VerticalResponse Email Marketing Blog for Small Business

Writing Holiday Copy That Sells

It's going to be tough to get noticed in the sea of emails that your customers are going to be getting this holiday season. Couple that with a plunging economy and you've got yourself a bit of an uphill battle. So what are some of the tricks of the copywriting trade for your upcoming email marketing campaigns that you can use to get noticed?

Sprinkle Your Message with The Holidays - First of all make your messages a bit more festive. Be careful: some of your recipients might take offense to you wishing them a "Merry Christmas" when they celebrate Hanukkah, but the reality is that most won't. To get around offending anyone my advice is to be a bit more generic in your well wishing unless of course you do know the exact makeup of your list. Sticking to "happy holidays" or "season's greetings" is probably your best generic bet while still conveying good wishes.

Include some nice holiday images in your email to make it even more festive. Images of nicely wrapped gifts, candles, pinecones, snow scenes, a wreath, snowflakes and candy canes are nice additions. If you'd like to call out all holidays then you can use images like Santa, Kwanzaa candles, a Hanukkah menorah, and a Christmas tree. Now that's festive!

Holiday Offers - Now it's time for the fun stuff. What is going to really get the attention of your recipient? In this economy you can bet that your recipients are really going to be looking for deals now more than ever so make sure you give them what they want!

• Top 10 Under $20, Under $30, Under $40 - This is a real time saver for your recipient in a busy holiday season. Many people know what they want to spend and want to know what the hot products are this season. Giving them quick lists will get you noticed.
• Free shipping - This is a great offer especially for comparison shoppers. Even if you are slightly priced higher than a competitor, more often than not people will choose you if you're willing to ship free.
• 10% off for early bird shoppers - Why not start the season off early and send an early bird email to your customers in late October? Make sure you include an expiration date and stick to it, then you'll train people for your next early bird offer.
• Free gift with purchase - For those comparison shoppers who see your offer vs. your competitor's, if you're giving more value you'll likely get the sale. Why not even combine this with free shipping? You'll be a real hit.
• Buy one get one free - Call it the "Holiday Recession Sale" and offer two for the price of one.

VerticalResponse just published a whitepaper with even more ideas for offers, subject lines and more. So download it free today.

Subject Line Copy - This is Not Spam!

One of our Marketing Programs Managers Jess came into my office to ask if I'd received an email from one of our Partner companies. She was waiting for the email so that I could transfer "ownership" of the program over to her. I'd have to log-in from an email I got and do it myself.

"I don't recall getting an email in my inbox, let me check," I told her. I looked and didn't find it. "Wait, let me check my Junk Folder," I said. I looked for about 1 minute and there it was. Pretty important email for my junk folder I thought. Why did it go there?

 

Names have been removed to protect the innocent.

Were their hearts in the right place? You bet. But probably NOT a good idea to include the word "SPAM" in the subject line.

Just a friendly recommendation to all.

Crate & Barrel is Missing the Boat - Content Can Be King!

Sounds harsh huh? I don't think harsh enough actually. Look, I like the ole' C&B (especially the all new CB2) but I think they could be doing a better job. How?

I got the new Crate & Barrel catalog in the mail the other day. Cool! I like dreaming about outdoor living (cuz it is NOT happening here in chilly San Francisco!). They've got some really great pictures of a picnic scene with sandwiches and wine, then a great dining set with dishes on the table, then a nice weber grill with some skewers on a tray, and even a nice shot of some peppers frying on a grill pan. I even clicked on Summer Quenchers because I was sure that  headline would surely bring some quenching recipes. Nope.

What really got me going this fine morning was that there is a complete absence of any recipes that might go well with grilling, with any of their pots and pans, an absence of how really delicious summer food looks set up on a table and really the lack people in any shot.

C&B, Williams Sonoma is cleaning your clock. I hopped over to the WS site and they've got a whole section on Recipes. In the Recipe tab I search on "Roaster" because I wanted to know what I could Roast and I was presented with 74 recipes! Then I clicked around and even found Video Recipes on how to use a Weber and make Coffee Rubbed Prime Rib. I'm sold. I might even need that Weber Grill and some utensils too!

My point? In this situation content can sell the product. C&B has all the essentials to be able to do this but they don't pull it across the finish line.

Other situations that might lend themselves to content driven emails, websites and communications? What is your story around your product?

Wineries - Wines offer another great case for pairing varietals with food recipes, but you also might think about featuring the story of the winery or the passion of your winemaker.

Jewelry - Offer the story of the stones you use in your pieces or a story about how you began making jewelry.

Cars - Mini Cooper does a nice job offering up the History of the Mini as well as a community for the Mini owners and games like Word of the Day, fun Motoring Citations where you can write up your friends.

Retail - Due Maternity has celebrity fashion pages, blogs, a great marketing tool "Look Who's Prego" and nifty tools like Create Your Own Calendar, Countdown Clock and Wish List, all designed to sell more product.

Home Depot does a great job with content around selling their products, especially for the "Do-it-Yourself-ers".

Fitness Centers/Equipment - Write about an exercise of the month with a piece of gym equipment that you sell or your center offers.

Bars/Restaurants - Offer up your "secret" recipe for a popular drink or dish. Don't worry, no one can do it better than you, but they'll sure have fun trying!

Non Profit Organizations - You all have stories to tell about your cause. VR customers Street Schools and Children Today do a great job at this.

You can use content either very simply (a recipe) or more difficult (a game) but any way you do it it can help you sell more. Hey, I'd keep the C&B catalog around more if it had some good content in it and who knows maybe even buy a Roaster!

Are you using content to drive more sales? Tell us how!

How NOT to Write a Subject Line

I get a ton of email, as I'm sure you all do. I keep up reading it every day but I don't always get to answer every day. My mission this year is to get better at it. So the other day I was on said mission and I got this email that really got me going:

Obviously my reader thought it was junk mail.

The subject line is what really got me. "Interior Design". I'll admit I'm pretty interested in that topic. I opened it because I meet a lot of people so "Jessica Thompson" may have been someone I've discussed this topic with. What I found was a spam email about how to get to the 1st page of Google.

Argh. Not only would I never do business with a company that tries this massive trickery, but it's illegal, against the Can-SPAM law and could get this sender sued.  Other than that it's just not good business. Don't do this. I beg of you.

Day 2 - MarketingSherpa Email Summit - Offers

Richard on his last day at the Email Summit:

I’m just really beginning to notice how crowded it is here at the MarketingSherpa Email Summit here in Miami.  There are hundreds and hundreds of people.  I can only assume that the restaurant / bar hosting tonight’s after-party must be pretty huge.  I hope they have a dance floor large enough to contain both me and all these people together.  A normal dance floor can barely contain me alone.

What these sessions (the first hosted by Liz Bullock of Dell and the other by Tara Zanecki of Workshare, Inc.) conveyed above all else is the massive amount of variables you can tweak when testing.  Note that if you haven’t done any testing in the past, the first thing you’ll want to learn how to do is use our list segmentation tool to do A/B split testing. (Basically it's testing two things and cutting your list in two equal parts to do so.) We’ve done a webinar on list building and segmentation - hosted by myself and Erin Jacobs, our Director of Marketing - and we also have a short tutorial showing how to put the tool to use.  I’d recommend checking both of them out.

To quickly sum up what both hosts discussed:

Liz has very little control over the pages on the Dell website (there are apparently more than 4 million pages on the Dell site, which is beyond ridiculous), and a request to have something changed can take months.  The only thing she can directly change is the landing page she uses for deals offered to current and potential Dell Small Business customers.  As a result she wants to make sure her landing pages are optimized to a point that they perform better than any other page on the Dell site. 

She did a variety of tests which involved splitting her lists between current customers and subscribers who had not yet become customers.  She discovered that the Dell Deals page, which lists several computer deals Dell has going at an given time, did better than the landing page among non-customers and that the "Configurator" page, which allows site visitors to configure the best system for them, did better among current customers.

To improve things she removed clutter on the landing page and reduced the number of options visitors were given to navigate away from the page. She also adjusted the layout of the page and added a quick link to schedule a call with a Dell Sales Rep to answer questions.  The page then did better than both the configurator and Dell Deals pages (this improvement in performance took a lot of changes and testing).  She continues to make changes and test those changes to try and perform even better. 

Tara faced an issue in which a long lived version of Workshare’s software was being phased out and replaced by a new piece of software they’d created.  She needed to convey this information to as many customers as possible (meaning those customers needed to open and read the email they received) to make sure they understood why it was being phased out and how easy it would be to make the change to the new software. 

She tested two versions of the email: one that was fairly short (a bit less than a page), somewhat generically salesy, and to the point, and another that was personalized with an actual employee’s name, was written in a more personal style as if it was coming from that employee, and was quite long (three pages) in order to explain what was happening.

Though general best practices would call for a shorter email to perform better, the longer, heavily personalized email performed significantly better.  Though this performance was almost certainly helped by the personalization, it still shows that a longer email can perform better with the right audience if it’s providing them the value and information they’re looking for.

That does it for day two.  Now I’m off to the networking party!  I’m planning to walk, through Miami’s downtown?       

Day 2 - MarketingSherpa Email Summit - Copywriting

From Richard at the Email Summit: Day 2 here in Miami and I’ve already entered every single possible prize drawing at all the booths.  I’m hoping to win big!  I’ve also discovered that the younger MarketingSherpa employees sometimes call each other "sherpas" as in, “you are such a sherpa!”  I think I’m going to start calling everyone at VerticalResponse “responders” to show I’m just as cool as the sherpa people.

The best presentation I’ve seen today was by Jeff Cram of ISITE design, and it was called the Rise of the Un-Newsletter.  He showed, by talking about his own company’s newsletter, how putting a lot of effort and creativity into a newsletter can have a huge impact on how customers, potential customers, and even your own employees see your company.

Before I talk about his presentation I have to mention that he’s from Boston and put on his first slide that he’s a fanatical Red Sox fan.  Is every former or current resident of Boston legally obligated to say this?  I’ve never seen a presentation held by a Boston resident in which the Red Sox were not mentioned at least once.  I’d love to see someone mix it up by saying they’re a Bruins fanatic or that they can’t get enough of Boston College Lacrosse.

Up until two years ago, ISITE put very little thought into their newsletters.  They tried to send them out once a month, but were closer to every six weeks and were still inconsistent with that.  They sent out a plain letter from their president which, based on Jeff’s short description, I’d call roughly as dry and boring as a Terms of Service agreement.  Their open rates were next to terrible, and Jeff’s own friend told him he could no longer bring himself to read the newsletter.

They fixed that problem, and here’s two of the key ways they did it:

They became more consistent with their delivery.  Instead of continuing to shoot for a monthly delivery and failing, they started delivering their newsletter every Full Moon.  As Jeff said, if subscribers “look up in the sky and see the full moon, they know the email is coming.”   This doesn’t mean you need to start delivering your newsletters on the Ides of March or sometime equally as quirky, but setting a standard time to deliver your company newsletters is a good idea.

They put more thought, effort and personality into their newsletter, and took it from a “Letter from the President” format to a true newsletter with lots of information that’s relevant to their subscribers, along with jokes and pop quizzes (which worked for their audience).  As Jeff put it, “Every email is a brand interaction.” When you send an email or newsletter out one of the main goals should be to reinforce and strengthen the image you want your company to project.  Again, this doesn’t mean you have to make your email flashy or funny.  It just means you should steer away from a cookie cutter newsletter.  If your website provides detailed, boring information to your users and they love that, then you should keep providing them what they love.

Off to some more sessions!  My next post will be on some testing and optimization sessions I attended earlier today.

Injecting Humor Into Your Copy

Many of you know I like Woot.com, one deal, one day. It's simple, it's funny. But last week I actually went above a LOL, and guffawed (is that GOL?). I'm serious. The Woot-Off last week consisted of a bunch of products but one in particular caught my eye. Here's the exact copy selling what could have been a pretty boring product:

"HealthPro Wrist Blood Pressure Monitor  - No Wrist, No Reward

As far as I’m concerned, if you can’t mount a gadget on your wrist, it isn’t worth owning. You probably think you’re pretty “with it”, strutting around with that watch on, but I scoff. Like this: scoff! Oh, you say you’ve got a calculator on yours? Nice try, amateur. Get back to me when you’ve built a wrist-mounted DVD player, or webcam, or carbon-monoxide detector, or microwave. Perhaps then you’ll be worthy of my company.

So when my doctor told me my blood pressure was looking a little questionable, I knew I either had to find a wrist-mounted way to keep an eye on it, or die. There was no third option.

Don’t start making my funeral arrangements just yet. The HealthPro Compact Wristwatch-Style Blood Pressure Monitor keeps a close watch on my systolic and diastolic blood pressure readings just the way I like it: wrist-style. The Proper Position Indicator lets me know if I’ve got it on correctly, because anything worth wearing on your wrist is worth wearing right. And it saves up to 60 readings, so I can track my blood pressure history without recourse to non-wrist-mounted devices. Whew!"

I gotta tell ya, these days I stop by Woot just to read the copy. Is there anything wrong with injecting humor into your copy? I say heeeeaaaallllll no!

• Too Much Information! - These days you need to stand out in the crowded internet space. People don't like reading boring brochurish copy on the web, they can download your document for that.
• Time is Precious - Be quick, be snappy, talk to your users. These days Internet users almost expect that.
• Funny is Viral - Do people still use the word "viral" these days? I forwarded the Woot.com copy right to two of my colleagues, who were guffawing I'm sure as well. Nick, Josh, did you forward it to anyone?
  
• Anything Can Be Funny - Do you think your product, service, restaurant, or spa can't be funny? I challenge you to try. We put a bit of humor on our site and plan to do more. Here's a hidden chuckle from the VR site:
  
  Text-Only Email - So none of the border categories met your needs? You couldn’t find a suitable color scheme from the 16 million possibilities – maybe color is just not in the cards? No problem, we’ve got you covered with a Text-Only option.
  
  More utilitarian than flashy, simply add text content and do away with all those eye-catching things like logos, graphics, etc. Boring, whoops did we say that…moving on then…

Check out these big co.'s, they're even doing it:  Virgin Atlantic, JetBlue, Apple, Hammer&Coop (this one is the best, my "action name" is Juggernaut Pete!) 

BTW, if the Woot.com copywriter reads this, you've got yourself a job with VR if you want one.

Anyone got any sites you've seen lately that made you smile? Let's hear about them!

Newsletter Content for Real Estate Pros

It's so important for Real Estate professionals to keep in touch with prospective buyers and sellers especially when it comes to residential real estate. There are many choices out there when it comes to choosing an agent so continuously keeping on top of mind with a client is something you know you need to do. It's tough when your clients only think about buying or selling every year, 5 years, or longer!

Whether they're first-time buyers or have bought/sold before people are always interested in the market. They like to know what's going on with interest rates and what their house might be worth. They're also interested in you since either they're going to, or already have used you for a transaction. In many cases the biggest one of their lives.

So how do you keep in their minds?

Here are some ideas for a communications plan to your clients.

Calendar it out - Do you know your client's birthday or anniversary? How about the anniversary of when they bought their home? It's a nice gesture on your part to remember dates and send an email or card to them.

Holiday cards - Each year I get a holiday card from our agent. It usually has a great picture of his family. Makes us feel closer to him.

Homes that sold - Highlight other homes that have sold in the area. People always want to know what their home is worth. Who knows, they may have a magic number that you don't know about.

Transactions that you've done - Everyone wants to be associated with a winner! If you're doing well, your clients will think about you when it's time for their next transaction.

Event calendar - I've highlighted a few great examples of Real Estate marketing here. Why not do the same for your city or neighborhood?

Content - It's always tough coming up with content for your newsletter or website. I was looking around the web for content that Real Estate professionals could use in their email campaigns. Here are a few sights you might find helpful:

• EZine Articles - Here there are close to 50,000 expert authors sharing their best ezine articles that you can use, for free. I clicked on real estate and got a pretty exhaustive listing of articles in the following categories: Real Estate, Building a Home, Buying, Commercial Property, Condominiums, Investing, Land, Leasing/Renting, Mortgage Refinance, Moving/Relocating, Property Management and Selling. Phew!
• RealEstateABC.com - I thought this site was pretty amazing. You can get a ton of content for free, BUT for just $25/year you can get "personalized" mortgage calculators, home-selling content home buying content even a "What's your home worth" tool. I don't know if the $25 is worth it but seems like there is a bunch of free content you can use for joining as a "guest".

Hope these ideas work. Let me know if any of this was helpful. If I'm off the mark here tell me! Give more ideas.

Writing Your Email Newsletter - What Do You Have to Say?

When you're sitting in front of your computer looking at a blank canvas sometimes it can be daunting to get your email marketing newsletter off the ground. I know, it happens to me all the time. Where do you start? What do you have to say?

Here is a checklist you may want to refer to that hopefully get those newsletter creative juices flowin'.

Got Anything New? - Think about all of the things you want to notify people about. Do you have something new to announce? New store hours, new features, a new product? Include that as an article in your newsletter. If you've got a good relationship with your recipients they're going to want to know!

Got Any Advice? - Have you got a great piece of advice for your users? Do you possess knowledge that they've come to rely on? Any tips to offer to get them reading or perhaps a how-to to help them learn more? You'd be surprised how often your email gets read because your recipients don't want to miss out on getting some information that might help them in some way.

Got Any Stories to Tell? - If you have a story about an experience that is relevant to your recipients or maybe another recipient's story is relevant publish as an article. VerticalResponse highlights a user case study from time to time outlining how other users can be successful too! We've also seen wineries talk about how a particular wine was made, we've seen stories about the jewelry designer and how they got their start, we've even read stories about a day in the life of a dog at doggie-day care!

Got Any Content? - We have many restaurants that publish their sought-after recipes, Realtors are great at including mortgage rates or publishing local events, wineries write about fantastic food pairings, clothing retailers include celebrity sightings of clothing they sell and businesses selling to business include research articles that support their messages. There are so many ways to include content in your own newsletter!

Got Any Advertising? - So many of our users are able to send newsletters because of sponsorships. If someone is paying you to include their message in your newsletter why not give them a link with an image and some text. Make sure the advertisement is relevant to your business and your recipients.

Remember, put the most important article, the article that you think will get your recipient scrolling, "above the fold". Be sure to send yourself the email before you launch so that you'll see what it looks like in your reader and make adjustments accordingly.

What have you got to say in your email newsletters? What's working for you? Chime in!

A List of Subject Lines and Offers for the Holidays

The holidays are here and so are the scads of subject lines in my inbox.

I took a peruse and thought you might be interested in some we thought needed a bit of help and some we think are fabulous!

Below that is a listing of some generic subject lines you can take and use for your own business as well as a few industries I picked out specifically.  First let's start off with the basics...

Subject Line 101

• Not too long - 40-50 characters
• Don't repeat your from label, it's a waste of space
• Don't use all caps
• Don't overuse punctuation
• Don't abuse the word "Free"
• Most important information in the beginning

That said, let's see a few subject lines that need help.

Help Needed!

Nieman Marcus: FREE SHIPPING + The Gifting Event: Great gifts for everyoneAND YOU!

Too many caps, too long, too much punctuation weird spacing. This one hurts my eyes.

Banana Republic: Your Holiday Offer is Here + Men's Outerwear

What is the offer Banana?

Real Subject Lines We Like!

• Shutterfly: janine, 2 days to enjoy holiday cards on us
• RICHART Chocolate: Handmade French Truffles 2006
• Frontgate: Remember, Save 20% Site-wide at Frontgate.com
• Brookstone: Full-size authentic arcade games--just like you remember

Generic Subject Lines We Like

• Buy one, get two widgets
• Gift baskets under $45
• Gifts under $20 No S and H
• Holiday Daily: widgets under $20
• Customer faves under $30
• [Gift Certificate] $25 e-gift sent immediately
• Buy before Nov.30 get 20% off
• Order by 12/22, Holiday delivery guaranteed
• Buy a widget 10% goes to a cancer cure
• Stocking Stuffer Alert-Get a $5 gift card with purchase
• [Offline Specific] Invitation: Wine in-store Saturday the 22nd
• [Offline Specific] Last minute shoppers: Open until 9pm

Subject Lines for Salons or Day Spas for the Holidays

• Get Party-Ready Now - $35 for Mani/Pedi
• Holiday Rejuvenate - Spiced Scented Massage
• [Gift Certificate] Last minute shoppers: $35 Mani/Pedi day
• $20-$50 Gift baskets in stock

Subject Lines for Restaurants for the Holidays

• Have {COMPANY_NAME}’s holiday party with us
• Appetizers for you and 9 friends on us
• Last minute: Give a $50 gift card this season
• Take a shopping break, come in for a drink
• Bring this coupon in for a free appetizer with purchase
• Shop at Sally’s and get a drink at Harry’s

Subject Lines for Wineries

• Book now - 10 dates left for holiday parties
• Wine clubs: The gift that gives all year long
• Trio of wine under $50 with gift pack and card
• 40% holiday discount for wine club members
• Discounts and Free S&H for wine members
• 2005 Cab with our gift of Riedel wine glasses

Hopefully this helps, if you've got any ideas to contribute, bring 'em on!