iContact

What is iContact

Please contact Andrew Ta to receive an account within iContact. Once you are in the system, this company has excellent enterprise support at the following address:

Technical support & application issues:

enterprise@icontact.com  •  ☎ (866) 331-3207

iContact is the email marketing solution to grow your business.

• Best Practices Training
• iContact Tutorials
• VIDEO TUTORIAL SPECIFIC TO UC HASTINGS

Maximizing your Email Marketing - Templates, Subject lines and Calls to Action

1. Provide Email marketing template examples
2. Give you ideas that you can implement
3. Establish a solid email marketing foundation to build on

Template options - Message Coder

1. You can build a message either within iContact, or in an external program like Photoshop, and then place the code directly into the HTML page in a new template.
2. iContact design team can help with tweaks, if needed, or if there are any problems with rendering when your template is placed into the application.

Choosing a "From Address"

1. Do you open emails from people/organizations you don't recognize?
2. From Name should be recognizable
3. DoNotReply@organization.com is not a good email to send from
4. Neither is Fred@company.com unless you are certain subscribers know who Fred is.
   

Subject Lines

1. Goal of a subject line = get recipient to open your email
2. Is there Value? Exclusive info or ideas?
3. Is there urgency or breaking news?
4. Stay under 50 characters. People are busy, and inboxes will chop them off.
5. Questions can work well

What makes someone open your message?

Test, test, test those subject lines, and see what works!

Calls to Action

1. Call to Action (CTA) means an element that solicits an action from the user
   -  Typically a visual element
2. If you want recipients to do something when they get your email, tell them via CTA
3. Grab their attention
4. Entice them to click, call, purchase, donate, attend, read, listen, visit, etc..
   -  Note all of the above words are verbs
5. Tell them the action they should take

CTA Examples

BUTTONS! Much more effective than hyperlinks in generating clicks because

1. They draw attention better
2. They are more easily clickable -- Particularly in mobile devices
   
   

Recap

• Templates should be well branded and be consistent with your website, and any other marketing communication
• Navigation bars are a great way to provide this type of consistency, as well as give contacts more opportunities to click on your message
• Subject lines are a key determinant of whether an email is opened--- what will they gain from opening your message?
• Include a clear Call-To-Action
• Keep content brief.  If they want more, they will click to read/see/hear more on your website
• Average open rates vary by industry and audience, but maximizing results requires TESTING!