Email Marketing

Email Marketing Campaign Modules are the building blocks of your email marketing campaigns. They contain placeholders where you can add the text, images, buttons, styles, and layouts that make up your campaigns. You can add as many modules as you like, change the type (different layouts of text and images), and rearrange them to suit your design needs. Module buttons are located at the bottom of a campaign that’s open in Edit mode.

Each text module has its own set of editing tools.

• Heading: Highlighting text, and the clicking on the big H button, will turn the highlighted text into a heading text type.
• Subheading: Highlighting text, and the clicking on the small H button, will turn the highlighted text into a subheading text type.
• Unordered list: Highlighting a list of text, and then clicking on the bulleted list button, will create an unordered list. An unordered list is a list with bullets.
• Ordered list: Highlighting a list of text, and then clicking on the numbered list button, will create an ordered list. An ordered list is a list with consecutive numbers.
• Link: Adds a clickable link to your text. If you highlight text, Email Marketing will put the highlighted text in the appropriate field on the link overlay. You need to specify both the display text, and the destination URL, when using the link tool.
• Center: Centers any highlighted text. It’s best to center individual paragraphs, by themselves, instead of trying to center an entire span of text, over multiple breaks.
• Bold: Makes highlighted text bold.
• Italic tool: Italicizes highlighted text.
• Additional Integration Functions: If the integration you have added to your account is related to text editing, then you’ll see it appear on the right. Some examples include Event Brite, and Personalization Tags.

After you’ve opened to your Email Marketing account, you can see the Email Marketing Campaigns page by clicking Campaigns in the top menu. This is where you will create your email marketing campaigns and email marketing newsletters.

• Responsive Email Marketing Templates: Email Marketing uses responsive email templates. With the responsive email templates, your emails will automatically scale to fit any screen. Whether it’s viewed on a laptop or a smartphone, your campaigns will look great. There is no additional action needed to take advantage of the feature.
• View your email marketing campaigns: Recent email marketing campaigns or email marketing newsletters you have created appear in the center of the Email Marketing Campaigns page. All others appear under the Compose! button in the sidebar. When you select an email marketing campaign, it opens in the center of the Campaigns page.
• Email Marketing Campaign Statistics: These appear in the summary section for each campaign. These numbers show the total overall stats for the campaign. Click more stats to see a detailed overview of the campaign statistics. Learn more about email marketing statistics.
• Email Marketing Campaign tools: These tools are available for each campaign on the Email Marketing Campaigns page.

The footer is at the end of your email marketing campaign showing your copyright and company information. It is right below Social Media Links that you have added to your account. The footer is must, and it is required to comply with CAN-SPAM Act, and other laws.

The default details in the footer are the company name and address that you entered when you registered your email marketing account. You can edit this info by clicking Settings, at the top of the screen. The Company/Group, and Physical address fields show in the footer. Feel free to add a phone number, or any other details you’d like to display in the email footer, to those fields. Activate the Campaign Tweaks Add-on to make more display changes to your email footer. You can add extra content below, adjust the copyright date display, and center the footer text. Use the styles editor to change the footer background color, and the style of the footer text.

Creating your very first email marketing campaign is as easy as 1,2,3…

Below points cover creating a full email marketing campaign from scratch with text and images using the tools available in Email Marketing. It is possible for you to create a plain text email campaign, or you can use custom HTML to create a campaign from scratch.

1. Log in to your Email Marketing account.
2. Click the Compose! –in the right panel.
3. A blank campaign opens
4. Enter a name for your campaign.
5. To upload a banner image, click the plus sign on the Images tab.
6. A banner image is the graphic (590 pixels wide) that appears at the top of your email campaign, giving your readers a first impression.
7. Click the plus sign
8. Browse to the image you want to upload to the Images tab, and click Open.
9. Click and drag the image from the Images tab to the banner placeholder.
10. Click and drag the handle
11. In the Banner link dialog box that automatically appears, enter the URL you want people to go to when they click the banner image, and then click Save.
12. Enter the link address and click Save
13. Click This is your main headline, enter a headline, and click OK.
14. Enter a headline and click OK
15. To structure your email campaign layout, use the module buttons located at the bottom of the campaign.
16. In the text placeholder, enter your text.
17. Upload an image to the Image tab, click and drag the image onto the image placeholder (just as you did with the banner image), and click OK.
18. Add text and drag image into placeholder
19. To change the color and formatting of your campaign, click the Styles tab that is located in the right pane next to the Images tab, and choose a style.
20. Click the Styles tab
21. To preview your campaign, click the Preview button.
22. Click the Preview button
23. At this point, your campaign may look something like this:
24. Email marketing campaign
25. You can add more modules that contain section title, image, text, and –placeholders.
26. In the upper right pane of your campaign (next to Continue), click the Save button.

With Email Marketing, in most cases you will get an SPF Pass without needing to change anything on your end. If you don’t have an SPF record set up, your campaigns will still deliver really well through Email Marketing. Also, each campaign is signed using our own DKIM signature, and includes Sender ID validation. This allows for full email validation without you needing to ever be involved! While our SPF covers you for most cases, sometimes delivery can be improved with a little something on your end. If you are experiencing delivery issues (not caused by content), changing your own DNS records for the domain you are using as your sender address may help.

Subscribers can forward your email campaigns to friends and colleagues any time. Here’s how:

In the email footer of your campaign, the subscriber clicks the Forward button.

They can enter up to 5 friends’ email addresses, include a short personal message, and then click the Forward button.

The campaign is delivered to the subscriber’s friends in the form of a forwarded email message. Since the campaign was merely forwarded, the people receiving the campaign are not subscribers yet. It is a good idea to include a call to action to subscribe.

On your stats page, you can see how many times the original campaign was forwarded, and by whom. You can’t see the email addresses of the people they were forwarded to until they subscribe.

An Email Marketing campaign connected to all your social profiles, and shareable by your subscribers In Email Marketing, there are two different types of “Social Links” that you can add to your campaigns.

The first are Social Icons, that link your users to your various profiles on all your different social platforms. The other are Social Sharing Links that let your readers share the email, themselves.

Adding Social Icons to your Email Marketing campaigns:

You can connect any of your social profiles to your Email Marketing account, and have each of them show up as an icon at the bottom of your Email Marketing emails. (You can also change the position of them, using our Campaign Tweaks add-on, or insert them manually with our macro shortcuts, too.) Just click on Add-ons at the top of any Email Marketing screen, and then on the Social option. Then you can set it up, from there. You won’t be able to see this row of icons, while you’re editing your campaign. But they will show up on the Preview page, and when you send your email, for sure!

Now, these icons are not used for sharing your campaigns, but have no fear! Read on, to include ways for your readers to share…

Adding Social Sharing Links to your Email Marketing emails:

The Social Sharing Links are a way for you to encourage your subscribers to get involved in the conversation, and share your emails themselves. When you hit Send on any campaign, and get to the Mailing Details page, you will see a column of check boxes at the bottom. You can tick these options, to add your sharing buttons to the very top of your email.

Yes, You can create a Email Marketing campaign and schedule the mailing for a later date. This can be helpful when you want to create a group of campaigns at one sitting, and plan their release ahead of time.

Note: Before you get started, confirm your Time Zone settings.

1. On the Campaigns page, on the campaign you want to schedule for a later mailing date, click the Schedule button. Click the clock button
2. On the Schedule tab, click inside the time box and set the time of your future mailing. Set the date and time
3. Click the date box, and in the calendar that appears, click the planned mailing month and date, and click Save. Set the month and date
4. The date and time you select must be set in the future. If you receive error messages, double check your Time Zone settings. Click Continue.
5. On the Recipients tab, click Include for each list you want to send the mailing to.
6. Click the Exclude button only if contacts in different lists overlap, and you want to make sure the overlapping contacts do not receive the mailing.
7. For details about using the Include and Exclude buttons, see Including and excluding lists. Click Continue.
8. On the Details tab, confirm your mailing details are correct, make final changes, and click Schedule. Check the box
9. Once you’ve made the necessary changes, click Looks Good. Schedule it! and we will send it on the date and time you set.
10. In the Campaigns page, the clock button will appear red, indicating you’ve successfully scheduled your future mailing.

Know CAN SPAM Act and other laws before sending email marketing campaign legally:

Here at Email Marketing, we have our permissions policy to keep your emails landing in inboxes. ISPs (internet service providers) and governments have their own rules and requirements. We would like to avoid getting into the legalese aspect of email delivery but it is still important to know that you are sending responsibly. Here are some guidelines for sending commercial email that should keep you safe:

Only send commercial email to people that have consciously agreed to get mass email from you or your business. Simply put, this means that anyone you email should have opted-in, and expects to receive your emails, specifically. That means no purchased lists! The more clear you are at the time of opt-in about what you’ll be emailing, the higher your response rate and success will be.

Make sure your business is clearly identified as the sender. If your contacts signed up with you as Bob’s Top Hats, you ought be sending them emails as Bob’s Top Hats and not Jason’s Slacks and Spats. Even if you own both businesses, it’s important that your recipients recognize you!

Include a valid postal address and internet address on the email that you send so that can both be used for unsubscribing if needed.

This is actually a legal requirement, but it’s a good idea to make it easy for folks to contact you anyway… Periodically reconfirm people who have been on the list more than 18 months.

This is especially important if they have not read or responded to any emails recently. Old and non-responsive email addresses harm your delivery and can indicate to ISP’s that you are bad news even if you are not! We can help though, so contact support and we will recommend a few options to keep your list fresh.

When people complain or unsubscribe, remove them from the list immediately or as soon as possible after receiving the request.

Well, this one’s pretty important! Email Marketing removes folks who unsubscribe through your email automatically, but in case the readers email you directly, it’s really easy to pop into your account and suppress them manually.

Keep in mind that embedding the full form HTML code in your Email Marketing campaigns is not recommended. It can cause unwelcome display and delivery issues. Instead, use the default signup form option instead. This will add a Sign-up button to the footer of all your mailings.

Email Marketing links to your default form wherever you use the macro [[subscribe]] in your email campaign. To add an extra clickable link in the campaign body, just copy the line below and paste it into any text module in your email:

[Subscribe here!]([[subscribe]])

Don’t forget to send a test to yourself, to check your work. Feel free to edit the link display text used in the square brackets. It’s the visible text your readers will see in the final email.

A Email Marketing template is a pre-designed starter page that you can use to efficiently promote your product, invite people to an event, compose a newsletter, or send out a quick update.

If these templates don’t offer a layout you like, you can customize a template to meet your needs, or you can create a new campaign based on an existing one.

To open the template gallery, on the Email Marketing Campaigns page, click Compose! To get a better idea of how each pre-designed template might look with text and images, hover over the Examples below each template design type.

You have several pre-set style options to choose from, in your Styles menu. You can also edit any of the existing color or text settings in each one of those. You also have the option of creating your very own, custom style.

If you host your sign-up form on your site using the plain embed option, feel free to customize the HTML code provided. Just keep the form functions intact, to be sure that it will work correctly!

However, if you plan on keeping the form hosted on Email Marketing, or using the styled embed option, or the side tab embed option — use the theme options to customize the style to your liking!

You can technically embed HTML code into a Email Marketing campaign — however! The email programs you are sending to don’t allow any embedding media to be viewed. And, in fact, they are likely to block your email with embedded media, as potentially malicious content. So you need to steer clear of embedding any media, using any code, for view-ability, and deliver-ability reasons

Many email programs and readers simply don’t like embedded media. They’ll either display it incorrectly or push it to spam. ISPs in general don’t like seeing that sort of code and tend to flag it, as a lot of malware makes it way into email through that sort of thing.

Our Email Marketing Experts recommend that you use a high quality screenshot or image in your campaign. And then, link that picture to the video or audio on your site, or elsewhere on the web. You could also put a text link instead of an image.

The goal of subject lines is to encourage readers to open your email and take action. Don’t let the pressure of writing the perfect subject line get to you. Finding the right words doesn’t have to be difficult.

Open rates depend on multiple factors like collection practices, list age and the industry in which you’re sending. The average rate ranges from 10% to 25% (at the high end of the spectrum). We analyzed thousands of subject lines to find those with the highest open rates and the most impact. Here’s what we learned.

Be Specific: The subject line should tell readers what they’re going to find inside.

It’s totally clear what the email is about and the reader knows, when they open the email, they will read the details about the special offer. Also, note the “call to action” and a sense of urgency. However, it’s worth avoiding overwrought proclamations — you don’t want to come on too strong.

Be True To The Purpose Of A Subject Line: The purpose is a preview of the email; a handful of words that capture the essence of the subject matter.

Words With Friends: Feedback is extremely constructive and with subject lines, getting some outside perspective is vital.

Ask your friends and colleagues what they think the subject line should be or have them edit your subject lines. Better yet, come up with a few options and ask them to come up with some themselves. Then see which ones are best. You’ll be surprised at how often this results in the perfect subject line.

Split Second Impressions: The first words matter! When the email is being previewed, your first few words are the one’s that will be seen so make ‘em count. Litmus has a neat tool to preview how your subject lines will appear across multiple email clients.

Content Is King: Subject lines are a major factor in generating healthy open rates. It’s the first step to engagement and as such, it is worth looking at how your content drives your subject line rather than viewing the subject line as an afterthought.

A compelling subject line can only be built on a strong foundation of content so make sure that your newsletter itself offers value. Thinking holistically, if you want to drive higher open rates, write content that generates great subject lines.

While analyzing our top performing subject lines, a trend did emerge. Of emails that had the highest open rates, 76% of them had either their business name or the product name mentioned in their subject lines.

That’s more than a coincidence, that’s a pro tip: the top subject line writers use either their company name, the product name or both.

Utilize Google Insights For Search: If you’re unsure of which words are best suited to your subject line, try comparing them with Google’s Insights For Search. While it’s technically a tool to help improve search engine optimization (aka SEO) and help you understand what people are searching for on Google, the tool offers great ‘insight’ into online interests in general.

It’s most useful for subject lines when you want to compare which words will be more powerful or whether to lead with a certain timely topic over another.

Engagement is also known as “clicks” — this is the actual interaction that your readers have with your email newsletters. And can make a big difference in how many are converting to site traffic and sales. Here are some quick suggestions for increasing engagement:

Target Your Biggest Fans: Email Marketing support is able to create a “Views” list for you. It’s a list of everyone who has viewed your emails, with images, since you began sending. These are your most engaged subscribers because it’s the folks who have been active, in your actual emails. If you want to slice it more recently, we can create a Views list for you that spans just the past couple months, as well.

Although it may not be your biggest list, it is your strongest list. These folks are most likely to engage with what you send. You’ll see a pretty significant increase in your Views and Engagement rates if you send to just this list. And a higher rate of engagement means healthier sending, and more guaranteed delivery rates.

Write Good Subject Lines: Subject lines draw your readers in! Spend an extra 3 minutes brainstorming a creative subject line or tweaking the one you always use before your next send. Many studies have been done about subject line effectiveness, and thoughtful subject lines always result in greater read rates.

Keep Content Fresh: Keep your content interesting by trying something new: offer a coupon, have a sale, reference current or local events, mention national holidays, or send out a survey (with our Survey Monkey Add-on). All of these are small changes that might freshen up your content and wake up your subscribers.

Use Links Effectively: Adding links to your newsletter makes it easy for your readers to get to your website. You can use the link icon at the bottom of your text or image module to create a link. (It looks like a chain link. Get it?) If you’re already using links in your newsletters regularly, but they just say, Click here.

Descriptive anchor text encourages clicks, and is a good SEO strategy, in general.

Don’t forget to make your images clickable, too. It’s something readers expect.

You can also use the button module to create really enticing calls to action, for your links.

Leverage your lovers: One goal of email marketing is to continually expand your reach to new readers. They can become customers or word-of-mouth marketers for your business – new eyes are a huge asset.

Why not ask people who already love what you are sending to pass along your newsletter? Encourage people to share or forward to a friend by using all the available tools. Email Marketing offers a whole suite of social share tools that you can add to every email newsletter you send.

What Is An Email Newsletter / Email Marketing Abuse Complaint?

A email complaint is when a recipient clicks the “spam” button on your email in their inbox. Email Marketing tracks these through feedback loops and reports them in your statistics under the “Marked As Spam” stat.

How Do I Reduce these complaints?

The best way to reduce spam complaints is to alter your opt in process. Think about the reasons why a contact in your list would mark your email as spam. Whatever the reason, it’s always about an unwanted email. When a contact reports your email as spam, they’re saying they did not expect to receive an email from you and do not want to receive another! So go through your opt-in process as a test and ask yourself if you can make any step clearer.

4 Tips To avoid email marketing / newsletter marketing abuse complaints:

1. If you add customers to your email list, add a separate unchecked box specifically for email marketing opt in at the point of purchase.
2. Only include active contacts from the past 18 months.
3. Periodically remove contacts from your active subscribers that have not engaged with your emails. If you’re not sure how to do this, support can help!
4. If you use single opt-in, make the switch to double opt-in.