VerticalResponse Email Marketing Blog for Small Business

Are You Under-Utilizing Your Thank You Page?

We recently took stock of our own thank you pages here at VerticalResponse and decided to make some sweeping changes. We thought of all of the ways you can use a thank you page after someone either signs up for your newsletter OR buys your product or service. Here is what we came up with:

Friend Get a Friend - After someone purchases from you or signs up for your newsletter this is the perfect time to ask them to get a friend to do the same. They've just had a super-positive experience with you and trust you enough with their information. Why not either just ask them to tell their friends? Give them something for getting their friends to sign up too if you can.

Cross-Sell - If you know your customers bought something that goes well with another product or service you offer, offer it to them right on the thank you page. You'd be surprised how many people decide to go back and try again. If you offer more than one newsletter, include links to the opt-in forms for them.

Tips -  Does your product or service have some tips or tricks that go along with it? Your thank you page is the perfect place to put them!

Product Tour - If you have a video or tutorial for your product, your thank you page might be a perfect place to put it. Check out Marka Online, they sell computer bags for women and include videos of their products.

Customer Support Information - Perhaps you'd like to put your customer service hours, phone number and links on a thank you page. Did they purchase something from you? Include shipping information so your customers know when they can expect their product.

Advertising! - Make some dough on your thank you page by including 3rd party ads or targeted Google Adwords. Word to the wise: make sure you suppress your competition. The last thing you need your customers seeing is your competitor's ads on your thank you page. (Thanks Mark Brownlow for commenting and giving us the lowdown on Google's Policies on Adwords and Thank You pages. I stand corrected!)

Tell Your Story - If you've got a story to tell, reinforce your customer's decision to buy or  sign up to your newsletter Make them feel better about taking an action with you by telling them the story behind your product or service. It's a great way to make your customers feel closer to you.

Got any of your own? We'd love to hear them!

July Inc.com Article - Hiring & Retaining Great Employees

Summertime got you with extra time on your hands? I have an idea! Forget Harry Potter! Why not curl up with my monthly column for the Inc.com Women in Business section entitled Hiring & Retaining Good Employees.  Happy reading!

VerticalResponse Has Super Heroes!

OK, so while sitting in the VR kitchen on Friday after work, enjoying some wine, we asked everyone who crossed the threshold, "If you had super hero powers what would they be?" Boy we learned a lot about each other!

• Raj, PM - Would be able to turn water into wine (any year, any varietal, nice!).
• Nora, Sales Ops - Anything she touches turns to money, at the highest value wherever in the world she is.
• Jill, Customer Relations - sill waiting on ya Jilly.
• Carol, Direct Marketing - Anything she touches turns to revenue! (I like that one personally).
• Furious Alf - Can fly (until something better comes to mind for him. Flying is not good enough?).
• Christine, Admin - Would like to heal herself like Claire in Heros.
• JP, me - I can beam myself anywhere and bring anyone who touches me with me.
  
• Richard, ISP Relations - Would like the power to kick butt, and be well respected for it.
• Nathan, Software Engineer - Through telechenetic powers detect fake wigs (not ones made with human hair mind you) and be able to levetate them off of people's heads and spin them around. He'd also like the ability to turn their fake wig into medusa like hair. An offshoot of this (as if he needed one) is that to use this for good he can see if someone is falling turn it into a helmet to save them. Nathan gets the most points for creativity.
• Rhonda, Accounting Mgr. - Would turn anything to gold.
• Chris, Associate PM - Morphs into anything inanimate or not.

What did we learn? Basically Nora could pay anyone to use their super hero powers to help her. She could have Raj turn water to wine for her, she can pay me to beam her anywhere she wanted to go. If she wanted to fly (for fun or if I'm busy beaming somewhere I guess) she could go with Alf (until something better comes along) and at any moment get Nathan to turn someone into Medusa. She could pay Rhonda for gold and use Chris to morph into a bank to hold it.

Hmmmmm. What's your super hero power? Just insight into VR after a long week o' work!

Updated Info on Deliverability - a White Paper

Wikipedia's definition of a white paper: A white paper is an authoritative report. White papers are used to educate customers, collect leads for a company or help people make decisions.

In this case it's not really to get leads, it's to give you info. Richard, our deliverability expert, wrote a white paper on Email Delivery: VerticalResponse, Email Delivery and You - A Handy Guide

What's in it you ask?

• Info our email gets to the inbox in plain English, no techy-speak.
• What VR does to ensure delivery
• What you can do to help

It's free, check it out. Send it to your friends. Post any questions about it here, Richard will be happy to jump in and answer.

10 Marketing Tactics You Won't Have to Sell the Farm To Do

Since the last post on Guerilla Marketing got such an overwhelming response, I thought I'd throw some more ideas out there.

Here we go...

1) Hire teams of people to hand out your product, samples or flyers. I saw Rock Star Energy Drink handing out free samples to the fans on every corner during All Star Week here.

2) Local businesses were using the All Star game artwork in their businesses to drive visitors and capitalize on the traffic.

3) We had a billboard on the bottom of the hill where Johnny Moseley was having his ski jump on Fillmore Street here in San Francisco! Good for us the media was all over it. That was a bonus.

4) Here at PacBell Park (I refuse to say AT&T Park, sorry Giants fans) businesses make floats with their logo in the water. When Barry hits a homer they get on TV! Taco Bell did a nice float.

5) I once saw a company put their flyers on the sink in the bathroom of a trade show, now that's a captive audience!

6) A group of businesses in a local area got together and had cards printed with a grid on them. Once a customer purchased from each place they got a stamp. Once they get all of the stamps they get something free from each of the businesses. Great welcome for "new movers" into a neighborhood each month.

7) Put your company decal on your car with your URL or address. I found a company that does it for under $40!

8) Packaging - Make your packaging so cool that people want to carry it around! It doesn't HAVE to be Tiffany's. Check out the Queen Bee bag I got in Boston on Newbury Street. -->

9) I love the idea Andy Sernovitz gives, throw a bag of m&m's into a shipment as a thank you. People will talk!

10) Ask your customers to post a review about your products or business on CitySearch. Did you know Citysearch is just about in the top 1000 of ALL websites? Are you listed there? You should be.

Ok, slam me or give us more ideas, I can take either.

VR Releases a Few New Features!

In keeping with VR's attempt to do mini-awesome releases, here's another one for ya!

Opt-in Signup Alerts

You can now choose to receive periodic email alerts when someone signs up to your opt-in form.  The alerts will be sent out based on the timezone in your profile and can be sent based on one of the following frequencies:

*  Monthly (1st of the month)
*  Bi-monthly (1st & 15th of the month)
*  Weekly (every Sunday)
*  Daily (every morning, shortly after midnight)
*  Daily 4x (4 times daily - 8 AM, 12 PM, 4PM, 8 PM)

Why you need this: Now, as soon as someone signs up for your product, service or newsletter, you can email them with further information!

Customization of Confirmation Emails

You can now include copy above and/or below your link in confirmation emails that are sent to anyone who signs up to your opt-in form.  In addition, the emails will be sent in HTML format for a much more professional look.

Why you need this: Cuz plain text does not excite a recipient to click!!!

Confirmation Link Redirect

Now you'll be able to specify a URL to direct your new registrants after they confirm they've signed up. 

Why you need this: Now you can send them to your website or custom thank you webpage.

Cheers to Raj, Erik and the VR Product/Engineering team. Log into your VR account and check out the new features.

Interesting Retail Statistics from eMarketer

eMarketer reported two very cool Retail reports out this week. Check them out.

The Online Inventory Impact Study

Check this out. Do you have an item out of stock? Forty-eight percent of the people looking for it go to another site. 25% sign up for an email alert when the item is back in stock! Be sure to have an email sign up form prominently on your site for when you don't have a product in stock!

The Multi-Channel Shopping Transformation Study

This is a great study. Looks like coupons are the way to go here. Sixty percent of the respondents received a coupon online then bought in a store. The products they shopped for tended to be bigger ticket items. They also tended to spend more in the store then they did a website.

I'm Fired UP About Unsubscribes!

I just got an iPhone (thanks to our Marketing Manager Patricia who texted me to tell me SF had them in stock finally, funny story) so I decided it was time to delete the uber-illions of messages I have received over the course of a long time. For those of you who don't know, I've had my "retro" phone (see pic on right) now for years. No camera, no email, nuthin' fancy. But the iPhone has pushed me over to the evil PDA side. So now that I'm going PDA, I had to clean up my act. I had over 8000 messages sitting in my inbox...yikes. I also decided to go through the hundreds of newsletters I've subscribed to over the years (or have BEEN subscribed to over the years :-() and unsubscribe from those I don't read or never signed up for.

A huge undertaking? More than I thought it would be. In total there were over 200 newsletter subscriptions, no lie. Of around 200 I was AMAZED at how many I didn't sign up for. Roughly 140 of them. Even the DMA had wh0#*d my email address out. I was even more amazed at which Email Service Providers housed these emailers. There were a few GLARING ESPs that stood out as massive harborers of spammers, I'm happy to say that of the 200, VerticalResponse only had one that I didn't sign up for. There was one serious ESP offender, I won't say their name (email me if you want it) then a host of smaller offenders. THEN there were many that, well, just went to an error page. OUCH.

Here are some bad unsubscribe practices I uncovered:

Whoever this ESP is, they house a number of companies and sent me to the unsubscribe page and having me check a box again, to unsubscribe. -->

Many made me "sign in" to my account to unsubscribe - Ouch. I don't remember a password I set 4 years ago! Just unsubscribe me!

At least 20 companies had the only option be - "Please reply to this email with the word Remove in the subject line".  Even worse, they made me then type Remove. It should already be there.

Over 30 companies directed me to a page that read: "Please fill in this information, including your email address to unsubscribe." Yeah right! This came from an email not a static web page. They should know who I am and pre-fill my info. -->

One company tried to be tricky and send me to a page that has a "Yes, send me email" or "No I don't want to receive email" with the "Yes" radio button checked!

Also can someone tell Doubleclick that yes, even though I am a customer, it would be really nice to have an unsub link in the email? You'd think they know better. I get about 3 emails a week from them.

OK, I'm fired UP! ARE YOU?? At least my new iPhone will have a shiny new inbox!

You Want Features? Josh Just Posted on Facebook...

I just saw that Josh our VP of Product posted a new forum on Facebook asking for new VR feature requests! I also know that we have a 5 hour meeting next Tuesday to duke it out for what our features are going to be the 2nd half of the year.

NOW'S YOUR CHANCE, JUMP IN!!

Free Business Forms, Letters and Templates on WorkZ

Our sister company WorkZ just got an update! There are now over 150 forms, letters and templates you can download for free to help you manage your business from marketing and sales to accounting and HR. These are forms and templates for your business that we use here at VR, and there are those that we luckily got from McGraw Hill! So you know they're good.

Here are just a few some examples, there are tons more:

Marketing - Marketing Plan Outlines, Press Release Template and more...
HR - Employment Application, Offer Letter Template, Sample Interview Questions and more...
Accounting - P&L Statements, Balance Sheets, Cashflow and more...
Sales - Comparing Sales Rep Performance, Average Cost Pricing and more...
Office Stuff - Fax Cover Sheet, Invoice template, wire transfer template, expense reports and more...

So check them out, they're easy to download and free of charge. Also look at the great articles people have written to help small businesses grow. Got an article YOU want to submit?  Email us.