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.

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.

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.

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

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

How we used video to help 360 degree feedback company promote its services

CASE STUDY Lumus™ is one of the UK's leading suppliers of 360 degree feedback surveys - leading the way in technical excellence, feedback report quality, latest thinking and client support. Lumus had a business challenge which was how to convey their unique and cost effective approach quickly and effectively to potential clients and website visitors. There were three stages to the process: 1. Planning discussion We discussed what type of video would work best for Lumus. Following our input they decided on a "1 way interview" technique We recommended this technique because the resulting video ends up looking more conversational and less like a hard sell. It's also easier for the interview participant to appear more natural than talking direct to camera. 2. Story board development We worked with Lumus to develop this. It was vital to ensure we didn't just turn up for the shoot with no ideas on the structure and content. 3. The Shoot Although we had built a story board as we got into the shoot we realised some elements of it could be improved. A key point here is just because there is a story board it need not be cast in stone and if there is an opportunity to improve upon it during the shoot don't be afraid to do so. Mike Cooper of Lumus comments: "Working with  Expertise on Tap was a pleasure – they provided lots of great advice and steered us through the development and filming process in a very professional and skilled way – I’m overjoyed with the finished product" Here's the video...