Net Atlantic Marketing

Improve the Look of Your Email Newsletter in 5 Simple Steps

Posted by Net Atlantic Marketingon March 27, 2012April 16, 2014in Email Templates, Design & Layout

It’s easy to let your email marketing newsletter get stale. You find a formula that works and send a variation of the same thing day after day, week after week, month after month. But then you start to notice open rates falling, unsubscribe rates rising and higher than normal volume of spam complaints.

If you experience any one of those issues, it’s time to take a look at what you’re doing and make a plan for how to get back on track. One of the best ways to stay fresh is to improve the look of your email marketing newsletter. Here are five easy ways to do just that!

1. Test a new format. Many companies with email newsletters are still sending them in a plain text format because they believe that’s what their subscribers are used to and that they won’t want anything new. This may have been true five years ago, but with the proliferation of HTML emails from companies of all sizes, people are much more used to seeing this format in their inbox. About two years ago, a former client of mine tested a new HTML template versus the plain text format it had been using and discovered that 95% of readers liked the HTML better. And those other 5% were still able to receive plain text because most email service providers allow you to set up both formats when you schedule mailings.

Create a Gauntlet Welcome Series to Retain New Leads

Posted by Net Atlantic Marketingon March 13, 2012April 17, 2014in Marketing Strategy

Seeing your email list grow is a great feeling. You’ve put in hard work to get quality leads and now they’ll stick around and buy your products or services, right? Not necessarily!

Once you’ve got a captive audience, you need to make them want to stay on your email marketing list. A great way to do that is to create a multi-part gauntlet welcome series to help new leads familiarize themselves with your company and to set expectations for future communications.

Every business is different and depending on how often you send emails, you might do a one-part series or a five-part series… or something in between! Regardless of how many emails your gauntlet encompasses, there are some problems you may encounter and some solutions that will help make it successful.

Become a Trusted Source: Nurture Your Leads

Posted by Net Atlantic Marketingon February 24, 2012April 17, 2014in Email Automation

Lead nurturing is the process an inquiry goes through once it is received by your company. This process has the goal of converting as many of your leads into qualified prospects as possible. Depending on your business model this process could also result in immediate sales. With an intelligent and automated lead nurturing program in place companies can see a huge return on investment.

An effective lead nurturing campaign can increase the number of qualified prospects in your pipeline and decrease the time a possible client spends in a sales cycle. But even more important than this, a great nurture program can demonstrate to your potential customer base that you are trusted source of information. Once a prospect views you as a valuable source of information you have deepened your relationship with that potential customer. If you have a deeper relationship with your customer from the beginning, a solid foundation has been set and you will likely be able to retain that client for a longer period of time.

Successfully integrating a nurture campaign into your email marketing efforts takes some planning. You don’t want to just start pushing material out to your leads. You want to serve them timely information. Each email should be seen as a way to provide your prospects with valuable insight, not just as an opportunity to influence their buying decision. In return this train of thought could result in lasting relationship with your buyers. Reports have shown that acquiring a new customer is 6 to 7 times more expensive then retaining an existing customer.

Tips to Send Email Campaigns Like One of the Big Guys

Posted by Net Atlantic Marketingon February 21, 2012April 8, 2015in Email Automation, Email Engagement, Email Marketing Best Practices, Marketing Strategy

Just because you are a small business doesn’t mean you lack the resources to integrate email campaign tactics that are deployed by large organizations into your marketing strategy. Email service providers are now making it easier for companies to automate their emails and implement nurturing campaigns, despite having a one person marketing team. All it takes is a little time and patience to outline a strategy, set your campaigns and analyze your results.

It is understandable that small businesses are overwhelmed with the amount of features that are now available to email marketers. It is easy to feel like you don’t have the time to log into your system and build out a lifecycle campaign that will engage your audience for the next 6 months to a year. Heck, you can hardly find time to pay your vendors and follow up with your customers. But think of the extra staff you can hire after your email campaigns get a 600% lift in performance.

It is time to stop making excuses and dedicate time to your email marketing campaigns. Implement these steps into your email marketing and it will start to reach its potential ROI.

Pinterest: Can it drive your business?

Posted by Net Atlantic Marketingon February 15, 2012April 16, 2014in Social Media Marketing

Is EVERYONE a photographer?

Pinterest! It’s the latest shooting star in the social world, and if you don’t know, it’s a place to post and share photos. REALLY GOOD photos. It’s basically Twitter if you throw out 90% of the users and keep only the serious photogs, then instead of a stream of text, display a wall of pics.

There’s only one problem: Have you seen the web recently? There’s a lot of bad photography and worse Photoshop, and we’ve accepted it. I admit, my idea of photography is to make sure I carry a phone around so I can take a quick shot of something cool. I always figured a lot of people were like me, ready to post a quick image to Facebook or some other social site without worrying about F-Stop, framing, lighting, and other technical minutiae.

As I browse Facebook and other social platforms, I see pretty much the same type of stuff: Here are the kids at the ballgame. Here’s our company picnic. Here we are at the beach. Few of my friends are serious photogs. I assume most people have a camera that takes decent shots, and they treat it like a serious piece of equipment, but they don’t lug it around all the time.

Not so, Pinterest.

Make a Splash: Surfing Etiquette for your Email Marketing

Posted by Net Atlantic Marketingon February 13, 2012April 8, 2015in Email Marketing Best Practices

Make A Splash: Surfing Etiquette For Your Email Marketing What does surfing have to do with email marketing? Well, both disciplines require a strategy, timing, preparation, and best practices, or what we surfers call surfing etiquette, to make a memorable surfing session.

Speaking of surfing; that’s a photo of me at one of my favorite hometown breaks in New Hampshire. I know what you’re thinking; surfing in New Hampshire… do they even have beaches there? The answer is yes, we sure do! But lets get back to email marketing.

Off the Record: Google Privacy Policy & Tools Simplified

Posted by Net Atlantic Marketingon February 10, 2012April 8, 2015in Industry News

You received an email from Google, saw an ad featuring a new privacy policy or keep hearing about Congress griping over Google’s new privacy policy; but all you want to do is read your email, search stuff online and chat with your colleagues without sharing your information for the world to see.

On March 1, 2012 Google will start adhering to a new simplified privacy policy across most of their products and services. We’re going to quickly explain the highlights of Google’s simplified privacy policy and how it affects your use of their tools (certain products like Google Wallet are regulated by industry-specific privacy laws and will continue to keep their own set of policies).

Why Your Email Marketing Strategy Stopped Working – And How To Fix It

Posted by Net Atlantic Marketingon February 8, 2012April 16, 2014in Email Engagement, Email Marketing Best Practices, Marketing Strategy

Recently I came across a question on LinkedIn: “Why Does Email Marketing Sometimes Fail?” To be fair, the question is an honest request for feedback, not an assertion. Email is a proven communications method when used well, however there are those moments when senders see a pronounced reduction in email’s effectiveness, and must decide whether to re-evaluate their strategy.

It’s a dirty little secret in marketing: Every tactic eventually falls short. We see it when a great television campaign just stops being interesting, and when a Facebook page rises to 100,000 Likes and then suddenly stops growing. Dancing Santa banners must have been hilarious at one time, but are now the online equivalent of carnival barkers.

Email is more of a journeyman tactic. It’s always there. It’s reliable. It’s expected, and it drives immediate visits. But it rarely makes a big splash or gets talked about (unless the sender made a mistake). It’s hard to ‘re-launch’ a brand using email. It just reflects what the brand is doing in other avenues.

Facebook Friends Wall Street: What Does this Mean for Its Users?

Posted by Net Atlantic Marketingon February 1, 2012April 16, 2014in Industry News

As early as today Facebook will announce it is going public. To most of us who use the social network as a means to communicate with friends and family we are wondering what the buzz is all about. So what if Mark Zuckerberg wants to file for an IPO (an initial public offering, if you were wondering, likely to be anywhere between $5 and $100 billion).

Being an end user and not someone who is considering buying stock in Facebook when it becomes available, I am curious how this will affect me. Here are some facts and opinions I have managed to scrounge up about that very topic.

The Millennials Are Here: Is Your Email Marketing Prepared?

Posted by Net Atlantic Marketingon January 26, 2012April 17, 2014in Mobile Email Marketing

The Millennials, also known as Generation Y, embrace all things digital; these are people born between 1981 and 2000. If asked most people in this generation will say that their use of modern technology is what differentiates them from earlier generations. Technology has provided them with an endless source of information.

Despite Millennials increased internet usage, when surveyed by Pew Research Center for MILLENNIALS A Portrait of Generation Next, there were no significant differences among Millennials, Gen Xers and Boomers when asked about the amount of email sent and received in the 24 hours prior to the survey. Millennials were more likely to have Tweeted, updated their online profile or sent a text message in that time period.

Don’t be discouraged; people under the age of 31 are still utilizing email. If you understand how they are using email in connection with social media and text, you can increase your under 31 subscribers’ engagement greatly.

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