VerticalResponse for AppExchange Blog

A Friendly Suggestion to Our Competitor

2009-11-18T08:36:21-08:00

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

Use Salesforce Reports to Send Targeted Follow-ups

2009-11-16T15:01:48-08:00

It’s ridiculously easy to build a list from your Lead & Contact records using VerticalResponse. Just search for the people you want and you’re done. What’s not quite as simple is creating targeted follow-up lists based on the action a recipient has taken with an email you’ve previously sent out.

Let’s say you want to send a follow-up email to everyone who did not respond to your last email so you can try a different message or approach to get them to take action. How do you do that?

I’m sure you’re already well aware that VerticalResponse tracks the opens, clicks, bounces and unsubscribes (as well as the non-responders who didn’t do anything) for all your emails. We display this data both within your VR Statistics tab and in Salesforce’s own Reports tab. And, as luck would have it, you create can create a list using any of your reporting data from either of these two places.

Let’s take a look at both options, starting with the better of the two:

Use a Salesforce Report to Create a Campaign

If you have access to the Salesforce Campaigns module, then you add people from any of your email reports as members of a Campaign. You can then use that Campaign as a list and be on your way.

Go to your Campaigns tab and create a new Campaign. Be sure to set it to “Active.”
Go to your Reports tab and use the Report Folders drop-down menu to select either VR Email History Lead or VR Email History Contact. Note that Salesforce reports are separated by Leads and Contacts, so if you want to use a mix of both groups you’ll have to add two different reports to the Campaign.
Click the Contacts: Non-Responders report. This will display a list of every email you’ve sent out and non-responders associated with each one.
Drill down to the email whose non-responders you want to use either by clicking the box next to the name of each email you want and then pressing the drill-down button at the bottom of the report or by using the Customize option to search for the email you want.
You’ll now see only those non-responders from the email you’ve selected / found.
Click the “Add to Campaign” button and then choose the Campaign you created earlier. Now all the Leads or Contacts from your report will be added to the Campaign. Note again, if you want to add both Leads & Contacts to the Campaign, you’ll have to repeat steps 2 thru 5.
Now go to the VR Email tab and select New List from the Quickstart section.
Select to build your list using the members of a Salesforce Campaign and then choose your Campaign from the section that follows.
Finish up the few remaining list building steps and you’re done. You now have a list of non-responders to mail.

And the other option I mentioned:

Use a VerticalResponse Report to Create a List

Go to the VR Statistics tab and find the sent email you want to use.
Click the “Actions” link to the right of the email’s name and select “Create Mailing List.”
Give Your New List a Name
Choose “Non-Responder” from the “What to Include” menu.
Click the Create List button.

Your list is now ready to go. The second option is much easier, so why did I refer to the first option as the better of the two? Because only the first option will allow you to push your reporting data back to Salesforce. You’ll still see reporting in VerticalResponse if you use the second option, but you won’t see any reporting info within your Salesforce Reports tab or on your individual Lead & Contact Records.

Let me know in the comments if you have any questions!

Richard Huffaker, Education & Training Manager

Get More Sign-ups with an Improved Opt-in Form

2009-11-01T23:10:21-08:00

There is no better way to gather sign-ups than through an opt-in form on your website. I'm sure most - if not all of you - have a form on your site already.

But just because you have an opt-in form now, doesn't mean you can't make improvements. Here are four tips to help you make those improvements and get even more sign-ups.

#1 - Make It Impossible to Miss

It's one thing to have an opt-in form - it's another thing entirely to make that opt-in form so easy to find that everyone who visits your website can see it. There are very few people who want to join your mailing list so badly that they'll click around your site and search for your opt-in form to find it.

So you should either:

Link to your form from the main navigation menu of your website that says something along the lines of "Sign-up for Our Newsletter" or "Get More Info."

OR

Include your form on every page of your website. This can be done through the simple inclusion of a sidebar that stays on screen no matter which page is being viewed.

#2 - Keep It Simple

It can be tempting to ask for lots of information on an opt-in form - email address, phone number, postal address, etc. The more info you collect, the easier it is to qualify your leads and the more avenues you have available for marketing to them.

However, asking for too much info can discourage people from signing up. So you have to strike a balance between getting the info you need and ensuring your form is not acting as a barrier to new sign-ups.

Ask yourself how much info you actually need. Unless it's very important that your sales people have as much info as possible, you should limit your form to Email Address, First Name and Last Name (or some similar combination). Or you could have 2 forms: a simple opt-in form for mailing list sign-ups and a separate form for more serious inquiries that requires potential customers to provide you with more info.

#3 - Explain the Value

Don't just ask people for their contact info, tell them what you're going to give them in exchange for that info. Instead of "Join Our Mailing List" say "Sign-up for our twice monthly newsletter to get tips, hear about new products and get access to email only deals."

This approach should go beyond your opt-in form. Everyone in your organization should be aware of the value of your email marketing program, so they can convey that value to potential customers. It is always better to tell someone what you're going to give them instead of asking them to give you something. "Can I send you our newsletter?" is better than "Can I get your email address?" just as "Would you like to buy that item?" is much better than "Would you like to give me 75 dollars?"

#4 - Market It

Use your non-email marketing to direct people to your opt-in form. An ad in the newspaper, a postcard, an online ad - all these can be used to send people to a form.

Why is that of any value to you? Because once someone is on your email marketing list, you have a stronger connection and can market to them directly.

Of course, sending people from an ad to a form with no extra incentive or explanation may not get you very far, since most people are unlikely to jump all over the chance to join some random company's list if they aren't already interested in the products / services of that company. So you would likely want to combine the form with some other content or offer.

To provide an example of such a combination - I know of a pub / restaurant that sends out a postcard to people who move to their neighborhood. This card asks the new residents to sign-up for the pub's newsletter and offers a 50% coupon for their next visit if they sign-up. They do so many things right:

- They reach out to new residents who don't know the neighborhood yet and are therefore likely to want to try new places nearby.

- They ask people to sign-up for their newsletter which enables them to continue marketing to those folks who are clearly interested.

- They provide an incentive to both sign-up and come down to the pub. So not only do people have a good reason to sign-up, they also have a good reason to become an actual customer.

Can you think of an approach to take with your own potential customers that could accomplish something similar?

Richard Huffaker, Education & Training Manager

3 Email Tips for a Strong Finish to 2009

2009-10-19T22:40:06-07:00

Whether your company provides B2B software services or you own a store that sells cranberry sauce, there’s little doubt that you want to end your year on a high note by making lots of money in Q4. How can you get the most out of your email marketing to help make that happen?

Make a Plan ASAP

Emails are so easy to create that it can be tempting to just send them out whenever the mood strikes or to fall into a rut of mailing out the exact same type of messaging every two weeks. Though you can certainly see email success without a plan, you’ll be more successful (as with most things in life) if you have one.

Ask yourself:

What are the goals of my email marketing program this quarter? To increase traffic to the company website? To sell particular items / services?

Are there a wide range of goals? If so, how should each goal be represented within the email marketing program?

Who are the people on my mailing list? Is your list mostly customers? Mostly prospects? Do you even know for sure?

If you do know, are you sending different emails to each group or lumping them together? Different kinds of messages are likely to be more effective depending on whether you’re dealing with customers or prospects. And it’s very easy to create lists of just Leads or just Contacts using VerticalResponse.

How many emails do I need to send? One a week? One every two weeks? Determine how much mail you’ll need to send out to achieve your goals. Then create a calender to plan when you’ll send each email out.

Segment and Test

You can follow all the best practices in the world, but you can’t be absolutely sure you’re getting the most from your email marketing unless you test different approaches with your own audience. It’s a good idea to test:

Subject Lines - Try out different subject lines with smaller subsets of your audience and use the subject that gets the most opens with the larger control group.
Content - Not sure the design of your emails is getting as many people to take action as possible? Try some different designs and test them with a smaller group of recipients. If the new designs perform better, start using them with everyone.
Timing - Do you always send your newsletter out on Thursday at 11:00am? Maybe it’s every other Wednesday at 1:03am?

Whatever it happens to be, try splitting your list up into smaller groups and vary the timing of your message among these groups. If a certain day and time works better, start using that as your newsletter day for everyone.

Also, the more targeted your message and list, the better your email is likely to perform. Learn more about how segment, target and test in my previous blog post on this topic.

Implement a Few Best Practices

There are lots of tweaks you can make to improve your email marketing program. Here are a few that can lead to immediate improvements:

Make sure the opt-in form on your website is easy to find. It should be linked from, or appear on, every single page of your site.

Your form should also describe the benefit of sign-up. Don’t just ask people to “Sign-up for More Info.” Tell them what they’re going to get in return for signing up (Sign-up for Our Weekly Specials / Learn About Upcoming Products in Our Newsletter). You’ll always get a better response when you can describe the value of your messages than if you just ask people to give you their address.

Write subject lines that are action oriented and describe the benefits of reading your email. Some examples:

    •    Sign-up Before Nov. 30th Get 20% Off
    •    No S&H for Purchases Under $25
    •    Book Now - 10 Holiday Party Dates Left
    •    Version 3.0 is Finally Here!

Generic subject lines like “October Newsletter” don’t tell the reader what differentiates the message from the last one you sent out.

Start personalizing your emails. Most companies personalize their emails by referring to each recipient by their own first name. But you can do so much more than that - any info you include in your list can be used to personalize your email message.

Do all your Leads and Contacts have Account Reps or Sales Reps? Use the record owner info to sign each email as coming from the owner of the specific record. All you need to do is include info like Owner Name and Owner Email Address when creating your mailing list (you can do this from the Map Your Fields page of the list creation process) and then you can enter fields like {OwnerName} and {OwnerEmail} in your message to sign the email with the record owner’s name and email address.

Any standard or custom field on the Lead or Contact record can be used for personalization. Any standard Owner or Account level field can by used as well.

Any questions or comments? Let us know!

Richard Huffaker, Education & Training Manager

Track Your Return on Investment

2009-10-05T16:58:15-07:00

The goal of just about any email marketing campaign - or regular marketing campaign - is to generate revenue so you can become well-to-do and retire to a private island. But how can you track the money you’re generating to be sure your email marketing is producing the kind of cash flow necessary to purchase an island in today’s economy?

Why, you can use our free ROI tracker / calculator of course!

Return on Investment tracking allows you to see how much revenue is generated from people who click a link in one of your marketing emails and then make a purchase on your site. You can also use the included calculator to compare revenue vs. the amount you spent on the campaign and see the ROI %.

To activate ROI tracking within your account:

Go to VR Email > Account Information > Analytics Setting > Click-to-Conversion
Use the “Enable” drop-down menu to select the Click-to-Conversion + ROI Calculator option.
This generates a short snippet of HTML that you’ll need to add to the thank you / confirmation page that follows a purchase on your site.
Be sure to click the Submit button on this page after you copy the snippet, as tracking will not be activated until that button is pressed.

The provided snippet of HTML will look like this:

img src="https://cts.vresp.com/s.gif?h=e8bad6dc67&amount=PURCHASE_AMOUNT" height="1" width="1"/

The “PURCHASE_AMOUNT” text in the HTML code is a placeholder and will need to be replaced by the actual purchase amount of each individual sale. This will need to be coded by your website designer. The actual implementation can and will vary, but if you are already noting the total purchase amount somewhere on the thank you / confirmation page then it will be very simple to note this amount within our provided snippet of code. Note that the “PURCHASE_AMOUNT” number can be in any floating point format like 30, 29.95, 9,95, etc.

After you finish setting everything up, you’ll see two additional columns under VR Statistics and Recently Sent Emails called “Conversions” and “Revenue.” The Conversion column will display the percentage of your recipients who “converted” by making a purchase and the Revenue column will display the amount of revenue generated by the email.

You’ll also find a ROI Calculator on the main reporting dashboard of every sent email. This calculator will display the total amount of money you spent on the email and the total amount of money that was made from recipients who clicked a link and made a purchase. In addition, you can enter any additional money spent on the campaign outside of the cost of sending the email through VerticalResponse. The tool will then calculate your ROI percentage based on total amount spent divided by total revenue.

There are a couple of other things to note when working with the ROI tracker:

The reporting will not be 100% accurate as some of your recipients may have their browser or networking settings configured to block third party cookies. Such a setting would make it impossible for our system to receive any data past the initial click-through made within the email itself.

There will also be some recipients who will read your email and visit your site directly (without clicking a link) in order to make a purchase. These folks will not be tracked as it is necessary for them to click a link within your email for our system to be able to see that they then went on to make a purchase on your site.

Note too that the cookies we use to track the activity are set as soon as the recipient clicks a link within your email. These cookies expire immediately after a purchase is made or 30 days later if no purchase is made. The cookies will also disappear if the recipient clears their browser’s cookies.

Let us know if you have any thoughts or questions in the comments!

Richard Huffaker, Education & Training Manager

Get the Most From Your Email Images

2009-09-22T16:17:27-07:00

Most, if not all of the marketing emails you send out likely include images to illustrate the content. But are you using best practices to get the most from your images?

It takes more than just pretty pictures to be successful. So what do you need to know about images?

The 80/20 Rule - As a general rule of thumb, you should try to balance your email with no more than 20% image content and 80% text content. Though 25 / 75 and 30 / 70 are not bad ratios either. How do you calculate this ratio?

Just look over your email. If it looks like it is roughly 20% image content to 80% text content then you’re doing just fine. This particular rule is more of a guide than an exact science.

Why should you follow this rule? Because many email browsers these days - around 40% or so - initially block images when the email arrives in the inbox, requiring the recipient to click a button or a link to turn the images on. If your email is too image heavy then your recipients may not see enough content to take action, leaving them with no reason to turn your images on and see the full impact of your message.

Use the Quick Preview tool in the Canvas, Salesforce Mail Template and Freeform editors to take a look at how your email looks with images turned off.

Use Alt-Text - Giving all your images alternative text essentially provides you with an “emergency backup” in case a recipient cannot initially see your images. Many of the same email browsers that block images will display the alt-text for the image so that the recipient knows there is image content there.

So you should use the alt-text to either describe your image or the action you’d like people to take when they see the image. How do you add alt-text?

In the Email Canvas or Salesforce Mail Template options found with VerticalResponse, we prompt you to create Alternative Text for an image after you select to add it to the email.

If you write your own HTML, you can add alt text by entering the img alt=”description” attribute as part of your img src tag.

Keep the File Size Small - You should try to keep the file size of every image in your email below 30k. The smaller the file size, the faster the image will load for your recipients.

You can check the file size of any image you’ve uploaded to your library simply by looking directly beneath the thumbnail for that image. If you notice the file size is larger than 30k, simply scroll over the image and click the pencil icon to access our image editor.

Any image edited and saved with our editor is optimized for web use to make the file size as small as possible. So all you have to do is make a slight change to the image, save it and we’ll significantly shrink the file size automatically.

Turn Your Images into Links - Images are fairly big, pretty and tempting to click on. Turn them into links, so they can lead people back to your website.

To turn an image into a link using our Canvas editor just select the image, click the chain link icon in the toolbar, enter the web address to which you want to link and click submit.

Use Your Resources - VerticalResponse provides a free stock photo gallery with more than 75,000 images. To access this gallery, you need to use the Media Library link found in the Tools & Resources section on the main page of your VR Email tab. There is a link to the Stock Photo Gallery within the main Library page from where you can search for images that fit the needs of your email message.

Any thoughts or questions? Let us know in the comments.

Improve Response With an Easy to Scan Email

2009-09-07T16:24:58-07:00

My mom reads every single email I send her, word for word. I bet your parents (or kids or grandkids or grandparents) do the same thing with your emails.

But I’ll also bet there is at least one group that does not read every single word of every email you send them: the customers and prospects on your mailing list.

Once someone opens up one of your emails, you have (on average) 15-20 seconds to really grab their attention. If you don’t succeed, then they’ll move on to the next email in their inbox.

How can you can get the most attention possible from the highest percentage of your readers? By making your email easy to scan.

You can do this in a variety of ways:

Use short bullet points. Like in this example below:

A brief glance at that email tells you the exact value of their offer. No need to dig through several paragraphs of text to find out how to take action. “Print subscribers now also get access to this exclusive online content and here’s how to access that content.” This is a simple and effective message that you can read through in less than 20 seconds.

Break you content into short blocks of copy. Of course, not all written content is appropriate for use with bullet points. If your message requires multiple paragraphs, then break those paragraphs up into short blocks.

You may have noticed we do this in our VerticalResponse for AppExchange newsletter. No paragraph in the opening of article of each newsletter ever includes a paragraph that takes up more than 4 to 5 lines of space. This makes the paragraphs much easier to look at. A message with longer paragraphs, especially several longer paragraphs, could look overwhelming to a reader who only has a short amount of time to look over your message.

Use teaser content. If you have a lot to say, don’t say it all within the email. Use teaser content to allow readers to easily find the stuff that interests them and then push them to that content on your website or blog. Like this example:

Even shrunk down to the small image size we see here, it’s pretty easy to see what this email is about. They use big headlines, illustrative images, and a line or two of descriptive text to pique reader interest and guide them to the appropriate place for a longer video, article or product description.

No recipient is likely to be interested in every single thing you have to say in your message. Taking this approach makes it easy for people to find an item or two that interests them and then take action with those items.

Highlight links and descriptive sentences. If you do have a longer newsletter or email that includes numerous paragraphs, consider highlighting or bolding important information within each paragraph. That way a reader can easily scan your email for the most notable info without having to read every word you’ve written.

Bolding your links makes them stand-out. And if the goal of your email is to drive people back to your website, then you certainly want your links to be very noticeable.

Limit the number of articles and calls to action. Try not to include more than 3-5 topics in a newsletter and 1-2 topics in a general marketing email. If you include too much info, then your recipients may overlook an item that would have interested them and that means you’ve lost someone who would have otherwise become a customer, registrant, viewer or reader.

Thoughts or questions about this post? Let us hear them in the comments!

Richard Huffaker, Education & Training Manager

Turn a Sent Email Into a Template

2009-08-24T14:57:03-07:00

You've probably noticed that every VerticalResponse newsletter uses the same layout: main article in the upper left, table of contents on the right, etc.

We do change the design occasionally, but when we find something we like, we stick with it for a while.

I'm guessing your company probably does the same thing. So it's good that VerticalResponse and Salesforce make it easy to turn previously created emails into templates, and then share those templates with other people in your Salesforce Org.

Let's take a look at how you can create templates and share them.

Create a Template from a Previously Sent Email

After you send an email out from your account, that email is archived within your VR Statistics tab. Each sent email includes an Actions menu that can be accessed via a link to the far right of the screen. To use a previously sent email as a template:

Click Actions.
Select “Make a Copy.”
Give the copy a name.
Then you can: 
- Go to Draft Emails page (this will take you to the page where all your unsent email drafts are saved).
- Edit the new email immediately.
- Make another copy of the email and give it a different name.
Click the Copy Email button.

Following these instructions will turn a previously sent email into a template for a new message. You can always find copied messages under VR Email > Quickstart > View Drafts until you edit them and send them out.

But how can you share a copied email with other people in your company, so that they can also use it as a template?

Share Templates Across Your Salesforce Org

Note that this does not work with the Email Wizard tool.

Go to VR Email > Quickstart > View Drafts
Open the email you want to share as a template.
Click the green “Make Changes to this Campaign” button near the top of the page. This will open up the Canvas or Freeform editor (depending on which one was used to build the message, of course).
Select the “Edit Source” tab within the editor, select all of the HTML code and copy it (CTRL-C on a PC, Command-C on a Mac).
Click the “Setup” link found at the top of your Salesforce account.
Expand the Email menu found under “My Personal Information” on the left hand side of the screen.
Click “My Templates” and then click the New Template button on the page that opens up.
Select the option to create a “Custom (without using Letterhead)” template.
What happens on the next page is crucial: For the “Folder” prompt, you MUST select a Public folder, otherwise you won’t be able to share the template with other people in your company. If you’ve not previously created a public folder or don’t know how, see the instructions for doing so at the end of this post.
You must also tick off the “Available for Use” box found on this same page. Otherwise your template will not be available for people to use.
Give the Email both a name and a “unique name.” You can usually just use the same names in both fields. Continue on to the next page.
Give the email a subject (this can be changed when the template is used for an actual email), and then paste the HTML code you copied earlier into the “HTML Body” field.
Preview the template. If you like what you see, save it and you’re done.

For you or anyone else in your org to access the saved template:

Go to VR Email > Quickstart > New Email
Give the new email a name and click the Refresh Templates button at the bottom of the New Email page.
Use the drop-down menu to select a saved template.
Click Next and then use the provided editor to make changes to the message and send the email out.

And if you need to know how to create a Public folder (as referenced in the instructions for sharing a template):

Click the “Setup” link found at the top of your Salesforce account.
Expand the Email menu found under “My Personal Information” on the left hand side of the screen.
Click “My Templates”
Click the Create New Folder link.
Give the folder a label and a “unique name.”
Use the provided drop-down menu to make the Public Folder Access “Read/Write.”
Make sure the folder is set as “accessible to all users.”
Save the folder. Now you can start adding templates to this folder and they’ll be accessible via VerticalResponse.

Post a comment if you have any questions!

Richard Huffaker

Create a Successful Postcard Campaign

2009-08-10T17:18:59-07:00

My last blog post covered why and how to start using direct mail postcards for your business. Today I'm going to look at some best practices that will help you get the most from those postcard efforts.

Here are ten steps to building an effective postcard. Note that many of these steps would apply to just about any kind of marketing:

1. Start with an Idea

You can’t build an effective postcard if you don’t have an idea of what you want it to be about.

Why are you creating a postcard? Are you looking to invite new residents to your neighborhood business? To increase attendance at an event? To sell a particular item? Figure it out before you start.

2. Decide On an Offer

You know why you’re sending the card. Now what exactly are you going to offer up to your recipients to get them to take action? Is the item, service, event, etc. compelling enough on its own? Or are you going to offer a discount or provide some other incentive?

3. Identify Your Audience

Is the idea a good fit for your entire list? Or do you want to reach out to only a certain segment based on their interests or location?

You can also use purchased or rented lists for direct mail postcards, something that is generally an awful idea with email (VerticalResponse prohibits the use of third party lists for email campaigns). So consider if your offer could generate prospects for your company.

If you’re looking for direct mail lists, then sites like www.hoovers.com, www.onesource.com and www.infousa.com are a good place to start.

4. Select an Eye-Catching Image

With the possible exception of the offer itself, the image is probably the most important part of the card. An eye-catching image could land your card on a recipient’s refrigerator for the next three months, or, even better, make them want to flip the card over and see what you’re offering them.

An image that fits your offer and is funny / striking in some way is never a bad choice.

5. Write Your Headline

The headline on the front of your card is like the subject line of an email. It should usually be short and interesting, and (in conjunction with the image on the front) make recipients want to flip the card over and read what you have to say.

6. Clarify Your Message

It can be tempting to write a long explanation of what you’re offering and why people should take action with it. But that is the wrong way to go. Your offer should be easy to read and understand in the time it takes a recipient to go from their mailbox into their house. Otherwise your card could end up in the garbage without it having achieved the impact you wanted.

7. Design Your Card

Now that you know your offer and chosen your image, you’re ready to design your card. You can do this with a tool like photoshop or using the tools in VerticalResponse.

Try to keep the design simple and easy to scan, because (again) you really only have until the recipient reaches the trash or the recycling bin to get your point across. If you can say what you need to say in a sentence, then don’t say it in a paragraph.

8. Include Tracking

Tracking an email is easy. You just have to send them email and we’ll immediately tell you who opened it, who clicked a link and can even tell you who made a purchase or otherwise converted from your message.

Postcards are not quite so easy, but that doesn’t mean they can’t be tracked. If you’re linking recipients to your site, send them to a landing page that is specific to the card. If you’re pushing them to make a purchase, include a postcard specific promo code. If you’re doing a sale at your store, require that they bring the card in with them.

Doing some kind of tracking is important, because otherwise you’ll have no direct way to measure the success of your card.

9. Send Your Card

Once your card is together, you’ll obviously need to send it out. And I know of this great service that makes it easy for you to do that.

Err, if you just happened upon this article, the service to which I’m referring is VerticalResponse.

10. Track Responses in Salesforce

If you’re tracking your responses in such a way that you can see exactly who took action, then make note of that on your Lead & Contact records. And if a postcard is returned to you as undeliverable, then be sure to note that the address on the record is no longer correct. Otherwise you’ll be wasting your money on a bad address again and again in the future.

Have questions? Let us know in the comments!

Richard Huffaker, Education & Training Manager

Do You Know the Way to VR Postcards?

2009-07-27T16:33:55-07:00

When you first install VerticalResponse, we add three tabs to your account: VR Email, VR Postcards and VR Statistics. Though plenty of you use the VR Postcards tab, I'd guess that most skip right over it while jumping back and forth between the other two tabs.

And that's a shame, not only because ignoring the VR Postcard tab in this way almost certainly hurts its feelings, but also because Direct Mail Postcards are still a powerful tool in a marketer's arsenal. Yes, even in this day and age with our blogs and tweets and Segway polo teams.

So in today's post I'm going to detail how you can use the VR Postcards tab and talk a little bit about why postcards can be a useful part of your marketing efforts.

First, why use postcards in this modern era?

Because you don’t have the email address. There is a good chance you’re missing the email address for at least some of your customers and prospects. If you have their postal address, a postcard can be a great way to point them to sign-up for your email list.

Because you’re looking for new customers. It’s a bad idea to use purchased lists for your email marketing because using such lists can have a direct impact on your ability to see your own email delivered, since there is such an incredible amount of fraudulent email that goes out everyday. In fact, VerticalResponse doesn’t allow the use of purchased lists for email. But you can use purchased lists for sending out postcards without worrying that the postal service is going to suddenly stop delivering your mail. So postcards can be a great way to reach out to a potential audience.

If you run a neighborhood business or a business that focuses on a certain city, postcards can also be a great way to reach out to people who have just moved to town. The Postal Service generally does not forward Commercial mail when someone moves, so a new resident’s mailbox will likely be emptier than normal.

Because an email address has bounced. If an email address bounces back as undeliverable, then a postcard can be a great way to get the correct address.

Postcards are also useful for:

Announcing Events
Mailing to Lists Provided by Tradeshows
Reaching Out to People who Don’t Respond to Your Emails

How does the Postcard tool work?

You can upload your own image or select an image from our royalty-free stock photo gallery. If you upload your own image, it needs to be in JPEG (*.jpg) format and 150 DPI or larger.
You can create either 4x6 or 6x9 sized postcards. You choose which size you want during the editing process. As you might expect, 6x9 cards are more expensive than 4x6 cards.
We print the cards on 30% recycled, Forest Stewardship Council certified paper and mail them out to your list. You can build a postcard list from the VR Postcard Tab using the same tools we provide for building an email list. There is no minimum order size, either - we'll print and mail a single card if that's all you need. But do note that postcards can only be mailed to US Addresses.

Every account includes one free 4x6 card so you can check out the quality of the postcards. If you’ve never sent yourself a free card before (or never used the postcard tool), here’s how to get going:

Go to VR Postcards.
Click the New Postcard link.
Select whether you want to upload your own image or select an image from our free Stock Photo Library. If you choose to upload your own image, you’ll just browse your computer for the file you want to upload. If you select the stock photo option, a dialog box will appear from where you can search for images.
After you make your selection, you’ll be able to edit the front of the card. From here you can select between 4x6 and 6x9 card sizes (be sure to choose 4x6 if you want to send a free card), add text to the front of the card by clicking anywhere on your image, and do some very basic image editing.
The next step is to add text to the back of the card. There is a single provided box in which you can add text. You should also enter your return address here.
When you’re done, you can view PDF proofs for both the front and back. Each proof includes a 3 digit proof code. You’ll need the codes for both front and back later in the process, so be sure to jot them down somewhere.
Now you select the lists to which you want to send your card. Any list you select will need to include postal addresses for what I think are obvious reasons. You can also select the option to send yourself a free card at this point - you’ll be prompted to enter the address where you want the free card to be sent later in the process.
The next option is to schedule your launch date. You can schedule the postcard to be processed in advance or have it processed immediately. Note that your scheduled data determines when the card will be sent to the printer, not when it will actually be mailed. It can take a few business days before it is printed and sent out.
The final step in the process is to actually pay for the mailing (unless you’re sending the free card as that doesn’t require any sort of payment) and launch it. You’ll need to enter your proof codes on this page before you can actually send your card out.

Need more help? Don’t forget to check out our How To Do Everything site:

http://www.verticalresponse.com/tutorials/salesforce/

Next week I’ll take a look at some best practices for creating an effective postcard.