VerticalResponse for AppExchange Blog

Get More Sign-ups with an Improved Opt-in Form

There is no better way to gather sign-ups than through an opt-in form on your website.  I'm sure most - if not all of you - have a form on your site already.

But just because you have an opt-in form now, doesn't mean you can't make improvements.  Here are four tips to help you make those improvements and get even more sign-ups.

#1 - Make It Impossible to Miss

It's one thing to have an opt-in form - it's another thing entirely to make that opt-in form so easy to find that everyone who visits your website can see it.  There are very few people who want to join your mailing list so badly that they'll click around your site and search for your opt-in form to find it.   

So you should either:

Link to your form from the main navigation menu of your website that says something along the lines of "Sign-up for Our Newsletter" or "Get More Info."

OR

Include your form on every page of your website.  This can be done through the simple inclusion of a sidebar that stays on screen no matter which page is being viewed.

#2 - Keep It Simple

It can be tempting to ask for lots of information on an opt-in form - email address, phone number, postal address, etc.  The more info you collect, the easier it is to qualify your leads and the more avenues you have available for marketing to them.  

However, asking for too much info can discourage people from signing up.  So you have to strike a balance between getting the info you need and ensuring your form is not acting as a barrier to new sign-ups.  

Ask yourself how much info you actually need. Unless it's very important that your sales people have as much info as possible, you should limit your form to Email Address, First Name and Last Name (or some similar combination).  Or you could have 2 forms: a simple opt-in form for mailing list sign-ups and a separate form for more serious inquiries that requires potential customers to provide you with more info.

#3 - Explain the Value

Don't just ask people for their contact info, tell them what you're going to give them in exchange for that info.  Instead of "Join Our Mailing List" say "Sign-up for our twice monthly newsletter to get tips, hear about new products and get access to email only deals."

This approach should go beyond your opt-in form.  Everyone in your organization should be aware of the value of your email marketing program, so they can convey that value to potential customers.  It is always better to tell someone what you're going to give them instead of asking them to give you something.  "Can I send you our newsletter?" is better than "Can I get your email address?" just as "Would you like to buy that item?" is much better than "Would you like to give me 75 dollars?"

#4 - Market It

Use your non-email marketing to direct people to your opt-in form.  An ad in the newspaper, a postcard, an online ad - all these can be used to send people to a form.  

Why is that of any value to you?  Because once someone is on your email marketing list, you have a stronger connection and can market to them directly.  

Of course, sending people from an ad to a form with no extra incentive or explanation may not get you very far, since most people are unlikely to jump all over the chance to join some random company's list if they aren't already interested in the products / services of that company.  So you would likely want to combine the form with some other content or offer.

To provide an example of such a combination - I know of a pub / restaurant that sends out a postcard to people who move to their neighborhood.  This card asks the new residents to sign-up for the pub's newsletter and offers a 50% coupon for their next visit if they sign-up.  They do so many things right:

- They reach out to new residents who don't know the neighborhood yet and are therefore likely to want to try new places nearby.

- They ask people to sign-up for their newsletter which enables them to continue marketing to those folks who are clearly interested.

- They provide an incentive to both sign-up and come down to the pub.  So not only do people have a good reason to sign-up, they also have a good reason to become an actual customer.

Can you think of an approach to take with your own potential customers that could accomplish something similar?

Richard Huffaker, Education & Training Manager

3 Email Tips for a Strong Finish to 2009

Whether your company provides B2B software services or you own a store that sells cranberry sauce, there’s little doubt that you want to end your year on a high note by making lots of money in Q4.  How can you get the most out of your email marketing to help make that happen?

Make a Plan ASAP

Emails are so easy to create that it can be tempting to just send them out whenever the mood strikes or to fall into a rut of mailing out the exact same type of messaging every two weeks.  Though you can certainly see email success without a plan, you’ll be more successful (as with most things in life) if you have one.

Ask yourself:

What are the goals of my email marketing program this quarter?  To increase traffic to the company website?  To sell particular items / services?  

Are there a wide range of goals?  If so, how should each goal be represented within the email marketing program?

Who are the people on my mailing list?  Is your list mostly customers?  Mostly prospects?  Do you even know for sure?

If you do know, are you sending different emails to each group or lumping them together?  Different kinds of messages are likely to be more effective depending on whether you’re dealing with customers or prospects.  And it’s very easy to create lists of just Leads or just Contacts using VerticalResponse.

How many emails do I need to send?  One a week?  One every two weeks?  Determine how much mail you’ll need to send out to achieve your goals.  Then create a calender to plan when you’ll send each email out.

Segment and Test

You can follow all the best practices in the world, but you can’t be absolutely sure you’re getting the most from your email marketing unless you test different approaches with your own audience.  It’s a good idea to test:

• Subject Lines - Try out different subject lines with smaller subsets of your audience and use the subject that gets the most opens with the larger control group.
• Content - Not sure the design of your emails is getting as many people to take action as possible?  Try some different designs and test them with a smaller group of recipients.  If the new designs perform better, start using them with everyone.
• Timing - Do you always send your newsletter out on Thursday at 11:00am?  Maybe it’s every other Wednesday at 1:03am? 

Whatever it happens to be, try splitting your list up into smaller groups and vary the timing of your message among these groups.  If a certain day and time works better, start using that as your newsletter day for everyone. 

Also, the more targeted your message and list, the better your email is likely to perform.  Learn more about how segment, target and test in my previous blog post on this topic.

Implement a Few Best Practices

There are lots of tweaks you can make to improve your email marketing program.  Here are a few that can lead to immediate improvements:

Make sure the opt-in form on your website is easy to find.  It should be linked from, or appear on, every single page of your site.

Your form should also describe the benefit of sign-up.  Don’t just ask people to “Sign-up for More Info.”  Tell them what they’re going to get in return for signing up (Sign-up for Our Weekly Specials / Learn About Upcoming Products in Our Newsletter).  You’ll always get a better response when you can describe the value of your messages than if you just ask people to give you their address.

Write subject lines that are action oriented and describe the benefits of reading your email.  Some examples:

    •    Sign-up Before Nov. 30th Get 20% Off
    •    No S&H for Purchases Under $25
    •    Book Now - 10 Holiday Party Dates Left
    •    Version 3.0 is Finally Here!

Generic subject lines like “October Newsletter” don’t tell the reader what differentiates the message from the last one you sent out.

Start personalizing your emails.  Most companies personalize their emails by referring to each recipient by their own first name.  But you can do so much more than that - any info you include in your list can be used to personalize your email message.

Do all your Leads and Contacts have Account Reps or Sales Reps?  Use the record owner info to sign each email as coming from the owner of the specific record.  All you need to do is include info like Owner Name and Owner Email Address when creating your mailing list (you can do this from the Map Your Fields page of the list creation process) and then you can enter fields like {OwnerName} and {OwnerEmail} in your message to sign the email with the record owner’s name and email address.

Any standard or custom field on the Lead or Contact record can be used for personalization.  Any standard Owner or Account level field can by used as well.

Any questions or comments?  Let us know!

Richard Huffaker, Education & Training Manager 

Turn a Sent Email Into a Template

You've probably noticed that every VerticalResponse newsletter uses the same layout: main article in the upper left, table of contents on the right, etc.

We do change the design occasionally, but when we find something we like, we stick with it for a while.

I'm guessing your company probably does the same thing.  So it's good that VerticalResponse and Salesforce make it easy to turn previously created emails into templates, and then share those templates with other people in your Salesforce Org.

Let's take a look at how you can create templates and share them.

Create a Template from a Previously Sent Email

After you send an email out from your account, that email is archived within your VR Statistics tab.  Each sent email includes an Actions menu that can be accessed via a link to the far right of the screen.  To use a previously sent email as a template:

1. Click Actions.
2. Select “Make a Copy.”
3. Give the copy a name.
4. Then you can:
          
   - Go to Draft Emails page (this will take you to the page where all your unsent email drafts are saved).
   - Edit the new email immediately.  
   - Make another copy of the email and give it a different name.
5. Click the Copy Email button.

Following these instructions will turn a previously sent email into a template for a new message.  You can always find copied messages under VR Email >  Quickstart > View Drafts until you edit them and send them out.

But how can you share a copied email with other people in your company, so that they can also use it as a template?

Share Templates Across Your Salesforce Org

Note that this does not work with the Email Wizard tool.

1. Go to VR Email > Quickstart > View Drafts
2. Open the email you want to share as a template.
3. Click the green “Make Changes to this Campaign” button near the top of the page.  This will open up the Canvas or Freeform editor (depending on which one was used to build the message, of course).
4. Select the “Edit Source” tab within the editor, select all of the HTML code and copy it (CTRL-C on a PC, Command-C on a Mac).
5. Click the “Setup” link found at the top of your Salesforce account. 
6. Expand the Email menu found under “My Personal Information” on the left hand side of the screen.
7. Click “My Templates” and then click the New Template button on the page that opens up. 
8. Select the option to create a “Custom (without using Letterhead)” template.
9. What happens on the next page is crucial:  For the “Folder” prompt, you MUST select a Public folder, otherwise you won’t be able to share the template with other people in your company.  If you’ve not previously created a public folder or don’t know how, see the instructions for doing so at the end of this post.
10. You must also tick off the “Available for Use” box found on this same page.  Otherwise your template will not be available for people to use.
11. Give the Email both a name and a “unique name.”  You can usually just use the same names in both fields.   Continue on to the next page.
12. Give the email a subject (this can be changed when the template is used for an actual email), and then paste the HTML code you copied earlier into the “HTML Body” field.
13. Preview the template.  If you like what you see, save it and you’re done.

For you or anyone else in your org to access the saved template:

1. Go to VR Email > Quickstart > New Email
2. Give the new email a name and click the Refresh Templates button at the bottom of the New Email page.
3. Use the drop-down menu to select a saved template.
4. Click Next and then use the provided editor to make changes to the message and send the email out.

And if you need to know how to create a Public folder (as referenced in the instructions for sharing a template):

1. Click the “Setup” link found at the top of your Salesforce account.
2. Expand the Email menu found under “My Personal Information” on the left hand side of the screen.
3. Click “My Templates”
4. Click the Create New Folder link.
5. Give the folder a label and a “unique name.”
6. Use the provided drop-down menu to make the Public Folder Access “Read/Write.”
7. Make sure the folder is set as “accessible to all users.”
8. Save the folder.  Now you can start adding templates to this folder and they’ll be accessible via VerticalResponse.

Post a comment if you have any questions!

Richard Huffaker

How to Use a Salesforce Report as an Email List

A Salesforce report is a powerful tool that makes it simple to pull up very specific groups of leads or contacts.  So wouldn't it be great if you could use a Salesforce report (or multiple reports) to build an email list? 

Well, it is great, because you can already use Salesforce Reports to create an email list with VerticalResponse.  It is a simple matter of running a report, adding the members of that report to a campaign and then selecting to use that campaign as a list.

Let's take a detailed look at each of the above steps, so you can start turning your Salesforce Reports into mailing lists today. 

Get started by creating a custom Salesforce report.  If you already know how to do this, you can skim through these instructions for putting together a basic report:

1. Go to Reports.
2. Click Create New Custom Report.
3. Use the provided drop-down menu to “Select the type of data you wish to report on.”  Note that running a report on Leads is a good place to start.  Then click Next.
4. Choose to create a Tabular, Summary or Matrix report.  Tabular is the default and the one you should go with if you have no previous experience with Reports.  Click Next after you make a selection.
5. Select the columns to include in your report.  Your choices here have no impact on what ultimately ends up in your list - you’ll be able to select the columns for your list (like First Name, Last Name, City, Record Owner, etc.) during the list creation process in VerticalResponse.  So you can leave this on the defaults if you want.  When you’re done here, click Next.
6. Select the information to summarize.  Your choices here determine how Salesforce will display the summary information for numerical fields within the Report.  This page isn’t necessary for what we’re trying to do here, so you can ignore it and click Next.
7. Order the report columns.  This determines the order in which columns of data are organized within the Salesforce report.  This has no impact on your VerticalResponse list, so you can ignore this page if you want and click Next.
8. Select your report criteria.  This is where you setup the search parameters to put your report together.  You can search based on pretty much any information in your account to find the people you want to mail.  When you’re done setting up these parameters, click Run Report.
9. Now your report is ready to go.  If everything looks good, you can use the Add to Campaign button at the top of the report to select a report to which you can add these folks.  Once they’re part of the Campaign, you’ll be able to turn that Campaign into a VerticalResponse list.
10. If you need to setup a Campaign for this purpose then save this report for now by clicking the Save As button.  And then move over to the Salesforce Campaigns tab.

Salesforce Campaigns are a useful way to keep track of your various marketing campaigns, but they are not available by default in every edition of Salesforce.  So if you’ve never used them before you’ll need to make sure you have access to them.  Of course Campaigns are also, as we’re seeing here, a good way to turn Salesforce Reports into a VerticalResponse list.  Setting up a Campaign is very simple:

1. Go to Campaigns.
2. Click New.  This opens up the Campaign Edit screen.
3. There are a number of things you can do from the Edit screen, but there are only two things you absolutely must do:
- Give your Campaign a name. 
- Check the Active box (if this box is not checked, then the Campaign will not be visible to your VerticalResponse account)
4. Once you’ve done at least these two things, you can click Save.
5. Your Campaign is now created and will be available when you click the Add to Campaign button in the report you ran earlier.  So now you can go back to Reports, find your saved report (which should be right at the top of the page) and add the members of that report to your Campaign.
6. If you want to use more than one report for your mailing list, then you can add several Reports to the Campaign.

With all that work finished (which doesn’t take very long at all once you’ve done it a few times) you can import the members of the campaign as a VerticalResponse list:

1. Go to VR Email.
2. Click New List.
3. Choose the option to Use a Salesforce.com campaign.
4. Select the Campaign you want to use from the provided list.  If the list is really long you can use the Search box to find your Campaign.  Making a selection will open up the Map Your Fields page.
5. The Map Your Fields page allows you to select which pieces of data from your Lead / Contact records you’d like to pull over into your list.  Use the drop down menus and checkboxes to choose if you’d like to pull over First Names, Last Names or any other Standard, Customer, Owner or Account level field associated with your records.  Any data you include can be used to personalize an email sent out to the list.  Note that Email Address is checked off to be included by default since you can’t send an email to a list that does not include the email addresses for each of your recipients.  Click Next Step when you’re done.
6. Now you’ll see a Summary / Preview of the records that are being pulled into the list.  If everything looks good, continue on to Next Step.
7. Give your list a name and click Create List.  Your list will then be created and ready for you to use with an email.

Any thoughts or questions about these instructions?  Let us know in the comments!

Using Anchor Tags & Anchor Links

Every VerticalResponse for AppExchange newsletter includes an "Also In This Issue" Table of Contents right at the top to help all our readers find content that interests them.  Have you ever wondered how you can create your own TOC?  Well, wonder no more!

You can very easily create a TOC for an email created within VerticalResponse through the use of Anchor Tags and Anchor Links.  Anchor Tags allow the creation of a link in one section of an email that links to another section of that same email - just like in the "Also In This Issue" part of our own newsletter.

To create an Anchor Link in an email of your own, you should start by placing an Anchor Tag within a section of the email to which you intend to link.  The title or first sentence of the section is the best place to insert the Anchor Tag.  Note that you must be using our Canvas Editor for this to work as we do not provide a method for creating Anchors within our Wizard tool.  Here’s how to insert a tag:

1. Left-click the exact spot where you want to place the Tag. 
2. Click the Anchor Icon found in the top row of the Canvas toolbar.
3. This opens an “Insert/Edit Anchor” dialog box.  Enter a name for your anchor here.  The Anchor’s name should be no longer than one word, otherwise the link you create may not work properly for some recipients.
4. Click Insert. 

Now that the Anchor Tag is in place, you can create a link that points to that Anchor.  To do so you should:

1. Select text or an image that you want to use for the link.
2. Click the chain link icon in top row of the Canvas toolbar.
3. This will open the “Insert Hyperlink” dialog box.  Use the Anchors drop-down menu to select the name of the Anchor Tag you created earlier.
4. Click Update.  You have now created a link that points to the section of the email in which you placed your Anchor Tag. 

To test that the Anchor Link works properly, go to the Quick Preview section of the Canvas editor or send yourself a test version of the email.  And to create more Anchor Links, just repeat the steps above.  There is no limit on the number of these links that you can include in an individual email.

Including a small Table of Contents at the top of a long email or an email that includes several different topics (as with a Newsletter) can be a great way to get more people engaged with your message.  A TOC allows recipients to find items that interest them without needing to scroll through the entire email message.  And, of course, the easier you make it for your subscribers to find content that interests them, the more likely they’ll be to take action with your message.  

To learn more about both creating regular Links and Anchor Links using our Canvas Editor, watch the video below:

Segment Your Way to Email Success

Email marketing would be significantly easier if every customer had the exact same needs and interests.  Then you could just focus all your efforts on this small list of "what people want" and leave work at noon every day.  What a marvelous dream.

But we all know marketing isn't so simple.  While there are both general and detailed best practices that can be followed with regards to email timing, layout, content and everything else even vaguely associated with your message like what time you should eat breakfast the day you send a newsletter and in which direction the wind should be blowing when you click the launch button, no list of best practices is likely to be a perfect match for your database.

So how can you get the highest return on investment from your email marketing efforts?  By using segmentation to test different approaches and to create more targeted, relevant messages for your subscribers.

Why Segment?

As I’ve noted in several recent posts that preceded this one, emails that are more targeted to the interests / experiences of a particular group of people are more likely to provide a higher return on investment than emails that try to do everything for everyone.  That doesn’t mean all of your emails need to be targeted (a newsletter, for example, will usually go out to everyone), but many kinds of emails will perform better if they are targeted to specific groups.

Some example uses for segmenting:

Limiting the geographic reach of a message.  If I was going to have a breakfast seminar in Nashville, I could limit my email invitations to people who live in Tennessee or Kentucky.  This would save money since I’m not blasting the invite out to everyone I know and keep customers in, say, Oregon from getting annoyed at receiving an email invite to a morning presentation that they are highly unlikely to fly all the way to Tennessee to attend. 

Sending different messaging to customers and prospects.  A customer’s relationship with your company differs from that of a prospect and it couldn’t hurt for your communication to reflect this fact.

Tailoring a message to the customer’s interests.  If you offer products or services that can be sorted intro broad categories, then you could sort your customers along similar lines based on purchasing history or most recent purchases.  The primary focus of your message could be on the apparent interests of a specific group of customers and then a smaller portion of the message could deal with other types of products / services.

Creating lists based on record owner.  If each of your customers has an account representative, then you can split the messaging up so that groups of customers receive the messaging from their specific rep.  This can make the message more personal than a standard bulk email.

Splitting recent customers from those who are not so recent.  Someone who last made a purchase nine months ago may need different messaging than someone who made a purchase last week. 

How to Segment

Preparation for segmentation begins with the data collection process.  The more data you collect, the more segmenting you can do.  Though you do have to consider that the more info you request, the more resistant people will be to providing you with any info.  But lots of useful data, like type and date of purchase, can be collected without needing the customer to fill anything extra out.

With the data in hand, you can segment when you create your list.  How you set up your segment will depend on whether you’re building the list by “Creating a New List of Leads and Contacts” or by “Using a Salesforce Campaign.”  Let’s take a look at both.

Creating a New List of Leads and Contacts

When you select to Create a New List of Leads and Contacts the system prompts you to enter search parameters so it can find people who match your query.  So, unless you simply create a search which finds every record that has an email address, you’re already using this tool to segment your database at some level.  But let’s look at how you can use this tool to create most of the example segments I noted above:

Limiting the message’s geographic reach: To find those members of a database who live in Tennessee or Kentucky, you’d do a search for “State” “Equals” “TN, KY”.  Placing a comma between each state tells the system to perform an OR search.  Since this is an OR search, the system will find everyone whose state matches either Tennessee or Kentucky.  If you did an AND search, the system would only find people whose state matched both Tennessee and Kentucky at the same time (which would be no one).

Different messaging for customers versus prospects: If you’re using Salesforce exactly as intended, then your prospects will be Leads and your customers will be Contacts making it very easy to sort the two.  If you’re not using Salesforce in this way, then you’ll need to have a field indicating this info and search for it using a similar method as used in the state search.

Creating lists based on record owner:  In this case you’d do a search of “Owner-First Name” “Equals” and then click the magnifying glass to choose the owner (or owners) whose records you want to include in the list.

Separating recent customers from those who are not recent:  You’ll need to create a custom field for Last Purchase Date within Salesforce.  Then to find more recent purchases you can do a similar search to: “Last Purchase Date” is “Greater or Equal” to “11/04/2009”.  To find less recent customers you’d do a search for: “Last Purchase Date” is “Less Than” “11/04/2009”.

Using a Salesforce Campaign

To create a list using this method, all you do is choose the campaign whose members you want to use as a list.  There is no filtering here - all campaign members become part of the list.  So any segmentation done through this method must be done when you’re adding people to the campaign. 

The most common way to add people to a Salesforce campaign is to run a report and then use the Add Members to Campaign button within that report.  You can customize reports using the exact same search functionality that’s available when Creating a List of Leads and Contacts.  To do this, all you have to do is go to Reports > Create New Custom Report or use the Customize button to “Select Criteria” within an already created report. 

Have you had any success creating targeted lists?  Let everyone know in the comments.

Richard Huffaker, Education & Training Manager

Maintaining a Healthy Mailing List

A healthy list is the key to a successful email marketing program.  You can come up with clever subject lines, write dazzling prose and illustrate it all with the prettiest pictures around, but you won’t be getting the most from these efforts if your mailing list isn’t in good shape.

Adding an address to a list is just the first step in an always ongoing process of cultivating a relationship with the subscriber.  But - for many companies - collecting the address is often both the beginning and the end of the cultivation process.  This is unfortunate, since subscribers must be treated properly in order to keep them actively engaged in an organization’s email marketing.  You aren’t their grandmother, so they’re not going to keep opening your emails forever if you don’t give them a reason to do so. 

Let’s take a look at the steps you can take to cultivate relationships with your subscribers and maintain a healthy mailing list. 

Sign-up

Signing up is the beginning of the process and it should be as easy as possible.  If it isn’t easy, then you’re losing out before the relationship has even started.  Here are some ways to make it easy for people to join your list:

• Opt-in Form: If you don’t have an opt-in form on your website, you need to get one up pronto - consider using Salesforce’s Web-to-Lead Form - as there is no reason to not ask website visitors to sign-up for your list.  


  
  If you do already have a form, you should make sure it is easily accessible from every page (either through a prime spot on your main navigation menu or by placing it in a sidebar that appears on every page of your site).  You should also give a brief explanation of what people will receive as a subscriber.  A newsletter, special deals, tips, etc.  An explanation shows that you’ll be providing value of some kind, which makes people more likely to sign-up.

• Guestbook / Fishbowl: If you have an office or storefront that accepts visitors off the street, then you need to provide a way for those visitors to subscribe to your list.  

• Phone: Do people call your office to place orders or to get help?  Then ask for their address!  However, don’t just say, “Can I get your email address?”  Say, “Can I sign you up for our newsletter?”  or  “Would you like to get more information or access to special offers via email?”  Asking someone if you can send him something is always going to get a better reaction than asking if he will give you something. 
  
  

Also make sure that other employees in your company know the value people will receive if they sign-up.  That way it doesn’t feel like they’re “up-selling” by asking for an address - they’ll feel more comfortable asking for the address and the potential subscriber will feel more comfortable giving the address to them.

A welcome email following sign-up, especially if that sign-up came from somewhere other than your website, is a good way to immediately engage your new subscribers.  As an example: waiting three weeks to send a newsletter to people who came by your tradeshow booth could mean that many of those folks will have forgotten why they were even interested in your company by the time you’ve written them.  Which means you’ve already lost them after only a few weeks.  But sending a welcome email within a few days of the sign-up thanking them, explaining who you are as a company, and the kind of value you provide (and that your emails provide) will get them immediately in the loop and prep them to start receiving your regular messaging.

Frequency

As I mentioned in an earlier blog post, don’t mail subscribers sporadically once or twice a year and expect them to take action with your emails. How often is too often? How sporadic is too sporadic? I would say twice a week to once every two months is a good range to keep in mind, depending on the type of messages you're sending out.  A newsletter probably doesn’t need to go out twice a week, but special offers and event invitations certainly don’t need to be limited to once a month.

I bought a software application (an application which I love) about a year ago and I’ve received three emails from the company that sold me the app since then.  Every time I receive one of their emails, I have to rack my brain to remember who they are since their company name is not in any way related to the name of the application.  And I work in the email industry.  Most people probably aren’t bothering to rack their brains and are just deleting the emails.

Relevance

The more relevant your email is to a recipient, the more likely that recipient will be to continue opening the emails.  The less relevant the messaging is, of course, the more likely the recipient will be to stop reading your emails. 

Avoid treating your emails the same way you would treat a print ad or a billboard.  If you use the same content again and again, then recipients will have no reason to open your email.  If a magazine kept sending you new editions with the same articles then you’d probably quit reading that magazine, and the same thing is true with email subscriptions.

Instead of sending out blanket emails that try to say everything to everyone, try sending out messaging to different groups of people that focuses on their interests and then also references other services / items you’d like to see them buy in the future.  And when most of your message is at least somewhat relevant to what a recipient has done in the past, they’ll be more likely to assume other items you’re referencing are also relevant to them since you’re making an effort to speak directly to them. 

How do you get information in what people are interested in?  Ask them at sign-up or pay attention to their most recent purchases. 

And how can you more easily stay relevant?  By using:

Segmentation

Segmentation enables you to target emails to recipients based on their history or interests (so long as you’ve collected this information, of course).  When you’re creating your list through VerticalResponse, you can search using both standard & custom level fields.  So you can search based on info you’ve collected.

A winery, as an example, could set-up lists based on a customer’s favorite kind of wine.  So a list of Merlot lovers and a list of Gewürztraminer lovers could be setup and each list would receive a message that was tweaked to what they like.  In my next blog post, I’ll take a closer look at all the options available to segment your list when working within VerticalResponse for AppExchange.

Richard Huffaker, Education & Training Manager

Design Your Email for Delivery & Response

In my last post I briefly described a number of steps you can take to help ensure your email is both delivered properly and garners a strong response.  Today I want to take a closer look at one of those steps: designing an email with delivery and response in mind.

This is a very broad topic, that covers everything from the From Label to images to HTML.  So I’ll stop wasting space with this opening and dive right into the details:

From Label & Subject Line

The From Label should almost always be the name of your organization.  It’s important that your recipients be able to immediately recognize the email is from a person or company they know - otherwise they’re likely to glance right over the email without opening it or could potentially even report it as spam.

To illustrate this point: I belong to a non-profit organization here in San Francisco and they send me a few email updates every month.  However, I didn’t notice these emails for weeks after my initial sign-up, because instead of using the name of their organization as the From Label, they used the names of various high level people in the organization. 

I realize that they were likely doing this to make the emails seem more personal, but it didn’t matter how personal they were being as I looked right over their emails until one of the subject lines finally clued me in that the messages were from their organization.  Speaking of which…

The Subject Line is essentially the headline for your email.  Keep it as short, descriptive and interesting as possible (easier said then done, I know).  A few tips:

• Try to keep it under 45 characters long.  Many email clients cut the subject line off at or around 45 characters, so going over this number can lead to many of your recipients not being able to view your entire subject. 

• Don’t write a misleading subject.  Doing so is questionable from a legal standpoint and will also cause subscribers to stop trusting your messaging - use a misleading subject line now and people won’t believe the great subject you use in the future.  The subject should describe the actual content or purpose of the email.

• Don’t use ALL CAPS or overuse punctuation!!!  This makes it look like your email is screaming for attention, which can both annoy your recipients and make your message more likely to get picked up by a spam filter.

Message Content

Plan for the Preview Pane - Make sure that your call to action or some of your interesting content will show up if the recipient views your email in their preview pane.  The average pane is 600 pixels wide by 200 pixels tall, but that is going to vary by recipient since the preview pane is adjustable.  So plan to have easily digestible content at the top of the page that will drive the recipient to take action or read more.

Use Short Blocks of Copy - Avoid writing long paragraphs that are difficult to scan through.  Use short paragraphs and bullets to make your points and call to action pop out.  If you do write long paragraphs, highlight words and phrases within each paragraph that highlight what you’re going on about.  That way a recipient can quickly scan your message and determine if they want to do anything with it. 

Always remember that - in most cases - recipients aren’t going to sit down and read your entire message.  They need you to show them where, why and how they should take action.

Provide Numerous Links - Don’t just link back to your website once or twice - make it easy for people to take action by sprinkling links throughout the message.  Turn all your images into links, too - images are big and pretty, making them tempting to click on.

Follow the 80 / 20 Rule - This is a simple rule of thumb that says your email content should generally be no more than 20% images and no less than 80% text.  Measure this simply by looking at the email and roughly estimating how much of your message real estate is covered by text or images.

Why should you follow this rule?  Mainly because many email clients initially block images when an email arrives in the inbox, requiring the recipient to click a button or a link to turn the images on.  Relying too heavily on images can mean much of your content will be initially invisible to many recipients.  A very image heavy email can also be more likely to end up in a spam folder.

Optimize Your Images for Email - The smaller the file size of your image, the faster it will load.  Be sure to save your image for web use using an editor like Photoshop or to edit the image using the tools found in our Library (we always optimize images for web use when you edit and save in the Library).  The file size of an email image should generally be 25kb or smaller.

You should also provide alt-text for all of your images.  This back-up text will display in place of the image in many of those same email clients that block images.  Plus, if you have any blind subscribes using a screen reader to read your email, their screen reader will read the alt-text aloud.

Test - Not sure you’re getting the most from your campaigns with the content you’re using?  Test!  Try different kinds of layouts and content to smaller segments of your list to see if you get higher response rates.  No form of marketing, including email, has a one-size-fits-all approach, so you can’t determine what will work absolutely best for you without trying different approaches. 

Any ideas or comments of your own?  Let’s hear ‘em in the comments!

Richard Huffaker, Education & Training Manager

Secrets of the Email Canvas

VerticalResponse offers several applications for building an email within VR for AppExchange.  The most popular of these apps is the Email Canvas.  It is both a more powerful and more flexible editor than the other provided tools.

But more flexibility and power also means more complexity.  And while many parts of the Canvas are very straightforward (adding an image, creating a link, changing fonts), some functions are not as obvious.

Let’s take a look at some of these less obvious “secrets” of the Email Canvas tool.

Line Breaks:

The first time you type any text into the Canvas and hit the enter key, something that is perhaps unexpected happens - you get a double line break.  This is perfect if you wanted to start a new paragraph, and not so perfect if you were hoping to get a single line break.  So how do you get a single line break?  Hit Shift+Enter. 

Linking to an Email Address

Creating a link to a website is very straightforward: choose the text or image you want to link, click the link icon in the top row of the toolbar, and type the address for the link (http://www.mysite.com).  But what if you want to link to an email address instead of a web address?

The process is exactly the same as linking to a webpage, except you should type mailto:email@address.com in the link address box.  If I wanted to create a link to the email address for VerticalResponse support, I’d simply type mailto:support@verticalresponse.com.

Changing Background Colors:

Every available Canvas Layout has it’s own default background colors.  But what if you like a layout, but don’t particularly care for that layout’s provided background colors (or would like the colors to match your company’s branding)?   

Each section within a Canvas Layout is a Table Cell, and the background color of any particular cell can be easily changed.  All you need to do is click within that cell and then do one of two things:

1.  Right click and then choose Table Cell Properties from the menu that pops up.
2.  Choose Table Cell Properties from the Canvas Toolbar.  The Table Cell Properties button can be found in the second row of the toolbar (on the left-hand side).

Either of these options will open a dialog box where you can use a background color drop-down menu to select a different color.

Creating a Table of Contents

For a newsletter that includes several different sections (like the VerticalResponse newsletter), it’s a good idea to include a table of contents at the top of the newsletter so readers can click a link and go straight to the particular section they want to read.  How do you set this up?

1. Choose a part of your email that you'd like to link to. If you're writing a newsletter that has several different sections, the title to a section is a great spot.
2. Click the Anchor icon (top row, right side of the Designer's Toolbar). This will bring up a dialog box - name your anchor and click Insert
3. Now that you've "laid anchor", choose where you'd like to place a link to that anchor. This will usually be text or an image near the top of the email, since the main purpose of using an anchor link is to make it easy for readers to navigate to different parts of your message.
4. Click the Chain Link icon (it's right next to the Anchor icon) and use the drop down menu to select the name you gave your anchor earlier. Then click Insert.
5. Done! The new link will redirect you to the Anchor within your email. You can test this by going to the Quick Preview tab within the Canvas.

Changing the Default Font

If you’re not a fan of a layout’s default font, then you’ll probably want to change that font to one you like better.  The most obvious way to do that is to select text you want to change and then use the Font Family drop-down menu in the toolbar to select a different font.  But wouldn’t it be better to just change the default font for the entire email so that you get exactly the font you want as you type it?  Of course it would!

To change the default font, just go to Document Properties.  You can access Document Properties by clicking the fourth button from the right on the second row of the Canvas Toolbar.  From here you can use the text properties options to change the default Font Family and Font Size, as well as other properties like the color of your text and links.

Any other Canvas functionality you have questions about?  Let us know in the comments.

To learn more about using the Canvas, check out our How To Do Everything website or download our Step-by-Step Guide to Email Success. 

Richard Huffaker, Education & Training Manager

HTML to Avoid When Building Your Email

If you've spent much time creating and mailing your own custom email messages, you've probably noticed that not every email client is displaying those messages in the same way.  What looks great in Yahoo or Outlook 2003 may appear broken in Gmail or Outlook 2007.

This root of this problem is the variance among email clients in the level of support for CSS (Cascading Style Sheets).  Unlike web browsers, there is no real standard for what an email client should support and how it should go about supporting it.  Every email client - and there are significantly more commonly used email clients than there are commonly used web browsers - takes its own approach to rendering HTML and CSS. 

So how can you or your designer ensure a design remains consistent across all these different email clients?  

1.  Avoid linking to an external .css file.  This will simply be ignored or stripped by many email clients.

2.  Refrain from using CSS within the <style> section of your HTML code.  Similar to an externally referenced .css file, many elements from this section will be stripped or ignored by a number of email clients.

3.  Since you should avoid external or header CSS, all of your styling should be done via inline style attributes within the body of the document (i.e. < p style="border:1px solid #c00; font-size:12px;">).

4.  Email layout should be done via table tags instead of div tags.  This is no longer common in web design and may sound archaic to anyone who has been designing web sites over the past several years, but it is the only way to be absolutely confident that your layout isn’t going to break somewhere.

5.  Don’t rely on background images within your design.  These are sometimes ignored, so you’ll end up with a plain white background instead of one that shows off your lovely background image.  A background color will be more reliable than an image, so use that instead.  But even then, consider how your message will look against a white background, because it’s possible the background color will be ignored occasionally as well.

6.  Be careful using graphical HTML editors, even great ones like Dreamweaver.  They generally default to use external CSS or header CSS to style the design (which is only natural, since this is exactly how you should create the style and layouts for a website).  So no matter how good the design looks within the editor itself, you’ll end up running into issues with various email clients.

7.  Stay away from posting forms, such as opt-in forms or surveys, within your message.  Many email clients do not support forms, so the submit button within the form won’t do anything when your recipient clicks on it.  You should link directly to a form as an alternative to including it in your message.

8.  Don’t include videos within your message.  A number of email clients have trouble with Flash (which will almost certainly be the format of the embedded video), and this will lead to the video either not working or being stripped out of the email entirely.  As with forms, you should link recipients to the video so they’ll definitely be able to watch it.  A great method for doing this is to use an image overlaid with a play button (as you would see on a YouTube video before you start playing it) so that recipients automatically think to click the image to start the video. 

The lack of support for Flash also means, of course, that you should not use Flash elements as part of your design.

9.  Don’t incorporate Javascript into your design.  Javascript will be treated as a security risk by any number of email clients and will be stripped out.  Javascript could also potentially generate a warning to recipients that your email is dangerous - few folks who receive such a warning are likely to want to open another email from you in the future.

10.  Try not to send out emails that are image only.  It’s tempting to do this (and fairly common for a lot of mailers) because it’s far easier to control the design of an image than it is an HTML document.  But the problem is that many email clients turn images off be default, requiring the recipient to click a link to turn the images on.  An image only email will essentially appear to be an unsubscribe message to these folks - giving them little reason to turn the images on and every reason to just unsubscribe.

If you’re interested in learning exactly which email browsers support what (in terms of CSS, at least), take a look at the excellent Email Standards Project.  They breakdown exactly what CSS is supported by most of the commonly used email clients.

Any comments or further design suggestions?  Let’s hear ‘em in the comments!

Richard Huffaker, Community Education & Training Manager