May 3, 2006

Email Marketing Tips

I'm in the mood for tech tips this week. So following-up on yesterday's post about improving your online ticketing system, here are 17 suggestions for enhancing your email marketing campaigns:

1) Build your email list: Always collect email addresses from people who are likely to be interested in your dance performances and related offerings. Encourage audience members to sign-up for your free email blasts. Add line in your email signature file that promotes your email newsletter. And promote email newsletter in all online and offline promotional materials.

2) Create email form: Ensure that visitors to your website can easily register for your email newsletter or periodic email blasts. The fewer questions you ask, the more subscribers you will get, the more questions you ask, the better you'll understand your audience.

3) Sample newsletter: It's a good idea to include a link on your email sign-up page for a sample of your email newsletter so that prospective subscribers will know what they will receive.

4) HTML or text: If you can afford the extra work and your email system supports it, it is best to offer subscribers a choice of either a graphic HTML or a text version of your email newsletters. While you may be able to send multi-part MIME emails (email messages that combine HTML and text versions in a single file and the appropriate one opens in user's email client), this combined approach has its downsides. Plus, many more people open email with their handheld device or mobile phone and they want small, text-only files.

5) Single opt-in or double opt-in: Should you require new subscribers to confirm by email that they really want to receive your email broadcasts? While this double opt-in approach ensures that all of your subscribers intended to subscribe, you'll lose customers because some people won't complete the subscription process by responding to your confirmation request. My general recommendation is to stick with the single opt-in approach.

6) Audience segmentation: In some cases, you'll want to send different email content to different groups of subscribers. If this is the case, you'll want to segment your email lists into different sub-groupings. For instance, you might segment customers based on season/series ticket holders, frequent audience members, rarely attend and new customers/never attended. You could also segment by sponsors/donors/advertisers/audience members. You'd then send different emails/campaigns to each segment.

7) Avoid the spam folder: On the email confirmation page that users see after they enter their email address, provide specific details about your email broadcasts so that your emails are actually read by subscribers. The most important detail is that you list the "from" address for your emails. This way if subscribers are motivated they can include your email address as one of the email senders whose message they do want to receive.

8) Privacy information: Describe your privacy policy. As a general rule, you should not use or distribute email addresses for any purpose other then sending the requested email broadcasts.

9) Choosing the day of week: I haven't read many studies lately about the best time to send email broadcasts. Going back a few years, the best results usually occurred on mid-mornings on either Tuesday or Wednesday. I think the logic still holds. On Monday people are overwhelmed. By mid-morning on Tuesday or Wednesday, recipients have already had their morning coffee. And by Thursday, most people are just thinking about the weekend.

10) Subject lines: There are many theories about what to put in the email subject line. For starters, don't include any words such as "money," "win" or words likely to be picked-up by spam filters. Some email broadcasters just put the name of their organizations or events in the subject. But most include a benefit or description of what is included in the email. My approach, which I'd probably change in specific situations, is to go with an upbeat description of what's included in your email newsletter. If you go only with the straight benefit, it can easily sound like excessive hype and nobody will open your newsletter.

11) Format: Whether you deliver a graphic html or text email message, the usual approach is to write short descriptions of each story or offering with a link to a page (usually on your website) where readers can get additional information. This approach makes sense because most people don't read more than a couple of sentences deep about a specific story. Make sure the title for each story/offering is clear and compelling.

12) Content: The odds are you'll be using your newsletter to promote performances, classes and related events. What will grab the attention of subscribers will usually be compelling content associated with your performance or class. Personally, I like multimedia content. If you give me a link to an audio or video file of the choreographer discussing your upcoming performance, I'll definitely watch it. But work with what you have. Or, alternatively, offer special deals if recipients act by a specific deal. For instance, "Our email subscribers can purchase tickets before they are available to the general public. Buy tickets by May 10th and receive 10% discount."

13) HTML newsletters: If you include pictures and graphics in the HTML version of your newsletter, keep the files small so they load quickly. Also, make sure that the links to all of your graphics are permanent and not relative URLs. Send your HTML newsletter to two separate email addresses to test formatting and to ensure that images appear properly.

14) Test your newsletters: In addition to recommendation 13, always do test runs of your email newsletters - HTML and text. Check all of the links to make sure that they actually work and that you are taken to the proper page. It is a hassle to test all of the links. But if you don't do it, your subscribers will inevitably encounter problems.

15) Track "opens" and "click-throughs": If your email application supports it, track the number of delivered emails, the number of emails that are opened (viewed) by subscribers and the number of times that each link is clicked on. If you also collect demographic data about your subscribers such as location, age and type of patron, you can also create cross-tab reports that show you click through rates based upon this demographic data.

16) Modify mailings: Based-upon the reports you generated from section 15, you will want to modify the content of your email newsletters. You will learn what subject lines work the best, what types of stories are of greatest interest and which performance promotional campaigns are the most successful. Whatever works the best, you'll want to do again in future emails.

17) No-hassle unsubscribe: Absolutely make it easy for subscribers to unsubscribe from your email newsletter. On every email that you send out, there should be an unsubscribe link that, with a single click, removes the person from your list.

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