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?
