Posts filed under 'General'
Spread Valentine’s Day love with email marketing
Are you ready for the one of biggest retail days of the year? Yes, Valentine’s Day is getting closer so get ready for a lovefest when it comes to promotional messages showing up in your inbox.
Do you plan on spreading the love with email marketing this Valentine’s Day?
Here are 10 tips you can use to influence your recipients or in this case, your Valentines.
1. Use or create a Valentine’s Day template. By using a nice balance of Valentine-specific copy and imagery it will get readers in the mood and thinking about the day.
2. Create a special email message for people who bought from you last year around Valentine’s Day and this time make it an even better offer. Great way to build and keep customer loyalty.
3. Segment your list by gender. There is no better day than Valentine’s Day to do this. Send female oriented offers to the guys and male oriented offers to the ladies. Keep in mind that this sort of segmentation may not be appropriate for all audiences or all products.
4. Use customer testimonials and reviews in your email marketing campaign. Most people will buy if they know another person has had a positive buying experience with your product or service. Think of it like a movie. Most people put more stock in a friend’s review than what an advertisement says. At the same time you are showing some love to the person who took the time to leave the glowing review.
5. Coupon Codes are the perfect way to generate traffic to your website or service and convince potential buyers to make a purchase. Make the coupons very easy to use and make sure you mention all terms and conditions clearly.
6. If your business has a blog, Facebook page or Twitter account, mention the Valentine’s Day promotion there as well. The more love you spread, the more that will come back to you (hopefully). Many potential leads may just need that extra incentive to purchase your service and let’s face it, there are a lot of eyeballs using Facebook and Twitter these days.
7. Make sure it is super easy for people to take advantage of your offer. Nothing will make a potential customer discard your message faster than if they have to work hard to act on it. Do as much of the work for them by making contact information prominent, coupon codes that are easy to read and give clear directions on what they have to do.
8. Thank loyal customers by sending them a Happy Valentine’s Day email postcard to show customer. This supports customer retention and will keep them from even thinking about looking elsewhere. This is also a great time to ask customers to make sure their account information is up to date.
9. Mention shipping cutoff dates in your emails. It can be a great call to action strategy to remind people they don’t have much time to ship gifts to loved ones if they want to get it by February 14th.
10. Have fun and be creative! The more enjoyment you and your coworkers have when creating your email marketing campaigns, the more it will resonate with the reader. There will be thousands of emails flying around the Internet between now and Valentine’s Day and you want to get noticed. Unleash Cupid and all his arrows of love and appreciation.
Got a tip to share with your fellow email marketers? Want to be our Valentine? You can interact with the SimplyCast team on Twitter and Facebook.
Add comment February 4, 2010
Email marketing calendar ideas for February
We have all been there. Monday morning rolls around, the brain is still stuck in Sunday mode and you have to come up with a killer idea for the week’s email marketing campaign.
That is why planning ahead is so important for those creating new campaigns each week. Sometimes if you are not planning a week or two ahead, you are too late or even worse, you waste valuable time trying to come up with something.
We have mentioned it before on the blog and will say it again. Let the calendar be your friend and use special days to base your emails around.
Below is a list of real holidays, wacky holidays, and pop culture events in February that you can develop a timely and relevant email campaign around.
Tuesday, February 2nd – Groundhog Day
You know how this one goes. If a groundhog fails to see its shadow, winter will come to an end much sooner. If the groundhog sees its shadow, winter will continue for six more weeks (Nooooo). If weather is a driving factor in your business, more winter or less winter is most likely something to take advantage of.
Sunday, February 7th – Super Bowl XLIV – New Orleans Saints vs. Indianapolis Colts
One of the few sporting events that pretty much everyone marks on the calendar. Many subscribers or potential leads who don’t even watch football take part in this day in their own way. Be careful however because of strictly enforced trademark infringements, you can’t use the words “NFL,” “Super Bowl,” or “Super Sunday” in your marketing campaigns. However, you can use terms such as “The Big Game,” or other generic descriptions for Super Bowl XLIV.
Monday, February 8th – Boy Scout Day
Your company could have some fun with this one. Something based on trust, honesty and providing great service. Display to your customers the “Boy Scout” in your company.
Friday, February 12th-28th – 2010 Winter Olympic Games
The Winter Olympics only come around every four years so it is a great event to incorporate into your email marketing. Everyone in Canada has had Olympic fever for months and we can’t wait to share the Vancouver games with the World. Take advantage of people’s excitement about a particular sport or the Games as a whole.
Sunday, February 14th – Valentine’s Day
If this is a big day for your company, hopefully you already have a plan in motion. Valentine’s Day is 2nd largest retailing event of the year. Though men are expected to spend the most on Valentine gifts and are stereotypically procrastinators, don’t wait too long to share your special deals and promotions. This is also a great day to share some love with your subscriber base and maybe even ask them to update their user information.
Tuesday, February 16th – Mardi Gras aka Fat Tuesday
Now this is a day you could really have some fun with. Everything about Mardi Gras is party-related and about going big. The opportunities for fun and creative ideas don’t get better than this. Stop thinking of pancakes for a second and create your own Mardi Gras related event.
Wednesday, February 15th-21st – Random Act’s Of Kindness Week
Random Act’s Of Kindness Day is an unofficial holiday in order to encourage acts of kindness. This is an opportunity to give something back to your loyal audience of readers. Maybe it’s just to say thanks. Maybe it is a no strings attached coupon for something free or at cost.
Saturday, February 20th – Love Your Pet Day
This one is a stretch, but I am a huge pet lover so I had to add it in. Create a theme, contest or some kind of interaction with clients that are pet related. Deep down, we all love our pets so this may be a connection you never knew you had with your subscribers.
The calendar on your wall or desk can spark all kinds of great ideas for your next campaign. The best part about using this concept is that each month you get a whole list of new holidays to use.
Let us know what special days or themes you are using in your email marketing campaigns on Twitter or Facebook. Can’t wait to read them.
Add comment January 26, 2010
SimplyCast special – 30% savings for one year subscription
The SimplyCast team is starting the new year right by offering you a 30% discount when signing up for a one-year subscription to our email marketing service.
Don’t delay as this special offer expires on Friday, January 15th @11:59pm EST and won’t return until next January.
We understand that everyone needs to manage costs when planning the next 12 months, so we are doing everything we can to deliver the best prices to our customers.
To take advantage of this offer visit SimplyCast.com to sign-up or renew your current package for the full year. Once you are logged in, all you need to do is go to the “Manage Subscription” page under “My Account” and select the 1 year package from the drop-down menu (it will say 30% next to it).
Not happy with your current email service provider?
Here are a few reasons to make the switch to SimplyCast:
Over 1000 free HTML email marketing templates.
Simple and elegant interface.
Every account is assigned to a dedicated account manager.
Option to upgrade to a free Dedicated IP address.
Ability to remove the SimplyCast logo from the bottom of emails.
Access to create Email, Survey and RSVP campaigns.
Compatible with IE, Firefox, Opera and Safari.
A cross-browser, cross-platform WYSIWYG online HTML editor.
Ability to import HTML from Microsoft Word.
Industry leading customer care team that can be reached by phone, email or live chat.
And many more.
The SimplyCast team is working hard for you. Email our customer care team today with any requests for new features and enhancements.
Thank you,
The SimplyCast Team
1.877.312.4979 Ext 1
sales@simplycast.com
Join our Facebook fan page for more special offers and email marketing tips.
**The above offer is only valid on single month purchases made after January 11th 2010 and cannot be combined with multiple coupon codes**
Add comment January 12, 2010
How to choose the right Email Service Provider
Once you have decided to add email marketing to your business plan, how do you go about choosing the right email service provider (ESP)?
An ESP is a service that hosts email marketing services on their servers, which are specifically optimized for that purpose. While you control your email marketing account, create the content and send out emails using a Web browser interface, the ESP’s servers and Internet connections do all the technical work.
A good ESP will also provide detailed reporting on the results of your email campaign, which includes delivery success rates, email open-rates, and link click-through rates. You should even be able to see which of your subscribers performed these actions. Having access to detailed reporting is an invaluable feature as it helps you measure the effectiveness of your overall email marketing campaigns.
Most ESPs also make it very easy for you to comply with the CAN-SPAM Act regulations. What that means is, an ESP should automatically include an unsubscribe link in every email sent through their service as well as verify that all emails are sent from a valid, working email address. Most ESPs also require you to send only to lists of subscribers that have opted-in to receive emails from you. Remember, don’t buy or rent lists.
Here are some features to consider when choosing the right ESP for you and your business.
Private IP vs. Shared IP
If your ESP makes you share an IP address with other customers, too many spam complaints against another customer could get your shared IP address blacklisted by a major ISP. This would prevent your emails from being delivered and it can take time for your ESP to get the IP off the blacklist (if ever). SimplyCast offers the option to upgrade to a free dedicated IP address when you sign-up. To learn more about the differences between shared and dedicated IPs, click here.
Customer support and tutorials
Your ESP should offer both online and phone support and tutorials on how to use the service. SimplyCast’s customer care team is always at your service and you can reach them via online chat, email or by phone.
Detailed reporting
The ESP should offer a variety of user-friendly reports including deliverability success, open-rates, and click-through rates.
CAN SPAM compliance
As mentioned above, any ESP that you choose should require customers to comply with the CAN-SPAM Act and make it very easy to do so.
Email storage space
An ESP in most cases will limit the amount of space you can use to store your emails and any attachments. The amount of space varies throughout the many providers and some even charge extra when you go over your limit. Know what you have to work with before joining.
Robust infrastructure
Make sure your ESP has multiple, high-speed connections to the Internet through more than one source and hardware redundancy. This ensures reliability if one of the Internet connections fails or there is a hardware failure. Go ahead and ask prospective ESPs about their infrastructure before signing up. There would be nothing worse than sending email campaigns to your list and having the ESPs servers go down.
List Segmenting
Your ESP should enable you to segment lists by several different criteria. By targeting subsets of your list with content relevant to them leads to more successful email marketing campaigns.
Free trial with no long-term contract
Do not sign up for a service that requires anything beyond a month commitment. If you are unhappy with your service, you should be able to cancel and switch services as much as you want.
Pricing Plans
ESPs host your email list on their servers. Some charge a monthly fee based on the number of emails on your list, while others charge a monthly fee based on the maximum number of emails you think you will send per month. Be sure to choose a pricing structure that fits your needs.
Ease of Use
Finally and most importantly, how easy is the service to use? Do you need to contact technical support a lot to figure things out? If you don’t enjoy using an ESP, there is a good chance it will influence the result of your email campaigns in a negative way. Remember it is okay to try before you buy.
Now that you are ready to shop around for an ESP, we invite you to take a look at everything SimplyCast has to offer.
1 comment January 7, 2010
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
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
