Expertise on Tap | Email & Video Marketing...made easy

Our latest round up of e-newsletter tips

Here's our latest round up of tips for better e-newsletters. This list is based on e-newsletters I've received recently. 1. Use a real "from" address not a "no reply" address. Always use an address which can receive replies. This is imperative as some subscribers may have comments or queries 2. Keep your introduction brief. If your introduction is too long this means your relevant and  important content is buried too far down the page. Introductions can work well and add a personal touch to the email. But do keep them brief. A couple of lines at the most. 3. Include your company name in the "From" section I received an email this week with only the person's name in the "From" section. It was not clear which company the email was from so I deleted it. So, unless you're so well known that your name alone will suffice, always include the company name. 4. Don't include attachments I received an e-newsletter recently promoting an event with three lengthy attachments. Subscribers won't bother to wade through too much information. Never send attachments, they can trigger spam filters. If you need to include further information link to a pdf or a blog post. Keep the extra information concise. 5. Don't use your email program and send to "undisclosed-recipients" This just looks amateur and depressingly I receive several examples of these every week! Using your email program will almost certainly result in compatibility issues. Eg. it might look fine in Outlook but not in Hotmail. Use an email service provider to send your newsletter, for example Mailchimp. Or better still outsource it to us!

How to increase click throughs for your e-newsletter using video

If you try and embed a video into your e-newsletter it won't work properly in most email programs. The email is also likely to get blocked by anti virus ssoftware. Technology is changing and this may become possible in future but for now a work round is necessary. Here's a simple technique which I use with great results in clients' newsletters. Simply pause the video and take a screen grab then add a play button onto the image. Use this image in your newsletter so that it looks like a video screen. You'll get far more clicks than just using a text link saying "Click here to watch video".

^ Examples of video ^ screen grabs used for my client The Stuart Holmes Hair & Beauty Spa

Why email marketing is not dead. It's just changing

Email marketing is dead! That's what various web articles in the past year would have you believe.  They argue that the growth of social networking will eventually mean people abandon email and start communicating using tools like Facebook messaging and Twitter. Presumably brevity will become the norm as we all attempt to converse in 140 characters or less (!). What I, and others in the email marketing industry are saying is email is not dead. It's just changing. Discover how it's changing and read my 5 point plan on how to adapt your own email newsletter.

How to link to a specific time in a YouTube video

It's a common dilemma. You're watching a funny pets video and you want to send a link to your friend about the bit where the skateboarding dog comes on. Usually it goes something like "Check out this amazing dog, LOL! It comes on around 2 minutes in". Now you can send an exact link of a specific time in any YouTube video. Just right click on the video at the relevant time and then left click on "Copy video URL at current time".  The link is then on your clipboard for you to copy into an email, a Tweet, a Facebook post or whatever.

The resulting link will look something like this:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Je8nn-RzYZk&feature=player_detailpage#t=28s