Use this checklist to ensure that your email elements are checked before you hit send.

• Body Copy – double check for typos and readability.
• Images – Hyperlink images and add ALT text.
• Fonts – Use standard fonts that everybody has.
• Call to Action – Make sure it’s hyperlinked.
• Headline – Short and self-explanatory.
• Personalization – check for issues with name tag.
• Pre-header – always add pre-header text.

• Inbox preview – Send yourself and other test email.
• Email Clients Test – Send to gmail, outlook,
  thunderbird.
• A/B Testing – are you A/B testing the campaign?

Schedule the campaign to execute at a particular time or send immediately.

• Subject line – triple check for typo and personalization.
• Pre-header –check for typos and new changes.
• Footer – check for typos and hyperlinked pages.
• Sending address – always include the physical company address.
• Permission reminder – new subscribers to opt-in.
• Unsubscribe link – always include unsubscribe link.
• Social icons – check if they are hyperlinked properly.

• Suppressions – add any suppress contacts.
• Exclusions – do you need to exclude certain contacts?
• Data – is the list complete with all data points.

Notify team – notify sales and support team for any
outgoing campaign. Send them link so more people can review the email before its sent.

Analytics – Always track and measure campaign
performance.

 

Email Marketing

Despite what you might have heard, email marketing is not dead. It’s alive and thriving, and these businesses above prove just that. Over 93% of B2B marketers use email to distribute their content. However, if you’re slapping together a monthly newsletter or sharing your most recent updates and clicking send, you’ve probably noticed your open rate plummet.

Email is evolving, just like the rest of digital marketing.

Email now needs to exist as an extension of your content marketing strategy. Simply put, you need to offer value with your emails. If you’re simply self-serving in your strategy, you’ll come across as salesy and pushy. Nothing turns a lead cold faster than sounding like a sales pitch robot.

Since we don’t want that, let’s talk about some of the basics of successful email marketing. You can’t run a successful email campaign without the following:

 

• Knowing your audience – Who are you emailing? You’ll phrase your emails much differently if you email administrators compared to teachers. You want to position yourself in your prospect’s shoes.
• Identify your audience’s pain points – Everyone has a pain point. What about your audience? What problems do they need solved? More importantly, how does your product solve this problem?
• Goal oriented – Your emails need to feature some kind of end-goal. What do you want your users to do next? Read your latest content, make a sale, or contact a representative?
• Lead magnet – Finally, you need to attract your users with something of value. People won’t hand over their email address if there’s nothing in it for them. For instance, Samsung offers a downloadable guide to getting funding for your educational technology. This has value to the audience and solves a pain point all at once.

Now that you see how email has changed today, you’re in a position to make a stronger impact with your own strategy. If you don’t know what you’re doing, no email will get you there.

 

---

 

Video Storytelling

Marketers have been using written content to tell stories since the dawn of the internet, but video is emerging as the shiny new object on everyone’s minds. According to Aberdeen Group research, video marketers get 66% more qualified leads per year. What makes video so powerful? First, it’s face-to-face. Reading a testimonial is powerful, but it’s not nearly as powerful as seeing those feelings play out on a customer’s face for yourself.

Video intimidates a lot of marketers. It’s scary to ask your best clients to appear on video for your marketing efforts. However, this is a type of virtual referral that works. People trust other people. That’s why reviews are such a huge part of the online purchase process. When you can transform those reviews into videos, they’re suddenly much easier to share.

You can share video stories anywhere. They work great on social media, on your blog, and even your sales page. Even better, they’re not nearly as hard to secure as you think. Your best customers are already passionate about you. If you learn how to grab this passion while it’s hot, you’ll have no trouble securing video testimonials.

You don’t need any fancy equipment to get started. There’s no need to hire an expert videographer as long as you have a smartphone camera, a tripod, and you know the right questions to ask. The key here to bring out the value of your product in your user. What problems did your business solve? How has their workday changed since they used your product? These are the questions that your prospects want answered.

 

---

 

Data-Driven Marketing

Last but not least, you need leads driven by data. If you’re not utilizing data to find the best leads, you’ll keep falling flat and wasting your company’s time. Data-driven marketing sounds complicated, but it simply means you use insights from customers, prospects, and smart data sources in order to deliver targeted messages and increase your own response rate.

From utilizing existing customer data to sourcing high-quality data in your niche, all of these tools need to become a daily reality for your organization. With so much data around us all day every day, how do you know what data is worth your time?

In reality, data can come from just about anywhere. You won’t know what matters most to your business until you try, fail, and learn from it. Doing a test campaign is a great way to gain a better understanding from your current prospects.

In the case of email marketing, for example, this could be as simple as A/B testing your messaging. What delivery works best? In addition, you could take this a step further by testing your own outreach campaign. Does contacting administrators prove to be more successful than lower-level educators? The only way to know for sure is to review the results.

Before you start your test campaign, identify some key metrics for measuring success. Here are some of the most important metrics to modern marketers:

 

• Cost of Customer Acquisition – How much does it cost to acquire a new customer? If you’re spending $1000 each month on marketing and you gain 100 new customers,  your cost is $10 per customer.
• Web traffic – How many people are visiting your website?
• Social media engagement – Are users engaging with your content on social media?
• Website leads – How many people are converting from your website. This might mean converting into customers or into email subscribers.
• Email conversion rate – How many email subscribers are turning into customers?

That’s all there is to it. Don’t be afraid of your data. Make it work for you. If you want to stay competitive, you need to leverage all of the tools at your disposal.

 

---

 

 

 

When you’re trying to reach busy school administrators with your latest software, product or service it’s important to know they are reading your emails. Unfortunately, most of you are making crucial mistakes that send you straight to the trash bin. Lucky for you, we have compiled the 5 biggest blunders made when sending email campaigns to the district and school officials.  

Think your emails are flawless? Think again! Experts say most campaigns could perform better. The secret to harnessing those untapped potential clients could be hidden in the things you’re doing wrong. On that note, take a moment to read through our 5 oft-made mistakes that are holding back your campaign success.

 

1. Not updating your email lists

It may sound simple, but the fact is that many client lists and email databases are filled with old, outdated emails. If you want recipients to open, and even read, your emails then you need to send to valid addresses. You may think, what does it hurt me if I send to old emails?

Well, besides wasting the opportunity to connect with potential customers, you are also hurting your open rate. Even worse, your IP reputation will eventually take a hit if you continually send to outdated emails. This will cause all your emails to be filtered automatically into spam. Being relegated to the spam folder is the worst outcome for any email campaign. This means all your effort is wasted as your potential customers haven’t seen your offers or content.

Another way to end up in the spam folder is by addressing your recipients in the wrong format. Remember that school administrators are busy and inundated with a lot of offers daily. It may be tempting to boost the flashy factor by using HTML emails.  

However, HTML is best used for sales fliers and invitations to events. If district decision-makers see that your email is a sales call they are likely to hit unsubscribe and send you to the spam folder without a second glance.

Meanwhile- Text emails are more professional and give a personal feel. You want to offer content and value to keep your recipients opening and reading your emails. You also want to deliver that content quickly, ideally in 30 seconds or less. This rapid delivery of valuable information should lead your potential clients to a single call to action which lands them on a webpage with links, videos and all the information about your services.

 

2. Lack of Value

Another mistake which can permanently damage your campaign results is trying to forgo the introduction. You cannot send one email and immediately try to sell a product. This will prove to the reader that you are just another useless sales pitch.

Instead, you need to provide valuable content, videos or training opportunities. Solve a problem your district or school clients are struggling to keep them opening your communications. A good first email will build trust before offering anything for sale.

 

3. Lazy Subject Lines

While your content needs to be valuable, interesting and quick to keep readers coming back, your subject has to hook them first. Attaching a one-note subject will lead to low open rates and even lower follow-through from your potential clients.

Most of the marketers spend tremendous amount of time on content but very little time on creating attractive subject line. Before the school administrator see your content they see your subject line. Spend a good amount of time crafting a better subject line.

Subjects should be related to the content, not a bait and switch that will upset readers. And, while quippy or funny subjects may seem smart, they are seen as unprofessional and won’t be well-received by overworked school administrators.

 

4. Misuse of the Email Preview

The pre-header content displayed by most email clients is only 100 characters. It usually grabs the first few lines of content automatically. It may even read instructions, not meant for preview like “open this in your browser.”

This is a mistake many individual marketers or first-time senders often overlook. Configuring your emails with interesting and relevant pre-header content is essential to boost open-rates. Think of the preheader like a movie trailer. While the title only tells you so much, the trailer shows you the highlights and pulls you into the story. A successful email preview will make readers curious and encourage them to benefit from the valuable content enclosed within.

 

5. Unfocused content

Overloading your potential clients with too much information in one email is a momentous mistake. Equally so, would be adding more than one call to action per email. Instead, craft an email campaign which provides the content over time with one call to action per email.

Instead of being attacked by one big advertisement, school officials will see the value you are bringing them on an ongoing basis. You should have an introductory email, developmental emails and sales emails which are dispersed on a predetermined schedule for each set of customers. This can all be decided by applying a carefully thought-out district decision-maker journey map.  

 

Take heed of these simple tips to increase your open-rate, follow through and eventual client base for email marketing campaigns. Remember to consider the customer. School and district decision-makers have a lot going on at any given time and follow specific schedules for budgets and purchases. To succeed, you need to play the long game and pay attention to the details. It’s that simple!