VerticalResponse Email Marketing Blog for Small Business

Marketing Ideas for Salons

I was talking to a hair salon owner here in San Francisco about how a salon goes about getting new customers and retaining existing ones. Wow, did I get some good ideas about marketing and selling for salon owners. Do you need some ideas for your email marketing campaigns? Check out the ones below, I think they're pretty creative.

Also, check out this post for using email for appointment reminders and this post for collecting email addresses. You might even get a good idea or two if you don't have a salon so read on...

FREE is Good

For the most part there are many things that you charge for that have pretty high margins. Consider giving these products or services away for free with a higher-priced service.

• For hair salons highlights can be expensive, why not give away something of lesser value for free, like a conditioner?

• For nail salons, what about a free manicure with a pedicure? - Do you have a time during the day when you're slow? Get people in the door with a free offer.

• Free product with a treatment - The margins on products are usually great and chances are you can afford to give away something small for free.

Getting NEW Customers

• The shared restroom - Are you in a building where you share a restroom with other businesses? Why not put a coupon or a sign there so visitors know you're there and could potentially kill "two birds" with one stone next time.

• Customer trade - Do you do hair or nails for someone who works at a local magazine, newspaper or other advertising venue? Give them free treatments in exchange for advertising.

• Friend get a friend - Offer a free color, cut or manicure when you bring a friend OR bring a friend and the friend gets it free.

• Punch cards - Give your customers a card and each time they get a treatment they get a punch in their card. On the 10th punch they get a free treatment. One last idea, keep their cards for them so that they don't have to remember to bring them.

• Birthday promotions - Free treatment on your customer's birthday. Email them on their birthday week.

Need More Stylists?

• See some fabulous hair on the street? Ask them who styled it, call them and invite them in!

Get Your Information Digital Now!

• Take all of your cards you have customer information written down on and put them into an information manager. Quickbooks and Filemaker are very easy to use and affordable!

Do you own or work at a salon? Are you doing some creative things with marketing AND email marketing? Chime in with some more ideas!

Writing Email Copy that Sells - Features and Benefits

Sitting down and coming up with copy for anything can be a daunting task right? Even if you're writing about something you know pretty well. One of the things I've been wrestling with is that fact that so many companies are so enamored with their "features" they fail to talk about the benefits, that is, what problems the features are going to solve.

Today I'd like to focus on writing benefit-oriented copy in your emails.

BENEFITS-BENEFITS-BENEFITS

Make your copy more benefit-oriented and tell your recipients why they'd want your widget, not just how cool your widget is. People are emotional, they buy because they want to know how your product or service will benefit them first, features are secondary.

When you're writing your copy and you list a feature, always pay off the feature with what goes after "...so now you can..."  or "...for better..." in your copy.

I went through my inbox and found a few emails that outlined both the need for and good use of benefit-oriented copy.

Toysrus.com - In the excerpt from an email to the right, we're never told "why" it's going to be better for us to shop using our existing account information.

We might have suggested:

"... so now you won't have to create another new account and manage yet another user name and password! More time for shopping and saving!"

... or something like that.

The Sport Tec jacket  - What an amazing invention. So many pockets and zippers. But what are they all good for? You wouldn't know with this email:

We might have suggested something like:

• 21 pockets - Holds your iPod, your cell phone, your pda so you can walk into your trade show without having to carry a computer bag or hike around the mountains without a painful backpack.
• Detachable sleeves - Hotter than you thought? Unzip the sleeves and store in the handy sleeve pocket so you can air out!

...you get the point.

Dell  - Dell does a great job here with three features and benefits related to them.

They list a few of their popular cool features and the reasons why they are actually cool. Kudos to Dell.

Lastly, revisit your copy - Write your copy first then revisit it and make sure you're outlining "why" someone would want your product or service.  I jot down my ideas first then revisit my blog two or three times to make it better before I publish it.

Got any ideas of your own? Comment on this post.

VerticalResponse is Going to Dreamforce!

It's happening again, Dreamforce that is. What is Dreamforce you ask? It's the Salesforce.com annual conference here in San Francisco. We have gone to it every year, even when it was just 6 of us partners in a conference room in the back of Salesforce! It's bigger and better than ever this year.

The best part? We'll be unveiling some pretty cool new features at the show, stuff our customers who use us through Salesforce.com have asked for. What you ask?

• Enhanced query functionality - Now you can build lists and personalize your emails based on Account and Owner fields.
  
• View the content of the emails you send right from within the Lead and Contact record. No more guessing what your recipient received!
• Did you spend time creating email templates within your Salesforce account? Now you can use them when sending emails through VerticalResponse.
• Custom reports and dashboards built off of response data to help you analyze your results.
• And much much more!

We'll also be speaking in a few sessions this year so be on the lookout.

Josh our VP of Product Management and Wes our Sr. Developer have been working around the clock to be ready in time and we'd would love to see you there!

If you haven't registered for the event yet, use the code "VRRE26D" to get a $100 discount. To use the code, click on the "General Attendees" button on the registration page.

VerticalResponse for Partners: New Features!

Not sure if you knew we had a partnership program here at VerticalResponse so if you didn't know, you can get more information here. It's a pretty cool solution for people who have businesses that need to offer an email marketing solution to their clients. You get a branded VerticalResponse solution, access to real-time reporting as well as lifetime commissions on all sales.

Anyhoo, today I'm excited to say that we've got a pretty cool set of features coming next for our Partners. You'll now have access to an all-new Partner Dashboard right within your VR account!

What is the Partner Dashboard?

• Real-time Reporting - See who's signing up and who's sending email marketing campaigns. Most importantly watch your commissions roll in.
• Custom Email Footer – Add a custom graphic to all outgoing email marketing campaigns in the footer.  Drive traffic back to your own VerticalResponse solution and capture new customers.
• Marketing Materials – Get unbranded banner ads, product datasheets and white-papers. You'll be able to advertise and educate.

Best of all there are no minimums that you or your clients need to hit in order to use the product like some of our competitors have.

Why You Might Need VerticalResponse for Partners

Value-Add Service to Your Customers - If an email marketing solutions fits in nicely as an add-on to features you already offer, this is a piece of cake. Now you can send them directly to your co-branded VerticalResponse solution. VerticalResponse handles the billing and customer support.

Take the Full Service Approach - Manage the process from beginning to end. You can offer account creation, design services, account management, image hosting, database management, statistical reporting and analysis. Your organization can also set fees for the service you're providing. Use the VerticalResponse co-brand to help you manage the program and add additional revenue for your company.

Hybrid Model - Some of your customers may want to manage their campaigns themselves, while others may require a full service package. VerticalResponse for Partners can satisfy both needs.

If you have any questions or need to know more about these features gohere.

Poll Results: Do You Blog for Your Business?

Out of the 100 of you that answered the poll "Do You Blog for your Business?", 60% don't yet have a blog and 40% do.

For more information on thoughts as to why you should blog for your business see this post. For more information on Business Blogging you may want to check out the Blog Business Summit.

Why is "Pong" Still So Cool?

Ah, I think I long for the simpler life sometimes. I watch people I know, people who are *very* close to me, playing crazy video games killing people in the Godfather or running over people in Grand Theft. (Well I can't really say that I hate it, I mean Godfather is my favorite movie.) But what happened to the simplicity of Pong? Is it just too boring?

Well some major brands don't think so. Thank god they're breathing some new life into a retro product. Check out these ads that are fab!

American Express - Roddick vs. Pong
Even though he lost in the finals, he kills it here with this commercial. Go Andy!

HP Pavilion - The Computer is Personal Again
Starring Pharrell Williams, this one is great. I like the entire campaign that HP is doing here using these famous pop-icons like Jay Z, Shaun White and others.

For all you Pong lovers out there... Check out its history at PONG-Story.

So I wonder if VericalResponse can do some Pong inspired ads, maybe emails flying out of servers past email filters that look like Pong?  Hmmmm.

This was just a observation after watching some TV last long holiday weekend. Love to hear it if you've got any Pong stories.

5 Steps to Help Retailers Plan for the Holidays Now!

I just approved an email marketing campaign where a VerticalResponse retail customer was "preparing" their customers for the U.S. holiday season. They even used one of our holiday email templates. Then, my husband John, came into my office and we brainstormed about the upcoming corporate gifting season. Yep, it's here... the holiday season.

Retailers are already thinking about it, but realistically, you need to be scheduling your campaigns out now.  Hopefully you already know what your typical response to an email campaign is, if you don't, look at our retail email trends report for average open/click/bounce/unsubscribe rates. If you do know the type of traffic you get to your store or your site during the holidays, you know what your product ordering/manufacturing pattern is going to look like and probably need to think about ordering soon.

5 things to think about while you calendar your holiday season:

1. Devise your start plan - Will you start before Halloween or around Thanksgiving? It seems like the giving season comes earlier each year so make sure you make the most of it. It's right around the corner!
2. Guarantee shipping - If you're an online retailer, when is the last day you'll guarantee your orders will arrive by December 24? Make sure your shipping company will guarantee it before you do!
3. Gift wrap and a card - Will you offer this? If you do, make sure you plan your shipping for this and bake it into your calendar.
4. Customer service - Returns happen, are you set up for this? Prepare for this the week after the holidays when everyone is returning their "mis-targeted" gifts.
5. Email frequency - Plan how often you'll send your email campaigns. If it's once per week now, you may want to increase the frequency to two times per week closer to the holidays. Your last-minute shoppers will appreciate this.

Planning now for your biggest season will help you in the long run. Don't let the holidays pass you by!

Got any comments of your own? Do you celebrate a holiday from another country you would like to comment on? Bring it on!

The Truth About Landing Pages

Thank you Mark Brownlow for talking about landing pages in your latest Email Marketing Reports blog post. We are vigilant about the concept of the landing page here at VerticalResponse for tracking purposes. He talks about driving recipients to a single page and why it's a good thing:

"If we can dictate the landing page, then we can put specific content on this page that encourages the visitor to do what we want them to do. We can custom-design the landing page to fit with the goals of whatever advertising or marketing effort got the visitor to land there in the first place.

So the link in that email might go to a product page where the visitor can buy the item in question. If we just sent readers to the main website address, perhaps they'd never find the product or offer on their own before pursuing some other task or interest."

Great post Mark, keep them coming! Read the rest...

Case Study: Due Maternity

I don't know if any of you have seen our case study with Due Maternity. Shannon DiPadova and her husband Albert run a great business. Not only are they killing it in their retail locations, but they're doing some great things online too. We asked them a bunch of questions on how they're using email marketing and they were pretty forthright with their answers including response rates.

Even if you're not in retail, you might get a few great ideas.

If you're interested in doing a case study like this with us, email me.

If you've got any great stories of your own and just want to comment, everyone benefits!