Global Marketing Plus

Tip #6 is about the often neglected subject line.

According to Jupiter Research, 35% of email users open messages because of what’s contained in the subject line.

After the From line, the subject line is the second most important part of an effective email. If you forget to include a subject line, your message is much more likely to go into a junk mail folder, or just not be opened. Email marketing professionals live and die by subject lines. A good subject line will sum up what the message is all about, but still entice someone to open the message, read it, and take action.

Personalizing a subject line with your company’s name or the recipient’s name or other information can also lead to higher message open rates Including the company name in the subject line can increase open rates by up to 32 percent to 60 percent over a subject line without branding. (Jupiter Research)

I hope my 12 Step Program is helping you communicate with email more effectively

Has your web designer moved, but forgotten to leave a forwarding address? I can help.

Thanks, Ron

On May 1st, I was invited by Bonnie Whitlock to attend a musical called “Wizard of Odd” at Deseret Star Theater in Murray, Utah.

What a fun night!  We laughed until our sides hurt!  This was the first time I had the opportunity to attend a play at Deseret Star and was very surprised at the professional way the actors entertained.  I would suggest that anyone go!

What also amazed me was the way they took a very famous movie and applied local flavor to it to appeal to the audience.  By using local names and places, it drew the audience into the play and everybody could relate to the new jokes.

Tip: Pull your visitors into your website by including words and phrases that people can relate to.  For example, it is suggested we do not write using terms used in your industry unless your readers are already in your industry.  Write on a 7th to 9th grade level and you will not loose as many readers!

If you have never been to Deseret Star, you should go.  Thank you Bonnie for the opportunity to experience the fun.  Our whole group said you stole the show and made it fun for all of us!

Recently Kris and I had the opportunity to attend a concert at the Hawaiian Cultural Center in Midvale, Utah. Wow! talk about fantastic. It was like attending a family reunion. Everyone was happy and most dressed as if we were in Hawaii attending this function!

The main event was a “slack guitarist” from Hawaii that played the most
fantastic music and kept us entertained for over an hour!

Several local people were on the program, including some fantastic hula dancers!

When it was over and we stepped outside to go to the car, I was disappointed to see we were not really in Hawaii!

When the Hawaiian Cultural Center asked me to build a website for them, they wanted to create the look and feel of Hawaii. I think we did that. Look at their website and judge for yourself. Go to Hawaiian Cultural Center and look (www.hawaiianculturalcenter.org). I think they did a wonderful job making visitors feel the Hawaiian spirit just as I felt I was in Hawaii at the concert.

Tip: Remember to make your visitors feel your passion when they come to your website. That is one way to stand out from all your competition!

Check out the Hawaiian Cultural Center’s website to see what other activities they have. For
example, they have Hula Lessons! Check out their calendar and visit the center at 741 West Smelter Street, Midvale, UT or call them at (801)562-5642

The single most important part of an email message is the From line. If the person you’re sending to doesn’t recognize your name, your message will be at best skipped over. At worst, it will be simply deleted without opening.

Most email programs show a friendly display name instead of the plain email address.

The From line of your email (friendly display name) should have your full name and organization in it.

For example, when I send out an email, my from line reads: Ron Coleman– Global Marketing Plus. When someone receives an email from me, it’s pretty clear which person named Ron the message came from. And if they don’t know me, but know my company instead, they won’t completely ignore my message.

But at least a couple of times per week I get an email that was meant for someone else named Ron, but works at a different company.

The culprit is that many people have only their first names listed in the friendly From display line. Most of the time the messages aren’t too racy, but with email programs that automatically fill in an email address when you start to type a first name, it’s easy to email the wrong person something that could be seriously career limiting.

This week’s effective email strategy will certainly increases the amount of email that you send out. But it can also be extremely effective.

With the huge volume of spam, it’s tough to know if your message got through. Right now, four out of every five emails sent over the Internet today is spam. With so much junk, it’s easy for your message to get lost, trapped in a junk mail filter, or simply piled up in someone’s ever-expanding inbox.So you start to worry when you haven’t heard back from someone that you emailed a couple of days ago. Hmmmm, you say. Did that person get my message? Should I send it again? If I do, will that bug them? Am I being too pushy?

So when you’re on the other side of the email message, it’s really important to reply early and reply often.

What you’re doing is letting them know you (a) received the message and (b) that you care. Even if you’re not able to take action on their message right away, replying back with a quick message indicates that you’re not ignoring them.

Replying early to a message could be as basic as something like this:

Bob-
Thanks for sending this over. I’ll work on this later today. Thanks,

Ron

We’ve found that replying early and often dissipates a lot of anxiety and tension, and allows the person who sent you a message to know that they don’t have to worry about it.

Let me know if you need help with an upcoming web project or email campaign.

Ron

Since my last post, I’ve heard from many people about their take on effective email messages. Feel free to send me your thoughts.

Never before have people been more interested in getting more information, but it must be relevant. According to the Wall Street Journal, 81% of U.S. executives subscribe to industry email newsletters for product information and business intelligence. And 35% of email users open messages because of what’s contained in the subject line (Jupiter Research).

This week’s strategy — keep it relevant — is critical to long-term messaging success.

If your messages are relevant, your recipients will pay attention to what you are trying to say.

If your messaging is not relevant, however, you’re quickly going to find that your messages are filed in the “I’ll get to these later” pile.

If you send email that isn’t relevant — they will quickly stop paying attention to your messages.

Let me repeat that, and make it stand out …

If you send email that isn’t relevant — they will quickly stop paying attention to your messages.

It’s easy to get into a mentality where you want to send everything to everyone. And with email newsletters or mass broadcasts, it’s not that expensive to do. However, once someone feels your messages aren’t that important, they will simply stop reading themNext Post, I will talk about replying early and replying often.

A day in my life:

• The phone rings off the hook.

• While I am on the phone, my cell phone rings.

• I have other people that instant message me.

• Unexpected visitors come to my office to “chat”.

• My cell phone rings some more!

• I receive dozens of emails … many of which are spam!

Sometimes it drives me insane!

I have read that our collective attention spans are very short. Plus we simply have too many distractions to wade through a really long email.

You might think they need all of the information, but when people are faced with dense blocks of text, many people’s eyes glaze over. And then they ignore the entire message.

For that reason, the most effective email messages are short. Two or three short sentences in length. Perhaps a couple of bullet points. And perhaps the short message is followed by supporting material, an attachment or a link to more information on a website.

Enough said. I’ll try to keep this section short.

Have you found that shorter emails are more successful? Let me know.

For years I’ve spent a lot of time analyzing email messages for our clients, and measuring and tracking their effectiveness. During all these years, I have performed tons of research and surveys.

The most important thing I learned is that most people do not send effective email messages!

Whether you send large email newsletters or just use email to communicate with friends, colleagues and customers, following twelve strategies will make your email more effective. These strategies have been developed over years of experience and quantitative analysis of tens of millions of messages we’ve sent out for our clients.

So, during the next few weeks I will share these twelve strategies one at a time in this blog.

Here is number 1:

1. One Main Message Per Email

The most effective email messages and the one that get the most positive respnses have one main idea or concept. Over the years I have found that the strongest messages are ones that don’t distract people with too much information.

I’m sure you’ve received a message from someone that has eleven different ideas and thoughts that ramble from paragraph to paragraph.

If you’re like me, most people will just leave this complicated message for later, and focus on another email or task that’s much easier to accomplish.

Before you start writing a message, write down what you’re trying to communicate. Or at least think about your message before you start writing.

The most effective messages are ones that are crisp, clear and concise.

I’ll be listing these strategies, one tip at a time, over the next several weeks. Let me know if you find them helpful.

And let me know if we can help you with your next email campaign or web project.

A: As I mentioned before, submitting your Web site to Google and Yahoo and other search engines is a good way to start. You can also submit your Web site to directories, which contain human-edited links to related Web sites in a hierarchical structure. Not all directories are free, but two of the best-known directories are Yahoo (separate from submitting your site) and dmoz.com.

Prepare your site through “organic” means to be clean, easy-to-use and optimized for search engines. If you aren’t familiar with search engine marketing, I recommend you use the many resources available from Global Marketing Plus.

A: Over 70% of online users search for products to purchase online. (Even those looking for local goods and services).

The more visible your small business is online, the greater your chance for sales. SEM and SEO campaigns can be targeted only to your local area and may be more cost-effective and farther-reaching than traditional local advertising. You can also easily track results, something that can be difficult with other types of advertising.