VerticalResponse for AppExchange Blog

Event Marketing is Coming to VR for AppEx - Stay Tuned!

Back in June we announced we're adding event marketing and ticket sales to our product offerings, and we're delighted that VerticalResponse for AppExchange Event Marketing will be released very soon! This new tool will enable you to quickly create event websites, sell online tickets, accept sponsorships and donations, and send emails to promote your events − all through your VR for Salesforce account.

After the launch, users of VR for AppExchange will notice a new “Events” section under the "Resources and Tools" portion of the VR Email tab in your account.

Getting Started & Selling Tickets

To get started you'll simply complete a quick sign-up page. After that, you’ll be creating and marketing your event in no time!

With VR for AppExchange Event Marketing there are several ways to "sell" event tickets:

• Create an online box office on the event website where customers can buy tickets to your events.
• Use the Shopping Cart feature to sell tickets at various price points (or free of charge) that your customers can purchase, and then print a receipt to gain entrance to your event. 
• Embed the ticket widget on your web site, or even your Facebook page, within minutes!

Collecting Funds

If you're selling tickets, the funds can be deposited directly in your PayPal account. Ticket purchases and revenue figures can be accessed for your event at any time, allowing you to quickly gauge how your promotions are performing and whether you need to expand your mailing lists or exposure to social networks.

Get Social with Your Event Marketing

Speaking of social networks, have you taken advantage of our recent Social Media Updates for getting the word out about your email campaigns and events? Well, now’s your chance! Your event marketing programs can also benefit from our social media update to track the popularity of your events among your customers and their social networks. Simply turn on our social sharing features in your email invitations and announcements, and then your customers and their connections can promote your events for the widest reach possible. The number of posts, tweets, and Forward to a Friend actions are all tracked through your VerticalResponse email reports dashboard.

Event Marketing Email Templates

Currently in your VR for AppEx account there are new email templates that can be tailored for a variety of invitations and campaigns. If you've already created emails for events you don't have to worry about redoing all the great work you already have, since invitations can be sent through your VerticalResponse account.

Non-Profit Discount

We're proud to offer our non-profit customers discounts on the service we provide, and with Event Marketing we continue our commitment to those of you who do so much for your communities. Along with selling tickets and collecting payments you can also accept donations or sell sponsorships for your events. Event sponsors can then be recognized in your invitations and event website to showcase those who donate to your cause.

Feedback

As you can see there's a lot to be excited about, and we hope you are as excited about these new features as we are to provide them! To foster your input we added “Event Marketing” in the Feedback tab of the application, since we're very interested to hear your impressions while working with VR for AppExchange Event Marketing. We ask that you continue to provide feedback and suggestions to improve and maximize your experience, and we'll strive to bring more of these great features to you!

Hit Your Target Audience with Geotargeting

  There are many tactics you can use to build your lists and maximize their efficiency:

• Run  split tests to increase open and click performance.
• Use Salesforce campaigns to target by a contact's lead or opportunity status.
• Map list data to personalize your message based on specific contact information. 

One simple method of list creation that's  often overlooked is geotargeting. Geotargeting involves building your list to send specific messages or offers to target individuals by geographic area. How's it done and why should you do it? Glad you asked!

To create a geotargeted mailing list you'll need to have a contact's city, zip code or phone in your salesforce records. You can collect information to target markets by any size area you'd like. Next, use this information to run a Salesforce report based on the specific geographic information you've gathered. Then, add the members of that report to a Salesforce campaign and select to use that campaign as a list.

Check out our blog post How to Use a Salesforce Report as an Email List, our guide Map Salesforce List Data or view our tutorial Build Lists Using Lead & Contact Queries for more detailed step-by-step instructions on creating targeted lists.

Okay, now that you know how to do it, why should you give it a try?  We've compiled a list of our top geotargeting ideas. Check them out! And, feel free to comment and add to the list!

1. Events - Use geotargeting to promote events to residents of specific regions. Rather than send a mass email informing recipients of multiple events in various cities or states, use geotargeting to send a more specific invitation. This can increase both sign-up and attendance rates by making the invitation more relevant and exclusive.

2. Promotions - Notice low sales, subscriptions, or sign-ups in a particular area? Send a targeted promotion to low performing regions or use geotargeting to vary offers across low or high performing territories.

3. Personalization - Personalize messages by referencing local celebrations, events or landmarks.  Your messaging will be more relevant, personal and effective. Moreover, recipients are more likely to feel they are being addressed by an individual instead of a large corporation. 

4. Loyalty - Let your local customers know that you're nearby. This not only informs them that you are easily accessible, but allows you to foster a more personal and intimate relationship with them. Individuals are often more comfortable conducting business locally, especially when they know you share a city or state or that you're only a neighborhood or even a block away.

5. Subject Lines - Geotargeting can also be used in subject lines to increase open rates. Reference an individual's place of residence or even their hometown in your subject line to catch their attention. Recipients may be more likely to notice a message containing their city or state in the inbox over a generic subject line.

Want more on lists? Check-out the lists section of our VR for AppExchange helpsite for information and tutorials on managing lists, creating opt-in forms and queries, and list best practices.

Related posts:

How to Use a Salesforce Report as an Email List

Top 10 Things to Test to Put Your Email on the Top 10 List!

5 Simple Tips to Engage Your Audience

Ever open up your inbox and see an email from an unfamiliar sender you don't remember subscribing to? Most of us have and the first reaction is usually to delete the message and perhaps even unsubscribe. If the sender hasn't been of value to you at this point, chances are they won't be in the future.

It's important to develop a rapport with your subscribers in order to add value to your emails. Below are 5 tips to keep your recipients engaged and coming back for more.

1. Consistency is key: It's important to follow a consistent sending schedule. With too little messaging recipients may forget who you are or forget they even subscribed to receive emails and if you mail too frequently, your audience may become overwhelmed and feel spammed. To avoid either scenario, create a schedule or a baseline for your minimum and maximum number of sends (i.e., at least once a month and no more than twice weekly). Stick to a schedule and your recipients will pay attention to your content and not the number of messages in their inbox.

2. Diversify your messaging: The last thing you want is for your recipients to be bored with your messaging or to feel the sole purpose of your emails is to sell them something. Rather than send the same promotional offer or product promotion week after week, change it up by sending a newsletter with industry tips, a company update or an employee profile. Having a good mix and variety of information with relevant content rules.

3. Reward your recipients: As many of us gathered in grade school, the best way to captivate an audience is by rewarding them for their attention. Are we suggesting you deliver each of your list members Red Vines, Tootsie Rolls or Jolly Ranchers for opening your emails? Not exactly, but you can reward your recipients by holding contests or randomly selecting a list member to receive a discount on your product or a free one-month subscription to your service.

4. Know your audience: When you notice a decline in open or click rates or a spike in unsubscribes find the cause. Ask your audience for feedback, send out a survey or encourage comments to find out what they're thinking. Put yourself in your readers shoes and ask yourself what would catch your attention or what would you find interesting? Then experiment with a test. Send two emails with differing subject lines, content or send times to optimize performance rates. 

5. Keep growing your list: After creating engaging emails you'll want to send them to as many individuals as possible.  You'll lost approximately 30% of your subscribers each year due to attrition, so you constantly need to grow your list. The easiest way is to include an opt-in form on your website, blog and your Facebook page or other social networks.

Follow these simple tips and your subscribers will keep coming back to the inbox for more!

Related Posts:

5 Ways to Get More Action from Your Call-to-Action

Want More Clicks? Tease Your Readers!

What the Heck is Google+ and What Does it Mean For My Business?

Now that Google+ is beginning to open to the public we thought we'd tap our Social Media Manager, Ellery, to give a rundown of what it's all about and why it's relevant to your business.

Another social network?!

Yes, another social network, but one that you should definitely pay attention to. Although dominant in the search market, Google has tried for years to break into social with little luck and some large failures. Google+ seems to be a product of the lessons they've learned along the way. After a week of exploring Google+ and it's features, it's impressing how well thought out the network appears to be. Sure, there are a few off things here and there, and your homepage may feel like a ghost town since only a handful of folks are on it so far, but we see a ton of potential, particularly for businesses.

 

So, how's it different than Facebook?

At first glance, Google+ actually looks a lot like Facebook, probably a good thing when it comes to user adoption. The home page doesn't drift far from the look and feel of the Facebook wall and status updates and the commenting function works essentially the same way as well. Hey, Facebook has honed its user experience for years...no need to reinvent the wheel, right? The key benefits to Google+, though, lie in the features that aren't available (or weren't until just last week) on Facebook in any form. There are five in particular we think really stand out:

• Circles: Circles give you the ability to sort all of your contacts into separate groups based on the nature of your relationship. You can then select which circles you want to be included whenever you share something on Google+. For example, you could have a circle for your family members where you share pictures of your kids and other family news, while keeping a different circle for your friends and even another circle for just acquaintances. By sorting your contacts in this fashion, the information you share can be much more targeted, and in turn, more relevant to the people you're sharing with.
• Hangouts: Hangouts are group video chats. By making yourself available to "hangout" you can start a video chat with up to ten of your contacts who are also online at that time. You can also share things during a hangout (say an article or a youtube video) which everyone can view together. Now that's cool!
• Sparks: Sparks is a feature that recommends content for you based on your interests, online activity, and preferences...sort of like your very own custom content curator. Given Google's expertise in data mining, we expect this feature to become really robust over time. Another nice thing about Sparks is the ability to share things you find to the circles of your choice without ever leaving Google+.
• Huddle: Huddle is a group chat function that can be used online or across Android, iPhone, or SMS. Yes, Facebook just announced the rollout of group chat too, but the integration of mobile and a more professional environment (see next bullet) give Google+ the edge here.
• Aura of professionalism: Okay, so not technically a feature, but we think the professional vibe put forward on Google+ so far (or at the very least, the ability to easily separate friends from professional contacts using circles) is a huge benefit for the network. Google+ seems to take the powerful functionality of Facebook and marry it with the professional environment and discussion topic types of LinkedIn. On top of all that, Google+ functions a bit like Twitter too, in that you can follow someones updates regardless of whether they are following you or not...a huge plus when it comes to finding good content. For these reasons, Google+ has a lot of implications when it comes to business applications.

Okay, then what does Google+ mean for my business?

For the time being, Google has asked that businesses refrain from creating a profile on Google+. The company says that they have plans for businesses to be able to get the most out of the network, but that it's just not ready for that functionality yet. If you're interested in being one of the first businesses on Google+ permitted to create a profile, you can sign up with Google to be notified as soon as profiles are available.

That said, there are several ways right out of the gate that Google+ is good for business:

• Productivity: Between Hangouts, group chats, and the ability to create work specific circles, Google+ is poised to be a powerful internal communication tool at your company. Imagine being able to push certain information or topics towards one or a few departments without bogging down peripheral employees news feeds. With circles, this will be a snap. Have offices spread across several locations but need to arrange a quick face-to-face meeting without springing for a pricey web conference solution? Hangouts has you covered. And for those companies already using Google apps at some level, the inevitable integration with Google+ will be a serious game changer.
• Professional Networking: While Google+ probably won't replace LinkedIn when it comes to things like showcasing your experience and professional recommendations, it will be a threat to areas like industry specific content sharing and discussion groups. Additionally, Google+ enables users to allow other people to contact them via email, regardless of whether they are in each other's circles or not. While not everyone will leave this feature on, for those that do it will open a great avenue for new business contacts.
• Competitive Research: For the same reasons that Google+ is a powerful professional networking tool, it can also be useful when it comes to keeping an eye on and interacting with your competition. Google+ allows you to follow anyone with a Google+ profile regardless of whether the connection is reciprocated. Of course, users can specify whether or not specific content is shared with public circles, but for content that is public, Google+ can be a great way to stay up-to-date on news and announcements in your competitive space.
• Personal Branding: Because Google+ profiles are publicly searchable and viewable - don't worry, you control what is and isn't shared - the network represents a great opportunity for users to brand themselves by maintaining a complete profile and sharing content that speaks to their areas of expertise. By specifying which circles see what, you can tailor this messaging even further. Remember, though, personal profiles are a reflection of the company as a whole, so be sure that employees who share their affiliations with you are representing the company in an appropriate way.

Is Google+ here to stay?

While still in its infancy and admittedly kind of limited to tech geeks and social media experts at this point, we see a ton of potential for Google+ moving forward. By making the effort to truly field test the technology before rolling it out to the masses, we think Google will avoid many of the problems they've had with social in the past. At the end of the day, Google is building a powerful social network on top of an infrastructure (search, email, documents, advertising, etc.) that already has mass adoption. Leveraging this fact is going to be the difference here and what makes Google+ the first legitimate contender to Facebook's social dominance.

Related Posts:

Why You Should Include an Opt-in Link in Your Email Messages

RELEVANT Content is King

Get More With VR Statistics

Many of you have become pros at creating attractive emails, uploading perfectly formatted lists and launching your campaigns like clockwork. Great, except one thing may be missing. Reporting! VerticalResponse for AppExchange has great reporting resources to help you determine everything from most popular send times to your most social email. Below are some tips on how to get the most out of the VR Statistics tab in your account.

1. Compare emails- Choose any 5 emails from any time period and see a side-by-side comparison on opens, clicks, bounces, unsubscribes and social media likes and shares. Example: Use the compare emails feature to determine your most successful send time or best performing newsletter design.

 

2. Create a List- Use results from a recent campaign to create a targeted mailing list. Simply click the campaign name in the VR Statistics tab then the "Create Mailing List" option to build a list of recipients who clicked a link, opened the email, converted, or shared on Facebook, Twitter or LinkedIn. Example: Use the "create a list" feature to download a record of all non-responders (those who did not open the email) and send a follow-up message.

 

3. Measure Email Performance- Quickly determine the performance of a particular email over time by selecting the email in the VR Statistics tab and choosing the desired time since launch under "Activity". Example: View open and click trends from 6 hours to 2 weeks after the launch of an email to determine when response rates are the highest and schedule your next email accordingly.

Quick Tip: Don't forget to select "Update Statistics" for recent emails in order to maintain the most up-to-date statistics for your leads and contacts. Next use the "VR Email History Object" to view exactly which emails an individual Lead or Contact has received and see exactly what they did with each of those emails.

Want more on reporting? Visit our Salesforce Statistics page to access video and text tutorials or sign up for our weekly VR for Salesforce live webinar.

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The Social Future is Here!

In the old days there was a pretty limited set of options to spread a message far and wide:

1. You could climb to the top of a mountain and shout to the people below.
2. You could tell some guy on horseback to ride from town to town and yell it to people he passed.
3. You could pay people to hand-copy something you wrote and hand-deliver it all over the place.
4. And in the more recent past, there were fliers and phone trees (which were admittedly kind of fun).

While each of those options could help get the word out (and in some cases have awesome fitness side effects), reaching a large audience was no small feat.

Email marketing (along with a few other technologies) changed that. And in the last few years, social media has completely revamped the game. Today, the rules change again:

VerticalResponse for Salesforce is happy to introduce our enhanced social media features for email marketing!

You asked for it and we delivered. We've been working on our new social features for several months, taking great care to build what you need. In the last couple of months we introduced you to the basics of the new features which give you the ability to:

• Include social sharing icons in the emails you create
• Share your email on Twitter and BOTH your Facebook Profile AND business Page(s) when you launch your email
• Track the social activity generated by your email

And, we also discussed a couple of finer points of the integration:

• Clicks vs. Social Reach: Who clicks on the icons in the email they receive from you, and how viral it becomes once it hits the social networks
• Facebook Graph API: The latest and greatest from Facebook that enables almost all of our new features

Now it's time to give this new stuff a try! We enabled sharing icons by default in any new email you create, and you can share your email right from the launch page, so it's easy to start sharing right away. And as we all know, sharing is caring (enough said).

So sit back, create a new email, and easily share it with the world (and let others do some of the sharing for you). You'll be glad you didn't have to climb a mountain to do it (unless you're into that sort of thing).

Snacks, Lemonade, and Peas: Why First Impressions Matter

It can often be difficult to stand out in an endless list of unopened inbox emails. An online marketing company recently sent an email with the following subject line: "Snacks, Lemonade, and Peas: Event Tips, and Beyond." Why is this particular subject line so attractive?

First of all, who doesn't love snacks and lemonade? And, while not everyone loves peas, they can certainly appreciate their nutritional value. Second of all, the email was sent at 12:19 PM, just around the time when our stomachs start grumbling and we're ready for lunch. The company applied two clever tactics, they used the right verbiage and they did it at the perfect time. They spoke to our subconscious appetites and yelled who wants snacks, lemonade, and peas?!

What can we take from this encounter with Snacks, Lemonade, and Peas in the inbox?

1. First impressions still count! In a fast paced environment of reality tv, tabloids, and twitter, we have become accustomed to being entertained, excited, and drawn in with a hook. Although we may not always have something exciting to offer, we can still offer it in an interesting way. Use attractive verbiage, find clever ways of phrasing a subject line, and be unique! 

2. Keep it above the fold. As often as we hear the phrase "you can't judge a book by its cover" the truth is, we all do, whether or not we are aware of the fact. Within seconds of seeing a subject line, title, or opening sentence of a blog post or email we decide whether or not to continue reading. So, make your first few lines count. Deliver your call to action, purpose, or message above the fold (upper half of the page). Don't make readers dig for the goods because 9 times out of 10, they won't.

3. Ask yourself, would I read this? We rely on first impressions to help us quickly determine whether or not we will find something useful and interesting much in the same way we watch a movie because of its preview or buy a magazine for its cover. There is limited time and space to draw in customers. Put yourself in the shoes of your readers and ask yourself, would I find this enticing?

4. Timing is everything. When sending an email, timing can have a huge impact on open and click rates. Perform a split test or examine the reporting on your last few sends to determine the times when your emails have the highest open and click rates. Like the marketing website did with snacks, lemonade, and peas at lunchtime, coordinate subject lines and timing to optimize open rates even further.

We can spend hours creating interesting content and incredible offers but if our readers never get past the subject line, our efforts become futile. In an age where everything is animated from billboards to buttons, we have to compete to captivate our audience from the start. The first few seconds of introduction determine whether our users will remain engaged or make a dash for the delete button.

Learn more about Salesforce reporting! Learn how you can use your customer data to send relevant, timely and exciting messages with VerticalResponse. Sign-up for our weekly VerticalResponse for Salesforce live demonstration, Wednesdays at 10 AM PDT.

Savannah Stewart is the Partner Marketing Coordinator at VerticalResponse and blogs here about all things related to marketing and B2B communication. Connect with her on Twitter at @savannahstewart.

Expand the Reach of Your Email Beyond the Inbox

Social media is the talk of the town, but after many conversations we've found that people often leave with more questions about how to make effective use of social media for their business than when they came. To address this conundrum, VerticalResponse has put a lot of thought into how we can help small businesses use social networks to spread their email marketing messages most effectively. We think the social sharing features we're about to release are the perfect combination of quick and effective, and as we put the finishing touches on them prior to release, we'd like to highlight some of the more unique aspects our new social sharing features will have.

Clicks vs. Social Reach

VerticalResponse has always been proud of our reporting features - they let you quickly see performance data in a nifty high-level dashboard with charts and graphs, and also allow you to drill into the details if you are so inclined. Continuing in that tradition, we've designed the social reporting to behave similarly: a combined dashboard view (so you can see your social data right next to your email data), along with downloadable details about who shared your email to their networks. 

 

What's particularly cool about our new social reporting is that in addition to showing the clicks from the emails, we also include a measure called Total Social Reach that will help you understand what happens after your message hits the social networks. These numbers have the potential to be wildly different, and in fact we're hoping they are. Here's why: let's say you have 10 clicks on the "Like" button from your email. Once those 10 Likes hit Facebook, they can be re-liked/shared on Facebook, commented upon, etc., which has the potential to make your content viral. That means with 10 clicks, you might see something like 50 total Likes across Facebook (or more!). Wouldn't it be great to know who on your list contributed to that? 

With this approach, you not only see the intent of the person you sent your email to, but you'll also see how people engage with your content. Armed with this information, you can take things one step further to determine who on your list has the most social influence (with a service like Klout), and then continue to focus on building a good relationship with them by giving them what you promised.

The Facebook Graph API

VR's current social sharing features use an older integration with Facebook that, while functional, is somewhat limited in what it can do (the people at Facebook are in the process of fixing it as I type). Our new social sharing features use Facebook's latest and greatest Graph API which is at the core let's us automatically add Like, Tweet, and LinkedIn Share buttons to the hosted version of your email! 

The two main benefits to this upgrade are that it allows a connection to all the Pages you control within Facebook at once (that means your profile and all the other Pages you own for your business) so that you can share your message more efficiently. And secondly, your recipients can share the content they receive from you. We're obviously very excited about the upgrade and the additional functionality we'll soon offer you, but since this is a completely new integration - even if you've been using our current social sharing features - we'll ask you to re-link your VR and Facebook accounts just the first time you use the new sharing tools. It'll only take a second, and you'll be on your way to much more powerful social marketing!

So stay tuned, because expanding the reach of your email beyond the inbox is only a few weeks away!

Want More Clicks? Tease Your Readers!

If you’re using social media for your business, good for you! Hopefully you're paying attention to which messages you publish to social networks like Facebook and Twitter get the best response. But it’s important to understand what messages you publish are most interesting to your fans.

No matter which social network you use, it’s crucial to grab your reader’s attention with a compelling hook. And your introductory message can be the difference between your content being shared or completely ignored so you need to get their attention with a "teaser."

We took a look at a recent activity report for the VerticalResponse email marketing Twitter account, @vr4smallbiz, to see what takeaways we might be able to give you about our own teasers. Looking at the top five most clicked links over a two-week period in March, we saw some interesting themes emerge that can be applied to how you might use social media. Check them out:

1. How-To

Using the words "how to" clearly communicates to the reader that they will be getting information that's useful to them and actionable.

2. Numbers/Lists

People love numbered lists. By including a list in your teaser, your reader knows exactly what to expect when clicking through.

3. Rewards/Offers/Exclusives

Using "Top Lists Of..." will always be successful whether it's informational or a list of "Top Products Purchased" this week. This tweet promoting VerticalResponse's free downloadable guides has continued to be one of our most clicked through teasers nearly a month after posting.

4. News/Announcements

Have some exciting news about your company or industry? Make sure to use it in your teaser. You might be surprised how many people follow you on social networks for access to the latest information about your brand or business.

5. Charlie Sheen (or any topical reference)

Well okay, not just Charlie Sheen, but you can go ahead and call it the "Sheen Rule of Social Teasers". Using humor, drama, and timely topical references do a great job of commanding attention. Just be careful with this one and make sure that it does somehow tie back to the content you're sharing...you don't want to make your fans feel like they've been conned. The Sheen Rule of Teasers reminds us that it's perfectly okay, even encouraged, to have a little fun with your social teasers. Social media is the perfect place to get your personality out there.

Bonus!

You may have noticed that social teasers have a lot in common with the subject lines you craft for your email marketing campaigns. In fact, many of the practices that we recommend for writing email subject lines can be applied here as well. Check out our 29 Great B2B Subject Lines for some ideas. Also, if you're not using the VR for AppEx Social Sharing feature to post your newsletters to Facebook and Twitter, you might want to revisit our recent blog post about how to make the most of social media for your business. 

Want More?

Check out our Spring Webinar Series to sign up for helpful live demonstrations on what you can do with email and social media.