Many of these tactics and tips can be applied to social media and direct mail marketing as well — driving engagement from your lists, followers, friends, potential clients and current customers.

1. “Failing to plan means planning to fail”

The best thing you can do to make the most of your e-marketing strategy is to plan ahead. These are some questions you should be able to answer about your e-marketing:

• What is the first email a new subscriber will get from you?
• How will you set their expectations?
• What do you want your e-marketing to accomplish?
• How often will you be emailing?
• Have you integrated sharing options (“like,” “tweet,” “pin,” etc.)?

2. Watch your frequency

The sweet spot of e-marketing is a delicate balance between often enough to keep your name and brand fresh in your audience’s memory and not so often as to annoy your audience.

• Don’t email just to email
• Match your frequency to your content — shorter, “real-time” content can come more often than longer “perspective” content
• Offer different frequencies if you can — weekly updates and a monthly digest, for instance

3. Be interesting and be relevant — don’t be pushy

Remember that e-marketing is not intended to sell your services. It’s not about the features and benefits you offer — it’s about building brand awareness and loyalty by being a consistent, interesting and reliable resource. Keep your emails to the point, helpful and timely. Consistency in content and tone means your subscribers will come to expect and anticipate your emails.

• Don’t email just to email
• Establish a theme, topic, personality or perspective to frame your e-marketing — “neighborhood secrets,” “home décor tips,” “interesting properties on the market”
• Stay on topic, most of the time  — you can stray from your theme once you’ve established it to send out emails of particular interest or urgency

Infographic from Andy Jenkins

4. Drive engagement

The best way you can grow subscribers (followers, friends, etc.) is to have your current subscribers get you new ones.

• Make it easy to share, like, pin, tweet, forward and otherwise spread the word
• Ask for what you want — ending your email with a simple reminder — “Found this interesting? Share it with a friend.” — can be very powerful.
• Offer incentives — a Top Twenty List, a free consultation, etc. — when people sign up

5. Never assume — test, segment, test, and segment again

Testing allows you to really know what works with your audience — longer, shorter, urgency, tips, news, photos, etc. — and you may find that different portions of your audience (segments) respond differently to different tactics. The larger your list, the more likely you need to break it into segments.

• Establish your target goals— Click-throughs? “Likes”? Bounces? Phone calls? Unsubscribes?
• Make sure you have a way to measure the results of your campaigns — and tests
• Test everything — different subject lines, format, length, frequency, excerpt vs full length, etc.

Second on Hubspot’s list of the top 5 email challenges, taken from MarketingSherpa’s 2012 Email Marketing Benchmark Report,  is “email deliverability.”

Email Deliverability Statistics Worth Reading

First, consider these statistics compiled by Email Stat Center:

• 20% of email does not make it to the recipient’s inbox, 3% goes straight to the “junk” or “bulk” folder, and another 16% goes missing
• “Not relevant” is the reason cited by 75% of respondents for opting out of lists — at 73%, “too frequent” is the second most cited reason
• “Clean, current lists,” “relevance,” and “sender reputation” were the top factors listed by email marketers at 64%, 52% and 42% respectively

1. Manage Your List

• provide an easy unsubscribe method for your recipients
• maintain an opt-in only list and avoid purchased, shared or co-op’ed lists
• manage and maintain email bounces — scrub your list regularly
• test your subject lines to ensure they will not be filtered as spam by service providers
• run them through CopyBlogger’s U-Filter — is your headline Useful, Ultra-specific, Unique, and Urgent? (for more, see CopyBlogger’s Three Key Elements of Irresistible Email Subject Lines)
• service providers score your “sender reputation” — the better your reputation, the higher your deliverability rate will be — 83% of deliverability issues are related to sender reputation (via Return Path)
• watch your bounces —too many (generally more than 10%) and too frequent bounces will lower your “score”
• authenticate yourself — “sender authentication” allows service providers to monitor sending activity for given IP addresses — at minimum you should create an SPF record for yourself

2. Respect Your Subject Line

3. Polish Your Reputation

Some good resources for improving email delivery:

• Eight Ways to Improve Your Marketing Email’s Deliverability, Part I and Part 2 (Thrive)
• The Importance of Sender Reputation (Active Campaign)
• 7 Tactics to Improve Sender Reputation and Optimize Deliverability (BLI Messaging)
• One Major Email Deliverability Issue You Need to Monitor (Mequoda Daily)

Next week: Subscriber Growth and Retention.

Taken from MarketingSherpa’s 2012 Email Marketing Benchmark Report, the most difficult email marketing challenges companies report are:

1. Email Data Integration
2. Email Deliverability
3. Subscriber Growth and Retention
4. Return on Investment (ROI)
5. Funnel Optimization

Let’s take a look at email marketing integration.

Statistics Worth Reading

First, consider these statistics from GetResponse (via Yahoo News):

• 18.3% of email marketers include social media sharing icons in their email campaigns
• The average click-through-rate (CTR) for emails including a social media link was 115% higher than those without
• The CTR for emails with a LinkedIn sharing link was nearly 10% — Facebook a little more than 5% and Twitter 5%

Software Solution

To integrate your email marketing with other data systems, such as your social media networks, landing page conversions, and/or new prospects and client acquisitions, look for a marketing solution that enables and supports that integration — letting you create, manage and analyze email, blog, website and social media efforts.

Campaign Strategy

Before management and analytics, however, you need an integration strategy to cross over your various marketing channels. Social Media Examiner’s 9 Ways to Integrate Email Marketing and Social Media is a great place to start. From the #1 tip, Include Social Icons in Emails, to #9, Promote Email Marketing on Your Blog — this article highlights the best ways to integrate two of your most powerful online marketing tools and concrete steps you can take to make that happen.

Next week: Conquering Email Deliverability.

Social media is social. By definition, it is about interaction.

Think about social media as a cocktail party — the easiest way to meet new people or follow up on an introduction is to ask them about themselves. Have you ever noticed the most interesting people at the party are usually the ones who say “I” the least?

Your blog, facebook page, twitter account are all great platforms to ask questions — if you post about the newest coffee shop to open in a neighborhood, close your post or update by asking your readers/followers/friends what their favorite coffee shop is.

Other people’s facebook pages, blogs, twitter accounts, etc. are great platforms for you to show you’re interested in what they have to say. Try not to limit your social activities to your own profiles — share, like, retweet and comment on others’.

(Need more reasons to ask questions? According to Roost, posts with questions generate almost twice as many comments as any other post type on Facebook.)

2. Be continuous

A steady stream of fresh and interesting content — links to news items, meaningful quotes, blog posts, etc. — continues to give your clients, prospects, friends, and followers motivation to check back in with you on one platform or another.

Adding new content on your blog and updates to your social profile status once a week is the minimum to show that you are active, responsive and social. Think about it this way — if you aren’t updating and posting, another agent is.

3. Be consistent

Your personality. Your brand. Consistency is right next to reliability.

If your friends and followers can easily recognize you from platform to platform through consistent branding — that makes it easier for them to find you.

When your tone and subject matter are the same whether you’re tweeting, posting or updating — that demonstrates your integrity and authenticity, two characteristics that rank very high when choosing a professional.

What’s the secret? A picture is worth a thousand words.

Pictures are easy. They require less work by the “reader.” And they can tell a story in the blink of an eye.

Real estate agents have built-in photographic opportunities (as opposed to, say, accountants or insurance agents).

Create galleries of your properties on your website and make sure they have distinct urls so you can use them as landing pages if you want.

Create and share photo galleries and albums on Facebook (with their “photo album”), Google+ (try using the “hangouts” feature to showcase your open houses and current listings), Twitter (try Twitter galleries), Flickr— group them into helpful and interesting categories such as Sold, Current Listings, Gorgeous Yards, Perfect for Kids, etc.

Facebook posts with photos get nearly 50% more “likes” than any other type of post.

Chances are by now you’ve heard of the latest online social sensation, “Pinterest.”

What is it?

In their own words:

Pinterest lets you organize and share all the beautiful things you find on the web. People use pinboards to plan their weddings, decorate their homes, and organize their favorite recipes.

Best of all, you can browse pinboards created by other people. Browsing pinboards is a fun way to discover new things and get inspiration from people who share your interests.

How would I use it?

Real estate is ideally suited to Pinterest’s organization and interaction —

Showcase your niche (e.g., property type, client, neighborhood) with a visual amalgamation of items, links and images that relate

• Showcase what you’re famous for — if your friends and clients know you’re a foodie, avid runner, knitter, or Wildcats fan, Pinterest boards are a great place to create a bulletin board featuring finds, how-to’s, photos, and resources.
• Showcase a new listing — posting images, information, and photos for a listing on a “board” creates a whole new type of visual entrée into your properties and their best features (e.g., architectural details, neighborhood pluses – like a great coffee shop or playground, landscaping)
• Showcase a category — do you have an eye for celebrity homes? Or interesting storage solutions? Or the weirdest houses? Make a board and start pinning — specific (and eye-catching) themes are one of the best ways to get noticed and “repinned” on Pinterest

Why would I use it?

The way Pinterest works can make it a valuable part of your SEO strategy — the initiatives you use to increase your chances of getting found by search engines — because of the way it inherently supports “link building.”

At their most basic, search engine algorithms analyze the number (and quality) of links that point to your page/s to determine where you land in the search results. The more (and better) links pointing to you, the higher you go. Pinterest “repins” — what it’s called when you pin an image you found on Pinterest to your own board — will always include a link to the user who first pinned the image. The more popular your image on Pinterest – the more links back to you.

How do I get started?

Pinterest is invite-only right now — go to pinterest.com and request an invite.

It’s easy to pin — there are browser extensions for Chrome and Firefox, an iPhone app, and an Android app (that lets you pin photos from your phone).

FDeliver Magazine published these eye-opening direct mail statistics in its June 2011 issue:

With a Saudi Arabian prince expressing $300 million worth of confidence in the future of Twitter, the importance of Twitter in the social media marketing mix is undeniable.

What are Twitter Lists, and how do I use them? (from Hubspot)

Twitter Lists let you group together the tweet streams of people you’re most interested in. Create a new list, name it according to those you’ll add, and simply input their Twitter usernames to create a more targeted stream of content. These can be private or public, so others can also follow your lists.

From “50 Power Twitter Tips” (go to Chris Brogan for the full list)

Build lists to watch people who matter to you more closely. (See “What are Twitter Lists” above)

Leave 20 characters or more space in each tweet to improve retweeting.

Retweet the good stuff from others. Sharing is caring.

Start thinking in 120 characters (remember? save 20). Every bit of this advice is tweetable.

How do I know when someone else Tweets about me? (try TweetBeep)

Like “Google Alerts for Twitter,” TweetBeep tracks who’s tweeting your website or blog, even if they use a shortened URL (like bit.ly or tinyurl.com), and emails you periodic alerts. There are free and premium versions.

What’s the best way to manage my Tweets? (from Smashing Magazine)

Get a good desktop Twitter client — “Without a shadow of doubt, the most powerful Twitter client currently available is TweetDeck.”

Are my Tweets really doing anything for me? (from Smashing Magazine)

The really interesting Twitter stats are about “click-throughs.” What you really want to know is, if you post a link on Twitter, how many people click through? TwitterBurner answers that question — it shortens URLs and tracks all click-throughs, even to websites you do not run yourself. Best of all, it is now supported directly in TweetDeck.

What are Embeddable Tweets and why do I care? (from Hubspot)

The true power and leverage of much of social media marketing resides outside of the network itself, for example, email lists, website visitors, blog subscribers, etc. Embeddable tweets help bring your social marketing to the rest of your marketing — your website or blog visitors can follow, retweet, or click on a link in an embedded tweet without ever having to leave your site.

Want more ways to get Twitter working for you?

7 Epic Uses of Twitter’s New Embeddable Tweets Feature (Hubspot)

99 Essential Twitter Tools And Applications (Smashing Magazine)

40 Tried And Tested Twitter Tips For Newbies, Apprentices And Pros (Media Bistro)

New Twitter: 25 Tips and Tricks for Savvy Tweeters (Mashable)

It may be the new kid on the block, but Google+ is no 90 pound weakling. After 100 days, Google+ had 40 million users and saw 3.4 billion photos uploaded. Then,  in November, Google+ launched pages for brands (as opposed to profiles, which are for people).

Here are a few tips and tricks gathered from some of the more popular marketing resources on the web:

Do Google+ Pages and posts appear in search results? (from Hubspot)

Yes, both the pages and posts appear in search results, which is why integrating Google+ into your social media strategy can also help your SEO. Google continues to roll out more ways in which Google+ is integrated into search results, with four new developments in just the past few weeks.

Where do I go to create a Google+ business page? (from Hubspot)

Visit http://plus.google.com/pages/create to get started, and remember that you need a Google account to set up a page. Find more detailed instructions here.

How do I find my Brand Page Google+ URL? (from Mashable)

Google gives you your brand page’s URL on set-up, but if you need to find it again, click on “Get started” under your name and avatar on your brand’s home page. This takes you to a useful admin info page which includes a “Tell the world” section, under which you’ll find your URL.

How do I connect my Google+ Page to my website? (from Raincastle)

Google gives you a simple one-line code to incorporate into your website that automatically links to your brand page. Linking your site is an important step to increase credibility, but also makes you eligible for Google Direct Connect, which hooks your Google+ page to search.

What is Direct Connect? (from Duct Tape Marketing)

Direct Connect lets you search for things using the + sign to begin your search and “directly connect” with a brand’s Google+ page and even add them to a circle.

How do I let users Direct Connect to my page? (from The Next Web)

1. Connect your Google+ page and your website using the Google+ badge

2. Add a snippet of code to your site

3. Add your website link to your Page

(for more details, see “How to help Direct connect find your Google+ Page”)

StumbleUpon is a “discovery engine” — not a search engine. As a visitor “stumbles” on a page that matches their interest, they can like it (or not like it). The more likes a page gets, the more often it will appear to future visitors

Consider these stats (via BrainsOnFire):

— After 24 hours, a popular shared link will usually get:
Twitter “ReTweets”: 0%
Facebook “Likes”: 5%
Stumbles: 83%

— Link longevity (the half-life of a link is how long until that link will see half of all the interaction it will get):
Link on Twitter: 2.8 hours
Link on Facebook: 3.2 hours
Link on StumblUpon: 400 hours

What really sets StumbleUpon apart from other social and sharing sites, like Facebook, Twitter and LinkedIn, is that it is geared to reach people who don’t know you.

The first secret to StumbleUpon success is content on your site. Interesting, valuable, compelling content —such as statistics, quotes, photos, how-to’s, lists — is most likely to be Stumbled.

The other secret to leveraging the power of StumbleUpon is — leveraging the power of StumbleUpon. Join StumbleUpon yourself. Put a “StumbleUpon” badge and link on your pages and posts. Stumble on your own content. Reach out to your social networks and ask them to “spread the word! Stumble on my blog/site/post [with link]”. Get more tips on using StumbleUpon from the Miami Association of Realtors and KISSmetrics.

StumbleUpon is averaging a billion clicks every month. Snag some of those for your business!

Robbin over at Brains on Fire wrote a post this week, “Stories, Sharing and Emotions,” in which she talks about how people are emotionally motivated to share information and experiences, and about the power of stories to stir up emotion.

“Research by our friends at KellerFay has found that strong emotional content is key to people’s desire to pass along things they hear about brands, either through word of mouth or online sharing.”

Think about that. What is more compelling, more memorable, to you? A friend telling you about the car wash she goes to that has a great deal on Wednesdays and offers detailing or a basic wash, etc. — giving you a run-down of the services and features.

Or… the friend who tells you about the day her car was filthy and she had less than an hour before she had to pick up a really important client and Anthony, the owner at the car wash, sent her to the front of the line and made sure her car was sparkling and ready in less than 30 minutes.

Word of mouth happens when your clients, colleagues and friends pass along your stories, and their clients, colleagues and friends remember those stories. The better the story, the more likely it is to be shared.

Where can you tell short stories about you and your brand in your marketing outreach? When you post to your social media accounts, when you create mailers, even when you’re introducing yourself.

How do you tell your story? Think anecdote instead of adjective. Instead of using the words “friendly,” “dedicated,” and “successful,” to describe what you do, find a recent success story that demonstrates those qualities. As Hollywood puts it: show, don’t tell.