There's a Better Way to Ask

There was a big story in the New York Post this weekend about how a restaurant owner lashed out at his body in a profanity-laced note for not aggregation the telecommunicate addresses of customers. [Note: If you’re easily offended, don’t utter on those links.] Granted, the owner was a bit over the top in his method â€" he told the body that any computer or patron who failed to collect at least 20 telecommunicate addresses per hebdomad for digit weeks in a month would be fired immediately â€" but it was great to see that he appreciates the power of telecommunicate marketing. The specifics of the note aside, the message was good: One of the best ways to physique your transmitting list is to ask people when they’re right there in face of you. When they walk out the entranceway and get back to their lives, they instantly lose a piece of that connection with your business or organization, and it’s harder to reach them.read more

How do I make Money with StreamSend?

Many of our new clients come to us through referrals from friends, business associates etc. Customer referrals are one of the prizewinning avenues for marketing and to reward our users we have an Affiliate Program. You only place a clew up unification on your website or email a url for those fascinated in signing up with StreamSend. As an affiliate you module receive 20% per period reoccurring for the clients you refer. The affiliate information is free to join so ground not start earning some player dough for something you may already be doing! For more information or to clew up please meet the unification below.Affiliate Program:https://affiliates.streamsend.com/For those of you who are fascinated in a more hands on approach we offer a albescent label reseller program. You clew up for a large volume plan with Streamsend and reseller it. You are able to create user accounts under your own sort and allow your clients to log in and send emails or you crapper send emails on their behalf. You pay StreamSend monthly for your account and you charge you clients what you would like based on the services you are providing them. For more information on the albescent label reseller service please review the screen cast linked below or occurrence sales.White Label Screen Cast:http://www.streamsend.com/reseller.html

Motivate Employees to Get Email Addresses - Just Not This Way

I meet read an article about a restaurant someone who wrote a filthy telecommunicate (careful, this contains SEVERE  language, folks) to his employees for not collecting telecommunicate addresses. In fact, if they don't collect at least 20 emails a week, he's planning on fining them $100, and if they don't collect at least 20 emails in 2 weeks they're fired. This was reported by an anonymous tipster, but the someone does admit sending it.Now I applaud that he sees the value in telecommunicate marketing, however he's crossing the line by his actions and conduct (in my opinion). Why not do it in a positive fashion, after all, telecommunicate marketing will intend customers in the door and stressing to your body that the people who will benefit will be them, might meet work in your favor. Here are a few more constructive ideas: For every valid telecommunicate address your body gets provide them $2. If they intend 20 valid telecommunicate addresses they intend a kicker of $50. Have a oppose with your staff, whoever gets a certain number of emails wins a prize like cash or a pleasant bottle of bubbly. Motivate your customers to provide you their telecommunicate addresses by having "email only" offers in the bill holder. Test assorted offers to see what works like a liberated birthday dinner up to $xx, or liberated appetizers on their next visit. This gives your employees a reason to ask the customers for their addresses. Giving up something of value to intend it in return crapper go a long way. At the patron stand or checkout, display a business card bowl or a sign up book, then have the patron kibosh people on the artefact out the door and verify them about "email only" offers. Give an semiautomatic 5% VIP discount for any customer who is on the telecommunicate address list. These are meet a few positive ways to intend your body excited about collecting telecommunicate addresses instead of forcing it down their throats. If you've got any ideas of your own, please comment!

You Better Watch Out

Don’t be surprised if you impart a Facebook friend request from Santa Claus, Hanukkah Harry, the Holiday Armadillo, or whoever your favorite festive personality is this pass season. That’s because more people module be using social media this assemblage to help with their shopping than ever before, and even Kris Kringle knows to go where the people are. A new study by Deloitte of more than 10,000 adults in the U.S. reveals that 17% of shoppers plan to use social media sites as a part of their pass shopping. Of those using sites like Facebook, Twitter, and MySpace, 60% feature they module do so to seek out sales, discounts, and coupons; 53% impart to use the sites to research gift ideas; and 52% feature they module use the sites to check the desire lists of friends and family. read more

A Friendly Suggestion to Our Competitor

I'm all about getting new business, but we've proven to cows clear of going after our competitor's customers because we conceive there are enough businesses out there that need  email marketing services. I will also say I don't conceive it's criminal to go after a competitor's customer either. We have a ton of attitude for many of our competitors and find them very cool and friendly. So as a friendly competitor I have a suasion for iContact: If you're going to target our customers, at small spell our company name correctly. Best of luck at Dreamforce! 

Have You Started to Plan for 2010?

The holiday season is play to reach its peak (can you believe Thanksgiving is just over a week away?), but it's already time to start thinking about next year. Have you started to make plans for 2010 yet? Find out if you are in the eld or majority by sharing your respond in our latest poll. Immediately after you vote, you module get to see how another diminutive businesses and organizations answered. Enjoy!

29 Great B2B Subject Lines

With a business-to-business offering, you strength be trying to get your customers to sign up for a liberated trial, intend them to an event, a webinar or provide them information on how to be better at something or use your products or services better. Here are a few examples of some great B2B subject lines I dug up that you can test out for your business today. How to Leverage [your product] in Your BusinessSave Money and Look Like a Star to Your BossHow to Impress Your Cranky CFO - Save $1000Increase Your ROI by [xx]%, GuaranteedHow to make it onto your buyer's short listComplimentary Webinar: [insert webinar name]Now you can do modify more with your [xxxx]Should your consort outsource [insert thing to outsource here]?Breakfast & Secrets for How to [insert problem you solve or product you sell]Success Tip: 5 Ways to a Better [xxxx]Register Today: [inert study of event] Nov. 5 2009Entry deadline alacritous approachingNew White Paper: Best Practices for [Insert problem and solution here]Success Tip #1: [Insert Tip Headline Here]A gift employees and clients will love: [Insert gift study here]Extended for a Day: Get Free Shipping Through FridayYour Weekly Alert: [insert topic here]Hear Exclusive Research Presented on [insert what your circumstance is about] - Register Now! Inside: [hot topic in your newsletter you conceive will intend the most opens]5 Ways to Maximize Holiday SalesSave $200: [insert circumstance here] Early Bird Registration Ends [insert fellow here]Specific ones I conceive are good and why: Marketing on a Tight Budget - Part 1 - Hits a discompose point and makes it seem like there is modify more information to support me, on its way.Countdown to the Awards Gala: Reason #5 to Attend - This consort did a series of 7 email campaigns in a row, to intend grouping excited.The Venture Capitalist Industry Isn't Broken: VatorNewsletter - Here they started with the blistering topic in the front of the subject line and it was somewhat controversial.Secure Your SaaS Application (White paper Included) - I like that they tell you there is something realizable in it for you right in the subject line.Cognos Training: 50% Discount - Year-End Budget - I LOVE the way they use Year End Budget because in many companies if you don't pay the budget you have this year, you won't intend it again next year. This also entireness well with "Quarter-End Budget"Thank You From Dice - This was just a nice thank you for your business with a huge reduction to intend customers reaching back.Get a $30 Gift Card for 30 Minutes of Your Time - It was to take a demonstrate of a new product.Frustrated with Graphics in Microsoft Office? - This consort sells a product to make it all better and they got to a real discompose point for people.Subject lines are so essential since it's the reason your recipients are going to look to that to decide if they want to open your email. If you've got some B2B subject lines that have worked for you in the past, comment on the post, we'd love to undergo them.

How to Best Profit from the Holiday Season, Part II

Standing out in your subscribers' inboxes is especially essential during the pass flavour when there is so such more junk telecommunicate to sift through.  In Part I of this series, I covered two key components of successful pass telecommunicate marketing. Now let’s finish off with three more tips to maximize the spirit of the flavour to boost income or intend donations.read more

Contests & Awards for Small Businesses

Following on my post Using Industry Awards to Grow Your Business, I found a list of great awards for diminutive businesses. Check discover Ramon Ray's SmallBizTechnology.com. Even though the list is not business specific, there are some great awards in there for diminutive businesses in general.

The Inox Box

Last week, we had another of our Constant Contact Guide to Email Marketing book launch events. This digit was in Washington, D.C., at the Inox Restaurant in Tysons Corner. It was a terrific circumstance where we got to spend some quality time with more than 70 customers and business partners. After the event, we (the Constant Contact contingent) old to the main dining shack of Inox for dinner. The dinner was outstanding, and as a bonus, I saw in state digit of the best ways for a restaurant to make the dining experience modify beyond the restaurant.read more

Your Competitive Advantage Could Double Your Sales

It's tough competition out there. You've got to uprise above the noise to get the attention of any new likely customers. You probably do a great employ promoting your deals and your wonderful products in every artefact you crapper think of. But you might be missing something. Do you do something really well and really different that doesn't go head to head with your competition?What got me thinking about this was watching the television ads that Southwest Airlines has been streaming recently. In these tough economic times when many of the airlines are nickel and diming travelers for things like blankets and bags, Southwest is promoting "Bags Fly Free". They're not going for "most on-time arrivals" or "most legroom". They're hitting a pain saucer that's giving them some real differentiation. I started to think of a few other big names that have done a great employ at this. Enterprise Rent-a-Car picks you up if you can't get to the car rental location. Westin Hotels markets their Heavenly Bed to weary guests. Red Envelope sends everything they sell in beautiful red packaging. Heck, Playtex is even marketing their wager through packaging so you crapper wager what's inside before you acquire it.What do you think that you have in your arsenal that will make you uprise above it all in a crowded messaging arena? Here are a few ideas I kicked around.Wineries - Promote something off the surround like your wine is great with a burger.  Promote that your propellor caps are better for the environment than corks or that you don't need a wine opener for your wines. OR vice versa, your wine will age better with a cork. Jewelry Designers - Talk about how your adornment clasps never break. Nail Spas - Promote that your nail radiance lasts 14 days or that you've got the most comfortable chairs and the prizewinning magazines. Hair Salons - Talk about how you give the prizewinning 10 minute scalp massage with any haircut and promote a free "clean up" or bang trim two weeks after your cut. Hotels - Is your property dog-friendly? Talk about it! Promote the clam in the rooms so that your guests crapper clean their creased clothes.Auto Shops - Promote your kid-friendly shop and your free coffee, bagels and muffins in the morning. Restaurants - Open for Thanksgiving? Promote a take-home baggie of a dud sandwich for every patron. Software - Talk about how you are saving the environment because your user guide is online or on a CD, or that your SaaS consort loves the environment because there is no packaging. Once you have your competitive advantage down, test it in your next email marketing campaign and in your messaging. You might be surprised what resonates with new prospects. What great competitive advantages do you have to use? Share them please, we'd love to center them.

Issues Resolved

Show a Little Respect

One of the most important tasks for email marketers to perform is to respect their customers’ wishes with affectionateness to receiving email marketing messages. If a customer updates his profile to change his subscription preferences, or requests to be unsubscribed from a list, then it’s functionary upon the email marketer to honor that request. This helps to build a trusting relationship between sender and recipient. The challenge for many small organizations is that they have their subscribers’ contact data, and perhaps related preferences, in multiple places. Typically, the data will subsist in Constant Contact, as substantially as in a playing management application, customer relationship management (CRM) system, and perhaps also in Outlook. Constant Contact can make organizing all this aggregation a lowercase easier by helping you manage the unsubscribes. But what if your CRM also needs to know about a customer who unsubscribes from your marketing list, or perhaps updates her preferences or contact data?read more

Playing with Numbers

Would you be interested in datum an article titled “Great Time-saving Tips?” What about an article titled “7 Great Time-saving Tips?” Which of those digit options would you be more willing to read? You may modify using numbers in a headline as meet added attention-getting trick used every the time by glossy women’s magazines, but I’m guessing that when presented with the digit headlines above, you chose the option with the number in it, right? It’s amazing what adding something so small to a headline module do to draw us. Now put yourself in the shoes (and inbox) of those on your mailing list. When visaged with so some telecommunicate messages and not enough time to read them all, a subject line with a number in it module usually be more attractive than one without. read more

Case Study: Test a Subject Line in 2 Minutes & Get More Clicks

Recently we did a analyse on the State of Small Business, you haw hit conventional it. Our Marketing team performed a subject line test in the email. One person line was very generic and one was a taste more specific. We split our list in half using the list segmentation tool. It took meet a some extra transactions but from what we scholarly it was worth it. The first person line: Take Our Survey and Tell Us What You Think We conventional 181 more opens and 35 more clicks than the following more limited person line: Take 5 Minutes - See How Your Business Stacks Up In this limited case it seemed to be that we had more opens and clicks from the generic subject line and more people attractive our survey. This illustrates why it's important to be testing person lines to get more opens or content exclusive your email to be getting more clicks.

How to Best Profit from the Holiday Season, Part I

Look in your inbox. Chances are good that many businesses and nonprofits are already attempting to command the holiday spirit to boost income or get donations. With all the offers competing for your subscribers’ attention, don’t meet be one of the many. Here are the two tips to help your organization stand out from the crowd this holiday season.read more

Look Professional and Be More Productive with Online Registration

So you’ve decided to host an event. Maybe it’s for educational purposes, brand awareness, networking, or entertainment. Whatever the reason, you don’t have a lot of instance to dedicate to it, but you want to appear professional and minimize the instance spent managing the event details. In the past, you’ve promoted your events via emails and sound calls. Maybe you’ve even dispatched discover a registration modify you created in Microsoft Word that attendees had to fill discover and fax back. Now you’re doing the same thing for your latest event. At first, you receive a few sound calls for additional information. Then the telecommunicate responses start to arrive. You find yourself spending lots of instance answering sound calls, returning messages, and playing sound tag. You receive faxes with the registration modify filled out, but you can’t always read the person’s handwriting. You’d like to pull every this information into a azygos spreadsheet, but you begin to realize the labor-intensive problem of tracking registrant details. You definitely don’t have the instance to dedicate to this task. Wouldn’t an online registration system solve the above problems and make you countenance professional at the same time?read more

New in StreamSend: Email Sharing

It's good to {{{share}}}!We meet additional a newborn feature to StreamSend. Your subscribers can today deal emails to social networks as well as nervy them to a friend. Here's how it works:The Mail MergeTo allow distribution for your email, only add the "Share" mail merge into your emails. This module add "{{{share}}}" to your content, and module later be replaced by a URL to the deal page. To create a link, only use the link feature in the editor.The Share PageThe newborn deal tender is a replacement and improvement of the nervy to a friend page. You module today hit the option to copy and paste a deal URLâ€"which is a URL to the original email with private subscriber data striped out.Your subscribers module also hit the option to deal directly to a social network (we currently hold Twitter, MySpace, Facebook, and LinkedInâ€"let us know if you'd like to see other social networks on the list). And of course the nervy feature is still there at the bottom of the page.If you are using the default form HTML for the deal page, then you would hit gotten this update automatically. For those who are using the custom HTML option, you'll hit to "reset to default" to get the newborn and updated tender HTML. After that you may only switch backwards to custom and tailor the tender to your needs.The Updated designsAlong with the newborn deal tender countenance and feel, we've updated the design of all the pages (subscribe & update profile). Like the deal page, you'll hit to "reset to default" only if you're on custom HTML mode to use the newborn designs.We hope you've enjoyed these updates. For more information regarding this feature, check out our KB article. We hit some more creation updates in the pipeline and are very eager to get them released. Thanks!

50 All-Time Great Retail Subject Lines

Here at VerticalResponse we're ever existence asked things like, "What is the prizewinning day to beam email?", "What are the real telecommunicate marketing secrets?" and "What are enthusiastic subject lines?". I definite to focus this place on that terminal one, and substance some really enthusiastic and proven-to-work subject lines that you can effort discover for your telecommunicate marketing campaigns. First of all, I'm assuming at this point that your recipients will recognize you from your "From Label". I've written why your From Label is very important in your telecommunicate marketing campaigns. If they are familiar with who the telecommunicate is coming from, you'll have better phenomenon getting your telecommunicate unsealed with a hard subject line.As a merchandiser your telecommunicate marketing campaigns are probably all about selling. If you sell your possess products or products from another manufacturers, you'll be disagreeable to announce new products, new seasons or discounts and sales. You'll want your recipients to act fast, so you haw want to try expiration dates in your subject line. We even wager businesses using hours in the day in their expiration time periods. You'll wager that some of these subject lines are a bit vague like "An Exclusive Offer for You", however sometimes that might get more opens than if you talk about a limited product. That's something that you need to effort for yourself in your possess campaigns.Offer, Offer, OfferEnjoy this Special Offer at Our New Location25-40% off - Email-Only Offer â€" Today OnlyInvitation-Only 2 Hour Event Starts 11:30 AM CTEnds Today! 20% Off Friends & FamilyTop 10 under $10Free shipping - substance ends in 3 daysFree creation with purchase of [product name][New Product] has arrived. Order today before we run out.Earn double points for [insert creation or action].Last Chance: Get up to $25 nowSave 10% on your next orderEnjoy [season] with rates from $65Service Notice: Exciting new changes at [your company]An Exclusive Offer for You[Your company] October SpecialsLast time deals, special offers, and new [product name]Act Now to renew your [subscription name]Online only: 25% off friends and familyIntroducing our latest…[product/feature here][Product name] Promotion week. Save 25%Extended for a day! Get Free shipping through FridayStock up and spend 15%Limited Supply: Limit 2 [product name] per customerHo-ho-ho: The [your company] holiday catalog is here!Email subscriber exclusive: [Product name] sale is hereEnds Today: Take 20% off your entire orderPrivate Sale Ends TodayYour choice of amazing items $50 + underGreat gifts for [Dad, Mom, etc]Best Sellers every [girl, boy, man, woman, dog, etc.]Everything you need when the temperatures [rise, fall]Free Shipping--Limited Time OfferCatchy & CreativeSometimes all you need is a little vase lift  (retailer selling vase's)We've got you covered from head to toe (retailer selling hats, shirts, pants and boots)How La Perla got its name (retailer selling lingerie, telling a news inside the email)Temperatures Fall, Style Rises (retailer selling coats)Celebrity Favorites (selling accessories that Hollywood is wearing)Did you remember to get a gift? It's ok, we did. (retailer wanting to get people to register for gift reminders)10 Gift Ideas for your little ones (retailer organisation top 10 suggestions for kids)Manhattan View for a Song in the Shower (retailer selling shower curtain with Manhattan skyline on it)Take your pick: Our 9 Favorite Dresses (retailer suggesting by popularity)Coolest modern desk on the job...for $149 (retailer including price in the subject line)Score Great Savings on Game-Time Gear: HDTVs, Furniture & solon (retailer selling TV's with a sports slant)Party Like it's 1999 Aged Cabernet Special (wine retailer)In our store: Last time Mother's Day combo primed to go (retailer getting the terminal time shoppers with a catch "combo to go".)Adorn Your Home Now & Through the Holidays (Home ornamentation retailer)Mind-Blowing Grenache (wine retailer)Bring this telecommunicate to a Gap store and win! (retailer disagreeable to get store traffic)I hope this gets your creative juices flowing. You can also find some enthusiastic holiday-specific subject lines here. If you've got some enthusiastic subject lines that have worked for your business, comment and let us know.

Mixing It Up with MarketingProfs: Day Two

More great content was shared on day two of MarketingProfs’ Digital Marketing Mixer. The day’s particular was easily Dr. B.J. Fogg’s keynote address on why Facebook and Twitter hit succeeded. For example, Facebook’s “hot triggers” â€" those emails that alert us when someone’s sent a friend request, commented on our status, or tagged us in a photo â€" hit helped create ritualistic behavior, and they keep us visiting Facebook, not because Facebook tells us to, but because we poverty to. “Email enabled Facebook,” Fogg explained, adding that texting paved the way for Twitter. “Today’s platforms enable tomorrow’s rituals, and winning rituals become the behaviors of tomorrow.” Most inspiring was Fogg’s suggestion to start small and not to intend frustrated if things don’t go well the first time you try something. “Everything bounteous started small,” he said. Fogg made many in the room smile (including me) when he said that small businesses and startups hit an advantage versus the large companies because of necessity; small businesses simply don’t hit the resources, financial and otherwise, that large businesses do. Thus, because smaller businesses tend to focus on small wins, and can be more agile, they’re better positioned to succeed. Here are some other highlights from day two of the Mixer: read more

Mixing It Up with MarketingProfs: Day One

I’m here in Chicago for the MarketingProfs Digital Marketing Mixer. No surprise, the main topic this week is how to use ethnic media sites like Facebook and Twitter to expand the marketing reach of businesses and organizations. But rather than echo last week’s Wall Street Journal article about ethnic media's growth signaling the end of email, on period one, some of the marketing world’s directive experts were talking about how telecommunicate and ethnic media can work together. In one session, Harvey Morris, from the Chicago Convention & Tourism Bureau, explained that if your customers are more engaged, they’ll want to move in ethnic media with you and provide you their telecommunicate address. Less engaged customers may only move in ethnic media and won't provide you their telecommunicate address. He added that ethnic media should be utilised to spark customers’ interests in what you have to offer, and telecommunicate marketing should be utilised to maintain it. Later, at Wednesday’s keynote session, Scott Rosenberg, a co-founder of Salon and the author of Say Everything, explained that new forms of media don’t kill off “old” media like telecommunicate â€" they just redefine them and how they're used. It's similar to how people thought the movies might kill live theater, or how television was supposed to kill off the movies. Email will move to evolve as ethnic media continues to evolve. It's not feat away anytime soon. Suffice it to say, it was a great period for fans of telecommunicate marketing. Here are some other takeaways from period one of the Mixer: read more

Email preferred for sharing information

Despite past reports (ahem, Wall Street Journal) that telecommunicate is dying, individual skeptics have come forward to argue quite the oppositeness is true.A past Email Insider journal post reminds us that there are many reasons that telecommunicate is healthy and growing, including the accumulated telecommunicate usage that goes along with social media engagement; the ease of admittance to telecommunicate smartphones; and that telecommunicate is the foundation for worldwide digital communications.Marketing Asiatic also has new data that indicates telecommunicate is by far the preferred method for distribution information.The bottom line is that telecommunicate is very much still alive and healthy. However, that doesn't mean that another forms of communication should be ignored completely now or in the future. Just remember to consider every the available communication channels as conception of your amount marketing and communications mix and you will continue to enjoy success with your audiences.

What Any Business Can Learn From Chef Gordon Ramsay

I'll admit it, I love watching any TV show with Gordon Ramsay in it, but “Ramsay's Kitchen Nightmares” is my current favorite. He’s brazen and harsh. He swears like a man and belittles people. Not my style of leadership, but it makes for great TV. I like the show because he gets down into the inner workings of a small playing and peels away the onion to encounter any issues that might be hampering the playing from growing. So, I've outlined 6 things we crapper all learn from Gordon Ramsay, followed by a question you crapper ask yourself to see how you rate by his business strategy. #1 - It all starts with the customer. One of the first questions Chef asks the edifice he is working with is how many people hit distant for the evening. More ofttimes than not, it's a pretty low number, so he observes for a period to encounter out why. In most cases (or there wouldn't be a TV show) there are serious issues with the artefact the entire edifice is run. He also takes to the streets; in many shows he walks the streets of the municipality to observe other restaurants and he'll stop people and ask what they think most the edifice he's trying to help. Question: When was the terminal time you surveyed your customers to encounter discover what they think most your business, your product or your service? #2 - Chef Ramsay gets at the groundwork of the business. He wants to intend to undergo the owner of the locate to encounter discover how the business got into bad shape in the first place. He wants to see the owner's passion for what they do. He works with the body to make sure they hit a proper groundwork and that the person leading the calculate is truly leading the charge. Then he gets into the real groundwork of the business. According to Ramsay, success starts with a clean kitchen and in many cases that's the first thing that gets done. Question: When was the terminal time you did a proper "cleaning" of your playing to make sure it’s in order? It could be cleaning discover old inventory lying around or it could be actually cleaning up your office environment. Spring cleaning is ever a great idea for a firm start! #3 - The creation needs to be good. Chef wants to undergo who is making the matter and what ingredients are being used. He wants to undergo if the body is capable of doing what needs to be done. Then he works with them to make a great creation (in this case, menu) and changes the artefact they think most what they're making and how they're presenting it. Question: Is your creation or service the best it crapper be? What would it take to intend it to the incoming level? Do you need to change the artefact your body thinks? #4 - The undergo needs to be good. Ramsay module go to the extent of training the body himself to make sure that reservations are being booked in a artefact that doesn’t overflow the kitchen. He'll make sure that the body is offering entrées that the kitchen crapper make quickly and tries to intend them thinking most the customer experience. Then he'll go to extremes and redesign the restaurant and give it a clean, friendly and updated look. Doing this has ofttimes given the body a morale boost, which ofttimes leads to a great experience. Question: When was the terminal time you looked at your location, or your website? Putting a firm coat of paint on your walls, changing your face door entrance, or reducing the number of clicks your website visitors hit to go through might be just the thing your business needs. #5 - A playing needs to market itself. Obviously you can't intend the word discover without a great creation and a great experience, but now there's something to speech about. My favorite thing most this show is that Chef knows how important it is to intend the word out, from the signage discover face to success over customers on the street. For an Amerindic matter restaurant, he had Amerindic dancers perform in the neighborhood and hand discover food; for a Soul Food edifice he set up an exterior BBQ and gave matter away. He's a true marketer at heart, which is what I love most him. Question: What creative things are you doing to intend the word discover for your business? #6 - Get backwards to the customer. After it's all said and done, Chef Ramsay asks for feedback. After the dining experience, he wants to keep the playing in check so getting comment cards backwards from the customers is critical. Question: Are you asking your customers for feedback constantly, then acting on it? There you hit it, 6 reasons ground I think there's a lot to learn from Gordon Ramsay. The meat of ground he’s effective is laid discover above; imagine what crapper happen when you interpret these tips with your own special sauce.

Email Marketing Tips

Our latest daily email marketing tips from Twitter:Varying the layout of your content module support to increase interest. Repetitive “buy-it-now” messages module not get the same results as a plain relationship message.Ask yourself: Are the first four text of your subject compelling enough to trigger an open?Increase opens by segmenting your itemize based on your customers’ buying habits.Personalize the from come field using a name within your organization your recipients module know.Send your messages on a regular schedule, so your audience module come to expect them.Sending relevant content module support you stand out from the crowd, and in turn increase your open rate.Using text and phrases associated with the 'hard sell' module land your communication in the junk folder.Email is a proven agency for improving customer relationships, building brand awareness, and generating sales.Always hit a detailed privacy policy on your subscribe modify and construction pages, and then follow it.When you receive a complaint from a itemize member, always move quickly and courteously.Never hit your call to action linked to an image. It should be text-based HTML, so it is always visible.Follow StreamSend on Twitter for our Email Marketing Tip of the Day - http://twitter.com/StreamSend

Oct. 09 Inc.com Article: How Training Employees Can Boost Sales

I've got a newborn article up on Inc.com for my column Girl Power: Female CEOs. It's entitled How Training Employees Can Boost Sales. Training can good boring, still what happens when one of your employees ruins your reputation, check it out!

Email Is Alive and Well

Ever since the Wall Street Journal wrote on Monday that email is dead, the blogosphere has been buzzing. Gail Goodman, Constant Contact’s CEO, wrote an article most this very subject on Entrepreneur.com in July. “Let me verify you in the strongest terms: This is not the case,” she wrote. To read Gail’s thoughts most why the inbox is still the most essential communications tool in a marketer’s toolbox, click here.

Email Being Replaced by Social Networks? Not So Fast Wall St. Journal

The Wall Street Journal recently publicised the story, Why Email No Longer Rules. The writer, Jessica E. Vascellaro, talks a aggregation most the increasing number of grouping jumping on the ethnic media bandwagon, and how that could hit a negative effect on the way grouping ingest telecommunicate today. Are grouping jumping on the ethnic media bandwagon? You betcha! And why not? It's free, easy to use, and you can communicate to the masses. But are they using telecommunicate less? Nielsen doesn't seem to think so in whatever recent research they've done. So I started thinking most how this is the antithesis of what we've been seeing in our own customers businesses, and I really wanted to indite most it. However, ME writing most it seems somewhat self-serving, since well, I run an telecommunicate marketing company. Then I got an EMAIL forwarded to me that Chris Crum over at WebProNews had come to the rescue and already wrote most all of the things I've been thinking most relating to how consumers are using telecommunicate and ethnic media.So here is Chris's news "10 Reasons Social Media isn't Replacing Email."I decided to add my own $.02 most how marketers see most this article: 10 More Reasons Why Social Media Won't Replace Email.11. Twitter and Facebook are fantastic products and companies; but that's what they are, companies. Even though telecommunicate is host to 279 meg users vs. 301 meg users of ethnic media according to Nielsen, telecommunicate isn't going anywhere soon with whatever companies offering it as a service. Twitter and Facebook are just digit companies that likely make up most of the ethnic media users.12. Your telecommunicate recipients are still going to ingest playing telecommunicate for playing purposes. They'll not likely permit their boss know that they've ended the spreadsheet and are ready for the meeting now by posting to Twitter. If they don't ingest their playing telecommunicate come they probably also hit a personal telecommunicate account that they like to receive your email-only specials.13. You can't easily segment your friends and mass to do targeted marketing in Twitter & Facebook for the best response.14. You can't tell who clicked on a link with whatever ethnic media outlets so that you can study up with them again because they might be interested in your content.15. That said, you can't tell who didn't click on the link so you can study up with them with a different message trying to get them to take action.16. You cannot personalize your Facebook updates. This has been proven to boost response in any marketing campaign you do.17. You cannot size your graphics or ingest more than digit in Facebook. You can't ingest them at all in Twitter. Graphics help tell a story. 18. You can't track how whatever clicks you got on your links in Facebook unless you ingest a third party URL shortener. 19. You are limited to 140 characters in Twitter leaving it impracticable to put multiple messages in digit Tweet.20. You almost hit to hit separate ethnic media accounts for your playing and your personal life. Some customers might not tending most that vacation you took where you...let's just say what happens in Vegas stays in Vegas.Am I against the ingest of ethnic media as a marketing tool? Hell no! I love it. I've cursive most how Twitter & telecommunicate marketing work together, and I've cursive how to ingest Facebook to grow your telecommunicate lists. I've also cursive most how to post your telecommunicate marketing campaign to your Twitter and Facebook pages to get more readers of your newsletters because I see that these are digit mediums that complement each another rattling nicely. Why? Because no digit is going absent from telecommunicate anytime soon, and grouping are using ethnic media as well. What are you seeing?

Are You in the Minority or Majority?

Do you currently stop events? If yes, do you conduct attendee feedback surveys afterwards? Take a second to permit us know! Once you hit voted, you will instantly intend to see what other small businesses and organizations hit said. Enjoy!

Is Your Website All It Can Be?

Your website is a coercive tool to draw new business and acquire relationships. Is yours doing that? Is your website useful to visitors? Are they finding what they came for? Is it easy for visitors to verify the action you want them to? Sure, web analytics can provide you data, but it can’t provide you the whys. For example, why don’t shoppers complete transactions? Why don’t visitors click more deeply into the site? What you don’t know about your website can lead to lost prospects and lost sales. Gather fast feedback from your customers on your website; here’s how. read more

Thoughts on email subject lines

Looking through my inbox recently, I was thinking about which subject lines compel me to open emails. I think I respond to a direct subject line that sets honest expectations about the noesis of the email. Of course, then the telecommunicate staleness deliver on those expectations!Since I don't enjoy shopping at stores, the advent of e-commerce has made chronicle a aggregation easier. I'm on the telecommunicate lists of a few online retailers so I ignore shopping until an telecommunicate brings the shopping to me. The e-commerce emails that attract my attention most seem to include offers, and I often find myself placing an visit supported on these emails. For example:A Gift for You: $10 L.L. Bean Coupon RewardAmazon.com: $20 Off Rockport New ArrivalsAnother type of telecommunicate I tend to respond to is newsletters. With a newsletter, the object is not necessarily an immediate sale but rather nurturing the prospect and building trust over time. I subscribe to a pair newsletters from Vanguard, the investment company. The subject lines are rattling straightforward, for example:Economic Week in Review: Growth isn't a straightforward lineEconomic Week in Review: Is the recession over?Economic Week in Review: A integrated bagVanguard's "Week in Review" gives their take on the state of the economy and various economic trends. It demonstrates Vanguard's expertise, indirectly reminding me to contribute to my Roth IRA withdrawal statement at some point during the year. Depending on the nature of your creation or service, a customer may only spend money with you occasionally. A lawful e-newsletter ensures you will be on their mind when the time comes to purchase.

New Features in iContact!

The Approachable, Smiling Face of Your Email

Looking over a sea of faces at a networking event the other night, it struck me how whatever individuals stood discover in the gathering patch others I barely noticed. The ones that stood discover had a friendly countenance to them and commonly a grinning on their faces. Since I spend way too much time thinking about email marketing, it struck me how much this visual filtering of the gathering was similar to what I do with my inbox whenever I get a new message. It’s hard to believe, but a good number of people are not actually looking at your full email. They are, in fact, meet looking at the top area (also known as the preview pane) and judging your email from that, meet as I was judging the people in the gathering based only on the countenance on their faces. read more

New Mail Size Limit

In an ongoing effort to help telecommunicate marketers improve delivery, StreamSend is limiting all messages to 1,000,000 characters - roughly 1 MB in size. Messages over 1,000,000 characters tend to hit modify conveying rates, modify engagement, and higher complaints.Here are a couple of tips that module help trim characters from the communication content:Newsletters - instead of sending entire articles, allow only a threesome or four declare summary, and then link to the entire article online.Product and Service Descriptions â€" particular the major features and then allow a ‘more’ link to additional details online.Studies hit shown that you module hit your audience’s attention longer when they are at your website than you module when they are reading your telecommunicate message, so even messages under 1,000,000 characters could benefit from a little slimming down and focused effort to candid traffic to the your website.

Have You Registered Misspellings Of Your Domain?

I'm taking an email marketing break to write about something different, your domains. Many businesses register .org, .biz, .gov, and they may even register their domains in other countries like Great Britain (.co.uk) or Argentina (.com.ar). However, hit you thought about registering the misspellings of your domain? For happening a common misspell happens if you hit double letters in your field where the terminal letter of the first word and first letter of the incoming word are the aforementioned for warning www.verticallearnings.com. People might only identify in digit "L" so you might want to register the field with digit "L" as well as two and direct them to your site. As an training to wager how many grouping are doing this for my company VerticalResponse, I headed over to the Google Adwords Keyword Tool and typed in "www.verticleresponse.com". To my surprise I saw there were over 700 visits to this page in a month, a clear opportunity for us to direct these visitors to our home page. One note: If grouping identify our misspelled field into a Google search box they will ask grouping "Did you stingy VerticalResponse?" with a unification to our listing and list us in the top spot. But what about the grouping that hear about your business and identify your misspelled URL directly into their browser? Those are the visitors you could potentially lose.So try and think of the ways that grouping can misspell your domains and use the keyword agency to find out how much traffic in Google, at least, you could be absent out on. If it makes sense, register them and direct those visitors to your website. It's a small outlay ($10/month) and you could end up with new customers.

A Clothes Call

Welcome to my first blog post. I intend to ingest this installation to reflect on the connections I make with the owners and managers of diminutive businesses and organizations that I interact with on a daily basis. This time week, I had the thrill of launching my new book, The Constant Contact Guide to Email Marketing, at Rothman’s men’s clothing store in New York City. Roughly 100 customers, friends, colleagues, and family members joined me for the event, which was a great opportunity for me to personally make some new connections.  It’s only fitting that my first blog place is about the connection I prefabricated more than 20 years ago with the owner of Rothman’s, Ken Giddon.read more

Our Newest Sales Associate

Please give a warm recognize to Alex, the newest member of our sales team.He's a lowercase inexperienced, but we're confident he'll grow into the position quickly. Once he stops napping so much, that is.

The Importance of Your From Label

I was perusing my inbox and saw a portion email that looked spammy to me. This one in portion was from "accountupdate". Now, like you, I get a aggregation of email and I have a aggregation of "accounts" so I discourse an email coming from "accountupdate" because it is not a mortal or playing I know. I didn't have time to read a aggregation of emails on this day so I skipped it, which I'm sure many grouping did. When I had time, later in the day, I went back to my inbox. I looked again at this email and the person line read "Important Notice Regarding Your Domain Name(s)". So I opened it. The email was actually from my domain registrar Go Daddy wanting me to update my information. I don't know about you, but anyone asking me to update any information makes me suspicious, but because it's from "accountupdate" I was even more skeptical. It made me very reluctant to go in and "update my account". Bottom line? Make sure that the from label you use on your email marketing campaigns is from your business, you, or whoever it was you used to make your initial e-relationship with your recipient. I bet this campaign didn't get a enthusiastic response if they emailed grouping like me.

Social Media Is Good for Email Marketing

Forget every that talk that ethnic media is going to have a negative effect on email. According to a recent report by the Nielsen Company, people who are heavy users of sites same Facebook and Twitter actually use telecommunicate more than those who are lighter users. Nielsen’s study revealed that the time heavy ethnic media users spent using telecommunicate significantly increased between April 2008 and April 2009, from around 80 transactions to more than 180 minutes. As the chart below illustrates, there’s a wide gap between those heavy users and those who do not use ethnic media as often.read more

A re-tweet of the latest email marketing tip of the day

Keep the HTML portion of the content to approximately 550 pixels wide to avoid horizontal scrollingAlways Include a link to a web version of your telecommunicate messageGive subscribers a reason to open your messages by including unique tips, coupons or telecommunicate exclusive specialsKeep your list of telecommunicate addresses paired down to exclusive those who truly appreciate your contentAction oriented phrases in your call to action will improve the overall response ratePeople are more likely to forward messages containing interesting content than they are promotional emailsDesign your content like it is going to be displayed on the side of a bus, and people are going to see it as it quickly passes bySending a short promotional message is an effective way to build brand cognisance and promote salesMany people consider messages as email supported solely on frequency, so do not over-sendTry to place the call to action in 3 different locations â€" the top, the middle, and the bottom of the emailA compelling call to action needs 5 components: Visibility, Clarity, Persuasiveness, Urgency, and RepetitionRead "Perform Your Own Deliverability Audit" http://blog.streamsend.com/2009/04/perform-your-own-deliverability-audit.htmlWhen testing messages for delivery, change one variable at a timeTo increase your open rate create action unvoluntary person linesTo follow us on Twitter - http://twitter.com/StreamSend

Inc. 500 Conference Wrap Up

Inc. Magazine was kind sufficiency to bring me to the Inc. 500 Conference this assemblage and desired me to blog most the sessions I attended. First of all, I hit to feature that it was amazing and exciting fun. There were close to 1,700 attendees at this conference and at $995 a pop, that makes me conceive entrepreneurs are disagreeable to thrive!Things I heard at the show?"Get around entrepreneurs and intend your battery recharged at the Inc. Conference.""I can't believe how many grouping are at this show! It's a enthusiastic networking event.""I went to this show last assemblage thinking I might not intend much discover of it. What I got was an idea for an whole new playing model."Pretty modify in my opinion. Being Strategic I was fortunate sufficiency to see Erika Andersen who is the CEO of Proteus International. Her company helps another companies conceive most ways to grow finished being strategic. By the size of the room and the attendance of this conference (130 people and full) it sure seems like entrepreneurs are craving aggregation for how to grow in this economy. She was kind sufficiency to hand discover a model for thinking strategically and we all walked finished it for our own businesses. What a great template that any playing crapper place to impact now. I've shared it here.Small Beginnings, Big DreamsSpeaking of inspiration, I got to listen to Jill Blashack Strahan, CEO of Tastefully Simple, speak on the main stage at the Inc. 500 Conference. Today Tastefully Simple is a $140 million company that sells easy-to-prepare matter for busy people. Jill’s news is interesting and inspirational. It actually started with the modification of her brother when she was just 26, which was a major wake up call and ultimately what motivated her to start her business. The saying “Life is Short” became very real to her and she definite that it was time to DO something. She has three major points she lives by: Just Start, Know Where You’re Going, Don’t Stop. Check discover my Inc. post on this enthusiastic conference here. Wow. Now I was full of inspiration and got to speech to a bunch of entrepreneurs between sessions. The energy in the place was exciting and it appeared that diminutive playing is where it's at. Mutual Support for Mutual SuccessI also listened to Keith Ferrazzi, CEO of Ferrazzi Greenlight, a research company that spends time understanding how building relationships crapper make companies grow. His interesting saucer was that relationships are critical to growth and success not only in life but in business. Every entrepreneur who thinks they aren't in sales is crazy. We're all in sales, selling our dream. And in sales discussions, there is a person at the another end of the relation that needs to buy our message. He went on to feature that employees who hit friends at impact hit a 30% higher level of engagement, and 20% more productivity. Completely a surprise! They hit even more fecundity if the friend is a boss.  It’s not just a playing relation according to Keith, it's a personal relation in business. Good point. How to Get Your Message RightLast week I was at the Inc. 500 Conference and caught a conference with Michael Sheehan, CEO of Sheehan Associates. His company helps businesses, people, and government officials craft messaging. At this conference he was discussing how hard it has become to get your message right and intend it understood by your audience in a world where we all hit aggregation overload. Michael stressed that your message isn’t your brand. I’ll admit, at first I was a bit potty by this. But he went on to give a couple of enthusiastic examples, digit of which was Nike. When Nike got bad advise for working with overseas companies that employed young children that were barely paid, “Just Do It” was not their answer. With Coca Cola and the health debate, the “Coke Side of Life” isn’t their answer to immatureness obesity. So he stresses that there is a concentration on branding but not necessarily messaging. Check discover the rest of the news here.Should You Stay Small or Go Big?After that I was at Doug Tatum's session. He's the author of No Man’s Land, What to Do When Your Company is likewise Big to be Small but likewise Small to be Big. What a enthusiastic session. He talked most the "chasm" that companies start into when they're over 25 employees but disagreeable to intend to 100 employees. According to Doug there are 4 "M's" to watch discover for, market, management, model and money. He outlines all of the things to watch discover for in your playing if you're disagreeable to grow past the diminutive giant phase. These things really hit home with me. I posted my notes here.The GalaInc. puts on a enthusiastic gala at the end of the conference. They go all out. We had enthusiastic speeches from top entrepreneurs from the Inc. 500/5000 list. They were truly inspirational. There was not a dry eye in the house when Alison Schubak, CEO of Invisibib, was wheeled onto the stage in her wheelchair, and told her news most after becoming unfit from a automobile accident, she invented a transparent, washable bib for adults with disabilities and launched a company to sell it. She was titled Entrepreneur of the Year by Inc. Magazine and deserves every bit of it.We were lucky sufficiency to sit next to #4 on Inc.'s itemize Alden Mills, CEO of Power Pushup who grew his company by leaps and bounds! What a enthusiastic guy. And his in-laws were with him. Unlucky for his father-in-law, the Washington Huskies got stomped by businessman and the team he hates, the Oregon Ducks stomped Cal that weekend. Bummer. But Alden (Ex Navy Seal) has something really going for his company. Congrats Alden!The another company at our table happened to be a VerticalResponse customer...bonus! Doug Parker, CEO of RMCN Credit Services (Repair My Credit Now), discover of McKinney TX, was a wonderful tablemate. These guys hit it going on. I love what they do on their most us page, scanning in all of the enthusiastic things that their customers feature most them. Great job guys!I hit to feature I didn't expect such a wonderful turn discover to this show in this economy, but it was clear to me that diminutive playing and entrepreneurs are thriving and wanting to see and network more than ever. As Doug Tatum place it, we're responsible for over 65% of the employment in the US. We're strong, we persevere, and we'll intend us finished these tough times.

Modifed Customer Support Hours

Help, I've been blacklisted!

Your recipients hit all opted in to center from you, you send regularly, and yet you find yourself on the dreaded blacklist. Even the most well-intentioned telecommunicate marketers crapper sometimes find themselves in deliverability trouble. What do you do?First, confirm that you are in fact blacklisted by checking your deliverability report for the bounce reason.Then assess the situation and review your practices to figure discover what went wrong. Making sure your recipients want to center from you, and are opted-in, is very important in maintaining a good reputation. Start by asking following questions:Are all your subscribers explicitly opted in?How up-to-date is your list?Are your telecommunicate addresses valid?Is it cushy for recipients to unsubscribe if they no longer want to receive your emails?Are you sending what they requested?Is your message relevant and compelling?How frequently are you sending to your subscribers? Is it likewise much? Or likewise little? (If you haven't emailed to your itemize in some time, they may hit forgotten they signed up to center from you and mark the message as spam.)Once some problem areas are identified, put plans and policies in place to correct them immediately. And then, you are ready to intend yourself soured the blacklist. The next travel is to contact the ISP directly. Each has a process for applying, and most move with an online form. Most ISP’s will want to know your dedicated IP come and private mailengine domain. You crapper intend this information by clicking on your StreamSend “Account Settings” in the upper right assistance corner.Here are links to some of the more popular ISP’s whitelisting/delisting applications:AOL / CompuserveFollow the directions in the article below:http://www.streamsend.com/kb2/idx.php/13/104/Improving-Delivery/article/How-to-get-unblocked-by-AOL.htmlAT&T / SBC Global / BellsouthInclude your private IP come in the body of the email.http://www.att.net/general-info/bls_info/block_admin.htmlBarracudahttp://www.barracudacentral.org/lookupsCenturytelSend a double of a bounce error to abuse@centurytel.netCharterhttp://www.charter.com/postmaster ComcastFill discover the modify located at:www.comcastsupport.com/rblCoxSend a double of the bounced telecommunicate notification to unblock.requests@cox.netEarthLinkSend an telecommunicate with the complete header to openrelay@abuse.earthlink.netAllow 12-24 hours, our server engineers will fix the issue once the telecommunicate is received.ExciteSend and telecommunicate asking to be removed from telecommunicate blacklist to abuse@bluetie.comGmailA adjuvant website:http://www.google.com/mail/help/bulk_mail.htmlGo here for messages being blocked or marked as spamhttp://mail.google.com/support/bin/request.py?ctx=bulksend&nomods=1HotmailFollow the instructions in this article:Answering the Sender Information Form for Hotmail Delivery Juno / NetZero / Bluelight (United Online)Getting onto whitelist:http://www.unitedonline.net/postmaster/blocked.htmlOutblazeYou crapper check if you are blocked and request whitelisting here:http://spamblock.outblaze.com/Roadrunner / AdelphiaFollow instructions for removal:http://security.rr.com/mail_blocks.htmUSA.NETYour IP come crapper be checked and you crapper request whitelisting at:http://postmaster.usa.net/html/error.htmlVerizonhttp://www2.verizon.net/micro/whitelist/request_form.asp?id=ispYahooFollow the directions in this article:Yahoo is Filtering/Blocking my EmailFind more tips on avoiding blacklists here.For more on monitoring deliverability, see "Perform Your Own Deliverability Audit," by StreamSend's Deliverability Manager, Louis Chatoff.

Follow-Up Emails Can Save You Customer Service Costs

Our Vice President of Business Development Alan Keller, gave me a great intent for a blog post. He got an telecommunicate from a company that he does business with that he intellection would be a great intent for our readers. It's a simple way to follow-up with customers that hit just purchased a product from you that will intend delivered. Here is a double of the email: Why is This Email Good?Good Subject Line - The subject line "Have you received your Caswell Inc. Order?" It's catchy and if you hit ordered from them you're likely to open the email. Personalize it! - The detail of how long it's been since their customers hit placed an order is something you can do with personalization fields. This shows that you know just how long it has been since they've ordered and you're up on their arrangement habits. Contact Info - They prominently display an telecommunicate address so that you can intend to someone quickly with any questions the recipients may have. Customer Service - They encourage recipients to open the package and occurrence them with any issues they may hit via email. This might actually decrease customer service costs because they're existence proactive in getting customers to verify state and send an telecommunicate instead of potentially having to attain a phone call. All in all I intellection this was a great example of a transactional telecommunicate that encourages your customers to verify an state that could save your business money in the long run. Are you doing this?

Use Email Marketing to Get Reviews!

I received an email this week from CB2, a Crate and Barrel brand. It was interesting to me because they used an entire email marketing campaign to compel their recipients to give their products a review. If you give a review you'll be entered to win $1000 shop bill at CB2. I conceive this is a enthusiastic ingest of an email campaign. I went to their place and I found that they have an Atlantic on most of the creation pages where you can post a review for each product. The only potentially negative issue is that CB2 seems to have control over these reviews so the reviewers may discourse if they are "filtering" them. For whatever reason I doubt that they are, but we just don't know. All in all, a enthusiastic idea of how to ingest email marketing to get people conversation about you.  Hey CB2, get bold! I found you on Yelp, a review site, where you get whatever pretty good reviews. Next instance why not allow other ways in your email campaigns for people to review you? At VerticalResponse we asked users to post reviews to Yelp and our Facebook Fan Page as well as Twitter. If there's a problem, we undergo it pretty quick and can work to fix it. Transparency is good!Do you have some experience with using email marketing to get reviews? Chime in!

A Customer Experience Worth Talking About

I recently visited a community business, the Brickhouse, a enthusiastic little restaurant here in the Bay Area. As I looked around this recreation joint, I instantly got a sense of the personality of the owners and what it is that they tending about. I started to conceive about all of the ways this particular playing marketed themselves not finished advertising, but finished a enthusiastic customer experience and articulate of mouth marketing. Let's look at a few things I noted and see if there are some ways to make use of them with your own business.Do You Have a Story?This playing talks about the owner who makes a pilgrimage every assemblage to Alaska to catch the salmon himself. The Wagyu beef is right off of his family's farm. The Bavarian beer was chosen by the owners patch they were in Bavaria. They encourage this news prominently on their large sheet menu.Question: Do you hit a news about your passion for running your business? Promote it in some materials you display and on your website. Telling your news to your customers crapper make them feel fireman to your playing and also spread some enthusiastic articulate of mouth.Is Your Place Fun?This is definitely a laid back restaurant, with mismatched antique furniture, and very inviting with bizarre pictures and items on display. For instance, they hit a bicycle hanging from the ceiling that has digit seats and digit sets of handlebars feat in opposite directions. It's subtle but funny. They hit a "Question of the Day" sheet with recreation and random questions that people crapper answer and get something free. Makes for some enthusiastic conversations.They encourage their "Big Ass Burger" which won an award for Best Burger in the Bay Area which always gets people talking. The people that work there are super nice, laid back and funny. Question: Can your playing be fun? Injecting some recreation into your playing crapper be cushy and if you've got a physical location, and could get people in the door.Do You Promote Green?This playing proudly displays a Green award they won, and tout on the menu that they only buy topical and sustainable products. This makes the patrons feel like they're helping the community and the planet. They use chalkboards for menus. It's enthusiastic for making up-to-the-minute changes and enthusiastic for the environment.Question: What crapper you do in your playing to go green? If you are a green company, make sure you verify the world. People like doing playing with companies that help our environment.Do You Promote Your Business?This playing has drink punch game at the register, and after 10 cups purchased they give you a free coffee. They encourage their website in their window. They prominently display a sandwich board out front to let passers by know that the place is open and some specials or entertainment they're serving up that day. They hit free WiFi, except for their busy meal hour when they ask that you either come back later, or better yet, buy lunch!Question: Will your playing allow you to monetize every inch of the space? Look around and find new areas where you crapper be displaying something new. Cross delude one product with another in your positioning or on your site. You might find that you could double your sales.You don't requirement to hit a physical positioning to do what this restaurant is doing. Look at your playing and make sure that every time you crapper interact with a customer, you're making the most of it.

Some StreamSend updates

HTML editor for FormsForms are now armored with the HTML editor (the one you use to editing your emails). This is great for those who wish to attain those small edits to their forms without knowing HTML. Head over to the Forms section and click on "Form HTML" to get started.Export privilege for usersWe've had much request for user permissions when it comes to exporting. If you wish to preclude a user from mercantilism whatever subscriber accumulation from your account, edit their user profile in the Users section, and uncheck the "Allow user to export data" option. Note that all users are given permission to export by default.International Character SupportWith much success from our beta testing of the new UTF-8 option (which fully enables planetary character support), we've decided to attain this option available for everyone. If you encounter that you're having trouble with the planetary characters in your email and/or mail merges, we recommend that you enable this--and please give us your feedback. For more information on how to do this, check out our KB article.We have whatever more enhancements coming soon. See you later!

Seeing double newsletters?

We apologize to everyone who received our VerticalResponse Marketing Newsletter twice this morning. We were doing a bit of investigating and had segmented our lists a number of ways. When actuation our newsletter we opted to ‘include’ instead of ‘exclude’ one of those lists. That’s why some of you were delivered two copies of the newsletter this morning.  We are sorry for crowding your inboxes this farewell and appreciate your understanding for our mistake. 

Good News: Your Younger Customers Are Listening

Much has been said about how marketing via email to members of the Millennial generation â€" those between the ages of 18 and 25 â€" is ineffective because these people are more connected via social media and don’t use email as much. Well, according to the most recent Global Consumer Email Study from the marketing services firm Epsilon, the oppositeness is true. read more

How to Build a Good Email Newsletter List

The vast majority of grouping who visit your website are not going to acquire anything on the spot. Most of grouping are going to arrive, surf around a bit, and move on to another website. They are interested, want to learn more, but are not yet ready to buy. They leave and you never learn anything about them and they presently forget about you. Some of these visitors are ready to give you authorisation to ready in touch.Here are some ideas to support with your itemize building:Offer something valuable to your subscribers. Having a "sign up for our email newsletter" modify is not that interesting to many people. They are in it for the useful information, special offers, coupons, contests, giveaways, etc.Be sure to put your email itemize subscription forms on every tender of your website. Permission to build a relationship with prospective customers is valuable and worth some space on every page.Ask for the right amount of information. If you ask for too much information, grouping module be intimidated. If you ask for too little information, you module not have enough information to segment your email lists well. A good approach is to start with a brief modify and expand it by one field at a time. By doing this you are dynamical just one variable and seeing how things work. If it work well you stay with the change. If the change really hurts your conversions, then revert back to the old form.Ask for authorisation to ready in touch when someone becomes a customer. I have heard from a number of StreamSend customers that the majority of their repeat business comes from email marketing. We every know that keeping a current customer is less expensive than getting a newborn one. In addition, loyal customers are where your referrals are going to become from. Email marketing is a very coercive tool for antiquity customer loyalty.

New Features in iContact!

That's How You Know

How do you undergo what aspects of your email newsletter are the most popular? If you’re exclusive looking at your open evaluate or your click-through rate, then you’re exclusive getting half the story. A great newsletter is interactive, and has plenty for the reader to do â€" whether that’s in the form of calls-to-action or links to utter on. And the more you give people to utter on, the more you’ll see most what catches readers’ attention. read more

Press Release: Adam Mesh Uses Email to Educate Stock Investor Membership

StreamSend announced that cristal Mesh Trading Group use StreamSend telecommunicate marketing software to educate its hit investor membership, while building and strengthening those relationships.Adam Mesh Trading Group is a recognized leader in hit mart investment coaching. As featured on CNN, Fortune, Forbes, CNBC, and Trading Monthly, Adam’s unique hit mart system has helped thousands of beginner investors around the world alter their financial lives for more than 10 years.Daily emails containing tips, mart snapshots and new perspectives are a critical factor in creating and building relationships with Adam’s members, but his assemble was hampered on several fronts:Although trying to maintain symmetricalness by mailing at figure am every day, messages sometimes would not reach their destinations until hours later. There was no artefact to learn from previous mailings. Since staffers had to deal a open IP address, they strength also hit to wait to use the come for mailings, not to mention risk being tainted by another users’ spam practices.When something went really wrong, cristal Mesh staffers were essentially on their own.Turning to StreamSend Email Marketing, the cristal Mesh Trading Group found the solutions it needed.The first step was to offer cristal Mesh its own private IP address, then helping the assemble intend “whitelisted” with every the major ISPs that had judged them by the open IP come they shared. StreamSend supplied the resources and deliverability to let Adam’s staffers near the “send” button at precisely figure am every day, so that members knew just when to expect their emails.With StreamSend’s expert service and Google Analytics capability, Adam’s assemble can now learn and meliorate from each mailing, dissecting each component for the most effective combination, including imagery now prefabricated possible with HTML capability.Although Adam’s subscriber base has tripled to over 100,000 since language on with StreamSend, complaints hit plummeted and deliverability has jumped to 99%. Viewership and click-through now exceed 15% and continue ascension as the cristal Mesh Trading Group builds profitable relationships by using StreamSend telecommunicate marketing to effectively deal expert, timely financial guidance and insights with its members.“StreamSend has given us the ability to separate precise, profitable telecommunicate campaigns, successfully reaching our members with timely information they want on a sure schedule,” said Johnathan Bezalel, managing director of cristal Mesh Trading Group.“Since we can examine action statistics and put that knowledge to use in continuing campaigns, we are able to boost the direct response, effectively turning metrics into money.”

29 Ways to Collect Email Addresses for Your Business

There are a ton of structure to intend grouping to sign up for your telecommunicate marketing offers. I've place together a itemize for you to read, so you undergo all of the structure you crapper be ontogeny your list. Put an substance on the backwards of your business game to intend grouping to sign up for your newsletter. Tradeshows - Bring a clipboard or sign-up book with you to tradeshows and communicate for authorisation to send telecommunicate to those who sign up. Include a account sign-up unification in your signature of all of your emails. Send an opt-in telecommunicate to your address book asking them to tie your list. Join your local room of commerce, telecommunicate the member itemize (if it's opt-in) about your services with a unification to sign up to your newsletter. Host your possess circumstance - Art galleries, software companies (one here has a party every quarter and invites the neighboring businesses), retail shops, consultants (lunch & learn) crapper all patron an circumstance and letter attendees to sign up. Offer a birthday edifice where you provide something special to grouping who sign up. Incentivize your employees - Give them $ for collecting VALID telecommunicate addresses. Giving something for free like a PDF? Make visitors sign up to your opt-in form before you let them download it. Referrals - Ask you customers to refer you, and in exchange you'll provide them a discount. Bouncebacks â€" Get them back! - Send a postcard or call them asking for their updated telecommunicate address. Trade account space with a neighboring business, allow a unification for their opt-in form and communicate them to allow yours in their newsletter. SEO - Make sure you optimize your site for your keywords. You need to be at the top of the natural search when grouping are looking for your products or services. Giveaways - Send grouping something physical and communicate for their telecommunicate address as well as their postal address. Do you have a postal itemize without emails? Send them a direct mail substance they crapper only intend if they sign up to your telecommunicate list. Include opt-in forms on every tender on your site. Popup windows - When someone attempts to yield your site, pop up a window and communicate for the telecommunicate address. Include a forward-to-a-friend unification in your emails meet in case your recipient wants to forward your content to someone they think will encounter it interesting. Include a forward-to-a-friend on every tender of your site. Offer a community - Use Ning as your easy-to-set-up community and have your visitors interact and sign up for your newsletter. Offer "Email only" discounts and don't use those offers anywhere but email. Telemarketing - If you've got grouping on the phone, don't hang up until you communicate if you crapper add them to your newsletter. Put a fishbowl on your furniture and do a weekly prize giveaway of your product - then announce it to your newsletter. Add everyone who put their card in on to your account list. Include an opt-in form inside your emails for those grouping who intend your telecommunicate forwarded to them. Tradeshows - Collect business game and scan them into a spreadsheet. Make sure you communicate authorisation to send telecommunicate to them, then mark the card. Use Facebook - Host your possess group and invite grouping to it, then post new links often. From time to time, post a unification to sign up for your newsletter. Use Facebook - Post the hosted unification from your account into Linked Items to spread the word. Use Facebook - Include an opt-in form on your Facebook Fan page. Use Twitter - Twitter the hosted unification of your telecommunicate campaign every time you launch. If you've got any additional ideas, let's hear them!

New Feedback Loop Tucows

Tucows, the operators of OpenSRS (which has reigstered more than 8 million domain names) has launched a new feedback loop program operated by Return Path.

 

This allows ESPs to better communicate with mail box providers and is a welcome addition.

How To Use Video in Email Marketing Campaigns

I hit talked most creating videos for your business and your website in the past here but it's more important than ever for you to take plus of recording marketing in your business, especially in these tough times. If you've got a recording instance of digit of your customers conversation most you, or your product it's a great way to background the recording inside your telecommunicate marketing campaigns and potentially boost response.

Why Embedded Email Still Has Challenges

Embedded telecommunicate simply put means that when your recipient opens your email, it starts to play. Sounds like a marketing dream come true, doesn't it? It crapper play out to be more of a nightmare though since there are many technical issues surrounding embedded video.

First of all, ISPs that you send telecommunicate through, don't like to accept recording embedded in email. To get around this Anna Yeaman tells us how you crapper create an enlivened gif out of your video. However as Mark Brownlow points out it won't work in Outlook 2007 since it exclusive displays the first frame. Also, there is no audio in an enlivened gif.

Insert the Image of Your Video

Displaying a recording ikon in your telecommunicate campaigns crapper be simple. We've heard that when businesses ingest a graphic of the recording clip, then link off to where it's hosted, whether it's on YouTube or the business's website, they've increase response to their campaigns.

From a VerticalResponse customer:

"Here's a stat for you. Using video as part of my last VerticalResponse telecommunicate campaign QUADRUPLED my click rate. Very powerful and compelling."
David Cleary, www.davidcleary.net

You crapper either take a screenshot of the beginning of the recording and insert the ikon into your email, or you crapper ingest the "embed" code that YouTube provides you and insert it into your email, it has the nifty "play" fix already there. That's how I included our recording below in this blog post.

At VerticalResponse we're starting to include our recording tutorials in our recognize telecommunicate campaigns, we'll post how they're doing. We ingest customer testimonials, recording tutorials, interviews we've had, recorded webinars and employees gift presentations.

Are you using recording in your telecommunicate campaigns? What is your experience?

We’re Giving Away 1000 T-Shirts

In honor of our Forever Free plan, we’re giving away 1,000 MailChimp T-shirts between now and the end of September! These are all new, very easy and they feature the original Jon Hicks MailChimp sketch.

All you hit to do is stay adjusted to our Twitter feed and Facebook updates for a chance to win. As soon as you wager the unification posted in either of these locations, it effectuation that the T-shirt form is live. Just provide us some basic occurrence info, and your shirt size of course, and we’ll get your newborn favorite T-shirt in the mail in no time!

It doesn’t matter where in the world you’re located, we will gladly send you a shirt. We love international chimps too!

And in case there’s any confusion, this substance does not include chimp arm covers, bananas, or our models Leif and Stephanie. Oh, and no purchase necessary. Because then it wouldn’t be free.

Scheduled Maintenance-9/12

Survey Says

We want to know: What is your greatest contest when it comes to surveying your customers and members? Share your answer in our stylish poll. After you vote, you'll be healthy to see what another people have said, and you'll know how your answer compares to theirs.

Look for the test tally in next month's issue of Hints & Tips.

A re-tweet of last week’s email marketing tip of the day

• Extremely large type size and crazy type colors are ofttimes times associated with spam.

• Contact all new subscribers within 30 days. Waiting leads to grouping forgetting they subscribed to your list.

• Remember that with email marketing quality module be rewarded, whereas quantity module not.

• Give your noesis a 6-second test. Have someone open it, count to 6, near it, and ask what they remembered.

• Adopt the nous set that you are going to successfully physique your list of recipients one email address at a time.

To study us on Twitter - http://twitter.com/StreamSend

Have a Great Risk-Free Offer & Get Great Word of Mouth

Having an substance for your products or services that is truly risk-free might be just the ticket you need to rattling attain a difference in your email marketing campaigns. To intend a risk-free substance soured the ground, you'll need to set everything from your refund and convey policy, your transport policies, your customer service and how your policies are implemented. An awesome risk-free substance can rattling flash whatever enthusiastic word-of-mouth.

If you delude a creation that needs to be shipped to your customer, a rattling enthusiastic risk-free substance encompasses free shipping, a generous time window your customers can convey the product, a short readying in processing their refund and you picking up the journalism for transport the convey back to you.

Here are a few companies that do it right and intend constructive articulate of representative as a result.

Zappos - They hit a 365 day convey policy and they'll clear for the transport back to them. They even hit a handy artefact for you to print your UPS label from the Zappos site!

Nordstrom - You need to hit your receipt, or your component tag but you can even convey worn items without a problem. They attain it cushy to convey items purchased on the web as well as in-store. But, they also monitor offenders.

Walgreen's - Walgreen's lets you convey makeup you purchased within a month if it didn't suit you. I'm sure they got a lot more in sales then they ever would in returns.

However, do it criminal and you could rattling flash negative articulate of representative same the Video Professor. On his TV ads he boasts a free trial of one of his eBay software information (pay $6.95 s&h) AND he'll give you $50 if you can show that you've successfully bought or oversubscribed something on eBay. Sounds too beatific to be true huh? Turns discover there is a pretty big list of restrictions, a 30-day window which sounds impracticable to attain (they mail you a form to fill discover which takes about 15 days to get). People sounded off.

And avoid adding tons of restrictions same restocking fees and different time limitations by the identify of creation customers buy same I saw at Best Buy. It could also flash whatever negativity and attain people not want to purchase from you if they conceive they hit to jump finished hoops to convey something.

If you hit a enthusiastic risk-free substance and you follow finished on it, it rattling can generate beatific will and constructive articulate of mouth. Do it criminal and it'll bite ya!

Cool Tool RoundUp - Run Your Entire Business Online

From time to time I come crossways some rattling enthusiastic tools I think diminutive businesses can rattling benefit from. I've got a enthusiastic agency for you to check out today, WorkingPoint, a free online agency that enables you to separate your entire playing online.

What I like about WorkingPoint is that it's free forever for one user. Free=affordable :-) It modify includes the kitchen sink: online invoicing, bookkeeping, contact management, inventory tracking, expense tracking, financial reports, and much more. What's more is that you don't need to be a bookkeeper to get up and running. The folks over at WorkingPoint hit made it very easy to understand your playing finances. And it's enthusiastic for any diminutive playing whether you're a freelancer, consultant, retailer, service bourgeois or distributor, their flexible system will work for you.

Check out WorkingPoint today to separate your business.

Using Industry Awards to Effectively Grow Your Business

If you're streaming a small playing today, congratulations! You should be proud that you're  ownership the frugalness going. You should also give yourself a huge pat on the back for surviving and thriving. One of the easiest and most inexpensive ways of giving yourself that pat on the back is to apply for industry awards that you could be eligible for.

Why Should You Take Your Time To Apply for Industry Awards?

Great question, because in many cases it takes a clump of time to answer a lot of questions to win your award. But I will tell you, it can impact well to help acquire your business. Many nowadays awards are judged by a third party who validates that what you do is worthy of an award, and ensures that what you provide meets their requirements. So who are they to judge? Well they may be your peers in your industry, they may be your customers and they may be leaders of your industry association. Either way, it's the validation that counts. Why?

• Your customers like to be associated with a winning company.
• When prospects wager that you've won an honor it could sway them to you instead of your competition because they may intend a sense that you are a "real" and "quality" entity.
• People that visit your playing wager your awards on your face door and on your website. This lends quality to your biz.
• Winning awards can improve employee morale. Employees like to thump their chests and tell customers why you won a particular award. If they're selling your product, it makes their job easier because of this "stamp of approval".
• Awards can intend you quality employees. If you're voted as having quality products, a quality site or storefront, people are drawn to this because they poverty to impact for the winner.

How Should You Market Your Awards?

Make them striking in your business - Whether you have cubicle farm or a retail store, attain sure that your employees and customers wager your awards by framing them, displaying them on a stand or a label on your window. It doesn't have to be hokey, just prominent.

"Award-Winning" - You can include these words in your brochures, your site and any press you do that you have an "award-winning" company. Be proud!

Use Award Logos - Use the logos in your online advertising, put them on your direct mail pieces, include them on your playing cards, display them on your bag page, and include them in your bio or on your about page. The more striking you attain them the better you'll look.

Press Release - Announce to the world that you've won your award. Then attain sure you publicize the news out to social media outlets like Twitter & Facebook.

Email Marketing - Include the logos and the news about your honor in your newsletters.

Awards are a artefact to gain recognition for you, your playing and your website. They bring prestige and more reciprocation to you, and they enhance your quality as a business. Check out your industry honor possibilities today.

Closed for Upcoming Holiday

iContact Names Keith Moore as Chief Marketing Officer

Tracking Forms using Google Analytics (using Goals)

I'm a huge analytics fan. I recently posted about how we helped a topical wine bar take advantage of our Forms functionality. What I hadn't mentioned is that we implemented Google Analytics to track the results. In this place I'm going to show you how, it's rattling easy, and the data you'll see crapper be extremely useful.

STEP #1 - Add the Google Analytics cipher to your Web Site HTML.
<script type="text/javascript">
var gaJsHost = (("https:" == document.location.protocol) ? "https://ssl." : "http://www.");
document.write(unescape("%3Cscript src='" + gaJsHost + "google-analytics.com/ga.js' type='text/javascript'%3E%3C/script%3E"));
</script>
<script type="text/javascript">
try {
var pageTracker = _gat._getTracker("UA-xxxxxxx-x");
pageTracker._setDomainName("none");
pageTracker._setAllowLinker(true);
pageTracker._trackPageview();
} catch(err) {}</script>

Notice the brave items above. They are the key to making everything work. Remember you need to make trusty the cipher on your site has the two brave lines. So pay careful attention if you already hit Google Analytics implement on your scheme site.

STEP #2 - Add the Google Analytics cipher to your Form HTML

Go to the Forms section in StreamSend and utter the "Form HTML" unification under the appropriate Form. Next utter on Edit unification for the "Subscribe" page. Add the Google Analytics cipher above right before the closing attach (all the way at the end of the form). Save your changes and you are every set.

STEP #3 - Add the Google Analytics cipher to your Form Thank You HTML

Go to the Forms section in StreamSend and utter the "Form HTML" unification under the appropriate Form. Next utter on Edit unification for the "Thank you" page. Add the Google Analytics cipher above right before the closing attach (all the way at the end of the form). Save your changes and you are every set.

Step #4 - Tag every course or email signup boxes pointing to the Form on your own site

If you are linking to the form from your scheme site, then you need to add whatever cipher so Google crapper properly associate the utter to the form.

Links:
<a href="http://app.streamsend.com/public/xxx/xxx/subscribe" onClick="pageTracker._link(this.href); return false;">Sign up</a>The brave above should be additional to your links.

Form Box:
<form name="subscribe" action="http://app.streamsend.com/public/f2gK/Gfr/subscribe" method="post" onSubmit="javascript:pageTracker._linkByPost(this)" target="_blank">
...
</form>
The brave above should be additional to your sign up box on your scheme site.

Step #5: Create a Goal in Analytics to track the signups

Login to Analytics and go to the Home Page.

Locate your scheme site's strikingness and utter the edit URL.

Under the "Conversion Goals and Funnel" utter on the "Edit" unification incoming to either of G1, G2, G3 or G4. (there are 4 because Google allows you to configure up to 4 goals).

Fill out the values as described below:

Active Goal : ordered to on
Match Type: Regular Expression Match
Goal URL: (skip this, we'll come back to this later)
Goal Name: Create a content name you like
* The rest you crapper leave as is...

Now the Goal URL is based on your sign up form's URL. You crapper find the URL in the Forms section in StreamSend. It looks something same this: https://app.streamsend.com/public/f2gK/Gfr/subscribe. Notice the two brave values, they are important. The Goal URL is essentially in the following format:

/private/VALUE1/VALUE2/.*/thank_you

So for the example above it would be:

/private/f2gK/Gfr/.*/thank_you
Here is a screen shot of how the content is organized in analytics. what it would countenance same in Google Analytics.


Step #6 - Login to Analytics and you crapper today see your form signups in reports!

Remember it takes a couple hours before Google reports on data. So test it, and check back the incoming day to make trusty it's every employed properly.

Hope this is helpful. In a incoming blog place I'll outline using Transactions as opposed to Goals (since with goals you are limited to 4). It's multipurpose for those that plan on using a multiple Forms.