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Chances are that you use Outlook and Exchange of some sort, and if you do then you have the flagship of integrated messaging and communications software. The things that you can do within these programs are only dreamed about from other email clients. We at Willow, use mainly Apple computer systems and solutions, as such that means using Mac Mail, iCal, Address Book and so forth… While these are easy to use individually they are not integrated in one interface and saved to a server, just in case you switch computers. In an effort to catch our office up to powerhouses such as Outlook, we have begun looking at other technologies that bring integrated solutions to the table. What do you use, or would suggest, other than Outlook and Exchange?

If you have done any Email Marketing you have found that HTML emails look great in everything but Outlook. Two major reasons are Outlook uses Word as its render(the engine that displays what you see) instead of Internet Explorer and as a Security precaution it doesn’t show images until you tell it to. You can tailor make a nice looking HTML email for Outlook once you are aware of the issues that come up with its rendering, however the security measure that stops you from seeing images is a larger hurdle, since there is no way as the Email Marketer to turn that feature off.

The question I am asked often is how many people actually click on the link that will download the images and display the email correspondence correctly. Because the majority of people use Outlook in the business market, I expect that a large part of them understand that is just the way it works (or have went into their preferences and turned that off). If you use Outlook as your email client, how do you feel about these special issues, what would you change? Or what program do you use to view email with, if not Outlook? I would like to hear your thoughts on the subject and how you deal with it.

In my recent post on click through rates, I touched on the total number of clicks versus unique clicks in email communications and what the most recent industry statistics are. This post continues that conversation, but contains information on some reasons why your CTRs may be low.

If your email marketing campaigns are typically showing under 2-3% CTRs, some of the causes likely include:

• Poor permission or opt-in processes. This includes pre-checked boxes, not making it clear what type of email they will be receiving, automatically adding someone to receive your email marketing when they’ve actually signed up for something else such as a whitepaper, etc.
• Poorly written email subject lines that do not direct and motivate recipients to take an action.
• Poor email delivery rates. If a lot of your email messages are getting blocked or filtered and you don’t know it, your CTR will obviously be affected.
• Poor email open rates. If few people open your email, fewer recipients have a chance to click.
• Poor email design and layout. If they can’t easily find where to click through or aren’t motivated to by your layout – you’ve got trouble.
• Lack of links. Quite simply, the more links the better. Make it so that email readers are continuously stumbling over text and graphic links like they do signage in a retail store.
• No reason to click. If your email newsletter has a single or multiple articles in their entirety, then don’t expect them to click. You haven’t given them any reason. If you are sending a promotional email and you don’t include a deadline for the offer, or convey a discount, special offer, limited supply, etc., few people are probably going to take action.

Hopefully you found this information useful for your email marketing efforts. And for those of you who did read the entire article, we have a special treat for you…the answer to Willow’s first most frequently asked question…“so what’s the story behind the Willow tree?”

One of the most frequently asked questions at Willow is “so what’s the story behind the Willow tree?” Unfortunately, this blog post doesn’t answer that question. But it does address the second most frequently asked question at Willow, “What kind of click through rates (CTR) should we expect in our email marketing efforts?” Great question, especially since it relates directly to your clicks being converted to leads.

There really isn’t a national average or percentage that can be used with any accuracy. Why? Well, this is a bit of a loaded question since there are so many factors that come into play. Most of our efforts for clients are focused on a business-to-business target audience. Those rates can differ greatly from a consumer audience. But that’s simply the start…Is your list good? Have you segmented your list? Is your mailing personalized? What’s the offer? Is it relevant? How often have you sent to this audience?

But even more significant is how many links you do have in your email. Are you providing content such as articles? This can be the entire article within the body of the email or a teaser or snippet that requires email subscribers to click through to a website to read.

It’s important to understand the statistics your email marketing service provides in reports as well. Are you studying total click throughs versus unique clicks? Make sure you understand how the click through rates were calculated by your email marketing provider. Many recipients will click on multiple links placed in your email. This results in more clicks. Unique clicks are where only one click per person (or email address) is counted. CTR reports based on the total number of clicks versus unique clicks will be very different. If your report is based on total clicks, your numbers will be about two times higher than those based on unique clicks. At Willow, we study both, but benchmark a client’s history based on unique CTR’s.

Lyris is a leader in digital communications and has compiled some industry statistics that may be helpful to use as a guideline in your email marketing efforts. To follow are some averages click through rates based on unique clicks:

• Business to Business (B2B) email newsletters typically range from 5% to 15%. If your CTRs are consistently below that level then among other things, you are probably providing content of little value to your email subscribers. Or you may have most of the content within your email, not giving subscribers a reason or means to click through to your website.

• Business to Consumer (B2C) promotional email marketing campaigns often range from about 2% to 12%. Email campaigns with less than a 2% CTR may be a result of over mailing and questionable email opt-in processes.

• Highly segmented and personalized email lists (B2B and B2C) are often in the 10% to 20% CTR range. Also, email messages with very strong content but sent to unsegmented lists, like many news or trend-type e-newsletters, are often in the 10%-15% range.

• Trigger or behavior-based email campaigns (emails that are sent to recipients based on some behavior they showed, such as clicking on a product link, coupon, visiting a specific web page, etc.) are often in the 15% to 50% range.

So now you’ve seen a few guidelines on how to enhance your email marketing efforts. Be sure to check back and read Part 2 to find out reasons why your CTRs may be low. You may also have the chance to find out the answer of the infamous Willow tree question…

This is not an article about working in the jungle from your satellite enabled laptop, but instead information that will help keep you from pulling your hair out when creating custom email layouts that will be delivered through email clients like iMail, Outlook, Gmail, Yahoo and others. If you have tried to do this you will find that they all act a bit weird when reading your nicely formatted and coded layout. While most adhere to the HTML specifications of browsers others do not…and yes I am talking about Outlook. Outlook, as widely used as it is, can be an absolute nightmare when trying to make its display of your HTML look the way you expect it. The reason behind this? Outlook uses MS Word as its rendering engine. Word is not complaint with HTML as you would expect and will mangle your design with ease. Others have summed up the best practices in handling not only Outlook but the other oddities with email layouts, so I will defer to them for the answers to this issue. You can find a great article about it here: http://www.queness.com/post/8784/12-killer-tips-and-tricks-for-building-html-email

I think I might get that satellite uplink and head to the jungle, I will just need a really long extension cord after my batteries die!