HOW DO I NEWSLETTER?

Mikhaila Skehor, @miktacular

Account Manager at @kickpointinc

Gif sommelier, Newsletter writer extraordinaire, Person to Lemons the Corgi

CASL: WHAT IS IT AND HOW DOES IT AFFECT ME

CASL: THE LOWDOWN

• Canadian Anti-Spam Legislation

• Protect Canadians from unwanted electronic communications (within Canada)

• CASL means that senders must establish express consent before sending electronic communications

• Government definitely hasn’t made it easy or clear to figure out all the rules

CASL: FREQUENTLY ASKED QUESTIONS

CASL: TO WHOM DOES IT APPLY• Applies to all electronic communications within

Canada, with some notable exceptions

• If the primary purpose of the CEM is to solicit a contribution, CEMs sent by or on behalf of a political party or a person who is a candidate for publicly elected office, are excluded from section 6 of CASL

• CASL does not apply to the activities of the federal, provincial and territorial governments. CASL does apply, however, to crown corporations, including municipal governments, when the corporation is acting in the course of any commercial activity.

CASL: CONSENT

• Checkbox is used during purchase process

• Implied express consent is entering email into a box

• Privacy Policy and a Contact Us link must be visible during signup, also clarification that consent can be withdrawn at any time

• Proof of consent must be provided during an investigation – i.e., if you’re adding people from a ballot in an offline contest, you must keep the ballots in order to prove consent was provided

CASL: CONSENT DURING PURCHASE PROCESS

Checkbox pre-checked Checkbox unchecked

CASL: EXPRESS CONSENT

CASL: DOUBLE OPT-IN

• Send an email to the subscriber asking them to confirm their subscription by clicking a link after they’ve given you express consent to contact them

• If you have CASL compliance, double opt-in is optional, BUT just because you have double opt-in doesn’t mean you’re automatically CASL compliant

CASL: COMPLIANCE

• Proper compliance involved sending out an email to your entire existing list and asking them the opt-in, confirming they still wanted to receive emails

• A new list from the opt-ins was generated which could only be used from then on

• The old list was therefore invalid, no matter who was on it

• Needed to be completed by July 1, 2014

CASL: HOW MUCH WILL IT COST ME? • Starting July 1, 2017, fines will be levied against

violators, and as a sender you will be responsible for any violations

• Individuals can be fined up to $1 million dollars, while corporations could be fined up to $10 million.

• Individuals will also be able to sue organizations for breaches in a private right of action

CASL: UNSUBSCRIBES

• Every electronic communication you send must have an unsubscribe mechanism, i.e. a “hyperlink that is included clearly and prominently in an email that allows the end-user to unsubscribe by simply clicking it.” 

• People will unsubscribe. It’s okay – it’s not a breakup. Don’t get whiny, don’t ask why, don’t beg them to stay. Just let them go.

CASL: HOW NOT TO UNSUBSCRIBE, BY AMEX CANADA

CASL: HOW NOT TO UNSUBSCRIBE, BY AMEX CANADA

CASL: HOW NOT TO UNSUBSCRIBE, BY AMEX CANADA

CASL: WHY IT’S ACTUALLY GOOD FOR YOU• Kick Point’s good friend Jill guest posted for us

on the benefits of CASL

• More engaged audience, people who are more likely to buy a service or product from you because they’ve actually signed up for your email list (better brand engagement)

• Your list will be smaller but infinitely more engaged

CASL: WHY IT’S ACTUALLY GOOD FOR YOU

37% of respondents reported an increase in clicks post-CASL

Charts from engagement increases from our CASL survey

SO YOU WANT TO BUILD A NEWSLETTER?

SYWTBAN: BRAND VOICE

• Your Brand Voice can be summed up by the question: If your company were a person, what would they say?

• Brand Voice is the overarching tone of all company communications (hopefully) – from the way the phone is answered to every response to a complaint, Brand Voice provides consistency

• You’ll always be the face of your company until you give it a voice

SYWTBAN: BLOG POST TO EMAIL BUTTON• If you’re already blogging, a great way to

develop your list (and a baby step to a real newsletter) is to have a blog posts to email button

• This allows subscribers to receive an email when new blog posts are posted, ensuring you grow your list so when you’re ready to start your newsletter, some of the leg work is done already

SYWTBAN: LOOK FOR OPPORTUNITIES• You want to find the value in what you’re

offering

• Offer someone something they’ll exchange their email address for, but not something so valuable you should be charging for it

• Combine a series of related blog posts into a whitepaper for download

• Run the risk of tire kickers, but they’re in every industry

SYWTBAN: PROVE YOUR VALUE• Death to the Stock Photo sends monthly emails

with photo pack downloads on different topics every month (this month is objects)

• Offer discounts to VIP subscribers, or advance notice of sales

• Don’t make it salesy – if sales are a goal, make sure you have other content as well

SYWTBAN: PROVE YOUR VALUE• I downloaded a whole library of stock photos

from Death to the Stock Photo in exchange for my email address. Here’s one of Left Shark’s early days:

SYWTBAN: CONTENT

• What’s new and cool in your industry? Outside your industry?

• What blog posts did you enjoy (or not enjoy) this week/month, and why?

• Is your company hosting any upcoming events?

• Things that may seem boring to you may be great content/blogging/newslettering opportunities

SYWTBAN: POP-UPS: ANNOYING BUT EFFECTIVE

SYWTBAN: POP-UPS: ANNOYING BUT EFFECTIVE• Speak to your IT department to implement a

(CASL-compliant!) pop-up on your website

• Either on the homepage after scrolling, or a few pages in, or those with ‘Exit Intent’ (Bounce Exchange)

• Ensure they’re tied to cookies (and a thank you page) so that subscribers aren’t pestered

• Write a specific post with a CTA for signups to promote on social

SYWTBAN: POP-UPS: ANNOYING BUT EFFECTIVE

SYWTBAN: SIDENOTE

SYWTBAN: MONEY AFTER GRADUATION• Bridget at Money After Grad recently started a

newsletter called Get Rich Young

• Has significant traffic each month and a high conversion rate on signups so she has 400 subscribers in 2.5 weeks

• Uses a pop up that displays for new visitors every seven days

• Offers various spreadsheets as downloads upon signup, has a great welcome email that suggests articles you may also be interested in

SYWTBAN: MONEY AFTER GRADUATION

SYWTBAN: CHOOSING AN EMAIL CLIENT• Think about the type of newsletter you’ll be

sending – will the format change every month, or will it stay the same?

• Several clients out there – Campaign Monitor, Industry Mailout, MailChimp, GetResponse

• As with anything, it’s useful to investigate a few different options to see what works for you

SYWTBAN: CONTENT

SYWTBAN: CONTENT

• Jacek’s newsletter is tantalizing and makes me want to eat all the chocolate

• Lots of information, professional photos, and a great layout

SYWTBAN: CONTENT

SYWTBAN: CONTENT

SYWTBAN: SUBJECT LINES

• “When it comes to email marketing, the best subject lines tell what’s inside, and the worst subject lines sell what’s inside.” - MailChimp

• You want to stand out in a good way

• How many other companies are competing for inbox space? What makes you different than the rest?

• Test, test, test!

• Create a curiosity that results in the recipient opening the email

SYWTBAN: SUBJECT LINES

SYWTBAN: HOW NOT TO SUBJECT LINE

SYWTBAN: SUBJECT LINES

6 Steps to Improve Email Open Rates from Unbounce

Step 1: Be useful and ultra specific – make sure it’s relevant and useful for your customers

Step 2: Identify yourself – mention your most identifiable brand product in the subject line, or prefix the subject line with a consistent identifier

Step 3: Be visually different – make you subject stand out visually by trying square brackets, sparing use of capitalization, phone numbers or quotes

Step 4: Use timely topics and urgency that are top of mind, and use urgency occasionally to point out deadlines

Step 5: Use a call-to-action (CTA) by asking a question

Step 6: Test your subject lines so you can repeat what works best

SYWTBAN: KICK POINT NEWSLETTER TAKEOVER• I can’t do a presentation on newsletters without

talking about Kick Point’s weekly newsletter

• Dana writes our newsletter, but a few weeks ago she had the plague

• Jen and I, being supportive, offered to do it for her so she would have one less thing on her diseased plate

• We changed the subject line to something straight out of 1999.

SYWTBAN: KICK POINT NEWSLETTER TAKEOVER

SYWTBAN: KICK POINT NEWSLETTER TAKEOVER

SYWTBAN: KICK POINT NEWSLETTER TAKEOVERUsual subject line:

Your Weekly Dose of Kick Point (Issue #89)

Our subject line:

~*~ YoUr WeEkLy DoSe Of KiCk PoInT ~*~ (Issue #90 wutwut!!!)

Which subject line did better?

SYWTBAN: KICK POINT NEWSLETTER TAKEOVER• Usual subject line:

• 39.02% open rate• 42.5% of subscribers clicked a link• Top performing link: Buffer’s Complete

Guide to Social Media Benchmarks

• Hijacked subject line:• 47.83% open rate• 32.32% of subscribers clicked a link• Top performing link: My breakout session

for iMEDIA!

SYWTBAN: KICK POINT NEWSLETTER TAKEOVER• Were Jen and I successful in our takeover?

• Depends on what our metrics of success are• We had the second highest open rate of all time,

likely due to the complete departure of the subject line phrasing from usual. However, the click rate wasn’t as impressive

• Proves that our subscribers are likely more interested in Kick Point’s content rather than J.Crew, rainbow font colours, and hearing about our near-death experience with a periwinkle SUV, and our article about passion was shared on our Facebook page

SYWTBAN: GROUP WORK

• Split into groups of two or four, and introduce yourselves and your company

• Describe what kind of things you’d like to put in your newsletter

• Come up with two or three subject lines each, and we’ll run them through Coschedule’s headline analyzer tool

• http://coschedule.com/headline-analyzer

SYWTBAN: MAIL CHIMP SETUP

SYWTBAN: MAIL CHIMP SETUP• Importing an existing subscriber list

SYWTBAN: MAIL CHIMP SETUP• Importing an existing list from a CSV (comma

separated format) file

• Save as CSV

SYWTBAN: MAIL CHIMP SETUP

SYWTBAN: MAIL CHIMP SETUP

SYWTBAN: MAIL CHIMP SETUP

SYWTBAN: MAIL CHIMP SETUP

SYWTBAN: MAIL CHIMP SETUP

Make sure Google Analytics link tracking is turned on, or you won’t know if your newsletter is having an impact!

SYWTBAN: MAIL CHIMP SETUP

SYWTBAN: MAIL CHIMP SETUP

SYWTBAN: MAIL CHIMP SETUP

SYWTBAN: MAIL CHIMP SETUP

SYWTBAN: MAIL CHIMP SETUP

SYWTBAN: MAIL CHIMP SETUP

SYWTBAN: MAIL CHIMP SETUP

SYWTBAN: MAIL CHIMP SETUP• Please never do this. Different social platforms

require different copy and content. Autoposting is bad, and you should feel bad if you do it. Please stop.

SYWTBAN: MAIL CHIMP SETUP

Seriously. Just don’t.

SYWTBAN: MAIL CHIMP CONTENT• Select a template that fits the content you’ve

outlined for the newsletter you’re sending (you can change the template in the Design phase)

• Start adding your content!

• MailChimp uses content blocks that are very intuitive and easy to use, and provides many resources in the form of blog posts and tutorials

SYWTBAN: MAIL CHIMP SETUP

SYWTBAN: MAIL CHIMP SETUP

SYWTBAN: DOS

• Do keep an eye on your reply to address for people who reply to unsubscribe rather than click the link

• Do sign up for some of your favourite companies’ email newsletters and see what they’re doing

• Do test everything you’re doing – subject lines, sending at different times of the day, length, content, etc

• Do obey CASL laws

SYWTBAN: DON’TS

• Don’t scare the crap out of your subscriber with your subject line

• Don’t send any commercial electronic messages without the proper consent

• Don’t ever autopost across multiple channels (Liam will find you)

• Don’t overwhelm your subscribers with emails

LOCAL U: APRIL 29TH

• Full-day workshop about internet marketing for Edmonton businesses, featuring a presentation by Google on how to use their local products to acquire new customers while also engaging and retaining existing ones

• Learn Search & Social Marketing tips and techniques that will lead to sustained, long-term search engine rankings (and new customers) in your local markets and world wide.

• How Do I Social? Getting Social Online

• 8am – 4pm at Lister Centre (Maple Leaf Room)

• Use code KP50 for $50 off your ticket – hope to see you there!

RESOURCES

• CASL Resource

• Government of Canada’s Anti-Spam Legislation

• Kick Point’s CASL Survey Results

• Jill Scheyk’s Pro-CASL Blog Post

• Headline Analyzer

• How to write the Perfect Email Subject Line

• 5 Email Subject Line Strategies That Will Increase Your Open Rates

• All About Email Open Rates