A recent subject line research article by Return Path identified that "click-through rates (CTR) for subject lines with 49 or fewer characters were 75 percent higher than for those with 50 or more." Wow, why is this so?
Filed under: E-Zine Tips, General
One huge mistake that many ezine publishers do when sending HTML email newsletters is that they will test their design to their email client (software they use to check & send email) and wrongly assume the rest of the world uses the same email software. Today, you'll learn about Inline HTML vs. Internal/External CSS stylesheets for your ezine template:
Filed under: E-Zine Tips, General
More than a year ago, I shared how important it is to give your blog audience the ability to subscribe via email to your newest blog entry sent to them in either real-time or daily/weekly summary. This year, I'm encouraging you to take the NEXT step in this evolution and give your blog commentors the ability to subscribe via email to the comment thread they are leaving a comment on. Here's why and how:
Filed under: E-Zine Tips, General
Recently in Tempe Arizona I was sitting next to Tom Kulzer, CEO of Aweber. He lives in the autoresponder & sequenced email service provider world and not the ezine publishing world (even though his clients also publish ezines with his service). Check out his argument for why the ezine model is not as cool as the sequenced autoresponder model:
Filed under: E-Zine Tips, General
Fee-based email newsletters on average do not have the same level of perceived economic value as print-based newsletters, yet ebooks can sell for 2-5 times the same price as a print book of the same exact content. Seems contradictory, no?
Filed under: E-Zine Tips, General
How can you really figure out what the market wants you to write about next? Don't guess! I'll show you 7 quick ways you can poll the market (in most cases, without doing a single survey)...
Filed under: E-Zine Tips, General
Ezine-Tips reader Glen writes, "I'm not sure if you wrote an article about this...anyway can you offer me any advice or resources about the art of weaving in a story from your life into your email marketing messages? Here are my 8 tips to do just that:
Filed under: E-Zine Tips, General
This week, ExactTarget released their 2005 Response Rate Study that summarized open, click-through and unsubscribe rates. Learn about my sweet spot send day logic before you start sending more emails on Friday:
Filed under: E-Zine Tips, General
AOL quietly launched their Goodmail CertifiedEmail service this past week. WHAT? Yes folks, their plans are moving forward:
Filed under: E-Zine Tips, General
Even after you've done everything you can as a responsible email newsletter publisher or permission-based email marketer (such as watching your email content, mailing history/frequency and list hygiene), false-positives are still a serious threat to your ability to get your emails delivered.
Filed under: E-Zine Tips, General
Patsi Krakoff, Psy. D. and Denise Wakeman run something called the "Blog Squad" - and they also have recently released an All-In-One Ezine Publishing training system for $197 USD (at the time of this review). Is it worth it? I got my hands on it and have read it cover-to-cover to share my thoughts on it.
Filed under: E-Zine Tips, General
Thanks to an inspiration from EmailLabs, I changed the HTML format of Ezine-Tips today. The core goal is to become preview-pane friendly so that a reader of my email newsletter can instantly get value from the TOP preview pane instead of having to dig into the bottom preview pane to see the core insider information. Check out a sample of my new ezine template design:
Filed under: E-Zine Tips, General
"The biggest challenge facing online marketers today is to design for the preview pane and ever-shrinking real estate of the email inbox," said Stefan Pollard, Director of Consulting, EmailLabs in a recent media release. I do agree that it's a major challenge for ezine publishers and let's give it some attention today by considering how to improve your email newsletter template to address the preview pane's impact.
Filed under: E-Zine Tips, General
Should you risk outsourcing your ezine production to a 3rd party? Here are my thoughts for those with and without a marketing brain. :)
Filed under: E-Zine Tips, General
More than a few years ago, thanks to A/B split testing, many discovered (including my own results) that adding a privacy protection statement below your subscription button helps to increase conversions. Yes, today you'll find out why the title to this Ezine-Tips article makes me cringe!
Filed under: E-Zine Tips, General
After my last Ezine-Tips issue where I showed the importance of packaging your email newsletter with a classy ebook/ezine cover, I received a small avalanche of emails asking me how I made the email newsletter ebook cover. Today, I'll reveal how I made mine and (4) options you have to create your own:
Filed under: E-Zine Tips, General
Here's a handy checklist for you to review to see how many of these things you already are doing or may want to be doing to increase your visitor to subscriber conversion rate.
Filed under: E-Zine Tips, General
In many affiliate programs, you will often see 98% of the performance coming from 2% of your affiliates. Today I'm going to recommend that you segment your affiliate partners (those who sell for you online on a commission basis) by either being in your top 2% or your bottom 98% so that you can email each segment a different series of emails to drive sales.
Filed under: E-Zine Tips, General
I knew something was up when my hard bounces for a recent mailing shot up 454%. Today, an important lesson on what will happen to your Earthlink & Mindspring email list members when their new challenge/response system eats your members for lunch.
Filed under: E-Zine Tips, General
Is your ezine "Open Rate" sliding worse than a coastline house in a mudslide into the ocean? Is there something you can do about it? An Ezine-Tips reader sent me this letter and I'll answer some of the questions or issues including an important trend to watch over the EU's data privacy acts that may impact this issue:
Filed under: E-Zine Tips, General
Discover two strategies to improve your ezine subscription conversion rate. Your email newsletter conversion rate is the number of new subscriptions you receive divided by the total number of unique visitors to your website (or squeeze page) each day.
Filed under: E-Zine Tips, General
There's an ezine mistake that I've been seeing more of lately and while my solution to it may not apply to many of the tens of thousands of readers of Ezine-Tips; For the few dozen to a hundred who are doing this brand mistake, I hope it improves your ezine management and branding experience.
Filed under: E-Zine Tips, General
Recently Email Service Provider (ESP) MailerMailer released an email metrics report on the first half of this year. To save you some time from reading all 28 pages of this report, I'm going to give you the quick highlights:
Filed under: E-Zine Tips, General
Your reputation determines your email deliverability more so than your content... at least that's the finding of a recent Lyris ISP Deliverability Report card for 1st quarter 2007. Two things that can improve your email campaign and newsletter results are:
Filed under: E-Zine Tips, General
Is there ever a good argument to force or ask your email newsletter members to resubscribe? ...to confirm their interest in receiving your emails? Let's address this ezine subscription renewal issue together by listening to Dale's story and my response.
Filed under: E-Zine Tips, General
Today I dipped into the AskChrisKnight folder to answer the most pressing questions sent in recently... ranging from email subscriber valuation to editorial calendars and ezine list building.
Filed under: E-Zine Tips, General
There are two types of evil when it comes email newsletter publishers who repurpose their email lists: Type 1) Intentionally misleading and no true respect for the privacy of their list member and Type 2) List-slaughter is where they unintentionally come to the realization that the current ezine relationship isn't working for their business interests any more so they take liberties that they know are wrong.
Filed under: E-Zine Tips, General
If you've run out of 'good' ideas for topics for your next email newsletter, today you're going to discover my top 5 favorite ways to pick new ezine topics and a link to another article of 20 more new ezine topical ideas for you to leverage.
Filed under: E-Zine Tips, General
Many times I come to an email newsletter to get a specific outcome, such as being more informed, keeping up on trends, picking up a new strategy to test, or simply being entertained... and lately I've noticed handfuls of ezine publishers who have a hard time realizing that I didn't give them permission to tell me about their personal life... on and on and on and on... You get the point.
Filed under: E-Zine Tips, General
Having been in the email services industry for more than a decade -- it occurred to me that you might benefit from taking a peak at some of the leaders that I track in the "Email Universe". Here's my short list:
Filed under: E-Zine Tips, General
With the holiday shopping season in full gear, many retail and e-tailers have already had a strong October and November sales rush thanks largely in part to their email marketing efforts. When consumer buying budgets are blown, many e-tailers turn to increasing their email frequency with hopes to gently brow beat their prospects & clients into buying. There's a better way:
Filed under: E-Zine Tips, General
According to the Retail Email blog (Chad White), they found in that 68% of retailers in their survey sent out a Cyber-Monday promotion compared to 44% last year (54% increase). In addition, 25% of retailers in their survey sent promotional emails the Sunday before compared to 12% last year (108% increase). Read on to learn more about best practices for handling unsub requests.
Filed under: E-Zine Tips, General
The EOY (End Of Year) time is a great reason to send a series of email newsletters that answers various questions relating to the end of a period of time and the future outlook for the next year. Here are (6) new ezine content topic ideas for you to consider:
Filed under: E-Zine Tips, General
Kathy writes: "I have been creating an e-zine for the past five months and now that we are in a new year do not know if I should change the volume number, along with the issue number, now that we're in a new year. Can you tell me the rules about this?" Yes, I can help. Read on...
Filed under: E-Zine Tips, General
In an effort to promote their upcoming 3rd annual Em@il Summit '08 in Miami (that I'll be attending as well), the experts over at MarketingSherpa have released their dirty dozen mistakes that they believe nearly everyone makes. Here are the first (6) of their "Dirty Dozen" along with my comments:
Filed under: E-Zine Tips, General
In an effort to promote their upcoming 3rd annual Em@il Summit '08 in Miami (that I'll be attending as well), the experts over at MarketingSherpa have released their dirty dozen mistakes that they believe nearly everyone makes. Here are the last (6) of their "Dirty Dozen" along with my comments:
Filed under: E-Zine Tips, General
Robin Anna Pernice, VP of Product Segment Marketing at JPMorgan shares 11+ insights into how to invent must-read content for B-to-B Newsletters.
Filed under: E-Zine Tips, General
While at MarketingSherpa's Email Summit in Miami, I was able to catch up with Eric Stockton, President of MarketingSherpa... to discuss the state of email newsletter strategies and how MarketingSherpa uses ezines to drive community engagement and be of 'service' to their membership.
Filed under: E-Zine Tips, General
Tad Clarke, Editorial Director for MarketingSherpa said that a typical newsletter they produce involves 1-2 hours of research, 1-5 hours writing each story, the submission of each story to an editor and someone who formats the work...resulting in a total of about 16-20 hours PER newsletter. Discover what he thinks are the (3) things you must absolutely test in your email newsletter:
Filed under: E-Zine Tips, General
There are (4) new rules issued by the Federal Trade Commission that amend the CAN-SPAM Act of 2003 that you should know about. Don't have time to read the 109 page memo? Check out this quick article to give you the basics in a few minutes.
Filed under: E-Zine Tips, General
Today I dipped into the AskChrisKnight folder to answer the most pressing questions sent in recently... ranging
from email subscriber valuation to editorial calendars and ezine list building.
Filed under: E-Zine Tips
Your reputation determines your email deliverability more so than your content... at least that's the finding of a recent Lyris ISP Deliverability Report card for 1st quarter 2007. Two things that can improve your email campaign and newsletter results are:
Filed under: E-Zine Tips
Is there ever a good argument to force or ask your email newsletter members to resubscribe? ...to confirm their interest in receiving your emails? Let's address this ezine subscription renewal issue together by listening to Dale's story and my response.
Filed under: E-Zine Tips
There are two types of evil when it comes email newsletter publishers who repurpose their email lists: Type 1) Intentionally misleading and no true respect for the privacy of their list member and Type 2) List-slaughter is where they unintentionally come to the realization that the current ezine relationship isn't working for their business interests any more so they take liberties that they know are wrong.
Filed under: E-Zine Tips
If you've run out of 'good' ideas for topics for your next email newsletter, today you're going to discover my top 5 favorite ways to pick new ezine topics and a link to another article of 20 more new ezine topical ideas for you to leverage.
Filed under: E-Zine Tips
Many times I come to an email newsletter to get a specific outcome, such as being more informed, keeping up on trends, picking up a new strategy to test, or simply being entertained... and lately I've noticed handfuls of ezine publishers who have a hard time realizing that I didn't give them permission to tell me about their personal life... on and on and on and on... You get the point.
Filed under: E-Zine Tips
Having been in the email services industry for more than a decade -- it occurred to me that you might benefit from taking a peak at some of the leaders that I track in the "Email Universe". Here's my short list:
Filed under: E-Zine Tips
Is there ever a good argument to force or ask your email newsletter members to resubscribe? ...to confirm their interest in receiving your emails? Let's address this ezine subscription renewal issue together by listening to Dale's story and my response.
Filed under: E-Zine Tips
There are two types of evil when it comes email newsletter publishers who repurpose their email lists: Type 1) Intentionally misleading and no true respect for the privacy of their list member and Type 2) List-slaughter is where they unintentionally come to the realization that the current ezine relationship isn't working for their business interests any more so they take liberties that they know are wrong.
Filed under: E-Zine Tips
If you've run out of 'good' ideas for topics for your next email newsletter, today you're going to discover my top 5 favorite ways to pick new ezine topics and a link to another article of 20 more new ezine topical ideas for you to leverage.
Filed under: E-Zine Tips
Many times I come to an email newsletter to get a specific outcome, such as being more informed, keeping up on trends, picking up a new strategy to test, or simply being entertained... and lately I've noticed handfuls of ezine publishers who have a hard time realizing that I didn't give them permission to tell me about their personal life... on and on and on and on... You get the point.
Filed under: E-Zine Tips
Having been in the email services industry for more than a decade -- it occurred to me that you might benefit from taking a peak at some of the leaders that I track in the "Email Universe". Here's my short list:
Filed under: E-Zine Tips
First, read the article that started this thread: New Email Privacy Seal Program From TRUSTe - Should Ezine Publishers Care?
Filed under: E-Zine Tips
TRUSTe launched a new program this week that is designed to be an email privacy seal that says confidently, "WE DON'T SPAM."
Filed under: E-Zine Tips
The issue: Last week, Clickz ran an article that gave a position from Charles Stiles, AOL's Postmaster that Goodmail Systems would be the exclusive provider of a new postage stamp tax on emails being delivered into AOL if you wanted images and links made active.
Filed under: E-Zine Tips
This year, it's time to raise our standards and stop promoting our email service provider when we send out email newsletters, solo mailings, customized emails, or any prospect/client email communications.
Filed under: E-Zine Tips
Many email service providers have been spewing their predictions for 2006 and I think I've read them all. Some include bunk that could have been predictions in 2004 or 2005, but you quickly come to the realization that the bulk majority of the market moves about 1 2 years behind the major ezine publishing trends. Yes, there are still some email publishers who think email is used purely for a sales acquisition channel instead of the obvious relationship channel it can be. Read on...
Filed under: E-Zine Tips
The amount of time you invest in ezine publishing & marketing activities is not always proportionate to the results your ezine creates. Let's look today at strategies that can help you optimize your ezine to produce more results with less effort.
Filed under: E-Zine Tips
Competition for the attention of your email newsletter subscribers or permission-based email marketing campaign members is rising. To increase the relevancy, deliver more value via email, *AND* increase your sales -- now is the perfect time to begin doing more email segmentation campaigns.
Filed under: E-Zine Tips
I was speaking at the NEPA (Newsletters & Electronic Publishers Association) event in Orlando this month and one of the roundtable discussions brought out this gem that struck me as gold information for HTML newsletter publishers:
Filed under: E-Zine Tips
I get together for coffee about once a month with my friend Paul. We meet at one of the local Starsbuck (is that the plural?) to engage our mutual interest in relationship marketing, sole proprietorship and middle-of-the-day time wasting.
Filed under: E-Zine Tips
The demand for your future email member's time is intense and it's not just coming from your competitors, but all of the volume of information available overwhelms many folks. Promoting your email newsletter is falling on more deaf ears, so how can you build your list against the odds?
Filed under: E-Zine Tips
Unlike the normal Ezine Tips format where I present an idea, a solution, a trend or a tip on how to improve your ezine... today, I'm giving you some of the ezine publishing thoughts that have been on my mind this month. Perhaps some of them have been on your mind as well?
Filed under: E-Zine Tips
Ask yourself this question, "If you were a competitor of mine, what would you rather read: What I already wrote or What I'm planning on writing?" or "Would you rather know what your competitor has done or what they are planning on doing?"
Filed under: E-Zine Tips
A recent Silverpop research study found that "23% failed to include e mail registration requests on their home pages." Let's act on that finding today if you have not yet. Here's why it's important:
Filed under: E-Zine Tips
You want to create, enhance and extend the emotional connection you have with your email newsletter membership. One of the ways to do that is to remind your list members that they are part of your community.
Filed under: E-Zine Tips
Every print magazine that you pick up has a personality to it. You instinctively know the 'feeling' it delivers and it's usually lead by the opening letter from the editor. Your email newsletter is no different. Stronger relationships with your audience can only be had when an emotional bond begins and strengthens (think about Oprah for a moment).
Filed under: E-Zine Tips
Big ISPs such as AOL, Yahoo and others have created a "this is spam" abuse reporting tool that is often mis used by their technologically illiterate userbase. This may cause your ezine to be blocked unfairly.
Filed under: E-Zine Tips
You can't bury your head in the sand on this one. You MUST know and be vigilant as to whether or not your email list server is blocked. Your emails can be blocked through absolutely no fault of your own and if your email list hosting service provider is not on the ball, you could lose out big time and I'm not even talking about the lost emails that are not getting sent to your list.
Filed under: E-Zine Tips
Recently, MailMailer (a web based email list management service provider) released a study that analyzed the aggregate industry data from their clients email use. They had restricted this report to their clients only and I asked their CEO to allow us to allow you to view the report without having to give up your email address to get it. Find out how you compare to a cross section of their client base.
Filed under: E-Zine Tips
Whether you are launching a new product or service or re launching an existing product your ezine has an important role to play in the market demand or interest that you want to generate.
Filed under: E-Zine Tips
Got a forum or site that requires registration for free or fee-based membership?
Filed under: E-Zine Tips
Think of your ezine as the conveyor belt designed to take a qualified potential prospect for your business and over time, to convert that prospect into a paying customer and raging loyal fan of you and your business.
Filed under: E-Zine Tips
An ezine (a.k.a. e-zine, email newsletter, e-mail newsletter, or e-newsletter) is a newsletter that is delivered via email that you can subscribe or opt-in to it.
Filed under: E-Zine Tips
You want to create, enhance and extend the emotional connection you have with your email newsletter membership. One of the ways to do that is to remind your list members that they are part of your community.
Filed under: E-Zine Tips
You've already bought the concept that I've been encouraging you to create a fresh web page of content for every single article you send to your email newsletter audience. Now that you are putting all of your ezine articles on your website, how do you organize them and with what software?
Filed under: E-Zine Tips
An Ezine-Tips fan writes in and asks how long it's good to keep an email newsletter archive up? From face value, this question looks too easy to answer, but there is a deeper issue underlying the question. Let's explore together:
Filed under: E-Zine Tips
Michael Katz'sDo-It-YourselfE-Newsletter System
Filed under: E-Zine Tips
From the AskChrisKnight.com grab bag of questions sent in this month, a fan writes in and asks, "How wide should an HTML newsletter be?"
Filed under: E-Zine Tips
"The hardest to learn was the least complicated"
-- Indigo Girls
Filed under: E-Zine Tips
Spring arrived in New England this past Tuesday morning. It showed up as it always does -- unannounced and unexpected, like a long lost relative that you discover sleeping on your couch when you get home from work.
Filed under: E-Zine Tips
I may as well just come right out and admit it -- I'm not much of a baseball fan. In fact, despite having lived in Boston now for nearly 25 years, I have only a passing interest in the Red Sox.
Filed under: E-Zine Tips
According to my friends at the Reference Desk of the Boston Public Library, the U.S. retail industry lost $10 Billion in 2004 as a direct result of shoplifting. That's right, a staggering twenty-seven million dollars a day walks right out the door.
Filed under: E-Zine Tips
Every print magazine that you pick up has a personality to it. You instinctively know the 'feeling' it delivers and it's usually lead by the opening letter from the editor. Your email newsletter is no different. Stronger relationships with your audience can only be had when an emotional bond begins and strengthens (think about Oprah for a moment).
Filed under: E-Zine Tips
Return Path is best known for their ECOA services (Email Change Of Address), and they are also known to be a smart marketing firm (acquiring Netcreations / PostMasterDirect.com last June).
Filed under: E-Zine Tips
Lyris Technologies, Inc. (Lyris is the platform that I currently use to manage all of my email lists) just released a new 10 point check list to help email marketers and ezine publishers to improve their deliverability.
Filed under: E-Zine Tips
This is becoming an ezine pet peeve and I just have to get it off my chest! So many newbie ezine publishers just plop their full ezine back issues onto their website (many even foolishly forget to remove the failsafe or safeunsub header and footers). There is a better way to do this and I'll tell you how and what you'll get for applying this easy ezine tip!
Filed under: E-Zine Tips
Recently Tom Kulzer, CEO & Founder of AWeber Communications release