Recently, the 60 Second Marketer posted 25 email marketing tips for small to mid-sized businesses. There were so many, we couldn’t fit them all in one post. Here are an additional 15 tips, tricks, and secrets to help you out in your email marketing ventures:

1. Don’t Forget the Preview Pane in Your Campaign: The preview pane should be filled with the unique selling point of your campaign, with your most intriguing benefit or your best offer. Unsubscription instructions, long introductory copy, and disclaimers should be moved down the page so that they’re not the first thing people see in the preview pane.
2. Get Subscribers by Partnering with Other Websites: Turn to Web sites that people who might be interested in your newsletter are likely to visit and cooperate with the owners of these sites in some way that can profit both of you, such as exchanging sign-up forms.
3. Make Sure Unsubscriptions are Effective Immediately: Avoid a spam-like impression by making sure unsubscriptions from your newsletters or email marketing lists go into effect immediately.
4. Choose the Right Day of the Week to Send Newsletters: The best way to figure out when to send your email is to test your way into success by deploying on a variety of days and seeing which day is best for your specific audience. If your newsletter is business-oriented and read at work, you might start by sending it on Wednesday or Thursday. If your newsletter is primarily read at home and focuses on spare-time activities, try sending it on Saturday or Sunday. (For more information on this topic, read “What Are the Best Days of the Week to Send an Email Campaign?” on the 60 Second Marketer blog.)
5. Send Newsletters on Time:People love consistency. If part of your email marketing involves sending a weekly newsletter, send it out at the same time each week.
   

   These 15 tips, along with the 25 other tips in a previous post, should give you everything you need to get started with a successful email markeitng campaign.

6. Successful Email Marketing is 1-to-1 Permission Marketing: Truly successful email marketing consists of personalized messages being sent to customers individually. Tailoring your communication to the needs of the individual customer is only possible if you know a lot about them. You can learn about your subscribers by analyzing the data in the sign-up form or by sending them a survey after they sign up.
7. Test the Layout of Your Newsletter with Email Clients: Make sure your email marketing message looks good not only in your email program but in your recipient’s, too. You can do this by signing up for AOL, Google, HotMail and other free services, then testing the look-and-feel by sending yourself an email to your AOL, Google and/or HotMail accounts.
8. Decide whether to use Opt-In or Double Opt-In: Email addresses on an opt-in list are not confirmed. On a double opt-in list, all email addresses must be confirmed by the user before they are added. A request for confirmation is sent to the submitted address, and the address owner must take some action to confirm that. At the 60 Second Marketer, we’ve found that a double opt-in list ensures a very high degree of engagement with our readers and a very low complaint rate.
9. How to Get the Names of Anonymous Subscribers: Send a letter to those who have signed up for your newsletter but haven’t submitted their name periodically and tell them you’d love to greet them with their name instead of the stale “Dear Subscriber.” Chances are lots of them will be more than willing to reveal their name.
10. Know Your Competition: Sign up for your competitors’ emails.  It will give you insight into what types of emails they send and what they are offering to their subscribers.  This can help you with promotional ideas as well as improvements to your own email campaigns.
11. Monitor Reply-to Addresses: The “reply-to” address for your email campaigns should be closely monitored by a member of your team.  It is important that email remain a two-way street, and by having a valid reply-to address that is monitored and acted upon, your customers will know you are listening to them.  Don’t make the mistake of allowing the replies to pile up in your inbox and never looking at them.
12. Remind the User how they Signed-up: People register for email subscriptions at different sources (store, point of purchase, co-registration, etc.). As a result, they may not always remember what they did to start receiving communications from your brand. By personalizing the copy based on the registration source, you can provide them with a gentle reminder of where they signed up, which can eliminate any confusion that might cause them to hit the unsubscribe link.
13. Do Not Include Attachments in Your Emails: Some people will not open an email with an attachment for fear of getting a computer virus, so it is best not to include any. If want to share an image or coupon with your subscribers, it is more effective to incorporate it within the body of the email.
14. Don’t Say it All in One Message: If you have a lot to tell the subscriber, say it over a series of communications. The user is more likely to retain information given in small batches than a lengthy email that requires them to “page-down” through multiple paragraphs. A well-integrated welcome series works wonders.
15. Include a Sign-Up Banner at the Bottom of Your Blog Posts: See the e-newsletter sign-up banner at the bottom of this blog post? Steal the idea. Seriously, take the idea and incorporate it into your own blog posts. We’re all in this together, aren’t we?

Want more tips on Email Marketing? Visit About.com for more information.

About the Author: Brittney Leigh Smith is a marketing analyst for the 60 Second Marketer.

Email Marketing can be a challenge. Here is a collection of 25 tips, tricks, and secrets to help you out in your email marketing ventures:

1. Address Recipients with Their Name: Make your recipients feel more like themselves and less like mere numbers by greeting them individually and personally.

2. Avoid “$$$” Signs: Most people don’t like spam, and a lot of spam contains “$$$” somewhere in the subject or the body, which is why you should avoid it in your email marketing campaigns.

3. Create a Clear Call to Action: Make sure recipients of your email marketing message know what you expect them to do.

4. Avoid Mistyped Addresses by Requiring Retyping: Require that subscribers type their email addresses twice to reduce the number of obvious errors.

5. Avoid Email Marketing During the Holidays: Holidays are often holidays from email, too, which is why email marketing during the holidays is often not very effective.

6. Email Marketing Needs to Reflect Your Corporate Design: Your email marketing strategy as a whole must be cohesive with your overall marketing strategy and corporate design.

7. Emphasize with Words, Not Exclamation Marks in Your Copy: If you feel the need to use an exclamation point, reword the sentence to make the words and sentence structure develop their own urgency and importance.

8. Experiment with Link Placement in Newsletters: Maximize performance by putting the right links in the right places. Monitor click-through rates closely to determine which link works best in a certain position.

9. How to Get Newsletter Subscribers with Sweepstakes: Sweepstakes are a great way to build your list, but if you decide to make use of freebies and prizes you should pay extra attention not only to quantity but also to the quality of the list you build.
   

   Email can be a secret weapon for small- to mid-sized businesses. Why? Because with email marketing, you're talking to a captive audience. (With social media, you're talking to a fleeting audience.)

10. HTML or Plain Text: Let Your Recipients Decide: If you can’t decide whether you should publish your newsletter as HTML or plain text, do both and let your recipients decide individually which they prefer.

11. Include an Easy to Use Unsubscription Link in Newsletters: Unhappy subscribers are worse than no subscribers. An easy and fail-safe way to unsubscribe is a way to make subscribers happy.

12. Learn from Spam: You can learn a lot from spammers– what your marketing emails should not look like, and how it does not work.

13. Make it Easy for Subscribers to Change Their Email Address: If somebody likes your newsletter or email marketing, they will want to get it at their new address, too. Make this as easy as possible, or you may lose a reader.

14. Make Landing Pages Fit Your Email Marketing Campaign: An email marketing campaign is nothing without a landing page, so make sure it visually belongs to its campaign and does not irritate the user.

15. Motivate People to Sign Up for Your Newsletter with a Bonus: An additional bonus can improve the chance that somebody will sign up for your newsletter significantly.

16. Prefill Forms on Landing Pages: If you want to make somebody buy something in an email marketing campaign, the process must be as easy as possible. Prefill forms with name, shipping address, and other information you already know.

17. Prioritize Newsletter Content for More Clicks: Newsletter prioritization makes it easier and faster for recipients to find the content they are most interested in.

18. Put Newsletter Sign-up Boxes on Every Page: Make sure visitors can sign up to your newsletter when and where they want.

19. Reply to Requests Within 1 Day: You’ve got 24 hours to win — or lose — a customer, so be sure to reply to emails within a day.

20. Send Newsletters at Least Once a Month: If you send your newsletter less often, your subscribers may forget about you and their signing up, and perceive your mailing as spam. Also, send them at the same time.

21. Test the Links in Your Email Marketing Messages: Test them routinely again and again. If the links don’t work, your call to action leads recipients nowhere, and the success of your campaign or newsletter turns into failure quickly. Make sure your email marketing message looks good not only in your email program, but in your recipient’s, too.

22. Use a Template for Your Email Newsletter: A template is something to cling to, and something your readers will recognize.

23. Use Bold Face for Emphasis in Email Marketing: Make important text stand out in your email marketing efforts by using bold face.

24. Put Your Brand Name in the Subject Line : Recipients will trust you more and will feel more comfortable with opening your marketing messages.

25. A Newsletter Shouldn’t Be a Sales Pitch: An email newsletter is defined by valuable content, and this is what subscribers will expect. If somebody subscribes to a newsletter, they do not expect product offers without context turning up in their inbox.

Want more tips on email marketing? Visit About.com for additional articles and tips.

About the Author: Brittney Leigh Smith is a marketing analyst for the 60 Second Marketer.

By Simms Jenkins, CEO of Brightwave Marketing

I’m having a lot of interesting conversations with clients and prospective ones excited about being on the verge of something big. It might be a major investment in the program, a new partner, or internal recognition after years of hard work. I think most in the email space have that feeling too – we are onto something bigger than ever before and the timing is right to seize this opportunity.

However, digital marketers often feel they won’t be able to make “the leap” – and not because of execution, customer adoption, or anything related to their core brand and its strategic benefits. What lurks on the other side is more of an internal problem tied to a general fear that someone will not understand the full scope of why and what’s so important. After all, most email programs work pretty well even when poorly planned and executed. So these smart and savvy marketers I have been chatting with want to ensure they pitch their program properly to have it “blessed” by senior management and usually more importantly, not squashed by these same people.

Here are some practical ways to get buy-in from the C-suite:

1. Find the right key performance indicator. Sometimes any business-related goal tied to your email program can be enough, but you might as well go for the right one, not just any metric. Connecting your email program’s impact to a key performance indicator (KPI) like revenue per subscriber or sales per campaign will all of a sudden make your email program stand up strong next to its less measurable digital cousins like social.

Email marketing is one of the more effective tools you can use to grow your sales and revenue. Despite that, some people still have trouble getting the C-Suite to invest in it. Here are 5 tips you can use to convince your CEO it's a worthwhile investment.

2. Have a state of the union meeting. Email often doesn’t get much of a spotlight because it is hard to shine when its leaders are hiding under a rock. Often it is because of the Sisyphean tasks, but other times it is because email managers make false assumptions of what internal teams know about the program or don’t give themselves enough credit in what they have accomplished.

Change this with inviting all of marketing (or in a smaller company, the entire team) to listen to what the email program has achieved and where it is going. You might be shocked at the response you get. Even if you can’t get on people’s schedules, always have this deck ready and be sure to update it monthly.

3. Start communicating differently. Stop forwarding emails with long and hard-to-decipher analysis and spreadsheets of campaign performance. Do you think the CMO reads that? We arm many of our clients with a high-level scorecard that connects the email program to the rest of the business. This is what you report if stuck in the elevator with the CEO and he asks how your program is doing.

4. Creative sells. While creative is one of the many weapons in an email arsenal (sometimes self-destructing in the wrong hands), let’s face it: people like to see and touch things and even more so if it is a pretty picture. Email momentum has slowed many a time when the business rationale failed to have a tangible example of how it is was manifested to the customer. Show killer creative and you’ll help your case in a meaningful way. Throw in a mobile version of some campaigns and you may be perceived as cutting edge.

5. Business cases, not theories, get investment. Ultimately, you want to sell your program not just for a pat on the back or a raise, but to grow the program, try new things, and drive the business forward in a stronger fashion. So besides summarizing what your program does and why subscribers have embraced it, you need to be able to succinctly articulate (think one slide, not 20) what your program is capable of doing with additional support, resources, and/or investment. Meaning don’t go down the path of how a mobile preference center will increase your subscription base by 10 percent due to increased smartphone adoption by a large segment of your best customers. You lost your CFO early in that statement.

Project that “our email program will contribute $2 million more in revenue (or whatever business metric you can estimate) by leveraging new tactics that correlate to changing consumer habits.” A recent study showed 89.6 million Americans used their mobile phone to access email during a three-month period (comScore) and one way we can monetize this is to create ways to interact with these customers where they are spending more time.”

Remember, you often can’t improve on many fronts if your program doesn’t get broader visibility. This is one of the biggest challenges email marketers will face internally and it must be addressed if you have the ambitions to take your program to the next level.

What do you use to make your email marketing program relevant?

Simms Jenkins is CEO of Brightwave Marketing and the author of The Truth About Email Marketing.

(This post was originally posted on ClickZ.)

Content and context were two of the biggest buzzwords at Email Summit 2012 — and for good reason.

If you’re trying to generate more new business and retain more customers, these days you absolutely need to have strong content that’s aimed at the right audiences.

Most organizations know they need to do a better job of this, especially with email, as a MarketingSherpa survey of more than 2,700 email marketers showed.

Asked about their top email marketing priorities are for 2012, among large and mid-sized companies “delivering highly relevant content” ranked first (70% and 62% respectively), and for small businesses it ranked second (71%), surpassed only by “growing and retaining subscribers” – which also relies heavily on content.

Good news: This means email marketing will continue to improve in 2012. But it’ll still take a little work and creativity.

How To Get There Quickly

Survey data is great, but to really benefit from it and cultivate stronger relationships, you need a real action plan.

That’s why we teamed up with the Sherpa researchers to produce a free special report ebook and email series featuring five key ways to maximize your email marketing ROI.

With a mix of statistics, case studies, examples and tools, we broke down the special report into five key action steps:

1. Be more strategic about your list building approach 

Even a laundry list of email tactics and best practices won’t get you as far as a comprehensive email strategy. Sounds painful and time-consuming, right? After all, if decent results are coming in, what’s the harm in minor adjustments?

Less then one-third of email marketers said they “send relevant emails to segmented audiences with a clear conversion goal” — that’s a ton of potential money and business being squandered.

What would it take to implement a process for consistent testing, segmentation and analysis? How about using content to the fullest extent, for instance, but stretching the value through revisions, repackaging and syndication? If combining steps like those into a framework that improves consistency, just think of the increases you could see with your email efforts.

Interested in learning more about how to improve your email marketing? Download the free report from AWeber and Marketing Sherpa

2. Let subscribers know what to expect — then deliver

Countless email forms request the bare minimum of information, because we want subscribing to be easy and painless.

The downside is, many times, we don’t provide enough information or context at the sign up stage, so people don’t always have a clear sense of what they’re going to get later in their inboxes. This can lead to lower engagement rates, higher unsubscribes and complaints and an unhealthy list with a lot of dead weight.

Make sure your offer is clear, from the opt in forms and confirmation emails to thank you pages and the emails themselves. Do they align? Is is obvious from a first-time visitor’s perspective what I’m going to get in exchange for my email, and will it maintain my interest over time?

3. Link your list segments to your priorities

Segmenting lists and sending more relevant content was a common theme at this year’s Email Summit. If you feel you’re way behind, take heart: many email marketers are in the same boat. Only about half of email marketers are using segmentation regularly, according to the Sherpa survey.

So, where should you start? What are your objectives? Sorting prospects from customers is one of the best places, because that’s where different content can have a major impact. Perhaps demographics are important your business. Or readers who typically access your emails from mobile devices vs. desktops or laptops. Another segmentation areas is actions, such as who opened and clicked (or didn’t) on certain emails.

Wherever you begin or augment your segmentation efforts, make sure they’re consistent with your marketing priorities and that you’re asking for the information you need.

4. Start using automation in your campaigns

Beyond the commonly used welcome, thank you and transactional emails, research shows a big drop-off in automated messages.

When it comes to building relationships, email autoresponder series are ideal for lead nurturing, drip campaigns and even re-engagement campaigns. Only about one-third of the emails sent by the marketers surveyed fell into this category.

If, like most marketers, you’re pressed for time and resources, autoresponders could be your best friend. Once you’ve created the series, using evergreen information such as how-to articles, training videos or links that won’t lose their timeliness for a while, you can let the series run and devote more time to juggling all those other priorities.

5. Test, optimize and test again

One of my favorite quotes from the special report? “Continuous experimentation is the quickest path to peak performance.” Problem is, only 28% of small businesses regularly test and optimize their email messages. Although mid-sized and larger companies fared better, still only about half of them are testing regularly, too.

If you still think testing and optimization is a hassle to set up, analyze and run regularly, I’d urge you to think again. There are several tools that make the process much easier than it was even a few years ago, and where email messages, opt-in forms and landing pages are concerned, setting up A/B tests is now a matter of a few clicks.

You’ll still need to be precise, since you don’t want what looks like a 37% gain to be false, but the real point is if you’re not testing regularly, it’s time to start. And if you’re just dabbling with tests now and then, it’s time to get more serious. Whether it’s simple tests like subject lines and time of day the email is sent, or more involved copy and call to action changes on emails and landing pages, this is the year to dig in and go for bigger gains.

About the Author: Hunter Boyle, Sr. Business Development Manager for AWeber, helps all kinds of businesses learn how to leverage the power of email marketing using the AWeber platform.

Not long ago, we conducted an A/B Split Test with a 60 Second Marketer e-newsletter subject line.

Which subject line won? See if you can guess.

• Subject Line A: “Where Does Your Brand Fall on this Brand Spectrum Chart?”

• Subject Line B: “Apple, Google, GoDaddy and the Brand Spectrum”

Can You Guess Which Subject Line Won?

Normally, when we do tests like this, one subject line might beat the other by 10%. But in this case, the winner outperformed the loser by 40%.

Yup, you heard right. The subject line with “Apple” and “Google” in it generated 40% more opens than the “Your Brand” headline. Better still, the click through rate was 15% higher in the “Apple” email — even though the copy in the email was exactly the same.

My guess is that the higher click-through rate happened because the people who opened the “Apple” email were more engaged and interested in the content.

Action Steps for You:

If you aren’t already running tests on your marketing program, here are some things to consider.

• Build Testing Into Your Program: Make sure A/B Split testing is built into your marketing program. Don’t make it random — do it every time. (Truth-o-Meter: We don’t test every time, so do as we say, not as we do.)

• Keep it Simple: Only test one variable at a time (unless you’re doing multivariate testing with a sophisticated research company)

• Start with Easy Stuff: Test the simple things first (e.g., subject lines, “Buy Now” buttons, etc.), then work your way up to more complex tests (e.g., layout, design, e-commerce options, etc)

• Test Your Way Into Success: When you have something that’s a winner, use it as your control. Continue to test against your control to see if you can beat it

We’d love to hear from you about your experiences with A/B Split Tests. You can let us know what your results have been by adding your comment below.

Other Articles of Interest from the 60 Second Marketer Blog:

• How to Measure the Value of a Brand

• What is Mobile Marketing?

• Social Media Glossary of Terms

Posted by Jamie Turner, Founder of the 60 Second Marketer and co-author of “How to Make Money with Social Media” and “Go Mobile.” He is also a popular marketing speaker at events, trade shows and corporations around the globe.

What are the best ways to supercharge your email marketing campaigns? Here are 10 tips to help you get started.

1.  It’s all about deliverability, verifiability, and bounce reduction. Permission-based lists and clean data have the best chance of getting response.  Make sure your email solution has high deliverability rates and can track message activity (deliveries, bounces, clicks); or you’re just wasting marketing dollars.

2. Aim Before You Send. Email marketing starts with targeted, clean, and compliant lists. Build your email lists based on specific attributes and behaviors of your target audience to best capture attention and encourage response.

3. Create a marketing ecosystem that walks, talks, and works together. Your email campaigns, website, social media channels, and sales team all need to have the same key messages and value propositions.  Give your prospects an easy way to respond to your offer; wherever and however they find it.

4. Give your lists a fighting chance. Build trust with prospects by providing them with opt-in opportunities, delivery preferences, and privacy settings. Follow up with valuable content with relevant subject lines and messages. Avoid spam-trigger words: “Free,” “Discount,” or “Click.” Test before launching.

5. Don’t Ignore Opportunities to Improve Conversions. When analyzing the success of an email, determine what recipients clicked on vs. what was ignored. Note where the majority of prospects navigated away from your content and adjust future email campaigns based on these results.

6. Email haiku – You’ve got 3 seconds to make an impression. Can you answer these three questions: “What am I asking them to do?”, “Why should they care, or do it?”, and “Am I making it easy for them to act?” Have just one objective in an email, and make your call to action clear and easy to respond to.

7. Be Human: Write your email as if you are speaking to an audience of one. Ask the recipients opinion and present future content thataddresses these conversations. And whenever possible, have the email come from a real person, such as the CEO, CP of Sales, CMO, or other appropriate contact.

8. Avoid the dreaded “Big X” – How to beat the preview pane. Don’t make prospects click “download image” to even understand what you’re offering. Focus attention on the message and call to action. Downsize your banner and make it clickable. Shorten horizontal graphics, move up a promotional message, or add header box to increases response rates.

9. If you aren’t tracking behaviors and metrics you’re missing the boat. Demographics, psychographics, online and offline interactions, transactions, and responses deepen customer profiles. These should be used to drive personalized, relevant, and timely communications, as well as sales engagement.

10. Drive Conversions Through Social Media. Take conversations outside the inbox and integrate socially by creating a site with social media sharing capabilities. When a prospect shares your content, track the activity to gain knowledge for future campaigns. Social sharing is the new viral marketing.

This guest post was written by the kind folks at Act-On Software. Act-On Software is the provider of the fastest growing, cloud-based marketing automation platform for the Fortune 5,000,000, enables marketers to realize their creative expression to the fullest.

I attended the Facebook Success Summit this fall, and after listening to Jay Behr’s seminar on killer ways to integrate Facebook into your email campaign, I wanted to pass along some tips!

Want to connect with the 60 Second Marketer on Facebook? Click the image above and visit us on Facebook.

The one thing those of us in social media have always pursued like the Holy Grail (and found equally elusive) is getting “Likes” on a Facebook business page.  You could have engaging content, fun links, an inviting landing page, great promotions… but not many fans.  So how to get more?

Of course, many think the best solution to obtaining fans is to run Facebook ads.  But quite frankly, if you have an active email list, this may be a less costly way to obtain Facebook fans/Likes.

First you need to realize that people on your email list may not be the same as people who have clicked “Like” on your Facebook fan page… but they should be!  Second, when you think about it, Facebook and email are really not that different:

• Email subscribes = Facebook “Likes”
• Email unsubscribes = Facebook “UnLikes”
• Email opens = Facebook impressions
• Email clicks = Facebook feedback
• Email forwards = Facebook shares

If you understand this language, you can see that they are really the same.  In both cases, you are trying to stay top-of-mind for people who have opted in.  You can also use email to help build up your Facebook fans.  Here are 5 tips for integration:

(1)   Opt-in: Set up an email opt-in page on your Facebook page; add buttons in the actual email that make it easy for people to “Like” your Facebook page.

(2)   Reuse Your Material: If you have a post or content that is very successful on Facebook, send out an email which contains the same info.  By the same token, if you send out an email with content that gets a high response rate, be sure to post it on Facebook.

(3)   Test Email Subject Lines:  When you send out emails, test different subject lines (while using the same content) to determine the open rate.  Once you see which subject lines get a higher open rate, you can use those to create Facebook ad headlines.

(4)   Status Updates as Email: If you have a series of status updates that work together and help create a story, use them together to create one complete email.

(5)   Ask Email Recipients to Like or Comment on Facebook:  Edgerank has always favored the posts that get the most “Likes”, “Comments” or traffic.  So in your emails, ask your readers to do the same on your Facebook page.

(6)   Special deals for Email Recipients in Your Facebook eCommerce Store:  If you have an eCommerce store on Facebook, be sure to come up with coupon codes or deals that are exclusive to people on your email list.  Advertise those specials by sending out emails to let people know about these email-subscriber-only deals.

A few things to keep in mind: While your Facebook fans really should be the same as your email list, never assume they are the same.  Therefore, you should never hesitate to reuse content.  In addition, just because somebody is a Facebook fan, this doesn’t mean they have seen your content.  So sending the same information in an email is not necessarily going to annoy those on your email list… it might even make them want to follow your Facebook page a bit more closely!

Karen Naide is a Social Media Barista for Project Social, a virtual social media management company in Alpharetta, GA.  She loves helping her clients make sense of the social media space, and use it to their benefit.  Karen is married to Adam Naide, Executive Director for Social Media at Cox Communications. Her Twitter handle is @ProjSocial.

Today’s teens aren’t enchanted by email in the least. A roundup of 167 teen opinions on email, shows that less than half are confident that email even has a future.

Now, 5% of these teens reported that postal mail is already dead, the mail carrier walking by their window notwithstanding. So this does not, as some might assume, mean that email will die out as this generation comes of age.

It simply means that at their stage of life, teens look to communication technology for social connection, and they can connect with more friends at once on social media.

Which is not to say you can’t market to them with email – quite the opposite, in fact. If you’re trying to sell to teens, combining the medium of email with the mood of social networks should do the trick.

Why bother trying to reach them through email?

Reaching teens via email marketing has been and continues to be a viable marketing channel.

Here’s the thing. As teens grow older and start sending more formal communications, they’re going to be pulled into email more and more.

In fact, even now 95% of teens who fan companies on Facebook also subscribe to commercial email. It may not be the place where their buddies are present, but it’ll become the place where they expect to hear from the businesses they’re interested in.

Since you’re not their buddy, and you are a business, this is good. When teens check their email, they’ll be looking for deals, expecting updates and ready to entertain offers.

Plus, with email, you have a much higher chance of your message being seen than on social media, where feeds continually update.

Invite your teenage fans to subscribe now, and you’ll build loyalty with them early. They’ll get to know your emails and your brand, and you can start building relationships with them.

In a few years, when other brands are preening, posing and competing for a spot in their (adult) inboxes, you’ll already be there, a favorite fixture.

Now, how can you create a teen-friendly experience with email?

First, let’s ask establish what kind of experience social media provides.

In one word: community.

Social networks are places where teens can:

• Share their own opinions.
• Get feedback on their own ideas and questions.
• See people that they know.
• Find out what’s going on in the world.

When teens show up on their social network of choice, they find something intensely relevant and personal to them. So to appeal to them with email, try to bring them the same kind of experience. Slant your campaign toward building a community and involve teen subscribers in your emails as much as possible.

Introduce yourself.

The formal face of a brand isn’t likely to appeal to an audience so accustomed to informality. So write as a person (or a team), not as a brand. Share personal anecdotes or opinions. Include signatures. Include pictures. Let them get to know you.

Invite their replies.
A very common function of social networking is telling other people what you’re thinking.
So when it makes sense for your subscribers to share their questions or opinions, tell them they’re welcome to hit that reply button. (And tell them sincerely, not in a canned, drop-the-same-line-in-every-email way.)

FEATURE those replies. Include quotes as testimonials. Post their questions and then answer them in emails. Include their first names (though not their last, for privacy), so they notice that they’re featured. (You may want to get their permission first – which gives you even more of a chance to interact with them one-on-one.)

Keep it current. Whatever is going on “in the world” is affecting each of your subscribers individual worlds, as well. By relating your marketing emails to the events of the moment, you have a chance to share those experiences with them, further strengthening your sense of community.

And as these teens become adults…

They are going to grow older. But these tweaks designed to appeal to them as teens aren’t something they’re likely to grow out of, like black lipstick or a Skittles-and-root-beer breakfast habit.

They’re molded to the way this generation is growing up, to the way today’s teens expect to communicate online.

Teens may accede to more formal messaging as they grow up, but for the best of both worlds, bring the social element they’ve grown used to.

Amanda Gagnon writes about email marketing for AWeber, a leading email service provider for small-to-medium businesses. For more email marketing tips from AWeber, you can subscribe to their twice-weekly emails here.

Most of us are all addicted to our email. In fact, more than 90% of Internet users between 18 and 72 say they send and receive email, making it the most popular online activity.

E-mail is a powerful marketing tool because it is intimate. You are among friend’s party evites, family messages and funny forwards that everyone can’t get enough of. You need to develop a relationship with the consumer as well. Otherwise you are just an intruder in a house you don’t belong in.

Treat your email marketing like a friendship and follow the proper etiquette that all good friends stick to:

1. Don’t be a stranger. You talk to acquaintances only once in awhile, but you speak to a friend frequently, so stay in contact with your subscribers. If you send too many emails, you can definitely become a pest. However, sending too few emails can cause your consumer to start relying on someone else instead. Find the right balance so you will be anticipated, not dreaded.
2. Be personal. Talk to the consumer like a friend. Be informal. Your tone should sound like you are talking to them, not at them. Use their name and make sure it is spelled correctly! Use information that you know about your subscribers to a add a personal touch, such as wishing them a happy birthday. It doesn’t always have to be about the hard sell.
3. Get to the point.You don’t want to be that friend who takes 20 minutes to tell a 2 minute story. I don’t know about you, but I don’t want to read an e-mail that just won’t end. People are pressed for time, so keep it as short as possible to get across what you are trying to say. Write the email first and then cut it down by half. It will take longer to make the email shorter but it will be worth it in the end.
   

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4. Maintain consistency. Nothing is worse than someone who is two-faced. You never know which person you are going to get and it can be confusing. You want your emails to maintain a consistent flow that is steady and reliable. Keep this in mind with elements like your company logo, overall email design, from address and name, as well as tone. This will make your email more recognized in a crowded inbox and recipients will appreciate the familiar look so they can better navigate the different elements.
5. Master the art of timing. A friend knows when “it’s just a bad time.” Your consumers all have a part of the day or week that is best for them in receiving emails. If they are stay-at-home moms, mornings would most likely be best. However, if you are talking to the 9-5 crowd, you might not want to send it at 6pm on a Friday when the last thing they want to do is read an email. Since there are no hard-and-fast rules on the exact best day to send an email, testing is always a good way to figure out when your audience prefers to receive your emails.
6. Don’t be selfish. A friendship is one where both parties should benefit. So make sure you are giving your subscribers what they want whether it is information or special deals, which should be hinted at in the header of your email. Don’t send pointless emails; all of them should have a purpose. Give the people what they want.
7. Make their lives easier. Friends are always thoughtful. Since the number of users checking e-mail on their mobile devices has risen by 36%, you should consider developing a mobile platform. This will involve upgrading your campaign to perform properly on the iPhone, iPad, Android phones, Windows mobile platforms and other devices as well as adjusting your content to the smaller screen size.
8. Don’t hold on when it’s just not working out. Going your separate ways can be difficult, but don’t make it harder than it has to be. If a person wants to stop accepting your emails, they shouldn’t have to jump through leaps and bounds to be able to. Make the unsubscribe link clearly visible because it’s way better to receive an unsubscribe than a spam complaint!
9. Learn from your mistakes. It is always disappointing when a relationship ends, but it is important that you improve as you move forward. Let your audience provide you with the reason they are unsubscribing so you can prevent future losses.

Email is a much more personal plane of marketing than other forms of communication, such as television, radio and magazines. You are among family, friends and co-workers. This can be to your advantage if used properly.

The take-away: Building trust is the key. Instead of just flooding subscriber’s inboxes with your messages, consider each email carefully. It can make all the difference in your correspondence with the subscriber and whether that relationship is fleeting or enduring.

It seems as though every new marketing article or blog post these days is focusing on social media or mobile media. But email marketing is still one of the most efficient ways to connect with customers and prospects.

So, how do you get consumers to actually open your email and read the valuable contents inside? Mashable and AdAge broke down a list of smart and effective email marketing tactics. Here’s a baker’s dozen you should consider implementing into your campaign.

1. Combine with social platforms: Brands are seeing success when using Twitter and Facebook to gain email subscribers. Send your followers tweets with a shortened URL that allows them to easily click and opt-in to your email mailing list. By creating easy email subscription sign-ups on your Facebook page you have the opportunity to attract more subscribers.

2. Know who you’re talking to: Companies often make the mistake of sending universal email blasts to their entire mailing listing with zero regard to who they’re actually talking to.  Segment your database and design personalized emails that the specific viewer will actually want to read. One way is to screen your subscribers when they first sign up. Ask them what they want to get out of these emails and find out who they are as a consumer. This way, you’re sending them content they actually want to and will read.

3. Let them know who’s talking to them: According to AdAge, 70% of consumers say the “from” line drives their decision to either open or ignore the email and 30% say it’s the subject line. These two touch points give you an opportunity to brand your email and let consumers know who’s talking to them.

4. Give them an incentive: Everyone loves getting a little something special in the mail. Send your subscribers a free gift on their birthday or a 20% off coupon for Father’s Day. Give them a reason to open up the email and they’ll be wanting to come back for more.

5. Extend the offer across social platforms: Extend this incentive across social media platforms by giving viewers the ability to share their news on Facebook and Twitter. By making consumers an advocate for your brand, their friends and followers will be interested in signing up, too. 

6. Create mobile-friendly emails: According to ComScore mobile email usage increased 36% in 2010.  By creating mobile-friendly emails, your on-the-go viewers have the opportunity to read and click-through while on the train or waiting at the doctor’s office.

7. Where to put your most important message: When designing mobile-friendly emails, the key is to make sure the first line in the email is your most important message. Why? The first line is what shows up as the preview on smartphones. It’s about putting your best foot forward.

8. Expand your email list with SMS text: Give consumers an easy way to opt-in to your email database with a simple text. You can do so by letting consumers know all they have to do is text their email address to you SMS short code to subscribe.

9. Make announcements: Consumers are more likely to open up an email with announcement of news. Letting them know a sale ends soon, a new product alert or limited time offers gets them to open up the email and act fast.

10. Frequency and Relevance: AdAge reports that these are the two key elements to keep in mind when using email as a marketing tactic. Don’t bombard your subscribers with a flood of emails, but don’t neglect them either. Provide them with relevant content. If they just bought a product at your store, send them a survey to learn about their experience.

11. Current event tie-ins: Mashable states that viewers respond well to emails related to current events and pop culture. Find creative and fun ways to tie in what’s going on in the area with your brand.

12. Test your tactics: Test subject lines, offers and messages to see what works and what tanks. By testing your tactics you have the ability to know what grabs readers attention and gets them to interact with your email.

13. Listen to feedback: Make it easy for your consumers to leave comments and give feedback so you can give them more of what they want. Email is and always should be a form of two-way communication, so give them the opportunity to respond.

Posted by Rebecca Wilson, Marketing Analyst for the 60 Second Marketer.