Monday, December 24, 2012

KobeMails Most Helpful Tips from 2012 - Part 2

As promised - Here are some more highlights and tips from the 2012 year here at Kobemail!
Email Lists
There are many ways to acquire a list, but how do you make sure the emails you are receiving are good? While building your user consumer base online it is important to consider sending a follow-up email to confirm the user email address - a mailer generally refer to as a “double opt-in” email confirmation. Get more info about the benefit of double optins.

BlackList
Blacklist can apply to links, IPs or domains that are viewed with suspicion or disapproval. Disapproval comes from the amount of complaint users have reported. Learn how to find out if your on the dreaded Blacklist.

Standing Out
First Impressions are everything! In email marketing you have just few seconds to grab reader’s attention and make them interested in the products or services you are offering them. Ways to get their attention here.

Optimization

HTML Creative Optimization can be difficult. We’re here to help! Get tips on how to optimize your HTML creatives so they look the same in all email carriers and get delivered successfully each time.

Happy Holidays and as always Happy Mailing!
Author: Various
Editor: Caitlin Durand

Monday, December 17, 2012

KobeMails Most Helpful Tips from 2012 – Part 1

What better way to end the year but with a helpful reminder of our biggest tips from 2012. Have a look at these various blurbs from previous blogs and feel free to check out all of our posts here.

Re-Engagement
Mailing to users who haven’t engaged could be important to converting them back in. These users can still be valuable to you if you can think of ways to re-engage them. Separate these users from your engaging users and send a specific message to them to help get them engaged again. Learn more.

Gmail Filtering
Gmails complex filtering system uses a multiple tier system based on pattern analysis, virus/phishing detection, and most importantly user preference analytics to ensure that spam stays out of the inbox. Find out what you can do to help pass Gmail filters.

Deliverability
Here at Kobemail, deliverabilty is our number one priority. Check out some elements of email messaging that can cause blocks on ISP’s and ultimately effect the outcome of your email marketing campaigns.

Scheduling
Reaching a vast market, which spans across multiple time zones, can be a difficult task. The Its important to collect information regarding how to best target recipients in and outside the country in the most effective manner to get the best possible results. Learn more.
Check out our website and keep us in mind if you’re looking to outsource for your email marketing needs. Stay tuned for “Part 2” of Helpful tips next week. Happy Holidays everyone!
Author: Various
Editor: Caitlin Durand

Monday, December 10, 2012

Content Marketing Basics, Benefits, Blunders

Just today I stumbled upon an interesting article that gave five prime examples of disciplined, creative, and effective content marketing developed within the recent past. As email marketers we are still, at the core, marketers. Although we work within one niche area of the field we must stay up to date with trends and techniques in the marketplace, across the entire spectrum, to execute successful marketing campaigns.

So, to brush up on your content marketing basics, benefits, and blunders check out some of the interesting info below.

What is Content Marketing?

A marketing technique of creating and distributing relevant and valuable content to attract, acquire, and engage a clearly defined and understood target audience - with the objective of driving profitable customer action.

Read More

What’s the Challenge?

Successful Content Marketing can be difficult to create and sustain for a multitude of reasons. The most commonly heard reasons tend to be: It takes a lot of time and energy and it’s difficult to break through the noise and engage users.  Perhaps taking a look at the below companies, that have proven themselves as breakthrough leaders in the content marketing field, will help you to enhance your own marketing endeavors.
 
Who Does It Best?
  • Virgin Mobile via VM Live, a social newsroom that features daily content on new music, apps, etc and can be shared across various social media outlets
  • American Express Unstaged live streams concerts by some of the biggest names in music
  • Marriot hotel programs that allow guest to explore the area around which they will be staying in terms of food, drink, films, art, and much more
  • L’Oreal Garnier Fructis and Rolling Stone who have joined forces to explore beauty within the music industry for up and coming artists
  • Vanguard who recently launched a campaign called “Vanguard at the Movies” which spoofed classic movie genres of horror, drama and suspense to convey what using Vanguard doesn’t feel like.
Read More

Happy Holidays from the KobeMail Team!

Author & Editor: Caitlin Durand
 
  

Thursday, December 6, 2012

Non-responsive Users

Responsiveness of email recipients varies from mailing form mailing and client to client for various reasons. The type of mailer you’re sending out, the quality of the content, presentation of redirect links, the acquisition of your list, etc, etc.
Before you think of removing non-responsive users from your list consider these ways to get these users engaged:
  1. Offer an incentive. You may want to offer them a special incentive to get them to engage again. By encouraging sign-up or purchase that is rewarded with a special offer you may see users become responsive and willing to open and click through mailers.
  2. Target these users with a special campaign. These users may not need (or want) frequent emails sent to them so try something a bit more specific. Use different header information and non-conventional subject lines to grab attention and encourage responses.
  3. Ask for feedback. Still having a hard time waking these users up? There is no harm in asking them why. Potential customers appreciate having their voice heard. By asking “what can we do for you” the customer will feel more inclined to answer on a personal level.
List growth and continued responsiveness of your database users is an uphill battle. The most important thing to remember is that by testing new things, showing the recipient your paying attention, and even giving them some sort of incentive you may just win them over yet!

Author: Amarilys Rivera
Editor: Caitlin Durand

Tuesday, December 4, 2012

Best times to Tweet


Recently we posted a blog that gave the best time to send email campaigns. Since social media is one strategy that we encourage our clients to use in an attempt to build a strong user base, we thought it would be useful for you to know the best time to tweet.

According to Kissmetrics.com the best time to tweet is at 5pm EST as nearly 50% of the population is in the Eastern Time Zone followed by about 33% in the Central Time Zone. The best days during the week to tweet are midweek and weekends. Ideally you should send about 1-4 tweets per hour to achieve a higher click through rate.

Take a look at this infographic to get even more info!

Author: Adeline Zeledon
Editor: Caitlin Durand

HTML Creative Optimization Tips


In the past we have written few blogs that gives tips on how to optimize your HTML creatives so they look the same in all email carriers and get delivered successfully each time. Today I would like to focus on few HTML coding and rendering issues that our clients have recently experienced.

The following issues can be avoided by following the few steps mentioned below:

• The usage of background images in email creatives is still popular, but it is often forgotten that background images are still not supported by Outlook. Try using images surrounded by background colors to achieve the same effect without losing your rendering ability across all ISP’s.

• Adding images and nested tables can cause gaps or breaks in the creative that are seen to the recipient as white space. One solution that has worked for us is using the style=”display:block” in the image source code to ensure that images and tables stay tight together.

• Want to avoid seeing a blue line around the images? Add border=”0” in the image source. Its that simple
• PNG images don’t render properly across all platforms. Make sure to convert to a commonly accepted format – .gif or .jpg.

• Last but not the least, be careful about the usage of fonts. The commonly used fonts like - Arial, Verdana, Georgia, Times New Roman, Tahoma, Trebuchet – are the only ones that are supported by all ISP’s. If you can’t have a fancy font, simply find another way to make your email pop.

I hope the suggestions I have made above will help you in your email optimization endeavors. If you need further assistance feel free to contact us and make us a part of your email marketing team!

Author: Roopal Rawani
Editor: Caitlin Durand



Inbox Deliverability

A while back (November of 2010 actually – Yikes!) a colleague of mine wrote a blog entitled “Deliverability – Are You Getting into the Inbox?” Recently, as I was skimming through past blogs I came across this piece and wanted to re-post and reiterate some points. These fundamentals of email marketing will simply never become outdated…and although they may seem elementary it never hurts to brush up on the basics.


Don’t forget these few simple facts mentioned in the blog that will help to improve your overall email deliverability:

- Ensure your emails are authenticated

- Use an opt-in process to practice permission based sending

- Cleanse your list of hard bounces properly and on a regular basis

- Use welcome emails to engage your users and build reputation

- Incorporate relevant content that enhances mailer quality

Check out the past post for more details.



Author & Editor: Caitlin Durand