Including the following four tips will help you engage with your recipients better, maintain their trust and get those images displaying.

At the top of your email:

Remind them why they are receiving your email
You are receiving this email...
-Because you are a customer of X.
-Because you signed up to X newsletter.
-Because you are a subscriber to X emails.

This will help the recipient immediately recognise who you are and remind them why they are getting the email.

Use a Viewonline Link to help display blocked and unloaded images
Most mail clients will not display the images on your email, so inserting a viewonline link at the top of your email will help encourage recipients to open up the email in a new web browser page. This will display all the content and images in full.

Try including:
-Problem seeing the images? [viewonline]Click here to view this email in your web browser [/viewonline].
-Images not displaying? [viewonline]View the full email online here [/viewonline].

This will help to get the email opened and avoid recipients possibly ignoring or deleting the email because they’ve been put off by the email looking incomplete.

At the bottom of your email:

Include full company details
Always include your company name, address and contact details at the foot of your email. This will help you build and maintain trust with the recipient. Emails without full company details can look illegitimate and untrust worthy, which could lead to the email being marked as spam.

Make the unsubscribe link easy to find
Avoid burying the unsubscribe link amongst a paragraph of text or changing its colour so that it doesn’t clearly stand out against your email’s background colour. If a recipient is no longer interested in receiving your emails, make it easy for them to locate the unsubscribe link, rather than running the risk of the recipient getting annoyed and marking the email as spam.

Creating a successful call to action (CTA) is essential as it is what triggers the chain of events that leads to a sale, registration or website traffic.  A CTA is just as important as a subject line as it is what prompts the reader to act once the email has been opened.  If you take the time to carefully consider your own CTA, the outcome will be worth the extra effort.

1. Give a Reason to Click
As always, there has to be something in it for your readers.  Make sure that your CTA leads to something that is useful, desirable and worthwhile. Also, make it known that by clicking on the CTA your reader will be getting something in return, some info or an offer perhaps.  You want to entice the reader into responding to your CTA.

2. The CTA shouldn't be a Mystery
By simply saying "Click Here," you risk leaving your reader wondering what happens next.  You need to explain what the benefit is to completing the call to action.  If the CTA is vague, readers will be less likely to click.  Instead try phrases like "Click here to read the full story" or "Visit this page for more information on this offer."  All it requires is a simple one-liner that highlights what will happen after the click takes place.

3. Create a Sense of Urgency
CTA's should generate a “must respond now” outcome otherwise campaign responses will be lower.  If there's no reason to act now, readers are likely to put it off, which can lead to forgetting about it altogether.  If I get an email offering DVD box-sets on sale for the next 2 weeks, I may delay responding until a later date, maybe I don't have time to go through the shopping cart that day.  But if the CTA says a sale ends 6pm today, or there's limited stock, or only the first 100 customers to respond qualify, I'm sure to click straight away.

4. Don't be Tight with Your Links
You only want to have one main CTA, but that doesn't restrict you from linking to your CTA in multiple places.  Spread the link throughout your email so that the main CTA is not the only route to the desired landing page.  If your CTA takes your reader to the main sale item, put that same link in several other places.  Hopefully the CTA will grab your reader's attention, but if not, give them several other places to find the link.

5. Make the Call to Action Stand Out
Be sure to place your CTA at the top of your email, above the fold.  Your reader should be able to see it in their email preview screen, before they even open the email.  If you place it towards the middle or bottom of the email, it can get lost by other content.  Make your CTA very noticeable either by bolding it, putting it into a graphic or by adding an arrow or symbol.  It needs to be eye catching and obvious (without being too large and not in sync with the rest of the email).

6. Use a Unique Click Phrase
You can be more creative than simply saying "Click Here."  Your readers aren't dummies, so you don't have to simplify your CTA to the standard and overused "click here" phrase.  Because this phrase is often used, it doesn't stand out like it used to.  Try other action phrases like "Download Now" or "View More."

We are pleased to announce a new email marketing feature for Suite26, the first of many improvements and new functionality to be added in the coming weeks, aiming to make your email marketing more effective.

Today’s new feature is quite simply a button that lets you resend a campaign to those contacts that didn’t open the original email, therefore reducing the time and effort it used to take before. Sorry about that.

This new feature works by automatically placing these ‘unopened’ contacts into a new group for you, which you can rename and then select when scheduling your campaign to resend.

How to use this auto ‘create new group’ feature:

1. Go into the report for the campaign you previously sent and underneath the ‘More Reports’ section, click on ‘Not Opened Report’.

2. At the bottom of the list of contacts displayed, click on the new link titled ‘Create a new group with these contacts’.

3. A message bar will then appear saying the contacts are being importing into a new group and might take a few minutes.

4. Refresh your screen after a few minutes and you’ll see a new contact group has been generated, which you can rename if wish.

5. To resend the email campaign, go to Send/Schedule Campaign and simply select the new contact group of unopened contacts.

If you have any questions or need any help using this feature, please call Mark on 0845 313 0912.

When selecting your subject lines always remember: the shorter you keep your subject lines, the more deliveries you’ll receive and the higher open rates you’ll achieve.

Before you send your next campaign, take a look at the link between the length of the subject lines from previous email campaigns and the number of unique opens and total clicks they received.

You should also carefully consider that subject line word choice, word order and recipient awareness are also vital factors in receiving more deliveries and opens.

We recommend that you stick to these points when writing your next subject lines:

1) Keep the subject line as short as possible
2) Avoid using ‘Spammy’ words such as; Urgent, Free, Buy Now and symbols like !!, ££, **
3) Only use longer subject lines when there is considerable reason to do so
4) Whenever you’re unsure, always test your emails.

We've recently added two new email campaign reports into Suite26.

The first is a Not Opened report which allows you to view and export the recipients that did not open your email campaign. The second is Opened But Not Clicked report which allows you to view and export recipients which opened your campaign but did not click on any links, allowing you to follow up further if you wish.

Both of these new reports can be accessed from the Delivery Overview report. You'll find them listed in the More Reports section underneath all of the usual statistics.