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.