The Importance of Low Hanging Fruit

Email marketers, from the novice to the expert, should always be looking for ways to touch their subscribers in a positive and effective way. There are a plethora of complicated and expensive ways to do this, including purchasing expensive lists and list building services, creating fancy and complex mailing campaigns, and generating robust and often overbearing reporting.

But as helpful as these higher-level endeavors might be, one should never neglect the low hanging email marketing fruit. This fruit will not only provide no-to-low cost wins, but also offer insight that neither breaks the budget nor strains the eyes.

Several simple email strategies include the following:

• If in doubt, test it out. There are a wide variety of simple, cheap and effective tests that can and should be run on a regular basis. These include, but are not limited to subject line testing, time of day testing, day of the week testing, geo-targeting, age testing, and gender testing. These simple tests validate whether your larger, more expensive marketing plan is on the correct track or if your plan needs a tune-up.


• Change up the format of your mailings through a creative test. If your mailings tend to be image heavy, try a text heavy mailing. If your images tend to be static, test an animated GIF. Since ISPs are more apt to block image heavy mailings, adding more text might provide your campaigns an easy and profitable lift.


• Create a simple survey. Asking subscribers what they like and dislike about your mailings is a simple and sometimes illuminating way to obtain better insight into your customers and their needs, wants, likes and dislikes. You will never know if you do not ask. Adding an incentive (free shipping or a coupon, anyone?) is a great way to encourage subscribers to complete a survey.


• Try a personalization test. Do your subscribers like to see their names or other personal information in your mailings? You will never know unless you run a test. Also, adding a forward-a-friend link with the option to subscribe is a great way to build your subscriber list for free.

Once you've run your tests, be sure to create a consistent and relevant plan to determine a winner. For example, you should ask yourself whether you are most interested in clicks, opens, or conversions, and then choose accordingly. The key is to be consistent when determining which tests are successful and which should be shelved for another day.

Happy testing and enjoy that low hanging fruit!

Little Wonders Can Lead to Big Success- Part 1

A 'little wonder' is a seemingly insignificant action or event that eventually has a large impact on your long-term situation. In this two-part series, Jordan Lane looks at some email little wonders — simple ways to improve your email programs — and the key benefits from each of them.

Like diligently saving pocket change, there are some easy additions you can make to your email campaigns that can bring large rewards in the long run. Today we'll look at two of these tactics that can yield long-term success.

View a hosted version of an email

Providing the opportunity for a subscriber to view an online or hosted version of a message will enable those who might have images blocked or have email rendering issues to be able to view the message. A hosted version, often linked via the text Having trouble viewing this email?, is typically used for HTML and text versions of a mailing. A great place to put this link is in the top or header of an email.

Subscribers now have one less excuse as to why they should not read the content of an email. If the email can be viewed by the subscriber despite content rendering issues, then the email marketer has overcome a significant technical challenge.

View an email easily on a mobile phone or other mobile device

Mobile devices are everywhere. Wirefly.com (who boasts to be the Internet’s #1 authorized retailer of cell phones) recently reported that “the sales of touchscreen mobile devices increased by 56 percent year-over-year in the first quarter of 2009.” Despite the availability and popularity of mobile devices, there are some drawbacks when it comes to viewing email in the palm of your hand.

One of the most common issues is the rendering and loading of HTML-heavy emails. Inserting a mobile view link into an HTML email will ensure that all mobile users will have the opportunity to view the content of the email. The mobile link should open just the text or rich text versions of the email for ease of viewing. As a general practice, presenting a text version of an email is a much better option than not presenting anything at all.

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Remember to use these simple tools consistently, wisely and appropriately. These little wonders can take time to have noticeable and meaningful impact on overall email performance, so be patient. With the proper use, tracking, testing and reporting, you will eventually reap the fruits of your labor. Little things can make a big difference!