How effective is your subject line? Interesting enough to open? What about your call to action? So intriguing that readers just can’t help but click it?

Good! But open and click rates only measure interest. They’re not your end goal.

Your end goal is to make sales. It’s the revenue from customer purchases that keeps you in business. So an email campaign’s true worth should be measured by the sales it generates.

The trick is finding out how to put the message together in a way that prompts the most purchases. With a little up-front work, you can do this right in your AWeber account.

Step 1: Set Up Sales Tracking

First, you’ll need to make sure you’re tracking the purchases that your subscribers are making in response to each email campaign.

You can do this with sales tracking. If you’ve already done this, skip to step 2. If you haven’t yet, head over to AWeber’s knowledge base and follow these steps.

Once you’re ready, it’s time for…

Step 2: Tweak Your Promotional Broadcast

Start with your email design. The goal is to test whether a different version will sell more, so you’ll need to create two or more versions.

To get started, take a look at:

• Your call to action. Is your email design eye-catching? Could different words be more engaging and motivate readers to take action? Should it be placed higher so that reader don’t have to scroll as much?
• Your text-to-image ratio. Experts recommend a blend of 60% text to 40% images to present your message while avoiding spam traps.
• Your preheader. Do you have a whitelisting request? A link to your newsletter online? An unsubscribe link? You should.
• Your format. Are you using the best layout for your content, or should you try one of these options instead?
• Your images and copy. Are you presenting your product or service in the best possible light? Or would your readers respond better to something else?

Step 3: Split Test For the Winning Design

To find out which email design will generate more sales, use the broadcast split testing feature in your account. This sends each version to a randomly selected, equally sized audience from your mailing list so you’ll get the most accurate results.

After the broadcasts go out, follow the QuickStats for each version to keep track of sales.

• Do you think you know the best day and time to send your email newsletter?
• Do you ever wonder if other email marketers are sending their mail at the same time you do?
• Do you think your open rate is either way too low or unbelievably high?

Real-world statistics might surprised you. Aweber recently released data compiled from all of their users that may help you answer these questions, and get more out of your email marketing efforts.

What Open Rates Should You Expect?

One of the first data points you probably look at is your open rate so that you know if people are even reading the content you’ve been pouring your heart and soul into.

Your open rate is far from a perfect measure of whether people are actually opening and reading your emails, but it can be useful as a relative measure. If it goes up over a short period of time, it usually means more people are reading, while the opposite is true if it falls over a short period of time.

It can also help provide the motivation to improve if your open rates are lower than average, or reassurance that you’re on the right track if your open rates are higher than average.

So, on with the numbers…

Average Open Rate Last Month: 13.6%

When is the Best Day to Send Email?

You’ll probably hear that Tuesday is the best day to send email, because on Monday people are busy catching up, and that on Tuesday morning you’ll have their undivided attention before they jump into their work for the upcoming week.

But does the data really back up that theory? Let’s take a look.

Open Rates by Day

So according to last month’s data, if you’re measuring by open rates, Tuesday was almost the worst day to send your email.

While we’re breaking long-standing assumptions, I should also point out the hour of the day that got the best open rate was not earlier in the morning (like 8-10AM EST) when most people are first getting to work, but in fact 2-3PM Eastern Time — email newsletters sent during that hour last month enjoyed a 19.1% open rate.)

Does this Mean I Should Switch My Campaigns to Thursdays?

The short answer is no.

Don’t break your readers’ expectations just to follow the latest stats. In both March and February, Thursday newsletters got the 3rd-worst opens vs. the rest of the week. Every single list will perform differently because of countless variables, so it’s critical to test any changes first. If you’re going to (or planning to) change the time and/or day you send your email, be sure to split test some broadcasts. If you simply change everything, you may throw off subscribers who are used to hearing from you at the usual time.

One possible explanation for Thursday’s success last month may be that it wasn’t as popular as say, Tuesday or Wednesday for sending email:

Percentage of Newsletters Sent by Day

The higher-volume days mean there are more emails in readers’ inboxes, which might contribute to lower open rates. Following that logic, some people may see the low weekend volume (more email newsletters were sent on Tuesdays than on Saturdays and Sundays combined) as an opportunity to earn their audiences’ undivided attention.

My main point in showing these is to point out that our assumptions about what works are often quite wrong, and that you ultimately have to test for yourself to see what best suits your audience.

A Little bit of Inspiration and Advice

Are your open rates higher than average?

If so, GREAT! Give yourself a pat on the back…but don’t get complacent. Open rates aren’t the be-all, end-all of email metrics. They don’t guarantee that people are reading your emails, only that they have images turned on and that they probably saw your email for at least a moment.

Plus, there’s always room for improvement, right?

Here are a few quick tips that can help you increase your open rates:

• Ask your readers to add you to their address books or safe-list. Some email programs will automatically display images from senders who are in the recipient’s contact list, as opposed to automatically blocking them.
• If you are using images in your emails, be sure to use the ALT attribute to pique readers’ interest so that they enable images. Or, you could just use the ALT attribute to directly ask readers to turn on images!
• Include a picture of yourself to your emails, near/next to your signature. It can help to increase credibility by showing that you’re a real person.

In the not so distant past, Constant Contact was the only real solution for sending bulk email. Unfortunately, they took this position for granted. They refused to improve their software and began providing progressively worse customer service. Along the way several competitors sprung up, offering the features Constant Contact was missing while providing far better customer service, all at about the same price. AWeber happens to be one of those companies.

The biggest complaint we had with Constant Contact was their customer service . On three separate occasions, they were unable to process our payment due to outdated billing information. Rather than notify us, they chose to immediately suspended our account. You would think we could have just logged in, updated our billing information, make our payment, and been on our way, right? Not quite. In addition to the payment, they also wanted to charge a $30 reactivation charge.

Another major factor in our decision was that AWeber provides two critical features that Constant Contact is missing; auto-responders and shopping cart integration.

Auto-responders give you the ability to automate portions of your email marketing. A great example of this is the when you sign up as a free member of SEO Book. Over the course of seven days, you will receive a series of seven emails. This just had to be set this up once and AWeber handles the rest.

Shopping cart integration allows your customers to subscribe to your newsletter when they purchase your products or services online. This can save you a lot of time and help you build your list more quickly.

At the end of the day, AWeber beats Constant Contact on features, price, customer service and ease of use. That’s why we switched.

On one hand, this is a sign of just how powerful and cost-effective email marketing is. On the other hand, the increase makes it makes it more difficult to get your message heard over your competitors. So how can you ensure that you get the most from your email marketing?

• You need to continually work at building your targeted opt-in list. The more qualified prospects you can reach, the better. Don’t be shy about asking people to sign up, and be sure to make it easy for them to do so.
• Send your newsletter frequently enough for people to remember you, but not so often that you annoy them. In most cases, once each week is about the maximum, and once a month is about the maximum.
• Offer different, or at least additional information in your newsletter rather than just a rehash of what you provide on your website. If people know that they will find useful, original information in your newsletters, they will be more likely to open and read them.
• Send your newsletter when it’s most likely to be read; Tuesday’s and Thursday’s are typically best for open rates, so they work well for branding. Weekends are typically best for click-through rates, so they work well for specific offers. The best time of day will vary by industry, so you’ll have to do some testing to see what works best for yours.

Marketing is a collective activity in that when multiple channels are used together, the results are almost always far greater than the sum of the channels. Direct mail, radio and television can support internet marketing to bring you results that you could never achieve with the same budget used in any one of those mediums. This is because after the creative aspect of any marketing campaign, the effectiveness is due largely to repetition and consistency. When your prospect is on their way to work and they hear your ad, they may be only slightly convinced that your product or service is right for them. When they arrive at work they’ll probably do a little more research online, and if they come across your marketing message again, they will likely become a little more convinced. Later that night when they’re watching an episode of The Big Idea on their local cable channel and they see your television ad, chances are high that they’ll be very convinced that your product or service is the right choice for their needs. Now this doesn’t mean that the will buy from you just yet, but you will be standing on significantly higher ground than your competitors at this point.

To develop a marketing campaign where all of the channels work together you’ll need to determine what your desired outcome is to be. If you’re trying to educate your prospects about a complex product or service, all of your marketing channels should be used either to drive them to your web site where they can access the applicable information or to encourage them to schedule a meeting with one of your representatives. If your goal is to push sales in a particular retail location, all of your marketing channels should be focused on driving them directly to that location. In a nutshell, choose one goal and utilize all of the marketing channels available to you to foster achieving that goal.

The first step in launching an email marketing campaign is to determine if you’ll handle it in-house our outsource it. If you’ll be handling it in-house, you’ll need to choose your platform for delivery. If you’re not the technical type, then you may want to look at one of the web based services such as Constant Contact or Bronto. Aside from being relatively simple to use, these types of services also offer varying levels of statistics analysis to help you fine tune your campaigns for a higher ROI. If you know your way around a server and are comfortable installing software on a web server then you may want to consider running your own email marketing software such as phplist. This is more complex to set up but gives you complete control over all aspects of it’s operation.

The next step is to build your mailing list. You’ll want to add a link on your web site enabling visitors to join, and then contact your current customers/clients and ask them if you can add them. In moving forward, be sure to ask all of your prospects if you can add them to your mailing list. It will take some time to build a large list but the focus should be quality over quantity.

Now you’ll need to create your first email newsletter. HTML newsletters produce far better results than text newsletters but you’ll need to carefully test yours to ensure that it displays properly. Roughly 75% of business users use Outlook, so start there, but you will also need to ensure that your newsletter displays properly in web based email including free accounts like Hotmail or Yahoo. Be sure to check that all links in your newsletter work properly and that all images load properly.

When it comes to sending your newsletter, keep in mind that Wednesday, Thursday and Friday generally generate higher open rates but email sent on the weekends generally generates higher click-through rates.

You can subscribe to our newsletter via the following link:

Marketing Tips Newsletter

Through this program, TRUSTe affirms, with a seal stating ?We Don’t Spam,? that the e-mail reputation and practices of the company have been thoroughly reviewed and have met strict standards that eliminate the threat of unwanted email from the seal holder. The seal is to be placed on the website where the seal holder collects e-mail addresses and related personal information. TRUSTe monitors sealholder email performance with a proprietary list seeding system and a consumer complaint mechanism to flag investigation. This program, by raising consumer trust in data collection practices, will help companies increase online customer registration rates. In a pre-release trial, one company found a seven-percent increase in registrations when using the seal.

?A survey last month found that two-thirds of Internet shoppers decided not to register with a website because the privacy policy was too complicated or unclear. This marks a difficult and worsening situation for businesses that rely on trusted digital communication,? said Fran Maier, executive director and president, TRUSTe. ?Companies need a way to declare simply, clearly and believably ?we don’t spam.’ Our seal lets them say that with confidence and consumers now can trust they won’t be receiving unwanted email from these companies.?

The seal program was created with technical and financial support from DoubleClick and Return Path. TRUSTe provides certification, monitoring and oversight for Return Path’s Bonded Sender Program.

?Solid permission-based policies and practices are critical to both email deliverability and email acquisition improvements,? said Matt Blumberg, president and CEO of Return Path. ?To combat spam, companies need to differentiate themselves by having a stellar email reputation. With TRUSTe?s position as the leading consumer privacy advocate, this ?no spam’ accreditation program will help companies boost email acquisition rates by proving they are one of the good guys in email.?

“The TRUSTe Email Privacy Seal plainly demonstrates the integrity of our email policies. We increased registrations by more than 7% with the seal, and helped boost our overall email campaign metrics,” said Ian Harrison, vice president of business development, AskMen.com. ?The Email Privacy Seal helps consumers make a comfortable and informed choice to hear from us on an ongoing basis.?

?While we have always said that the spam problem could only be solved by a combination of legislation, industry self-regulation, technology and consumer education, until now consumer education has not been a focal point in the industry,? said Ken Takahashi, vice president of strategic partnerships for DoubleClick. ?This seal brings consumer education front and center by bringing clarity and trust to the critical opt-in process.?

Participants in this seal program must meet the following requirements:

1. Prior consent standard for commercial email
2. At a minimum, pre-selected option for house files
3. Opt-in for 3rd party mailings
4. No 3rd party sharing without explicit permission
5. Clear and conspicuous notice describing use
6. Easy to use, responsive, persistent unsubscribe
7. Privacy statement fully disclosing email practices
8. Willingness to participate in dispute resolution and ongoing monitoring

TRUSTe, the online privacy leader, is an independent, nonprofit organization dedicated to enabling individuals and organizations to establish trusting relationships based on respect for personal identity and information in the evolving networked world.

Founded in 1997, TRUSTe runs an award-winning global privacy certification and seal program. Its seal programs are considered Safe Harbors for the Children’s Online Privacy Protection Act (COPPA) and the EU Safe Harbor Framework. Today, TRUSTe maintains the largest privacy seal program with more than 1,400 Web sites certified throughout the world including AOL, Microsoft, IBM, Nationwide and The New York Times. TRUSTe’s mission extends standards, certification and oversight into email with Bonded Sender. For more information on TRUSTe please visit www.truste.org .