VerticalResponse Email Marketing Blog for Small Business

How & Why You Need to be Added to Your Recipient's Address Book

United did something great, for once. Just kidding. But seriously, they sent out a clever email marketing campaign. Simply put, it was an email asking the recipients to add United's From Address to their address books. Why? Because if they do add you, your recipients will not only get your email in their inboxes (avoiding the junk folder), but all of your images will appear and not be stripped out of your email. Some might say "Well Janine, if the email IS going into the junk folder then how would my recipients know"?

Great point. The point is that for all of your recipients that periodically check their junk folders, they might see this and wonder why they have not been getting your emails, and take actions to make sure they do.

How can you help? Just send an email to your recipients with some simple instructions that make it easy for them to add you into their address books.  Here's how to do it using VerticalResponse:

First you need to know what email address to send and the one you'll want to give them is the "From Address" for your VerticalResponse email campaign. The From Address is automatically constructed for you based on the text you put into the "From Label" of your email campaign. The text you enter will be added to the left of the @ sign and to the right will be the VerticalResponse sending domain: "mail.vresp.com."

So let's stop here and give an example.  Let's say I'm creating a new email and my company name is Widgets, Inc.  Well I simply enter my company name into the From Label for the campaign like normal. Now when I send a test email or live email the From Address will be Widgets_Inc@mail.vresp.com. Notice characters such as commas are removed since they cannot be included in a valid email address.

Since the From Address is what you want to get added in your recipient's address book and since the From Address is tied to the text you use for your From Label, we recommend using a consistent From Label for all the campaigns you send.

Here is the email, cheers.

Great Idea for Building Your List - Use Your Business Cards

I was handed a card by one of our customers one day, Birdy Botanicals. What a great idea, contact information on the front and a 25% discount off my next purchase if I sign up for the newsletter on the back.

What are you doing with your business cards? Got any ideas to share?

Summer Olympics Are Coming! Do You Have an Olympic Promotion?

The Beijing Summer Olympics are right around the corner and here at VerticalResponse we can't wait. Almost any business can have a summer Olympic promotion. We've come up with a few fun ideas to get you thinking.

Retail

• For every medal your country wins, offer a 5% discount (cap it at a certain level).
• How about getting behind your favorite athlete? Go Michael Phelps! If he breaks a record we break prices!

Restaurants & Bars

• If you're showing the Olympics on your TVs, make sure to send an email to your customers getting them to come back in.
• Why not have a special when your country wins?
• Offer appetizers on the house if a record is broken.
• Offer up a special Olympic concoction.
• Pasta on the menu? Have an Olympic Pasta night while the games are playing.

Salons/Spas

• Wax Your Legs Like An Olympic Cyclist! 50% Olympics Discount on Waxing This Month Only! (That's a fun one!)

B2B

• Countdown to Beijing - Discount or Bundle of the week all the way up to the Olympics.

What kind of Olympic-themed promotion can you think of for your business?

Is It Spam?

We recently sent an email marketing campaign about a webinar we hosted with the folks over at Google Apps. Soon after we sent the email, an angered customer of VerticalResponse emailed me telling me how disappointed they were that we were "soliciting something that wasn't from our company" and that is spam.

I replied that we aren't soliciting anything, we're not asking for money (the webinar was free) and we were not getting paid by Google. In fact I told them that there are a ton of Google Apps that are free. I told them that we use Google Apps and we just think that our customers can benefit from knowing about how they can use these products with VerticalResponse.

Then I found this from the Spamhaus Project:

Spam is an issue about consent, not content. Whether the UBE message is an advert, a scam, porn, a begging letter or an offer of a free lunch, the content is irrelevant - if the message was sent unsolicited and in bulk then the message is spam.

So we emailed our users about something we were doing, with Google, that they could benefit from for free. I think that's pretty far from the 100's of spam messages I get in my inbox that I never signed up for. So I told this customer if they were so offended they could unsubscribe.

P.S. I noticed this customer got a huge ratio of spam complaints on one of their mailings...now who is the spammer? ;-)

11 Places You Need To Include Your Opt-In Form

It's important to collect email addresses to build your email marketing list. We thought it would be great to put together a quick list of where you should include the actual sign up form or a link to one on a web page. If you can include the form yourself, great! If not, hand this list over to your web designer as soon as possible. Oh, tell them to get your already-built opt-in form from your VerticalResponse account.

Your Homepage - If you don't have one on your home page, get one there now.

Your Sub-pages - All of them! If you don't have the space to put an actual form on all of your sub-pages, at least have a "Newsletter Sign Up" link on them.

Your Blog - Not everyone subscribes to RSS to get information from your blog, so you'll need to include an actual form for your readers to sign up, or a "Sign Up For Our Newsletter" link to it. You don't want to lose the opportunity to get email addresses from people who might be interested in knowing about your regular updates. If you use TypePad, you can get the free VR Opt-in Form Widget with just a few clicks.

Your Purchase Confirmation Page - Someone has just hopefully had a great experience purchasing from you, why not ask them to join your list right then and there?

A Pop-up Window - Include a pop-up window when someone leaves your website. You won't be able to use this with visitors who have their browsers set to block them, but you'll surely get some people seeing them. We've had thousands of people signing up through this form.

A Landing Page - If you have a separate landing page you send people to from your search engine pay-per-click campaigns, include a newsletter sign up form on it. If they don't purchase from you, they might at least sign up to your list, then you'll be able to attempt to get them to purchase later on.

The Footer of all Outbound Email Correspondence - Any email you personally send or any email your employees or customer service people send one on one, should have the link to your opt-in form.

Your Email Marketing Campaigns - We have many customers that include an opt-in form image or link inside their actual email marketing campaigns. If the email is forwarded to someone who isn't on your list you might get a new subscriber. You can also use Forward to a Friend links as well.

Offline

Your Counter - Don't forget to put a sign up book at your counter or somewhere prominent in your place of business. Then enter those email addresses quickly and send them a welcome email.

Taking Appointments - If your service business is centered around making appointments with your clients, ask them for their email addresses so you can confirm the times. Also ask if they would want offers from you and make a note of their answer.

Your Tradeshow Table - You've spent a lot of money to be at a tradeshow. If someone doesn't have a business card you don't want to lose the opportunity to add them to your list. So make sure you have some kind of sign up form or book at your booth.

All of these things are super easy to do so don't miss out any opportunity you have to build your email list. Oh and make sure you tell people what they'll get for giving you their information whether it's hot tips, discounts, special offers or invitations. Make it exciting!

What am I missing? Let me know!

GoDaddy is Charging for Spam Complaints - Ouch!

Seems like the folks over at GoDaddy are charging their email marketing customers if they get spam complaints. Deliverability.com broke the news when they got an email with this information sent to them from a GoDaddy customer. GoDaddy will now charge customers $200 to "manage" their complaints. Even worse is that if the customer wants to then leave them and transfer their domains to another registrar they can't do it until they pay GoDaddy $75!

To cover all of their bases, it appears that if one of their customers uses an Email Service Provider outside of GoDaddy to advertise their GoDaddy-hosted site and they get complaints from one of their customer's recipients, they could be hit with a fine or other action.

Wow. Serious Email Service Providers (ESPs) like VerticalResponse usually do this as a service to customers and won't allow spammers to use their services. But let's face it, everyone gets a complaint now and then, even customers with best intentions. The difference is that serious ESPs want to help their customers learn best practices about email marketing and not turn complaints into a new revenue stream.

If you use GoDaddy to host your website be careful. And any time you're looking for a serious ESP, make sure you ask if they have a deliverability and abuse department - most serious ESPs do, looks like GoDaddy might not.

IMO, GoDaddy should stick to what they're good at, being a registrar. Leave the email marketing heavy-lifting to those who "want" to do it and help businesses grow.

Janine Interviewed on Duct Tape Marketing Podcast

John Jantsch is the hero of Duct Tape Marketing, a hot company that gives great marketing ideas to small businesses. He asked me to talk a bit about the new rules of CAN SPAM which we never really got to, because we were having too much fun! Check out the podcast and check out his site.  

Writing a Job Description - Is it Marketing?

Writing job descriptions to post online can be a daunting and even boring task. But why does it have to be? It could be one of the most important things you do. Why? Well, what you're selling is your company rather than the product your company sells.

You want a prospective employee to choose you, over another company, to spend their entire and very valuable day with. Your company can be the reason your new employee gets up in the morning and transports themselves to work. That's a really important decision for any prospective employee to make.

So is writing a job description considered marketing? Perhaps one of the most important forms of it!

Here's a template we use that might help get you started. Before we write about the position we're trying to fill we provide an overview that looks something like this.

Who We Are

Here write about what your company does, how long you've been in business, any awards your company has won, and how fast you're growing. You want your employee to get excited about the company first.

Our Culture

In our case we write about how we "work hard but play hard". You might talk about how fun it is to work in your company and some fun stories about your customers. If your business is a bit more serious you might focus on any employee achievements or how you empower your employees. Either way, you want to give the vibe of what it could be like to work in your company.

What We Offer

Here you can write in generalities about your generous package and the way you promote from within. This is to make prospective employees feel great about applying.

Then we get into the actual descriptions.

Job Title

Provide a paragraph of the overall position. You'll want to get your prospective employee excited about what they'll be doing day-to-day. Here's an example of a posting we have for a Marketing Manager:

The Marketing Programs Manager role is integral to VerticalResponse’s rapidly growing marketing organization and is responsible for driving new customer conversion through email, surveys and postcards. This is a great opportunity for a proven marketing programs professional to gain broad experience across a variety of channels and help drive the most important objective of the company.

Qualifications

Here you'll give your bulleted must haves. It's tough to be sexy here. You'll want some number of years of experience, some education level, someone who is detail-oriented. Just think about all of the things this person must know how to do before coming into the job.

Responsibilities

These are bulleted areas of what this person is going to be responsible for day-to-day. Here you should even try to make the mundane sound hot!

To Apply

Here's where you can have a bit of fun and let your culture show through. Here's an example of that Marketing Position we have open.

To Apply:

• Send a copy of your resume to hiring@verticalresponse.com
• Tell us why you love marketing
• Tell us a funny story or funny joke (yes, we’re testing to see if you actually have a sense of humor)
• Tell us why you’re passionate about helping small businesses grow

Overall you're trying to get a new employee who fits into your culture. You want to match how you position the job opening to the copy you write. So make sure you put a bit of effort into how you market your company to your prospective employees and you'll win in the end.

If anyone has their own template or can improve on our design please share!

Webinar: Getting Started With Google Apps

Join Google and the VerticalResponse product specialists for an exclusive webinar on Google Apps. Find out how you can use Google docs, calendars, and sites alongside VerticalResponse. From collaborating with coworkers on newsletter content, to creating and hosting a site, to developing a list of your most valuable customers, it's easy to do with Google Apps.

               When: Wednesday, July 9,  10AM-11AM PT

Learn more about all the features in Google Apps and how you can use them to effectively manage your business. This is your chance to chat directly with the folks at Google, so don't miss out!

Reserve your spot today, I think it's gonna be great!

Re-Introduce Yourself - After Uncovering a Bunch-o-Business Cards

I just saw a great email marketing campaign from one of our customers. It was a simple text-based email sent to people this person once met but never contacted.

What a great idea, we all have business cards from people laying around. Do you have a bunch of business cards from people you've met over the months or even years that you've never sent an email to?

Here's a plan to get you going.

1. Enter them into your contact manager like FileMaker, ACT!, Salesforce, or your VerticalResponse account. You can either enter them one by one into all of these programs or upload them from a spreadsheet.

2. Include a field called "MEEETINGPLACE" and for each name you enter, if you can remember it, include the place where you met. If you remember the date you can enter that too. These are your "custom" fields in your VerticalResponse account.

3. Create an email. You can use text like this particular customer did, or you can include pictures as well. Why not include one of yourself or logo of your business to jog your recipient's memory?

4. Personalize it! Go beyond Dear {FIRST_NAME}. Try to include your custom fields in the first paragraph.

Dear {FIRST_NAME}

Hope you're well. Sorry it's taken so long to email you, I misplaced your card. If you don't remember, we met at {MEETINGPLACE} on {DATE}.

5. Ask them to opt-in to your list. You can include the link to your opt-in form in your email and you'll find it in your VerticalResponse account.

6. If they've already agreed that you can email them, go ahead and give them a deal. If you're selling something, link them off to what you think they might be interested in.

Oh, and If you don't have time to enter them, hire an intern, make time to input 10 per day yourself or check out Card Scan. You feed your business cards into a mini scanner and it spits out a list for you. It's not full-proof so you'll have to read through what the scanner "thinks" is the right name. Then get to emailing.

Have you had good luck with this? Tell us your story!