Constant Contact Email Marketing

What to Say, and How to Say It –  Using words and images to craft your email messages.

 

Let me take just a minute to explain what Constant Contact is for those that may not be familiar.
Constant Contact is a do-it-yourself online marketing system. You can use it to create and manage campaigns. The company is best known for its email marketing tools. It’s easy to create and send mass email, like newsletters or announcements and updates. You can run special promotions or offers; you can build online surveys and polls to gather feedback; and you can promote and manage your events using Constant Contact with registration tools, payment acceptance, invitations– all in one place.

All of this is all built on top of a really good contact database, so that you can load all of your contacts, your customers, stakeholders, volunteers, staff, your board – whatever lists you are keeping in various spreadsheets or in your Outlook, Gmail or Yahoo folders can be loaded and organized easily in Constant Contact so that your people and your marketing campaigns are all together in one spot. Oh, and it costs most people between $20 – $75 a month to manage all of it. (Ready for a free 60 day trial? No credit card needed to take it out for a spin CLICK to sign up)

I want to give you a simple definition, or a framework, for what marketing really is.

You already know, generally, what it is – but when I say the word marketing, I mean something very specific and it’s important that we are on the same page.   My definition of marketing has three simple parts –

• 1. you define an audience: a group of people that you want to target.
• 2. You reach out to them with a message that is specific to that audience.  And
• 3. you elicit a physical and measurable response – which are the results that you want (and need) your business to get.

What kinds of results are we talking about?

These are examples of physical and measurable responses:

These actions represent a decision by a person to do something in response to what you put out there. It’s not a mechanical response, it is human. And it must be measurable.

But keep in mind that your overall goals come back to why you’re in business or what’s going to keep you in business……generating revenue or donations.  If the responses you’re getting don’t lead in some way directly to the bottom line, then you should evaluate why you’re driving those types of responses.

Today, we are going to talk about the content you can share – whether it’s written or images – can drive the responses you need to help your business or organization.

Content is currency on the internet (and it works offline, too!)

When it comes to content, you have an advantage over big businesses and organizations, because you can use the tools and tips we’ll talk about today to have a real conversation with your customers, clients, members and volunteers. You can also use their feedback and questions to come up with new content.

• Content is what people search for, consume and share. It’s what they pay attention to.
• Through the content you email to your audience, you can become a source that your customers, clients, members and volunteers know, like and trust.
•  As we progress through this presentation, think about the conversations you have with your customers or clients. What kind of questions do they ask you? How can you use those questions and conversations to create a great email?

Now, let’s tackle the big question: What kind of content should you use in your email?

Email content basically boils down to a picture, a paragraph and a call to action.

Email content is made up of the words, images and videos you use in your email campaigns that is designed to attract, convert and retain an audience. When you’re sending out an email to the people on your contact list, you want to make sure it is relevant and interesting and includes a clear call to action – meaning the response you’re seeking to solicit from your readers, whether that’s buying a product, taking your advice, signing up for services, referring you to friends, donating to your nonprofit, answering your survey, or whatever action you’re hoping they take. You can make that action easily accessible by including links to whatever you want your audience to do.

Here’s an example of an email from a company called Great Vacation Retreats. (see above) At the top of the message, they have a great picture that prominently features their brand; a text block that announces their deal, a paragraph that describes it, and a link, which is a call to action for readers to view their available vacation rentals. Even if they didn’t list the individual rentals in the email, they’d have more than enough information that communicates the action they want their audience to take – to book a rental in Kauai.

And as a bonus, the approach that Great Vacation Retreats took with this email is inherently mobile-friendly – it’s a single column template, there’s not too much text, and it’s not too long. This email will look great, no matter where the reader opens it – on mobile or on their desktop.

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.  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.

 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: https://www.marketingsherpa.com/article/chart/why-subscribers-flag-email-as-spam

Here’s what we’re going to talk about today.

1. First, we’ll talk about creating content – how will you come up with ideas for the words, images and calls to action you will use in your email marketing.
2.  We will talk about curating content – how to find and share content from outside sources that you can use in your marketing.
3. We’ll talk about extending your reach beyond your email by using social media.
4. And then we will talk about how you can get started developing content ideas for your own organization.

First, let’s talk about content you create.

What do you write about in your emails? This is one of the biggest questions, and the biggest hurdles, people encounter when they set out to create an email. The good news is that you know your organization better than anyone, and there’s a world of ideas out there for you!

• First, and above all else, you write about what you know that they don’t know. This is an opportunity to share your knowledge and raise your profile as an interesting organization and an expert in your field.
• Here are some ideas of types of content you can share with your audience! Take a minute to look at what’s on the screen right now, and be thinking of ways you can explore these ideas with content about your business.

• Let’s talk about a few of them:
• OFFERINGS: If you have a new product, you can write a paragraph describing what it does, and use photos or video to share a quick product demonstration or tutorial. If you have an event coming up, send out all the details in a short email, including a link to register the event.
• UPDATES: Do you have a new location? Have you hired a new employee, or do you have a well-known employee retiring? Send out a biography and a photo to your customers and clients. Updates can go out in the form of newsletters, or even press releases. Perhaps you’re a nonprofit, and you’ve received a big grant. That’s a perfect reason to send out an email update! Did you have a recent event? Send out a survey asking recipients how it was, or send an email to share photos of the event.
• EDUCATION: You are an expert in your field. Write about what you know that your audience doesn’t. This is your opportunity to weigh in with your perspective on a study or a news story. If you sell a product, you can make a video that demonstrates how to use it. You can also share your know-how. Let’s say you own a landscaping company. You can send out an email early in the spring and lay out a good planting schedule for your clients.
• ENTERTAINMENT: Don’t be afraid to show your fun side! Have you seen a funny YouTube video that relates to your field? Or have you heard an interesting, funny or inspiring quote you want to share? Maybe you and your employees have made a cool behind-the-scenes video – that is something that could really show off your environment and personality.

Seasonal and Holiday updates work well.  Is there a way you can incorporate a holiday or seasonal message? Let’s say you own a bed and breakfast at the beach – in the dead of winter, send a photo of your property under warm sunshine and ask your customers to think about planning their summer getaway. Or maybe you work in tax preparation – Thanksgiving could be a great time to let your clients know how to account for any charitable giving so they’re ready for tax season in the new year.

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.

• 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.

We did a study of our customers and found that the best practice is to limit yourself to 20 lines of text and  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: https://news.constantcontact.com/research/constant-contact-data-reveals-direct-correlation-between-email-campaign-effectiveness-and-n

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 don’t forget that more than half of your audience is reading email on a mobile device…who is going to scroll through 14 articles on their phone?

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: https://news.constantcontact.com/research/constant-contact-data-reveals-direct-correlation-between-email-campaign-effectiveness-and-n

Even if the idea of creating content still feels daunting, remember – keeping your messages short and focused is actually much better than putting tons of information into one email.

• You can use outlines to help you further focus your ideas and organize the sections of your email: Any text you’ll write yourself, any photos or videos you want to use, and any content from outside sources that you want to share – we’ll talk about content curation in a few minutes.
•  Jot down a list of topics that come up in conversations with your customers, members, clients, volunteers or donors, and use those to spark ideas for email campaigns. If you get five questions from your clients, that’s five separate email topics you can build on!
•  Show your expertise in your field – become a knowledgeable resource for your audience, and they will look forward to emails from you.

 And make your messages reflect your brand – this is easy to do with email tools like Constant Contact. We won’t get into email design today, but you can visit our website for great design tips and tricks to make your emails look visually fantastic.

Let’s talk about turning your interactions with your customers, clients, members, supporters and volunteers into content for your email.

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? 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.

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.

Check out the email on the right (shown above) – the colors and graphics make the message eye-catching and more professional-looking than the one on the left.

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 source:  https://www.adweek.com/socialtimes/visual-social-media-marketing/488380?red=at

67% stat source: https://www.mdgadvertising.com/blog/its-all-about-the-images-infographic/

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.

When you’re using images in your marketing, you’re faced with the task of creating that content, deciding what images are best, and determining their context and the story around them. That’s a lot to think about, and you’re probably wondering where to begin. Here’s some direction.

• Images can be created around:
• Your business
• Your environment and what’s around you
• Your expertise
• Themes that you decide your audience will love

You don’t have to have a product to sell to include visual content in your emails! If you have a new employee, feature their photo with a caption explaining who they are and what they’ll bring to your business. If you’re a nonprofit, share photos of a recent event, or a graphic showing the progress of a fundraising campaign.

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!

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: https://www.bigstockphoto.com
• StockVault.net https://www.stockvault.net/
• FreeImages.com https://www.freeimages.com/
• FreeDigitalPhotos.net https://www.freedigitalphotos.net/

Video is a powerful way to engage with your audience. People prefer watching a video to reading long web pages full of text.

• When using video, make sure you mention in your subject line that your email includes a video, so your readers know about it right away.
•  Consumers prefer watching a video to reading long text articles. In fact, 50% of people are more likely to read emails that include a video.
• But make sure the length of your video is within 90 seconds– that’s the point at which 58% of viewers will stop watching.
• You can make video work for your business – use it to show product demos, customer testimonials, promotional material or share user-generated content.

We’re talking about email today, but video is becoming very prominent on social media – 84% of consumers have liked videos from companies in their social media news feeds. If you email a video link, you can also repurpose it on your social media platforms for that audience to watch and share.

The example here is a great way to use video – The Pajama Program sent this email out with a link to a video thanking their donors.

Just remember to keep videos short – we’ve said it a few times already, but your audience is very busy. Videos should be about 90 seconds or less.

Make sure you’re using video in a careful, deliberate way. If you have some specific action that you want your readers to take – for example, to register for an event – you should choose text and pictures, rather than video. Using a video in that case will lessen the likelihood that your readers will take the action, because they will click on the video and be taken over to YouTube.

• Source:  Consumers are 50% more likely to read emails that include video, Animoto, the 2015 Video  https://www.adweek.com/socialtimes/infographic-animoto-online-video-smbs/619908
• Source: Length (average viewing is 90 seconds) https://www.mediabistro.com/alltwitter/digital-marketing-stats_b48214
• Source: 84% have liked videos in their feeds: https://www.adweek.com/socialtimes/infographic-animoto-online-video-smbs/619908

Now, let’s talk about curating content – finding and distributing content that is relevant, educational, entertaining and newsworthy.

At this point, you might be feeling overwhelmed, thinking you have to think up infinite ideas to create content from scratch. That’s not the case at all! We know you don’t have any time to spare in the operation of  your small organization. The great news is that you can curate content – meaning that you can find content created by others and share it with your email contacts.

Think about a curator at an art museum. That person uses their expertise to collect and present artwork from many different sources and arrange them in a way that’s educational and organized – they’re not responsible for painting every canvas!

Your curated content could be a link to a news article related to your organization, with a brief paragraph including your perspective.  The example on your screen is of a cycling company sharing their favorite headlines in cycling news for a weekly newsletter. All they had to do was write a brief introduction and then link to the articles.

Your audience will come to rely on you as an expert in your field. Let’s say you run an animal shelter, and you come across an article about coyotes in your area. You can introduce that link by giving some helpful tips for pet owners to keep their dogs and cats safe.

Or maybe you own a restaurant, and a new food trend has been talked about in the national media – you can link to a video from a TV station and tell your contacts how you’ve added some trendy items to your menu.

There are lots of different places online where you can find content to share through your emails.

• Read your local and regional news – maybe you’ve been mentioned, or maybe you have something to say about goings-on in your community. A lot of news sites offer their recent content for free. Just make sure that if you link to content on a news site, it’s not something you need a subscription to read.
• You can read blogs related to your field – one way to easily gather lots of blog posts is through Feedly – a service that aggregates blogs from all over. You can customize a Feedly account by selecting the areas you’re interested in reading about. It’s a great way to find content you’ll share with your contacts.
• You should follow others on social media! This is a world of almost infinite possibilities. Let’s go back to that animal shelter example – they would want to follow other shelters, the ASPCA, pet retailers and other animal advocacy groups, and share content from those sources.
•  Set up Google Alerts – Google will aggregate pages that mention a phrase you’ve created an alert for. You should definitely set one using your organization’s name to keep an eye on what people are saying about you online.
• Subscribe to other email lists! This is a great way to get ideas for content and see what other people are sharing.
•  And finally, you should always provide links to the original source, and let people know why you’re sharing the content.

Some people have asked whether it’s plagiarism to share content by other people – and the answer is definitely not! As long as you cite your source, you can share what’s publicly available. You’re actually helping the source broaden their audience by sharing their content with your audience. The difference between sharing and plagiarism is citing the source. If you were to copy and paste someone’s blog post, and pass it off as your own without mentioning the source, you’d be plagiarizing. Always give credit where credit is due!

One way to get creative and great content to easily share via email, and on social media, is to have others create it for you!

You can do that through sharing behind-the-scenes videos or photos, like this one from The Avenue Gallery, showing one of its employees loading a painting to be transported.

You can also use client or customer testimonials. There are a few ways you can approach these – you can ask a client to share their story on a video, or write a paragraph about their experience. Or, if you have a place on your website for reviews, you can pull content right from those reviews!

You can also compile user-generated content. This Facebook post from the Wekiva Falls RV park shares photos from a customer who documented her recent visit. One way to inspire user-generated content is to create a hashtag – a hashtag is a word or phrase beginning with a pound sign, or hash sign, that creates a link connecting all of the posts using that hashtag on a particular social network. You can create your own hashtag by coming up with a unique word or phrase, or even your brand name: Make sure you keep it short, and don’t use any spaces or punctuation – just letters and numbers. For example, here at Constant Contact, our employees use #CTCTlife to share pictures and videos of our company culture. Once you’ve created a hashtag, ask your customers, clients, members, employees and volunteers to create social media posts with that hashtag – then you can select your favorites to share!

Now we’re going to talk about how you can extend your reach beyond your email audience.

Once you’ve decided what content you’re going to use in your communications, it’s time to share it! This way, you extend your reach as much as possible. Using email is one way to share content, but you can also share it through social media. Email marketing tools like Constant Contact make it easy for you to share your content on different social platforms, and also for your audience to share your content across THEIR social platforms.

When you’re thinking of content to use on social media, you don’t have to reinvent the wheel! You can use the content you’ve already sent in your email, and break it into smaller pieces of social media content.

Don’t worry – this isn’t going to translate into a lot of extra work for you.  You’re already building out content for the future as you focus on your emails.

For example, let’s say you’re a marketing consultant for businesses that run a lot of events, and you’ve sent an email to your those clients with four tips about selling more tickets for their events.  We’ll call that your original email. Next let’s quickly think of a few ways to extend the content by expanding on each tip as its very own social media post!

•  The tip on sending your invitations in advance could be expanded to a Facebook post about when to send your event invitations.
• Hanging flyers in your store could be turned into a great info-graphic on effective flyer design that you share across all your social networks.
• Advice to post events on Facebook could expand to a blog post on promoting events on Facebook, which you can share across all your social networks.
• And a tip about special pricing for VIPS could be repurposed into five Tweets (spread across a week) about the things VIPs want.

Here is an example of a company, the Grafton Inn in Vermont, repurposing content.  1) They used this image of a porch swing in their email, which announced summer activities at the inn. 2) They repurposed the photo on Facebook to show their weekly schedule. 3)  And on Instagram, they shared it with their followers with a cute caption.  (see below)

You can do the same thing. Take a tip, a quote, an image or anything that your audience will find interesting and share it on whatever social networks you use.

Now, do keep a few things in mind. First: Change the content a little bit for each network. And I’m not just talking about its size. Change the caption or text in the post to reflect the style, etiquette and voice for each network. Don’t post exactly the same thing in each place.

Next: Don’t worry about being repetitive. People are following you because they like you. They might miss your post on Facebook, but catch it later on Pinterest. Or they might follow you on Pinterest and not Facebook, so you need to make sure you’re covering all the places people might be seeing your content.

Finally: While we’re talking about using multiple social networks, keep in mind that you don’t have to use all of them for your business. Just choose the ones that are right for you and your audience. It’s better to focus on a couple of social networks and do a good job with them than to have a bunch that you don’t have time for and manage poorly.

When it comes to extending your reach, you want to make sure that you’re meeting your audience where they are. Email is a great place to start, but you can reach more people by sharing your email content on all of your social media platforms. Think about it this way – there is probably some overlap between your email contact list and your followers on social media, but those groups are not likely to be identical. Also, what your followers do on social media, THEIR followers see. If someone likes or comments on your post on Facebook, all of their friends will see that, and see your name.

Marketing on social media tends to be less expensive than traditional advertising. If cost is an issue, you’ll get more return on your time, money and energy by going first through email and subsequently through Facebook, LinkedIn, Twitter, etc.  Each has its own typical audience and decision process. You want to start on the social networks you already use, and then begin to move to where your customers and contacts are so that you can leverage the existing network you have on those sites and begin to generate some social visibility along the way.

To be clear, email IS part of social media.

And if you’re doing it right, keeping your messages short, making the action or response obvious and simple and providing access, information and real value, then you will grow your business.

The best part of this is, if you’re a Constant Contact customer, we make sharing your emails on social media really easy!

•  If you are using Constant Contact, add the Share Bar to the top of your emails – this allows your readers to post a link to your email on their social media profiles
• And add social media buttons that link to your business’ social media profiles. The buttons are a nice visual reminder for them to click and follow you online.
• Remind your audience to share your promotions – ask them to Like them on Facebook, retweet on Twitter or pin on Pinterest

Your audience has a lot of influence via word of mouth, and you can get your promotions in front of more people – their friends and family – if they help spread the word for you

SOURCE: Visualistan, Latest Social Media Statistics Infographic https://www.visualistan.com/2015/04/latest-social-media-statistics-infographic.html  

SOURCE: VPNMentor https://www.vpnmentor.com/blog/vital-internet-trends/

Constant Contact allows you to extend the reach of your emails by using the Social Share tool.

• Social Share offers a quick and easy way to share an email on Facebook, Twitter and LinkedIn with suggested post messages, images, and the best times to schedule posts based on when your social audience is most active. It also makes it easy to plan social posts for an email with a monthly calendar.

Now, let’s talk about the next steps you can take.

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, use links to direct your audience where you want them to go, and make your messages relevant, short and focused, with the call to action very clear.

It can be very helpful to keep a calendar to schedule emails and social media posts ahead of time. Keep that running list of topics that come up in your organization, and plan out your publishing schedule in whatever way that works best for you. There are no hard and fast rules about how you should schedule – just make sure whatever you do is realistic for you to follow, whether you use an Outlook calendar, a Google Doc, a notes app on your mobile device, or a hand-written schedule, or anything else that keeps you organized!

If you’re using an email marketing service like Constant Contact, you can track which types of content get the most clicks and opens, and use that information as a guide for future emails.

You can also, from time to time, send out a survey asking your audience what types of content they’d prefer to receive from you.

In the beginning of this presentation, I said that email content boils down to a picture, a paragraph and a call to action. You can use this as a really basic outline to create content for any subject you think of.

• Take the last question you answered for a customer, client, member, donor or volunteer, and develop an email around it using a picture, a paragraph and a call to action.

Let’s go back to our first example, about the vacations in Hawaii, and say our customer question is: “What offers are available for renting in Kauai?”

•  First, the picture:  Remember – 90% of information absorbed by the brain is visual, so how can you illustrate the subject to catch your reader’s attention? Don’t forget, you can use stock photography, and you don’t need to be selling a product to use visuals. This photo of a beautiful seaside cliff in Hawaii grabs the reader and makes her want to learn more about seeing it in person.
•  Next: What is it that you need to write? Respond to that last question you were asked. Your paragraph can be just a few words introducing a link, a longer explanation about the subject, or tips to answer the question in a few steps. In the example, the paragraph explains that rentals are available, and that every third night is free.
•  Finally, you need a call to action: What do you want your audience to DO in reaction to your email? Come to your business for a consultation, buy a product, register for an event, or donate… make your call to action prominent and clear. Here, the call to action is a link, where readers can go to the vacation company’s website and see – then hopefully reserve – the available rentals in Kauai.

Let’s go over a few more examples:

B2C: Let’s say I own a wine shop, and I’m getting a lot of questions about what foods to prepare with rose wine. I can take a photo of a beautiful glass of rose with a meal, or of a display in my store. After that, I can write 5 tips for pairing different foods with rose wines (I can even include links to recipes if I’m feeling really crafty), and finally, as my call to action, I can include a coupon for 20% off selected types of rose.

B2B: I own a marketing company. One of my clients has asked me about how often she should be posting to Facebook, Pinterest, Instagram and Twitter.  I can use a word image [a picture with words laid over it] to easily list the different platforms and the best practices for frequency, or I could use a cool infographic with that information. That’s my image. Then, I could write a few sentences explaining that I’ve written a blog on the subject, and include a link to the blog post – that is my paragraph AND my call to action!

Nonprofit: I’m the president of a local conservation group and a resident has written to ask about the progress of a river cleanup project my group is working on. I can include before and after photos of an area that was cleaned up, a paragraph describing what is going to happen next, and links for my audience to donate or volunteer – my calls to action.

From there, you can repurpose the email content by breaking the subjects down even further into posts onto the social media platforms!

• Facebook/DannaCrawford1
• Twitter/DannaCrawford

Watch the replay :

 

. Source: The above contact is provided by Constant Contact. I’m using as an authorized local expert trained by Constant Contact.  Feel free to contact me should you have any questions. If you are already a user of Constant Contact and are not part of the PowerSellingMom.com network, send me an email saying : Yes, Danna Crawford, I want to be a part of the PowerSellingMom Constant Contact network. Include your Constant Contact user ID and email. Send to: DannaCrawford@gmail.com

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Creating and Delivering Offers that Work!

Welcome – Thank you for joining me – My name is Danna Crawford and I’m also known as Power Selling Mom – quick info about me … I’m an authorized local expert with Constant Contact. I’ve been using their service since 2006 and shortly before that I became a Certified business consultant, trained by eBay after being an active seller on the site since 1997 – With my experience of teaching eBay classes and workshops in partnership with the United States Postal Service, Constant Contact contacted me to go through their certification program and now I do webinars and local workshops on the topic of social media and email marketing.

Next I became the Development Director for our local Foodbank after a meeting with the board while I was teaching them about fundraising using Constant Contact and eBay, next thing you know they offered me a part time job that I couldn’t resist since I’m passionate about the Cause of feeding America – So those are the three hats I wear, Constant Contact, eBay and the Food bank! You can learn more about me by visiting my website at PowerSellingMom.com or just google my name “Danna Crawford”. NOW, enough about me, lets talk about YOU and how you can become a marketer!

Let me take just a minute to explain what Constant Contact is for those who may not be familiar.
Constant Contact is a do-it-yourself online marketing system. You can use it to be a marketer for your own small business or organization. The company is best known for its email marketing tools. It’s easy to create and send mass email, like newsletters or announcements and updates.

You can run special promotions or offers; you can build online surveys and polls to gather feedback; and you can promote and manage your events using Constant Contact with registration tools, payment acceptance and invitations – all in one place.

NOTE: All of this information is provided to me by Constant Contact as an Authorized local expert I’m happy to share these transcripts with you.

You can use all the tools and tips we’ll discuss today in your own small business or nonprofit marketing. You can be a marketer. All it takes is Constant Contact.

Before we jump into the content of today’s webinar, I want to give you a simple definition, or a framework, for what marketing really is.
You already know, generally, what it is – but when I say the word marketing, I mean something very specific and it’s important that we are on the same page.   My definition of marketing has three parts:

1. First, you define an audience: a group of people that you want to target.
2. Second, you reach out to them with a message that is specific to that audience.
3. And third, you elicit a physical and measurable response – which are the results that you want (and need) your business to get.

What kind of results are we talking about?

These are examples of physical and measurable responses. These actions represent a decision by a person to do something in response to what you put out there. It’s not a mechanical response, it is human. And it must be measurable.

But keep in mind that your overall goals come back to why you’re in business or what’s going to keep you in business……generating revenue or donations.  If the responses you’re getting don’t lead in some way directly to the bottom line, then you should evaluate why you’re seeking those types of responses.

Offering promotions – and soliciting for donations – are all ways to keep your organization in business, because, when they’re planned well, they will increase revenue. They are great ways to reward and engage current customers, clients and members – to bring in repeat business – and to attract new clientele.

A great place to start with generating revenue and donations is with email marketing. When it comes to offers and promotions, email marketing is hard to beat. A huge majority of U.S. adults prefer to receive promotional emails from companies they do business with. And about 7 out of 10 U.S. adults have made purchases influenced by a company’s email. When it comes to communicating your offer, it is a very influential medium.

 91% U.S. adults like to receive promotional emails from companies with which they do business. That means that your loyal, frequent customers want to hear about your promotions. Source: Marketing Sherpa- survey of consumer attitudes Source: Convince and Convert

Today, we will be walking through the steps for an effective promotion, or offer, for your small business or nonprofit.

• We’re going to start by talking about identifying your marketing goals and creating a strategy for your offer or promotion.
• Next, we’ll talk about how you can determine the best type of offer to help you reach your marketing goal.
• Then, we’ll go over the practical steps for setting up and delivering a campaign, including email marketing and social media.
• And we’ll end by talking about the next steps you can take after your promotion.

Now, let’s start off by identifying the plan for your promotion – first, by identifying your marketing goal, and then understanding how you’ll design your offer to achieve your goal.

When identifying your marketing goal, you want to keep it to one objective – the one thing you want to accomplish –  otherwise, you can cause confusion for yourself and your audience. It might be:

• Reaching new customers or clients
• Driving repeat business from current customers/increasing customer loyalty
• Motivating donors and advocates to take that next step by giving or spreading word of mouth about your cause
• Or increasing your membership or subscriber numbers.

Once you know your marketing goal, you can focus your marketing efforts on achieving it.

And when you’re thinking about what to offer during your promotion, you shouldn’t just be thinking only about what’s good for you and your business. You need to think about what your customers and supporters want!

As a small business or nonprofit, you have an advantage over larger organizations, in that you can have a more direct and ongoing conversation with your customers. These conversations can help guide you in planning your offer, because you’ll know the types of promotions that your audience will respond to.

Your offers and promotions should let your customers know that you value their business. That means giving them a deal on items or services that they already want. Don’t make your promotion about clearing out unwanted merchandise or promoting underused services. Instead, offer things that are already in-demand.

If you’re a nonprofit, you want to use events like special offers or promotions to nurture your relationships with donors and supporters, and show that you appreciate their contributions. You can do this by offering discounted membership, or incentives for giving, such as being listed as a sponsor for a program or event.

And regardless of whether you’re a for- or nonprofit organization, the promotions you offer should be desirable and help you attract new customers or supporters. Create a buzz to help you grow your organization!

Because email is such a powerful way to communicate, it’s a great place to start with your promotion. And when you’re sending out an email promotion, you have a lot of different options. You should consider sending separate emails specifically about your promotions, but also make sure you’re mentioning them in any regular email newsletters you send, as well as all of your social networks, on your website, and in your physical location if you have one – anywhere you interact with your customers and clients.

What kinds of promotions are best to include in your emails?

• You can send a coupon or offer a discount
• Free shipping – This is an example from Bisque Imports, a business that sells ceramics and wholesale art supplies offering free shipping on orders of $100 or more. Their email goes the extra mile with some helpful tutorials on using some new products.
• Suggest products or services, as Bisque Imports does.
• Encourage customers to buy directly from your website – Door County Coffee celebrated the launch of its new website by offering email subscribers a code to get 25% off if they bought online.
• If you’re a nonprofit and are running a donation drive, make your email readers aware
• You can also offer other promotions that increase awareness of your nonprofit organization, by hosting events and asking people to register or become sponsors.
• And you can use email to increase membership for a nonprofit or if you’re a retail organization and have a loyalty program, you can build it through email.

When you’re sending an email, you need to grab people’s attention! Just like you, your audience is busy, and when they open any email, they are subconsciously asking themselves: Why should I care about this? So when you create an email campaign about your promotions, make sure you’re answering that question.  You need to tell them what’s in it for them and get their attention.

• Think about your subject line. Use a strong subject line that tells them the most important information in this email. More than 1/3 of people open an email based on the subject line alone. Keep the deal prominent.

You should also make it clear to your readers what your offer is. When they know there’s something in this email that benefits them, that answers the question, “Why should I care?”, then they’ll be more likely to act on your offer. Make sure the top content of your email also answers this question.

One really important thing to take into account is your timing – we’ll talk more about this later, but you want to give people enough advance time to know about your offer (but not too much that they might forget about it!) and even a reminder just before or during the offer to keep it top of mind. Make sure you appeal to your audience’s fear of missing out J

Now, a lot of the words we use in promotions, like “free” and “now” can actually trigger email spam filters. Other things that set off the spam alarm are the use of all capital letters and excessive punctuation or special characters. If you need a guide on what NOT to do, take a peak into the junk or spam folder of your own email account!  There is a balance to this – you may in fact be offering a free item, or a buy-one-get-one-free offer, so make sure your subject line doesn’t have words in all capital letters or excessive punctuation. Be specific about your offer with a strong subject line. 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.  Source: 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) 51% of emails are now opened on mobile (Litmus, January 2014) 

And always make sure you’re sharing your promotions everywhere your audience is, including on social media

• Share your email on your social media profiles
• Post updates about your offers everywhere you can
• Share product photos, and include details about the deal in the caption, as Taza Chocolate does in this example from Facebook.
• Ask for donations if you’re a nonprofit. The Rescued Pets Movement, a nonprofit that uses both email and social media to get the word out about its cause, uses the “donate” tab on Facebook, so their supporters can contribute without leaving the social network where they spend a ton of time.
• You can also use social media to take the pulse of your audience – ask questions to spark conversation. Which of your products or programs do they like best? What do they want to see more of? These kinds of conversations can help you plan future promotions and keep your offers relevant.

Now, some advice about your limitations – the “fine print” of your offer.

You are the expert on your business. When you’re considering the type of promotion or offer you are going to do, make sure you are prepared to deliver. If you only have one staff member, and your offer requires people to call in, you may need to get volunteers or even hire temps to help answer phones, which could chip into your bottom line – and you also need to make sure you have the technology to handle an influx of calls!

Make sure you have the inventory available to fulfill orders, and that your promotion is ultimately a benefit to you – you don’t want to offer such a deep discount that it negatively affects your bottom line. Not every discount has to be 50% off in order to drive sales. But make sure you’re offering things that your customers want, and you’re not just trying to clear out products that haven’t sold in the past.

You should also structure the deal so that you can continue with your normal business and increase revenue. If your regular clients can’t make appointments with you because all of your resources are tied up in the promotion, it could have a negative effect.

For nonprofits, make sure you have the staffing/volunteers to handle donation drives and plan special events with the goal of making money (for example, don’t host a black-tie dinner at a fancy hotel if you don’t think you’ll raise enough to cover costs and benefit the organization). With events, consider asking for in-kind donations, such as donated event space, catering or equipment, to help offset the costs.

You should also carefully plan out your restrictions, by explicitly stating conditions like the expiration date of your offer, or a limit of purchases per customer. If you leave loopholes, such as “25% off through Sunday,” without specifying WHICH Sunday, you could end up locked into a promotion you could only afford to run for a finite time.

You should ALWAYS check your communications for clarity and typos before you send anything out, but it’s especially important to your organization when you’re thinking about offers and promotions. Before you send out any email offer or promotion on social media, send it to yourself or a person you trust to go over the fine print and make sure it’s clear, not open to any different interpretations! And make sure all of your links work. You don’t want to send someone to an error page on your website when they’re trying to give you money!

I know this sounds like a daunting thing to consider, but there is a positive side to making sure you’re working within your own limitations. This is also a way you can give a sense of exclusivity to your offer, by giving your audience a sense of urgency – for example, say there are “Only 200 sale items in stock,” or “Just 50 tickets left,” or “5 more days to donate and receive a free gift,” and your audience will know they need to act right away.

Now that you have a marketing goal, and an idea of your promotion, it’s time to decide what form your offer will take.

Once you decide the goal of your offer, you have to determine the kind of offer you will make. These are some ideas that you can use, depending on the goal you set. We’ll go through each type of offer in detail.

• B2B Services – If your business is a B2B – business to business – and you sell to other businesses, consider offering your expertise. If you’re a marketer, that might be an offer of a free service, like a review of your client’s email newsletters, when they purchase a consultation at full price. You could offer a regular discount on services. Or bundle an offer – provide something extra for a lower rate.
• Events -With events, consider offering an early-bird registration discount, buy-one-get-one tickets, or limited time offers for upgrades, like special seating, parking or admission.
• Downloads -Downloadable content gives your audience some inside tips or information – you can use your expertise to provide a benefit for your customers. These can include tips, a study or guide related to your business or cause, an e-book, advice on what to do or not do while using a product or service, or any exclusive content you may have.
• Discounts -With discounts you can provide a percentage or dollar off through a limited time period, a buy-one-get-one-free promotion, or a gift with purchase. You can also offer coupons – Constant Contact allows users to create a trackable coupon that will tell you who redeemed your offer – making it easier to market to that specific audience in the future.
• Hints and Tips – Educational information is a great offer for customers – people love how-to information and insider tips. Consider giving them tips or steps to solve a problem. Give them insights on the latest trends in your industry. Or provide your expertise or best practices for how to use or maintain your products or services.

• Support A Cause – Nonprofits rely on support from donors and volunteers throughout the year – and if you’re a nonprofit, you can use email marketing to help plan events and donation drives! You could give away exclusive access to an event in exchange for volunteer hours or donations. Or you can offer a sponsorship listing for donors who give a certain amount of money. You can also think about using limited time offers – for example, if your revenue relies on membership, you can offer a “Join today and receive a discount” deal!

You should choose your offer based on what is most likely to get a response from your particular audience. When you ask your audience what they want (through surveys, social media or just chatting with them in person) and take a look at their behavior, you can find out what promotions they will respond to and you can target your offer to the audience that will act on it. When done correctly, promotions can be very effective. In fact, 76% of email subscribers have made purchases from an email marketing campaign.

If you haven’t heard of segmentation, it’s a marketing term, and it means dividing people into groups based on information like interests and demographics. You might already be segmenting by categorizing or grouping your contacts. It’s important because some promotions are not one-size-fits-all!

Knowing what your audience wants will help you to create relevant promotions– so you’re not wasting your time sending messages they’re not interested in. And if they’re not interested in what you’re sending, they might unsubscribe. Every group of people includes a variety of interests and demographics, so your audience is likely to be divided as well – you might have regular customers or donors, while others are more seasonal; and your new  customers or donors are not the same audience as your  VIPs, such as vendors, partners, board members and investors. 76% stat source: SmallBusiness.chron.com.

According to a Constant Contact and Chadwick Martin Bailey study, 56% of people who unsubscribed from a business or nonprofit list did so because the content was not relevant. Source: Social Quick Starter.

Now that we’ve looked at marketing goals and types of promotions, let’s talk about campaigns – how you will deliver your promotion or offer.

A campaign doesn’t have to be expensive, or elaborate. Simple is great. To run a campaign, you push content out, like an offer, a free download, a promotion, or fundraising drive, and then you pull a response. A physical, measurable response. You get your audience to react.  And a campaign can be sent by email and shared on social media.
Let’s talk about how to make a promotional campaign work.

Timing is important during promotions. When you are planning a promotion, make sure you are reminding your audience with enough advance notice about your promotion.

•  Keep key dates in mind, especially if you’re planning a promotion or event around a holiday or other special date, such as this promotion from Spoilt Rotten Beads.
• Also make sure you’re clear on shipping deadlines, if you’re offering something that needs to be ordered. Let people know when they need to purchase in order to get their product on a certain date, and also whether there are any express shipping rates.

Plan for exclusive offers and sales – give your customers enough time to take advantage of discounts and your great deals!

Your promotion should make it easy for customers to answer your call to action. The content you include should help them understand the offer and take action.

This email from Taza Chocolate definitely does that, with a prominent headline that announces a 15% off deal and a discount code. It also helps customers find featured products, with enticing photos of items they have for sale.

You should use images, and communicate through them. An email service provider like Constant Contact makes it easy to turn a picture into a clickable link, so if someone clicks on one of the chocolate products in the email, they’ll be taken right to Taza’s website, where they can buy the product.

And use your design wisely – the template used by No Rest for Bridget is perfect for a retail promotion. It’s well-organized, clean, and has room for a description and buttons that are linked to the products’ pages on the store’s website.

Side note – try to avoid giving too many choices in your campaign. No Rest for Bridget sells other things besides wrap dresses, but they chose to highlight this one item in order to direct attention to a certain product. These are supposed to be quick decisions to act upon. Too many choices will actually reduce the number of actions a person will 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 in the first place.

Video is a powerful way to engage with your audience. People prefer watching a video to reading long web pages full of text. You can make video work for your business and your promotions.

• The response to video is undeniable. Video content increases click-through rates by 300%. Make sure you mention the video in your subject line for readers to know about it right away.
• What should you feature in your video? For promotions, think about the call to action. If your promotion is about a product, you could consider a customer testimonial or a product demonstration. If you have a new service, show that service in action, as PrimeVet Animal Hospital did with this video. If you are hosting an event, consider featuring a video from a previous event.
• And don’t forget to promote your video. Whatever visual content you use in your email, you can repurpose on your social media. Share your videos on social media to reach even more people, and encourage audience engagement. PrimeVet Animal Hospital shared its doggy daycare video, with a caption describing its promotion, on Facebook. It was liked by 6 people and shared twice.

Source: Forrester study: video content increases click-through rates by 300%.

Ratings and reviews are another way for you to engage your audience, and they can tie nicely into promotions and offers.

• 88% of online shoppers use online reviews to help them to decide on purchases
• Don’t be afraid to ask for feedback! Encourage your audience to write reviews for you – ask them to do it, and include links to relevant places on your website to create those reviews
  
• Then, include reviews in your content – quote those reviews, link to them in your emails, post them on social media – and keep on top of what your most popular items and services are. These can help you plan future promotions, because your audience is telling you what works, and what doesn’t. If you do get a negative review, make sure you respond professionally, and, if possible, ask the reviewer to contact you offline so you can try to resolve the situation.

Example: Bottlewise: accessories for wine lovers.

(Source: BrightLocal “Local Consumer Review Survey 2014”) Source: Channel Adviser.

Encourage your audience to share your promotions by using social media tools.

• If you are using Constant Contact, add the Share Bar to the top of your emails – allows your readers to post a link to your email on their social media profiles
• Use Simple Share – you can create posts for multiple social media profiles in the Simple Share editor and publish to all of them at once.
• Use social media buttons to give your email audience an easy way to follow you on social media. Remind your audience to share your promotions – ask them to Like them on Facebook, retweet on Twitter or pin on Pinterest. Your audience has a lot of influence via word of mouth, and you can get your promotions in front of more people – their friends and family – if they help spread the word for you.

And don’t forget to make it mobile. More than half of all emails are opened on mobile devices, and so you need to consider mobile design when you send out your email. What this means for you is that your messages should be short and easy to read, and your call to action very clear. This is especially important for promotions and offers – if people have to scroll down, or can’t find the action you want them to take, they’ll ignore or delete your message, or worse – they’ll unsubscribe.

Here are some tips about designing for mobile.

First, avoid using too much text.  Think about it – do you want to read long and complex messages on your phone?  When you’re on the go?  No.  Which means neither do your customers or supporters.  Do you want to read a message like the one here? Probably not…

What you want is to see something more like this…the result of some basic considerations as you build your message:

• Start to re-think your content. Could it be condensed? Can a picture tell the story better?  Can you turn one newsletter into a series by cutting it into pieces?
• If you have longer, or more complex content you want to share, send an email with a clear call-to-action that directs people to where that information lives (on your website or blog).

Tip #2: avoid using multiple columns

Prior to the rise of mobile and mobile communication, emails had started to take on an almost website-like feel – with multiple columns and navigation elements similar to what you find on websites.  But with mobile communications driving content to be more focused, and also just to fit a more physically condensed space, multiple columns cause problems.

In this example, you can see how the mobile email client has tried to figure out what to do with the multiple columns…and it has squished them together in a less than optimal way. Using multiple columns can also result in some mobile email clients forcing the columns together into one single column, but that could render the email almost unreadable.

Tip #3: clear and easy calls to action

You want to make it easy for your readers to take an action, to do something that keeps them connected to you – buy a product, register for your event, sign up for services or donate to your nonprofit.  You can increase the odds of them taking that action by carefully thinking through the design of your emails.

Notice how the call to action is a button that is clearly separated from the rest of the content, both visually and spatially?  This will make it easier for the reader to click on it.  You should also consider making your images clickable links …they’re ready-made buttons waiting to be clicked!

A note here on buttons versus text links.  What you really want to do is make it easy for your readers to take the action you suggest.  Whether you give them large text links (with clear separation from surrounding text) or easy to tap buttons, make sure that there is no confusion about what action you want your reader to take: learn more? Register for an event?  Make a donation? Make it incredibly easy…

You should also be thinking about where that button or link takes them – will they be dumped into a screen that is hard to see on a mobile device?  That could derail the entire experience for them… So make sure you’re sending them to a website that is also mobile-friendly.

Tip #4: avoid using tiny fonts and hard to read colors

This one would seem to be pretty self-explanatory…but is no less important.

• here’s an example with 9-point font. Yes, a lot of text fits on the screen, but who can read it? People will need to pinch-to-zoom the text, and then have to scroll around.  They’re more likely to delete the message, as well as unsubscribe from future small-fonted emails. Some other problems with this example are the color choices – dark backgrounds make it difficult or impossible to read the text, and too many different fonts make the message look sloppy and cluttered.
• this one is a bit better, as the font starts to reach a minimum size that we’d recommend (11 points for body text and 22 points for headlines), and starts to bring greater contrast between the text and the background. But it’s still hard to read, because those sizes are the minimum. The colors are definitely better – a light background with a dark text is the best way to go!

Tip #5: use images carefully

Images are a great way to convey a message, tell a story…create a connection.  But if you don’t carefully consider how you’re going to use images, you may end up with some unintended consequences that lead, at best, to someone not reading your email.  At worst they’ll unsubscribe from your list and you won’t be able to communicate with them at all.  Here are some common challenges to consider:

• notice the red “X” on the screen? That’s there because some mobile email clients may not display images by default…so be sure that you’re using what is called “Alt Text,” or text that appears if the image doesn’t, to at least let people know what’s there.
• in this example, there’s a great picture – a photo of a yoga class – and when viewed on a desktop email client it may look great…but the problem is that on a mobile device, in order to see it, or the rest of the message, the reader will have to pinch and zoom out of the message. This large image has pushed the call to action all the way to the bottom of the message, making it less likely that the reader will actually click through.
• Be aware of where or how an image may appear. You may need to resize images as you build your email (a lot of email marketing tools have simple, built in image-editing capabilities).

Before you send any message out to your customers or supporters, TEST THE EMAIL BY SENDING IT TO YOURSELF!!  And then view it with your readers in mind…and make changes accordingly.  A few extra minutes of testing can save you from a lot of headaches later!

Now, let’s talk about the next steps you can take to schedule and follow through on your promotion.

Any time you set out to create a special offer or promotion, there are three things you should know. Let’s review them now:

1. Know your goal – choose one objective for your promotion – too many will cause confusion for your customers and yourself
2. What’s the offer? You have a lot you could choose from – coupons, discounts, gift with purchase, etc. – make it a clear and compelling offer for your customers.
3.  And know when to send – In order for your promotion or offer to get the best response and success, you need to understand the time and day that your audience is the most likely to take action on your messages. Let’s talk about that now.

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 offers, 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.

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 three equal groups – in this case, each group would have 100 people. You will use the same exact email message for the first part of the test.

• Then, select three days in the week. For example, you could test it on Monday, Wednesday or Friday.
• Then, send your email to the first group of 100 on Monday, the second on Wednesday, and the third on Friday. After that, you can 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.
• The next time you send an email, find the best time of day to send, using the same three audience lists.
• Using the best day from the first part of the test, select three times of the day that you want to test sending your email.
•  Send your email to the first 100 people in the morning, the next 100 at lunch time, and the final 100 in the late afternoon or early evening. 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!

Once you’ve identified the best time and day for your particular audience, you can begin to schedule your promotion. If you’re new to promotions, don’t feel like you have to do EVERYTHING on the screen. This is a pretty advanced plan, and it’s just an example, to give an idea of the types of things you can schedule during a promotion.

Keeping a calendar is a helpful way to stay organized during a promotion, or really any kind of marketing plan. You can use whatever works best for you, whether that’s a calendar on your smartphone or tablet, a Google doc, Outlook, a planner, or just a bunch of Post-It notes. Knowing when you’ll communicate with your audience and planning ahead is a big time-saver. To make it even easier on you, you can automate things…

We know you’re busy, and you might not want to be – or can’t be – on your computer all day. Save yourself some time by using some automation tools that do the work for you.

• Start simple by setting up welcome or update messages for your email marketing. They can be triggered to send to your list when someone signs up.
• Create your emails in advance and schedule them to send at the times and dates that you choose.
• You can also try autoresponders – these are emails that are sent out based on certain triggers, like holidays, birthdays or anniversaries.
• You can also schedule your social media posts – you don’t have to be sitting in front of your computer to post to your networks. Facebook has its own scheduling tool, but the other networks don’t.

• You can use tools like Hootsuite to schedule posts for Facebook, Twitter and LinkedIn. Hootsuite also has an Instagram feature that reminds you when to post content, and makes it easy to share your images.

It doesn’t take a lot of time to keep on track with social media. Try at least 20 uninterrupted minutes at a time, 3 to 5 times a week to make social media planning, posting and monitoring part of your regular schedule.

Once your promotion or offer is over, you’re not done. In fact, analyzing how you did is one of the most important parts.

If you’re not measuring, you are not marketing. Period.

You should know who is opening your marketing emails, when and how many times – what they clicked on – individually and generally. Know how many people respond to your surveys, sign up for your events, pay for your events or pay for a special deal, or make a donation if you’re a nonprofit.
Here is one of the reports in Constant Contact. Most reputable email services will give you similar reports

You have to know what is working and what isn’t – because you should do more of what is working and stop doing what isn’t. You have to measure in order to know what will help you grow.

In addition to measuring and analyzing your results to help you understand what worked, there are a few ways you can follow through on your promotion to complete a great experience for your customers.

• First, say “THANK YOU!” to show that you appreciate their support. It’s a personal touch that goes a long way – you can ask them to review their experience with you, send them a token of appreciation, such as a small discount or gift for donating, or simply say thanks.
• Send them your newsletter (after asking for their permission, of course!) You can incentivize and reward your loyal customers who sign up for your newsletter with email-exclusive deals in the future.
•  Add the people who acted on your offer to a special list which you can use to send targeted offers. You can do this in an email marketing system by using the reporting tools to find out who clicked on your offer or redeemed a trackable coupon.
•  Lastly – encourage the people who responded to your offer to join you on your social networks like Facebook and Twitter. No matter the email service provider you use, it’s important to stay in touch with customers after the promotion as a way to cultivate those new relationships, an easy way to do that is to have them share their experience on social networks.

Continuing to engage with your customers through email and social media will keep you informed about what they want from you, and will keep them loyal, repeat customers.

If you want to learn more about this or other marketing subjects, you can visit my “Email Marketing” section or “Social Media Marketing” to learn more. Sign up for a free trial of Constant Contact, and access tons of helpful marketing resources within the platform.

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Planning ahead to convert and keep customers.

First I must say “Thank you” for subscribing. No matter which path led you to this presentation it was mainly because you are either subscribed to my newsletter or you were registered for a recent webinar or event. OR it could be social media brought you here or even a search engine led you in. No matter how you arrived “Welcome” to this page!

Below you will find the original transcripts that were prepared by Constant Contact. I’ve edited and added a few of my own tips and tricks along the way.  At the bottom of this page you will find a recording of the replay. Feel free to bookmark and return as needed. It’s a never ending learning process in the social marketing world and the fact remains we all need it if we want to stay current in the marketplace.  Automating your email marketing is one of the best ways to simplify your life and give yourself some time back to your day.

Email Automation = Email Marketing

Everyone can be a marketer. All it takes is Constant Contact.  Constant Contact is a do-it-yourself online marketing system. You can use it to create and manage campaigns. The company is best known for its email marketing tools that make creating and sending mass emails easy. Constant Contact gives you easy access to a one-stop contact database so contacts can be loaded and organized easily in Constant Contact so that your people and your marketing campaigns are all together in one spot.

Oh, and it starts at just $20 a month to manage all of it.

That said, let’s jump into today’s presentation by talking a bit about marketing in general.

Let’s face it: marketing has changed and that’s a big reason why you’re here today in the first place.
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.

Look at this model above – its a typical sales funnel, using traditional marketing methods, things like print ads, radio, television, direct mail.– 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.

When you begin to use new marketing tools, like email marketing and social media, 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, 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. Automation is one way you can make this process of conversion more routine.

Now that you know that marketing is about getting results that you can measure…using automation tools to compliment your list growth activities helps get you closer to earning revenue or donations. Automation helps you steer new subscribers towards becoming donors or customers and generates action and information that you can measure.

It ensures that you’ll have an ongoing, timely response to customers who subscribe to your mailing list expecting to receive something in return like:

• Coupons
• information
• tips
• videos
• guides
• e-Books
• slides
• free gifts
• etc.

In a nutshell, automation tools help you get what you want, while delivering what they want.

Automation tools will help you get and convert new subscribers into paying customers or supportive donors faster – all behind the scenes FOR you while you focus on to maintaining a loyal, existing customer/supporter base with the contacts that you already have using the types mailings you already send.

We talked about ‘flipping the funnel’ by marketing to people who already know you. This type of customer nurturing is beneficial because these are the types of customers/supporters who have chosen to interact with your organization in hopes of getting something of value in return. If you fail to send them the information they are expecting to receive in return for sharing their email address with you, you run the risk of losing a potential customer.

Considering 91% of people check their email daily, you have quite the opportunity to reach your audience and connect with new subscribers who you’d like to convert to a paying customer. (Source: Litmus).

These days, people do their homework before making big purchases or donating. They research the organization first, look around at reviews others have made about it, and when they decide they want to stay in touch with the organization or learn more about it, they take that next step by subscribing to the mailing list. This mostly occurs through your website. In fact, 82% of consumers sign up to receive email on brand websites (Source: Blue Hornet Email)  and 72% sign up expecting to receive discounts (Source: Blue Hornet Email)  so if you can incentive someone to subscribe to your list, do so on your website and everywhere else you can because that is where they are going to go first to learn more about your organization.

So how do email automation campaigns come into play  here with your marketing strategy? Well consider that according to a recent study (Source: SalesForce.com) for every $1 spent on email marketing, the average return is $44.25!  If you want to establish a consistent plan to convert and keep subscribers coming back time and time again to your organization, email marketing is the way to do it. Automation makes it easier.

In the end, email marketing pays for itself time and time again. With a strong and ever-growing email subscriber list and timely automation series, you can grow your business or increase funds for your nonprofit.

Email marketing conversion rates are 3X higher than social media prospect-to-customer rates . Every new subscriber that you collect has the potential to become a paying customer or donor. (Source: Forbes)

I know I have a hard time learning something new when I don’t understand the jargon being used by the speaker so before we continue let’s make sure we’re all on the same page with definitions before I continue:

When I say: “Autoresponder” – I’m talking about a series of pre-designed automated emails designed with a specific goal that is triggered after a contact or subscriber is added to a list through your online signup form or if you add them manually.

It is set to mail in sequence after it is triggered to send when new subscribers join a list or you add their email address to a list.

So, when I say: “date-based triggers ” I am referring to any pre-designed emails that are personalized to send to someone on a specific date – for example on a birthday or the day when they first became a member of your organization, anniversary on becoming a customers, etc.

I will also say “contact” when discussing email addresses referring to the existing email addresses you already have stored in your contact management system. Think of a contact as a person you already “know”.

“ Subscriber” refers to a brand new person who decides to give you their email address in exchange for something in return. They don’t know your organization yet nor do you have an existing relationship with them. Think of them as people you need to make a great first impression with ASAP.

And, when I say “campaigns” I am referring specifically to the marketing messages you design and send to get your contacts to do something like buy or donate or volunteer. Think of campaigns as the ‘thing’ you send out.

The topics we’ll be covering today are:

What is an automation campaign? – We’ll talk about what automation campaigns are and how they can help your organization make the right first impression with subscribers and nurture them towards making a purchase or donation faster

How do you know if you should use one? – We’ll talk about how to determine if using an autoresponder is right for your organization and how to identify ways your organization can use an automation campaign to your advantage

How to use it the right way – We’ll talk about how to segment your contact list so an automation campaign can work properly and how to set up your web lists and sign up forms to funnel contacts into the correct interest lists. In this section we’ll discuss the type of content you want to use and guidelines for setting the timing of your automated campaigns.

How others use automation tools– We’ll take a look at a few ways businesses use automation tools to offer digital assets to nurture new subscribers into a healthy & lasting customer/supporter track

Next steps – We’ll take a look at what you need to do to setup, create, execute and measure a successful evergreen automation campaign!

As a small business owner or non-profit, we know that you don’t have a lot of time. But in today’s market, you know you need to market your business or nonprofit yourself. You’re here because you want to save time and be successful and competitive in your business or nonprofit without having to sit on your computer all day when you have other things that must be done.

Automating communications that you find yourself sending manually all the time or wish you had the time to send more regularly is a powerful and easy way to communicate a consistent and unified message about your company or non-profit to every subscriber you receive without consuming any of your valuable time or requiring you to wear more hats than you already do.

What are autoresponders and how do they work?

Autoresponders work while you work. While you’re taking care of business, your autoresponders will be welcoming new subscribers into your community on your behalf and you can rest assured that they will receive the timely information they need to begin to establish a relationship with your organization.

When someone signs up for your mailing list, they’ll automatically get sent the promotional materials or messages you want potential new supporters or customers to receive. That could be a coupon or discount code, a video to watch, a downloadable asset like a guide or e-book, a survey or simply a thank you or welcome message.

BY LIST – An autoresponder can be sent to mail to subscribers after you have added them to a list or they have subscribed to your mailing online from your signup form on your webpage, via text-to-join, QR code or through a Facebook signup form linked to your Constant Contact account. **Note: If YOU manually add a contact or group of contacts to the list assigned to your autoresponder series, that counts as a trigger and they will start to receive the series. **  Think about those welcome emails that you sometimes receive after subscribing to a business’s mailing list. Some of them offer you a coupon immediately upon signing up and some offer you a free thing like a coffee or a gift a few days or a week after subscribing.

BY DATE : Autoresponders can be triggered to send by a specific date like an anniversary or a birthday. An anniversary date  could be when a subscriber became  a member of your organization, or when they last  donated/purchased a product or service from you. CTCT will search the contact database each month for contacts with a birthday then will automatically send a pre-designed personalized birthday message that you craft to wish someone on your list a happy birthday up to 14 days in advance of their special date. It is in that message that you can try to get them to donate, purchase, or stop by.

Whatever you need them to do next for their special day.

Think about when you get a reminder email about your gym  membership fee or if you’re a member of a golf club or other similar organization you may be annual reminder emails.

Or when your favorite salon or restaurant sends you a birthday coupon. These are all examples of automated campaigns triggered by date.

An autoresponder  not only saves you time, but it also gives you the freedom to think differently about the ways you communicate with your contacts, build relationships, and do more business or foster more support for your cause. You’ll know its there doing the talking for you at times when you can’t.

AFTER AN EMAIL TRIGGER – A specific email within a series that will go out after an email sent previously.  This allows you to set up a streamlined, successive series of emails and campaigns to achieve an objective.

There are a few different kinds of automation. Think of it like an umbrella with a few different reasons why one would create an autoresponder and how they would be activated.

First:    There are messages that are trigger to send once someone joins your mailing list online or if you add them to a list.

The Welcome Email is the most common example of emails that are triggered by someone joining your list.

Another type of autoresponder series that could be created would be done by:

• -creating a list
• -Creating an autoresponder series (ex. Re-engagement campaign, email course)
• -Adding desired contacts from one list to the one created for the autoresponder

 

Second:

      Date-Based Triggered autoresponders

The system would check on a regular basis for contacts whose stored data qualifies them to receive a birthday or anniversary email.

-So a few weeks before someone’s birthday, the system would automatically send the pre-set email or series of emails designed to wish someone a happy birthday with a special offer or message. That way you’re not sitting there every month trying to find out who all the people with January birthdays are so you could send them your special birthday coupon or fond wish.

-Similarly, a pre-set email or series of emails could be sent automatically when someone’s membership dues are due, or when they first became a customer or donor or volunteer with you, or when they need to re-enroll for something — or anything that would require an annual reminder message to be sent.

Let’s go deeper into how automation can work for you while you work.

What’s the difference between date-based automation tools and list join automation and what do they have in common?

Dated Based Automation –  makes communicating certain messages on specific dates automatic and timely – less maintenance from you! Saves you from having to seek out anyone with a birthday or a membership due for example to send them something special. You design the email once and an automation tool will do the rest and get their special message to them on time every time.

For example, if you’re non-profit that collects birthdays to send special messages to big donors or if you must remind people when their monthly membership fees are due, these tools will seek out the birthday or anniversary membership date on your behalf and send a special ‘short –and –sweet’ message which you designed ahead of time to be delivered on that specific date to a specific person or group.

 List Join Automation – is a series of welcome emails which you create once and schedule to send when triggered by new subscribers joining your mailing list. Autoresponders can sometimes also be referred to as a “drip campaign” — as they engage new people multiple times in a sequence after initial interaction with your organization. It is meant to drive a specific action from the new subscriber while introducing them to your brand and the type of communications you send. Each one should have a theme or be working towards an end goal until the series concludes and that contact can then be folded into your regular communications. Welcome Emails are a good example of list join autoresponders.

What they have in common is that they are created in advance and are intended to always be valid or ‘evergreen’ so the contents don’t become outdated. They also should be designed with only one major call-to-action or ‘thing’ that you want the recipient to do after receiving the message.

Let’s see autoresponder in action:

Well let’s say that someone is searching for a gift for someone special. They do a quick online search for ‘boutiques’ and they come across your business either via social media or on your website or perhaps a friend who loves your shop forwarded your monthly newsletter to them. They are interested in the items you feature on your website but want even more information or are hoping for a discount or new customer special. They notice that you advertise a 15% off coupon for joining your mailing list on the website or on Facebook and they decide to subscribe.

You’ve made sure to set up a Welcome Email autoresponder that mails  a coupon to any new subscriber moments after they sign up. This person gets this email right after subscribing along with some information about what else is in store now that they’ve subscribed. The email thanks them for signing up for the mailing list and shares a little bit of history about the business as well as an overview of the types of items the boutique carries. You’ve set the tone for future mailings and established the beginnings of a relationship with this customer.

The subscriber is left with a great first impression of the boutique especially now that they have a coupon! They decide to shop at your boutique with coupon in hand!  You have been creating great lasting first impressions in store for as long as you’ve been in business and with an autoresponder you’ve sped that process up– that customer leaves and tells their friends about what a great business your boutique is and now others are subscribing too and soon purchasing from your business.

This could work for you even if you sell online because in the end, this cycles ends with your new subscriber making a purchase from you or taking that next step with your business.

– Let’s determine if using an autoresponder is right for your organization and how to you can identify ways it can use an automation campaign to your advantage.

Do you send the same introductory information over & over? – if your customers/supporters need special information – like forms, pre-requisite learning or certain informational content, AR can send this each and every time  to every new subscribers. You design that information once and it is sent each and every time at a time-frame you set.

Do you neglect to send introductory information to new subscribers? – do you collect contacts on the road, on the go and store them in your email provider database  here and there? If you have conversation with people and you tell them you’ll send them information but find that you can never get to it in a timely manner, delegate that task to autoresponders. All you have to do is get that contact in the system and the AR will do the rest! You’ll never miss making a great first impression or a connection again.

Do you believe each subscriber should receive the same friendly welcome? – in your organization you probably pride yourself on outstanding customer service and delivery, right? Well your email communications should reflect this too. AR can speak to the specialized interests of your subscribers and will digitally greet every future customer in the same, friendly way your organization does and instantly deliver the critical information new subscribers need to stay in touch with your organization.

Do you want to create a lasting first impression immediately? – nothing says that you care more than a generous first-time offer! If you have something to give new subscribers it makes a really good first impression because it shows that you are generous right off the bat and this will make people open your email over and over again.

Do you have specialized sub-audiences with varying interests? 

Do you want to celebrate customers’ birthdays? 

Do you want to send annual reminders? 

According to a study by the Epsilon Email Institute and Chief Marketer (Source: Chiefmarketer.com) Welcome Emails consistently have about a 60% open rate, so take that opportunity to give your subscribers more of what they’re looking for so they keep coming back in that ‘honeymoon phase’ with your organization. Welcome Emails are some of the best performing emails that you’ll ever create. So utilize them! 

These days, most people research BEFORE deciding to buy, volunteer or donate. They are more discerning about committing time or money to something and are expecting to receive specific information about your products or services in a timely manner.  Those messages help them formulate an impression of your business or nonprofit with the initial email they receive from you so you want to make sure you are steering that impression by delivering what they want/need immediately.

Also, 89% of consumers turn to Google, Bing or another search engine to find information on products, services or businesses prior to making purchases. Make sure that you have an automation campaign in place so that you can capture these leads/potential donors by getting them onto your mailing list and delivering what they are looking for with your Welcome Email series. Your future customers/supporters are most likely to encounter your brand from online searches. If they want more information about your products, services, or mission they’ll sign up for your mailing list expecting to receive that additional information. The least you could do is to say thank you with a Welcome Email! They are expecting it, so deliver it.(Source: Fleishmanhillard.com) 

Let’s talk about how to position this content in a way that delivers that expectation so you can make and keep new subscribers longer for a greater return overall for your marketing efforts.

• –   How to identify the objective of an automation series
• –   How to use evergreen content so your message never expires and hardly needs updating
• – And we’ll discuss some timing best practices
• – And we’ll talk about how to segment your contacts so you can use automated messages

Map out your autoresponder emails before you create them thinking in terms of what you want a new subscriber to ultimately do or learn after signing up for your list. Be strategic with each email as each in a series should lead to a result that means something significant to your business at a pace that is right for your organization

An autoresponder is meant to educate & mobilize new subscribers to take the next step with your organization. It’s about getting results that you can measure. When you’re designing your autoresponder email:

Keep it short and straight to the point. You want them to go from Point A as a new subscriber/prospect as they research your business or interact more with your digital assets to Point B – becoming a customer/donor

No extra fluff – make sure call-to-action buttons, links, or videos are directing a subscriber to log into your online program or come into your store or location. Don’t confuse them with too many things you want them to do or pay attention to. Tell them what you suggest that they do next and provide a simple, no-brainer way for them to comply.

If you want them to donate, sign up to volunteer or visit your shopping page or make a purchase with a coupon/offer you provided them, make that the most prominent next action step in the email close to the top of the message.

Now, let’s discuss what you need to set up next behind the scenes before hitting the ‘Schedule’ button.

In order for an automation campaign to work, you have to have organized lists. Period. Since you can create multiple Autoresponder series for multiple different lists, it is important to keep your records clear.

One of the best ways to start segmenting is by organizing your list of contacts right off the bat. Create a few lists in your account that will categorize your organization’s relationship to groups of contacts to act as ‘buckets’ for subscribers to put themselves into when signing up for your mailing list.

As you title the lists you want to segment contacts into, make sure a stranger could seem themselves in your categorization – in other words – that they could identify with the topic of that list.

Use language that people encountering your business for the first time could relate to. There’s no limit to how you can break up and categorize your lists, but try to provide at least 3 separate categories for people to choose from as they essentially give you their email address and tell you what they expect to receive.

Here’s another look at this:

In this example, this B2C business Bisque Imports has created these lists for their subscribers to choose from when asked about WHAT TYPE of mailings they’d like to receive. Some sign up looking for discounts. Other’s want to know when new products are announced. Others believe they’ll find value in your weekly/monthly mailings so they’ll sign up for that list as long as you make that option clear.

Whatever a subscriber’s interest, those contacts will be added to your list automatically and you’ll know that anyone in each of these lists only wants to receive communications about that particular topic  which will lessen the chance that they’ll unsubscribe because they’ve already told you what they want to read about and what they do not.

So when you set up your autoresponder, make sure it speaks to the interests of people in the list that say, want to receive discounts vs. read your regular mailings.

Putting these best practices into place and harnessing the organizational benefits of list segmentation right off the bat means that you’ll have a nicely organized list of contacts who have  elected to tell you what their interests are specifically regarding which types of marketing mailings they are likely to engage with the most. It gives you a heads up and a fighting chance to grab their attention before they even see anything from you because you already know what they want to read.

Also, when you encounter new people along the way and you need to manually add contacts to your account, YOU will know which category they belong in and you can add them to that list yourself, knowing what kind of automation campaign they will soon receive.

This makes creating your email each month easier because you know who you’re talking to and what they want to read about.

Now let’s talk about what to put in your autoresponder emails.

These are just a few ideas of what you could offer to new subscribers in an autoresponder whether you are a B2B, B2C or NP.

The best way to access what you have to offer is to make a list of all the digital assets that you have as well as the capacity you have to run a promotion or offer an ongoing discount to all future subscribers. You’ll begin to see an abundance of goodies that you could use to incentivize someone searching for your services or products to subscribe to your mailings.

Find a common thread amongst them and order them by putting the best piece of content or offer in the beginning of a series to lead a lasting impression as generous and/or helpful when a potential customer/supporter needs it most. You’ll also want another stellar incentive/actionable offer to cap it off at the end of the series.

Remember, you want this content to be evergreen and feasible for you to manage and honor because it is something that will run behind the scenes for an indefinite amount of time and should not lead to a dead link, expired promotion or outdated and irrelevant information.

The options are truly endless and really go a long way in capturing one’s attention, keeping it, and stirring up interest in further experience with your company or nonprofit.

 

Evergreen content– is timeless content –  or another way of saying it, informational copy that doesn’t have an expiration date and which will require little if any updating over time. You want it to be relevant and deliver all the details that someone new to your organization needs to know to continue establishing a relationship with you and want that message to work today if someone subscribe and 5 years later if someone subscribes.

Don’ts:

• Don’t refer to any specific seasons/events/dates/cultural references
• Don’t include anything you’ll stop carrying/doing
• Don’t include too many things someone new to you would have to focus on
• You want the recipient to respond to your message, so don’t confuse them with a million things to interact with because they won’t. Just give them the one thing that they expect and ask them to do what you want them to do next with what you have offered them.

You want to keep it straight to the point, short, sweet and explain to them what they can expect from your business or nonprofit going forward. If you plan to send multiple emails in an autoresponder series tell them how many emails they will receive from you initially and then how often you mail regularly.

And remember: this is the first impression someone may have of your non-profit or business. Make that interaction rewarding, uplifting, easy, and quick. Your best content should be in your automated Welcome Series. It has the greatest success at driving measurable results for you that can become lasting business.

Once you’ve mapped out a short series of emails and designed them, you next want to consider the timing. Deliver that message in a timely way so that each email in a series is a reminder or a gentle nudge towards what your end goal is for the subscriber to take.

You’ll send multiple emails in an autoresponder series to ‘nudge them along’ the buying/donating path. But you don’t want them to be too frequent or too infrequent where they’ll forget about you or signing up for your email list.

So start the series off with an immediate Welcome Email (and an incentive doesn’t hurt either!) Tell the subscriber in the Welcome Email how many emails they can expect to receive from you initially and then how often you mail regularly after the final one. Short & sweet.  Explain what they can should expect.

Think about how often you send regular emails. Do you send weekly? Schedule your autoresponder sequence to send at least the Welcome Email and one other within 24-hours of having subscribed. That way, if they happened to subscribe the day before you usually send your weekly email, a new subscriber would already have some context.

Do you send once a month? Then with your autoresponder series spread these emails out – do one or two a week to stay top-of-mind, that way new subscribers are familiar with your organization enough to have context for the monthly email when they get that.

Do you send bi-weekly? Schedule your autoresponder a day or two apart to introduce a new subscriber to your ‘club’ so-to-speak with enough time to get used to your information so that when the DO receive one of your regular mailings, they begin to feel part of the community or more comfortable with your brand and what you do. With this you want to make sure it is not too frequent that one might feel overwhelmed, so try to spread it out by a few days to give some breathing room.

Do you send mailings infrequently anyway? Schedule your autoresponder in a consistent way so that they are not surprised and caught off guard when you decide to send a regular email campaign. If this sounds like you, might would want to send one per day for a week but make sure that what you’re offering delights a new subscriber and calls them to take some sort of action with your business or non-profit, like drawing them to you website or social media pages.

Let’s look at some ways that some businesses might map out the timing of their autoresponders…

No business or nonprofit should be without a friendly, helpful Welcome Email.

One great thing about a stellar Welcome Email is that every customer that ‘walks through your door’ so-to-speak is sent the Welcome Email immediately with the same great quality that the 10,000th customer is treated. Also, you don’t have to think about mailing immediately to people you just met or collected email addresses from, it will always do that for you once the contact is in your database!

There’s nothing worse than meeting someone who wants to know more about what you do, and you forget to give them that because you’re busy doing what you do to run your business or nonprofit and you lose that potential donor or customer.

These are all examples of Welcome Emails that provide something for a new subscriber to receive. They all offer links to informative content or a special digital freebie to impress the subscriber who in turn is expecting something in exchange for their email address, and these organizations all deliver that immediately.

With a Welcome Email, you can rest assured that anyone who has signed up for your list looking for more information about what you do, is getting what that they need immediately to kick off their first encounter with your organization.

Set it and forget it. Your list will thank you for it.

Before we start:      Have a look at the legend on the right-hand side as a key to understanding what types of content each business is sending in each automated message. (see above graphic) The colors are associated with those types of content, the boxes contain the content including in the Autoresponder.

The first example is one from a B2C organization. This is an example from LibertyJane Clothing, a niche company that specializes in show making patterns for people to sew their own custom American Girl Doll clothes. We’re going to take a look at how they structure their autoresponder series based upon how often they mail to their list regularly.

We’ll be taking a peak at what their content calendar might look like.

BACKGROUND INFO:   This organization sends OFTEN. They mail to their subscribers twice a month, as well as some extra promotions mixed in throughout the month OFTEN TOTALING WEEKLY EMAILS.

But how do they plan out their new subscriber automated Welcome Series?

Well as you can see, after the subscriber joins (in yellow), they receive an email with a digital goody everyday afterwards for a week. Then, they start receiving regular promotions that the company sends out to the list as well as a final ‘Thank You’ email and final sign off from the Welcome Series.

This approach works for this organization because they have a wealth of digital assets that they have to offer, and many branches of the business that they want to alert new subscribers about. They have a very interactive + loyal following because they provide how-to materials for their base and sell patterns, books, and many other materials that people interact with a lot.

If your organization has a lot of digital assets you might want to set up your AR like this.

Let’s have a look at how this AR flow looks. It all starts with a website like Liberty Jane Clothing, a business to customer website.

People click to subscribe to their newsletter.

Let’s break it down:

1. In the Welcome Email, the company shares two free patterns to try to sew right after subscribing.

 

2. After the Welcome Email  is an email about how to connect with them on social networks including self-help videos on YouTube and step-by-step images on Pinterest as well as some history about how the company was founded for interested new subscribers curious about sewing doll clothing.

3. The third email describes other branches of the company – a reseller program and charity foundation for educate girls in Zambia about sewing as a viable occupation and skillset.

4. The fourth email is about their rewards program for frequent purchasers and a loyalty package for active seamstresses to get discounted fabric remnants.

5. The fifth offers a final discount ‘Buy 2 Get 1 Free” affordable patterns. She offers the promo code to use at checkout online.

6. The final email is a check in a week later with a hopeful follow-up and access to some free online tutorial videos in case the subscriber still needs introductory help.

And the content of this email is evergreen – meaning that this message could be sent a million future subscribers without being out of date. In their Welcome Email, which is sent right after someone subscribes, they offer two incentives – 2 free patterns – and they direct the new subscriber to the company’s additional resources, social media properties and to Youtube for more research and information. The result is a satisfied customer and an outstanding, generous first impression of the business they were curious enough about to subscribe to.

The second example comes from a Business to Business:

This is an example from Mike Mikelat of Building Aspirations. He provides marketing services to small businesses and has a Welcome Series autoresponder set up.

Let’s take a look at how he structured his series differently than the previous example.

He does something a little different when someone signs up. He spreads out his digital assets a bit. When someone initially subscribes, he tells them what he will be sending them and what they can expect to learn from the digital videos he’s sending. He then sends two videos per email that people can watch on their own time. He spreads it out to give the subscribers time to learn about the type of consulting he offers and decide what they’ll hire him to help them with.

For him, it works well because he stretches his digital assets that he has designed especially for this mailing out across a month’s time so subscribers are not inundated with emails from him and after a month have become very familiar with his expertise and what services they could purchase from him.

This could work well if you have a modest amount of digital assets to offer or a more service based business that takes time to deliver. This business remains top of mind, but not in your face.

Let’s have a look at a portion of his Welcome Series:

One of the best ways to get someone to subscribe is a dedicated area of your webpage or a standalone page on your website that catches a reader’s attention and states the reasons why someone would want to subscribe to your list. Tell them why they should subscribe and what benefit it will have for them.

1. He starts with a Welcome Email. You saw it on the previous slide. It sets the stage for the exceptional content that he plans to share with new subscribers. He tells them how many videos subscribers can expect to receive over the next few emails and then gets to it.

2) Next he sends his content. He decided that the digital asset he wanted to share would be a video series. Because he’s planning to spread this content out over the next 2 weeks, he includes two videos. Depending upon your business or non-profit, sometimes having more than one call to action may be appropriate for you, but try to keep it at about 1 call to action and no more than 2.

3) The following messages are sent a few days apart. His approach is slow and steady, a great speed for a B2B. His series is not overly sales-y or pushy and allows the subscriber to educate themselves on their own time.

Because Mike Mikelat of Building Aspirations  has set up an automation series with something short and sweet offered in his messages, when a new subscriber receives his Welcome Message and later his automated messages in sequence, they’ve had a positive experience watching the previous week’s video so are more apt to open the next to see what is inside. And in so doing, this business has established itself as an authority on how to make marketing more feasible for a small business owner and that subscriber is more likely to purchase his services because they have more information to make an informed decision to purchase his services.

Let’s have a look at our final example from a non-profit organization.

The Leaf Line Project is a non-profit and they don’t have as much digital content to offer as the previous example but they do offer some of their best resources in their automated Welcome Series. they are soliciting donations and looking for volunteers so they might schedule this in a tight and timely manner, choosing instead to stretch it out only to 2 weeks so again their subscribers have time to look around the website, explore the assets they share, and ultimately donate or decide to volunteer before too much time passes.

This is a look at how they might set up their autoresponder within their content calendar.

At the end of the automated series they will fold these new subscribers into their regular mailings and fundraisers.

Let move on to segmentation and how you must structure your contact lists in order to make autoresponder series work for you.

A Welcome Email autoresponder should remind someone that they subscribed to your mailing list. Make sure you include your logo, brand identity, colors and style so they start to recognize your correspondence. Don’t forget to provide a clear way someone could unsubscribe to show them that you value their continued interest in your company.

Tell them how many emails you plan to send in the series so they are expecting them.

SET UP THE FIRST EMAIL OF YOUR AUTORESPONDER SERIES TO SEND IMMEDIATELY AFTER SOMEONE JOINS OR IS ADDED TO YOUR LIST. Or use the Welcome Email product built in *NEW VERSION COMING SOON*

Make sure you offer subscribers something useful and captivating right from the get-go when their interest is most high.

So there you have it! We have come to the end of our presentation on automation tools and we hope you have learned a lot that you can take with you today. You’ve learned about what content to create and how to deliver a powerful punch to make a lasting first impression. You’ve seen some great examples for different types of organizations so let’s talk about some next steps that you can take today:

How you could use an autoresponder?

• Identify call-to-action goals
• Create segmented lists
• Use evergreen content
• Timing

Just recap what we  talked about using these points:

How you could use an autoresponder? – Identify your goals for new subscribers? When they sign up, you want them to come into your store, redeem a coupon, download useful content.

Identify call-to-action goals – What do you want them to do? What do you want them to learn about you or what you do?

Create segmented lists – Organize your new lists or existing lists into distinct categories so you can target more effectively

Use evergreen content – Make sure your content included in your autoresponder emails – especially your Welcome Email – could be used time and time again with no updating. It needs to be timeless with no end so you don’t have to bother to update it and it can work FOR you for years to come.

Timing – determine the frequency by thinking about how often you send regularly. If you don’t send often = send daily in your autoresponder. If you send daily or weekly, spread out your correspondence for off days from you regular mailings.

Remember, you CAN be a marketer, Constant Contact and Danna Crawford can help!

Thank you for joining me. Enjoy the video replay below and take advantage of the FREE 60 DAY TRIAL (no credit card needed) with Constant Contact. ALSO I am here for you if you need further assistance. I offer both hands-on consulting or I can mange your email marketing for you. Visit my marketing page to learn more. CLICK TO VIEW

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Most everyone sends and receives emails. But do all those emails get opened?

91% U.S. adults like to receive promotional emails from companies they do business with according to MarketingSherpa Email Summit 2015 “People who buy products marketed through email spend 138% more than people who do not receive email offers”.

The fact is that email marketing is successful because of the Standout Subject Lines – if the subject lines don’t grab the receivers attention, the email will never get opened.  Encouraging people to open your emails is the most important 1st step in email marketing. It determines the success inside the email if the call to action will even be seen.

Subject lines can:

• Get your email read
• Bring you more business more revenue
• Build awareness around your business or organization

Further reading is included in PDF eBook. Feel free to download a copy :

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Constant Contact Email Marketing Service Review

Since 2006, I’ve been using Constant Contact as my email marketing service provider. With all the services Constant Contact provides, I’ve been able to grow my email marketing list to over 5K active readers.

Additionally, I’m the Constant Contact Authorized Local Expert for all of Central Florida. This is a huge honor for me and I will never be able to thank Constant Contact enough for the many opportunities they’ve so graciously given.

Because I’ve been with Constant Contact for so long, I know the Constant Contact interface inside and out. So, while my Constant Contact review is based on opinion, my opinion stems from years of experience with the program and not just a one-time use for review’s sake.

What is Constant Contact

Constant Contact is a company which offers incredibly affordable email newsletters, surveys, events, Facebook promotions, online listings, and more.

They cater to small businesses, non-profits, and associations. Their products and services are specifically designed for the “small” business which does not have the budget to hire a marketing professional and/or team.

Constant Contact is a company who cares about helping entrepreneurs succeed. They offer FREE MARKETING and SOCIAL MEDIA TRAINING all across the United States.

Why I use Constant Contact

Early in my career as an entrepreneur, I was fortunate enough to learn the importance of starting an email list even before opening your business.

I tried a number of different email marketing services, spending several months testing each program. Constant Contact won as the best email marketing service provider, hands down.

From the beginning, Constant Contact provided more options and tools than any other email marketing service I tested. The two biggest features that hooked me were the ability to measure results of my email campaigns and the ease of the automation.

Today, Constant Contact remains on the leading edge of technology, standing head and shoulders above the rest. How do I know? Because a smart business person is always researching for ways to improve and grow their company. I keep up with other email marketing services so I can be certain I’m doing the best by my company and my clients.

Constant Contact Features

Think Constant Contact is just a boring ol’ newsletter by email service? Read on, Macbeth…

More than newsletter via email

Unlike most email marketing service providers, Constant Contact is not only about emails. With Constant Contact you’ll find they offer options for events, surveys, coupons, social networks, and a host of other ways you can interact with your tribe.

Gorgeous templates and customization options

Constant Contact has a wide variety of email, newsletter, social media, coupon, survey, and poll templates to choose from. And you have the ability to customize each so they perfectly fit your brand.

Personalized Communication with Autoresponders

Need to send different emails to different kinds of customers and all at different times? Constant Contact makes this SO easy to set up and keep track of.

Email a product tutorial to folks who just purchased a product! Send a survey to customers who already received the product or service. Upcoming event? No problem! Email registered attendees on the day you want, at the time you know is best!

More Constant Contact Features & Options

• Add subscribers via SMS messages, Facebook, forms and more
• Store files and images online to share via emails
• Includes free stock photos to use in emails
• Publish your emails to social networks as well

Constant Contact Pricing

*Note* These are the current Constant Contact prices. I will do my best to make sure and change this information if/when the prices change. Apologies in advance if this information is not 100% accurate when you read it.

• 60 day free trial
• $15/month for up to 500 subscribers
• $35/month for up to 2.5k contacts
• $55/month for up to 5k contacts
• $85/month for up to 10k contacts
• Bulk plans available

My role as the Constant Contact Authorized Local Expert for Central Florida

Constant Contact Authorized Local Experts are dedicated to educating small businesses, nonprofits, and organizations on how to make their marketing efforts as effective as possible.

As one such expert authorized by Constant Contact, I host FREE SEMINARS AND TRAINING WORKSHOPS in the Central Florida area.

These sessions focus on using marketing strategies to find new prospects, engage key audiences, drive dialogue, and build relationships. These strategies include a framework that shows how different marketing campaign types all fit together, to deeper dives into the specific campaigns and tactics: newsletters and announcements,offers and promotions, online listings, events and registrations, feedback, and mobile.

Why does Constant Contact invest in offering FREE TRAINING?

Catherine Kniker, vice president of local success at Constant Contact states, “We believe education and training on marketing best practice leads to more success for small organizations. Our Authorized Local Experts are in a fantastic position to serve their local community by sharing their expertise and our successful, educational know-how.”

Topics at my seminars include:

• Email Marketing
• Social Media Marketing
• Understanding Mobile Marketing
• Event Marketing

Each of these topics can branch off into the top 5 social sites:

• Facebook
• Twitter
• Pinterest
• LinkedIN
• Google+

If you’re interested in a presentation for your company or organization, Contact Me! I would be happy to work with you to meet the needs of your organization!

Getting started with Constant Contact and a FREE OFFER!

Are you ready to be successful? If so, I’m ready to help you achieve your goals! Sign up for a FREE 60 DAY CONSTANT CONTACT TRIAL and I’ll give you a FREE 30 MINUTE CONSULTATION!

See the section below to take advantage of your FREE 30 MINUTE CONSULTATION!

Join the Power Selling Mom Constant Contact Community!

I would love to have you as a part of my network, under my umbrella!

Whether you are new to Constant Contact or already have an account, just send an email to me saying, “Danna, I would like to be a part of your solutions provider “PowerSellingMom” network. Please add me (include your Constant Contact name and email) and help me get started to take my email marketing to the next level!”

After I receive your email I will pass it along to Constant Contact headquarters to move you to be a part my network. It’s free, no cost to you, and once you are moved then I will schedule your FREE 30 MINUTE CONSULTATION so we can discuss the direction you want to take your marketing.

It will be my pleasure to assist you in taking your brand, your business to the next level by understanding how to use all the incredible tools Constant Contact has to offer!

Also, I invite you to join my Facebook group

This is the place to mingle with fellow Constant Contact users, ask questions, and get awesome suggestions to help your newsletter, email, and marketing efforts!

Let’s get started with Constant Contact!