Inform Interiors is owned by Niels Bendtsen, and sells contemporary furniture online and in their Vancouver store. They have a fairly successful email campaign that they have managed with us for a couple years now. Even though their campaign has been a success overall, we couldn't help but notice some small changes that could lead to even better results.
Read on to learn about how Inform Interiors use AWeber, what changes they made and the results they've seen.
You ask: What's a good open rate? What should I write on my opt-in form? What works best as an incentive?
And you hear: that depends on your industry, depends on your audience, depends on the role that your company plays.
But there are a few things that don't "depend." They're core ideas that apply to every situation. Without them, you're likely to flounder. With them, you pretty much can't help but flourish.
Keep reading to discover them. Then if you want to explore them further, check out the article that inspired this post by Loren McDonald.
After all, somebody has to study their latest campaigns. It's not my fault that I often always feel obliged to take certain senders up on their irresistible offers and free shipping.
I really consider myself lucky to enjoy all aspects of a good shopping experience. From the marketing messages to the markdowns, I love it all.
On a recent shopping trip, it dawned on me just how similar a good email marketing campaign is to a visit to a well-run boutique. There are several key factors that contribute to the success of both. Keep reading to see how your messages stack up to some of my favorite stores.
Sure, they subscribe because their interest is high - their interest in finding out what you're all about. Before they fork over any cash.
That's why the current name of the sales game is relationship marketing. You build trust with subscribers, showing your brand's value before making any pitches.
This concept gets discussed ad nauseum. But what does it look like in action? We asked Steven Vrancken, artist and musician, how he humanizes his own email campaign.
Steven sells mandala coloring meditation kits. He has over 7,000 subscribers and has been making sales steadily since he launched his kits a few months ago.
His strategy?
Broadcast messages that consider what his readers are dealing with at the moment, reveal his own personal quirks and offer value - whether in the form of inspiration or actual, printable art.
"I believe that costumers feel it intuitively when you are pushing them to make a sale," Steven says.
So, instead of pitching his kits, he writes his broadcast like a note to a close friend. He includes his picture and autograph, so readers can get to know him as much as possible. And he sends free gifts.
But Steven's friendly largesse doesn't mean he doesn't make sales. His meditation kits are always available for sale. And the social media buttons through which readers share his work attract new subscribers and kit purchasers.
As he explains,"Relationship marketing is about a constant evaluation of yourself, your marketing intentions and your sincerity."
So with every email, Steven asks himself,With these questions, Steven infuses his marketing with sincerity and kindness. And that sincerity and kindness gets his product sold.
Steven's not alone in his approach. At January's Marketing Sherpa conference, Real-Time Marketing and PR author David Meerman Scott said, "I know I sound really California-crunchy-granola-airy-fairy right now, but I believe the more you give away, the more comes back to you."
And we've heard similar things from Chris Guillebeau and Ramit Sethi. Do you subscribe to this idea of building a relationship before making a sale?
Or do you still think more sales can be made while your leads are "hot"?
Origin: Inbox Ideas
In a recent survey of 80,000 email marketers, over 80% of respondents told AWeber that it is "very valuable" to them to know which subscribers purchase their products.
With sales tracking, you can easily see how many sales your email marketing campaigns generate, as well as how many dollars that campaign brings in. As the survey results indicate, that information is highly important.
But once you have that data, many of you are uncertain about the kinds of emails can you send to encourage repeat purchases. Fewer than 15% of those surveyed actually use sales tracking! Let's look at how you can use your campaign sales tracking results.
So if over 80% of our survey respondents think it is "very valuable" to track sales...
... why then, are fewer than 15% actually using this tool?
It's not as hard as you might think to put sales tracking information to good use. You only have to set up sales tracking once for each product you sell.
The most difficult part is simply thinking of what kinds of emails to send after your subscribers buy. Here are two of the most effective types of emails you can send after an initial sale.
Jay, our webinar talent extraordinaire, is crazy about comics. He particularly loves Wonder Woman, Aquaman and Batman and buys comic books on Amazon.com from time to time.
Recently he pointed out that Amazon does a great job of sending relevant suggestions based on his recent purchases. They periodically email him with other superhero titles that they think he will enjoy.
While he doesn't always buy from these suggestion emails, Jay gives serious consideration to the recommendations, which is an opportunity for Amazon to make a repeat sale that might not have happened otherwise.
Amazon also sends me recommendation emails based on my recent camera purchase, and you'll see that my email is much different from Jay's. I don't normally order from Amazon, so they can't recommend as many products because they are unsure of my interests.
Sales tracking gives you the knowledge to do the same exact thing with your own emails. You can see which products subscribers are buying and how much they are paying, then segment your list based on that information and send specific, targeted content that relates to the genre of their original purchases.
When winter rolled around last year, the dealership that I bought my car from wasted no time at all sending me a cold weather email.
Their message was timely and direct - they knew I had purchased a car in the summer, so they sent me this winter email to remind me that I might need snow tires and all weather floor mats:
I didn't give any thought to the remote start or the iPod integration they were offering, but their email did get me thinking. What would I do if it snowed and I couldn't make my 45 minute commute because my car couldn't handle the roads?
You can send similar emails to your subscribers, and they don't have to be as important as the winter weather email from Mazda. After I bought an iPad, Apple also sent me an email that featured "the perfect companion pieces":
The iPad works well on its own, but this email showed me a handful of little goodies that would make the whole iPad experience cooler.
Recommending add-ons at checkout has been a retail tactic for years; you might as well use sales tracking to apply the technique to your email campaign. Compile a list of products that compliment each other, then add them to emails created only for customers who purchase specific things.
Need some more information before you jump into sales tracking? These links will get you started:
How Do I Set Up Sales Tracking?
How Can I Set the Value of My Sales Dynamically with Sales Tracking?
How Do I Install Email Web Analytics?
How Do I Set Up Sales Tracking?
How Do I Know When I've Made A Sale?
Email Segmentation: Easily Target Customers
What Information Do I Receive About My Sales?
It's not hard to put your sales tracking data to work making you more money, it just takes some planning and a few examples to kick your imagination into gear.
Will you try any of the tactics we discussed? If you do, drop us a line and tell us how they work for you in the comments below.
Via: Inbox Ideas
Since they are virtually compatible with all major email clients except for Outlook, animated GIFs are a genius way to infuse some personality into an email marketing campaign. Even subscribers viewing a message in Outlook can still see the first frame of a GIF shown as a static image, so you can still illustrate important details in the first frame.
Animated GIFs sound too tricky for you? They aren't so bad, I promise. By the end of this post, you'll know everything you ever wanted (or needed!) to know about the image format. Plus, you'll see 3 different ways you can use them to create animated messages for your own email campaign.
A GIF is an image filetype made specifically for the web. The majority of people use them because of their small file size, but another great use is for animation in emails.
Animated GIFs simulate video so that you can see scrolling features, products in different colors or blinking calls to action without having to leave your inbox to visit a website. You can think of an animated GIF just like an old flip book movie. Your eye perceives a fluid motion when presented with several images in succession.
Email marketing is one of the best ways to promote your business and expose prospective customers to your products. But with limited space and limited attention spans, sometimes the best emails go unnoticed mixed in among a slew of similar catalog-style messages.
An animated message can help you appeal to lots of different people without bothering with segmenting and using advanced email analytics. (This is especially good if you're just starting out and don't quite know exactly what subscribers want to see yet.)
Pottery Barn often uses animation in their emails to depict several products at once. It's a double-duty move: it grabs readers' attention and gets a variety of products face-time that wouldn't be possible in a static email.
You can do the same thing with your messages, too! Sites like gickr, gifninja and Make a GIF take the hard work out of the process. All you have to do is upload your product images, then they instantly animate them for you - making an animated GIF for your email campaign in mere seconds that you'd upload to your email like any other image.
Some products are more complex than others and take a little bit of explaining before you can really appreciate their benefits. That's why informercials for products like ShamWow and Bumpits remain popular to this day - they provide demonstrations and explain the features and benefits that accompany them.
Williams-Sonoma does an excellent job of using animated GIFs to do just that. They created three simple images to explain exactly how their Breville Pie Maker takes the hard work out of pie making.
It's not as hard as you'd think to do the same thing. Essentially, you just need to snap 3 or 4 photos to illustrate the most important steps for using your product, then use text to explain the rest of the details. Add them to one of the sites above, and ta-da! Instant animated GIF for your message.
Even if your messages do a splendid job of displaying everything your company has to offer, they can sometimes fall short when inspiring readers to click-through to your site.
While actionable phrases like 'shop new products,' 'see limited-time offers' and 'get 50% off' are strong in their own merit, adding a little pizzaz with animation will surely catch your subscribers' attention.
Fred Flare uses simple animation to bring attention to their call to action. You can animate action words and link them to the desired pages on your site, too, using a site like Text Anim 2.0 to generate your text. You can pick the font and color, type in your text and save it as an animated GIF.
Not only can animated GIFs make your messages more creative, appealing and unique, but they can also help you earn more money, too.
When online retailer Bluefly tested their animated GIF usage, they found that animated shoppers who clicked through generated a 12% increase in dollars spent compared with non-animated shoppers.
Let us know if you decide to give them a try - we'd love to hear how they work for your campaign!
Via: Inbox Ideas
Some marketers think so. Others don't. You can certainly peruse your reports for days and times that draw good response in your own campaign. But what if you don't find anything conclusive?
To help you figure out your scheduling strategy, we took a look at when some of the Big Guys send. Do any of their approaches work for you?
The thank you page is the page that a potential subscriber will land on after filling out your web form, making it the second point of contact you have with them. It's an opportunity for your business to make a good impression, set expectations and get subscribers on their way to becoming customers.
Here are 3 businesses that do a great job thanking their potential subscribers while also answering a few questions for their subscribers: what happened, what happens next, and what they need to do now.
Perhaps the most important feature of a thank you page is the instructions for what the potential subscriber needs to do next. You want to make the subscriber experience as easy as possible so they can start receiving your messages.
Philip Patete runs the email campaign for Wilmington.net and has a creative solution for making sure instructions are clear:
Including an image of what exactly the potential subscriber needs to look for in their inbox and what they will need to click on can make the whole sign up process easier. Notice how features of the image are highlighted so the potential subscriber will be able to see the from address, subject line, and what they will need to click on.
You can do this too by taking a screenshot of your confirmation message, and then use image editing programs such as Skitch or GIMP to highlight certain areas.
It's also important to set subscriber expectations in the thank you page. If subscribers know what to expect from the start, you will have a more engaged list with less people unsubscribing or complaining. The Wilmington thank you page handles setting expectations by incorporating them with their instructions:
The potential subscriber understands what needs to be done next and knows when they can expect to receive the information they requested.While these potential subscribers need to confirm in order to get a guide, you can also set this up to remind them that they need to confirm before they can begin seeing the value of being on their mailing list. Our next example also makes sure to set expectations in the thank you page.
Iain MacPherson runs the email campaign for Barnyarns.co.uk, and this thank you page does an excellent job with setting expectations.
Part of their thank you page includes a description of what the potential subscriber can look forward to in their newsletters:
The potential subscriber already showed interest by signing up to the mailing list, so adding further details about what they're going to be getting helps build anticipation. They even take it one step further by including how often they send newsletters:
Potential subscribers are aware of what they can expect from these newsletters and how often they can expect to get them. This means there won't be any surprises for subscribers that could lead to unsubscribing or marking an email as spam. Our next example takes this concept one step further by incorporating the most recent newsletter in the thank you page.
Chris Hopkins runs the site http://www.investedcentral.com, and he sets expectations by allowing potential subscribers to get a sneak peek at what the newsletters look like:
Giving subscribers a look at what they can expect to see is a great way to start off on the right foot. They'll also be able to see the value your messages can have for them, making them more likely to confirm.
You can get a web based version of your message when you check off the "Social Media/Sharing" checkbox at the bottom of the Broadcast edit page.
Of course, in order for your potential subscribers to get these valuable newsletters you need to make sure you're in their address book, otherwise you may end up in the spam filter. Take a look a look at how Chris handles this:
We've talked before about the importance of getting in your subscriber's address book, and the thank you page is just one of many good places to remind them.
What else do you think a thank you page should say and do?
Original: Inbox Ideas
Sean Cohen and I (Justin) will be there from Friday, March 11 until Tuesday, March 15. We're looking forward to a busy few days of interesting sessions and discussions with businesses about how they're growing and marketing themselves.
We always love meeting AWeber customers and other smart people, so if you're going to be down there, let us know!
You can reach us through Twitter - Sean is @scohen and I'm @justinpremick. We'll also be tweeting from the @AWeber account, so if you're not going to be there, follow us for updates from the show (you can also follow the #SXSW hashtag, but with thousands of people attending, it may be a lot to digest).
Hope to see you there!
 Sean |  Justin |
Hat Tip To: Inbox Ideas
Your brand has it's own ambassadors. They purchase loyally and refer their friends to you. You're part of their lifesty
le.Those ambassadors are your best bet for growing your business. But how do you find out who they are? And once you do, how can you encourage their support?
With email, of course!
Many marketing emails contain social share buttons. Readers can click to automatically share the message with their networks.
(To make your own social share buttons, follow these instructions. The URL should be the direct link to your archived message.)
By tracking clicks on those buttons, you can see who's hyping you on social sites. AWeber users, you can see this in your QuickStats. Start by clicking on a recently sent broadcast.
On the left, choose the option to display click stats.
Then scroll down and find the data for your social share links. (Design - replace image with example)
See that number? Those are the subscribers who are so excited about your brand, they're already converting others.
Sharing one email isn't necessarily an indication of deep loyalty. To get a clearer picture, use your Subscriber Search page to find people who shared not just one, but several of your emails
.
These people have already taken it upon themselves to advocate your business. Imagine what you could accomplish if you..
Your next step is to contact these people. (You can do this by creating a broadcast for them, then selecting the segment you created above to send to.) Let them know they're your top customers and ask if they might be interested in participating in some special initiatives.
Give them five minutes of fameBuy them lunch and ask for their thoughts in return. How do they feel about your service? How do they use your products? How is their life better because of your brand?
Then put together an email featuring their story. Send out a broadcast with inspirational ideas from these customers. Present them as the valued commodity they are.
You'll have creative content. Your readers' interest will be sparked. And the featured customers will feel more invested in your brand than ever.
Bring them on boardWhen designing a new offer or product, ask these your brand ambassadors for their reaction. If you can, use Nikon's strategy and let them try it out.
If not, email them an exclusive sneak-peek and ask them for their reactions. To really get ideas flowing, link to a forum where invitees can build off each other's ideas.
Thank them for their feedback with a fun token and sincere gratitude. Figure out which suggestions are feasible and wise and implement them. Then send another thank-you email for each idea you used.
When your customers see their ideas in action, they'll gain a sense of ownership, increasing their loyalty to your brand. And the improvements that appealed to them are likely to attract similar consumers, growing your customer base.
Michael LeBoeuf, author of How to Win Customers & Keep Them for Life, agrees with the idea that customers can have a powerful impact on a brand's reputation:
"Smart companies go the extra mile for the customer and show them just how dedicated they are to making sure that they feel good about doing business with them," he says.
How can you invest in your customers in ways that will convert them to ambassadors?
Origin: Inbox Ideas
They want easier lives. They want to be entertained. They want their struggles extinguished and their problems solved.
This, then, is how you sell to them with email marketing: solve those problems. Stamp out those struggles.
Focus on meeting people's needs in a way that positions your product or service as their solution. In other words, do what these eight marketers did.
