Four Email Marketing Mistakes, Why They are Horrible for Your Subscribers and How to Avoid Them

As an email marketing program manager (either in whole or, as a part of your job) there are a variety of opportunities that surface when managing your e-mail marketing. The list that follows are common items that email marketers may overlook as well as some suggestions on what to do and why it's important to your email subscribers to fix.

Email Marketing Mistake #1: The Send From Address is a Blackhole

Don't leave your email subscribers out here.

Number one on our list of email marketing mistakes is the send from email address that comes from nowhere. This could be something like info@yourcompany.com or, another equally uninteresting, impersonal and deep black hole. Nothing could sway your subscribers into "unsubbing" faster than receiving a bounced/unknown address email reply informing them that the address they replied to doesn't exist. And not to belabor this point but, it is really frustrating to the subscribers.. as I can personally attest. The fix for this email marketing mistake? It's super easy: Activate the bogus email address you have been using for your email sends and then, do whatever you can to avoid the second email marketing mistake.

Email Marketing Mistake #2: Replies to the Send From Address Aren't Monitored

Don't let this happen. Photo by Justin

Similar to Mistake #1 in this mistake the replies to your from email address actually go to an inbox somewhere... they just aren't acted upon. This is another email marketing mistake that you should do your best to help subscribers avoid.
It stands to reason that if you are emailing subscribers, your subscribers should be able to do the same in return. If someone replies to your email shouldn't you have the ability to act on their: request for more information, sales inquiry or customer service issue? It's entirely possible that a reply email contains your next sales or client retention opportunty. The fix for this email marketing mistake? After each send, wade through the replies to find the hidden treasure.

Email Marketing Mistake #3: Your Subscription/Preference Center Hasn't Been Audited in a Year (or more).

You launched your email marketing with great fanfare and enthusiasim... 18 months ago. Since then, you've discovered the need to refine customer service/CRM data, offer more (or less) subscription options or, changed your company logo/branding. The email program got left out. What's the fix for this email marketing mistake? Update your email subscription center, adjust the form length (is it too long?) and make any other changes that your analytics tells you.

Email Marketing Mistake #4: Your Opt-In/Welcome Triggered Email Series Hasn't Been Reviewed Since it was Implemented.

Similar to the previous email marketing mistake, your email marketing program has been humming along nicely for a while. But, your company recently decided to get involved with Pinterest, Facebook or, otherwise refine your social media strategy. Unfortunately, your email welcome series still refers new subscribers to be a friend on MySpace or doesn't mention that you have a Facebook Business Page. If you've made this email marketing mistake, what do you do? Double check all of your triggered email messages and take out all the outdated links, and creative.


What are some email marketing mistakes you've seen (since we know you haven't made any)? And, what do you think should be done to correct them? Let us know in the comments below.

Pinterest Ideas for Brands

In our first Pinterest blog post we covered some fundamentals about the fledgling social network which is now the third most popular online social network. The visual pinboard site is already defining it's own niche with several mechanisms borrowed from other social media with a few new ones thrown in for good measure. Combine this with the entry by several national retailers and brands and you have the ingredients for a powerful addition to your marketing mix.

Some Key Stats About Pinterest

• More than 60% of Pinterest users are Female.
• Almost 1/3 of users have household incomes of $100,000 or more.
• Pinterest has more referral traffic than the combined referral traffic from LinkedIn, Google+ and YouTube.
• 1.3 Million average visitors per day visit Pinterest.

Tracking Competitors on Pinterest

And if the above data points were a bit on the dry side here's an interesting tip. We'll assume you have competitors, know who they and their website address. Want to know what has been pinned from their website to Pinterest? Just enter the following into your web browser's address bar.

http://pinterest.com/source/competitordomain.com

You will be sent to a Pinterest page that shows all pins from the website. In the example below we see some of the recent pins from Target's website.
 

Pinterest Ideas for Brands

If you haven't jumped into the Pinterest visual bookmarking waters yet, never fear, we have some suggestions for brands (both big and small) to consider.

1. Make it Easy to be Pinned.

Even though Pinterest has a Pin It browser button/bookmarklet not everyone is going to use it or, know how to use it. Make it as easy as possible for any of your website visitors to pin. How to do this? On Pinterest under Goodie is the Pin It Button for Websites. Give this code to your favorite website design company to implement and let the sharing begin.

The Pin It Button for Websites from Pinterest

2.Pin Others (and Yourself)

The point here is one shared across social media and that is spend some time and effort pinning/re-pinning the pins of your followers/customers. As consumers we instinctively shy away from or even worse (ignore) self-promotion. What's recommended here is a balance between pinning your latest and greatest gadget and sharing pins from your customers. Better still, pin your customer's results with your latest widget and the things that inspire them that are related to your business.

How would you show social media goodwill to your customers on Pinterest? Here are two examples to get your ideas flowing:


Greenland Gardener calls their fan board "Out & About". On this board Greenland Gardener pins images of  customers who have purchased and used their raised bed garden kits and other products.

Greenland Gardener's customer pinboard "Out & About".

Cost Plus World Market refers to their follower board as Inspiration by Members. This board is a combination of customer re-pins involving World Market products and some pins that don't involve World Market products at all. The interesting piece of World Market's strategy is in the fact that they pin things that are topically related to what the retailer sells.By doing this, World Market positions itself with it's followers as a source of inspiration

World Market's customer pinboard "Inspirations by Members".

3. Create pin boards around what your customers find interesting

The boards below are from The Family Handyman magazine. Notice how they've arranged boards around rooms in your house? Use what you know about your core customers to make it easy for them to review and re-pin what you've pinned.

Have you found success with Pinterest? What tactics work for you? Let us know in the comments below.

Note: Stats in this blog post originally appeared on Mashable.

Fostering Creativity In Business

Creativity is not limited to those that can draw well, paint a beautiful picture or design exceptional architecture. At its core creativity is about problem solving through uncommon solutions. Yet all too often you encounter people that do not consider themselves as "creative". I've known many business people that could hardly draw a stick figure and have no sense of style whatsoever. But when it comes to solving a business problem, they can come up with very unorthodox, yet highly effective solutions. What makes them different from anyone else? They live and function in an environment that fosters and even requires a high level of creativity.

So how do you develop creativity within business, and build a creative environment? Let's outline a few key points.

Drive Change With Creativity
All too often people look at limitations and see them as brick walls, looming and restrictive. Yet walls can be scaled and even plowed through with the right tools. The first step is to STOP doing what has always been done in the past. The process may have worked great for the last 20 years, but business is constantly evolving and change is imminent.

Embrace Exploration With Sharing And Collaboration
Now you have to change how you define and approach solving a problem. First, begin by defining a purpose or goal and outline the absolute elements that need to be included as part of the solution. Keep in mind to only define the absolute minimum requirement.

Next, pull everyone together to brainstorm the problem as a team. Allow people to think in terms of "what if" rather than "what is". Often the best time to be creative is when people are more relaxed. Take everyone outside for an hour and sit in the grass, or out to lunch, if possible. But find a way to help them relax for 10-15 minutes before engaging in a discussion. This helps reset their mind and prepare them for creative thinking.

Now you outline the challenge and start taking any and all suggestions to address the problem. You want people to think beyond the scope of logic and encourage everyone to continue offering suggestions. For a while some of the ideas will be ridiculous, even funny at times. But eventually someone will make an extraordinary suggestion that has potential for real application.

Learning From Failures
I'm sure some of you just cringed at this statement, but it is absolutely true. Creative problem solving comes from learning in a positive environment using constructive criticism. Take Apple or Google for example; they have had many past failures and will have many more. But each time a project fails or does not perform as expected, there is a process of evaluation that allows team members to learn from their mistakes. It's one of the primary reasons both companies have been so successful. Why are Apple products so successful? Simple usability and great interface design (just to name a couple). Google began by learning from the other search engine's failures; simply too much clutter for a page when all the user wants to do is perform a simple search.

As your team begins to learn from past failures, make sure you evaluate and learn from experiences and discuss them in a constructive manner. You'll find that not only will your staff become more creative overall, but morale will improve and eventually your bottom line.

Celebrating Success
Any measure of success whether big or small is a tremendous tool for individual encouragement and building team morale. Without success, staff will become demoralized over time and begin to question their contribution and relevance in a team environment. The celebrations don't have to be elaborate, but it's essential that they be acknowledged to continue fostering creative thinking and driving change and innovation.

Email Subscription Sign Up Forms - Four Considerations

One of the key elements in your email marketing communication plan is the subscription sign-up form. In this blog post we'll review a few different types, elements that comprise email marketing sign-up forms and four considerations when developing your email newsletter sign-up form.

Types of Email Sign Up Forms

There are lots of different types of email sign up forms. Some are for signing up for an email newsletter, capturing leads, requesting literature or entering a sweepstakes/contest.

Email Newsletter Sign Up Form

The "Grand Dad" of the email sign up form the Email Newsletter Sign Up form has been with us forever (maybe even longer). With the email newsletter sign up form the objective is to capture a new subscriber to your email marketing list. The one featured here is from an online pet retailer. I really like the subscribe button. And this online retailer has made a real effort to classify a subscriber with the interest areas pull downs.

An email newsletter sign-up form

Lead Capture Sign Up Form

In this form from a popular inbound marketing software company we are offered an informational download in exchange for our information. You'll note that the form requires scrolling to complete. When considering a long lead capture form (like this one) it's important to weigh the need for information against the prospect's perceived value of what you are offering for download. If the information requested on the form is more than the prospect feels is worth disclosing the bounce rate will be high. In this case it's worth keeping an eye on your analytics to see the performance of the page. If the bounce rate is extremely high it's worth experimenting with the number of form fields and other variables.. one at a time to see if an improvement in bounce rate can be made.

A lead capture sign up form

Email Subscription Forms 4 Considerations

1. Does your offer equal the information you are requesting? As mentioned earlier if your perspective subscriber perceives an in balance between what is being requested and what will be received, you may not get all the subscribers you were hoping.
2. Do you have a prominent call to action button?If your signup button is too similar to the colors of your website it might not get noticed. Also, regularly shaped buttons tend to underperform against irregularly shaped ones.
3. For recurring emails/downloads:Do you provide samples of what the subscriber/requestor will receive? It's not a bad idea to include a sample. Usually, a graphic of a newsletter is sufficient to satisfy the "What am I signing up for?" question in new subscriber's minds.
4. Do you have a link to your spam policy? The more transparent you can be in relating to prospective subscriber the more likely they will sign up to received your email newsletter.

Do you have some important email sign up form elements? Share them in the comments below.

Change Management - Securing Network Resources

All companies, at some point, need to change an employee’s access to the IT environment.  A change in location, role or employment status will require adjustments to the access an employee has to company data.  Securing company resources during the transition process is critical to the ongoing stability of the IT environment.  When the employee is a member of the IT Department knowing what to lock down is especially important.

Having a complete list of all access points will help considerably when changes occur.  Many companies have created a Change/Exit checklist to help track secured data or portals.  Additionally, the checklist is often part of a formal process for navigating employee changes.

All resource or data access should be added to the checklist and stored in a central location.  Network access may come from but are not be limited to the following areas:

• Hosting environments
• Network Appliances
• Purchasing Accounts
• Security Devices
• Servers
• User Accounts
• Vendor/Support Accounts
• Virtual Private Networks (VPN)
• Web Sites
• Workstations

When a separation or transition occurs, resources outside the company should take top priority.  For example, access to VPNs and web sites should be blocked first.  Once done, and the user no longer has external access, internal resources can be secured.

If the user was a member of the IT department, he or she may have come to know other users’ passwords.  Asking all users to change their passwords can be a disruptive yet necessary step to securing the environment.

Network transitions will occur in any IT environment and are often unsettling.  Collecting and maintaining access lists for all employees will help during changes to the IT environment.  Prioritizing the order in which resources are secured can prevent unwanted access.  Finally, securing internal user passwords will further protect the network.

Share your security challenges, successes or policies in the comment area below.

Image courtesy of: http://www.freedigitalphotos.net/images/view_photog.php?photogid=982