VerticalResponse Email Marketing Blog for Small Business

How Small Businesses Are Planning to Spend on Marketing in 2010 - Part 2 of Our Survey is Here!

Drum roll please… the second part of our survey to 831 small businesses is here! We released the results on 2010 marketing spend for areas such as email marketing, social media, online banner ads and search engine marketing. You may be interested to check out the results and see how your business compares to what others are doing.

Key findings from this survey include:

• Well over two-thirds of respondents plan to increase their use of email marketing and social media in 2010.
• Email marketing continues to prove its worth to small businesses, as 96.2% plan to use email marketing in 2010.
• Small businesses are getting more comfortable with social media. When reporting marketing plans for 2010, 35.1% of all respondents say they plan to increase their use of social media by a little and 33.3 % plan to increase it by a lot.
• Over half—or 54.2 percent—of all respondents stated they won’t do online banner advertising in 2010, and 23.8% of respondents won’t do search engine marketing such as Google, Yahoo and Bing next year.
• Not surprisingly 79.6% are not planning to use TV, and 72.7% of small businesses will not use radio advertising.

Check out the full survey here and see how your business matches up!

Building Your Email List - Opt-In vs. Opt-Out, Which Way Should You Go?

Many businesses have had the opt-in vs. opt-out discussion at one time or another. The question asked: do you get visitors to take an action to sign up for your newsletter or offers? This is considered opt-in. Or should you email people that never signed up nor have done business with you and tell them they can unsubscribe if they don't want to hear from you? This is known as opt-out.

At VerticalResponse we have always recommended that you get people to opt-in to your list or only email those who have done business with you. You usually wind up with higher open and click rates, and lower bounce and unsubscribe rates, which gives you a better return on your email marketing campaigns. Generally if you use an opt-out method, it means that you've obtained a list or someone has sold you a list, and many times these lists have been built in an unethical way.

Here is a perfectly great example of an opt-out email campaign I recently received from a company called OptInteractive, totally unsolicited.

Dear Janine,

Welcome to our email program!

You are now among a select group of professionals who receive emails packed with product news, information and offers.

Our hope is that you will enjoy this email program and take advantage of its offerings. If, however, you do not wish to receive emails from us, please click on the unsubscribe link below. Keep in mind that you can unsubscribe at any time in the future as well.

Thanks,

Your Friends at Dunhill Interactive

Please click Unsubscribe  from receiving future emails.

Lesson: The "from label" reads "Opinteractive", but they signed the email "Dunhill Interactive" so I'm not sure which company (neither of whom I have an affiliation with), is sending me the email.  And "OptIn-teractive" sounds more like "OptOut-teractive". They probably scraped my email address from the blog or a website somewhere and added me to this list.

Again, we don't recommend you start to build an e-relationship by force-feeding recipients your messaging and telling them they can opt out or unsubscribe. By doing it the right way, you're brand will be protected.

Seeing Merge Fields in Our Thank You Notes?

This morning we sent out a Thank You email to our customers. We made a mistake with our merge field when we inserted our image. Even though we use our product every single day we still make mistakes. Sorry for our error. And thank you for your understanding and letting us know what you saw. The essence of the message is still true, a heartfelt thanks for your business this season.

Motivate Employees to Get Email Addresses - Just Not This Way

I just read an article about a restaurant owner who wrote a nasty email (careful, this contains SEVERE  language, folks) to his employees for not collecting email addresses. In fact, if they don't collect at least 20 emails a week, he's planning on fining them $100, and if they don't collect at least 20 emails in 2 weeks they're fired. This was reported by an anonymous tipster, but the owner does admit sending it.

Now I applaud that he sees the value in email marketing, however he's crossing the line by his actions and demeanor (in my opinion).

Why not do it in a positive fashion, after all, email marketing will get customers in the door and stressing to your staff that the people who will benefit will be them, might just work in your favor. Here are a few more constructive ideas:

• For every valid email address your staff gets give them $2.
• If they get 20 valid email addresses they get a kicker of $50.
• Have a contest with your staff, whoever gets a certain number of emails wins a prize like cash or a nice bottle of bubbly.
• Motivate your customers to give you their email addresses by having "email only" offers in the bill holder. Test different offers to see what works like a free birthday dinner up to $xx, or free appetizers on their next visit. This gives your employees a reason to ask the customers for their addresses. Giving up something of value to get it in return can go a long way.
• At the host stand or checkout, display a business card bowl or a sign up book, then have the host stop people on the way out the door and tell them about "email only" offers.
• Give an automatic 5% VIP discount for any customer who is on the email address list.

These are just a few positive ways to get your staff excited about collecting email addresses instead of forcing it down their throats. If you've got any ideas of your own, please comment!

Your Social Media Planning Checklist

Just like we created our Checklist for Email Marketing Campaigns, we created this Checklist for Integrating Social Media & Email. It's simple and great checklist for you to keep on track with your social media duties, we use it here ourselves. Cheers!

A Friendly Suggestion to Our Competitor

I'm all about getting new business, but we've tried to steer clear of going after our competitor's customers because we think there are enough businesses out there that need  email marketing services. I will also say I don't think it's wrong to go after a competitor's customer either. We have a ton of respect for many of our competitors and find them very cool and friendly. So as a friendly competitor I have a suggestion for iContact: If you're going to target our customers, at least spell our company name correctly. Best of luck at Dreamforce! 

29 Great B2B Subject Lines

With a business-to-business offering, you might be trying to get your customers to sign up for a free trial, get them to an event, a webinar or give them information on how to be better at something or use your products or services better. Here are a few examples of some great B2B subject lines I dug up that you can test out for your business today.

How to Leverage [your product] in Your Business

Save Money and Look Like a Star to Your Boss

How to Impress Your Cranky CFO - Save $1000

Increase Your ROI by [xx]%, Guaranteed

How to make it onto your buyer's short list

Complimentary Webinar: [insert webinar name]

Now you can do even more with your [xxxx]

Should your company outsource [insert thing to outsource here]?

Breakfast & Secrets for How to [insert problem you solve or product you sell]

Success Tip: 5 Ways to a Better [xxxx]

Register Today: [inert name of event] Nov. 5 2009

Entry deadline fast approaching

New White Paper: Best Practices for [Insert problem and solution here]

Success Tip #1: [Insert Tip Headline Here]

A gift employees and clients will love: [Insert gift name here]

Extended for a Day: Get Free Shipping Through Friday

Your Weekly Alert: [insert topic here]

Hear Exclusive Research Presented on [insert what your event is about] - Register Now!

Inside: [hot topic in your newsletter you think will get the most opens]

5 Ways to Maximize Holiday Sales

Save $200: [insert event here] Early Bird Registration Ends [insert date here]

Specific ones I think are good and why:

Marketing on a Tight Budget - Part 1 - Hits a pain point and makes it seem like there is even more information to help me, on its way.

Countdown to the Awards Gala: Reason #5 to Attend - This company did a series of 7 email campaigns in a row, to get people excited.

The Venture Capitalist Industry Isn't Broken: VatorNewsletter - Here they started with the hot topic in the front of the subject line and it was somewhat controversial.

Secure Your SaaS Application (White paper Included) - I like that they tell you there is something tangible in it for you right in the subject line.

Cognos Training: 50% Discount - Year-End Budget - I LOVE the way they use Year End Budget because in many companies if you don't spend the budget you have this year, you won't get it again next year. This also works well with "Quarter-End Budget"

Thank You From Dice - This was just a nice thank you for your business with a huge discount to get customers coming back.

Get a $30 Gift Card for 30 Minutes of Your Time - It was to take a demo of a new product.

Frustrated with Graphics in Microsoft Office? - This company sells a product to make it all better and they got to a real pain point for people.

Subject lines are so important since it's the reason your recipients are going to look to that to decide if they want to open your email. If you've got some B2B subject lines that have worked for you in the past, comment on the post, we'd love to know them.

The Results Are In! State of Small Business Survey Part 1; Healthcare & Hiring

You may remember that we’ve been asking our small business customers to fill out a survey on healthcare, hiring, marketing and funding plans—and today we’re sharing the first set of results with you; how small businesses feel about healthcare reform and hiring. As the government debate on the hill continues to be covered in most of the top newspapers, our survey reveals what 831 small business owners think about a proposed healthcare offering, and other areas that matter most to their businesses. A huge thanks to all the VerticalResponse customers who took some time out of their day to add in their five cents!

One of our customers even chimed in for the VerticalResponse press release. Theron Kabrich, CEO, San Francisco Art Exchange says “A public offering of healthcare unburdens small businesses and entrepreneurs alike, as it allows them to focus on core parts of their business such as innovations and new products. It also removes an unfair competitive advantage for small businesses when trying to attract the best employees, and levels the playing field.”

We regularly give our small business customers a pat on the back for surviving and thriving in this economy, and recently President Obama mentioned that the small business sector has created 65 percent of all new jobs in America over the past 15 years. However, the VerticalResponse survey does show that smaller businesses may take longer to recover from the current economic downturn, as only 11% of businesses with 1-10 employees are planning on new hires in the next three months.

Read the rest of the story here, and stay tuned for some other findings in the State of Small Business Survey. Interested in surveying your own customers? Check out how we did it here.

9 Cool Things to Throw in Your Retail Packaging That Get People Talking About You

Black Friday is right around the corner, but there's still time to make the most of this holiday retail season. If you haven't thought about how to go the extra mile for extreme customer satisfaction, now is the time. You've got an opportunity in your shipments to make a fantastic impression, so why not include a little something extra, especially in an economy where so many businesses are focused on scaling back? It doesn't cost you much and this little bit could go a long way in getting your customers to come back again and again.

So here is a list of ideas you can put to work now, and it doesn't have to be just for the holiday season.

1. Handwritten Thank You Notes - Gilt does a great job of this and even though it's not handwritten, it's a very nice gesture.

2. A Funky Hat - Wine.com included this very cool hat inside their shipping package along with nifty bottle neckers for you to take tasting notes on.

3. Candy - Who doesn't love a package of M&Ms or some Jelly Belly's? Just make sure it won't melt and ruin the product you're trying to ship! A great idea I heard from Andy Sernovitz, author of Word Of Mouth Marketing.

4. Samples - Do you sell products that you are able to give smaller samples of? Put samples of other products in the box when you ship. You're likely to see your customers come back and buy more from you the next time.

5. Get calendars for next year printed with your logo, url and contact information included. 

6. I got a book shipped from Andy Sernovitz, his new one coming out is really great, and in the packaging he included a bookmark with his info printed on it, a smiley face button and packages of yummy bacon salt! It had nothing to do with the book, but it got a group of us talking and tasting!

7. Logo'd Bag - Drawstring backpacks are great for the gym and who isn't using grocery bags these days? I saw both of them at Branders for about $2. You can't have enough of these!

8. Post-It Notes - Who doesn't love them? Have some printed with your information on them. I saw them at 4Imprint for 47¢ each.

9. Fun Games - I once got a package with a whoopie cushion in it! Ok, you don't have to go that crazy but what about a fun keychain puzzle, temporary tattoo, or a frisbee? It always gets people talking and puts a smile on their faces.

It doesn't have to cost much to go above and beyond, remember, it's the thought that counts. What are your ideas for this retail season?

Contests & Awards for Small Businesses

Following on my post Using Industry Awards to Grow Your Business, I found a list of great awards for small businesses. Check out Ramon Ray's SmallBizTechnology.com. Even though the list is not industry specific, there are some great awards in there for small businesses in general.