VerticalResponse Email Marketing Blog for Small Business

You Know You've Done Too Much Email Marketing If...

This is just for a good laugh, thanks to Mark Brownlow from Email Marketing Reports, he's done it again! Check out his list, it's hysterical...

You Know You've Done Too Much Email Marketing If...

• you don't end friendships or love affairs...you "opt-out" of them
• you can't read any text wider than about 600 pixels
• you can think of 17 different ways to describe something as free without actually using the word "free"
• the shopping list you give your spouse has all the important items squeezed into the top left hand corner of the piece of paper

Oh there's more, check them out here and start laughing :-) Add one of your own!

Ten 2007 New Year's Resolutions for Email Marketing

Got enough resolutions for the year yet? Been bombarded with lists? Well here's another! Each year we all do a little reflecting of what we can do differently or better in the new year.

I took a look at our own email marketing efforts and put a little list together of what we all should be thinking about as we plan for our email campaigns in the coming year. Hope they help kick it off right for ya!

1. Ask (ok beg) your web designer to stop creating “image-only” emails. Tell them that you know they create lovely emails, but that in order for you to get a better response, you need for your users to see your content. That said, you need a mix of both text and graphics. Why? If your recipient has their reader set so that images are "turned off", the first thing they'll likely see is your text and not your unsubscribe message. (Not to mention image-only emails rank higher as spam.)

2. Create a calendar of email campaigns now for the first three months of the year. Pin it on your bulletin board and stick to it.

3. Put a sign up book on your counter if you have an offline business. At checkout tell your customer they’ll get customer-only deals, then give it to them!

4. Take a small segment of your list and test a new subject line to see if your open rate will increase.

5. Call the recipients who have bounced and get their updated email address.

6. Put a newsletter sign-up form or link on each page of your site or your blog, even if you’re a retailer.

7. Keep your subject line short and and to the point. Try for less than 40 characters.

8. Use personalization wherever you can. Thank your customers for buying {Product x}.

9. Include more links to allow more click through.

10. Make some money!

Got any resolutions that you're going to abide by? Comment away!

Webinar Recap: Email Marketing and GoToWebinar

VerticalResponse teamed up with GoToWebinar to put on a webinar about how to launch a great webinar and how to use email marketing to drive people to it. We didn't get to all of the questions so here they are are with our answers from Richard our Manager of ISP Relations and Josh our VP of Product Management. BTW, the webinar can be found here for those of you who weren't able to make it. (Windows 2000 or higher only :-()

Question: Does VerticalResponse allow purchased email lists?   

Answer: VerticalResponse does not allow the use of third party email lists to use with our solutions.  If you do rent a list with another provider, make sure the list owner emails your offer on behalf of you to their members. 

Question: How do you recommend we build our mailing list? 

Answer:

1.  If you have a website, put an opt-in form up there. VerticalResponse provides a form creator free of charge.
2.  If you have a storefront, put several sign-up books or note pads out where people can sign-up for your email updates.
3.  When meeting people, exchange cards and ask if they're interested in your company and if they'd like to be added to your mailing list.
4.  Give people a reason to sign-up!  An interesting newsletter or a chance at special offers will get more sign-ups than a generic marketing email.
5.  Check out the Building an Email List section of our Email Marketing blog to get more ideas.

A great combination of building your list from the ground up and advertising it can help you in the long run. 

Question: On average what is an acceptable open rate and click through rate for any e-mail campaign?

Answer: VerticalResponse published a Trend Watch Report for the first half of 2006 by industry and list size. You can see where you're averages should fall by looking up your industry.

Question: What kind of some spam words and content should we avoid in our email campaigns? 

Answer: There are a number of phrases and words to avoid.  Some examples would be:

“Will not believe your eyes”
“Save big money”
“Join millions of Americans”
“Act now! Don't hesitate!”

A full list of potentially problematic spam words and phrases can be seen here.

Is your email going to be filtered simply because you have a word or phrase that the spam filter doesn’t like?  Probably not.  Most spam filters score your email based on a number of factors, so don’t feel like need to scrub your content of everything shown in the list I linked above.  Just keep this info in mind when creating your content.

Question: How can I join a whitelist?

Answer: It is difficult to get whitelisted without the help of your Service Provider.  You may not be the only person mailing through your IP Address (something you must know in order to be whitelisted) and so cannot vouch for everything going out through that IP.  Note that if you are already using a program like VerticalResponse then this is something that you really don’t have to worry about.

But still, you can check out the whitelisting process an ISP like AOL has in place.

Question: How can I find out if I’m on a blacklist?

Answer: To check if you’re on a blacklist you need to find out your IP Address, and then check a SPAM Database list like the one found at DNSstuff.

Question: Does VerticalResponse offer “Forward to a Friend” functionality?

Answer: Yes we do.  You can add a forward to a friend link to any email sent out using our service.  This will allow your recipients to easily pass the email on to others, and also gives those “friends” to whom the email is passed an easy way to opt-in to your mailing list. 

Question: Are you integrated with salesforce.com? 

Answer: Yes, we are.  Take a look!

Hope you got something out of this. If you have other questions, feel free to comment!

Great Customer Service and Word of Mouth

Recently I was in DC attending a great show, the Word of Mouth Marketing Show (which I will be blogging about soon). I found myself with a free moment and saw an ad for a very cool jewelry store in the Hotel Rouge city guide.

Nice! I had to buy a holiday gift for my husband John and quite frankly I haven't been able to break away from VR. Not to mention downtown crowds scare me on the holiday weekends.

So after being interviewed by CRN Magazine for a new salesforce.com partner program right outside the store (sorry about the loud buses CRN), I went in.

TALK ABOUT CUSTOMER SERVICE!

1. I was greeted by the daughter of the store owner, Nicole. I was interested in a specific collection, and not the most expensive one I might add. She immediately introduced herself and helped me through my decision quite nicely. I picked out the piece and said wrap it up, I've got to get back. She asked me to fill out a customer card WITH email address so she "had it on file." Nice.

2. While I waited, her father, Ivan Gorman (who I'm pretty sure the store was named after) came out and introduced himself. He shook my hand and thanked me immensely for my business. A very warm man.

3. Nicole came out and told me that I should bring John back to the store to make sure it fits, and to make sure he liked it the best. She also put in it amazing packaging and included a split of champagne for us to celebrate the nice gift. (It is a pretty sweet ring.) I told John about my experience after he opened his gift (which he loves) and he couldn't believe it.

4. Next day - John and I went back, Nicole greeted both John and I by name, and showed him the other pieces. He ended up liking the one I got him but she told us that if the sizing wasn't right to make sure to send it back, she'd order another size.

She then told us to take our rings off, she would clean them and be right back. While we waited she offered us beer, wine or soda. Then her brother Adam came out and introduced himself to John and the two had a very nice conversation on watches. Do I HAVE to leave this place?

People ask us all of the time, how to I grow my email list? This is a GREAT example of how a store easily got my email address. And how appropriate was it that I was attending a show that was teaching in many cases word of mouth marketing comes from superb customer service and superb products, both of which this store had. I've told this story to 4 friends so far PLUS you all, and I'll most likely buy from them again.

Look out for my WOMMA Show blog I'm going to try to do this weekend!

VerticalResponse & TypePad - A Great Combination

Some of you may have read my post about driving traffic to your blog and how email marketing can be the perfect tool for this. There isn't a better time to announce that today we're launching the VerticalResponse Sign-Up Form Widget for TypePad.

The VerticalResponse Sign-Up form Widget for TypePad is simple: it's a sign-up form you create in minutes that your visitors can fill out to be added to your email list. Once you have your form and you're collecting addresses, you'll have access to a multitude of features enabling you to connect with your readers when YOU want to.

How does it work?

1. You choose what information you want to collect from your visitors and your form is instantly built using VerticalResponse.
2. You click on "Add to my TypePad Blog" and instantly it appears on your TypePad blog.
3. You collect email addresses for FREE.
4. You now have access to a professional email marketing solution where you'll be able to send email notifications, newsletters or offers when you want to.

Want to add email addresses from your Feedburner and Feedblitz lists? No problem, use the VerticalResponse upload tool to do so. Then all of your email addresses are in one place! Check out our sign-up form to the left, we now use our own solution!

Want to learn more about TypePad? Check it out.

Upcoming Product Features for Q1 '07

I've had some mixed reviews here internally about whether or not I should publish this post. Some say, "What if we tell people we're going to deliver and we don't?" Others say, "We've taken too long to get something to our customers so WE HAVE TO DELIVER!'"

My opinion? You've all been more than patient while we've spent a good amount of time "fixing what's under the hood" as they say. We feel we've now got a robust architecture to be able to do some pretty cool stuff. We hope you think so too...

HTML Editor

What is it? Picture this: start off with a blank "canvas" that you'll  start typing on just like you use MS Word.

Then bold, ital, color your text, highlight links and a mail-to address, even use our "wrappers" from our template system right around your email. You'll have more control than ever over your email content.

Image Library

Do you use the same images over and over and would love a one-stop shop to store them? With our new image library you'll be able to do this PLUS re-size them to fit your email content.

Click-to-Sale Conversion Tracking

Just as easy as it is to put an opt-in form on your site, you'll be able to copy and paste a snippet of code into your confirmation page to do email-to-sale tracking. Now you'll really be able to track ROI from your email campaigns.

Hopefully I've got you excited, I know I am. We'd love to hear your comments on these new features.

Inc.com Column - "To Start or Not To Start A Business With Your Spouse"

Inc.com asked if I would write a monthly column for their "Women in Business" section. It's pretty exciting for me, I hope you enjoy it.  

You just may find it interesting even if you aren't a woman ;-)

Case Study: Results from an Email Webinar Invitation

A few weeks ago we did a webinar about our Salesforce.com integration. It went great. We use GoToWebinar, a pretty cool product. Check them out for yourself.  I asked Kara who ran the webinar here at VR about some of the metrics that surround using email marketing to drive people to register for and attend the webinar. Here's what we came up with.

We posted a link on our site, the VRU area of our site, a week or two before we did the webinar.
We got 208 clicks.

We then did a newsletter out to a targeted list of users in our database.
Total sent:      2700
Total opens:     766 (28%)
Total clicks:     152 (5.6% great click rate!)

Total clicks for the entire webinar "2-week campaign":     361 clicks
Total people who registered for the webinar:                   153 people (42%)
Total attendees the day of the webinar:                             75 (49%)

I think these are some really great numbers for us to start benchmarking our webinar series to test out new things.

Here are a few things I think would be really great to test going forward:

• Start mailing earlier, 2-4 weeks, and do a re-mail of the original campaign to the non-responders.
• Put the specific webinar link on the home page (right now we have a "general VRU" description.)

You might want to use our metrics and see how you compare. If you've got any ideas on how we might increase our rates, let us know!