Hi everyone,

Comm100 Forum Open Source has been published on CodePlex, an open source project community powered by Microsoft.

Check it out at: http://opensourceforum.codeplex.com/

Comm100 Forum Open Source is the powerful and easy -to-use open source forum software based on ASP.NET and SQL server. You can download the forum package with no limitations for free and install it in your own environment. You can also have full access to the source code and freely tailor the forum software according to your own needs.

Thanks.

From 0 Client to 42,925 Registered Businesses;
From 1 Product to 5 Integrated Products & 1 Open Source Project;
From English Version Only to English, Spanish, German, Japanese & Chinese Versions

– Comm100 Spent Only 1 Year !

VANCOUVER, BC –(Marketwire – August 25, 2010) In August 2009, Comm100, the provider of open source and free hosted customer service software, entered the market with its first product. One year passed, Comm100 has grown from a complete new business to an international industry leader with 42,925 clients around the globe.

As a leading provider of customer service software, Comm100 is committed to helping businesses develop and maintain good customer relationships. Comm100 has built a large customer base and a good brand reputation all over the world. 42,925 businesses have registered with Comm100 in only one year. Positive feedback from clients keeps coming.

“I am pretty much in awe about how amazing Comm100 is. I’m using its live chat software on my online store and all my staff love it. We also can’t believe the features Comm100 developed for this product,” said Danny Keyes, Customer Support at Shop Radio Cast.

Comm100 now offers five customer service applications including Live Chat, Forum, Knowledge Base, Newsletter and Email Ticket. Several others are under development, including Issue Tracking, Contact and Survey. All these applications can be either fully integrated to offer a complete customer service solution, or used independently to meet different business needs.

Moreover, Comm100 has released its powerful and easy-to-use open source forum as well as multi-language versions of its products, including English, Spanish, German, Japanese and Chinese. Comm100 grows rapidly according to its business plan and has basically completed its product structure. Concept turns to fact after one year’s efforts.

“We have a passionate and innovative team. That’s why Com100 can achieve this much in such a short time. Support from our clients is also vital, as it fills us with confidence and motivation. We believe we will do even better in the future,” said Amy Gu, VP of Comm100.

About Comm100

Comm100 provides open source and free hosted customer support software for small and medium businesses. Comm100 Network Corporation focuses on developing and managing fully integrated customer support and communication solutions to enable businesses to communicate with their customers more effectively through multiple integrated communication channels, including Live Chat, Forum, Newsletter, Survey, Knowledge Base, Email Ticket and Issue Tracking. All Comm100 products are delivered as FREE SaaS/Hosted applications and fully managed by Comm100. A part of the applications are also available open source. Comm100 is a Microsoft Gold Certified Partner. Visit us online at: http://www.comm100.com/

Comm100 Released Open Source Forum Software Based on ASP.NET & SQL Server

VANCOUVER, BC– Open source project has been a real hit in the technology world these days. To meet strong market demand, Comm100, the provider of open source and free hosted customer service software, has just released its open source project, Comm100 Forum Open Source.

Comm100 Forum Open Source is the powerful and easy -to-use open source forum software based on ASP.NET and SQL server. You can download the forum package for free and install it in your own environment. You can also have full access to the source code and freely tailor the forum software according to your own needs.

“Open source software is a widely-adopted and proven business model. Comm100 Forum is our first open source project, on which we have made a lot of efforts. We are trying to be the No. 1 ASP.NET open source forum on the web and we will continue to roll out more open source projects,” said Amy Gu, Vice President of Comm100.

Comm100 Forum Open Source makes it easy for you to set up your own online community and enables you to have full control over your own forum.

Comm100 Forum Open Source hosts a wide range of features, such as unlimited forums and users, multiple control panels, flexible permission settings, vigorous security policy, fully customizable forum style, unlimited topics and posts, various post statuses, user-to-user message, advanced search and many others.

For more information about Comm100 Forum Open Source, please visit:
http://www.comm100forum.com/

Comm100 also offers a hosted edition of its free forum software. It’s specifically designed for businesses to communicate with their customers. It is delivered as a SaaS application and fully hosted by Comm100. No setup or maintenance is required on your side. Besides, it’s fully integrated with other Comm100 applications, including Live Chat, Newsletter, Email Ticket, Knowledge Base, etc.

About Comm100

Comm100 provides open source and free hosted customer service and communication software for businesses. Comm100 products include Live Chat, Forum, Newsletter, Knowledge Base, Email Ticket, Issue Tracking, Survey, etc. As business grows fast, Comm100 has built a large customer base around the globe. More than 40,000 businesses have registered with Comm100 in 12 months. For more information, please visit: http://www.comm100.com

Get Personal!
When is the right time (and the wrong time) to personalize your email sends?

In This Article…

If you’re actively emailing but aren’t sure if it will improve your campaign to include personalized user information such as a name or a user name, Comm100 explains in this article the pros and cons of both and the best times to use personalization in emails for the best results.

To Personalize or Not to Personalize

These days, almost all third party email marketing platforms offer the option to personalize your email sends by including your client’s user name or name. Is this a good idea and can it improve your email marketing results? The answer, of course, is both yes and no.

The Basic Conversion Fact

Numerous studies have revealed that the more personalized you can make your email, the better it will convert. The simplest version of this would be to include your client’s user name or name in the intro to the email. The most complex version of this would be to send multiple versions of your email with different offers and products displayed to users based on their on-site behaviors and purchasing patterns.

Let’s assume that, for most of us, we will be operating on the “simple” end of this spectrum. Studies from multiple sources have revealed the following:

Using a name or user name in a subject line will improve open rates as users typically assume that this email has come from a trusted source.

Using a name or user name within the content of the email itself improves conversion rates and has the added benefit of creating brand loyalty with the user.

So, it would seem as though it would be an easy decision to include a personalized element in your email sends, right? Unfortunately it’s not that simple.

The Issue of Privacy

Unfortunately, the issue of user’s concerns about privacy and the use of their information can throw a wrench in your belief that personalization is the best move for your email product. Selecting a bad context to use a piece of personal information in can result in the abandonment of users from not only your email list but also your brand. Here are some important elements to keep in mind when deciding whether to incorporate any form of personalization in your email campaigns.

Would your users want other people to know that they use your product? There are any number of industries out there where clients and users might not be comfortable with others knowing that they use the product or service. This can range from anything as salacious as gambling or adult sites to something as essentially harmless as dating sites, medical information sites and financial advice sites. While, in theory, an email that uses personalization will only be seen by the person it was intended for, it can have the unfortunate side effect of creating uncertainty about the safety of their identity with a user. If you have reason to believe that any significant portion of your user base would be concerned with the security of their identity, veer away from personalizing your email services.

Test…then test again! Are you tired of hearing this phrase yet? But it’s true. If you’re willing to take the hit that your test may result in some people leaving your list, run two separate a/b tests. The first test should use a name or user name within the email, and one that test should use that information in the subject line. If there’s any question, you’ll certainly know after that test if your users like personalization. Just remember, pay attention to all four key metrics when you do this: open rate, click-through rate, conversion AND unsub rate. It’s one of the few tests where you may see a variation in unsubs that matters!

NEVER use a last name! The one thing that we can tell you for sure is that you should never use a client or user’s last name as a personalization field. By just about every study ever done that is one step over the line of what people are comfortable seeing being used in a piece of marketing collateral. No last names! We would recommend not even using last initials!

Name or User Name?

One of the larger questions of using personalization in an email is whether to use a client’s actual first name or their user name. Once again, there are arguments for each option.

First Name: Using a user’s first name as your personalization element has the advantage of making the email, well, more personal! It takes the user out of being a nameless face or possibly randomized user name and into the area of having a relationship with you or your company. However, the downside is that it’s less anonymous than using a user name, so clients who are uncomfortable about user privacy will have a more negative reaction to it. The other downside is that a first name is actually a more readily available piece of information to a spammer. Spammers regularly buy lists of emails and registered users from list brokers and include the first name field, and a first name is actually a relatively easy piece of information to phish for spammers who scour the internet stealing user information from insecure forums and registration sites, so it can, in some cases, have the opposite impact of creating company trust. However, at base, it’s true that nothing makes a person feel more like they’re in a personal relationship than the use of their name!

User Name: Using a user name counteracts some of the issues that you’ll encounter with using a client’s first names. For starters, it’s a more anonymous piece of information, so clients or users may not experience the same concerns about privacy. Secondly, a user name isn’t a field commonly used or even obtainable by spammers, so you’ll overcome what may be an initial reaction by users to seeing a potentially spam-like message. However, the downside is fairly obvious, which is that a user name is not as friendly or personal as a first name.

Whether you use first name or user name, be careful about where you put that information in the email! Because personalization is designed to improve your metrics, if you’re not including it in the first two inches of the email, you’ve probably negated its positive impact already!

Personalization is an important tool in optimizing your email campaigns, but it needs to be approached with caution and a specific plan. Be sure to monitor your email performance closely once implementing it! And be prepared to test several different versions of it as well!

The first step to getting started with email marketing, whether you’re just getting started or ready to start implementing personalization, is to select a quality email sending partner. Comm100, who provided you with this complimentary summary, offers a completely free, hosted email and newsletter solution. It’s both a great long-term and short-term solution to getting your email marketing off of the ground to just about any type of customer or client email list! Check it out at: http://www.comm100.com/emailmarketingnewsletter/

Smartphones and Email!
How many people read their marketing emails on their phone, and why is that important to you?

In This Article…

If you’ve got an active email list that you’re sending to, be aware that many of them will be reading their email on smartphones. Comm100 explains in this article how to create an email that will be as effective on a mobile phone as on a large computer monitor.

The Smartphone Phenomenon

Walk into any coffee shop, library, bus stop, gym … honestly walk just about anywhere and you’ll see the masses browsing the web and checking their email on the newest generation of cell phones. Smartphones, as they’re called, are defined as mobile phones that operate with advanced capabilities and operating systems, similar to that of PC functionality. These phones have internet browsers and capabilities, and, increasingly people are completing their internet surfing and email reading on these phones.

Why is this important to my email campaign?

The primary reason that the proliferation of smartphones is important to your email campaign is that your marketing email design needs to take into account how it will display on a smartphone. This makes email design even more restrictive than it used to be. We’ll detail the elements of email design that you need to keep in mind at the end of this article, after we familiarize you with the lay of the land when it comes to smartphones.

Types of Smartphones

By the time that you read this article, the information about the most common types of smartphones will probably already be out of date! However, at this moment, the smartphone market looks something like this (according to a 2009 study by Canalys):

Symbian: 47%

RIM (ie Blackberry): 21%

Apple iPhone: 15%

Microsoft Phone: 9%

Android: 5%

All Others: 3%

If you email a great deal, it would be worth your time to find somebody in the office with each of these phones to see how your email displays on their various screens and resolutions. It’s becoming as important as checking your email in various email providers.

How many people use smartphones?

According to a recent comscore study, you can expect up to 20% of your email list to be reading their email on a smartphone, and, if the demographic that you market to involves business professionals, that number will skew even higher. It’s a growing demographic, and one that you’ll need to cater to if you want to optimize your email marketing platform.

How does this impact my email marketing?

The primary way that the emergence of smartphones will impact your email marketing campaign will be to make your design team even more frustrated! We’ve already discussed how design teams can become frustrated with the html limitations and low graphics counts required in good email design. Imagine how your designers are going to respond to you when you tell that that, ideally, you need your email template to still resolve on a three inch by two inch screen. It should be readable on that size screen, and it can’t be dependent on graphics in case they don’t load!

The good news is that you’ll have a better chance of having your email read by users checking their email on a smartphone! Some studies have indicated that users checking email on a smartphone do it more during leisure time or “down time” than those who check on a laptop. For example, they check while waiting for public transportation or for a meeting to start. So unlike trying to stand out in an inbox that people are trying to clear, you stand of chance of being opened just to that the user has something to read.

So, the keys to remember are that you should keep in mind that a portion of your users will view your email on a three inch by two inch screen. Then you can hope that you’re on the lucky end of an increased open rate!

Should I segment out my smartphone users and send them a different email template?

There’s been some discussion of the possibility of beginning to ask users when they join your email list if they regularly view their email on a smartphone. This would be similar to asking users if they prefer to receive their email in html or plain text, and the end result would be to send those users a different email template that was designed to resolve better on a small screen.

We’d recommend against this. Firstly, it’s probably a segment of your list that doesn’t justify the extra resources and list management to create an entirely different list for them. Secondly, even your most avid smartphone users won’t always view email on their smartphone. So if you’re sending an email that’s designed for a small screen and then the user views it on a normal laptop or desktop, you’ve just sent a highly non-optimized email.

Rather than try to treat regular smartphone users separately, just practice good clean design and be sure your email doesn’t explode into a mess when viewed on a smartphone screen!

Being aware that your users will view your email on a smartphone is becoming more and more important, and your email program will certainly suffer performance issues if you don’t accommodate it. However, it’s still a growing segment of your list, and your main focus should continue to be on laptop and desktop users.

The first step to getting started with email marketing, whether you’re just getting started or ready to move up to advanced steps like optimizing for a smartphone, is to select a quality email sending partner. Comm100, who provided you with this complimentary summary, offers a completely free, hosted email and newsletter solution. It’s both a great long-term and short-term solution to getting your email marketing off of the ground to just about any type of customer or client email list!

Check it out at: http://www.comm100.com/emailmarketingnewsletter/

The Email Content Quandary
Direct Response Email vs. Informational Email: Which is What You Need?

In This Article…

If you’re considering implementing an email marketing program, of if you’ve already started emailing but aren’t sure if your content is the right type of content, this article explores whether an informational newsletter or a direct response sales email will be better for your overall email needs.

Finding the Right Content Balance

Often, in developing your email program, the following question will arise: “Will my customers be offended and stop reading my emails if every email is just a hard sell?” Shortly after that question arises, the next logical question comes to mind. “But if I send only informational content in an email, will my users then follow through to purchase anything or will they just read the email and then delete it?”

Finding the balance between providing users with content that will make them feel that your email marketing is valuable and generating direct sales and ROI from your email campaign can be a challenge. Succeeding at accomplishing the best balance will most likely requires testing on your part. However, there are some basic concepts that you can walk through while developing your email program that will help.

What exactly did your users sign up for? What do your users want?

The first question that you need to ask yourself is this: “What exactly did you promise your users when they signed up for your newsletter?” Does your newsletter sign-up box promise users a weekly tip? Does it promise informational articles? Do users sign-up because you’ve assured them that there are exclusive monthly discounts to members of the email list? The most basic rule of thumb is that your email recipients need to receive exactly what it is that you promised them. So if you’ve incentivized people into signing up for your email list by promising them quarterly white papers or ebooks, then that needs to be what you send if you want to keep your list loyal.

The second half to this question, however, is the more important one. What is it, exactly, that your users want to receive in their emails? And how do you determine this?

There are two ways to figure out what your users really want to receive. The first, creating multiple email list options, is detailed below. The second, however, is to do some simple a/b testing. In this instance, you’ll need to change your email acquisition page (whether that’s a separate landing page or a module on your main website) to present a different value proposition for your email product at different times. The easiest way to do this is to change it out at the beginning of a week. So, for example:

- During the first week, when people sign up for your email list, they see the message “Join our email list for weekly tips on becoming a happier person.”

- During the second week, when people sign up for your email list, they see the message “Join our email list for exclusive monthly product discounts.”

At the end of each week, divide the number of impressions that the pages with the email capture form received by the number of sign-ups to the email list in order to get your conversion percentage. The one that performed better is the one that your clients want to receive!

Create Multiple Email Formats to Get the Best of Everybody

An even better option than trying to limit your email list to just one format that appeals to only one segment of your audience is to create different email lists for your users to join. Typically, this would include an informational newsletter, a discount or special offer email and a generic update email list. However, depending on your product or business, there are many other options as well. You may have enough users to create email options that are specific to brands, geographies, and types of news or other segments.

The benefit of offering multiple email lists for your users to choose from is that you’ll always be sure that your users are receiving exactly what they wanted. The downside, however, is that you’ll be producing more email products and your list will be harder to manage, track and determine ROI on. The scope of your resources and the importance of email marketing in your marketing mix should be the driver on this decision making.

Also, remember that even if you offer multiple email lists to your clients, CAN-SPAM requires that you offer users the option of opting out of all emails instead of just one list!

What if my users want informational emails? Can my email program be profitable then?

One of the more common issues we’ve encountered in the email marketing world is the dilemma of what happens when you’re users don’t actively want to be marketed to but instead want to receive informational emails. While discounts, sales and exclusive merchandise tend to be the primary reasons that people will join an email list, you will find the situation where people honestly prefer information based emails. In this case, we’d suggest that you keep in mind two factors when evaluating the value of your email program.

Retention Value: In an earlier article, we discussed customer life cycle and how email can be used to extend the time a customer is in a relationship with your brand. While a direct return on an email is important, there’s also value in the fact that your email keeps your brand and product name in the mind of your users even when they’re not ready to make a subsequent purchase from you. Because your email program develops a relationship with your clients, when they are ready to make a purchase again, you’ll be the first option in their mind. Be sure to factor the retention value of your email when evaluating its role in your marketing mix.

Contextual Selling: Also, let it not be thought that it is impossible to generate sales out of an information email. It’s just that doing that means that you need to take the time and effort to create very compelling content. Contextually mentioning products and linking to those products from your email, when done well, can actually yield better results than a direct sales piece in some instances. The key is to relate the product to the information in such a way that users really see how the product is useful to them and then act on that information. Contextual marketing is an entire lesson on its own. However, don’t underestimate the value that can come from it!

Is it really terrible to send a direct response email to a list that’s opted-in to a newsletter or informational email?

The short answer is that it’s not terrible at all! Often your users will appreciate your periodic discount or sales email and respond favorably (and profitably) to it. The key is to limit how many times you send these types of emails and to make sure that the offers that you include in them will truly be perceived as valuable by your clients or users. If you’re sending direct solicitation offers as frequently as informational newsletters, then that’s too often! But sending a special offer monthly will most likely be appreciated by your users.

There’s no hard and fast answer to what type of emails your clients want to receive. You’ll need to experiment, listen to your customers and pay attention to what gets the best responses when you send it out. However, most companies will find that walking the line between useful content and compelling offers will yield the best results.

The first step to getting started with email marketing, whether you’re about to send a content-based newsletter or are going straight for direct response sales pices, is to select a quality email sending partner. Comm100, who provided you with this complimentary summary, offers a completely free, hosted email and newsletter solution. It’s both a great long-term and short-term solution to getting your email marketing off of the ground to just about any type of customer or client email list! Check it out at: http://www.comm100.com/emailmarketingnewsletter/

Good news, everyone! Comm100 Forum Open Source has been released.

Comm100 Forum Open Source is the powerful and easy -to-use open source forum software based on ASP.NET and SQL server. You can download the forum package with no limitations for free and install it in your own environment. You can also have full access to the source code and freely tailor the forum software according to your own needs.

Highlights

• Complete Control over Your Own Forum

• Powerful Yet Easy to Use

• Fully Customizable

• Friendly User Experience

Comm100 Forum Open Source helps you easily build your own online community to spark and manage discussions.

Learn more at: http://www.comm100forum.com/

Thanks.

Best Practices Checklist

email marketing Best Practices 101.

In This Article…

If you’re considering implementing an email marketing program or are currently emailing but experiencing underperformance, Comm100 provides you in this article  with a list of ten best practices that will assure improvement in your email marketing campaigns.

The Top Ten

Despite what you may hear, email marketing is a complicated process with many moving parts. But that doesn’t mean that you can’t have a successful email marketing program or campaign while keeping things relatively simple. Comm100 has narrowed down the ten best practices that you absolutely must remember. If you follow them, you certainly won’t fail!

1. Make Sure That Your Email Has Many Obvious Links

The purpose of your email is to drive traffic to your landing page, product page or website. It’s really that simple to define the main purpose of an email. Without driving clicks to your page or website, users can’t convert to sign-ups or customers. They key to accomplishing this is, quite simply, capitalize on every moment where a user may feel compelled to click. Include lots of links (at least one per paragraph of text) and make sure that your links look like links. Using strong calls to action and even authoritative “click here” messaging will also help you.

Takeaway Message: It’s a best practice to have many links and to make sure that those links are obvious to the user.

2. Minimize Your Use of Images

We’ve covered this in great detail in a previous article, but always keep in mind that an email is not a print mail piece. Many (if not most) of your recipients will not see the images included in your email, which means that every image you include can be wasted space. Use well-coded html instead of image heavy design. Never send an email that is simply one big image and certainly don’t put any messaging in an image that a user must see to complete the action you want from an email (i.e. “click here” or “order now” messages).

Takeaway Message: Use images sparingly, rely on html to enhance the look of your email and never use an image to convey a critical or important message.

3. Make It Easy to Unsubscribe

It may seem counter intuitive to make it easy for a user to leave your mailing list, but the other option is much less appealing. When users get frustrated while trying to figure out how to remove their email from your list, they eventually just start to flag your email as spam. Every user who notes your email as being spam counts against your sender reputation with email providers and makes it harder (and sometimes impossible) to get your email into the inbox instead of the junk folder.

Takeaway Message: Have clear, easy-to-find unsubscribe links that require minimal action from the user to complete the task of unsubscribing.

4. Follow Spam Tips From the Beginning and EVERY Time That You Send Email!

We’ve also covered in detail the best ways to avoid getting flagged as spam and removed from your users’ inboxes, but we can’t emphasize enough how important it is to follow those steps. More importantly, it’s important to follow them from the beginning of your email marketing effort and to follow them every single time you send. We know that it’s tempting to send a harder sales email that trends against some of our advice for staying out of the spam folder, but it only takes one email that looks like its high spam to keep you out of the inbox for weeks, months or years afterwards.

Takeaway Message: Even if it means your email isn’t as effective as a sales tool, following all of the steps to avoid being flagged as spam is absolutely, unquestionably critical with every send.

5. Maximize Your Email Template Dimensions

You don’t have a lot of space in a person’s inbox to convey a message, and most of your users will be viewing your email in a preview pane with the images turned off. Make sure that your html email template isn’t more than 600 pixels wide and that you clearly get your value proposition and at least one link into the first 100 pixels of height. It won’t look as nice as putting a shiny header graphic up there, but it will yield better results. Also, consider a secondary column on the right or left hand side in order to get more information above the fold of an email preview pane!

Takeaway Message: Design for what your email will look like in a 600×200 pixel space without images loaded! How it looks in those dimensions with that restriction is how must users will see the final email.

6. Keep Your Text Short and Easy to Scan

Most users aren’t going to read the full text of your email. They’re going to scan it for key points that they may be interested in. Keep your text short (very small paragraphs or bullets) and use font bolding and additional colors to highlight words or phrases that you know will be important to your users and clients. Too much text will get your email deleted just about as fast as anything, and it creates more risk for triggering spam filters.

Takeaway Message: Less is more! Content may drive the internet, but it doesn’t improve email performance. Write concisely, user trigger and keywords and make sure that your most important messages are highlighted or bolded.

7. Keep Your Email List Clean

There’s no value to not taking the time and making the effort to make sure that you’re removing bad email addresses from your house list. Making sure that incorrectly formatted email addresses are caught when somebody signs up and then “pruning” addresses that are returned as undeliverable, non-existent or with full inboxes from your list before the next send isn’t optional if you want to have a successful email marketing program. If your list starts to show a higher percentage of undeliverable email addresses, email providers will flag you as spam.

Takeaway Message: Even if it creates more work for you, make sure that you’re pruning your list and removing bad emails from it. The result if you don’t will put you in the spam folder!

8. Properly Use Alt Text, Title Text and Linking with Images

Because using images in email can create dead space, maximizing the code behind those images is critical. Make sure that ALL of your images have both alt text and title text as different browsers will read those two types of text differently (Alt text and title text are the text messages that appear when an image doesn’t load or when somebody hovers over an image with a mouse). Also, make sure that all of your images are actually links to your landing page or website. This way, at a minimum, your potential image dead space can still drive traffic to your destination.

Takeaway Message: Make sure that all of your images are properly coded. This means not only making sure that the image height and width is properly defined but also that the image has alt text, title text and is linked to a webpage or landing page.

9. Send Test Emails BEFORE You Send to Your Main List

There’s nothing worse than sending an email and then finding out that it went right to the spam folder or that something in your email layout broke in Hotmail’s email viewer or Outlook’s preview pane. Before you send an email to your entire list, send a test version to a test account using each of the big email providers (Gmail, Yahoo, Hotmail/Live/MSN and any account using an Outlook client). If there are any significant segments of your list using another email provider, you’ll want to include that in your test as well. If you catch any errors, there’s still time to start disassembling your email and fixing them, or remove a problematic segment of your email list.

Takeaway Message: Catching an error in an email sent to a seed address is useless if it happens after you’ve already sent to the main list. Use your seed addresses to test send to and check formatting and deliverability before you send to the main list.

10. Make Sure to Piggyback a Text Version of the Email

We’ve previously discussed how to decide if you should use an html email or a text only email, and our recommendation is that you use both. But, at a minimum, if you are using an html email you must piggyback a text only version of the email onto your send. A number of people do opt to view email as text only, and, increasingly, people are reading text-based email only on mobile phones.

Takeaway Message: Make sure, no matter what, that your html email has a piggybacked text email attached to it! It’s that simple!

Bonus Tip! Always Ask Users to Add You to Their Contact List!

At every opportunity, remind users that they can be assured that they won’t miss out on the valuable information that they love receiving from you if they add your send address to their email contacts list. The more people you get doing that, the better your deliverability will be!

These ten best practices won’t make you a perfect email marketer, but they will certainly make you better than most! Just use these tips as a checklist when putting your email campaign together and you’ll be fine!

The first step to getting started with email marketing, whether you’ve got your best practices down or need to work to implement them into your program, is to select a quality email sending partner. Comm100, who provided you with this complimentary list, offers a completely free, hosted email and newsletter solution. It’s both a great long-term and short-term solution to getting your email marketing off of the ground to just about any type of customer or client email list! Check it out at http://www.comm100.com/emailmarketingnewsletter/.

The Social Buzz
Is email marketing being replaced by social media? No!

In This Article…

If you’re considering implementing an email marketing program but aren’t sure if your resources would be better spent expanding a social media programs, or if you’re considering decreasing the amount of email you send in order to focus more on social media, this article explores whether or not social media is really “killing” email.

The Rise of Social Media

Before the rise of the mass social media networks, communicating with your users or customers was a lot easier. Most of them read email, and they read it frequently. However, now people admittedly spend less time in their inbox and more time on social networks. As a result, many marketers have shifted their focus to social network marketing to the detriment of their email programs. In this article, we’ll explore why social networks haven’t replaced email and shouldn’t alter your email marketing strategy.

The Numbers

Prompt Communications of Boston recently completed a study that revealed that social networks, and Facebook in particular, are replacing email as the most popular way to stay in touch with friends.  96% of respondents regularly use Facebook to connect with friends, followed by text messaging at 93% and email at 91%.

But that doesn’t mean that people aren’t going into their inboxes. Email is still the primary communications tool for work and office related communications. Email is also where people receive their receipts and purchase confirmations for online purchases. People do go into their inboxes, often daily, to transact in non-personal ways. While in their inboxes, people are still able to receive, and often are receptive to, your email marketing campaign. There are some very compelling reasons to keep an emphasis on your email marketing program.

Monetizing From a Social Network vs. Monetizing via Email

One of the most important reasons to keep your email marketing program in tact is because of the increased viability of direct response marketing via email versus via social networks. How users behave in both environments is very different. In an email environment, assuming that you can get the user to open your email, the user is then involved in a solo activity with no other distractions. He or she can read (by which we mean scan!) your email and be funneled into clicking links or taking other actions. Users are involved in the isolated activity of absorbing and responding to your message. 

In a social network environment, however, it’s much more difficult (though not impossible) to generate direct response actions or sales. Though Dell Computers reports great success with their Twitter campaign, most other businesses (and particularly mid-size and smaller business) have experienced challenges with converting social media users to revenue streams. It makes logical sense. In a social media environment, users are not as compelled to follow through with actions. They are in the network to explore information and, more importantly, interact with other users. Convincing a social media user to become a receptive action taker rather than to read your message and then move on to the next opportunity to interact with other social network users is challenging, time consuming and takes a much longer tail to result in action. 

Social Network Migration: Why Maintaining Your Email List is Key

Remember just a few short years ago when everybody believe that MySpace would last forever? Today, MySpace is struggling with revenue and much of its user base has migrated to other social networks. Moving your profile and following from one social network to another isn’t challenging. As soon as their friends and contacts start to do it, users will follow them. Just because we believe that nobody would ever abandon Facebook or Twitter today, it doesn’t mean that a better option, using better technology, won’t come along. And when it does, you’ll need to build your social network audience from scratch again.

Conversely, while people do change email addresses, they do so infrequently and often keep the same email addresses for many years. In some cases, even if they change their email address, they’ll still occasionally check their old address. Once you have an email database, though there will be attrition, you have a more reliable and long term method of contacting users.

Also, your house email list is a company asset. In the event that your exit strategy involves having your company purchased, the number of registered email addresses that you have on your house list can be factored into the overall value of your company.

There has yet to be a social network that has proven that it can withstand a decade of use, but many email providers have! Don’t abandon your email list unless you’re willing to take the risk regarding having your social networking strategy impacted negatively by advancing technology.

Better Email Marketing is the Key

Don’t fool yourself though, the fact that users spend less time in their inbox than they used to will absolutely impact your email marketing campaigns. You’ll need to focus on four things to make email marketing in the social networking era work!

Relevant Offers: Inboxes are crowded, and users will want to clear them out quickly. You don’t have the luxury of sending out non-compelling offers to users any more just to benefit from a small percentage response. Take the time to segment your list, study what offers your users respond to and then send only the best offers out via your email campaigns.

Great Subject Lines: Again, because inboxes are more crowded and people spend less time in them, deleting email without even reading it has become more common. Make sure that you spend time and effort on your subject line. You’re competing with more email for fewer resources than you used to. The subject line is the most important step in the process these days!

High Deliverability: This should go without saying. Even if you didn’t make it into the inbox, it used to be that people would occasionally scan through their spam or junk folders. This isn’t the case any longer, so making sure that your sender reputation is clear and your messages are going into the inbox becomes even more important.

Longer Tail Offers and Content: Because people go longer between checking their inboxes (sometimes days, sometimes even weeks), the ability to use email as a real-time marketing or communications strategy no longer exists. If you send an email that needs to be responded to within 24 hours, you’ll see much lower response rates than you used to. Make offers (or events that your email refers to) have at least a three day tail for taking action.

Social networks are not replacing email, but they are changing out people use it. Make sure your email strategy responds accordingly.  Send good, relevant, targeted emails to clean house-lists. You’ll find that email still works best for pure ROI purposes and also comes with a number of other benefits that you shouldn’t overlook.

The first step to getting started with email marketing, whether it’s your primary method of customer solicitation or in combination with a social network strategy, is to select a quality email sending partner. Comm100, who provided you with this complimentary summary, offers a completely free, hosted email marketing and newsletter solution. It’s both a great long-term and short-term solution to getting your email marketing off of the ground to just about any type of customer or client email list! Check it out at http://www.comm100.com/emailmarketingnewsletter/.

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