7 Valuable Email Marketing Strategies to Increase Open Rates by Ryan Clutter #302

Hi, and welcome to the SEO Podcast, Unknown Secrets of Internet Marketing. My name is Chris Burris, owner of E-Web Results. I am Charles Lewis, your client results advocate. Results advocate? You need to have like a song, theme song, I think. Man, I'm working on it. Like the king of results advocacy or something along those lines. Hey, welcome to the podcast. This is podcast number 302. As always, we have a tip from our previous podcast, and the tip is when using multiple tags on a blog post, to be sure to canonicalize the URLs. Yeah, any time you use multiple tags, you end up with multiple URLs, but it ends up with multiple content. Canonicalize those so you can have one unique URL. Excellent. That is the tip from podcast 301. Hey, remember, we are your broadcasting live from Houston, Texas, and we are your friendly local neighborhood top position snatchers. Where our mantra is. Don't be a douche. Please do not be a douche. Hey, we got a great article for you today about email. Email marketing. I mean, punch in the face to Ryan Clutter, the good folks over there at Search Engine Journal, posted an article, seven valuable email marketing strategies to increase your open rates. So we'll dig into that a little bit later. That's the fantabulous seven. Hey, if you're in a position to, and you have some sort of device, and that device enables you to do something called tweeting, we would ask you to... Tweet us. Make sure you use the hashtag SEO podcast. This is number 302, and be sure to tag us in it, at bestseopodcast at eWebResults. That way we can follow you back and do all of our social networking stuff. Absolutely. Hey, if this is the first time you've listened to our podcast, howdy, and welcome to the podcast. How you doing? Woo-hoo! Thanks for joining us. If you've listened to this podcast before, you know what we're about to do. To skip, actually. Oh, okay. Numbers must have been up. Yeah, we got some

good numbers. We got like a 35... Where was it? 27 increases in our Twitter followers on best SEO podcast. That makes sense, because I remember last week we missed it, and some of y'all probably just caught that. Like, hey, they missed last week. I followed a whole bunch of people back last week. Right. Cool, because those are the ones who are engaging with us. And we did actually get a review. We'll get that to it in a second. But please remember to shike us. Yeah, shike us. That means share and like us. Share and like us. And you can do that on a number of platforms. And the best way to get to those platforms and find them and all that stuff is, say, try twitter.com slash... E-Web results. YouTube.com slash... E-Web results. Instagram.com slash... E-Web results. Facebook.com slash... E-Web results. And I think that's all of them. Yeah. Any other ones you can find. If we don't have it, tell us. We'll get it. And then slash and E-Web results should get you there. And if you don't find it, let us know so that we can get it there. Hey, if you're a WordPress genius or a PHP guru, we're probably looking for you. All you need to do is submit an audio resume. What's the call? 713-510-7846. If you would like a free website analysis, it's an extremely good value. We'll actually contact you and chat with you a little bit about what focus you want to have on that website analysis. And figure out what your goal is. We don't want to just go through it and kill it and tell you what you did wrong, what you did right. We really want to figure out what you're trying to accomplish online and then discuss your website and how you can make it better. The reality is, is if you just, if we just do an analysis, we have to make assumptions about what it is you're trying to accomplish. Exactly. Because if you're trying to accomplish one thing and we

think you're trying to accomplish something else, we could really go in and tear up your website and be like, okay, well, that'd be way off topic. That was brutal. Yeah. It was brutal. For no reason did we need to do that. All right. So I've got a little bit of news. I thought this was interesting. So Google's disappointed. The California law that I think is going to get pushed through or is on its way that they've written says that the driverless cars must have steering wheels, pedals, and a licensed driver. Kind of defeats the purpose of the ultimate vision of a driver. I mean, I get the steering wheels and the pedals, okay, because, you know, you need manual operation. But, yeah, I shouldn't have to require a driver. Yeah. Yeah, a licensed driver. And even the pedals. I mean, if you think long term, at some point, if it can't drive anymore, then you tow it, right? You don't drive it off. I mean, unless it's malfunctioning, right? Then you need to be able to switch to manual. Maybe you're offline. See? I mean, so it's interesting, right? Because it's a different mindset altogether, which is if it can't navigate, it needs to go to the shop. It's not that you need to drive it to the shop because you shouldn't be driving because eventually nobody will know how to drive. Maybe. Who knows? I get it. So, yeah. So if you don't, if you require that it has a steering wheel and pedals, then really you have to require a licensed driver. Yeah, because not necessarily. That's just there in case your internet starts buffering. And all of a sudden your car is not online anymore. You need to be able to turn that off and get to where you're going. But, you know, at the same time, I kind of get it because, you know, stuff happens. Times, they are changing, aren't they? Let's see. Apple adds an iPhone battery case to their repertoire. You know, there's just a whole cottage industry

of battery cases for everything. I just bought a big battery for my old Galaxy S3. Yes, it is the S3. And, hey, I'm bringing my mom into the new technology. I got her Note 4 for Christmas today. So she's coming in. Anyway, so Apple adds the iPhone battery case. So it's a branded Apple device that is a battery. So it looks pretty good, of course. It's overpriced, of course. Amazon is looking to lease 20 Boeing 787s. To lease them? Wow, just for the holidays? I don't know if it's just for the holidays or that's the business model. Okay. But it's clear the only reason to do that would be to start managing your own shipping. Yeah, instead of working with FedEx and whoever else they use right now. Just handle your own shipping. Now, what was interesting is I went to Quora and I posted the question in Google. It sent me to Quora. How many boxes does Amazon ship in a day? Oh, so a whole book. And they backed out. They know their profits. They said, let's say 70% of it is actual packages. Let's say it's about 1.1. Somebody told them that the average transaction was $47. Let's assume 1.1 package per transaction. 3,300,000 boxes a day. Yeah, so FedEx was doing a short expose on Fox News. And then they were interviewing the general manager at the FedEx location in Stafford. And he was saying, yeah, his numbers were similar in regards to how many boxes they were doing per day. And so, yeah, it's a lot of shipping going on. I'm not surprised at all. Huge. Hey, and the big reason we skipped the section where we would tell you how to write a review is because we do have a review. Let me go over this. This review is only three stars. This is from Brianna Sue 14. It says, good info on SEO tactics, but the beginning of each episode is long and drawn out and immature for a podcast that's supposed to be for business-minded people. Also,

the quality of the sound is rough. Ooh, thank God you didn't listen to one. Yeah, which one are you listening to? Yeah, that's kind of crazy. The beginning of each episode is long and drawn out. So, you know what I immediately thought of because no one's really kind of brought up this, the perspective of business-minded people. What is that Kramer dude who's like on Fox News or something who's talking about the market and throwing chickens and having bells? I mean, that's as public as you can get, as business-oriented as you could possibly be, and as immature as you could also possibly be. So I think if that show has stayed on for 10 years, we're probably well within our rights. Well, it isn't just that. Who says business-minded has to be boring? Yeah. Right. We're the Red Bull of SEO podcasts. This is infotainment. We're not the NyQuil of SEO podcasts. Exactly. Go listen to somebody else. So that was our review. Anyway, I'm bringing up Punch in the Face for reaching out to us. Thank you for your review. And she listens. This is good information. So thank you for that Punch in the Face. What do you got? Oh, I got some news as well. So dig this news, right? Bing released their list of top searches in 2015. Okay, cool. So in regards to celebs, three categories, right? Celebs, Caitlyn Jenner. Okay, yeah. Came first, followed by Miley Cyrus and then Taylor Swift. Okay. In regards to celebs who will search the most on Bing. In regards to sports, the Seattle Sioux Hawks winning the Super Bowl. Right. And in regards to news, it was the ISIS threat and, of course, the attacks on Paris. Yeah, yeah. Interesting amount of search data. So the attacks on Paris got the most searches for the whole year, and they just happened recently. That's interesting. In regards to news-related searches on Bing. So there's nothing bigger than that in the news this year. Well, not until we elect the president. Yeah, yeah. That'll be big

news. Yeah. Interesting. So then this was, well, there's some other big things, you know, like Black Lives Matter and the whole movement that's going on. Yeah, I would have thought that was in the news for so long, I would have thought that that would surpass Paris, but not nationally, not internationally. Well, and then consider this as well. This is Bing's, searches on Bing. So had we done maybe most news on social media, it would probably have been a lot different. Exactly. And international play is huge in that, right? Because certainly if you just did U.S. search, that was just, it's been top of mind for so long. Exactly. And that has got to have more searches. So I like this one as well. Comscore revealed that the total digital spend on Cyber Monday reached $3.1 billion. Wow. 21% gain versus the $2.5 billion spent on 2014. Wow. That's a lot of money spent online on one day. Wow. Like, literally. I thought this was kind of cool. Back to Bing, they released a new menu favorites feature. So if you do a search on Bing for a specific restaurant in their menu, they will show you the favorites on that menu based off of user reviews. Interesting. So if you're a restaurant and you're optimizing, you're ranking on Bing, you should get people to review their favorite dishes. The individual dishes now. And lastly, this is kind of cool, especially with video. So YouTube introduces the trending tab. Okay. And so basically if you go to YouTube and you're looking for viral videos, Right. the trending tab will show you those viral videos in real time. What's going on right now, how many people are looking at it. And it's cool. It's based off of, of course, comments, views, and links, and how much social activity is going on behind that video. So good way for YouTube to kind of bring us viral videos quickly. Yeah. You can find it. Yeah. So that's, that's my news. That is awesome. All right. Well, that is the

potatoes of our podcast. And at this point, I think, uh, what's her name? Brianna would be happy because now we're getting into the meat. Exactly. So again, punching the face to Ryan clutter, the good folks over at search engine journal. He posted this article, seven valuable email marketing strategies to increase open rates. So let's talk about email marketing for a minute, right? He starts off by saying email is the preferred method of communicating with businesses for 72% of adults in the United States. And I'm pretty sure he's right about that. One of the things we always preach here is that no matter how much traffic Google gets, no matter how much traffic YouTube gets, no matter how many people go to Facebook at the end of the day, the inbox is still the most visited place on the internet. They're going to go to their inbox multiple times a day on multiple devices. Every time you pick up your tablet, probably won't check your email. Every time you look at your phone, you're going to see if you have a Gmail notification. When you're on your computer, I use multiple monitors and one of those monitors is dedicated to my inbox. And so the inbox is still that place. And since it's that place, let's talk about how we can get more activity while we're there. He starts off by number one, he says subject lines. He says that 35% of email recipients open an email based on the subject line alone. Subject lines are important. What I added to this was I think you'll treat your subject lines like page titles. Effectively, you want to have your keyword there. You want to be aware of the length of your subject line. He says, make them concise and short. Studies show that the shorter the subject line, they higher the open rate. Interesting. He also suggests that we avoid spammy buzzwords like click here and free. And I totally agree. I think you should be natural with your subject lines. They should be somewhat optimized

and have some kind of click bait. Yeah. Because you want people to click it, but you don't want to be overly cheesy and rude. And you definitely don't want to be disrespectful. You ever had a disrespectful subject line? Oh, yeah. But yeah, I'm not clicking that. And I'm almost, give me off your list. So, so he's right though. I think that 35% is probably low and applies to whether I open an email in general. So for instance, if I get an email for you, I'm opening it. The subject line doesn't matter. So it's more along the lines of, Well, I think he's talking about 35% of marketing emails. Man, I think it's, it would have to be higher. Think about going into a promotions tab and you're just perusing. And the only ones you open are based on the subject line. Have almost nothing to do with who it is. And so 35% would be what? Between three and four out of 10 of those? Yeah. That's probably right. So do you click seven of them? No, I click three and four. I click three out of four of them. If I get 10 emails, I probably click three of them. Right. Based off the subject line. So I'm thinking, so what's the, it sounds like that's the criteria, right? So if your subject line were good enough, then you're one of the three clicks that may happen would happen out of 10. But I think the subject line is more important than that. I think that the number of people who click through based on the subject line is probably more like nine, right? So think about being in a promotions tab in Gmail. And if that promotions, if that headline sucks, you're not clicking it. Okay. So your decision making on the promotions tab on which ones you open is like nine out of 10 or 10 out of 10 on the quality of the subject line. On the quality of the subject line. Okay. Right. And so 35 is in general, right?

So I open yours, I open, you know, Daniel's and David's and Jay's, but the subject line is the thing that drives me in a very small percentage. But we're talking about, yeah, we're talking about marketing. And that's the one thing I'm not grasping because, um, when it's from somebody, you know, like, of course you can open mine. Right. And it doesn't have anything to do with the subject matter. Right. Exactly. So that, like I say, that's 35% is probably true for, of all the emails you open, how many of you, of them do you open because of the subject line? Probably like 35%. But when you're looking at promotional videos, how much does the quality of the subject line drive you opening them? Yeah. Bulk of probably 199.9% or something like that. Unless I know the sender. Yeah. Exactly. Okay. I can dig it. Um, number two. Cool. He says, um, two list segmentation. Great one. He says, uh, list segments help you further personalize and narrow your audience where you can choose the subscribers on your list that you want to receive a particular message. Segmentation is extremely important. Even more from email marketing to remarketing or retargeting or whatever you're doing. Yeah. Segmentation works. And I think to make it really work is you got to test it and he'll get into testing a little bit later, but you may want to segment by age, depending on your product or service. You may want to segment by product type, right? Maybe you're a retail person. Yeah. And so, and you sell, you know, things that do it yourself and then you maybe provide a service. You send out different lists to those different types of clients. Um, but make sure that if you have the opportunity to segment that you're actually doing it because it has value and take the time. And there's probably some, uh, length of list that you need to have before it really starts getting a value. Exactly. Just an example of what segmentation you might want to do

is, uh, you know, during a back to school sale, you know, is your email say, impress the other kids or does it say, get your kids what they need? Um, and, and so that's a great thing. Or does, uh, the drip campaign say, thank you for buying, which means you've segmented people who have already purchased from you or, Hey, we're looking forward to you being a customer, which you really don't want to send to existing customers. To existing customers. You want to split that list up. Yeah. Definitely. Speaking of split up number three is split testing. Yep. He says, uh, try variations and test on your subject lines, body text, call to actions, personalization, or the design of your email. He's right. You have to test, you have to test, test, test, and then test again. Yeah. Frankly, we say the only way to really determine if something works is to test it and then measure. So some sample tests, right? If you're split testing email marketing campaigns could be, for example, the send time. Yeah. Are you sending this in the morning and afternoon or the evening? Which one has the best engagement rate? Uh, maybe the sender. Good test. And I like that one. Yeah. Do you want to send this as Charles Lewis from eWebResults or do we want to send it from no reply at eWebResults? Right. Big difference. Right. Big difference on who's going to open it. Big difference on how the inbox is going to receive it. Yeah. Right. This may end up in a promotional tab or in your main inbox based off of the sender. Yeah. Very good idea. Split testing is a must. Number four. Four. He says, um, the mobile mindset with responsive design. This is important. I like this one, Jay. It's very important that I called him Jay and that's not his name. Um, uh, it's very important that you, that you make sure the, it is Ryan doing Ryan. Uh, the mobile mindset with responsive design. You want to make sure that

at the end of the day, the, your, your, your email marketing is accessible regardless of what type of device they're on. They could be, I don't know, on a phone and a tablet, right? At the same time. At the same time. Yeah. Like our audience who apparently were so engaging that, uh, she can't help but stay on her phone and tablet and tablet at the same time. And so you want to make sure you're responsible. Matter of fact, he goes on to say, maintain a consistent user experience, no matter the device they're using by optimizing your campaigns for a mobile first environment. Why did he say mobile first? Yeah. Well, he goes on to say mobile devices account for 51% of all emails opened per recent study by constant contact. And over 75% of subscribers will delete your email if they can't read it on a mobile device. I have done that. Yeah. Like, oh, this sucks. I can't read that. Delete. Delete. Get off of my device. And so you want to make sure that your mobile free. Maybe save it for a letter for the later for the workstation, which never happens. Which never happens because it's in my promo folder and I just didn't get to it. But I'll say this. Be sure your content is written to get the right actions mobily, right? If we're talking that bulk of your visits and both of your readers and bulk of your opens happen on mobile devices, then make sure your content reads well for a mobile, right? They like to swipe on mobile devices. We like to tap on mobile devices. Phone numbers need to be linked on mobile devices. Things like that. Social icons should be pretty prevalent and should be included with an action that automatically opens up that app. Yeah. Or mobile devices. So that way when that newsletter is received, they can have the best mobile experience. If you have an app, you should have a link in your email that makes it easy to download the app

on the mobile device. Yeah. Number five. Five. He says send frequency. He says, should you be contacting your list just once a month as much as once per week or every quarter of the year? Answer varies across industries. He's right. It just kind of depends. I said it definitely depends on the industry. Maybe if you're retail, you may want to send this weekly. If you're retail, you can send daily. Especially if you got coupons. Amazon is sending stuff daily, right? Yeah. Depending on what it is. Maybe if you're a service provider, then monthly probably works for you, right? Your AC service, a plumbing service, an electrician service, something like that. You want to send out something monthly, definitely something seasonal that just kind of touches bases with your people. Let them know you're still here and whatever service you're offering for that particular season. Yeah. They say that after 90 days, 80% of your customers have forgotten who you are. So make sure you're touching them before 90 days. Definitely. Or you may be in the entertainment industry. Yeah. That's definitely an industry where you can send out something daily. Sports, music, it's stuff happening all the time in entertainment. So you better be sending out something daily to stay top of mind. Matter of fact, I'll give you a good example. This is kind of, I'm not sure the technology behind this and you may get it. So Foot Locker. Okay. Right. I've subscribed to Foot Locker champs. I'm a Jordan sneaker fanatic. Right. But if I visit Foot Locker's website, I promise when I get back to my inbox, I have a new newsletter. Yep. No, I, and I've been pitched this and, and the time, you know, we'll include it in some of our larger, larger packages as those packages grow. But yeah, they, they know based on IP. Oh, IP that I visited and I'm on their list. And I know it works kind of like, kind of like the paid ads, how I can, you know, we can import email

lists into our paid ads. And so anybody who's logged in begins to see our remarketing ads. Technology is similar. It's pretty, yeah, it's pretty smart. So basically they're just, pretty slick. They've just got, they, they end up, you, you had to, I think at one point you had to click through to, from Foot Locker with a unique code to their website. So now they've tied their website and your browser to your email address. And so now when you browse. So as I hit the site, it triggers an email. Yeah. Yeah. It's brilliant. Cause it's just a quick reminder, especially when I'm just window shopping. Yeah. Cause I'm just kind of seeing what comes out, what's next. Are they, are they, so are those emails smart enough? They're like, Hey, check out our last three Jordans. Nope. But they will include remarketing in that email. And so the one that I was looking at, so the, nice and tough dude. Tough. Number six, six times six, right? Which is kind of one of the split testing he was talking about. He says, according to word stream, weekends have low open rates as well as Mondays and Fridays during the beginning and end of the work week, Tuesdays through Thursdays during business hours of one to three, p.m. Is the optimal time to ensure your email open rate is increased Tuesdays through Thursdays between one and three. So Tuesday through Thursday after lunch and before close the business is best time to send an email. Yeah. And what I say is, can I give him a pro tip right here? All right. All right. Time for pro tip. So my pro tip in regards to time sent, I will say send your emails based off your website engagement. Oh, that's a good one. Oh yeah. How do you do that? Well, find the biggest day that you had the most conversions. Go into analytics and maybe just choose that day only. Right. Then if you go to your conversions tab, then you will see the conversions that

you had on that day. Over the last six months or something. Well, if you said it just for the day, then it's going to show you over the last 12 hours, the time of day you had the most conversions. And whatever time of day that was, why don't you try sending your newsletter out at that time? Yep. Include that in your AB testing. Definitely include that. That was a good one. Ooh, that was a good pro tip. Number seven. Seven. He says, and this is the last one. He says, update your list and keep it fresh. He doesn't like a fresh list. He says, to improve your results and leads. Did you just say, ain't nothing like a fresh list? Fresh list. That's true. He says, to improve your results and leads, to increase sales, a clean email list leads to better deliverability. And he's right. At the end of the day, man, save your money and your time. Right. Ain't no need to be sending out these emails that you spent so much time crafting the right message, making sure it's responsive, making sure that it works on mobile devices, having the right ads in there, doing all this testing, just to send it to a bad list. Yeah. That's kind of a waste of time, effort and resources and everything else. So don't do that. And now, after you clean up your list, don't be discouraged, because you'll likely have a really small list after you clean it. A depressingly small list. Depressingly small. That's okay. At least it's a good list. Right. And just work on growing it. Richard was easier to do that, like on Facebook. Oh, man. Just clear out the people who have liked us, that we know never engaged with us, never. Yeah. So, so I will say this, just don't be encouraged if you just get smarter. Just instead, turn up your networking, right? All those business cards you get from each conference, drop them on your list. Matter of fact, when you get it, tell the

people you're going to do that. Hey, I'm going to add you on my email list. It's okay to do that. Excellent. He had a conclusion on here. His conclusion was don't be afraid to try new techniques and approaches. Steer away from the same bland approach to your subject lines and news that are content. He's right, man. I'll tell you this. Be creative. More importantly, be consistent. If you're going to send it out every month, sometime within the first week of the month, do that, do that consistently. And if you do that consistently over the period of time, maybe six months, a year, your list will grow. You will see engagement. More importantly, your open rates will go up because of that consistency. Dude, Matt Clutter. Matt is not his name. Ryan. Ryan. I called him the first time. Jay. You did. Yeah. Ryan. Dude, Ryan Clutter. Great article. Seven valuable email marketing strategies to increase open rates. Excellent. Do we have any blank stare or any? Oh, yeah. I do got some blank stare news. Is it blank or what? It's kind of like a blood. A blood. All right. A blood. A blood. I feel like a vampire when I do that. Blood. A blood. This one goes to Microsoft. So, you know, we have like on Android, we use Google now. Right. Okay, Google, and then you do your search. Or on Apple, they use Siri. Siri. Right. So, Microsoft has Cortana. Right. Right. So, they released. Didn't they choose a harder name? I feel like that's not hard enough to remember. Not only is the name bad, but they released it, so it's available on iOS, it's an Android now. Okay. The problem with that is, here's the problem with that. So, the benefit to Google now is that it's an Android app, right? Right, right. And so, if I need to check my calendar or something like that, it already has permissions to access my calendar, my contacts, and everything else. Right. Same thing with Siri. Right. If you want an

Apple device, you can access your cloud and everything else. Yeah, it's a device specific, yeah. Cortana does not have that access on Android or iOS. So, it can't do that stuff. It can only do that stuff. So, it really just answers questions from the internet. Interesting. Which you probably have to like, because like on yours, if you say, okay, Google, it'll just fire up, right? Exactly. Yeah, you can't do that. I have to go open it and ask it and yeah, so that's a waste of time making this available on other devices. Wow. It's probably like insanely, it's downloaded an insane amount of times and almost never used. Yeah. That's probably, wow, all right. Worth a blank end of what? Kicking the shins. By the way, we don't say kicking the shins enough. Ah, katish. Katish. To Microsoft for that one. Hey, if you're looking to grow your business with the largest, simplest marketing tool on the planet, the internet, call eWebResults for increased revenue in your business. Our phone number is 713-592-6724. Hey, if you have a referral for us, somebody who needs internet marketing, by the way, we do do website design. Usually it's as part of our internet marketing, but we do do website design and we do website design, working on getting butt out of my vocabulary. If you've got a referral, send them to us. We do internet marketing for them. They pay their bill. We pay you. Let's see. Remember, this was filmed live at 5999 West 34th Street, Suite 106, Houston, Texas, 77092. You can find the transcript of this podcast and the video of this podcast on our website, eWebResults.com. Thank you guys for making us. Before we wrap up, can I pose one question? This is really a favor for all our listeners, for those who are watching right now. We're working on something really, really big. We're going to roll this out next year and we need some help. We need some help. If you would be interested in learning maybe some advanced SEO techniques,

some advanced online marketing stuff, gritty. Yeah, like get into the meat to step by step. Get into the bones of this via video or something you could download. What would you like to know? How would you like to get it? Right? You want to listen to it? You want to watch it? You want to read it? Hit us up, man, at Best SEO Podcast at eWebResults. Hit us up on Facebook, facebook.com slash eWebResults and let us know what you're looking for and just know that we're working on something big. Really big. All right. Thank you guys for making us the most popular internet marketing podcast. Until the next podcast, my name's Chris Burris. Charles Lewis. Bye-bye for now. Balance check. One, two. Sound check. Let me clear my throat. Right, check. One, two, one, two. Let's see. Here we go. SEO Podcast 302. We about to go up, man. You should go, too. We're talking email marketing. We're targeting it's eWebResults. Let's get started, then. Mark it in. All right. Podcast 302. Yeah.