'How To' Tuesday: How to write a great subject line for your email marketing

Source Bottle always has fully descriptive subject lines

So what makes a good subject line for an email? And more importantly - why should you care?

I'm a BIG believer of the power of email, which gets lost these days in the hype of social media. That's not to say social media isn't important, but you OWN your email database (or at least the permission to email them whilst they remain subscribed) and so you have much more control over when you speak to them.

So back to subject lines. These little puppies are the MOST IMPORTANT part of your email. Why? Because we are all so busy, all we do is SCAN our emails - and wait for something to grab our attention or we simply delete it. And when it comes to our email inbox, where we routinely get 50+ emails a day, we are very picky about what we read. And how do we decide what to read? The email subject line.

A scan of your own inbox will show you that a LOT of email subject lines tell you nothing about what's in the email - the fatal flaw, in my opinion. The are either overly promotional, boring or completely uninformative.

A GOOD subject line is:

- Descriptive
- Enticing or intriguing
- Long enough to tell you something
- One that is appealing to YOUR target market

There is this odd perception with many people that "short is always good" in marketing - but in email subject lines, it can go either way. Some research says "the longer the better" and other research says "no difference".

I have found that it's much more about being relevant and interesting rather than long or short for the sake of it.

A good thing to remember is that an email subject line is your HEADLINE - so to help work out what works, consider what makes YOU read a news article...what "sucks you in" to read more?

A quick look at today's Herald Sun (which has the highest readership in Victoria) has the following headlines:

'Lance admits "tour drug use" to Oprah'

'Scam takes punters on $800 ride'

'Mum on drugs killed son, court told'

These headlines give you a lot of information in just a few words - and make you want to know more. You need to apply the same thinking to your email marketing.

Often you have more than one story to share - but don't feel you can only mention one. Why? Because different stories appeal to different people.

A fantastic example of this is the SourceBottle emails that come out twice daily, matching marketers and business people with call outs from journalists and writers.

Here's an example from a recent one:

"Personality types and health | New products to feature within TrailerBoat Magazine | How has motherhood changed you? | Small Business Pinterest Lovers | Unusual proposals, themed weddings, bizarre hook-ups | Back to school | Homework - agree/disagree"

A subject line this length - without knowing the context - would scare the pants off most marketers. Yet it's perfect for this market. I ALWAYS check the subject line to see if there's something relevant to me, and I must be one of many as their subscribers numbers are constantly growing.

A hard working subject line is worth the hard work it takes in coming up with it - don't just write anything and hope for the best. You have likely spent many HOURS (or dollars) on your email content - so don't throw it away with a barely considered subject line.

Put in the effort, test the results - and watch your email marketing performance improve.

Web Design Review: Single page web design - what's to like, what's not

If you're a business that uses the web to attract business or convey key information, your website is a vital asset: I'd argue - your most important online asset. Yet we often put a LOT of time into a website when we're building it - then forget to review it regularly to:

(a) ensures it's up to date
(b) that everything still works and
(c) that it's keeping up with current web trends.

(And as good zero budget marketers know, it's about optimising what you're already doing, rather than continually starting from scratch.)

In terms of current web trends, one trend is "single page" style sites - I'm seeing more of these lately, particularly in the bar and restaurant space. They feel a bit "old school" and "new school" all at the same time.

The style has some benefits - primarily that all the information is in front of you with virtually no clicking required. So I think it can work well EXCEPT when web designers forget that a BIG chunk of people access the web from mobile devices - largely, Smartphones (particularly to look for bars and restaurants). So if you're ever going to invest in a mobile version of your site, now is the time. But I digress...back to the single page site.

I thought it would be helpful to look at a specific example: the site for Hanoi Hannah, a newish restaurant in Windsor. It's a spot that we were planning on trying for dinner, so I looked it up to get their details and make a booking.

First impressions: I love the design - it immediately "brands" it as funky and let's you know the style of dining you can expect. It has a real "fresh" feel. You can also find what you want fairly easily -  when what you want is location, phone number and opening hours.

Challenges: You actually want to read all the cool stuff on the right - but when you zoom in it becomes pixelated so you can't read it...I suspect a bad case of "print design incorrectly applied to the web".

It also suffers from not incorporating a newsfeed - which matters when you're trying to call and book for dinner on the 7th January but after several "sorry, no-one is here to take your call" phone answering machine responses I checked the facebook page and find they're closed till 14th Jan. Unhelpful! A newsfeed from their facebook page would have been an easy way to ensure the message they put on that page showed up on their website.

Finally, they haven't made a mobile version, so it becomes very hard to navigate on my iphone. I've included a screenshot below.

Finally - when I was looking for the site on my iphone (and subsequently on my computer), I noticed their web design company hasn't done the best job with the meta tags and page descriptions as the automatically generated google snippet that displays in search results is just generating image names.

Wrap up: This site is a great start - and all the "challenges" can be addressed. So if you're pondering a web update to a streamlined "single page" site, learn from what works and doesn't work in this example.

Characteristics of a good name for a small business

A business name is something you're stuck with for a long time - you CAN change it, but it's expensive (to change all that branding) and risky (because you lose any established knowledge of your name in the market). So it's worth putting some thought into, not just from a creativity perspective, but from a practical approach too.

I was chatting to a small business owner yesterday and she had a whole host of potential names for her re-launched business. I had a look through and instantly a few stood out above the rest. As I explained the reasons why to her, I thought it would be worth a post here to share what the same thoughts.

Characteristics of a good business name

- Keep it short. If you can keep it to one or two words, try to do this. The longer it gets, the harder it is for people to remember and they tend to mix it up. For example, I used to work with Flexicar. Great name. Except first it was "Flo car share" (yes, missing the "w"). Which people used to call "Flow carshare" "Flow sharecar" "Car flow share". It got too painful. The moment we switched to Flexicar, everyone got it right, every time.

- Memorable. Being a little bit different or quirky makes it memorable or catchy. But if it's TOO quirky, you'll find people won't get it right.

- Use real words that describe your business if you can. Don't make people have to think too hard to work out what it is that you do. Be as specific as you can. There is a temptation to keep it general, like I did with Brazen Productions, as I planned to do a lot of things. However, if I had my time again, I'd make it Brazen Marketing as this is largely what I do.

- Don't get too tricky with the spelling. I've already given an example above with Flo car share. People also try to replace "s" with z or x, or add lots of additional letters. Not ideal as when people are talking about your business, as you need to reply upon them to convey the odd spelling. It can work - Grill'd for example - as they have a retail presence with their name displayed all over it. But they also bought the URL grilled.com.au just in case.

- The URL is available. This is getting harder and harder, but it is one of the most important elements for businesses that rely on being "found". Ideally you'd buy the .com and .com.au if you can. If you're a business that relies heavily on online leads, consider buying misspellings too. (If you're a one person show, and most of your business comes through personal referral or handing out your card, then this is less important.)

There are exceptions to all of these - but they tend to be businesses that have a LOT of money to spend to build awareness, or businesses that have been around a long time. A name isn't everything, but it can be a cheap shortcut to instantly promote what you do, which is why it's an ideal zero budget marketing approach.

A final word. Don't spend forever agonising over it, or a logo. Think about it. Test it out of a few people who DON'T know what you do and see if they can pick what your business might be. Then choose something and move on to the business building part.

Why making your written communication clear will save you money

A large element of Zero Budget Marketing is ensuring that any marketing you're already doing, you're doing as well as you can. Written communication is a key part of marketing that can have a huge impact - but is often "forgotten" once it is written.

I've come across several business in the past few weeks who are literally costing themselves money due to poorly considered written communications.



The worst offender was a conveyancer (legal representative who helps in the transfer of title when you buy a house). They charge a fixed fee for their conveyancing service, so it's in their interest to speak to their clients as few times as possible during the process. Calls to them represents time, and they don't charge by the call or their time. Yet every written letter and email from the conveyancer was extremely unclear. It didn't outline what we needed to do, or what would happen next. So I always had to call or email to check.

None of the answers were something that couldn't have been provided BEFORE I had to ask by including a "step by step" guide or an FAQ. Each one of those 8-9 calls or emails represented time wasted for that company.

So how can you avoid this?

It's not that you never want to talk to clients or prospects, it's that you only want to talk to them if you have to - otherwise you're wasting their time too. The best way to "sanity check" your existing communications (website, email, standard letter) for clarity is to have someone that knows NOTHING about your field, or your business. Any questions they ask, any difficulty they have in understanding, will be a question someone else will have - so build it into your communications before they have to ask.

When I worked with Flexicar, which had thousands of members but a VERY small team, we had to take every opportunity to better educate "members" so that they wouldn't need to call unless absolutely necessary. One little initiative was instituting an Invoice FAQ and a "How to understand your invoice" video. These two things cut calls to the accounts person in HALF.

So, just to take my own advice, here are the clear steps to checking your written communications aren't costing your business money:

1. Identify a list of "public" written communications for new or existing customers (website, letters, invoices, statements, presentations, etc).

2. Have someone OUTSIDE your industry or business read them and note their questions. Or for a month, make a note of any questions you get asked by customers or prospects.

3. Make adjustments to these existing comms or create NEW comms to address the questions.

4. Track for improvements (reduced call volumes, for example).

5. Go and spend the time you save on other marketing initiatives!

Case Study on budget lead generation event - 2000% ROI

Events are a great way to get in front of many people (prospects!) at once. Even if you're a small business, hosting an event can be an extremely cost-effective way of generating business leads- and demonstrating your business expertise. It's also a great way to share expertise so that all attendees benefit and think well of you.

I was speaking with a web development company the other day. They run events every month, on various topics relative to the digital space.

They promote the events to their own database and to people they're currently trying to do business with. They get around 15-20 people to every event. They get great feedback and interaction. They get at least one lead from every seminar. And it costs them the huge sum of....$150!

Yes, $150.

They've done a deal with a pub close to their office to get the space, tea and coffee for $150.

Now they tell me they get a sale EVERY time. And a sale for them isn't just a one-off. There's upsell opportunities and ongoing maintenance and development work.

Let's be conservative and say a website with them is $3000.

That's TWENTY TIMES the investment cost to make the sale. Even if they only got a sale every 2-3 times this is still a great zero budget marketing activity.

Of course there is there time in promoting and running the event. But as zero budget marketers know, sometimes time is easier to supply than cash.

Can you apply this to your business? Do you have knowledge to share that people want or need to know more about? Then taking the plunge and running some free educational events could be a big win for all involved.

PS. Free tools you can use to manage registrations:

-Eventbrite - Free for free events (which I'm using for a free event on social media marketing and the law right now -and I can report it's great. Come along if it's relevant.)
-Wufoo - Great form tool that's free to use in most cases

Networking still has the same principals - even if it's social networking

If you've ever seen me talk about networking, I maintain that GOOD networking isn't going out to "get" something. Good networkers look for opportunities to help people - to EARN the right to ask a favour.

My marketing hero, Seth, talks about this in his own way in the context of social networking. It's worth a couple of minutes of your time to watch (and thanks to Mark at The Fortune Institute for sending me the link).

PS. If you can't see the youtube box above, use this link: http://www.youtube.com/watch?feature=player_embedded&v=r0h0LlCu8Ks# ! 

What is your 'cost per fan' on Facebook?

With the "average" Aussie spending up to three hours a day on social media, and most of it on Facebook, the zero budget marketer needs to understand whether they can tap into this bounty of online attention. So today we've got a guest post on the issue of "Cost per fan". You may also want to check out some thoughts on what makes an effective Facebook advertisement.

GUEST POST: What is the Cost Per Fan and how Does it Affect You?

As you have probably noticed by checking out the competition on Facebook, practically every business around has some sort of Facebook fan or business page. Hands down the largest social network around, Facebook attracts millions of unique users every day, and a large percentage of those will become recurring users. If you could somehow make them fans of your business, your brand would exponentially explode and you’d be dealing with massive success.

Marketing successfully on Facebook takes a lot of knowledge. You probably already understand a lot about online marketing in general, as in how to determine your niche, how to create materials, how to promote your brand, and how to drive conversions. But once you start dealing with Facebook, an entirely new set of metrics open up. Take the cost per fan for a quick example. This is something that only exists on Facebook – CPF. So let’s a look at CPF in greater detail.

Understanding CPF Metrics and How They Relate to Your Success

The term is fairly self-explanatory, although it can be confusing in the context of Facebook. Obviously, it all has to do with what you’re paying per fan – per an individual you convert who likes your ad material. Yes, this does cost money. It isn’t something you get for free on Facebook. It comes from what you’re paying for CPC or CPM Sponsored Stories or another type of marketplace ad. It includes what you’re paying for your overall campaign versus how many visitors you actually convert.

The Two Steps to Measuring Your CPF

Step One: Conversions Report

Words like “metrics” and initialism like “CPF” make things sound a lot more complicated than they need sound. To put it simply, you can open up Qwaya (or whichever advertising management tool you’re using) and check out your conversions report. In plain English, a conversion is a fan, and a fan is a conversion. It’s the same logic, only a different name. You want to view your conversions report and figure out what you’re paying for a fan.

Step Two: Advertising Performance

You deduce how much you’re paying per fan by viewing your advertising performance within your conversion report. How much does your ad campaign cost? How many views are you getting? What’s your CTR? This is how you figure out how much you’re paying per any one fan.

With the Sponsored Stories features and other unique features on Facebook, you can always find ways to drive the costs down. Of course, you first have to realize what you’re spending money on and exactly how much you’re spending.

Author bio: Craig Robinson is the Editor for Qwaya and works with Social advertisement and how social context works within online behaviour today.