A recent Constant Contact study analyzed data from small businesses that combined their email marketing with social media marketing and compared it to those who use email marketing alone. It’s clear that SMBs should do both. Smallbiztechnology.com summarized the study’s key takeaways:

Faster list growth: From June 2010 through August 2011, those using both social media and email marketing saw 14.43 percent list growth, while those using only email marketing saw 8.96 percent list growth.

Larger average list size: Those using both tactics have email lists that are 53 percent larger on average than their email-only counterparts.

With a larger list, you can begin engaging more contacts that are aware of your brand which in turn will help your click through rates:

The average click-through rate for those using both email and social media marketing was 59.3 basis points higher than for those using email only.

It has become apparent that focusing too much on one aspect of your marketing can limit your potential. Why exclude one outreach channel when you put extra KAPOW! in your marketing by using email and social media?

Holy return on investment, Batman!

The contest is meant to help our partners shake the holiday doldrums and start the New Year in a fast, furious and focused fashion. And to keep things interesting, we put together a list of great prizes. What kind of prizes, you ask? A Ninendo Wii (bronze), Amazon Kindle (silver) and a 46-inch plasma TV (gold).

The rules of the contest are as follows: Partners must use the Kutenda toolset to create and launch an email marketing campaign that incorporates proven best practices, such as integrating a tailored landing page with the campaign. The partner that generates the most response from his or her campaign will take home the gold, and those that meet key milestones along the way will be eligible to draw for a Wii or Kindle (there are two of each).

Learn more about the ‘Grow Big in 2010′ contest here.

And I tried to put email marketing in context by pointing out this juicy statistic from the Direct Marketing Association: For every dollar the average business invests in email marketing, it gets $48 in return. Today we’re going to discuss the following: optimizing your layout for the preview pane. As you read this post, keep that $48 figure in mind!

Let’s back up. So far, you’ve gotten the green light from the spam filter and made it into the inbox. Your ‘from’ and ‘subject’ lines were either familiar or enticing enough to prompt the person to open your email. While these are great victories, you’re far from done!

Designing for the preview pane

What’s the ‘preview pane’? It’s the user-interface that most email applications, such as Outlook, Lotus Notes and Apple Mail (pictured), use to display email. And most users—people like you, your customers and me—typically stick to the default preview pane settings: horizontal alignment with email images blocked.

What does this mean for your email marketing message? For one thing, no matter how much time you spend making your email visually appealing, it’s going appear fragmented to the average recipient, especially if you have a lot of graphics at the top.

I don’t suggest that you ditch all design in favor of plain text emails. Most users will unblock images once they’re comfortable that your message isn’t spam. But you’ve got only a fraction of second and a tiny sliver of screen space to earn enough trust/interest to get the person to keep reading and possibly unblock your images.

Alt text to the rescue!

Alt text is what shows up when an email client blocks images, so it acts as an image description. (Alt text is intended to describe images to Internet users who are visually impaired.) Alt text gives you the opportunity to communicate to the recipient. It’s important to use alt text to reinforce who you are and why prospects should care about your email.

Here’s an example of an image-heavy email that doesn’t use any alt text. As you can see, Sam’s Club is missing a big opportunity here—all that canvas and not a single word about their great holiday deals!

This is what the email is supposed to look like:

In this example, J. Crew does a marginally better job, at least getting their name in the alt text. But think of how much more effective it would be if they included the offer as well.

We can give points to J.Crew and Sam’s Club for at least having header text that encourages people to view the email in a browser. But the text is small and doesn’t reference any of the content in the email.

Depending on the email marketing tool you use, you can typically add alt text when you’re uploading an image. Some tools, Kutenda included, make it very easy to add. (If you’re in the market for new email marketing software, be sure to ask how easy it is to add alt text to your photos and graphics.)

The preview pane typically hides a large chunk—the middle and bottom—of your email, so it’s important to put key information in the top inch or two of your email. By ‘key information’ we mean your business logo, which creates recognition, and your messaging, which creates interest (we hope). The more compelling the introduction, the more likely the reader will engage further. Remember, most people are flooded with email and will look for any reason to ignore yours; by getting to the point quickly, you have a better shot at drawing prospects deeper into your message and closer to your conversion point.

It’s no secret that email is a great way to draw large numbers of leads down your sales funnel. Not only is it easier and cheaper than other lead-nurturing methods, it’s incredibly effective. According to the Direct Marketing Association, email returns $48.56 for every $1 you invest.

But great ROI is not automatic. To fully realize the potential of email as a sales tool, you need two things: (1) knowledge of email best practices and (2) a well-reasoned strategy for success. These are the things we’ll cover in this two-part email series.

First let’s make sure we’re on the same page: We’re assuming you already have a targeted list of leads that you’ve collected yourself (as opposed to a list you purchased). If you’re not at this point, don’t worry: Robin’s post on building your opt-in list is a great place to start. Read it, start implementing it, then come back here. (We’ll wait…)  OK, let’s go.

1. Deciding on an emailing schedule
Consider the game of chess. A chess master isn’t thinking about how his next move will get him to check mate—he’s thinking about how his next 15-25 moves will get him there. Same goes for email. One email won’t do the trick, but a carefully constructed sequence of emails will.

How many, how often and what time to send?
Extending the chess analogy further, I regret to inform you that here is no rule of thumb for designing email campaigns, just like there’s no foolproof series of moves that will bring you to checkmate.

When creating your campaigns, you’ll have to make judgment calls based on a variety of factors, including your audience type (demographics, needs, wants, habits, etc.); what you’re selling (is it something people want to think about frequently?); the content of your emails; and your relationship with your audience.

An example
If you sell auto insurance, a monthly email is probably the right frequency, since people have only so much desire to think about their insurance. However, certain content may dictate a more rapid-fire approach: People are always eager to save money, so if your campaign centers on an irresistible offer, you may have success with more touches at a higher frequency.

To reiterate, there’s no formula for constructing an effective email nurture campaign. We could lie and tell you to send X emails at Y rate on Z day of the week, but that advice wouldn’t be very helpful. If you want to produce results with email, you need to do your research, think critically, test multiple strategies, monitor your results and keep striving for perfection.

2. Getting your email through the spam filter
At the risk of stating the obvious, it’s impossible to nurture leads if they don’t see your email. It pays to take every precaution to avoid spam filters. Start with your subject line.

Subject line no-nos

• excessive punctuation!!!!!
• ALL CAPS
• missplleed words
• w0rds sp&lled wth $pecial ch@r@cters

Message body no-nos

• Email messages that contain images but little or no text could be labeled as spam. (Spam filters suspect that senders of image-heavy emails are trying to hide their content.)
• Messages that use colored backgrounds or numerous font styles. (If possible, use a simple stylesheet to format the message text rather than excessive font tags.)

3. Getting recipients to open your email
So you’ve successfully avoided the spam filter. Good job. But you still have work to do: You’ve got to get prospects to actually open your email, and yours is just one email among many clamoring for attention.

So you have to stick your subject line.

Any tennis players reading this? Yes? Then you know that getting your serve in play is one of the most important elements of the game. You have zero chances of winning the point, much less the match, if you don’t get the ball in play. Same goes for subject lines. If they don’t entice people to click, your email campaigns won’t get off the ground.

Here are some tips for your subject lines:

• Tell readers who you are up front. There is no need to try to hide your identity, so make sure your company is easily associated with your subject line.
• Entice with your subject line, but don’t give everything away. You want to give recipients a reason to open the email.
• If your message contains an offer, be sure to include it in the subject line. People are always looking for a deal!
• If you can, split test your subject line to find out which is the highest converting for your business. (You’d be surprised which subject lines perform well.)
• Don’t get carried away with writing enticing subject lines or you’ll risk alerting the spam filter. What’s more, you don’t want to overpromise in the subject line and under-deliver in the message body.

According to research from Epsilon, the from line is now nearly as important as the subject line when it comes to getting fickle people to open emails. Faced with too many emails and not enough time, people use the from line as a filter. If they don’t recognize the name, they skip it, delete it, or mark it as spam. The upshot is that your “from” line should include your company name and/or other markers that the recipient will recognize.

That’s it for part one. In future posts, we’ll discuss the remaining four elements of a successful nurture campaign: Optimizing your layout for the preview pane, applying the WIIFM method to content, issuing calls to action and using landing pages to improve conversion rate.

Read part two here

Summary: Email is a powerful advertising medium, but it won’t do a thing for your small business unless your messages actually get delivered. The key to avoiding the spam folder? Follow federal CAN SPAM regulations and obtain permission from your recipients.   

We’ve all experienced it before.

You open your email, excited that you have 10 new messages, only to find that nine of the ten are spam emails that you didn’t request.

Frustrated, you just delete anything you feel is unrequested.

As a small business owner, you want to ensure that your emails avoid this fate.

At the risk of stating the obvious, the deliverability of your email is crucial. If you don’t follow certain guidelines, you run the risk of having a higher bounce rate or—even worse—getting caught in a spam filter.

Deliverability is vital to your email marketing success. In order to avoid being labeled spam and ensure the highest possible open rate, there are guidelines that are not only best practices—some are law.

In 2003, Congress passed the CAN SPAM Act to enforce certain rules on email marketing. The law defines commercial email as “any electronic mail message the primary purpose of which is the commercial advertisement or promotion of a commercial product or service.”

For most businesses, these rules—they’re commandments, really—apply to most of the messages you send to prospects.

The top CAN SPAM commandments are as follows:

• You shall not provide false To, From and Reply To information.
• You shall not use false or deceptive subject lines.
• You shall disclose that the email is an advertisement.
• You shall include a valid, physical address or P.O. box
•  You shall provide an opt-out for future emails. (This must have an option to exclude all email communication, although you can also offer opt-outs for certain areas.)
• You shall honor any opt-outs promptly (within 10 business days)

For the details on the CAN SPAM Act and helpful FAQ’s, click here. http://www.ftc.gov/bcp/edu/pubs/business/ecommerce/bus61.shtm

It is important to remember that you must also monitor what others are doing on your behalf. For example, if you have a contract company do your email marketing, you are still legally responsible for what they send. If you or someone working on your behalf breaks the law, the penalties can be severe, with fines up to $16,000.

Best practice: Get permission first

Although the CAN SPAM Act doesn’t specify that you must have permission to send someone an email, it is always recommended to do so.

Sending an email without permission can cause severe consequences for your brand, including distrust, and dismissal and deletion of all communication.

Kutenda makes it easy for you to be CAN SPAM compliant with all email messages you send.  An unsubscribe option is automatically inserted at the bottom of each email and when someone chooses this option, Kutenda ensures that they are deleted from email communications. Also, Kutenda prevents duplicate email address, helping you get accurate statistics on the performance of your email campaigns.

Whatever tool or system you use to execute email campaigns, be sure to enforce these best practices. Email marketing is a powerful means to communicate with your customers, and doing so well can bring you much success.

Online advertising, long considered the lesser sibling to television advertising, has come of age.

According to a September report from the Internet Advertising Bureau and PricewaterhouseCoopers, online advertising expenditures in the UK overtook television expenditures in 2008.

Last year advertisers spent $2.792 billion on online media and $2.615 billion on television.

The report defined online advertising as email campaigns, classified listings, display ads and search marketing. (Commonly referred to as PPC, or pay-per-click, search marketing involves placing keyword-based ads on search engines like Google and Bing. Incidentally, Kutenda helps small businesses with their email and search marketing—get more information here.)

The news from the UK comes on the heels of a similar milestone on this side of the Atlantic. In August, the Kelsey Group announced that spending on online media eclipsed spending on traditional media among small and midsize businesses in 2008.

What’s driving businesses toward online advertising?

For one thing, companies of all size are a lot more frugal these days, and as their marketing budgets shrink, the appeal of online marketing and advertising—with its trackability and precision—increases.

The other reason? Businesses realize that their customers are spending more time online than ever, and they have little choice but to follow suit.

According to the Pew Internet and American Life Project, broadband connectivity has increased across every demographic group—jumping 300 percent among the so-called Silent Generation, those born between 1937–1945.

In other words, it’s not just the kids who are online—it’s every demographic, young and old.

So what do you think—are you ready to tap the power of online advertising for your small business? Learn how Kutenda can help your business meet local prospects on the Internet through search and email marketing.

Summary: Since not all new prospects are ready to buy, your small business must effectively nurture them from cold to hot, a process that’s easier and more efficient with email marketing. But to take advantage of email, you’ve got to build a good opt-in list first. Here’s how.

Why take the time to build an email list? Because email marketing is the most efficient way to move large numbers of prospects from cold to hot.

How does that work exactly? Well, most of the time when a prospect finds out about your business, they aren’t going to be ready to part with their money, for a few reasons:

• Trust. They don’t necessarily know that much about you or your business, and need to learn more to develop a level of trust that you can do what you say you do.
• Investigating. Depending on what your business does, a prospect might be just doing initial investigation into who can help solve a business problem.
• Comparison shopping. You’re not the only company that sells something, so the prospect is comparing you to others.
  

So, email is a great way to build trust and keep your company and expertise at the top of a prospect’s mind. But what if you don’t have an email list to send to? This is definitely an issue I have heard from some Kutenda customers who have a small number of clients they work with.

What are some good ways to build an opt-in email list—meaning, people who give you permission to send them email messages? I don’t recommend buying email lists. Even though the lists are opt-in (meaning, the people on the list agree to receive your email), purchased lists aren’t usually worth the cost.
Better ways to build an opt-in email list for your business

• Ask for emails at every customer touch point: Have an email signature? What about some available space for a quick form on your web site? Make sure that at any place you can ask for email addresses, you get them. Ask people to subscribe to getting updates and information from your company on any employee’s email signature, at the check-out stand (if you are a retail business), on your payment and billing receipts, on feedback forms, heck, even on your business cards!
• Get subscribers on your web site: Place your email list subscribe form on the home page of your web site, preferably “above the fold,” meaning visible on your web site before someone has to scroll through the page.
• Give them something valuable: Give someone an added incentive to sign-up to get emails from you. Offer a chance to win a prize or something for free. Offer to give them free information in exchange for handing over an email address. For example, if you’re a plumber, you could offer a free guide to clearing clogged drains without harsh chemicals. If you’re an accountant, how about a guide to the most-missed business deductions? These kinds of free but useful information are a great way to get people to give up an email address.
• Market to someone else’s list: Do you have other companies that refer you business (or vice versa)? Ask to write an article for their email newsletter on something their audience might need to know. Then give those folks on that list a way to subscribe directly to your emails for more helpful information. Note: You may need to pay the other company to do this for you, but if you think you can get a good list out of it, its probably worth it.

Remember, email marketing can’t do much for you unless you have an opt-in list of email addresses you can send email to. So start building your list today!

File under: Small business online marketing > Email marketing > Email list building

About a month ago, my wife and I welcomed our fourth child into the world and the team at Kutenda presented us with a gift certificate to a restaurant near my house. Needless to say, our hands were full, so ordering in seemed like the perfect option.

It was a surprise to me when I did a Google search and couldn’t find a web site for the place. This was a bit frustrating, as it’s tough to order for delivery when you don’t know what is on the menu. Fortunately, the place was only a 6-minute drive, so I went there to find out.

I entered the restaurant and asked for a takeout menu. The hostess said their takeout menus were located in the Yellow Pages. Wow.

Since it was a small business, I asked if the owner was around and she introduced me. We had a nice chat about her place and then I asked why she didn’t have a web site. She told me that she didn’t need one because everyone already knows about their small business or could find them in the Yellow Pages. I told her that I don’t keep a phone book because it takes up too much space and showed her how I could find it all on my iPhone. Again, she said that people just call and place an order. Confused, I said, “but I don’t know what’s on your menu.” We ended the conversation back at the Yellow Pages.

It was clear she was marooned on Phone Book Island. (Well, it was more of a self-imposed exile.)

This experience showed me how vital it is that small local businesses understand changes in consumer behavior and the importance of having a web presence. To cling to the phone book is to isolate your business on an island with a rapidly declining population. The phone book now trails the Internet as the most popular source for local business information, and the proliferation of smart phones will add to the web’s lead.

Just creating a profile on Google Local Search would dramatically improve this restaurant’s chances of being found. The amount of revenue being lost by this small-business owner could be substantial.

As with many small proprietors, she probably does not know where to start with online marketing. According to a 2009 Opus/AllBusiness.com survey, a plurality of small businesses, 25 percent, chose “confusion” as the reason they do not market themselves online. “Lack of budget” was close behind at 24 percent.

Though web marketing may seem daunting and expensive, there are three easy and affordable steps businesses can take to get started:

1. Create a web site
2. Submit to Google Local Search
3. Build an email list

Just starting with these three steps—none of which is harder than setting up a free email account—would allow a small business to be found online. If this restaurant had a web site with a menu, more people would be able to order for delivery and decide if it’s a place they want to go to eat.

What did we think of the food? It was excellent. I would send you a link, but you’ll have to paddle out to Phone Book Island to have a look at the menu …