VerticalResponse Email Marketing Blog for Small Business

Publishers Clearinghouse Must Die!

I know it's a strong statement, but as a direct marketer myself I'm embarrassed that a company like this is in our industry. For that matter Reader's Digest should die too but I'll stick to one for this post.

Some time ago I visited a woman I am close to, who is getting a bit older and needed some help going through some paperwork at her home. She's pretty much alone, her husband is deceased. Going through piles of paperwork I was amazed: I discovered she's been "suckered" by PCH for many years now. They've been teasing her with the chance to win big, but also giving her the "opportunity" to buy their products at a "members-only" discounted price. I honestly think that she believes her chances of winning are better the more she buys (as dictated by all of the piles of these products in her home). Their tag line is "It's all about winning" isn't it?

Hold Your SuperPrize! So I looked at one (of many) envelopes from PCH.  In this particular envelope is an offer for you to "hold" your own SuperPrize number which may win you a million bucks. There is a 48 hour warning that you must return it by. The kicker? They say if you don't respond someone else YOUR NEIGHBOR will get your number and they may win.

"You definitely don't want this to be the one time you fail to enter on time. (Although I'd bet your neighbor would be happy if you didn't respond!)...Imagine now that you fail to enter your $1,000,000.00 SuperPrize Number on time: What's this? The Prize Patrol is surprising your neighbor with the Big Check! Soon after, your see your neighbor with a new car in the driveway of costly home improvements underway. Then you hear that they're leaving on the kind of vacation you've only dreamed about. And all this could happen because you said, "No, I don't want my SuperPrize Number!"

Right underneath the SuperPrize offer where you put your "Yes" stamp is another offer to "activate your customer benefits." This means that you "send no money now" when you order their products and that you have a whole 14 days to return them.

Finally, on this same order piece, they ask for you to buy their Pain Spray, which "helps temporarily relieve pain fast!" Included are pics of an elderly couple living healthy with a caveat in small print "No purchase necessary to enter. A purchase won't improve an individual's chance of winning." Right.

But wait there's more! An insert of the potential to enter and win a Panasonic 32" HDTV and $1000 in cash with of course a pic of an elderly couple winning.

Are You Kidding Me? Upon further reading of the "rules" the prize will be paid out in annual increments of $25,000 and upon the 30th year $275,000. Not to be crass but do you think the next of kin gets the money if the winner passes on?

Buying Won't Help You Win.  Even though the rules state this right beneath it is the No-Hassle Cancel and Return policy which states that if you don't return something within 14 days of receipt, you don't get your money back you get credit for other products they sell.

Products? Pain Spray, Government Secrets (book), Mystery Gift hand-picked by the Senior Product Person, The Final Battle (book), The Amazing Bag Sealer, Battery Free Flashlight, Nostradamus (book), Bug Lights, Credit Card Case, Birthday Card Bonanza, Sport Socks, Binoculars, Pocket Magnifier so you can read small type, knit gloves and scarf, do I need to go on?

So, do they employ some pretty great direct marketing tactics? You bet!

• They do some great personalization everywhere.
• Most of the font size if 14 pts. or larger (even the rules!)
• They use a sweepstakes.
• They use expiration dates.
• They target their offers to the elderly.
• They keep a great updated database.

Using any of these tactics are a super way to spice up your offerings in your email marketing and direct mail campaigns. Hey they've been around and working for years. So why should PCH die? They wrap it up altogether in a way that tricks the elderly who don't understand that most of this is database driven, and mechanically put together. Many of them really think that PCH is talking to them. They just want to win something big. (I haven't even researched, but chances are they're renting lists of people who also fall within a certain income bracket as well.)

P.S. On top of it all I went to their home page to check it out. It's one big list collection tool for the prize drawing. However, when I tried to navigate away from the page, it told me that if I did I'd forfeit my prize number!!

Check out the fascinating stories others have about PCH, they're now being spoofed and other companies are tricking these poor people out of their life savings.

Valentine's Day is Around the Corner...Are You Ready?

We just got through some major holidays but now it's time to start over. Your first mission? You need to send your email marketing campaigns for Valentine's Day. We're already seeing them fly through our system. Your customers need to think about their loved ones, ones they're hot for, and their Moms. Best of all, it's not just for flower, lingerie, and jewelry shops anymore.

Here are just a few ideas to get you thinking about what to offer for your business.

Restaurants - You should start booking those romantic dinners now. Do you have a special prix fix menu? Get the word out to your favorite customers using email.

Jewelry - Pictures work! Make sure you put them prominently in your emails to show off your stuff.

Flowers - This is too obvious, but remember to include email marketing campaigns all the way up to and on the day.

Spas & Salons - Start putting your offerings out on your websites and in your salons now. Gift certificates are THE thing you should be pushing for this holiday.

Wineries/Wine Shops - How about putting together gift baskets of your merchandise? We've seen some nice red gift bags that wineries are giving for free with nice card attached.

Paper Goods and Rubber Stamps - We've seen some nice Valentine's Day-themed papers and gift bags on sale for this holiday.

Entertainment - Send an email offering event tickets to your loved one's favorite act.

Gift Baskets! - Just about anything can go into a gift basket. Make up a special Valentine's Day gift basket and market it. We've seen the obvious ones like food and wine, but if you've got a nice "suite" of products go for it!

Odd and very cool Valentine's Day offerings we've seen -  Cooking classes, weight loss programs (ouch), plastic surgery (whoa!), Swiss Army tools, gelato shop certificates and even yoga for partners. Very creative stuff here.

Got any more ideas? Give us a comment.

January '08 Inc.com Article - Welcome New Employees With Open Arms

I write an article for Inc.com's Women in Business Section every few months. This month has me thinking about how tough it is to hire great people and how I think every company needs to be treating a new employee. Check it out.

Oopsy Hall of Fame: 2007 Inductees

I've written time and again about how not to look to the big boys for creative ideas. RetailEmail BlogSpot, a blog I like to read written by Chad White, just announced the Oopsy Hall of Fame for larger retailers and their email campaigns. It's a great read, I highly recommend it.

What I really like is the advice on how to avoid oopsies. The checklist goes...

1. Develop a pre-flight checklist and follow it every time. For a list of things to consider having on your checklist, take a look at the Email Marketer’s Club Wiki’s Things to check before you launch your email campaign. VerticalResponse also has a checklist as well.
2. One word: Spell-check.
3. View a test send in accounts from all the major email clients, or use a rendering tool to ensure consistent rendering across platforms.
4. If you make a mistake in an image, simply correct the source file.
5. Don’t resend emails that contain minor mistakes. Only resend those where the mistake has significantly impaired the message.
6. If the error is significant, see if you can halt the send. You may be able to stop your entire list from receiving the erroneous email.
7. Develop a protocol for your apology emails so you can respond quickly when serious mistakes happen.

Any other ideas? Chime in!

VR Wins 2008 Small Business Computing Award - Online Marketing

We're SO happy here at VR today...why? We won the Small Business Computing Award in the Online Marketing category. Why are we "really" happy? We won by getting 66% of the vote and it's because customers just like you voted for us. So from the bottom of the collective VR heart, thank you very much. Oh and even though we love 'em, beating Google feels kinda good too ;-)

How to Get People Commenting On Your Blog

I remember when I started our blog, people would email me instead of commenting on my posts. It inspired me to write the post Why Comment on a Blog? I really wanted to be open and let everyone see great comments from other readers and not have it be closed between two inboxes. There are a few good ways to get people commenting on your blog that we employ here at VR, check them out. 

1. Collect Email Addresses - Do you have enough people reading your blog? Use VerticalResponse's free opt-in form, it's just a few clicks if you use our integration with TypePad. Then as soon as you publish your post send an email marketing campaign to your list with a snippet of your new posts. Sometimes simply publishing your post won't drive traffic if your readers don't know about it or aren't subscribed via RSS.

2. Ask for The Comment!  - At the end of each blog post ask your readers to comment on something you wrote about.

3. Ask Your Friends to Comment - Sometimes people are shy but if they see others commenting they may chime in too! Get the ball rolling any way you can!

4. Write Some Good Content - Not everything you write is going to be Pulitzer worthy, however there are easy ways to see what people are excited about reading. We installed Google Analytics on our blog to see what people are most interested in, then I write more of that particular topic or in that particular fashion. For example, it was pretty clear that many of our readers liked things formatted so that it's easy to read but also a quick one. "5 Quick Things..." or "10 Ways to a Better...".

5. Write Often - Get your readers used to you publishing on a regular basis so that there is enough for them to read when they haven't been to your blog in a while. They may find something in the past few weeks that inspire them to comment.

6. Get Your Readers Riled Up! - From time to time be crazy and take a different stance. Write about something controversial to get them commenting or point to another blog and tell your readers how you feel about it. Then ask them how they feel!

Hope this helps!

The Proper Way to Rent or Buy an Email List

If you see any signs like this run away and run fast! We generally don’t allow the use of 3rd party email marketing lists here at VerticalResponse. Why? Mostly because they’ve not been kept cleaned and up to date and as a result there are usually many bounces. ISPs that we send email to (AOL, Yahoo!, Hotmail) don't really like when anyone sends too many bad email addresses through their systems because it takes the ISP time and resources to process the bad email addresses and bounce them back. Furthermore if most of our lists bounce back then that could hurt our good reputation of sending email to people who've requested it.

In addition, most of the lists are not reputable meaning they’ve been automatically scraped or spidered from websites. You’ll get a lot of info@, ceo@, sales@ as a result.

Is there a proper way to rent an email list?

The answer is yes!! There are many legitimate lists on the market that will enable you to grow your list, however, if anyone wants to “give” you a list for you to mail, it’s highly suspect. Most list owners want to protect their asset so just handing over the jewels is not the proper thing to do and you should be suspect.

Here’s the skinny:

1. Visit a website you think your target audience would visit. If there is an “advertising” section try to find if you can be included in the email newsletter or a “solo” email which is really their endorsement of your product or service.
2. Green light? You give them your offer,  your content and your link that you want them to send people to.
3. Always ask the list owner who the “from” will be. The only case scenario you want is for the "from" to come from them endorsing your product. If they want to put your company name in the From Label beware. The recipients might think it’s you spamming them instead of the list owner sending them email they requested.
4. Now you’ll have a bigger list you can send to!

We have seen a caveat: from time to time association members agree to opt in to get email from other members who have joined. In some cases the association will handle the list, in others they simply give the list to the members. A good thing to do is to remind them when you send your email that they're getting it as "a member of x association."

If you have any other ideas we'd love to hear them so give us a comment.

Your Marketing Checklist for 2008

It's that time of year again when we all list our New Years resolutions. Lose 10 lbs, get to work early, call your Mom every week, we know, we all have them. Well we hope this one actually sticks since so many of them don't. It's a list of resolutions all businesses should focus on in the New Year if you're not already ahead of the game. If you are, consider yourself a pro and do everything 20% better!

1. Use a Calendar - iGoogle has a great one where you can use alerts to remind you to write your copy and send your communications. Bonus? You can also share it with others so that they know exactly when you're planning to launch.

2. Publish a Blog - Yes, even if you already have a website you should also host a blog. It's another way the search engines can pick you up, you establish yourself as an expert in your industry, you give a "voice" to your business and you can get your reader's insight into how they feel about you or your company through comments they make.  It's not an overnight success, however when it starts to take off it can be incredibly beneficial. Make sure you flag categories on your posts or tag them for the search engines. Make sure you backlink to your own site from your most popular keywords in your posts. Check out TypePad or WordPress, two great blogging platforms that are very cost-effective and easy to set up.

3. Get 5 Testimonials - Get your best customers to give you quotes and use them everywhere you can. Include them on any outbound communications, in your email newsletters, on your site and in your store. Used often, they can be one of the most powerful forms of marketing you have. We have a store near us that prints off huge posters of their customers wearing their clothing and hangs them in the window along with their history of being a customer. Benefit? The customers tell all their friends to go check out their big picture and shop at the store. These people are your influencers, use them wisely.

4. Get People Talking - Have a "wow" factor. Give free samples, throw a free gift into the customer shipment, call your customers to see how they liked their service, send a birthday greeting. Whatever it is, get your word of mouth campaign going!

•    Doctors call the night after a procedure to see how things are going.
•    Retailers throw something fun into your online shipment orders or shopping bags.
•    Restaurants give a few cookies at the end of the meal.
•    Coffee houses announce a free 5 minutes off coffee every day at a different time.
•    Consultants give your first 2 hours of time free.
•    Offer coffee at your offline location   

5. Shake it Up - Pick one customer-facing thing you do and change it drastically. Change your entire look of your website, repaint your store, start a monthly club, change your advertising message, change your uniforms, heck even change your "hold" music. Just do something different in the coming year that you've always wanted to do. 2008 is your year.

6. Host an Event - If you've got a retail location host an after-hours sale or an event to celebrate your best customers, the new year or your anniversary party. Make sure you do enough marketing in store and outside your location to get the number of people you want there.

If you are an expert in your field host a "lunch and learn" or a networking event. Again, make sure you do marketing to your own list as well as potentially renting a list for a postal mailing in the area to get people there. If you're work is online, host a webinar. Note: most of these have a 40-50% attendee rate.

7. Advertise - Make a list of 5 of your competitors OR 5 other businesses in your local area and look at where they advertise. Then finally answer that pesky ad sales person and choose somewhere you've never advertised before. Then roll the dice! Caveat: don't only do it once and make the call that it doesn't work work, if it's in your budget, advertise 4-6 times before you decide to stop it or better yet, continue it.

8. Do a Customer Survey - Send an email and ask 10 questions about your customer's experience with you with a 5 point rating: Excellent, Good, Neutral, Poor, Very Bad.  Be ready for the good, bad and the ugly, you'll learn what your customers like and what they don't, then you can make changes. Make sure you send a statistically valid sample and get a good sampling back. You don't want to make changes based on just 1-2 remarks. Make sure you announce your changes to all of your customers in an email campaign. Everyone wins!

9. Collect Email Addresses - Put an opt-in form on every page of your site or blog or link to it on every page with a link "Newsletter Sign Up". Put an exit pop-up window with the opt in form when someone leaves your domain. Put a sign up form on your blog. Ask for your customer's information at your counter, input it daily into a spreadsheet or better yet a contact management system. However you collect email addresses send a welcome email to them with a thank-you offer. Use VerticalResponse to collect email addresses for free!

10. Analyze - Use Google Analytics to track your website visits. Get to know where your traffic is coming from and how good it is. Then make changes to your site, or your marketing materials.

Hopefully you're doing some of these already. It's tough to run a business and constantly come up with new ideas to market. Hopefully this list sparks some new ideas. Happy 2008!

An Explanation of VR's "Reply-To" email address ... What is vresp.com?

We get this question all the time, why does my email marketing campaign have a reply-to with a vresp.com domain?

Well that’s a question with a few levels of answering so let me start.

1. Reputation - First of all VR has been around 7 years. Why is that important?  ISPs that we send your email to recognize our domain as a trusted sender and they let your email through their "pearly gates". You get the benefit of our good sender reputation using this domain.

2. Authentication - VR authenticates all client mail using SPF, Sender-ID and DomainKeys, and has been doing so for years.  If we simply allowed users to "spoof" their own domain, we wouldn't be able to send fully authenticated emails for those users.  Authenticating mail is a best practice and helps with email delivery.

3. vresp.com – We chose this domain because it doesn’t include any branding and it’s not our long domain. In short, it’s not anything people will recognize.

4. Replies - VR uses Variable Envelope Return Paths for all mail sent through our system.  This enables us to make sure that the proper recipient address is unsubscribed or bounced when the situation warrants it, plus the use of V.E.R.P is also considered a best practice.

Note that if a recipient replies to your email for any reason other than to unsubscribe, we route them to the "reply-to" email address you indicate on your launch page.  We always want to ensure you receive the legitimate email.

Can you use your own branded domain with VerticalResponse?  Yes, there is a set-up fee for it.  It also requires a little work on both your end and on our end to make sure we have full permission to authenticate your mail.  Email domainbranding@verticalresponse.com for more information on this. Our recommendation? We think you should take advantage of our domain and reputation since we’ve been working really hard at it!

See our Deliverability section on our website. Comment with any questions!

Your Company Name Has Changed - Treat Your From Label Carefully!

We spend a bunch of time talking about the art of the Subject Line here at VR. Why? It’s critical to get it right so you maximize your response from your email marketing campaigns. But what about the From Label? How important is it?

We think it’s arguably the 1st or 2nd most important part of your email campaign. Why?
It’s whom you originally made your relationship with when your recipient signed up for your email. They’ll recognize whom the email is coming from and a good percentage of them will hopefully open your email and click on your links.

Changing your From Label could increase your unsubscribe rates if your recipient does not recognize the From, not to mention your recipients could feel “tricked” into opening your email, then complain to you or your ISP for potential spamming. No one wants that.

So What Happens When You Change Your Company Name??

This happens all the time with mergers, acquisitions and general company name changes. How do you treat this? One word: Carefully!

Here’s an approach we took at a previous company for and it worked well.

Send a first email campaign with the old company name announcing the new company name in the subject line.

Send your next month or two of email campaigns “From Old Company Name/New Company Name”.

The next month or two send your email campaigns “From New Company Name/Old Company Name”.

Finally switch over to “From New Company Name”

This way it’s a gradual change and you’re getting your recipients over time to recognize the company they initially had the relationship with as the new company. This is especially true because your recipients probably don’t always open your email every time you send one (kudos to you if they do!)

If anyone has any other ideas for this situation please chime in.