Category: Learning Zone

When It Comes To Subject Lines, Size Does Not Matter Too Much

Patrick Griffin 1 Comment

subject linesSubject lines: Recently we explained that it is a good idea to keep your emails short rather than long when communicating with your subscribers.

People are busy, they are increasingly also doing something else when reading emails and they don’t have very much time to spend reading each one.

So when you are using an auto-responder like RocketResponder, it is a good idea not to make too much of a demand on people’s time if you want to keep your subscribers happy.

However when it comes to the subject lines, the size is much less important than you might think.

The only job of the subject line is to grab the reader’s attention in such a way that they go on to open the email.

Sometimes if takes a very short subject line to achieve this goal and sometimes it takes one a bit longer.

The bottom line is don’t be frightened of writing a long subject line if you think that it what it takes.

It is far better to write a good subject line which is long than a bad subject line which is too short.

In fact I remember seeing the results of a survey into subject lines where billions of subject lines, ranging from the very shortest ones right up to long ones of 148 characters or more, were analyzed.

When these were checked to see if there was a difference between subject line length and the numbers of opens and clicks the results were…there was virtually no difference at all.

So when it comes to subject lines don’t worry about length, just worry about making them so interesting that your email gets opened.

See also: Rocket Responder – When It Comes To Writing Emails, Size Matters

When It Comes To Writing Email, Size Matters

Patrick Griffin Leave a comment

Short and SweetIt is still very common to go to a sales page for a product and find what marketers call a “long copy sales letter.”

The term is self-explanatory and if you have seen any of these pages yourself, you will know that long can mean very long indeed.

The reason that such pages have been so successful for internet marketers is that they work and quite often they can work very well.

However don’t make the mistake of thinking that this technique will translate quite so well into the email you send to your subscribers…the majority of times it really won’t.

For a start, if we are on some sales page for a product or service it is generally because we actually want to be there and want to read about the offer being made to us.

It follows that we may have time to read many thousands of words, or perhaps we will just read the headlines and bullet points and skip to the “buy it now button” as many people do.

Email is different. It is different because we can get so many of them on a daily basis. They just land in our inboxes at random times and invite us to read them.

We may be at our desks or or at home and have time to go through all our emails one by one but, increasingly, we read them on tablets or smartphones when lots of other things are competing for our precious time.

So when it comes to writing email, for example using an auto-responder like RocketResponder, the general rule is to keep it short. Email size matters and small is generally better than large.

Grab your subscriber’s attention with the subject line, then say what you need to say in a few sentences and include a link for people to click to get more information.

That is the general rule and there always exceptions. You might do an email newsletter for example which is packed full of content and that is totally fine.

However when we are competing for the precious time of our increasingly busy subscribers it really does help to keep the message short and to the point.

 

Use Video To Show The Real You

Patrick Griffin Leave a comment

Internet Video on smartphoneUsing an autoresponder like RocketResponder is something every online business should do.

The old days where you stand behind the counter of a store and wait for the customers to come to you are long gone.

Nowadays you have to go out and take the lead when it comes to customer communication. The tables have turned and you now go out to the customers.

Even more and more businesses in the offline world are using auto-responders to connect with their customers and get them coming into their stores.

Email is a very effective means of communication, and if you have built up a good relationship with your client base, they will look forward to getting emails from you.

An effective use of an autoresponder campaign will see you spending as much, if not more, time on building relationships with customers as you do trying to sell them goods and services.

While email is a very effective means of doing that – don’t leave it to the written word alone…start using the power of video.

Video is an absolutely awesome way of building relationships and getting your subscribers and customers to know the real “you,” and, believe me, they will want to know you.

Don’t be scared of video and don’t think of big, expensive, professional, scripted productions either.

These days a video can be something shot on your smartphone, quickly uploaded to YouTube and available to be viewed by your customers in minutes.

You can do videos giving tips about using your products or services, talking about the latest trends in your industry or…just about anything at all.

Just be yourself and provide something of value and your customers will love you.

Post the link in a RocketResponder email, post it on Twitter, Facebook, your blog or your website…there are so many possibilities these days.

Use email but use video too…it is a really great combination.

Five Tips To Make Your Next Autoresponder Campaign Sparkle

Patrick Griffin 1 Comment

sparkling lightsWhen you use an autoresponder service like RocketResponder you open up a whole new world of communication with your subscribers.

You have a powerful tool to ensure that your message, or series of messages go out exactly when you want them to and over the time period you want them to go out.

This leaves you free to concentrate on the message and to ensure that the information you are communicating is spot on.

Here are five top RocketResponder tips to ensure that your next autoresponder campaign (and every other autoresponder campaign after that) works out exactly as you want it to.

  1. Always plan in advance. This is a must. Take the time to work out what message you want to get across and what you are going to say. There should be a structure to every email campaign you put together whether it is a series of training steps, the build up to a launch or the ‘drip feed’ of information over a set period of time.
  2. How long will it last? There must be a definite start date and a definite end date for your campaign. Make sure you leave yourself long enough to plan the email campaign in advance so it is all ready to go and you are not leaving things until the last minute.
  3. What am I trying to achieve? The campaign must have some specific goal otherwise you will not be able to tell whether or not it has been a success. Work out what the goal is and how best you are going to achieve it.
  4. How frequently will I send emails? If it is a short campaign then it might be appropriate to send an email every day but if it is a bit longer then maybe one every other day or every three days might work better. Finally if you have not contacted your list for a long time and you plan to send them regular emails during this campaign then it might be worth warning them in advance that they are going to hear from you again.
  5. Make sure everything works. When everything is all queued up and ready to go then make sure everything works as you want it to. Send each of the emails to yourself first and read over them for any factual mistakes or grammatical errors. Also test that all your links work as you want them to and that any pages you send people to are the correct pages and the links or sales buttons on those pages are also properly set up.

Try putting these tips to work and see how well RocketResponder can work for you.

Why Quality Matters When It Comes To New Subscribers

Patrick Griffin Leave a comment

Quality

Quality matters when it comes to listbuilding and at RocketResponder we strongly believe this to be true.

We don’t believe in the rather outdated concept that says you just pile as many people onto your list as you possibly can in the hope that if you send them enough marketing emails that some will eventually bite.

Not only is it not very clever marketing, but neither is it very effective and you will just end up unnecessarily annoying a lot of people for no good reason.

To everyone who enters the world of listbuilding there is a question which always must be answered…should I go for single or double opt in when it comes to getting subscribers.

Single opt in is where someone enters an email address and as soon as that happens the email address is automatically added to your list.

Double opt in is where someone enters an email address and it is only added to your list when the owner of that address clicks a link in an email to confirm that they actually want to be on your list.

The first, without doubt, will allow you to build your list faster than the second which is slower, but which, arguably, will give you a much higher quality list.

Think of it like this. It is so easy to get hold of someone’s email address and sign that person up to a list – with single opt in the owner of that email address is on your list whether or not they wanted to be on it in the first place.

With single opt in, you as a list owner, have no way of knowing whether anyone at all on your list actually wanted to be on it.

Even if someone did sign up for your list with a single opt in process, it is difficult to determine how interested they are in what you are promoting. The person who really wants to hear from you cannot be differentiated from the person who signed up to your list by mistake.

With double opt in you are asking people to actually take some positive action to say “Yes I really do want to be on this list and receive email communication from the person who owns it.”

I can guarantee that with double opt in you will regularly get people who sign up for the list but then never get around to clicking on the email to confirm their interest.

This can be really frustrating but it need not be. Look at is this way – if the person cannot even be bothered to confirm their interest then they probably have little or on interest in anything you have to say or any goods or services you might want them to buy.

At RocketResponder our message is simple – there is nothing to fear from double opt-in and by getting people to take one extra step to join your list means you are building a higher quality list.

The higher quality should translate into more engagement and higher conversions and that, after all, is what listbuilding is all about.