VerticalResponse Email Marketing Blog for Small Business

VerticalResponse & MerchEngines - Guaranteed Clicks to Help Grow Your List!

One of the ways VR tells you to grow your list is to use Pay Per Click (PPC) on the Search Engines to get the word out. Then you're pretty much on your own. We didn't like leaving you in the dark so we partnered with MerchEngines to help you swim the rough seas that can be Search Engine Marketing.       

Together we've come up with some interesting monthly packages where they'll do your campaigns for you and guarantee quality clicks to your site. Then the visitors are yours to convert.            

Check out MerchEngines Click Packages Today!

75,000 Images Available From Your Media Library

Did you ever find yourself in need of an image for your email, and you waste time searching all over the web never to find the perfect one, or worse yet find one that has copyright protection? VerticalResponse has teamed up with Photos.com to hand pick 75,000 high-quality images available for you to use in both your email and postcard campaigns.

Searchable - Type in any keyword you're looking for and  you'll come up with some really great images.

Royalty-Free - VR foots the bill for these images. They are for you to use in your VerticalResponse email marketing and postcard campaigns.
 
Sized Right  - Use them for postcards, you'll get high-res images. Use them for email and choose from two sizes. Then you can resize them further!  

Available Now - Check them out in your Library in the top Navigation Bar of your VerticalResponse account and start to browse!

 

March '08 Inc.com Article - Don't Hire Before You Need To

I've got a few friends I don't necessarily agree with when it comes to a hiring strategy. This month for Inc.com's Women in Business I've written about my thoughts on the timing of hiring great employees in the life of a business. Who needs March Madness when you can sit back and read this? Kidding, I'm doing great in my brackets!

The "Oops" Mailing - To Re-mail or Not to Re-mail

One of our customers made a mistake this week. Hey we all do it. We're trying to get the email marketing newsletter out and we miss a typo or we have the wrong link, everyone is human right?

Instead of having their company name in the From Label, they simply had "March Newsletter" in the From Label. Probably just an oversight on their part. Then they had a really great subject line: "Easy Ways to Build WoM" (Word of Mouth).

What Went Wrong...

1. It looked like spam with no company name in the From Label.
2. The open rate was way lower than normal because there was no name recognition, it was 20% vs. over 35+%.
3. Their click rate was half of what it usually is.
4. The unsubscribe rate was a bit higher due to people not knowing who this was coming from.

So as instantly as it went out, this company made the decision to re-mail minutes later. They only mail a monthly newsletter so this was really important to them. The good things that happened?

• They apologized and poked fun at the situation:

Sorry gang, I should have had a cup of coffee before I originally sent this newsletter this AM. The 'from' line in the email was incorrect, as it said 'March Newsletter' instead of 'Andiamo Systems'. Which means no one knew who it came from, so a lot of people probably won't open it. Sorry for the resend, but I wanted everyone to have a chance to receive and read this newsletter.

• Their subject line read "Oops - Resend of "Easy Ways to Build WoM"
• They didn't have any unsubscribes from the second mailing.
• The second mailing gave them more opens than the first getting them back up to the 35+% open rate.
  
• Their click rate was more than double the first mailing.
• When they downloaded the list they saw that the unsubscribes were prospects that were likely never to become customers.

Potential Reasons to do a Re-mail

You don't want to do a remail for just any mistake. If it is just a typo, I'd say let it go. That's not worth potentially losing some subscribers. If it's as important as the scenario I outlines above where the recipients potentially wouldn't even know to open and read the email that's pretty big. Here are a few other scenarios:

Wrong Dates Published - If an incorrect date for an upcoming event was published your recipients might decide before clicking through they can't go. Even more confusing? If they do click through and see a different date on your site. Now confusion sets in and  they have to work at finding the right date.
Wrong Pricing Published - Whether the price was too high or too low you might find yourself with a customer service nightmare when the customers get to the page on your site to find a different price. If it's too low you might lose a lot of margin. If it's too high your call volume might go up. Either way it's dollars potentially coming out of your pocket.
Wrong Audience - If an email goes to the wrong audience, again you might find yourself with a customer service issue. Imagine if an airline sends an email confirming flights to someone who doesn't have one or if a winery sends a wine club shipment notification to someone who isn't a member. Calls will come in.

Oh and remember, if you put a wrong link in your email in your VR account you can change the link on the fly. Just go into your campaign report and where you see the   icon just click it and input the new link. Also remember to use the spell check tool, I need it myself ;-)

Backlinking - Why Search Engines Think It's Important

We tell people all the time to use Search Engine Marketing (SEM) to build their list. Then you're pretty much on your own. Today we'd like to talk about a part of SEM called SEO (Search Engine Optimization). I know, I know, another 3 letter acronym to wrap your head around. Great.

There are a ton of parts to a good SEO campaign, from adjustments you can make on your site like title tags, keyword optimization and XML site maps, to offsite efforts like link building.  Today, we'd like to focus on one: Backlinking – it's time good ole' VR broke it down for ya in plain English. So I asked Alf, who is our SEM guru (who will be giving up some great secrets at our Spring Marketing Conference in April) to tag team this one with me. So here goes...

What is Backlinking?

Plain and simple it is what it sounds like – getting other web sites to link back to your web site.

But the search engines don't just count the number of backlinks you have, they QUALIFY them.

Google and other popular search engines use a ranking algorithm (which is a closely guarded secret that Sergey & Larry probably don't even know) to evaluate the quality of incoming links, page rank of the linking site, the content on the site or blog linking in, the link text, and a whole host of additional criteria, to determine the value of that link to the search engine.

Bottom line? You don't just want anyone linking into your site, you want the right kind of site with the right type of link.

What's The Right Type of Link?

The best backlinks are links that use the keyword you are trying to rank for. For instance if your fictitious online store - eVino.com - sells wine, particularly a Cabernet varietal, you'd want a wine enthusiast to blog about your Cabernet and link to your site and include the word "Cabernet" in the link.

Example:

    For the best Cabernet deals online check out eVino

        or

    In my book, eVino & Cabernet are synonymous

What's The Right Kind of Site?

Since the wine enthusiast site more than likely has great content on wine, that link has more authority to a search engine therefore putting extra umph behind that link. The more of these you get, the higher you rank for your keywords. This same link on a website or blog that writes about Music or Fashion, may still drive traffic but would not be worth nearly as much in the eyes of the search engines.

Where do you find the right kind of site you ask? here are a couple of ways.

1. Search for your keyword on Google and look at the top 100 listings. You'll want to get as many of these to link to you as possible. Unless of course they're your competitor.
2. If you can't get links from your keyword's top 100 sites, examine each of those site's backlinks and try and get some links from those pages. Use a tool like Backlink Watch to see who is linking to them or linking to your competitors.

The Wrong Kind of sites

Now that you have a sense of the kind of sites you want backlinking to your site. Here are some situations you want to stay away from.

• Paid Links – The search engines are on to this and are actually penalizing people who do it. I'm not talking about AdWords or PPC (oh no... not another acronym) which are totally safe, but carry no link juice anyway.
• Link Farms – Links within ACTUAL content on the page look the most natural to search engines. So if it's just a page of links going to any which site, the search engines find no relevance and won't count them.
• Link Swaps – Trading or reciprocal linking are dead. These links cancel each other out. In the eyes of the search engines, doing this is a sign that your content must not be very good.  If you have good content, people will link to it.

Some Other Things You Can Do

• Press – If a blog picks up a new product you sell or service you have, but doesn't include a link, shoot them an email and ask them to link to your site from one of your keywords which they probably have in their article. You'll be surprised how much it actually happens.
• Your Blog – In your own blog, write content that your audience wants to read, then make sure to link back to your home page from your keyword.
• Reach Out – Introduce yourself to sites where you think your audience will go. Ask to contribute your content. If it's worth reading and interesting enough you might get published. Comment on forums and blogs, but not just to throw your link there – actually add something of value to the discussion, or you might just wind up getting banned.
• Link Bait – Also known as viral marketing, link bait could be anything (good content, videos, free tools, a fun web game, etc.) that makes people want to link to it. Just make sure it has some association with the keyword you are trying to rank for, so people linking will naturally use that keyword.

Final Note:

Backlinks are only ONE of the things the Search Engines use to gauge where you should be in their rankings for your particular keywords. So it's not that be all answer to good keyword ranking.

Any other ideas? Bring them on!

A Brochure Mailer That Broke Some Major Rules

I received a direct mail piece in the mail the other day. It was very expensive looking, about 6 inches square all folded up. Inside the ultra cool envelope there was a fold out brochure loaded with pictures of scenes of apartments in cities. The brochure had a wrap around it which said:

Pied-A-Terre, On Demand. Prestigious Locations. Dramatic Views. Attentive Service.
Fully Appointed Luxury Apartments when you need them.

Below is only one panel of 6 or so.

What's Wrong With This Picture?

No Offer - No Call-to-Action - I bust into the brochure looking to find copy, an offer, anything. I finally find some that I can barely read because it's in knock out white then type against a busy picture (see above).

Unreadable Type - All of the type is turned sideways (see above, if you can) so i have to turn my attention away from the pictures to read it.

Where's the Beef? - I say to myself there HAS to be a letter in this envelope talking about a virtual tour, a deal for our business for business travel, something. Wrong.

I understand the cool factor, but you can at least write a nice letter or another piece talking about the offer or call-to-action in "cool speak" with something for me to "do". Otherwise it's just some nice fuel for a blog post like this or a toss in the circular file.

CAPTCHA - Use One To Protect Your Email List

From the Wikipedia: CAPTCHA is a type of challenge-response test to determine whether the user is human. The process involves one computer asking a registrant to complete a simple test which the computer is able to generate and grade. Because other computers are unable to solve the CAPTCHA, any user entering a correct solution is presumed to be human.

Translation: A CAPTCHA is made up of those distorted letters and numbers that a registrant needs to type into a field like the one to the right. Therefore, anyone who is registering on a form and completes the sign up with the CAPTCHA is a human who wants to register for something and not an automated script or "bot".

Why they’re good: If you build your email marketing list and use a newsletter sign-up form like the one VerticalResponse provides for free, you might get a fake sign up generated by these "bots". Now you're faced with having to spend more of your time cleaning out your lists because you don't want to miscount these bogus registrations as potential subscribers.

That’s the reason why a CAPTCHA works really well. You won’t even add these computer-generated registrants to your list so your list should be automatically cleaner in the long run.

VerticalResponse has just given our users the option to include a CAPTCHA with their opt-in form, again FREE.

If you want to get your own opt-in form, watch this video and make sure you click Use CAPTCHA Verification.

If you already have an opt-in form and want to include a CAPTCHA:

1)    Click on any of your lists.
2)    At the top of the next screen click on Opt-in Forms
3)    Click on the name of the form you want to include a CAPTCHA with
4)    Go into the Design Your Form tab
5)    Check Use CAPTCHA Verification
6)    Go to the Publish tab
7)    Replace all the HTML with new one we provide you on your website or click on Publish to TypePad and it will automatically replace your current one.

Oh, CAPTCHA is an acronym for Completely Automated Public Turing test to tell Computers and Humans Apart.

Now go get yourself a CAPTCHA!

Idea from a Nail Spa for Your Business - Referrals

At a neighborhood nail salon, I've seen that they've got some pretty good ideas when it comes to marketing. Seems like they're trying to get more business in the door for some of their other services.

In a printed piece by the counter their message is that you can get a discount for referring people - a nice 20% off. Good deal. What I really like is that they go one step further and ask their customers to put their selling shoes on (pun intended) and get out there and sell their Thai foot massages. Then they give a free massage after you've referred 5 people.

I think it's a great idea, give up $65 to get 5 new customers in the door.

Can you put this to work for your business? Comment and tell us your story.

VR Goes to Austin's South by Southwest Music Fest!

Check out this video from one of our customers at SXSW Interactive...

Thanks Indiegogo!!

Avoid Weird Formatting When Copying & Pasting Text

The other day I was watching the CNN ticker at the bottom of the screen and the sentence looked like this:

"Britney?s children get to see their mom."

Did you ever see this? This ever happen to you? It happens to me in our email marketing campaigns in two ways: When I copy text off of the blog (HTML page) to paste into my Email Canvas in VR, OR when I write the blog first in Microsoft Word, then copy and paste directly into the blog.

What's happening is that Microsoft Word inserts strange characters that replace quotes, dashes and apostrophes like the one example above.  Also, if you're copying and pasting right from a web page you may be taking some HTML code you don't necessarily see.

What can you do?

1. If You Use Word - Paste everything to Word first. Then copy what you've pasted. Go to the area you want to paste the copy into in your Email Canvas and highlight it. Then click on the "paste from Word" symbol in the toolbar that looks like this: and a screen with a large text field will appear. Paste your text into the screen and click Insert. You may have to choose a font and a size but you won't get any weird characters or formatting.

2. If You Don't Use Word - Instead of pasting the text into Word, paste your text into Notepad if you're on a PC or in TextEdit if you're on a Mac. Then copy and paste your copy into your web document.

Hope this helps, it sure helped me!