After ripping apart some poor email examples, I think it’s high time we point out someone who’s doing an email newsletter right.I’ve been getting emails from travel planning site Kayak.com for a couple weeks. In each issue I’m impressed by their email savvy, from content to design to the little extras that make me so likely to use them to plan my trips.

Why do I like Kayak’s emails — both as an email marketing guy and as a subscriber — so much?

Examples of Kayak’s Emails

Before we go any further, take a look at 2 issues of their email newsletter that I’ve received:

(Click the above images for full-size versions.)

What do you think of them? Here’s my take:

They Build a Relationship, Rather Than Going For the Hard Sell

As a member of several frequent flyer programs, I get emails from a number of airlines. I also get emails from time to time from other travel sites where I’m a member.

Rather than pushing for a sale right away, Kayak keeps my attention with great content.

I’ve never received an email campaign from any of them that tries to connect with me. They’re just so… all-sell, all-the-time, all about price.

Kayak, on the other hand, doesn’t scream at me about the latest deals.

Their emails sell the idea of traveling. Each section gets me excited about a destination, as if the emails were made up of postcards from friends who were visiting each place.

And even though I’m not usually looking to go anywhere, I often click through just to see what it might cost to take a trip. Just for fun (when was the last time your email campaign had subscribers going to your website just for fun? Try it.).

They’re Well-Designed and Easy To Read

This is exactly the kind of email that comes to mind (for me) when someone asks for an example of a “Light HTML” email message.

They cleverly separate each section with a header (the destination name).

They provide navigation at the top of the email to each section/destination, and each section has a link back to the top.

Navigation is text, not images, so it’s even useful with images disabled.

They distinguish their own content from sponsored content/ads by using lightly shaded backgrounds. Interspersing shaded sections with the main content also makes the email seem shorter than it actually is.

They put their logo in the upper left-hand corner of the email, so it appears in the preview pane, and they keep it small enough that it doesn’t get in the way of other content at the top of the email.

They’re Targeted To Me

And oh boy, is it easy to see what a trip might cost.

Did you see what they did in the sidebar? They put links to “cheap flights from Philadelphia.

When I signed up they asked me what my home airport was, and they’re using that to get me from reading their email to making a purchase. The links even go to a flight search page that’s pre-filled with Philadelphia as the departing airport.

With what is really just basic segmentation and personalization — nothing difficult or complex — Kayak makes a smooth transition from inbox to web.

They Encourage Communication

Look at the footer of the email.

Rather than hiding behind a “do not reply” type of address and using email as a way to talk at me, they tell me they want to hear from me!

What’s especially great about this is they give me multiple ways to contact them:

The link in their email goes to a feedback form on their site.

Unlike the company in our email footer example a while back, they send from an email address that forwards to their help desk, so even if I reply instead of using their feedback form, I can still get in touch with them.

Anything Else?

I feel like I’m rambling a bit here, so I’ll turn it over to you.

What did you like about these emails?

Or didn’t you like them (and if so, why not)?

How do you feel you can apply these tactics to your own email marketing campaigns?

Popularity: 9%

Unfortunately, many email marketers don’t think about what it means to build a relationship with subscribers. They hear the mantra and believe they’re following it — but in practice they take subscribers for granted and treat them like wallets with email addresses.Do you show your subscribers the respect they deserve?Or do you overlook these areas of respect that help you build a quality subscriber relationship?

Respect Subscribers’ Permission

• Have you ever been subscribed to the email list for one brand, and received an email out of the blue from another brand (that happens to be owned by the same company)?How does it feel? What do you typically do?

When people sign up to your list, they’re giving you a valuable resource: permission to email them.However, that permission is temporary. Subscribers can revoke it at any time.It is also specific: subscribers give a specific person (you) permission to email them a specific set of information (what they signed up for).Respect that specific permission in your email marketing campaigns, and your subscribers will trust and respect you. Fail to respect it, though, and things can go downhill fast.

• Send subscribers what they asked for.
• Don’t send an email about some product or topic that subscribers have never heard you talk about before and expect them to see the connection.If you want to introduce content or products that are not perfectly related to what subscribers signed up for, go slowly and deliberately.

Respect Subscribers’ Privacy

Subscribers are your #1 asset as an email marketer.And yet, some companies permit others to email their subscribers (even though subscribers almost never want this - regardless of whether they were aware that would happen when they signed up).Others don’t remove unsubscribes in a timely fashion (this isn’t a problem at email marketing solutions like AWeber, where we automatically process unsubscribes for you - but it can be a problem for others who manage their email campaigns manually).This foolish disrespect of subscribers’ privacy not only hurts those companies’ reputation, it makes people less likely to trust others with their email addresses.Once you’ve earned subscribers’ trust enough for them to sign up, be part of the solution. Respect subscribers’ privacy.

• Don’t share subscribers’ information with others. Subscribers signed up to get emails from you, not from some other company.
• Remove unsubscribes promptly (or just use AWeber and we’ll handle that for you).

Respect Subscribers’ Time

You might not be charging subscribers money to be on your list, but don’t be fooled: a subscription to your list is not “free.”It costs subscribers time to:

1. Stop
2. Open your email
3. Read the content inside
4. Decide what to do with that information

Those costs are significant, because your subscribers are busy people and their time is valuable.Subscribers sign up to your list because they feel that the benefits they will get from your emails will exceed those costs.If you’re not delivering relevant, valuable content, you’re telling your subscribers that you don’t think their time is valuable. That’s disrespectful, and a sure-fire way to make them unsubscribe.

• Make sure that next email you’re sending is worth (far) more to subscribers than the time it takes them to read it.

Respect Subscribers, And They’ll Respect You

And that’s the first step to any successful relationship.source: aweber.com 

Popularity: 5%

@reybango the ease of implementation is a testament to well written, modular software.

Popularity: 2%

Of course, picking out dates to send campaigns might seem pointless if you don’t have any idea what your emails are going to be about!

So today, let’s get into some email content ideas.

Annual Industry Events

Many of us work in industries that follow relatively fixed annual cycles, where certain things take place at the same time each year.

Since we know about such cycles/events well in advance, we can plan individual emails or multi-email campaigns to send in the time leading up to (and in some instances after) them.

Major industry conferences and trade shows

Other Consumer or Product Cycles

A publisher in the music industry might send an email newsletter about the South by Southwest Music and Media Conference (occurs every March); if you write about cars, you might put a campaign together around the North American International Auto Show (each January); golf experts could talk about The Masters.

Other industry cycles work well, too. Are you an accountant? Create a campaign to send your subscribers from January up until (and through) Tax Day. Winery? Let readers follow the winemaking process along from harvest through crushing, pressing, aging and bottling.

Don’t Forget Holidays!

Industry-specific events aren’t the only annual occurrences that you can work into your email marketing calendar.

Holidays, while they shouldn’t be a cause of empty greetings, can provide a backdrop for thought-out campaigns.

Many businesses create a series of emails for the “12 Days of Christmas”

The floral, candy and jewelry industries are known for putting together strong campaigns in the months leading up to Valentine’s Day, but this holiday can work well for anyone marketing a unique product/gift idea.

Creating email marketing campaigns around the holidays may sound tired/trite to some of you — and in some cases, it is — but in my experience it’s all about the planning and execution, and how narrowly you define “holidays.”

For more holiday ideas, check out our holiday email marketing calendar. It contains plenty of celebrations that you might never have considered…

“Special Features” — Narrowly-Focused Email Campaigns

Just as in other media, you can drill down to one particular area within the broader focus of your email newsletter and publish a group of articles on that topic.

Example: our features on email marketing for doctors, restaurants and realtors.

This type of “special feature” (to borrow the term from more traditional media) can be a welcome diversion from your typical email newsletter content, and grab the interest of particular groups of subscribers.

Are you a travel agent? Highlight 5 destinations that offer exceptional value. Interior decorator? Show how different color palettes can make a room exciting, calming, bigger, smaller, and so on. A woodworking expert could take a little-used wood and showcase 3 projects that your readers can tackle using it.

The beauty of special features is that they:

Spice up your email newsletter.

Have natural cohesiveness, making it easy for you to keep your content relevant (example: a 5-part series on “readying your classic car for the next show” gives you 5 emails that logically tie together).

Give you plenty of email content to spread over multiple messages and keep in touch with subscribers while providing value.

Unless your email newsletter focuses on so narrow a topic that there’s absolutely no room to vary your individual message content, you can benefit from this type of campaign.

(If you think your email newsletter’s focus is too narrow to do this, please explain in the comments… I’d like a shot at giving you some ideas for possible “special feature” campaigns!)

Small Series of Tips: Break Up the Monotony

The other ideas discussed so far are all for creating “primary content” — the main focus of each campaign you send.

Even with an idea of where to start, and plenty of writing experience, you may find it exhausting to continually crank out thoroughly outlined, researched and proofread articles for your email newsletter.

Quick tips/ideas can supplement your main email content. They fit well in the sidebar of a 2- or 3-column HTML email, or near the end of a plain text one.

The tough part about motivating yourself to keep doing those types of campaigns is that you know that some people simply won’t end up reading the article thoroughly. They won’t have time, or they’ll want something they can scan through quickly.

This is where little “asides” or “mini-articles” can help. Since these are short, people are likely to read them, and they also require less of your time than a full-fledged article (so you can write a bunch of them in advance, and then just drop them into your campaigns as needed!).

Take a topic that you’d planned to turn into a full-fledged article — the primary content for one of your email campaigns — and break it up into bite-size packets of information. Then, put each of them into a different campaign under its own heading.

For example, a chef could use part of each email newsletter issue to highlight a little-known cooking tool and what it’s used for (maybe linking to a page with more details, a demonstration by video, recipes and/or a purchase link).

Multichannel Marketing: Sync Your Communications

If you’re taking advantage of other marketing channels like direct mail, radio and/or print media, think about how you can tie your email marketing campaigns in with those other media.

You might use email to alert subscribers of an upcoming promotion, or to look out for a flyer/catalog/postcard you’re sending them (or vice versa — you could use email to follow up after a campaign run in another media).

Marc recently blogged on multichannel marketing and gave an example of how a retailer coordinated email and postal campaigns to raise their response rate.

To learn more about multichannel campaigns, check out the MineThatData blog.It’s very advanced stuff, but if your business makes or plans to make significant use of multiple media channels to market to your prospects, it’s well worth your time to stop by.

source : http://www.aweber.com

Popularity: 4%

I know that the Facebook momentum has gained a ravenous pitch as I see more and more people jumping into it. And not only are they jumping but they are guzzling the addictive life streaming service at a pace that is at times scary. So as the Nigerian email scammers that rose to rapid fame/hatred have found it too. They realize that there is an opportunity to stop using email, as it might be played out, and now are using Facebook to run the same scams. Thanks for leaving email to us and jumping on the social media bandwagon. You will not be missed. 

Popularity: 7%