As the launch of the new GetResponse approaches, we’d like to give you some important information concerning the process of moving your current account to the new system. Here’s what you need to know:

Before the migration - schedule service disruption:

The data migration will begin on July 4, 2009 at 9 PM EDT and end on July 5, 2009 at 5 PM EDT, therefore service will not be available during that time period.

Note: During this scheduled data migration, all GetResponse sites will be down and you will not be able to access your account.

Your account during service disruption:

Please rest assured that no account data will be lost during migration! Your web forms will be working, however all processes related to sign ups will be queued and processed within 24-48 hours. That means that anyone who subscribes or signs up to your campaign will not be added to your contact list for 24-48 hours. If applicable, new subscribers will also be credited to your account within the same time period. Please note that new subscribers will not receive confirmation or thank-you messages immediately, but they will go out automatically after the above time period.

No payments will be processed on July 5. Therefore, if your recurring charge is set for this date, it will take place on July 6.

After the migration:

After the migration is completed, you will be introduced to the new GetResponse interface and the old version will no longer be available.

All the settings from your account will be carefully moved to the new system and will remain intact. You can be confident that no data will be lost.

As with most major migrations, the system may not be working perfectly from 2 to 3 days after the data has been moved. Please let us know about any problems you experience by contacting our capable Customer Service Team. It will help us to quickly address any issues.

We have performed migrations many times and, as always, we will do our best to conduct a smooth migration for the new launch. Again, you can rest assured that this process will not affect your account or stored data in any way.

If you have any questions regarding the migration process, feel free to contact us. We will be happy to answer any questions you might have!

Thank you for choosing our email marketing service! We hope you will be just as excited about this new version as we are!

Best Regards

GetResponse Team

A new and easy process lets GetResponse account holders capture subscribers directly from their Facebook fan pages!

It only takes about 2 minutes to implement and you only need 2 things:

1.       A Facebook fan page.

2.       Your GetResponse Sign Up form in HTML format

          (from your GetResponse Capture Subscriber option).

Ready? First grab this great app here and add it to your fan page. Now go back to your fan page and click the ‘Edit Page’ option. Here you will find FMBL under the Apps section; click on the Edit pencil icon. Now you can edit the ‘Box Title’ to whatever you want.

Next you paste your GetResponse HTML code into the FBML box. If you are a whiz with HTML, feel free to change the code to match your brand,  add images, etc., anything to grab attention!

Click to save your changes and make sure to give your form a priority position in your tabs, so you attract lots of great subscribers to your list!

If you need any help with this option, feel free to post your questions on our fan page or at www.twitter.com/getreponse.

Every day brings us closer to the launch of GetResponse 6.0, the biggest and the best release ever! The new version gives you a totally new interface, powerful features, multimedia, and much more.

Of course, we understand that change can be stressful, that’s why before the Big Day comes, we’d like to let you know more about what’s coming with the new and improved GetResponse. To review some of the new features, enhancements and new GetResponse for iPhone preview please watch our videos:

Attention Tweeple. We have decided to reward those “serious email marketers” who are first in line to take control of the power and possibilities of GetResponse 6.0. We will be soon launching an exclusive competition for @GetResponse followers to celebrate the launch of GetResponse V6.0.

Make sure to stay tuned! There’s lots more excitement to come!

Email Marketing – GetResponse

Join our Email Marketing Academy and leave the competition behind! You’ll get exclusive interviews with top email marketing experts, starting with “Unravelling Best Sending Practices” with Marcin Luks, GetResponse Email Deliverability Specialist.

Please explain your role at GetResponse?

Put simply, I ensure that our clients’ emails reach their subscribers’ inboxes. In practice, apart from maintaining
relationships with ISPs (like Yahoo, AOL, Hotmail or Gmail), it means constantly teaching clients how to keep up with the Best Sending
Practices, because each and every client contributes to GetResponse’s reputation as a whole.

How important is deliverability for a Email Marketing service like GetResponse?

To be reliable for our customers, we need to ensure that the number of received emails is as close to 100% of those sent as possible.
Deliverability is like a litmus paper of reputation. If a certain client conducts email marketing which might be considered as
spammy, it influences not only his own deliverability, but also that of other users.

Why do people try to spam?

Because they don’t understand their relationship with their subscribers. In reality, it’s an agreement: ‘I am joining because I want to
receive relevant content relating to my interests and expect you to respect me and my time.’ Spamming is treating subscribers
just as a list of prospects, not real people.

Is it getting harder to spam?

ISPs are developing new technologies to guard inboxes from unwanted content and spam filters are getting more and more sophisticated.
We also monitor our system daily in search of abusive behavior, so yes, it is getting harder. But it’s an ongoing battle all the time.

How is GetResponse improving its deliverabilty?

Apart from technological issues, like authentication or whitelistings that we take care of, deliverability is all about what, how and how often
our clients are sending. That is why our role is to teach our clients how to be responsible email marketers. We just share our knowledge, which is built on experience and multiple industry initiatives that we are a part of.

Email Marketing - GetResponse

More than a 1000 of you applied…thank you! Right now, we’re engaged in a very meticulous verification process.  After that, we will notify the selected candidates and provide all the necessary information − and the new GetResponse beta tests will commence! As promised, whoever provides the best feedback will win an iPhone 3G. So stay tuned!

Once again, thank you for subscribing.

Email Marketing - GetResponse

It’s official! Beta test of the new version of GetResponse is “locked and loaded” and ready to commence. But we need you!  Be among the first humans on earth to evaluate the completely new, super-smart GetResponse! Just follow this link:

www.getresponse.com/beta

Have fun working with the GetResponse Team while you test-drive the new version and tell us what you think. Your feedback is incredibly important! If we use your recommendations, you get an iPhone! Don’t miss out your one and only chance to shape this revolutionary new release of GetResponse! (Talk about bragging rights!)

We’re waiting for you! BYI…bring your ideas!

Best,
Email Marketing - GetResponse

Need to “see it to believe it?” GetResponse now offers a “live” graph that lets you track the transmission of your email campaigns in real time! So, while WE KNOW our deliverability is top notch, we don’t want you to waste a minute wondering. Got a lot going on? Leave the Broadcast Bar on your desktop and monitor them! The Progress Bar is available NOW once you log in to your account. Simply click on My Campaigns and select the campaign broadcast you’d like to monitor. Isn’t it “good to know”?!

Simon Grabowski, CEO and founder of GetResponse, had this to say about the new feature: “Our clients are telling us that they are trying to do more with less these days, and that means managing more email marketing campaigns than ever before. The new Broadcast Bar allows at-a-glance status checks on multiple campaigns, making their jobs easier and less stressful, while providing managers with real-time reporting capabilities. As always the GetResponse Team would like to thank our valued clients for their feedback and encourage everyone to voice their recommendations, so we can continue to deliver the ultimate in email marketing features and service.”

Kind Regards

The GetResponse Team

Follow Us On Twitter

With more pressure than ever to maximize marketing budgets, a recent survey indicates that marketers still regard email as one of the top performing methods in generating ROIs.  (Survey conducted by Ad: Tech and Babcock & Jenkins.)

Email came in second only to pay-per-click advertising and beat out nine other methods, such as search engine optimization, affiliate marketing, and rich media ads.

The article stresses that inbox competition would intensify in 2009 and it was more critical than ever to “be careful not to wear out your house lists with repeated messaging and offers”. Set up a reasonable communications timetable and always include valuable information.  (See previous blog posts for ideas on this topic.)

In addition, you should take advantage of marketing opportunities anytime you are in touch with your customers. Include a special with receipts, shipping notices and any follow-up emails from Customer Relations. (You can even program your cash register receipts to encourage your customers to sign up to your notification list. Call your register company for details.) The cost to include such a message is negligible and can easily result in additional purchases or referrals.

MarketingSherpa’s 2009 Email Marketing Benchmark Guide reported that transactional emails, as described above, have high open rates. The best part is that customers accepted brief marketing messages in these emails, as long as they were pertinent and brief. For instance, if you were confirming shipment of a new plasma tv set, your email could offer insurance or a DVD recorder for use with your new tv.

These were the top areas to be tested, according to the survey:

27% – Landing Page Content
26% – Landing Page Design
25% – Subject Lines
17% – Email Offers

Email continues to rank as one of the top marketing methods and biggest bargain in your marketing arsenal in 2009.  And GetResponse continues to rank as one of the best companies to provide email marketing services!

Debbi Bressler
GetResponse

If you have a higher percentage of unsubscribes than you want (isn’t that everyone?), here’s an idea I’d like to pass along.

First, think about why your readers may wish to unsubscribe:

• They are no longer interested in the subject matter;
• Your email messages are sent too often;
• Not enough content and too many ads.

Rather than losing these subscribers altogether, why not remodel your Unsubscribe Page into an opt-in page?

Here are some examples:

• Give them a choice of different delivery schedules. One newsletter I receive is sent daily. It finally became too much, so I decided to cancel. Upon doing so, however, I was given the option to choose a different delivery schedule and selected 3X a week. You don’t lose a subscriber.
  
• Tell them what else you have available. If I’ve purchased that gardening book, I may no longer want your email marketing series about one that I had been considering. What if your unsubscribe page listed the other series you had available, including herb gardening, which IS of interest to me? You don’t lose a subscriber.
  
• Ask me why I’m un-subscribing and offer me a solution. Maybe I can keep up with your content, without so many ads, by reading your blog. Or maybe I can switch my subscription to your bi-weekly newsletter instead of your 8–part email series. You don’t lose a subscriber.

You might think of offering some of your information via podcasts and videos. You can still use email marketing to contact your reader, but send them to a website. Instead of a written ad, your site can contain a banner or other advertising.

It takes time and money to capture a subscriber…do whatever you can to keep them!

Debbi Bressler
Email Marketing Specialist
GetResponse

An eye-opening article at Direct Mag quotes from a study which found that 29% of Internet users have bought goods through a spam email.

The research study, conducted by online security company Marshal, found the most commonly purchased items were sexual enhancement pills and other adult material, software, jewelry and clothing.

Unfortunately, it looks like the percentage of people buying from spammers is increasing. In 2004, Forrester Research did a similar study, finding that 20% of those they surveyed reported purchased from spammers.

Marshall attributed the rise to the spammers’ ability to reduce their costs by using botnets, or networks consisting of thousands of infected personal computers, which are remotely controlled by criminals. Thanks to this, spammers have reduced or eliminated their need for their own servers because they can take control of other people’s computers.

Eighty percent of the world’s spam is accounted for by only five botnets.

Debbi Bressler
Email Marketing Specialist
GetResponse