Email Marketing: Avoiding the Spam Folder

Spam filters are a great invention! It saves you from looking at unwanted emails constantly. However, as a brand or business owner, it can be a tough challenge to bypass in order to make sure your newsletters and other forms of email marketing are getting through. Spam filters work by using certain methods to identify potential red flags, such as checking the IP address against a black list of known spammers, deceptive subject lines and content within the email. These are all good things but when it comes to your marketing campaigns not so much. So, what are some solid ways to keep your emails out of the spam folders? Here are some of our tips.

1. Avoid spam triggers by:

   1. Always using an unsubscribe button

   2. Avoiding subject lines with all caps or exclamation points

   3. Staying away from attachments

   4. Adding too many images

2. Proof read people! Phishing emails tend to be laden with grammatical errors and can send your email to the spam folder if it contains to many typos.

3. Always get permission. This one goes without saying but let us reiterate. Make sure that your newsletter email list is full of people who have consented to receive them.

4. Email your subscribers regularly. This will help the spam checker to weed you out as a real person and not spam since your regularly sending emails to their addresses.

5. Whitelist your emails. All this means is that your recipients will add your email address to their contact list. Then, the spam checker will tell your emails to go into their inbox instead of the graveyard.

6. Use spam checkers. This system helps assist you in checking your emails for potential spam-like content. GlockApps and Mailmeteor are two great systems.

We hope this helps you on your email marketing journey. “41.5% of brands state that email marketing is critical to business success,” according to Litmus and we couldn’t agree more. Here at Locomotive we are always looking for more ways to improve our marketing and grateful to share our findings.

Consumer Attitudes Toward Brands

Consumer attitudes play a large role in consumer behavior and their decision-making processes. Consumer attitudes are a composite of their beliefs, feelings and behavioral intentions toward your business. Beliefs are composed of past experiences to develop an attitude toward something. Sometimes feelings are based on beliefs people have, but can also be independent of it. Lastly, intention is what the consumer intends to do with respect to your product or service. Of course, all brands want consumers to have a positive attitude for their business. Some studies showed that consumers may change their attributes toward an existing product/service if exposed to new ones that reinforce positivity. Measuring consumer attitudes can be difficult because they can have conflicting beliefs and feelings about one thing at the same time. However, surveys can be done in order to get an idea of consumer’s attitudes for your brand. It can help your brand make future decisions on products and/or services and improve attitudes toward your brand.

Friday Fun Fave 7/15/22

This week we turn to a print ad campaign that is nostalgic in its own way. This ad was illustrated by Aspire Doors, UK and showcases the first products of certain brands, such as Nintendo. It was shared on Media Samosa’s Instagram feed. It was surprising to see what many firsts that every day household name brands created first. Sony’s was a rice cooker created in Japan in 1946. Nokia created toilet paper in Finland in 1865. Take a quick look to see how these iconic brands began.

Top Reasons to Adopt UGC Into Your Advertising Strategy

It’s no secret that we love user generated content pieces. We’ll scream it to the mountain tops and swear by its effectiveness. We’ve written articles on the cost effectiveness of UGC, building brand trust with UGC and overall UGC statistics for making our case. But…just in case you aren’t sold yet, we’ve decided to put a list together to show you just why you should incorporate it into your advertising if you haven’t already.

1.     Increased customer engagement. People are more likely to share content created with UGC. Millennials share more UGC as well. There is a “28% increased engagement rate when UGC and product videos merge” (Comscore). 

2.     Brands are focusing on UGC. 16% of brands have an effective UGC marketing strategy already and 86% of companies understand the importance of it according to an article in Taggbox.

3.     Increases return visitors. Digital Information World Brands claims that brands featuring UGC on their sites have a 20% return rate.

4.     High impact. People spend more time watching UGC than produced content and it has a higher impact on the viewers.

Do you believe us now? We hope we’ve made you a believer as we fully trust what UGC has to offer in the advertising space. Contact us now for your consultation to get started! 

Friday Fun Fave 7/1/22

This week’s Friday favorite isn’t very fun but in light of recent events of the overturning of Roe vs Wade, we though it appropriate to choose one that shed some light on what this may mean for American women. Planned Parenthood did an ad predicting the “Dark Storm” of the Supreme Court decision. The ad background has the news reporting abortion rights and recent decisions of the Supreme Court as the narrator states, “we’ve all felt this storm coming. It’s been building for a long time.” After this the narrator states that, “Together we’re a force of nature!” as women take to the streets protesting. “We’re built for this. We don’t stand by, we walk into the storm and turn its raw force into something transformative!” It’s a powerful campaign that promotes action! We stand behind their “ Bans Off Our Bodies” movement! This link is where you can find resources on how to support abortion moving forward. This compelling advertisement was created by Virtue Worldwide.