VerticalResponse Email Marketing Blog for Small Business

How Not To Write a Subject Line

I was recently on an "email marketing resources" site and found some horrifying information that was being given on how to write a great subject line. We all know that one of THE most important parts of an email campaign is the subject line and everyone is trying to come up with the perfect one, but this resource for email marketing is wrong, wrong, wrong!

Here are four subject lines that this website uses, but that you should never use in your campaigns. Not only do they break best practices, but in some cases they break the law. The CAN SPAM ruling states that for any commercial email, you must have your subject line relate to the content of the email. 

Subject Line #1 - Hi, My name is Paul

This is a game to trick the recipient into opening an email. It may raise curiosity, however, when the recipient opens the email they're going to feel tricked and unsubscribe.

Subject Line #2 - I need your help, please?

There’s something about wanting to help another human being, however there is also something about lying to your recipient to get your email opened. Don't do it.

Subject Line #3 - Bob, I haven’t received your shipping address yet.

What! My shipping address? What do you need my shipping address for? This particular subject line is really scary because it seems like the sender is trying to get more information from the recipient. Also, it's scary because it's personalized to the recipient so they may actually give it. This could also be seen as a form of phishing.

Subject Line #4 - Bob, Please accept my sincerest apology.

Unless you're actually apologizing for something sincere, don't use this subject line.

All of these examples of subject lines are unscrupulous especially because they don't relate at all to the copy. Avoid being seen as a spammer, and avoid being non compliant with the FTC CAN SPAM rulings.

StartupNation and VerticalResponse Let You Pick Top Mom-Run Businesses

We've partnered with a great company, StartupNation to launch the first annual "Leading Moms in Business" ranking, which highlights one of the fastest growing segments of entrepreneurship, Moms! 

According to the Center for Women’s Business Research, there are 10.6 million women-owned businesses in the United States generating $2.5 trillion in annual revenue. With women starting businesses at nearly twice the rate of men, many of these businesses are run by mothers.

Nominate Yourself, Tell a Mom to Nominate Herself

Contestants interested in making the list can submit their profile. The top 200 winners will be selected by popular vote, with results announced in advance of Mother’s Day. If you know a Mom who would be great for this, forward her the info!

Send an Email to Get Votes for Your Nomination

Use email marketing and send an email to your recipients with an exciting announcement that you’re a contestant. By encouraging them to vote for you and support your quest to be a winner, you provide them with an engaging and fun way to participate in your success. This can help you create deeper loyalty and affinity, which ultimately can lead to business opportunities and increased revenue.

Mom-run businesses are at the forefront of what’s happening more broadly in the business world, including trends like telecommuting, flexible work schedules and green workplaces. The Leading Moms in Business ranking will shine a spotlight on these exceptional businesses and the dynamic women behind them. Among other things, the ranking will focus on recession busting businesses, highlighting entrepreneurial moms that have implemented strategies to make their businesses thrive in spite of the economic downturn.

To enter, contestants must be a mother and a majority owner of a business. Contestants must also have a website for their business and be based in the U.S.

Get Your Valentine's Day Email Ready!

I posted this exactly a year ago but thought it was worth posting again (no, I'm not being lazy!).

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 flowers, lingerie, and jewelry shops anymore.

Take it a step further and send Valentine's Day postcards (that's right snail mail!) in addition to email. They're easy to create using VR and versatile, whatever your industry.  Use eye-catching images for your business or maybe even upload your artwork from your kids or nieces/nephews. People will naturally turn it over to see who sent it and read your message. And if your offer and call to action (email, call or use expiration date) are strong, then your customers and prospects will take action.

Don’t wait too long though, you want to create them and get them
in the mail by the end of January.

Here are just a few ideas we've been seeing 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 fixe menu? Highlight it in an email.

Jewelry - Pictures work! Make sure you put them prominently in your emails to show off your jewels. If you ship products make sure you have an "order by" date so your gems get there in time. No one wants to see their valentine empty-handed.

Flowers - This is too obvious, but remember to include email marketing campaigns all the way up to and on the day, especially if your shop is open late for those procrastinators.

Spas & Salons - Start putting your offerings out on your websites and in your salons now. Gift certificates for your products and services are a no-brainer for you to be pushing for this holiday.

Wineries/Wine Shops - How about putting together gift baskets of your wines and merchandise? We've seen some nice red gift bags that wineries are giving for free with a card attached if their recipient's order by a specific date.

Paper Goods and Rubber Stamps - We've seen email campaigns with artsy Valentine's Day-themed papers and gift bags on sale for this holiday.

Entertainment - Send an email offering event tickets to your customer's favorite act or concert.

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 email campaigns that highlight 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.

Business to Business Marketing – 5 Ideas for Cultivating Leads

If you’re selling to businesses it can be quite a challenge not only getting leads in the door, but what you do with those leads once they’re in.  After all, many businesses have a longer lead time to getting a sale than others. And within that lead time, the last thing you want your leads to do is “cool down”.  Here are 5 things you might do to get leads and keep them HOT.

Get Your Leads

How do you get leads? "Anyway you possibly can" should be your answer. If you’ve met someone at a tradeshow or a networking event or if they sign up for something on your website, consider them a lead. If you want to get people signing up on your site, the first thing you want to do is offer them something of value, whether it be more information, a download, or even an offer for a live call or meeting. Make sure your site has a lead form for this. You can use a free form from VerticalResponse or your CRM provider like Salesforce.

Put Your Leads in a “Bucket”

Once you have a lead you need to identify what type of lead they are. Many businesses identify leads as hot, warm or cool depending on what the sales cycle is. Some businesses identify leads based on when they think they’ll be making their purchase of a product or service; 1-3 months, hot, 3-6 months, warm, or 6-9 months, cool.

Another way would be to ask what their budgets are or when they'll be making their purchasing decision. It could even be that a lead isn’t going to buy for 5 months but they’re ready to spend 4x what someone who is going to buy sooner would spend.

It's up to you and your business how you'd like to identify you leads but make sure you do it!

Create Your Email Pipeline

Once you’ve identified your buckets, now start your plan on how you’re going to communicate to them. If it’s a hot lead you're marketing to, you may want to start with an email asking for an appointment and let your recipient know in the email you’ll be calling. It gives you a reason to make the call. Then you can call your lead to set up the appointment. It also shows you’re aware of the value of your lead’s time, which you may also want to include in your email content.

For your warm and cool leads you may want to set up bi-weekly emails. The emails may talk about your product or service and you could even prompt them to download a whitepaper. Making them take an action is a way of making your lead even warmer, and it’s more of an information soft sell approach.

Either way, get your leads on your regular email newsletter list. As long as you’re providing valuable information, they’ll want to keep getting it. And if they don’t, they’ll unsubscribe.

Get Face-to-Face if You Can

Events are a great way to cultivate leads whether it’s one you host, one you sponsor or one you attend. And if you know someone at your company will be at an event, why not send them an email to let them know? If you’re going to have someone that can be face to face with your prospect, it’s always better than an e-relationship, especially if you have that luxury.  If you can’t set up an appointment, at least identify your booth number or where you’ll be sponsoring or attending. Make sure whoever is attending is easily identifiable if possible with some company garb.

Give Your Prospect Props!

Once you’ve got your lead in the door, try to find out as much as possible about that company, or your specific prospect. If they’ve recently won an award or got kudos in a review from the press, make sure you send them an email to congratulate them. It gives you another reason to make the contact. Then, send them a gift for their achievement. You can use Google Alerts to track down the stories.

These are just a few ways you can cultivate your leads. If you've got any ideas you'd like to share about how you cultivate your own leads, let's hear them!

How to Use LinkedIn for Your Business

Occasionally I like to write about things other than email marketing ... shocker! This time I thought it would be great to talk about LinkedIn, and how small businesses can harness the power of this valuable business networking tool.

A lot of small business owners ask the same question: What is LinkedIn and how can I use it to help my business grow? Well, since LinkedIn's inception in 2003 there are over 80 million people using this business social networking site that allows for super easy business networking. That's a lot of people to get access to. So here are just a few ways you can utilize this great solution.

How Do You Start?

Create Your Profile - What’s important for using LinkedIn successfully depends on the amount of information you contribute to your profile. You’ll surely want to display where you work now and your past work experiences, as well as your interests and company website.  But after that it’s up to your comfort level for the type of information you want to include.

Make sure you define what you want to get out of LinkedIn. Most people use it as a business tool. If that’s how you want to use it then that’s what you should be thinking about when you accept “Invitations to Connect” from people that may or may not know you. Now that you've created your free account, the real stuff happens.

Personal Accounts are free with limitations, but you can upgrade to a Business Account for more functionality. Check out pricing and functionality here.

Human Resources

Reference Searches - If you want to get a snapshot of what a new prospective employee is like, check out their LinkedIn profile. See if what they have on their profile matches their resume. To take it one step further, if you upgrade to a Business Account, you can do a Reference Search to find out who they've worked with in the past. Then you might even see that you're connected with someone they know and you can then send that contact an "Inmail", an email that is generated through the LinkedIn network, with some questions you might have about your candidate.

Find New Employees – You can post a job description on LinkedIn then send it out to all of your connections or a subset of them. It's $195 for a 30-day listing. Here’s where it pays to have some great connections. If one of your contacts knows someone that might be perfect for the job, they’ll forward the job description to them. Then you’ll get your contacts referring people they know for the job.

Sales

Learn About Your Prospects -  If you've been talking to a prospective customer, it pays to know as much about them as possible. Check out their LinkedIn profile, you might even find you have a connection in common or are a few degrees away from it. This might even help you close the deal.

Find New Prospects - Investigate a company you want to do business with, it's simple with LinkedIn. You can even do an advanced search on the type of title you’ll need to be speaking to. For example, if you need someone on the marketing team you might type in “VP Marketing” or “Vice President Marketing”. Once you've found them you can send them an “Inmail”. Then it’s up to your prospect to decide if they want to communicate back with you. You’d be amazed at the response you’ll get if you articulate clearly why you want to talk to them. Note: If they don’t want to be contacted they’ll have already added that to their profile, and you won’t be able to contact them using Inmail but many people are on LinkedIn for the purpose of networking. You'll need to upgrade to a Business Account for Inmails, but IMO it's worth it.

Get Introduced – If you’re looking at someone you might want to do business with, you might find that you’re connected with someone who knows them. Then you can ask your connection for an introduction to them. Sometimes it’s easier to get in front of someone if they know someone you know.

Marketing

Get Advice – The “Questions & Answers” feature is a fantastic tool you can use to get your name out in your LinkedIn Network. If you have questions on anything about your business or industry you can simply ask your LinkedIn network.

Give Advice - The “Answers” feature enables you to establish yourself as an expert in your industry. I’ve had a few people forward me questions on direct marketing and email marketing because they thought I’d be a great resource to answer them. Then people rate your answer and you can have it display in your profile. One thing to note here, when you’re answering questions try not to be too self-serving and salesy. It’s ok to talk about your company just try not to be too pushy, it seems disingenuous.

Here's a funny story about LinkedIn. The building next to where I live was having their windows washed very early on a Saturday morning with a very loud machine. Now I don't know about you, but Saturday mornings for me need to be a bit quiet. Somewhat angry and pretty tired, I wanted to find the CEO of the company that was having the work done. I looked him up on LinkedIn, sent him an Inmail and that same day he emailed me back apologizing for how early they were starting and promised they’d never start work that early on a weekend again.

If you've got any great LinkedIn stories please share!

2 Great Restaurant Marketing Ideas

Idea #1: This list building idea comes from Jessica Greene-Pierson, a Marketing Programs Manager here at VerticalResponse.

She went out to dinner with her husband at a local Indian restaurant and in the bill holder there was a survey. Nothing new there, we've posted about this idea before. But what got her attention was the fact that they offered a free buffet on your next visit if you coughed up your email address. Clever! Thanks Jess!

Idea #2: Here's another one I ran across recently. At the end of a great meal, the bartender gave us our bill. On the bill he noted that there were two other restaurants we should visit. I'm not sure if the restaurants were owned by the same owner or if they were swapping offers, either way it's a great idea to pump up the foot traffic.

There was a 7 day expiration date and an offer for 20% off our entire bill if we spent more than $25. The catch was that we had to save this receipt and show them. Check to see if your point of sale system allows you to customize your message on the receipt. If it does it's great because you'll capture the date when the clock starts the expiration ticker. Otherwise you can just use your own printer and give them a monthly expiration.

Any other great restaurant ideas? We'd love to hear them!

Your 2009 Marketing Checklist

New year resolutions lists are running rampant, so we decided to call this one the 2009 Marketing Checklist. You can tack this one up next to the list where you vow to "lose 5lbs.", "volunteer more" and "get a dog" which is what my list looks like.

While coming up with this list, the economy really drove my thinking and the theme of "penny-pinching" really came out. So here is our list of things you need to be doing in 2009 to not only keep your business afloat, but keep it growing.

1. Social Media

Don't be scared, Facebook & Twitter are an easy and free use of social media to grow your list using . First, if you don't already have one, create a Facebook & Twitter account, they're free. Then post to your Facebook & Twitter pages that you just sent your email campaign.

On Facebook, post to "what are you doing now" as well as your "share a link" section.  Include the link where you host your email and your subject line. You might get your email in front of one of your "friends" or "followers" that may have missed it in their inbox.You may also include links in your emails for people to be your friends and followers.

While you're at it, join some groups on Facebook that might lend themselves to your content. If the group allows for anyone to post, then post your link there as well.

On Twitter, just "tweet" that you finished your email marketing campaign. Include the subject line and the link where it's hosted on a web page. Remember you only have 140 characters on Twitter so keep it as short as possible.

2. Track Your Customers & Registrants

Ask people where they heard about you on your site, on your opt in form or after they've purchased. If you're advertising on CitySearch, I'd include "CitySearch" in your list. I'd also include "Friend" to see if word of mouth is driving any business. If you're advertising in a specific magazine, or on a site, I'd include those as well. Then look at who your best customers are, by where they heard about you, and do more of that type of advertising.

3. Use Google Adwords

I was recently at a small business conference and asked the audience how many were using Google Adwords to drive business. Maybe 20% of the audience raised their hands. This is the year you need to be thinking about cost-effective advertising for your business. Many people go to the web to search for businesses whether it's an online business or an offline business, not the yellow pages. The best thing about Google is that YOU are in control of your spend and your messaging. You control how much you want to cap your spend in any given time period and you control where you want to advertise (local, national, world wide).

You can do it yourself or use our VerticalRepsonse partner MerchEngines to do it for you. It's a $250/month minimum commitment with them, but they guarantee targeted traffic to your site, and they'll even select your keywords, write and place the ads for you, soup to nuts.

Remember, it's an investment that won't happen overnight, you need to give it time to work.

4. Test Your Subject Lines in Your Email Campaigns

Testing your subject lines in your email campaigns will require you to spend a bit more lead time in launching your campaign, but it could get you a few more clicks and add a few more sales!

Here's one way to do it: two days before you want to mail your email campaign, take a small portion of your list and split it in two. Make sure you have enough email addresses on each list to make the test valid, you wouldn't want to make the wrong decision based on a data set that's too small. We recommend each split part be no less than a few hundred email addresses. Then make a copy of your campaign and send two different subject lines to see which one got the most opens/clicks. Take the winner and mail it to the rest of your list. It really could make a difference in the subject line you'll use in the future.

5. Survey Your Customers

By using surveys you can find out instantly what you're customers think about your business by sending it in an email. You could also learn over a longer period of time by including links on your site. Either way it's a good idea to keep in check with your customers to make sure you're delivering the best products or services you possibly can. Doing surveys early in the year gives you a change to make the changes your customers are telling you to, then you can email them telling them that you've listened and made the changes they asked for. You'll be surprised how far that goes. Here are just a few things you'll find:

• How customers were treated by your personnel on the phones, in email or in person
• What customers might think about a new product line and how much they'd pay for it
• How customers feel about your online checkout process
• What products or services your customers would like to see from you next

Check out VerticalResponse Surveys and get your first 25 responses free then as low as $15/month. Also read this post for more ideas: 5 Places to Include a Survey.

6. Collaborate!

Whether your company is 3 people or 30, see how Google Docs can help your business save time and money by consolidating and sharing information. Not only will it save you time, but it also could save on printing documents which in turn saves the environment. Here are some ideas for how your business can benefit from them. Did I mention they're free?

• Use a calendar to schedule marketing campaigns or even appointments and events. I know an events manager at a local restaurant who was keeping event dates on a paper calendar until he was introduced to Google Calendar. Now he's keeping everything online. Even better? The owners can access the calendar without having to contact him.
• Use Google Docs to gather information so that everyone can see it instead of passing word docs or emails around.
• Use Spreadsheets to keep customer data in one place. Then it's easy to update your email marketing list.
• We use Presentations so that everyone in our staff meetings can input into one place what they've worked on in the previous week. Then we present to the group. It becomes a living document we can refer back to.

7. Get Control of Your Data.

I've blogged about this one before but I thought it was important enough to repeat! With the economy in the dumpster, it's more important than ever to take control of all of your lists. It could be the thing that gets your business through any tough times. Plus, you might miss out on sending email campaigns to certain recipients just because you forgot about them, which means less revenue to you in the long run.

Do you have your lists in more than one of these places?

• VerticalResponse
• ACT, FileMaker, Salesforce or any other contact manager
• QuickBooks or your accounting system
• POS Systems
• Shoeboxes and fishbowls of business cards
• Spreadsheets
• Sign Up Book

If your business requires you to keep lists in separate places, that's ok, keep them there. It's not optimal, but if it works for your business fine. BUT, once a week, or more often if you choose, make a copy of all of your lists and choose the place that's easiest to access, upload and download your data.

One more thing, if you've got your lists offline, spend an hour or so a week getting those lists in digital format. Then welcome these new list members with an email. You'll be surprised at how important managing your lists can be to your bottom line.

8. Change The Look of Your Email Campaign

If you use a very linear campaign style where one article sits on top of another and so on, why not try to shake it up a bit; use columns and create a different look to your campaign. I know it's easy to copy the campaign you did last time, but next time use a different approach. You might find that placing your content higher up and in a different format gets you a better response.

9. Use PR!

You have news and you don't even know it. It might not be the Wall Street Journal that picks up the fact that you have a new head chef in your restaurant, or a new winemaker at the winery, or that your software company just hired a new VP, but you'll be surprised at the local coverage or online coverage you might get. Every little bit helps!

If your industry gives out awards, apply for them! Then post if you won on your site and do a press release about it. It is an inexpensive form of advertising that might not only get you industry coverage but you may get local coverage as well.

If you survey your customers ask them questions about your industry or the economy. Then craft a release out of that. Once we surveyed our small businesses around tax time and asked if they had already spent any refunds they might get. We then crafted a press release around it. Do you know what happened next? CNBC and an LA TV station picked up the news! It sure got our name out there.

Finally you need to submit your press release so the world knows about it. You can use free services to do this like PRLog or The Open Press. If you want greater distribution you can spend a little money and use PR Newswire or MarketWire.

10. Use Your Neighbors

Everyone needs new customers right? Now it's time to find businesses that you can jointly refer customers to.

Business to business marketers can find complementary businesses and do joint webinars about your products to each other's lists. Not only do you help your customers with another product they might be able to use, but you'll help each other grow your businesses collectively.

Local businesses can put up collateral or business card offers in a neighboring business to drive business back and forth. You might even pay referral fees for every customer another business drives you. 

It's been a tough few years for small businesses, and who knows what the new administration will bring for us. In the meantime we all need creative ways to keep going and these are just a few we can all do to get us going and prosper in 2009.