Archives for the Email Marketing category

Most marketers are aware of ‘no go’ words for subject lines and content when it comes to avoiding spam filters. However, even if you don’t repeat the words ‘Free’ or ‘millions of $$$’ throughout your email you may still be making some simple mistakes that could result in your email landing in the junk folder of some or many of its intended recipients.

Take a look at this guide for what you should and should not be doing when creating your email campaigns. If you want to really get to grips with how to send powerful, effective emails that avoid spam filters, come on our 1-day Email Marketing Workshop. Not convinced it’s the right strategy for your business? Read this post on why you really need to be using Email Marketing.

Do:

Use double opt-in

Spam filters are becoming increasingly aware and are strict when it comes to defining what is and isn’t permission, and individuals are more inclined to just chuck emails into the junk folder if they don’t remember signing up.

Rather than run that risk, adopt the double opt-in method whereby an individual must confirm via email after signing up that they do really want to receive emails.

It might seem like a hassle but it will save you lots of trouble down the line.

Use an obvious and recognisable sender name

Simple really –  if a recipient can’t work out who the email’s from straight away, they’ll bung into junk without a second’s thought.

Use a clear and concise name, with no unnecessary numbers or letters – and make sure it’s the same/as close to the name they’d have seen when signing up. Read the rest of "Emails Going Straight to Junk? Email Campaign Dos and Don’ts"

Posted by Aaron Charlie in Email Marketing, Marketing, News on January 24th, 2013| No Comments »

Welcome to the second instalment in our ABC of Email Marketing series, giving you a snapshot of what you’ll learn on our Email Marketing course. If you missed it make sure you read the first post - A is for Above the Fold! If you’ve already seen it, or you’re only interested in Bouncing, then read on…

B is for… Bounce

When an email fails to reach its intended recipient, it is said to have ‘bounced’.

No, we’re not talking about the ‘Jennifer-Aniston-as-she-walks-alluringly-out-of-Le-Salon-Expensivé>’ kind of bounce. We’re talking about the crushing disappointment of finding out that a fair number of your recipients wont experience the html wonderland you slaved over for the better part of a bank holiday weekend.

There are many kinds of bounces but all can be divided into two categories – Hard Bounces and Soft Bounces. Read the rest of "What Is An Email Bounce?"

Posted by Philippa in Email Marketing, Marketing, News on October 9th, 2012| No Comments »

Yesterday we brought you the complete coverage of day 1 of Brighton Digital Marketing Festival (#bdmf12), it’s great to be able to say that there’s a whole other day to go!

We’ve written up all the speakers in this post, but still have some video to work on so keep your eyes peeled for that. If you want to see more photos taken on the day head over to our Facebook page where we’ve added all our favourites.

Follow us on Twitter for live tweets, talking points and a good dollop of controversy.

Charlie Peverett, iCrossing

BDMF Day 2

Keynotes

Allister Frost, Managing Director, Wild Orange Media & Ex-Microsoft
Microsoft, Marketers & the Psychology of the Social Web

Yesterday’s keynotes were something special, so Allister Frost and James Hamlin had a tough job on their hands. Allister from Wild Orange Media certainly got us off to a great start with his psychology focused presentation. Neuroscience is tough work at the best of times, let alone a Thursday morning, but it definitely got everyone’s brains into gear.

It’s often easy to just do in marketing, without really thinking why. If you think that’s you then it’s a shame you missed the talk! We will hopefully be providing video next week.

Here are the key points:

• 10 years ago, there was a scarcity of spectrum. There has been a major switch to a scarcity of attention. The number of channels we have to pay attention to is staggering.
• What people want and what businesses think they want is often very different – especially on social media
• Marketing is a dirty word – people hate us. We have to make marketing noble again.

So how do we combat this?

Using social proof, contrast, hidden delights, commitment, reciprocity and visual stimulus.

We will go into a lot more detail on these next week as the whole subject deserves its own post!

As an example of what to expect – have a look at the FedEx logo. Have you noticed the little arrow before?

James Hamlin, Marketing Director, Seatwave
How to Market 6 Million Great Times Using the Right Combination of Email Marketing and Social Media 

The second keynote was from James Hamlin of Seatwave who took us through a week in the life of marketing an online ticketing service.

Turns out James only finished the talk this morning as it was based on last week and the build up to Lady Gaga’s gig at Twickenham and how they adapted their marketing style through the week and focused on mobile and social to drive last minute sales.

One of the most interesting points was that the closer to an event, the heavier the use of mobile and social. 10 minutes before the event was due to start there were people tweeting tickets for sale for £8!

There was also a good example of driving engagement – providing a photo booth at venues and running campaigns where people would take a photo in the booth (with props) and set the photo as their Facebook profile picture.

The most useful lesson for other marketers was about Facebook integration. Seatwave.com is heavily integrated with Facebook – you can see tickets your friends have bought and artists they are interested in for example.

They’ve also worked out that not everybody wants the same service or advertising – a hard rock fan isn’t going to be interested in Britney Spears tickets - so they’ve introduced a personalised area where you tell them which bands you like and receive updates based on your preferences. If you can do this, we highly recommend you do. It’s very easy to put off customers with a wide marketing strategy that alienates different niches.

Oh, and apparently marketers like boobs – this was the second talk of the event featuring them!

Read the rest of "#BDMF12 Day 2 – Brighton Digital Marketing Festival"

Posted by Craig Charley in Blogging & Content Marketing, Brighton, Email Marketing, Marketing, News, PPC, SEO, Social Media on September 13th, 2012| No Comments »

It’s a busy time for marketers Brighton this week with Brighton Digital Marketing Festival (#BDMF12) running Wednesday & Thursday and BrightonSEO (#brightonseo) running on Friday with some extra workshops the day before! We have tried to cover the lot, with round ups, analysis, photos and videos from the talks we found the most interesting.

We were live tweeting during all 3 days, and you can check out our BDMF Storify at the bottom of the post to see the reaction on Twitter from attendees.

If you missed out (or attended and want to learn more) then don’t forget that we offer a wide range of SEO, Social Media, Content Marketing and Email Marketing courses which are a great way to begin or enhance your digital marketing learning.

In this post we’ve written up a brief summary of each talk, but we have also written individual posts for the most interesting talks. Keep on reading for a round up of the day or scroll straight to the bottom for the Storify! We have also covered BDMF12 Day 2 in another post.

BDMF12 Day 1

Keynotes

Matt Curry, Head of e-Commerce, Lovehoney
The Things We Do for Love (honey)

What a start to the day! Rude words and sex. Matt Curry is a self-professed ‘nerdy statistician’ who happens to work for an online sex shop, having previously sold hot meals to old people.

During an entertaining opening talk, Matt focused on the power of love in marketing. Expanding this concept, he claims that people don’t want to give us their info, so how do we love people we don’t know?

Using Lovehoney as an example, Matt’s main point was how important it is to test and to understand demographics. For example, how do they market differently to ‘unsatisfied traditionalists’, ‘tepid explorers’ and ‘free enlighteneds’. This is important because a product that would appeal to free enlighteneds would frighten off unsatisfied traditionalists.

Matt devised a system that ranked users based on what they are into – we don’t even want to think what interest the 5th scale!

Unfortunately, this system was ruined by a rather famous book called ’50 Shades of Grey’ which completely transformed the ‘tepid explorers’ group and pushed them to search out more ‘extreme’ products.

This brought the talk onto testing, something Matt doesn’t believe marketers do properly. For example, Lovehoney tested 24 different versions of a front page image. Although it turns out that ‘boobs always win.’ Read the rest of "#BDMF12 Day 1 – Brighton Digital Marketing Festival"

Posted by Craig Charley in Blogging & Content Marketing, Brighton, Email Marketing, Marketing, News, PPC, Web Analytics on September 12th, 2012| No Comments »

As part of a new series we’re going to take the time to sift through the complicated world of Email Marketing and attempt to decipher some of the weird and wonderful terms and phrases bandied about by the Pros.

As is often the case with a burgeoning industry, the Email Marketing world is awash with acronyms, abbreviations and jargon; so, if you’re constantly confusing you’re A/B with your B2C then you’re in the right place.

In the wise words of Julie Andrews, let’s start at the very beginning, a very good place to start…

A is for… Above the Fold

This expression is used to describe the area of your email that will be seen immediately by the recipient without having to scroll down.

Back in the days when newspapers ruled the roost (remember them?) Advertisers and Editors were most interested in the top half of the newspaper as this could still be seen after the Newspaper had been folded up for distribution. This is where Headlines screamed and the best danced like chorus girls desperate for the limelight.

Unlike a newspaper though, an email is affected by how the recipient views it – there’s a massive amount of choice nowadays as to how we can set up our inboxes. Everyone seems to have their own preferences for managing the influx of information that bombards them each day, what’s yours? Read the rest of "The ABC of Email Marketing: A – Above the Fold"

Posted by Philippa in Email Marketing, Marketing, News on August 29th, 2012| 1 Comment »

Here at Silicon Beach Training we have a great offer on our SEO, Social Media & Internet Marketing courses in Brighton. We recognise that these disciplines overlap more than ever and a well rounded marketing team must have experience in all areas to succeed.

Our 5 day ‘Pick ‘n’ Mix’ deal is just £995 + vat. Pick from any of the courses below to create your own 5 day custom package:

You can take these courses at dates to suit you (visit the individual course pages for upcoming dates) or you can complete the training in the same week with one of our suggested packages. Call us on 01273 622272 to discuss availability.

Not sure which package to pick? Here is an overview of each course to help you understand how they work together as a complete online marketing package: Read the rest of "SEO, Social Media & Internet Marketing ‘Pick ‘n’ Mix’ Training Packages"

Posted by Aaron Charlie in Blogging & Content Marketing, Brighton, Email Marketing, Marketing, News, Offers, PPC, SEO, Social Media, Web Analytics, WordPress on May 9th, 2012| 1 Comment »

Brighton Digital Marketing Festival (BDMF)

Another day, another conference – the Brighton Digital Festival rolls on, and on Thursday 8^th September we attended the Brighton Digital Marketing Festival (or #BDMF / @BDMFest) at the Pavilion theatre – organised by Pure360.

You can read our write up of the Update 2011 Mobile development conference on Monday 6th September here, we are  also attending BrightonSEO on Friday 9th – see #BrightonSEO 2011 – Attracting Quality Links.

The four morning keynotes at BDMF were crammed in to a 2 hour session with no breaks – so it was an intensive morning with some numb-bums by the end, but covered a wide range of digital marketing disciplines well, including social, mobile, and eMail marketing.

Our round up of these sessions is below, and we’ll be writing up some of them in more detail soon with some video too…

Mark Kelleher from BBC Technology at BDMF

Keynote – Mark Kelleher, BBC Technology Social CRM Approaches, Risks and Futures

In his very energetic and highly entertaining keynote, Mark Kelleher shared some of his experiences of Social CRM (SCRM) at the BBC, and gave us some advice on the challenges of implementing a social CRM strategy, along with some thoughts on its future.

How is Social CRM different from ‘standard’ CRM’?

Mark started by summarising what sets SCRM apart from the ‘database-of-customers-to-market-to’ approach of traditional CRM. They key difference he highlighted was that with SCRM you are no longer the sole voice of your brand.

He used Dr Who as en example – in the 11 years between the ‘old’ series and the series with Christopher Ecclestone, hundreds of videos had been posted on YouTube and fans had taken ownership of the Dr Wh0 brand.  This generated a huge buzz around the launch of the new series which worked in the BBC’s favour.

We’ll publish video with a full write up of Mark’s session later – but the key takeaway points were:

• Create a buzz and let go – people will find their own value in your messages and content – you can’t tell them what you want them to think any more – “customers don’t know how they are going to behave”
• Accept that it won’t always work – SCRM is much harder to predict, so its very hard to forecast ROI effectively – you have to stick stuff out there and see how it develops – some things will flop!
• You can’t be everywhere any more – Because a lot of the channels you use in SCRM are ‘free’ its tempting to want to be on all of them – but there are so many now that this simply isn’t possible. Explore your brand and your consumers’ target channels and prioritise your investment

Mark also provided some good advice on managing the risks of SCRM:

• Try to make sure that your customers want you to have an SCRM presence before you invest heavily in it – this can be hard to ascertain but make sure that what you are doing adds value.
• Prepare to be flexible – Don’t invest all of your time and effort in to one channel or network – be prepared to shift focus as new things emerge
• Don’t wait too long – your brand will be seen as old fashioned if your customers are waiting for you to arrive and you don’t – they’ll take their business to the companies that are there
• Your brand doesn’t have to answer all of the questions people have about you. People like to find things out for themselves (and that’s cheaper for you!) and there are other customers out there who will answer questions for you in the social sphere.

Read the rest of "Brighton Digital Marketing Festival (#BDMF) – Morning Keynotes Review"

Posted by Aaron Charlie in Brighton, Email Marketing, Marketing, News, PPC, SEO, Social Media on September 8th, 2011| No Comments »

Want to create emails directly using HTML and CSS? Great news – we’ve just launched our HTML Emails Training course!

How to Create Email Templates using Dreamweaver

Dreamweaver’s template feature makes it really easy to adapt existing HTML email designs to suit your brand with minimum time and effort. Email Marketing is enjoying a bit of a renaissance at the moment as people are more being selective about whom they wish to receive promotional material from. Keep your emails relevant and well designed and they can be an extremely effective sales tool and a way of interacting with your customers.

To learn more about the effectiveness of Email Marketing you could enrol on one of our Email Marketing Training in Brighton, Sussex.

1. Simply download a free email template from one of the many available on-line, just type in Free Email Templates into Google, this one is a good start. If you know Dreamweaver already and a bit about design you could design one yourself (See our Dreamweaver Training course if you need some help) . We are going to show you how to create the template not how to design it, if you need help with web design we offer a great Web Design Week here in Brighton which includes Photoshop Training for the web.
2. Open up one of the templates (HTML file) that you have downloaded in Dreamweaver.
3. Create an Editable Region by selecting the areas of text or images that you will need to change for each email/newsletter.
   Read the rest of "Email Marketing Using Dreamweaver"

Posted by Heather Buckley in Email Marketing, Marketing, News on October 27th, 2010| No Comments »