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

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.

Met Police admits victims' email address sharing error - how to avoid it happening to you

This article on BBC News caught my eye today. Scotland Yard has admitted inadvertently sharing the email addresses of more than 1,000 victims of crime with other victims. A Met spokesman said "In total 1,136 emails were sent out in seven batches of between 119 and 198 recipients but because the addresses were put in the wrong box they were visible to the other recipients in the batch." What seems apparent from this quote is that the Met was using its in-house email client (for example Outlook or similar) to mass e-mail people and instead of putting the email addresses in the "bcc" blind copy box, it placed the emails in the "cc" box instead meaning all recipients could see each others' addresses. The Information Commissioner's Office comments "We will be making enquiries into the circumstances of the alleged breach of the Data Protection Act before deciding what action, if any, needs to be taken." The maximum penalty is £500,000 for "the most serious cases".  Ouch! Mistakes like this are remarakbly simple to avoid and it's astonishing the Met were not better informed on how to send mass emails of this nature. How to avoid this happening to you. The simple solution is never to use your email program to send out newsletters or similar to large numbers of people. Instead use an email service provider such as Campaign Monitor. It doesn't cost much and it will help you avoid serious data breaches. Alternatively, just outsource your e-newsletter production to Expertise on Tap and we'll ensure you stay within the law.

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.

E-Newsletters - Common mistakes from 2010 and how to avoid them

End of Term Report 2010 - Email Newsletters I subscribe to a lot of email newsletters and although many of them are excellent some make fundamental mistakes, even those sent by very large companies. At the end of the article are some blog links which will help you avoid such errors. Here's my list of this year's common mistakes 1 Failure to include an unsubscribe link or where they have included one they have made it difficult to locate. Making it easy to unsubscribe will improve your list quality. 2 Contact details are not prominent. Subscribers will not go hunting for your phone number or email address. 3 The call to action is not clear and not prominent. What is it you want the subscriber to do? Call a number? Book now? Register here? 4 The subject line is poor. Subject lines should sell as well as tell what's inside. 5 The layout is poor with no clear distinction between articles and sometimes no prominent headlines. 6 The layout contains a large proportion of images to text or is entirely made up of images. This will trigger spam filters. 7 The e-newsletter width is too wide. I recommend 600px if possible and 630px as a maximum. This is because more emails are being read on smartphones these days. 8 There is too much content. I received one recently which was five pages long! 9 The content is dull, often because the author is wrapped up in their own world and fails to consider what will be of relevance to subscribers. Write it then sleep on it. I guarantee you will change your content the next day! 10 Business to business (B2B) emails being sent overnight or at the weekend.  B2B emails need to land in subscribers' inboxes during the working day to have more chance of being read. 11 The e-newsletter has not been tested across the main email clients and therefore doesn't display correctly in Outlook, GMail and/or Hotmail. 12 Broken links. Ensure you send yourself a test email and check that all links are working. Help is at hand!  Here are some previous blog posts which address some of the points raised above. • Why sending your B2B email newsletter overnight is a bad idea • Why you should make it easy to unsubscribe • Why your newsletter may no longer look right in Hotmail and how to fix it • Why your e-newsletter subject line is important • How to generate great content for your e-newsletter

Why sending your B2B email newsletter overnight is a bad idea

I see far too many businesses sending B2B* emails overnight. By overnight I mean after normal office hours. *Business to business Here's why it's a bad idea: 1. If you send after 5pm your email will most likely land in their inbox the next morning. That means it won't be fresh. It will be stale. It will be stale because when the user downloads it the next morning it will appear amongst all the other emails that have come in overnight, including spam. It will also be amongst non actioned emails from the previous afternoon. There's more chance of a busy recipient missing the email whilst he/she settles into the day's work. Ok you could argue that some people work beyond 5pm so what's the problem? But many do not. 2. An even worse scenario is to send your email over a weekend. When it's downloaded on Monday morning it's even less likely to be read. What's the solution? Simply send your email to arrive during working hours, ideally between 10 and 4pm so it's not too close to the start or end of the day. That way there's more chance of the email dropping into the recipient's inbox whilst at their desk. In other words it's a fresh email and more likely to be read. It's also worth avoiding lunchtime from 12-2. I could quote numerous studies that state the best time of day for B2B emails, however they all contain conflicting advice which is why I recommend the above broad time window. It's easy to pre-schedule your delivery time If you use a mailing service provider such as Mailchimp you do not even need to be present when you send your email. You can pre-schedule it to send at any time and date in the future.

How to get more subscribers for your e-newsletter

Here are our TOP 10 TIPS to get more subscribers 1 On every contact with customers take the opportunity to ask for their email address. Ensure you explain what you will use it for. 2 Add a subscribe form to your website. Place it on all the key landing pages. Right hand side of page and 'above the fold'. 3 Sell the benefits of subscribing to your newsletter. What will subscribe receive and how often? Why will it benefit them? 4 Give something away for free in return for subscribing. For example a tips sheet, a white paper or similar. 5 Add a link to your subscribe form in your email signature. 6 Promote your newsletter on blogs and forums. 7 Take hard copies of your newsletter to networking events and include details of how to sign up. 8 Archive your newsletter on your website along with details of how to sign up. 9 Include a forward to a friend link in your newsletters. 10 Include a subscribe link in every newsletter for people who have received a forwarded copy. Above all take every opportunity to collect email addresses. If you take the above steps your list will grow organically over time. You'll have a high quality list and will be communicating with people who have asked to hear from you.