VerticalResponse Email Marketing Blog for Small Business

Retailers: Great Internet Retailer Survey

Internet Retailer published their Holiday Sales Survey recently. It's a pretty comprehensive survey that might give retailers out there some ideas for the holiday season. It was surprising to me that most of the retailers they surveyed had sales revenue of less than 1 million annually. That really speaks to the smaller retailers weighing in rather than Target or Walmart.

The top three take-aways were that you should start marketing early, you should include gifts with a purchase and include lower priced items in the assortment you offer. Reducing prices across the board was also a big one.

On the marketing front it looks like email marketing is the big winner with regards to the tools retailers will use. A close second is paid search followed by social media in third.

In addition, most retailers will make free shipping conditional, meaning customers will have to purchase $50 or more.

All in all, 81% of the retailers surveyed think that their holiday sales will grow this year, with half of the growth being up 15% or less from the previous year. Sounds promising, let's hope so!

New Features: List Management

A quick note if you're a VerticalResponse customer. Recently we released a range of exciting new list features for customers who have gone through our list consolidation process (it's free btw) . If you're wondering what you need to do, login to your account and follow the simple instructions there.

Upload a list for mass actions

This feature makes it easier for you to target emails, and clean your list.

• Suppress members - Great if you want to temporarily exclude some subscribers from your email marketing campaigns.
• Unsubscribe and Delete - Easily clean your list of data that you are collecting in other places or people you know don't want to get your emails.

Where to find it: Lists > All Lists, and select any list > Tools > Mass Update

More search options

Find email addresses in your account based on their opt-in status. It makes it easy to find subscribers who are single opt-in, mailable, bounced, or unsubscribed. Also easily search on suppression status.

Where to find it: Lists > All Members > List Members > Advanced > Select filter for Opt-in Status or Suppression Status

Get Set Up to Email Unlimited

If you want to join our monthly subscription program (you don't have to), you can send unlimited emails for a low monthly fixed fee. Just check out our pricing page to see where you fit in. Then consolidate your lists if you're an existing customer. (Did we mention it's free?)

It's easy, so what's stopping you?

How Using Twitter Can Grow Your List

If you didn't know, VerticalResponse is on Twitter! Follow us, we're VR4SmallBiz. We're having a blast with it, watching more people follow us every day. Why should you start to "tweet"?

1. You want to be where your customers are and you can bet many of them are on Twitter. You can tweet about what's going on at your company, include links to some great articles you run across, and give your followers up to the minute information about your company and product. Remember, keep it short and sweet.

2. You can grow your list! Think of it as a boost for your email marketing program. When you create your newsletter or email blast using VerticalResponse, make sure you use the feature that enables you to host your email on a web page. Then you can use Twitter to let everyone know you've published your email and make sure you include the hosted version's URL.

Computerworld published this great article with tons of Twitter tips. It's easy, now follow us and tweet!

 

Can Your Business Be Socially Responsible?

I'm sitting at a pretty large tradeshow called Dreamforce, about 9,000 attendees. I'm listening to the head of Google.org, Larry Brilliant, talk about the CSR (Corporate Social Responsibility) programs of Google and Salesforce, where each donates 1% of profits, 1% of employee time and 1% product to non-profits. It's a pretty moving speech about how businesses need to be stepping up to socially responsible. I couldn't agree more.

I started thinking, it truly doesn't have to only be the big guys like Google and Salesforce that can step up to the plate because they have the power and the resources. In aggregate small business actually could have more power to make a real difference. Heck, VerticalResponse stepped up to the plate more than 2 years ago when we were a lot smaller than we are today. I say take the "C" out of "CSR" it scares us little guys away.

How Can You Start? 3 Simple Ways

1. If you don't have the dollars to donate or sponsor something, take a good look at what you do have. Perhaps it's your employee's time at first. That's how we started when we partnered with Salesforce for their annual community event. Even better, you get to meet new people as well as share an experience with your employees you never would have. We have teams regularly going to read to first grade classes at a local elementary school as well as teams feeding the homeless. Not one person ever leaves an event thinking they didn't make a contribution to the community, it's a great feeling.

Important note: try to peg how many of these programs are actually feasible for your business to keep running. Your business has to be your #1 priority.

2. If your product or services lend themselves to helping a non-profit, why not give it away at a discounted rate or even free to non-profit organizations and schools? Many times you'll get sponsored links in exchange for this. A great example of this is when restaurants give their dishes and employee time free at events where all proceeds go to non-profits. Another example of this is doctors donating their time to give services to the homeless.

3. Schools often are in need of computers. If you've got old computers laying around that might be somewhat out of date but still work, why not ask your local schools if they'd like to take them off of your hands. Not only is it good for the school, but it's great for the environment as well.

Is your business socially responsible? Do you give back? Give us more ideas!

eMarketer Article: Pinching Pennies Online this Holiday Season

eMarketer just came out with this interesting article. It stated that consumers have devised a variety of strategies to save money beyond just buying fewer and cheaper holiday gifts.

To save money on gas, shoppers will shift some of their store purchases to the Internet. Some will plan ahead so that they make all their online purchases at once to reduce shipping costs. Others will buy in bulk from warehouses and club stores online.

It also stated that consumers will wait for peak promotional times to buy like Cyber Monday (the Monday after Thanksgiving), when Web retailers frequently offer free shipping and other price-cutting deals.

Other strategies include using coupons, finding cheaper product alternatives, reducing gift spending, looking for sales and shopping online for deals, according to a July 2008 survey from comScore.

What does this mean for your business? You might consider the following:

Get ready for Cyber Monday, it's right around the corner! Make sure your email marketing campaigns are ready to go the day before.

Include a cyber "coupon" in your email campaign since 35% of the respondents said they would use coupons this holiday season.

Offer a top 10 under $10 ($20, $30) list. You might be able to get a few more purchases this way by making it super easy not to mention cheaper since 63% of the respondents said they would look to buy less expensive gifts.

Offer free shipping on orders of some dollar amount and over. Looks like that could be a winner this season especially if people are buying at once.Thirteen percent of the respondents said they'd be looking for that.

Oh and make sure people can find you when they search for you online. Since 32% of the respondents said they'd shop online for better deals, you should be getting your Google Adwords going now so you appear when someone is searching on your keywords. Check out our partner MerchEngines if you don't want to do it yourself.

Reporting: How Are You Using It, Or Are You?

If you are currently using any reputable email service provider like VerticalResponse, you definitely have access to basic reports about how your email marketing campaigns are doing. The real question is, what are you doing with that information? I've put together some ranges for the stats you probably view and some ideas you could be doing with that information to make your email campaigns even better.

Open Rate

Customers who tend to have great relationships with their customers can get open rates as high as 40%, which is great. Others that have gathered their lists over several years and potentially lost some customers could be in the 14-18% range. 

Idea: Get rid of the dead weight. If you've been sending someone email for years and they've never opened your email or clicked a link, then maybe email just isn't the way you should be contacting them. Why not try calling them or dropping them a postcard to see if that wakes them up? THEN you can try to develop an online relationship with them at a later date. You'll be mailing to more active people in the long run.

Idea: Download your list of NON-RESPONDERS, these are people who have neither clicked on a link nor opened your email.  Then, a week or so after you've sent a campaign, send them the same email, but switch up the subject line to something more catchy to see if you can get more people opening.

Click Rate

Click rates usually fall in the 1-3% range.  However, if they've got an amazing story to tell or great deal to give, then we see it skyrocket to the 8-10% range. Anything over that you're off the charts. Again it all depends on that relationship you have with your customers. 

Idea: Test including more links in your email. We tested linking our article headlines and squeezed some more clicks out of people. Make sure all of your images are linked as well. 

Bounce Rate

We've seen our customers average bounce rates usually come in under .5%. However, lists mailed less frequently can have bounce rates in the 5%-7% range. A list that is mailed for the first time can have up to a 50% bounce rate depending on how "new" it is.

Idea: Download your list of bounces. If you have their postal addresses, send them a postcard asking them to update their email address. Then direct them to an opt-in form where you capture their new address. You may have to sweeten the deal with an offer on their next purchase or something free like a gift card. It's worth it for you not to lose that customer.

Unsubscribe Rate

A regularly mailed list has an average unsubscribe rate around the .2-.5% range. A less frequently mailed email list can creep up to the 2-5% range. 

Idea: Keep in more frequent touch with your recipients. Instead of once every 3 months why not make the time and increase it to once per month. A customer of yours may be on their way out the door, you don't want that.

Any ideas of your own that you'd like to share? We'd love to hear them.

Assessing Your Marketing Budget in This Economy

Last week I talked about how to reduce costs across the board, today I'll talk about how to continue to grow while cutting back a bit on marketing. You never want to completely cut back on all of your communications but you can take steps to reduce them a bit.

Print ads - First of all make sure your print ads are working for you. Ask your customers how they heard or read about you in the first place. One simple thing you can do is to reduce your ad sizes if the publication will let you.

Google Adwords - Don't cut Adwords spending altogether, but assess what's working for you. If you sell locally make sure you're not spending to show ads in other areas of the country, spend locally only. Google let's you do that. If you have campaigns that just have not pulled you might want to pause them for a few months.

Email Marketing - You don't have to cut here at all and it's not just because you might be a customer of ours. Now, VerticalResponse let's you send unlimited email for a low fixed monthly fee in addition to our flexible pay-as-you-go option. This enables you to increase your email sends and keep growing your business.

Tradeshows - Instead of cutting tradeshows out of your budget altogether, you might be able to reduce your presence. Why not share a booth with another complementary business? Do you really need 3 people to go or can you do it with 2? Maybe you can have a smaller table or booth? Make sure you don't skimp on printing business cards, but use the back of your card for a promotion instead of printing on a larger datasheet. There are simple ways to reduce, while still promoting your business.

Start a Refer-a-Friend Program - Ask you customers to refer their friends and you'll give them a discount or free gift every time their friends purchase. This only costs you your discount or gift and it's a fantastic way to spread word of mouth.

Just a few quick ideas for you to save some $ or get new customers.

Unlimited Emailing from VerticalResponse

Today we're pretty excited to announce some new features from VerticalResponse; you'll have access to unlimited emailing for a low fixed monthly fee. No, we're not kidding. It's tough in this economy and we want to give you the email marketing tools at the price that will keep your business growing. If you're happy on your current pay-as-you-go plan, feel free to stay put. Here are just a few of the new features you'll  have access to:

• Now you'll be able to view and edit one record that now exists across multiple lists.
• You can now download all unique list members with/without bounce and unsubscribe info.
• View one complete profile of all of your list members.
• Search on any field or partial email address.
• You'll have access to unlimited emailing for a low fixed monthly fee.
• And more!

Current VerticalResponse users will be notified within your account with more details on how you can get access these new features.

Great Ideas from a VR Customer

From time to time I join a customer's list to see what they're doing in the wonderful world of online marketing. This one was particularly special because I used to be a customer of this business. This post is devoted to some really great ideas from Pet Camp, a place to bring your pets for short-term or long-term boarding.

Things they do well:

Email

• The email has a fun and friendly tone, and all of the staples you need in your email campaign are here.
• There is a great mix of graphics and text. The text will show in the event the images are blocked by an email client. Most of their content will show.
• They prominently ask you to forward the email to a friend.
• They prominently display their locations.
  
• Since they spend a ton of time and effort being a "green" business they tout that in their email.
• They push their refer a friend program with a discount.
• They include a hosted version of their email for people having trouble reading it in their email clients
• They talk about their community program, helping local schools. People like doing business with businesses that help the community

Blog

Separate from the Pet Camp website they have a blog. I am going to assume it's because it's easier to post to and make changes to than going through their web designer.

You might be thinking "Why would a company like Pet Camp need a blog?" The great thing they do with this particular blog is that they devote the entire blog to images of their furry guests and they try to post them each day if they can. The cool thing about that is that when the parents of the pets see their pet on the blog, they'll surely email their friends to show them. That's the power of word of mouth. Now lots of people that may never have heard of Pet Camp will.

Site

I've always liked the simplicity of the Pet Camp site. It's an easy to navigate site and I love the use of the pictures of the guests and guests with the people who work there. It puts a nice personal touch on the site. They've also got some really good testimonials from past guests, which every site should have.

Great job from Pet Camp, how are you employing these tactics in your online marketing? Do you have any additional goodies you want to throw in?

We Made a Mistake...

Yesterday's newsletter talked about the use of lingo and images we recommend for the holidays so as not to offend anyone. Then right under the article we included a small image of postcards with an ornament on one of them. How ironic. I'm posting this to apologize to anyone who may have been offended and for us not eating our own dog food so to speak. Cheers.