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Archive for the ‘Improve email marketing campaigns’ Category

The Idea Behind Autoresponders

Wednesday, May 9th, 2012

The idea behind autoresponders is to establish an enduring relationship with your subscribers. When people opt into your list, they usually expect something in return — valuable content, special offers, product bonuses, etc. Since they gave you the permission to email them, you already have taken the first step in building a relationship. That is what autoresponder marketing is all about. However, you must consistently provide them with value, and the best way to achieve this is by effectively using autoresponders.

All internet marketers should use autoresponder marketing. It is easier to sell to an existing customer than it is to find a new one. Creating an email series requires some time and effort, but once it is up and running, all you have to do is sit back and watch. The whole process should be automated as much as possible.

What you basically need to do with your autoresponder marketing program is setting up an email series to be sent to your subscribers. Once they subscribed, they should receive a welcome email, with some information about your business, products or services. Then every days or weeks, they should receive other emails, in which you provide them with valuable content.

Autoresponder marketing is great for building a relationship with your list. If you email people with valuable content, on a regular basis, they are more likely to read your emails, and ultimately purchase your products or the products you promote. Building a list is not only about size but also conversion.

Autoresponder marketing is one of the most effective ways to make money online. It is a proven technique and remains among internet marketers and home business owners.

Here are some tips:

Send short, eye-catching emails to your subscribers with a short description and a link to a page of your website.

Offer a free trial of your product to your prospects and send them instructions to make use of the trial through the autoresponder. When the free trial ends, you will want to follow up with the potential customers to get them to buy because you now have their email addresses.

Offer training to your affiliates if you run an affiliate program because this is a great way to offer them value. The affiliates who are marketing your product will always be on the lookout for ways to improve, and when you automate everything you will get maximum results, as long as your training offers value. Your affiliates can be trained in a variety of ways when you make use of an autoresponder.

Write reviews about products in the target market and deliver them to your list through the autoresponder. You will be providing value to your subscribers and at the same time making a commission from the sales you generate when someone buys the product through your affiliate link.

When someone buys one of your products, you then follow up the purchase with an offer for a second product. The second product could be another of yours, or it could be an affiliate promotion.

Use your autoresponders to conduct simple polls.

Use your autoresponders to deliver training courses.

Use your autoresponders to deliver a “rate card” for advertising on your website.

Email marketing does not have to be difficult; however you need to stay with it to reap the benefits and achieve long term results. Remember the money is in the relationship with your email list, not in the email list itself.

*Did You Know?  Autoresponders can be divided into two categories:  an outsourced ASP model — these autoresponders operate on the provider’s infrastructure and are usually configurable via a web-based control panel and server-side which enables users to install the autoresponder system on their own server.

Improve your email marketing campaigns

Friday, April 23rd, 2010

How do you improve your email marketing campaigns?

Let us first discuss why most email campaigns fail.

Indistinct offers– The benefits of your offer are not clearly stated to the recipient due to a poorly developed offer or improper formatting of the email. These will appear more like announcements, rather than an email providing something of interest to customers. The recipients will promptly delete such messages.

Feeble offers– This is ordinary. The vendor believes their email campaign is solid; their company recognizable; and they do not need a quality offer to achieve results. This is incorrect.

Advertisers do not understand what their customers want– You need to know your customers are always asking:  “What’s In It for me?” Does your campaign support what your customers actually want? Do you express this to them clearly?

Do not settle for awful email marketing campaign results!

  • You can learn how to get your email marketing campaigns attention.
  • You can discover ways to stand out from the rest.
  • You can find out what top email marketers know that makes all the difference.
  • You can stop wasting 75% of your budget on emails that are never read!

There is a great deal to learn about email marketing, so begin today.

A survey showed that business-to-business (B2B) email campaigns have greater open rates than business-to-consumer (B2C) campaigns. Sometimes the user who receives the text format of your email is not counted in the open rate calculation. This is because as a rule only HTML mails can be tracked down. It is important to note that sometimes the ‘from’ field is unclear. People tend to delete vague mails.

A simple email marketing campaign can produce significant results quickly. Once you have mastered the basics of targeted email campaigns, it is time to integrate a few advanced techniques to improve email marketing. You must refine your email campaigns based on results. The popularity of content is not the only type of data you can learn from. As we have discussed in the past, look for patterns in the times and days you send your emails. Divide your email list into groups based on a common factor. For example, you could segment your list based on age, gender, or past buying behavior. Do not be afraid to test your groups to see what produces the best results; i.e. send your groups different subject lines to determine which is more popular and which garner the most results.

Determining the purpose of your email marketing tells you what kind of email messaging you should be sending. Email marketing activity is also subject to constant changes in advice, approach, and technology. Given this subjectivity, your campaign can easily lose its direction, its intended purpose lost, thus rendering your time and investment as ineffective. Many email marketing campaigns send out the wrong type of message. Once you decide your email campaign goal, and the elements needed for your message, determine the format your email messages should follow. Here are some email formats which businesses have found successful. However, be sure the positives outweigh the negatives, as far as the structure you are employing.

Email newsletters

The email newsletter involves a little more commitment than an immediate action-driven email message. It needs to be more informative and useful to your readers than a direct marketing email. Email newsletters need to be sent with regular frequency to be effective, and that is where the challenge begins for many companies.

The best advice for any businesses sending email newsletters is to start out slowly. A monthly or even bimonthly email newsletter would not be considered an over-aggressive frequency. Newsletters are not a direct marketing tool. In other words, you risk a high unsubscribe rate if you promised to send email newsletters to customers and started sending email ads instead.

Announcements

Non-profit organizations should be using email to announce almost anything new about their mission.

Service-based organizations usually find the announcement format easier to compose. This approach usually requires a little creativity, but it continually keeps your message and services in the minds of your clients.

Printable email coupons

If you sell clothing, books, or even gift memberships, email coupons can be helpful. They are typically issued either as an online coupon code, which can be used on a website ordering form, or they can be in the form of a printable coupon. Printable coupons can be simple PDF files or they can be web-based, HTML documents composed using minimal design features, for easy printing.

Common elements of a printable coupon include your organization’s logo, specifics of your offer, your phone number, street address, the URL address to your website, and an expiration date.

Surveys

Another format of email campaign is the customer survey, using email to invite supporters to participate in a short survey about their recent experience with your business.

Define your purpose

Define the goals of your email campaigns ahead of time, and develop appropriate email messages that will best help you succeed.

*Did You Know– 71% of the top 360 U.S. companies (as ranked by D&B) offer an email opt-in on their website.

When is the most effective time to send your emails?

Friday, November 13th, 2009

Good for you – you have decided to embrace the necessity for email marketing. It is a wise choice.

There is an old adage that says – ‘Timing is Everything’ – this is true in life as well as email marketing.

So when is the most effective time to send?

Our research, here at Emercury, shows the best days are Tuesdays, Wednesdays,and Thursdays. The reason these days are better (for businesses) is simple – during Saturdays and Sundays your audience is not in the office. We suggest, on Mondays, you allow existing and prospective customers to get caught up after their weekend. Monday tends to be a day when there is a multitude of internal work and organizing to complete. In other words – leave them alone.
What about Fridays? People are generally in a good mood. They are more likely to reciprocate a quality solicitation – right? Wrong! They are closing out the week, and their minds can be elsewhere. Too often a project commencing on a Friday can be overlooked Monday.

I want to reiterate, so you follow this formula — the days to send to your subscribers are Tuesday, Wednesday and Thursday. Since these days are mid-week, your subscribers should be in the ideal state of mind to want to read, and hopefully convert on your newsletter. Monday nobody really has the time, or wants to take the time, to read a sales email. Likewise, Fridays are often filled with wrapping up work and procrastination. Do not send your message on Friday, unless you do not want people to read it. Statistically, Friday is one of the worst days possible to send an email blast.

Additional days to steer clear of are holidays and primary vacation months.

The time of day you send your email blast is not as important, but it definitely must be considered. Research when your readers are online. You do not have to presume – go to your logs. Discover when your website receives the most traffic. You can find out when the people on your list joined. If you find a pattern within an approximate time range, then select that time to send your emails.

We suggest, to our Emercury clients as a general rule of thumb, to send your email blast between 10 a.m. and 2 p.m. You want your message to reach your audience when they are most accessible. Early in the morning and late in the afternoon are not those times. People will be more frenzied in the morning – retrieving their coffee, making a quick call, cleaning out their inbox – you do not want your message to get lost in that shuffle.

Remember; do not place all your email marketing strategic thought in these areas. Let your subscribers have a say with their purchases. Tracking and testing is the only way to know when your audience is the most willing to respond to your offer. As a business owner, what you need to prioritize is finding your niche market for your email list; this allows you to target your sales messages. When you have defined you market, you can have a targeted business email list with contacts who welcome your offers and the priceless information you send them. The more you refine your niche market, the easier it is for you to furnish your audience with their specific needs and interests. People do not respond to impersonal emails. They react when you relate to them and provide a solution.

*Did You KnowSMTP stands for Simple Mail Transfer Protocol, which controls email relay on the Internet. All online mailing services use SMTP, and all email is SMTP mail. Delivering email and e-marketing since 1996, SMTP.com is the world’s oldest independent SMTP service provider.

Learn The Rules… So You Can Break Them!

Friday, March 27th, 2009

We have all heard the phrase, “rules are meant to be broken,” right? Well, in some cases, rules really are meant to be broken. In the previous two newsletters, we gave you some rules that are generally applied to email marketing. But, are there any exceptions to those rules? When is it a good idea to follow your own instincts? As a client, it is extremely important t you know what you want for your website, email marketing campaign, or newsletter. Remember, a service provider is there to bring your ideas to life and give you sound advice on how to proceed. If you know what you want, you are more likely to get it!

Here are some familiar names that are doing email marketing by their own set of rules.

Costco, we have all heard of this company, right? Well, Costco has bypassed the all important rule that says you do not want to saturate your preview pane with too much information. Instead, Costco offers quite a bit of detailed information in this area. Why does this work for Costco? Maybe because we all recognize this brand and the services offered. Many of us will take the extra step, click on a link, and scroll up to the next column to see what Costco has to offer.

Who else is blazing their own trail? Nordstrom is following a different set of rules when it has to do with subject lines. Subject lines typically contain 35- 45 characters. However, the subject line for Nordstrom’s email marketing reads, “GET FREE Shipping with Any Shoe Purchase.” This immediately sets up the viewer for an offer for free shipping, but instead “sets up the subscriber for the sight of great shoes.” While the content and intent of the email is not exactly clear, the shorter subject line and enticing header is something that gets a reaction from people.

How about Pandora? According to best practices, “Pandora’s copy is long, and the message is not direct (it doesn’t steer subscribers back to the website). Because Pandora is a free service that does not need to upsell to already-engaged subscribers, the company uses its welcome message to highlight its human face and to introduce its accessible customer service.” In other words, Pandora does not need to re-sell services to those already receiving their email marketing. Instead, Pandora reinforces the importance of customer service human interaction.

Lastly, we take a look at Backcountry. This company basically spoofs itself and the whole idea of “call to action” by being irreverent, “light it up.” Yes, normally any call to action would be highlighted and right at the top, where the subscriber can clearly see what is being asked of him or her. However, there are times when a more lighthearted approach does the trick. Backcountry is the perfect example of this approach.

So, what does all of this mean to you and your business? It means not every rule will apply to you or to the type of business you are promoting. How you promote your business depends greatly on the audience you are trying to reach, the services you are providing, and branding. The best way to conduct any email marketing campaign is to discuss your goals with a savvy email marketing provider. A good provider will not only listen – they will also offer you sound advice on how to reach your target audience.

*Did You Know – email ad spending will increase to $677 million in 2011, from $492 million in 2008?

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