VerticalResponse Email Marketing Blog for Small Business

7 Guerilla Marketing Tactics That Won't Break the Bank

Finding new customers is tough, especially if you're trying to do it on a shoestring. So how do you go about getting people to notice you if you don't have a big marketing budget?

Here are a few ideas...

Find key influencers - These are people that talk about you all the time. Get them in your offices, your store, treat them nicely if they get you new customers. Talk about how appreciative you are about them talking about your business.

Visit a convention - Instead of getting information from people selling their services and goods, why not go to a convention and pass out flyers or coupons to all of the booths and collect and business cards that the booth may offer. Be careful so as not to waste their time since they're actually there to sell themselves. Then follow up with an email marketing campaign reminding them of how you received their information.

Local Bartering - Drive reciprocal traffic to a neighboring business so that each of you can promote the other businesses as an add-on. In our neighborhood, a local brew pub offers beers from a brew pub across town and vice versa. It's a nice cross promotion and reminds customers who might be visiting one neighborhood or the other.

Signature files - I've talked about signature files before, make sure you include them in all of your outgoing email personal and business email.

Yellow Pages - Sounds archaic right? But it doesn't cost too much for a display in the local yellow pages. Some people still find what they need by flippin' pages.

Merchandise with your logo - Give customers and employees cool things to wear with your logo on it. At VerticalResponse we give employees great jackets and messenger bags, it's a great form of advertising.

Chamber of Commerce - Become a member of your local Chamber of Commerce and attend the regular gatherings or send a representative from your company with business cards and coupons.

Got any guerilla ideas of your own to share?

VerticalResponse API is Here!

What can the VerticalResponse API do for me?

Using the VerticalResponse API, you're only a SOAP call away from integrating a world class e-mail marketing solution into your current software project. Your developers can access the features of your VerticalResponse account (e.g. uploading a mailing list, launching a campaign) and build personalized solutions around them allowing you to leverage the reliability & top-notch deliverability that comes with VerticalResponse's email marketing platform.

Here are just a few examples of processes that can be automated:

1. Updating contact information from your in house customer database into your VerticalResponse mailing list
2. Sending a welcome campaign to customers who signed up during the past week/month
3. Downloading open/click statistics across multiple campaigns for analysis in Excel or the reporting tool of your choice

Check out the new API site for more information on how we can help you!

Holidays for May/June

Holidays and events are coming for the Spring Season. Don't them them pass you by. Have you got any email marketing campaigns that you need to think about sending for upcoming holidays? Here's a list to get you thinking!

May

Cinco de Mayo - May 5
Mother’s Day -  May13th
Memorial Day - May 28th
Baseball Season!

June

Flag Day - June 14
Father’s Day - June 17th
1st Day of Summer - June 21st
Apple Ships the iPhone, Date TBD!

International holidays are listed here by country. Comment if I missed anything.
 

5 Marketing Ideas We Say "Don't!" To

I focus on the "how-tos" so much on the blog I thought that it would be fun to post a "how not-to". These are marketing mistakes that we've noticed in the past week.

Don't print an email "fill-in" ON a beverage coaster if you run a bar or restaurant. Why? 1. If there is condensation the ink runs, 2. No one sees it when their beverage is on it, and 3. The staff throws them out.

Don't print on just one side of a datasheet. I'm sure you have enough to say to fill up both sides. The cost of a 2-sided sheet probably dwarfs the amount of sales you could get by filling up the other side of the page.

Don't forget to include your web address on physical shopping bags. A shopping bag is a form of advertising too. If you can't get it printed, print out stickers and stick them on.

Don't send an email out without a signature file. Make sure it includes a link back to your site and make sure your employees do the same.

Don't include your opt-in form on just ONE page of your site. Include the form is on as many pages as possible. If you can't include the entire form, at least a the link in the header or footer.

Got any of your own? Please comment.

VR Customer Uses Postcards to Get Updated Emails!

I was standing around the office last Friday afternoon and Jill, our top-notch Customer Relations Specialist came to me with this amazing example of how a VR Customer used our postcards! Alex, our Director of Sales yells out, "I'm blogging about it!" just to tease me. Did you know Alex is famous?  

Anyhow, turns out that this great bookstore had some bounced email addresses. They sent out this very creative postcard enticing users to update their email address.

Why do we like it?

• The message is catchy and very creative.
• Toyon Books gives a great incentive of 25% off to update your email address.
• They give an expiration date to drive updates sooner.
  

Great job Jim! Great concept and great execution. Does anyone have any ideas they'd like to share? Comment!