Email Marketing Tips Checklist: Email Marketing Tips Top 10

If you're considering implementing an email marketing program or are currently emailing but experiencing underperformance, Comm100 provides you in this article with a list of 10 Email Marketing tips that will assure improvement in your email marketing campaigns.

The Top 10 Email Marketing Tips

Despite what you may hear, email marketing is a complicated process with many moving parts. But that doesn't mean that you can't have a successful email marketing program or campaign while keeping things relatively simple. Comm100 has narrowed down the ten email marketing tips that you absolutely must remember. If you follow them, you certainly won't fail!

Email Marketing Tips No.1: Make Sure Your Email Has Obvious Links

The purpose of your email is to drive traffic to your landing page, product page or website. It's really that simple to define the main purpose of an email. Without driving clicks to your page or website, users can't convert to sign-ups or customers. The key to accomplishing this is, quite simple, capitalize on every moment where a user may feel compelled to click. Include lots of links (at least one per paragraph of text) and make sure that your links look like links. Using strong calls to action and even authoritative "click here" messaging will also help you.
Takeaway Message: It's a best practice to have many links and to make sure that those links are obvious to the user.

Email Marketing Tips No.2: Minimize Your Use of Images

We've covered this in great detail in a previous article, but always keep in mind that an email is not a print mail piece. Many (if not most) of your recipients will not see the images included in your email, which means that every image you include can be wasted space. Use well-coded html instead of image heavy design. Never send an email that is simply one big image and certainly don't put any messaging in an image that a user must see to complete the action you want from an email (i.e. "click here" or "order now" messages).

Takeaway Message: Use images sparingly, rely on html to enhance the look of your email and never use an image to convey a critical or important message.

Email Marketing Tips No.3: Make It Easy to Unsubscribe

It may seem counter intuitive to make it easy for a user to leave your mailing list, but the other option is much less appealing. When users get frustrated while trying to figure out how to remove their email from your list, they eventually just start to flag your email as spam. Every user who notes your email as being spam counts against your sender reputation with email providers and makes it harder (and sometimes impossible) to get your email into the inbox instead of the junk folder.

Takeaway Message: Have clear, easy-to-find unsubscribe links that require minimal action from the user to complete the task of unsubscribing.

Email Marketing Tips No.4: Follow Spam Tips EVERY Time You Send Email!

We've also covered in detail the best ways to avoid getting flagged as spam and removed from your users' inboxes, but we can't emphasize enough how important it is to follow those steps. More importantly, it's important to follow them from the beginning of your email marketing effort and to follow them every single time you send. We know that it's tempting to send a harder sales email that trends against some of our advice for staying out of the spam folder, but it only takes one email that looks like its high spam to keep you out of the inbox for weeks, months or years afterwards.

Takeaway Message: Even if it means your email isn't as effective as a sales tool, following all of the steps to avoid being flagged as spam is absolutely, unquestionably critical with every send.

Email Marketing Tips No.5: Maximize Your Email Template Dimensions

You don't have a lot of space in a person's inbox to convey a message, and most of your users will be viewing your email in a preview pane with the images turned off. Make sure that your html email template isn't more than 600 pixels wide and that you clearly get your value proposition and at least one link into the first 100 pixels of height. It won't look as nice as putting a shiny header graphic up there, but it will yield better results. Also, consider a secondary column on the right or left hand side in order to get more information above the fold of an email preview pane!

Takeaway Message: Design for what your email will look like in a 600x200 pixel space without images loaded! How it looks in those dimensions with that restriction is how must users will see the final email.

Email Marketing Tips No.6: Keep Your Text Short and Easy to Scan

Most users aren't going to read the full text of your email. They're going to scan it for key points that they may be interested in. Keep your text short (very small paragraphs or bullets) and use font bolding and additional colors to highlight words or phrases that you know will be important to your users and clients. Too much text will get your email deleted just about as fast as anything, and it creates more risk for triggering spam filters.

Takeaway Message: Less is more! Content may drive the internet, but it doesn't improve email performance. Write concisely, user trigger and keywords and make sure that your most important messages are highlighted or bolded.

Email Marketing Tips No.7: Keep Your Email List Clean

There's no value to not taking the time and making the effort to make sure that you're removing bad email addresses from your house list. Making sure that incorrectly formatted email addresses are caught when somebody signs up and then "pruning" addresses that are returned as undeliverable, non-existent or with full inboxes from your email list before the next send isn't optional if you want to have a successful email marketing program. If your list starts to show a higher percentage of undeliverable email addresses, email providers will flag you as spam.

Takeaway Message: Even if it creates more work for you, make sure that you're pruning your list and removing bad emails from it. The result if you don't will put you in the spam folder!

Email Marketing Tips No.8: Properly Use Alt Text, Title and Linking with Images

Because using images in email can create dead space, maximizing the code behind those images is critical. Make sure that ALL of your images have both alt text and title text as different browsers will read those two types of text differently (Alt text and title text are the text messages that appear when an image doesn't load or when somebody hovers over an image with a mouse). Also, make sure that all of your images are actually links to your landing page or website. This way, at a minimum, your potential image dead space can still drive traffic to your destination.

Takeaway Message: Make sure that all of your images are properly coded. This means not only making sure that the image height and width is properly defined but also that the image has alt text, title text and is linked to a webpage or landing page.

Email Marketing Tips No.9: Send Test Emails BEFORE Sending to Main List

There's nothing worse than sending an email and then finding out that it went right to the spam folder or that something in your email layout broke in Hotmail's email viewer or Outlook's preview pane. Before you send an email to your entire list, send a test version to a test account using each of the big email providers (Gmail, Yahoo, Hotmail/Live/MSN and any account using an Outlook client). If there are any significant segments of your list using another email provider, you'll want to include that in your test as well. If you catch any errors, there's still time to start disassembling your email and fixing them, or remove a problematic segment of your email list.

Takeaway Message: Catching an error in an email sent to a seed address is useless if it happens after you've already sent to the main list. Use your seed addresses to test send to and check formatting and deliverability before you send to the main list.

Email Marketing Tips No.10: Make Sure to Piggyback a Text Version

We've previously discussed how to decide if you should use an html email or a text only email, and our recommendation is that you use both. But, at a minimum, if you are using an html email you must piggyback a text only version of the email onto your send. A number of people do opt to view email as text only, and, increasingly, people are reading text-based email only on mobile phones.

Takeaway Message: Make sure, no matter what, that your html email has a piggybacked text email attached to it! It's that simple!

Bonus Tip! Always Ask Users to Add You to Their Contact List!

At every opportunity, remind users that they can be assured that they won't miss out on the valuable information that they love receiving from you if they add your send address to their email contacts list. The more people you get doing that, the better your deliverability will be!

These ten email marketing tips won't make you a perfect email marketer, but they will certainly make you better than most! Just use these tips as a checklist when putting your email campaign together and you'll be fine!

No matter what email marketing strategy you are taking, the first step to ensure a successful email campaign is to choose a reliable bulk email sender.Comm100, who provides this article, offers you powerful email marketing software, which is both a great long-term and short-term solution to improving your email newsletter program to a new level.

http://emailmarketing.comm100.com/email-marketing-tutorial/email-marketing-tips.aspx

Top 10 Commandments of Affiliate Marketing

Affiliate programs can be a big source of revenue. The key to maximizing your earnings is engaging your readers. Unlike traditional ads where you are paid for impressions or clicks, affiliates are only paid when/if a specific action is performed. The action might be a purchase or signing up for a newsletter, but regardless, you are not paid until you've compelled your readers to act.
With that in mind, here are the Top 10 Commandments for affiliate marketing success.

1. Know Your Audience

The most successful way to use affiliate programs is to anticipate and meet the needs of your readers. Consider why they are coming to your site. What are you providing that they are looking for? Make sure the affiliate products you are promoting provide a solution to your audience's problems.
If you are writing about sports, don't put up affiliate ads for printer toner just because everyone has a printer and those programs have a high payout. The people who are coming to read commentary or get stats for their favorite teams aren't thinking about those things when they're on your site.
The more relevant the ads are to your readers, the more likely they will use them.

2. Be Trustworthy

Readers are savvy. They know an affiliate link when they see one. If you break their trust by promoting a product you don't believe in or take advantage of their visit with too many ads, they will leave and never come back.
It is your repeat visitors that will drive traffic. They are the ones who will give you linkbacks, spread the word, and recommend your site as the go-to place for valuable content. You need to build a relationship based on genuine content.
If your visitors don't think you're being honest, they won't read anything else you have to say.
 

3. Be Helpful

Think of affiliate ads as additional resources that complement your content. Give value to your content by making it helpful, useful, and informative.
Don't put up a list of your favorite books, hoping people will click on the affiliate link, purchase the books (just because you listed them), so you can cash in on a sale. Take some time to write a detailed review, and use affiliate ads to point them in the right direction if they decide to act on your information. That's what affiliate ads are for. If you write a great review recommending a book and readers buy the book because of it, you should get something for that.
But just throwing out links to products with no rhyme or reason will result in a quick exit by visitors.
 

4. Be Transparent

Always disclose your affiliations. Your readers will appreciate your honesty, and will feel better about contributing to your earnings. If they sense that you are being less than honest about your affiliations, they are savvy enough to bypass your link and go directly to the vendor just to avoid giving you referral credit.Honesty and full disclosure is a necessary part to building a loyal reader base. They know they are supporting you by using your referral links. Make them happy and eager to do so.
 

5. Select Carefully

Take the time to go through all the different options for products or services available through the programs. Put some thought into which products or services your readers may need or like. Also, change the ads around often, try different ones, and use different graphics and text to see which are the most effective.
It may take some time before you figure out the best formula, and you may also find that you need to continually rotate ads to attract more attention.
 

6. Try Different Programs

If one particular program doesn't seem to be working for you, try another one.
Affiliate programs don't look the same. They offer different products, services, and payment structures. Some programs will have a lifetime payout on sales while others will limit it to 30-90 days. Some programs allow much more flexibility in the types of ad units available, as well as colors and design so it fits better on your site's layout.

Also, check your favorite vendors to see if they run their own affiliate program. Sometimes you can go directly to the source. You're not limited to big affiliate networks

Integrate systematic ad testing into your strategy to maximize your profits.
 

7. Write Timeless Content

Your old content can still be valuable even though it's no longer on your front page. Take advantage of the long term opportunities by making sure you provide timeless content.

If visitors come across your older content first, and find that it offers dated information, they will leave right away. Of course, information moves forward, so relevant content changes quickly. You can make your content timeless simply by adding links to your updated articles on your old ones.

Many platforms allow you to show "most recent" or "most popular" or "related articles" on every page, so no matter how old the article is, it will always show access to your new ones. Your old content can make money for you indefinitely.
 

8. Be Patient

Affiliate revenue grows and builds up with time. Remember that some programs offer lifetime payouts. If you refer a visitor, you may continue to make money from that one visitor even if he doesn't come back to your site. Also, as long as you have referral links still active in your old posts, they may still payout for you.

Affiliate programs aren't a get rich quick plan, but it provides opportunity to make passive income in the future.
 

9. Stay Relevant

Keep up to date on the latest offerings of your affiliate programs. New ad units, advertisers, and tools are constantly being added to improve usability and be more visually appealing. Small changes go a long way in motivating action by readers. You may be left out in the dust by being complacent with your strategy.

Don't get lazy about monitoring trends and exploring new opportunities.
 

10. Content Comes First

Above all else, your content must be your highest priority.

Your content is your foundation, the life blood on which the site exists. Without valuable and helpful content, readers won't come. Focus on providing excellent content, and the monetizing strategies will work out.

Once you start compromising your content to cater to the affiliate programs or any other money making venture, you will lose your readers. Once that happens, you will lose the opportunity to receive any earnings from any of your ads, be they CPM, CPC, or referral based.

http://onlinebusiness.about.com/od/affiliatemarketing/tp/affiliate-programs-top-10-tips.htm