Crocs – Welcome letter

I think that everyone should have a welcoming newsletter to their new subscribers. I mean, if I walk in to the nearest Tavern I expect the Barmaid to give me a heartly welcome. Same goes with email.

Let others do your work

Some things, like skin a wolf or rescue a mermaid, you want to do on your own. Other stuff you would love to have someone else do for you. Content for your email is probably one of those things. Here’s some blog-posts on user generated content:

What is user generated content?
Adventures in Email Marketing
The future of user-generated content is now

 

Top 5 | Go mobile

Ok, I was thinking about making this a weekly thingy. I will give you some short lists with things you should think about when it comes to a certain topic. The first thing that we will cover is going mobile. Here in the Nordics, where the polar bears roams the streets and Santa Claus makes his appearances at the local pub from now to then, a lot of people are reading their emails in a mobile device like a Smartphone or a Tablet. Just take a look at this infographic from 2012.

So what should you think of when it comes to mobile strategies for email?

1.) Make sure you’ve mobile optimized your emails
With Media Queries you can control how the layout of your email should be handled in a mobile device. Make sure that you make your layout “mobile friendly” when it’s viewed in a mobile device. Makes sense, doesn’t it? Just like you put on different appearal when you go on a bear hunt or to pillage the nearest village, you’ll have to give your email different appearal when it goes desktop or mobile.

2.) Make sure your landing page is optimized as well
When you go into battle and you cry out your batlle-cry you will have to be able to back that up with some qualified axe-swinging as well. Same goes with your mobile optimized emails. With them you cry out: “We are mobile optimized!”. If your subscribers then are led to a landing page that’s not optimized they will not find you trustworthy.

3.) Mobile is fast – that means that your emails have to be fast
So you have a lot you wish to say, right? Well don’t! Use your email to tease your subscribers. It’s like a dinner table at the feast. You don’t put out the grilled pig with the apple in the snout to start with. You might start with a rabbit, quale or something smaller to tease their taste buds but still keep their apetite. Create your emails with short teasers that are easy to read and easy to take action on or you will lose the subscribers’ attention quickly.

4.) Timing has changed
Perhaps you did some split-testing back in 2010 and found out that 10 a.m. at tuesdays was the best time to send your emails. This is most likely not true anymore. Figure out when your subscribers tend to read your emails now that they are using mobile devices. And here’s the twist. Try to figure out when they are not reading it in a mobile device and send it then. Why? Because they are more likely to click through and make a “conversion” when they are reading it in a desktop client.

5.) Sideways scrolling
This is something for the brave. The ones that can stare a mountain Troll in the eyes without a shred of fear. Since the people with Smartphones have been trained with scrolling sideways instead of vertical you could try to create an email that has the height of a Smartphone screen but with a width that exceeds the screen width and let them scroll sideways instead of vertical. But as I said. This is only for the brave.

Next time we will be looking into 5 automatic messages that you really should have set up in your email program. Smell you later!