VerticalResponse Email Marketing Blog for Small Business

Follow-Up Emails Can Save You Customer Service Costs

Our Vice President of Business Development Alan Keller, gave me a great idea for a blog post. He got an email from a company that he does business with that he thought would be a great idea for our readers. It's a simple way to follow-up with customers that have just purchased a product from you that will get delivered. Here is a copy of the email:

Why is This Email Good?

Good Subject Line - The subject line "Have you received your Caswell Inc. Order?" It's catchy and if you have ordered from them you're likely to open the email.

Personalize it! - The detail of how long it's been since their customers have placed an order is something you can do with personalization fields. This shows that you know just how long it has been since they've ordered and you're up on their ordering habits.

Contact Info - They prominently display an email address so that you can get to someone quickly with any questions the recipients may have.

Customer Service - They encourage recipients to open the package and contact them with any issues they may have via email. This might actually decrease customer service costs because they're being proactive in getting customers to take action and send an email instead of potentially having to make a phone call.

All in all I thought this was a great example of a transactional email that encourages your customers to take an action that could save your business money in the long run. Are you doing this?

Use Email Marketing to Get Reviews!

I received an email this week from CB2, a Crate and Barrel brand. It was interesting to me because they used an entire email marketing campaign to compel their recipients to give their products a review. If you give a review you'll be entered to win $1000 shop card at CB2. I think this is a great use of an email campaign.

I went to their site and I found that they have an area on most of the product pages where you can post a review for each product. The only potentially negative issue is that CB2 seems to have control over these reviews so the reviewers may question if they are "filtering" them. For some reason I doubt that they are, but we just don't know.

All in all, a great idea of how to use email marketing to get people talking about you.  Hey CB2, get bold! I found you on Yelp, a review site, where you get some pretty good reviews. Next time why not include other ways in your email campaigns for people to review you? At VerticalResponse we asked users to post reviews to Yelp and our Facebook Fan Page as well as Twitter. If there's a problem, we know it pretty quick and can work to fix it. Transparency is good!

Do you have any experience with using email marketing to get reviews? Chime in!

A Customer Experience Worth Talking About

I recently visited a neighborhood business, the Brickhouse, a great little restaurant here in the Bay Area. As I looked around this fun joint, I instantly got a sense of the personality of the owners and what it is that they care about. I started to think about all of the ways this particular business marketed themselves not through advertising, but through a great customer experience and word of mouth marketing. Let's look at a few things I noted and see if there are any ways to make use of them with your own business.

Do You Have a Story?

This business talks about the owner who makes a pilgrimage every year to Alaska to catch the salmon himself. The Wagyu beef is right off of his family's farm. The Bavarian beer was chosen by the owners while they were in Bavaria. They promote this story prominently on their large chalkboard menu.

Question: Do you have a story about your passion for running your business? Promote it in any materials you display and on your website. Telling your story to your customers can make them feel closer to your business and also spread some great word of mouth.

Is Your Place Fun?

This is definitely a laid back restaurant, with mismatched antique furniture, and very inviting with bizarre pictures and items on display. For instance, they have a bicycle hanging from the ceiling that has two seats and two sets of handlebars going in opposite directions. It's subtle but funny.

They have a "Question of the Day" chalkboard with fun and random questions that people can answer and get something free. Makes for some great conversations.

They promote their "Big Ass Burger" which won an award for Best Burger in the Bay Area which always gets people talking.

The people that work there are super nice, laid back and funny.

Question: Can your business be fun? Injecting some fun into your business can be easy and if you've got a physical location, and could get people in the door.

Do You Promote Green?

This business proudly displays a Green award they won, and tout on the menu that they only buy local and sustainable products. This makes the patrons feel like they're helping the community and the planet.

They use chalkboards for menus. It's great for making up-to-the-minute changes and great for the environment.

Question: What can you do in your business to go green? If you are a green company, make sure you tell the world. People like doing business with companies that help our environment.

Do You Promote Your Business?

This business has coffee punch cards at the register, and after 10 cups purchased they give you a free coffee.

They promote their website in their window.

They prominently display a sandwich board out front to let passers by know that the place is open and any specials or entertainment they're serving up that day.

They have free WiFi, except for their busy lunch hour when they ask that you either come back later, or better yet, buy lunch!

Question: Will your business allow you to monetize every inch of the space? Look around and find new areas where you can be displaying something new. Cross sell one product with another in your location or on your site. You might find that you could double your sales.

You don't need to have a physical location to do what this restaurant is doing. Look at your business and make sure that every time you can interact with a customer, you're making the most of it.

29 Ways to Collect Email Addresses for Your Business

There are a ton of ways to get people to sign up for your email marketing offers. I've put together a list for you to read, so you know all of the ways you can be growing your list.

1. Put an offer on the back of your business cards to get people to sign up for your newsletter.
2. Tradeshows - Bring a clipboard or sign-up book with you to tradeshows and ask for permission to send email to those who sign up.
3. Include a newsletter sign-up link in your signature of all of your emails.
4. Send an opt-in email to your address book asking them to join your list.
5. Join your local chamber of commerce, email the member list (if it's opt-in) about your services with a link to sign up to your newsletter.
6. Host your own event - Art galleries, software companies (one here has a party every quarter and invites the neighboring businesses), retail shops, consultants (lunch & learn) can all host an event and request attendees to sign up.
7. Offer a birthday club where you give something special to people who sign up.
8. Incentivize your employees - Give them $ for collecting VALID email addresses.
9. Giving something for free like a PDF? Make visitors sign up to your opt-in form before you let them download it.
10. Referrals - Ask you customers to refer you, and in exchange you'll give them a discount.
11. Bouncebacks – Get them back! - Send a postcard or call them asking for their updated email address.
12. Trade newsletter space with a neighboring business, include a link for their opt-in form and ask them to include yours in their newsletter.
13. SEO - Make sure you optimize your site for your keywords. You need to be at the top of the natural search when people are looking for your products or services.
14. Giveaways - Send people something physical and ask for their email address as well as their postal address.
15. Do you have a postal list without emails? Send them a direct mail offer they can only get if they sign up to your email list.
16. Include opt-in forms on every page on your site.
17. Popup windows - When someone attempts to leave your site, pop up a window and ask for the email address.
18. Include a forward-to-a-friend link in your emails just in case your recipient wants to forward your content to someone they think will find it interesting.
19. Include a forward-to-a-friend on every page of your site.
20. Offer a community - Use Ning as your easy-to-set-up community and have your visitors interact and sign up for your newsletter.
21. Offer "Email only" discounts and don't use those offers anywhere but email.
22. Telemarketing - If you've got people on the phone, don't hang up until you ask if you can add them to your newsletter.
23. Put a fishbowl on your counter and do a weekly prize giveaway of your product - then announce it to your newsletter. Add everyone who put their card in on to your newsletter list.
24. Include an opt-in form inside your emails for those people who get your email forwarded to them.
25. Tradeshows - Collect business cards and scan them into a spreadsheet. Make sure you ask permission to send email to them, then mark the card.
26. Use Facebook - Host your own group and invite people to it, then post new links often. From time to time, post a link to sign up for your newsletter.
27. Use Facebook - Post the hosted link from your newsletter into Linked Items to spread the word.
28. Use Facebook - Include an opt-in form on your Facebook Fan page.
29. Use Twitter - Twitter the hosted link of your email campaign every time you launch.

If you've got any additional ideas, let's hear them!

How To Use Video in Email Marketing Campaigns

I have talked about creating videos for your business and your website in the past here but it's more important than ever for you to take advantage of video marketing in your business, especially in these tough times. If you've got a video clip of one of your customers talking about you, or your product it's a great way to showcase the video inside your email marketing campaigns and potentially boost response.

Why Embedded Email Still Has Challenges

Embedded email simply put means that when your recipient opens your email, it starts to play. Sounds like a marketing dream come true, doesn't it? It can play out to be more of a nightmare though since there are many technical issues surrounding embedded video.

First of all, ISPs that you send email through, don't like to accept video embedded in email. To get around this Anna Yeaman tells us how you can create an animated gif out of your video. However as Mark Brownlow points out it won't work in Outlook 2007 since it only displays the first frame. Also, there is no audio in an animated gif.

Insert the Image of Your Video

Displaying a video image in your email campaigns can be simple. We've heard that when businesses use a graphic of the video clip, then link off to where it's hosted, whether it's on YouTube or the business's website, they've increase response to their campaigns.

From a VerticalResponse customer:

"Here's a stat for you. Using video as part of my last VerticalResponse email campaign QUADRUPLED my click rate. Very powerful and compelling."
 David Cleary, www.davidcleary.net

You can either take a screenshot of the beginning of the video and insert the image into your email, or you can use the "embed" code that YouTube provides you and insert it into your email, it has the nifty "play" button already there. That's how I included our video below in this blog post.

At VerticalResponse we're starting to include our video tutorials in our welcome email campaigns, we'll post how they're doing. We use customer testimonials, video tutorials, interviews we've had, recorded webinars and employees giving presentations.

Are you using video in your email campaigns? What is your experience?

Have a Great Risk-Free Offer & Get Great Word of Mouth

Having an offer for your products or services that is truly risk-free might be just the ticket you need to really make a difference in your email marketing campaigns. To get a risk-free offer off the ground, you'll need to assess everything from your refund and return policy, your shipping policies, your customer service and how your policies are implemented. An awesome risk-free offer can really spark some great word-of-mouth.

If you sell a product that needs to be shipped to your customer, a really great risk-free offer encompasses free shipping, a generous time window your customers can return the product, a short turnaround in processing their refund and you picking up the tab for shipping the return back to you.

Here are a few companies that do it right and get positive word of mouth as a result.

Zappos - They have a 365 day return policy and they'll pay for the shipping back to them. They even have a handy way for you to print your UPS label from the Zappos site!

Nordstrom - You need to have your receipt, or your item tag but you can even return worn items without a problem. They make it easy to return items purchased on the web as well as in-store. But, they also monitor offenders.

Walgreen's - Walgreen's lets you return makeup you purchased within a month if it didn't suit you. I'm sure they got a lot more in sales then they ever would in returns.

However, do it wrong and you could really spark negative word of mouth like the Video Professor. On his TV ads he boasts a free trial of one of his eBay software program (pay $6.95 s&h) AND he'll give you $50 if you can show that you've successfully bought or sold something on eBay. Sounds too good to be true huh? Turns out there is a pretty big list of restrictions, a 30-day window which sounds impossible to make (they mail you a form to fill out which takes about 15 days to get). People sounded off.

And avoid adding tons of restrictions like restocking fees and different time limitations by the type of product customers buy like I saw at Best Buy. It could also spark some negativity and make people not want to purchase from you if they think they have to jump through hoops to return something.

If you have a great risk-free offer and you follow through on it, it really can generate good will and positive word of mouth. Do it wrong and it'll bite ya!

Cool Tool RoundUp - Run Your Entire Business Online

From time to time I come across some really great tools I think small businesses can really benefit from. I've got a great tool for you to check out today, WorkingPoint, a free online tool that enables you to run your entire business online.

What I like about WorkingPoint is that it's free forever for one user. Free=affordable :-) It even includes the kitchen sink: online invoicing, bookkeeping, contact management, inventory tracking, expense tracking, financial reports, and much more. What's more is that you don't need to be a bookkeeper to get up and running. The folks over at WorkingPoint have made it very easy to understand your business finances. And it's great for any small business whether you're a freelancer, consultant, retailer, service provider or distributor, their flexible system will work for you.

Check out WorkingPoint today to run your business.

Using Industry Awards to Effectively Grow Your Business

If you're running a small business today, congratulations! You should be proud that you're  keeping the economy going. You should also give yourself a huge pat on the back for surviving and thriving. One of the easiest and most inexpensive ways of giving yourself that pat on the back is to apply for industry awards that you could be eligible for.

Why Should You Take Your Time To Apply for Industry Awards?

Great question, because in many cases it takes a bunch of time to answer a lot of questions to win your award. But I will tell you, it can work well to help grow your business. Many times awards are judged by a third party who validates that what you do is worthy of an award, and ensures that what you provide meets their requirements. So who are they to judge? Well they may be your peers in your industry, they may be your customers and they may be leaders of your industry association. Either way, it's the validation that counts. Why?

• Your customers like to be associated with a winning company.
• When prospects see that you've won an award it could sway them to you instead of your competition because they may get a sense that you are a "real" and "quality" entity.
• People that visit your business see your awards on your front door and on your website. This lends credibility to your biz.
• Winning awards can improve employee morale. Employees like to thump their chests and tell customers why you won a particular award. If they're selling your product, it makes their job easier because of this "stamp of approval".
• Awards can get you quality employees. If you're voted as having quality products, a quality site or storefront, people are drawn to this because they want to work for the winner.

How Should You Market Your Awards?

Make them prominent in your business - Whether you have cubicle farm or a retail store, make sure that your employees and customers see your awards by framing them, displaying them on a stand or a sticker on your window. It doesn't have to be hokey, just prominent.

"Award-Winning" - You can include these words in your brochures, your site and any press you do that you have an "award-winning" company. Be proud!

Use Award Logos - Use the logos in your online advertising, put them on your direct mail pieces, include them on your business cards, display them on your home page, and include them in your bio or on your about page. The more prominent you make them the better you'll look.

Press Release - Announce to the world that you've won your award. Then make sure you publish the news out to social media outlets like Twitter & Facebook.

Email Marketing - Include the logos and the story about your award in your newsletters.

Awards are a way to gain recognition for you, your business and your website. They bring prestige and more traffic to you, and they enhance your credibility as a business. Check out your industry award possibilities today.

Grab an Email Address With a Popup Window

If you're using best practices like Branders, you've got an email marketing newsletter sign-up form on every page of your website. You collect email addresses at your counter before someone leaves and you ask for their email address over the phone before you hang up. You even ask for a business card with an email address on it when you meet someone. 

So why let someone leave your website without asking just one last time for their email address? Consider the amount of time and effort you spend on getting visitors to your website. Don't let them leave without one more request.

Popup windows can be seen at as annoying because of the flood of advertising we've been getting from them over the years. Frankly there are a lot of people who have blocking software to prevent them from getting popups so you won't get those people to sign up. However, think about it this way; your visitor came to your site for a reason, they were interested in something you have to sell, manufacture or offer. It's not necessarily out of place for them to see a request for them to join your list.

Branders does a great job at exit popups by giving their visitors an incentive of $50 off the first order and free samples.

At VerticalResponse we get 5-10 people signing up for our email marketing newsletter per day by this method. 

Talk to your web designer today. If you use VerticalResponse for email marketing, we have free opt-in forms they can display in a popup window. Then watch your list grow!