Advanced Email Marketing: Landing Page Monetization, Part 3

In the previous two posts, I've discussed three of the most engaging landing pages you have (and that you're almost certainly not monetizing properly), and gave some suggestions for what you could do to change that.

Before I wrap up with the FeedBlitz "how-to" however, one point I didn't emphasize earlier but should is this: You should monetize the landing pages, true, but not the interactions that lead up to them.

By which I mean, don't bling up the subscription form with lots of offers and competing links. You want to draw the subscriber in closer, so make it clear what you want them to do. Don't distract them before they even start the process.

Similarly, you should keep the activation email down to one call to action: Activate your subscription. By all means brand it, but, again, don't add other competing links, distractions and bright shiny objects. You want them to finish the play, so make that the first, obvious and only choice they have.

Obviously, the same applies for your unsubscribe form. You don't want to be reported to your email service provider or the relevant government authority for making it hard to unsubscribe, so don't get in the way on the conformation page. Ask them why they're leaving and let them go. Save the monetization for the page that follows.

Set Up the Landing Pages on Your Blog

You need to decide which landing pages you are going to use and make them. Don't make them as posts, but as pages. Also make sure when you publish the page that you tell your blog to omit the landing page from your site menus and navigation. They should only be reachable as a result of the opt-in and opt-out processes in the email subscriber life cycle.

Now, bear in mind that you don't have to do all three at once in order to be successful. The "check your inbox" page will have the most traffic, but the people reaching the "welcome - you're in" page will probably be the most engaged. I recommend picking either of these as your first page to produce, depending on the programs you have available to monetize with. Leave the unsubscribe landing page until later if you're short on time.

As you build each page, remember too that the job of each page is to inform the subscriber of what to do next and / or confirm what it is they have just done. Make sure that the relevant message is front and center; don't shove it below the fold. After all, you've built enough trust to merit someone wanting to become a subscriber; don't give them second thoughts now.

Setting Up FeedBlitz

In your mailing list's settings, go to Newsletters - Settings - Content Settings - The Basics (v3), or your list's settings page (v4) and look for the three landing page redirect fields. Add the URL(s) of the landing page(s) you've created here and save. If your landing page is a script and can parse incoming variables, you can pass the subscriber's email address into the redirect as well by following the tip on that screen. That's it!  What you then need to do is test that it all works, so log out of FeedBlitz, and then subscribe to your list using an email address you haven't used before. This ensures that you get the same experience as a fresh visitor to your site as you move through the process. FYI there are similar options for autoresponders too - just find the analogous screens and fields.

Test, Optimize, Repeat.

As you build your list, you should start to see increased engagement and monetization from these new pages. Once they're settled in, try changing the offers, the headlines or other elements on the page to see how that affects click through rates from those pages. Optimize steadily over time to grow your business further, and good luck!

   

Advanced Email Marketing: Landing Page Monetization, Part 2

In the previous post I pointed out that there were three landing pages on everyone's web site that are typically ignored or forgotten about from a monetization perspective. They are the landing pages that appear in an email list's dual opt-in transaction cycle:

• The "Check your inbox now" landing page;
• The "Thank you for joining the list" landing page; and
• The "You have been unsubscribed" landing page.

What, then, can you do with these pages to help boost earnings without messing up each page's core purpose, which is to guide / reassure the subscriber through the relevant step of the email opt-in and opt-out processes?

Don't Bury the Lead

Well, the first thing you should not do is build a salesy squeeze page that distracts or detracts or confuses the subscriber. Each landing page has a core mission. So make sure that the basic message of each page - check your inbox, congrats you're in, sorry to see you go - is front and center for each. You need to make sure that the messaging of each page matches the visitor's expectations. Don't hide that core message with flashy bling, confusing text or a barrage of popups.

That said, once your main headline and opening sentence get the relevant point across, you can work on leveraging the engaged reader into something more revenue-positive.

The "Check Your Inbox Now" Page

When the visitor reaches this page, they're about half-way through the dual opt-in process. They completed the form, filled in any squiggly letters in your CAPTCHA, and the activation email is on its way.

The first thing this page has to do is to reassure them of this, and to remind them that they should check their inbox to activate their subscription. What you don't want to do is have them not finish the play, so you do need to encourage them to check their inbox ... eventually.

But since they're here, now, on this page, you have their attention. As they haven't yet fully signed up, it isn't time to ask them to refer your site to their friends; save that for the successful activation landing page later on.

If you're offering an incentive for new subscribers, this page is a great place to remind them of it. Let them know that they will be rewarded somehow when they finish up. Perhaps a 10-30 second video from you would work too.

You can also use this page to promote further activity on your site. A variation on the "sneeze page" theme, this can be a "while you're here, check out our most popular posts" message. It can be two or three of your greatest hits, or a more comprehensive list if your site has enough quality content. It's also entirely appropriate to use ads and affiliate links on this page, provided that they don't distract the reader from figuring out quickly that a confirmation is required. If you have ebooks to sell, or some other service that helps build your earnings, you could provide a prefilled order form. You get the idea...

Finally, if you have partner sites where you earn referral fees, you can offer your nearly-subscriber a set of "we recommend" links or a form that invites them to do whatever your partner site needs. You can't force them into it - permission is required - but it is a way to get paid for leads if the visitor converts on the partner site's page.

When you're done defining the page, just make sure it isn't over done. If there's too much choice you'll end up confusing the visitor and they're more likely to do less, not more. Take time to edit.

Mission Accomplished - Welcome!

The visitor has activated their subscription. Thank or welcome them on this page, of course, and (if you can) set their expectations about how often they will be mailed.

If you offered some kind of reward for new subscribers, this is when it should be fulfilled. If the reward is they are part of a sweepstakes, say, instead of having access to a tangible deliverable, tell them that they've been entered (or whatever is appropriate). Let them know they've succeeded. If you are delivering an incentive, it's also a great idea to use an autoresponder here to deliver it as well as using the landing page.

Now, by getting to this point, the subscriber has completed the multi-step dual opt-in process. That's an achievement! They're pretty pumped. So NOW go ahead: Ask them for a referral. This is the perfect time to ask them to share your site or their new subscription with their social networks. Put big friendly sharing buttons on this page for that purpose, and place a good call to action around them. (FeedBlitz does this for the default landing page we serve, see this blog post).

Moreover, if you have a multiple list strategy in place at your blog, this activation page is a great place to offer additional subscriptions to your site. If most of your readers are joining your main list, then offering niche, category or other lists here is a great idea to bind the new subscriber deeper to you and your site. The deeper in with you they are, the more you can potentially earn. MoneySavingMom.com does this - when you activate a subscription, you're taken to her list of store-specific coupon mailings.

Finally, pretty much all of the ideas I mentioned for the "check your inbox" page will work here too. A little repetition won't hurt. Encouraging exploration - more time on site, more ads to be seen, more offers to view - will also boost your income.

Oh no! You're leaving.

Sooner or later, a subscriber is going to unsubscribe. Don't stand in their way.

But on the page that tells them they've been removed, what you can do is offer them alternative ways to reach you. Perhaps email isn't the way they want to follow you now. You can and should offer the ability to keep up via your favorite social networks on this page - you may lose a subscriber, but gain a Facebook Fan.

If you have multiple lists, perhaps the subscriber is unsubscribing because the list they were on is no longer working for them. Well, offer them your other ones - perhaps there's a better fit there that will keep them in the fold. Remember, people unsubscribe for a variety of reasons, so if all it is that they'd prefer to have a weekly wrap up and not a daily deluge, offer the weekly version here. You never know!

Wrapping It All Up

Next post will conclude this short series, along with a "how-to" implementation guide for FeedBlitz publishers.

   

Advanced Email Marketing: Landing Page Monetization

Landing pages. Generically, landing pages are the pages where a user starts to interact with your site in some way, usually after an search, or possibly clicking on an ad. One of the things that Internet Marketers (and any business online) spend a lot of time optimizing are their landing pages.

The landing page is your last best shot at converting the new visitor into something else: A buyer, perhaps. A lead. A subscriber. A donor. A voter. The point being that you want that new visitor to do something when they hit that landing page, and optimizing that landing page to improve its conversion rate typically leads to more success (however you define that) later on.

Landing pages can be short and sweet, or go all the way through to screenful after screenful of text, with embedded videos, highlighted text - "squeeze pages" in the industry jargon. Optimizing landing pages needs lots of testing. Even simple headline changes, a subtle change in the call to action, or adding a chevron to a button can dramatically affect how well a landing page converts.

Dollars to donuts, you have three highly visible, highly engaging landing pages that you haven't even thought about. And that means you're losing out on potential conversions, and therefore on downstream monetization.

Thinking Harder About Dual Opt-In

The tragedy of most bloggers - which is why I wrote the "List Building for Bloggers" series and subsequent ebook - is that email subscriptions are neglected, forgotten about and generally ignored. Not only is that in and of itself a tragic loss of potential engagement (and, again, monetization opportunities), it also means you're missing out on three critical landing page monetization opportunities.

What are they?  Well, think about the dual opt-in process. You probably haven't for a while, so here's a little diagram as a reminder:

See, after the subscription form is completed, there's the "Check your inbox now" page. It's a landing page.

After the subscriber activates their subscription, there's another "thank you for subscribing" landing page.

The third landing page I mentioned? Happens when a subscriber unsubscribes. They opt out of the list, and a "Sorry to see you go" landing page appears.

Three, very engaging, well-read, landing pages. Have you thought about how to make better use of them? Optimize them? Leverage them to help you monetize your site better? Because if you haven't, you're missing out on some great revenue opportunities.

More on what to do with the neglected landing pages hiding in your dual opt-in process in the next post.

   

Advanced Email Marketing: Suppression Lists in FeedBlitz

In my earlier post about using Suppression Lists in email marketing, I explained how suppression lists are used to restrict to whom a third party an send a mailing. They're important because selling a direct sponsored email blast to your list can be the best form of one-off email monetization available to you, so you need to be able to use them if and when you get the chance.

This post is the promised "how-to guide" for FeedBlitz users who've sold a dedicated sponsorship email and need to use our suppression list feature.

1) Setting Up - Use FeedBlitz v4

Suppression lists are only available in the new FeedBlitz user interface, so you'll need to try that out. Visit http://www.feedblitz.com/f?v4 to start.

Once you're in, Suppression Lists (along with Custom Fields and Surveys) are in the "Publisher Tools" section of the navigation, just under your Sites. Select "Suppression List Management" in the navigation.

2) Import your Suppression List File

You can import into a new suppression list or update an existing one. If you update an existing suppression list, FeedBlitz deduplicates, so that it's safe to re-add the same addresses if all you have is a single monolithic file from your vendor. There's no practical limit on imported list size, but if the upload is so large that it times out on you, you can split it into multiple parts, or ask FeedBlitz tech support to help you out.

As you import the file and further work on your list, you'll see your activity is recorded on that suppression list's page. You can use that information to prove to your provider how you used the list if you need to.

3) Use the list!

Suppression lists are designed for one-off mailings, so you can use them in either Newsflash ("email blast") or On Demand (manually selected posts from your site) mailings. Pick the suppression list you want to use at the foot of the on demand or newsflash page, just under the subscriber segment area.

And that's it; pretty easy. The mailing will use the suppression list to ensure that nobody on the suppression list gets the email, even of they're actively opted in to your mailing list. FeedBlitz won't mail anyone on the suppression list.

Your use of the suppression list is recorded in the list's activity log, and (for newsflash) saved along with the contents of your mailing. If you like to jump start later email broadcasts by picking one you used earlier, your suppression lists selection now comes along for the ride too.  If you want to use a different list (or none at all), simply change your selection in the newsflash email builder while you're editing your copy.

   

Advanced Email Marketing: Suppression Lists

One of the great ways to raise extra revenues from your list is by selling advertising sponsorships. The more responsive your list, the better rate (usually expressed as a CPM, cost per thousand, value) you can expect to get. Higher response rates tend to accompany focused, targeted audiences, so if your site is the industry leader in couponing or IT security or antique french flange sprockets, then you can get a high CPM from sponsors wanting to target your list.

There are several ways to monetize a list via advertising and sponsorships.  These are:

• Ads in your mailings;
• Sponsored posts;
• Direct email blasts.

Ads in your mailings can be included via your email template or the copy of your post; that's easy to understand. They'll typically earn relatively low amounts for you on a CPM basis, but function a little like an ATM machine: they're always working for you whenever you mail.

Sponsored posts are where you are paid a certain amount of money to review or promote a product or service. Again, fairly easy to understand (but don't forget to disclose!). Sponsored posts are one-offs, but will probably make you more money on a per-mailing basis than passive ads alone.

Direct email blasts are where you send an exclusive mailing to your list with just the sponsor's content. It's obviously an ad, it will perform much better than any other form of email list advertising, and is often of the "20% off, free shipping" variety.

Direct emails, like sponsored posts, are one-offs, but they will earn you much better rates than a simple sponsored post or passive ad. This is especially true if you blog often enough that a sponsored post ends up being just one of several in any day's mailing. By making the mailing dedicated to the sponsor, and it being much richer / up-front content-wise than a simple sponsored post, you ought to be able get 2x to 10x your standard sponsorship post rate on a CPM basis for a direct email broadcast. Direct mail on behalf of sponsors can be very lucrative!

Direct Broadcast Email Marketing Issues

Now direct emails come with a number of related issues. Most importantly, how will your audience react? They may object to your "using" them in this way. You can try mitigating that by warning them up front that there's a sponsored mailing coming (and actually spin that as a "bonus" mention to your advertiser). If they're forewarned they will be less likely to complain or unsubscribe, and instead stick around for your next content-related mailing.

Make sure that, if you're typically a blogger / content marketer, your dedicated email blasts are the exception not the rule. The more your list feels "bombarded" or "taken advantage of" then the higher your unsubscribe and complaint rates will become, which will be an unwelcome step on multiple fronts.

Assuming, though, that you can manage all of this, and you've sold a great package to an advertiser that includes one or more dedicated email blasts, what every reputable email advertiser should then offer you is their suppression list. And, if they don't, you should ask for it. Which begs the question...

What is a Suppression List?

A suppression list is basically all the people who have unsubscribed from your advertiser's mailings. If a subscriber is active on your list but has unsubscribed from your sponsor's mailings, then they should NOT receive an email blast from that sponsor via you. In other words, that particular email address is suppressed from your mailing. Your advertiser will provide you with a list of email addresses that you may not mail this way: the suppression list.

Now, you're never going to email people on your list that have unsubscribed from your mailings. Your email app or service won't let you do that; that's standard stuff. What you need to do is have a mechanism to apply the suppression list to your one-off mailings, so that once the sponsored mailing is done, people who are active on your main list but who are also on your sponsor's suppression list will continue to receive your regularly scheduled updates.

(Ab)Using Suppression Lists

Yes, as in many good things in life, there is also a dark side to suppression lists. Here's the thing: They're full of email addresses. It can be tempting to take a peek. For mailers that don't have any scruples, it can be tempting to mail this list anyway, once the email blast is done.

Obviously, anyone who does this would have the ethics of a sewer rat, and that isn't you, Gentle Reader. Equally obviously, though, the people providing suppression lists are aware of these risks because, would that it were different, there are in fact people with the moral values of sewer rats lurking on the Internet.

So you should know that the suppression list will contain emails that are owned by the sponsor, but won't be obvious by their address. They'll be buried in the list somewhere. Not only that, but these addresses will be unique to the suppression lists given to you (in other words, the same list given to somebody else will contain different traps). Bottom line: If any of those email addresses receives an email, they will know exactly where and whom it came from. These addresses are spam traps on steroids, in other words, and you will have no idea which addresses on your suppression lists are real and which ones are the gotchas. So you can't risk mailing any of them, because doing so risks your entire ability to mail anyone in the future.

It's really simple. Apply your suppression list to that sponsor's mailing, and then forget about them. Don't peek. And, for sure, never ever send email to an address that you took from a suppression list.

Suppression Lists - The Flip Side

The other side of suppression lists is when you are the sponsor, using a trusted third party to mail. Many industry journals and magazines have mailing lists that they open up to sponsors. In which case, you will be asked to provide your suppression list to the mailer. You should be able to export your unsubscribed reader list to a simple file format (email addresses, no need for demographics or other data), add some traps of your own if you wish, then send it on to the mailer.

What this means, though, is that if you ever plan on using a third party mailing service, such as an email marketing program run by an industry journal, you should never remove unsubscribed readers from your database. Why? Because you want your suppression list to be complete and accurate. And with a complete list your risk of complaints and unsubscribes is significantly reduced when using a third party service.

Now at FeedBlitz we don't charge for unsubscribed addresses (and you can't get rid of them either), so this risk doesn't apply to publishers using FeedBlitz for their email marketing solution. But other services (a.k.a. ESPs - Email Service Providers) do charge for such addresses, even though they're not going to mail them anymore for you. Crazy, I know. But if you are in that situation and you remove unsubscribed addresses from your list to keep your ESP's fees down, then you may risk higher complaint rates from your mailer when it comes to delivering your sponsorship. If you can, I recommend you keep unsubscribe information around.

Alright. So much for email marketing suppression list theory. Tomorrow, how to set up and use suppression lists in FeedBlitz.

   

List Hygiene, or Cleaning Up Your List, on FeedBlitz

The prior two posts have been talking about list hygiene - keeping your list's quality up by removing non-engaging subscribers - and described how to use a re-engagement campaign to do it. This post describes how to do it in FeedBlitz, everyone's favorite premium FeedBurner alternative.

New FeedBlitz Custom Fields

What you're going to need to do is cast your mind back to Monday (cue wavy time travel / flashback effects) where I described new date-based custom fields. I mentioned that there was a new set of "built in" or "system" custom fields now available in FeedBlitz - Joined, OptedIn, Opened and Clicked.

These are all date fields. They are there primarily to facilitate date-centric email marketing campaigns, such as list hygiene re-engagement programs. You can use them for much more than that, of course, and by the end of this post you'll know how.

The meaning of these fields is as follows:

• Joined: The date the subscriber's email address was first entered onto the list (e.g. via s subscription form);
• OptedIn: The mot recent date that subscription was activated (e.g. by clicking the link in the activation email);
• Opened: The set of dates where an open was recorded for the subscriber;
• Clicked: The set of dates where a click through on any link in a mailing was recorded.

So, if you imported a subscriber, the optedin date will typically be the same as the joined date. Otherwise, the optedin date will always be after the joined date.

The opened and clicked dates represent all the recorded values of an open and a click. How they're all used in segments is pretty easy easy, as you can see from the following examples:

• joined<"2011-02-28" picks all subscribers added to a list before February 28th, 2011.
• clicked>="2011-11-01" includes all subscribers who clicked on or after November first.

Using System Date Fields

One way to use these fields is as a loyalty program. Let's say that you started a promotion on November 1st, 2011 that rewards all new subscribers with sample chapters from your latest e-book. That's great! But somewhat unfair to your established subscriber base.  So you set up an email blast using the segment expression joined<"2011-11-01" and send subscribers meeting that criteria a link to the free chapters. Subscriber loyalty rewarded, trust reinforced. Nicely done!

Or, say you want to draw a random subscriber from the prior month as part of a giveaway. Copy active subscribers from your list to a new one using (say) joined>="2011-10-01" and joined>="2011-10-31" - then you can use FeedBlitz's "random subscriber" feature on this list to pick your winner.

Building a Re-Engagement Campaign in FeedBlitz

And this, then, is how you can build a re-engagement campaign. To keep things simple, we're going to assume that you want to remove all non-responding subscribers who haven't interacted with your mailings since April 1st, 2011.

The segment expression you need is:

optedin<"2011-04-01" and opened<"2011-04-01" and clicked<"2011-04-01"

Why these fields? Use optedin instead of joined because some people may have left your list and come back; optedin makes sure you limit things to people who've stayed subscribed the entire time. Then we add both opened and clicked criteria, since (as I explained yesterday) open rates are typically under-reported, so we smarten the expression up by referencing the click through data as well.

Set up the segment expression at the bottom of the Newsflash screen in v3, or create it directly in the sagments area in "Publisher Tools" in v4. Validate that you typed the expression correctly using the validator, then give it a name and save it: You're going to use it a lot during the re-engagement program.

What you're going to do is send each of the emails in your re-engagement criteria to this segment. In FeedBlitz, the segment is evaluated every time it is used. As and when subscribers that match this segment interact with you campaign or with your main mailings, they will no longer meet the opened and clicked criteria, so they won't be included in any subsequent re-engagement mailings. In other words, there's no need to worry that people who have ben encouraged to re-engage are going to get later messages in the program. They won't.

You send the initial email in your list hygiene program as a newsflash using this segment expression. Wait a while (1-3 days), and then send the next in the series, using the same expression. Repeat until you get to the final "See ya" message. Each mailing should be to a slightly smaller subscriber base than the one before, as people re-engage and take themselves out of the group the segment expression defines.

Finally, you're done. It's time to move the remaining people off your list. Here's how:

1. Create an empty mailing list that's not blog or feed powered, just a simple list. Call it, say, "Non-engaged subscribers."
2. Under Newsletters - Subscribers - Move / Transfer, move (not copy) subscribers from the list you ran the re-engagement campaign on into this list. Make sure you use the same segment expression you used in the newsflashes to select the people who didn't come back.

At this point, the non-engaged subscribers are OFF your list and now ON this new list. Your main list is now squeaky clean and much higher quality.

Fee Reduction with Effective List Hygiene

If you want to save a little on fees, delete this "non-engaged" list under Newsletters - Mailings - Delete.  It's worth pointing out that in FeedBlitz, deleted lists (and also deleted, unsubscribed and pending subscribers) do NOT count for fees. We believe that you're using FeedBlitz to send subscription updates; if there are addresses in your account we're not going to mail (e..g unsubscribed readers, bounces, people yet to complete the opt-in process) then we're not gong to charge you for them. It might save some money on fees; it might not. If you're not sure, contact FeedBlitz tech support to understand any impact it might have.

If you have any questions about FeedBlitz, custom fields, segments or our fee structure, please don't hesitate to contact tech support. Next week, a deep-dive into another more advanced area of email marketing automation.

   

Advanced Email Marketing: List Hygiene, or Cleaning Up Your List - Part 2

In the first part of this mini-series on list hygiene I talked about why list hygiene was a good idea, and outlined a typical re-engagement program sequence that you would send to non-responding readers as part of the process.

Before you head off and do that first, though, a few tips on best practice.

How Many Non-Responding Readers Do You Really Have?

Say your open rate is, on average, 10% on any given mailing. If the same 10% open every email you send, then you will have a 90% non-responsive reader rate.

That's pretty unlikely, though. It's one extreme. The other extreme is that each mailing is opened by a different 10% each time. In that case, over 10 mailings, all your readers will have interacted with your messages and you're golden.

The truth lies somewhere in between, of course, and where that is depends greatly on your audience and how you engage with them.

You should find out, though.

Why? Because the total non-responsive number is the largest number you will actually force off your list. If you have 1,000 people on your list and a 10% response rate, worst case you could end up getting rid of 900 at the end of the process. Is your ego ready for that much of a hit? Is your manager / investor / partner going to be happy? Your advertisers and sponsors? If you use subscriber counts as part of providing "social proof" that your list is worth joining, what might the downstream effect be if that number is crushed at the end of the process?

See, you should occasionally clean up your list. But as well as gaining greater focus and engagement, you're going to end up with a lower subscriber count. Perhaps a LOT lower. Prepare your ego (and warn your associates!) before you begin.

Most email services, FeedBlitz included, will have the ability to tell you more-or-less how many subscribers are going to be affected by the process. If you need to explain, justify and prepare other stakeholders in the process, do so up front. It will help avoid, um, uncomfortable conversations further down the pike. You don't want to finish up with a nicely focused, effective list ... and end up having to prepare your resume because your boss didn't like losing a zero from the count.

One trick you can use is to move the relevant subscribers into a separate list just for the purposes of the re-engagement campaign. That way you know who many you're working with (and might therefore possibly lose) before you even start.

When to Stop the Re-Engagement Campaign

What you really want to avoid is to have your engagement campaign keep running for a subscriber if that subscriber has started to interact with your mailings again.  That's aggravating and likely to lead to a slew of unsubscribes from people whom you were *this close* to winning back as long-term readers.

As you work through the multi-step mailing, make sure that you remove all the subscribers from the campaign that have opened, clicked or otherwise done what you wanted them to do to stay on the list. Depending on the email application or service you're using, that might be handled automatically for you, or may require a little manual intervention. Make sure you know how to do this before you start!

How Often Should a List Hygiene Program be Run?

Well, it depends. If you have a relatively new or highly engaged list you can probably defer for a while. If your list has been around for some time, perhaps sooner rather than later would be a good thing.

What you don't need to do is run this on a daily or weekly basis. That's just silly. A four or five sequence re-engagement campaign will take the best part of a week or two to run if you space the emails out to every three days, so don't make yourself crazy this way.  Most bloggers could probably run a list hygiene campaign at most every quarter and you'll be fine. You can even do it annually.

Once you decide how often you're going to run the campaign, make sure that engagement time span is at least as long as the time between each re-engagement campaign. So, if you do list hygiene annually, I'd recommend that you include people who haven't interacted for at least that year.  If you run hygiene campaigns quarterly, I would say that your cut off time should be at least one quarter, and maybe two.

No matter what, once you have a list hygiene campaign under your belt, you'll be able to look at how well it did and adjust accordingly. So that's one last check box item: Give yourself the time to see how much better open and click through rates become after you run each campaign, so you can see that you're getting the results you wanted from it.

Essential Re-Engagement Prerequisites

If your email application makes tracking opens and click-throughs optional, then you can't run a re-engagement campaign if you haven't enabled those features (you need both, by the way; more on that in a moment). Further, you have to have had these features on for at least the "idle time" you are using as your non-responding criteria. For example, if your criteria is to filter out subscribers who haven't interacted in the last three months, then tracking must have been enabled for at least three months for that list. You can't switch it on today and then expect to have data miraculously "appear" for the last N months. It isn't going to happen. If you must, switch it on now, and set a note in your calendar to revisit list hygiene in a few months' time once you've got enough data safely gathered.

Secondly, as I said earlier, you need to have both open and click tracking enabled. That's because open tracking typically uses an image to track the activity. When the tracking image is served, the image server can note that the image HAS been served and that the email sent to that subscriber has therefore been opened.

The problem is, it's both tempting and easy to draw this conclusion: If the tracking image has not been served then the email has not been opened.

This is not true.

Images - specifically open tracking images - won't be served when they're explicitly disabled by users for privacy or security reasons (image serving is off by default in gmail, Outlook and many other email apps, so this is a very real risk); they may not be fetched in a timely manner by mobile devices or low-bandwidth connections; or the subscriber may be reading the plain text version of your email.

In all cases, the email may well have been opened by the subscriber, but it will remain untracked by your email service. The subscriber will appear to be non-responsive and not engaged with the list, even when they are.

So the reason you add link tracking is simple. If a user clicks a link in your email, then that email MUST have been opened, even if the tracking image itself hasn't been served. Once you click through, whether or not images have been served is immaterial. So link tracking - and using link tracking as a selection criteria - helps keep people off the list hygiene program who shouldn't be on it. Not all of them, mind you, but it's better than the alternative.

The bottom line, then, is this: Simple open tracking is at best only indicative of your true open rate. It will almost certainly be under-reporting the actual number of opens any one mailing is getting.

Re-Engagement: Full Circle

And, ultimately, this is why you need to run a multi-step re-engagement list hygiene campaign. Not only is it simply common sense to try to keep people on your list using multiple triggers and emotions; it takes into account that your non-responding subscriber count is probably over-estimated due to the challenges inherent in open tracking. You will include people in the program who are, in fact, engaging with your mailings, but are simply not being tracked. The multi-step list hygiene campaign will readily find these folks, and help ensure that you don't erroneously remove them.

All clear? Great! Now you know what to do to create an effective list hygiene campaign. Tomorrow, I bring this week's series full circle by linking the new FeedBlitz system fields mentioned on Monday into a how-to guide specifically for FeedBlitz users.

   

Advanced Email Marketing: List Hygiene, or Cleaning Up Your List - Part 1

Why You Should Clean Up Your List

Keeping a good quality list is important, because it means that you can get greater engagement from it, which in turn will enable you to derive greater revenues.

It's also important from a deliverability perspective. ISPs track how many emails of yours are opened, and one factor they use to determine inbox placement is how your list engages with your mailings. The more your emails are interacted with, the more likely they are to be safely routed to the inbox and the less likely to end up in the dreaded junk folder.

Finally, economics comes into play. You might be able to move your list into a lower pricing tier if you can cut some of the dead wood out.

List Hygiene - An Ookie Term for an Important Process

This is the essence of "list hygiene" - a term professional and corporate email marketers use to describe a process used to keep a list down to its most engaged, enthusiastic and committed members.

What you want to do is get rid of subscribers who haven't engaged recently. But what you don't want to do is lose subscribers who might engage soon, still want to hear from you, but have gotten a little lazy or switched off. That's why engagement date fields, as hinted at yesterday, are crucial. They help define the group of subscribers you're going to work with.

So a thorough list hygiene process is based on a "re-engagement campaign," where you try to convince, cajole and coerce apparently non-interacting subscribers into engaging with your content again. This ups the energy level, and means that you get to keep the relationship with subscribers who you can work with more in the future. Everyone else who isn't interested, you can safely clear out.

Elements of a Successful Re-engagement Campaign

So remember, you want to convince, cajole and coerce people into staying engaged. OK, so you can't really coerce them into doing much of anything, so the content plan is simple: Start out all sweetness and light; then ratchet up the intensity until you're done.

Your biggest decision is probably the amount of time you want to use as the non-engagement window. Let's say it's six months.  In that case, you know that there are two core criteria for recipients of the re-engagement campaign:

1. The subscribers much have been on the list for more than six months; and
2. The subscribers must not have engaged in the last six months.

The second criteria is obvious; the first one stops you from throwing out people who joined recently and haven't yet had the chance to engage in many - or perhaps any - of your mailings.

Now instead of throwing these folks off the list in a fit of social media pique, let's send them a sequence of emails, spaced a day or two apart, as we roll the campaign out.

Mail #1 - Hey, Haven't heard from you for a while, are we still friends?

See, I told you to start with sweetness and light (with a side of guilt thrown in - obviously tune the messaging to suit your audience). We just want to make it seem more personal and not a run of the mill blast to our list. If you have custom fields, this is a great campaign to use them in.

What you do in this list though, is set the stage. Tell  them that you really don't want to keep mailing them if they don't want to hear from you, and that's what's behind all this. This initial mailing is also a great place to showcase your popular posts - you want them to engage, so each mailing in this campaign must give them a reason to!

Mail #2 - A sweet deal for you!

As it turns out, many people are lazy, deadline-hugging procrastinators. Come on, we all do it.

It's actually unlikely that your first mailing will have brought many people back into the fold. That's OK - we have a ways to go yet.

With this mailing, then, you want to incent your laggard subscribers. Just as incentives work brilliantly to attract new subscribers to your list in the first place, they can work here too. That incentive could be a coupon, a freebie, a sample from your e-book, some of your time, a transcript of a webcast or an introductory membership in your coaching program. You have to do the work of finding the right incentive for your audience and your site, and that the incentive you use makes sense for you financially, operationally and personally.

Mail #3 - Time is running out.

Tick, tick, tick - Let's make your procrastinators aware that the deadline is starting to lurk offstage, even if it isn't looming directly overhead yet.  Again, you emphasize that you don't want to bother them, but if they want to keep hearing from you they need to act now to avoid being turfed off.  But don't be all stick and no carrot; find something you can offer them that's positive. For example, perhaps they can switch to a weekly version if the daily one is too much? Give them that link here.

Mail #4 - Action Required: Last Chance

Oh my. Now we're serious. The subject line is imperative. The content is short and to the point. You're off, this is it, fix this now! Since you actually don't want to lose someone who actually will engage, perhaps you can remind them of all the reasons to stay you delivered in emails 1-3. But this is the last chance. You mean it!

Mail #5 - Bye Bye, Baby

This is it. The subscriber hasn't responded, and you've had to let them go. Let them know to confirm you did this (it's OK, you chose to get rid of them; they didn't unsubscribe). And give them, like on "Who Wants to be a Millionaire," a lifeline. Tell them how to get back onto the list, and perhaps you can leave them with a reason to do it, or a small gift to thank them for their long-standing subscription.

Moral: Don't burn your bridges when you run a re-engagement campaign.

Tomorrow: Setting expectations, protecting egos and list hygiene process implementation tips.

   

FeedBlitz Founder Video Interview

Recently published by Bob Andelman, aka "Mr. Media" - here's a video interview with me on lists, email marketing and blogging.

The original post is here at Bob's site - http://www.mrmedia.com/?p=2334 - or you can catch the interview below:

List Building for Bloggers interview with Feedblitz founder Phil Hollows! from Bob Andelman on Vimeo.

   

Blogging Myth: The "Newsletter" is Different and Special

I'm often asked whether FeedBlitz, as well as doing RSS to email, can cover a blogger's "newsletter" as well.  People who ask this usually do so for a couple of reasons:

1. They have a separate weekly or monthly newsletter list that they don't want to overwhelm with daily posts form the blog;
2. They like to write "special" content for the mailing list so it is not just a recap of blog posts.

So can you do this in FeedBlitz? Yes, via our Newsflash feature.

But you shouldn't! Here's why:

Everything is Bloggable

If you're writing special editorial for your mailings list in the form of a newsletter, there's no value in limiting your content to just the mailing list. If you wrote that editorial as a blog post, it would be archived on your blog, be indexed by search engines, and you'll influence a wider audience. Don't just mail it, blog it!

So what you write instead of a "newsletter" is a weekly wrap up on your blog - perhaps on weekends when things are more quiet. Consistently tag / categorize it "Weekly Wrap" or "Newsletter." @CopyBlogger does this each and every week; it's a great way to summarize your week in a single post and to add extra editorial if you want. If it's good enough for Brian Clark and his hundreds of thousands of subscribers, it's good enough for you!

How Not to Overwhelm your "Newsletter" Readers

Easy: Only mail them the weekly wrap up, as opposed to your "blog subscribers" who get everything.

Here's how.

1. Clone your blog's list in FeedBlitz via Newsletters - Settings - Clone.
2. Change the name of your new cloned list to "Weekly Newsletter" (or whatever you want to call it)
3. In Newsletters - Settings - Content Settings - Tag Filters, set the include tag to be "weekly wrap" (or whatever you decide to categorize those summary posts with)
4. Import your "newsletter" subscribers to the list
5. Done!

All you do to create your "newsletter" is post a weekly summary (which also goes to your regular readers, as well as generating google juice and SEO points for your site). Then FeedBlitz mails it out to your "newsletter" list automatically - without sending them the other posts, thanks to the tag filter.

It's probably less work for you, so you save time producing the "newsletter" plus you get the SEO benefits and an online, indexable archive on your blog, none of which you'd generate doing your "newsletter" the old fashioned way.

So that's the myth of the newsletter debunked - your blog can generate it just as easily as you can any other RSS to email mailing. In fact, it's better all around, thanks to the SEO and online archive benefits.

Get FeedBlitz to Produce a Weekly Wrap Automatically with No Extra Effort

If you don't want to add extra editorial (i.e. no weekly wrap up blog post) but you do want to send a weekly summary to a group of subscribers, you can automate that in FeedBlitz too.  You create your clone, but instead of setting a tag filter, you set it to have a weekly schedule and abridge the post content.  Once a week FeedBlitz will generate a nice digest of your week's posts and mail it out to your "newsletter" subscribers - zero extra work for you. All you have to do is import the subscribers from your legacy newsletter service.

So don't let your existing legacy newsletter hold you back. Using your blog and FeedBlitz together to generate both newsletter and bog / mail subscriptions is easy, saves you time and better for your SEO.

   

8 New School Ways to Build Your List Using This 50-Year-Old Technology

The room was filled with bloggers of all ages. I was giving a presentation at BlogWorld Expo and I had lured these tech-savvy bloggers to my talk on the premise of unveiling the 50-year-old technology that was the hidden profit center of their blog.

What is this 50-year-old technology that I speak of? It's e-mail, and specifically marketing via e-mail. Now I feel like I'm preaching to the choir, but let me explain.

First of all, e-mail is not a new technology, it's not a cool new start-up that is getting a lot of buzz. It predates the Internet we know and love today, and was used by university researchers to share data.

But before you start saying that e-mail is irrelevant in our social media world, let's look at a quick study done by Microsoft and picked up by Mashable, which I believe highlights why it's so important to keep building an e-mail list even if you are building an online presence through social media.

You see, people are using e-mail more than ever. According to the study, 96% of people are either increasing their use of email, or keeping it stable. Only 4% of respondents use email less than they did last year.

People who are active on social media tend to use e-mail even more than other people. Surprising? Maybe, but I think it just means that we are becoming more interconnected and we want to you stay in touch with the people who are providing us with entertainment and value online.

So how do you build your list in this world of social media without defaulting to to 50 year old email techniques?

1. Value first

Build your list by offering something of value up front, and continuously sending the best quality stuff to people on a regular basis.

2. Exclusivity

Be upfront about what's different for people who are on your list, versus people who read your blog, versus people who follow you on Google plus or twitter.

3. Make it easy

It's easy to think that everyone in your target market is on social media, but depending on what type of market you're in e-mail is still going to be the best means of communication. So make it easy for people to sign up via e-mail.

4. Push versus pull

E-mail allows for permission based marketing. To top it off, most people are checking their e-mails on a daily basis, versus people who might not even see your message because of the number of friends they have on Facebook and how much activity is taking place.

5. Don't send people away

Your e-mail list should be the biggest ad on your website. Do not send people away from your site by allowing them to click on an ad that makes you pennies. You could be building a long-term relationship with someone after they become a subscriber, and that is worth more than a few cents.

6. Speak to one person

It's easy to start looking at your list as a mass of people, but you need to remember that these are individuals and you should address your e-mails to a single person. That way every person who reads your e-mails feels special.

7. Consistency is key

Make it easy for yourself to remain consistent with your publishing schedule. Don't try to pack too much into your e-mails but rather attempt to deliver the most value in the most succinct and easy to absorb way possible.

8. Ask for what you want

Ask people to share your e-mails or your free gifts with their friends and family. Your content is new to people who have yet to discover you, even though you might be tired of talking about it. You have new fans that have yet to discover you.

Let's do it!

Keep on building your list, because e-mail is here to stay. There are plenty of ways to differentiate your list from those of your competitors and most of the advice comes down to being a good listener and treating your people like gold.

Leave a comment below and let me know what one tip resonated with you the most!

About the Author

Nathalie Lussier is an online business triple threat, she combines marketing with web design and technology. Find out more about building your list by watching her free list building webinar here, and you'll also receive her free weekly Getting Techy With It newsletter.

   

Coming Soon: The List Building for Bloggers E-book!

List Building for Bloggers will soon be available as an eBook! I can't wait to have this see the light of day, as well as being just in time for my List Building for Bloggers session at Blog World Expo, New York.

The book contains additional new content, new illustrations and consolidated tips to help you rejuvenate your email list building activities with very little work.

When it comes out, I'll be thanking FeedBlitz clients with super-special customer-only pricing for the first couple of weeks, so watch out for that. FeedBlitz News subscribers will also get a good deal!

In addition, everyone will get the chance to pre-order at a simply insane price that will only be available for 48 hours once it's released. News next week on where to go and how to secure the "Phil is out of his freaking mind" launch discount.

Finally, we will be welcoming affiliate sales of the book. You'll be able to keep at least 50% of the sale price your sales make, so it's a standout opportunity. I'll have a full blog post to talk about affiliate pricing once the pre-ordering pages are ready to roll.

   

Your Email Marketing: DIY or Outsource, Free or Paid?

My goal with this final post in the current List Building for Bloggers series is to help you frame the questions you need to answer to find the best fit for you, in terms of going DIY (Do It Yourself) or using a third party email marketing service; and paying or using a free option. In this article I will discuss:

• Back to Basics
• Planning
• Minimizing list management technology changes
• Understanding the true cost of "free"
• DIY server restrictions
• Understanding free service volume limits
• Features
• Support
• When to DIY
• When to FREE
• When to PAY
• Three Real World Examples
• Your Mileage May Vary
• And, Finally...

Full disclosure: Obviously, I run a service and I’m skewed to thinking that’s a good idea. Don't say you weren't warned...

[This is the latest article in the List Building for Bloggers series – Click here to read all the recent #LBB posts]

Back To Basics

Throughout the List Building for Bloggers (LBB) series I’ve been emphasizing permission and relevance above all for success with your email marketing and subscriber growth efforts. The reason for this is that with permission and relevance you get better deliverability – your email is much more likely to make it to the inbox, and much less likely to be flagged as spam.

I’m emphasizing this point – again – because in this post I’m going to offer some tips on choosing between running your mailing yourself, or whether / when you should use an outsourced service. Deliverability is key. If the mail can’t get through, you’ve failed.

For the purposes of this article, the DIY option includes any software or service that you run on your own servers, since that means that any email you send goes through your mail servers, and that’s a critical for deliverability (see this earlier LBB post).

The Difference is Planning

Minimize list management technology changes

One of the things that can really mess up a mailing list and your success with email marketing is changing how you run that mailing. Every time you transfer subscribers from one app or service to another, you risk losing some of them according to the provider’s import policies (see the section on importing in this LBB post); you may experience significant delays if your new technology requires subscribes to resubscribe (FeedBlitz doesn’t), or if your new provider requires your list ot be vetted before mailing can begin (again, FeedBlitz typically won’t make you wait). Changing email servers and technologies might also require white list changes by your subscribers, further complicating inbox deliverability.

So, in a perfect world, you need to minimize the number of times you change list management systems for the life of your blog. It’s much less hassle all around.

What this implies, then, is that you need to think about where your list is now, how large you expect it to become and how quickly, because list size is a significant limiting factor on DIY implementations; I’ll get to this later when I discuss mailing volume limitations.

Understanding the true cost of “free”

Free is a compelling price point, no doubt about that, especially if you’re just starting out and don’t have many subscribers (yet). But free usually comes with extensive limitations: No support, limited features and no subscriber import (FeedBurner). No phone support (some services). Volume limitations (fairly close to bait and switch, in other words). Deliverability nightmares. Who needs that?

For apps that are free and limit your feature choices, you need to think about how much you intend to use your list in the future.

For apps that are free but have no – or restricted – support, do you have the time to dig into issues with ISPs, blacklists and logs to resolve deliverability problems? Do you have the time to figure out why an email did or didn’t go out, or why it looked that way?

Because in the real world, time is money. Consider: How much do you / would you charge for your time? If you’re spending time self-supporting your mailing list app, what is that time being NOT spent on (the “opportunity cost” in accounting-speak). Is spending time self-supporting the best use of your time and resources?

Let's make it really clear how much free really costs you by attaching some dollar numbers to it.

For the sake of argument, and to keep the math simple, say your nominal hourly rate is $60. If you spend just 5 minutes a day managing your mailing list during the work week, that’s 110 minutes per month on average. So your not being able to have a service do it for you is costing you $110. Put another way, if  your ad revenues are such that every post you write makes you $100 ad revenue a month, and you can write two extra posts in that 110 minutes, you just missed out on $200 of real money. Total cost of "free"? $310. 

It gets worse if you’re constructing your newsletter by hand instead of using an email marketing automation solution like FeedBlitz. If you spend an hour a week on your weekly newsletter, in addition to anything else, that’s costing you $240 a month in your time alone at $60 / hour, and if that’s 4 blog posts that could have been written instead, a financial loss of $400 in terms of revenue you didn’t see. That service (free or otherwise) is costing you $640 a month even when it “only” takes an hour a week of your time.

Yowzers.

This is why FeedBlitz exists: automating these tasks practically eliminates these chores, saving you time and, hence, money.

But I digress...

DIY server restrictions

For most bloggers, a DIY solution means sending emails via your ISP’s email servers. Most ISPs and hosting services will strictly limit the number of emails that can be sent per day, because they don’t want their systems to be tagged as spammers (remember from earlier posts that IP sender reputation is the #1 factor in good deliverability). That number is usually in the 250-1000 emails per day range.

If you think your list has a chance of growing to be in this range, you’re going to exceed your ISP’s limits quickly and you’ll need to outsource to a dedicated service anyway.

Again, if you do end up with deliverability problems, or a subscriber saying “I didn’t get your email” – then what? You need to access logs (if they exist), interpret them (if you can) and then figure out a solution. Which is part of the deal if your day job is email marketing, ISP relations and server management.

But wait, yours isn’t, is it?

More on free and volume limitations

It’s also worth noting that some “free” solutions are for list sizes under some number, which might seem pretty large and decent to you at first, and also limit you to the number of emails you can send per month for free. At which point of course, comes the switch, and you have to pay.

For the sake of argument, let’s say the limitation is your list must be under 500 subscribers and you can send 5,000 emails for month for free. To keep the math simple, let's further assume that your list size is 400 subscribers, as an enthusiastic / professional blogger / content marketer you post once a day during the week, and your automated mailings are sent on a daily schedule if there's new content.

In this scenario, you hit the volume limit, without any list growth, in the third week. Gotcha!  The larger the list, the sooner you hit that limit. And now you have to pay. It isn’t really going to be free after all...

Well, perhaps then you can scale back to a weekly mailing? Oh, wait, you can’t, because these services don’t have a weekly automated mailing option (unlike FeedBlitz, which does). Well, OK, so instead you go to a manual mailing – but now "free" is costing you $640 a month (see the calculation further up) in your time / opportunity costs, plus your relevance just cratered because mailings are reaching everyone days late.  Or you can just write less – only you’re a content marketer, and that’s a quick way to lose your audience to a competing site. Not an option.

Does that sound like a win to you? Well, not for you, no. For the service, yes, because you pretty much have to upgrade to keep going.

Feature Creature

Of course, every email service or app is different. Broadly, though, you can consider categories of capability that you can use or grow into as your subscriber base expands. I’ve discussed these in earlier posts on growing your lists here, here and here, and discussing things like autoresponders here.

At a high level, this is checkbox stuff – and remember, even if you’re just starting out in bogging, you want to minimize the number of times you change services. So these questions apply to both “now” and “in the next year or two.”

• Do you / will you want to say “thank you” or run time-based drip marketing or email courses? Then you need autoresponders.
  
• Do you / will you want to automate the email process completely from your blog, or spend time constructing additional editorial content (why? Seriously, why is this not on your blog anayway?) and manually building your mailings? If you want to spend your time in things you’re good at and creating compelling content, a service must have blog-powered automation.
  
• Do you / will you want automated mailings from your blog (a la FeedBlitz) but want to offer different schedules for different audiences? Then you need a solution with automation AND schedule flexibility.
  
• Do you / will you have the time and energy to manage and maintain an email app on your own systems, or do you have more valuable things to do with your time? If the latter, run with a service.
  
• Do you / will you use video in your blogs? Then a solution that automatically handles embedded video is a requirement.
  
• Do you / will you need segmentation, personalization and demographics? Then you’ll need custom fields.

Support

Sooner or later, you’re going to need help.  Getting set up, changing a setting, or dealing with an issue. Can you fire off an email, pick up the phone? If not, what other resources are there – user forums? (yuck, see here what I think about companies that abandon their product support to user forums).

Now it may be that not having true support is OK with you, especially if you’re blogging casually for kicks and not for greenbacks. But the more important the blog becomes to you and your income stream then the more important your list and deliverability becomes. A snafu at the wrong time can kill a campaign, event or special offer. Who are you going to call if and when that happens? Access to knowledgeable support is invaluable when you need it.

The devil (or God, depending on your perspective) is in the details of course. But at least answering questions like these can help you make the best informed choice you can.

When to DIY

• If your list size is going to remain below your ISP’s volume limits (250-1000) for the foreseeable future;
• AND there are no better ways to spend your time (and money) than to install, manage maintain and self-support the app for the foreseeable future;
• AND you can handle deliverability / IP reputation issues from your server(s).

Only go DIY if your needs match all these criteria.

When to FREE

• If your list size is low enough to qualify for the free service for the foreseeable future;
• AND the feature limitations are not important to you for the foreseeable future;
• AND price is the most significant factor;
• AND the lack of prompt available support is not an issue;
• AND you can trust deliverability.

When to PAY

• If your list will outgrow your ISPs of FREE service limits;
• OR your content marketing will result in many email sends a month;
• OR you want expert support when you need it;
• OR  you want features like multiple lists, advanced scheduling, autoresponders, enhanced branding;
• OR  you want to NOT worry about deliverability, subscriber management etc.

In other words, you should plan on paying if ANY of the above criteria match your needs or expectations.

Three Real-World Examples

Google’s FeedBurner is a free service for bloggers that does the basic email service well and there are no list size restrictions. So it’s not DIY, and it is FREE. But there is no support, limited branding, no schedule flexibility and no features like Facebook integration, autoresponders or manual mailings. There’s no subscriber import and no subscriber management API. So it's very limited from a feature set perspective, and so an increasingly poor choice as your blog becomes a larger part of your income, marketing and branding strategy.

On the other hand, FeedBlitz is a PAY service (fees start at only $1.49 for very small lists) for bloggers with all the bells and whistles. Read more about us here.

Of the more traditional services serving small business and personal markets, Constant Contact is probably the best known. They’re feature rich, lots of service and oodles of support. But the service comes with higher entry costs, and charges extra for features such as archiving that other services bundle. Crucially for bloggers, all mailings have to be built by hand – they automate delivery, but not production. So you need to understand the extra hidden costs to you in terms of time and money building the mailing (there's that $640 a month again), as well as their service fees. If you’re not a blogger or content marketer, they may well be a great fit for you because you can't automate it - but then why are you reading this? Hmm...

[I haven’t any installed software examples because, honestly, anyone with any list of any size should not, in my opinion, be taking on the time burden, deliverability risk and feature limitations of self-installed email list management software. But you should certainly do your own due diligence if your email marketing goals match the DY criteria above.]

Your Mileage May Vary

Obviously, what works for you depends on your current and expected needs in terms of email marketing, and how that fits into your overall content marketing / blogging / social media efforts.  My goal with this final post in the current List Building for Bloggers series is to help you frame the questions you need to answer to find the best fit for you.

Good luck!

And, Finally...

I'm wrapping up this series here - it's been both fun and challenging to write, and I hope that you've manage to get something out of it.

I'm not, however, done with the concept! There will be a full recap post (maybe more than one) to come, and I'm using this series as the basis for conference presentations at Blog World Expo in New York this Spring, and at the Savvy Blogging Summit in Colorado in July. If you're at these events, please stop by and say hello.

Not only that, though. I'll be making a special announcement May 1st about the series that I'm pretty excited about! So stay tuned for that too.

About List Building For Bloggers #LBB

Written by Phil Hollows, the FeedBlitz Founder and CEO, List Building for Bloggers (#LBB) is a series of posts to help you make the most of your blogging by harnessing the power and capabilities of email, the universal social network, with your bog and social media communications. No matter whether you're a novice or a more advanced blogger, there will be something for you to learn, apply and benefit from in this series. Click here to read more about #LBB

P.S. If you think your friends or followers would find this series valuable, please retweet on Twitter or "Like" on Facebook using the buttons below. Don't forget to use the #LBB hashtag when you do. Thank you! And if you have a comment, contribution or something else to say, please comment too. :-)

   

HTML Email Design Tips

In this issue of List Building for Bloggers I'll give some hints and tips on making your HTML mails work well in most readers. It isn't a "how to design great looking email" post; it's "having designed your great looking email, here's what you do to get it to look right" post.

It isn't as simple as you might think. It certainly isn't as easy as you want.

[This is the latest article in the List Building for Bloggers series – Click here to read all the recent #LBB posts]

All HTML is not created equal

HTML is the "language" - the code - that web pages are written in. Every web page is HTML; in fact is has to be in order to be a "web page" in the first place. Now, some of that HTML may be just enough to host the Mother of All Flash Objects (e.g. game and movie sites), but they all start as HTML.

As you also probably know, despite one's best efforts, some sites look sightly different, or behave slightly differently, depending on the browser you're using. The more complex the site, the greater the risk that some browser incompatibility will cause something funky to happen.

And it gets worse with smart phones.  BlackBerry browsers, let's be honest, are simply awful. iPhones and Android devices are a whole lot better because they use the same core browser technology that powers Apple's Safari browser (amongst others). But phones have different size screens, and they're typically a lot smaller (not just physically, but in the number of pixels they have) than most computer screens. It all adds to the fun of web site design.

HTML, CSS, WTF?

As well as HTML, graphic designers use a related technology called CSS which helps make sure that the HTML displays (or "renders") the way they want. Like HTML, there are multiple generations of CSS, and each browser supports CSS to varying degrees. CSS is really, really powerful - and can get really, really, complicated - but the tools that graphic designers have rely on CSS to turn the HTML they build for sites into something that, more or less, within a certain degree of acceptability, looks and works the same way no matter where the web page is viewed. CSS is great for web sites; it helps eliminate many browser compatibility problems and makes complex / interesting web sites much easier to build.

So the typical web designer has to deal with all of this in order to get your web site to look good on all the different platforms and browsers that are out there.

It's a lot of work. It's complicated. It's often infuriating, fiddly and tiresome to boot.

They have it easy.

Welcome Back to the Stone Age - HTML for Email

Because it's just worse here in email-land. There are many more email apps (aka "clients") than there are browsers out there. There are desktop clients (e.g. Outlook, Thunderbird, Notes); the email app on your mobile phone, and web apps (gmail, hotmail, Yahoo!, whatever your ISP or cable company gives you).

All of them have different HTML rendering engines. All of them make different decisions about how to render the HTML. And, especially for desktop email clients, people can keep using the same app around for years and years (I still use Outlook 2003 personally, for example). Many of the older ones only have basic support - or even none at all - for things such as CSS.

Oh, and there are some email clients (I'm looking at you, Gmail), where lack of support for these capabilities is a design decision. They could support this stuff (if Yahoo and Hotmail can do a better job at rendering than gmail, it isn't a case of it being impossible). They simply elect not to. Don't like it? Tough luck.

So all the tools, technologies, that your web designer uses to build your beautiful web site? HTML 4, CSS 3? No good for email. Forget it. They're really not going to like what one has to do to get good HTML email rendering across the broadest set of email apps.

Email CSS Compatibility - the Chart of Doom

Corporate email provider Campaign Monitor has an excellent resource they update from time to time on the CSS support each major email client delivers. If you're a graphic design maven, gird your loins and read the whole post there. The chart doesn't yet include Android mobile devices, but since Android uses Apple's WebKit (well, mine does), the iPhone column will do for now. For bloggers, I'd caution that the market shares listed at the foot of the table will probably not reflect your readers' email software use, since you're much more likely to be talking to consumers. As such, webmail services like gmail, yahoo and hotmail etc will have a much higher share of your readership than indicated on the chart.

As a blogger, though, graphic design is no more your job than it is being a full-time email marketer. What the heck are you supposed to do to get your emails looking right across the board, given this degree of complexity?

K.I.S.S.

Keep it simple, silly. The whole chart at Campaign Monitor is useful for graphic designers, but for the rest of us there are two areas that merit picking out.

They are the Notes 6/7 and Gmail columns, and the background and colors sections. Here they are, excerpted (remember, the source post with the whole graphic is here). Just look at all that red:

What you need to internalize from this is really basic:

1. Gmail and Lotus Notes 6/7 really stink at CSS (and Outlook 2007/2010 is pretty odiferous too);
2. Doing anything other than simple foreground colors is asking for trouble.

And it gets worse from there. More advanced CSS used for positioning and what's called the "box model" is inconsistently implemented, if at all. Use these CSS features at your peril.

The Blogger's Advantage

Ok, so this whole HTML email thing is one giant screaming nightmare, right? What are we to do?

Well, it isn't quite as bad as it seems as long as you follow a few basic rules of the road.

Better yet, as bloggers and content marketers, we actually have a huge advantage compared to corporate email marketers building custom "blasts" (ugh) every time they run a mailing. We deliver our messages in consistent form - what most email services call a template - time after time after time. The basic layout is similar every time we mail; only the post content changes. So what you need to focus on is getting the template right; once done you ought not to have to worry about rendering much in the future, provided you're a teensy bit careful with how you build your posts (and more on that below).

HTML Email Rules of the Road

For best results and the most consistent rendering:

1. Don't use CSS at all. Use standard HTML tags - yes, even the nominally deprecated ones - to format your posts and template. So use old-fashioned tags such as the font, b and em tags; and use HTML tag attributes such as color, bgcolor, border, align attributes etc. instead of CSS. Don't use the style attribute; as soon as you do you're going to have rendering problems.
   
2. Never, ever use CSS positioning statements. Use HTML tables to lay out your page. Yes, tables. They work consistently in HTML email; positioned divs won't.
   
3. If you do use CSS for style, specifiy as much as you can as style attributes of the relevant HTML tags. Gmail in particular will simply ignore style tags and the classes / selectors they define or modify. Just to add to the fun and games, CSS will not always cascade as it should in some webmail clients. So if you're getting really fancy (again, don't), you're going to have to specify the style attribute on each tag.  But, really, don't do this. Specify a font, color etc. in the template with the font tag and be done.
   
4. Don't use background images. They're inconsistently implemented, and if the subscriber is viewing with image display off, not having a background can make your email unreadable. In fact, if you can, avoid background colors too. Same reason.
   
5. Don't use external stylesheets or classes. Did you not see the chart? They won't work in gmail at all. They also won't work in any email client where the user has images disabled. Besides, you're not using stylesheets, right?
   
6. Always specify width and height for images. It makes the page look heaps better if there are no images, smooths rendering when images are being downloaded, and for some email clients (Outlook 2007/2010) stops images being displayed as too large or too small if they are downloaded late.

THE BOTTOM LINE: If you build your HTML template and party like it's 1999, you're going to be just fine.

It's also safe to ignore these rules, as long as you're ok with the email not "looking right" in certain email clients. That should be a business decision, though; don't take it lightly. It is also true that you can specify styles and classes (in which case redundantly include them in the HEAD and BODY of the HTML), knowing that email rendering will be better in those email clients that support them. By all means specify that images shouldn't have a border via CSS. But again, you need to know what your baseline is without that support, because you simply can't rely on it.

Other best practice

• Use meaningful alt tags with images. When an email app doesn't display an image, it will typically display the "alt" tag in the box the image would have occupied instead (and if there isn't an alt tag specified, it may display the images URL, which will be very ugly). Why meaningful? Because you still want to get your message to the subscriber. Don't have an alt tag of "logo" - make it "The Latest from " or something. If you have a lot of imagery, see if you can "read" it using alt tags with images disabled. By the way, your blind readership only has this way of "seeing" images. Make your mailing work for them too.
  
• Use a few, small images. The less work your email app has to do, the faster your email will display. Fast is good. Your beautiful 1MB photo will simply stop your mail from displaying right - if at all - for your mobile customer or the rural subscriber without broadband access.
  
• Think about the preview pane. If you only have 3 lines in the preview and the user is going to decide whether to open your mail based on that, get the details up front - e.g. view online, the latest from , new coupon from Target today only etc.

Posting

Once you have your template happy (see testing below), you shouldn't have to worry much when you post. There are a few things that can mess up in certain readers, beyond the CSS tips above:

• Keep the HTML simple in your posts. No CSS! Try to avoid using classes within the post itself.
  
• Always specify image sizes for all images.
  
• Always use alt tags for images. 
• If you have active content (e.g. script, embedded audio, flash, even forms), provide options in your post to access the content if it doesn't appear, because in email it probably won't (well, apart from video, which FeedBlitz fixes for you).
• Don't use MS Word to create posts. It adds lots of CSS and styles and will mess things up royally.

Testing

So there are three main problem email apps. Gmail, older versions of Notes, and Outlook 2007/2010. Most bloggers are unlikely to have many Notes users, and since it's about as useless as gmail, for most of us gmail can be used as a proxy. Once your mail looks OK in gmail with and without images, you're 95% of the way there everywhere else, especially when you follow the other rules.

To quick and dirty testing, then. Send yourself test mails from your system, and view in gmail. View with images on, and then view with images off. Don't like it? Edit, rinse and repeat.

Be Realistic

Finally, understand that 100% perfection across all email apps is very, very hard to achieve. Know your audience; if you have extensive readership on old Notes platforms you should verify your changes on Notes once you have gmail working acceptably. If your audience is using mobile devices more - and who isn't these days? - then consider how your template should change to accommodate the different form factor: Perhaps you can go from a fixed width to a flowing layout? Understand what compromises you are - and are not - prepared to make.

For FeedBlitz Users and Prospects

If you have a template you like from another vendor or service, please contact technical support. We'll be more than happy to help you convert it to our templating tags to simplify transitions.

Next Up

DIY or outsource: some help on deciding.

About List Building For Bloggers #LBB

Written by Phil Hollows, the FeedBlitz Founder and CEO, List Building for Bloggers (#LBB) is a series of posts to help you make the most of your blogging by harnessing the power and capabilities of email, the universal social network, with your bog and social media communications. No matter whether you're a novice or a more advanced blogger, there will be something for you to learn, apply and benefit from in this series. Click here to read more about #LBB

P.S. If you think your friends or followers would find this series valuable, please retweet on Twitter or "Like" on Facebook using the buttons below. Don't forget to use the #LBB hashtag when you do. Thank you! And if you have a comment, contribution or something else to say, please comment too. :-)

   

LinkedIn Totally Blows Email Marketing Opportunity

Oh LinkedIn. Reid. Can I call you Reid? I know we don't know each other personally, but really: we have to talk. Sit down and let's chat.

You see, you just sent me this email about your 100 millionth member. (Congrats, by the way. Impressive).

But, you know, it has issues. It really is, frankly, a horribly missed opportunity. Plus you're breaking the law. Needless to say, that's not good for your pending IPO.

Marketing Fail

This was the perfect, perfect opportunity to give us early adopters something special. Some special feature. Free upgrades. Discounts. Extended trials of your premium services. Anything!

But instead you gave us, well, diddly. You emailed us all but failed to answer the 100 million question: so what? What was the point, Reid?

You just blasted all of us, your early advocates, and gave us nothing. No reason to go back to the site. No incentives. Not even a "hey, haven't seen you for a while, come on back." A little ego pampering about how insightful we are, kinda sorta, but maybe we knew that already, y'know?

Such a wasted opportunity.

And by the way: The Law called CAN-SPAM

Yes, CAN-SPAM is largely worthless. It is, nevertheless, the law. And you broke it, what, a million times?

See, your email wasn't transactional. It was marketing. So the law requires, amongst other things

• Physical contact data.
• Unsubscribe instructions.

And it didn't. Unless I'm blind; here's mine. Did I miss it?

You see, Reid, in the war against spam and in promulgating email marketing best practice, it's important that industry leaders like you and LinkedIn get this stuff right. And you didn't. Not even close. It's frustrating for us toiling away in the field when major Internet firms skip even basic compliance.

So, Reid. If you need an email marketing service or some consulting please do let me know. Happy to help you avoid wasting what is, in other news, a fabulous milestone. FeedBlitz makes sure basics such as compliance and authentication are taken care of for all our users, automatically.

   

Practical Personalization: Birthday Lists

In this issue of List Building for Bloggers I'll step you through using birthday lists to help deliver additional value to both your clients and you sponsors, via custom fields.

[This is the latest article in the List Building for Bloggers series – Click here to read all the recent #LBB posts]

Birthday Lists - The Theory

The idea is to ask the subscriber as they subscribe what month they were born in, and then to email them something special from you - or your sponsors - to celebrate the birthday. Why is this a good thing?

• It helps reinforce the relationship between you and your subscribers;
• It helps incent readers to stick around for their rewards;
• You can sell the birthday mailing to sponsors or use affiliate monetization.

Birthday Month, not Birthday Date

So we're going to ask subscribers for the month they were born: January, February etc. We're not going to ask them to enter their birthday.

Why?

• Choosing a month is easy - there are only 12 options;
• Entering dates is a hassle and error prone, especially if you have international readership;
• We're only going to use the month anyway (mailing them on their birthday is a daily chore - don't want that) - the extra data isn't any use in this case;
• Some people don't want to give their date of birth for a variety of reasons, but just asking for the month is basically harmless.

So asking for the month only make sense all round - less friction, no privacy issues, and much less work for us.

Birthday Lists - The Practice

Setting Up the Custom Fields

[Note: We're going to use FeedBlitz's UI for the step-by-step here, but most email services support this kind of thing too; ask their support function for help] 

1. In FeedBlitz, click the Newsletters tab and pick "Custom Fields" from the left side bar.
2. Click "Confgure Custom Fields"
3. Click the "Add Custom Fields" button

Now let's define the field. Call it (say) "BirthMonth" (without the quotes). Since we want to make sure all the data is entered correctly, and we know the potential choices, define the field as "Choice" - a list is drop down box, which is more compact, whereas radios are easier to use but take up more space.

Now we have to enter the values we're going to allow. January through December, right?

Not so fast.

Here's the planning part. Are you going to require people enter the field? What about existing subscribers who have not shared their birth month with you? What will the default be?

If the field is optional AND you're using the list version of the field, you need to add a 13th option. Why? Because if the user doesn't pick a month the list box will just use the top value; you're going to end up with a lot of folks in January! So for lists, add a 13th value, call it "--Pick Your Birth Month--", give it the undefined value and drag it to the top of the list.

You also need to decide what you're going to store in the custom field - the month name? The month number? FeedBlitz will default to the name you type in, but you can change that to 01 to 12, for example, or the abbreviations like Jan to Dec instead. This matters if you're going to export the data later and use it in another system. Get it right now, otherwise you'll have to "translate" the data when you export it for use elsewhere.

Anyway, by the time you're done, you're going to end up with a screen that looks something like this:

Note that we've made the field optional (so the new subscriber doesn't have to enter it if they don't want to), that it is not hidden on the form, and we've added a prompt and some popup help.

Creating Segments

Let's say, for the sake of argument, that you defined the database values for the birth month to be the abbreviations: Jan, Feb, Mar etc.

Here's the FeedBlitz segment expression that picks all the subscribers, like me, with birthdays in April:

BirthMonth="Apr"

Easy! You can do this when you send your first mailing to your April birthdays (on March 31st in this case) via Newsletters - Mailings - Newsflash. At the foot of the screen you can create the segment expression - and save it for the same time next year. (In FeedBlitz v4, you can define segments in advance, getting the job done much faster).

One List, 12 Segments, Happy Birthdays!

And it's as simple as that. With a simple field, scope narrowed down to keep it simple, your one list has now become much more powerful. No need for fancy triggers or rules or what have you; just a single well-defined custom field.

Wait: What are you going to send?

With the mechanics out of the way, the real work begins: What are you going to send readers on their birthday?

• If you're e-commerce, a special coupon or discount code valid for the month.
• For content marketers, perhaps a special offer on your e-Book or webcasts.
• Service provders - a special consultation, an hour of your time, perhaps?
• For crafters, an appropriate seasonal item or tip.

You get the idea. Everyone of us has something we can offer, and your subscribers will totally value that special something you're giving them. Just make sure it is special.

Next Up

Before I get to DIY vs, outsource, I'll address the audience request on graphic design.

About List Building For Bloggers #LBB

Written by Phil Hollows, the FeedBlitz Founder and CEO, List Building for Bloggers (#LBB) is a series of posts to help you make the most of your blogging by harnessing the power and capabilities of email, the universal social network, with your bog and social media communications. No matter whether you're a novice or a more advanced blogger, there will be something for you to learn, apply and benefit from in this series. Click here to read more about #LBB

P.S. If you think your friends or followers would find this series valuable, please retweet on Twitter or "Like" on Facebook using the buttons below. Don't forget to use the #LBB hashtag when you do. Thank you! And if you have a comment, contribution or something else to say, please comment too. :-)