aaryn.com

Constant Contact --> Your Email Marketing Manager

Email marketing is a great way to connect with your clients and customers. It gives you an opportunity to showcase new services and products, as well as share your expertise (as we did in our first issue of COMMUNICATO). Studies show email marketing can be up to 20% more effective than direct mail, and it is much more cost effective, not to mention environmentally friendly!

Using an email management program can help you manage your list and increases the delivery rates of your emailers. Each email you send gets a "spam score". Email management programs work with Internet Service Providers to ensure emails from their systems recieve a low spam score and therefore reach the recipient. At Aaryn.com we like using Constant Contact. They are the industry leader and have the best overall delivery rates for clients.

How to get started? Sign up for an account at Constant Contact and upload your email contacts. If you would like assistance in setting up your first email template and adding a sign up box to your website please contact us.

Here are some tips for successful Emailer Campaigns:

From:
- Include your company name and use a friendly, easy to identify email address
- 60% of users decide to open based on From:

Subject Line:
- Include your company name again in the subject line and include call to action.
- The entire subject should not be more than 30-40 characters including spacing
- 30% of users decide to open based on Subject Line

Content:
- Share useful information. Educate the consumer with articles and your expert knowledge. They will appreciate the free knowledge and will be more likely to buy your product or service.
- Keep the tone casual and be entertaining!
- Put the most important info in upper left of the emailer.
- Keep your header image area at a reasonable height so users don't have to scroll down for important info.

Images:
- Make every image clickable!
- Put text "alt tags" behind images
- Limit the number of images so the email does not take too long to load

When to Send: (applies to USA only)
- Tues (best), Wed, Thurs
- 10:30 am or 1:30 pm
- Make a schedule ahead of time to determine your send dates
- Fun fact: When addressing a European audience, you will want to deliver your email communication on the weekend. Why? Studies show that Europeans do not check their personal emails at work like we do here in the U.S.

Industry Averages:
- 30% open rate: This is how many users open your email
- 6-8% click thru rate: This is how many users click on a link from the email to your website.
- It takes users 25% longer to read content online verse on paper, so keep it short!
- 19.8% of all commercial email is blocked
- 15% of opened email is not reported as opened. This means your are getting more opens than you think.

Building your email list:
- Make the sign up box very visible on your website. Include a note stating that you will not share their email address.
- Bring a registration book to events and tradeshows.
- If you have a retail store, have the sales clerk ask customers if they will join your list.
- Insert an email signup link into your email signature. See http://www.roncates.com/resources.htm for instructions.
- Offer incentives for users to forward your email to a friend, such as enter them in a drawing for a free product.
- Make "sub-lists" to direct different communications to different types of customers.

What NOT to do:
- Don't farm lists or trade lists with other companies. You will get high spam reports and could get blocked.
- Don't send mass emails from Outlook. Internet Service Providers assign a "spam score" to emails to determine what to filter. Emails sent to a group of recipients from Outlook receive a massive amount of points. You are decreasing your chances of deliverability.
- Don't over communicate with your customers or they will unsubscribe