Recently, I have been seeing a lot of email in which the sender uses lots of text and pictures to communicate the message. And when I say lots, I mean LOTS. I sometimes find myself having to scroll two and three pages to get to the end of the message. Nightclub and event promoter emails are especially notorious for this type of content.

Case in point: A nightclub owner wants to promote a particular event. His email creative ends up full of photos of DJs and scantily clad women. What is not in the email is a good text-to-image ratio, or an easy-to-understand call to action.

To use the old adage, “less is more” seems more than appropriate to email marketing. Here are a few things to consider:

• Most email clients block images by default. If the message is 90% images, the user is left with 10% of the message.
• Sending unstructured content can have the potential to confuse to the reader.
• Using poor design and little or no navigation can result in a poor or incorrect customer perception of what is being communicated.

The bottom line is that you want to want your readers to be able to grasp the essence of what you are sending to them quickly and effectively. What you don’t want is for your readers lose interest because it takes them too long to get the point of your message. Here are some simple steps that can be followed to create great content.

1. Use a good mix of HTML text and graphics. Don’t just fill up your email with cool photos or images that have the words on them.

2. If using plain text, get to the point or call to action quickly. Don’t write a book and expect the subscriber to read the entire thing.

3. Validate your email content for errors. Use an HTML validator such as http://validator.w3.org/.

4. Check to see who is actually opening and reading/clicking your emails. Remove those who don’t.

Until next time,
Jaren Angerbauer, Director of Deliverability, mobileStorm

Drink Responsibly, Drive Responsibly, Email Responsibly.

Furniture shoppers are responding brilliantly to messaging campaigns from the retail chain Ashley Furniture HomeStore of Charlotte, N.C. and upstate South Carolina. And mobileStorm 4.0 gets part of the credit.

Hey, we can’t help but brag when ROI includes a whopping $20,000 in one day’s revenue (!) generated when the chain announced a 12-hour sale by subscription message, sent out only the evening before the sale began.

It’s an inspiring case of a seasoned marketer unfamiliar with digital messaging who quickly—thanks to an easy, all-encompassing platform and the wise use of best practices—executes successful campaign after successful campaign.

The Charlotte-based Ashley Furniture HomeStore regional chain came to SMS marketing a bit reluctantly. Admits co-owner and COO Charlie Malouf, “We were initially against the concept, because we thought that text message marketing was just annoying spam. Then we found out that it’s not spam; instead, it’s based on highly regulated permission marketing principles where you only send text messages to people who have opted in to subscribe and receive special offers.”

(more…)

One of the major challenges of email marketing is creating an email that people read and understand once they open it. A good way to get on the right path to engaging your reader is following a few simple steps as part of your email creation process.

Put your offer in the first paragraph. Whatever the goal of your email may be, for instance a purchase or a sign up state your offer prominently your starter paragraph. Along with the subject line, the first paragraph is the most read part of your email. Don’t get flowery- this is not a novel. Tell your reader why they are reading your email, and you will increase your chances of them both reading the entire message, and also taking the action you desire.

(more…)

I’m writing this from the sky as I fly over the Atlantic Ocean, on my way back from Heidelberg, Germany where I attended a MAAWG conference. I always enjoy going to MAAWG, not only because of the vast amount of socializing and networking that goes on, but also because of the high level of knowledge and expertise there. For example, I attended a panel discussion that included the managers of the postmaster teams for both AOL and Hotmail. These people are the ones who make the decisions on how email is delivered, and whether it is bulked or blocked. From my standpoint as the one in charge of ensuring good delivery for mobileStorm, the value for attending these conferences is clear.

Overall, from the panel discussions to the hallway discussions, some fundamental truths were again reconfirmed to me. These aren’t new concepts, and have been discussed at length in the past, but I will reiterate as they are becoming increasingly important.

(more…)