Spam folders an be a pain in the bum if you send "bulk emails” or a newsletter using a tool like Mailchimp. It’s almost inevitable that some of your emails will end up in junk folders, but there are lots of things you can do to minimise the risk. Here’s tip 1

During the course of running networking events and workshops and coaching my clients, the subject of what people charge for their services and how much they can then pay themselves comes up a lot. And invariably it’s not enough for various reasons. Here are 5 things to consider when working out what to charge and how to pay yourself fairly.

I’m lucky to live right opposite a church with a wood behind it. In fact, I can see it right now if I look up from my desk. It’s a cloudy day and the trees are still bare but you get the idea.

Much to my delight but to the consternation of others and exclamations of delivery men, the church bells ring every 15 minutes. And it’s very interesting what I’ve come to notice coincides with those dongs. My phone often buzzes as a little flurry of email marketing comes through on quarters and particularly on the hour while the church bell is counting them out. At certain times of the day there’s a big swoosh of them together and my inbox suddenly fills up. Here’s what you can learn from those patterns and how to apply them in your own email marketing…

It doesn’t matter how fabulous your email marketing and newsletters are if no one ever opens them. So what’s normal? Where do you stand in that range? How do you improve it? And why it’s about more than open rates.

I had an enquiry recently for help with Mailchimp. Early on in our conversation, the man (let's call him Bob) said that their website sign-up was all working fine but they needed help with templates and automations.

However, I like to try things out for myself and make sure anyway so I subscribed to their mailing list via their website.

When I signed up I very quickly discovered something that he had completely missed because he hadn't recently gone through the front end sign-up process "wearing the eyes" of a website visitor. And that error was a big one.

Once your website is up and running and you're busy working in your business, it's very easy to move on and assume those processes are still doing their job. However sometimes they break, the app/plugin integration gets glitchy or things simply get outdated. When was the last time you checked yours? It’s crucial you do this from time to time. Here’s how…

In the course of helping businesses with Mailchimp and email marketing and what pops into my inbox, I see a LOT of scope for improvement when it comes to e-newsletters.

Here’s my guide to 7 things that every email newsletter should contain regardless of your business type or customer base.

I speak to a lot of people who feel they need to move away from Mailchimp because they have over 2,000 people in their audience so need to pay and don't want to. Instead of moving and spending time and energy on changing everything, here are some simple things you can do to help retain the free version or reduce your spend.

A bit like social media, the success of your email campaigns is in part due when they land in someone’s inbox. The trick is to have it arrive at a time when it’s relevant to them and they’re checking emails, and before their inbox fills up with other mail that could take their attention away from yours. All that depends on:

1. Who your audience is and their lifestyle

2. Whether you’re selling business to business, business to entrepreneur, or business to consumer

3. What sort of things you’re emailing about?

Read on for some tips and food for thought.

It doesn’t matter how brilliant the content of your email marketing is if nobody ever opens them and actually reads what you have to say.

A huge factor in whether or not someone opens your emails depends on the subject and preview text.

This blog will focus on how to make use of Mailchimp’s features to structure your email subjects and how to word them to give your emails the best chance of being opened and read.

I speak to a lot of business owners who don’t collect email addresses because they don’t plan to do email marketing.

However, that it NOT a reason not to collect email addresses. Even if you don’t plan on doing anything with them for the foreesable future, here’s why every single business out there should be collecting them…

Firstly, I’ll start by saying this… S I Z E. I S. N O T. E V E R Y T H I N G. It’s better to have a small Mailchimp audience of 100 people who hang on your every word than 100,000 who don’t care, especially when you have to pay for them.

But despite that, we all want more people to sign up because we want more of those people. And let’s face it, a big list feels like a mark of success just like our social media followings. I get that. The key is making sure that they are the right people.

So here are my top tips on how to grow your list in the right way.

If you have a business and use email, there's a fair chance you've had problems with your emails not reaching customers' or prospects' inboxes. Particularly if you send out email marketing to lists of people. Even if your emails get through spam filters unscathed without being dumped into the Junk folder, you then have the delights of "responsive inboxes" to tackle.

The trouble is that these filters don’t always get it right. And one person’s junk is another person’s livelihood.

So here are my 12 top tips to help your business emails stop ending up in spam folders