XDXY eMarketing Tips

Today, I would like to share 7 Tips to help Small Business to start their own Email Marketing.

1. Be professional in Email. No one will know how ‘Small’ of your business will be via Email, it’s your chance to ‘act’ as brand company, decorate your Email as big company.

2. Hire  contractor to create a Email template. I highly suggest you to hire a professional designer to help you to create a trim, clean, organized, professional Email template.  It really worth to put a little mount of investment on here.

3. Keep your Email subject consistent.  If you want people get starting remember your Brand name. Keep it in-front of each eNewsletter. such as, XDXY eMarketing Tips: best email marketing tool

4. Leverage big company’s brand.  Since you are still small, some times you need to leverage big company’s brand as Partner of Google,  Reseller of IBM to get people’s trust.

5. Don’t SPAM! I know you are lack of email address at the beginning of Email Marketing, please keep in mind that NEVER SPAM, it will ruin your reputation, I bet you will regret for it.

6. Offer Valuable information to your subscriber. Don’t just spread your product information. provide something your subscriber might like. Otherwise they will start to unsubscribe your list soon.

7. Use efficient Email Marketing Tools.  It’s very important, get a good one at the beginning, otherwise you will waste much time in the future to move one Email Marketing Tool to another. That will be a TOUGH job, Believe me! I introduced 2 Email Marketing Tool for your reference:  AWeber & iContact.

Good luck!

Email Marketing Email Marketing, Small Business

When we doing email marketing, there are at 3 basic steps  for us to reach out our customers:

- get your email opened by your customer
- get your email read by your customer
- get your offer be accepted by your customer  (Click & take action)

Yes, the most important thing over the 3 points is to get your customer open your email, then they can read it and take the action then. Actually, I have blogged one regarding email subject line, today I prefer to share the tips on get your email read by your customer.

1. Drive attention.
At the beginning of the email content, you must to wake up reader’s interest. So the most important paragraph is the 1st brief one to tell the readers what they can get in this email.

2. Offer valuable information
Deliver something your customer, the readers always asking this question ‘what’s in it for me?’ if you can not answer this question, please stop sent email to this client. you don’t want either waste their time or yours, do you?

3. be straight
People are busy, most of recipients have tens of emails need to go through daily, that means they will just spend a little time on each email. be straight and point out your highlights.

4. ‘To be continue’
At the end of email, you can tell your recipients that you will send other emails days later. And give a sneak peak on the topic you are going to send, and for sure to add the benefit what your reader can get from it.

Those above maybe out-of-date tips, but please keep those in your mind before you draft your email.

Email Marketing Email Marketing, email subject

What’s the Best Email Marketing tool? Best Email Marketing Application? Best Email Marketing solution?

Since I’m focusing on email marketing, some friends either email or call me directly to ask a recommendation of email marketing tool for them. They have same situation as below:

- Start-up company (Small & Middle Business)
- DO know email is great method which can help them to do marketing
- limited budget on email marketing but want to boost from now on

I did some research on the most popular email marketing applications for my friends and I think it’s better to share with my blog audience, If they have question, some of you may the same.

The most popular email marketing applications in the market are: AWeber, iContact, mailchimp, GetResponse. My personal best email marketing tool prize goes to AWeber.

The reason why I recommend Aweber:

1. Very Low cost, $19 per month will allow you to maintain a mailing list of between 0-500 subscribers. AWeber offer a 30 day money back guarantee

2. Autoresponder for trigger marketing!
nurture your relationships with subscribers automatically from the moment they sign up.
You can use it to welcome new subscribers, educate them about your products, and drive them back to your website, without having to manually re-send the emails to each and every one!

3. Email Newsletter.
Send engaging email newsletters to your opt-in subscribers.
Already know what you’re going to send in your next few issues? Create and schedule them all in one sitting - we’ll automatically send each one at the date and time you tell us to. Even segment subscribers based on who clicked and who didn’t.

4. Top Notch Email Deliverability.
In an era where spam blocking and filtering make it increasingly difficult for small businesses to get their email delivered, our customers continue to reach their subscribers’ inboxes.
From building and nurturing relationships with ISPs over the past 11+ years, to automatically removing unsubscribes and bounces, we do what it takes to get your requested email delivered time and again.

Have you been thinking about setting up for email marketing? If so, as I said I strongly recommend you give it a try to Aweber. With their money back guarantee, you’ve really got nothing to lose, and potentially have a lot to gain.

Click this banner to have a start:

I’d happily recommend AWeber to anyone.

In a future post, I’ll provide some ideas about what you can do with AWeber.

Believe or not?

Here to check out how other people say about Aweber on social media

Email Marketing AWeber, Best Email Marketing Application, Best Email Marketing Solution, Best Email Marketing Tool, Email Marketing

Practicing good list hygiene will control deployment costs, protect your reputation, and ultimately improve ROI per deploy. Knowing when to remove or relocate a subscriber is difficult to do, and something email marketers often fear. If you are seeing a decline in opens, reads, and clicks, it may be time to consider implementing a Re-Engagement campaign. Best case scenario, you will energize and strengthen the relationship with subscribers. Worst case scenario, you will remove some subscribers from your list, thus decreasing your deployment costs. Get started:

Step 1: Define Inactive
This is difficult to do. You will need to establish your own definition that is specific to your subscribers. How? Start by reviewing the life cycle(s) of your customers. (If you have developed personas to segment your customer base, you will have several life cycles. If you have not developed personas, and are wondering what in the world a persona is, click here to learn more. ) If you have no idea what the life cycle of your customer is, gather a list of all subscribers who have not opened an email in the previous year (or two). This is your “master inactive list.”

Step 2: Segment On Level Of Inactivity
Next, segment the master inactive list. One approach is to separate subscribers who have been active at some time in their history and made a purchase, from subscribers who are truly inactive and have not made a purchase. Consider that those who have made a purchase can be messaged differently than those aspirational subscribers who have not made a purchase.

Step 3: Communicate Thoughtfully
Craft messages for inactives with care. The ultimate goal is to close a sale. Minor, but equally valuable goals, are to engage subscribers to the point of clicking, reading, or at the very least opening the email. Any activity is better than none and reinforces that the subscriber is still interested. Consider carefully the frequency and timing of your deployments. A three-deploy campaign, spanning a three-to-six week period is sound starting framework. Be certain that your Re-Engagement campaign works in concert with your standing deployment calendar.

> Messaging inactive past purchasers
Use a personal greeting and dynamic content to fill the message with items that are similar or that complement the previous purchase. Include your best offer and limit the time the offer is available to drive sales sooner versus later. Improve the offer during the second and third deploys if possible.

> Messaging inactive aspirational subscribers
If possible, use a personal greeting to establish a relationship. Use your strongest branding possible through images and text to facilitate recognition and recall. Position the offer and Call-To-Action high above the fold so that it cannot be missed. Oh yes, the offer – make this the very best offer that you can. Gift With Purchase (GWP) or high level discounts perform well. Improve the offer during the second and third deploys if possible.

Step 4: Relocate or Remove
After each deployment during your Re-Engagement campaign, you will be relocating subscribers.

> When a purchase is made
Success! Move this subscriber off the master inactive list and back onto your master list. Use all segmentation possible so that this subscriber receives relevant messages in the future.

> When a click is made
Keep this subscriber on the inactive list for the second (and or third) deployment in the Re-Engagement campaign. A click shows interest. If, after the third deploy in the Re-Engagement campaign there is no activity beyond a click, you will need to determine if you want to move this customer to the master list with a flag showing interest, or remove the subscriber completely.

> When a read or open is made
Keep this subscriber on the inactive list for the second (and or third) deployment in the Re-Engagement campaign. A read or open shows some interest. If, after the third deploy in the Re-Engagement campaign there is no activity beyond a click, you will need to determine if you want to move this customer to the master list with a flag showing minimal interest, or remove the subscriber completely.

> When nothing happens
If, after the third deploy in the Re-engagement campaign there is no activity you will need to determine if you want to move this customer to the master list with a flag showing no response to the Re-Engagement campaign, or remove the subscriber completely.

Goodbye Doesn’t Mean Forever
Removing subscribers from your list after the Re-Engagement campaign controls your deployment costs. And, these subscribers may not be gone forever. Keep a watchful eye on your list delta and see if any pop up in the future as “new” subscribers. Dive into the data and segment and trend from there – did the “renewed” sign up come from a different channel, include a different email address, or a change in last name? So much data, so little time!

Email Marketing Email Marketing, re-engage customer

Based on some preliminary analysis, we estimate that 25 to 33 percent of the typical email list may be comprised of “inactive” recipients. In this context, we are defining inactive recipients as those who have not opened AND clicked on a single email over a given period of time/number of emails.

Here are some tips on what you can do to re-engage your inactives:

1. Special Offers - If you are a retailer, for example, consider a special offer such as discounts or free shipping. If you are a B2B marketer you might offer a special white paper that will motivate the recipient to re-engage with your communications.

2. Survey Subscribers - While you are not likely to get a significant response, consider surveying these recipients to help provide insight into their inactivity.

3. Update Profile - Using incentives, drive subscribers to your profile update page where they can change email addresses, update format preferences, demographics and interests. This updated information may now enable you to send them targeted and relevant emails.

4. Understand Their Demographics/Profile - Perhaps a large percentage of your inactives share a common trait. Perhaps they opted in as part of registering for a white paper or seminar or promotional offer. Or perhaps a majority are women, while your content is oriented toward men.

5. Try Different Send Days/Times - If you always mail on the same day or time of day, try some different distribution times (what do you have to lose?).

6. Modify Frequency - Now that you’ve segmented your list by actives and inactives, consider adjusting the frequency of your sends. If you normally send twice per month, you may want to test sending three times to active subscribers, but only once to inactives.

7. Create Different Content - If your analysis has been able to uncover some common threads among inactives, consider packaging the content differently for this group. For example, a newsletter from a job search-oriented business might logically find many subscribers becoming inactive after completing their job search. For these recipients, the company might want to focus its newsletter content on managing people, careers and the hiring process. Uncovering this type of trend should lead to providing different newsletters or dynamic versions based on a person’s profile or stated preferences.

8. Try Different Formats - Test using a text version, for example, that is very simple but with specific links and messaging intended to drive action.

9. Test Different Styles of Subject Lines - If you’ve used a particular style of subject line, try a different approach with the inactives. Creative subject lines could be one of your most effective strategies in getting recipients to re-engage.

10. Monitor Seed/Proof Lists - Send your messages to proof and seed lists for key domains. Monitor if content or images are causing your messages to be filtered or treated differently with specific ISPs and companies. If problems are detected, consider developing different versions of the messages that may not trip
filters.

11. Send a Postcard - If you have your subscribers’ mailing addresses, consider sending them a postcard that offers an incentive if they’ll update their email preferences and profile.

12. Move Re-engaged to Active Status - After each email message sent to the inactives, change the demographic status of those recipients clicked a link to “active.” This helps keep your focus on converting the inactives and tracking your success in those efforts.

Email Marketing Email Marketing, inactive email, re-engage customer