Rebel's Guide to Email Marketing, The: Grow Your List, Break the Rules, and Win

by DJ Waldow, Jason Falls

Overview

A No-Nonsense, Take-No-Prisoners Plan for Earning Positive Return on Your Email Marketing!

“They” say email is dead. Baloney! 94% of Americans use email. Passionate social networkers use email more, not less. Mobile email is huge. Email offers marketers more opportunities than ever...opportunities to guide customers from consideration and trial to repeat purchase, loyalty, even advocacy! But email has changed. Email users have changed. To get breakthrough results, you must break the rules! Whether you’re B2B or B2C, Fortune 500 or startup, this is a complete no-nonsense plan for transforming your email marketing. Discover radically better ways to handle every facet of your campaign: lists, From names, Subject lines, calls to action, social network integration...everything!

Learn how to

• Discover which email marketing “rules” are obsolete--and when to break the rest
• Optimize every component of your message and campaign
• Drive list growth that translates directly into the top line
• Encourage opt-in by systematically simplifying signup
• Bring real humor and creativity back into your email
• Write a great main call to action--and great secondary and tertiary calls, too
• Take full advantage of tools ranging from QR codes to texting to grow your email list
• Make better technical decisions about prechecked opt-in boxes and other attributes
• Know when to deliberately introduce “imperfections” into your emails
• Use email marketing and social media to power each other
• Prepare for the short- and long-term futures of email marketing

Product Details

ISBN-13:	9780133048148
Publisher:	Pearson Education
Publication date:	08/15/2012
Series:	Que Biz-Tech
Sold by:	Barnes & Noble
Format:	eBook
Pages:	288
File size:	22 MB
Note:	This product may take a few minutes to download.

About the Author

DJ Waldow is an email marketing consultant, writer, blogger, speaker, and (now) author. He is the founder and CEO of Waldow Social, a company that helps clients take email marketing to the next level. DJ has spent nearly 7 years in the email, social, and community-building world, advising clients on how to optimize their email marketing campaigns and--on occasion--break some of the “best practice” rules. DJ can be found on most social networks under the handle “djwaldow” or by searching “DJ Waldow.”

Jason Falls is an author, speaker, and CEO, the latter of Social Media Explorer, a digital marketing agency and information products company. From client strategies to industry research reports to conference-style events, Falls spearheads efforts to bridge the gap between professional communicators and business owners and the strategic use of digital marketing and technology. An award-winning social media strategist and widely read industry pundit, Falls has been noted as a top influencer in the social technology and marketing space by Forbes, Entrepreneur, Advertising Age, and others. He is the coauthor of two books, this one and No Bullshit Social Media: The All-Business, No-Hype Guide to Social Media Marketing (Que 2011).

Table of Contents

Introduction: Email Marketing Is (Not) Dead     1
Email Is Dead?      3
94%     3
2.9 Billion     5
Email versus Email Marketing     7
The ROI of Email Marketing     8
What to Expect from This Book     9
Endnotes     11
Part I: THE SECRET TO EMAIL MARKETING: LIST GROWTH
Chapter 1: Why List Growth Matters     13
List Churn and List Fatigue     14
30%     15
A Few Words about Effective Tactics     17
Endnotes     19
Chapter 2: How to Grow Your List     21
Making the Opt-In Process Obvious and Easy     23
Asking Website Visitors to Subscribe     26
Using Humor and Creativity to Increase Opt-Ins     29
Using Technology: QR Codes and Smartphone Apps to Grow Your List     31
Use Social Media     34
Providing Incentive (WIIFM--What’s In It For Me?)      37
Growing Your Email List Offline     40
Endnotes     43
Chapter 3: Let’s Get Technical     45
To Pre-check or Not to Pre-check     46
Explain the Email List Sign-Up Process     48
Send a Welcome Email     50
Remember, Make a Good First Impression     54
Endnotes     55
Part II: THE ANATOMY OF AN EMAIL
Chapter 4: Examining an Email’s Body Parts     57
The Subject Line and From Address     58
The Preheader     59
The Header     60
Table of Contents     60
Main Call to Action     61
Secondary Calls to Action     62
Sharing Your Email     63
The Footer     64
Chapter 5: The First Impression     67
From Name and Subject Line     68
Preheader     72
Header     75
You Don’t Need a Second Chance Do You?      78
Endnote     79
Chapter 6: The Meat and Potatoes     81
Table of Contents     82
Zappos’s Digest TOC Email     82
MarketingProfs’s Approach to Email Table of Contents     83
Main Calls to Action     86
Secondary and Tertiary Calls to Action     90
Buttons vs. Links vs. Images     91
Endnote     96
Chapter 7: The Finishing Touches     97
Social Sharing and Social Connecting     98
Footer     100
Providing Unsubscribe Options     102
Endnote     106
Part III: BREAKING THE RULES
Chapter 8: Are Best Practices Really “Best”?      107
Best Practices Are Practices That Are Best for You     108
Test and Test Often     109
What to Expect     110
Endnotes     111
Chapter 9: My Word! You Must Read This Now!      113
Email Subject Line Words to Avoid     114
King Arthur Flour: Achieving Higher Sales Using All Caps and FREE     118
Tumbleweed: More Opens and Click-Throughs Using All Caps and Free     121
The Proper Length of a Subject Line     123
Measuring Success     125
Evidence in Favor of Long Subject Lines     126
The Most Incredible Chapter Ever     129
Endnotes     130
Chapter 10: The Perfect-Looking Email     133
It’s Okay to Send Mostly Text Emails     134
Some Subscribers Prefer Simple Text Emails     137
Writing Letters Versus Pamphlets     139
Text Emails Have a Clean Look     140
Text Works for B2C Marketers, Too!      141
One Big Image Can Work     143
King Arthur Flour’s Image-Heavy Emails     146
Making Mostly Image Emails More Readable     147
What If the Unsubscribe Link Is at the Top of the Email?      152
The Most Headache-inducing, Eye-searing Graphic Possible     157
Groupon’s Creative Unsubscribe Solution     158
Test the Rules; Don’t Just Break Them Outright     159
Beauty Is in the Eye of the Subscriber     160
Ugly Emails That Consistently Perform Well     160
A Split Test of Ugly Versus Pretty     164
Making Assumptions and Challenging Them     167
Endnotes     168
Chapter 11: The Best Ways to Grow Your List     171
Spiders, Scorpions, Snakes...and Popups     172
Installing a Lightbox to Increase Opt-Ins     174
Using Lightboxes on Blogs     175
Adding Lightboxes on a B2C Site     177
Park City Mountain Resort Tests a Popup on Its Winter 2010 Website     179
Choosing an Opt-In: Single or Double     180
Making the Case for Double Opt-In     182
Making the Case for Single Opt-In     183
Village Voice Media Moves from Double to Single Opt-In: Sees Significant List Growth     185
Sending Emails Without Permission     186
Sending an “Opt-Out” Email     189
Using an eAppend     191
Buying an Email List     193
Coming Full Circle     198
Endnotes     199
Part IV: BATMAN (EMAIL MARKETING) AND ROBIN (SOCIAL MEDIA)
Chapter 12: How Email and Social Media Go Together     203
Batman and Robin     204
Email: The Digital Glue of Social Media     205
Social Connecting vs. Social Sharing vs. Social Promoting     208
Social Connecting     208
Social Sharing     210
Social Promoting     212
Endnotes     213
Chapter 13: The Power of Pairs     215
Social Connecting     216
Using Email Marketing to Grow Your Social Following     216
Using Email Marketing to Grow Facebook Likes and Revenue     218
Social Sharing     222
Show Me the Money: How One Online Retailer Netted $250,000 Using SWYN     227
Social Promoting     229
Using Social Media to Grow Your Email List and Make Money     231
A Truly Integrated Email Marketing and Social Media Campaign     233
Two Is Better Than One     235
Endnotes     235
Part V: THE FUTURE OF EMAIL MARKETING
Chapter 14: What’s Next?      237
The Current State of Email Marketing     238
Email Marketing Predictions     239
Chapter 15: Go Forth and Conquer     247
What You Know     248
What Now?      249
Four Steps to Email Marketing Success     250
1. Grow Your List     250
2. Plan Your Content     250
3. Determine Success Metrics     251
4. Send, Test, Analyze, Adjust, Repeat     251
And Now, It’s Your Turn     252
Endnotes     252
Appendix A: Your Prize     253
Index     255

Editorial Reviews

After reading this book, the debate over email marketing being dead is without a doubt over. DJ and Jason talk about email coming alive and letting it work for your organization in many ways that you have heard don’t work. Whether you are newbie or a seasoned veteran, this book will get you screaming at the top of your lungs that EMAIL IS THRIVING!”
--Andrew Kordek, cofounder and chief strategist of Trendline Interactive, a strategic email marketing agency

“Social media gets more attention, but email is still the spine of effective digital marketing. In this practical book that you’ll refer to constantly, Waldow and Falls shed much-needed light on how to build, operate, and optimize a knock-out email program. It’s a useful book, perfectly executed.”
--Jay Baer, coauthor of The NOW Revolution: 7 Shifts to Make Your Business Faster, Smarter, and More Social

“I would take 1,000 opt-in email addresses above 1,000 followers or Likes any day of the week. This from one of the biggest social media fans alive. Email is not dead; it’s stronger than ever for the ones who use it right. DJ and Jason are the guys to show you how with this masterpiece.”
--Scott Stratten, best-selling author of UnMarketing

“At a time when all the buzz is about social, DJ and Jason’s fun, insightful, and down-to-earth style will give any marketer a renewed excitement for email.”
--Halley Silver, director of online services, The King Arthur Flour Co.

“Non-practitioner pundits have been declaring email marketing dead for years. They’re still wrong. Email marketing remains the best way to get people to take action, so read this book if you want your business to grow.”
--Brian Clark, CEO of Copyblogger Media

“You might call email the glue that holds so much of business marketing efforts together. You might call it the backbone, or the connective tissue, or the linchpin. But whatever you call it, you need it. And this is the book that shows you not just why you need it, but how to use it to grow your business.

“Rebel’s Guide is the book I’ve been waiting for, because this is the book that talks (in real, relevant, updated terms) about how email is that critical thing businesses need to market in a digital age.”
--Ann Handley, chief content officer of MarketingProfs and coauthor of Content Rules: How to Create Killer Blogs, Podcasts, Videos, Ebooks, Webinars (and More) That Engage Customers and Ignite Your Business (Wiley, updated 2012)

From the Publisher