The longer the length (in characters) of a B2C email subject line, the higher its open, click, and click-to-open rates, finds Adestra in a July 2012 study of 932 million emails from more than 40,000 campaigns across 6 sectors, sent over a 6-month period. The results show that B2C emails have a below-average click-to-open rate (CTOR) for subject lines between 20 and 60 characters in length, but after that pick up steam, hitting their peak at 150 characters in length. These emails have a CTOR 94.7% above the average (and click and open rates 276.4% and 93.2% above-average, respectively).

B2B emails show a similar trend, though not quite as clear cut. Emails with subject line length of 20 characters performed above-average for all 3 metrics, though the rates generally dipped after that until recovering from 90 characters in length and up. The peak for open rate was 20 characters (24.6% above-average), while the peak for click rate was for 140 characters (82.7% above-average) and for CTOR was also 140 characters (72% above-average).

by Cory Albertson

As smartphones continue to transform the way people use the Internet, there remains incentive on webmasters to create a mobile version of their site. Here is a step-by-step checklist of what you need to do to make sure your site is fit to go mobile.

1. Decide what you need. The mobile world can be overwhelming as there are many providers happy to take your hard-earned dollar to help deliver your mobile site project. But don’t go on a needless spending spree. Chances are high that your needs are fairly basic. A downloadable app is unnecessary if a simple mobile version of your site will suffice.

2. Use the right create mobile website tools. Creating mobile websites is basically a giant pain. Thankfully, there are plenty of start-up companies who have done the hard work for you. Creating a mobile version of your site can now be done in literally minutes by utilizing the right software tools. Mobify is one such very popular tool but can be costly ($250 a month or higher) to receive premium considerations such as their logo not appearing at the top of your mobile page.

3. Bear in mind SEO. Webmasters should understandably be concerned about how a mobile version of their site can impact SEO efforts. Google’s disdain for duplicate content renders it important that the mobile URL of a page is not indexed. This can be fairly easily achieved by using robots.txt to preclude Google from indexing the mobile versions of your site.

Alternatively, your site can be re-engineered to deliver the correct version of the page to mobile users while keeping URL pages the same. However, this method requires considerable more effort. In the absence of strong programming skills, a developer would need to be hired to redesign the site via CSS.
4. Enable your forum to go mobile. Tapatalk is a very convenient tool for enabling your forum users to create posts through an efficient mobile application. Installation is as easy as registering with Tapatalk, providing them with your forum info, and installing a plugin on your forum software. They recently teamed up with VigLink to provide webmasters with a means for monetizing their forum links.

5. Use the right plugins. If your site is WordPress based, WPTouchPro is a great and necessary tool for creating mobile and tablet versions of your site. It’s as easy to use as any WordPress plugin and will deliver your content to mobile visitors in an attractive format. The plugin can be integrated with AdSense or your own custom affiliate deals in order to monetize your mobile marketing efforts.

6. Use an emulator to test the site. Finally, you want to check to be certain that your site is going to look right on a phone screen. Mobile web emulators allow you to test what your site looks like on different smartphones without having to go buy them all yourself. The user agent switcher Firefox plugin is great for viewing mobile versions of your site.

by Shelly Watson

There are about 200 words that can get you into spam trouble with your email content. That’s not to say that you can’t ever use these words, but it is to say that you should minimize them and certainly don’t use them in the subject line. The following short list constitutes what are often referred to as “email disaster words.” If you’re having a problem staying out of the spam or junk folder, these are the words that are most likely to be putting you there:
Free
Visit our website
Opportunity
50% Off
Click here
Call now
Subscribe
Bonus
Discount
Save up to
Winnter
Prizes
Information you requested
Important information regarding
Guarantee, Guaranteed
Special Promotion
Great Offer/Deal
All New
One Time
Order Now
Again, you certainly can use these words in your email, and you’ve most likely seen emails from companies that use these words. Ending up in the spam or junk folder involves a complex matrix and algorithm that’s different for each email service provider. The more that you use the above words, the more likely you are to experience deliverability problems. Be aware of these “disaster” words and know that if you over-use them or begin to experience deliverability problems they could be your likely culprits.

by MC Marketing Charts

Almost 3 in 10 marketers say they have shifted at least half of their marketing spending from traditional to digital advertising over the past 3 years, according to June 2012 survey results from RSW/US. The data also shows that 2 in 3 have moved at least 30% of their budgets from traditional to digital, while just 4% have not changed their spending mix.

These findings align closely with March 2012 results from a DataXu survey, which found about one-third of CMOs saying that more than half of their budgets have shifted from traditional to digital marketing in the past year, with an additional 23% reporting a shift of between 26% and 50% to digital.

by Shelly Watson

Increasingly, mobile phone users impact your email viewing greatly. Recent studies suggest that up to 20% of your users check their mail on text-only mobile phone applications. If your email is a single image, or is based on a great deal of images, you won’t resolve to those users at all.

So, What Should you Do?

Use images. You should just use very few of them and be careful where you put them.

Images definitely have a marketing impact. A portion of your viewers will see them and turn them on. If you just follow these basic steps with images, you’ll be fine. Also, remember that you can do a lot of things just using html tables and colors that will make your email visually appealing AND deliverable.

The Less Than 25% Rule: No more than 25% of the real estate in your email template should be image-based. You want at least ¾ of the email to be readable without images.

Alt and Title Text: This is the text that is contained within your image url that appears when the image doesn’t load (and in some cases appears when your mouse hovers over a graphic). Having this text beneath your graphics is important because you can still convey the message that was in the graphic even if the graphic doesn’t load.

No Trapped Messages! The basic rule is this: “If it’s important that your readers know a piece of information, it cannot be trapped in an image.” All important information, such as price, product title, value proposition and expiration date, must be in html text. This includes “Click to order” buttons. If those are images, you’ll have users looking for where they’re supposed to click, and possibly not finding it. Those should be html buttons.

Images are an important part of any marketing campaign or collateral. However, email presents challenges in that you can’t control how the end product displays to the user in all cases. It’s better to have an email that can be delivered and seen by the user than to have one that looks fantastic, but only when it’s loaded on your computer screen and not when it’s in an inbox!

by MC Marketing Charts

Shipping costs are a key aspect of online shopping for consumers, and there is room for e-retailers to improve on this front, according to a June 2012 report from comScore and UPS. The report finds that while comparison shopping, shipping charges are almost as important to consumers as product pricing (23% and 26%, respectively). And when it comes to the types of discounts and specials that bring customers back to a retailer, free or flat rate shipping deals (54% combined) outweigh discount (36%) and coupon (11%) deals. Despite the evidence demonstrating the importance of free or discounted shipping, this factor topped the list of areas shoppers want to see improved by retailers, cited by 58% of respondents. A significant proportion of consumers also see the need for retailer improvement for ease of returns/exchanges (42%), variety of brands/products, and online tracking ability (both at 38%).

The report notes that examining levels of customer importance and satisfaction reveals that ease of making returns/exchanges is above-average in importance and below-average in satisfaction, while the availability of free or discounted shipping is above-average in satisfaction and slightly below-average in importance. This suggests that retailers should focus on their return policies first before tackling their shipping policies.

by John Duff

Email marketing is an incredibly powerful tool – when done correctly, email marketing can achieve a higher ROI than any other direct marketing method.

In this article we look at four mistakes to avoid.

1. Bad Subject Line

Subject line is the first thing that is noticed by your audience. More than 69% of the times, your email will be deleted just because of your poor subject line. Try to limit your subject line within 5-6 words, avoid using marketing speak or sales speak, avoid the words “free” or “sale” or “save money”, those words will send your email to the spam folder.

You have to make sure that your email “from” line displays your company name or brand name and not some of an employee. The recipient might not know the name of that employee and hits the delete button. So don’t make this easily fixable mistake.

2. Too Many Offers

Send a one concept email, do not list all the opportunities you have available in the one mail message. If it shows that you are using the scattergun approach and are hoping the one of your concepts will entice your readers, then it might go other way.

The person who opens your email does not want to see a whole range of hyperlinks to all your opportunities. In most cases the reader is looking for a specific solution. If your email puts them off because of all hyperlinks and the length of the email they may never open another email from you.

3. Linking to Your Homepage

One of the biggest reasons for poorly performing emails marketing campaign is the lack of linking to the landing pages. For example, if an email is asking the reader to take action (e.g. save up to 30% off on a purchase of technological mailing lists) with a link to the homepage instead of that particular landing page. If you are running a promotion on technological lists, then link to a landing page that contains only the information regarding offers on technological lists. Don’t expect that your readers will dig around your website for the offer.

4. Image Based Emails

If you have the perception that an image based email may attract more attention, then you are wrong. Text only mails have a 40% higher click through rate than those picture emails. There are multiple reasons that this may be, the first of which is that emails are often checked through smart phones and webmail, neither of which displays images as well as desktop client.

If you do use lot of images with a lot of text in them, be sure that you repeat everything in simple text, so that users that are unable or unwilling to see images don’t miss important content.

by Nielsen Catalina

Consumer packaged goods (CPG) brands can experience a return of almost three dollars in incremental sales for every dollar spent in online advertising that has been precisely delivered using purchase-based information, according to research from Nielsen Catalina Solutions (NCS), a leader in measuring and improving advertising performance using purchaser-based analytics.

These findings, based on what NCS believes to be the most in-depth study on the correlation between online advertising and offline purchase, indicate a turning point for the digital medium as marketers seek to better leverage their advertising budgets across multiple channels.

“Not only can we prove that online advertising drives sales, but the returns on ad spends are significant when purchaser-based data is used to optimize the media buy,” said Mike Nazzaro, CEO of Nielsen Catalina Solutions. “The marketer’s ability to precisely reach the desired consumer segment in the right media enabled by shopper-based analytics is changing the way advertisers plan and buy media,” Nazzaro said.

Nielsen Catalina Solutions and Nielsen completed more than 800 studies over the past seven years, collaborating with more than 300 CPG brands and 80 companies to measure the correlation between online advertising and offline consumer purchases.

Sales Return on Advertising Ranges from Three to Five Times Investment
A key metric for measuring campaign success is the ratio of the sales generated compared with the cost of the advertising, typically expressed as a cost per thousand or “CPM.” The incremental sales revenue per thousand households or “RPM” is compared with the advertising CPM to determine the return, or payback. According to Nielsen Catalina Solutions’ research, the average payback for all CPG categories was 2.79, ranging from 2.36 for food items to 5.29 for the pet category.

“These findings reveal an opportunity for advertisers to increase sales by leveraging purchaser data to improve media planning and buying. CPG marketers spent over $22 billion in total advertising in 2011, including $2 billion to $3 billion in the online medium,” Nazzaro said.

by MC Marketing Charts

There are 19 million affluent men on the internet, and they are researching, shopping and spending at rates higher than ever before, according to a survey by iProspect.  Its just-released report “The Affluent Male: What His Online Behavior Can Teach Luxury Brand Marketers” details the preferences, behaviors and attitudes of affluent males toward online advertising. iProspect defined an affluent male as being 18 years or older, with a household income of at least $100,000.

Forty percent of respondents are shopping online at least twice a week and those who shop multiple times spend more than $30,000 annually. Luxury menswear leads as a category, growing at a rate of about 14% per year. This shift in luxury spending means more opportunities for advertisers to target this growing segment, and across all devices.