Business

Ask anyone about ‘daily deal’ sites and the first company they think of is Groupon. They’ve rapidly become leader in the “group deals” or “daily deals” niche of email marketing for small businesses. Here are five Groupon-inspired email marketing tips that today’s small businesses can use to give their email marketing a boost.

Groupon has been so successful they’ve even incurred some feedback from businesses who were pummeled by the flood of new customers wanting to cash in Groupon offers. While their surge of popularity appears to be cooling off, their email marketing strategy still works.

1. Always Be Segmenting & Targeting

Remember when you received a daily email from Groupon? I did. From spray-on tans to hair treatments to waxing, their offers sent to me at one point were poorly targeted. (Maybe not the waxing, but I digress…)

I may not have been alone. The cost of poorly targeted emails is lack of engagement, loss of attention and ultimately, decreased response. Not even the greatest email marketing copy in the world can save them from an offer that’s irrelevant to the reader. Their business was built on the engagement of readers. Not just the opens, but the primal excitement of getting a good deal and passing it along to their friends. Thus, the element of a group deal, not a solo deal.

Takeaway: Always learn about your audience. You can do this through surveys and the actions they take with previous emails. Did recipients click on product B? Deliver them relevant messages specific to Product B. Take them out of product A and C’s campaigns.

2. Extend the Reach of the Brand with Sub-Brands

After Groupon passed on the acquisition offer from Google and enraged some people with their Super Bowl TV ad, they expanded their business from region-specific deals to travel and instant deals. They accomplished this through different lead-generation campaigns.

They recently introduced ‘Getaways’ and ‘Now Deals.’ This expands their reach because I know people who would love to get away to a resort, but are fine passing up on the offer to join a gym. Now deals target the people on the go who want a deal based on their physical location. Not only do the deals rake in higher margins; it enables their audience to receive these that are more relevant to them.

Takeaway: Using specific landing pages coupled with highly targeted email campaigns, you can discover new opportunities in your business. For instance, if you offer marketing coaching, consider creating a membership site or digital download product used to attract different types of leads to the business. You might actually stumble into a new profitable business idea!

3. Target Deals When People are in a Buying Mood

I know on Monday morning, I’m not exactly in a mood to buy. I noticed that recently I’ve been receiving emails for Groupons on Friday. It makes sense because I’m thinking of the weekend and recreation.

Takeaway: Consider adjusting the time and date when you typically send your emails. Not only will this adjust when it’s  opened, but it will affect when recipients take action on your message. A quick experiment is to track your next email campaign with Google Analytics and discover the time of day most people hit your site from your email message. My point is 8AM may not work as well as 1PM or 4PM.

4. Use a Consistent and Well-Recognized Format

Groupon is all about brand awareness, trust and conversion. They’ve made such an impact on the niche-deals industry, everyone has copied their look and feel. It works. People want to read big headlines, vivid pictures, sub-headlines, details on the offer and compelling copy. This formula they coined took the industry by storm.

Takeaway: Earn the trust of your contacts by using a professional – but not impersonal—look and feel to your emails. If the purpose of the message is to engage in a transaction, address all the questions in the mind of a buyer. Here are a few examples that we’ve created.

5. Always Follow Up With Leads, Even at a Loss

Businesses that use Groupon for attracting customers are missing a big opportunity. Following up. The industry has often stated that with Groupon offers, the business actually takes a loss on these new customers. Right or wrong as the deal-takers may be (such as only tipping on the discount amount, not the full price), the business needs to follow-up and educate people about the value they provide. Data suggests that simply following up increases sales by nearly 400%!

Takeaway: Encourage new customers to sign up on your email list. Then nurture them with a thoughtful variety of polls, educational insights about your business that they didn’t know or even invite them to come back. Read this blog post for seven more lead-generation ideas.

On another note, I’ve received fewer Groupon offers to my email. (Perhaps you have, too?) It’s not because they’re short on deals, it’s because they are becoming more targeted with them. I open up the ones offering discount oil changes, unlimited car washes and automotive tint. This increases my awareness and response.

I don’t think the experience and excitement with daily deal sites or even “flash sales” is exclusive to Groupon. I feel that businesses with a well-planned email marketing strategy coupled with a loyal list of prospects and customers could actually pull these off without a daily deal site’s assistance. (And keep 100% of the revenue for themselves.)

[Image credit: © Groupon, Inc.]

This post 5 Email Marketing Tips Inspired from Groupon was first published on the Big Ideas Blog.

Many marketers and non-marketers share a mutual concern for doing email marketing the right way. They often wonder if the emails they’re sending are making it to the inbox and pleasing their recipients, and they are curious about how they can improve the response rates of their email campaigns.

With these 25 email tips, you can improve the quality and consistency of your emails for your subscribers.  To make it easy to read, I’ve broken it up into five different sections.

If you have a tip you’d like to add, post it in the comments at the bottom.

• Always get permission – Without having permission (meaning every subscriber asked for you to email them), spam complaints will increase and people will ignore your emails — even worse, they may opt out altogether. Aside from upsetting your “newfound” subscribers, you will probably also get the boot from your email service provider for violating their policies.
• Set expectations at the opt-in – Tell your potential subscribers what you will send them and how often. It shouldn’t be a shock that nobody wants an inbox full of email from you.
• Confirm with double opt-ins – While it’s a slight barrier to get your emails, double-opt-in protects you and your email provider from incurring spam complaints. Also, it’s smart since you will be confirming that someone actually wants your emails and is willing to click a link to do it.
• Utilize email marketing campaigns instead of ‘newsletters’ – Newsletters are so 2001. With an email campaign, you can attract specific prospects and send them emails related to a particular topic.
• Make the offer at the right time – Nothing annoys email subscribers more than getting an offer at the wrong time in their inbox. Strategically and calmly earn the opportunity to make a sale by providing the helpful and relevant content that they originally signed up for.

• Match your email to your brand – Include your company logo and colors on all your emails for consistency. Doing this will make your emails familiar and expected.
• Look professional with a consistent color scheme – Colors are a major component of your brand. If you need help finding a good color scheme, check out kuler or COLOURlovers for inspiration.
• Design the email and landing pages so it’s easy for mobile users – Realize that the popular iPhone has a viewable space of 320 x 356 pixels. That’s not much compared to the real estate of your computer (probably above 1024 x 768). This means you should condense the width so they can read the email without resizing the message.
• Make your email readable without images enabled – For privacy reasons, most email clients disable images unless the user allows it. Because of this, any images you include in the email should have descriptive text set for the Alternative attribute.
• Use fonts that reflect the style and tone of the email message – Choosing the right font size and family is a big deal. You wouldn’t take a business proposal seriously if they emailed you with Comic Sans. Choose a font that everyone has instead of one that looks good on your computer (e.g., Arial, Verdana, Times New Roman or Tahoma)

• Reinforce expectations of the email campaign – This doesn’t mean using the original IP address and convincing people your email isn’t spam. Rather, tactfully explain the basis of your email message and inform them if there are future emails they can expect from you.
• Personalize the emails and include more than their name – Make your emails personal and include more than their name. You’ll hopefully know why they signed up to your list and you can presume that in your copy by making it relevant.
• Economize your message to maintain focus – People are pressed for time. They don’t want to read more than a few paragraphs to decipher what you’re trying to say. Write what you need in the most efficient way possible. A tip I learned from an esteemed copyeditor is to write what you want, then cut the length by half. It’s remarkably helpful.
• Write for people, not robots – If you use “F.R.E.E.” in your email and it’s not an acronym for “Foundation for Research on Economics and the Environment,” you’re doing it wrong. Just write for people and the spam filters will let it slide.
• Make your emails engaging and solicit feedback – As a reader, I like it when the sender asks a provoking question and solicits a response on their Facebook or simply via reply. This is good not only for the social interaction, but it will also educate you on what people think about your emails.

• Test your email messages on different email clients – Once you have the perfect-looking email, test how it looks on many different email readers. There are a few affordable services available that let you preview how it looks or you can simply try it yourself by setting up free email accounts on AOL, Yahoo, Gmail and Hotmail and downloading a copy of Mozilla Thunderbird.
• Make it easy to unsubscribe – When users don’t want to receive your emails, don’t bury the unsubscribe link. Make it visible because receiving an unsubscribe is much better than a spam complaint.
• Send emails in multipart for maximum readability – Combine the best of plain-text and HTML email by sending in Multipart. For devices that don’t support HTML, they will show the message in plain-text. Conversely, if a device supports HTML, they will show it in HTML.
• Use a pre-header to take advantage of email previews – Pre-headers are simply the first line of text in an email located at the top. Email services like Gmail display the pre-header directly after the subject line, and it’s a good idea to summarize the email right there.
• Try a plain-text format if you use HTML – Mix up your email routine once in a while and use a plain-text email if you typically send in HTML. People frequently perceive plain-text emails are more intimate and personal from the sender, so use it sparingly.

• Respect your subscribers’ time and interests – Don’t hammer their inbox with useless emails. Plan out your emails and respect subscribers’ interests so they don’t receive more than a couple messages per month.
• Let people re-confirm their interest after nine months – Getting permission is half the battle; retaining it is the other half. Permission typically expires after nine months, so it’s a good idea to ask people to confirm their interest in receiving your emails and offers. The best part is, you will discover the most loyal subscribers.
• Send emails to smaller, more targeted groups in your list – With advanced email marketing, you are able to track which links and emails intrigue your audience. Leverage this data to identify different sub-groups to send tailored messages. You will be surprised at the increase in response rates when you do this.
• Use more than email to stay in touch – Email is the holy grail of marketing for small businesses, but it doesn’t end there. As the relationship with email matures, get more information on your contacts by asking for their address and even mobile number. Consider these additional means to stay in touch with your audience.
• Ask for and use subscribers’ feedback – There are two types of feedback: passive and active. Passive feedback is looking at which links people click on, which is an indicator of the aggregate interest in your email messages. Active feedback is when people ask you a question, suggest an idea or make a comment. Leverage this feedback to improve your email campaigns.

What email marketing tips do you have to share with other business owners? Share it in the comments below!

[Image credits: maxbraun, pjb2332, pointnshoot, gerlos, kriegsman, stevensnodgrass]

This post 25 Email Marketing Tips and Tactics was first published on the Big Ideas Blog.

Many small business owners often wonder why email messages go to spam instead of going to the inbox. In this post, I’ll explain how spam filters work so you understand them. This is a great reference for any marketer so they understand how spam filters function.

The goal of email marketing 2.0 is tailored in such a way to not worry about spam filters. We know that; however, it’s important to consider the levels of filters their recipients have so you see what you’re up against to get the message in the inbox.

We’re not alone. Every Email Service Provider (ESP) provider including Constant Contact, iContact and AWeber all face the challenge of getting their users’ messages to the inbox. While the ESP maintains the bulk of the responsibility in getting messages there, content of the emails are crucial to consistently have the message hit the inbox, not the spam folder.

Illustrated below, I explain the levels of spam filtering that take place with each message.

The ISP filter checks for the major sources of Spam and reject offending messages. These often handle the 75% of work for anti-spam operations. This includes checking for Email Relays, IP Reputation, Authentication (Phishing), botnets and simply accepts or denies a senders from proceeding to send their email.  When mail is rejected here, a bounce is sent to the sender for later handling. (Infusionsoft automatically handles these for you.)

The Content Filter rests between the email recipient and their ISP. These handle about 20% of anti-spam operations. This will often check the email for content that doesn’t meet their standards, such as malicious attachments, spammy words and even the overall “fingerprint” of the email itself. When mail is rejected here, it’s silent and often the user doesn’t know. Some ISPs may bounce the message back with details, but not always.

Finally, the Personal Filter is the filter that happens when the recipient’s email software filters the messages on its criteria. These handle about 5% of anti-spam operations. Depending on the email service, the ISP may offer this through a web-based interface or in the case of Outlook, it’s running with the email client. These filters honor any request by the recipient. When mail is rejected here, it’s silent and often the user doesn’t know until they specifically look for the message. (Don’t believe me? Try syncing your Gmail account in Outlook and watch what lands in the “Junk Email” sub-folder. It’s a pretty liberal spam filter.)

What do you do with this information? That, I can’t tell you. It’s up to you.

Infusionsoft (along with any reputable ESP) has a good IP reputation and a Feedback Loop (FBL) established with ISPs so they can handle any complaints that come through. Infusionsoft also makes it easy to build standards-compliant emails, so that’s covered. We recommend users adhere to industry-leading best practices so you don’t get flagged as a spammer. Lastly, we drop spammers when we encounter them, preserving good deliverability for all the rest of our users.

If there’s one nugget of advice to takeaway from all this, it’s this:

Encourage recipients to add your email address to their address book. This is known as Whitelisting and often Whitelists supersede Content Filters to your recipients email inboxes. With Infusionsoft, you can ask people to add your email address to their address book, and many people will if they want to continue receiving your messages.

Now for a little disclosure. I used to work within the AOL Postmaster team. During my tenure there, I learned a lot about how they (specifically AOL/AIM/Netscape/CompuServe) filter their inbound email. No information from this article is proprietary or confidential — at least I hope not. AOL sets the standard when it comes to aggressive spam filtering, so I can only assume other top-tier ISPs follow suit.

This post Why Do Email Messages Go to Spam? was first published on the Big Ideas Blog.

Many people probably know at least someone who uses Infusionsoft and receives their email messages. I’d like to address one of the comments we hear from users about using the powerful unsubscribe feature effectively in their emails. This information is useful for existing Infusionsoft users as well as potential new users to the leader in email marketing 2.0.

When people unsubscribe from an email from our users, they often see this:

One assumption is you can’t change this. You can!

Infusionsoft provides a very easy and cool feature where you can allow people to unsubscribe from a series of emails and update their contact information all in the same place.  These are known as Opt-Out & Update Links. Here’s what a customized that looks like for recipients:

This makes it easy for subscribers to choose exactly what email marketing they wish to receive, what email address to use and even update their contact information. This also makes it easy so the Infusionsoft user can set-and-forget about their opt-out link and know that it’s giving their subscribers the best option possible to keep list fresh.

Another benefit from doing it this way is you can adjust your unsubscribe and opt-out message on the bottom of your emails so it empowers recipients to elect to remove themselves from one (or more) follow-up sequences without opting out from your database.  One example you might want to try is, “Unsubscribe or update your email delivery preferences.” Another idea might to say “Stop receiving these types of emails” link and provide an option to allow people to stop getting messages from a lead-generation piece.

If you need help setting this up, we have a great article in our Help Center that guides you on customizing opt-out links within Infusionsoft.

While this isn’t new by any means, I thought it was a good idea to clear up this confusion and show you how it’s done.  Thanks to Mari Smith and others for asking us about this on our Twitter. If you have any questions, to shoot us a Tweet or post a note on our Wall.

[Image credit: peggydavis66]

This post Customize Your Unsubscribe Links in Infusionsoft was first published on the Big Ideas Blog.