VerticalResponse Email Marketing Blog for Small Business

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!

Is Your Data All Over The Place? Take Control!

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 separate lists, 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. If it's ACT or Salesforce, make sure you don't add duplicate records, it could get messy. If it happens to be a spreadsheet, you might consider having customers in one sheet and non customers in another. And if you want to use VerticalResponse, you can do that too. We will de-duplicate on email address so make sure you include those. Any way you choose, make sure you consolidate your lists so you always have one data source to market to.

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.

Opt-In Forms - What Data Should You Collect?

The question about the "right amount of questions" to ask of people signing up to your opt-in form is a tough one to answer, we get it all the time. Then we have to give the lame answer "that depends." But it's true, it does depend. It depends on what you really need for your business. There are varying degrees of data collection methods, here I've attempted to outline a few.

Quantity

If your business relies on sheer quantity and "just ok" quality of email addresses then you might only ask for email address and maybe first name if you want to ever personalize your email marketing campaigns. For our own newsletter this is what we do here at VerticalResponse.

VR customer BetterWall asks for only the email address because they're going for quantity. They probably will try to convert their subscribers to purchasers at a later date.

Quality

If you need your email addresses to be quality and be "real" verified email address, than a double opt-in verification or a CAPTCHA can be used.

Postal Address - Some businesses need a full address because they'll be sending postal mail to them. If you do need this make sure to make it required so your visitor can't leave the form without filling it out. What's also great about getting a postal address is if your recipients email bounces you can send them a direct mail piece asking them to call you and update it.

If you're not going to be sending your recipients anything by mail but want to know their location, you might want to just ask for postal code. Then you can do free zip code lookups with tools like the ones Melissa Data provides.

Phone Number - Phone numbers can be especially important if you need to call your customers at any given point to confirm something. And just like gathering postal information, you can call them if their email bounces to get an update. Expect to get a percentage of people giving bogus information as well, but many won't especially if you give them the reason why you're asking for it.

Product Interest - We have many customers who want to market to their recipients by the product or service they have an interest in.

Duckhorn Vineyards does a great job at telling their visitors why certain fields are required and asks what varietals they'd like to receive information about.

Age - Asking for age, again depending on the business might be a bit tricky. One way around this is by having a birthday club where you give something to your registrant as a gift. It can be in the form of a discount or something free.

Danger Zone Data - Credit Card information, household income & gender can all be a bit personal and turn off your registrant especially if they're required. Expect a lot of bogus information here if you're asking for it, there are just too many scams going on online and people are generally afraid.

Testing

If you can set up two different opt in forms. For one month show the opt in form with less data required and count how many email addresses you collect. Then in the following month show the opt in form where you ask for more information. At the end of the two months compare the two for what your business needs are and see if you got more email addresses from one month to another and if asking for more information deterred visitors from signing up.

Got any ideas for collecting information that you've learned? Share!

Great Email List Building Ideas From a Presidential Candidate

I was watching the news today and one of the stories focused on what is a really amazing email marketing list building idea. Obama is going to announce by email or text message who his VP candidate choice is going to be first.

I had to find out more. When I went to Barack's site I was pleasantly shocked: I found that his entire home page was replaced with an email sign up form "Be The First To Know".

On the page that displays after you sign up with your email address, you're asked to tell a friend. On top of that when you text them to be added to the text list you're asked to "please forward". Great viral components. (Is "viral" still the term these days?) Frankly, I think they are doing a great job using every opportunity they come in contact to get voters to promote them.

How can you use this in your business? Here's an idea to test: when someone comes to your website display a splash page with an email newsletter sign up form. It would be even better if you had something great you're going to announce and like Obama, you give them the opportunity to get the news first. Make sure you also include a "Skip This Page To Go Directly To The Store" link so you don't lose or annoy anyone. Do it for a few days and see if it has an affect on sales or your list size.

If this is too crazy of an idea for your business then you might want to keep your home page and apply this test when your visitor clicks to a sub-page.

Here are other sites that are doing similar things: Wilson Web (stay on the page for 5 seconds) and MarketingSherpa.

If you're doing this with success, let us know!

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?

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!

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!

Non Profit Confirmation Page - Ask to Add Donors to Your List

I recently donated to the American Heart Association. On their confirmation page right under the receipt information was an area asking me if I wanted to be added to their list.

I thought it was a great way to ensure that donors have opted into receiving offers from them. They clearly outline to donors what they're going to get and they even tell you how often - monthly.

You might want to include an opt-in form on your own confirmation pages. Whether you're a non profit or you're selling a product, if your customers or donors just had a great experience with you, they'll more than likely opt in. By the way, needing a username and password is really only necessary if they create an "account" with you. Many times an email address, name and a few other pieces of information should suffice.

Any other ideas on growing your non-profit list?

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!

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 ;-)