As we are starting to get into the the spirit of giving with Christmas fast approaching, we thought we would share a few points that we think might help you with your holiday email campaigns.

Tip 1: Make it easy to forward. Whether it's to pass on an invitation or drop a subtle gift hint, make sure your subscribers have an easy option to move your information along.

Tip 2: Make sure your holiday related information as at the top. Have you heard about the phrase "above the fold". This is your email gold mine.  Turn the top of your email into a crowd puller.  Don't waste this valuable real estate on an image that might not even be displayed.

Tip 3: Get personal. People can have pretty full inboxes in general. When the holiday season hits, they get even fuller. So take a moment and find ways to get a little more intimate with your readers. They may be a little more receptive to click on emails tailored for them.

Tip 4: Balance the images. People seem to receive more emails with one large image in the holidays than any other months. While we understand big display images are tempting, be careful. Find a nice balance of images and text, and be sure to make the most of your alt tags.

Tip 5: Give some thanks. Let your readers know that they  are important to your company. Whether it be a small discount, some free information or even a separate campaign, don't miss the opportunity to let your subscribers know what they have done to help you out over the past year.

So we hope the holiday season is a succesful one for you.  Hope you can latch onto a few ideas that will take your communication efforts to a new level.  As a wise man once said - HO, HO, HO.

Outlook 2007 has been out now for almost 2 years and the issues around this have not changed.  They have just become magnified as more people upgrade and convert to Outlook 2007.  We thought this might be a good opportunity to revisit the issues surrounding Outlook 2007.

Firstly we want to make something clear that the sky is not falling in with the changes to Outlook 2007.  Are they annoying for email marketers?  Yes they are, but if you are following good email design practices then you will be having less problems than others.

So what has happened?  Instead of taking advantage of Internet Explorer 7 to display html emails in Outlook 2007 Microsoft have used the very limited support for HTML and CSS that is built into Word 2007 to display HTML email messages.  So previously in Outlook 2003 you would use IE to display your html emails, but in Outlook 2007 receivers view using Microsoft word.  So effectively two people in one office could view your emails in two different formats.

Below are some of the limitations imposed by Word 2007:

• No support for background images (HTML or CSS)
• No support for forms
• No support for Flash, or other plugins
• No support for CSS floats
• No support for replacing bullets with images in unordered lists
• No support for CSS positioning
• No support for animated GIFs

In short, unless your HTML emails are very, very simple, you're going to run into problems with Outlook 2007, and in most cases the only solution to those problems will be to reduce the complexity of your HTML email design to accommodate Outlook's limited feature set.

With the release of Outlook 2007, Microsoft is effectively adding an entirely new rendering engine to the mix-one that designers producing HTML email will not be able to ignore.

Are we in a recession or is it still coming? Economists and politicians continue to trade opinions, but business people know they are facing an economic downturn. Cost-cutting will be inevitable and unfortunately some of the first cuts seem to be made in marketing. Given the proven profitability of email marketing many companies feel that in this case that conventional slashing of the marketing budget that email should be spared.

Email as a marketing channel offers a distinct set of competitive advantages, not unlike the advantages many businesses will seek in an economic downturn.

Firstly is the accountability of email marketing. Email is considered the most measurable of all marketing channels.  You should be able to justify any investment with hard revenue and profits generated. Email results generally deliver an immediate return on investment.  Send today and view the results in minutes.

Secondly is email's ability to help you protect your most valuable asset in a downturn economy: loyal customers. As a channel, email offers some technical advantages that enable marketers to send highly targeted and relevant messages. You can craft your email campaigns that are focused on your highest value customers, with content and offers that will keep them coming back for more. Unlike television advertising and print advertsing, email marketing offers more cost effective opportunities to surprise and delight your customers, while at the same time generating some quick sales.

When it comes to low cost, high reward marketing channels, email has no rival. In fact, your goal should be to drive as much of your customer communications to email as possible, no matter what state the economy is in. Email gives you the ability to monitor customer interactions in real time and respond quickly to a need or customer concern. It is the ideal device for driving online revenue.

Always remember that email is a permission based medium. Marketers who "blast" their customers with generic messages will certainly get results, but it is the marketers who send the smartest and most relevant email that will reap the greatest reward: loyal, long term customer relationships. And, if we are indeed in a recession, your most important asset will be the enduring value of that customer loyalty.

What do you do with people on your email list that don't seem to be interested in you anymore? Maybe their are not opening your emails or clicking on any links.  We recently attended an email marketing seminar where the subject of a "Break Up" email campaign was mentioned.  The audience moaned when confronted with the fact that they may actually tell someone that "sorry your really not that into us anymore and it could be time to severe our ties".  The activation of this campaign can be quite a simple one and very similar to a list cleaning.  If it is done right and has some humor to engage as well as some steps to re-qualify those on your list either into other programs OR taking them off your list you can have some big benefits.

The question at the seminar was asked "Why would I do this". Well the answer is a simple one too. If you are emailing people over and over again what YOU want to tell them and they are not taking actions, it would suggest that you do not have campaigns that are currently relevant to them. So by continuing to send them your emails you are just reducing the chances you have to engage and convert them into sales. Now they may be past purchasers and not in market right now for what you have to offer.

Essentially what you are doing with the break up email approach is to try and reconnect with your database. Why not ask them to update their profile to make your future messages more relative to their current needs.  Don't use their last purchase entirely as a guide for future purchases from you.  People change.  So you need to have a relevant Customer dialogue to find other products to promote or get them excited to move on a new larger purchase down the road.

If you are not having a two-way conversation in email, you will find that your campaigns are slowly losing steam and not driving results.

Why not use the holidays to approach the new year in a way that helps you while at the same time builds a program based on need with your subscribers. Or you could continue to send email campaigns and hope for the best while your subscribers lose interest. Its your call.

Once again EzyMsg will be offering a Christmas special and providing all full accounts with 6 free Christmas email templates that you can edit and update as well as FREE send fees for all messages sent using these special Christmas email templates.

These templates will be live in your account from the morning of
Monday December 1st to Wednesday 31st December 2008.

As in previous years, there are some important restrictions you need to be aware of.

These restrictions are:

• The maximum number of emails that can be sent FREE using the templates are restricted to 10,000 messages
• The Christmas templates are locked down so that the headers on these messages cannot me modified.  Your are welcome to create your own Christmas emails, but these will not be sent FREE.
• To be able to send these Christmas messages, your account must be a full active account (ie no trial accounts)

So go and spread the Christmas cheer to your clients.  All you need to do is choose messages in your account and then choose to create a new email.  You will then see a Christmas Email button.  Click this button and away you go.

     Unsubscribe Notification Messages: You will now have the ability to set notification messages for when a contact unsubscribes from your database (in the same way that you can set subscription and profile change notifications).
 
    Bounce Codes Update: Bounce codes have been modified so that the only permanent errors to be recorded are:

1. No such Mailbox
2. Incorrect Domain
3. Mailbox has moved
4. Mailbox disabled
5. Bad Mailbox Syntax 

   Menu Buttons: The Message and Database Fields screens now have Menu Buttons in the bottom right hand corner.

   SMS Statistics: SMS messages in Campaigns will now have their statistics included in Campaigns results

   Menu Changes: The Campaigns/Autoresponders menu item will be renamed "Automation"