VerticalResponse Email Marketing Blog for Small Business

Facebook - What It Is, And Join VR's!

I was reading a post by John Jantsch, Duct Tape Marketing guy. He's great. He was a keynote speaker at the eBay Live! tradeshow and his blog is super. Check it out. He started to talk about Facebook, the new super duper social networking site where basically the kids post a bunch of jargon about themselves, about a product they're trying to sell or about an event in a local spot they're going to. MySpace version 2.0 I guess.

So I went to Facebook and set up my own account. (Between Squidoo, the VR Blog, and Facebook who is gonna run the company?) What did I find? It was pretty easy to set up. But I was trying to figure out what a marketer selling to businesses (VR) was going to get out of it. Here's what I did:

• I joined the San Francisco network just to see what was going on. Lots of events for youngsters.
  
• I set up a Network for VerticalResponse, I'm not really sure what this might do.
  
• I also set up a "Group" for VerticalResponse - Email Marketing for Small Business. This was cool. Here anyone can talk about how they use email marketing, why they use it, problems, solutions, you name it.
• I created a "flyer". This is a small advertising unit that I can choose to show to different Alumni, grads or undergrads. We'll see how that works.

So if you have a Facebook account do me a favor, join the VerticalResponse Group. For all of you that like the VR Lounge, that's great too. Log into your account and join in the conversation.

Will VerticalResponse "get" new business out of this? I'm not so sure, but it seems like it could provide a great FREE set of tools enabling customers to chat.

VerticalResponse Scores a Stevie!

I was recently in New York because VR was up for a few American Business Awards. Like I do when my husband can't make it with me, I call my bud Robert DiGioia (Publisher of a hot new yet-to-be-published marketing pub called eMC) to go with me. We had fun. That's the CEO from SilverJet presenting the award.

Although we didn't get the other awards we were nominated for (Best Customer Service, Product, Executive, Blog and Website), we got the one that was THE most important: Best Overall Company under 100 employees. Wow. Thanks to the American Business Awards and the judges.

Congrats to my fellow table mates! We had the table that won the most out of hundreds! A special shout out to another industry winner Des Cahill from Habeas who was at our table as well as the fine folks at ExactTarget.

Who do I really want to thank? Our superb team at VerticalResponse. We care about our customers and fellow employees. It's a really special place to work. I'm proud to be a part of it.

Affiliate Programs - 6 Steps to Get You Started

We're asked all the time, how do I get more email addresses, how can I grow my customer list? Affiliate programs can be a great way for you to get new customers.

What's an affiliate program? Basically you pay people to market and sell for you. What a concept! Even VerticalResponse has an affiliate program - that's right - we pay people to put ads on their sites with a trackable link so that anytime anyone purchases from us, we track it back to where it came from and pay affiliates for their efforts.

Glossary

Merchant/Publisher - You are a merchant or a publisher if you want to get more customers.
Affiliate - Web site owners that will put ads on their site and get paid by you, the merchant. Affiliates are in this for one thing and one thing only: to make money. You need to help them do that.

How can this work for you? 6 Steps to getting started...

1) Hook up with an affiliate program provider. For larger businesses check out LinkShare. For smaller businesses check out clickbank and  shareasale. They seem to be cost effective and you don't need all the bells and whistles you pay for with LinkShare.  What these providers give you is an online platform for affiliate approval, advertising asset management, and payment tracking. They also give you access to a network of existing motivated affiliates who are already selling for other types of merchants. Most importantly? THEY'LL disburse the payments to the affiliates that gave you customers. Gets rid of a huge headache for you.

2) You include copy about the program and a form on your site that your affiliate provider gives you. Remember: some of your best affiliates can be your customers who love you, so make sure you send out an email campaign announcing your program. Why shouldn't they get paid for their word of mouth marketing?

3) An affiliate applies to your program on your site by filling out the form.

4) You set aside some time daily or weekly to check out the affiliate applications and the websites they are going to refer you on. If you like the site they'll be advertising you on, you approve them. If you don't, you decline them.

5) You'll have to create advertising banners in all shapes and sizes. Check out the IAB for preferred sizes. If you've got one in each size you're doing better than most. The more you have the better your chances are of an affiliate having the space on their site to place you.

6) The affiliate places your ad on their site with a trackable URL that your provider gives you. They then send traffic to it hoping that these visitors will buy so they'll get paid by you.

In some cases you'll find your affiliates buying keywords in Google and getting a better placement than you! Should you care? I say no way! Let them get you a customer, pay them, then you've got two happy customers!

Word-to-the-wise: Success doesn't happen with affiliate programs overnight. You've got to work at it. We've got Laura our Affiliate guru working part time on ours, making sure that we've got great affiliates and that they're happy. They need to be treated like an extension of your sales team, no matter what you sell. If you put the time into it, you'll have a better chance at reaping the rewards.

Laura says, "We love special requests. If an affiliate asks for help with copy for their sites or a banner ad customized for their industry, we know they are really thinking about how to send us referrals. We've got a virtual sales team out there promoting our services in places and ways we'd never be able to reach without them."

The Affiliate Summit is the ultimate place to network and learn more. I think it's sold out for July but they may score some more space. VR will be there learning too!

We have pretty good luck with the VerticalResponse Affiliate Program, what's your luck been?

Vonage Has Bad Email Practices...

Andy Sernovitz, the guru on word of mouth marketing, has a serious issue with Vonage. And I can see why. Turns out so do tons of other people. What happened? Andy referred friends to Vonage years ago, and now Vonage is using Andy's name to endorse their service to his friends in multiple emails. Yikes.

If you're using Forward to a Friend on your site or in your emails, make sure that you don't do anything with those addresses until the forwarded recipients opt-in to your list. 

Perfect example? VerticalResponse offers Forward to a Friend links you can include in your email. BUT unless someone who receives a forwarded email from one of your recipients fills out an opt-in form to opt in to your list, we don't allow you to get that email address. This is good practice and you avoid getting into trouble like Vonage is in.

Did this happen to you? Let's hear your story!

eBay Live! from the Boston Show Floor

What a show this is! One thing is clear: eBay Power Sellers know how to sell products, that's for sure. The show is a lively one. Hungry for information on how they can sell and market better their attendance rate to the sessions is high. That means that eBay does a great job at getting good speakers for the sellers to learn from.

To be able to talk to someone who sells Christmas ornaments, another selling after market car parts and someone doing a million bucks a year selling bullhorns is really an amazing experience.

Andy Sernovitz gave a keynote on word of mouth marketing and was incredible as usual.  And with technical difficulties he even did half of it without slides. Kudos to you Andy.

Some VerticalResponse customer/partners where there exhibiting, Channel Advisor, Infopia and Citymax. Great to see you guys.

Our booth was next to Squidoo, Seth Godin’s company. They had a great promo, they gave away t-shirts and if you were spotted wearing one at the show at a given moment, you got big bucks. I have created a Squidoo for VerticalResponse and am testing it out now. Looks like an interesting idea but I'm trying to figure out why I'd send people there rather than the blog. I'm donating the money we make from the advertising to the Lance Armstrong Foundation.

Oh, and collectible pins? It’s all about collecting pins people. And you bet VR jumped on the bandwagon. Here is our pin (limited edition) AND, it's already on an auction if it's a must have for you this season! (It isn't us selling it, I promise.) Our own team had some serious flare.

Odd Sightings at the Show

Odd: Subway Jared was at the show. I lunged at him with a VR pin and asked him to wear it. Classy! What do you think he sells on eBay?

Odd: eBay starts to play music every few hours, Kool and the Gang's "Celebration"  to be exact, and people rush to an eBay booth to get an eBay Live! pin. Don't get in their way.

Odd: Random cheerleaders at the OnState Booth.

Odd: At least half dozen of the exact same light boxes to take your eBay product pictures.

Odd: Ribbons attached to a show badge. Some people had ribbon upon ribbon, 3 feet long!

All in all a fantastic time in Beantown. We met some great customers too.

One interesting thing came out of this show, eBay Power Sellers aren't using email enough to drive traffic back to their auctions and stores. One reason could be that eBay has limits on their free email marketing tool. Another reason is just that eBay Sellers are so busy with all other aspects of their business they don't have the time to see what' out there. Any eBay Power Seller care to comment? We're here to help you drive more business!

New Features: Interactive Marketing Calendar & Hosted Emails

Our team has been trying to get new features that you ask for out each month and I think we're doing it. Check out these new features you'll find in your VerticalResponse account right now... 

Interactive Marketing Calendar

Our new Interactive Marketing Calendar allows you to view sent and scheduled campaigns, view region-specific holidays and create personal tasks/events.

In addition, you can export and print your calendars in the event that you need this information outside VR.

• Check your monthly or quarterly mailing history
• Schedule pre-launch tasks (copywriting, design, etc)
• Plan for upcoming holidays

Hosted Emails

Now you can easily add a link to your email, so that recipients can “click to view this email online”. VerticalResponse will host a copy of your email FREE on a separate web page to ensure that your recipients can view the content regardless of formatting restrictions imposed by some email readers.

Recycle Bin

We've heard your requests! Now you can locate and restore deleted campaigns and lists all by yourself.

Let us know what you think about these great new features!

What is a Transactional Email and How Can You Use Them?

When the US Federal Anti-Spam Legislation came out in 2003 they defined  "transactional emails" very differently from "commercial emails". Transactional emails come in many shapes and forms and could be a very nice form of business for you, in many cases some of your best performing email.

Here are examples of transactional email:

• Thank you emails after someone purchases from you.
• Shipping notification of a product you sold.
• Your confirmation email when a visitor signs up for your site.
• Information about your customers rewards or points programs.
• Your Privacy Policy changes.
• Product feature changes or releases.
• Warranty information, product recall information or safety or security information from a product or service you sell.
• Any account balance information or statements to a subscription, membership, account, loan.
• Product updates or upgrades, that your recipient needs to know about.

You get the idea right? An email can remain “transactional” under CAN-SPAM but still include promotional content as long as the primary purpose is not promotional. What does that mean? The subject line needs to relate to the transactional message and the content must be mainly transaction-based.  The entire transactional message must appear at the beginning of the email.

So what can you do?

• Make sure you're putting the content into your transactional email, not your IT person (sorry!)
• Add some color! Most transactional emails are boring text-based emails. Use images, use color and HTML to make it interesting PLUS it's the only way you'll get reporting on them.
  
• Track them! Make sure you get reporting on who clicked and who opened the email. See the VerticalResponse API site to help if you need us to do this function for you instead of your IT staff.
• Include a few links and content to a cross-sell of a product or service you think your recipients would like.
• Include other areas of your site for them to browse for more information on the product they purchased.
• Add in FAQs.
• Include customer service information for those that need help.

After I spent time this weekend writing this, I found Dave Lewis from Strongmail JUST wrote for DM News about transactional emails. Mine has a bit of a different slant so read his too!

Any other ideas on what people are doing with their transactional emails? Let's hear them!

Stop Talking Loud on the Cell Phone!

I don't usually rant other than for the love of marketing, but I HAVE to share this story. I'm in NY, VerticalResponse up for 6 American Business Awards tonight. Cross your fingers for us.

I get in at 10:30 at night, cab line at JFK is 300 people long or more. So yes, I get one of those "suspect" cabs. Desperation. I find that I'm sharing the cab with two other people, a woman and a man. The woman is in the back with me, first thing she says to the driver:

"I'm sharing a cab with THESE people?" She's going downtown so she says "Well you're dropping me off first."

Great, I thought. Keep thinking you'd be 301 in that line Janine, keep thinking. She proceeds to get on the phone and is at about a 150 on the decibel scale. Unreal. I take it for 40 solid minutes. We learn about her boyfriend, we learn about her doggy, until...you guessed, she starts talking about The Sopranos.

Now I'm on the plane for the last episode which I've basically watched the last 7 years for. Then, she SPOILS THE ENDING FOR ME!!!!!

I scream at her. She hangs up staring at me in fright. "We've had to listen to you scream on your phone for the last 45 minutes and then you spoil the freaking ending for me? You've GOT to be kidding. Stay off the phone for the remainder of the trip!!!!!" I was hungry too, didn't help.

Karma? When she got out of the cab she lost her phone.

There's my rant. It's for fun. I'll take it down at the end of the day and get back to marketing. Enjoy.

Great Wine Blogs & Why Wineries Should Blog

I've talked about blogging in general here, but how is it that wineries can benefit from blogging? What does "blogging" mean for a winery? Here are 4 great examples of blogs in the wine industry. Maybe you can get some ideas from these.

Mountain Spirit Winery

Great blog, but why they moved from their original blog site is a mystery to me. You can still have a blog on Typepad and use your own domain. In fact a primary reason for you to do that is so you'll have more traffic to your domain and you'll rise in the search rankings. Who knows maybe a relative owns the agency. Great blog though.

Goosecross Vineyards

Love that Goosecross has taken it upon themselves to be the community for the wineries. These guys have taken it to another level! They highlight other wineries and the wine lifestyle. They podcast calling it Napa Valley Wine Radio, clever! I'm listening to a podcast about Cheese right now.  They've got forums for you to post to, and even an "Ask the Educator" section. Great job at getting closer to your customers!

Farella Vineyards

Tom Farella posts often. Most winery blogs I've found post monthly which is good but could be better. This site posts weekly and very informative. also lends to some personality with pix of the family, etc.

Dover Canyon Winery

Talk about updates! Mary goes blog-crazy and the updates are so relevant. I love the set up of this blog and the content. She's got books about wine, recipes and more. Oh, and she was up for a wine blog award, great job!!

So there are a few examples of what a winery can do with the blog. Now for the benefits:

• Gives your followers a place to comment to start a conversation with you or your readers.
• Drives more traffic to your site whether you host the blog or it's hosted on popular blog products like TypePad or Blogger. Make sure you include links back to your home page of your site.
• Sells more product with links back to your wine site or store.
• Gives your Winery a voice or personality!

VerticalResponse isn't in the blog business other than we obviously blog ourselves, but we've had such great experiences with it we think you should give it a go! Talk to your design team or just try one for yourself, it's really simple. Then use email marketing to drive your customers to your blog to get even a closer experience with your business.

Injecting Humor Into Your Copy

Many of you know I like Woot.com, one deal, one day. It's simple, it's funny. But last week I actually went above a LOL, and guffawed (is that GOL?). I'm serious. The Woot-Off last week consisted of a bunch of products but one in particular caught my eye. Here's the exact copy selling what could have been a pretty boring product:

"HealthPro Wrist Blood Pressure Monitor  - No Wrist, No Reward

As far as I’m concerned, if you can’t mount a gadget on your wrist, it isn’t worth owning. You probably think you’re pretty “with it”, strutting around with that watch on, but I scoff. Like this: scoff! Oh, you say you’ve got a calculator on yours? Nice try, amateur. Get back to me when you’ve built a wrist-mounted DVD player, or webcam, or carbon-monoxide detector, or microwave. Perhaps then you’ll be worthy of my company.

So when my doctor told me my blood pressure was looking a little questionable, I knew I either had to find a wrist-mounted way to keep an eye on it, or die. There was no third option.

Don’t start making my funeral arrangements just yet. The HealthPro Compact Wristwatch-Style Blood Pressure Monitor keeps a close watch on my systolic and diastolic blood pressure readings just the way I like it: wrist-style. The Proper Position Indicator lets me know if I’ve got it on correctly, because anything worth wearing on your wrist is worth wearing right. And it saves up to 60 readings, so I can track my blood pressure history without recourse to non-wrist-mounted devices. Whew!"

I gotta tell ya, these days I stop by Woot just to read the copy. Is there anything wrong with injecting humor into your copy? I say heeeeaaaallllll no!

• Too Much Information! - These days you need to stand out in the crowded internet space. People don't like reading boring brochurish copy on the web, they can download your document for that.
• Time is Precious - Be quick, be snappy, talk to your users. These days Internet users almost expect that.
• Funny is Viral - Do people still use the word "viral" these days? I forwarded the Woot.com copy right to two of my colleagues, who were guffawing I'm sure as well. Nick, Josh, did you forward it to anyone?
  
• Anything Can Be Funny - Do you think your product, service, restaurant, or spa can't be funny? I challenge you to try. We put a bit of humor on our site and plan to do more. Here's a hidden chuckle from the VR site:
  
  Text-Only Email - So none of the border categories met your needs? You couldn’t find a suitable color scheme from the 16 million possibilities – maybe color is just not in the cards? No problem, we’ve got you covered with a Text-Only option.
  
  More utilitarian than flashy, simply add text content and do away with all those eye-catching things like logos, graphics, etc. Boring, whoops did we say that…moving on then…

Check out these big co.'s, they're even doing it:  Virgin Atlantic, JetBlue, Apple, Hammer&Coop (this one is the best, my "action name" is Juggernaut Pete!) 

BTW, if the Woot.com copywriter reads this, you've got yourself a job with VR if you want one.

Anyone got any sites you've seen lately that made you smile? Let's hear about them!