publish often enough. Publishing too infrequently leads the fans to either feel like there’s no point in remaining subscribed to the page, since they’re not getting any updates, or to lose interest in the company (and its page) and choose to unsubscribe. Find a posting frequency that maintains a good balance between these two extremes so you can keep your fans satisfied but still hungry for more. Which brings us to the final point…

4. Keep them coming back for more. The ExactTarget and CoTweet study we mentioned earlier found that 26% of Facebook users only “Liked” a business page to take advantage of a one-time offer. Running a Facebook contest or promotional offer can be a great strategy for attracting more fans to your page, but don’t let it stop there. Once they have “Liked” your page, keep them engaged. Give them more reasons to be excited they are fans of your page, whether it’s new offers, unique content, exciting company and industry updates, or fun games, quizzes, and contests. In other words, make your fans glad they found your page through that one-time offer, not because of that one-time offer alone.

There’s no shortage of ways to take advantage of a large fan base on Facebook to improve your marketing and extend your reach. So keep drawing in the fans, and once they’ve “Liked” you, use these tips to show them you’re too awesome to even consider “Unliking.”

by martin

Lessons and examples of how to create a Viral Launch Page

Digital marketing, Ideas, Inspiration, Social media, Strategy

Google+, Hipster, Connect.me and Instagram! They all hit a gazillion users in no time at all — and you can even read all about it in everyday media today. This is every product creator’s dream. Ok, granted, Google already had their users well before the launch of its social extension. But how did the other ones succeed in building such a strong fellowship in a few months (or even days)?

Turns out that many of these services’ creators were very busy bees and made small details about their product’s launch addictive. It even turns out that many start-ups were indeed able to launch to a strong following (not much unlike Google+) through collecting interested users, email addresses, Twitter followers in any way they could well ahead of their public appearance using a combination of very common and old marketing strategies with clever launch pages.

In this article, we’ll outline some best practices and examples of successful viral launch pages. Let’s define a viral launch page not only as a “Coming soon” landing page, but also as a usable beta page or even in some cases a finished product page.

Fundamentals Of The Viral Launch Or Landing Page

The first rule of viral is of course that you must build something that other people would actually be interested in for one reason or another. Let’s emphasize this, using the words of Robert Scoble: “The best launch is if you have a product that other people like using so much that they tell other people about it.” The users you target need to know at least one bit of information in advance that will make them care. Then, only then, can you move on to the next step, which is to facilitate and encourage sharing.

Normally, you’ll want to (1) let visitors know what you’re doing, and then (2) spark some interest. Then you should (3) make use of that interest by giving them a chance to subscribe to your news updates, doing so with a bright call-to-action button. Lately, so-called stealth start-ups have become quite popular because of the interest they are able to generate. They typically won’t tell you what they’re doing, which means they’re ignoring step (1), but somehow they still manage to grab your attention.

Here are the basic elements a launch page should have:

A clear value proposition that interests people. (What problem will you be solving?)
If your strategy is stealth, then why should people care? (For example, are you Jack Dorsey?)
A notification form, with a bright call-to-action button.

Examples of Basic Launch Pages That Spark Interest

Even very basic launch pages can do a great job of advertising the product if they are memorable, viral in some way or desirable to visitors (or all of the above). You can read more about these characteristics in the recent Smashing Magazine article “Building An Effective ‘Coming Soon’ Page for Your Product.”

Stripe
Stripe has a simple landing page ready for visitors, with one concise sentence: “We’re making it easier to accept payments online.” This is followed by a simple call to action: “Get notified when you can use @stripe”. The app’s name is also the company’s Twitter handle, so you can opt to subscribe to updates through Twitter. This implementation is very minimalist and suggests that the service does one thing very well. Who wouldn’t want an easier way to accept payments online?

Elements: slogan; notification form; call to action; Twitter handle in copy.

Milk
Milk doesn’t tell you what exactly it’s building, but it makes sure the team can reach you once it has something to say. What makes this landing page so successful? It’s the new venture of Kevin Rose (Digg’s founder). Also note the subtle “pleasantly infrequent updates” for email, Facebook and Twitter, which puts us much more at ease with subscribing.

Elements: slogan; notification form; call to action; Facebook and Twitter handles.

VaultPress
You may need to give more information up front in order to get the message across. Here is how Automattic launched VaultPress, a back-up service to give WordPress bloggers peace of mind. The text does three things:

It sets your expectations of what VaultPress will do (which is to keep your blog and server safe).
It collects data from those who fill out the sign-up form (data that will validate their idea).
It creates a sense of exclusivity, because not everyone can join immediately.

Elements: copy that explains what VaultPress does; an integrated sign-up form.

Sumazi
Instead of focusing on the product itself, Sumazi tries to get you to follow it on its social profiles and to share the news with your contacts. Registration is done through Facebook. It’s a first attempt to add a small viral loop to the launch page.

Elements: simple copy; integration with social networks (for sharing).

Let’s see how other start-ups have used the viral loop, and how this effect has sparked real enthusiasm for start-up launch pages.

Additional Elements That Can Make A Launch Page Go Viral

In addition to the basic elements covered above, start-ups have recently been using some of the following elements to make their landing pages more enticing:

Viral loop,
Exclusivity and scarcity,
Glimpses of the beta,
Social proof,
Viral content.

You will find all of these in the examples below. Many of the elements are often combined in meaningful ways.

Adding a Viral Loop

The viral loop is a kind of “sharing cycle” or “multiplier effect” that is built into the launch page. It’s an incentive for people to share news of the start-up and to share the sign-up form with their friends and followers. Forkly’s landing page was one of the first to successfully tap into this effect .

Forkly
Forkly is an innovator in this popular viral invitation system. If you want to be notified of Forkly’s launch, you can leave an email address in the form on the landing page. Once you hit the “Go” button, the page reloads and gives you a personalized link that you can share with friends and followers. If at least three of your friends join, then you will get early access to the service. And the more friends who join, the earlier your access will be (Update: they’ve just launched their app to the public) .

Top: a simple informative landing page. Bottom: a simple viral loop.

Add an Incentive to the Sign-Up Process

Forkly’s incentive to share is a strong one: you’ve signed up to use the service anyway, so why not share it with a few friends so that you can gain access even earlier. This was a smart move and has been copied repeatedly since. But there are countless other ways to incentivize sharing.

ResourceGuru
ResourceGuru is giving away an iPad 2 to one of the people who share its link. Who doesn’t want an iPad 2 these days? Think about it: would you subscribe to ResourceGuru if it had only used Forkly’s strategy? Would you subscribe if an iPad was (potentially) waiting for you? These incentives are most effective when the item has an aspect of exclusivity. That’s why you see so many give-aways close to the launch dates of Apple gear, when no one yet possesses the gadget.

ResourceGuru throws in the prospect of winning an iPad for sharing a personalized link.

Alternative Ways to Subscribe

In some cases, you might want to offer other ways to subscribe to your news, particularly if your users are mainly on Facebook, Twitter or Tumblr and like to consume news in ways other than through email.

RumpelDealSkin
RumpelDealSkin offers various ways to get the inside scoop: email, phone, text message, postcard. Additionally, there are links to its social profiles.

Stealth Start-Ups

Lately, the “stealth start-up” method has been quite popular, due to some spectacular successes (including Hipster, Connect.me and Kohort). It’s a way of making something publicly known without actually letting people in on what you’re doing. This could elicit another level of interest in your start-up, but let’s face it: it’s a tough ride. Are you able to leak as little info as possible but still make people genuinely excited?

Hipster
Hipster is a good example of a stealth start-up. Hipster managed to gather 10,000 addresses in just two days after its public marketing launch. And it happened before anyone knew what it does. The cool name and slogan (“Something cool is coming to San Francisco”) turned out to be the perfect marketing mix. The story was picked up widely and quickly by bloggers and media alike. People wanted to know what it is, and they left their email addresses in bulk and shared the links happily with their friends (Hipster used the Forkly approach) to be among the first to see the service.

Elements: intriguing name; fitting slogan; fitting background image; call to action.

Notice the value proposition that complements the name. Then there’s the simple call to action button, and the background that would appeal to San Francisco residents and others. (Wouldn’t you want to know what you’re missing out on?) This happened in January 2011; as of this writing, Hipster is still building its service which will be some kind of local Q&A. But take a moment to check out the hiring page to see how it’s still using its name to tell a story.

Supyo
Supyo has received a lot of attention as a result of its founders, long-time collaborators Shawn Fanning and Sean Parker. They have set up nothing but a splash page for now, which means they cannot collect addresses. (Update: they’ve just added an email notification form.) Shawn Fanning and Sean Parker will create buzz even if only for their Web celebrity status.

Elements: logo; social proof.

Amen
The same is true for Amen. Their landing page doesn’t sport anything but a cryptic (and interesting) message of what it is going to be: “The best place for having an opinion in the World”. Rumors of what the service will be and the fact that Ashton Kutcher and Madonna’s manager invested here keep the interest alive (also the first Twitter engineer Florian Weber is a co-founder).

Elements: explanation of what it does; Similarly to Hipster: an unconventional branding.

Allow People to Reserve User Names and Integrate With Social Networks

Connect.me
Connect.me is another stealth start-up with an incredibly viral sign-up page. Apart from its memorable domain and brand name, it communicated almost no information on what it’s about; an “About connect.me” link appeared in the bottom-right corner, but it didn’t really explain what the app would do.

Top: reserve your user name; get early access; register only through social networds. Bottom: revamped landing page with the same structure but with an explanation of the service.

Unlike the services mentioned above, Connect.me did not ask you to leave an email address. You could only register through Twitter or Facebook. Also, did you notice that instead of something like, “Invite friends to get early access,” the copy says, “Reserve your username to get early access”? This makes it clear that early adopters will have dibs on vanity URLs. This can be very effective with people like me, who have common names and want to register a good URL.

If you went through with the registration, the app would automatically tweet or post a simple message on Facebook: “Reserve your Connect.me username [link].”

This simple approach generated roughly 20,000 sign-ups in a short span of time and even provoked fears of a scam in the blogosphere shortly after. When you visit the website now, you’ll find a landing page (in green) telling you exactly what the service does. The “Reserve your username” is still there, but it has been turned into a central call-to-action button.

The success of strategies like those used by Forkly, Hipster and Connect.me have even led to the creation of a start-up that takes care of the sign-up process for you. LaunchRock does all the heavy lifting, leaving you to concentrate on building the actual software.

LaunchRock
Once you’ve submitted your email address, you’re immediately given the option to do a few things with your link: tweet it, share it on Facebook or email it to friends. The tweet is pre-written and contains a lot of important elements:

Your brand name, and an announcement that you will be launching soon;
Social proof: “Follow me! I’m first in line.”
Your personal link;
Your brand’s Twitter handle.

LaunchRock will take care of your viral launch page.

Even if you don’t use LaunchRock as a service to launch your product, it still has a lot to be inspired by. I would even argue that now with so many newly unveiled LaunchRock sites you would do your launch a disfavor for looking like another me-too. LaunchRock’s blog provides a good analysis of the viral “Coming soon” page.

Especially Twitter Integration

Many services that succeed in generating some idea or product that people want to share on Twitter (and Facebook) experience a hell of a growth rate. This was the case with Threewords.me and Turntable.fm, which recently became the most shared music start-up on Twitter, because people love to announce what they’re doing at a given moment (check out the real-time search results of Turntable.fm’s hash tag). Let’s look at two examples:

Shuush
Shuush is a Twitter reader that scales back users who tweet too often and amplifies people who don’t tweet as much. As a byproduct, users are assigned Shuush levels that they can tweet out. Users like to share facts about themselves, which we’re seeing over and over again.

Elements: explanation of the service; sign in with Twitter only.

Instagram
Instagram has no conventional landing page (and didn’t have a conventional viral launch page when it launched). Rather, its viral circulation comes from people sharing their images on social channels, mainly Twitter. You can instantly recognize these images by the branded URLs, like of this image by Justin Bieber, http://instagr.am/p/IMhuj/, which made the service literally explode on July 21st.

Elements: landing page has a call-to-action “Download” button; the viral loop comes from people who share the service’s output (images) on Twitter and other services.

Sell a Half-Baked Product for Half the Price

Minecraft
Minecraft is an online gaming phenomenon, and its adoption has been mind-blowing, with 2,932,884 licenses sold in the beta phase. People are willing to sign up early, especially if a discount is offered because the product is not yet ready. When Minecraft is finished, it will sell for €20.00. Right now, at 25% off, you can get it for €14.95. Discounts for early adopters are a no-brainer.

Minecraft offers a discount during the beta stages. As the product advances, the discount shrinks.

Lifepath
Lifepath turns this approach on its head. The service is invite-only, and because people might very well want to use it, the company invites visitors to buy an “entrance ticket”. The closer the service gets to completion, the lower the entrance fee gets. Note that registrations fared better when the fee was $10 than when it dropped to $3 . This is an interesting insight that the creator Dustin Curtis shared on Twitter.

Elements: exclusivity; call to action.

Exclusivity

Exclusivity can be a powerful way to convince people to join. Facebook, which started out as private to one university, now has the biggest following of them all.

Sugarhigh
When you receive an invitation to this invite-only newsletter, you’re redirected to the landing page, where a counter displays the time you have left to register.

Elements: invitation only; sign up within 24 hours of being invited.

Turntable
Turntable is the red-hot music start-up that allows you to join rooms and DJ along with other people, mainly friends. The landing page says, “If you have a Facebook friend already on Turntable, you’re in!” This enables the company to grow the service organically, making sure that only like-minded people join and slowly adjusting and scaling up its servers. If you know no one on the service, you can leave your email address.

Elements: exclusivity; social proof.

Tell a Story, Add Personality

Telling a story is a powerful way to interact and tell people about your product (and has a clear psychological aspect). Stories can captivate an audience, which is exactly what you want for your launch page.

Evertale
Evertale is an Android app that automatically scrapbooks your life. The creators explain this very visually as you scroll down the page. Your path is marked on a map, and when you reach the bottom you’ll see a call to action, where you can leave your details.

Evertale gives its elevator pitch as you scroll down the page.

It turns out that scrolling is a useful technique for making information engaging and telling a story. Check out these other services with slightly alternative approaches:

Ben the Bodyguard
A Frenchman protecting your secrets is the theme of the viral launch page for this iPhone app.
Nizo
Another launch page for an iPhone app. Notice how the page elements move around.
Kaleidoscope
The landing page for a Mac OS app. Each major feature is given its own section.
Ala
The landing page for a Swiss illustration and interface design studio.

The Last Rocket
Telling a story has a lot to do with authenticity and staying true to one’s purpose. The Last Rocket is 8-bit at heart and conveys it well on its launch page.

Story told exclusively in 8-bit.

Social Proof

Social proof (one of six “weapons of influence,” according to Robert Cialdini) can be a powerful and compelling way to get people to sign up for your service (or at least for the launch news). In a nutshell, the concept states that people will do what they see other people doing. We have seen this demonstrated with the viral invitation system used by Forkly and the social network-only system used by Connect.me. A complementary feature would be to showcase your sign-ups or Likes front and center on the home page.

Gidsy
Gidsy is an online marketplace, and as such it needs the trust of the community. Therefore, the company shows the love it’s gotten from real users on its home page, along with two key elements: a few explanatory words, and a sign-up form with a call-to-action button. You’ll find a button labelled “Host an activity” in the header, although the service is not yet fully operational. By checking it out, however, a lot of people will be convinced to come back once it’s ready to go.

Elements: copy with slogan; subscription form; call to action in the header; social proof.

Fellody
Fellody has taken quite an interesting approach with social proof and exposure. If you’ve signed up and uploaded an image to your profile, the picture could be included in the background of the home page.

Fellody is a music social network with dating elements, so showing off its members to prospective users makes sense.

Elements: social proof.

Honestly.com
Right after you sign up (through Facebook), Honestly.com sends you an email showing your friends who have already signed up. It establishes trust in those few moments after sign-up, while helping you find people you know on the service.

Elements: confirmation email (social proof, instead of the usual gibberish).

Fab
We saw earlier with Justin Bieber on Instagram how social proof from celebrities can create an instant surge in traffic and sign-ups. Ashton Kutcher, who actively invests in start-ups, knows this well. Whichever start-ups he invests in get not only funding but an instant push in visibility. Fab is a start-up that recently pivoted from Fabulis and has gotten funding from Kutcher among others. TechCrunch even did a celebrity endorsement face-off between him and Kevin Rose.

Element: social proof from celebrities.

Sharable (i.e. Viral) Content

Another strategy for gaining traction ahead of launch is to create sharable or viral content. This could be anything that people want to consume and that solves a problem they have. (KISSmetrics covers the topic in depth on its blog.)

BestVendor
BestVendor shared a statistical document on its blog (“The Startup’s Toolkit”) that was picked up widely in the blogosphere and start-up world, which is exactly the market it is targeting. Its launch page, however, is a simple sign-up form for collecting email addresses.

BestVendor shared its document “The Startup’s Toolkit.”

Visual.ly
Visual.ly spread around its video explaining what its service is about, along with its “Coming soon” page. The video was well done and for that reason was shared by others.

A good video is enough to get attention.

Fake Readiness and Skip “Coming Soon” Altogether

Recently, doubt has been cast on the effectiveness of these viral launch strategies. Some of the criticism questions how much a sign-up is worth if people don’t really know what they’re signing up for. Turning someone who has signed up into a user after launch could prove very hard. So, you could skip the “Coming soon” approach entirely and make it look like you’re ready for users to sign up. Make the launch page look like an actual landing page for your product.

By skipping the “Coming soon” page, you can test your idea on visitors directly. The goal is still to get as many sign-ups as possible, but in the process you are gaining validated insights into your start-up. Is your page ready, but no one is giving you their address? That’s a good sign that you need to clarify your vision.

Joel Gascoigne, who launched his start-up Buffer that way, has this to say:

“Treat your idea as a hypothesis that needs rigorous testing, and treat the emails as people who are happy for you to get in touch to discuss your product idea further in order to validate that it would solve a real problem for them and that they might actually pay. I don’t think the idea of having a conversation with the people who give you their email comes into the minds of new start-up founders enough.”

EyeEm
EyeEm currently has an Android app out in the wild. And if you browse the company’s landing page, you might assume that the iPhone app is ready to download, too. But if you hover over the iTunes button, it lets you know that it’s “Coming soon,” and then you can leave your email address on the dedicated iPhone launch page. You sign up for an email notification by setting up an account, so once the app is out, you’re already registered and ready to use the product (you will no longer see this, since the launch has now been done).

EyeEm’s App Store button tricks you into thinking that the iPhone app is available.

The OpenFeint Bluff
The developers behind OpenFeint, the social gaming network for iPhone, started with a bluff. They sent a press release to TechCrunch and got the blog to cover the story, which claimed that they were almost done and would be releasing the product soon. Only after many people signed up did they decide that building out the concept was worthwhile; till then, they had not written a single line of code. So, they worked away at it for 45 days straight. The company later sold for $104 million.

Websites That Respond to Visitors

Thermo
Thermo, the landing page for an iPhone “pocket thermometer,” does a great job of telling you what the app does and being responsive to you. It tracks your location, fetches the temperature there and then displays it in a graphic on the left. Moreover, the developers allow you to tweet the results (not unlike what Shuush does), thus gaining even more exposure.

Thermo responds to your location and temperature.

Sign-Ups as a Qualifier

Joel Gascoine proposes taking the conversation with prospective users to the logical next step. Whenever someone signs up or tries to sign up, you could give them a few questions to answer. There’s a thin line, though, between annoying visitors (and thus driving them away) and making them feel valued.

Monotask
Monotask asks subscribers key questions that will immediately inform its product decisions before launch.

This looks like a normal, simple launch page.

After you sign up, Monotask asks why you subscribed and how it can build a great product for you.

Joshua Porter analyzes Monotask’s implementation more in depth in this article “Using Your Sign-Up Form as a Qualifier.”

Make It Easy for People to Love You

The last and simplest advice is this: make it easy for people to love you. This love could be for any number of things: your design, your ideas, your approach. Or perhaps they just love that you make their lives easier in some way. Visitors will always reward you for that.

Akismet
One detail on Akismet’s home page is a good example of making people’s lives easier. When you right-click its logo, a window opens that asks you, “Looking for the Akismet logo?,” followed by links to download it. How many bloggers and journalists try to copy logos into their articles? I don’t know how many, but everyone will love you for such attention to detail and for making their life a little easier.

When you right-click the logo, a pop-up lets you download files in different formats.

Conclusion

The strategies listed above provide a glimpse of how launch pages could be made more intriguing and shareable. Many of the start-ups we’ve analyzed have made use of various strategies to grow their numbers. Most importantly they built a service that people were interested in and they managed to share their vision among the right people making use of the viral loop.

But the list is by no means exhaustive and certainly the launch page was not the only reason the services took off. A well thought out placement in blogs, social media and among friends is often a necessary accompanying move. However: the launch page is always the first thing a potential user sees of a new idea and it would be wise to cater for the best possible conversion right there.

by martin

Reasons why e-mail (marketing) is still important

E-mail marketing

Social media is more than a buzzword. It’s now a lifestyle decision for a lot of companies. Many individuals and organizations have abandoned a traditional Web presence (which used to mean a website and email address) in favor of a Facebook page coupled with a Twitter account.

So, where does this leave email? Has the @ symbol lost its meaning as an address, and instead become the signifier of a Twitter name? I think that we need to radically reconsider our approach to email in this changing landscape and understand that it can be a powerful tool when leveraged correctly.

Changing Habits

While I disagree with the assertion that “social is killing email,” evidence shows that email use among the younger generation is declining: a 59% decline among US teens between December 2009 and 2010, according to comScore. In the same study, only the over-55s had increased their use of email. This is especially significant if it represents a long-term shift away from email and towards social media and SMS as preferred methods of communication.

Losing Faith In Email

Email has been around forever (it predates the Web), so it’s not surprising that, for some, it has lost its lustre. For one, it’s not exciting enough; other social media platforms have come with fanfare. Twitter has hosted world headlines, and Facebook has been the driving force behind many campaigns. In 2009, a Facebook Group even succeeded in getting Rage Against the Machine’s single “Killing in the Name” to the UK’s “Christmas number one” spot ahead of the X Factor single.

This level of drama appeals to business types who like their social media “sexy,” and for this reason Twitter and Facebook push all the right buttons around the boardroom table. By comparison, an email marketing campaign may seem tired and old fashioned.

Email4 in Email Is (Still) Important And Here Is Why

Email in a social media landscape.

For another reason, it lacks tangible value. Valuations of Internet companies (and particularly social media giants) have skyrocketed. In May of this year, LinkedIn was valued at $10 billion (roughly 41 times its 2010 net revenue). Facebook is still a private company, but rumors of a public offering in 2012 include a valuation that could reach $100 billion. While many in the industry see this as a portent of a second dot-com bubble, for a lot of businesses it is simply a compelling reason to invest in these services.

Email is non-proprietary, which means that no one is pushing its agenda, and, unlike the LinkedIns, Groupons and Facebooks of the world, it cannot attract a market worth. Value theory tells us that if something has no market value (such as air, water, etc.), it is often taken for granted. I think email has suffered a similar fate.

Finally and perhaps most significantly, it lacks the pack mentality that most of social media thrives on. Despite the growth of marketing, email is still mostly private. No one knows which lists I am subscribed to or who I write to from the privacy of my inbox, even if by virtue of Facebook they know what I ate for breakfast. In stark contrast to the insidious evils of “like” culture, my email behavior does not broadcast itself all over the Internet, which for marketers is a decided disadvantage.

Email Is A Currency

Email3 in Email Is (Still) Important And Here Is Why

The currency of email.

Everyone Has It

It’s true that email is fighting with other services for online communication, but it is still ubiquitous in a way that other social media networks are not. As of May 2010, 39% of US Internet users had never used a social network, compared with only 6% who had never sent or received an email. If you want to reach the majority of your audience, email is still the safest bet.

It’s a Unique Identifier

It’s worth noting that people tend to be members of multiple social media websites simultaneously, with varying degrees of involvement, but they usually have only one or two active email addresses. The email address remains the unique identifier online; you use it to log into almost everything, so it would take a lot for it to become obsolete.

It’s a Coveted Resource

According to research conducted by the Direct Marketing Association, email marketing is expected to generate an ROI of $44.00 for every dollar spent on it in 2011. This is due in part to the fact that more customers are engaging via email: 93% of email users have opt-in relationships with a consumer brand, as opposed to 15% on Facebook and 4% on Twitter (according to Chris Brogan, president of New Marketing Labs).

This value has been recognized by most social media networks. Facebook launched Messages, which provides each user with an @facebook.com email address, because it understands the importance of email in the social graph. Google+ is also tying email more directly into social media activity, blurring the distinction between the two.

Overcoming Obstacles

I hope I’ve managed to convince you that email is still a powerful part of your social media arsenal. But before you leverage it to the best of your ability, let’s understand some of email’s most notorious limitations.

Email2 in Email Is (Still) Important And Here Is Why

Understand the limitations imposed by email.

Spam

This incarnation of junk mail is relentless. It plagues users, who must be cunning to distinguish genuine mail from hoaxes. Email clients require elaborate algorithms to sift the wheat from the chaff. And perhaps most vexing, Internet marketers have to struggle to get anything commercial through to their subscriber lists.

Unfortunately, Twitter and Facebook are not safe havens either. Business folk are not the only ones taking a bigger interest in social media; scam artists are, too. As of April 2011, spam alone occupied seven full-time employees at Twitter. This is a drop in the ocean compared to email (over 73% of all messages sent are spam), but it might be a relief to hear that we are experiencing the lowest levels since 2008; at least things are looking up!

Broadcasting

Social media networks encourage multi-way conversations between many users. Even those who are not involved directly in the conversation can often “overhear” what is happening. Email is much more direct; it is usually between just two people and does not invite additional participants. Understanding this limitation of email will make it your greatest ally. Unless an email is personal, it will not get a response; however, it is one of the best ways to deliver direct messages, such as newsletters and alerts, which do not invite discussion so much as action.

Presentation

HTML email is far more effective than plain text for marketing, but you’ll need to know the tricks to make it look good across different browsers. Writing code for email usually means going back to 1998, which is enough to put most people off it entirely. Luckily, Campaign Monitor and MailChimp offer some great templates to get you off on the right foot. But make sure to use a tool to test the email across different clients before clicking the “Send” button, or else you could do more damage than good.

Making Email A Part Of The Conversation

Bonnie Raitt once sang about giving people something to talk about, and that’s what you have to do with email marketing! Spark that discussion and keep it going on your blog, Twitter and Facebook.

Email is difficult to ignore. Unlike social media streams, in which content is disposable, an email demands your attention until it is read. Use this to your advantage: write newsletters; push your most engaging content in front of your users; adapt your offers so they match your audience.

Email1 in Email Is (Still) Important And Here Is Why

Use email to provoke conversation.

Also, email is a much calmer medium. Inbox zero is a difficult (yet achievable) goal, whereas staying on top of every stream, tweet and status update is not only stressful, but well nigh impossible! With email, you can take time and give thought to your words; you can dedicate some time to the person you are communicating with. Email not only gives your thoughts some room, but gives you time to write them down clearly.

If you’ve heard of the Slow movement (which advocates a cultural shift toward slowing down life’s pace), then you might want to consider how email fits into Slow Marketing. Is it possible that cultivating brand advocates over time who have more than a fleeting interest in your product could bring long-term benefits? Could you talk to these customers in a more respectful way, one that leads to substantial, meaningful conversations?

Think Twice Before Hitting “Send”

If you’re not put off by the shortcomings of email and you find 140 characters more limiting than liberating, then you’re well on your way to incorporating email in your social media campaigns. Chances are your email subscribers are your most loyal audience, so treat them with respect (which means offering valuable content, and not too often), and they could become your greatest advocates.

While reams of articles are devoted to creating social email campaigns, here are just a few tips to get you started:

Have something to say.
Sounds simple, but while your daily musings are permissible on Twitter, your email audience will be less forgiving.
Make it digestible.
Email doesn’t limit your word count, but you’ll need to apply some editing of your own. If it’s a long article, include an excerpt and link through to the website for the full story. This has the added bonus of enabling you to track the most popular items.
Be regular.
Set a schedule of emails that you know you can keep to. A monthly or quarterly newsletter can be a good guide.
Be personal.
Tailor your tone to the audience. Most email services offer invaluable segmentation tools. You wouldn’t speak to your spouse the way you talk to your bank manager; neither should you address your entire audience the same way.

Don’t forget that email is only half of the conversation. Find out where your readers hang out (you can use their email addresses to locate them), and continue the discussion there!

by martin

Resources to help you make the most of CSS in Email

E-mail marketing, html/css, HTML5

With funky CSS support and coding practices from circa 1994, designing HTML emails might seem like rocket science. Thankfully, quite a bit of solid documentation exists on effective HTML email design, so below is my recommended reading list if you want to take your newsletters to the next level.

Getting Started With HTML Email

“Design and Build an Email Newsletter Without Losing Your Mind (or Soul)”
“Rock Solid HTML Emails”
An excellent starter tutorial.
Premailer
For moving CSS inline.

HTML and CSS in Email Clients

Mobile Email Design

Style Campaign blog
“What You Can Learn From Panic’s Approach to Email Marketing”
“Mobile Email Design in Practice: The New CampaignMonitor Newsletter”
“Optimizing HTML Email for Mobile Using Progressive Disclosure”
“Finger Snafu”
I highly recommend this post to mobile design enthusiasts.
“Make your HTML Email 5× More Mobile Friendly”

Email Design Inspiration and Templates

by martin

What’s next for HTML Email designers?

E-mail marketing, html/css, HTML5

So, while CSS-unfriendly desktop clients and Web email clients like Gmail will always be here to rain on our parade, the good news is that the rise of mobile email has meant that we may soon be at liberty to create more Web-like email experiences. It has also meant that optimizing your newsletters for handheld and touch displays has gone from being a “nice thing to have” to a given. This doesn’t just affect email newsletters at the code level, but it also changes the way we display design elements. For example, in the following two mobile designs, which do you think is the more effective call-to-action (CTA) button?

Touch6 in From Monitor To Mobile: Optimizing Email Newsletters With CSS

Or consider the CTA in the following mobile-friendly email. If it’s not visible “above the fold,” as they say, then will it be seen at all? Or worse, will recipients end up accidentally tapping the toolbar instead?

Touch4 in From Monitor To Mobile: Optimizing Email Newsletters With CSS

If designers aren’t asking these questions, they sure will be soon. You need only visit Style Campaign’s blog (which provided the examples above) to grasp the importance of solid mobile design.

Here are a few other important things to consider when designing adaptive layouts:

Single-column layouts that are no wider than 500 to 600 pixels work best on mobile devices. They’re easier to read, and if they fall apart, they’ll do so more gracefully.
Links and buttons should have a minimum target area of 44 × 44 pixels, as per Apple guidelines. Nothing sucks more than clouds of tiny links on touchscreen devices.
The minimum font size displayed on iPhones is 13 pixels. Keep this in mind when styling text, because anything smaller will be upscaled and could break your layout. Alternatively, you could override this behavior in your style sheet.
More than ever, keep your message concise, and place all important design elements in the upper portion of the email, if possible. Scrolling for miles is much harder on a touchscreen than with a mouse.

Now it’s your turn to design wicked HTML email newsletters that, with a dash of CSS, look just as effective on the small screen as they do in your Web browser or desktop inbox. I have no doubt that your readers will appreciate the effort.

by martin

The CSS support in Email today

E-mail marketing

When I mentioned that a lot of CSS properties out there work fine in many email clients, I wasn’t trying to be vague. Thankfully, the research into what works and what doesn’t has already been done. You need only skim this guide to CSS support in email clients to see what properties are within and off limits. Or just know that most of your CSS rendering troubles will come from Outlook 2010, Lotus Notes and Gmail, due to their refusal to do anything useful with CSS style sheets.

These issues are nothing new. Indeed, the battle for market share between email clients that play nice with CSS versus those that don’t has been pitched for years now. But progress is being made. Looking at the data from over 3 billion emails sent, we found that mobile email clients have gained ground dramatically with the growth of mobile professionals. In fact, one in five emails are now opened on a mobile device. Here is how desktop, Web and mobile email clients have fared comparatively over the last two years:

Email-client-growth in From Monitor To Mobile: Optimizing Email Newsletters With CSS

Desktop, Web and mobile email client market share, 2009 to 2011.

Mobile’s ascent is great news for email designers everywhere for one reason: roughly 75% of mobile email is read on an iOS device. iOS devices use the Webkit rendering engine, which means they can display really nice-looking HTML emails.

Our friends at Panic (the creators of such popular Mac titles as Coda and Transmit) were well aware of this when they got started on their email announcements. As purveyors of Mac software, they can pretty much always count on their emails being read in Webkit-powered email clients like Apple Mail and the iPhone. As a result, they’ve been able to pull a lot of CSS3 trickery out of the toolbox, including border-radius and text-shadow:

But what really impressed me was their use of CSS3 animation. Check out the mesmerizing glowing button effect in this video:

To sate your curiosity, here’s the code they used to achieve this effect:

`1`	`-webkit-animation-name:` `'glow';`

`2`	`-webkit-animation-duration: .7s;`

`3`	`-webkit-animation-iteration-count: infinite;`

`4`	`-webkit-animation-direction: alternate;`

`5`	`-webkit-animation-timing-function: ease-in-out;`

And you thought HTML email was a boring medium? Well, to temper things a bit, CSS3 still has very limited support beyond a handful of Webkit-powered email clients, so use it with discretion. But with that in mind, let’s look at Panic’s newsletter again, this time on the iPhone. For comparison, here it is both with and without a @media query (which calls the mobile style sheet):

Panic-iphone-comparison in From Monitor To Mobile: Optimizing Email Newsletters With CSS

Let’s now look at how you can optimize your email newsletters for small displays as well.

by martin