Neil Berman recently used the analogy of a wedding to explain the importance of planning your marketing efforts, but it got me thinking how much email marketing is like a relationship.

Imagine your prospective recipient’s first visit to your site as the first date.  Perhaps a friend set her up (through a personal recommendation or link from a trusted site), or she used a dating service (you showed up in a Google search).

You begin spending time together, getting to know one another (through browsing and analytics). One click leads to another, and before you know it, you’re popping the question (“Would you do me the honor of becoming my subscriber?”)

She says yes. The wedding is set and when the Priest/Rabbi/Judge asks “Do you..?” (in the form of a confirmation email), she says “I do!” (by clicking the link.)

You embark on your honeymoon (in the form of a Welcome message). You’re staring into each others eyes and laying out the future (setting expectations, collecting more info, adjusting preferences).

What follows is the marriage.  Everything has built to this point, and it is important that both parties are active and engaged and honest.  For example, if one of you has stopped communicating, that’s not good, and could likely lead to the eventual breakdown of the relationship.

From the sender’s perspective, a silent recipient (no longer opening, clicking, buying…) could be due to a number of reasons:
“I need a break” – are you sending too often?
“I’m just not that into you anymore” – content not relevant?
“We never talk” – is your email getting blocked?
“There’s someone else” – in a crowded inbox, someone else is more relevant?
“You never listen” – not honoring recipient’s preferences?
“I didn’t know what I was getting into” – signup form unclear/misleading?
“I’ve changed, you haven’t” – Is your information timely and up-to-date?

While I don’t want to trivialize the complexity of human relationships, I do want to emphasize the importance of planning your email marketing efforts beyond just getting people to sign up.  You want a relationship that is going to last.  Make sure you’re paying attention to the signals and responding to them.  Try something different.  Make your subscribers feel special. If you have a group that’s gone quiet on you and you are looking to re-connect, let us know.  We can help identify where to focus and provide some tips for campaigns to revive the relationship.

Oh, and I can’t leave this whole analogy without going through the signs that it is indeed over:
A hard bounce is coming home and finding her closet empty.
An unsubscribe request is a “Dear John” letter.
An abuse complaint is a restraining order.

Kris Dougherty | Operations

Building a quality email list for your company is one of the biggest concerns when starting and continuing email marketing.  It is important to know when and how to ask people to join your mailing list, so you are not sending people unwanted emails.  Recently,  I stumbled upon an article that presents clear tips to help people grow their email lists organically.

Click here to read 9 ways to build your email list. It is a great resource to start expanding and engaging new users in your email marketing campaign.  By improving your email list, you will see a much greater impact on the success of your campaign.

For further information on growing your email marketing list, take a look at these past Delivra blog posts:

Growing your list: three simple changes that can make a big difference

Snail mail, a way to grow your list?

Lavon Temple | Marketing

When working with HTML in emails it is very important to know what works and doesn’t work.  Below are some tips that can help make sure everything is readable and works well in different email clients.

1. Maximum recommended mailing “weight” is 50kb, which includes the actual HTML document (10kb or less is ideal) to be delivered and all referenced images (40kb or less). Minimize mailing weight as much as possible through image optimization, markup refinement, the removal of all embedded comments and indentation, etc.

2. Layouts should not exceed a web-standard 600-pixel width limit. Layouts should accommodate the resizing of copy by recipients changing their default font sizes.

3. Do not rely on BODY attributes (i.e. – background image, background color, text color, link color, etc.) or markup present in the HEAD of HTML documents, as web-based clients tend to filter out such layout cues prior to final presentation.

4. Do not use any form of stylesheets, whether it be in the HEAD tag (e.g. – CSS) or inline stylesheets.

5. JavaScript should be avoided as many email clients filter it out.

6. Avoid reliance upon the background image attribute. Any kind of background image whether it be in <body>, <td>, or <table> may not render properly in all email clients.

7. Avoid using Image Maps. Many email clients strip out all Image Maps.

For more tips on how to improve your emails, click here for some from our design experts.

These tips are just a taste of the knowledge of email that Delivra has.  Contact Delivra today and be in the hands of email experts to make sure your mailings look great and get out the door.

Patrick Love | Marketing

I don’t know about you, but I’m kind of sad to see that Google has halted the development on their Wave product.

I saw it as a bold re-imagining of email.  Wave was originally introduced to me as “what email would look like if it was developed today” and that’s exactly how I saw it – a more collaborative tool designed around sharing beyond simple forwarding.  Those you chose to share a wave with were now part of the conversation, not just recipients.

The problem, as I see it, is that email DOES already exist and has been such an effective and easy to use tool, that people weren’t ready to replace it.  Blogs, Facebook, Twitter and the like satisfy the need to share (and often overshare).

I understand the low adoption that Google cites as the reason to stop development.  I tried pretty hard to get friends to sign up, and the few that did couldn’t understand why they needed a separate account from their existing Gmail address.  I found the interface confusing (especially for a Google product) and always hoped it would just become a part of Gmail (perhaps a separate box for My Waves).  Having yet another app open all day just didn’t seem logical.

I had mixed feelings when Google introduced the ability to get email updates when a wave was updated.  On one hand, I no longer needed to keep it open all the time.  But it meant that the tool that was created to replace email now admitted that it was reliant on it.

I still have hope that there is a team of mavericks working on it as a business tool.  I think it has a place along side the rest of the apps.  I can see geographically separated project teams using it very effectively to keep everyone up to date on various tasks.

I’m curious, were any of you using Wave regularly or in interesting ways?  I’d love to hear about it.

Kris Dougherty | Director of Operations

For the past month,  we’ve been running our first ever Extreme Email Makeover Contest.  Well, today is the day that the winner is finally announced; actually, because of such a great lineup of entries, Delivra has chosen to award two participants an extreme email makeover.  So,  this is the day the winners are announced.

The winners of the Extreme Email Makeover Contest are…Keeping Indianapolis Beautiful, Inc. and Mainstyle Flooring.

Keep Indianapolis Beautiful is the Delivra client winner of the contest.  KIB is a non-profit organization that supports an average of 500 community improvement projects with 30,000 volunteers.  According to the KIB website, “since 1995, KIB has helped its neighbors plant more then 14,000 trees, and has been supported by more than one thousand individual donors toward these efforts.” KIB entered the Extreme Email Makeover Contest in order to improve their current email template, stating that their current one is “serviceable, and we haven’t changed it in years.”

Mainstyle Flooring is the non-client winner of the Extreme Email Makeover Contest.  Mainstyle Flooring is a small, locally owned flooring company.  Mainstyle Flooring is determined to offer great service to their customers and is always striving to exceed their expectations.  Mainstyle Flooring entered the Extreme Email Makeover in hopes of receiving help to initiate their email marketing efforts.

Delivra is excited to award each of these winners an Extreme Email Makeover and improve their email marketing efforts.  Stay tuned to the Delivra blog because both winners will be showcased in a case study.  Also, for those participants that didn’t win or for those of you who didn’t get a chance to enter the contest, don’t worry – Delivra plans to run more contests! The best way to stay current with Delivra news is to read the Delivra blog or to follow the Delivra Twitter account: @Delivra.

Lavon Temple | Marketing

Click through rates have always been an essential part of the email marketing process.  They help to let you know if your recipients are engaged and interested in what you are sending.  They also let you know if your recipients are reading your emails.  So it is essential to make sure to know how to improve your click through rates.  Here are a few tips that I have found that help to improve click through rates.

1. Make sure your links to other pages are clear.  It is important to differentiate them from the rest of the text on the page.  That way the user can easily find them to click them.  One easy way to do this is use the words “Click here.”
2. Engage the user immediately. Similar to a newspaper, an email should have the important information at the beginning.  The call to action to click should come at the beginning of the message before the user would have to scroll down the page.
3. Use multiple links.  Instead of just having one link toward the beginning of the message, space them out throughout the email.  More links will always give you more opportunities to engage the user.  Make sure they are titled a little differently every time in order to attract different users and not bug the readers with the same words.
4. Use video links.  The popularity of sites like YouTube and Hulu have proved that online video has become very popular. It is easy to entice people with a link to a short video and they have been proven to improve click through rates.
5. Create a clean email layout.  The layout of the email itself has to be simple and easily readable.  It will be much harder for users to find links if the page sent to them is cluttered with images and designs.  This is another case of simpler is better.

Want to learn more about email marketing and how we can help you?  Contact us today at 317-915-9400 or click here.

Patrick Love | Marketing

This is the third installment in my summer book series.

Selling the Invisible, Harry Beckwith’s field guide to modern marketing, has been on my book shelf for over a decade. It’s where I go to find fresh ideas for energizing day-to-day operations. It’s a treasury of hundreds of quick, practical, easy-to-read strategies – few are more than one page long.

Here’s an example, “Don’t plan your future, plan your people. Outstanding people who fit your basic broad vision will tend to make the right decisions along the way, not by following a plan, but by using their skill.”

And another, “Rather than hide your weaknesses, admit them. That will make you look honest and trustworthy – a key to selling a service. Tell the truth. Even if it hurts, it will help.”

Yet one more, “Don’t assume that logical pricing is smart pricing. Maybe your price, which makes you look like a good value, actually makes you look second rate.”

You can’t touch, hear or see services. So how do you develop and make them grow?  Harry provides answers to these fundamental questions.

“A must read for anyone in a service business – which is everyone in business.” Rodger Dow, VP Marriott International.

“The one book on marketing I’d have if I could have just one. A CLASSIC.” Harvey Mackay , author

Neil Berman | President & CEO

Delivra has just announced its first ever Extreme Email Makeover contest!  If your current email design is in desperate need of a major “face lift” and you want to take advantage of the design skills and various other talents of the Delivra team to help then this is definitely the opportunity for you!

Wondering how you can participate and get in on all the action? It’s really simple!  All  you have to do is go to the Delivra Facebook Fan page and click “like” this page.  From there, you can simply upload your current email design.  Then, you can vote on which email you think should win!  That’s it!

The sweepstakes runs through the month of July,  so there is plenty of time to get your emails in. Then, on August 3rd, 2010, after waiting so patiently, Delivra will announce who is in the most desperate need for an email “makeover” – the winner of the Extreme Email Makeover!

Wondering what you win? I thought so!  If the winner is a current client of Delivra, they will receive a custom made, sophisticated email template placed into their established account for use in future mailings.  If the winner is not a Delivra client, they will receive one custom designed email template, one hour of email strategy consultation, access to Delivra 101 and 201, and a 90 day trial account.  Pretty sweet, huh?

To learn more about the Extreme Email Makeover,  you can read the press release located on the Delivra website or go straight to our Facebook page.

You do not want to miss out on your chance for an Extreme Makeover!

Marketers thrive on information about customers and prospects. It’s one of the reasons email is such a powerful marketing channel–the ability to see in real-time exactly which recipients are interacting with your content, and how (opening/clicking/sharing), and to what effect (page hits/conversions).

However, the marketer’s desire to collect as much data as possible, when applied to signing up new email subscribers, can have unintended consequences. Aggressive collection of personal information and preferences can backfire. Here are a couple of ways we’ve seen it go wrong, along with suggestions for avoiding these pitfalls:

1. Asking for too much personal information. Many consumers are concerned about privacy in the digital age, and there is widespread disagreement about how much privacy one should be expected to give up in exchange for the benefits of new technology. Identity theft is a rampant problem, and even reputable brands have been victims of hackers, or otherwise found to have mismanaged personal data provided by their customers.
    
   Given these circumstances, it’s natural for customers not to want to share any more information than is strictly necessary. Therefore, don’t scare them off by requiring them to provide more than is needed to deliver the emails they’re signing up for. If your program truly requires responses in seventeen different form fields, then set expectations clearly about how you will and won’t use those responses.On the other hand, if you don’t expect to use all that information, why overwhelm the user by asking for it? They may decide that subscribing to your email is more trouble than it’s worth. Consider asking for minimal information up front, to lower the barriers to subscribing. Then, after building some trust with the subscriber (by sending relevant content that doesn’t abuse the opt-in permission you were given), follow up with a request for more details to serve the subscriber better, and give some incentive for them to cooperate.
2. Asking for preferences, but not honoring them. Related to #1 above, subscribers tend to assume that information requested on the signup form is somehow needed to deliver the messages they’re subscribing to. If you ask for their preferences about the kind of content they’re interested in, it’s reasonable for them to think that you intend to honor those preferences.
    
   Consider a profile form for a fictional video game retailer that lists all of their product lines with checkboxes next to them. Suppose that a subscriber checks only the boxes indicating interest in “Sony Playstation” and ‘Xbox 360″, but doesn’t tick the box for “Nintendo Wii.” If you’ve recorded these choices, and yet persist in sending the “Wii New Release Deal of the Week” email to your entire mailing list–without regard for subscriber preferences–then the subscriber of our example has reason to feel that you’re sending them unsolicited email. And when users feel they’re getting more than what they signed up for, unsubscribes and spam complaints are likely to result.
    
   The rule of thumb here is simple. In the context of an email signup form, don’t ask what subscribers want, if you have no intention of delivering it. If you seek preference information for other reasons, like trying to decide how to allocate your marketing budget, then consider sending out a survey instead. But definitely do ask my preferences if your aim is to send me the most relevant and engaging emails possible.

Chris Broshears | Product Development

The Business Marketing Association’s Engage 2010 conference held in Chicago the first week of June was an exciting gathering of some of the best thinkers in marketing today.  As each speaker took the stage, the audience found another great nugget to take back to the real world and implement to make their marketing programs better.

Delivra attendees were struck when they looked around the room and saw that nearly every person was engaged not only with the speaker, but was also busy tweeting, emailing, blogging, YouTubing, Foursquaring, or interacting in some other way with their smartphone.

Interested in reading more? Click here!

Neil Berman | President & CEO