VerticalResponse for AppExchange Blog

7 tips for Using Email to Promote Webinars

2010-03-11T17:21:46-08:00

Karen Bannan from B2B Magazine posted this interview she had with our CEO Janine Popick
on how email can be effective to drive people to Webinars. Email marketing can be a smart way to help people learn more about your company or brand, and email marketing is one of the best ways to get the message out about an event. Here are some promotion dos and don'ts you can put to work for your business. After the article I'll have some great tips for using these best practices with your Salesforce account.

1) Don't forget the basics. It might sound silly, but marketers often forget the most salient information when sending out a promotional e-mail, such as date, time or program name, Popick said. Identify the time zone, for example, and include opt-out—and opt-in—links. In addition, make sure there's a link that recipients can click on to preregister for the program.

2) Do keep content simple. Webinar invitations should include the who, what and why right upfront. Provide a bio for anyone speaking at the event and bullet points that detail exactly what participants should expect to take away from the program. “Really hype the speaker and [his or her] legitimacy,” Popick said. “You want people to walk away from your message with a good idea of why they need to attend.”

3) Don't be shy about reminders. If someone has signed up for your program, remind them a week before and then again the day before. It won't seem intrusive if you keep it basic, including a link to the program, the time and day reminder, and a quick synopsis of what the recipient should expect. “The message can be changed up a bit, but the bullet points should probably stay the same,” Popick said.

4) Do use e-mail as a follow-up vehicle. Once someone takes the time to attend a webinar, it's crucial that you reach them in some way immediately following the event. E-mails should include a link to the recorded webinar as well as a thank you. Prospects may also receive a special offer. “Segment your attendee list into attendees and registrants. Then segment each into prospects and customers,” Popick suggested. “Leads who didn't attend should get a link and a special offer.”

5) Don't overlook the power of testimonials. You probably use case studies and customer quotes in traditional e-mail marketing. It can work just as well in webinar promotions. You can include links to previous webinars in your current invitation and call out the benefits of attending one of your events by letting a recent attendee explain what he or she got out of the experience, Popick said.

6) Do cull webinar transcripts and materials for future e-mail content. During a successful webinar you may receive more questions than you have time to answer. Those questions can be repurposed as e-newsletter content or blog fodder, Popick said. “You can include a sentence in the follow-up e-mail that says, ‘If you didn't get your question answered, check out our blog,' ” she said. You can excerpt one or two so registrants who didn't attend have another reason to click through to the recorded webinar.

7) Don't oversell yourself. Webinars work best when they are used for thought leadership and education; you don't want your entire program to be too self-promotional. Don't be afraid to tap speakers from outside your company, Popick said. “You want your speaker to be viewed as a best practice guru within your industry,” she said.

As a Salesforce user there are a couple of things to keep in mind for using these great suggestions.

Of course the first item I’ll mention is that you can send out your webinar emails using VerticalResponse and using our query tool to create a list of your leads and contacts to invite to the webinar.

If you set up a web-to-lead form for webinar sign-ups you can grow your list and you’ll have an easy way to pull your lists to send your webinar reminders.

You can set a task in Salesforce to remind you to send out the webinar reminders, or create all your webinar emails in VerticalResponse at one time and schedule them to go out in advance so you are only doing this work once.

Then, be sure to update your VerticalResponse email statistics back to Salesforce so you can keep your leads and contacts updated with the data from the webinar. Once you’ve done this you can use Salesforce to run reports on who did or didn’t attend the webinar. You can then send out follow-up emails to let people know what they missed out on and encourage them to attend the next one. Or send the attendees an email with a special discount for attending or even request a meeting with a salesperson.

What is your experience with email marketing to drive traffic to webinars?

5 Tips for Using Video in Email

2010-02-16T11:19:44-08:00

Before I jump into the blog post update I thought I should introduce myself as I have just taken over updating this blog. My name is Jill Bastian and I am the new Education and Training Manager here at VerticalResponse. The position may be new for me but I am not new to the company, I've been working here for 5 years in the Support team, so I have lots of experience with our product to draw on.

Recently some of my colleagues attended the 2010 Marketing Sherpa Email Summit and brought back some great information on using video in emails that I thought should be shared.

Video may seem like a daunting task, you need a camera and place to host the videos, and once you have that set up, how do you make it work in email? Video doesn’t have to be scary though, there are some tricks that you can use to make it easier on yourself and help increase clickthrough rates in your emails. Other articles you might want to check out? How To Use Video in Email Marketing Campaigns, and Website Videos - How Important Can They Be To Your Business?

Make it easy:
Instead of hosting videos on your website use one of the free services out there like YouTube or Blip.tv. They give you the tools and space for hosting without all the headaches. Once you’ve got your video online you don’t need to embed it in an email. Instead, take a screenshot of the video, add that image (help with images) to the email and make it clickable with the link to where the video is hosted. I’ve included a sample here of how this will work.

Since this is a link in your email, we will still be tracking the clicks. You will know how many times the videos are being watched by your email recipients with this reporting. And be sure to include a forward-to-a-friend link in your email, your recipients may enjoy your videos so much that they want to share with others.

Keep it short:
You don’t want to lose your customers part of the way through the video. Keep it around 3-4 minutes and you’ll be able to get your message across and keep your customers attention.

Use quality content:
Give your customers information they want. A good percentage of viewers will do what you ask if you have information they can use.

Think long-term conversation:
 Try making your videos episodic — hook your customers on a continuing story with multiple short videos. Keep them coming back for more of the story, and reading your emails.

Include a call-to-action:
We often mention to include a call-to-action in your emails, but it also applies here. Give your customers something to do from your video. You might want them to visit your website to see more about the topic you filmed, to sign up for a newsletter or contest you may be running, or maybe check out specials you may be running.

Still not sure about using video? Here are a couple of facts that may entice you to get started.

39 billion video clips were viewed in 2009
You are 53 times more likely to show up in an online search if you have videos posted to an online site

Wow! Those stats are pretty mind boggling, and if you follow these easy ideas it will be a lot easier to get a piece of that traffic!

Share Your Email on Facebook and Twitter

2010-01-14T11:48:20-08:00

It's a new year, which means it's time for a new VerticalResponse feature: Social Sharing! You can now post a sent email directly to your Facebook Wall or Twitter Feed from your VerticalResponse account. This is a great way to get your email in front of people who might not otherwise see it.

In addition, you can create an archive link that to use to post links to a hosted version of your email anywhere you like. So you are not limited to posting only to Facebook and Twitter.

You can access these new features by:

Clicking on the name of any previously sent email found under VR Email or VR Statistics.
Selecting the Share Email option from the Email Actions menu.

This will open up a dialog box from where you can copy and paste the email archive link or enter a message to post directly to Facebook or Twitter. If you want to post the link directly to either Facebook or Twitter, and have not done so before, you'll need to link these accounts to VerticalResponse. We'll prompt you to do this, and it is a very simple process. All you have to do is click the appropriate link for each, enter your username and password with Twitter or Facebook (you will be entering this info into their interface, we will not have access to your login info for either provider) and you’re ready to start sharing emails on Facebook and Twitter.

Watch this short video to see Social Sharing in action:

And don’t forget to check out our "Why Social Sharing?" guide, as well as my previous blog posts about Twitter:

Twitter: It’s Not Just for People Who Use Buzzwords Anymore

Tips for Using Twitter for Your Business

The Top 5 Blog Posts of 2009

2009-12-28T11:33:14-08:00

It’s the end of the year, and I’m stuffed with Christmas chocolates and delicious winter beer. I’m hardly in a state to think up something new to write. So, in case you missed something good, I’ve compiled my five most popular posts from the past year. Continue on to read a synopsis, see the first paragraph from each and access technologically advanced “hyperlinks” that will allow you to jump straight to each post!

Note that one of my Top 5 was from the past six weeks, but I’m not listing that because it just seems lazy.

#5 - How to Email Old Contacts in the New Year

A very appropriate post for this time of year. Take a look at how to reach out to older contacts that you haven’t recently mailed or have maybe never mailed at all.

Read:

How to Email Old Contacts in the New Year

January is nearly over, so it’s almost too late for me to use the words “New Year” in the title of a blog post. But a title of “How to Email Old Contacts Within a Few Weeks of Valentines Day” wouldn’t have had the same ring to it.

#4 - Sharing Between Accounts Within the Same Salesforce Org

Each user within a Salesforce Org has access to their own VerticalResponse account. What can users within your own Org share between their individual VR accounts?

Read:

Sharing Between Accounts Within the Same Salesforce Org

If you’re familiar with the way VerticalResponse for AppExchange accounts work, then you know that each user in your Org with access to VerticalResponse is using their own individual account. This means that lists, emails and data that live in one user’s account will not show up in an account belonging to another user.

#3 - Twitter: It’s Not Just for People Who Use Buzzwords Anymore / Tips for Using Twitter for Your Business

I use Twitter to bring humor and joy to my 40 followers. You’ll probably want to use it to connect with your customers and prospects. This two part series will show you how to get started and how to use Twitter in conjunction with your email marketing.

Read:

Twitter: It’s Not Just for People Who Use Buzzwords Anymore

You’ve probably heard of Twitter. You might think it’s cool. You might think it seems a little silly. You might be using it right now to let everyone know what you had for breakfast this morning.

Tips for Using Twitter for Your Business

Despite being the punch line of many bad jokes (like the ones made by me in our last newsletter), Twitter is continuing to prove itself as an excellent tool for personal and business communication. If you’ve been following the news on Iran’s very controversial election over the weekend, then you’ve seen first hand that Twitter can be much more than a tool for snark and navel gazing.

#2 - Design Your Email for Delivery and Response

Seeing emails delivered and having lots of people take action with them is likely to be the goal of any email marketing program. How can you design your emails to see the best delivery and highest response rates?

Read:

Design Your Email for Delivery and Response

In my last post I briefly described a number of steps you can take to help ensure your email is both delivered properly and garners a strong response. Today I want to take a closer look at one of those steps: designing an email with delivery and response in mind.

#1 - Do You Know the Way to VR Postcards?

The primary focus of VerticalResponse is email. This is also where most of our customers are focused when using our system. But we also offer direct mail postcards that enable you to reach out to your customers and prospects via the real world with a beautiful piece of high quality paper.

Read:

Do You Know the Way to VR Postcards?

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.

Quick Survey about VerticalResponse for Salesforce

2009-12-14T16:20:59-08:00

Hey VerticalResponse for Salesforce users, we need your opinion on an upcoming upgrade to our email application. It’s short (3 questions), and we’d love to hear from you if you have a minute. Click here to take the survey!

The three tabs for our app are currently limited to a smaller screen because of the Salesforce Sidebar (the menu bar that runs along the left-hand side). This cramps our style a bit and gives you less room to work. So the goal of this Survey is to find out how easy it would be for you or your administrator to enable the “collapsible sidebar” within Salesforce. This would give you far more room with which to work and would make the upcoming (and rather fancy) upgrade to our email application even better.

This upgrade will arrive late in the first quarter of 2010 and provide a much improved user interface, more flexibility and an all around better user experience. Take out survey now to have your say in implementing these not too distant improvements.

Take the survey!

Applying Colin Powell's Points to Email

2009-11-30T05:00:00-08:00

Colin Powell was a keynote speaker at Dreamforce here in San Francisco earlier this month, and he spoke on leadership, technology, giving back to your community and the state of modern America. His speech was excellent and made a lot of great points, but you probably don’t read this blog for reviews of excellent speeches. You read it to learn more about email marketing and using VerticalResponse. So how can we apply Colin Powell’s points to email?

Let’s take a look at some of them:

Great leaders give their followers a sense of purpose

And great emails give their readers a call to action (sense of purpose) and content that makes them want to take action. If your emails don’t inspire subscribers to keep reading, then subscribers will simply stop reading your emails.

Great leaders have to be great communicators

It’s not just what you say in your message, it’s how you say it. An incredible offer that’s been buried in a seven sentence long paragraph is probably not going to have as big an impact as an average offer in a message that is easy to scan through. Presentation is a huge factor in the success of your email marketing.

Write thank you notes - it only takes 10 minutes for you and it goes a long way for the recipient.

Sending a thank you email after you get a new customer or sign-up is a great way to connect with your contacts immediately. And the faster you connect with a new member of your list, the more likely they’ll be to take action with future emails you send out to them.

Start sending a weekly thank you message out to all your new sign-ups. Take it as an opportunity to tell them what they’ll be receiving as a member of your list (special offers, information, funny stories, etc.).

Trust is the essence of Leadership

Trust is also the essence of an excellent email marketing program. People need to trust your messages will be of value and that you will not use their email address for anything outside of what you promised at sign-up (so don’t lend or rent customer addresses out to other companies - that’s rude and a great way to ensure your email marketing program is a failure).

Always recognize people as human beings

Before you send your email out, ask yourself, “Is this something I would want to read if a company sent it to me?” If it isn’t, you probably need to rewrite it.

Also ask:

“Am I sending too much email to my list?” Send too many messages and you’ll annoy people.

“Am I sending enough email to my list? Send too few messages and people will forget their relationship with you.

“Is my email personal enough?” Your message doesn’t need to be written like a message between friends, but it should be more relaxed or engaging than the kind of messaging you put in a newspaper advertisement.

There is no point in missing anything in life, look forward to what's next

Did an email have a lower open or clickthrough rate than you wanted? Make some changes, test and try again! Like everything else in life, there is no magic bullet that will ensure all your email marketing is successful. You have to work at it - make sure your emails are engaging and relevant to your audience, that your offers worthwhile and that your messages are easy to read.

Buy a corvette, it can solve any problems

I disagree. Owning a Corvette in San Francisco would cause me plenty of problems:

Parking is next to impossible here. Last time I rented a car, I spent 30 minutes driving around my neighborhood trying to find anywhere to leave it for the night.
It would be broken into everyday.

But other than that, he was spot on!

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!

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?

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