Join Us for this Special Webinar- “Email Marketing 201: Taking your Campaigns to the Next Level”

Posted on December 21, 2011 by lindsaymvp

We know the holidays are right around the corner and everyone is dying for a few extra days off, but remember that your marketing initiatives for Q1 are just around the corner as well! To get you started on the right foot, Topica is presenting a special webinar to refresh your email marketing goals and make sure you are following best practices.

Join our hour-long complimentary webinar, Email Marketing 201: Taking Your Campaigns to the Next Level, to learn how to go beyond a speculative approach to email marketing and how to create best practices driven email campaigns. Register Today!

Webinar Details

Date: January 11, 2012

Time: 11am PST

You’ll Discover

• Email marketing best practices

• How to achieve the best ROI possible from your email marketing efforts

• And much more!

Join Us for this Special Webinar!

About the Speakers

Walid Ezzeddine, VP, Customer Success Walid has been with Topica since 2006 and is responsible for managing the Customer Success team.

Kevin Curtin, Director, Customer Success Kevin has been with Topica since 2010 and works on the Customer Success team. Kevin provides marketing consultation and technical support for some of Topica’s largest clients.

Andrei A. Romanov, Director of Business Operations Andrei has overseen Topica’s deliverability team since 2007. Making sure Topica’s thousands of clients are seeing their highest possible rates.

Space is  limited, be sure to reserve your spot today.

Happy Holidays and Emailing from all of us at Topica!

Filed under: About Topica, Best Practices, Email Marketing 101, Email Marketing Tips | Leave a Comment »

“Are you like me? Or do you have discipline?” via KevinJCurtin.com

Posted on September 30, 2011 by lindsaymvp

Happy Friday, friends!

Since it’s Friday and we’re all ready to get our weekend on, we’d like to take a break from email marketing and share this recent post by one of our own bloggers and Customer Success All-Stars, Kevin Curtin, on the frustrations of starting a new project ans having discipline:

ARE YOU LIKE ME? OR DO YOU HAVE DISCIPLINE? by Kevin Curtin, via his blog at KevinJCurtin.com

From his post:

“If you are anything like me, you’ve started more things than you have finished. 

We’re innately curious about the things around us and inspired when we come across people who have mastered their trade. We see people create cool and beautiful things and think, “Man, that looks easy, if I put in a little time I can do that in no time.” What follows is a few days or weeks of focused and dedicated learning. During this time we make some progress, but not much. In fact, the progress that we do make only gets us to a point where we can truly begin to understand the complexities of the task we are undertaking. Things that look so easy as an outsider begin to take on odes of complexity that we never knew existed. We realize that this is actually going to take work to accomplish! It’s at this stage that we usually lose interest  and let ourselves get lost in the gap between where we are and where we want to be. Soon after, we stop finding time for our new project and almost forget we ever started.”

Sound familiar? You can read the rest of the post here, and don’t forget to leave Kevin some love in the comments of his own blog by either sharing your own experiences in discipline or the best way to overcome starting a new project.

Enjoy the weekend + happy emailing,

Lindsay

Filed under: About Topica, Topica Community, When You're Not Managing your Email Marketing | Leave a Comment »

“How can I achieve perfect deliverability?”

Posted on September 22, 2011 by lindsaymvp

Happy Thursday, friends!

Today we want to address one of the top questions we receive from Topica clients: how to improve deliverability. Deliverability refers to many different aspects of your email marketing- the total number of emails successfully delivered, low bounce and unsubscribe rates, and inbox penetration versus the dreaded junk or spam folder. Deliverability is hardly ever 100% perfect as email addresses are always changing, but how to make it the best it can be as a sender? Keep reading for our quick tips to do just that.

Ask recipients to add your from name and address to their address book. I’m sure you’ve seen it before if you aren’t doing it already- simply add a line in the header or footer of your email campaign asking your subscribers to add your email address to their safe sender/address book so they receive your messages in the future. However, since most email marketing messages have this message don’t be afraid to be creative and switch it up a bit and make your message industry specific.

Honor unsubscribe requests. If you are using an ESP such as Topica, those that click “unsubscribe” in the footer of your email will be automatically unsubscribed. But there are cases in which a subscriber will just hit “reply” on an email campaign and ask to be subscribed that way. Therefore, be sure you are monitoring the reply-to email address you have linked with your email campaigns and respond to any requests that come through to that email account.

Avoid misleading subject lines. Along with receiving unsolicited emails, a misleading subject lines is one of the top reasons that subscribers will complain or unsubscribe from an email list. Don’t over promise or lie in your subject line just to improve your open rate. Instead use the subject line to introduce your message and be creative accordingly.

Check your content score before sending. When sending an HTML email campaign your content score is always going to be at least a 2.0 when using Topica’s content checker tool. However you should still be keeping it as low as possible by sending text with your HTML, breaking up large, postcard-like images into smaller panels and keeping your HTML clean of errors or excessive coding. What’s a good score to keep it under? We usually recommend at or around a 3.0,and definitely below a 5.

Pay attention to your most active subscribers. These are the subscribers who have opened or clicked a link in your campaigns. You already know these individuals are interested in your messages, so why not follow-up with an autoresponder containing an extra discount code or further information about a specific product or promotion? It is becoming more and more common for ISPs to look closely at their users’ behaviors to determine whether your message should go to the inbox, junk, or important folder.

Happy Emailing,

Lindsay

Filed under: Best Practices, Deliverability Days, Email Marketing Tips | 2 Comments »

Come Meet Topica at the BAARC Fall Fest Event tonight!

Posted on September 19, 2011 by lindsaymvp

Looking for a way to chase away those Monday blues?

Come hang out with us tonight at the BAARC (Bay Are Advertising Relief Committee) Fall Fest Event at the Autodesk Gallery located on the second floor at One Market Street! There will be yummy food and drinks, along with plenty of friends and marketing/advertising professionals looking to mingle and donate to BAARC’s great cause of helping those in need in the marketing/advertising world.

You can check out the event website here, and don’t forget to buy your advance tickets at $35 each which go up to $50 at the door.

Hope to see you there!

Happy Emailing,

Lindsay

Filed under: About Topica, Topica Community, When You're Not Managing your Email Marketing | Leave a Comment »

The First 3 Steps of Email Marketing

Posted on August 25, 2011 by aaromanov

Email marketing is a powerful and proven tool. Thousands of businesses rely on it daily for it’s efficient and tractable results. However few people realize that when setting up your email marketing operation, taking some very simple steps at first can have a tremendous impact on your long-term success:

  • Placing a subscriber form on your website to allow visitors and potential customers to become new subscribers.
  • Setting up an auto-responder to double-opt-in all your new subscribers in order to provide optimal deliverability.
  • Sending out a welcome email that will familiarize the new subscriber with your campaigns to improve relevancy.

Today we’ll look at each of these 3 steps, and the best way to implement each of them.

Placing a Sign-up Form

Find a prominent spot on your homepage. Usually people pick the upper right corner, as this is where the eye is naturally drawn, and place a sign-up form there that will allow visitors to join your mailing list. You can also place a link that will take them to a sign-up page, however the rule of them is the less steps you have a visitor take to complete a certain action, the more likely they are to do it.

Sending out an Auto-Responder

Once the individual signs up, let them know that they will be receiving an email message asking them to confirm their subscription. Inform them of what from address you will be using. Also tell the new subscriber to keep an eye on their inbox as well as their junk folder, as sometimes new messages from unknown receivers can end up there.

Confirming and Welcoming the Subscriber

In your welcome message to the new subscriber, you want to accomplish two things. First, have them confirm their subscription to your mailing list, and second, thank them and give a brief description of what to expect. People tend to be most receptive to email campaigns if their expectations are set from the start. Thus, if you intend on emailing the individual on a weekly basis to promote your products, let them know. Introduce the new subscriber to as many elements of your email campaigns (from address, friendly from, subject line, etc) as possible. The more familiarized they become with you and your campaigns, the more likely they will be to open them in the future.

Are you using these 3 steps above to grow your subscriber base? Let us know what works for you in the comments below!

Happy Emailing,

Andrei

­

Filed under: Confirming Subscribers, First Impressions, List Building, Using Autoresponders, Using Forms | 4 Comments »

Time- Is it on Your Side?

Posted on August 11, 2011 by lindsaymvp

The actual time of campaign deployment is a huge topic amongst email marketers, and rightly so. It is one of the factors that can be easily tested and tweaked,  and every marketer strives for that perfect send time that results in the highest number of opens, clicks, purchases every time they send. However, what is the perfect send time? Is there only one hour of send time that can give you optimal results, or is time of deployment more lax than we thought?

You may remember a while ago we posted some of the top findings from an awesome webinar hosted by the folks over at Hubspot called The Science of Email Marketing. Hubspot compiled statistics from over 9 billion email newsletters as well as information from surveys and focus groups to bring us some key takeaways about how subscribers react to email marketing. You can view the slides from the webinar here, but one of the hot topics was obviously send time and this takeaway:

Try sending earlier in the day. The first thing most people do in the morning is to go through their email inbox and you want your message to be in those emails that get read. Data shows that the click through rate spikes between the hours of 6am and 7am (EST) and starts to dwindle from there with the largest drop off happening between evening and night (when people have left the office for the day).

Makes sense, right? Most people including myself clear their inbox first thing in the morning, then become more busy with meetings, lunches, distractions as the day progresses and may be less likely to sit and actually read through your message. But 6am to 7am EST is quite a small window- is this the only time you as a marketer should be sending email? This recent post by Tim Watson at Email Vision begs to differ, and rather takes the stand that send time is not as strict as we thought. In the aptly titled post “Campaign send time isn’t important” Watson takes a look at 3 different email campaigns with varied sending times and found that the time of day had little effect on campaign success.

So should we be throwing time of send completely out the window, and start pulling the trigger at all hours of the night? Not necessarily- ideally your message would be at the top of the inbox when your subscribers are checking their mail, but of course this isn’t very feasible to predict. Also with mailbox settings such as Gmail’s priority inbox timing doesn’t really dictate what’s on top anymore. Instead, focus your efforts on the variables you can control such as creating a witty and catchy subject line, relevant and notable content, and a clear from name and from address. All these factors will increase subscriber opens and clicks now and in the future. (Psst- for more tips on getting your message to the top check out our blog post 3 Strategies For Sending to Gmail’s Priority Inbox)

What do you think- how much consideration do you put into send time versus subject line or content? Have you found a send time that works best for you? Let us know in the comments below!

Happy Emailing,

Lindsay

Filed under: Email Marketing Tips, Email Marketing Trends, Subject Lines | Leave a Comment »

Preaching to the Converted: Increasing Revenue Through Your Current Customers

Posted on August 4, 2011 by lindsaymvp

Your online programs are designed to capture, qualify and convert prospects. You bring in new customers daily, and with each mailing gather more data about your site visitors’ click habits and interests; data which in turn allows you to understand their behavior and optimize conversion. But first-time buyers, while important, generally have a lower average order value than second- and third-time purchasers. Once you’ve converted your prospects to customers, will your current strategy inspire them to purchase again?

The good news: your current customer base is four to five times more likely to convert than prospective customers. Segmenting your customer base, and appealing to their trigger points, is key to driving a second (or third) purchase. Here are some ideas you can implement now to kick-start your own loyalty programs:

Preferred Customers
Preferred customer programs are a great way to generate return purchases. The preferred customer program can be tailored to specific price ranges, giving larger discounts for shoppers who spend more, or it can be targeted to customers who purchase a certain amount in a given time range. To determine which customers qualify for your program you can segment them into audiences based on number of clicks in a campaign, or on number of purchases. Once segmented, you can run a preferred customer program in several ways; free gifts, sneak peaks, private sales, discounts, or other incentives such as free shipping. Remember in your offer to make sure your customers know they are “preferred,” and know why they’ve been selected. Vague offers and descriptions, as well as false criteria, can damage your program’s reputation as well as your own. Also remember to be responsible in your messaging; avoid sending discounts every week or your offers will fall on deaf ears, or worse, be tuned out completely.

Bargain Hunters and Brand-Wagoners
While purchase size speaks volumes about the elasticity of a customer’s shopping budget, the types of products they buy can offer more insight into how they spend their money, as well as how you can provide them the products they’re searching for. Product-type data will help you avoid sending discounts to customers more interested in high-end products than discounts, and vice-versa.

Shoppers often fall into two categories, “bargain hunters” and “brand-wagoners.” Bargain hunters are always on the hunt for great deals – two-for-ones, slashed prices, closeout items, and so on – and make perfect candidates for sales aimed at clearing out your overstock. Brand-wagoners are more interested in quality and are apt to buy brand name, high-end goods; for example, if purchasing a watch, they’ll more likely buy Bulova than Fossil or Citizen. You can segment these groups based on product purchase history, then send high-end product offers from similar categories (i.e. accessories, men’s clothing, women’s clothing, etc.). Your messaging to brand-wagoners should focus on your brand qualities, your customer service, and guarantees of satisfaction.

The Cross-sell
The cross-sell campaign is an important revenue driver for online sales and boosting customer spending. Cross-sell campaigns offer related items in addition to the original product purchase, such as a discounted color printer to go with a digital camera. Autoresponders based on product purchases are a fast, effective, and easy-to-implement cross-sell strategy for online marketers. For example: if your customer purchases a cell phone, an autoresponder can be triggered to send him or her an offer for a hands-free headset. You can send a message to a customer immediately after their purchase to catch their interest while they’re still in buying mode and excited about their purchase.

To sum up, your current customer base is your perfect customer. They’ve visited your site, they understand your goals and objectives, and they like what you’re doing. By capitalizing on the knowledge you gain from their shopping experience, and tailoring unique messages based on their purchases, you can dramatically increase your online revenue!

Happy Emailing,

Lindsay

Filed under: Audiences, Customer Service, Email Marketing ROI Tips, Marketing Tips, Using Autoresponders | 3 Comments »

5 Secrets of a Successful Email Marketing Campaign

Posted on July 20, 2011 by lindsaymvp

Hey blog readers! Happy Wednesday. :)

This is a blog post we wrote that was originally posted on Rapleaf’s blog, a company located about a block and a half from us in downtown San Francisco! Rapleaf helps those utilizing email marketing to send more relevant, targeted campaigns by providing valuable demographic information for their subscribers. You can check out the original blog post here, or keep reading to learn our 5 secrets to email marketing success:

Email marketing isn’t new, but getting started in the email realm can still be a daunting task for large and small business owners alike. With the abundance of email being sent everyday, how do you make your campaign stand out in the sea of other messages reaching your subscribers’ inboxes? Although there isn’t one secret recipe that will work for every business, here are five email marketing tips for campaign success that will surely increase the reach and ROI of your messages.

1. An attention grabbing subject line.

Currently I have open 6 internet browser windows, 2 email inboxes, 2 chat services, a calendar, iTunes, TweetDeck and a Word document- your email campaign has a LOT of competition to get my attention. The subject line of your email marketing campaign is the first thing your subscribers see in their inbox and determines whether that message gets opened or junked. Don’t risk the latter by leaving your subject line as an after thought of your campaign creation! Start thinking about those precious 50-60 characters as soon as you start putting together the content and HTML of your message. Make sure the subject line introduces the campaign and makes your subscribers jump out of their seats, literally (well, almost literally).

2. Sending targeted messages with list segmentation.

You wouldn’t have a conversation about cat food with a strictly dog lover, would you? The same goes for your email marketing campaigns- make sure you are sending the right information to the right subscribers based on their interests and lifestyle. How to get these nuggets of information? Easy, just ask! Create forms that are easy to fill out and include them in the footer of every email you send. Also, ask your subscribers for more information as soon as they are signing up for your list either in the sign-up form itself or with an auto-responder message after the sign-up has been completed. Create audiences based on these specific groups, and send them the targeted messages you know they want to receive. (Psst- our friends here at Rapleaf could help with gathering this information as well!)

3. Content worth sharing.

Everyone hopes that their email newsletter will go as viral as a video of an surprised kitten that loves to be tickled, but you have to give your subscribers a reason and the means to share your content. Start by creating content worth sharing that is fun, witty, and appeals to the masses. (Having a case of email campaign writer’s block? Check out our blog post What to Write About When You Have Nothing to Write About.) Next, include those all too important sharing links such as forward to a friend, Facebook, and Twitter. Finally, give the subscribers who have shared your content a well-deserved virtual pat on the back to encourage repeat sharing through a simple “thank you” email/tweet/message or a coupon to receive a discount for one of your products or services.

4. Clear call to action link.

There’s a reason you are sending this email campaign to a targeted list of subscribers with an eye-catching subject line and creative content that will blow their minds, right? (Wait, what was the reason again?) Your call to action link should be the driving force and reason behind your email campaign. Whether you want to drive traffic to your website, encourage the download of a white-paper, or have subscribers participate in a contest make sure you are announcing this to your audience loud and clear. Also, try to pepper the link in throughout the entire campaign instead of just one large, postcard like button image. This will decrease the content score of your campaign that is used by ISPs to determine if a message is sent to the inbox or junk folder. Also keep in mind that the more call to action links used throughout your campaign the more likely your subscribers are to click.

5. Test, test, and test again!

One of the biggest mistakes email marketers make when it comes to their email strategy is to get stuck in a sending rut and assume they are already doing everything perfectly. Most likely this isn’t so (sorry- truth hurts!), and to keep up with changing trends as well as your subscriber base you should constantly be testing the components of your email strategy. Try playing around with image placement, template colors, subject lines, the day or time of send, or the call to action placement. One way to do this is through A/B testing, splitting your subscriber list into 2 groups and sending one group a different than normal campaign while the other group serves as your “control” group. Another testing method is to take a small sampling of your subscribers, split them into multiple groups each with a different variation of the element you are testing and send them your newsletter the day before. This method works best for campaign elements such as subject lines where you may have multiple variations and for non-time sensitive material. For both testing methods monitor your results, adjust your campaign accordingly moving forward and watch your ROI come rolling in!

Happy Emailing,

Lindsay

Filed under: Email Creative, Email Marketing 101, List Building, Subject Lines, Using Forms | 9 Comments »

Advice from the Entreprenette + Friends: “What do you include in your sales and marketing plan?”

Posted on June 30, 2011 by lindsaymvp

Howdy blog readers, and happy Thursday before the loooong 4th of July weekend! Hopefully before you check out for 3 or 4 days of sun, BBQs, parades and fireworks you are double checking those email marketing campaigns scheduled to be delivered over the weekend and are setting up some autoresponders for further follow-up with your subscribers.

Before we all mentally and physically get our weekend on, I wanted to share this great post and advice compilation from Sarah Shaw, blogger extraordinaire and small business pro over at Entreprenette.com. Sarah put together over 50 tips from those working in sales and marketing on what to include in a business plan for your company in order to successfully grow your business. Take a minute to check out the entire post “What do you include in your sales and marketing plan?” here, and be sure to make it down to tip #29 to get some important email marketing advice from yours truly. ;)

From all of us here at Topica, wishing you a safe and happy Fourth of July weekend!

Happy Emailing,

Lindsay

Filed under: Email Marketing 101, Marketing Tips | Leave a Comment »

Announcing the New Topica Referral Program + How to Create One Yourself

Posted on June 23, 2011 by kjcurtin

Traditionally, “word of mouth” marketing and client referrals have been informal sources of revenue for businesses. Clients happy with a product or service tell people about it, creating an informal referral structure that can help increase revenues. Structured client referral programs do exist, but the programs that exist are heavily skewed in favor of the business getting the referral. The “better” programs often follow the 80/20 rule (taking 80% of the profit and only offering 20% to the person who referred the new sign up) while most offer less than that.  With this in mind, we have created a new client referral program designed to reward our clients’ efforts to support our brand and drive us new business. We thought it would be helpful to share the thought process that we went through when designing this program so that you can get started in creating a referral program for your company.

The way we see it, there are two main factors that determine whether or not a customer will serve as an ambassador for our brand and recommend our business: customer satisfaction and incentive. Both of these are important factors to keep in mind when creating a client referral program that goes above and beyond the loosely structured semi-successful model of old. While customer satisfaction is essential, we think it is more a reflection of our business and customer service than a reflection of the structure of our referral program. That brings us to incentive.

Without incentives, we think that even if a customer is extremely happy with our product or service there isn’t much reason for them to go out of their way to recommend it to someone. If the opportunity arises and conversations steer towards “What ESP do you use?” then sure, clients will put in a good word for us. The purpose of this program is to go beyond that casual recommendation to make sure that our clients go out of their way to share their experience with people they know.

In order to do this, we are now offering our clients a 50% commission on any referrals that they send our way.  If we get a new signup for $5,000, the client who referred us the business gets $2,500: there is no limit on the pay out and no limit on the number of referrals someone can give us. If our clients are doing the legwork then we want to reward them for it. Making the program performance based will incent people to drive us business and prevent us from making payouts on bad leads. As always, your feedback is appreciated! Please leave us a comment if you have any suggestions or if you have launched a client referral program of your own.

Happy Emailing!

Kevin

PS- And remember to check out Topica’s new client referral program!

Filed under: About Topica, Customer Service, Marketing Tips | Leave a Comment »

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