If you are a business trying to advertise to individuals via email, it’s important to use a subject line that stands out. Without this, potential clients or customers are more likely to delete the message before even opening the email.
We’ve compiled a few handy tips to help you get your emails opened and your customers converting.
To start, don’t beat around the bush – you only have a few words in which to get someone’s attention, so don’t make it too complex or long. Keep it simple, keep it catchy and keep it to the point. If you don’t generate interest within a few words the recipient will not engage with your email.
Avoid capitalizing text or some words in the subject line – when was the last time you received an email message where the “Caps Lock” key was over used to spell out some, if not the entire subject line? You probably didn’t open the message unless you knew who the sender was. It can be seen as quite aggressive and more importantly, ISPs will often mark this as spam which drastically reduces your chances of the message being delivered at all.
Get creative where you can and generate topical subject lines based around current news stories or events and if possible, personalise your subject lines as this will directly appeal to your customer base. In our experience, adopting both of these approaches can really improve response rates from your email marketing campaigns.
Think about what you would open – is the title something that would interest you if you received in your inbox? Your subject line should directly appeal to your target audience and provide them with a reason to engage with your email marketing message. It’s important to ensure your message stands out within the recipients cluttered inbox.
Not sure on what might work best? Then test your ideas! We always recommend our clients to split test various subject lines to see which perform better. Just ensure you track and measure any results as well as validating these before rolling out the most effective subject line to the bulk of your list.
For more advice on your email strategy why not get in touch with Red Star Digital and see how we can help.
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To ensure your affiliate marketing programme is effective, it’s important to start at the campaign grass roots; ensuring your affiliate have everything they need to promote your brand. Each affiliate will have unique requirements in terms of content, images, links etc that will reflect their site and target audience – understanding these requirements is of paramount importance in building a successful programme.
We’ve compiled a quick guide to help you understand the main affiliates types are their needs when promoting your brand.
Content
Content affiliates do exactly what it says on the tin, they provide content heavy sites. These may be review sites or niche sites, they tend to focus their efforts on SEO to attain good rankings throughout the SERPS. The content affiliates don’t like to have their sales cannibilised by other sites such as voucher code sites so will often list codes on site too.
Likes – Exclusive content, Press releases, Codes, Exclusive Images from press shoots or of new products, Keywords, Commission Increases, Tenancy Placements, Top Sellers,
Voucher Code
Voucher sites or Coupon sites are sites that list discounts and offers from merchants. They focus their efforts on SEO, PPC and email along with a growing social media presence. Voucher sites will have a loyal following and often have high levels of email data that they frequently mail. Voucher sites have many rules and regulations they must adhere to, designed by the IAB and some have been known to break a few rules in the past, although most now play fair.
Likes – Exclusive codes, Commission Increases, Regular updates of offers, Content for blog posts, Tenancy Placements, Top Sellers,
Cashback/Incentive/Loyalty
Cashback and incentive sites are sites with a loyal following offering their users some form of reward for shopping through them. This might be cash or sweets or points to redeem online. They have large user bases that are emailed frequently along with additional blogs and forums for their users to participate on. Some incentive sites have neen hit in the past by fraudulent users, but most have now clamped down and are fast to stop this happening.
Likes – Commission Increases, Voucher Codes, Content to use for blogs, Tenancy Placements, Top Sellers,
PPC Affiliates
PPC affiliates are affiliates who will concentrate their efforts on driving traffic via PPC. There are a number of affiliates who have made successful businesses from doing PPC for merchants. This can be based on allowing the affiliate to bid upon your brand, generic terms or long tail searches. Quite often when allowed to bid upon a brand, there are deals done to ensure the affiliate puts a percent of their profits back into expanding the campaign to generic terms. PPC affiliates are still paid on a CPA so can be a low risk solution to increasing your search engine exposure.
Likes - Brand Rights, Top Sellers, Voucher Codes, Commission Increases,
Competition/Freebie
Competition sites and freebie sites are sites that offer their users something interesting or appealing – this may be a competition to enter or a free giveaway. They often have high volumes of users who are online savvy and love a bargain! These types of site can be rewarded for passing new users on, or for incremental sales.
Likes – Competitions hosted on merchant sites, Free gifts, Commission Increases, Voucher Codes, Exclusive content, Top Sellers,
Price Comparison/Shopping Directory
Price comparison sites do pretty much what they say on the tin, they compare prices of items or holidays or banks and much more. They use product feeds from multiple retailers or merchants to create a site filled with content. This is then sorted to show the best price or offer first. Most price comparison sites will take delivery costs and voucher codes into their listings. To get
Likes – Full Product Feed, Voucher Codes, Increased Commissions, Details of offers,
Email
Email affiliates are affiliates with large lists of data either of their own or through 3rd parties. They are highly skilled in sending email, delivery and converting email creative into buyers. They often have large lists that are segmented and will often test your creative first.
Likes – Email creative, Voucher codes, Increased commission,
If you want to discuss your affiliate strategy further or would like to know how we can help, please get in touch today.
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When asked to think about any tips for lead generation, here at Red Star Digital, notepads were filled of ideas and tips. We managed to narrow our top tips down to just ten handy ones for you.
1. Set A Budget
The budget you set for your marketing campaign will determine not just how many leads you may receive but also the quality. When it comes to lead generation, quantity is not always a winning factor, quality is often the most important. Having a budget that gives you the ability to source quality leads will ensure higher conversion rates and a better ROI.
2. Set Your Lead’s Expectations
It’s important to understand what the prospective customers were told when they were giving their details. Were they promised a service or were they expecting a free assessment when they agreed to allow their information to be used? It’s important to know what the potential customer is expecting, and form a strategy based on the information when making the initial contact. Setting the expectations early can ensure that when you come to use their data, they are not angered or upset by a phone call they were not expecting or a call at a door.
3. Check For Duplicates and Un-Verified Leads
When you are paying for leads, the last thing you want to do is pay for the same information a second or third time. There are several software applications available that allow you to check for duplicates and strip them out (dedupe) of your data for future use. Data that cannot be verified is also something you should check for, emails such as spam@spam.com do not count as valid data and should not be paid for.
4. Test Different Marketing Channels
It’s a good idea to try different types of marketing strategies to know which will yield the best results for your product or service. While some customers will prefer a more personal contact like a telephone call, others will prefer to keep a certain distance through emails, etc. It’s good to test different marketing channels on your leads to see which work best for you and give the best results.
5. Focus Your Campaign
You should make sure your campaign as clear objectives that can be met through your lead generation. Make sure the criteria you put in place on your forms meet those objectives to ensure your leads are giving you the information you want. The leads should include specific information on potential customers; names, addresses, email addresses, and phone numbers or any other information you may require.
6. Honesty Is Important
Your marketing campaign is only as good as your word and the effort you’re willing to put forth. Whether it’s a contact you’ve promised to make or a promise made about your product or service, remain reliable throughout all your business dealings.
7. Be Realistic
Be realistic about your marketing strategy and the time for frame, you set, for it to reach your expectations. A good solid marketing strategy will be based on the budget you’ve set, the leads you purchase, and the energy and time you put forth.
8. Clarity Of Your Message
Make sure that your marketing message is clear and concise. If you are generating leads through an offer, have a think about what you might put – for example if it’s a free trial but card details are required – you should mention this somewhere t ensure the leads you get are less likely to complain.
9. Keep It Simple
An overload of information can render fewer leads and complicate the process. The average person might be willing to fill out three to four forms, but a continual stream of forms will turn the customer away, and the information becomes confused creating a greater work load for you.
10. Focus Your Efforts
If you only have a small budget to begin with, make sure you focus your efforts and concentrate on driving decent leads, when those leads convert to sales, you’ll have more budget to widen your lead generation campaign. Getting lot’s of leads to begin with may seem great, but if the quality is not there – it can be a waste of money and effort.
Red Star Digital offer comprehensive lead generation packages including advice and strategy. For more information, get in touch today and see how RSD can help you.
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Although, some online marketers consider email campaigns to be a bit obsolete, it is still an effective form of marketing when done correctly. To help ensure more productivity with running a successful email campaign, here are our five top tips;
1) Creating a buzz with your subject line
This is still proven to be a very powerful asset when it comes to getting your message across before an email is even opened. This is the bark that makes people listen to you before you make your initial bite. When you have a subject line that attracts attention within the first few words, there’s a greater chance that your potential customers will click on it and read the whole email.
2) Create more text based hyperlinks within your email
Images are nice, but they can be a bit distracting when you are trying to get your message across. Also, take into account the some of your readers might have a slower internet connection so images will take ages to load. Within your body of text in the email you should place a number of text based call to actions, linking to whatever product or service you are trying to promote. ‘Click here’ is a popular text based link that gives your reader a prompt to find out more, get in touch or purchase.
3) Proof read your emails
If it’s one thing that ticks off a lot of people, it’s an email marred with errors. How can you be a great marketer or someone with writing authority if your emails are poorly written with spelling errors or poor grammar? Not only should you check for the spelling, grammar errors, but the links built into your emails. Make sure that all your links work, you email renders correctly and you have no glaring mistakes. Just imagine someone that actually wants to buy your product, but the link is dead or re-routed to somewhere else. That’s potential profit lost not only in the short term but you could lose your credibility because they may look at it as spam.
4) Don’t give everything away in just one email
If you have different products or different services, then spread them out. Use a teaser email that helps you to make your potential customer more aware of a product or two, create some interest and then go in for a more in depth email explaining more. This way you can compare which items have better clickthrough rates, sales, or leads so you can put more of a priority on which products to promote.
5) Don’t let your audience think you are a spammer
It’s better to spread out your emails depending on the market. Instead of sending out an email every single day, maybe spread it out for twice a week. This way you’ll build up the need for your product. Too many emails being sent to the same list will only result in people marking you as spam. Think carefully about what your message says and how often you need to send it.
For more help and advice on your email marketing campaigns, speak to Red Star Digital who specialise in email marketing. To find out more about our services click here.
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Affiliate marketing is a powerful route to market that if set up, managed and analysed correctly can provide an uncapped source of high quality leads, sales or clicks depending upon your requirements at a minimum cost.
To help you manage your programme efficiently and in a constructive manner, Red Star Digital have put together a few handy tips to help you run a successful programme and ensure you don’t make any huge mistakes;
1. Monitor Conversions
First set your conversion parameters, is it clicks to sales, clicks to order value or something else? Once that is in place you need to closely monitor conversions across all your marketing channels and ensure your affiliate channel falls in line. If your conversion suddenly drops or jumps through the roof, you need to find out why, and either fix the issue or replicate it with other affiliates. You also need to ensure you take into account that different affiliate types will deliver varied conversion levels; incentivised traffic and traffic coming from voucher code sites will often have higher conversion rates, so bare this in mind when working out your averages. Benchmark against competitor conversions (where the data is possible) and make sure you communicate the conversion levels to affiliates if they are above the average or sit level with others. Good conversions = more sales = more money = happy affiliates.
2. Pro-active Recruitment
Use the tools available to you such as various search engines to find key affiliates to partner with. Spending a few hours a week researching sites you want your products placed on will not only give you the opportunity for increased sales, but it will also educate you in the different types of affiliate site out there and how they operate. Using handy tools like Whois.net can often help you gather contact details for the site owners.
- Important – When you are recruiting, remember that affiliates often read hundreds to thousands of emails a day, so make yours stand out. Offer them unique content, voucher codes, increased commissions, banners or whatever else you feel will entice them into not only joining your programme, but pushing it to deliver sales.
3. Regular Communication
Providing fresh and regular communications to your affiliates will not only inspire them to promote you, it will also give you the opportunity to advise them which products to promote and why, what new products you have, any offers you have and much more. Take some time to work on the format in which you send your affiliates tthis information, and consider what they may need. Some affiliates like a deeplink built in, some prefer a list, some like images, some like fresh banners. Find a way of communicating that best fits you and your affiliates and make tweaks where necessary. Find out how your key affiliates like to be communicated with, msn, email, phone or another means and how often. – Top Tip – Don’t flood them with 10 emails a day, they’ll soon get annoyed!
4. Provide The Affiliates With The Correct Resources
Different affiliates need different resources to help them drive sales for you, from feeds, banners, email creative, voucher codes and unique content to seasonal incentives and promotions. When planning a promotion or setting up your affiliate campaign, try to cover all the varying types of affiliate to make sure they have what they need to start and continue promoting you. Remember – when creating banners and email creative, remove any ‘leakage’ points like phone numbers and URL’s.
5. Build Relationships
Building relationships is key within affiliate marketing, from getting to know the network or agency staff to getting to know your affiliates. Many of the most famous deals in affiliate marketing were done, sitting face to face around a pub table whilst having a drink and a chat. By attending events and get-togethers frequently you will be able to meet your key affiliates and potential affiliates face to face, offering them and you chance to give and receive feedback thus enabling you to work together more closely to deliver the results you both need.
Here at Red Star Digital, we offer Affiliate Marketing Consultation, so if you have any questions or want to discuss our services further, please get in touch.
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Many clients that we advise with their online data collection have already had some experience with generating leads in this way; however, these experiences are not always positive. Quite a few of the issues clients experience with online lead generation centre around how the campaign was set up at the beginning – which is often caused by miscommunication with suppliers.
To make things a little clearer in the foggy world of online data collection, Red Star Digital have put a few tips together designed to assist with the setting up online lead generation campaigns and also to ensure you get the most from them.
Specify Your Exact Requirements
Ask yourself what data you require. If you have exclusions based on gender, age , annual income or something else appropriate to your needs, ensure you state this at the set up stage of the data generation.
It’s also important to specify your data delivery needs from the outset too. Do you require data to be delivered through a live data feed or through a CSV file? When would you like the data to be delivered to you, daily, weekly or monthly and would a certain time suit your needs? These are the key questions you need to answer before you set up any data capture campaign with a data supplier. The more questions you ask yourself at the beginning, the less time you will have to spend stripping out useless information or chasing the data to be delivered.
Make sure you also specify what constitutes a valid lead not only to your supplier, but also on any paperwork you draw up with them. By setting these parameters in place at the start, you can ensure you do not have to pay for invalid data.
Specify A Test Budget And Cap It
Don’t blow your entire budget on one day with one supplier. Try using a variety of suppliers and cap their leads on a daily basis – this avoids being flooded with leads and burning the budget too quickly. If you spread your data capture requirements with a number of suppliers, this will assist in optimising your campaign in the future with the best converting data.
Specify Your Reasons For Returning Data With An Accurate Returns Timeframe
By specifying your reasons for returning data that did not meet your needs or standards, you can work more closely with your suppliers to optimise your campaign. If you fully explain the reasons for returns, you and your supplier will be able to draw up some ideas of improving your data sources in a prompt and efficient timescale. You should also make sure that your paperwork includes a deadline for when returns will be provided, for example the 5th working days after month end.
Read And Re-Read Your Paperwork
It seems too many organisations do not read their paperwork properly. To avoid any issues further down the line, make sure you read your paperwork not once, but twice. This way you will fully understand exactly what you will be receiving, in what format and on what days, as well as the policies for returning data. Make sure you keep your paper work in a safe place and do not be afraid to ask questions if you do not understand any terminology on it. It is better to have a clear and defined picture at the outset rather than find difficulties later on.
Shameless plug:
Red Star Digital offers a range of service to assist clients with their current online data collection campaigns or designing and collating new prospect lists – if this is of interest or you’d like to chat further with a member of our team, please feel free to get in touch.
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Finally, a year after Red Star Digital was set up, our site is now live!
We’ve set the site up to not only outline and present our services but to provide updates on all our recent projects and successes. They’ll be regular features and ramblings from Red Barrington on our blog as well as some guest posts to look forward to.
We’re really excited about our new site development and are always keen to hear any feedback you have about the design, content and features – so please feel free to get in touch.
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