Thursday, March 31, 2016

The 3 Questions You Should be Asking About Your Autoresponder Campaign

So if you want to know exactly how effective your autoresponder series could be, ask yourself what you’re sending out as part of your campaign.Related Articles
  1. Getting Social with Benchmark Email Marketers
  2. Affiliate Marketing: How to Set Up an Email Course
  3. Permission Based Email Marketing: The Magic of the Welcome Email


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How to Use Email Marketing to Build Meaningful Relationships

The following is a guest post written by Ryan Robinson, an entrepreneur and writer who teaches people how to start meaningful, self-employed careers at ryrob.com. If you’re looking to start a business while working your day job, check out his upcoming online course, The Launch While Working Formula

Since it’s inception, email marketing has catapulted into becoming the primary method by which most businesses generate a substantial portion of their revenue.

In fact, a few of my products are only available for purchase if you’re in my email community. To me, email marketing represents so much more than just a revenue driver for my business.

There’s already an incredible amount of resources out there about how to use email marketing for growing your email list and bringing in revenue. But not much is said about how you can use your email marketing to actually build more meaningful relationships with your subscribers. Relationships that are beyond just transactional.

In a world of increasing personalization and growing consumer demand for experiences that are custom-tailored to their exact wants and needs, both brands and individual business owners have a lot to learn about how to use their email marketing to create a reputation that’s built on something deeper than dollar signs.

Personalization in email marketing

Each week, I get anywhere from twenty to a hundred replies to my weekly updates and personalized autoresponders. While no doubt time consuming, choosing to create email content that directly calls my audience to action, engages me with many of my subscribers on a one-on-one basis.

I use a very simple principle employed by all great conversationalists, to get my subscribers to share with me – ask people to talk about themselves. This alone has had a dramatically positive impact on both the engagement and revenue on my website, ryrob.com.

Here’s an example of my primary autoresponder that new subscribers receive when they download one of my pieces of content, sign up for a waiting list, or for my weekly email updates on starting a profitable side business.

The subject line is simply, “Hello from Ryan.”

It’s short, to the point, shows my personality, and calls all of my new subscribers to one specific action. I ask each and every new person who joins my community to reply with their #1 question they want answered about starting a business while keeping their day jobs, which is often the reason they discovered me in the first place.

I get anywhere from 40-100 new subscribers on an average day. Since my autoresponders are so focused and personalized, about 10% of these new subscribers reply to them, which sets in motion a lot of one-on-one relationships with members of my community.

The open rate on my autoresponders hold steady at above 70%, which is almost unheard of in email marketing, especially for an email that really isn’t essential to open in the first place.

Through these exchanges, people share very personal stories, struggles, failures, ask highly detailed questions, and give updates on their progress as time goes on. I reply to every single one of them. It often takes me a week or two (or longer), but I make it a point to reciprocate the vulnerability they show, in taking the time to write me personally.

Vulnerability in email marketing

Beyond just my autoresponders, I extend my deep personalization and vulnerability into my weekly email broadcasts.

Each week, I share with my community something I wrote either on my blog, for a publication, or brand that I’m working with. All of my broadcasts start out with a personal story, transition into a critical lesson I learned in business (usually the hard way), and end with asking my community to read the related post & take a specific action either in the comments or by replying to my broadcast.

Here’s an example of a reply I received from a recent broadcast, where I shared the story and lessons learned, from my biggest failure as an entrepreneur.

This has become a winning formula for me.

Because my community knows I care about them personally, the open rates of my weekly broadcasts stay well above 30% with click rates around 10%.

The vulnerability I show through storytelling in my email marketing helps me establish deeper connections than if I were to simply deliver a bland RSS-template email each week with a new blog post.

Translating personalization and vulnerability into revenue

This approach isn’t for those who are looking to turn a quick profit on their email list. It’s an investment you’re making in your business, that over time pays off in great dividends.

Vulnerability and personalization always start the conversation. However, you’ll need to deliver on the value you’re promising, time and time again.

Over time, this is what allows me to warm up my audience, build long term relationships, and establish a platform of trust based on the genuine value and personal insights I provide through content like my detailed breakdown of the best tools for starting an online business.

After the foundation of trust is established, occasionally, I offer something deeper than everything else I cover for free on my site.

This is usually in the form of a course or activity that’s transformational enough to charge for, and if it’s relevant to a segment of my audience, I’ve already provided enough value to them, that their decision to buy isn’t impeded by a lack of confidence in me. They’re already sold on me as a person, which makes the decision to buy something I’ve created for them, much easier.

The first online course I created on Writing a Winning Freelance Proposal last year, was launched directly to a small segment of my email list that signed up for the waiting list to purchase this course once it became available, just over 400 people in total.

In the first week the course launched, 28 of my subscribers purchased the course, a 7% conversion to purchase rate at a relatively high price point of $129.

It’s no coincidence that most of the members of my community who end up purchasing a paid product of mine are those whom I’ve had one-on-one email exchanges with prior to purchase.

5 steps to using email marketing to build meaningful relationships

1. Provide value

Email marketing helps grow my business in several ways.

Instead of viewing your email list as a means to make money for your business, think about it as a vehicle to provide value to your subscribers. The amount of value you provide to your subscribers is particularly important when you’re just getting started with building your brand, because you don’t automatically command their trust. You have to work for it.

Ask yourself how you can provide such an insane amount of free value to your subscribers on a regular basis, that once you do offer a paid product, they are jumping at the opportunity to pay for more.

Take for example, my 9,000 word post about the best business ideas. It’s one of the largest organic traffic drivers to my website, and because it’s incredibly detailed, it converts into the most new subscribers for me each day.

Start with these simple, yet often overlooked questions to deliver more value to your subscribers, the way they want to receive it:

  • What do my subscribers want to know about most?
  • What do others charge for, that I could provide for free?
  • Which content medium is easiest for my subscribers to consume?

From a revenue perspective, my email list serves as the primary, and often the sole channel, through which I offer paid products and consultation sessions.

My subscribers are the people who know me best. The people who I’ve built trust-based relationships with. Ultimately, they’re the people most likely to value and pay for my services.

2. Be personal

All things being equal, people will always prefer personalized products and services. You need to write like you’re speaking to the individual person at the receiving end of your email.

With that in mind, I recommend adopting a very conversational tone with your email marketing. Having a style of conversation that shows your personality and differentiates you from the corporate sounding marketing emails will help you build the foundation for stronger long-term relationships.

Use first name personalization whenever possible. How much more likely are you to open an email that starts with addressing you by first name, compared to a more generic-sounding email that’s more clearly designed to sell you something?

Regularly ask what pain points your audience has, and you’ll get valuable feedback about future offerings you can create. Take time to read their responses and reply as much as possible. This will significantly help deepen your personal connection and nurture relationships that’ll strengthen over time.

3. Be vulnerable

Become a storyteller with your email marketing.

Share things that make you uncomfortable. Bring your subscribers closer to you, by getting them personally invested in your journey. If you can get them to care about you and your mission, you’ve already won half of the battle.

Ask yourself these questions to determine how you can effectively convey your vulnerability with your email marketing:

  • Which experiences that I’ve had could my subscribers benefit from hearing about?
  • What lessons have I learned that can be translated into meaningful advice for my subscribers?
  • Which of these experiences and stories can naturally relate back to the core offerings of my business?

4. Use intelligent autoresponders

Having a full-time business, or even one you’re just running on the side, takes an enormous toll on your time and energy.

Autoresponders, customizable email messages that follow a preset deliverability sequence, help you build one-on-one relationships with your subscribers.

In my experience, autoresponders provide my audience with more meaningful and individualized experiences. This in turn, helps build stronger connections, deeper engagement, and higher conversion rates.

Make sure your autoresponders meet the following criteria:

  • They’re customized based on signup source.
  • They’re personalized and address subscribers by name.
  • They have one (and only one) simple call-to-action and encourage engagement.
  • They set the right expectations for what’s to come in future emails and updates.
  • They convey the personality of your brand.

5. Stay in touch regularly

Think about the truly great marketing emails you receive. You don’t want to unsubscribe, and in fact you probably want more.

Your goal is to keep your subscribers always wanting more, and give them a clear expectation as to when they’ll be receiving more. Choose a regular cadence that you can realistically commit to for sending great email updates to your community.

I personally send weekly emails, so that I’m regularly appearing in my subscriber’s inbox. I want to stay very top of mind, so that they don’t forget who I am and the value I regularly provide in their lives.

But, it’s easy to bite off more than you can chew in this department.

Start with evaluating how often you can produce new content that your audience will be interested in. You absolutely need a call-to-action in your emails, because it trains your audience that they’re supposed to take action every time they open your emails. So, if you can only commit to publishing a new blog post, video, quiz, or something else, once a month, it makes sense to have an email frequency of once a month.

The only thing worse than not staying in frequent contact with your subscribers, is wasting their time with too many emails that don’t provide genuine value.

Build your email community the right way

The relationships I carefully build through my email marketing, are always meant to reach far into the future.

I gladly sacrifice the dollar today for the opportunity to show how helpful I can be with free content, and eventually offer a much more premium solution that digs deeper into helping my audience achieve their bigger goals. That’s exactly what I’m doing with my upcoming course, The Launch While Working Formula.

If you hope to eventually generate revenue from your email list, you have to provide value first. It’s as simple as that. If you aren’t willing to provide that free value, your subscribers will seek it out elsewhere.

The post How to Use Email Marketing to Build Meaningful Relationships appeared first on Email Marketing Tips.



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25 Proven Steps to Achieve Email Marketing Magic

If you’ve left email marketing out of the promotional mix for your business, you’re missing out on a method that has been shown to generate as much in revenue as all other types of digital advertising combined. Just how much revenue does email drive? Research last year found that such campaigns produce an average ROI of $38 for each dollar spent. To add to that, Econsultancy found email marketing was rated effective by more companies and agencies than any other channel.

25 Proven Steps to Achieve Email Marketing Magic

If you haven’t been giving email marketing the focus it deserves, not to worry, this post is for you.

Here are 25 proven steps you can start taking today to begin reaping magical rewards in no time.

1. Build Your List

Start by gathering email addresses from current and potential customers. Building your list can seem difficult and time-consuming, but it’s worth your while to limit it to those who choose to engage. Buying lists is a bad idea, since emailing anonymous contacts can seem invasive and often results in complaints, bounced addresses and unsubscribes. Gain trust by not sharing subscribers’ info with other companies, and by creating emails with useful or exclusive information and valuable offers, not just sales pitches. The options for growing your list are only bounded by your imagination. Some of the best ideas can be found here and here.

2. Segment Your List

Segment your audience so you can create targeted messages for different groups, leading to better open rates, lower opt-out and unsubscribe rates and improved deliverability. Check out our 2016 Complete Guide to List Segmentation. Segmenting allows you to separate your list according to geographic region, customer behavior patterns (buyers vs non-buyers, openers vs non-openers), age, area code, and more, so you can create content and offers most likely to generate responses.

3. Plan Your Content

Decide what range of content you’ll offer. Possible subject matter includes:

  • Tutorials
  • Recommendations
  • Reports on industry trends or research
  • Explanations of company functions
  • Comments on current events
  • FAQs
  • Profiles of your clients or employees
  • Surveys
  • Contests
  • Previews of coming events
  • Descriptions/photos of new products
  • Inspiring quotes
  • Blogs
  • News articles or humor

The medium might include copy, photos, infographics or videos. If you don’t want to generate the content yourself, source it from social media, business partners, online sources or content agencies.

In general, experts advise using a likable voice; employing sharp design; being different from competitors; incorporating snappy subject lines and offering discounts. A common mistake? Looking to your own preferences to determine what your audience would like. Perhaps most importantly, strive for a mix of 80 percent informational and 20 percent promotional content. Messages that aren’t sales-oriented may seem counterintuitive, but they work to develop brand awareness and customer relationships, paving the way for future purchases. Do recipients a favor by helping them solve a problem, providing inspiration, giving them direction toward a goal or quickly expanding their knowledge.

4. Analyze Your Competition

Study what competitors are doing. Sign up for other email campaigns and newsletters to compare your efforts with those of competitors and industry leaders. It’s OK to put your own spin on their ideas and techniques but always strive for original content that’s hard for your readers to find elsewhere.

5. Plan Your Email Campaigns

Devise a year-long email marketing plan that projects multiple messages, tying your content into holidays, special events, pop-culture happenings and current events when applicable. Work backward from preferred launch dates to set writing or sourcing deadlines. Shoot for three to five emails monthly.

6. Design with Mobile in Mind

Ensure your emails are mobile-friendly in design and content, since two-thirds of such messages are now read on mobile devices. That means limiting copy to 750 words or less.

7. Develop a Welcome Email Program

Create a series of follow-up emails to new subscribers introducing them to your company, products and website. Avoid the hard sell; start with a warm welcome for subscribing and follow with a reminder of the benefits, a thank you offer, helpful information about your products or services and links to your website and social media sites.

8. Implement Autoresponders

Use autoresponders that automatically trigger welcome emails, resend messages that were never opened, and send newsletters at regular intervals. Such a practice can increase your open rates by 30 to 40 percent. Other uses might include thank yous for purchases; reminders; polls; contests; or requests for comments, reviews or content submissions. Autoresponders are fairly crucial if you’re too busy to regularly monitor your email account.

9. Personalize Your Emails

Implement as much personalization as possible, using analytics and customer surveys to your advantage by recognizing birthdays and anniversaries, referring to previous purchases and shopping patterns, and otherwise making readers feel valued. Experts predict we’ll eventually have capability for highly optimized 1:1 emails within a single broadcast.

10. Track Performance

Track open and click rates, revenue and conversion, unsubscribes and bounces, and use your website’s analytics tools to gauge post-click through behavior. Note that services are available to fix bad data — incorrect or problematic addresses that increase bounce-backs.

11. Test and Optimize Your Campaigns

Continually test your campaign, and use the results to tweak further strategy. Consider a schedule for the testing of one campaign variable each month, such as copy length and content, time and day of the week, frequency, call to action, design and other elements.

12. Gather Customer Feedback

Listen closely to customer feedback about content, format and frequency, and respond quickly. To avoid being perceived as a spammer, be gracious and quick with those who ask to unsubscribe.

13.  Monitor Industry Trends

Email marketing is evolving so swiftly that business owners must be proactive to keep on top of important features and best practices. VerticalResponse helps you stay at the top of your email marketing game with its free and easy-to-use email marketing tool.

Get a Free VerticalResponse Account

Send responsive newsletters, invitations, promotions, and more. Email 1,000 contacts, up to 4,000 emails per month for free.

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Once you’re on a roll with your campaign, consider elements that can improve your responses even more. Here are some ideas:

14. Use Visual Content

Gifs and videos can be powerful additions, since visuals are processed by the human brain in about one-tenth of a second.

15. Maintain Brand Voice

Develop a consistent voice, experimenting to determine which writing style and topics most appeal to your readers. An example of a defined voice is the tone of the informal and somewhat irreverent blogs posted on Groove HQ. “(The writer) addresses the recipient like human beings,” writes Jimmy Dala on Marketingland.com. “It sounds simple, but so many people lose the human touch when they are blasting bulk emails about Presidents’ Day sales.”

16. Use Humor When Appropriate

Devise fun and entertaining polls related to your industry, then record some of the best responses online. Cottonelle once staged a fun email survey asking consumers whether they rolled toilet paper over or under, incorporating results into video demonstrations, a U.S. map, social media and a website.

17. Socialize

Make sure widgets are installed into your emails allowing readers to instantly share your content on their social media sites.

18. Test Timing of Campaigns

Fine tune the timing of your email campaigns. Some report the highest open rates (leading to the highest conversions) are achieved in the evenings after the dinner hour. Others say those working are more likely to open an email sent just prior to the lunch hour. Experiment to find out what works best for you and your audience.

19. Use Email Sign Up Forms

In order to fuel continued and sustained list growth, it’s a no-brainer to have an email sign up form on your website, blog, and other digital properties like social media sites. Check out these three golden rules for sign up forms.

20. Give Incentives

Offer prizes as part of a contest on social media requiring entrants’ email addresses. Check out Social Sweepstakes to engage fans on Facebook and grow your email list.

21. Leverage Social Channels

Ask your social audience to stay connect via email. If Twitter is your primary channel, use a Twitter Ads account to glean more email addresses via Twitter lead-generation cards sent to Twitter users.

22. Incorporate Inspiration

Examine competitors’ emails more closely with the free tool Scope; it creates a web-based version, HTML source code and a view of how it appears on mobile, desktop and plain text.

23. Avoid the Spam Filter

Pre-empt being relegated to spam bins by running your emails through the Email Spam Test. A number of other tactics can also help you dodge the spam filter, which reportedly snags some 21 percent of all emails. Some have to do with coding, content and formatting, but you must also limit the repetition of seemingly benign words like “guaranteed” and “free.”

24. Test Your Subject Lines

Use SubjectLine.com to get viability scores on the subject lines of your email. The first query is free. Here are 50 all-time great retail subject lines for more inspiration.

25. Use Clear Calls to Action

One of the most important elements to your email campaign is the call to action (CTA). Subscribers typically read the first line, notice any images, and glance at your CTA. Eliminate any confusion by making your CTA obvious and compelling. Some are better than others, and here’s why.

Ready to get your email marketing program started?

Sign up now and grow your business with our free email marketing tool that allows you to send newsletters, invitations, promotions, and more. Send to 1,000 email contacts, up to 4,000 emails per month for free and track results.

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© 2016, Linzi Breckenridge. All rights reserved.

The post 25 Proven Steps to Achieve Email Marketing Magic appeared first on Vertical Response Blog.

Wednesday, March 30, 2016

6 Simple, Effective Ways to Grow Your Email List (That You Can Set Up in 10 Minutes or Less)

What the Drama Film Genre Can Teach us About the Types of Autoresponder Messages You Should be Sending over 6 Days

Keeping with the first point of contact theme that is carried across six days, we’re going to focus on what your first set of messages look like.Related Articles
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  2. Hugo’s Tacos Woes: A Broken Autoresponder = Customer Disconnect
  3. Walgreens’ Autoresponder Campaign Has My Order Backwards


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Event Marketing 101: Tips for Newbies

One of the funniest and most insightful bits ever done by the late, great George Carlin was his exploration of how changing what we call something can change our perception of it. The message underlying his profanity-laced hilarity was simple to grasp — the thing remains the thing no matter what we call it, only our perception of it has changed.

That’s sort of what’s happened to what used to be called “event marketing.” If you’re a new small business, or new to the concept of marketing that aims to directly engage consumers, it’s easy to get confused by all the names marketers give this type of activity, including engagement marketing, live marketing, participation marketing, and — our favorite — experiential marketing. No matter what you call it, event marketing is still an old-school marketing method at heart. While you can promote it in the digital realm, the actual hook that gets consumers to engage with your brand occurs in the real world — at a community festival, in-store event, rally, etc.

If you’re a young new business owner, you may be far more comfortable with digital marketing than anything that involves face-to-face interaction between your brand and your customers. Or, if you’ve struggled to master digital marketing, you might have put event marketing on a back burner. However, in your first year of business, event marketing can be a powerful way to maximize the impact of your marketing budget.

Here are the five most important points every event marketing neophyte should know:

1. You need to pick a valuable event.

It’s right there in the name of this style of marketing, but what do we really mean by “event”? Simply put, an event is any opportunity for your brand to meet and interact with current or potential customers in a real-world setting (as opposed to the digital world). Two types of events create these opportunities — those you stage, and those staged by others.

In your first year of business, you may find it easier and more cost-effective to participate in events someone else is responsible for organizing. There will be approximately 6 million to choose from, and that’s only a slight exaggeration! From industry conferences and expos, to community events looking for vendors, demonstrators, and sponsorships, a small business that goes looking for an event opportunity should have no trouble finding one. The challenge is finding the one that is best for your objectives.

When weighing the value of an event, ask yourself these questions:

  • Are my current and potential customers likely to be there too?
  • How many of my current and potential customers might be there?
  • What are the side benefits of this event (e.g. raise company visibility in the community, position you as an industry player, make valuable industry contacts, etc.)?
  • Is the cost/benefit comparison for this event in my favor?

2. Leveraging your logo builds your brand identity.

Hopefully, one of your first marketing investments was to have a logo designer create a signature look for your company. A good logo really does establish your brand identity. Think of the vibrant colors and implied motion of the Nike swoosh, or the combination of braininess and action suggested by the bite missing from Apple’s logo.

Once you’ve got a great logo, it makes sense to maximize its use, especially when you’re engaging in event marketing. Put it on your company’s booth, in the program book, and on t-shirts you’ll wear and/or hand out at the event. Find creative ways to display your logo, such as on candy-bar wrappers or cell phone cases, so that it will help create a visual impression when people see it at your event.

3. Swag sells your brand and makes it memorable.

Speaking of cell phone cases, candy, and other items you might hand out, swag is a great way to sell your brand and ensure people remember it long after the event is over. One study by the Promotional Products Association found:

  • 83% of consumers like getting promotional products.
  • 38% say promotional products are a constant reminder of the advertiser.
  • 69% will pick up a promotional product if they think it’s useful, and 23% will grab it no matter what it is.
  • A majority of people have at least one promotional product somewhere in their home or workspace.
  • 76% of people who’d received a promotional product were able to recall the product, advertiser, and message two years after receiving the item.

Make sure your event-marketing budget includes an allowance for swag, and choose a mixture of staples (like pens and beverage containers) that can be handed out anywhere, and items that are tailored for the event (such as logo’d wine glasses at a wine-tasting event).

4. Gimmicks can work great to communicate your company’s persona.

Whether you’re staging your own event or attending someone else’s, a great gimmick can help grab attention and make you memorable. Gimmicks can be kitschy, but you don’t have to be. Yours could be a simple contest (guess how many jellybeans are in a bowl and win a prize from the company’s inventory), community-oriented (sponsor a local sports team or high school marching band), or noble (solicit donations for a national charity and award a prize for the largest donation).

5. Support your event marketing with digital endeavors.

Of course, digital marketing is a critical part of your overall marketing plan, so don’t forget to support your event marketing efforts with digital tactics. Use your company’s website, blog, and social media pages to promote the event and “tease” potential attendees with information about what you’ll be doing and offering. Leverage your email list to announce the event to subscribers. Create a page on your website where visitors can learn about the event and even schedule a meet-and-greet with you during the event in exchange for a promotional reward. If you plan to stage a competition or giveaway during the event, use digital tools to spread the news — and tempt customers to attend your event.

No matter how small or new your business, regardless of who you’re marketing to, event marketing can be an effective, affordable way to build your brand’s identity and make real-time contact with current and potential customers.

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© 2016, Tori Tsu. All rights reserved.

The post Event Marketing 101: Tips for Newbies appeared first on Vertical Response Blog.

Tuesday, March 29, 2016

How to use video in email with Jay Moore [Podcast]

Video in email. It’s a thing. You can’t ignore it.

Well, you can ignore it, but I wouldn’t recommend that. :)

Successfully implementing video in your email campaigns can yield higher open rates, and a ton of clicks from your subscribers. If you’ve been looking for a new way to stand out in the inbox, this is the episode for you.

Concerned about the whole “creating a video” part? No need to worry – producing video has become incredibly accessible and affordable these days. Do you have an iPhone? Great, you’re equipped to record video!

To dive deep into this topic, and help equip you with the tools you need to test and optimize video in email, I’ve recruited our in-house education guru (and video specialist), Jay Moore. He’s been running a successful webinar series on this topic, so he shared a few key points.

In this episode you’ll learn:

  • Why you should test video in your emails
  • How to effectively use video in your emails
  • What types of videos you should create
  • Various tools and software for creating video on a budget

You don’t want to miss this.

Listen below:

Here are a few links referenced in the episode:

Have a question about email marketing? Leave us a message at aweber.com/podcast.

The post How to use video in email with Jay Moore [Podcast] appeared first on Email Marketing Tips.



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Beauty Heroes: Saving the World One Subscription Box At A Time

Jeannie Jarnot spent years working in the spa industry, on the search for the best non-toxic products for her customers. She took that experience and decided to bring it to the masses via a monthly subscription service.Related Articles
  1. Heart of Business: Thinking Outside the Anything Box
  2. Big Target Partnership Fuels Pixi Beauty
  3. Introducing the Heart of Business


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Monday, March 28, 2016

The Art of Tidying Up Your Email List

“We should be choosing what we want to keep, not what we want to get rid of.”

Minimalism is all the rage these days. Just ask Marie Kondo, whose fresh and unabashed guide to home organization, The Life Changing Magic of Tidying Up, has become a #1 New York Times Bestseller and amassed a cult-like following. Rather than give a laundry list of items to throw away, she encourages us to focus on what we want to keep. The things that bring us joy.

And while the famous decluttering guru might be referring to the home, her tips can easily be applied to something seemingly unrelated: your email list.

A healthy list is non-negotiable.

Want to succeed with email marketing? List cleanup is non-negotiable.


Want to succeed with email marketing? List cleanup is non-negotiable.
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A healthy, well-maintained email list is the foundation for any successful email marketing program. If you’re spending the time and effort on your campaigns, you want to make sure you get results.

Unfortunately, the average email list depreciates over time – nearly 25% a year, according to MarketingSherpa. This is due to a combination of things: bounces, unsubscribes, email address changes. And if you’re not bringing in subscribers at the same rate as they leave, it can feel like your business is taking a hit.

Think quality > quantity.

A big list certainly seems impressive. There are dozens of blog posts and case studies out there touting strategies to go from 0 to 10,000 subscribers in no time. But not all of these list-building tactics are legit – buying an email list, for example, might get you subscribers, but it won’t get you the results you’re looking for.

Why? Because these subscribers never opted-in to receive your emails. They don’t know who you are and they most likely have no interest in buying what you’re selling – be prepared for your emails to go straight to the spam folder. Plus, if you’re using a reputable email service provider (like AWeber), purchased lists are totally off limits.

Wouldn’t you rather have a smaller, curated list of ideal subscribers who are super excited to read your emails? This would certainly bring joy to your email list – and your open rates.


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Don’t give up on growing your list just yet! Check out this video for list building ideas that won’t harm your sender reputation and this post for seven tips to grow your email list in a time-crunch.

Commit yourself to letting go.

Letting go of clutter is hard to do. The same can be said for your subscribers. Cleaning up your list means having to part with subscribers that you spent time and money to acquire.

Keeping your goal in mind is a great way to stay focused. Are you sending to attain more sales? Readers? Connections? The people on your list should be the ones who help you achieve that goal.

Keep in mind that not only will a clean list mean more attentive readers, but your deliverability and open rates will improve, too. Talk about a win-win!

Imagine your ideal subscriber.

For us, the ideal subscriber is someone who looks forward to seeing your latest newsletter hit their inbox, engages with your newsletters, clicks through to your offers and shares your emails with friends. While these are the people you want to see on your list, you might find that there are different characteristics and traits among your specific audience.

Having a visual ideal for the type of people you want to send to plays a huge part in how you plan your email strategy. These personas will make sure your content, cadence and promotional strategy are all in check.

A good way to identify these subscribers is by sending out a survey. Ask questions about the type of content they’d like to receive and how frequently, as well as what they expect from your emails. With the feedback you receive, you can learn a lot about your list.

Identify your inactive subscribers.

Inactive subscribers are people who signed up for your email list, but haven’t opened any of your emails in a long time – or possibly ever. And we always seem to make excuses for keeping these people on our lists.

There are lots of reasons why these perfectly valid subscribers go dark: they no longer need your products or services, they don’t have time to check all of their emails or maybe they just aren’t interested. Sometimes people sign up for a one-time incentive offer but have no intentions on purchasing from you again.

Fortunately, your inactive subscribers aren’t too hard to spot. Simply take a look at your subscriber stats to see who opens your emails and who doesn’t. People who open but don’t click aren’t necessarily a lost cause – they’re showing some interest in your brand, but maybe the content doesn’t completely resonate. It might be a good option to segment them out from those who don’t engage at all, and follow up with more targeted content.

Cleaning up your list from inactives isn’t easy. It’s hard to part with your subscribers! Before you remove these people from your list, try running a reactivation campaign to give them a second chance and increase engagement. If they still aren’t opening your emails, it’s time to let go.

Spark some joy.

When it comes to list cleanup, think of it like this: You’re choosing which subscribers to keep, not which to discard.

Keep your list healthy and maintained by delighting your subscribers with relevant content. After all, these are your ride-or-die subscribers. You should be showing them as much attention (if not more) than your prospects.

Need some ideas for reigniting the spark with your subscribers? Try employing one of these tactics:

1. Send subscribers a special promo code or discount offer

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2. Share helpful tips or hacks for using your product or service (bonus points for GIFs)

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3. Ask for feedback with a customer survey

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4. Reward customers who frequently purchase from you with a loyalty program

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So fresh, so clean.

There’s nothing better than the feeling of a clean email list. Have you employed some of these tactics in your email marketing strategy? What kind of results did you see?

Let us know in the comments or share your own ideas for keeping a healthy list!

The post The Art of Tidying Up Your Email List appeared first on Email Marketing Tips.



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Friday, March 25, 2016

Autoresponders: The Brilliant Digital Minions that Do All the Work

In a marketing department saturated with workload, most of us dream about cloning ourselves or hiring a team of trained interns who get the job done. While that can’t happen, treating autoresponders as our own personal marketing minions is a pretty close second.Related Articles
  1. Autoresponders Help Treasure Island Hotel to Email Marketing Bounty
  2. Permission Based Email Marketing: The Magic of the Welcome Email
  3. Affiliate Marketing: How to Set Up an Email Course


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Thursday, March 24, 2016

[#EmailChat Recap] Talking Landing Pages with LeadPages

Serious about growing your email list? Then you should know just how important it is to optimize your landing pages. But for the time-crunched marketer, knowing where to start can feel like a challenge.

That’s why we’ve enlisted our friends (and landing page experts) Bob and Kat over at LeadPages to help us break down the do’s and don’ts that every email marketer should know. We came away with so many actionable tactics that we can’t wait to employ in our own landing page strategy!

Missed out on this week’s chat? We’ve got you covered. Read on for 7 ways to optimize your landing pages and start growing your email list:

1. Want to grow your list? Landing pages are non-negotiable.

Key Takeaways:

  • Landing pages can help you grow your list in record time.
  • Have a webinar, promotion or other offer you want to market? Landing pages make it easy.
  • Tailor your content to a specific audience using landing pages!

2. They fit seamlessly into your email strategy.

Key Takeaways:

  • Offering something of value on your landing page – such as a webinar, guide or template pack – is a great way to get more email subscribers.
  • We use landing pages to promote our own webinars and ebooks, but these aren’t your only incentive options. Check out our guide to 5 Irresistible Incentives That Aren’t Ebooks.
  • Landing pages aren’t only for getting new subscribers. They’re a great way to start a conversation with your prospects and get more traffic to your site. Try adding social buttons to your landing page!

3. Remember these landing page best practices.

Key Takeaways:

  • Keep your CTA “above the fold.” And be sure it stands out – try a bold color or font!
  • Don’t miss out on any opportunities – every element should be carefully considered to make visitors take action.
  • Speak to your audience, not at them. Use simple, concise language that they understand. (In other words, avoid jargon or marketing speak.)

4. Landing page performance is totally measurable.

Key Takeaways:

  • Keep tabs on your conversion rate (aka the # of people who made it to your thank you page).
  • Pair Google Analytics with a built-in analytics tool (like one from LeadPages) for a winning combo.
  • Use tracking codes? Save time with Google Tag Manager.

5. Don’t make these common rookie mistakes.

Key Takeaways:

  • Don’t rely on one lead magnet. Your prospects aren’t all the same. Segment your lists and create landing pages that appeal to each audience.
  • Keep your copy crisp and clear. Your visitors should be able to know what you’re offering in the first five seconds.
  • One common mistake? Overwhelming prospects by giving them too much information at once (I call this “feature FOMO”). Keep your messaging short and sweet.

6. Just getting started with landing pages? Listen up.

Key Takeaways:

  • Keep it simple the first time around. It’s amazing how far one powerful headline and call to action (CTA) can go.
  • Don’t overcomplicate things and delay your promotional efforts. Start out by testing and iterate later.
  • Consider your audience: Who are they? Where are they coming from? Keep this in mind when creating your landing page experience.

7. Behold: Your landing page toolkit.

Key Takeaways:

Save the Date

Mark your calendar for Thursday, April 7 at noon ET as we talk welcome emails (guest expert TBA).

Love #emailchat? Help spread the word! We made it easy – just click the retweet icon in the image below:

 

The post [#EmailChat Recap] Talking Landing Pages with LeadPages appeared first on Email Marketing Tips.



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Wednesday, March 23, 2016

Points of Contact: What Autoresponders Have in Common with Sci-Fi Alien Films

An autoresponder, a sequence of emails that are sent to subscribers automatically, is a powerful too that helps generate buzz around your product, service, or campaign. If you’re confused about how this technical and digital side of marketing works, then think of it as a science-fiction film.Related Articles
  1. Walgreens’ Autoresponder Campaign Has My Order Backwards
  2. The Love Songs of J. Alfred Weekly Wrap
  3. Announcing the launch of new Benchmark Email!


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Rock This Way: Top Email Marketing Strategies for Small Businesses

(Wanna skip the intro? Check out Rock This Way: Top Email Marketing Strategies for Small Businesses now!)

If you work at a small business, you’re familiar with the daily challenges: the endless to-do list, a calendar crammed with meetings and the constant switch between managing all the things, from customer service to marketing your business.

When it comes to email marketing, you probably do it all yourself too. You plan, write and design every email. And unless your emails convert 100 percent of your leads into customers, you might often wonder, ‘How could I improve my email marketing strategy?’

To help answer that question, we surveyed approximately 1,600 small businesses to see how they plan to grow their business with email marketing. And we turned their responses into one awesome site (which is basically your email marketing cheatsheet): Rock This Way: Top Email Marketing Strategies for Small Businesses.

So, what kind of info should you expect to discover?

I don’t want to spoil things, but you’ll get insight into why 83 percent of small businesses plan to spend more time on email marketing in 2016, as well as how they plan to spend that time.

You’ll also discover what tools and tactics small businesses are most excited about using to improve their email campaigns (hint: automation is involved).

And the rest, well, you’ll just have to see for yourself:

rock-this-way

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From Subject Lines to Email Lists, It’s Time to Spring Clean Your Email Marketing Efforts

It’s spring cleaning season — time to air out closets, clean house, and switch your wardrobe for warmer weather. It’s also a good time to air out your subject lines and freshen your email campaigns with seasonal flare.

Just as you’re ready to be done with being bundled up in a winter coat, hat, and scarf, the folks on your email list might be getting tired of the same old subject lines. They’re probably also ready for something light and refreshing in their email inboxes after the months of hard selling they endured during the lead-up to the end-of-year holidays. Spring gives you a chance to breathe new life into your email campaigns. You can do this with subject lines that capture attention as well as the spirit of the season, and with compelling campaigns that capitalize on what people are experiencing as the seasons change.

Breathe fresh air into subject lines

Anyone who’s ever engaged in email marketing — or opened a promotional email, for that matter — knows subject lines make all the difference in getting your message opened and read. An eye-catching, curiosity-piquing subject line convinces recipients to open your email. Dull ones mean the recipient will delete your email before the next one in the queue loads on the preview screen!

Spring clean your email subject lines with these four tips:

1. Lighten up with some humor

The dark days of winter are slipping away and the bright colors, sounds, and scents of spring are here. People are feeling lighter, and they’re ready to enjoy a chuckle — or a belly laugh. Give it to them by infusing humor into your subject lines. You can do this in a number of ways, from connecting together two things that don’t normally relate, to poking fun at current events like the presidential primaries. (No dearth of material, there!) For more advice on how to infuse humor into your subject lines, check out our blog 25 Comical Subject Lines + Tips for Funny Writing.

2. Try out some new action words

All marketers have their go-to words that they rely on to create interest and excitement in their subject lines. You probably have some too, but spring is a great time to try out some new action words. Active verbs and vibrant nouns capture the reader’s attention and encourage recipients to open up your email. Need some ideas for fresh word choices? Check out our blog on choosing words that sell.

3. Tug on their heart strings

Sure, Christmas gets the accolades for being the most joyous time of year, and Valentine’s Day is all about love, but spring is also full of some very emotional cultural events. With Easter, Mother’s Day, graduations, and Father’s Day piling up throughout spring, speaking to recipients’ emotions is a great way to freshen up your subject lines during this warm, fuzzy season! Read up on how to write emotionally evocative subject lines.

4. Move things along faster …or better

Spring is a great time to practice making your subject lines shorter and pithier. A Marketing Sherpa study found that subject lines of 61-70 characters (about 15 words) get read the most. However, the second-highest read rate goes to subject lines of 91-100 characters and 51-60 characters, and the third-highest for shorter ones of 10 characters or less. What do these wildly divergent results tell you? Generally, brevity is better but if you’re going to go long, be brilliant! Practice honing both skills this spring with our guide to Successful Subject Lines Deconstructed.

Spring ahead with seasonal email campaigns

Whatever your product or service, chances are there’s a seasonal element to your business. If you’re in retail, maybe your emails in the last quarter of 2015 were full of special offers and sales pitches. If home repair is your bag, you might have spent the end of last year sending informational emails on common winter maintenance tasks. While if you’re an accountant you probably barely have time to read your email, let alone send any out, between Jan. 1 and April 15, once tax season dies down you might turn your attention to financial education.

Spring means it’s time to seasonally adjust your email campaigns to give recipients information that’s relevant to them at this time of year. Here are three ways to spring ahead with seasonal emails:

1. Update the look

Email providers like VerticalResponse offer a variety of templates to choose from when you’re crafting your email campaigns. If you’re still using the same template and colors you chose for winter promotions, why not switch things up by trying something new? A clean, fresh design in brighter or lighter colors will fit well with seasonal content.

2. Offer something relevant to the season

What’s on your customers’ minds this spring? Are they thinking of buying or selling a house? Getting a child ready for graduation? Enjoying some time outdoors on their decks or working in their yards? Finding just the right gift for Mother’s Day or Father’s Day? Tie your email campaigns into what’s going on in their lives this season. For example, an email newsletter with spring cleaning tips or an offer for a Mother’s Day discount on select merchandise will appeal to customers with information that’s relevant to them at this time of year.

3. Work on freshening your mailing list

Spring is a great time to freshen up your email list to make sure you’re sending to valid addresses and to ensure you’re reaching the right customers with the right offers. If your website doesn’t already have a page where new and existing customers can sign up to receive your emails, it’s time to add one. If you already have one, review how well it’s doing. Is it compelling? Is it easy to find on the site and does it make enrollment simple? Check your open, read, click through, and bounce rates. Weed out bounce backs and send out a ping email asking subscribers if they’re still interested in receiving email from you.

It’s also a good idea to revisit how you segment your list. Are there new ways to crunch customer data and organize customer groupings to reach new groups with fresh information? Consider targeting based on different common demographics, from geographical location to buying habits.

Before you know it, the light, refreshing days of spring will sizzle into summer. Taking steps now to freshen up your email marketing efforts can help ensure you won’t have to sweat to get results come summer!

Ready to get started on your spring email campaigns?

VerticalResponse is easy to use and free to get started. Sign up and send your next email for free.

Sign Up

© 2016, Tori Tsu. All rights reserved.

The post From Subject Lines to Email Lists, It’s Time to Spring Clean Your Email Marketing Efforts appeared first on Vertical Response Blog.

Tuesday, March 22, 2016

How many emails should I send? [Podcast]

Nurturing a relationship through email marketing is a lot like forming relationships in real life. Am I saying too much or too little? Am I saying the right things? It’s been two days; should I text now or wait? Okay, text sent. Oh no, I can’t believe I did that! Am I texting too much???

The struggle is real.

The age-old question of how many emails are too many emails, and what’s the appropriate frequency to send is relevant to marketers in any niche.

In this latest episode of the Ask Me About Email Marketing podcast, I’m joined by Content Marketing Specialist, Monica Montesa. We break down the various reasons for and against different send frequencies. If you are struggling with identifying the perfect sending cadence, this is the episode for you.

In this episode you’ll learn:

  • The magic number of how many emails you should send
  • The pros and cons of sending more frequently
  • The pros and cons of sending less frequently
  • The importance of setting expectations
  • How to use data and surveys to decide

You don’t want to miss this.


How often you are sending is impacting your email success - @missmontesa #emailmarketing
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Listen below:

Here are a few links referenced in the episode:

Have a question about email marketing? Leave us a message at aweber.com/podcast.

The post How many emails should I send? [Podcast] appeared first on Email Marketing Tips.



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Getting to the Bottom of Natural Products with Ecocentric Mom

Casey Powers met her perfect match in Ecocentric Mom. Having the experience of being a mother herself, Casey understood how overwhelming it could be for an expecting or new mom.Related Articles
  1. March 29, Celebrate Mom & Pop Businesses with an Email Campaign
  2. The Weekly Wrap: Deluxe Mother’s Day Edition
  3. 4 Reasons Why You Shouldn’t Ignore Mom Consumers


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Emotion vs. Promotion: 3 Ways to Get a Customer to Buy

Pascal once wrote, “The heart has its reasons which Reason knows nothing of…” We can easily apply this famed French philosopher’s quote to our marketing efforts. When someone buys from you, is it more likely that their decision to purchase was driven by an emotional want, or a logical need, or because of a trusted referral? If you’ve fallen in a rut and your email efforts only go as far as blasting an offer in hopes they’ll bite at the “great savings” then we’ve got some things for you to think about. While sales promotions can be a part of the marketing mix, they represent one variable in the equation. Here are 3 ways to get a customer to make a purchase:

1.  Promos: Lowering the Barrier to Entry

According to Kotler, sales promotion is a “diverse collection of incentive tools, mostly short-term, designed to stimulate quicker and/or greater purchase of particular products/services by consumers or the trade. Where advertising offers a reason to buy, sales promotion offers an incentive to buy.” In other words, promotions are an excellent way of boosting sales over a short amount of time by offering something exceptional to your target audience. The most commonly seen type of promo is of course the discount, and with good reason: according to the Promotion Marketing Association, over 76% of the population uses coupons or promo codes. The rebate allows you to lower the barrier to entry that may have prevented potential customers from purchasing from you earlier.

Offering discounts on a regular basis has its limits though. Even though they’re a great tool for meeting your sales quota in a short amount of time, they can devalue your product or brand in your consumers’ minds. Offering promotions on a regular basis may cause your customers to wait for the next promotion, instead of buying right away. Also, people may have bought your product during the sale period specifically due to the rebate you offered, and may be slow to return for that next purchase.

We break down the dos and don’ts and cover best practices for small business promotions during our next webinar. Register for Small Business Promotional Strategies scheduled for Thursday, March 24th, 10:00am – 11:00am PDT.

2.  Emotional Connection: Cultivating a Positive Brand Image 

Seeing an item going for less than half its regular price may make a potential customer sit back and think, “Oh, this won’t hurt my wallet as much, might as well get it now.” That would seem to be the logical response. However, lower prices don’t necessarily equate higher sales. Would you buy something from a brand you’d never heard of before, even at 50% off? Now what if it were, say, Apple? In a heartbeat, right? That’s because Apple has, over the years, built a brand image of being “cool” and “innovative.” It resonates emotionally with consumers.

This goes back to my preamble to this post: emotion and logic both play an integral part in your customer’s purchasing behavior. But in order to make a purchase, the consumer must have some kind of emotional investment in the product, making him/her want to acquire it. Per Perry Marshall, “We all fundamentally make all of our decisions based on emotion, not logic. Logic supports our emotions and is used to justify our decisions after we have made them. Logic plays a part, but emotion is the core ingredient.” So if your product and/or the way you promote it is boring, no matter what the price, you may still will have difficulty selling it.

3.  Trusted Referral: Get Your Customers Selling For You on Social Media

With the new norm of Facebook, Twitter and other social networks, consumers have found a venue to not only voice their opinion, but make it known to the whole world (or at least their friends and followers) if they so choose. Word of mouth has found itself a platform, but more importantly, the relationships between parties can go beyond simple business acquaintances or partnerships, they can be actual friendships. This elevates the degree of trust even more, as the reasoning now becomes: “My close friend/relative likes this brand, and I know him/her to be of good taste, therefore I can trust this brand and purchase their products as well.” Moreover, it can give one bragging rights, resulting in a potential game of one-upmanship.

Want to dive deeper on social promotions? Join our Small Business Promotional Strategies webinar and learn:

  • The Dos and Don’ts of small business promotions
  • Online and offline promotional best practices
  • How to create a promotional calendar for each quarter
  • How to leverage your different social channels by promotion type

emotion vs promotion how to get a customer to buy

Editor’s Note: This blog post was originally published in August 2012 and has been revamped and updated for accuracy and relevance.

© 2016, Contributing Author. All rights reserved.

The post Emotion vs. Promotion: 3 Ways to Get a Customer to Buy appeared first on Vertical Response Blog.