Inbox Ideas

Want More Opens or Clicks? Reward Subscribers!

Justin Premick — Thu, 09 Jul 2009 13:53:45 +0000

How do you keep subscribers reading your email marketing campaigns and/or clicking to your website, especially as they "age" (as more time passes since they signed up) and you compete for their attention with an increasing number of other senders?

Obviously providing valuable content plays a big part here (as we've discussed on several occasions), but sometimes a little extra incentive can help, too.

Recently Tracey, our Director of Customer Solutions, passed me an email with a helpful example of how to provide an incentive for subscribers to keep reading and clicking on your emails.

How T-Shirt Vendor TeeFury Uses Open and Click Data to Reward Readers

Here's the body of the email from t-shirt site TeeFury (click image below to see full size):

Toward the end of the email, you'll see this banner:

As you can see, they're offering an incentive - a free T-shirt - to a somewhat randomly selected reader.

I say "somewhat randomly" because they're only opening the giveaway to the first handful of people who open their email.

You Can Do This, Too!

Among the many Email Analytics tools available in AWeber is the ability to search for and segment subscribers based on whether they opened a certain email or clicked a certain link.

You can find options to search your list based on whether subscribers opened a certain email or clicked a certain link on the "Subscribers" page of your account:

All you have to do is:

Decide what behavior you want to reward (reading a certain email? clicking a certain link?)

Note: Personally I prefer having people click on a link rather than open an email. This is because tracking email opens relies on subscribers having images enabled, and some people might read your email but have images turned off - so even though they might read your email, you might not know it.
Come up with a bonus, gift or special offer specifically for those subscribers who take the desired action
Tell subscribers about the bonus/gift/offer/giveaway/etc.
Send the email you want them to act on
After a certain amount of time (whatever you decide), search your list and pick out your winner/s!

Your Ideas On Using This?

Can you see yourself using this tactic? What sort of incentives would you offer?

Share your thoughts on the blog!

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Email Marketing - AWeber

Using Send Windows for Exceptional Targeting: A Restaurant Example

Marc Kline — Mon, 06 Jul 2009 14:43:10 +0000

The Autoresponder Send Windows feature can help increase the relevance of your emails - that sometimes hidden factor that ultimately determines how well your email marketing campaigns perform.

However, you may be at a loss for just how you might employ send windows in your campaigns.

Fortunately, with some creative thinking, we think every email marketer can come up with a use that will make a significant difference in their results.

Let's take a detailed look at an example of how send windows might be used to boost the effectiveness of an email marketing campaign.

How a Restaurant Might Use Send Windows

The owner of a restaurant wants to send a series of autoresponder messages to all new email subscribers to advertise regular events and promotions. They can use send windows to help ensure they reach the subscriber in their inbox when they are most relevant and likely to provoke a response.

Here is what this autoresponder sequence might look like:

Note: If you're unfamiliar with Autoresponder Send Windows and how they work, you may want to learn a bit about them before reading further.

Message 1 - Welcome Message

Every autoresponder sequence should have a welcome message.

In this case, our restaurant may want to provide some basic information about their restaurant (e.g. link to menu, directions) and set some expectations about what the subscriber will receive later.

Note: This message has no send window, since it is always sent immediately after someone subscribes.
Message 2 - Mornings, Monday through Friday: Buy a breakfast sandwich and receive a free coffee

To promote a work week, on-the-go breakfast special, we probably want to catch our subscribers early in the day, the first time they check their email.

By setting a send window covering Monday through Friday, from 6:00AM to 9:00PM, perhaps we can hit them when they could really use some breakfast and a coffee.
Message 3 - Sunday through Thursday: Buy one dinner, get a second dinner at half the menu price

Sunday and weekday dinners are often relatively slow at restaurants, so our restaurant provides a price incentive to help fill tables.

By setting a send window covering Sunday through Thursday, from 6:00AM to 3:00PM, we can send messages advertising a discount that arrives in the inbox when subscribers are looking to solve their dinner plans for the week.
Message 4 - Wednesday Dinners: Free dessert on a bill of $25 or more

We send each subscriber a message giving them something for their sweet tooth to look forward to, with our send window for this message set to Wednesday, again from 6:00AM to 3:00PM.
Message 5 - Thursday Lunches: 20% off entire lunch bill when business card presented with check

Our restaurant has a large banquet room with a TV that has video inputs perfect for laptop slideshows. We send a message with a send window set for Thursday between 6:00AM and 12:00PM, to target subscribers when they might be thinking of planning their next lunch meeting.

See Them in Action

The calendar below shows an example of a subscriber who (conveniently) signs up on the first of the month for the campaign described above.

Toggle on and off send windows, hovering over the green highlighted calendar dates to observe how they affect this sequence of autoresponders.

(Click to see the calendar demonstration)

Notice that with send windows off, we don't accomplish what we set out to do with our message campaign - target our subscribers when each message is most relevant to them.

Only with send windows on do we deliver these messages to all new subscribers when they are most likely to bring them into our restaurant as patrons.

Send Windows Aren't For Restaurants Only!

Of course, the benefits of targeting subscribers during specific windows of time are not unique to restaurants, and we'll highlight some other examples we've developed in future blog posts. For the meantime, we might all benefit from some real examples from real businesses like yours. Have you setup your send windows, or do you have any ideas about how your industry might use them you'd like to share?

Email Marketing - AWeber

Video: Moving Day at AWeber

Justin Premick — Fri, 26 Jun 2009 21:22:09 +0000

We're just about all moved in at our new office - here's how moving day went!

(You can also watch the video on YouTube and subscribe to our "emailmarketing" YouTube channel for more videos in the future.)

Email Marketing - AWeber

AWeber Moves to a New Office Friday, June 26th, 2009

Justin Premick — Thu, 25 Jun 2009 18:38:00 +0000

It seems just like yesterday that AWeber moved into a larger office to support our growing team.

As it turns out, that was about three and a half years ago now. And we've grown more, to the point that the office we moved into in 2006 just can't hold us.

So after over a year of planning and construction, we're moving into a new office.

Limited Support on Moving Day - Friday, June 26th

Tomorrow, AWeber's team is moving out of our 4000 square foot office into a much larger building (it's 24,000 square feet!).

(Click for a larger image of our Customer Solutions area.)

It's going to be a busy day for our Customer Solutions Team as we move computers, phones, chairs and other equipment to the new office and get it all hooked up there.

However, we still want to be able to provide support to the 60,000-plus customers who rely on us for their email marketing.

We're going to stagger the move throughout the day so that at least part of our team is answering your questions throughout our normal business hours (8:00am - 8:00pm).

Please Bear With Us As We Move

Since some people will be moving while others "hold down the fort" we may not be able to answer all of everyone's questions as quickly as normal on Friday.

So if you call and can't get us on the phone promptly, leave a message and we'll get in touch with you as soon as we can. As always, we'll work to answer your questions (by phone, email and live text chat) within one business day.

We're excited to get into a new facility that will help us provide email marketing services more effectively than ever.

Thanks for your patience as we move!

Email Marketing - AWeber

How To Add an Opt-In Form to Your Facebook Page

Justin Premick — Tue, 23 Jun 2009 19:22:33 +0000

Given Facebook's continued growth, you're likely to see even more discussions of how marketers can and should be using it to connect with customers.

For those of you who are running Facebook pages (or want to), there's now an easy way to add fans and visitors to your email marketing campaigns...

Adding an Opt-In Form to Facebook Pages

Alex at the Return on Subscriber blog offers an excellent tutorial (complete with screenshots) that walks you through the process.

In a nutshell, it comes down to adding an application to your page that lets you insert HTML, then pasting in signup form HTML just like you would on any other web page (not sure how to add a signup form to your website?).

Go check out the Facebook tutorial.

What To Do With Your Facebook Page Opt-In Form?

I'm sure you have some creative ideas on what kind of offer you would make to Facebook visitors and fans.

I'm still brainstorming ideas for our own use; for now, the form on the AWeber Facebook page (which I set up immediately after reading the tutorial above) is for this blog's newsletter:

(Click above to see the form on our Facebook page.)

What ideas do you have for incorporating an email marketing campaign into your Facebook page?

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Email Marketing - AWeber

Deliver Smarter Autoresponders With Send Windows

Justin Premick — Wed, 17 Jun 2009 20:42:46 +0000

At the end of our recent post on the trouble with choosing the "best" time to send your autoresponders, we proposed that autoresponders need to get "smarter:"

Deliver themselves only during the days and times you want.
Avoid days and times that don't work for your subscribers.

Throughout most of the history of email marketing, this sort of focused delivery scheduling was only available for broadcasting - not for autoresponders.

That's about to change. To learn how, watch this video or read on.

Send Windows Make Your Autoresponders Smarter

Today, we're excited to announce that you can deliver your automated follow up messages during the days and times you've determined to be best for your subscribers.

To see Autoresponder Send Windows in action, watch the short video below:

RSS subscribers: if you can't see the video above, watch it on the blog here.

As you can see, you can easily choose during which days, and times you want your autoresponders to go to your customers and prospects.

And when you opt to use the geographic awareness, we'll automatically adjust delivery to each subscriber's time zone - no matter where they are in the world, if you tell us to deliver your follow up in the morning, that's when we'll send it to each person!

How Can You Use This To Make Your Email Marketing More Effective?

A few ideas:

Look at when subscribers are opening your emails and/or clicking your links (the Opens over Time and Clicks Over Time reports will show you this) and adjust your send windows so your messages stand out at the top of the inbox during those times!
Run a weekend sale - schedule one of your follow ups to only send on Friday mornings!
Are there certain days and/or times that you know are bad for your subscribers? Use send windows to avoid sending during those days/times!

Those are just a couple ways you can start to increase your response rates with send windows - we know you'll come up with different and creative ideas on how to use them. When you do, we want to hear about them!

Learn More About Autoresponder Send Windows

See how to create Autoresponder Send Windows in our Knowledge Base...

...or join us for a free half-hour webinar showing you how to use them:

Learn To Use Autoresponder Send Windows

Date: Thursday, June 18th, 2009
Time: 3:00-3:30PM Eastern Time (USA)

We'll demo the new Autoresponder Send Windows for 10-15 minutes, then answer your questions about them. See you there!

Hope you'll join us for the webinar - and that you enjoy the new Autoresponder Send Windows!

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Email Marketing - AWeber

Email Autoresponders and The Trouble With the “Best” Time to Send

Justin Premick — Mon, 15 Jun 2009 14:12:22 +0000

Ever wondered: "what's the 'best' day and time to send an email?"

If so, you're not alone. It's one of the most popular questions about email marketing. It has spawned innumerable studies over the years, and we hear it at AWeber almost every day.

There's just one problem:

The Answer Isn't The Same For Everyone!

The best day for you might not be the best day for the next guy.
The best day changes from month to month and from report to report.
The best time can be different for subscribers in different parts of the world.
Not all messages necessarily "work" on the same day or at the same time.

And besides...

It's Not Really About The Single "Best" Time or Day Anyway, Is It?

If someone told you "9:32 and 14 seconds on Tuesday morning" was the best time, would you try to send every single one of your emails only on Tuesday, and only at 9:32AM?

I doubt it. Besides the fact that your subscribers aren't spending every waking moment waiting for your next email, after about 2-3 months of sending only on Tuesday, you'd be in a real pickle if you ever wanted to send out a message on say, Thursday. Nobody would expect it.

Optimizing your sending days and times isn't about finding one "best" time and hammering it to death.

It's About NOT Sending on Days or Times That Make Absolutely No Sense.

What you want:

Avoid sending at poor times.

Example: maybe you don't want to send at 10:30 at night, since you know subscribers will get other emails between then and when they check your email. You want to avoid having yours pushed to the "middle of the pack" (making it more likely to get overlooked).
Avoid sending on low-activity days.

Example: why send on the weekend if you run a B2B email marketing campaign and know your subscribers only read and respond during the week?
Build a little common sense into your message intervals.

This is easy enough for email newsletters - you can easily set a date and time for each issue...

... but what about sequential autoresponders? They just go out "X" number of days apart, right?

What We Need Are "Smarter" Autoresponders

Ideally, your autoresponders could:

Deliver themselves only during the days and times you want.
Avoid days and times that don't work for your subscribers.

That way, they'd automatically deliver themselves during appropriate times on appropriate days - just as you would if you were doing them by hand!

It's a shame they don't do that...

Wait. They Don't Do That... Do They?

Stay tuned...

Email Marketing - AWeber

Reason 9,785 Why You HAVE To Get In Subscribers’ Address Books

Justin Premick — Wed, 03 Jun 2009 19:30:05 +0000

OK, 9,785 reasons might be a slight exaggeration.

But the writing is on the wall for marketers who aren't getting subscribers to add them to their address books.

Soon, if you're not in there, it'll be even easier for customers and prospects to ignore your email marketing campaigns.

Here's what I mean:

Yahoo! Helps Subscribers Quickly Filter Out Email From Non-Contacts

On their official blog, Yahoo! Mail announced that users can now toggle from viewing all mail to only mail from their contacts.

As they say in the announcement,

"You get a lot of emails, some good (from friends, family, even favorite interests that you've added to your Address Book), and a lot of not-so-important emails (special offers, newsletters, emails you rarely read)."

So they've introduced a way to quickly separate those "important" emails from the "not-so-important" ones.

Essentially, Yahoo! is making it easier for users to do the same thing with emails that we all do with our postal mail - we look through for messages from friends, family and other people we know and put it in an "A" pile, and we take everything else and put it in a "B" pile.

Many of us already do it with email, too, by using filters - but up until now we had to set those up manually. It's not hard to do, but it is an extra hoop that most email users wouldn't jump through.

A one-click filter like the one Yahoo! has created makes faster email filtering accessible to even novice users. Don't be surprised if you see other email programs do something similar.

So How Do You Make Sure Your Email Doesn't Get Filtered Out and Ignored?

Well, in this case you do it by getting subscribers to put you in their address book (sometimes called a "contact list").

As for how you do that?

Ask on your thank you page.

You should already be using the thank you page to set expectations immediately after subscribers join your list.

And one of those expectations should be telling people who the emails will come from (i.e., your "from" name and email address).

Add a sentence asking subscribers to add that address to their address books. Quick and easy.
Ask in your welcome email (and maybe other emails).

Some people might not add you to their address books while on your thank you page (they may have overlooked the request, forgotten or just not wanted to yet).

Now that subscribers have seen an example of your email, point out that to ensure that they keep getting the information they signed up for, they should add you to their address book.

You might also put a reminder in some of your follow ups and/or broadcasts.
Build a relationship with subscribers.

If you want subscribers to treat you like a contact, you have to earn that status in their minds.

Providing valuable content is a big part of this.

So is coming across as a real person (see our social networking tips for email marketers).

So is being accessible.

The Inbox is Shrinking

One could argue that this Yahoo! move is effectively creating multiple inboxes - one with all email and one only with email from contacts.

Given a choice between viewing "all" email, and only email from preferred sources (like your contacts), which one are you going to spend time in?

To take a "tree falling in the forest" view of it,

If an email goes to an inbox, but nobody ever looks at that particular inbox, is it really delivered?

If you think about it, as more email programs implement tools like Yahoo!'s and the email that's important/relevant to the recipient ends up in a "contacts" inbox, the "default" inbox really becomes more of a "junk" folder than an inbox.

And none of us want to end up there. Right?

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1: Hat tip to Mark Brownlow for pointing out Yahoo!'s announcement.

Email Marketing - AWeber

Create Subscriber Expectations Over Time

Justin Premick — Wed, 27 May 2009 15:14:40 +0000

This is #3 in series of posts on subscriber expectations. Previous articles here: Part 1, Part 2.

As discussed recently, properly setting expectations for subscribers before they sign up and immediately after they do so helps you deliver the kind of better experience that leads to more responsive, more deliverable email marketing campaigns.

But that subscriber experience doesn't occur in just a single moment. And expectations can change over time.

How do you make sure the expectations you worked so hard to set in your opt-in form and on your thank you page don't fade after subscribers have been on your list for a while?

Create Subscriber Expectations Over The Life Of The Email Relationship

Explicitly setting expectations for new subscribers immediately before and after they join your list goes a long way toward making them responsive subscribers.

But it's not all there is to it.

As email marketers, part—a big part—of the reason we try to create subscriber expectations is that we also want to create subscriber habits.

We want subscribers to expect certain things about our emails because when they do, and when we meet those expectations, subscribers tend to treat our emails a certain way. Namely, they:

Open our emails
Click on links in them
Share them with others and
Order products from them

Create The Right Subscriber Habits By Helping Them Set Their Own Expectations

After subscribers begin to get emails from us, we continue to create expectations - whether we try to or not.

We're no longer only creating them explicitly. Rather, we also begin to build implicit expectations in our subscribers' minds about what they should do with our emails.

Here's an example of what I mean by that:

When a would-be subscriber sees your opt-in form, they don't know whether they should subscribe unless you explicitly tell them, "this is what you'll get if you subscribe, here's why it's good for you." They can then make a decision based on that explicit expectation.
On the other hand, once they sign up, you won't get far just explicitly telling them "hey, open our emails when you get them!" (You can try, but good luck browbeating subscribers into reading.)

To get your subscribers to continue opening your emails and clicking links over time, simply allow them to create their own implicit expectation: "hey, I'd better open and read this email when I get it because there's something really valuable and timely in here for me."

In short, you condition people to do what you want with your emails, rather than just telling them to do so.

"Conditioning" Subscribers? You Mean Like Mind Control? Subliminal Messaging? (That Sounds Sleazy...)

Conditioning does sound sleazy, doesn't it?

Perhaps you think I'm talking about hypnotizing subscribers with gold watches or goofy-looking sprirally glasses, or using subliminal messaging to get them to open your emails and buy your products.

Nothing could be further from the truth.

Let's take a quick look at the definition of conditioning:

Conditioning - to modify so that an act or response previously associated with one stimulus becomes associated with another
Source: Merriam-Webster.com

So, in effect, what we're looking to do is to get subscribers to respond to something (our emails) in the same way they responded to something else (say, our other previous emails).

Put another way, we want people who open our email, click a link, visit our website, etc. to do so again when they get another email from us.

We want them to say "hey, I'd better open and read this email" for as many of our emails as possible. Nothing sleazy about that.

So how do we do it?

Consistency Can Help You Condition Subscribers

Consistency comes into play here (see this 2006 post on expectations for some of my original ideas on expectations and consistency).

Consistency helps because it makes it easier for subscribers to recognize your emails in the inbox.

If someone knows you send from a given name and address, and tend to send on certain days or at certain frequencies, they're likely to be far more receptive to your emails.
It can also teach people to click through to your website.

For example, if subscribers come to know that your emails contain 2-3 "teaser" paragraphs with a link to more information online, they may form a habit of clicking on the links in your emails to get past the teaser and straight to the full content.

It's not just about being consistent, though.

Want to Create Good Subscriber Habits? Provide Great Value. Every Time.

If you want subscribers to get in the habit of opening your emails, clicking on links, sharing your emails via forwards or social networks, buying products or taking whatever other action/s you have in mind...

...bring the kind of value in your emails that gets them to do that - and do it consistently!

If you consistently provide outstanding value, your subscribers will read them, click links, etc. They'll also form a perception of your emails as being valuable.

Both of these lead to forming exactly the types of subscriber habits you want.

Email Marketing Isn't a Sprint; It's a Marathon.

I know, this isn't an earth-shattering, "how did I never think of that?" type of tip.

But it's an important one, and I hope you take it to heart...

...because if you don't focus on delivering great, even-better-than-subscribers-could-possibly-have-been-prepared-for content, then you'll create the worst possible expectation in your subscribers:

"These emails aren't worth my time anymore."

What Expectations Do YOU Try to Create Over Time?

How are you doing it? What have you found helpful?

Share your ideas in the comments!

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Email Marketing - AWeber

Thank You: Another Critical Opportunity to Create Subscriber Expectations

Justin Premick — Wed, 20 May 2009 13:21:01 +0000

This post is #2 in a three-part series on expectations. Read part 1 here.

Your thank you page is a critical stage in your email marketing because it links two types of interactions your subscribers have with you.

Immediately before they sign up, they're interacting with you on your website, with their web browser. They're 100% in charge of the situation. They can leave at any time and you'll never even know who they were.

After they subscribe, however, they've agreed to interact with your business in a whole new way you pushing information to them when you choose), in a whole new environment (their email software instead of just their web browser).

To effectively transition new subscribers between those interactions, good email marketers set expectations using the thank you page.

Aren't Subscribers' Expectations Already Set Before They Sign Up?

If you've properly set expectations in your opt-in form, you might feel like your work is done.

After all, you've already told them what they'll get and how often - and you obviously sold them on your emails because they signed up. There aren't any other expectations to manage.

Right?

Why You Must Create and Reinforce Expectations Right After The Opt-In

Here's the trouble with thinking that expectations are all set before the opt-in: you're assuming that the minute they subscribe, all of your new readers are immediately...

being transported to their email inboxes to read your first email.
adding your "from" email address to their address books.
doing whatever you want/need them to do with that first email.

If you've figured out how to make all of that automatically happen for one of your subscribers, let alone all of them, please tell me how ;)

Upon signing up to your list, new subscribers have a few questions that you need to answer right away:

"What just happened?" (Did that form thing-a-ma-jig do what I wanted it to? Am I subscribed?)
"What happens next?" (When do I get my first email? Who's it coming from? What's it going to look like?)
"What do I do now?" (Do I just sit back and wait? Do I have to do anything else?)

Answer These Questions With Your Thank You Page.

This first "post-subscribe" experience is a chance to reaffirm subscribers' decision to share their email addresses with you.

Spell things out for them! Tell them:

What Just Happened (they have subscribed successfully)
What's Happening Next (that you're sending them an email - what the subject line is - what from name and email address it's coming from - and what's inside the email)
What They Should Do (go to their inbox, open that email, possibly click on something in it—like a confirm link—and also add your email address to their address books)

P.S. Remember to thank them for subscribing! :)

Creating expectations on your thank you page is especially important because they help your new subscriber "connect the dots" between the time they spent on your website and the emails they'll receive from you days/weeks/months later.

How Do YOU Create Expectations On Your Thank You Page?

Share your ideas on the post!

Next Up: How (and Why!) to Keep Creating Expectations Long After The Opt-In

After Memorial Day, you'll learn about the ongoing challenge of setting expectations.

If you know someone else who isn't familiar with the idea of setting expectations, or could use a refresher, share this blog with them!

They can subscribe by email here, get the RSS feed here - and now they can even get this blog via Kindle!

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