Nova Scotia Email Marketing Firm Completes a Round of Financing in Excess of $1 Million from Local Investors
Funds to Support Development and Marketing of Email Marketing Platform
Dartmouth, Nova Scotia – December 14, 2009 – SimplyCast, a leading provider of email marketing, event management and online surveys for small businesses, announced today it has completed a round of equity financing in excess of $1 million in Series A funding to further develop and market its email marketing platform.
SimplyCast’s flagship email marketing product is a feature-rich solution already used by thousands of customers in over 175 countries, including many of the world’s most recognized brand names in retail, non-profit and hospitality industries. The rapid adoption to date is proof that it is easy for anyone to create permission-based email marketing campaigns with a professional look and feel, high degree of deliverability and automated tracking capabilities.
SimplyCast’s platform will fundamentally change the email marketing landscape by providing a suite of tools and services designed to drive new leads and sales revenue, maintain and grow customer email lists and maximize the overall ROI to the financial health of an organization.
“Email is one of the most powerful, cost effective and easy to maintain business marketing tools available today for organizations of any size,” said Saeed El-Darahali, president & CEO of SimplyCast. “This round of financing will help expedite our explosive growth rate to further deliver the best email marketing solution to customers worldwide.”
About SimplyCast
SimplyCast is a leading provider of email marketing solutions for organizations worldwide. With thousands of customers in various industries ranging from accounting, law and retail, to real estate, tourism and advertising, SimplyCast provides businesses with email marketing tools to help them effectively communicate with customers, enhance brand awareness and increase revenue.
For More Information Contact:
Michael Cusden
C: 902.220.7233
michael.cusden@simplycast.com
www.SimplyCast.com
Add comment December 14, 2009
Add a sign-up form to your Facebook page
Does your company have a Facebook page? Did you know that you can easily add a sign-up form to your Facebook fan page so your Facebook friends can join your mailing list?
When using SimplyCast, there has always been a simple way to put a sign-up form onto a web page. From the List Manager you would copy and paste HTML code onto your site so people could sign-up and be entered directly into your list.
Now it is almost as easy to add the same sign-up form to your Facebook fan page.
Here are the instructions.
To begin, you need to make sure that you have two things:
1. A Facebook fan page. (You can see SimplyCast’s fan page here)
2. The HTML code from SimplyCast that allows you to embed your sign-up form on a web page.
To get this first you need to have a list created. To get the HTML code to embed you need to select the list you want to use and go to Generate Forms on the List Manager toolbar. A screen will open that will provide HTML code to copy. The number of fields used is based on how many pieces of information you have entered in the chosen list. If you want to remove any one of the fields just unclick it and the code with refresh.
Next we will make the necessary updates on your Facebook fan page.
You need to add the static FBML application.
FBML stands for Facebook Markup Language. This inclusion basically allows you to embed your application in the Facebook platform. The easiest way to add the application is to search for “Static FBML” using the upper right hand search box on Facebook. It will show up as the second search result, and you need to click on “add to page”.
Next, navigate back over to your fan page and select “edit page” from right below your profile picture.
Scroll down to find FBML in your list of applications, and click on the little pencil icon to edit it.
In “Box Title” you can give the tab a name like “Email Signup” or “Newsletter”. Then in the “FBML” section, paste in the embed code that you copied from SimplyCast in Step 2. If you want you can use basic HTML to give it a look and feel that matches your brand.
You will want to make it easy to find so friends will see it and sign-up. You can do this by adding a new tab to your fan page’s navigation bar.
Go back to your fan page and select “edit page” from directly below your profile picture. Then scroll down to find FBML in your list of applications, and click on the little pencil icon to edit it once again. This time you want to select “Application Settings”.
From the Application Settings, you have the option to select whether you want your sign-up form to appear as a box, a top navigation tab, or both. As you can see on the SimplyCast Fan Page, we have our signup form set up as a tab on the top of the page. This is a matter of individual preference and will not affect the functionality of the form. Be creative!
By adding a sign-up form to your Facebook fan page you are expanding your reach for new customers that might not of found your company or product by traditional means.
If you have any questions on this please feel free to leave a comment and we will do our best to help you out.
Add comment December 9, 2009
SimplyCast rewind – The best of November
Hard to believe it is December already, eh? Time flies when you are email marketing I guess.
As Christmas gets closer by the day, life can get pretty hectic and time consuming. Black Friday and Cyber Monday are in the rear view mirror for another year and everyone’s email marketing campaigns are out in the world bringing in new customers and hopefully making sales.
With all the planning, writing, list building and testing that you have been doing to prepare your holiday marketing, there probably was not a lot of time to actually read.
That is why the SimplyCast team is taking a look back at November and highlighting the information you may have missed.
Nov. 4 – How email marketers can beat writer’s block
Even the most seasoned email marketer can run out of great content from time-to-time. Those who write a lot know that ideas are not always flowing and some days are a lot harder than others. So how do you beat the dreaded writer’s block and return to pumping out witty and creative copy?
Here are a few tips to get your creative juices flowing that will keep your subscribers engrossed in your future emails!
Nov. 6 – Important information when using a dedicated IP address
SimplyCast has been rolling out free dedicated IP addresses to our valued customers.
A dedicated IP address is one that is used only by you or your company to send the emails from. Dedicated IPs are static and do not change and since the IP does not change, the history and reputation of the IP belongs to the customer using it.
Check out these tips to best optimize your brand new IP and keep it looking shiny and new.
Click here to read
Nov. 13 – 12 tips to optimize your Christmas email marketing
Yep it was Friday the 13th when this post was written and nothing bad happened. This might be too late for Christmas but we still want to include these helpful reminders on how to optimize your email marketing campaigns. The good news is you can use them all year long.
Nov. 19 – Why your emails should be friends with social media
What? You did not know your emails can have friends as well? Time to let them out of the house and introduce them to social media if you have not already. By doing that, your already well crafted content will get shared and blasted to corners of the Internet you did not know existed.
Nov. 23 – Keep customers informed when email marketing for Christmas
Everyone wants their gifts delivered by Christmas so make sure you know the last day you can send your packages. Keep customers informed about key deadlines for shipping by using email reminders. You can include incentives for free shipping, which is a really big deal this time of year. This post contained information about Black Friday and Cyber Monday but you can still take a look at all the key deadlines to get things shipped.
There you have it! All of the important information we posted about in November. It was a busy month for email marketers everywhere and the payoff will be seen as December moves forward.
2010 is only weeks away and that means planning the next year of email marketing campaigns. Not to worry, the SimplyCast team will be here with you the whole way to help out.
Want to get valuable email marketing tips sent right to your Facebook feed? Become a fan of SimplyCast here.
Add comment December 1, 2009
SimplyCast Raises Bar with Version 5.0 of Email Marketing Solution
Compelling new release with powerful new features to provide highly efficient and effortless management of email marketing campaigns.
Dartmouth, Nova Scotia, November 30, 2009
SimplyCast, a leading provider of email marketing solutions for organizations worldwide, is proud to announce the release of version 5.0 of its email marketing service. The application was built to simplify the management of email marketing campaigns. It enables campaign creation, link tracking, detailed graphical reporting and access to important unsubscribe data, while ensuring compatibility with Internet Explorer, FireFox, Safari, Chrome and Opera browsers.
SimplyCast’s upgraded service is now available to all clients and trial users worldwide at www.simplycast.com.
Add comment November 30, 2009
Keep customers informed when email marketing for Christmas
They say Christmas is the most wonderful time of the year. If you are using email marketing to keep your customers informed about your holiday deals, it will also be a wonderful time of the year.
While many of us are making shopping lists and booking dates with friends, it is extremely important to focus on your email marketing efforts right now (or at least as soon as you finished reading this post).
With some of the biggest shopping days of the year coming fast, it is not too late to get a last-minute campaign out to your customers.
By sending out an email marketing message this week you can immediately nab holiday-busy consumers’ interest, and offer them an incentive to buy from you and not your competitor.
Here are the important dates that you should already have marked in big letters on your calendar.
Black Friday: November 27 – The Friday after the American Thanksgiving has been in years past the largest single shopping day of the year. If you have a retail store you should be integrating your specials for that day in all of your email marketing campaigns.
Cyber Monday: November 30 – The Monday after the American Thanksgiving is the mega day for online shopping as people start to look for special deals or those hard to find items that eluded them at the store all weekend. Send your emails early so people have them first thing in the morning. Remember, there will be a high volume of emails hitting the customer’s inbox, so make that subject line sparkle.
Shipping Deadlines: Everyone wants their gifts delivered by Christmas so make sure you know the last day you can send your goods. Email reminders with incentives and if possible include free shipping (a big deal around the holidays).
Key Deadlines:
Wednesday, December 16 – USPS Parcel Post.
Thursday, December 17 – FedEx Ground and FedEx Home Delivery.
Monday, December 21 – FedEx Express Saver, USPS First Class Mail, and USPS Priority Mail.
Tuesday, December 22 – FedEx 2Day.
Wednesday, December 23 – FedEx Overnight, UPS Next Day Air, and USPS Express Mail.
Thursday, December 24 – SOL unless you know Santa Claus.
Remember that your customers will always leave things until the last minute. Keep them informed (without being annoying) about shipping deadlines and any special offers you have going on. Also, because of that procrastination, be prepared for an influx of purchases right before the deadline that you set.
Need a hand putting together an email marketing campaign for the holidays? Let SimplyCast make the entire process quick and easy so you have more time for Christmas shopping. Visit SimplyCast.com or give us a call at 1.877.312.4979. Our elves are standing by.
2 comments November 23, 2009
Why your emails should be friends with social media
As many of you know, email marketing is an effective and inexpensive lead generation channel. But while email is very effective, it is still limited by the size of your email list.
That is where social media comes into play because it does not experience the same limitation.
With social media, your reach is equal to your followers/fans/subscribers as well as all of their connections. That makes your potential reach almost unlimited if it takes off. This is because the nature of social media is to consume and share content.
For example, if I post an update to the SimplyCast Facebook page, all of our fans can see that content. Then if they go and comment on that update, that activity is published to their newsfeed and all of their connections see that update.
If I post a link to this blog post on Twitter, all of our followers see that tweet. Then, if they retweet that content, it will be shared with all of their followers.
Are you seeing why your emails need to become good friends with social media sites?
Basically, social media gives your content rocket fuel to expand it’s reach beyond the existing list of clients. That already well crafted content will now get shared and blasted to corners of the Internet you did not know existed.
How to make it happen
So if it sounds so easy, why does it not work for everyone? Well, there is some work to be done before things blast off. Fortunately it is not something you need a PHD for.
Follow these five steps and you will be a social media pro faster than you can retweet it to your friends.
1. Figure out which social media sites your customers and potential customers use. Whether you want to believe it or not, your customers are online right now talking about your industry (and hopefully you). Figure out which sites they use the most. Facebook, Twitter, and LinkedIn are great places to start for most businesses.
2. Set up profiles on each of these websites. It’s free and only requires your time. Even if you don’t plan on acting on your social media plan right away, create your accounts now for branding purposes. It is best to reserve your company name on all of these sites immediately, before someone else takes them.
3. Add links in your emails to follow or subscribe to your social media profiles. The people already subscribing to your emails are great candidates for following you in social media, you just need to let them know that you’re there. We always add our Twitter link to all promos and as you can see, we also have it posted on this blog. Social media also gets a leg up on email in that an email address may not stick with someone as they move from one job to another, but social media profiles and subscriptions will.
4. Add links in your emails to post your content to these social media sites. Make it easy for your recipients to share the content with their networks on these social media sites. There are numerous buttons out there to use so make those links stand out. The easier it is, the more likely someone will share your work.
5. Integrate social media at all stages of the communication. Follow the user from the email to the landing page and conversion. The more places you use it, the better chance of people following or sharing.
With all this talk about social media, it would be wrong of me not to plug SimplyCast’s social accounts.
Follow SimplyCast on Twitter, Facebook, MySpace and Digg and we will do the same in return.
Click here to learn more about SimplyCast and how we can take your email marketing to the next level.
1 comment November 19, 2009
