This post will discuss how to attract subscribers that you do want, and how to identify and get rid of those you don’t.

So let’s start off by having a spring clean of existing subscribers. A good way to highlight inactive users is by looking at their open rate and CTR. If you have sent more than 5 newsletters out and none of these have been opened or clicked on, then you know this user is inactive and it is worth unsubscribing them from your newsletter. In order to avoid deleting an excessive number of subscribers, you can send out a final email, highlighting that they have been inactive and informing them they will be removed from the mailing list if they don’t get in touch.

So how do you attract new subscribers? Firstly, ensure your subscribe form is placed logically and visibly on your website. If someone enjoys reading your content, they will want to sign up to the newsletter. If they have to trawl through your pages to find how to do this however, you will probably lose their interest. You should always be able to subscribe from the blog/news section of the site.

Another top tip is posting a subscribe link on your social media pages every so often, and finally using the personalised subscribe link is an extra special touch when you are just targeting one person. This is the kind of thing you can add in to an email for example:

https://app.nouri.sh/campaigns/1234/subscribe?subscriber[email]=email@domain.com

If you need help implementing any of these tips, send over a quick email and we will be in touch!

Each social media platform offers something different. Here we focus on the top 3, highlighting their strengths and key features so you can decide which ones fit your business best. Before jumping in to any social media activity, consider who your key demographic is and think of how best to engage this audience.

Facebook

Facebook pages are a great tool for businesses. In fact if you operate internationally you can conveniently run all your pages from one login.
It allows you to share content including images and videos and it is also great for arranging events. With no limit to the number of characters you can use per post, Facebook is ideal for explaining your business, selling your concept to potential customers and raising awareness of your brand.

A word of warning, you should try and limit yourself to one post a day unless it’s exceptional news. The optimum number of posts per week is between 3 and 5.

Click here to like our Facebook page

Twitter

Twitter is a great way to promote your business, including special offers and bulletins. With only 140 characters per tweet, your posts need to be concise and focused on one thing; this is why many companies tweet away all day! It is recommended that a business tweets every 2-3 hours, but if you are repetitive and are not publishing anything of value to your followers you will become very annoying, very quickly!

Set time aside to interact with your followers and show off your expertise, a retweeted comment or conversation with a user provides you with excellent exposure to all of their followers as well. Also, make the most of the popular hashtags to ensure you are on trend. A Twitter account needs a consistent commitment and you will have to allocate some time to it to reap the benefits.

Click here to see what we get up to on Twitter

LinkedIn

LinkedIn has had a massive boom in users over the past 18 month. It is by far the best site for networking and posting career relevant content. 

Many businesses do have pages on LinkedIn, but that is not what it was designed for. In fact, by using your own personal profile to promote your business you will have increased success.

Ensure you join relevant groups and share your ideas and business updates with like-minded people. There is a special section of each group for promotions, so don’t go for the hard sell on the discussion page as you will more than likely be removed!

Use this site to show you are an expert in your field. In the long run earning the respect of other users will prove far more valuable than the few sales you may make by pitching your products and services.

If you would like any advice on which platform is best for you, contact us here.

It is a scary fact that if you are not a well-known brand a customer will only remember you for around 12 months, even if they have previously bought something from you.

Therefore it is imperative to keep reminding your audience that you exist, reiterating who you are and what you do.

By setting up a newsletter campaign with Nouri.sh you are encouraged to keep active on your blog and social media pages, as these posts automatically drive your eNewsletters. Let Nouri.sh do the work for you! Not only this, but these activities also drive traffic to your site and contribute to better Google rankings.

Being consistent is also a very important aspect of communicating. If your newsletter has a different design each week, your audience will assume that the email came from a different company. Upload a template with your company branding and imagery and remind your readers that you exist with each email that they receive.

Pop back next week for another great tip, or if you have any questions/comments we would love to hear from you via email.

The key to a good newsletter is engaging the reader; you want the reader to click through to your site, explore it, and interact with you. We find that the best way to engage a reader is to send them content that is super relevant. It seems obvious, but unfortunately it is easier said than done.

We have found that by segmenting your audience, highly relevant content IS possible.

This segmentation could take many forms, it totally depends why you use Nouri.sh and what action you want your readers to take. A great example is differentiating between B2C and B2B users, as their wants and needs are very different. There are huge differences such as price, VAT and credit.

The smaller the segments are the more focused the content will be. And the more reaction and interaction you will get from your audience.

For help segmenting your readers, or advice on who to target with what content just drop us an email.

Back in 1994, social media wasn’t even close to being invented. So how did people share their thoughts, feelings and photos of food? With a good old-fashioned blog post of course!

In 2014 blogs are still a great way for individuals to publish content online. You don’t need to be techy and the internet makes it easy for you to find people with similar interests, and build an audience. Over the years blogs have become increasingly important for businesses. From a business point of view building an audience is imperative, as any member of this audience is a potential client. Because of this blogging is now an integral part of eMarketing.

Here are some snippets from “classic” posts that we enjoyed reading.

fromfatbloketotoughguy.blogspot.co.uk – July 2009

After a day feeling energised but aware I’d had a proper workout, Saturday started in the sort of slight agony that you can only hobble and laugh your way through. Happily though, after much cursing, the stiffness passed and the day improved rapidly with the realisation that not only was I able to bend over once again, I no longer needed to breathe in while zipping up my jeans.

amateurgourmet.com – Jan 2004

So despite my self-proclaimed ineptitude in the kitchen, I do have a knack for all things sweet and desserty. I’m a baker, not a fighter. One of my favorite cookie recipes comes from America’s most beloved white collar criminals / domestic goddesses, Marthalicious Stewart. Available on her website for no charge (or the occassional insider trading tip) you will find the recipe for some wonderfully delicious cookies. I served these cookies to friends this weekend and their reactions were as follows:
“Mmmm!”
“Ohhhh!”
“Wheeee!”

mikesowden.org/feveredmutterings – Jan 2014

Ah, Yorkshire! The verdant sweep of its hills, the flatness of its caps, the award-winningness of its fish’n’chips, the sheer throbbing…
Forget all that. There’s a problem here.
I’ve heard people – maybe people like you – say things like “isn’t it a type of pudding?” or “is that somewhere in London?”
YORKSHIRE IS NOT SOMEWHERE IN LONDON.
Let’s stop playing silly buggers and sort this out once and for all.
Don’t argue, don’t question, just get them down you or you’ll get a bloody good wallop.
Aye.

No-one can compete with our pricing
We are proud to offer our flexible and fully customisable eNewsletter solution from £209/$319 a year.

If there is something we don’t currently offer that you would like to see available, just let us know. Our developers will be happy to implement your ideas making Nouri.sh the most bespoke solution on the market. Currently in the pipeline are dynamic newsletters, dynamic titles and a newsletter preview 24h before the mailing.

Not only can you send up to 5,000 emails a month, you can create an unlimited number of campaigns and you can manage an unlimited number of subscribers.

Make the most of our unique features
For example combining multiple RSS feeds. I recently helped a client to set up a newsletter that combined their blog posts with their Facebook updates, allowing their clients to receive all the business news in one handy newsletter!

With a starter package you can customise the content for multiple subscriber groups, ensuring everyone gets super relevant content that interests them. The Nouri.sh team are also here to give you tips and advice; how to improve your newsletter, how to increase the number of subscribers, how to track the progress of your newsletter with Google Analytics the list goes on…

You also get advanced subscriber management. If you need access to a list of subscribers you can download this at the touch of a button. You can edit or extract the data and re-upload it to your back office. Effortless!

Another great benefit of the starter package is access to custom templates. Unlike the free level with Nouri.sh branding, the templates in the starter package give the newsletter that extra professional flair.

You can upgrade here or contact us for more information.

Nouri.sh is a unique email newsletter solution. You can tailor the content and the look of the newsletter to fit your specific needs. Nouri.sh is a great way for sharing blog posts with your aficionados and is an equally good solution for internal email as you have the option to create multiple campaigns to target specific groups.

Yes, there are other similar products on the market but here are just some of the reasons why we stand out from the crowd.

WordPress Plugin

We have our very own WP plugin that adds a widget to your WP blog, allowing people to subscribe to your Nouri.sh newsletter campaign. You simply choose which campaigns you want to make available to your visitors.

To install, simply download this file, unzip and upload to your plugins directory within WordPress. Once installed you will see a Nouri.sh link in the menu, you simply input your username and password, choose the campaigns to make available (if you have more than one) and away you go!

Subscribe Forms

Getting new subscribers is important to the growth of your campaign. This is true whether you are an eCommerce business looking for an instant conversion, or whether you are just looking to remind someone about your brand. Here at Nouri.sh we have 3 different subscribe forms to help you grow your campaign.

For more detailed information about subscribe forms see here.

-Simple

The simple subscribe form is perfect for adding in to emails or posting on social media sites. Another great place to put this form is in your email signature.

-Customised

You can provide individuals with a customised link which will automatically subscribe them to the campaign when clicked on. Be sure to edit the URL to include their real email address.

-Advanced

The advanced subscribe form is better suited to a webpage or blog page. In fact you can add this form in to any page that you wish by pasting the code in to your newsletter template.

Measurable Success

When you login to view your campaigns you have access to a variety of statistics. You can see how your subscriber base is growing and view metrics such as the open and click-through rates.
You can also measure the success of your newsletter using Google Analytics by editing the newsletter template to enable tracking. This allows you to dig even deeper in to what content your readers find the most relevant.

Nouri.sh is FREE

With Nouri.sh you can subscribe to our free plan and send up to 1,000 emails a month. You can also combine multiple RSS feeds to ensure content is highly relevant to your readers.

Unlike any other similar service out there Nouri.sh does not force you to upgrade to a paid plan after a 15 or 30 day trial. You can test Nouri.sh for free as long as you like with the same great support and customer service as you would expect from the paid plans.

Customisable Nouri.sh Plans

We also offer a selection of paid plans which we can help you to customise to meet your specific needs. The main benefit of signing up to a paid plan is that you can set up multiple campaigns, allowing you to segment your subscribers. This is imperative for creating reader specific content and allows you to tailor make emails for multiple subscriber groups.

Other great features include:

– More emails. You can currently send up to 100,000 emails per month on our Professional plan. If you are looking for an even higher volume please contact us: sales@nouri.sh

– Advanced subscriber management. You have enhanced management features giving you the ability to download/export subscriber lists for easy management

– Nouri.sh is flexible; it can be tailored to suit bloggers, businesses and is even a useful internal eNewsletter solution. Our team is here to ensure users make the most of Nouri.sh, so if there is something you would like that we don’t currently offer then drop us an email to let us know.

Tim Watson has over 9 years of experience specialising solely in email marketing.

He works with brands on email strategy; helping increase the performance of the email marketing channel using an evidence-based analytical approach.

Tim is an active industry voice too, speaking at conferences, regularly blogging and Chair of the email marketing best practice hub for the DMA. We asked Tim some key questions; here is his valuable advice.

What are the main benefits of email marketing campaigns when they are done well?

The main benefit of email marketing is quite simply more business.

For those companies driving revenue online, I like to think of the email marketing “send campaign” button, as more of a “send me money” button. With many of the clients I work with, I find that we send out the campaign and literally within minutes, you see revenue coming in. It is quite incredible.

Those companies working in B2C and online commerce have been the biggest adopters of email marketing. This is mainly due to the tracking that is available. It has been very clear that revenue is delivered through email marketing.
But that doesn’t mean to say that revenue isn’t delivered for companies who don’t have an online instant conversion offer. Email marketing drives response. It drives engagement and it essentially drives more business. This is true whether you are looking to get an immediate click and purchase, or whether you are just looking to re-engage someone and remind them about your brand so that it stays front of mind.

It works.

What is the optimum length of the subject line?

That’s a great question and one that I continually see being debated. It is also something for which poor advice is continually re-circulated. There has been some research in the past about the length of subject lines, but that research was limited in its approach. What it looked at was the correlation between the length of the subject line and just open rates. It found that shorter subject lines generally had higher open rates. However, research failed to look at what happens when the subject line gets longer and how this affects the click rate.

Now clicks are far more important than opens. What actually happens is the click rate tends to go up with the subject line length. There is a very good reason for this; when a subject line is short, it makes it hard for the reader to understand if the email is actually appropriate to them and establish if it is something that they are actually interested in. This means they have to open the email in order to understand the offer, worse still the potentially wrong people open it. Many find the content is not relevant to them this time. Whereas when the subject line is longer, readers can better self-qualify their interest in that particular email. Those people who open it are then much more likely to act, so the click-rates go up.

I would say that the best lesson to be learnt for the subject line is not to always make it less than 50 characters. Fine, if you want to drive awareness and open rate, use a short subject line. But don’t be afraid to use a longer subject line just because of the research that continually gets re-quoted. The better research has shown a bigger picture considering open and click rates.

What is the best way to do split testing?

I’m really quite a fan of split testing, and with many different brands over the years I have driven increased response through careful use of split testing. Now there are a few things to think about when you are split testing. The first is to make sure that you test something from which you can learn and apply to future campaigns. So if you were to make a change to work out what is better on a particular campaign, but you can’t reuse any insight you get from that in future campaigns, you’re missing out big time. Test things from which you can learn and reuse the learnings to keep building and improving.

The next problem that I see happening regularly is sample sizes being too small. In order to ensure results are solid, what we call statistically significant, you need to have sufficient sample size. That means typically 3,000+ people in each test cell. To make sure your results are good, use a statistical significance email split test calculator. There are various free ones available online such as here .

Another I see happening is people make changes that are too small. As a general rule small changes lead to small result differences. If you want a bigger result difference, you need to make more radical changes to your thinking. There are test cases out there where just one word can make a big difference, but that’s where the one word has radically altered the perception of the reader. The best thing to do is to make big perceptual changes to the reader as that gives the biggest result. Rather than just improving a particular message experiment with totally different approaches too.

Is the open rate the best measure of success?

For me, it is a definite NO to that question. I definitely wouldn’t use the open rate as a business metric or put increasing open rates central to strategy. At the very most it is useful as a diagnostic metric, to look at the campaign performance and see what your next step might be.

As a business objective I would be quite happy to see my open rate go down if my revenue was going up and that absolutely can happen, and it does happen. The reason for this is that the open rate does not map accurately to click rates and conversion rates. So, even an increase in open rate will not necessarily mean that there is an increase in conversion rate. In fact the open rate gets it wrong a lot of the time. So I look to click rates and conversion rates, whether that’s sales, number of purchases, downloads of white papers, registration for events etc. Measure those things that drive your business, using clicks as a secondary metric to back that up, and opens really just as a cursory one to look at. Look at customer based metrics, rather than campaign based metrics.

When creating a campaign what is more important, the look of the newsletter or the content?

Well without a doubt it’s the content. Even ugly emails can do well; even poor emails can actually do well. It is surprising what a newsletter that might be considered rubbish can actually achieve. If the content is right and the offer is right, then the reader will actually forgive that is isn’t the most beautiful newsletter.

Of course designing an email to make it easy to read is a very good idea, I certainly wouldn’t set out to make an email hard to read. But the difference between easy to read and a beautiful look are also very different. No-one is going in to their inbox expecting to find the Tate Modern Gallery; no-one is looking for artistic and enjoyable things to look at. Any design work has to be designed to appeal to emotion and simplicity of message. But the content is the most important.

You can read more of Tim’s thoughts and great advice on his blog: http://www.zettasphere.com/blog

Don’t make unachievable resolutions this year, follow these 3 simple steps to improve your eNewsletters.

By spending a little time reviewing your newsletter content and making simple changes you can make a big difference in 2014. Of course it is always good to have big ambitions, especially when it comes to business but here are 3 top tips to ensure a prosperous new year.

Review previous newsletters. People often set up newsletters without stopping to think what the audience actually want to receive. Does it read well? Does it address your target market? And most importantly, if you were being asked to criticise the content, what would you highlight?

Have a read through past emails and go through them with a fine tooth comb, imagine you have just received a message in your inbox. Does the title make you open it? Make a list of questions such as those I have mentioned and draw some conclusions. If you would like some impartial advice regarding your newsletter the team at Nouri.sh will be happy to provide feedback.

Sometimes it is what you don’t do that makes the difference. Let me illustrate what I mean by using the visual of a Waltz. The Waltz is the most graceful dance, it looks simple and effortless, however in order to actually achieve this a huge amount of control and precision is required. One jerky movement and the whole illusion is ruined. In terms of an eNewsletter, the most effective ones will target the reader with intellect and calculated content, not with brash generic statements. The tact with which you deliver your content is very important.

Tailor your newsletter to your audience. This may seem obvious, but when was the last time you reviewed your subscribers activities and interests? You can use multiple feeds to create a newsletter with Nouri.sh so why not make the most of this and send the relevant feeds to the relevant people.

Image you own a coffee shop and you know that certain customers like certain drinks. The click through rate of an eNewsletter that gives them information or offers about their favourite beverage will be significantly higher than that of an email with generic information about the shop. If you have information about customer behaviour then you should be using this knowledge to create multiple campaigns. This demonstrates that you know and understand your reader.

Implement some changes. After reviewing your newsletters with the audience in mind, implement the top 3 things you have picked up on and see how this affects the open rate and CTR. You can use these statistics to see how effective your changes have been.

All the best for 2014 from the Nouri.sh team

So it’s that time of year again, just over a week to go until Christmas Day. As consumers step up their spending we in the office are unsurprisingly winding down for a small (well deserved) break.

It is common for businesses to avoid change as the festive season approaches. This can be because it is the busiest time of year and not the appropriate moment to be changing strategies, for others they feel it is just not the time of year to get things done. People will inevitably have holiday, partners will be closed for various amounts of time, and others are simply excited for one too many glasses of bucks fizz!

Whilst we have a few more working days available, let us prepare a few treats we can give our business. After all, the Christmas indulgences may very well inhibit your judgement, so it best to outline some plans before the holidays.

A Blog

If you don’t have one, get one. It can be used in so many different ways, depending on your requirements. It allows you to have a voice, whether this is for selling, informing, helping or simply connecting with people it is a great way to compliment any social media work you do. The only thing you may need to pay for is content creation, so blogs bring a whole host of benefits for very little outlay.

An eNewsletter Campaign

Again it is essential that you have a voice and that you communicate. This could be a newsletter for your staff members, a newsletter for clients or why not just implement both! You can use content from both social media campaigns and from your blog. In fact, any source that has an RSS feed. You can tag certain posts so they only go to certain groups and the whole thing really can be tailored to your individual needs. Have a think what would benefit or add value to your company and if you have any questions please post a comment and we will get back to you.

Appraisals/Reviews

These are great opportunities to rebuild relationships with staff. If you have been focussed on a project and haven’t given them much time over the past few months, suggest a catch up. This is a great opportunity for an employee to share thoughts about their own progress and it really doesn’t need to be your analysis of them. Have a chat, make some notes and then get back to them with a plan of action. Another benefit about engaging your staff in this way is that they feel they can share ideas and solutions to their everyday problems. With your help these can be implemented, so you end up with a happier employee who has a little more spare time to make you some lovely money!

A Christmas Party

The highlight of the social calendar, new dresses, new shirts and everyone is filled with festive cheer. It is great to end a year on a high and recognising hard work with a nice meal or a few beverages is always appreciated. It is nice to remind ourselves that we work with great people and this is something we often overlook in the office. Especially in the run up to Christmas, tensions in the office can run high. A lot of people under a lot of pressure cannot end well. The great thing about socialising outside of work is you get to know and appreciate the person, not the job title.

Merry Christmas!

From the Nouri.sh team