August 2012 – Devol

1. Put links to your landing pages in your email content

Landing pages are essential in the cycle of web marketing. The landing page should have a clear call to action for people to take once on the page. This could be to download something, sign up for something or to take some software for a testdrive. By putting links from your email to your landing page you are paving a clear path that is measurable and you can see the return on your investment.

2. Make your subject headline noticeable

Your subject headline is a great way to get people to notice your email in their inbox. If you have a compelling offer you want people to notice, then a headline such as “about our new widget” is as exciting as a wet dog. “50% off our new widget – introductory offer” is more enticing, and makes you more likely to want to pat the dog than shoo it away.

3. Make it snappy!

Short chunks of text are more likely to be read than a novel. People are busy and if they see screeds of text they can feel daunted and trash your email on the spot. Well presented short bursts of text that entice people through to your web page means that they are interested in your content and want to know more.

4. Timing your delivery

Try to avoid sending email campaigns on a Monday or a weekend and between 8am – 9am. People tend to prioritise their day and start by checking email, that’s true, but the common habit is to reduce clutter by throwing out anything deemed unimportant. After lunch seems like a much better time as people relax about their inboxes and have got the morning rush out of the way.

5. Spammy emails suck!

We all hate them don’t we? So to avoid your email from being marked as spam it has to have these key things:

Be who you say you are.
You must own the email address you send from and the domain name you send people to must be what you say it is.
Don’t lie in your subject line
Your subject line must not be misleading. If you say you are giving a discount on shoes, then that’s what your email must contain.
You need to have an actual physical address
Somewhere in your email you must have a physical address that you can recieve communication via snail mail.
Have a visible opt out/unsubscribe link and take people off your list if they unsubscribe.
This cannot be an invisible link and is required by law. You have 10 days to take people off your list if an unsubsribe request is made.

Follow these 5 key rules and reap the rewards of email marketing.

First of all your facebook page must have 30 likes before it will start to gather insight information. So get your friends on board and make them fans. Then get your friends to get their friends to like your page too. Once you have your insights activated you can really start to measure your engagement level with your fans.

To measure your engagement level, go to the insights page take a look at the overview section. This will give you the following info:

Posts – by hovering over the pink dots, you’ll see how many posts you put on facebook on what dates. This gives you an idea at a glance at how frequently you post content. Studies show that you need to post regularly but how regularly will depend on your strategy. I would recommend at least every 3 days.

People talking about this – this is the amount of people sharing stories about your page. This doesn’t mean that they are actually talking about you as this includes people who like your page, people who post on your wall and those that RSVP to one of your events.

Total Weekly Reach – this is the amount of people who have seen your content. It may have popped up in their ticker or scrolled past it in their news feed. Don’t get too excited tho as this doesn’t mean they have actually read it.

At the bottom you will find your posts – this is here to help you decipher which posts work and why.

It’s handy to know what posts people respond to and which ones they don’t. This can help you plan your content and fine tune it to get the engagement you are looking for.

Engaged Users are your key metrics to watch. They are the people that liked, commented on or shared a post. These are your brand evangelists! Make sure you respond to all comments and include people in the conversation.

Reach

This is one of the most powerful measures for how far your content is spreading across Facebook. A theory in marketing is that it takes 7 impressions for awareness to begin, so increasing your reach within the 6-10 bucket would be ideal.

Organic – is the number of unique people saw your page’s content in their newsfeed, ticker, or on your page.

Paid is the number of unique people who saw an Ad or Sponsored Story that points to your Facebook page. This equates to impressions but really what you need are clicks.

Viral is the number of unique people who saw a story about the page that was published by a friend. This could be from liking content, commenting, sharing, or posting on the wall of your page. So this is the amount of potential that your content has to be engaged with. That’s not to say that people actually read it, but it has the potential to have been read.

Something I’ve noticed when posting is that shorter snappier posts are more likely to attract user attention than longer ones.

For more advanced metrics

You can export your information to .csv or Excel file. When you’re on your insights page, go up to your right hand corner and export the data as an Excel file. Choose “Page level data”, “Excel” and a date range. By exporting your data from facebook, you can drill down and see exactly what posts are working and which others aren’t. You are likely to get overwhelmed with all the data that is dowloaded but if you step through Hubspots blog article, How to Analyze Facebook Insights to Improve Your Content Strategy, you will come out with a clearer picture.

5 steps to make your email marketing work