Should you use Emojis in your email subject lines


The subject line is the most important sentence of your email. A boring subject line will mean your email is overlooked or just deleted. 😲

Meaning all the hard work writing your email would have been for nothing!

It gets worse…

If your subscribers continually don’t open your email, you may begin to get marked as ‘spam’ by the email client (for example: Gmail, Outlook, Apple Mail). As email clients get more and more sophisticated about identifying which emails are engaging, and which emails shouldn’t even make it to the inbox.

So now you can know how important it is to get the subject line right, let’s see how we can make sure yours stand out.


Will Emojis Help Your Email Stand Out?


To avoid sending mundane subject lines to your subscribers, you’ve probably considered including emojis. But do they really grab readers attention?

Other email users seem to think so…

There has been a staggering increase in the use of emojis in subject lines.

Email marketer Jess Nelson reported that emoji usage has increased 775% year on year — (so you know, just a little bit). But could that mean you now blend into the crowd?

Turns out no.

While the increase has been massive, the percentage of people using emojis is still relatively small. According to Econsultancy, just 5% of subject lines in 2017 included emojis.

Will an emoji increase the chances of my email being read?


Other marketers are seeing success from using emojis when used well.

Many claim that emojis help your content stand out in an inbox dominated by text, and that when used strategically and sparingly, they do increase open rates.

Swiftpage, for example, did their own set of tests to determine the impact of emojis in subject lines. Here’s what they found:

  • 29% increase in their open rate (number of people who open the email)
  • 28% increase in the click through rate (number of people who click on a link in the email)

ReturnPath also tested emojis in their emails across multiple holidays and found some interesting results.

On Valentine’s Day, the use of lips in their subject lines increased their open rate by 4%.

On St Patrick’s Day the use of the Irish flag emoji increased open rates by over 6%.

 And they also found that the poop emoji was the most effective across other days of the year. Weird.

If you are a customer of InboxingPro, you will know we include a library of emojis in the campaign editor and you can simply select the emoji you want to add to the subject line and its added automatically

If you are not yet a customer, click here to see our current offers or click the link below to access a free selection

Click here to access a massive range of free emojis to use in your campaigns

It’s not all roses 🌹 for emojis


It can go the other way too. Econsultancy tested 14 different emails, each with multiple variations of the same subject line. They sent each email to over 10 groups of 50,000 people and recorded the results.

They found that 60% of the time an emoji increased the open rate (over the same subject line with no emoji). This means that 40% of the time, the emoji had a negative impact.

And popular isn’t necessarily better


There is data around the most popular emojis (see the list from Mailchimp below), but again, this doesn’t mean that they are the most effective. I suggest testing popular and different emojis to see which ones resonate with your audience the most.



Send half of your emails out with no emoji, and half with. See which gets the better open rate. Do this over the course of a few different email types to find a pattern and see if emojis really do work for you.

 Then try testing different types of emojis and use of multiple emojis to see which your subscribers prefer.

Emoji Subject Line Recommendations


If you are going to test using emojis in your email subject lines, there are a few tips I recommend.

  1. Use emojis sparingly: too many will make your email appear spam-like.
  2. Test your emails: your subscriber base is different, test to see which style they prefer.
  3. Render: make sure you are testing your email in multiple email clients, browsers and devices before sending to make sure the emoji appears correctly.
  4. Improve: take the learnings from previous emails and let them impact future subject lines.
  5. Write, write, write: create multiple variations of your subject line, with different emoji options and give yourself time to choose the best one, it is the most important piece of content of your email after-all.

Sorry — It’s Not That Easy.


Unfortunately, not all browsers and email clients display the same emojis in the same way or at all (check out this article on all the different ways the same emoji can look).

 So, while you might see your sunshine emoji just fine in your test email to a Gmail email address that you opened in Chrome, your recipients who open their email on another email client on their mobile might not see the same thing.

You will have to test multiple email clients and browsers to know for sure. Otherwise you could end up sending an email with this symbol in it ▢ or the word ‘emoji’.

Note: check how the subject line looks when you open the email too! Some email clients display subject line emojis differently within the email.

Could Emojis Impact Deliverability?


According to Experian, emojis shouldn’t impact upon your emails deliverability. So, if you’re seeing a lot of hard-bounces (failed sends) from your emails, then there are probably other factors at play.

To delve deeper into your low deliverability, start with your subscriber list:

  • Should these people be getting this email?
  • Are they all expecting and wanting to see your content?
  • Could you make your emails more relevant and engaging to them?
  • Are you sending emails at the right time for them?
  • Are your emails designed well and rendering correctly across all email clients that they use?

All of the above questions will help you determine why your deliverability is low.

Unfortunately it isn’t as simple as including or excluding an emoji.

So What’s The Final Verdict?


Should you include emojis in your email subject lines? Yes, you can and should trial using emojis!

But you need to work on writing a good subject line first. Then add relevant emojis sparingly to amplify their effectiveness.

Thanks to Amy Baker, Medium for this article

The Anatomy of Building an email list


It doesn’t really matter what product or service you sell online; the key metrics are the same and we should always start with building a list of targeted prospects

In this post I am going to highlight the best practice to build your list and generate revenue with the gold standard being you make more profit from the front-end funnel and back end follow up campaigns than the cost of the traffic and you have a very profitable long-term business

This should be the focal point of your marketing efforts and set up correctly you can capture the visitor’s email and then direct them to whatever page or offer you wish, and this provides the best ROI on your marketing spend

The key to building a list is to make sure you monetise the traffic

There are various ways to monetise your traffic, you can promote affiliate offers or create your own products and providing you build a high converting front end funnel and strong back end follow up, you should be able to make a profit from paid traffic which is the ultimate aim because you are then building your list for free

List building as an affiliate marketer

If you want to promote an affiliate offer many new markers send traffic directly to the vendors sales page which can be very costly and result in low conversions

To maximise revenue, always send your traffic to a review page of the offer you are promoting and collect the email to qualify for the bonus

Get review access as soon as possible from the vendor, if you are new provide as much info as possible so the vendor can see how you intend to promote and what sort of traffic you will be sending

The last thing any vendor wants is a lot of junk traffic because the conversion stats are all important to recruit other affiliates during the launch

It is also a great idea to create the bonus page frame work using the sales page or JV page graphics and headlines first before contacting the vendor because most will appreciate the effort and give you access

Do this as early as possible so you can go through the product thoroughly and create a review which can be a video or PDF

Always make sure you go through the entire product and provide a truthful review, it can take months to build up trust with your list of subscribers and 1 inaccurate review to destroy it

How to create a bonus

Providing good bonuses will increase your conversions but spend time going through the product to find something that could possibly be improved, generally an info product will address 1 key issue so find a weakness and base the bonus products on the missing piece of the puzzle

So, for example, you could be promoting an email marketing training course which covers how to get the most of out your emails but may not provide much in terms of how to get visitors to your website

Your review and bonus could point this out and address the issue with a related traffic product

If you are starting out chances are you will not have any of your own products but you can find some really great products that you can brand and sell or giveaway as your own and our own Plr profits club provides a product portfolio of over 5000 products you can sell and giveaway and we add 40 new products each month so a great resource to have

Other ways to build your list

If you have a blog (and you should have) add a signup offer in the sidebar or add links to the footer of your post linking to a paid offer, so for example you could say if you enjoyed this post you can find the top 3 advanced strategies etc on the link below

Forums and social media posting

Create accounts on the most popular forums in your niche and find questions or problems that have been posted that you can answer, if you don’t know the answer go and research it and you can add a link in your signature back to your blog and this method can be applied using all of the popular social media platforms

You will be amazed at the amount of quality traffic this method can provide even spending 20 minutes per day

The importance of top-quality Lead magnets

A lead magnet is something you give the visitor in return for their email address

Critically important to always provide high value content both as free content and paid offers

Gone are the days of throwing together a 7-page report, now we need to provide real value to get the visitor to give you their real email address

Make sure you provide a related offer based on the traffic you are generating, if you are promoting a list building product, its essential to provide a free report, video training or some related resource to list building for maximum conversions rather than a random offer which may be focused on another niche like social media etc

Always use a bridge page after the signup on the squeeze page

This is key to your conversions but also sets the scene and manages expectations for your new subscriber

A bridge page should give the new subscriber more information on what they can expect and when and how they will receive the gift they have signed up for

You can create a text page with graphics providing the info or create a short intro video

This is essential if you are sending the new subscriber to a one time offer or upgrade offer (and you should be)

Think about it for a minute, you have a brand-new subscriber that doesn’t know you and they have signed up to get your free offer

You obviously don’t mention on the squeeze page that you are going to send them to an offer before they get the free gift so guess what happens when they land on a paid offer? They are not too pleased, and a high percentage may well unsubscribe

Using a bridge page is designed to inform and educate the subscriber so they are fully aware of the process, you can tell them exactly how and when the free offer will be delivered but before that take a look at this offer on the next page because it could short cut the whole process, save money, or what ever reason you feel is appropriate in relation to the new offer you are presenting

Always use a trip wire offer

Once you have captured the lead and pre-sold on the bridge page, the offer you are going to send them to is know as a trip wire offer

A trip wire offer is simply a high value product with a low cost, I like to use an offer that may be an 8-part video training related to the free offer they just signed up for and typically I price this product at $7 which may normally sell for $27 - $37

The aim here is to convert as many cold subscribers to buyers with offers that should just be too good to miss

The value to you of a buyer can be 100 times more profitable than a subscriber so its key to work hard to convert as many free subscribers to buyers as possible

This process should be repeated with different offers sprinkled in amongst great free content in your follow up autoresponder campaigns until the subscriber finds an offer they can’t resist and becomes a buyer

Setting up your autoresponder

You will create a new list for your new subscribers and these leads are cold leads, they don’t know you and you need to spend some time providing genuine value and information that can help your new subscribers achieve whatever they are trying to do based on the niche you are in.

Over time you should achieve the “know, like and trust” status and this process gives you a far greater chance to make a sale and build up a long-term relationship

Segment your lists

Its key to segment your lists based on interests or products, so you can better target both paid offers and free content

Create as many free front end offers as you wish, add 1-2 personal follow up messages related to the actual free content and then set the autoresponder to automatically move the subscribers to a master prospects list so you never duplicate messages

Create a buyers list per product

Automate the lists so once a subscriber buys a product they are automatically removed from the prospects list and added to the buyers list and the buyer then starts on a new pre-loaded follow up campaign

List hygiene

Make sure the autoresponder removes any bounced emails, so you maintain the best sending reputation for better Inboxing

If you are using an autoresponder you should have the features included to automate all of these systems, if your autoresponder does not offer this amount of flexibility or automation take a look at InboxingPro here

This is our own cloud-based autoresponder with thousands of customers using it for all their email marketing campaigns, it provides a total end to end solution and with no monthly fees

Product creation

The one thing all successful marketers have in common is they are all product creators, and some seem to crank out products almost on a weekly basis

The secret here is the vast majority use done for you resale products or PLR products that can be rebranded and launched as their own and this is how I got started and 99.9% of all successful marketers

When you think about it, why work as an affiliate for 50% commission when as a product creator you can earn 100% and have an opportunity to recruit your own army of affiliates

If you want to get access to a wealth of high-quality resale and PLR products check out our own monthly membership PLR Profits Club

This is a one stop shop for internet marketers and you will find a library of over 5000 existing products you can brand and sell as your own with at least 40 new products added each month

Please click here to get the special joining offer

So now you have a blueprint go and get something set up and remember, it is better to have something out there that may not be 100% perfect rather than waiting for months until everything is exactly as you want it so good luck with your efforts

Traffic Rolodex


In this guide I am going to list free and paid traffic resources that I have either used personally or I am aware that they provide decent results

FREE Traffic

No such thing as totally free traffic because to generate free traffic requires an element of your time, it can be clicking ads to earn credits, posting in social media, forum posting etc and all can work very well but it does all take time to get results

Here is a list of the free resources you should check out, it is very much a case of checking the requirements of each platform until you find something you like and can produce results based on the time you have available and once you have found a couple of options concentrate on them to get as good as you can possible be so your results more than justify the time invested

Internet Marketing Forums

Good source of targeted traffic from like-minded marketers looking for help, make sure you always research any questions asked so your answer is always on point and much like the guest posting, lots of other marketers will click on your link in your signature to find out more about you, make sure you always link to a free offer on a squeeze page to collect the email details to add to your list

  www.warriorforum.com – Members: 801,991

  http://forums.digitalpoint.com – Members: 737,201 

www.wickedfire.com – Members: 180,107

www.sitepoint.com/forums ­ Members: 762,632 

www.freshmarketingforum.com – Members: 31,996 

www.v7n.com/forums ­ Members: 248,382

 www.affilorama.com/forum ­ Members: 225,144

 www.geekvillage.com/forums/index.php – Members: 26,317

 www.thefreeadforum.com – Members: 165,136

  www.clickbanksuccessforum.com/forum – Members: 18,964

 www.theimforum.com – Members: 11,158

Traffic Exchanges

A traffic exchange website receives website submissions from marketers that join traffic exchange networks. The person who submitted the website then must browse other member sites on the exchange program to earn credits, which enable their sites to be viewed by other members through the surf system. This increases the number of visitors to all the sites involved.

Exchanges enforce a certain credit ratio, which illustrates the number of websites the surfer must view to receive one hit through the program for their promoted website. Many sites offer the ability to upgrade one's membership level for a more equal credit ratio.

Depending on the offer, you can generate good amounts of traffic and whilst it may seem other people are clicking to earn credits and not really taking notice of the site, I have bought and sold many products using this strategy so a great entry level program to get some traffic

Easy Hits 4 U

https://www.easyhits4u.com/

10k Hits

 https://www.10khits.com

TE Racing League

http://teracingleague.com/

Neobux

 https://www.neobux.com

  BuxVertise

 http://buxvertise.com

 Clixten

http://clixten.info

Twickerz

 http://www.twickerz.com

Clickyclix

http://clickyclix.com

Legacy Clix

 http://legacyclix.com

GPT Plannet

http://www.gptplanet.com

OKIK https://okik.me

Video Sharing sites

Video hosting services are websites or software which allow users to distribute their video clips. Other kinds of websites such as file hosting services, image hosting services and social network services might support video sharing as an enhancement to their primary mission, but in general they are not listed here.

Video marketing is deemed to be easier to rank for keywords and you can make simple 2-3-minute power point videos that can rank and drive free traffic for a long period of time and you can find lots of free tutorials on how to post your videos for maximum exposure

www.YouTube.com

www.Metacafe.com

 www.Dailymotion.com

www.Vimeo.com

www.Veoh.com

 www.Flickr.com

 www.break.com

www.flixya.com

Social Media Sites

www.Facebook.com

 www.Twitter.com

www.Pinterest.com

www.Myspace.com

www.Linkedin.com

www.bebo.com

 www.friendster.com

www.Flixter.com

Guest blog posting

Back in the day I spent a lot of time posting as a guest blogger and you will be amazed at the amount of traffic 1 post can generate providing you post on a busy blog

Basically, you write a post that must provide great informative content and people reading it will click the link in your signature to find out more about the person (You) who has provided such a great article. 

You need to find blogs that are in your niche and contact the blog owner to ask if you can provide a post, always a good idea to provide a sample of your work to get the gig,  some blog owners now making a small charge to post but still a good investment if you can find a high traffic, related blog

PR 7: www.copyblogger.com/blog

PR 6: www.seobook.com

 www.b2bemailmarketing.com

 www.womenonbusiness.com

 www.business2community.com

www.business­opportunities.biz

 www.contentmarketinginstitute.com/blog

www.socialmediaexaminer.com

www.adrants.com

www.upandrunning.bplans.com

www.moz.com/ugc

www.blog.hubspot.com

 www.smallbiztrends.com

 www.econsultancy.com/uk/blog

www.marketingprofs.com

www.iwillteachyoutoberich.com

 www.raventools.com

PR 5:

www.lkrsocialmedia.com/category/blog

 www.tweakyourbiz.com

 www.12most.com

www.e­junkie.info

 www.online­bahvior.com

www.nevillehobson.com

 www.adverblog.com

www.suitcaseentrepreneur.com

www.socialfresh.com

www.mpdailyfix.com

 www.blog.kissmetrics.com

www.blog.marketo.com

www.convinceandconvert.com

www.killerstartups.com

www.scottmonty.com

Q & A sites

Great way to find highly qualified buyers in any niche normally looking for answers to help make a purchase decision

Some sites require you to build up sufficient points from previous answers before you can add a link but well worth doing and something that doesn’t take a lot of time

Try to create a routine to log in to the sites on a daily basis and search for questions posted In your niche

The downside is not all niches have loads of questions but conversions are fantastic providing you give a good answer so do your research before posting the answer

PR 8:

  www.answers.yahoo.com

www.wolframalpha.com

http://askville.amazon.com

PR 7:

 www.answers.com

www.quora.com

 http://wiki.answers.com

PR 6:

www.aolanswers.com

www.chacha.com

www.allexperts.com

 www.justanswer.com

  PR 5:

  www.answerbag.com

www.askmehelpdesk.com

www.askdeb.com

PR 4:

www.blurtit.com

 www.theanswerbank.co.uk

http://able2know.org

eBook And Document Sharing Sites

Another good long-term strategy is to create eBooks and short reports that you embed your links and distribute for free using document sharing sites, this strategy can bring a steady flow of long term traffic for doing the work once and good for brand building

PR 9:

www.issuu.com

PR 8:

 www.slideshare.net

 www.scribd.com

 www.docs.google.com

PR 7:

www.free­ebooks.net

www.docstoc.com

www.calameo.com

 www.box.net

www.manybooks.net

www.keepandshare.com

www.lulu.com

www.freetechbooks.com

  PR 6:

www.smashwords.com

 www.authorstream.com

www.4shared.com

www.powershow.com

 www.mediafire.com

www.feedbooks.com

www.memoware.com

www.en.pdf24.org

www.filestube.com

www.wattpad.com

 www.freecomputerbooks.com

www.bookyards.com

 www.yudu.com

www.ebooks.com

 www.e­booksdirectory.com

Social bookmarking

Social bookmarking websites are sites on which Internet users share their web pages, articles, blog posts, images, and videos. There are several advantages to submitting your content to one (or more) of these sites. For one thing, they help to increase your brand awareness.

The more people who have access to your great content, the more likely that your content will go viral.

These sites also help to get your blog posts indexed more quickly and increase your website traffic. Any SEO company will be familiar with this strategy and use it as part of its marketing strategy.

PR 9:  

 www.pinterest.com   

PR 8:

   www.librarything.com

 http://boingboing.net

 www.citeulike.org

  www.scoop.it

 www.reddit.com

 www.delicous.com

  www.stumbleupon.com

   PR 7:   

http://lifehacker.com 

www.techdirt.com

  http://readwrite.com

 www.fark.com

  www.newsvine.com

 http://technorati.com

  http://slashdot.org

 www.digg.com 

www.bibsonomy.org

www.diigo.com

  www.webseoexpertservices.com

  http://ideaoverten.net

 www.balltribe.com

  www.dzone.com

Paid traffic

The obvious paid traffic sources are pay per click and display ads using Google,  Bing and Facebook, this can be expensive, and you do need a firm understanding of how each program works because going in blind can result is big losses.

Always consider lower investments in more targeted traffic to make sure your offers are converting and perhaps then you can consider scaling further with paid traffic

Solo ads

Ideally suited to the Internet marking space you buy clicks from a marketer’s email campaign to his list and because the marketer is mailing his list on a regular basis the traffic can be classed as warm and therefore can convert very well

You send the traffic to a squeeze page where you provide a gift in return for the visitors email and you can then direct the subscriber to a one time offer to help pay for the traffic

Warning

As this form of traffic has got more popular so have the unscrupulous traffic vendors who can send fake clicks and even fake sign ups so on the surface you may get 50% of the clicks appear to be subscriber sign ups but the majority are fake so the only person making any money is the vendor, below are the resources I have used but you must do your own due diligence on each vendor and make sure you know that the clicks are from their own list, they don’t use any bots to generate clicks and you get to see plenty of real life testimonials

The 2 providers below provide good quality bot free traffic

Udimi

Trafficforme

Facebook Groups (Do a search for solo ad sellers)

Other paid traffic platforms to consider

http://adlovenetwork.com/ ­ self-serve banner and cpa network. good conversions

http://www.adside.com – self serve ppc contextual inline text ads

 http://www.reseauselect.com – banner and offline targeted at Quebec

http://web.blogads.com – banners/text ads on high traffic blog network

 http://elephant­traffic.com – ppv type ads on parked url’s – cheap

 http://mediatraffic.com – ppv ads

 http://casalemedia.com – self serve banners

 http://www.widgetbucks.com – self serve text/widget ads

http://tribalfusion.com – media buy banner network

 http://adclickmedia.com – self serve interstitials, banners, and contextual widgets

http://premiumaccess.com – premium banner ad network

 http://kontera.com – inline contextual text ads

http://www.adroll.com – self serve banners

http://pubmatic.com – ad network

 http://bidvertiser.com – contextual and banner ads

http://cpmstar.com – banners display aimed at gaming sites only

http://adengage.com – banners/text, similar to adbrite, allow weekly buys

 http://finditquick.com – text ads

http://technoratimedia.com – banners

 http://chitika.com – search related contextual display ads

 http://www.mediawhiz.com – banners/display, media buys

http://cpxinteractive.com – banners/display, media buys

 http://clicksor.com – banners

 http://advertising.com – display/banners, media buys

http://www.interclick.com – banners, high volume media buys

http://adtoll.com – banners/display/text ads, adbrite clone, cheap

http://valueclickmedia.com – banners, display/media buys

http://google.com/adwords – you already know about this…

http://advertising.aol.com – variety of solutions on AOL inventory

 https://adcenter.microsoft.com – search and content text/contextual ads

https://marketingsolutions.yahoo.com – search/content contextual ads

 http://miva.com – cheap search ads

http://www.specificmedia.com – banners/video display, media buys

 http://www.canoeklix.com/accueil – text ads on the canoe.ca

 network http://undertone.com – premium banners/display/media buys

http://7search.com – cheap search/direct domain ads

 http://advertising.microsoft.com/ad­network – microsoft banner display/media buys

 http://adbrite.com – display/contextual ads

http://www.adconion.com – video/banner ads, media buys

http://myads.com – self serve banners on myspace & a host of Fox network sites

http://facebook.com/ads – self serve ads on Facebook

http://plentyoffish.com – coming soon self serve ads

http://www.collective.com – media buys, banners/display

http://buysellads.com – self serve banners on a range of design blogs

http://sponsoredtweets.com – sponsored twitter posts

 http://ad.ly/ – more twitter ads

 http://trafficvance.com – good ppv ad network

http://www.tattomedia.com/advertisers/ – banners/display/media buys

 http://platform­a.com aol banner ad/media buy network

http://www.adready.com/ads/public ­ display ads/self-serve banners on yahoo sites

http://adsonar.com – text ads on high traffic US site

 http://adblade.com – self serve display ads, very good service

 http://adsdaq.com – banners/media buying exchange

 http://traffiq.com – self serve banners, media buy type thing

http://openx.org/market – banner exchange on open x ad network

  http://adbuyer.com – media buying search/display exchange

Conclusion

Whilst none of the free strategies will produce thousands of targeted clicks, providing you are consistant you will over time build up your daily traffic flow, always ensure you collect the visitors email address at every opportunity and never link directly to a paid offer, the money is in the list especially from cold free traffic