Email Marketing Tips Blog

Email marketers are finding that an unanticipated side effect of job layoffs is increased email bounce rates, due to people using a work address for email correspondence. In the chaos, the last thing on their minds is downloading a copy of their email and subscription lists or redirecting their incoming personal email.

Once you’ve lost a subscriber, even unintentionally, it’s difficult to regain them.

Here are some ideas you can implement starting today:

1. Ask for a backup email address. People are used to providing a daytime and evening phone number for emergencies. Yahoo Mail is just one of the sites that request this information. If you’ve ever set up an email account with them, they ask you to list another email address that can be used for notifications if you cannot access your Yahoo account.
2. Ask for and maintain a physical address. If your subscribers purchase physical products for delivery by you, this information is already in your database. But info product producers that make their wares available by digital download can also request a home address.

   If your customer’s email bounces, you have the opportunity to send a notice to them through the mail, directing them to your opt-in box, and, perhaps, enticing them to do so with a special offer.

3. Ask for a phone number. You should always request a phone number on your order form because there are many circumstances that may require a quick phone call to verify shipping information or credit card issues. Even if you are not selling physical products, you should include a space on your opt-in form for a phone number.

If you sell digital products, an easy way to gather this information is to offer an at-cost (or very low cost) upsell to a physical CD which can be mailed in addition to their digital download. Services such as Kunaki can do this for $1.75 each + shipping, including the case, CD printing, bar codes and all the trappings of a professional CD.

If you would like to gather physical addresses from everyone who subscribes to your list, include an optional physical bonus report on your opt-in form. The only way your reader can receive your bonus is by mail. Your report doesn’t have to  be long or fancy and should be kept to a minimum number of pages to keep your costs down.

While it’s great to have this information on everyone, it’s critical to have it on your customers because they are proven buyers and will likely purchase from you again. A buyer is much more likely to be an engaged customer and we could ALL use more of them!

As marketers, we must polish our marketing efforts even more. Job losses will probably not slow down for the foreseeable future. It’s imperative that you stay one step ahead by protecting that database you’ve worked so hard to build.

Debbi Bressler
Email Marketing Specialist
GetResponse

Many companies tie promotions and articles to holidays in order to draw extra attention to their product or sales.

To that end, here is a nice 2009 Calendar of Holidays and Special Events that will get you started in planning out your calendar. It includes know-(and not-so-well-known) holidays from around the world.

And, if your company prefers to celebrate those off-the-wall holidays, you can find holidays for every day of the year at Holidays for Everyday. For instance, how many of you remembered to celebrate “National Lemon Cupcake Day” on December 15^th?

If you don’t have a-year-at-a-glance calendar, get one. It’s a great planning tool to use in planning your editorial, email marketing, and website promotions.

The economic pressures have certainly been evident in the retail sector this year, as is evidenced by the number and frequency of email offers flooding mailboxes this season. Without “outing” any individual retailers, you have to ask if your customers need daily (or more frequent!) emails from you.

In the last post, we talked about engaging your customers and how that creates loyalty…which creates sales. One way to engage your customers is through surveys or polls. Why not survey your list to find out their preferable delivery schedule and then test the results to see if what they say is what they mean!

If you are establishing an email marketing or newsletter campaign, a once-a-week delivery schedule is a great starting point. Your list may also be receptive to special pricing, limited deals, or “hot” news one other day during that week. The key is to get the click (and hopefully the sale) without alienating your reader by flooding them with too many emails.

Remember when we discussed how engaged customers are more loyal and generally buy more? KitchenAid has developed a Weekly Specials program that can be customized by their customers. To see this example, go to the page above and click on the image labeled “Weekly Specials”” (obviously that link changes weekly so I can’t use it!). Once there, click on “Product Alerts”.

KitchenAid runs a one-day special every Monday on a product in their outlet store. These are money-savings deals with a short window and significant savings (I recently purchased something for 67% off). The Product Alerts allow you to select the products in which you are interested to receive information about sales in that category. Notice that they are very clear in stating, “You can add or change categories at any time.”

In this way, KitchenAid can email its customers more frequently because they are providing the latest information, sales, and rebates for specific types of products that the customers have selected. Since email notifications go out by product line, customers can delete emails regarding blenders after they’ve purchased one, yet keep receiving emails about other products of interest.

By implementing a system such as this you could easily mail your customers twice weekly – and have them sitting by their inbox waiting for your mail!

How could you adapt this for your business? Please share with us…

Debbi Bressler
Email Marketing Specialist
GetResponse

With the economy putting increased pressure on business profits, developing and maintaining a loyal customer base is more important than ever. And one of the best ways to keep customers happy is by adopting customer engagement campaigns.

The third annual Online Customer Engagement Report from cScape reported that more than half of the companies surveyed (51%) say they are giving more importance to customer engagement activities.

The survey showed that these companies felt email marketing was the best way to engage their customer and 59% of the respondents planned to increase their spending on email marketing. While some investment would go to blogging and social networking, the greatest investment was planned for email marketing. One of the reasons given was because the metrics for email marketing are in place and provide companies with reliable ROI information.

Engaged customers provide a needed foundation for businesses because they’re generally less sensitive to price, and buy more often than customers who are not engaged. They are also more likely to recommend your products and services to others, as well as be more willing to provide feedback through surveys or other feedback mechanisms.

Think your business isn’t the type to engage your customers? You’ll be glad to know that the ability to develop a rabid fan base exists for most businesses. Whether you are a B to C or B to B business, a pain-free dentist or the latest boutique in town, your email marketing program can fuel your efforts to involve your customers even more. 

Looking for just the right words for your squeeze pages, subject lines, or email marketing?

This list of 1000 words that get response was posted for human resource professionals, but the majority of them could be used in your marketing efforts.

One hint – whether you’re writing a resume or email copy – is to bullet point ACTION words!
Just a few examples from this list include:

Accelerate
Achieve
Automate
Choose
Compare
Compete
Create
Customize
Call
Develop
Deliver
Discover
Eliminate
Enjoy
Experience
Explode
Free
Gain
Generate
Get
Give
Grow
Heighten
Heal
Increase
Improve
Inspire
Inform
Imagine
Lead
Love
Motivate
Prove
Profit
Perform
Preview
Prosper
Promote
Protect
Qualify
Recommend
Realize
Receive
Reveal
Rush
Relieve
Save
Secure
Send
Shape
Simplify
Slash
Solve
Start
Succeed
Support
Test Drive

If you go to the list linked above, you’ll notice that many of the above words are shown as adjectives and not action words. If you compare my list of actions to their list, you’ll see how easy it is to get to the “root” to create exciting copy for your squeeze pages and emails.

Debbi Bressler
Email Marketing Specialist
GetResponse