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

Why your email links in e-newsletters will no longer work in Hotmail - and what to do about it

In the last few weeks Hotmail has stopped supporting "mailto" tags in HTML emails. What is a "mailto" tag and why does this matter? A "mailto" tag is where an email address is turned into a clickable hyperlink, for example info@expertiseontap.co.uk. Alternatively it's where the actual words are hyperlinked. This is usually used for "contact us" links or calls to action like click here to reserve tickets. Hotmail is no longer supporting "mailto" tags in HTML newsletters which means for Hotmail users your text will appear hyperlinked but won't be clickable. This is less of an issue for B2B (business to business) newsletters where recipients are less likely to be Hotmal users. But it's more an issue for B2C (business to consumer) emails where as many as 20% or more recipients could be Hotmail users. Solutions Currrently no-one has come up with a work round so for now you have these choices. 1. Link to a "contact us" form on your website 2. Spell the email address in full. At least Hotmail users can then copy and paste it even if they can't click on it. 3. Irrespective of this Hotmail issue, for calls to action such as "click here to enter competition" I recommend not using an email link at all. It's far better to use a form creation service such as Formstack. That way it looks more professional and it avoids clogging up your inbox with entries. You can see all the entries in one place on a web page and you can even export the data to Excel. Formstack plans start from $14 per month. Or, if you want a cheap and cheeerful form creator Google Docs has this option in its spreadsheets product. It's less functional than Formstack and doesn't look quite as professional.

How to use YouTube ‘annotations’ as a marketing tool

A YouTube annotation is a caption that is added after you've uploaded your video. It could be a promotional message or a link to another of your videos. If used wisely and sparingly, annotations can work as a great marketing tool. For advice on how to set up annotations on your YouTube videos please contact me Here's an example I recently set up for East Glos Club. They've had a promotional video on their site for some time and the club is holding an open day in May. I've simply added an annotation which appears on the video at 00:12 seconds and again at 00:50. It appears this quickly to ensure people see the message soon after video has started. In this case the annotation is quite large but it's only going to be on the video for a month so we're not too bothered about this! It is possible to make the annotations smaller to avoid the viewer becoming distracted. You can also link the annotation to another YouTube video. Here's a good example on the viral video "Charlie Bit my Finger". They're promoting a new video and also an iPhone app. For advice on how to set up annotations on your YouTube videos please contact me

Now we can all make money on YouTube! Or can we?

Until recently only producers of the most popular videos were eligible for YouTube's Partner Program. This program enables producers to serve ads during their videos and take a cut of the revenue generated. For example, Howard Davies-Carr the father of the two boys in the "Charlie Bit my Finger" viral video has reportedly earned £100,000 from it. Mind you, it has had 444 million views! Now YouTube has opened up its Partner Program to everyone. So could you make money from your videos and how do you go about it? And what are the potential pitfalls for businesses and brands? You can enable monetization for one or more of your videos in account settings. You also need to have a Google Adsense account set up. For detailed advice on how to do this please contact me. Hold your horses! Before you rush off and start monetising your videos here are a few things to bear in mind. 1 For your videos to be eligible for monetization, you must own all the necessary rights to commercially use all visuals and audio, whether they belong to you or a third party. By commercial use rights, this means the rights to make money from the video. Read more about this.     2 To make real money you're going to need tens or even hundreds of thousand of views. This is not a get rich quick scheme.     3 Consider the impact that adverts will have on the enjoyment of your videos and more importantly the perception of your brand. You can choose whether to display "pre-roll" ads before your video starts playing or you can choose display ads which will appear superimposed over your video. Or you can choose both. If you opt for monetisation on your YouTube account, banner ads measuring 300 x 250 will be shown by default to the right of the feature video and above the video suggestions list.     4 The adverts might be related to your video content. This means adverts for competing businesses may well appear. So what's the verdict? If you think you've got a video which is going to go viral like "Charlie Bit My Finger" then definitely consider monetising it. However if you're using YouTube for videos relating to your business then it might be best not to bother due to the potential adverse impact on your brand. If you're not sure, you could trial monetisation of your videos and assess what types of adverts are being displayed. Oh, and if you're one of the few people on planet Earth who hasn't seen "Charlie Bit my Finger" here it is...

More common e-newsletter mistakes and how to fix them.

I subscribe to a lot of email newsletters and whilst many of them are very good, some senders are making simple but easily corrected mistakes. Here are some recent examples I've seen in email newsletters along with some tips. 1. The name of the sender is not well known to the recipients Several e-newsletters I've received recently have been from "John Smith" or "Jane Brown" or whoever. The problem with this is if that name is not known to most of the recipients then they're unlikely to regard the email as being from a trusted sender and therefore less likely to open. That said, adding a person's name give the email a personal and less corporate touch so where possible I recommend including a person's name and the business name. I recently did this when sending out an e-shot for my client 4Networking. The e-shot was a regional event in Yorkshire so the email came from "Tom Lawrence - 4Networking". We achieved good results because Tom is a trusted and well-known figure to many of the recipients. 2. The unsubscribe process is not tested I recently unsubscribed from a newsletter and received the confirmation email below. The text "Repeating customers - didn't finish registration" is actually the list name in Mailchimp, which they're using to send out their e-shots. Unortunately this looks clumsy and is meaningless to recipients. So, make sure you test your unsubscribe process and if possible stop the list name from appearing in your unsubscribe confirmation emails. 3. The font size is so small it's almost illegible Subscribers need bright bold headlines to draw them in. And the main body text must be large enough to avoid them squinting to read it. Here's a newsletter I received recently and even though my eyesight is pretty good it's hard work to read this. If you make it difficult for your subscribers to read your content many won't bother. ACTUAL SIZE (COMPANY NAME MASKED) Does your e-newsletter text look a bit small? If so consider increasing your font by a point or two. And don't forget smart phone users. On those small screens tiny fonts are almost impossible to read without a lot of zooming.

How to measure audience retention for your videos using YouTube analytics

Big news from YouTube! They've recently introduced a massive improvement to their video analytics. This brings some powerful benefits if your business has videos on YouTube. You can now monitor how long people watched your videos for. It's all very well saying your video got 800 views but what if those viewers stopped watching part way through thus missing out on your key message? Now you can play the video and view a graph showing exactly which proportion of the audience were watching at any given time. See the example below. How to view your audience retention 1 Go to www.youtube.com/analytics and logon to your account. 2 Click "audience retention" on the left hand side bar. 3 Then choose your video beneath where it says "content". 4 Choose your date range. 5 Play the video and the red vertical bar will move. Note: This will only work for videos with more than a few hundred views. Top 3 tips on how to use this to your advantage: • Anyalyse where the drop off occured. What specific content caused people to tune out? • Was your video too long? Could you have got your key messages across in a shorter video? • Use the results to work out what you could do differently next time you produce a video. Here is an example of the audience retention measure. As you play the video in your YouTube account the vertical bar moves across.

YouTube Analytics: Find out how people 'discovered' your videos

Big news from YouTube! They've recently introduced a massive improvement to their video analytics. This brings some powerful benefits if your business has videos on YouTube. YouTube now has a new ‘discovery’ measure which shows you the different in which people found your video. This measure could prove useful for future videos in terms of where you decide to embed it. For example on your own site, on other people's sites, web forums and such like.  See the example below.... You can access this information by clicking the small icon next to your views count which looks like this >>> And you can set these statistics to be public or private.

HOW TO remove YouTube branding from videos embedded on your website

Until recently, one of the downsides of embedding YouTube videos on your website was the YouTube logo in the lower right hand corner of the screen >> There's now a way of removing this by adding a small snippet of code to the existing embed code. The following instructions assume you already know how to add YouTube embed code to your website. 1 Find the video on YouTube. 2 Click on "Share" just beneath the video player. 3 Then click on "Embed"   4 Scroll down and untick "Show suggested videos when the video finishes". I recommend this to avoid competitors' videos playing when your video has ended. 5 Select your required video size.   6 Grab the resulting embed code. 7 Add &modestbranding=1 immediately after where it shows ?rel=0.   So, this: <iframe width="560" height="315" src="http://www.youtube.com/embed/e8BORfMv5Pc?rel=0" frameborder="0" allowfullscreen></iframe>   Would change to: <iframe width="560" height="315" src="http://www.youtube.com/embed/e8BORfMv5Pc ?rel=0 &modestbranding=1" frameborder="0" allowfullscreen></iframe> If you get stuck please call me for some free of charge help.

Three more tips for better email newsletters

1. WHY not to send your newsletter on the same day that you write it. I guarantee if you write your newsletter today and review it tomorrow that you will change something! Reviewing your content the following day enables you to look at it with fresh and more objective eyes. This provides an opportunity to: 1 Proof read your content.     2 Test your content. Are all your images displaying and links working?     3 Abridge your content. Is it too long? Are you using short sentences and paragraphs? Have you got plenty of white space?     4 Assess your content for relevance. It's easy to get wrapped up in your own world so stand back, review your content and ask: - Why is this relevant to my subscribers?   - How does it add value? 2. WHY you should include a subscribe link in your e-newsletter. This is where you might say "Why do I need one? They're already subscribed aren't they?". Not necessarily. If someone has received a forwarded copy or read the newsletter on Twitter or Facebook, including a prominent subscribe link will enable them to do just that! 3. WHY you should avoid a big logo at the top of your e-newsletter I often receive e-newsletters with a large logo in the masthead. Sometimes these are 200 pixels high or larger.  If you're wondering how big 200px is, it's this big... LOOK AT MY FANTASTIC NEW LOGO I'VE SPENT LOTS OF MONEY ON IT THAT'S WHY IT'S THIS BIG I REALLY WANT YOU TO NOTICE IT The problem with using a logo this size is when your subscriber is viewing your newsletter in their preview pane it pushes the content down the page.   They need to see some of the content to make a decision on whether to open. Therefore it's far better to have a smaller, more discreet logo in the masthead.

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.