Freelance Forum Meeting Notes, April 7, 2011

Speakers:

Steven Roe, Bright Wave Marketing (email and digital messaging) and Sandi Solow, I Send Your Email

The key is to know your audience.

Create a preference center on your website where you collect more than just email addresses, but keep in mind the more information you request, the more likely it is that your audience may not fill out the form at all, or not complete the entire form. Once you have data on your audience, you can pick and choose what to send to them. Not everyone has to receive the same mass email messages.

For sending out email newsletters, choose the email service provider (ESP) that works for what you’re doing. Using one of these programs can help you avoid ending up in people’s spam folders and can preserve the reputation of mail coming from your own email address, decreasing the likelihood that you’ll get blacklisted and prevented from sending emails.

If you build your list with a paper trail (i.e., business cards collected), keep everything in case you’re ever asked by your ESP about how you compile your mailing list. If your mailing list has over 1,000 email addresses, Constant Contact is probably not the right ESP for you.

It is better to send email newsletters in HTML format. Everyone viewing an email newsletter may see it in a different way, depending upon a variety of factors such as browser, email provider, device, etc. Litmus (http://litmus.com/) can help you see what your email newsletters will look like across different viewing platforms. Also, maintain a text-to-images balance, and remember that less flashy designs will be better for all viewing the email newsletter.

ESPs allow you to write in the sender of an email. Choose your name, your company name or both so it’s recognizable to your recipients.

Poor content, lack of relevance to your audience and sending emails too frequently are the main reasons that recipients will unsubscribe. The more relevant your messages are to your audience, the more often you can send email newsletters.

Don’t purchase email lists. You want to have a permission-based list.

Don’t bury your email signup form on your website. Make it prominent and offer something, such as a white paper for free, in return for signing up. Make everyone who lands on your page want to be on your email list.

With email newsletters, you have seven to nine seconds to capture someone’s attention. If a reader has to scroll down to get text, it may be hard to keep their attention. Don’t make your audience work too hard.

Keep data on who clicks on which stories or articles in your email newsletter. See who wants to read what and use that to your advantage. Use your email newsletter to get people out of their inbox and onto your web page as quickly as possible.

Make sure your content is always share-worthy, and leverage your email newsletters so they drive your readers to find you on social media platforms.