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7 Steps to Writing and Designing Emails That Convert

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By Michelena Howl 

The key to success depends on these dos and don’ts.

A blank email canvas can be an exciting project, but also potentially an intimidating place to start. Your resources to conceptualize, strategize, write, design and deliver your campaigns can greatly impact your ability to succeed efficiently and understand the effectiveness of your program.

But email messaging is an important tactic to get right, given the impact it has on building customer relationships. According to our 2023 Consumer Trends Index, email remains the No. 1 format for driving sales, with 52% of consumers reporting making a purchase directly from an email. What’s more, email outperformed banner ads and SMS by 108%. With that said, email is a proven channel that shouldn’t be overlooked in any effective relationship marketing campaign.

So, it’s important to dig into email stats beyond campaign performance to see which subject lines, email copy, design and CTAs performed well … and understand why. There are a few key strategies every smart marketer should employ, based on the psychology behind what grabs readers’ attention — and the factors leading up to it.

Here are the dos and don’ts of email design and copywriting:

Do — Make branding a priority

It’s easy to overlook one of the most critical elements of design — your branding. Whether you’re a startup, a small business or a rapidly growing company, brand consistency is vital. If you don’t yet have formal brand guidelines, including key branding areas like colours, fonts, logos and tone-of-voice aligned with your brand, it’s time to make some.

Aligning and maintaining brand consistency in your email strategy alongside other media channels is important for readers to be able to easily identify your brand at first glance.

Don’t — Forget about good copywriting

Some people will try to tell you no one reads anymore, and with poorly written copy, that could be the case. The best marketing campaigns have clear and concise copy that grabs the attention of the reader and ignites a desire to take the action you have framed up.

If you fall into copywriting pitfalls like using passive voice in place of active, or compounding wordy sentences, you can create a disconnect between what you’re talking about and what you’re offering. Focus on the problem you’re solving for your audience and maintain your brand tone of voice in email marketing.

Do — Leverage psychology to influence action

Our subconscious mind is deeply involved in information processing and affects everything we think, say and do. Tapping into the subconscious mind with your email and marketing campaigns can have a big impact on your conversion rates.

Leveraging psychology to increase conversions and nudge your audience in a specific direction can pay off in a big way. A few impactful examples are:

  • Fear of missing out: Including offers that expire can motivate someone to do something immediately. For example, saying something like, “You only have 30 days!” makes the reader feel like they might miss out. However, communicating the same 30-day deadline as “You still have 30 days,” makes the expiration date seem further away.
  • Colour theory: The right colour contrast plays an important role in attracting attention — as long as it maintains readability. Make sure the colours in your email campaigns reflect your brand and drive urgency, but consider the accessibility of different colour combinations when making choices.
  • Emotional imagery: Select pictures that tell a story. Imagery helps crystalize concepts for customers. Email banners, icons and product images can positively reinforce your stories and break up blocks of text.

Don’t — Bury the lede

When you bury the lede, or, the most newsworthy part of the story, your reader misses critical information. As a result, they can easily lose interest completely. If you have something important to say or an action you want someone to take, don’t leave it for the end of your email.

Surface the most important information at the beginning of your email. Echo it in the subject line, the heading and introductory text. This doesn’t mean you need to build a big CTA button underneath your first sentence, however. Find a way to strike a nice balance between calling out the most important information, in a reasonable and appealing way for your readers.

Do — Use email templates to your advantage

The layout of your email should be easy on the eyes and optimized for desktops, mobile phones and tablets — which can be easier said than done if you’re a small team with limited resources.

A great first step is creating a set of email templates specific to your brand. These templates should be designed with the conversion you want to happen in mind. Sometimes the simplest design can be the most impactful. A one-or-two-column email that contains a branded graphic, copy sections that break up the content and a clear CTA button typically render well on any device.

Do — Practice dynamic personalization

Raise your hand if you’ve ever seen an email personalization go wrong. Maybe it was the classic personalization tag error where the intended first name displays as “{first name}” or a beautifully tailored email offer sent to the completely wrong person.

When incorrect, personalization can have the opposite effect of what you intended. A good email marketing platform will enable you to extend personalization beyond the typical mail merge fields we all grew to love 15 years ago. Dynamic personalization allows you to use data and insights to send the right message to the right person at the right time.

Don’t — Use typography the wrong way

There is an actual art and science to typography. Good typography enhances the experience, draws attention to the information you want to highlight and entices the consumer to learn more. Bad typography gives people headaches.

You don’t need to be a trained graphic designer to apply some typography strategies to your email designs. Make sure you stick with your brand fonts. A good rule of thumb is two, maybe three, fonts per email, in a font size that follows accessibility guidelines.

The best email marketing campaigns communicate offers clearly, with a consistent brand look and feel, and a snappy call to action draws readers in. As marketers, we want to make sure our outreach is accessible, relevant and created efficiently. Employing these key strategies will ensure your email marketing campaigns help convert readers to customers and will help you better understand the right levers to pull, and when.

By Michelena Howl 

Sourced from Entrepreneur

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7 Steps to Writing and Designing Emails That Convert

No Comments

By Michelena Howl

The key to success depends on these dos and don’ts.

A blank email canvas can be an exciting project, but also potentially an intimidating place to start. Your resources to conceptualize, strategize, write, design and deliver your campaigns can greatly impact your ability to succeed efficiently and understand the effectiveness of your program.

But email messaging is an important tactic to get right, given the impact it has on building customer relationships. According to our 2023 Consumer Trends Index, email remains the No. 1 format for driving sales, with 52% of consumers reporting making a purchase directly from an email. What’s more, email outperformed banner ads and SMS by 108%. With that said, email is a proven channel that shouldn’t be overlooked in any effective relationship marketing campaign.

So, it’s important to dig into email stats beyond campaign performance to see which subject lines, email copy, design and CTAs performed well … and understand why. There are a few key strategies every smart marketer should employ, based on the psychology behind what grabs readers’ attention — and the factors leading up to it.

Here are the dos and don’ts of email design and copywriting:

Do — Make branding a priority

It’s easy to overlook one of the most critical elements of design — your branding. Whether you’re a startup, a small business or a rapidly growing company, brand consistency is vital. If you don’t yet have formal brand guidelines, including key branding areas like colours, fonts, logos and tone-of-voice aligned with your brand, it’s time to make some.

Aligning and maintaining brand consistency in your email strategy alongside other media channels is important for readers to be able to easily identify your brand at first glance.

Don’t — Forget about good copywriting

Some people will try to tell you no one reads anymore, and with poorly written copy, that could be the case. The best marketing campaigns have clear and concise copy that grabs the attention of the reader and ignites a desire to take the action you have framed up.

If you fall into copywriting pitfalls like using passive voice in place of active, or compounding wordy sentences, you can create a disconnect between what you’re talking about and what you’re offering. Focus on the problem you’re solving for your audience and maintain your brand tone of voice in email marketing.

Do — Leverage psychology to influence action

Our subconscious mind is deeply involved in information processing and affects everything we think, say and do. Tapping into the subconscious mind with your email and marketing campaigns can have a big impact on your conversion rates.

Leveraging psychology to increase conversions and nudge your audience in a specific direction can pay off in a big way. A few impactful examples are:

  • Fear of missing out: Including offers that expire can motivate someone to do something immediately. For example, saying something like, “You only have 30 days!” makes the reader feel like they might miss out. However, communicating the same 30-day deadline as “You still have 30 days,” makes the expiration date seem further away.
  • Colour theory: The right colour contrast plays an important role in attracting attention — as long as it maintains readability. Make sure the colours in your email campaigns reflect your brand and drive urgency, but consider the accessibility of different colour combinations when making choices.
  • Emotional imagery: Select pictures that tell a story. Imagery helps crystalize concepts for customers. Email banners, icons and product images can positively reinforce your stories and break up blocks of text.

Don’t — Bury the lede

When you bury the lede, or, the most newsworthy part of the story, your reader misses critical information. As a result, they can easily lose interest completely. If you have something important to say or an action you want someone to take, don’t leave it for the end of your email.

Surface the most important information at the beginning of your email. Echo it in the subject line, the heading and introductory text. This doesn’t mean you need to build a big CTA button underneath your first sentence, however. Find a way to strike a nice balance between calling out the most important information, in a reasonable and appealing way for your readers.

Do — Use email templates to your advantage

The layout of your email should be easy on the eyes and optimized for desktops, mobile phones and tablets — which can be easier said than done if you’re a small team with limited resources.

A great first step is creating a set of email templates specific to your brand. These templates should be designed with the conversion you want to happen in mind. Sometimes the simplest design can be the most impactful. A one-or-two-column email that contains a branded graphic, copy sections that break up the content and a clear CTA button typically render well on any device.

Do — Practice dynamic personalization

Raise your hand if you’ve ever seen an email personalization go wrong. Maybe it was the classic personalization tag error where the intended first name displays as “{first name}” or a beautifully tailored email offer sent to the completely wrong person.

When incorrect, personalization can have the opposite effect of what you intended. A good email marketing platform will enable you to extend personalization beyond the typical mail merge fields we all grew to love 15 years ago. Dynamic personalization allows you to use data and insights to send the right message to the right person at the right time.

Don’t — Use typography the wrong way

There is an actual art and science to typography. Good typography enhances the experience, draws attention to the information you want to highlight and entices the consumer to learn more. Bad typography gives people headaches.

You don’t need to be a trained graphic designer to apply some typography strategies to your email designs. Make sure you stick with your brand fonts. A good rule of thumb is two, maybe three, fonts per email, in a font size that follows accessibility guidelines.

The best email marketing campaigns communicate offers clearly, with a consistent brand look and feel, and a snappy call to action draws readers in. As marketers, we want to make sure our outreach is accessible, relevant and created efficiently. Employing these key strategies will ensure your email marketing campaigns help convert readers to customers and will help you better understand the right levers to pull, and when.

By Michelena Howl

Entrepreneur Leadership Network® Contributor. COO of Marigold

Sourced from Entrepreneur

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Generative AI for Email Personalization: A Hallucination Wrapped in Confusion

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By Chad S. White

The potential for generative AI creating highly personalized emails may be premature, as current AI technology falls short in several areas.

The Gist

  • Scaling limitations. Generative AI struggles to efficiently create highly personalized emails without significant manual intervention, limiting its practicality at scale.
  • Traditional superiority. Existing personalization methods and machine learning models are more effective, reliable and risk-averse than current generative AI approaches for email personalization.
  • Unproven potential. The performance and return on investment of generative AI personalization in emails remain uncertain, with unclear benefits and possibly diminishing novelty.

Let me be blunt: We are so far away from generative AI writing personalized emails in any meaningful way. So very far. Yet, I keep hearing people suggest that generative AI will be writing highly personalized emails to individuals in the not-too-distant future.

I don’t think this is a realistic expectation at any significant scale, with any degree of automation and with a reliable expectation of increased performance — much less a positive return on investment. Let me explain why.

Not at Scale

The best example I’ve seen of generative artificial intelligence (AI) writing a one-to-one email was a meeting request for a salesperson. First, that’s a pretty generic request — and, in the example, amounted to 10 words. Not a big time-saver. Second, the salesperson is chaperoning the AI, and if they don’t like what’s written, they either have to edit it or write a follow up prompt for changes, which further reduces the time-savings. In that example, the degree to which it was personalized was achieved through manual intervention and not automatically driven by the recipient’s past behaviours, demographics or other criteria — which is the traditional definition of personalization.

While generative AI will get much better in the years ahead, that example is a very realistic example of how generative AI would be used in a “blank page” email situation right now, given generative AI’s many faults and limitations, including its propensity to “hallucinate.” That use case appropriately minimizes the risk by (1) asking for a routine request, (2) keeping the text short and (3) having the output monitored and approved by an employee before it’s sent.

Not Automated

To date, I’m not aware of any brands using ChatGPT or any other large language model (LLM) to incorporate personalized content into an email. And there’s a good reason for that: It’s unnecessary.

Traditional methods of personalization are highly effective and are far from fully utilized — due to siloed and unreliable data. And machine learning models for product recommendations and send time optimization are even less utilized. These existing tools are tried and true and offer solid returns with much more control — which is to say, with far less risk — than generative AI.

In fact, when generative AI is ultimately used for personalization, I predict it will be fed content that’s been personalized using traditional methods. Put another way, any personalization done by generative AI will be done on top of traditionally personalized content. That approach would minimize generative AI’s opportunities to introduce inaccuracies, biases, plagiarized material and other problematic content while simultaneously focusing generative AI on the kind of personalization that only it can do.

Just what are these new forms of personalization that only generative AI enables? Here are a few:

  • Tone. Some subscribers are receptive to more aggressive pitches while others are much less so. And, of course, there’s a whole spectrum of potential tones that could be used. Generative AI could rewrite copy on the fly to better align with what subscribers respond to best.
  • Vernacular. Language varies in significant ways by geographic region, education level, religious beliefs and other factors. Especially if it’s informed by sales and support correspondence, generative AI could adapt a brand’s messages to match the recipient’s language usage.
  • Image backgrounds. Generative AI for images can enable brands to create highly personalized images based on the subscriber’s location, industry and more. For example, an outdoors retailer could place a model in any number of national parks depending on the location of the subscriber or knowledge of where they like to hike or camp.

As with all personalization, a big part of the challenge will be securing enough data to make sound decisions. But even if that hurdle is cleared, there’s the question of performance and generating a return on investment.

Unproven Performance

Oracle Marketing Consulting has identified more than 170 segmentation and personalization criteria that can be used in digital marketing campaigns. However, just because you can personalize a message using a particular data point doesn’t mean your subscribers will respond positively to it. Through experience and testing, each brand must discover which factors truly move the needle for them. The same is true for generative AI personalization.

Even if you have the data to try to personalize the vernacular of your emails, for example, it’s currently unclear if this would be a winning approach. It’s likely that at least some subscribers would find this kind of personalization creepy and manipulative.

It’s also likely that some performance boosts likely wouldn’t be sustainable as the novelty wears off. The history of first-name personalization likely provides a good example. A decade and a half ago when it was new, first-name mail merges moved the needle for a while. But it quickly became a hollow gesture and a gimmick because it generally didn’t signal that the email’s body content was any more relevant to subscribers. First-name personalization got brief bumps when brands gained the ability to personalize images with a subscriber’s name and again when they could personalize videos with their name. But subscribers still view these as technological stunts that don’t signal anything meaningful.

Generative AI personalization may have the same effect, drawing attention away from your message and to the technological stunt of personalizing an image with the skyline of the person’s home city, for example. Sure, it will be cool the first time you encounter it, but the novelty will fade quickly because it’s based on relatively easy-to-obtain geographic data that doesn’t speak to the person’s needs or wants. Plus, attention-grabbing tactics often don’t translate into better performance.

Uncertain ROI

Even if generative AI personalization can boost performance, a positive return on investment is unlikely — definitely not at current “per token” price levels. And given email volumes, it’s possible that generative AI personalization may never make financial sense except for highly targeted campaigns.

It’s worth noting that many of our clients have seen lacklustre returns when using predictive subject line writing tools like Phrasee and Persado. These tools have been around for many years and are primarily driven by machine learning models where wording recommendations are based on the historical performance of a brand’s subject lines and other copy. If models that are trained on historical performance can’t reliably generate a strong ROI, marketers should be deeply sceptical that generative AI tools with no access to performance intelligence can.

Muddied Terminology

A big contributor to this premature idea of generative AI personalization is that some people are using the terms machine learning, AI and generative AI almost interchangeably. While they’re all loosely related, they’re far from the same. They operate using different algorithms and models, have different goals, are built on different datasets and are appropriate for different use cases.

With generative AI and AI in general being so hot right now, brands need to work extra hard to be clear-eyed about what’s possible now and what may perhaps be possible at some point in the future. Just like in the late ’90s when adding “.com” to company names was all the rage, now .ai domains are super popular. Just like then, in some cases these are just aspirational or opportunistic marketing moves.

Generative AI will ultimately be huge, and brands should absolutely experiment with and get comfortable with it. However, we’re in the hype-iest part of the hype cycle, so proceed with caution and ask lots of questions.

By Chad S. White

Chad S. White is the author of four editions of Email Marketing Rules and Head of Research for Oracle Marketing Consulting, a global full-service digital marketing agency inside of Oracle.

Sourced from CMS Wire

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Why Brands Failed to Deliver on Welcome Emails

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By Chad S. White

Here’s what happened after I signed up for over 100 promotional emails. There were some surprises.

The Gist

  • Forget something? Testing out 100 email signups, more than 8% of brands didn’t send a welcome email, missing a valuable opportunity to deepen the relationship with their new subscribers through promotions, education, profiling, expansion or evangelism.
  • Send a series. Nearly half of brands sent a welcome series, with subsequent emails including reminders to use discounts, explanations of brand strengths, pitches for loyalty programs, encouragements to download mobile apps or behind-the-scenes looks at their organizations.
  • Welcoming fails. Some brands missed the mark by using senseless or overly corporate sender names in their welcome emails, while others failed to seasonally optimize or personalize their messages, or had quality control problems.

I shared takeaways from having signed up for promotional emails from 100 brands in my last column, so for this one I want to share what happened next: I received a lot of welcome emails!

But that’s not to say there weren’t some surprises. There were. Here are my key takeaways and the major opportunities I see for brands when it comes to crafting better onboarding experiences.

1. Shocking Number of Brands Didn’t Send a Welcome

More than 8% of the brands didn’t send a welcome email. Instead, they just dropped me into their promotional mail stream. Not only is that slightly jarring, it passes up a big opportunity to deepen the relationship in a way that your promotional emails just can’t.

Here are the five principle messaging strategies for welcome email calls-to-action:

  1. Promotion: trying to drive a purchase through incentives or product promotions.
  2. Education: trying to deepen brand affinity and loyalty by educating the new subscriber about your brand’s history, products, services, values and social causes.
  3. Profiling: trying to to gather more information about the new subscriber so the brand can send more relevant messaging.
  4. Expansion: trying to get the new subscriber to connect with the brand through additional channels.
  5. Evangelism: trying to get the new subscriber to refer their friends or colleagues.

For most of those, messaging them immediately after signup is the ideal time to drive action and establish a healthy long-term relationship.

2. Nearly Half of Brands Sent a Welcome Series

In contrast to brands that didn’t send even one welcome email were those at the other end of the spectrum that sent a welcome series of two, three or even more emails.

What were the subsequent emails in those welcome series about? Brands included:

  • Reminders to use the discount they included in their first welcome, which was very common for retail and ecommerce brands.
  • Explanations of their brand strengths in terms of what’s unique about their products and how they do business, which was popular among direct-to-consumer brands.
  • Pitches to join their loyalty programs, which was also common for retail and ecommerce brands.
  • Encouragements to download their mobile app.
  • Behind-the-scenes looks at their organizations, which was most common among service-oriented brands.

Surprisingly, none tried to collect any preferences from me or profile me in any way using polls, surveys or quizzes. That’s a missed opportunity, as that kind of zero-party data can power personalization and segmentation during a time in the relationship when there’s little to no first-party data yet.

But the bigger opportunity here is that if you’re only sending a single welcome email, consider testing ways to expand it into a series.

3. Sender Names Could Have Been Better

For some brands, their welcome emails felt like they were sent by a different department or marketing group because of the sender names they used. For example, some brands had senselessly different sender names from the one used for their promotional emails, adding “Inc.,” “Company,” and “USA” to the end of the brand names for only their welcome emails. It made their welcome emails appear unnecessarily corporate and stiff.

That’s not to say that there aren’t opportunities to extend your sender name with purpose. Extending your sender name for your triggered emails, in particular, helps them stand out — not only from your other emails, but from all the other emails in your subscribers’ inboxes. Yet, only two of the brands I received welcome emails from extended their sender name. One used “BrandName Welcome” and the other “BrandName | Welcome.”

If you’re not currently extending your from name for your welcome emails, consider testing it and seeing how much of a lift you get. Adding an extension like “Welcome” is a sensible place to start.

Again, avoid overly corporate-sounding extensions. For example, some other welcome emails I received used sender name formats such as “BrandName Account,” “BrandName Account Services,” and even longer “BrandName Account Member Services.” Another used “BrandName E-mail Subscriptions,” with the dated hyphenation of email. While all of those are descriptive and accurate, they’re not particularly friendly sounding. They seem like they were written by lawyers, not marketers.

4. And There Were Smaller Opportunities to Improve, Too

In addition to those three big areas for improvement, brands sent welcome emails that…

  • Weren’t seasonally relevant. Only one brand seasonally optimized its welcome email, adding in imagery and content to match the season in which I signed up.
  • Rarely used emoji in their subject lines. 😢 Only 13% of brands used emoji in any of their welcome email subject lines. That seems a bit low, given their usage in promotional emails.
  • Included little personalization. Many brands required my name when I signed up, but few used it. For example, only 3% of brands used it in the subject lines of their welcome emails. First-name personalization isn’t great personalization, but if you ask for my name, use it.
  • Had quality control problems. One brand’s welcome email was sent twice, and another’s contained multiple broken images (but thankfully lots of HTML text, too). Not a good look.

Final Thoughts on Welcome Emails

Your welcome email — like all of your automations — are living campaigns. They need regular care and attention.

In fact, this goes double for your welcome emails since they are pivotal to making a good first impression and setting the tone for the emails that follow. If you haven’t reviewed your welcome emails lately, sign up for your email program with fresh eyes and see what improvements you can make or test.

By Chad S. White

Chad S. White is the author of Email Marketing Rules and Head of Research for Oracle Marketing Consulting, a global full-service digital marketing agency inside of Oracle.

Sourced from CMSWire

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Zoom Launches New Features to Rival Google Workspace

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By Jade Artry

Email and calendar features include end-to-end encryption, access restricted links, and external emails that expire.

Zoom kicked off its annual Zoomtopia conference by announcing several new features designed to take on big boys: Google Workspace and Microsoft 365.

Zoom Mail and Zoom Calendar, expected to be released later this month, will mean business clients will no longer need to leave the Zoom platform to access their calendar, schedule or emails.

Other features announced include upgrades to Zoom Meetings, Team Chat translations, and Zoom Spots — a virtual, video coworking space for remote colleagues.

Zoom mail calendar

Zoom Mail and Calendar: How Does It Work?

According to the Zoom blog, Zoom Mail and Calendar Clients (beta) will allow all Zoom users to access their existing email accounts from popular third-party services directly in the Zoom desktop app.

The new feature has been two years is the making and is designed to reduce the number of hours spent “toggling between applications,” a surprisingly common problem according to a recent Harvard Business Review study. The ease in integration means employees can easily create and join meetings in their existing calendar directly from the Zoom sidebar.

Zoom Mail and Calendar Services (beta) — designed for US and Canadian customers — will allow Zoom One Pro and Standard Pro users to set an email account hosted by Zoom for free. In addition, Zoom One Business will include up to 100GB of space, and have the functionality to set up custom domains, but how does it differ from other providers?

According to Zoom’s blog, the new features prioritize security, and given that 70% of cyberattacks in 2022 target business emails, it’s certainly a smart move.

“Zoom Mail Service is designed for small-to-medium businesses without dedicated IT resources who also have a need for enhanced privacy in their business communications, such as law firms or any business needing to share private information within their team. Zoom Mail Service offers end-to-end encryption (E2EE) for emails sent directly between active Zoom Mail Service users and expiring emails with access-restricted links for external recipients.”

Zoom Spots Explained

Zoom Spots, expected to be released in 2023, is designed to make remote work easier by tackling loneliness. The new feature, described as a “virtual coworking space for colleagues” allows remote workers to connect in real-time with a space specifically designed to let users work side-by-side, aiding collaboration.

The purpose is to “bridge the gap between workers in different locations, introducing a human-centered approach to virtual interaction.” However, some may argue that the increased screen-time could lead to digital burnout. Still, Zoom seems convinced that it’s the answer to our ever-changing work environment.

“Designed to foster inclusive discussions, bringing the fluid interactions of in-person work to distributed, hybrid teams throughout their workday. Zoom Spots replicates the ‘working alongside’ aspect of an open office for workers and encourages free-form video-first conversations.”

Zoom Meeting Upgrades

With a client base of over 470,000 business customers in the US, Zoom has already taken the business world by storm. But with an increasing demand for more remote work opportunities, there’s a push for companies to improve employee engagement by making work from home more enjoyable, and even easier. Zoom’s answer was to bring more video recording capabilities to their existing product with upgrades including:

  • Smart Recordings: A feature that allows users to add summaries, next steps, and smart chapters to meetings, so that employees can skip to the moments that matter most.
  • Improved Meeting Templates: Zoom users can now customize their meetings with improved templates, which will automatically configure the right settings for your stand-up, all-hands or specified meeting.
  • Avatars: Zoom users can now use customized Avatars to change how they appear on screen.
  • Video Clips: With the video clip feature, users can record and narrate presentations while sharing their screen.
Zoom smart recordings feature

Which Service Is Better? Zoom vs Google Workspace

Zoom is undeniably one of the biggest web conferencing tools in the world business, but Google Workspace is a giant when it comes to productivity, collaboration, and communication tools. Google Workspace is familiar, adaptable, and scalable, but Zoom’s new calendar and email features could take on Google’s Workspace and Microsoft 365’s monopoly in the productivity space.

If you’re just interested in web conferencing, Zoom is more than equipped to cater to your needs, but brands like GoToMeeting, RingCentral, and Webex are worthy contenders too, as they offer a great range of features and competitive pricing. See how they compare with our dedicated web conferencing quote form.

If you’re stuck between Zoom and Google Workspace, the better product will be the one that best caters to your business’ needs. Google Workspace has plenty of features and currently more integrations than Zoom, but we do like how Zoom is a product that is constantly evolving.

“Our team has built and launched more than 1,500 features and enhancements on the Zoom platform this year, advancing the way people connect with each other, their organization, and their customers — ultimately, opening the doors wide for creativity and collaboration.” – Eric S. Yuan, Zoom CEO.

With its new revamped chat, email functionality, chat translations, additionally collaborative tools, and future plans for virtual coworking spaces Zoom’s future workspace might just give Google Workspace a run for its money.

By Jade Artry

Jade Artry is the Content Manager for Tech.co. A digital marketing specialist with over 12+ years experience, her passion for tech and innovation has driven from life in London to Japan. Her experience and exposure to business and emerging technologies means that she’s equipped with a wealth of knowledge to help readers go from technophobe to tech pro, quicker than a cup of instant ramen.

Sourced from tech.co

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Where is the email marketing industry headed? Experts weigh in

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By Sananda Bhattacharya

Discussing excerpts from Netcore Cloud’s Email Benchmark Report 2022, industry experts highlighted the latest insights on email trends, and how email marketers can create highly customised and relevant campaigns for their customers.

Email marketing is one of the most trusted channels at the marketer’s disposal to connect with customers and convert them into loyalists. As emails have become a crucial way for personalised and conversational marketing, many emerging technologies are shaping the future of email marketing.
To explore this, and to gain a deeper understanding of the Email Benchmark Report 2022 (EBR) published by Netcore Cloud, industry experts like Sharon Supriya, Senior Director – Marketing & Growth Strategy, BYJUS; Sandesh Gupta, Head of Digital Marketing – USA, MPL; and Chaitanya Chinta, Global Business Head, Email, Netcore Cloud, came together to share their insights on the report, which is a study of 100 billion emails across 20+ global industries.

Key findings of the report

Chaitanya kick-started the discussion by shedding light on some focal points of the report. “We have witnessed a tremendous shift in the industry in the last few months of the post-pandemic period, in terms of brand strategy innovations that are fundamentally changing the way marketers implement their email programs. So, as part of the learnings from this report, I’ll break it down into two parts – the latest trend shifts and the benchmarks we’ve arrived at,” he said.
According to the report, a larger population engaged with email this year compared to last year from a deliverability standpoint. “Market delivers many emails, but some of them make it to the inboxes, while others go into spam. Often, when the mail is delivered spam, you don’t necessarily get any engagement, or there are hardly any people who visit spam folders and check their emails. So from a deliverability standpoint, the industry average has been around 78-82 percent, and Netcore today delivers around 94-95 percent of emails in the inbox,” explained Chaitanya.

Optimising email marketing for mobile devices

“With an estimate of almost 4.3 billion global email users, and with the number of new smartphone subscriptions increasing by almost 20 percent each year, every business should look at optimising email marketing for mobile skills,” said Sharon.
Sharing her list of commandments for the same, she highlighted, “To start with, the subject lines should be limited to 7-10 words, with fewer emojis. Secondly, call-to-action buttons should be added or summarising the mailer body on pre-headers. Thirdly, lengthy emails should be avoided, and the design and copy should be mobile-friendly. Next, it’s always best to personalise subject lines to your email body based on a persona or user activity based on clicks. Last but not the least, what has worked for a certain industry may not work well for all industries, and thus requires A/B testing to understand your user better.”
EBR also mentions how Send Time Optimization (STO) – an AI-powered feature that delivers email campaigns to users when they are most likely to check their inboxes – can act as a game changer.
“There are time-bound offers in digital marketing. If someone opens this particular email at a certain point, you can always opt for a time-bound experiment, where you know, they are just seeing right, and then there is an offer, which is going to expire, the natural tendency is to rope in another two. Of course, there is a very high chance that the offer will expire at the time they are seeing or opening the email. However, these are a few of the direct and indirect impacts of STO,” added Sandesh.

Email privacy and segmentation

Building on EBR 2022’s point on churn analysis or email churn – users who have either unsubscribed from a mailing list or turned cold by not responding to your emails anymore – Sharon feels that the impact is not just on future sales, but also on the present cost. So, the best way is to avoid churn or prevent it from happening in the first place.
“It’s best to have a predefined mailer journey for pre-sales as well as your postal user. The pre-sale users have made an effort to register as a lead to know more about your product. So, your pre-sales journey should answer and help him discover more about your services or offers, how it is different from the competition, and so on. For the post-sale users, give them reasons to keep coming back by showing them the day-to-day values of using your product. Talk about feature updates or special offers, or build repetitive contests or a fun activity they will love to participate in so they get addicted to it in the near future,” she added.
The next segment discussed was Accelerated Mobile Pages (AMP) for emails delivering a personalised experience to every Gmail recipient. AMP emails act as a website or app, allowing customers to take all actions right inside the emails; they need not click and go out to a web page or app. This greatly minimizes user drop-offs and leakage of valuable leads that happen with conventional HTML emails.
Talking about the importance of AMP for MPL to interact with customers, Sandesh said, “When you are specifically getting AMP for the gaming industry, a user can come and interact with that particular thing. It’s like how quickly you can play this game, try out a few moves, show some tips and tricks, and get your shot better. So, all these can only occur through an interactive platform, and we are able to provide an interactive gaming experience directly inside the AMP emails.”

AI for email marketing

Several retail brands are utilising Netcore Cloud’s AI-powered email delivery feature to impact their email deliverability positively. AI applications for email marketing remain in content optimisation, whether it is set subject line optimisation or personalisation that you can create, and even automated content creation. One of the most powerful aspects of AI is audience segmentation based on past and current behavioural data of the customers. Having the right segmentation is of utmost importance in delivering customized and personalized messaging that resonates with the recipients.
“Netcore added a fourth layer, which is towards email delivery. For example, if you’re sending a signup confirmation, a password reset, or any email when the user is waiting on the other side of the email, speed should be the topmost metric that you should measure. So, by the time a user switches on to the mailbox, the mail should be there, and this is where the delivery layer comes into the picture,” noted Chaitanya.
Sandesh here added his views on modifying their AI features accordingly, keeping in mind the changes in user behaviour while using emails, agreeing to the idea of optimising parameters across mediums.
Experts concluded that interaction, intelligence, and innovation are the three factors driving email marketers to enact next-level strategies. Email enables interaction with users closely, especially in the post-pandemic era. Then, there are tools and technologies today to get a lot of intelligence about users’ data as they engage with you via email. And finally, everything is encircled by innovation which enables us to do things not just more productively, but also efficiently – as exemplified by AMP emails.

 

By Sananda Bhattacharya

Sourced from YOURSTORY

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11 Tips Companies Can Use To Distribute Content For Consumers

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Sourced from Forbes

Companies can use a variety of platforms to distribute their content including social media, email and blogs. However, there are times where a certain method is seen as the best way to put out content and keep the consumers happy. Making content accessible the way consumers want it is a way to retain those consumers and adopt a loyal fanbase.

Companies are always looking for new and better ways to do so. Here, 11 Forbes Communications Council members share what they deem as the best way to distribute content and why.

1. Think Of The Consumer’s Preference

The best way to distribute content is to start with the consumer’s preference—not the content. As AI improves, companies and media outlets are using data and communication provided by consumers to choose the best channel for communication. Pushing content pushes consumers away. – Rob Wyse, Robert Wyse

2. Cater To The Audience

To have a successful distribution, we need to research the audience, create multiple audience segments, develop a content strategy for each audience and choose the right platform where they are active most. My favourite channel is video marketing via YouTube or social media to distribute content. Based on the data, video content has the highest impact on achieving business goals. – Yasaman Javadi

3. Team Up With Media Outlets

As a former journalist, earned content through respectable media outlets does much of the heavy lifting to reach target customers. Done right, customers are not bothered to vet the credibility of brand claims. Once the editorial channel is populated, the licensing and distribution is fair game for other channels. This approach is low cost, high impact but requires time and a solid hook. – Cheryl Goodman, Technology

4. Make Content Across All Platforms

Making content available across many formats and platforms is key to a distribution strategy. Consumers can begin their journey with short form content to build awareness, while long form content drives deeper engagement over time. Overall, all formats have a mutually beneficial role to play by providing content viewers with various options depending on their preferred consumption choices. – Victor Potrel, TheSoul Publishing

5. Find Out Where Consumers Get Content

Everything starts with your audience and figuring out where they consume content. Then, when you know the content platforms they are engaging with, you can design your content effectively by using those platform strengths while still effectively communicating the content you want your target consumers to consume. – Mark Sutherland, Missouri Partnership

6. Use An Opt-In Newsletter

Nothing beats an excellent opt-in newsletter for content distribution. It allows people to get fresh content that they can read, listen to or watch on their own time. It allows the brand to add commentary, outside sources, recommended articles, humor and insights in a snackable size that’s easy to consume and share. – Leslie Poston, Austin Data Labs

7. Make A Podcast

Starting with a podcast is a great way to reach customers because a long form audio or video conversation is easy to repurpose into blogs, video micro clips, social media graphics, email content and more. Plus, podcast guests offer co-promotional opportunities that reach consumers outside your network as well. Podcasts may take longer to build up and establish than other content, but it’s worth it. – Robert Neely, Lima One Capital

8. Use Multiple Channels

Different distribution channels and different content styles will appeal to different consumer target groups. Smart brands are creating highly personalized, visual and relevant content across multiple channels to engage with consumers at the right time, wherever they appreciate being contacted. Depending on the target group this may be direct mail, social media, WhatsApp or others. – Rafael Schwarz, TERRITORY Influence (a Bertelsmann group company)

9. Utilize Your Email

Of all of the tools in your marketing toolbox, email is one of the most useful. Not only can you create curated, segmented lists, but you can also glean valuable intel through analytics on the back end with open rates and click through rates, helping you define the messages that best resonate with your target customers. – Melea McRae, Crux KC

10. Layer The Content You’re Making

You spent a lot of time developing great content, so don’t limit it to just one channel. Layer your content so consumers can access it their way and on their time. Put it out on social media, include it in an email campaign and host it on your blog. Whenever possible, include a strong visual element like an infographic to increase both readership and retention. – Esther Bonardi, Yardi Systems

11. Be Original

The best way to distribute content to consumers is to do it in an organic way. Think of ways you can get your marketing content seen without shoving it down clients’ throats. Usually collaborating with influencers or utilizing social media ads are great ways to do this. Also concentrate on building your own social media presence. – Christian Anderson, Lost Boy Entertainment Company

Sourced from Forbes

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How to Improve your Email Deliverability Rate

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By Bharat Patel

Is your email deliverability rate making you want to bang your head against a wall? Frustrating isn’t it?

After all, you likely spent a decent chunk of time crafting the perfect email to send to your subscribers, only to find out a large percentage didn’t even receive it!

To ensure that your emails get read, it’s important to understand the best email deliverability practices.

Several elements and practices define good email marketing campaigns, and your email deliverability rate is one of them.

Today, I’ll take you through the different aspects of email deliverability, such as:

  • Is there an average email deliverability rate?
  • What is a good deliverability rate?
  • How to evaluate test email for deliverability?

Understanding the concept of email deliverability

Ever find all your emails land in the receiver’s spam?

Amazon-Workmail

This makes it challenging for your business to reach the right audience and generate leads.

Therefore, it’s important to analyse and run tests and concentrate on email deliverability before you send an email to your audience.

Email deliverability evaluates the frequency of an email reaching the subscriber’s inbox. This process is occasionally termed inbox placement.

The ultimate goal of any company is to gain metrics on whether the email has landed successfully in the inbox and how frequently it is opened.

Several factors influence your mail’s landing in the inbox or the spam folder, and they are:

  • IP address reputation
  • Sender reputation
  • DNS records
  • SPF records

Your email-marketing process has a big effect on whether the email will land in the inbox or the spam folder.

Email deliverability is an actual rate that highlights whether the email made it to the subscriber’s inbox or not. You are bound to experience a poor email deliverability rate when your emails consistently land in the spam folder or when your email address is blocked.

Common email deliverability mistakes to avoid

In addition to the factors mentioned above, there are a few other factors that impact email deliverability, and they are:

  • Bad list quality
  • Low engagement
  • Missing email authentication

If you aim to improve your email deliverability rate, determine what’s wrong or missing. You could have missed a single or a combination of elements shared above.

Search for authentication methods such as DKIM, SPF, and others to improve your email deliverability rate. You can implement a DMARC record setup to enable email authentication measures and protect your domain.

Simultaneously, it is important to prioritize user engagement through the content of your emails. Remember, an email engagement rate is a mix of click and open rates that indicate positive engagement signals.

One of the primary causes of poor deliverability problems is bad email list quality. For instance, a couple of inbox providers facilitate the additional services of domain blocklist lookup, where they spam your emails if you fall under the email blocklist.

Other metrics such as the sender score can have an effect on your deliverability. Sender score considers your IP reputation and domain reputation.

The difference between email delivery and email deliverability

Before sending an email campaign it is important to ask the following questions:

  • Is your message acceptable?
  • Is the message getting delivered to the inbox?

Understanding email delivery

Email delivery revolves around the probability that a receiver will accept your email before the spam folder or inbox. If your email does not end up in the inbox, the delivery is less likely to be successful.

For instance, you have booked a flight ticket, reached the airport, boarded the right flight, and got to your destination.

Similarly, when you deliver the email correctly, it will land in the receiver’s inbox; they’ll learn about you and hopefully buy one of your products.

Understanding email deliverability

Is the message getting delivered to the inbox?

Your concentration is on the inbox placement; this means you have to be mindful of where your email gets delivered. Email deliverability in the spam folder, inbox, and other folders has different impacts.

Good deliverability comprises three essential elements:

Identification:  This describes the primary protocols that confirm you are a reliable authority and all you quote in the email. Some protocols are shared via SPF, DKIM, DMARC, and others.

These protocols act as a security checkpoint for your organization that helps clear your email deliverability.

Reputation:  Your sender’s reputation represents your email’s trustworthiness. Each ISP and firm have different scores for you, and curating positive behaviour can help you craft a good reputation.

Content: Do you share relevant messages with your target audience? Poor copy with unorganized formatting can repel readers.

Using abrupt and unclear formatting can harm your email’s deliverability. Instead, consider what your audience is searching for and quote email messages accordingly.

The identification and reputation efforts lead the email to either inbox or the spam folder. On the contrary, if you have delivery issues, you need changes in the infrastructure. It’s time to review and work on the email addresses on the list.

However, if you notice deliverability issues, your subscribers are not interested in your content, or your practices are outdated.

Regardless of where you stand today, there is a scope to improve email deliverability.

Email deliverability best practices for 2022

Email Deliverability Best Practices For 2022

This image will give you an idea about blacklist emails. If your email is on the blacklist then it will show in this list. Email service providers used to check the email blacklist to check whether your email will go into an Inbox or spam.

Personalize your emails

Subscribers and marketers have different descriptions of spam emails. For example, subscribers prioritize relevance over algorithms or spam filters.

Are you sharing content that your audience is interested in?

Analyse your content relevance and errors before you hit the send button on your email.

Of all the marketing tactics, email is the most personal channel, and hence your content must resonate with your audience. So, naturally, this directly impacts your deliverability and reader engagement.

Informative and engaging emails can lead to long-lasting relationships with your audience.

Clear opt-in process

The way you accumulate email addresses plays a vital role in your deliverability rates. An optimized opt-in procedure is more effective and affirms that the list comprises handpicked engaging users.

When you tap the wrong audience, they are likely to mark you as spam, and the ISPs consider that you are spamming others on your list.

To avoid such circumstances, I recommend the use of a double opt-in strategy that involves dual verification for the user. This verification process ensures that you have an engaged email list and target them only. Make sure to clean the list regularly to avoid spamming boxes unknowingly.

Analyse subscriber’s expectations

It is essential to consider reader expectations to improve email deliverability. The best way to do this is to inform your readers what they are getting into through transparent communication.

This way, you can align with them and obtain better outcomes.

A few businesses and marketers prefer easy ways to expand email databases, but they seldom drive results and may hamper your sender’s reputation.

One of the key reasons for this could be that they were not ready for regular messages and end up ignoring them, marking them as spam, or unsubscribing.

ISPs can track this poor engagement and degrade your sender reputation, which gradually affects your deliverability rate.

Instead, ask readers for their consent before shooting them a series of emails and playing with your engagement.

Track your metrics

Whether the result is good or bad, it is important to keep tabs on your reader’s activity and not flood their inbox with unwanted emails.

How do you understand whether your subscribers are engaged and enjoy associating with you?

Open and click-through rates coupled with spam complaints and unsubscribes can notify you of the effect of your audiences’ preferences.

Besides, high bounce rates, negative engagement, and compliant rates are bad indicators of email campaigns. You can use email deliverability tools and hire digital experts to strategize an effective campaign for your brand.

This combination can assist you in improving your sender score and eventually reaching the desired benchmark.

Key takeaways

Hosting good email lists, updating your content regularly, and sending effective marketing emails are crucial to email deliverability. This will help increase the likelihood of having your emails delivered to your recipient’s inbox.

Managing email deliverability helps to a solid foundation for your company’s future success.

By Bharat Patel

Bharat Patel heads the digital marketing team at Brainvire Infotech. He is armed with over 12
years of experience in the fields of online marketing and project management. He is extremely
proactive in implementing the latest technological innovations in his projects. Bharat’s core
expertise lies in search engine optimization (SEO), social media marketing, and conversion rate
optimization, among other things. His immense flare of writing encourages him to consistently
pen down words revolving around current trends and innovations that relate to his fields of
interest.

Sourced from Jeff Bullas

 

 

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Do’s and Don’ts of Email Etiquette 2022: How to Sound More Professional Through Email

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The average employee spends hours every day going through their emails. However, even though emails are done on a daily basis and are one of the most common routines now, a lot of professionals still don’t know how to use email appropriately.

In fact, because of the massive volume of messages you are reading and writing every day, you may be prone to making embarrassing errors, which can have serious consequences.

Below are the do’s and don’ts of email etiquette.

Do Have a Short and Clear Subject Line

Most people have to compete with the hundreds of emails clogging their inbox daily, so the clearer the subject line is, the more likely the message will be read.

According to Business Insider, a lot of people decide which email to read first based on the subject line. If it sounds urgent and straight to the point, it will definitely be read first.

Don’t Forget to Put Your Signature

Every email that you send must have a signature that tells the recipient who you are and how they can contact you. You can set it up to automatically appear at the end of every email sent.

According to the International Data Corporation (IDC), workers spend 28% of their workweek checking their emails. This is why it is best to add your signature so they will automatically know where they can reach you best.

You also need to include all of your contact details, like email address, office address, and phone numbers, so the recipient does not have to look them up themselves.

In 2022, TechTimes reported how HR created a hybrid email culture using e-signatures.

If you want to create a signature easily, you can use the signature generator for free for your emails.

Do Add Professional Salutation

Using “Hey.” is not professional, no matter how well you know the recipient. You can use either “Hi” or “Hello” instead. To be more formal, you can use “Dear (insert name).”

You can also use the recipient’s name in the salutation, but remember not to use their nickname. You should only use their full first name, as advised by Entrepreneur.

Don’t Use Humour in Your Email

Humour does not translate well through email, especially in a professional setting. The other party may misinterpret what you think is funny or take it as sarcasm because there is no accompanying vocal tone or facial expressions.

It is best to leave the humour out of business communications when you are in doubt.

Do Proofread Your Message Before Sending

Do not be surprised if you are judged by how you compose an email. For example, if your email has a lot of misspelled words and grammatical errors, you may be perceived as careless, sloppy, or even uneducated.

Make sure that you check your grammar, spelling, and message before hitting send.

Don’t Assume the Recipient Immediately Knows About the Topic

Create your message as a stand-alone note, even if it is in response to an email thread. This means you should not reply with one-liners.

Always include the subject of any references to previous emails, conversations, or research. It can be time-consuming and frustrating to look back at the email thread just to get the context.

Your recipient may have a lot of emails coming in each day, and likely won’t remember the events leading up to your email, so it is best always to include context.

Feature Image Credit: Unsplash/Solen Feyissa Gmail

By Sophie Webster

Sourced from Tech Times

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