VerticalResponse Email Marketing Blog for Small Business

Small Biz Marketing Events You Can't Afford to Miss!

As the director of lifecycle marketing at VerticalResponse, I'm often asked to speak at, or have members of my team speak at industry events. After presenting and attending many of these over the years, we've compiled a list of the most relevant and rewarding events for any small business and marketer.

February:

• Marketing Sherpa Email Summit - Las Vegas, NV 
• Email Evolution Conference - Hollywood, FL
• Technology For Marketing & Advertising - London, UK

March:

• 7th Annual Small Business Summit - New York City, NY
• SXSW
• Orange County's Largest Mixer - Los Angeles, CA

April:

• Ad:Tech - San Francisco, CA
• Nonprofit Technology Conference -  San Francisco, CA

May:

• Small Business Week - San Francisco, CA

June:

• Blog World & New Media Expo - New York City, NY

September:

• Content Marketing World - Columbus, OH
• Dreamforce - San Francisco, CA 

October:

• DMA 2012 - Las Vegas, NV

And, if travel isn't in your budget this year, you can also join us for our free webinars, which can be enjoyed from the comfort of your chair (no baggage fees or delayed flights necessary). Check out the lineup here. New webinars are announced each quarter and there are recorded versions here.

 

Posted by: Kim Stiglitz

Kim Stiglitz is the Director of Lifecycle Marketing at VerticalResponse. Connect with her on Twitter at @Stiggy1.

 

 

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Rockstar Takeaways from the 2011 Email Marketing Summit in Sin City

Last week three of VR's marketing managers attended the MarketingSherpa Email Summit 2011 in Las Vegas. The trio not only took on Sin City in style (they networked and socialized with other summit attendees at PURE Nightclub), but they aced the event and returned to San Francisco with heaps of new ideas to put into action for our marketing and social media strategies.

The best ideas are ones shared among friends, so here's a sampling of their takeaways that you can try for your business!

Megan Buell, Conversion Marketing Programs Manager (@MeganJane425)

I am always looking for creative ways to engage our newest users. The Email Summit gave me some inspiring ideas and reminded me to stick to the basics with my email marketing strategy.

Paint a Picture for Your Audience: At VerticalResponse, I am often trying to explain the individual benefits of VR to my audience, however at the Email Summit I noticed some companies taking it one step further by connecting with their audience on an emotional level. You may be wondering what I mean by this. By painting a picture that portrays the end result of using your product and how it's going to have an impact on your customers overall well being, you can help them visualize the true value of your product.
For example, at VR we offer email marketing to help small businesses grow. So I asked myself, why do our customers want to grow their small business? The most likely answer, because they want to be successful, they want to be able to take their family on a nice summer vacation, buy that sports car they've always wanted or just simply not worry about paying the next bill in their mailbox. That's the picture I want to paint for my recipient. What picture do you want to paint?

Test the Basics: We talk a lot about testing at VR, but sometimes we forget it's the simple stuff that can really make a difference. In one case study I attended, the presenter tested the color of her call-to-action button and was able to increase engagement by a landslide. If you get the VR Buzz newsletter, you may have noticed green buttons instead of our usual blue this week; that's becuase we're testing blue vs. green buttons! We're still waiting to see the final results, but so far it's looking good for green!

Amber Ricchetti, Retention Marketing Programs Manager (@Gldnamby)

I attended the B2C track of the summit and got some great insight into engaging customers and building strong relationships. Here's what stood out the most to me:

Build Customer Relationships: Building customer relationships is always top of mind for me in my role at VR. That's why the Yahoo! case study, presented by Sue Coakley (Sr. Director, Customer Strategy, Yahoo!), really caught my attention. Coakley emphasized Yahoo!'s contact strategy, and it made me think - is our contact strategy working? In what ways can I improve it? As some food for thought, here are the "3 R's" of Yahoo!'s contact strategy which were presented to the group:

1. Build the Relationship (think about why it was started and continue to fulfill on that value)
2. Keep It Relevant (listen and don't assume what you don't know)
3. Respect Preferences (do all you can to retain permission to email)

Engage and Personalize: Mark Sniderman, Air Canada's North American Marketing Communications Manager, discussed the success of their award-winning webSaver email program. In this email loyalty program they aim to create an engaged and personalized customer experience by using customer profiles for targeted content. We hear a lot that relevancy is key, and webSaver does it well. They send targeted fares and offers based on a customer's home airport.

This example doesn't apply to all business, but there's a large lesson in relevancy here and it starts with customer profiles. What customer data are you collecting? Are your customer profiles up to date? In order to make sure ours is in top notch condition, I'm going to send a dedicated email marketing campaign and encourage our customers to update their information so we can continue to provide the most relevant and useful content. You can do a campaign like this, too.

Poppy Thorpe, Social Media Manager (@PoppyEliz)
I was excited to attend an Email Summit as a Social Media Manager.  I learned a ton and it was fun to see how much social media and email work together! 

Think of Social Media as Real Time Marketing: David Meerman Scott, the keynote speaker believes that too many companies are run by “MBAs and spreadsheets,” and are looking at data from last week, last month or even last year, and forecasting out as far as five years. He said he didn’t have anything against long-term planning, but David asks; “What about now?” Focus on today. This is something small businesses can use to their advantage and really tap into the real time aspects of social media when they work off of things that are occurring in real time and in real life. Look to current events and pop culture to give you content for your real-time and email marketing.

Connect Social Media to Your Other Marketing Channels and Maintain a Consistent Voice: Liz Ryan, Email Marketing Manager at Threadless, a graphic t-shirt company, mentioned that engaging Threadless' email audience in social media requires a balanced approach that incorporates elements from both channels. She reminded us that you need to engage your users and not just promote your business. Ask questions and encourage a community environment.

Obviously, what happens in Vegas doesn't always stay in Vegas! We just couldn't resist giving you the juicy details - we hope you enjoyed them as much as we did!

Q&A from the SF Take Action User Seminar

First off, I want to give a big shout out to everyone who joined us at our first Take Action User Seminar of 2011! It was a great way to kick-off our country-wide tour. 

A lot of content was covered - from Social Media in 30 Minutes, to Building Customer Relationships and Email in the Social Age.

I was really impressed by the high level of attendee engagement and the thought provoking questions that were asked. Here's a few of the questions and answers so you can take what was shared and put it into action for your business.

Q: How often should I update my social media sites with new Tweets and posts? 

A: It's a highly guarded secret and the answer is...It depends. Yes, that's really the answer. There isn't a number that is perfect for every business and every audience as it varies. We would, however, say a good "guideline" would be to tweet once or twice a day, and update your Facebook page a few times a week. Again, this totally depends on the content you have to offer. Don't just tweet to tweet or update your Facebook if you have nothing to say. Content rules so be relevant and your readers will respond. Read our Social Media Marketing Guides for more insight.

Q: If you don't have reviews for every product or service, is it better not to use any at all?

A: It's important to use the information you have and leverage customer feedback. Reviews are great for that! If you're trying to get more reviews for your products, displaying the (good) reviews is a great way to go. You could also add some copy around products that don't have any reviews and say, "Be the first to review this item!" Remember, you have to start somewhere. Displaying customer reviews is a helpful way to encourage more reviews. Read more about reviews in my blog post, Restaurant/Bar Reviews...How Do You Handle Negativity?

Q: What exactly is A/B Testing, and how do I do it in VerticalResponse?

A: An A/B test is simply a split test, and it's easy to do this in VR by creating list segments. Split a list into multiple, randomized lists and test anything (i.e., changes in content or timing). All you need to do is create multiple versions of your email (change whatever it is you're testing) and send the emails to your different list segments. Learn everything about creating segments on our helpsite.

Q: Can I set up my VR account to work with Google Analytics?

A: Yes, we have an integration with Google Analytics. The Google Analytics Integration tracks the traffic your emails are generating for your website. To activate the integration:

1. Go to Account > Analytics Settings.
2. Select the Google Analytics tab (this should be selected by default).
3. Enter the domains of the websites you're tracking with Google Analytics.  Note that we do not need to know every web page you're tracking - just the domain itself.
4. Click Save Domains.

Learn more in our Advanced Reporting and Analytics section of the helpsite.

Q: How do I add social sharing buttons in my emails?

A: There are two ways to add the Facebook and Twitter social sharing links in your emails. The first is to share an article within your email, and the second is to share your whole email. We have a new tutorial on our helpsite that walks you through the simple steps to add the social sharing links to your email.

Don't worry if you missed our SF Take Action User Seminar. You can learn helpful information like this - and more! - when we take the show on the road. Check out our seminar schedule and sign up when we visit a city near you!

Join Us On Twitter To Talk Social Media + Email Marketing!

One of the things I love about social media is that there is always something new coming around the bend. One of the newest innovations are 'Twitter Chats.' These are live, up-to-the-minute streaming chats that take place on Twitter. They‘re basically open forums where people get together on Twitter and discuss a certain topic. Tweets are linked together in the discussion with a hashtag(#), so you can easily follow and take part in the conversation.

Generally, the chat organizer creates a special hashtag, like '#vrchats' and everyone uses the hashtag to join the conversation. When you use a service like Tweetchat or TweetDeck you can easily follow a particular hashtag and it will automatically add it to your tweets when you post. Then, your tweets will be broadcast to everyone following it. If you don't want to use an external service like TweetChat, you can use your regular Twitter page by logging into your account and enter #vrchats into the search field on the right side of your profile. Real-time results will now stream from your Twitter page and to join the convo, update your status as you normally would and enter #vrchats at the end of your tweet.

We are excited to host our first Twitter Chat, this Wednesday 9/15/2010 from 2-3pm PDT and will discuss how email marketing and social media work together with experts from the VR team, small-business owners and VerticalResponse customers too. Poppy Thorpe, our Social Media Manager will moderate the chat from our main Twitter account, VR4SmallBiz, so feel free to ask us any questions about the chat ahead of time (see #3 below). Join the conversation and share your successes while we answer all your burning email and social media questions.

To join us on Wednesday, follow these simple steps (you don’t even have to register in advance, all you need to do is show up):

1. Sign up for Twitter. It’s easy and free.
2. Follow VerticalResponse on Twitter.
3. To send us questions, mention @vr4smallbiz at the beginning of your tweet or include your questions in the comments section of this post. We will do our best to answer all your questions that relate to email and social and that have been submitted up to one hour before the chat. 
   
4. Login into Tweetchat.com, or your Twitter account. Note that if you do not use Tweetchat, you need to manually enter the hashtag (#vrchats) in your tweets to take part in the discussion.
5. Follow hashtag#vrchats. 
   
   
                                                                                            
   
6. Join us on Wednesday from 2-3 PM, PDT to discuss email and social media.
   
7. Be nice and have fun.

We post highlights from the chat after the event, so stay tuned for more.

We'll see you there!

VerticalResponse to Host a NY User Seminar June 11. See You There!

Join us in New York City on Friday, June 11th, 2010 for the VerticalResponse User Seminar! This 4-hour User Seminar is designed for VerticalResponse customers of all levels using the new Wizard and Canvas email creation editors. Register Now!

Where You'll Be: 

Sofitel New York (Room: Paris Ballroom) 9am-1pm
212-354-8844
45 West 44th Street
New York, New York 10036
Map & Directions

What You'll Learn:

• Email design tips & best practices for emails that get results
• How to build a list of engaged subscribers
• Discover how email and social media work together to expand your reach
• Plus, a keynote from award winning social media publisher, and author of Duct Tape Marketing and The Referral Engine, John Jantsch

What You'll Get:

• Breakfast!
• A copy of the newly released book, The Referral Engine by John Jantsch!
• The VerticalResponse Take Action Kit which includes best practice guides, plus tips to take what you've learned and turn it into action
• VerticalResponse User Seminar Certificate of Completion
• Plus, networking with peers and our marketing experts

See you there!

San Francisco Small Business Week is Now!

National Small Business Week is May 23-25 but in San Francisco we're off to an early start! The San Francisco Small Business Week is May 15-21 and it's designed to support the success of small businesses. There are dozens of educational and networking events. Connect with over 4,000 leaders in the small business community and walk away with new contacts, best practices and innovative ideas that you can put into action today so definitely check it out.

We'll be celebrating The Flavors of San Francisco where there will be a special awards ceremony that will honor local business owners who have been elected to receive the U.S. Small Business Administration’s Small Business Award. 

And the Small Business Administration Awards go to:

• Small Business Person of the Year:
  Janine Popick, CEO and Co-Founder of VerticalResponse (Hey that's me!!)
  
• Financial Services Advocate of the Year:
  Katy Johnson, Wells Fargo Bank
• Women in Business Advocate of the Year:
  Barbara Kasoff, Women Impacting Public Policy
• Minority Business Advocate of the Year:
  Denise Coley, Director, Global Supplier Diversity Business Development, Cisco Systems, Inc.

Congrats to all who won. We're really excited to be a part of something that honors the very businesses we serve. If you're in town the event is free!

Lessons in the New Marketing Experience

Yesterday I attended the New Marketing Experience Conference that was put on by our friend Chris Brogan and New Marketing Labs. This conference was packed with social media advice.

Instead of writing paragraph after paragraph about the social media tips from the event I want to use my 140-character limit on Twitter to help pass on some of the lessons discussed in social media marketing. This is what my conference looked like from @VR4SmallBiz’s point of view.

Tweet 1: Piggy back your new Social Media campaigns onto your proven engagement campaigns. #nme10 /via @MickGriffin

Think about what is already working for your business. Maybe you are selling to businesses and you have figured out that your audience is really responsive to webinars or demos of your products. Add social media to these events, Tweet and post to your Facebook pages to invite people to the event. Also add a hash tag and encourage people to Tweet and Facebook during the event. You will only build on the traffic you already receive from your proven campaigns.

And after you finish the webinar remember to post your recorded version to your social media platforms to keep building.

Tweet 2: What you can change is if you are part of the conversations. You can’t control them happening

More than likely some of your audience is taking part in a type of social media. Maybe they’re on Twitter or Facebook, or maybe they’re using a blog or a social community. Even if you’re not there your customers could be talking about you. These conversations could be good or bad but if you aren’t there you don’t have the opportunity to be a part of that conversation and represent your business.

If you haven’t yet started on social media do a few quick searches on places like search.twitter.com. Search for the name of your business and your services and products to see if anyone is talking about you right now. Then jump into the conversation.

Tweet 3: RT @tedprodromou: @scottalbro says "always be helping" is the new "always be closing"

Scott Scott who with what company? was making two points with this statement. The first one is that customer service is a very important part of your sales team. If you do not have helpful and friendly customer support then customers might start looking at other companies that do.

Secondly, customer support needs to reach across all departments. It is a buyer’s market and if you aren’t helping someone do something why would they buy from you?

Tweet 4: Found VerticalResponse customer @StSupery at New Marketing Experience looking to learn how to reuse content - can't wait to see what they do.

What came right after that tweet:
@VR4SmallBiz Thanks for the mention. We're doing our best to be a conduit of useful information :) from @StSupery

Support your customers in anyway you can. By engaging them on social media or highlighting them in your email marketing newsletters you will be building your relationship with them and in return finding a more loyal customer.

Tweet 5: 3 types of media; owned (website..) paid (search..) engaged (word of mouth..) All of them can work together via @brickfish

The 3 types of media are “owned”, “paid” and “engaged”. The owned media is anything that you can control and have ownership of. Some examples of owned media would be the content on your website and your social media profiles like your Facebook Fan page. Paid media is something you paid for to drive traffic to your owned media. Some examples are your search or display campaigns and your email marketing. Engaged media is the media that your audience creates for you. When one of your customers tells a friend about your business or tweets about you to their Twitter audience that is engaged media.

These three types of media work together in a continuous loop. Let’s say you write a blog post (owned) and you think that everyone needs to see it because it is so good. So you send out an email marketing campaign (paid) letting your audience know that you just posted something you think they would be interested in and ask them to share it with their friends. After you send out this email, a recipient reads it and agrees it is good. So that person then posts a link from your blog to their Facebook Fan page (engaged).

By making all three of these types of media work together you just got your business in front of a few more people. Now you just need to make sure you have an email opt-in form on your blog so you can capture a few more people.

Tweet 6: Outbound leads can be the nudge for some inbound leads. But think about the right timing and message.

A story was told at this conference about a sales person who could tell when someone was on their website. They had the phone number for this particular site visitor, so this sales rep gave that person a call while they were still on the site.

The sales rep called this the “pounce method”. After working with the pounce method for a little bit they decided that it was a bit to early in the sales cycle for these potential customers, not to mention creepy. They have since scaled back and now call people who visit their site a few days later. This worked much better for them because their visitors had time to process and think about the info they read on their site.

All of your marketing has time slots that are more effective than others. Figure out what is the best time for all of your messages and you will see a better response from your audience.

Tweet 7: RT @gingerw: Really great content is not about what you want to say but about what your audience wants to hear #nme10 you will see it in ROI

Take some time and listen to your audience. Give then a survey or ask for feedback on one of your newsletters. Spend a few days closely following a group of your customers on Facebook and Twitter see what they are talking about on a daily basis. Take a look at past blog posts and see what you traffic has been, then blog more about the content that has been getting a higher traffic rate.

The time you take finding out more about what your audience wants to hear will be worth the rewards you receive after your new content is published.

Tweet 8: Email is the digital glue #nme10

Email is a very unique communication tool. It crosses all types of platforms; your phone, your social media profiles, and your inboxes. Email is a tool that people use for the important stuff. When people really want to pay attention to something on social media they sign up for email alerts. Many times people are in their email multiple times a day. I know I check my email on my phone and then save some of the messages as unread so that I can reread them when I am at my computer. Email is a very strong form of communication and if it’s used properly with social media it can be your digital glue that makes all of your social media efforts more successful than they would be on their own.

I did a very similar post about a word of mouth conference I attended you can read it here: Lessons in Word of Mouth Marketing.

My biggest take away from the event is that social media can integrate even more than I knew into already proven marketing tactics. Does anyone have any other tips about the integration of social media and other marketing tactics like email newsletters?

VerticalResponse CEO to be Interviewed On Hugh Macken, Live!

I’m excited to tell you all about my interview on Hugh Macken, Live! tomorrow, which is being hosted by Blog Talk Radio! If you’ve been following our $10,000 ‘New Deal’ contest, you might be interested to listen in to our radio interview as we discuss the submissions we’ve received so far!

Join Hugh Macken and I tomorrow Thursday, February 25 at 1 pm PT (that’s 4pm Eastern for those of you on the East Coast) for a conversation about how we’re helping our small business customers. We’ll also be talking about the 10,000 free emails VerticalResponse gives away to qualifying non-profits each month.

 

Throughout the year, entrepreneur Hugh Macken interviews marketing and PR professionals on new media strategy and topics that relate to small businesses. You can listen live to my interview on Thursday by clicking here. If you’d prefer to call in, you can also listen live by calling (347) 884.8912 and selecting the option to listen in.

 

Hope you have time to tune in!

Get Vertical Marketing Workshops Coming To a City Near You

Have you ever asked yourself:

1. What are the best ways to quickly grow my email list?
2. How can I build eye-catching emails when I'm not really technical?
3. What are the current laws I should understand regarding commercial emails?

If you have, then we’ve got the perfect event for you. Join us for a one-day workshop that will answer all of these questions and more!

Chicago, IL - September 16
Portland, OR - September 23
Cleveland, OH - November 12
San Diego, CA - December 2
Scottsdale, AZ - December 3

The GetVertical Workshop includes:

• Easy-to-implement ideas for acquiring new customers and building loyalty
• Step-by-step training on the VerticalResponse system for creating emails and surveys
• The opportunity to share ideas and network with other professionals
• Extreme Email Makeover session with practical tips to give your marketing a facelift
• FREE LUNCH!

If you’re a business owner, marketing professional, or Webmaster, then this workshop is a must! Register now for a GetVertical Workshop in a city near you!

Webinar: Getting Started With Google Apps

Join Google and the VerticalResponse product specialists for an exclusive webinar on Google Apps. Find out how you can use Google docs, calendars, and sites alongside VerticalResponse. From collaborating with coworkers on newsletter content, to creating and hosting a site, to developing a list of your most valuable customers, it's easy to do with Google Apps.

               When: Wednesday, July 9,  10AM-11AM PT

Learn more about all the features in Google Apps and how you can use them to effectively manage your business. This is your chance to chat directly with the folks at Google, so don't miss out!

Reserve your spot today, I think it's gonna be great!