Integrate your email marketing with your social media strategy

These days both individuals and businesses are using social networking websites such as Facebook and Twitter to communicate with their friends and customers. So can social networks help with your email marketing? Definitely…

Your email marketing activities and social media marketing can be closely integrated to create an overall effective marketing strategy. Make sure that you include links to your email newsletter sign ups on your Facebook and Twitter pages and vice versa. Always ask your newsletter subscribers to become a fan of your Facebook page or a follower of you on Twitter. That way you can increase your brand identity and potentially gain more customers.

In order to match your email marketing and social networking closely, you need to bear in mind how you communicate with your Facebook and Twitter fans. Social networks encourage brands to find a personality and style to communicate to customers with. Ensure that you keep this style in your email newsletters and you will be surprised to see how your subscribers react.

If you are looking for an email marketing solution, visit www.eshoutz.com or call the eShoutz team on 0844 873 0073.

eShoutz email marketing goes from strength to strength during the credit crunch

The eShoutz team has seen continued growth in the uptake of the email marketing solution, eShoutz, despite the downturn in the current economic climate.

eShoutz has had a number of recent upgrades with a wealth of new functionality now available that is ideal for all types of industry. Enhancements such as GEO Mapping now allow eShoutz users to dynamically segment their email subscribers based on geographical location using a simple drag and drop approach on a heat map.

Many companies have chosen to tighten their marketing budgets during the credit crunch and to ensure that they are getting the best return on investment, have chosen email marketing as one of their cost effective marketing streams.

eShoutz provides users with a complete, easy-to-use marketing solution which not only enables them to send out email newsletters, but also allows the integration of surveys and microsites into their campaigns.

eShoutz features and benefits include:

• there is absolutely no software to install or maintain
• travel websites can be integrated with the eShoutz API to automatically store newsletter sign ups
• users can manage multiple marketing campaigns with ease
• the system features automatic anti-spamming safeguards
• users can create professional, personalised email messages
• it is simple to track the success of your campaigns
• full technical support and advice are available once registered……plus much, much more.

If you are interested in the eShoutz email marketing solution, there is a 30 day free trial available at www.eShoutz.com/freetrial. When you sign up to a free trial you can create and send up to 20 emails, see how the reporting tool really works and fully evaluate how cost effective and easy the system is.

Advanced reporting tools with eShoutz email marketing

eShoutz email marketing offers a range of advanced reporting tools that enable you to not only see how well an email campaign has performed, but also to create new email campaigns and address books using this data to increase your ROI. The advanced reporting suite includes:

Geo-maps
In eShoutz you can view your unique email open report by geography, on a simple to use heatmap. You can then create address books with a click of the mouse on the map, further segmenting your existing contacts lists.

Hot prospects
See your most active prospects and customers in terms of their interaction with your email.
Your sales and marketing team then contact these whilst they are browsing the email which will be fresh in their minds.

Campaign performance comparisons
See side by side comparisons of your email campaigns to easily define what works and what doesn't. Improve your return on investment by continuing to work on what gets you the best results.

Email Hotspots
View your email campaign with overlay hotspots, showing you where your recipients clicked most. You can learn from this and refine your email campaign layouts, knowing where to place your most important content on the template.

eShoutz offers even more reporting tools so sign up for a free trial at www.eshoutz.com/freetrial or email sales@eshoutz.com to arrange a demo of the system.

Choosing an email marketing provider

There are many email marketing providers available so how do you differentiate between them and find the right provider for your company?

Things to consider:
1. Is the system easy to use? You should ask for a demonstration so you know exactly how the system works. For a free demo of eShoutz simply email your request to sales@eshoutz.com

2. Is the software provided by a UK company? Using an overseas provider often limits the support available especially if the country is in a different time zone.

3. Does the email marketing provider have its own design service? That way you can be sure that the design is not only attractive but also works with the software and is specially designed for email marketing.

4. How many emails are you required to send each month? Ensure that you are not committed to sending thousands of emails on a regular basis.

5. Can you register for a free trial? This allows you to see how easy or difficult the system is to use on your own. You can also get colleagues to log in and give you their opinions.

6. What is the pricing plan? Some email marketing providers charge based on how many emails you send per month whilst other providers charge a set monthly fee. Be sure to choose the type of pricing structure that fits your needs.

7. What reporting facilities are available? The email marketing provider should offer a variety of user friendly reports so that you can measure the effectiveness of your email campaigns.

8. What features and functionality will you have access to? Advanced functionality such as list segmentation, dynamic content & subject line split testing can enhance the performance of your email marketing. Also, are there extra services available that you can incorporate with the emails, such as surveys and micro-sites that you can include in them?

9. Does the provider have a high deliverability rate? Email deliverability is a complicated issue and one of the most important variables about different email marketing providers. To avoid having your email campaigns trapped by spam filters, be sure to choose a provider who can prove a high deliverability rate.

10. Do you have the option to have a custom 'from address'? This protects your company from the threat of being blacklisted and also enhances your brand and your delivery rates. If you have to use a generic domain and from address you are likely to become blacklisted very quickly as a result of another email marketing client's activities which you have no control over.

For more information about eShoutz email marketing visit the website at www.eshoutz.com or email sales@eshoutz.com with your questions.

Why have a bespoke email template designed?

There is a vast range of free email marketing templates in eShoutz, so why should you opt to have a bespoke email marketing template designed?

The free templates are ideal for one-off email marketing campaigns; however, the eShoutz team suggests that regular email marketers should have editable, bespoke and branded email templates professionally designed for frequent use.

Why?

• The eShoutz design team can create a template which is easily edited with the touch of a button. This means that each time you wish to send a new email with new content, you can simply use the point-and-click technology in eShoutz to do this.
• The design service is completely bespoke and is tailored to your individual needs. So whether you're looking for a postcard template or a full promotional newsletter, the design team can create it for you.
• Your email template can be branded to reflect your website. It can include all of your website’s colours, logos and even have a similar format to your website. This helps to raise brand awareness.
• Branded emails can achieve better open and click through rates than standard email templates. Recipients will know what to expect in your email over time if you are consistent with the design, and especially if it reflects your website.
• By approaching a professional email marketing design team, you can have editable, creative, eye-catching emails which are often unobtainable from standard free templates. You can decide on a layout and theme which suits your needs, rather than having to fit your content and messages into a free template which you can not adjust easily.
• The eShoutz design team will ensure that the editable email template is created so that it will render correctly in most email inboxes. These include both local inboxes such as Outlook and online email providers such as Hotmail and Gmail. This is done by avoiding style sheets in the design and by using the correct text to image ratio.
• It is very cost and time effective to have an editable email template created. You can re-use the template each time you wish to send a new email marketing campaign as you can easily edit the text and images yourself. This saves both time and money as you do not need to have a design team changing your emails regularly.
• Mistakes are minimal when you have had an editable email template created and imported into eShoutz. There are defined sections for both text and images which can be edited with the touch of a button. By using this approach, you are not going to need to change any of the code which can result in an email no longer rendering correctly.
• Like headed notepaper, correctly branded email campaigns look professional and help install the confidence in your recipients to click through to your website.

For more hints and tips on email marketing visit the eShoutz website at www.eshoutz.com.

Email Marketing VS Direct Mail

So should you use email as a marketing method or direct mail? Read the eShoutz guide to discover the pros and cons of both email marketing and direct mail.

Email Marketing

Pros

• Email marketing is cheap which makes it excellent for contacting large numbers of people.
• It is a very quick method of contacting people. Both production time and sending time for email marketing are minimal. This means that you can get rapid responses.
• You can measure the success of email marketing via ROI tracking. You can actually see leads and sales generated online from your email marketing activity.Emails encourage direct, online sales as it is easy for recipients to simply click through to your website directly from the email.
• It is easy to gain information on your recipients, measuring responses, checking which products and offers are clicked on and work well in your email campaign and also see hot prospects by tracking who is opening and clicking on your email.

Cons

• Emails can sometimes get lost amongst the large amounts of spam emails we all receive on a daily basis. This means that they are sometimes deleted without someone realising that they are not spam.
• Quality email lists are hard to come by. This means that you must invest time in building your own quality databases.

Direct Mail

Pros

• When sending mailers directly in the post, you can send someone many pieces of mail such as flyers, letters and information sheets all together in one envelope.
• Mail is often considered more personal than bulk email marketing.
• Sending direct mail is easy and requires no expertise in online email marketing at all.

Cons

• The printing and postage of direct mail are both expensive.
• Sending direct mail can be very damaging to the environment. Although many households now recycle their waste such as junk mail, it is still much more harmful to the environment that email marketing.

It is clear there are arguments for and against both email marketing and direct mail, and therefore which channel you choose for your marketing will depend on your business. Many onlline businesses and ecommerce websites find email marketing more appealing as it is cost effective and can connect recipients directly with their online businesses.

Take a look at eShoutz.com for more reasons to use email marketing.

Using Animated GIFS

eShoutz have noticed that there has been a subtle growth in the use of animated GIFs in email marketing during 2008. This has been especially true in this month, where subscribers are bombarded with numerous email campaigns and so companies are using animated GIFs in order to stand out from the crowd.

This subtle growth in the use of animated GIFS could be because, despite popular belief, they are supported by all of the major email clients and also because they do still hold a novel quality when used in email.

So what are the benefits from using animated GIFs in your email marketing?
- They can grab your reader's attention - Since animated GIFs are not greatly used in email marketing there is still quite a lot of novelty surrounding them and this is great attribute for grabbing your reader's attention.

- They can allow for a more creative message - Animated GIFs are great for drawing attention to particular elements of your email marketing message and for encouraging your reader to complete a certain action. The eShoutz team have seen in previous emails that animated GIFs have been used to encourage the reader to scroll down the email and also to highlight the call-to-action.

Here are a few points to bear in mind when using animated GIFs in your email marketing:
1. consider the file weight - animated GIFs can be considerably larger files than static images, especially since they use more and more colour.

2. consider how file compression affects your email design - Your email marketing message may lose its effectiveness if the design doesn't look good. Therefore, keep an eye on how the file compression affects the design, if it looks pixelated and garish, then may be animation isn't the right method for you.

3. keep it simple - You should assume that you only have your readers' attention for 10 seconds and so you should keep the copy to a minimum and make sure that your message is clarly defined.

4. consider compatibility issues - the major compatibility issue is that Outlook 2007 uses Word to render HTML emails and so animated GIFs do not display correctly. Instead, in Outlook only the first frame is displayed and so, for that reason, you may want to design your animated GIF so that the first frame contains all the information.

For more tips and advice on email marketing visit eShoutz.com.