VerticalResponse Email Marketing Blog for Small Business

Bloomies Big Brown Bag

A few weeks ago my husband and I were "getting our shop on" and we ventured into Bloomingdale's here in San Francisco. After dancing a bit in the aisles to some pretty GREAT DJs (a great idea for getting people in a good mood to spend money btw) we made our purchase. What did they put our kaboodle in? The same big brown bag they've been using for as long as I can remember Bloomingdale's. Both John and I said to each other: "You'd think they'd update this cheap tired bag by now."

Then we went into another store and low and behold the security guard looked at our bag and said, "Why don't they update that old thing?"

We'll I'll tell ya, after a bit of snooping around I know why: they've done a fantastic branding job.

Last week I got a rather large catalog in the mail from Bloomie's with that same brown bag as the cover entitled "big brown bag sale - 3 days only". I knew right away in the scads of catalogs I received who that one was from.

They've even made it a collector's item. That's right, for $18 you can buy the little brown bag in vinyl and either use it as a shopping bag to save trees or use it daily to bring your lunch to work.

I went to the site and they cleverly use the big brown bag as the shopping cart. Nice.

They also use the sides of the bag to include the store name. Brilliant.

So, they use it on the retail bag so to get their brand out there, they use it in the direct mail they send and they made a product out of it so that their customers can "wear" the brand. They also cleverly use it as on their site for their sales as well as tie it into the purchase strategy and something tells me if I was on their email list they'd have used it in their email marketing campaigns too.

A bit of history: What I found was the Bloomingdale's pioneered the "art" of the shopping bag in the 20's. The big brown bags debuted much later in 1973 and were designed by Michael Vollbracht, a designer for Bill Blass at the time. Apparently the linen department needed a big bag for the popular big pillows and blankets they were selling.

There you have it. Sorry for jumping to conclusions Bloomie's, keep going with your big brown bag! Readers, do you have something that can be branded on every item you use when you market? I'll tell you, it sure got me thinking...

Scrubbing Your Lists Using VR

We've had a bunch of questions in the VR Lounge about people wanting to scrub, merge or segment their lists. (Plug: if you haven't been there, log into your account and click on 'Community', tons of people talking about email marketing.)

Here are two common scenarios and the instructions for getting the data you need in a matter of seconds!

I need to send a campaign but want to scrub out anyone on my list who received a mailing I sent last week. How can I do this?

1. Click the Lists tab within your account.
2. Click Segments in the sub-menu, then create a new segment.
3. Give your segment a name and an optional description.
4. Choose your Segment Type.  In this case select: Segment List Members & Campaign Recipients.
5. Click Save and Build Segment.
6. Click Add List Rule to select the list(s) you plan to use for your new email campaign, then click Done.
7. Now click Add Campaign Rule and select the campaign(s) that you mailed last week, then click Done.
8. Click on the OR operation (joins the two rules you made) until you get to EXCLUDE.
9. You can now click Save & Get Results and this will produce a set of results that removes any email addresses on your mailing list(s) that received the campaign(s) you sent last week. 
10. Go ahead and save this as a new mailing list and attach it to your outgoing email campaign.

I've got a ton of mailing lists, is there a way to combine them all into one master list?

1. Click the Lists tab within your account
2. Click Segments in the sub-menu, then create a new segment.
3. Give your segment a name and an optional description.
4. Choose your Segment Type.  In this case select: Merge List Members.
5. Click Save and Build Segment.
6. Select all the lists you want to merge together (duplicates will be removed based on email address.) 
7. Click Done, then click Save & Get Results.
8. You will now see the results of your merge with a grand total of all records combined and you can now save this as a new mailing list. 
9. If you'd like to go into your list management section of your Home Tab and now delete all the individual lists that make up your newly merged list as the last step of the "clean up" process you can do so as well since all the data is now available on your newly created merged list.

If you want other ways to segment, comment and we'll do another blog or webinar.

Questionable Expert Advice in a DM News Article

I was reading DM News, and was perplexed at an article that was published 2 weeks ago.

This particular expert had chosen a particular Nordstrom email to feature and then talked about how wonderful it was.

• She liked that it gave her shopping options.
• She loved the way the global navigation was shown.
• The main body content had a Nordstrom experience.
  
• The fonts were elegant.
• The upsell potentials were good and targeted.

While I agree with almost everything this expert says, she left out a very critical issue. The email appears to be made up of either one large image or a series of images. We know what happens if a recipient receives this and has their images turned off...the first thing they may see is the unsubscribe link.

Make sure for the holidays you use a mix of both text and graphics in your email marketing campaign.

I like the new printed format of DM News btw. Good job guys.

Tips on Getting Traffic To Your Tradeshow Stand

It's always tough to get traffic to your tradeshow stand or booth no matter what size show you have. Your mission should you choose to accept it: talk to as many people as possible. How do you compete with those that might have deeper pockets than you to get people to know you're even there?

Here are some ideas we've seen business have some good luck with.

The T-shirt giveaway - Print up inexpensive t-shirts and give them to people who visit your booth. One time each day if someone is "caught" wearing the t-shirt they get a prize or money. You get free advertising for your booth! It was a great idea we picked up at ebay live.

Bags - Tradeshow visitors need bags to get all of the free schwag and materials they collect. Why not print up bags with your logo on them as a giveaway or sponsor the bags if the show gives them away?

Pins - At ebay Live this is serious stuff. Twice a day ebay gives out a new pin to add to a collection of 5. If you've got all 5 you get a chance to enter to win a grand prize. VerticalResponse printed up our own coveted pin!

Bingo Cards - We've partnered with other complementary businesses at a show. We print up a brochure with a grid on it. Each participating company has a logo printed in each of the boxes. Visitors need to get stamped from each of the businesses in order to enter to win. It's a great traffic driver. Make sure all of the participating companies have enough of the brochures to give away and each one has a stamp.

Raffle Tickets - We've seen people give away half of a raffle ticket for something of value with drawing times on the hour. The top of the hour drives the most traffic.

Include on Your Website and Emails - Whenever you send a newsletter, you should be including a note about your participation in the show. Also if you've got room on your home page, it's a great idea to include it there as well. Lastly, if you segment your list by the zip code where the tradeshow is located, send an email to those people with your offer or invitation to visit your stand.

Email the Show List - Sometimes the tradeshow organizers will provide a list of attendees who have opted in to receive emails from the show sponsors. Make sure you ask for this if they provide it. Then you can send an email introducing your company along with any of the ideas or offers above you'll be providing.

Direct Mail - Often times email is not available on the attendee list however postal information is. We've seen people do weekly campaigns leading up to the show, 4 weeks in advance with a different "reason this week" to stop by the booth. Even better? Print an offer to bring the card to the booth for something free.

List Swap - If you know of another company going to the show why not propose to include them in an email/direct mail if they include you? They you both potentially double the size of your visitors.

Bottom line? Once you do get people to the booth NO ONE should leave a conversation with you without giving you their information for follow up. You paid money to be there, you need to make it back! Give us some of your own ideas

VerticalResponse is Podcasting!

Check off yet another item in the social networking sphere for VerticalResponse. Any way we can get you information that may help your business grow, we're going to go above and beyond to do.

Let's quickly count the ways...

• The VerticalResponse Blog, obviously - Tips and tricks for your email marketing campaigns.
• The VR Lounge - Cool community you can get to from your VR account. Post questions, answers, connect with others like or not like yourself. 3000 members strong and growing.
• The VerticalResponse Facebook Group - Chat with VR/Facebook users about all things VerticalResponse. 220 members strong.
• Our new website gives you the ability to subscribe to almost anything via RSS including updates to articles, white papers, podcasts, you name it.

NOW... PODCASTING!

That's right, short how-tos and tips we have collected in the past but that are very relevant or things we're learning new every day. Listen to it while you're multitasking at work or subscribe to it with iTunes in just seconds. Listen to it on a walk, a run, in the car (no accidents please), at the gym, on a train, on a plane, while your blabbering friend is boring you...uh oh, I think I've gone too far.

We've got 3 up there so far and we'll be launching at least one a week so check back and check back often.

1. 5 Great Tips on Email Deliverability
2. Interview with Alf Brand, Director of Marcom - Cheap or free tools Alf and his marketing team use every day to get the job done.
3. 5 Tips on Building Your List

It's me, interviewing VR folks, our customers or just talking about email and how we can help your business grow. So check it out. Any ideas you have are always appreciated.

Splog - What It Is and Why It's Bad.

Spam, it ain't just for email marketing anymore. Can you believe that companies pay to have people posting canned comments and creating fake blogs to get their name out there?

I guess I can, we've pretty much seen it all, haven't we? I've really been against creating fake blogs and posting about VerticalResponse on them (definition of splog). For a while we hired someone to post our white papers on sites and try to get our articles in ezines but it was turning out that they may have splogged a bit. I just think it's unethical. Some even outsource this task overseas for cheaper rates.

How can you tell if someone is splogging?

1. You visit a blog about healthy diets and you see a blog post from an email marketing company that is completely unrelated and clearly not written by the writer.
2. You just simply click on the about us on the blog and the default text comes up "Here's where you write about yourself."
3. Each post you see has pretty much the exact same copy with a line or two written just a bit differently.

It's pretty easy for those who are technical to automatically create blogs and fill them with content via RSS and ads. Affiliate programs have grown by leaps and bounds because of this. (We *try* to monitor our own affiliates.)

Why do companies splog? They get more exposure, have more inbound links, use tons of keywords and hopefully the search engines pick them up and rise them to the top.

I actually got this spam email this weekend:

Dear Janine
I am writing you today to introduce myself, and my company, #$%^Services. We've got a hot new service that enables your organization to take advantage of the latest phenomenon, youtube.com. We can take an existing television ad, or create one for you, and post it to youtube, metacafe.com, miro.com, weshow.com, knockatv.com,videomsn, aolvideo, yahoovideo and dozens of other rising stars in the internet video space. We offer dedicated staff to add laudatory comments, based upon customer, staff, and vendor comments, to blogs underneath these videos as well as create new blogs touting the features, advantages, and benefits of your solutions. These dedicated resources will also visit and post laudatory comments to industry specific web forums related to your organization.

Fake blogs and fake comments..hmmm.

I think we'll do the best we can by monitoring and go the old-fashioned route and have someone here at VR track what people are saying about us online. Then WE can post comments that tout our services or answer questions from within VR, not outsource it and give canned comments or splog. When you see someone posting a comment from VerticalResponse, it'll be an employee who works here and knows what to say.

I had to vent when I saw some of our competitors in this space stooping. I'm tired of this littering of the internet, aren't you?

Great Customer Service Story - Are You Ready To Go Above and Beyond This Holiday Season?

One of our engineers Erik sent me this great customer service story he found online. Thanks for posting your story! This illustrates how going above and beyond translates into people saying great things about you.

Holiday Service Levels & Email Marketing (Part 2)

In our two-part series that Erin our Director of Marketing wrote, she focuses on how to handle unhappy customers as well as calculating how much business you can handle. It's a good read.

NO ONE IS 100% PERFECT, SO ACKNOWLEDGE IT

When things start to get busy this holiday season avoid ignoring complaints until after the season is over. News travels fast…bad news travels faster and further with people posting their issues all over the web! If you make the time to address service issues as they occur, you could save a customer and they are more likely to tell a friend how you turned the situation around for them and became a hero.

BE READY FOR TOO MUCH BUSINESS

If your business promises 24 hour turnaround times on orders or you ship within 2 business days, calculate your likely response rates for your offers in your email before you send your campaign. Then assess how many orders your team can ship in a single day. Remember 80% of responses come in the first 24 hours of your email being sent, so it's important that you create a strategy for sending emails to handle peaks in order volume. 

If you don't think you can meet service commitments don’t email your whole list at once. VerticalResponse's List Segmentation tool makes it easy to segment your list. Consider segmenting by region and starting promotions from the furthest locations and working your way to local offers for time-saving on shipping. Email offers to buy early in the season such as "buy before X date and receive a free gift with purchase". You can also slice your list into random segments and send a portion of your list everyday to maintain a steady flow of orders throughout the season.

If you've got more thoughts on handling the holiday rush, please comment.

Holiday Service Levels & Email Marketing (Part 1)

I'm on the road this week so I've given Erin, our Director of Marketing the task of filling my shoes! I think she's done a great job talking about things to think about during the holiday season. Erin, take it away...

The holidays can be the most lucrative time of year and the speed of email marketing makes bringing those dollars in easier and faster than ever. It's also a time of year of when buyers are more stressed and often less patient when it comes to service related issues.

How do you protect your brand and increase customer loyalty when every order is time-sensitive and emotionally charged? We've put together a few helpful tips to maintain your online zen during the holidays...

MAKE IT EASY TO ORDER

Remember there are a whole bunch of new online shoppers out there that may not be the most internet savvy individuals, this is your time to carefully walk those less savvy through the process and win them over with great service for the rest of the year.

A few questions to ask yourself about your online order process...

• Can they change quantities or sizing on the shipping screen?
• Do you explain turnaround times upfront? Are the number of steps to completing an order understood so they understand how many screens they will walk through to completing an order?
• Do you let the customer know when they should expect their confirmation or transactional emails (within minutes or within days?)
• Do you include instructions for returns in confirmation emails so they can pass along to a recipient?

DRIVE RETAIL TRAFFIC

If shipping in higher volumes can be a challenge for you to fulfill or you're also looking to drive retail traffic, consider sending a "buy online and pick up in the store" email offer. One of the big electronic retailers promotes this every year with television commercials. It also provides an additional opportunity to up-sell customers in a retail location and build a personal relationship. Another chance to prove your service promise!

We didn't want to bog you down too much, so look for part 2 in a few days. Any ideas are more than welcome.