One interesting facet of email marketing is holding contests—this isn’t exactly a novel idea anymore, but it can add interest and involve your customers.  But if you decide to run a contest, beware of how you post the winners!  Some sites have opted for using a mix of email marketing and other media such as Facebook and Twitter.  If you decide to post pictures of your contest winners in your emails, beware of the pictures you choose to use.  Don’t use pictures that make your winners look bad.  They probably won’t appreciate it, and it won’t exactly make you look like you have a respectable customer base.  And if you don’t have their picture, request it from them—don’t post a default image.  It’s better to request pictures up front from your contestants and let them know that you’ll be putting them in your email.  You’re more likely to get decent pictures that way.  If you decide not to go with pictures, a clever logo or design can be just as creative.  Remember, your customers have used your business and are participating, so do them a favor and present them in the best possible light.

If you were given the opportunity to try two things at the same time to see which one would give you the most benefits for the least work, would you take the opportunity? Of course you’d do it!

Think about this. What if whenever you walked up to a girl, you could try a couple different pick-up lines at the same time (and without the girl knowing), to see which line would get her attention? You’d exploit your unfair advantage, I’m sure.

Split testing = An unfair corner on the market

Think about your email campaigns. Whenever you work to compose and send one, you’re pretty much taking a guess each time, hoping that all the hours and effort you put into shaping the most grabbing subject line, the perfect offer, the best body copy and the most motivational call-to-action will make them open it and react. And then, that amazing promotional graphic you creatively designed. You hope your subscribers will not be able to resist that!

Here’s an idea! Why not take the chance element out of it and be certain next time?

When you split test your email campaigns, all you do is copy the original email, change any part (one or multiple), schedule the split test delivery and then sit back and watch the magic happen! Split testing offers a fast way to optimize email marketing campaigns. If you use split testing, you’ll be able to try out a couple versions of your message on a few subscribers, see which one performs better, and then use the better message for the rest of the subscribers.

For your next campaign, you can use the superior message as a foundation. You can then keep testing more elements, improving your email campaigns with each test. What’s the best thing about this? It’s amazingly easy! In fact, it’s so easy I don’t know why you don’t split test EVERY campaign! And think about it: Could you even try to do split testing with a newspaper ad or print campaign?

An easy example

Let’s imagine I’m a restaurant sending out an offer to my clientele to come in and eat on slow Wednesday evenings. Usually your resources (ad agency, in-house, etc.) are pretty much guessing at what offer is going to motivate customers to come into the restaurant. And you pay them for the guessing. The offer seems great. There’s a big enough, bold enough call-to-action. Hey, let’s try it. You press the send button. While you obtain okay open rates, you don’t think you did quite as well as you could have.

Using split testing, you are able to experiment with some variations such as:

* Sender/Envelope Info
* Subject lines
* Calls-to-action
* Images
* Body Copy
* Testimonials
* Personalization
* Message layout/design
* And more…

And with those options guess what you can do? You can get these results:

* Increase Open rates
* Increase Requests for more information
* Increase Click-thrus
* Increase Visits
* Increase Calls
* Increase your knowledge of what works and what doesn’t

Could be that a two-for-one offer isn’t as effective as free apps. How could you have known?

Do you have enough to think about now? Are you willing to give it a try for the next email campaign you send? If you’re an eConnect Email customer, we’re always here to help you! Contact your account manager for a few ideas and help you get started with split testing.

Good luck!

We know that your popular but there’s a limit to how often your email subscribers want to see a message from you in their inbox.

Have you ever thought about sending a follow-up email just a day after the initial email? Think again. There are two words you should consider deeply when you’re thinking about how often to send emails.

Inbox Exhaustion

Inbox exhaustion may sound like a serious problem, but you can totally avoid it. Inbox exhaustion occurs when you send way too many emails to your subscribers, wearying them with emails and making them unsubscribe, or even complain that you’re sending spam.

Now there isn’t a convenient guide telling you just how often you can email your subscribers. It’s just common sense. Even so, a lot of marketers ignore their common sense, especially near the holidays. Really, who wants to get an email from your company, or any company, every day for days on end? It’s annoying. And it’s inbox exhaustion – when the subscriber is worn out and frustrated by frequency.

How can I tell when often becomes too often?

Keep an eye on your stats. When you send out more frequent emails do your opens and clicks stats remain steady? Or do you see them drop? If they’re dropping, change your habits accordingly. Or, here’s an even better idea: ask your subscribers how often they want to hear from you. If you can, give them the options of yearly, quarterly, monthly, or bi-weekly emails. We live in an on-demand society. People will appreciate your emails more if they feel like you’re giving them just what they want.

When you’re trying to avoid inbox exhaustion, here’s the golden rule: use common sense. If you don’t like to get multiple e-mails from the same company, day after day, then don’t send them. Avoid filling someone’s inbox with multiple marketing messages within a day. Be patient rather than overbearing. If you have a good offer and clear message, those who want to will take action.

Don’t buy email lists! It’s wrong and it hurts your brand. If that’s not enough to stop you, then please remember the puppies! Don’t buy email lists…don’t kill puppies!

Do you use e-mail marketing at work or in your own business?  If you do, here’s the good news: Outlook 2010 Beta is now ready for use in your Inbox Preview reports within eConnect Email.  While some email marketers weren’t happy with the fact that outlook 2010 is using the Microsoft Word 2010 rendering engine in nearly the same way that it did in 2007, there have been some improvements to 2010 that will help you in your email marketing.
The reason for uproar over the 2007 version with Word was that many preferred to view in a browser.  This uproar at least got the attention of the folks at outlook, and the small concession that resulted was the little message/link “view in web browser” that allows the viewer to open up a web browser.  This just ensures additional rendering options available for your recipient, which is a wonderful thing if you use e-mail marketing.

To ensure that the link will be visible to your recipient, use the following steps:

1.    If you’re already using a <style /> tag in the <head /> of your email just tack on this line of code:

#ForceOutlook2010BroswerLink span { padding: 0px; }

2.    If you aren’t using <style /> tags or prefer a cleaner method just place this span tag in the <body /> of your email:

<span style=”padding: 0px;”></span>

While nothing else seems to have changed much with Outlook 2010, and this change seems to be a small one, it is at least proof that things may be heading in a better direction.

Sometimes little things slip through the cracks when sending an email like a typo or sending the email twice.  We kick ourselves for these little mistakes and call ourselves an idiot but in reality you got your message across and people forgive and forget quicker than you think, sometimes they may not even notice.

So, before you go correcting the mistake and resending the email or send another email apologizing for the duplicate, just realize that your readers may or may not have noticed the mistake and have already moved on.  An extra email would just seem annoying, after the fact.

If you are constantly flooding inboxes with typos or other mistakes, then you have a problem.  Otherwise just chalk it up as a mistake and move on.  We tend to over think and worry for our customers too much sometimes.  They’ve probably made mistakes in life too.

So just be careful and proofread your emails before sending and check all your links.  If mistakes happen every once in a while it’s no big deal, don’t beat yourself up over it.

Subscribers need to have the ability to ‘modify their details’ within an email for many reasons. It’s so frustrating when you simply want to update your email address or some other bit of information and there’s no means to do it or you have to jump through too many hoops to get there.

Just like any other online account, users should be able to update their email subscription information online.  From a marketer’s standpoint, you want users to have the option of updating their info with you at any time and deter them from unsubscribing.

The more in tune your clients are with you, the more likely they are to keep their information up to date at all times.

More and more, you see the words ‘Modify Details’ or ‘Update Profile’ right next to the Unsubscribe link in email footers, a trend that is especially important if you have multiple lists. Like fashion, taste in food and what rotates through my iPod, preferences change and what someone wanted to receive two months ago may not be copacetic with them now.

Within eConnect Email, you can create a Modify Details page in seconds. Here’s how you do it:

- Login and head to Forms in the upper right. Select ‘Create A Website Form’.

- Enter in your preferences for the form and select what lists you want people to update, including any specific Custom Fields within the lists.

- Make any customizations for the follow-up Thank You and Error page.

That’s it! Now all you need to do is include a link in your email (either from a predefined link after hitting the Links icon in the WYSIWYG, a merge tag or a Custom Field) and you’ve given people the opportunity to update their details with a single click – including their email address.

So are you emailing with just an unsubscribe link? That’s so 2003.

Our development team is always working to update and make our email application the most robust in the industry, it amazes me what they are capable of.  We are always introducing new features or helping our clients improve their inbox results, it’s pretty amazing.  So, I figured I’d take a few minutes to outline some pretty cool things about our system that you may not know about. Take advantage of them – they’ll make you a better email marketer. It’s why we exist!

1. Snippets: Save yourself some time by reusing key elements to your emails like a header, footer, or side bar.  Snippets are small pieces of HTML that you can create and save and use over and over when you need them.
2. Social Share: Did you hear Twitter is going out of busienss? Me neither. Social media is here to stay and so is email. Insert a simple tag and boom: your subscribers can share your emails with their networks on Twitter, Facebook, LinkedIn and Google Buzz.
3. Cart Abandonment: 7 out of 10 online shopping carts are abandoned.  70%! Wow.  eConnect Email can help you recover those lost sales by firing off triggered emails to each person that abandons your cart with an offer, incentives or reminders to complete the purchase.  Studies show nearly 50% of abandoned shop carts can be recovered and turned into cold hard cash!
4. RSS-to-Email: Why work harder than you have to. With this feature you can update a blog and then reuse your content for your newsletter too, automatically!  Some of our customers do this and use the next item to schedule the deployment and deliver while they sleep. It’s hands-free email marketing, baby.
5. Scheduled, Automatic Mailings: Want your emails to be working for you while you play? Just set it and forget it. The eConnect Email advanced scheduler deploys your emails on time, every time. So while you’re grilling on a Sunday afternoon with Sam Adams, we’ll be delivering your messages whenever and wherever you need ‘em.
6. Inbox Preview & Spam Report: Want to know how your email will render in all the top email providers including the Blackberry and iPhone? With one-click, Inbox Preview will provide a detailed screenshot report ensuring emails appear as intended. In addition, we’ll run it through all of the most popular spam filters (gateway, desktop and server-side) to see if your stuff might be mistaken as spam before you send.
7. Advanced Triggers: eConnect Email can communicate with your CRM. While we provide stock Salesforce.com integration, you may want to integrate with some other system. With a standard SOAP API, you can have us “talk back” to any system you’d like.
8. Dynamic Content: Readers will want to keep reading your stuff if it’s relative to them.  So tailor your emails to your client’s specific interests and you’ll keep them hooked a whole lot longer.  It just takes a little set up but the results will be well worth your time.  It’s no longer a one-size fits all world.
9. Browser Image Editing: We have a simple way to edit your photos or images inside our program.  Photoshop can be overkill and sometimes we just need to make a simple edit.  We have included the most common image editing functions inside of eConnect Email through our integration with Google-owned Picnik. Pretty neat.
10. Auto-responders & Triggered Mailings: Let our system go to work for you once again.  Set up your welcome emails and targeted mailings based on subscriber interactions with an auto-response or triggered mailing series, and relax.
11. API/Integration: For you developers out there, here’s one for you…with our API tools you can integrate your stuff with ours like never before. Want to build a custom reports interface for a client? Want to have your CRM and ours talk to one another? Well now you can.
12. The Free Plan…Forever!: Want something that will really entice you …You can have a free account with us for up to 150 emails per month as long as you wish.  That’s a good one…free emails!  Woo hoo!  Here’s what you get: 150 email/month, store an unlimited number of subscribers, access to all account features, no contract or credit card required!  So give it a spin, activate your free account today and see why eConnect Email is simply, email done better.
13. Email Marketing Services: Need some help with your email design and delivery, or maybe your just too busy doing what you do best? Put us to work for you whether it’s one really important campaign or all of your email marketing efforts. Our professional services team helps marketers design, develop and deploy better email marketing campaigns everyday.
14. The most flexible pricing of any ESP: When it comes to pricing, we’ve learned that flexibility is a cool, refreshing approach. We want you to feel comfortable with how you are billed, whether it be monthly or on a pay as you send basis. You give us an idea of your volume, we’ll show you where you fall. And the greatest part? You’re only charged for the emails you send not the number of contacts you have within your account. Simple.
15. You can talk to us: This one is usually the most pleasant surprise to folks checking us out as a potential solution. Many self-service email service providers even refuse to publish a phone number. That’s ok, but that’s not us. We love to talk to you and want you to feel like we’re in this together. Give us a ring we’re here to help – 888.596.9997.

It’s official, we’ve launched eConnect Email 3.0 and now we’re offering a Free Forever Plan!

Build, Send and Track successful campaigns with one of the industry’s most robust and powerful email marketing applications. Take a few minutes and learn how eConnect Email 3.0 can transform the way you do email marketing.

We are strong believers in the try it before you buy it method. Sign up for our Forever Free Plan and send up to 150 emails monthly, store an unlimited number of subscribers, and get access to all account features and support. The best part is you can have it all with no contract or credit card required!

Once you’re ready to activate your account, save 20% by using coupon code: offer

As always, if you have any questions along the way give us a ring (866) 596-9997, we’re here to help!

Cheers!

Statistics show that roughly 7 out of 10 online shopping carts are abandoned before a purchase is made. Crazy. 7 out of 10.

It takes too much time and effort to get someone to your site, get them to shop, put items in their cart to only walk away with nothing 70% of the time.

Obviously, physical stores rarely have this problem.  Of course you can walk in and walk out with nothing if you don’t find what you are looking for at the price you are willing to pay.  However, if you grab a shopping cart and start filling it with things you need or want, you are not going to just leave the store without paying for and taking those things home, it just doesn’t happen.

Now there are a lot of people who can go beyond these simple statistics and give you reasons why ecommerce shoppers do this, we just want you to know that through email marketing there is a way to increase your abandoned cart sales.

Fickle Shoppers

Of course, there are many things you can do to convert more visitors into paying customers such as the design, price pointing, special offers, etc. But with all that said, clients are fickle and may change their mind and walk away.

So by all means, do everything in your power to provide an optimal shopping and check out experience. But regardless of why they didn’t complete the transaction – you’ve got a secret weapon that doesn’t care and it’s called email marketing.

The eConnect Email solution to making your cash register go cha-ching!

eConnect Email has a solution to this cart abandonment saga.  Our email system triggers real-time, automated email follow-ups to your potential buyers, helping to convert abandoned shopping carts into money in the bank. By delivering timely follow-up messages, cart abandonment emails can remind, gently push and motivate lost sales to come back to you. Here’s a few simple examples of how customers use cart abandonment:

• Remind customers of the products they left in their cart
• Cross-sell/up-sell complimentary products
• Offer discounts or incentives to complete the sale
• Run surveys to ask why they didn’t complete the purchase
• Trigger special messages after purchase that entice new sales

Recovering lost sales with the help of email marketing will be worth the time and effort.  I would highly encourage you to use the technology at your fingertips and statistically speaking you can recover 50% of those lost sales.  Do the math yourself and ask why you’re leaving money on the table.

To learn more about email marketing automation, and specifically cart abandonment services, connect with us. We’d love to hear about your business and e-commerce goals and how we might help.

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