Power Of Email Inbox

Editor's Notes

• #2: Introduce yourself and give them a clear understanding that you are there on behalf of Constant Contact.
• #3: My name is Julie Niehoff, I’m the Director of Education & Development at Constant Contact. I have been with Constant Contact since 2006, I am based in Austin, Texas and here is my contact information if you want to reach out following this session. Send me an email, find me on facebook or reach out on Twitter.
• #5: [SPEAKER INSTRUCTIONS: Welcome your audience, thank those that are hosting and let people know about how long your session will be. If you plan to take a break halfway through (suggested for a two hour session) then let them know that as well.] 
• #6: We talked about ‘flipping the funnel’ by marketing to people who already know you. This type of customer nurturing can be beneficial because these are the types of customers and supporters who have chosen to interact with you in hopes of getting something of value in return, which ultimately leads to higher sales and more growth over time for your business because they are more likely to generate revenue for you. Considering 91% of people check their email daily, for every contact that you have and collect that’s how many eyes are seeing your offer or your marketing message each time you send! (Litmus). Now if you don’t think that people would subscribe to your mailing list from your website traffic alone, think again. 82% of consumers sign up to receive email on brand websites (Source: http://www.slideshare.net/bluehornetemail/bluehornet-consumer-views-of-email-marketing-2013-presentation-final) and 72% sign up expecting to receive discounts (Source: http://www.slideshare.net/bluehornetemail/bluehornet-consumer-views-of-email-marketing-2013-presentation-final) so if you can incentivize someone to subscribe to your list, do so on your website. And according to a recent study (Source: https://www.salesforce.com/blog/2013/07/email-marketing-stats.html) for every $1 spent on email marketing, the average return is $44.25! That’s impressive! In the end, email marketing pays for itself time and time again and with a strong and ever-growing email subscriber list, you can continue to grow your business or increase funds for your nonprofit. Email marketing conversion rates are 3X higher than social media prospect to customer rates. (Source: http://www.forbes.com/sites/mckinsey/2013/11/19/email-marketing-think-inside-the-new-inbox/) You don’t need a massive list to market well with a good return on your efforts, but you need to have a healthy, quality list which we’re going to show you how to build in this session.
• #7: We used to tell people things over the back fence, [click to build] now we tell everyone – our family, our friends, our colleagues, our clients, even our BFFs– through social media channels, review sites and email (which is the original social media). It’s less about spending all of your time/money and energy finding new customers and more about fully engaging your existing happy customers and making it easy for them to tell others. The changes have leveled the playing field for smaller organizations like yours to compete with the big boys. The point we’re making is that social media is the new word of mouth. Social media helps to kickstart that word-of-mouth marketing. Because your messages have the chance to be amplified and shared, social media marketing will bring you new customers (and donors, supporters and volunteers if you’re a nonprofit, repeat business from your current customers, and referrals from your happy customers. Is this starting to make sense – why social media is important? It’s a part of your entire business. Social media, the social visibility that it gives you, and how your business and customers engage with each other make up what we call the engagement marketing cycle. Let’s look at the engagement marketing cycle, and talk about how social media and engagement work together in the day to day life of your business.
• #8: Let’s face it: marketing has changed. Some of the change is obvious, but there are more subtle changes that affect you and your ability to grow your business using all of the new online tools: that’s a basic shift in the way you may find and keep customers with today’s business climate that actually works more in your favor as a small business or nonprofit organization. [click to build] Look at this model – its a typical sales funnel, using traditional marketing methods, things like print ads, radio, television, direct mail. We are all familiar with this model – the problem with this traditional funnel is that it’s expensive – those ads cost a lot of money and it’s hard for a small company or organization to compete in this landscape. [click to next build] So let’s look at what new marketing tools have done to the funnel – when you begin to use new marketing tools, Like email marketing and Facebook, LinkedIn, Twitter, online and offline events, surveys, etc… you reach to people you already know. On the left, the funnel, it’s all about reaching out to strangers. New marketing is about reaching out to people that already know you… you reach out, on a regular basis with information and offers that are relevant to your contacts and it turns out that if you do it right – and after today’s session, you should have a pretty good idea about how to do this – you will actually begin to convert more people than you are reaching because of the nature of social media’s digital word-of-mouth power. You grow your base and your business through repeat business and referrals – at the end of the marketing day, turns out you keep a lot more of your existing customers so you don’t need as many strangers, and it costs less and takes less time and energy making it much more efficient for a small business or nonprofit organization. . This is called flipping the funnel. And it’s a fundamental change in the way most small business owners think about their marketing – but it works. We see it working every day. And it all starts with a strong and growing email list of potential and existing customers or supporters/volunteers. You start with people already on your list, how do you make the most of that existing list while growing it.
• #9: THIS SLIDE IS OPTIONAL, IF YOU WANT TO USE IT RIGHT CLICK AND UNHIDE THE SLIDELet’s walk thru the engagement cycle and apply it to our real lives. So you have a business. Whether it’s a brick and mortar place or an office or even virtual, this is your business. [CLICK]People come and do business with you and they have a great “wow” experience with you. We all know they are going to tell two friends or 11 friends or whatever if it is a bad experience. But the same is true in reverse. [CLICK]While they are still in your store or place of business, or soon after you have interaction, you should entice them to stay in touch. Ask them to join your “croissant of the month” club or tell them your email subscribers get 10% off everytime – however you want to do it, get the digits. [CLICK] Engage. Send emails, post on facebook, tweet, make it human, make it real, be yourself. Also make sure you are giving them ways to tell friends easily – with the social share bar and by ASKING. [CLICK] Those people come back – did you know that a repeat customer spends on average 67% more than a new one?They bring friends, people learn about you on social media through continued engagement [CLICK] and NEW customers arrive – on their own or with those happy, engaged customers. Now you have another chance to deliver a “wow” experience and to keep the cycle going. This grows over time. It starts small – ish, but it begins to take hold and you realize that you know your customers. You are authentically engaging with them. That drives more people to your place. “Sometimes you want to go where everybody knows your name” right?  You can do this. And it doesn’t have to take a lot of time or money. Let’s keep talking and I’ll go over how in a little bit.
• #10: First impressions matter. And when someone opens your email, what they see is going to First impressions matter. And when someone opens your email, what they see is going to determine what they do next. Chances are you’ll want them to read your newsletters or announcements, and take a next step. Maybe you want them to visit your website, register for an event, donate to your nonprofit, or try a new product. This is where a beautiful, professional-looking email designed to drive action is crucial. People make snap judgements about whether or not to read your emails based on a quick glance, because all of us get a lot of email. We choose an email message, give it a two-second glance, then decide if it’s worth our time. If it is, we keep it and read it. If not, we hit the delete key and send the email to the trash folder.
• #11: I want to show you the difference between a regular email from your own Outlook, Gmail or Yahoo account, and one sent through an email service provider like Constant Contact. An email from a service provider looks better and gets you noticed– you can use it to feature your brand’s logo and colors, and include graphics that will capture your readers’ attention – all of this, including the graphics, comprises email content. With a combination of text and great images, you will get through to your audience. And, from a purely legal and practical perspective, an email service provider will help protect your messages from being considered spam. You can also get more email delivered to your customer’s and prospect’s inboxes using an email service provider. For all of the reasons I have just listed, I want you to understand that you need to use an email service provider to do email marketing the correct way. Check out the email on the right – the colors and graphics make the message eye-catching and more professional-looking than the one on the left. It also makes the call to action much more obvious, and that’s what we are after at the end of the day with our email marketing….Actions!
• #12: Here is what we will discuss today to achieve our goal of getting better at email marketing.Please feel free to raise your hand anytime if you have questions and believe me, there Are no stupid questions. Raise your hand loud and proud if you want to know something.
• #13: So email marketing defined at it’s base level is: Delivering professional communications – Making sure that we are getting great looking branded emails with no grammatical and spelling errors into the inbox. To an interested audience-- This is very important…because someone can easily report our emails as SPAM or delete them, we need to make sure that the individuals we are adding to our email lists expect to receive a communication from us. Setting this expectation is vital. Containing information the recipient finds valuable– Just because you have permission to communicate to someone doesn’t mean you will be successful with email marketing, you also need to be sending the right information to the right people on our email lists. Knowing what your audience needs or wants can be tough, is it promotional in nature? Is it informational? Is it a combination? If you are unsure, you may want to ask your customers, survey them, ask them on social media, or when you or your staff have interactions with them in person. Many times this will lead you to understand that you may need to segment your list to send different messages to different audiences, more about that later in the presentation. That looks great in any inbox– with so much email being read on mobile devices (Cell phones and tablets) you need to create an email that will look good on a laptop, desktop, and a mobile device.
• #14: Select a template that matches your message. Newsletters—Typically showcasing your expertise..remember you are giving away good information for attention. Remember to use the teaser paragraph strategy…If you have a whole article of content, tease the first few sentences and link to the rest of the content online. This will help you keep the newsletter short and readable on all platforms including mobile. Announcements—These may not be easy to plan on a calendar, so make sure they are special when you send them out. Could be your business winning an award, a special event or sale, or some breaking news that affects your audience. Promotions—Make sure that you don’t give too many choices..remember you want some one to take a quick action to make a purchase. Make sure that you have a way to track success of the promotions so you can make adjustments for future deals/sales.
• #15: If you do a good job building your list (much more on this later today) you will have quite a few prospects on your list who need to be nurtured until they trust you enough to spend money. Email is an amazing way to continue to touch those prospects over the course of time until they are ready to buy. One of the reasons your list is so valuable is that you can’t predict when someone will be ready to take that step with you, and if you deliver valuable information over the course of time, more prospects will trust you, and email is the most cost effective way to communicate with your potential buyers over time.
• #16: As I just mentioned, email is amazingly cost effective, and can help drive revenue directly from your communication if you choose to promote, push someone into the trusting stage with your expertise, or solicit a donation!
• #17: By the end of the seminar today, you will be armed with the strategies and tactics to help you harness the power of the inbox and really use email marketing as a way to grow your business.
• #19: Email marketing is hard to beat. It’s where everyone is these days for everything from updates from you bank or service providers, to messages from mom or the kids and of course promotional messages from businesses you subscribe to and frequent.
• #22: This one is pretty easy. Read the points on the slide one by one and add your own color, or don’t!
• #25: [CLICK] EACH SECTION WILL ANIMATE ON ITS OWN You know you need to be marketing and mailing to new and existing customers and subscribers, but you don’t know where to start. Well there are some truths to keep in mind as you embark upon your list growth journey: [CLICK] - GROWTH TAKES TIME - By now you may have heard that ‘your organization lives and dies by it’s subscriber list’. You might look at yours and wonder if you have enough contacts or if it is turning over the results you were hoping for. You’re not alone. But it is important to understand that it takes time and that it should have no end. Learning how to consistently grow your list is something that you want to become a reflex or a habit. [CLICK] - GROWTH IS AN ONGOING PROCESS - Think of growing your subscriber list the same way you think of building and growing your business or non-profit. You always want to be generating business even after you get the kind of consistent business you’ve dreamt about. There will always be periods of lots of business and periods of less than ideal business, and your contact list will be like this too. You want to always be collecting contacts every chance you get wherever you interact with customers or supporters because you’ll always want to be reaching fresh leads as some unsubscribe or opt out over time. [CLICK] - EFFORTS MUST BE ORGANIZED & CONSISTENT – just like the meticulous bookwork that you keep for your business or non-profit, your contact list is most successful when it is organized and is maintained in a consistent and efficient way [CLICK] - A COMBINATION OF TRADITIONAL AND MODERN METHODS – There is no wrong way to collect a contact (except of course if you buy or rent lists, that is! We’ll talk about anti-spam best practices a bit later) You should start with what you know and combine new and traditional methods of gathering contacts. Once you leave this presentation with more ideas than you had to start with and a clear plan of action for collecting as many contacts in as many places as possible, you’ll find that growing your list is just another way of growing your business or expanding your organization.
• #26: [CLICK TO BUILD EACH] I know you wish you could clone yourself, but since you can’t the next best thing is to delegate. Train your staff to ask. They are with your customers or supporters even more than you are so arm them with all they need to gather contacts. Educate them on the benefits of subscribing to the email list, show your emails to them so that they understand how to persuade someone to subscribe. Run Internal contests to see who can get the most email subscribers per week or month and employees have a good time with that especially if there’s a nice prize at the end of a month or quarter. Healthy competition, folks. 53% Consumers have given their email address to a sales clerk (Source: http://www.slideshare.net/bluehornetemail/bluehornet-consumer-views-of-email-marketing-2013-presentation-final) so the worst thing that could happen is that less of half of them would say no. Ask at point of sale – while a customer is paying ask them to sign the email list to join the email club. Make sure the employee knows the benefits of joining and how to politely ask or accept a decline. Make sure they know how to enter names into a POS system or where the signup form is. Ask over the phone – Train your staff to ask at the close of a call if a happy customer would like to join the email club for exclusive content and coupons. Give your employees the language they’ll need to do this, and make sure that your emails deliver what they say it will. Add online signup form URL to email signatures – With a call to action button and the hot link, that way your employees can be generating new contacts consistently for your database. Text-to-Join – For those of you using or planning to use Constant Contact, set up a text-to-join keyword to be associated with your organization. Memorize this keyword and phone # and make sure your staff knows this too. When they are out and about on the job or even if they meet someone during off hours, they will know how to ask anyone holding a smartphone to subscribe to your organization’s mailing list. Your employees are your best asset, so think about running a friendly competition with an incentive to see who can get the most subscribers to join the mailing list. Make sure that your employees are armed with resources and reasons someone should subscribe and give them the tools necessary to record those subscribers. They will most likely encounter more people in a day than you may so working together will grow your list faster.
• #27: There are lots of ways to gather contacts. Collect email addresses at events – Events are a great way to gather email addresses. When people subscribe, make sure you provide a checkbox for them to select if they’d like to receive email communications from you. Another way to leverage events is to hand out swag in exchange for an email address. At speaking engagements – If you are a featured speaker at events, make sure you gather as many business cards are you can while passing yours out with a way to subscribe to your list on them (QR scannable code or for US customers a Test-to-Join option). After the event, upload these new contacts and include them in your automation emails, welcoming them to your list by thanking them for subscribing. If you’ve had great conversations with these people, certainly send them a special email reminding them that you had met at a particular event and thanking them. It will leave a lasting impression. Add a QR scannable sign-up code to your menu or table tents or specials sheets – if you are a restaurant or café, or even if you have a waiting room at your business, this is a great place to gather contacts. People are sitting there looking over the menu or the specials in table tents. Give them a way to subscribe right from there. An added bonus is that this might take some of the pressure off of the other person to think of something clever to say while they wait for their order! Place to sign up on the bill or in a check presenter – When someone receives their bill, include a section where they can subscribe to your mailing list in the check presenter or receipt. Give them a space to check off that they are interested and provide their name and email address. Make sure you staff knows to check for this and to record that information at the end of the day. Print QR Code on paper distribution materials – put your QR Sign up code on everything that you print that makes it into potential subscribers’ hands! Your business card, your brochures, shipping boxes and receipts, ads in the paper or in local magazines, on posters. If you’re in the US, add your Text to Join keyword and unique phone number to these materials with a request to subscribe printed too. Use a fishbowl on the counter to collect business cards – tried a true, this technique still works! Offer a monthly drawing for a free meal, haircut, or Gift Card. Put this where people can see it, and make sure it looks as full as possible – this helps to encourage people to ‘go with the crowd’ and add their business card to the bowl. With this, make sure you are organized and uploading those contacts regularly. Use your sidewalk sign to offer an easy incentive to subscribe inside – If your business has a sidewalk sign, incentivize someone to come in for a special something in exchange for an email address. You’ll be surprised how many people want to get a special something and how many, after seeing your business will want more goodies like that from you in their inbox. But really, just ask.
• #28: [CLICK] [NOTE TO FIELD PRESENTERS: *PLEASE HIDE IF YOU ARE SPEAKING TO A CANADIAN AUDIENCE!*] Now if you’re in the US and using Constant Contact, definitely set up a text to join option and put it wherever people are likely to see posters or print materials from your business. Memorize it also – it’s one of the easiest ways – hands down – to get someone to subscribe to your list and costs you’re the least about of energy to do so. Set up a unique email list called Text-to-Join to collect these contacts and assign an automation Welcome series to this list so that when people take the time to subscribe to your mailing list this way, they can become familiar with your business right away or receive their incentive to join that you offered immediately and use it at your business.
• #29: [CLICK] These are few examples of the types of incentives that you could offer to get someone to subscribe to your mailing list. Make sure that they are feasible for your organization to offer and manage and track and that you have the bandwidth to honor these incentives.
• #31: Focus on being relevant—Make sure that you know what your audience values, I have seen business owners assume that they know what their audience wants, and be completely off base. Do the research by asking or surveying your customers and prospects what type of information they would like to receive in their inbox. Figure out how much is enough—How much content is enough? Keep in mind that a majority of people will be One of the easiest ways to create content is to listen to your customers’ and prospects’ questions that they frequently ask. Many times they are similar, and it’s important to remember that YOU are the expert in your business or industry, and your customers typically are not. These questions can be amazing sources of content. Try doing a “FAQ mailbag” section to your newsletter when you need content. Don’t forget that images can be content too…pictures of events/product/staff work very well. Make sure that you optimize for mobile, and that images don’t dominate your content. Nice powerful close here on the slide! Just quote it!!! “It’s not always about you. It’s about what you know or what you have access to that will make you interesting and valuable.”
• #32: Remember, when you’re thinking of content that you’ll create from scratch, you’re not writing for yourself – you’re writing for your audience! So make your messages relevant, short and focused. [click] Your email shouldn’t be telling recipients every single thing that you do, and it shouldn’t include extraneous information. You can make it relevant to your audience by thinking about the conversations you’ve had with your clients, customers and members – after an interaction, you may want to jot some ideas down that can help you expand on a topic. [click] People interact with email the way they do in the physical world – they’re not deciding whether to open your email, they’re deciding whether or not to delete it. What’s going to stop them from hitting delete? IMMEDIATE RELEVANCE
• #33: After you’ve compiled lists and collections of emails that you’ve been storing in different places, it’s time to organize them in one place. You may be using Constant Contact but other similar email providers will have a section where you can store all of your contacts in one place. Get them all into one place and be sure to back them up! Then, organize them into distinct target categories or based upon their interests. This is called segmentation - you want to break up your lists based upon audience interests, or by the different email messages you’ll send out – i.e You’re a Gym – Create lists for Pilates, Weight Training, Kettle Bells, etc. before setting up a signup form to collect NEW subscribers. Segmentation is an important practice in marketing but it basically boils down to organized groupings of contacts based upon how you plan to target them with your marketing communications or how YOUR ORGANIZATION identifies them in their relationship to your business/nonprofit. And you may not be aware of this, but you probably already do this in your head when it comes to your own business. You consider some people Volunteers. Or VIPs/Loyal Customers or Donors. Parents vs. Students, Vendors vs. Customers. You get the picture. Your contact lists will be made up of different groups of contacts at different stages in their relationship to your business or non-profit: [CLICK] one group may be your regulars…those people that are in your store all the time, or at your fundraisers every year. [CLICK] another group may be people who are important, but only frequent your shop or take advantage of your services on a seasonal basis. [CLICK] a third group may be your VIPs…those who always step up with big donations, purchases or referrals to your business. [CLICK] and last, but certainly not least, are those people that are new to your list…new customers or supporters or clients…they’re critically important, because you need to focus on building and strengthening your relationship to them through the communications that you send. These people are the type that you’d send automated welcome emails and introductory messages to to ‘ease’ them in to your brand or non-profit and introduces them to what it is that you do. Essentially, segmenting means recognizing groups and putting their contact information into unique audience lists or giving the subscriber the ability to tell you exactly what they want to receive from you and helps you and them know what to expect with these mailings. Targeting means each communication should be unique based on who will be receiving them from your list of contacts. Here’s another way to look at it: [CLICK TO NEXT]
• #34: I’ve mentioned relevance a few times now, and here’s why it’s important that you include content that’s for your audience, not for yourself. 38 percent of email recipients will unsubscribe if they think the content in your email is boring or irrelevant – and when a person unsubscribes, you won’t be able to communicate with them again. 32 percent will send irrelevant content to their spam folder, which could impact how email providers, like Gmail or Yahoo, sort your future messages. Source: http://www.marketingsherpa.com/article/chart/why-subscribers-flag-email-as-spam
• #35: Let’s talk about how much content you should include in your email. Think about it… How often do you look forward to reading a long, detailed email from a business? Not very often, right? You’re looking for something concise and easy to read – what’s the news, what are the details of the deal or sale, is there any action I want or need to take? – and that’s what you should think about when you create your own emails. [click to build] When it comes to email content, less is more. Always. There is no rule that says your newsletter needs to have three articles, three pictures and three links. One thing is plenty. There is actually a Constant Contact customer whose newsletter is called One Thing – he did it to make it easy on himself and it works really well – people can absorb it and he’s not under the gun to come up with a bunch of content to fill it. [click to build] We did a study of our customers and found that the best practice is to limit yourself to 20 lines of text and [click] three or fewer images. Just like you, your audience is busy. You don’t need to worry about sending a ton of information every time. Source: Constant Contact study: http://news.constantcontact.com/research/constant-contact-data-reveals-direct-correlation-between-email-campaign-effectiveness-and-n
• #36: Remember, more than ½ of emails are read on a mobile device… Our research also shows that 1 link gets the best click-through rate. You want your audience to take an action, so use a link to make that clear. Two links are OK, but once you get to three links, the click-through rate starts to decline. Any higher than 5 links means that people are LESS likely to click ANYWHERE in your email. So try to stick with only one or two clicks, and keep them high in your message so people do not have to scroll down to take an action. And for your mobile readers – make sure that you’re keeping your messages short, and your calls to action above the fold (meaning, readers don’t have to scroll down to get to your most important content). Source: Constant Contact study: http://news.constantcontact.com/research/constant-contact-data-reveals-direct-correlation-between-email-campaign-effectiveness-and-n
• #37: Let’s talk about turning your interactions with your customers, clients, members, supporters and volunteers into content for your email. [CLICK] Think for a second about the last interaction you had with someone at your organization. What questions did a customer or client have? What information are people requesting about your nonprofit? Can you turn an answer to their questions into an email? [CLICK] Here are some great examples. One easy way to practice this in real life is to create two columns – in a spreadsheet or document, or just on a piece of paper, with the questions you regularly get on the left. In the right column, write down a way you can turn the answers to those questions into an email full of fresh, relevant content.
• #38: You’ve heard that a picture is worth 1,000 words. In your email, you can communicate through images as well as text. Turn your images into clickable links, so that when your readers click on your images, they will be directed to the action you want them to take – just make sure you also include a text link to the same location, because about 67% percent of email readers will not see images by default. Email tools like Constant Contact make it easy to assign a URL to your images, and also to add “alt text” so that a description of the image appears, even if the reader doesn’t see the picture. Side note – try to avoid giving too many choices in your campaign. These are supposed to be quick decisions to act (clicking to shop in your online store or selecting an item and clicking to buy) Too many choices will reduce the number of decisions / actions a person can take. It’s a time limit thing. Think of your campaign as window shopping. You want to entice someone to come in right then and buy because of whatever got their attention.
• #39: As a matter of fact – and this might be a relief for those suffering from writer’s block – great content doesn’t have to be written at all! Visual content, like photos, videos, graphics and word-images, makes a huge impact in an email inbox. Did you know that 90% of information processed by the brain is visual content and more than half of consumers believe that images are very important factor when buying? Visuals are important to your business because they influence customers’ purchasing decisions. 67% of consumers believe that images are a very important factor when selecting and purchasing a product. You can use photos to show off your products or shots from a recent event, and you can link to videos to show your organization in action or a product demonstration. Word images – a brief phrase, statistic, or quote over a background image – are a great way to share information in an eye-catching way. And creating visual content is easier than ever these days – almost anyone with a smartphone has the ability to shoot high-quality photos and videos. You don’t need too much time or a huge marketing budget to create compelling images anymore – you’ve got the technology right there in your pocket. 90% stat: http://www.adweek.com/socialtimes/visual-social-media-marketing/488380?red=at 67% stat: http://www.mdgadvertising.com/blog/its-all-about-the-images-infographic/
• #40: Photos are a frequent and necessary piece for visual content. Sometimes, you may find you need a photo that you do not have or cannot create on your own. There are a variety of online stock photo sites where you can search for just the right photo that fits your needs. They are a great resource and can work well for visual content that’s based around a theme, a tip, a fact or a quote. When you download a photo, be sure it is the right size or slightly larger! You can always crop it or scale it down, but will lose image quality if you try to enlarge a small image too much. It might be tempting, but it’s never a good idea to use just any image you may find through a search, including sample stock photos with a watermark on them. There can be copyright issues associated with those images; they belong to someone else. When using stock photos, you purchase the rights to use the photo, or in some cases accept a free download and agree to certain credit/conditions. Fees can vary, so shop around for what feels right for you and fits your budget. Here are some services that you can use to get free stock photos! [click to build] Constant Contact customers have access to over 12 million images through BigStock. But even if you aren’t a customer, BigStock offers a free trial for new users. BigStock: http://www.bigstockphoto.com StockVault.net http://www.stockvault.net/ FreeImages.com http://www.freeimages.com/ FreeDigitalPhotos.net http://www.freedigitalphotos.net/
• #42: Mobile friendly or mobile responsive Remember, being recognizable is critical to success in email marketing. Make sure your emails look like your website/printed material from a logo and color perspective.
• #43: In your email, make sure you’re consistently using your logo and the colors that you use in the rest of your marketing, so that you’re immediately recognizable. Use great images of your business, products and people, so that your audience can easily connect what your organization does with who you are. We’ll talk more about images in a little bit. And make sure you use consistent language across all of your marketing so that people will not be confused. For example, the nonprofit Strong Women Strong Girls does a great job of being consistent with their logo and images across their email, website and Facebook page. Don’t be afraid to use the same content and images across your email, website and social media posts – the more your organization meets your audience where they are, the more likely your audience is to keep you in mind.
• #45: As a small business, you don’t have time to do things that don’t work, so when it comes to your subject lines, you want to get into the habit of optimizing your subject lines to get the best results possible for your marketing efforts every time. We’re going to show you some easy ways to do that today. [CLICK] Approximately one third of people decide to open an email based solely on the subject line so that subject line needs to be a Stand Out subject line whether they’re reading on a desktop computer or a smartphone or tablet. There is a lot of competition for our attention these days in our inboxes, but after today’s webinar you’ll have some tricks of the trade you can start to use on your next email campaign. After a few campaigns of implementing what we’ll show you here today, you’ll be a pro at getting real measurable results for your marketing efforts. [CLICK TO NEXT ] 35% of all recipients of email choose whether or not to open a message on the subject line alone. - inwise "The Magic Words: The Importance of the Subject and 'From' Lines for Email Marketing" (2012)
• #46: This is a setup slide…you will go into detail of all four points in the next section. Read them and set the table.
• #47: Subject Lines must fulfill a purpose and needs to entice your readers [CLICK – EACH GROUPING WILL APPEAR] The Purpose Remember the 222 principle we just talked about here. “2 seconds, 2 words, 2day” Does it clearly answer the question of why someone would open your email before the others in the inbox? Clearly identify the email's purpose. You can get creative and be clever about how you craft it but as long as you are alluding to an element of your email’s content, the more creative your subject line is the more it will stand out amongst the rest in a subscriber’s inbox and a natural curiosity will catch their attention wondering what else is in store. Try writing your subject lines after you have written and designed your next email campaign. You’ll have a much better grasp after that point about what the end goal or purpose is to your email, so ideas will roll off your tongue at that point. But experiment with what works best for your creative process.
• #48: So how do you win the battle of priorities and get more people to stop and open your email? Think about how you sort your email – or if you’re on facebook, think about the newsfeed. Typically when you open up your email – think about it this morning – you start at the top of the list and you go down, sorting by who it’s from. WHO the email came from turns out to be the most important part of winning the battle of priorities. You do it based on WHO, so it’s important for you to [click to build] be recognizable… You do need to exercise care [click to build] and consider how you’re identifying yourself across the channels you’re using. If you send your emails as “Jane Doe,” but your Facebook page shows up in people’s newsfeeds as “Famous Cookies,” people might not make the connection. Just be sure that you’re consistent with the name you use – and ensure that it’s the one that you’ll be recognized by, so that ultimately your readers and followers will stop and open your email, read your posts – because they know they’re going to get something of value and relevance from you. (If you have a longer session, here are more notes for talking points) If you are not sure that people will recognize you because they mostly know the company name, then use a combination of your name, then a comma, and then the company or brand name – so you can piggy back off of the recognition of that brand but knowing you’ll get more people to stop and pay attention to an email from a person. Another way to look at it – when you get an email from a company, don’t you automatically assume that it is a marketing message so if you are busy or going through your own battle of priorities, that one usually goes into the later or never pile. One other note, for nonprofits in the room, you are – and sorry to say this – often starting at later. And not because people do not care about your message. That’s not it at all. It is more about the timing of your messages (which we will cover in a little bit) But if you think about it, if people are at work and their focus is supposed to be on their work, and then they get an email about your cause or program, even if they really care about it, they cannot always pull away from their primary responsibilities at the office.
• #49: This is based on Constant Contact’s analysis of over 2M Constant Contact customer emails – THIS is the recipe for the most effective email campaign
• #50: When you get these slides, follow these tips to make sure that your emails won’t get flagged as spam. Make sure you’re not doing things we’ve found spammers to do in their emails. These are things that will likely get your emails sent to readers’ spam folders Don’t use these typical spammy words. When you get the slides, the first bullet here contains a chart you can refer to which contains words that spam-filters are trained to block if they catch them in subject lines. [READ ALOUD] Don’t use: The word free Act now Fast Guaranteed Advertisement Don’t use all caps Don’t use excessive punctuation or symbols like the pound or dollar sign or percentage symbol Need a reminder of what practices are in a spam email? Can always compare to what’s in your own junk mail folder. You can check before you send – if you’re using Constant Contact, it has a built in spam checker. It will tell you if there’s a chance you might be seen as spam and suggests ways to fix any potential issues it identifies. You’ll see it on the top left hand corner of the email editor next to the undo buttons if you’re using Constant Contact.
• #51: [CLICK – ALL WILL APPEAR, SPEAK TO EACH] When thinking of subject lines, think small. The Inbox will typically only show users the first 9-11 words of the pre-header text or any words above the logo. Take control of that fact and put a few power-packed words into a block above your company logo (which should always be placed at the top with a clickable link to your website.) Rule of thumb – write your subject lines between 6-10 words and don’t forget about mobile users because (51%) of email is opened on a mobile device and you want not to exclude people who are reading on the go and who may be more apt sometimes to stop by your business or respond to your message. This really matters – keep in mind that iPhones, for instance, cut off a subject line at 32 characters – so you want to keep the important stuff at the beginning! http://info.movableink.com/Device-Report-Q1-2015are using mobile phones to read emails as well as CTCT research Mobile phones will also typically show the first 15 characters of the first text in the message, so take control of that feature we’ve referred to as ‘preheader text’ and write a second headline that will hook your reader into reading the rest of your email right from the get go. Think of it like a compliment to our subject line or the ‘next step or hook.’ This text should appear just above your logo block and we’ll go into that in just a bit but it is important to keep it in mind as you’re crafting your subject line. Think about those first 2 words. What will help readers take notice of your email? How can you make the topic of your email stand out from all the rest in the inbox? After writing the content for your email, try to summarize what it is all about, and condense that into your subject line and your pre-header text which we’ll discuss shortly. Source: https://blog.kissmetrics.com/your-next-email-subject-line/
• #54: Optional slide – this gives a different view with more industries for DAY
• #55: When’s the best time to send emails in order to maximize open rates? It depends on what industry you’re in… we analyzed millions of emails across 33 different industries to give you this kind of insight! If you’re looking for a place to start, nearly 2/3 of industries had a “best day to send” on Mondays, including accountants, consultants, financial advisors, fitness & spas, real estate, and others. (Tuesdays came in #2) And, surprisingly, early morning send times performed best across the board – 5am-8am are the sweet spot. So what could this mean? What we found is that it could mean a 6% increase in open rates. 6% - Just by scheduling your email to go out at an optimal time! This is based on analyzing billions of Constant Contact customer emails (2015)
• #56: Here is a guide to help you determine when your email audience best responds to your email. It can help you in all areas of your email marketing, but when it comes to deals, it can really help you focus in on the time and day of the week when your audience is most likely to open and react to your message. [click] First, find the best day for you to send your email. For this exercise, let’s say you have 300 total contacts. Split your audience into two equal groups –You will use the same exact email message for the first part of the test. [click] Then, select two days in the week. For example, you could test it on Monday abd Wednesday [click] Then, send your email to the first group on Monday and then the second on Wednesday. Use your email marketing to analyze your results. Study your open rates for each day, and also which dates people answered your call to action (clicked on your link, registered for your event, donated, etc.) – that information will tell you what the best day is for you to send. [click] The next time you send an email, find the best time of day to send, using the same two audience lists. [click] Using the best day from the first part of the test, select two times of the day that you want to test sending your email. [click] You get the idea. Again, analyze your results and remember to measure the actions people take in your email. Using this method will give you the best day of the week and the best time of the day to send your email to YOUR audience! [click to next slide]
• #57: Set up slide..you will be going through each of these bullets in detail on the following slides
• #58: So what? It’s good to see all of that, but what do you do with them? We’re going to look at a couple of scenarios that could happen for some of the campaign types. What if your results are low? Don’t quit! We are going to run through a couple of actions you can start taking today to help you improve those numbers tomorrow. And what happens if your results are high? That’s great, but you can get even better results! Find out what exactly is working for you, and use that information to grow these numbers more. Some of these suggestions are going to be repeated in these scenarios – and that’s great news. That means that you can improve a lot of your results by using the same tactics. You’re reviewing your reports for an email, and discover that you had a high open rate, but a low click through rate. This means that people were opening your email, but looks like they were not engaging with your content once they opened it, or following your call to action. Let’s start with the high open rate. It’s a great result, but there are things you can do to make it even better: The first is to find out what’s the best time and day to send your emails. When you look at your open rate report, you’ll see what date and time each of your readers opened your email. Start comparing that to the day and time you send your email – you should send your messages at the day and time your readers are opening them. They’ll be more likely to check their email then and see your message. Next, take a look at your subject line – what keywords do you think were interesting to your audience? Think about the keywords you’ve used in your subject lines, in blog posts, on social media, and in your website that draw your audience’s attention. Keep using them in your subject lines. Also consider segmenting your audience by interest. You can create separate email lists for different audience interests, and send emails that talk about the topics they like. They will open emails that talk about their interests in the subject line. Now – the low click through rate. How can we improve it? It’s showing that our audience isn’t interested in the links that were offered in the email. Here’s what to do next: Review your calls to action in your email. Consider the wording in your call to action – is it clear? Is it telling people exactly the action they should take and do they get a sense of why it matters to them? Look at your email template and design. Is it mobile friendly? Use a mobile friendly template or you can choose a one-column template so your message is easily read on a mobile phone. If there are multiple columns, they might shrink to fit, and that results in tiny text that readers have to pinch and zoom to expand. Think about how much content is in your email. People don’t have time to read long emails and if they’re on a mobile device, they don’t want to scroll! Our recommendation is to have no more than 3 articles in an email. And keep those articles short! Include a sentence or two and link to your website so your audience can find more information. Also, if you have too many articles, you might have too many links and calls to action. When you give people too many choices, they’re not sure what they should click on, and might not click on anything. Let’s look at a different scenario: What should you do if you had a low open rate and a high click through rate? This tells you that although not many people opened your email, the ones who did were very interested in your content. Why might you have a low open rate? Your timing and frequency could be off. We talked about this with the high open rate – are you sending at the times and days that people would be most likely to read your email. Are you sending too often? Are you not sending enough? It could be an issue with your subject line. Is your subject line compelling enough? Does it contain keywords that appeal to your audience’s needs? Do you get to the point of the email in a few words? Watch your subject line’s length – if it’s more than 5 to 7 words, it could get cut off by your recipients’ email services or smartphones. The email’s content might not match up with your audience’s interests. As you review your open rate and click rate, your learning more about what content and keywords they respond to. Send emails about the topics they like, and don’t waste time creating content they won’t read. A high click rate is fantastic. Your audience wants to know more about the resources you’re linking to in your email. Here’s a few things you can do to make your click rate even better: Format your links so they stand out when your readers open your email. Use buttons or put white space around them. Make sure the links are spaced out for mobile readers – if they’re too close, it’s really easy to click on the wrong link with your finger. You’re using these reports to get to know your audience better, so keep track of what’s getting the most attention in your emails. Narrow down the links you offer to fit the topics, products and services that they want to read about. The last thing you can do is take that knowledge of your audience and segment them. Your reports allow you to view the people who clicked on individual links and create a list from them. Segment your audience into different lists, and target them with relevant content.
• #59: We’re here because you’ve told us that you’re interested in using reports and analytics for your business. In fact, we surveyed small businesses and: [click to build stat] Three quarters of the small businesses we spoke to believe reporting and analytics will give them a business advantage. [click to build stat] They also believe this data can help them retain existing customers - 67 percent of small businesses we surveyed see reports and analytics as tools they can use to improve retention. Although reporting and analytics are seen as an important tool for growth, not everyone has had a chance to sit down and learn more about these tools. 64 percent told us that they would like to learn more about how to use data to drive business. And that’s exactly what we’re going to do today. Source: Constant Contact Small Data and Small Business: 2014 Holiday Survey http://news.constantcontact.com/press-release/holiday-season-approaches-small-businesses-report-putting-small-data-good-use
• #61: Email marketing is hard to beat. It’s where everyone is these days for everything from updates from you bank or service providers, to messages from mom or the kids and of course promotional messages from businesses you subscribe to and frequent. [CLICK] 91% U.S. adults like to receive promotional emails from companies they do business with and [CLICK] 138% of people spend more after receiving email offers than those who never receive any at all. At the heart of that is the fact that emails are successful because of Standout Subject Lines – if the subject lines don’t grab your attention – whether they be from Amazon or your bank, your phone company, or the restaurant or boutique in town you always go to, those senders know that the subject line will make or break the success of that message and the calls to action included in the email to drive you to their business or to take a specific action. So crafting your subject line to persuade someone to open is absolutely key with email marketing. Source: Marketing Sherpa- survey of consumer attitudes - http://www.prnewswire.com/news-releases/marketingsherpa-survey-of-consumer-attitudes-towards-email-marketing-reveals-strong-preference-for-email-compared-with-all-other-communications-300029767.html Source: http://www.convinceandconvert.com/convince-convert/15-email-statistics-that-are-shaping-the-future/
• #62: One of the best things I can tell you is that, as a small business or a nonprofit, you actually have an advantage over “big business” in this new era of marketing – it is specific to your use of email and social media marketing. You have an advantage because you can be the face of the company, the person people associate with that business or organization. You can be your authentic self. Best Buy cannot do that. Pepsi cannot do that. Today we’re going to talk about some of the ways you can leverage this advantage and also take some of the mystery out of online marketing strategies and how email and social media can help you grow your business. [click to next slide]
• #63: We’ve made it easy for you. We took the best practices we talked about, as well as some pro tips and created a checklist. Print this out later on when you get the slides, and use this checklist when you’re designing and sending your next email.
• #64: RELATIONSHIPS. delivering on the promise you make when someone engages with you measurable results
• #65: With all of your pushing and pulling to run campaigns, it’s important to have an idea of your goals.Here, we are looking at some general goals. General goals for your marketing are something that we all have [click to build], and they are fairly standard across the board for all businesses or nonprofit organizations because you’re in business to do something, and at the highest level that’s what these are. Another way to think about these is that they are the “30,000 foot view” of marketing…very much part of your marketing strategy. But what we’re here to do today is come down a bit, and get more specific. [click to next slide]
• #66: You CAN do this. There are tools out there to make it easier, like Constant Contact, and we are going to go over some simple ways to help you use less time, money and energy running your marketing.
• #67: - 76% of people read email on their phones - 67% of b2b workers regularly view emails on their phones – Marketing Sherpa - 64% of key decision makers read emails on mobile devices – Marketing Sherpa There are no longer any excuses for not designing marketing messages for mobile and your subject lines are an integral part when it comes to your mobile strategy. On a small screen, your messages grab the attention of the reader immediately because there’s only so much time that one spends on their device in one sitting so it is worth understanding how your message is being read. Now we’re going to discuss a couple other things to keep in mind when optimizing your subject lines for mobile marketing before you send your next message. http://60secondmarketer.com/blog/2012/07/19/how-people-use-their-smartphones-infographic/
• #68: Start where you are. This is not something that you have to do all at once. Start with email and maybe one social media site… Next, you might think about [click to build] adding another social network (like Twitter). Then, maybe you add [click to build] a blog and start offering deals and promotions. Next you could think about [click to build] how your communications and marketing work across multiple platforms (mobile, tablets, desktop, etc.). You could add [click to build] events to your marketing mix (they work for all sorts of businesses), and finally you could build [click to build] even more of a social presence. But start small, start where you are, and build in a way that makes sense for your business.
• #69: Did you notice that with all the campaign reports we talked about earlier that they had one thing in common? That’s click-throughs. No matter what you’re using – email, events, surveys, offers or promotions, donations or social media – you can measure click-throughs. This goes back to what we talked about earlier– the importance of measuring actions. Click-through rates measure exactly what actions your audience is taking. This metric tells you so much. It gives you an idea of what content people like, what products they’re interested in, what calls to action work, what keywords appeal to your readers, and what multimedia is interesting to them. What you ultimately want to do with click-throughs is drive people back to your website, your social networks, to your business, to your location. The campaigns you create need to have calls to action that take them to your properties so that they will continue to buy, learn, read, watch, comment and engage with your business. You’re keeping your business top of mind and growing your relationships.
• #70: Did you notice that with all the campaign reports we talked about earlier that they had one thing in common? That’s click-throughs. No matter what you’re using – email, events, surveys, offers or promotions, donations or social media – you can measure click-throughs. This goes back to what we talked about earlier in the webinar – the importance of measuring actions. Click-through rates measure exactly what actions your audience is taking. This metric tells you so much. It gives you an idea of what content people like, what products they’re interested in, what calls to action work, what keywords appeal to your readers, and what multimedia is interesting to them. What you ultimately want to do with click-throughs is drive people back to your website, your social networks, to your business, to your location. The campaigns you create need to have calls to action that take them to your properties so that they will continue to buy, learn, read, watch, comment and engage with your business. You’re keeping your business top of mind and growing your relationships.
• #71: OPTIONAL “COMMERCIAL” SLIDE [SPEAKER INSTRUCTIONS: this is your short introductory “commercial” to explain what Constant Contact is to your audience.] SUGGESTED TALKING POINTS:…. Everything we talk about in today’s session is intended to help you grow your business. Strategies, tips and ideas that you can leave here and try. You can apply these ideas to any system or marketing tool you want to use, you do not have to be a customer of constant contact to come to this session and even if you use a competitor, all of the information provided here today will still help you. That said, I want to make sure everyone here knows what Constant Contact is. How many in the room use Constant Contact or know what it is already? Great, I encourage those of you that did not have your hands raised to speak to someone that DID have their hands raised about our service. I’m confident that you will hear good things or I wouldn’t have said that. Constant Contact is an online marketing system with tools to help you manage mass communication and marketing campaigns easily and without spending a lot of time or money. You can send email newsletters or announcements of any kind, run your own special offers or deals, get feedback or run an online survey and you can promote and manage your own events. It’s all together in one place and everything also works closely with social media channels like Facebook, LinkedIn and Twitter and it’s also designed to help you look good on a mobile device. Constant Contact is the leader, and the support is outstanding. I will of course encourage you to use Constant Contact – it only costs about 20 a month – but let’s get to the class and then I’m happy to answer any questions you may have about Constant Contact at the end of the session.
• #73: Introduce yourself and give them a clear understanding that you are there on behalf of Constant Contact.
• #74: You can use
• #76: Having a good subject line can be the difference between new sales and/or attendance to your fundraising event or silence on the other end. If it doesn’t positively interrupt one’s flow when perusing their inbox, your message will likely fall into that “well-intentioned later” or “never” category we talked about using the 2-2-2 Principle. You might have a beautifully designed template with all the right stuff in it, but without a subject line that makes one pause or wonder, that message will not get opened.
• #77: [CLICK AND READ EACH ALOUD. BOXES WILL APPEAR] Standout subject lines attract attention. Period. They move someone to click on your message to view its entirety and engage with your call to action. Let’s go over some techniques to apply to every email campaign you create: Short and sweet – 4-7 words is an ideal span to grasp and react to on mobile or desktop. They want you to offer information that is hard to click away from in a split second. They are willing to be distracted for a moment, but it better be worth it. Make an attractive offer - They want discounts or special offers that feel exclusive and valuable. Offer something that is sustainable for your business to realistically support or honor, and tell your subscribers why the offer is so great. They want it to look clean on a smartphone screen so there’s no need to scroll side to side or pinch and un-pinch to read tiny text or to adjust settings to compensate for clashing colors. Choose a mobile friendly, single-column template. Use hard-to-miss buttons and links for your call to action. And keep mobile in mind – ‘Embrace the space’ as we say around links and buttons for easy phone finger-clicking. Brand identity - If readers see your brand in the subject line and they’re loyal customers/supporters, they’re more likely to open your email because they’ve had previous positive associations with your personalized brand – try to incorporate your brand name in the subject line without sounding too ‘sales-y’. Or, try to use your brand as a play on words or if your organization has a rich following or community, use inside jokes or terms. Get creative with this technique and try to incorporate your brand in your subject line in creative ways. An air of mystery or a statement that piques one’s curiosity and makes them think, “Huh? What could this be about?” is effective if you can make them laugh or become informed about something after opening it but use it sparingly and make sure to deliver an expected punch – you don’t want to be deceptive. Questions pique curiosity and have the power to make one think introspectively for a moment. When they’re thinking about their own lives if you can get them to open your email in hopes of attaining a level of self-improvement so deliver some. Then, rinse, wash, repeat. Urgency or scarcity tactics can grab a reader’s attention for fear of missing out. No one likes to miss out on something they later find out they really wanted or cared about, so try using this with your next subject line. “Ex. I got an email the other day for something I’d been looking at, but I didn’t open it soon enough and the offer had expired and I was upset for missing out, but I’d completely bypassed the subject line because it didn’t seem urgent or like the offer would expire. If you’re offering something that is limited, spell this out in your subject line. Dates work really well to grab attention too. Entertain, warn, inform – use humor to inspire laughter. Funny subject lines can open a lot of doors (or in this case, emails!). Warning your audience of something to avoid can gently alarm someone, compelling them to open your email to get that helpful warning about something. Think about times when you’ve received emails warning of the dangers of extreme weather conditions and the effects they can have on your pets or property or about a rise in tick populations in the summer, for example. Informing someone of something they may not have known is also a great way to get someone to open your email. People love to improve their lives in small ways, why not share your expertise in your subject line and teach them about something they didn’t know. Like:” Cayenne pepper deters pests” might be a landscaper’s or homeopath’s subject line. Literary techniques – some literary techniques were made for eye-catching headlines. Think about using techniques such as allusion, alliteration and onomatopoeia in your subject lines because they’ve worked for authors and advertisers for decades to compel people to take action or purchase the work or product, and will work in your subject lines too. More on this in a bit. Top Lists - readers are willing to be distracted for a moment –As much as they may not want to be, readers want to be distracted by lists and content that makes them think or entertains them for a moment, adding value to their work day. Think of top appeal lists as ‘info-snacks’, it’s a snack for your brain that you find online to educate or entertain you for a moment. Let’s go into that a bit more because they are a really hot/popular trend right now. [CLICK TO NEXT SLIDE]
• #78: [CLICK] Let’s look at even more ways to gather up all of your contacts: Start with your database – Once you’ve gathered a group of contacts from say, your POS/CRM system, start by mailing to them using a mass mailing provider like Constant Contact so you can measure with the reporting data whether or not these people are responding to your messages, opening them or clicking on links provided in them. Just send them an opt-out message that contains information about what you do and how valuable what you do can be to them. You want to be able to see if they opt out of your list, especially if these contacts were collected over 3 years ago. Make sure to provide a clear way to unsubscribe from your list to weed out the ones who will not help you reach your bottom line and are left with the contacts who are still interested in your business or nonprofit. The reporting tools will help you identify who is worth continuing to mail to, and which contacts are not and should be removed to make room for active customers/supporters. Business cards –You might have a shoebox or a special pile in your office for people you’ve met along the way. Start by those digitizing those business cards. There are some services that will do this for you if you don’t want to take the time to do that all yourself, but you will need these digitized one way or another to start to email to them. Some free apps and services are: -Shoeboxed -WorldCard Mobile (for international business cards) -YoluCard Networking Opportunities – Take an inventory of all the places where you come into contact with people. Think about where you could network and gather business cards or emails with the explicit intent of adding them to your mailing list. You’ll have a roadmap for where you’ll gather a bunch of willing subscribers – Just make sure you have all your back-work done - online and paper forms must be ready before these events. Ask fans/friends on Facebook – These days, everyone’s on Facebook sometimes even before they have a website! - and if you have a personal account or better yet a business page already started, ask those there to join your list. If you’re using Constant Contact you can add a signup form button right to your FB account business page where people can see it and join on their own. You can also create digital sign up forms in your CTCT account which you can share as a URL in a series of posts asking people to subscribe to your mailing list with some reasons why it’s worth their doing so. It makes it super easy for people to subscribe to your list that way and much easier to ask and organize for you. Establish an incentive – Think about an incentive that you and your staff can easily offer or process that is attractive and worth enough for someone to subscribe to your email list if they don’t know much about your business. Could you offer a $15 coupon for new clients? 20% off your first meal? A guide? Think about where online and in your store, office or establishment you can advertise this incentive so people who visit your location want to join. Then, follow that up with an automation email or welcome email to automatically send the incentive or coupon to those who join your list for the incentive, then start to incorporate them into your regular mailings. This is important: 74% of consumers expect to receive a welcome email after they subscribe to your mailing list, (Source: http://www.slideshare.net/bluehornetemail/bluehornet-consumer-views-of-email-marketing-2013-presentation-final) so deliver on this expectation and use your welcome email to introduce them to your suite of products or services and welcome them into your email list. More on this a bit later. Promote your list to your best customers/supporters – Your best customers will be the best supporters. Ask them to be the first to join your list and to spread the word about your business or nonprofit to their friends and families. For a consumer, it feels good to feel like a business appreciates your patronage and considers you special and above all the rest.
• #79: [CLICK – TALK THROUGH EACH There are some other things that you need to set up before you can start to grow your list by collecting contacts. Let’s walk through them: -You’ll need to create a sign up form online so that people can subscribe from wherever they find your organization online. This form contains the info you may need to know from your subscribers. If your business or non profit only needs a name and an email, then just require that information of a potential subscriber. Only ask for what you plan to use. -After you do that, you’ll need to add it to your website or blog. * You may need help from your webmaster to do this. They’ll be able to sync your sign up form to your email provider database or your own, but there must be a way that these contacts are captured and stored in one distinct easy-to-access place. If you are use an email provider like CTCT, they’ll have tools that will help you design this form and button in that software that will generate a code you can give to your webmaster to apply to your website. -Next, if you’re a US customer using CTCT, set up T2J and memorize your keyword and number so that on the go, you can ask people to subscribe to your list from their smartphone. -Now that you’ve segmented your contacts, set up QR Codes for sign up form and save them to incorporate into paper graphics like posters, direct mail, brochures, menus, etc. -Add a Facebook Join-My-Mailing-List App to your FB Biz Page – this way if you’ve been building up a good following on Facebook, you can work on converting as many of those fans into email subscribers as possible. Point this button out often because it’s easy to join in 2 steps for the subscriber and easy for you to store in one place automatically with the rest of your contacts. -If you’re using Constant Contact as your email provider, Download iCapture app by Constant Contact for tablet and phone to collect contacts on the go digitally which will sync with your CTCT account. This works especially well for those who are on-the-go or attending lots of networking events out in the field, so to speak. It helps eliminate missed contacts due to typos and bad penmanship. Don’t try to understand handwriting hieroglyphics – just go digital wherever possible. After you’ve compiled lists and collections of emails that you’ve been holding onto over the years, it’s then time to organize them in one place. Get them all into one place and be sure to back them up. Then, organize them into distinct target categories based upon their interests or how your organization will identify differing groups. This is called segmentation and we’ll talk about it more in a bit.
• #80: Let’s take what we just learned about subject line techniques and discuss some more examples. [Click]The “Top” appeal – a quick list of easily digestible pieces of information: “7 must haves for Fall” “3 end-of-year tax tips” “Top 10 Best Beauty Products this year” [Click]Create a sense of urgency to drive action: “Only 1 day left!” “Limited time offer – don’t miss out!” “Only 12 seats left – get your ticket before Friday” “You won’t believe what we have in store for you” [Click]Be personal – use words like “you”, ”your”, or “we”: “What you need to know about your personal finances” “Find out what we can do for your home today” “7 Ways to Improve Your Morning Routine” [Click]Ask a question: “How can we help your business grow?” “Do you feel prepared for this winter?” “Would you know what to do if you saw this?” [Click]Exclusivity helps drive action: “An exclusive offer for you!” “Only crafters would understand this feeling…” [Click]Don’t want to miss out: “You won’t believe your eyes when you see this” “If you aren’t doing this everyday you’re doing it wrong” “13 Signs You’re Budgeting Wrong”
• #81: Now that you have gotten a bit more familiar with other techniques you can employ in your next email subject lines, let’s try an brief exercise together. Let’s pretend that we’ve just finished writing and designing our email campaign and we need to start writing a good subject line. Write in the first subject line that comes to find in the subject line section, just as a placeholder. It can be boring and unoriginal, the key is to just have something there to start with that sort of applies to the topics of your email. Next, try using these techniques as well as the others we discussed to improve it and make it more interesting and compelling to your readers. Let’s brainstorm this together. Later when you are really ready to apply this to your next email, you’ll want to get with a partner, a buddy, or a co-worker or spouse to come up with a few different examples you could use for your subject line or subsequent reengagement campaigns which we’ll discuss a bit later. So here we go: [CLICK TO BUILD EACH LINE, REVEALS THE BASIC SUBJECT LINE, THE TECHNIQUE TO TRY, AND 2 REVEALS. FEEL FREE TO VAMP ON THIS AS MUCH OR AS LITTLE AS NEEDED FOR THE SESSION]
• #82: [CLICK TO BUILD EACH BASIC SUBJECT LINE WITH ONE REVEAL. RDDs CAN GET OTHER INPUT FROM AUDIENCE MEMBERS BUT OFFER THEIR OWN REVEALS] Ad-lib: Read them all aloud and try to be interactive.
• #83: - 76% of people read email on their phones - 67% of b2b workers regularly view emails on their phones – Marketing Sherpa - 64% of key decision makers read emails on mobile devices – Marketing Sherpa There are no longer any excuses for not designing marketing messages for mobile and your subject lines are an integral part when it comes to your mobile strategy. On a small screen, your messages grab the attention of the reader immediately because there’s only so much time that one spends on their device in one sitting so it is worth understanding how your message is being read. Now we’re going to discuss a couple other things to keep in mind when optimizing your subject lines for mobile marketing before you send your next message. http://60secondmarketer.com/blog/2012/07/19/how-people-use-their-smartphones-infographic/
• #84: You may have done this yourself, but think about how you read email. Do you double click on each email you receive, opening it? Or do you see a snapshot of it in the preview pane when you’re reading email from your computer and make a snap judgement from there whether you want to see the rest of the email? I know I do! Well, The preview pane is used to display the first top half of an email, splitting your desktop screen so that you can see the subject line in your inbox but see a quick visual of what the email looks like BEFORE you click to actually open and read the whole thing. Think about reading your work email in Outlook for example. Not everyone reads email this way, but it’s pretty common nowadays. You need to deliver your logo, your easily recognizable From Name and best images or content in the top half to encourage people to read the rest of it. Put your best information in the top half of your email as well as your call-to-action ‘above the scroll’ line because if you’re subject line got someone to open your email, they want to know quickly what it’s about and why they should respond to your call-to-action. This part of your email really ‘sells’ the rest of your message because it’s the first part of it they can see. Many of the emails you send will be opened using the preview pane so because many people view emails this way, design your email for the lowest common denominator –aka- for small screens – with a strong first half. [CLICK TO NEXT SLIDE]
• #85: Let’s have a look at how to identify Preheader text but first… What is preheader text? Email accounts will display the first line of text it can find in an email. When you understand that and control that message, that is what we mean when we say ‘Preheader text’. [CLICK] The first line of text that a device picks up from your email appears right under your subject line in a subscriber’s inbox as you can see on the right whether you planned it to or not. If you know that, you can control that message so it does not display just the first line of random text that it finds in your email. Some have come to consider this ‘teaser’ text when it is customized but it’s been relatively recently that marketers have begun utilizing the Preheader text to compliment subject lines using them as a ‘second chance’ or additional way to ‘hook’ the reader into opening and reading the email message. Think of it this way: it’s basically just a few additional words or a sentence that you add above your logo as you can see on the left when designing your email to compliment your Subject Line and encourage mobile viewers especially to open your email over others in their inbox. Think of it as a way to appeal to mobile viewers especially. This is because mobile devices have limited space to convey a message and there’s lots of competition in the average inbox. Think of using the Preheader text section next time you send a message. Why not write a second line of your subject line and put it in this section instead so that those reading on a mobile device find themselves reading that second line pulling them further into opening your message without them noticing their continuing to read, as you see on the image to the right. These days, people can be reading email from an array of different email apps from many different email providers on different devices. You can’t control HOW people read their email but you CAN control how you ‘HOOK’ readers into your message by writing alluring Subject Lines AND by utilizing Preheader text to further draw a reader into your email. With the tips that we’ve discussed today you’ll be able to confidently improve your Subject Lines and open rates and have a higher chance of having your entire message read if you remember to consider how your email will appear in the Preview Pane and how Preheader Text can work to compliment your Subject Line you’ve worked hard to craft. [RDDs CAN USE THIS MOMENT TO HAVE PEOPLE OPEN THEIR INBOXES ON THEIR SMARTPHONES IF THEY HAVE THE TIME TO SEE IF AUDIENCE CAN PICK OUT EMAILS THAT INCLUCED PREHEADER TEXT IN THEM] Core presenters: Next time you’re reading email on your smartphone, take a moment to see if you can pick out emailers who included preheader text in their emails that show up under the subject line while viewing on the phone. Think of it as a way to appeal to mobile viewers especially. These days, people can be reading email from a array of different email apps from many different email providers on different devices. You cannot control how people read their email but you CAN control how you ‘hook’ readers into your message by writing alluring Subject Lines AND using Preheader text to further draw a reader into your email. With the tips that we’ve discussed today you’ll be able to confidently improve your Subject Lines and open rates and have a higher chance of having your entire message read if you remember to consider the preview pane and the preheader text. Let’s show you what these look like.
• #86: [CLICK – ALL WILL APPEAR, SPEAK TO EACH] When thinking of subject lines, think small. The Inbox will typically only show users the first 9-11 words of the pre-header text or any words above the logo. Take control of that fact and put a few power-packed words into a block above your company logo (which should always be placed at the top with a clickable link to your website.) Rule of thumb – write your subject lines between 6-10 words and don’t forget about mobile users because (53%) of email opens in the US occurred on a mobile device and you want not to exclude people who are reading on the go and who may be more apt sometimes to stop by your business or respond to your message. http://info.movableink.com/Device-Report-Q1-2015are using mobile phones to read emails Mobile phones will typically show the first 15 characters of the first text in the message, so take control of that feature we’ve referred to as ‘preheader text’ and write a second headline that will hook your reader into reading the rest of your email right from the get go. Think of it like a compliment to our subject line or the ‘next step or hook.’ This text should appear just above your logo block and we’ll go into that in just a bit but it is important to keep it in mind as you’re crafting your subject line. Think about 2-2-2 rule and those first 2 words. What will help readers take notice of your email? How can you make the topic of your email stand out from all the rest in the inbox? After writing the content for your email, try to summarize what it is all about, and condense that into your subject line and your pre-header text which we’ll discuss shortly. Source: https://blog.kissmetrics.com/your-next-email-subject-line/
• #87: With all of your pushing and pulling to run campaigns, it’s important to have an idea of your goals.Here, we are looking at some general goals. General goals for your marketing are something that we all have [click to build], and they are fairly standard across the board for all businesses or nonprofit organizations because you’re in business to do something, and at the highest level that’s what these are. Another way to think about these is that they are the “30,000 foot view” of marketing…very much part of your marketing strategy. But what we’re here to do today is come down a bit, and get more specific. [click to next slide]
• #88: [This slide can be used with the companion workbook. But you can also just have people make notes during the session. If you do not want to use this slide, simply right click and hide it.] So now that we have a framework to talk about overall goals and measurable objectives, let’s see if you can put pen to paper and come up with yours. First, consider your goals. Here are some examples but use your own, related to your own business. What are some of your marketing goals – remember, goals are very general but still specific to you and your business.[give them a minute to write down some of their goals, if you have time to allow interaction, either ask them to share with their table or ask a few people to share their goals with the class] So moving on, let’s get more specific and write down a measurable objective for these goals – it probably works best to think short term, monthly or quarterly in this exercise. You can go big when you get home and can take a step back and really look at this.I’m showing you examples on the screen that correlate to the goals above. Your objectives should correlate the the goals you wrote down. [give them time to write their objectives and again, allow for interaction if you have time]
• #89: Email is hard to beat for real marketing value. And it’s very much a part of social media. Email is how you can monetize your social media activities. 64% of American adults own a smartphone And it still has the highest delivery and response, much higher than social media. In addition to the actual email, there are a number of tools you can use to expand the reach of your emails and help you build your lists for the future. [click to next slide] http://www.istockphoto.com/stock-photo-1322200-carpentry.php?st=6ca4679
• #90: [This slide can be used with the companion workbook. But you can also just have people make notes during the session. If you do not want to use this slide, simply right click and hide it.] Do any of these types of campaigns make sense for your business, would one of them or maybe more than one, help you start working toward the objectives you wrote down earlier? Consider what type of content might work for you – we will talk more about some of this in a little bit so maybe just jot down a couple of ideas… and how will you get the word out – what channels will you use? Use the workbook to write down your thoughts. [give them time to write their objectives and again, allow for interaction if you have time]
• #91: We talked about ‘flipping the funnel’ by marketing to people who already know you. This type of customer nurturing can be beneficial because these are the types of customers and supporters who have chosen to interact with you in hopes of getting something of value in return, which ultimately leads to higher sales and more growth over time for your business because they are more likely to generate revenue for you. Considering 91% of people check their email daily, for every contact that you have and collect that’s how many eyes are seeing your offer or your marketing message each time you send! (Litmus). Now if you don’t think that people would subscribe to your mailing list from your website traffic alone, think again. 82% of consumers sign up to receive email on brand websites (Source: http://www.slideshare.net/bluehornetemail/bluehornet-consumer-views-of-email-marketing-2013-presentation-final) and 72% sign up expecting to receive discounts (Source: http://www.slideshare.net/bluehornetemail/bluehornet-consumer-views-of-email-marketing-2013-presentation-final) so if you can incentivize someone to subscribe to your list, do so on your website. And according to a recent study (Source: https://www.salesforce.com/blog/2013/07/email-marketing-stats.html) for every $1 spent on email marketing, the average return is $44.25! That’s impressive! In the end, email marketing pays for itself time and time again and with a strong and ever-growing email subscriber list, you can continue to grow your business or increase funds for your nonprofit. Email marketing conversion rates are 3X higher than social media prospect to customer rates. (Source: http://www.forbes.com/sites/mckinsey/2013/11/19/email-marketing-think-inside-the-new-inbox/) You don’t need a massive list to market well with a good return on your efforts, but you need to have a healthy, quality list which we’re going to show you how to build in this session.
• #92: [CLICK] EACH SECTION WILL ANIMATE ON ITS OWN You know you need to be marketing and mailing to new and existing customers and subscribers, but you don’t know where to start. Well there are some truths to keep in mind as you embark upon your list growth journey: [CLICK] - GROWTH TAKES TIME - By now you may have heard that ‘your organization lives and dies by it’s subscriber list’. You might look at yours and wonder if you have enough contacts or if it is turning over the results you were hoping for. You’re not alone. But it is important to understand that it takes time and that it should have no end. Learning how to consistently grow your list is something that you want to become a reflex or a habit. [CLICK] - GROWTH IS AN ONGOING PROCESS - Think of growing your subscriber list the same way you think of building and growing your business or non-profit. You always want to be generating business even after you get the kind of consistent business you’ve dreamt about. There will always be periods of lots of business and periods of less than ideal business, and your contact list will be like this too. You want to always be collecting contacts every chance you get wherever you interact with customers or supporters because you’ll always want to be reaching fresh leads as some unsubscribe or opt out over time. [CLICK] - EFFORTS MUST BE ORGANIZED & CONSISTENT – just like the meticulous bookwork that you keep for your business or non-profit, your contact list is most successful when it is organized and is maintained in a consistent and efficient way [CLICK] - A COMBINATION OF TRADITIONAL AND MODERN METHODS – There is no wrong way to collect a contact (except of course if you buy or rent lists, that is! We’ll talk about anti-spam best practices a bit later) You should start with what you know and combine new and traditional methods of gathering contacts. Once you leave this presentation with more ideas than you had to start with and a clear plan of action for collecting as many contacts in as many places as possible, you’ll find that growing your list is just another way of growing your business or expanding your organization.
• #93: You can start growing your list from where you and your organization are [CLICK] right now – and then build in these pieces on your way to running a truly effective marketing effort. [CLICK] Many of you already use email, have a website and at least 1 social media channel (say, Facebook). If this sounds like you, begin on these platforms by asking people to subscribe to your mailing list if they haven’t already. [CLICK] Incentivizing them can help to draw people to your sign-up form, too. Do this regularly but don’t overdo it. If you’ve been seeing an uptick in Likes or Fans, that would be the time to remind people how they can sign up for your newsletter. [CLICK] You don’t have to jump right in and start using everything in a scramble to find contacts. Go through every place where you store email contacts as of today. You might already have a contact database or POS system where you have contacts. Perhaps you use Outlook for business emailing but your Gmail account has contacts stored in it too that you’ve done business with. Once you’ve identified where all of your contacts are located, [CLICK] organize them together in one place and upload them into your email provider contact database. Once you’ve done this, you’ve streamlined your mailing process and you can begin sorting and segmenting them the way you identify different contacts or groups in your head based upon business needs. [CLICK] To sum it up: collect, compile, and organize. Start small, start where you are, and build in a way that makes sense for your organization. [CLICK TO NEXT]
• #94: [CLICK] Let’s look at even more ways to gather up all of your contacts: Start with your database – Once you’ve gathered a group of contacts from say, your POS/CRM system, start by mailing to them using a mass mailing provider like Constant Contact so you can measure with the reporting data whether or not these people are responding to your messages, opening them or clicking on links provided in them. Just send them an opt-out message that contains information about what you do and how valuable what you do can be to them. You want to be able to see if they opt out of your list, especially if these contacts were collected over 3 years ago. Make sure to provide a clear way to unsubscribe from your list to weed out the ones who will not help you reach your bottom line and are left with the contacts who are still interested in your business or nonprofit. The reporting tools will help you identify who is worth continuing to mail to, and which contacts are not and should be removed to make room for active customers/supporters. Business cards –You might have a shoebox or a special pile in your office for people you’ve met along the way. Start by those digitizing those business cards. There are some services that will do this for you if you don’t want to take the time to do that all yourself, but you will need these digitized one way or another to start to email to them. Some free apps and services are: -Shoeboxed -WorldCard Mobile (for international business cards) -YoluCard Networking Opportunities – Take an inventory of all the places where you come into contact with people. Think about where you could network and gather business cards or emails with the explicit intent of adding them to your mailing list. You’ll have a roadmap for where you’ll gather a bunch of willing subscribers – Just make sure you have all your back-work done - online and paper forms must be ready before these events. Ask fans/friends on Facebook – These days, everyone’s on Facebook sometimes even before they have a website! - and if you have a personal account or better yet a business page already started, ask those there to join your list. If you’re using Constant Contact you can add a signup form button right to your FB account business page where people can see it and join on their own. You can also create digital sign up forms in your CTCT account which you can share as a URL in a series of posts asking people to subscribe to your mailing list with some reasons why it’s worth their doing so. It makes it super easy for people to subscribe to your list that way and much easier to ask and organize for you. Establish an incentive – Think about an incentive that you and your staff can easily offer or process that is attractive and worth enough for someone to subscribe to your email list if they don’t know much about your business. Could you offer a $15 coupon for new clients? 20% off your first meal? A guide? Think about where online and in your store, office or establishment you can advertise this incentive so people who visit your location want to join. Then, follow that up with an automation email or welcome email to automatically send the incentive or coupon to those who join your list for the incentive, then start to incorporate them into your regular mailings. This is important: 74% of consumers expect to receive a welcome email after they subscribe to your mailing list, (Source: http://www.slideshare.net/bluehornetemail/bluehornet-consumer-views-of-email-marketing-2013-presentation-final) so deliver on this expectation and use your welcome email to introduce them to your suite of products or services and welcome them into your email list. More on this a bit later. Promote your list to your best customers/supporters – Your best customers will be the best supporters. Ask them to be the first to join your list and to spread the word about your business or nonprofit to their friends and families. For a consumer, it feels good to feel like a business appreciates your patronage and considers you special and above all the rest.
• #95: [CLICK – TALK THROUGH EACH There are some other things that you need to set up before you can start to grow your list by collecting contacts. Let’s walk through them: -You’ll need to create a sign up form online so that people can subscribe from wherever they find your organization online. This form contains the info you may need to know from your subscribers. If your business or non profit only needs a name and an email, then just require that information of a potential subscriber. Only ask for what you plan to use. -After you do that, you’ll need to add it to your website or blog. * You may need help from your webmaster to do this. They’ll be able to sync your sign up form to your email provider database or your own, but there must be a way that these contacts are captured and stored in one distinct easy-to-access place. If you are use an email provider like CTCT, they’ll have tools that will help you design this form and button in that software that will generate a code you can give to your webmaster to apply to your website. -Next, if you’re a US customer using CTCT, set up T2J and memorize your keyword and number so that on the go, you can ask people to subscribe to your list from their smartphone. -Now that you’ve segmented your contacts, set up QR Codes for sign up form and save them to incorporate into paper graphics like posters, direct mail, brochures, menus, etc. -Add a Facebook Join-My-Mailing-List App to your FB Biz Page – this way if you’ve been building up a good following on Facebook, you can work on converting as many of those fans into email subscribers as possible. Point this button out often because it’s easy to join in 2 steps for the subscriber and easy for you to store in one place automatically with the rest of your contacts. -If you’re using Constant Contact as your email provider, Download iCapture app by Constant Contact for tablet and phone to collect contacts on the go digitally which will sync with your CTCT account. This works especially well for those who are on-the-go or attending lots of networking events out in the field, so to speak. It helps eliminate missed contacts due to typos and bad penmanship. Don’t try to understand handwriting hieroglyphics – just go digital wherever possible. After you’ve compiled lists and collections of emails that you’ve been holding onto over the years, it’s then time to organize them in one place. Get them all into one place and be sure to back them up. Then, organize them into distinct target categories based upon their interests or how your organization will identify differing groups. This is called segmentation and we’ll talk about it more in a bit.