6 design tips to make your email newsletter visually appealing

Many businesses rely on email newsletters to build customer relationships and keep their companies top of mind with their audiences. A well-executed newsletter is a powerful email tool with multiple benefits, which is why it’s crucial to ensure your newsletter design is visually appealing. If it looks good, readers are more likely to click.

To help you start, we’ve created a list of six design tips to make your email newsletter visually appealing.

1. Create a header

No question, your newsletter needs a header. It’s the equivalent of a magazine, newspaper or website name. It sits at the very top of your newsletter and should include the newsletter title (if you have one), your company name and your logo.

Fortunately, there are online DIY tools to help you with your headers, such as Stencil or Pixlr. With these programs, you don’t need any graphic design experience to create and save graphics to your computer. Just create your header once, and use it again and again.

Here are a couple of examples:

2. Let your logo dictate color scheme

Your newsletter needs a color scheme. Because your logo is part of your header, consider using its colors throughout your email newsletter as font colors, borders or other elements. After all, your logo’s colors should already be the color palette for your entire branding.

3. Stick to standard fonts

When selecting fonts for your newsletter, the top priority is legibility. Stick with basic fonts like Times New Roman, Helvetica or Arial. Refrain from using several different fonts in one newsletter: Too many fonts together gives a cluttered, disorganized look that can easily distract the reader. Pick one or, at the most, two fonts for your entire newsletter — and consider sticking with them for each newsletter you create.

4. Use subheadings

Your newsletter should have several different pieces of content that are broken up by subheadings. It should look a lot like a newspaper. The subheadings should be in one of the clear fonts that you selected. The size of the subheadings should be smaller than what’s used in your header, but larger than the text you use for articles. Here’s an example from a real estate broker’s newsletter to her readership:

5. Stack content

If you’re using a newsletter template through an email service provider like VerticalResponse, you’ll be able to add content easily. For a layout that looks good to readers and scrolls smoothly on mobile devices, stack your content.

Here’s an example from the Fine Arts Museums of San Francisco:

6. Use pictures

A well-designed email is a good balance of text and images. When a recipient opens your email, images instantly grab his or her attention. By adding a few pictures, you pull in your reader and enhance the effectiveness of your message at the same time.

When you create your next newsletter, add pictures that are easy to snap with your digital camera. For example, take a picture of an employee that you plan to highlight or grab a shot of your newest product to include in the next edition. Here’s an example from San Francisco Bay Area-based The Spanish Table:



Of course, some businesses don’t have a lot of photo-worthy opportunities. An online magazine that sells monthly subscriptions, for example, might not have a lot to take pictures of. If you’re in the same position, use simple graphics, or consider buying stock images from sites like iStock to incorporate into your newsletter.

When you’re creating your next email newsletter, remember that you want it to grab your readers’ attention. A clean, organized layout that makes it easy for the reader to digest your content is the best way to do that. Use these six tips to spruce up your design, increase readability and create an email newsletter that your audience looks forward to receiving.


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5 Gmail Tools For Engaging with Subscribers

 Engaging with subscribers can be daunting. Do you invite your email subscribers to reply to your email campaigns, blasts, and newsletters? If so, you can get the most out of those replies by routing them through Gmail. Then using the following four tools to create a great follow up experience.

1. Rapportive – Know Who You Are Talking To

It’s impossible to know every one of your subscribers personally. But thanks toRapportive, a free tool for Gmail, powered by LinkedIn, you can get to know some of them before you start a conversation. When an email subscriber replies to one of your emails. This tool will see if their email address matches a profile on LinkedIn. If it does, it will give you the following information.

You can use this to get to know your subscriber right from the start. It’s great for sales profiling, as you can pinpoint your email subscribers pain points and needs and include them in your first reply to them.

2. Yesware – Know When Subscribers Engage With You

When you reply to someone, do you wish you knew when they read your reply, when they clicked on your links? How about how often they opened your email, and so on? If so, Yesware is the solution. This tool, which works with Gmail and other email services, offers a host of features, including the ability to see how your email subscriber interacts with your reply to their email.

This means no more guessing. No more sending a “Did you get my last email?” email. No more sending a “Did you read that report I sent you?” email. You’ll know what they did, when they did it, and based on that information, what your next response should be.

3. Boomerang – So You Don’t Forget

Whether your inbox doubles as a to-do list or you simply don’t want to forget to follow up with a specific email subscriber. Boomerang is a great tool to use. It will allow you to send an email while simultaneously setting an option to send the email back to your inbox if you don’t receive a response, if the email is never opened, if the email is never clicked upon, or regardless of what happens.

It’s simple, yet effective when it comes to making sure that your most important email conversations don’t just fade into the nothing.

4. Canned Responses – So You Can Stop Rewriting the Same Thing

When email subscribers reply to your emails, do you find yourself responding with the same thing over and over again? If so, Gmail has a feature in their labs that will help you out. It’s called Canned Responses. You can activate it by going to your Gmail Settings, clicking on Labs, searching for Canned Responses, and then enabling them.

The next time you find yourself writing a common response to an email subscriber. (or anyone, for that matter) You can save it as a Canned Response using the options in the dropdown menu at the bottom right of your email composer.

Just be sure to change any personal items (like names, websites, phone numbers, etc.) as needed in subsequent emails.

5. Advanced Search – Just Like on Google, but in Your Inbox

The best reason to use Gmail is for its Advanced Search capabilities. You can refer to this full list of advanced search operators for Gmail for all of the search options you can use to find specific emails from specific subscribers for specific reasons.

This will allow you to do things like dive deep into conversations you had with an email subscriber. That eventually turned into a customer several years down the road. They will be extremely impressed that you remembered them from the first time they contacted you with a simple question that you just happened to find with an advanced search query.

What tools do you use to make responding to email subscribers more productive and beneficial? Please share in the comments!

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The Only 14 Startup Tools You Need to Build a Unicorn

Imagine if you had to send marketing emails manually, or keep your records in a tattered binder on your desk.

Every company, even startups, needs to make a minimum investment in SaaS tools for work like email marketing, project management, and tracking sales.

But the catch is that some of these startup tools can cost huge amounts of money, and when you’re a young startup you don’t want to be forking out in excess of $2,000/user/month for just one piece of software.

The point of this post is to explain the minimum viable SaaS stack your startup should invest in, based on what we’ve found out at Process Street in our many (many, many, many) tool-testing escapades. I’ll even do the math for you, and collate the estimated annual cost at the end.

Ready to start building up your toolbox with the best SaaS out there?
Here we go: 

Database management: Airtable

Without Airtable, we’d still be storing data in various random spreadsheets, constantly having permission issues, and be unable to get a proper picture of all our data. With it, we now store all of our marketing and product data in one place that connects to over 750 different apps via Zapier.

Airtable takes you a step further than spreadsheets because it’s a relational database.

Setting up a database sounds harder than it actually is, probably because databases used to have to be made in complex apps or by using something like SQL.

Thanks to Airtable, everyone can have access to the power of a database that can hold everything from SEO data to customers and marketing contacts, all linked together so you can keep the data in a single, automatable, accessible place and stop scrambling to find what you need on your hard drive or inside Google Drive.

Pricing: free, or $12/user/month 

Marketing automation & support: Intercom

Intercom is an all-in-one platform for communicating with your customers, both for marketing and support. Last year we were using MailChimp for marketing automation, and Intercom for support, but we recently switched over to purely running our email marketing through Intercom.



Intercom consists of three products: Respond, Engage, and Educate:

Respond is an awesome support solution, with assignments, notes, automation, team inboxes, and performance metrics. It’s priced from $53/month for 250 customer contacts, but the price doesn’t rocket up as your business grows, it climbs gradually. For example, it’ll cost you $101/month for 4,000 customer contacts (and unlimited team members at every level).



Engage is Intercom’s marketing automation side. It lets you send messages manually at any time, based on user activity (perfect for SaaS and subscription businesses), or drip out a sequence of messages to anyone added to your blog subscriber list. In short, it does everything you’d expect from a marketing automation/email marketing service, but also has the layer of user insights because it’s linked to your product or service, too.

Total pricing for Intercom’s Respond and Engage products: $150/company/month for 1,000 contacts
Integrations: Zapier

Zapier is a platform that builds integrations between apps that wouldn’t usually integrate. For example, Intercom doesn’t have a natural integration with Sumo, but we need to send all blog subscribers (some of which come in through Sumo pop-ups) to Intercom. To solve that, we use Zapier to connect the two together.

And that’s just one of the hundreds of use cases. We even use Zapier with our own product, Process Street, to run checklists and add assignments to tasks when an action happens in another app.

Some of my own Zapier use cases at Process Street include:
Add new tagged Airtable URLs with titles to multiple Buffer accounts at once
Create a Google Sheet of incoming emails for analysis
Listen for the words ‘run meeting’ in our content creation Slack channel to fire off a Process Street meeting checklist
Run a Process Street pre-publish checklist when a blog article card is moved into a Trello list
Automatically tweet all RSS feed content
Add Trello cards in the ‘inbox’ list to Todoist with the same due date

So, as you can see, it’s a tool that helps you cut down on masses of data entry. Want to learn more about Zapier? We’ve written a huge ebook on the topic! Get it here.

Pricing: free, or $18.33/month for 20 zaps and 3,000 tasks 

Process management: Process Street

The scalability of your startup depends on how well new hires can pick up the pace, learn your processes, and start being efficient. Without documented processes, it’s practically impossible to scale because you’ll be spending time explaining tasks to new hires over and over again. Wouldn’t it be easier if you could just hand them a process and check their progress quickly?

That’s where Process Street comes in. With Process Street, you can transfer your company’s knowledge to checklist templates that explain exactly how your team is expected to get the work done. This is great for things like sales qualification, blog pre-publish, employee onboarding, or client onboarding. That’s because all of these tasks have a structure and margin for error.

Here’s an example of an employee onboarding checklist built inside Process Street:

As you can see, each step has a checkbox and can contain form fields, images, videos, text, and more — all to help you explain the tasks that need doing, or to capture structured data.

A library of up-to-date, properly documented processes means you can scale your team with little effort and quickly check the work of your organization at a glance from the Process Street dashboard, which shows you how far each task is progressing:



Process Street also has a Zapier integration, which means you can either link checkboxes to actions in other apps (like sending all form field data to a spreadsheet when a task is checked) or run and assign checklists automatically (e.g. when a new card is labeled in Trello or when you get an email with certain text in the subject line).

Pricing: free, or $12.50/user/month 

CRM: Close.io

A CRM is where sales and marketing teams can add leads, communicate with them, and track conversations in one place. It’s an alternative to separate email inboxes, and Close.io is our CRM of choice here at Process Street.

Even the cheapest package comes with unlimited leads, contacts, and opportunities, meaning there’s no cap on the number of companies you can reach out to. But what really sets Close.io apart is its amazing search functionality. Using the app’s own variables (or even custom variables you add yourself), you can quickly filter your leads to get a targeted list. For example, you could get every lead in New York City who you haven’t emailed in the past week but have spoken to on the phone at least once.

I find it useful for marketing, too. We use Airtable to collate contacts we’ve mentioned in our blog posts, then use Zapier to automatically add them to Close.io with a tag; when you search the tag, you get a list of everyone to email telling them they’ve been mentioned, and you can bulk email them a template using the tag as a snippet for the URL of the promoted post.

We also use it in conjunction with Process Street for sales qualification.

Close.io might seem expensive at first, but it also covers the cost of calls and won’t need to be purchased for every member of the organization, like a lot of these tools do.

Pricing: $59/user/month 

Chat: Slack

Slack is a chat app for teams — check our review here. With it, you can cut email out of the equation entirely and focus on using the most efficient kind of interface instead of the long-outdated email.

Inside Slack, you can direct message your co-workers and create channels for each team inside your company. For example, we have a content creation channel where we share resources, have a quick morning catch-up chat, post our WIP articles, and generally communicate a lot more than we would do with just email.

Slack also has a ton of integrations meaning you could take it from being just a chat app like Facebook Messenger to being a fully-fledged dashboard for your notifications.

For example, you can link Slack to Trello and get a constant flow of notifications fed into the relevant channel. If you often work with someone in particular on a board, you can add a Trello integration to that channel and automatically update each other alongside the chat.



Pricing: free, or from $6.67/user/month 

Cloud storage: Google Drive

Cloud storage is one of the most basic requirements for modern businesses. Without it, you’re stuck in the ancient days where files had to be emailed from your hard drive, or accessed through the company intranet. I was always under the impression that most businesses used cloud storage, but when a recent study revealed that only 8% of companies share documents using cloud services, I was shocked.

Here are the usages and benefits of cloud storage:
Store files outside of company servers, minimizing risk of losing resources
Access files anywhere that has an internet connection
Use another server’s bandwidth, don’t clog up your own company’s
Save money on internal storage space
Control permissions and access to all your company’s resources

And, while there are a ton of different cloud storage services out there, we chose Google Drive because it gives you the best value for money and natively integrates with the rest of the tools we use in the Google suite, like Gmail, Sheets, and Docs.

Pricing: $10/user/month including unlimited storage and all G Suite features 

Google Suite vs. Office 365

This little section could be an entire article, but for the purposes of this article it’s worth quickly mentioning that Google Suite and Office 365 are parallel products as far as the tools go (Docs = Word, Sheets = Excel, etc) but the best way to create email accounts and control access for your company domain is to use Google Suite. You can get a plan that we use at Process Street that costs $5/user/month.

However, in some cases it might make more sense to get both. With Office 365, you also get Microsoft Flow (which can replace Zapier in some situations), Microsoft Teams (Slack alternative), and Microsoft Planner (Trello alternative).

I’ll talk more about this later on when we get to pricing, but due to their dominance it’s obvious some companies are looking for a Microsoft-heavy solution.
Project and task management: Trello

Trello is a kanban board app that you can imagine like an infinite amount of sticky notes, lists, and boards.



We divide our team’s functions up into boards, and use lists to denote progress through the flow, from ‘idea’ to ‘work in progress’ to ‘done’. With Trello, all of our team’s work is centralized and it’s easy to quickly see the status for particular tasks or add tasks from other apps using their integrations.

Trello is such an open-ended app you can use it to organize pretty much anything: make an editorial calendar, a list of blog post ideas, a list of growth hacking experiments, or just your personal to-do items. Because of that, it organizes a lot of our day-to-day work at Process Street and has just about every feature you could need.

Here’s an example of a Trello board we use at Process Street for managing our editorial calendar and our blog article creation process at the same time:



Pricing: free, or $12.50/user/month 

Payment processing: Stripe

For subscription businesses (SaaS included), ecommerce, or anywhere that collects payments from customers over the internet, Stripe is an essential tool. Basically, it’s a payment processing API you can build into your software or website to let users put in their credit card details, be charged, and then notify you.

With Stripe, you can accept debit and credit card payments from customers in any country in over 135 currencies. Without Stripe or a similar API, it’d be a pain in the ass.

Pricing: 2.9% of charge + 30 cents per transaction
Source control: GitHub

Most startups are in the software industry, so it makes sense to assume you need source code control and a repository.



While GitHub is most well known as a network for open source software, it can also be used privately as an internal tool to control edits and rollbacks on collaborative coding projects. At Process Street, we use GitHub to push updates live to the server after they’ve been through the review process. That way, we basically make sure nothing’s going live that will break everything.

Pricing: $9/user/month for the teams plan

 

Design prototyping: InVision

If your startup is involved with any kind of digital design, whether that’s UI design or web design, you’ll find it hard to get anywhere without a product like InVision.

InVision was built to combat the problems designers have when trying to show clients and team mates how their design will work, and what it’ll feel like to use. By uploading screenshots of your design, you can build working prototypes inside InVision complete with clickable elements.



And, when you get feedback from your team, they can comment directly on the part of the interface they’re referring to, eliminating a frustrating clarification process.

InVision is priced per active prototype, which means that if you only work on one project at a time, you can use it for free. If you need more, the pricing starts at $15/month.

Pricing: free, or from $15/month

 

Accounting: FreshBooks

FreshBooks is a full accounting suite for startups and SMBs. It includes invoicing, expense tracking, time tracking, tasks/projects, and reporting (for profits, expenses, etc.)

It’s an alternative to managing your accounts using spreadsheets, or even an alternative to hiring an accountant because much of what FreshBooks does negates the need for a dedicated accountant, especially in a small startup.

Scan receipts, request payments, and have everything automatically logged in one place so you don’t run into any compliance issues.

Pricing: from $15/month 

Social media management: Buffer

For an organization without a dedicated social media team (or at least a member of the marketing team that spends a certain number of hours per week managing social media), maintaining multiple social channels can be a huge drain on your company’s time, but with Buffer you can run social media on autopilot.

At Process Street, we combine Buffer with Zapier to automatically add new RSS feed items and new Airtable records. We also have a zap that adds any newly Buffer’d article to all of our Buffer social channels at once. These methods are much more effective than manually adding content, especially for use cases such as adding new posts to every employee’s Twitter feed, too.

Pricing: $10/month 

SaaS metrics: ProfitWell

ProfitWell is a 100% free tool from the creators of Price Intelligently. It works with Stripe, Braintree, and Zuora, all of which are tools for processing payments. So, whenever a customer pays you for your SaaS product, you get free metrics that guide the future of your product and give you an indication of its health.



Pricing: free forever 

The total annual cost for your startup: free plans where possible

The cost of a SaaS stack is different for every startup, so there’s not an entirely accurate way to estimate costs, especially when some tools are priced per company, some are priced per user, and some will only be used by one member of the organization.

Regardless, I’ve tried my best to make an estimate based on assumptions like: the CRM will only be used by one person, Airtable will be used by everyone, etc. In this estimate, I’ve assumed that a startup consists of 10 people, but there’s also a per user cost breakdown for tools the whole company will use.

Phew. Here goes:



Notes:
Intercom costs the same no matter if one person uses it or the whole company uses it. What you pay for is $X/contact, and this example assumes 1,000 contacts
I’ve listed the necessary users for Close.io as 1 because it’s likely to be a shared account with multiple email addresses connected
Stripe has been omitted from the list of costs because it’s impossible to calculate 

The total annual cost for your startup: premium plans without Office 365

Because of the nature of freemium, any growing company will get too big for the free plan in time. For a company of 10, it’s likely some of the tools will need to be paid.

Using the same estimated user counts and going by annual pricing, here’s what you’d pay to use these tools on the premium plan:



Notes:
I’ve kept Trello on the free plan because it’s not absolutely necessary to upgrade when there’s so many great unlimited features already. 

Alternatives: Microsoft Office 365

While we were brainstorming for this article, we realized that some of the tools listed here are bundled together in Microsoft’s Office 365 suite. Namely:
Microsoft Flow replaces Zapier
OneDrive replaces Google Drive
Microsoft Planner replaces Trello
Microsoft Teams replaces Slack

It’s cheaper to get the full Office package than pay separate charges for every product ($12.50/user/month) — but only marginally, because you’ll still need Google Suite otherwise you’ll be using gmail.com email addresses at your workplace. Here’s a version of the table with Office 365 substituting out similar products, saving $120 annually.



While it makes financial sense to opt for Office 365, you’ll still need to pay $5/user/month for G Suite if you want to use a company email and bulk-control the Google accounts of your employees.

So, in conclusion, it’s possible to pay just $2,600 annually for a high quality SaaS stack for your startup. Some tools, like CRMs and marketing automation, don’t come cheap. In contrast, a lot of tools are available for free.

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40 Brilliant-but-Easy Ways to Build Your Email List

 

Email marketing is a high-impact, low-cost way of delivering your marketing message to current customers and prospects — if, that is, you have a great email list. If you don’t, this article is for you. Read on for the most effective and creative ways to build your email list.

If your email list is short, scant on information, full or errors and redundancies, or just not on-track with your targeting, that poor-quality data can be worse than having no data at all! Without a good email list, all your other digital marketing efforts are little more than wheel spinning.

There’s a lot to be said for the human touch, and these ideas rely on good old-fashioned human interaction to help you build your email list.

Build your email list the right way

1. Put out the sign-up sheet

Whether you’re at a trade show, community event or in your own storefront, collecting email addresses in person can be as easy as putting out a signup sheet and encouraging people to write down their details.

2. Leverage business cards

When you meet people face to face for any reason, ask for their business card. Offer yours. Set a glass bowl on the counter in your store or the reception desk in your office, and ask visitors to drop their cards in it. Offer some incentive to do so — a free product or service, gift card, etc. Use your own business cards to further drum up emails; add an offer on the back of your card that encourages people to sign up to receive your emails.

3. Host an event

Stage an event — lunch gathering, topic talk, book club or whatever works to get people in the door. Drop invitations at nearby businesses, post the notice on your front door, and advertise in local media. Ask people to RSVP with their email addresses.

4. Invite people to ‘join the club’

Offer a birthday or anniversary club that allows people to “enroll” by providing their email address and relevant date. Reward them with a special offer for signing up, and follow up with something else special, such as a discount coupon, on their birthday or anniversary date.

5. Organize a giveaway

Using snail mail and/or your existing email list, send people a postcard asking for email information and offer them a reward for providing it.

6. Drum up emails with direct mail

Sometimes you have a physical address but no email address. Send a direct-mail offer they can only get by going to your website and joining your email list.

7. Try some telemarketing

Throughout the day, you and your employees probably interact with many customers and prospects on the phone. Before you hang up, always ask if they would like to join your email list. Give them a brief statement of the benefits of enrolling — for example, exclusive offers and discounts only available to email subscribers.

8. Optimize your website for opt-ins

If a customer or prospect visits your website, they’re already at least somewhat interested. Don’t miss the opportunity to add them to your email list. Include email registration forms on every main page of your site, as well as on the pages for popular products and services.

9. Build with your blog

Your blog provides a great way to build a personal relationship with customers and prospects — and to gather their email addresses. Consistently end blogs with a call to action that encourages readers to sign up for your email messages. Require blog visitors to provide an email list in order to leave comments, and set it up so that they have to actively opt out if they don’t want their email address included on your mailing list.

10. Engage through social media

Social media participation can allow you to reach new audiences and make new connections. Stay abreast of trending topics that are of interest to your customers and prospects. Use social media to encourage people to visit one of the channels where they can sign up for your email list.

11. Don’t give up on bounce backs

Everyone hates to see the dreaded bounce-back alert in their inbox. If you have snail-mail information to match an email address, send a postcard asking the contact to provide you with an updated email address so you can stay in touch. Consider rewarding them with a discount or freebie for taking the time to respond.

12. Piggyback on a colleague’s efforts

Consider sharing email lists with neighboring businesses. Offer them space in your newsletter in exchange for including a link with your opt-in form in their newsletter.

13. Don’t let website visitors get away

If a visitor gets through your entire website without opting in, grab them one last time before they go. Set a lightbox to appear asking for an email address whenever someone is about to navigate away from your website or blog.

14. Create an online community

Platforms like BuddyPress for WordPress make it easy to set up a community and foster interaction between your brand and your customers. Include a sign-up form for your newsletter on every page of the community.

15. Leverage ‘email only’ specials

Reward your loyal email followers with specials that are only available to subscribers. Encourage them to forward the link to your sign-up page to friends and family.

16. Don’t forget your own email

Be sure every email you send has an opt-in form so that anyone who receives one of your emails via forward from someone else, can sign up directly to be on your list.

17. Use Foursquare

Offer a reward for customers who buy something from you and show that they checked in at your business on Foursquare using their mobile device. When they do this, they’re telling everyone in their network that they’ve done business with you. Each month, reward the person who gave you the greatest exposure by offering a discount, and asking for their email address.

18. Be active on blogs and forums

Frequent the blogs and forums your customers do and offer insightful comments. Include a link to your website where visitors will find your opt-in form.

19. Get employees involved

Reward employees for collecting valid, testable email addresses. Remember to have them obtain the person’s consent before giving you the email address for your list.

20. Encourage customers with a daily deal

Daily deal sites can be useful for retail or local service businesses. Offer your discount (daily deal) through the site for a limited time and ask anyone who wants to grab the deal to provide their email address in exchange.

21. Word of mouth still rocks

Ask current and new customers to refer new subscribers to your list. Sweeten the deal by offering them a discount as a reward for valid, confirmed and consent-backed email addresses.

22. Encourage forwarding

When you send an email, include a forward-to-a-friend link in case recipients want to forward your content to someone they think will find it interesting. Make sure the link directs newcomers to a page with your opt-in form.

23. Serve up a sandwich board

Sandwich boards are nothing new, but what about using one in a new way? Place one on the sidewalk in front of your storefront or office to advertise your newsletter and offer a reward to anyone who signs up. Invite customers into the store to enroll, or give them the web address where they’ll find your opt-in form.

24. Use receipts

Customize your credit card receipt with a field/line where customers can jot down their email address while they’re signing. Or, simply ask them to write their address on the back of the receipt. At the end of the day, enter the addresses into your database and send out a welcoming email.

25. Take it to the street fair

Spring, summer, winter, and fall — your community probably has at least one street fair or similar event throughout the year. Participate in the event and collect email addresses right at the fair. Sweeten the deal by offering new subscribers a discount on their first (or next) purchase in exchange for sharing the email with you.

26. Encourage competition

Sponsor a video contest in which customers create a one-minute video about why they like your business, products or services. Ask them to send the videos to you and post them to your Facebook page. Invite visitors to vote on which video should win a cash or merchandise prize. Include an email opt-in on your Facebook page. Be sure to follow Facebook’s rules regarding contests.

27. Go mobile

When you’re out in the world at a tradeshow, business meeting or other public forum, use your smartphone to collect email addresses. And be sure to include an email opt-in with your business’ mobile app. If you offer the app for free download through your website, “charge” users the “price” of their email address in order to download the app.

28. Inside-the-box ideas

If you ship products, it’s a perfect opportunity to expand your email list at no cost! Include an inbox request on a card inside every package you ship. Be sure to tout your “email only” offers and direct recipients to your website’s opt-in form. After they join, redirect them to a page where they’ll receive their first promotional offer.

29. Make it more than just a bill

When you send out an invoice, include an option to sign up for email communications with you. Again, sweeten the deal by offering an incentive such as a discount or free shipping on the next order as a reward for providing email addresses.

30. Signs of the times

Include a link to your opt-in page in the signature of all your emails, personal and professional.

31. Network for emails

Join your local Chamber of Commerce or another business networking group. Email the member list (if it’s opt-in) about your services and include a link to sign up for your emails and newsletter.

32. Download freebies

That e-book or buying guide you created to establish thought leadership in your industry can also help build your email list. When visitors to your website request a free download, ask them to complete your opt-in form in order to download.

33. Speak up for yourself

Speaking engagements are a great way to establish your company as active in the community, but you can also weave into your talk the idea that more information can be found on your website. Offer free consultations in exchange for signing up for your newsletter and emails.

34. Giving it all away

Every month, offer a giveaway of a valuable or fun item to anyone who signs up for your email list.

35. Subscriber-only access

Everyone likes the feeling of being in on something exclusive. Offer your email subscribers something only they can get. It might be a special discount. It could be access to a video, e-book or another piece of useful content. Promote the availability of this exclusive access in order to encourage more email enrollments.

36. Give them subscription options

People like more choices, so consider creating subscription levels that let people sign up to receive content that’s relevant to them. For example, if you sell widgets and tax advice, provide three options on your opt-in form that allow users to sign up to receive info about widgets, info about tax advice or both. Further customize by allowing them to designate how frequently they’d like to hear from you — weekly, monthly or only when something really special is going on. People may be more likely to sign up for your email list if they have some control over the content they’ll receive.

37. Don’t forget the power of print

Add a QR code (a bar code that people can scan with a smartphone app) to print ads, direct-mail post cards and other printed marketing materials. Use the code to allow people to opt-in to your email list simply by scanning the code.

38. Leverage testimonials

Make your opt-in form extra convincing by including testimonials from current email subscribers touting the quality of your content.

39. Create a teachable moment

Are you an expert in something people want to know about, like weight loss, home improvement, cooking, etc.? Promote an exclusive online email course available only to subscribers.

40. Reel them in with a scroll box

Visitors to your website might overlook the call to sign up that you have at the top of every page, but it’s harder to ignore a lightbox or pop-up. Scroll boxes pop up on visitors’ screens after they’ve scrolled down a certain length of the page. The box encourages them to sign up for your email list. They can be effective for encouraging a user who’s already shown interest in your content (by staying on the page long enough to scroll) to sign up for your email list.

Building an email list takes time and is critical to marketing success in the digital age. What tactics do you use to collect more emails?

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7 Email Testing & Delivery Tools for a Biz on a Budget

You hear so many rumors about what you can or can’t include in your email if you don’t want it to land in spam. But a lot of those are exactly that, rumors.

Using an ESP, like VerticalResponse, is an excellent start to ensuring inbox placement, but spam filters look for various things in emails to determine where they end up. Are there too many links in your email? Did you use the word “Free” one too many times? To help dispel the myths, we put some email testing and delivery tools to the test using the same HTML code and subject line from one of our recent newsletters. Here’s what we discovered:

Puts Mail

Puts Mail is a basic testing application, but you can get some good information about your HTML using this tool. First, they send you a test of your email, so you can see it in your inbox. If you’re using an ESP, you probably have this feature already, but if you don’t, it allows you to see your how your email will appear in the inbox of your choice. Then the tool goes through your code and detects if there’s anything that could cause an issue and what that might be. Our newsletter checked out okay, though anyone using Lotus Notes or Eudora may have some issues with the CSS that was included.

CSS is something that can be tricky in different email programs; if you’re using CSS, be sure to keep it inline to ensure it will work across a variety email programs. For more tips on HTML for emails, check out our HTML Tips for Designing Your Email guide.

Email on Acid

We’re fans of this tool because of the various email program display views. It’s always important to know how things will appear for all of your readers and the different programs they use. Email on Acid offers a free version that shows what your email looks like in Gmail and Outlook 2003, plus they take a look at your HTML and let you know if there are any issues. The paid versions offer more inbox examples, more analysis, and check for spam filter triggers. Our newsletter looked great with the free trial test on these two programs, but as we learned from the previous tool, there could be some rendering issues on older email programs.

Email Reach

Email Reach takes a different approach to testing emails by providing a seed list of addresses to test. The nice thing about this service is that they can test email programs around the world and on mobile.

You just need to download the list they provide, upload to your ESP and then send test emails to that seed list. They’ll give you reporting on how your email works in all the different accounts that they monitor. They offer a 24-hour free trial and then a paid version once that expires. They also check for spam folder placement and will analyze content and HTML for possible spam problems.

Lyris ContentChecker

If you’re worried about specific content that could cause your email to land in the spam folder, this is the free tool for you. Lyris checks the HTML and the content of your email and gives you score based on where the email will end up. Zero is the best, anything over 3.0 and they recommend changing your content to help ensure your email doesn’t get marked as spam. They’re checking through SpamAssassin, a very popular spam filter, for anything that is usually associated with spam. Their website gives you a quick analysis and then they send an email with more info and links to help you understand email delivery and how you can improve yours.  Our newsletter got a zero; we like to practice what we preach!

Litmus

Much like Email on Acid, Litmus offers a limited free test and a paid version with more bells and whistles. The free test covers pretty much any email program your readers could be using, plus mobile ones. While the other tests are done in seconds, this one takes awhile, but for free we were willing to wait a bit. There is also a subject line checker, to see how your From label and subject line will look in different email programs, landing page links and again, HTML analysis. There is one test per email address, but the paid version allows unlimited testing for all the features mentioned. As with the test on Puts Mail, our CSS was trouble but otherwise the email looked good.

Email Spam Test

Email Spam Test is another free tool that provides you information about whether your email may go to a spam folder. They don’t provide much detail, but if there was a potential issue with your code or content they let you know. Our newsletter did fine, although they weren’t sure about the subject line.

When we actually sent this newsletter, the subject line performed on target and our opens/clicks stats were right on the mark.

Postmark

This is also a free spam test, but it requires a bit more info than you may have. Not only do you need to paste in the HTML from your email, but you also need to include the full headers as well. It makes for a much more thorough test but also more time consuming. Just like Lyris, they’ll give you your SpamAssassin score and let you know how close to spam your email is.

There are many applications out there to test your email; these are just a few to get you started. Continue to test different things with your email and content especially if you find any problems getting delivered to the inbox.

We also have free guides to help you, and for more anti-spam specifics, check out our webinar, How to Avoid the Spam Folder.

Have you checked out any recent email testing apps yet? Let us know in the comments.


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6 Email Subject Lines That Really Work

6 Email Subject Lines That Really Work. In this video Jesse Forrest shares how to write email subject lines that get opened. Email copywriting and email subject lines can get your emails opened and read.

15 Email Marketing Best Practices 2016

15 email marketing best practices 2016. Top tips for better conversions and more sales. 

In this video, you will learn about some of the best email marketing practices for boosting sales. The email marketing tips include things like shortening email lengths, using a tease in the subject line, subscribing to other top brands to learn how they email, etc. If you use all 15 of these, you will be much more likely to see a nice increase in email marketing ROI. Enjoy the video!

Email Deliverability: How to Make Sure You Land in the Inbox

No matter how amazing your email content might be, if it never reaches your subscriber’s inbox, all your work will forever go unnoticed. No one will find out about your products, you won’t gain that strong trust with your potential customers, and it will be extremely difficult to make a living with your online business. But finding your way into an inbox isn’t as simple as just sending an email. You have to take email deliverability into consideration.

When it comes to email marketing, email deliverability can be one of the most confusing concepts. So to help you know how to get your content from your email service provider (ESP) to your subscriber’s inbox, today I’m breaking down the basics of what email deliverability means, how it affects your sending, and how to increase your chances of good deliverability.

First off, there will be some words and concepts that might sound like gibberish to anyone new to this topic. If you fall in this category or just want a little refresher about what I’m talking about, here’s a handy cheat sheet of deliverability terms you can download now to reference as you read.

DOWNLOAD THE DELIVERABILITY TERMS CHEAT SHEET

What is email deliverability and how is it determined?

Deliverability is a partnership between your IP/domain reputation, your email content, and your subscribers' email provider. As an ESP, our goal at ConvertKit is to get you in the door, meaning inbox deliveries within email providers like Gmail, Outlook, and Yahoo. There are quite a few factors that determine how your email is filtered once it’s received by an Internet Service Provider (ISP), but your IP/domain reputation are likely the most determining factor on whether your messages are delivered into an inbox or a spam folder.

While your IP/domain reputations are determined through a combination of factors, research within our industry has shown that the most important factors are: Subscriber Engagement, Limiting Negative Metrics, Authentication, and Content. So let’s talk about how these four things come into play in terms of your email deliverability.

Subscriber Engagement

These days ISPs are paying close attention to how previous customers of that provider have interacted with email sent from your domain/IP. That means the future of your deliverability can depend on what your subscribers do with your emails right now.

For example, Gmail often will make assumptions on where to filter your email based on trends seen from their customers. That means if the majority of subscribers are deleting your emails without opening them, marking the messages as spam, or taking no action on it all, Gmail will make the determination to increase spam or promo folder filtering for your IP/domain and will lower your overall reputation with Gmail.

On the other hand, if a lot of people are opening and clicking (showing positive engagement), Gmail is more likely to deliver future messages from your domain and IP into their inbox. This makes it extremely important to make sure that subscribers are receiving email content they actually want and on an expected schedule established upon signing up for your email list.

Limiting Negative Metrics

High levels of user spam complaints and hard bounces can be the quickest way to go from good IP/domain reputation to bad. Spam complaints at high levels (> 0.3%) give email providers indicators that a marketer is potentially sending unsolicited content, which is a violation of CAN-Spam or CASL regulations . Marketers observed exhibiting this type of behavior will lose trust in the eyes of ISPs, which will typically result in very poor inbox placement levels.

When ISPs observe spikes in hard bounce levels this often raises questions about the marketer's list collection and hygiene (or cleaning) processes. Purchasing or using third party lists can often result in high levels of hard bounces based on the fact that many of these types of subscribers are un-verified. Many companies that provide these types of lists use web-scraping tools to gather email addresses from all over the Internet (many of which are spam traps), and they sell them to marketers that are looking to grow their client base. This is a huge ‘No-No' in the eyes of an ISP and will often result in drops in your reputation.

Sending to older segments of subscribers can also show spikes in hard bounce levels. A general rule of thumb is that if a subscriber or list hasn't been sent to in over a year, it's best to get rid of that group. While this can be a scary thought, as many marketers never want to throw away subscribers, we have to remember that ISPs value quality over quantity.

We have to always look at the big picture here. Sending to an older list may provide you with a small amount of conversions, but if it results in all of your Gmail subscribers receiving their email in their spam folder going forward, is it really worth it?

Authentication

ConvertKit offers assistance in setting up your SPF and DKIM records to align with sending through our platform. Whether you're sending your email through convertkit.com or through a custom domain setup (ck.yourdomain.com), we look to make sure that emails sent through your account show ‘Passes' for SPF and DKIM authentication levels.

Before an ISP delivers an email they first examine the email headers of that message, looking for permission for your domain to be sent across our IP addresses. If the SPF and DKIM records show failures within the message headers, your domain does not give permission for it to be sent across any of the IPs that are not stated within these records.

Here’s how it works:

By default when you get started with ConvertKit, you're sending on one of our sending domains. It usually looks something like ckmail2, 3, 4, etc. We have about five of these spread out among customers so multiple ConvertKit customers can be using the same sending domain. There are both benefits and disadvantages to how this affects you and your email deliverability.

If you're just starting to build your domain's reputation, using a sending domain other customers are using and have been using is a great thing. It quickly helps build up your reputation. However, it is possible that the consequences of another customer's poor sending practices can impact you negatively.

We have a lot of controls in place to prevent that from happening and we regularly redistribute our customers across our sending domains, but it’s still possible that a shared sending domain will negatively affect your deliverability.

For our customers who are most serious about deliverability, we offer a custom sending domain that allows you to rely solely on your own domain reputation. To find out more about custom sending domains and how to set one up, contact our Customer Success team.

Content

Your content plays a big role in how an email is delivered as well. Think of a typical newsletter you receive from a retailer, like Target or Bed, Bath and Beyond. They usually contain a ton of pictures with really complex HTML that almost mimics visiting their webpage in your browser. When Gmail sees messages like this, with primarily images and complex HTML, they will often filter it as a promotional email. At Convertkit, we put a major emphasis on simple emails like the ones you write to a friend, which helps us avoid those promo filters.

Simple, plain text emails are more likely to be delivered into a primary inbox, period. Even though we recommend sending plain text emails to improve your deliverability, there still aren't any absolute changes that can be made to guarantee inbox placement within the Primary Tab.

Recent studies have shown that the usage of Gmail Tabs has dropped to roughly 33% (a 66% decrease in users since 2013). The prevailing thought here is that this filtering will have less of an impact going forward because those Gmail users that are savvy enough to set this up are usually the same users that will routinely check these folders.

Now that you know what affects email deliverability, let’s increase your chances of hitting those primary inboxes, shall we? The four high level deliverability concepts we’ve covered can be broken down into actionable, daily takeaways. Here’s how…

10 email deliverability best practices

Email deliverability doesn’t have to be rocket science. There are very easy practices you can put into action every day and with every email you send to help increase your deliverability chances. Here are 10 (easily actionable) email deliverability best practices.

Don’t buy lists (Seriously, don’t be THAT lady)

Like I said earlier, purchasing and using third party lists will result in high levels of hard bounce based on the fact that many of these types of subscribers are un-verified. So while you have a big list of, let’s say 50,000 subscribers right up front, the trouble is that they didn’t choose to be on your list. A vast majority of those emails will go straight to the SPAM folder, many more will mark them as SPAM once they’re opened, and then another large number will unsubscribe immediately. So even if you’re left with a few thousand in the end, they aren’t people who are choosing to hear from you.

Create opt-in incentives that attract the right subscribers

Some opt-in offers are better than others when it comes to building an email list full of qualified subscribers. For example, because giveaways and freebies attract a wide range of people, you’ll most likely get a high volume of signups that will never open your later emails or might even move them to their spam folder. Their negative engagement can eventually end up sending your emails to other subscriber’s spam folders as well.

To combat this, make sure your opt-ins are always targeted to an audience that would be interested in your topic. You always want to be attracting readers who would likely open your emails and eventually become customers.

So if you’re planning on running a contest with giveaways, make sure you’re setting yourself up for the outcome. If you’re wanting to grow your list with a targeted audeince, create a giveaway that only that group will want. Or if you just want to get your name out there and build a large list, create a giveaway that will appeal to a wide audience.

Use simple design (Or none at all)

Like I said earlier in the content section, simple emails will always deliver better. Even when it comes to images or tables in your emails, too many will decrease your deliverability. You can read more about our theory on why text-based emails are the way to increase your email deliverability in our post Why Fancy Email Templates Aren’t the Answer.

Add alt text when you use images

Images in and of themselves are not bad. Everyone loves a beautiful picture or graphic and they often help convey a thought or point quicker than actual text. But when you use an image, make sure to write accurate alt text or title instead of simply using the image’s file name. This way if an image gets blocked for any reason, a reader will still know what your image is. This also helps prove that a human sent the email instead of a spam robot.

How to- After you’ve added an image to your email in ConvertKit, click the image again and then click the edit button that pops up. In the edit box, write a title for that image that describes what is happening in your image, ie- your call to action, the details of a promotion.

Watch out for these trigger words

Sadly, because of those spammers out there, there are some words that have developed a bad wrap. When used in subject lines for emails, these trigger words can signal the possibility of spam and usually will send an email straight to the abyss. Here are a couple of those words to avoid in your email subject lines (and your content, if you can):

• Free
• Financial freedom
• Make money online
• Credit card offer
• Cash bonus
• Apply now
• $$$
• Weight loss
• Order now
• Price
• Increase sales

Enable double opt-in for all new subscribers

Setting up the double opt-in process adds an extra layer of subscriber qualification for you. If a subscriber clicks through a double opt-in:

• You can confirm every subscriber so your list is more accurate. That means if there's a typo in their entry they won't end up clogging up your list with email addresses that will ultimately fail.
• They are confirming interest and are more likely to open your emails in the long run, which improves your deliverability rankings.
• You know they are not fake subscribers and spammers with false email addresses that can ultimately affect your monthly fees.

With ConvertKit, setting up a double opt-in process is as easy as clicking a button.

Set up a custom sending domain

Again, setting up a custom domain for your reply-to email address will increase your deliverability. That means your days of using freemail like Gmail, Hotmail, and Yahoo are over. Learn how to setup your custom sending domain with ConvertKit: contact our amazing Customer Success team.

Keep a clean list

No matter how exciting or targeted your content is, there will always be a group of subscribers who aren’t engaged with your emails. Since those unopens can affect your email deliverability, it’s a good idea to run a re-engagement email sequence every 90 days to filter out what we call cold subscribers. Cleaning out your subscriber list will help it be healthy and high quality (plus, you’ll save money).

Ask subscribers to move emails from their spam or promo folder to their inbox

Sometimes email to new subscribers end up in their spam folder for reasons beyond your control. If those subscribers end up getting in contact with you asking where the email went, ask them to check their spam folder and take a second to move that email from the spam folder to their inbox. It might sound like a silly request, but doing this teaches that ESP that your email actually belongs in the inbox. Doing this will not only help with that particular subscriber's emails, but it will also help similar users whose emails might be ending up in spam as well.

Optimize your email subject lines

The last thing I want to mention that often gets mistaken for a deliverability issue is the subject line. While a subject line could potentially impact deliverability, it has it's greatest impact on engagement. A subject line is the first and sometimes only thing a subscriber reads of your email. If it doesn't clearly communicate what the email is going to be about and entice them to open it, then they won’t. Subject lines are often the simplest thing to tweak that have the greatest impact on opens and clicks.

Tools you can use to help check your email deliverability

Ready to start increasing your chances of optimized email deliverability? To find out where you stand right now, there are a couple tools you can check out. MailTester and GlockApps both test against Spam Assassin to tell you how your emails are delivering.

Once you’ve got that information you can start putting all those email deliverability best practices I talked about into place. Then it’s time to watch those clicks and conversion rate numbers rise.

Deliverability Terms Cheat Sheet

Blacklist-This is a list of IP addresses of known spammers, or “spam friendly” servers. If your IP address is on the list, it won't let your email through.

CAN-Spam – Short for ‘Controlling the Assault of Non-Solicited Pornography And Marketing Act of 2003,' this law outlines rules for commercial email, establishes requirements for commercial messages, provides email recipients with the right to make you stop emailing them, and lays out consequences for violations of the Act.

CASL regulations- This is Canada’s anti-spam legislation. It’s similar to CAN-SPAM in that it protects consumers against receiving unwanted email but different in that it is much more specific about permission and what is considered “opt-in”.

Domain– Similar to an IP Address, domain names refer to locations of servers and devices connected to the Internet. Domain names can represent many different IP addresses.

Domain Name System (DNS)- DNS is an Internet service that translates domain names into IP addresses.

Domainkeys Identified Mail (DKIM)- DKIM was designed to prevent domain spoofing, or someone pretending to send from your email domain, when they really aren't. DKIM uses cryptographic authentication, which means the records we generate will be unique to you and your domain. Read more about DKIM here.

Double opt-in– With a double opt-in a user is sent an email with a confirmation link after they initially opt-in to your list. After the user clicks the link, they are added to the ongoing email communication. This is a recommended way to build a healthy email marketing list.

Email service provider (ESP)- ESPs provide platforms to send commercial and transactional email on your behalf. ConvertKit is an ESP.

Hard bounce–  A hard bounce means that the email address is invalid and should not be sent to again. The email might belong to an unknown user, the content of your email might have triggered their spam filter, or the server might have seen too many other contacts marking your email as spam. When a contact’s email returns a hard bounce, they will be marked as ineligible the next time you include them in a send.

Internet Service Providers (ISP)- ISPs provide mailboxes to end users as part of their paid services. These are generally your cable or Internet providers, such as Comcast and Verizon.

IP Address- A number that uniquely identifies any device connected to the Internet. “IP” stands for “Internet Protocol.” Similar to how a street address helps people find buildings, an IP Address helps computers find each other on the Internet.

Open rate- The percentage of recipients who opened your email message. When someone clicks on an email, an image pixel in the email loads and is counted as an open.

Sender Policy Framework (SPF)- SPF was specifically created to protect against sender address forgery – spammers pretending to send emails as you. An SPF record in your DNS Settings gives email providers something to check, to make sure the emails are really coming from you. Read more about SPF here.

Sender score/reputation- This is basically your rating as an email sender. Return Path’s sender score tool is a free reputation rating tool that rates your outgoing mail server IP on a scale of 0-100. It’s used by mail servers, allowing them to quickly sort email IPs and decide what to do with your email. A sender score that is + 90 is considered a good sender score.

Single opt-in– If an email marketer uses a single opt-in, this usually involves taking a user's form entry and immediately adding that person to a live email list.

Soft Bounce – A soft bounce means that the email temporarily failed to reach its intended recipient. The email will be resent for up to 72 hours or until it’s either successfully delivered or it fails more permanently. Recipients that return soft bounces will still be eligible for future email sends.

Spam complaints (Marked as Spam)- This is the number of contacts that actively marked your email as spam. Contacts that mark your email as spam are automatically unsubscribed from all of your email. Please be aware that Marked as Spam is not the same as an email going into a spam or bulk email folder.

Spam trap/Honeypot– A planted email address designed to catch spammers. For a time, email that hits a dead email address will return a hard bounce. When the mail server sees continued traffic going to the dead address, it can turn the email into a spam trap, accept the email, and report the sender as a spammer.

Whitelist– The opposite of a blacklist, this means your server is considered spam-free or is an “approved sender.” It’s often used by email applications to allow users to mark whether or not they trust emails from specific senders, this overrides some of the filtering that may exist from the ISP. You can also apply for whitelisting programs that a few ISPs offer. While not a guarantee to end up in the inbox, a sender may receive preferred delivery as long as they stay within the proper thresholds of the program.

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