Archive for December, 2009
The 10 most popular SimplyCast posts of 2009
Before shifting our focus to 2010, it is time to look back at the hot topics of 2009. The SimplyCast blog grew quite a bit over the past 12 months and we hope you have learned a lot from us. Your comments and feedback has been great and we look forward to informing and entertaining you in the new year.
Here are SimplyCast’s top ten most read posts in 2009.
1. Checklist: Planning your first email marketing campaign – The team at SimplyCast wants to make life a little easier by providing a handy checklist to use when creating your first email marketing campaign.
2. Integrating Facebook into your email marketing campaigns – Here are a few ways you can start to integrate Facebook into your email marketing campaigns.
3. Is a dedicated IP address the way to go for email marketers – To help you decide whether a dedicated IP address is right for your company’s needs, here is a comparison of what a dedicated IP address offers as opposed to a shared IP address.
4. How effective is your Call-To-Action? – The Call-to-Action is arguably one of the most important elements of your email and needs to be evaluated and tweaked just like every other part of a campaign.
5. The scoop on using images in HTML emails – Here are some tips to help ensure the best results when adding images to your HTML messages.
6. Optimize email subject line for better results – When sending out email marketing campaigns, your subject line needs to stand out in the inbox.
7. Twitter and email marketing: A killer combo – Once you have created a Twitter account and a profile page, try these four easy ways to combine Twitter and your email marketing efforts.
8. 20 ways to avoid email spam filters - How do you avoid spam filters when sending out your latest email marketing campaign? Here are 20 important ways to dodge those pesky spam filters.
9. Free Email-Marketing-4-Life Program – SimplyCast, a leading on-demand email marketing solutions company, is offering users worldwide access to send 300 FREE emails for life through the new Free-Email-Marketing-4-Life program.
10. STOP! Validate your HTML code before you send – If you are still not sure why should validate your HTML code, you should also know that invalid code is rendered across a wide variety of browsers and the outcome is unpredictable.
We invite you to subscribe to our blog’s RSS feed so you never miss a post or a valuable email marketing tip.
Add comment December 31, 2009
Simple ways to improve sales with email marketing in 2010
As we wind down the year (the decade!), many of us are already thinking about 2010 and how to improve business and increase sales. If you are just starting out with email marketing, here are a few really simple ways to grow your business.
1. Invite customers to sign up. When a customer completes a purchase, invite them to sign up for your newsletter. Don’t trick them or sign them up without permission. By sticking to this simple practice, your list will grow for sure.
2. Invite everyone to sign up. Offer free shipping or special offers to anyone who signs up for your newsletter. Make it worth it to them.
3. Promote whitelisting. When someone signs up for your newsletter, give them clear instructions for adding your newsletter’s “From” address to their address book. That makes it less likely that your email will land in the junk folder.
4. Write a good subject line. Don’t use the word “Free” in your subject line if you can avoid it. Write a clear and compelling subject line like ‘Purchase Before Dec. 15th – No Shipping Charges’.
5. Include your company name in the subject line. Since customers already know of you and most likely trust you, make it easy for them to spot the email.
6. Put your main offer or promotion above the fold. Make sure that someone previewing your email in their email client’s preview pane can see and act on the offer right there without any scrolling. Don’t make them hunt for it.
7. Email regularly. Send out an email at least once a month. If your customers start abandoning the list, you might be sending too often. The most important thing is to make sure you stay in touch with customers and don’t let them forget who you are.
8. Use a reputable email provider. Use SimplyCast of course! We have strong relationships with most service providers to make sure that you don’t get blacklisted. Basically that means more of your emails will get to there they should.
9. Include a clear unsubscribe option.
10. Include a clear forward to a friend option.
11. Include your company’s physical address in the email. This builds trust and proves you are legit.
12. Include easy ways for customers to share your email on social networks like Twitter and Facebook.
To learn more about SimplyCast’s email marketing service and how we can help you grow your business, try us out today or contact our sales team for more information.
Happy New Year everyone.
Add comment December 29, 2009
Seasons greetings & happy holidays from SimplyCast
With the holiday season upon us, the SimplyCast team wants to take a moment to wish you and your family a safe and happy holiday season.
We also want to take this opportunity to thank you for your business and how much we look forward to serving you again in 2010. It is our valuable customers that have made us the company we are today and it is very much appreciated.
A lot of amazing work was done by our hard working team this year and the number one reason we do it is for you.
Looking ahead to the new year, there are many exciting and new features on tap that we feel will help you grow your business even more. So please stay tuned!
All the best to you and your family this holiday season.
Sincerely,
Saeed El-Darahali
President & CEO of SimplyCast
Add comment December 23, 2009
Design tips for the email marketer in all of us
With it being the holiday season, many of us are turning down the email marketing engine and letting it cool off until the New Year. But just because you are not creating and sending right now, doesn’t mean you can’t be thinking about how to make your next email look even better (and in as many browsers as possible).
Because I sit just down the hall from our wonderful customer care team, I know for a fact that many of you call in asking for advice on email design and why it is not looking the way you thought it would.
Did you know there are more than 50 different email clients out there with each offering multiple ways to view emails? Now you know why it is very important to try your best to get your email to render properly in as many clients as you can.
Wait, someone else just called in asking about design. I better get this post up fast.
Here are a handful of tips that are sure to help any email designer improve their next campaign.
Overall design tips
Keep email width under 600 pixels – This is a general rule as the preview pane for many email clients doesn’t get much wider than that. It is also the limit when using the editor within SimplyCast.
Think above the fold – There is nothing wrong with your email being full of great content but it should be your goal to make it so your readers don’t need to scroll down to see it. Some will read all the way to the bottom but most will skim the beginning and move on. Park all the important info at the top of an email and don’t forget all those people on their smart phones. The key aspects of the email include logo, call-to-action, navigation, primary subject matter, etc.
Short and sweet – Don’t overload your email with content that does not need to be there. Use the email as a tool to drive readers to your website or landing page. It is all about giving them a taste of what you have to say followed by a call-to-action. This is also valuable for tracking purposes since you can track how many people land on a page.
Keep it simple – Don’t spend all day designing a HTML masterpiece that looks like it was made in Hollywood and expect everyone to see it the way you hope they will. In most cases, the more difficult your email is to code, the more difficult it will be to see across all of the email clients. If you are having problems getting things to work the way you want, don’t forget to contact SimplyCast’s team of code magicians for assistance.
Speak of the wonderful world of HTML…..
HTML Do’s and Don’ts
Hand-coded emails are best – Many simple HTML editors often will add a pile of extra code that email clients don’t like so much and can cause your email to display poorly. A great practice to get in the habit of doing is pasting your content into notepad first before you enter it into the editor. This will strip out any unwanted code. Microsoft Word, for example, has a bad habit of adding all kinds of stuff you don’t want.
Tables are the way to go – Want a foolproof way to ensure your email will render correctly across all email browsers? Try using tables. Before you type anything into the editor, just insert a table (just one box will do) and enter your content within. This really helps control the size and alignment of your email.
Flash is not cool – Most email clients have the option to view all rich media platforms turned off by default. That means most people will never see that cool video or moving logo that you made. Instead provide a link to view your creation on a custom landing page.
Avoid Javascript and other dynamic scripts – Not much to say here. Most email clients will not allow these scripts to function so there is no need to even try. Don’t use them and all will be good.
Avoid Cascading Style Sheets (CSS) – Many email clients strip out CSS or over-write it. That means a lot of hard work that will never get seen. Even though the use of CSS is acceptable in email, there are guidelines you need to follow. Simple attributes like text style, colour, and sizing are usually okay and acceptable across the majority of email clients. It is when you start defining things like spacing, margins and other positional elements that will get you in trouble.
Don’t embed images – There is no reason to even try this if you are using SimplyCast. We will host all of your images for you. To learn more about the do’s and don’ts for using images in emails, check out this post.
Still have questions or not sure why your email is giving you a hard time in the rendering department? Contact our customer care team right now.
Hoping you and your HTML have a happy holidays!
Add comment December 16, 2009
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.
SimplyCast’s Interactive Marketing Suite includes:
Email Marketing | Survey Marketing | Event Marketing
Fax Marketing | SMS Marketing | AutoResponder Marketing
1 comment December 9, 2009
