Any at given moment, we’re bombarded with internet marketing and website optimization advice. We’re told to simultaneously be marketing on Facebook, Twitter, email and more. We know we need to be testing and optimizing our sites to the max.

These are all worthy endeavors. But I’m going to suggest that they aren’t always the most fruitful pursuits. I think we often bypass more obvious quick-wins in favor of sexier projects that we get excited about.

I was recently reminded of this at C28. For years, customers have been telling us to show the pictures of clothing on real people, rather than mannequins. For years we ignored the advice due to the impractical task of always having models on standby when new products arrived. So instead we optimized the heck out of everything we knew how. We overhauled the design of the site. We built a new and improved shopping cart. We ran incessant split tests on our marketing emails. But we started hitting a point of diminishing returns. All those a/b tests weren’t as effective as they used to be.

Then we decided to do the obvious. We actually listened to our customers and starting photographing all products on models. And the results? Let’s just say it was the single most effective optimization project we have ever done to the website. It wasn’t technical. It didn’t take an online marketing specialist, just a bit of old-fashioned listening to the customer.

You and me are online marketing junkies. We eat, sleep, and breathe conversion rates, CTRs, SEO, and SMO. Yet are we missing the obvious? What are the roadblocks preventing you from growing your business? You can have a flawless checkout process and fastest loading pages in the world, but if your basic product information is lacking, what’s the point?

Before you begin that next optimization project, take some time and revsit the fundamentals of your business.

Will it work? Yes. Will it work next month? Maybe. Will it still work after this tactic of desperation has been used for months? Absolutely not.

When the cost of an additional marketing endeavor is virtually nothing, the directive from management will always be the same. “Do it more!”

But more is a paradox. It works well in the short term, but fails miserably in the long run.

The alternative to more is better. Better requires thought, planning, and relevance. More simply requires more of the same. More is easier than better, so its often the weapon of choice.

Permission marketing is all about trust. Every time you send a campaign that is irrelevant, you lose a bit of trust. Every time you over mail your list, you lose trust. Slowly but surely, you’re crying wolf. And like the boy in the fable, one day you’ll really have something important to say, and no one will care to hear it.

1. Compound Topics: I’ve seen this used regularly by Karmaloop. They cram about as many topics, brands, or product names into the subject line as possible, in hopes that something will grab the users attention. In order for this strategy to work, it’s important to still keep the subject line scan able by breaking up the topics. I personally like using the “+” symbol. (”New Nike + Reebok + Addidas Shoes!” vs. “New Nike, Reebok, and Addidas Shoes”)
2. Short and Simple: If you can communicate the topic email in 2 words rather than 6, you’ll stand apart from the rest of the inbox clutter.
3. Use Special Characters: I like using special characters in order to communicate ideas and create eye magnets. Below are a couple of suggestions:
   • New Widgets = Great Gifts
   • Huge $avings on Widgets
   • { New Widgets, In-Stock Now }
   • New Widgets @ YourURL.com!
4. Question Marks and Exclamation Points: Creative use of Question marks and exclamation points within subject lines can stress urgency or create curiosity in the mind of the subscriber. I like combining the 2 and creating something like “50% Off All Widgets?!”
5. Top 10 Lists: There’s something so attention grabbing about top 10 lists (or top 7, 13, or whatever). People want valuable information in bite-size, scan-able chunks. A list delivers value that can’t be achieve by endless paragraphs, even if they contained the same information.
6. All Caps: Once considered a spam trigger, I believe all caps is back on the table. I frequently see it used by large companies that would probably not be doing it if it was harmful to the delivery rate. However, I would suggest only using all caps on special occasions. In addition, I think it’s much more effective to capitalize only 1 word in the subject rather than the whole thing. ( “HUGE Sale this Friday Only” vs. “HUGE SALE THIS FRIDAY ONLY” )
7. Use Magical Word “Free”: It sounds trite, but “free” still works. With less ISPs nitpicking on words like this in the subject line, it shouldn’t hurt your delivery rate.
8. Use the Recipient’s Name: Let’s face it, we love to hear our name. Adding the recipient’s name to the subject line will make them believe the message is personalized for them. I would strongly caution, however, not to use this tactic unless something in the email is personalized for this individual. Simply appending the name to the beginning of a subject line, and not delivering personalized content, is gimmicky.
9. Leave them hanging: Subject lines that end with an … (an ellipsis) suggest there is a continuation of the topic within the body of the email. An example of this might be “Checkout these new widgets…” or something similar.
10. Make them Witty: If appropriate with your demographic, use witty subject lines that make your readers smile. Threadless is a master of witty subject lines.
11. Solution Oriented Subject: Rather than using product or brand names in the subject, consider writing from a solution oriented perspective. For example, a site selling anti-Spyware software might consider using a subject line like “How to get rid of Spyware Forever” rather than a product oriented subject such as “Brand New Spyware Software Released.”
12. Don’t Be Gimmicky: If your subject line is “How to Live Forever” and the content of your email is offering a new alternative health supplement, your readers will eventually see through your gimmicks. The subject should be intriguing, but not over-promising.

The key to successful subject lines is a/b testing. Without solid data, there’s no guarantee any of these tips will necessarily improve your
open rates. Every subscriber list is different, so it’s essential that you understand what works for your list.

As always, be sure to leave comments with any other successful subject line tactics you’ve seen.

1. Join Feedback Loops: Feedback loops allow you to see who is marking your email as spam (so you can remove them). Some ISPs, like AOL, provide an easy way to join the feedback loop. For other ISPs, you may need to contact your email service provider to see if they can provide you with this information.
2. Remove Inactive Subscribers: Inactive subscribers are most likely to mark your email as junk. Sure, nobody wants to willfully shrink the size of their opt in list, but you have to think long term.
3. Consistent Timing: ISPs love it when you consistently send email on the same day at near the same time. Since spammers don’t care, consistency is the mark of a responsible email marketer.
4. Use Consistent From Information: Be sure to always use the same from name and address. Changing the from email will require your subscribers to add each address to their address book in order to ensure deliverability. In addition, a consistent from name helps readers recognize your brand.
5. Use Double Opt In: Double opt in is a best practice required by many ISPs in order to be considered for
   white listing. In addition, it protects your database from misspelled email addresses.
6. Unsubscribe Link at Top: Why at the top? Because if unhappy subscribers can’t find it within a few seconds, they may hit the junk button instead, which damages your rep. Better to lose a subscriber than get a spam complaint.
7. Static IP Address: If you send marketing emails from your own server, always send from the same IP address. If you use an email service provider, find out if they offer a dedicated IP for an additional charge. If they do, it’s worth it. Like shared webhosts, many ESP’s group many clients under one IP address. In other words, what another company does with their email marketing can affect your deliverability. It’s much easier to manage the reputation of one IP address rather than many.
8. Reverse DNS: Many ISPs perform a reverse DNS lookup, which checks to make sure the IP you are sending from is authorized to send from your domain.
9. White List Reminder: Encourage subscribers to add your email address to their address book or white list. Some ISPs look at the number of times you are added to an address book as a sign of trust.
10. Get Authenticated: Email authentication is confusing as heck. There are a few standards out there that are not necessary competing. The Sender ID Framework uses a simple SPF record with your DNS Zone. Microsoft has a handy Sender ID wizard to help you create this text record for your DNS. In addition to Sender ID, DomainKeys is another popular authentication method. Both methods help to both ensure deliverability and prevent spammers from spoofing with your domain.
11. Don’t Worry about SPAM Words: Don’t stress about using the word “free” or occasionally putting all caps in the subject. I find these tactics to be successful and have no affect on delivery.
12. Remove Bounces: Be sure to remove all hard bounces that come back as undeliverable. Repeatedly sending to an invalid email will send off red flags with most internet service providers.
13. Reply to Challenge Responses: Occasionally, SPAM filtering software will send back a reply to your email asking you to confirm that you are a real person. Invest the 30 seconds or so it takes to do this for each challenge response you receive. Not only will it ensure that this particular recipient receives your message, but it can improve your sender reputation as well.
14. Be Relevant: Nothing encourages spam complaints more than sending people stuff they didn’t sign up for. If they signed up for a ezine newsletter, and you send them nothing but sales pitches, you’re likely to get complaints.
15. Send In Spurts: Some ISPs have limits as to how many emails you can send to in a given period of time. If you’re having trouble sending email to a particular ISP such as Yahoo, Gmail, or Hotmail, see if your email service provider gives you the ability to stage the email over a longer period of time.
16. Get Off Black Lists: MxToolBox offers a great tool to check if your email server is blacklisted. If it is, begin the process of contacting each of the the black list service and find out the process for getting your IP removed.
17. Get On White Lists: Achieving white list status with the major ISPs is no small feat. If you’re not up for the challenge, consider uses an email deliverability consulting firm such as Return Path that specializes in this area.

As with any improvement program, it’s important to track your progress as you attempt to improve your delivery rates. Email Delivery monitoring services such as DeliverMonitor.com offer ways to track your delivery rates across most of the major ISP’s.

Be sure to checkout my previous post 25 e-mail marketing tips. As always, I’d love to hear everyone’s experiences with email deliverability.  Like the ideas listed above? Find out 3 Things you need here.

About the Author

Justin Palmer is the owner of Palmer Web Marketing, an e-commerce and internet marketing consultancy. Justin also manages the e-commerce website for C28, a Christian t-Shirts company.

1. Diversify your Content: If your entire email focuses on one product, service, or topic, you risk alienating all but the few people who will be interested. Unless you have segmented your database based on previous behavior, do not send an email on only 1 topic. I consistently find that the click through rate increases in proportion with varied content.
2. Don’t Stress about Spam Words: Many experts will tell you to avoid words like “free” or “sale”. In my opinion, ISPs tend to be moving away from content based spam filtering in favor of reputation based filtering. In other words, your sending IP address and from email are more important than whether or not your email contains certain words. Personally, I’ve used words like “free” in the subject line without any affect on delivery rates.
3. Make it Readable with Images Disabled: Always take into account the appearance of your email with images disabled. For email clients such as Outlook, this is now the default feature. Even popular web mails like Hotmail now disable images unless the sender is in the address book of the recipient. The best tactic to create readable emails with images block is use an alt description.
4. Create an Online Version: Always provide an online version of your email for users having trouble viewing images. I’ve calculated from emails I’ve sent in the past that around 5% of users will use this feature.
5. Don’t Over or Under Mail: If you send too much, you’ll get deleted or marked as SPAM. Oddly enough, if you send once every 3 months you may have the same problem. Keep your brand top of mind for your customers by finding the perfect balance between over and under mailing.
6. Forward to Friend Feature Many users automatically do this, but it doesn’t hurt to ask. First time potential customers can be very open to company when it is introduced by a friend or colleague.
7. Subscribe Feature for Forwards: Make it easy for potential new subscribers to subscribe if they receive your email as a forward. Include somewhere in the body a subscribe link.



8. White List Reminder: If you want your subscribers to add you to their white list or address book, you need to ask. Sure, not everyone will add you. However, those who do are likely the people who care most about receiving your emails and, therefore, you have the most to lose if your emails get flagged as spam.
9. Unsubscribe at Top: I know what you’re thinking, “At the TOP!?” Yes, at the top. Lazy unsubscribers have a tendency to click the SPAM button instead scrolling down to find the unsubscribe link. By placing the link at the top, you might increase your unsubscribe rate, but that’s better than an inflated SPAM complaint count.
10. Single Click Unsubscribe: I generally recommend keeping the unsubscribe as simple as possible. However, you may want to confirm the action if you place your unsubscribe at the top of every email in case users click the link on accident.
11. Privacy Policy: Always place your privacy policy at the bottom of every email. Assure customers that you obtained their email address in a legitimate fashion, and you will not sell their personal info.
12. Call to Action: Each section must contain a specific call to action that avoids vague phrases like “click here.” You’ll be surprised how an effective call to action button or link can improve your click through rate.
13. Mix Freebies with Products: Too much selling can burn people out. Engage your subscribers with useful, free content. For example, if you sell home theater equipment, send out an article on the explaining the benefits of newer technologies. When you provide additional value to your customers with learning resources, they are sometimes even willing to pay more for your merchandise. In addition, strategies like this keep your brand top of mind.
14. Find Your “Tuesday”: For the eCommerce sites I’ve worked with, Tuesday morning has always resulted in the best open, click-through, and conversion rates. However, every list is different. Find which day works best for you.
    
15. Same Day, Same Time: Be consistent in the time you send your emails for two reasons. First, the ISPs see inconsistency as a possible SPAM flag. Spammers can care less when they send out mass emails. Second, your customers will begin to anticipate your emails at a certain time each week, possibly increasing the likely hood of them opening and clicking through.
16. Keep the Good Stuff above the Fold: Remember that many email clients will obscure a large portion of your email unless the user scrolls down. Make sure the top 400 pixels are as engaging as possible. I can’t tell you how many times I’ve had to send artwork back to the design department because the top of the email failed to grab your attention.
17. A/B Test 1 Variable at a Time: It took me far too long to learn this. For years, I would change several factors in each successive email blast, but never could find that perfect mix. If you really want to find out what works, you can only change 1 variable. For example, should the subject line be short or long? Keep the same content and split your list in 2, sending half a longer subject and the other half a shorter one. Do not change any other variables!
18. 600 Pixel Width: Due to the limitations of many email clients, stick with a width somewhere between 500 to 600 pixels wide.
19. Experiment with Subject Lines: I wish there was a magic principle I can share with you about subject lines. Unfortunately, there isn’t. The best we can do is test, test, and test again. Sometimes short subjects are better, sometimes long, sometimes intriguing, sometimes urgent, whatever works best for you. Here’s a great article on email subject lines.
20. Remove Inactive Subscribers: Inactive subscribers are the most likely to get you in trouble by clicking the SPAM button. Consider automatically removing a subscriber that hasn’t opened an email in several months.
21. Proofreading: Always have every email proofread by at least 2 detail oriented people. There’s nothing more embarrassing than a typo in an email blast.
22. Monitor Replies: When you send out thousands of emails, you’re bound to get a few replies. Occasionally, you’ll get some good feedback from your subscribers. In addition, some people reply with unsubscribe requests.
23. Don’t Rent Lists: Some may disagree on this, but I’ve never seen anything good come from a rented list. Don’t risk your sender reputation with emails from questionable sources. If you want to reach a new audience, consider a joint venture with another firm in a similar but non-competing industry.
24. Develop your Brand: Remember that your emails will slowly build your brand in the minds of your subscribers. Even if they never click-through and make a purchase, be sure to keep a consistent and accurate corporate image with your email content.
25. Begin Segmentation & Personalization Now: In a few years, email marketers that don’t practice segmentation and personalization will be left in the dust. There are an endless number of ways to segment your email list. Some popular ways are by purchase behavior, geography, or ordering frequency.

As a long term strategy, I would also greatly encourage researching transactional and trigger based email marketing, as they tend to product much better open, click-through, and conversion rates. In addition, I’ve had great results tracking email delivery rates for the major ISP’s through a deliverability monitoring service called Delivery Monitor.

Like the ideas listed above? Find out 3 Things you need here.

About Justin Palmer

Justin Palmer is the owner of Palmer Web Marketing, a web marketing & e-commerce consultancy. Justin also operations several other websites, including EnjoyinJava.com, a coffee reviews and coupon blog featuring coffee for less coupon codes.

Text vs. Image: Should emails be text or image heavy? In my experience with one particular client, a text heavy email received a slightly better delivery rate than an image heavy email. However, both received an almost equal amount of clicks and conversions.

Subject Lines: Should they be short or long? Is ALL CAPS ok? What about using words like “Free?” In my experience, the subject line doesn’t matter as much as it used to since ISPs seems to be leaning towards reputation based spam filtering. While I still avoid using all caps, I have been able to use the word free and acheive good delivery rates.

Calls to Action: What works better, “click here” or “learn more?” Depending on your type of business, and what point of the buying process your customer is at, the answer to this will vary greatly. The best you can do is try different CTA’s and measure the results.

Time Sent: Every email list has a sweet spot in the week when subscribers are most apt to open and engage your email. The only way you can find this sweet spot is to test different timeframes. Traditionally, Tuesday seems to be the favorite day to send emails.

There are an endless number of variables you can test. While many of the lower cost email service provider do not provide a built in a/b test functionality, I’ve found that you can simply split your list in two and create two different versions of an email. As long as your provider offers basic analytics, you can then track open rates, clickthroughs, and conversions.

In my experience, you can’t trust the delivery rates shown by your ESP’s report admin. Recently I tested an email delivery monitoring service by Delivery Monitor for one of my clients.  The service allows you to see which ISP’s (most of the major one’s except gmail) are sending your emails to junk or not delivering them at all. I’ve this service is extremely helpful with a/b testing content.
Happy testing…

1. Measure Customer Satisfaction: I encourage my customers to move beyond simple “how would you rate your experience” questions. Delve into specifics. Ask them about checkout. Ask them about the shopping cart. What about customer service? The returns process? If you questions are vague, then your results will be less than impressive.
2. Determine Future Improvments: One of my favorite things to do in a survey is to ask customers about potential ways of improving the website. When your tech team is wavoring between two or more improvement projects, a survey is a great way to find out which would benefit customers more.
3. Capture Customer Demographics: Have you ever wondered what the average age or your customer is? What about the percentage of male/female? Customer surveys are a great way to learn more about your client base.

Anytime you ask something of your customers, it’s a good idea to provide an incentive. If you site uses coupon codes, you might want to offer a $5 discount for those who fill out the survey.

If the idea of creating a system to create and track survey responses sounds intimidating, there are companies such as Constant Contact and KeySurvey that offer services that simplify creating and analyzing customer surveys.

Be sure to let me know your experience in this area.

Recently, I purchased a cream for the Eczema problem I have on my skin from DermaTechRX. Immediately following the purchase, I received the typical order confirmation receipt. Not long later, I received another email from a name I didn’t recognize, in the form of a reply. The subject line however, made it clear it was regarding my order from DermaTechRX.

Opening the email, I found personalized letter. Below is an excerpt from this impressive piece of correspondence.

“I have been assigned as your “Personal” Customer Service Representative and my primary role is to help guide you through the process of getting rid of your Eczema symptoms quickly, so If you have any questions or need further assistance, please do not hesitate to call me.”

The Letter went on to discuss several of the products they offer for treating Eczema. The letter concluded with…

“PS – Please let me know how our products are working for you. We try very hard to give support and advice to our customers.”

As I said, I was blown away. I had been contacted by someone in the company who actually cares about helping my skin problem. Sure, it was probably automatically generated. And sure, they probably send out hundreds of these a day. Regardless, how many companies assign you a “personal Customer service representative?” Most likely, I will not need to use the help of this person, however it’s nice to know where to go if I need assistance.

It’s nice to see how smaller e-commerce companies continue to innovate by creating programs such as this. I am definately going to recommend doing something similiar to this to all my e-commerce clients.

1. Low-stock Emails: Allow your customers to be notified when a product they are interested in is almost sold out. Many people have a tendency to wait until the last minute before they act, so this serves as a great last minute reminder. Out of all the transactional emails I’ve ever used, this type seems to get the best conversion rate since there is a strong focus on urgency.
2. In-Stock Emails: Many times customers end up on the product detail page for an item that is out of stock. Rather than simply tell them, “Sorry, too late!” why not allow them to be emailed when the product becomes available again? In my experience, people are blown away by this, and often times purchase the item immediately.
3. New Product Alerts: Most businesses have trained their customers to know that their product newsletters are one size fits all. For this reason, the industry as a whole is seeing a decrease in open, click-through, and conversation rates. Rather than taking this approach, why not allow your customers to be emailed every time a product from their favorite categories is added to the site? Implementing a system such as this, you can expect to at least double your open rate due to the increased relevance.
4. Abandoned Shopping Cart Emails: These are becoming more common. When you visitor starts an order but doesn’t finish it, it’s a good idea to check up on them. Customers are usually shocked at this level of customer service, and many respond by completing the order. This sytem will also allow you to determine what barriers exist in your current checkout process.

Leave a comment if you experience success with any of the ideas above or have any ideas of your own.

 1) Not Removing In-Active Subscribers: Inactive subscribers are the most likely to mark your email as spam, which can severely damage your reputation. Remember, if as little as 1% of your list flags you as junk, this can prevent the other 99% from getting your mail. Play it safe and automatically remove people who haven’t opened or click after a certain timeframe.

2) Not Using Double Opt-in: Double opt-in is a great way to (a) reduce the amount of invalid emails on your list and (b) ensure that those signing up really do want to be subscribers. Many ISPs, such as Hotmail, require double opt-in order to obtain whitelist status.

3) Increase the Frequency of Your Emails: Recently, I took a survey of customers receiving one of my clients email newsletters. We found that the average subscriber preferred receiving 3.1 emails per month. Unfortunately, my client was sending around 6 per month. Most email marketers send too many emails rather than too few. Don’t send an email unless you have something good to say, otherwise you will be like the boy who cried wolf.

4) Offer Incentives to Get Emails: Many websites offer incentives such as freebies or a sweepstakes entry in exchange for an email address. This might be a bad idea. Users who signup with incentives like this likely just wanted the freebie, and they won’t necessarily become an active subscriber. They might not even remember you, and mark your email as spam.

5) Automatically Enroll Subscribers: At checkout, many e-commerce sites don’t give customers the ability to opt-out of their emails. Always, always, always let people opt-out any time you collect contact information. An opt-out is much better than having them later click the “junk” button to complain.

Many of these suggestions may be very counter intuitive or even controversial. Please leave a comment if you agree, disagree, or have anything to add.

So how much does content matter? Recently, I performed an A/B test with one of my customers in an attempt to answer this question. We split the subscriber list down the middle, and mailed half of the list with an image heavy email, and the other half with an html heavy email. Much to my surprise, each email received nearly an identical delivery and open rates. Website sales tracked back to each email was also very similar.

We also performed other tests such as using the word “Free” in the subject line. Again, I was surprised to find that it didn’t really affect the open or delivery rates. So does this mean content doesn’t matter any more? Not exactly. I would strongly argue that content plays a much smaller role in determining whether your email will be delivered. However, it’s important to keep in mind that it’s not possible to accurately track effects of client side email filters such as Outlook’s junk filter. Certainly, filters such as these still rely heavily on content.

In addition, certain other practices will certainly send off red flags for the ISPs. Never use IP addresses in links (a common phising technique), forms, or javascript in your emails.

I’d love to hear some feedback from anyone else’s experiences with content vs. reputation based spam filtering. Be sure to drop a comment.

I’m going to venture to say that email marketing is as expensive, if not more expensive, than traditional print mailings. Why? Consider these hidden costs of mass email blasts:

1) Unsubscribes: It’s extremely easy for someone to opt-out of your email list. If you overmail, you give your customers no other choice. A once interested subscriber can quickly become jaded by irrelevant or frequent emails.

2) Spam reports: If your emails get reported as spam frequently, it can severely damage your reputation. Depending on the size of your list, spam reports from as little as .5% of your list can affect the deliverability to the other 99.5%. Considering that the “Junk” button in Hotmail is now easier to find than the delete button, it’s not very hard to quickly reach a dangerous spam complaint threshold.

3) Reputation Affecting other Business Areas: One customer I worked with had so damaged their sender reputation the even the customer service department ability to get an email to a customer was compromise. Once a domain or IP address has acquired a bad rep, it can takes months to clean things up.

4) The Crying Wolf Effect: Email marketers can learn an important lesson from the Boy Who Cried Wolf. Suppose you send an email to your customers twice a week. These emails don’t necessarily contain important or relevant content, they’re simply sent as a matter habit. Eventually, your email list will languish due to overmailing, and your unsubscribes will go up as your open and click-through rates go down. Now, what happens when you actually have something important to announce like a new product or a huge sale event? Your customers think you’re just crying “wolf!”

What’s the moral of this post? Don’t overmail and be relevant! Effective email marketing now requires a conversation rather than simply shouting generalized messages at customers.

About Palmer Web Marketing

Palmer Web Marketing is a Christian web site marketing company specializing in Christian email blast marketing and SEO for Church websites.

This feature is a no-brainer for sites that frequently sell out of their inventory. However, it’s amazing how few websites actually do it. Here’s how it works: Anytime a customer visits a product detail page that displays an “out of stock” notice, give them the option to be emailed if the item becomes available again. This serves two purposes.

First, it gives you an opportunity to capture their email address (opt in, of course). And second, it gives you the opportunity to save the sale if you re-stock the item. Now wait a minute, you think, most websites don’t allow people to visit pages of items that are out of stock. That’s true, but keep in mind that search engines will keep these pages indexed for some time. In addition, people frequently bookmark pages of products they would like to purchase in the future. This feature is even more useful if you sell a product that comes in multiple sizes or colors. For example, if you sell widgets that are available in both green and blue, and the green widgets are out of stock, your customer’s can be emailed when that color is re-stocked. Just like that, another lost sale is captured! We implemented this program at C28 (checkout the “Email Me When My Size Is Re-Stocked” link under the options section), and it was very successful at bringing back customers who otherwise would have not ordered.

About PWM

Justin Palmer is the founder of Palmer Web Marketing, a Christian website marketing company specializing in Christian e-mail blast marketing and Christian search engine marketing.

An extremely smart tactic to bring back lost sales is to checkup on those people who never complete the checkout process. If you have already captured the customers’ email address, you can easily send them a friendly message informing them that you’re currently trying to improve your checkout process, and you apologize if they found anything confusing. In addition, you might want to give them a coupon code as an additional incentive for bringing them back.

In my experience with one client, customers were completely blown away that the company cared enough to check up with them. The program was extremely successful, and brought in thousands in sales.

About PWM

Justin Palmer is the founder of Palmer Web Marketing, a Christian web marketing firm specializing in Christian e-mail marketing, website usability, and search engine optimization.

The pandemic of declining open rates and increasing opt out rates with bulk Email Marketing today is a serious problem. These days, a full inbox is about as overwhelming as the ad section of the Sunday newspaper or a mailbox full junk mail. There’s simply too much, and subscribers can’t take it all in. Because email marketing is no longer a novelty, subscribers won’t simply open an email because in comes from a name they recognize. So what’s the solution?

Personalized Subject lines with the recipient’s name? This might help the open rates slightly, but if there isn’t personalized content, the user will again grow tired of the irrelevancy.

One of the greatest examples of customized email marketing today is I-Tunes. With a few clicks, I can select which artists I’m interested in, and request to be notified everytime a new album or single is available. The result? At least for me, I open the email every single time. Why, because they have trained me to. I know that the content I’m getting is personalized and customized for me and me alone.

Fortunately, it seems many long time email marketers are finally realizing that mass email marketing is on it’s last breath. Marketers must consider that the shot-gun approach to email marketing is doing more damage than good. Sure, if you email your whole list every week with generic messages, some people will always respond. However, the burnout factor must be considered.

About

Justin Palmer is the owner of Palmer Web Marketing, a Christian internet marketing company specializing in Christian email marketing, website usability, and SEO.