VerticalResponse Email Marketing Blog for Small Business

6 Ideas For Segmenting Your Lists

Slicing and dicing your list can be fun even without the Magic Knife! Even better? Watching your email marketing response rates soar!

True story: As you know every two weeks we send out a newsletter. One week I decided to go crazy. I divided our list by "Business Type". So for wineries, real estate and restaurants I sent targeted emails with "How-Tos" that related to each business. In the subject line I included the business type and in the email I named it "Restaurant News" and so forth. All of our other users got a generic newsletter.

What happened? Each of the business types registered double the open rate than the generic newsletter.

So what are some segments you can create that might register higher open rates for your messages? The key here is to collect and upload the data you'd like to create segments on whether you do it on your own, or you use the VerticalResponse Opt-In Form.  I've attempted to outline a few here.

Simple

A/B Split - There's nothing wrong with emailing your newsletter to your entire list by the way. But try this to maximize your send: the day before you mail take a sub segment of your list, divide it in two and use two different subject lines and send your email. The one that not only gets the most opens but also the most clicks is the winner for the next day's rollout.

Clickers - Create a segment all of your recipients who clicked on a specific link or clicked on any link in any email in the past 6 months. Then send them a special offer for their interest.

Non-Responders - Create a segment of all of your recipients who have not clicked nor opened and try different subject lines or offers to entice them to.

Regional - B2B marketers: Are you going to a tradeshow in a specific area? Segment your list by zip code then send the email inviting your recipients to come by.

Buyers/Non Buyers - Upload your entire list with custom fields that contain the name of the product they purchased. Then segment your buyers from those who haven't purchased from you. Send a customer appreciation offer to the buyers and an offer "they can't refuse" to the non-buyers to get them over the hump.

Advanced

For the advanced segment example I chose a winery segment: You want to send an email to your list offering the new chardonnay varietal and you want to send it to your recipients who are really going to be interested in this particular wine. There are two types of queries you can do. You can cast a wide net, or you can narrow it down.

To cast a wider net:

• Anyone who has selected they are interested in chardonnay on your opt-in form (20 recipients) OR
• Anyone who has purchased chardonnay (10 recipients) OR
• Anyone who has attended a winery event (30 recipients) OR
• Anyone who has clicked on a chardonnay link in an email sent in the past 3 months (50 recipients).
• Turns out there were no duplicates so this yielded 110 recipients.

This segment suggests that you want to basically take 4 sub segments and merge them. Notice the OR, this means that your list is going to grow bigger because you're adding segments.

To narrow your segment:

• Anyone who has selected they are interested in chardonnay on your opt-in form (20 recipients) AND
• Anyone who has purchased chardonnay (10 recipients) AND
• Anyone who has attended a winery event (30 recipients) AND
• Anyone who has clicked on a chardonnay link in an email sent in the past 3 months (50 recipients).
• Turns out there were 5 that met all of the criteria selected.

This segment suggests that all of the criteria had to be met when using AND and it turns out that only 5 happen to have met all four rules.

If you haven't heard VR now offers a super easy to use, yet powerful list segmentation tool so you can be smarter about the way you market. Then sit back and watch your response rates go Vertical!

New Feature - Segment Your Lists

Boy we've been waiting for this feature for a long time. You have been wanting to slice and dice your lists with ease. Now you'll be able to do all of that PLUS segment your campaign data as well.
We've had over 100 of our customers banging away at it as well as ourselves internally and I can tell you that I think this is the most powerful tool VerticalResponse has ever released in our entire 6.5 year life!

What You Can Do

• Want to send a targeted email to people on your list in California? No problem.

• Have you ever wanted to simply merge all of your lists together into one list? Easy to do!

• Want to send an email to people in New York who were sent an email campaign in the past 6 months and opened or clicked on a link? You got it.

• How about building a list of people who have not purchased from you in the past six months so you can send them a targeted offer?

• Want to suppress a list that you upload? Sure thing.

If you've got the data, the possibilities are endless. And as simple or complex as you need to make it, we've built the tool to get you there.

The Details

Everyone gets a free trial of it in their account. There is a new tab called Segment Your Lists  in your List Management section of your Control Center.

Towards the beginning of next year we're looking to roll this up into a monthly package where you'll benefit from having all of our new premium features (including surveys!) for a low monthly rate.

OR you can stay on the easy pay-as-you-go plan just like you are now with no extras.

Comment away!

Workaround - Create Your Own Newsletter Archive For Your Site

Did you ever want to have all of the newsletters you send posted on your site on a page where all of them are archived? With all of the work you put into them, it's a great way to send people who may have either missed a newsletter or signed up for your email marketing campaigns after you've sent one that may be exactly what they need.

1. When you create your campaign, make sure you insert the "Hosted Version Link" somewhere in your email. I like to put it at the top.
2. After you send your email campaign to your recipients and yourself, click on the "hosted version" link in your email.
3. Copy the URL from your browser and paste it into a page on your site where you've indicated that you'll have your archives, or better yet, have your web designer do it, just give them the links. (Notice the Title of the browser window is your subject line, cool.)
4. Now you can send people to that page on your site where all of your emails are hosted on a web page in an archive.

Look out for VerticalResponse to have this in a future release so you don't have to play with a workaround but if you just can't wait this is a good idea.

Dreamforce Download - What Happened at the TradeShow

For those who use our VerticalResponse for AppExchange integration and are interested in what happened at Dreamforce this week, I tried to do some "live blogging" from the show as did some other fantastic CRM Bloggers.

Newsworthy

Salesforce Foundation Event - Team VR makes it through painting and "landscaping". Great pix and videos of the team!

Sunday Night & Monday Morning - What's up and coming and a must-see: the "Baron of Beef"!

Monday Afternoon - Who did VR run into? Check it out!

Tuesday Morning - George Lucas, Second Life and JP's Panel on Social Responsibility.

Tuesday Evening - VerticalResponse get the Appy Award for Best in Show! Yeeha! Bonus, they played the Nuthin' But an AppThang video! Pix of the show here.

Other Posts of Note:

Mark Mangano had some excellent coverage of the show at Salesforcewatch. Great to meet you Mark!

Jeff Grosse has a ton of Dreamforce coverage at CRM FYI. Great to meet you too Jeff.

The Salesforce Foundation put up their own info on the event.

I know that Selling Power Magazine did tons of video taping so hopefully we'll see some coming soon.

VR Sessions

Josh Feinberg did a super session on list building and campaign metrics. Funny? Alex put the Appy Award for Best in Show right on the podium. Waytago Alex! Look for a webinar from him because we thought it was so good.

I (JP) spoke on the importance of corporate social responsibility along with some very esteemed professionals on a panel.

All in all, a super, super busy, well attended and tiring show. But the best part? We loved seeing and talking to our amazing customers. Great to see you all!

Case Study - VR Goes Viral Again With a Music Video...Check Out These Numbers

VerticalResponse released our latest music video Nuthin' But an AppThang starring our own Furious ALF and 2Fein. Videos like this and last year's AppEx Baby are not only fun to do, they really turn into a great viral marketing tool. (Viral, that's soooo 90s). These videos are specifically designed to get the attention of Salesforce employees, partners and customers about our email marketing solution a month before the big Dreamforce Tradeshow. Anyway, I've written about why we do these videos.

I decided to put a few more dollars into the video and this year we think it worked! The shoot took 4 hour  (we storyboarded our ideas) and the editing took a day. We worked with a great team called The Big Picture.

Here's where we stand:

August 20th - We launched it internally, had a preview party and then we "viraled" it into Salesforce, that is, sent email with the link. Crowd goes wild. In minutes (on a Friday afternoon no less) it was going through the company like wildfire and our own employees were sending it to their friends like crazy.

August 21st - Alf posts it on YouTube and we start getting 100+ views a day.

August 23rd - We post it in the VR Facebook Group (we don't actually know how many views we get because it's not hosted by YouTube but this is a must do.)

End of the first week: We had 1000 views.

August 28th - We post it in every group or event that is related to Salesforce on Facebook. We send it in a VerticalResponse email marketing campaign to a small subset of users, another 35 views, we include it in the email newsletter to everyone on the sidebar...another 120 views.

Viewing slows down around Labor Day but picks up again to 100 views a day.

By end of this past week we were at 2600 views on YouTube alone.

September 10 we sent out another newsletter and posted on Facebook to help us get to 10,000 views. By September 13 we're at close to 3,000. Probably won't get to 10k but it's sure picking up.

By September 16, we're at 3,025 views and loving it.

In all of the last year and a half our old video "AppEx Baby" got 4400 views, those also started to pick up as a result of these efforts and are now over 4700. All in all a success so far, and it's not over.  For not that much of a spend, we're getting our name and message out there. And no, it's not a million veiws but for a B2B video it's pretty darn good. Isn't word of mouth great? Email marketing and other forms of social media are really the culprit in this effort.

Our mission? To get to 10,000 views. Can you help? Watch the video and tell your friends!

Blogger's Choice Awards - Vote for VerticalResponse

I hope that you get something out of the blog we publish twice a week.  I have to tell you that behind the scenes it's a collective effort. My colleagues jump in and answer comments and give feedback to you all the time.  We'd love for you to vote for the VerticalResponse Email Marketing blog in the Blogger's Choice Awards! We've got some pretty stiff competition so it's up to the readers. Thanks in advance!

Build Your List Through a Birthday Club

Not that I needed to be reminded that my birthday is rapidly approaching (I'm not getting AARP mail yet, I'm not, really) but I gotta say Oceana Rain does it again! I got this piece in the mail, wishing me a happy birthday. Nice touch. And with a coupon. I'm going shoppin! Then I remembered a great comment that a reader once made about a birthday club as it relates to restaurants.

And, as my little SF store in Cow Hollow proves, any business can really put a birthday club to work for them.

So I started to think of all the birthday "greetings" we've gotten from businesses. My dog Stan got a birthday card from his Doctor and his day care Pet Camp every year! Nice huh? They already knew his birthday from all of the information they had and it made us feel great about leaving the little guy in a place that cares enough to remember his birthday. If it can work for pets, it works for anything! Then I saw a customer of ours the k9 Biscuit Company asking for Pet's Birthday in the newsletter sign up. Brilliant!

Our real estate agent sends me a birthday card too, just in case I was in the mood to buy or sell a house around the big Four-Oh.

So I took to the web and found some really creative ideas for birthday clubs for ALL industries. Some were as simple as giving "great birthday offers" and others were very specific, but all in all, some great promotions.

Coffee Club

Williams Coffee Pub gives free cake! Now that's a birthday offer! Club members start their birthday out with a celebration.

Travel

Odyssey Cruises sends "a little surprise" when that time of the year rolls around...intriguing.

Food

As if anyone needs a reason to get ice cream, let it be  a child's birthday! Cold Stone Creamery knows that for giving just a few bucks worth of ice cream, they'll get a bunch of people who actually pay for it, along with the birthday person who gets it free! They also let members tell them how they'd like to hear about their birthday wishes.

East of Chicago Pizza just asks for information but doesn't tell new members what they'll get, not a great implementation IMO, but they're halfway there!

Theater

Pittsburgh Public Theater gives members $25 off of a ticket and tells them they'll be hearing from them via email.
Portland Comedy Sportz gives members two free tickets just for being born.

Yarn (huh?)

Yep, yarn. Posh, a Denver-based Yarn store emails members with birthday discounts!

Golf

Bunker Hill Birthday Club gives great birthday offers via email.
How about a free round of golf at Alvamar in Kansas on your birthday?

The important thing is, once you have your birthday club (feel free to use the free opt-in form that VerticalResponse provides), make sure you put it prominently on your site and include it in your email campaigns to your recipients too. There's a good chance they'll forward your email to their friends to sign up which in the end, gets you more potential customers.

If you're using a birthday club to build your list and drive more business let me know, I'll post yours too.

eMarketer Study - Retail Ecommerce Sales for Q2, Up, Up and Away!

Q2 was the strongest Q2 ever as far as US online retail sales went, a cool $31.8 bill which is just 3.1% of all retail sales in this country. The year is projecting to be $131 billion total.

In another report that eMarketer published, "The State of Retailing Online 2007," a report sponsored by Shop.org and conducted by Forrester Research, US online sales of apparel, footwear and accessories (excluding jewelry) will reach $22.1 billion in 2007, a 21% increase over 2006.

What shocked me was that these three categories drove more business than computer hardware and software!

One thing of note all of you retailers will be happy about, email marketing was third after TV and the Internet for best to reach your adult audiences so happy emailing! It's certainly helping drive these healthy numbers.

Holidays...here we come. We'll be ready for you retailers.

New Feature! Industry Themed Pre-Designed Layouts

Staring at a blank screen not knowing where to start or what to type is the worst, isn't it? We've come up with some creative industry-themed layouts to get those creative juices a flowin', both for copy as well as images.

Don't see any for your industry? Don't worry, check them out anyway and see if you get any ideas. We're working hard creating more next month, but if you've got some ideas bring them on!

New Feature! VerticalResponse Integrates with Google Analytics - Track Campaigns Even Further!

Google Analytics is a free web analytics service available to anyone (cool enough) but now you will be able to access and leverage its power in your VerticalResponse account. The VerticalResponse Google Analytics Integration helps you track email and marketing campaigns with even greater accuracy. You’ll be able to track your users’ behavior beyond the click to:

• Increase your conversions and profits
• Learn where your visitors are dropping off during the conversion process
• Learn which ad text is the most effective
• Compare email marketing campaigns
• Make informed site design improvements

It’s easy to set up and easy to get started! It is a powerful tool to help take your marketing to the next level. All you have to do is check the box in your VerticalResponse profile and you're up and running.