The Yin and Yang of Yoga Marketing

In ancient times, yoga was practiced by ascetics seeking higher consciousness.

Today, everyday folk perform asanas in your studio – if they can find the time. Amid the thousand responsibilities of work and home, yoga can be overlooked.

But sometime in their day, your customers probably check their email. Finding a message from you can help bring their practice back into focus.

The Yoga Garden is a studio that email markets with a combination of diversity and sameness. Apply this balance to your own email marketing campaigns to keep your customers engaged, responding and staying on the path to enlightenment with you.

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Do Your Words Scare People Away?

“Words mean nothing. Action is the only thing. Doing. That’s the only thing.”
- Ernest Gaines

You write words in your marketing emails. Many or few, you use them to communicate your ideas.

But you don’t write words to communicate alone. You write them to request an action. Sometimes it’s subscribing, responding, purchasing – whatever you want readers to do.

The words that carry most of the weight of the request are the few at the end, where you normally provide a link to proceed: your call to action. This is the decision point. The words you use here could sway readers either way.

So how can you know which ones to use? You can guess, based on your own preferences. Or you can know for sure by running a split test.

A Case of Textual Turn-Off

The Cabot Heritage Corporation, a stock advisory, ran a split test on two opt-in buttons. The buttons were identical in design and location. The difference was in the wording: one read “Send My Free Report”; the other, “Start My Free Subscription.”

Split Testing CTA Opt-in Text

Just two words changed, but that change had a powerful effect. The “subscription” button decreased conversions by 22.9% in the span of just two days.

What Happened Here?

Different words trigger different associations, and those can make or break the response.

In the above case, it looks like readers associated “send my report” with a single contact and “subscription” with regular communication, requiring more commitment.

But your readers’ responses will partly depend on your subject and the relationship you already have. The phrase that crashed and burned for Cabot Heritage might take your opt-in rate soaring.

That’s why you need to test for yourself. But when you do, don’t forget to…

Think About the Long Run

In Cabot Heritage’s test, it looks like people preferred the idea of one mailing to regular updates. But whichever button they pushed, they were added to the same mailing list.

It would be interesting to see how people who didn’t expect regular mailings reacted when they started getting them. Did the unsubscribe and spam report rates go up with the opt-in rate?

When choosing the words you want to test, keep in mind that you need to set correct expectations. A well-informed subscriber is a happy subscriber.

How To Test Your Call to Action

Your first step is to write several options that set those expectations and fit the usual “voice” of your brand – how you usually represent your brand in writing.

There are several approaches you could take:

Subscribe Here
You could go with a simple directive.
Sign me up
You could put words in the subscriber’s mouth.
Sign up for a monthly newsletter and a free T-shirt
You could restate the benefits that the subscriber will get.

Once you’ve designed a few options, split test them against each other. (If you use AWeber, here’s how to test your web forms and your broadcasts.) Soon you’ll know just what phrase calls your audience to action best.

Who Answers When You Call?

Are you getting the response you want from your calls to action? Are the subscribers you collect interested and engaged? Do they click and purchase?

Have you split test your call to action in the past? How could you test it now for an even better response?

Share your thoughts below!

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Email and Facebook: In a Relationship

“Email – I can’t imagine my life without it – is probably going away,” Sheryl Sandberg Facebook’s COO boldly claimed at the Nielsen’s Consumer 360 conference earlier this summer.

Obviously, We beg to differ!

On the contrary, it seems obvious to us that email is stronger than ever – particularly when used hand-in-hand with social networks like Facebook and Twitter.

In fact, in our recent survey of email marketers, we found that:

  1. 33% reported integrating social media and email marketing has increased their subscriber base.
  2. 30% reported after integrating social media and email marketing they saw an increase in friends/fans/followers.

With email and social working hand-in-hand, how could email possibly go away?

The Allegation

Just as the Wall Street Journal made the claim that 2009 was “the end of the email era,” Sandberg spoke for Facebook, suggesting that the use of social media will bring about the demise of email.

Our Rebuttal

Email is still alive, thriving and only helping social media become an even more powerful tool than it already is.

The Nielsen Company, the same organization that held the conference that brought about the controversial claim, agrees. The results of their 2009 study of email and social media use indicate that “social media use makes people consume email more, not less…particularly for the highest social media users.”

The Nielsen Company

“If you want to know what people like us will do tomorrow, you look at what teenagers are doing today,” Sandberg touted.

So let’s take a look at what they are doing today. In a 2009 survey of people 18-24, the Participatory Marketing Network and Pace University found that the majority of those surveyed would rather abandon social networks long before they stopped using email.

Generation Y spends a large amount of time on social sites. Their average time spent on social networks each month is 33 hours, making them high social media users.

When they were asked which activity they would least like to give up for one week, only 9% said social networks, as compared to 26% for email.

Generation Y Survey Results

Graph from Marketing Charts via WebProNews.

That doesn’t sound to us like email is going anywhere any time soon. In fact, take a look at what positive effects the respondents of our recent survey have had with email and social media:

AWeber Survey

Clearly, there’s a correlation between the two mediums, and there is some truth to Ms. Sandberg’s presentation. As she attests, “Facebook connects people in really extraordinary ways.”

There are 400 million people who use Facebook worldwide. It obliterates communication barriers and can put you in touch with people all over the globe who otherwise would never have come in contact with your business or brand.

Working Together

When it comes down to it, people are people. Whether you are growing your email list or looking for people to “like” your brand on Facebook, any and all eyeballs on your service are welcome.

You have to remember that social networks rely on email in the most basic sense. Facebook requires an email address to log on, and their emails notify you of updates, friend requests and comments.

Rather than deny the importance of email, Facebook should embrace it! The two make a rather powerful pair – both play a significant role in that relationship.

They have the potential to increase awareness of the other and encourage users to participate with both mediums and they cultivate and nurture true brand advocates.

If you use social media and email together, or have ideas of your own for using Facebook or other social media sites along with email to create the biggest buzz, please share them!

Why Email Marketers Heart AWeber (& You Will Too)

Recently we asked users to submit videos of how they use AWeber to run their
email marketing campaigns.

The response was extraordinary. There were videos for just about every industry imaginable, from non-profits to e-courses and everything in between.

We decided to edit a few together into a video showcasing the unique personalities of our amazing customers.

Thanks To All Our Wonderful Users!

You guys are the reason I get off the couch in the morning and come in to work.

Check out the full list of contributions below:

Email Preferences Make Readers Happy

Email marketing blogs are constantly buzzing with talk of value; they go on and on about all of the different ways you can add it to your campaign.

But how can they possibly know exactly what readers find valuable? As Mark Brownlow attests, “value is defined by the reader and not by you.” It doesn’t matter how valuable you think your messages are. If a reader doesn’t find your content to be of interest, they’re going to stop opening your emails.

In fact, a recent survey found that 85% of consumers prefer that companies ask about their e-mail preferences at sign up. So instead of playing the value guessing game, read on to learn how to use email preferences to let your subscribers decide what they deem to be valuable.

Give Them What They Want

The easiest and least time consuming way to learn what information subscribers want to receive is to simply ask. Hershey’s Chocolate does this exceptionally well on their email subscription page.

They require only the most basic information…

Hershey's Newsletter Sign Up

and then leave the important choices of which emails to sign up for up to the subscriber:

Hershey's Sign Up

You Can Do This With Your Web Form, Too!

Your potential subscribers are accustomed to making choices both on and offline, and they’re used to having things their way. After all, they can customize everything from their cars and coffee drinks down to the sneakers on their feet online with Mini, Volkswagen, Starbucks and NikeiD.

Since they are used to the convention of customizing the things they are most interested in, your prospective readers will be way more likely to fill out your form when you offer preferences because they’ll feel like they are in control.

Decide What Messages You Want to Send

This might be as simple as breaking up your content into a monthly newsletter, a weekly special and a daily deal. Or, your content could be entirely different for each choice, but that will depend on your business offering.

Regardless, you have to commit to sending these messages, so don’t give yourself an impossible workload. Choose a manageable number of messages that you can easily keep up with without becoming overwhelmed.

Create a Web Form with Checkboxes for Each Message

Each field on your form will represent a different email. This way, when the selection comes in with a new email sign up, their preferences are saved in your account and you know exactly which emails they want to receive from you.

Save a Segment for Each Email

With the choices saved as fields in your account, you’ll then create segments that automatically update whenever someone is added to your list.

Screen shot 2010-06-11 at 10.59.15 AM

When searching for fields that were added via checkbox, you must enter “yes” to indicate that the box was checked.

Send Specific Messages

As sign-ups start rolling in, you’ll send your separate messages only to those subscribers who checked certain boxes when signing up.

Send to Segment

This way, readers will get what they asked for, and your content will be right on target and true to what they requested from you.

Will You Try This Tactic?

By offering a few simple preferences, your email campaign will be more professional and customizable and your website visitors will be happy to subscribe to it because they can control what they’ll be receiving.

Let us know if you’ve tried this before, or what kind of response you get when testing it out!

How To Reengage Inactive Subscribers

Your subscribers are busy people. It’s completely normal for a percentage of your messages to go unopened each time you broadcast – that is just the nature of email marketing.

But for all of the busy people on your list, there are also email addresses that belong to genuinely disinterested subscribers and it is difficult to separate them from the busy ones.

A reengagement campaign can help you identify those subscribers that still want to hear from you and part ways with the ones who don’t.

Inactivity and Why It Matters to Your Campaign

Inactive subscribers include all contacts who haven’t opened or clicked through your messages over an extended period of time.

With all of the emails that your subscribers receive on a daily basis, it is easy for them to lose interest in your campaign for a variety of reasons – from bland subject lines and irrelevant message content to a change in their lifestyle or financial situation.

It’s a reality that you must accept: if subscribers no longer fit your target audience, they will quickly become inactive and take up space on your list.

According to a study by Merkle Interactive Services (PDF), subscribers who receive permission-based, promotional messages delete 55% of those emails without ever opening them.

That is over half of all requested email!

You want your subscribers to open your mail no matter what when they request it, but if you don’t address the truth that subscribers interests change over the course of your campaign, you run the risk of losing subscriber attention and damaging your deliverability and reputation.

As the late Stefan Pollard points out in an article about engagement and deliverability for clickz.com, the “top metrics generated from activity that make up a sender’s reputation include bounce rates, spam complaints, and recipient interaction.”

Many ISPs now look at what recipients have been doing with your emails when deciding whether your messages belong in the inbox. All interactions (both positive and negative) are noted so that the ISPs can get a better idea of your individual reputation as a sender.

You always want your subscribers to interact positively with your messages so that they are delivered consistently. A bloated list full of inactive addresses will not perform well and could negatively impact your sender reputation.

How to Handle Inactive Subscribers

Assess the Situation

How often are you sending emails? Is the information about your product or service something that a subscriber would value? The frequency and relevancy of your messages go into a subscriber’s decision to stop interacting with you.

There are lots of ways to investigate the activity on your list, but segmenting and sending surveys is a good place to start.

Identify the Inactives

On the Search Subscribers page in your account, you can find out exactly who hasn’t opened your messages in a certain amount of time.

Perform a search for “No Opens” since a previous date. Most marketers find that 90 days without opening is an appropriate time-frame, however you can always adjust the length to suit the needs of your campaign.

Search for No Opens

Finally, save the segment so that you can send emails only to those subscribers.

Save Inactive Subscribers Segment

Send a Series of Reengagement Messages

Even back when your inactive subscribers were engaged, they didn’t open or click on every single message from you. And they won’t all open/click on your first try at reengaging them.

To find the people who are really still interested in your campaign, set up a series of three broadcast messages that make it easy for them to take action.

Send the second message to people who didn’t respond to the first one by creating a new segment after you send the first message, and then send the third message to people who didn’t respond to the second.

Note: with Broadcast QuickStats, targeting non-responsive subscribers is a simple process.

For example, to email non-openers, click the “Unopened” button:

Did not open button

Then scroll down and click the “Send Directly to These Subscribers” button:

Send to non-openers

Make it very clear starting with the second message that if they do not take action you will remove them from your email list. If they still haven’t responded by the third and final message, use urgency tactics to let subscribers know that they will never, ever hear from you again unless they take immediate action.

Not sure what kind of information to include in your emails?

  • Send a survey, asking them to provide feedback and offer suggestions for content that they would like to see.
  • Create a whitepaper or a download about your particular service or specialty.
  • Reward subscribers for (hopefully) taking action: include exclusive coupons or discounts for products.

Know When to Say Goodbye

Going into this task, you must accept that there will be people who don’t respond to your reengagement messages. Although it’s hard to let go of those subscribers, you want the most responsive and interested list in the long run.

Stay firm with the decision to remove inactive subscribers. Run one final search for people who haven’t opened your messages and delete them from your list for good.

Ever Run a Reengagement Campaign?

What was your experience? Was it hard to let go of subscribers in that final moment?

We’d love to hear all about it!

New QuickStats for Email Newsletters

QuickStatsIf you’re like most people reading this blog, you love data. Not this Data, but the kind that paints a picture of what is and isn’t working in your email marketing.

The trouble with data, of course, is that sometimes it’s hard to know which data is important and worth focusing on. Not to mention that for it to be valuable, the data has to be actionable, too.

Last week we leaked some information about a soon-to-be-released tool that not only helps you see how your email marketing campaigns perform, but also makes it easy to take action to increase your response rates and conversions.

And now, it’s here.

Announcing Broadcast QuickStats

QuickStats makes it easy to understand how your broadcasts performed by showing you:

  • Opens
  • Clicks
  • Web Hits/Traffic
  • Unsubscribes

Some screenshots of QuickStats (click to see full-size images):

opens-mock
clicks-mock

Even better, you can use the data to identify responsive and non-responsive groups of subscribers – those people who:

  • Opened the email
  • Didn’t open it
  • Clicked a given link
  • Didn’t click that link
  • Made a purchase (did you know that you can track email-driven sales in AWeber?)

Not Only Are QuickStats Useful and Easy-to-Read… They’re Actionable, Too!

This is by far my favorite part.

One of the most powerful things you can do when you know who clicked a link, or didn’t open an email, is segment out those subscribers and broadcast only to them:

Send Directly to These Subscribers
Click to see full-size image

It’s an effective way to talk to people who are interested in a particular product, feature, part of your website or anything else you’re linking to.

Plus, when you’re able to identify who didn’t open or click, and then email only those people, you can:

  • Make an alternate offer
  • Find out what their objections are
  • Send other targeted and relevant email campaigns to increase your conversions

Learn More About QuickStats in a Free, One-Hour Webinar

On Wednesday, August 4th, we’ll give you a tour of QuickStats, show you how it works and answer your questions about it, live!

Learn All About Broadcast QuickStats

In this free webinar, you’ll learn about QuickStats, our new tool that will make analyzing your email campaigns and segmenting your list easier than ever!

Sign up to discover:

  • How QuickStats shows you how your emails performed
  • How to easily segment your list in 1 click to create highly targeted, relevant campaigns to responsive and non-responsive subscribers

Plus, get your questions about QuickStats answered live!

Date: Wednesday, August 4th
3 – 4 PM ET (Convert Time)

Sign Up Now

What Do You Think?

How will being able to see at a glance how your broadcasts perform, identify potentially profitable subscriber segments, and quickly and easily create and deliver targeted campaigns to them affect your business?

We’d love to hear how you’ll use QuickStats to increase your response rates and conversions – tell us!

A Sneak Peak at Broadcast QuickStats

For the longest time in the history of forever, email analytics has been an all or nothing affair. You’re either tracking your email marketing campaigns or you’re not.

The problem: there is a ton of data that gets tracked and sifting through it all can be overwhelming. It’s like trying to find a back issue of Field & Stream in the Library of Congress. You’re better off going to your local library where they only carry the stuff that’s relevant to you.

We took that terrible analogy and applied it to AWeber’s Email Analytics. As a supplement to our full reports page, in the near future we’re rolling out Broadcast QuickStats. You’ll be able to view the most pertinent statistics for your messages grouped together on one super slick page.

Click that big grey play button in the video below to check out our design and development teams as they discuss both building QuickStats, and what it will do for you.

Broadcast QuickStats makes it easier than ever for you to not only see how your emails perform, but also identify responsive and non-responsive subscribers, and quickly segment those groups and deliver relevant, targeted email marketing campaigns to them.

Sneak Peek Screenshots

You saw a bit of Broadcast QuickStats in the video; here are some screenshots from it. Click to view the full-size images:

opens-mock
clicks-mock

When’s It Coming Out?

Broadcast QuickStats will be launching in accounts with Email Analytics very soon.

In the meantime, let us know what you think!

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Segmenting: The #1 Sales Technique

Salespeople often get a bad rap. It doesn’t matter what they’re selling – one bad experience with a scummy, slimy swindler and you’re left with a bad taste in your mouth for quite a while.

But for every scalawag salesguy, there are dozens of serviceable and accommodating sales reps that truly want to help you find the best product out there.

They engage you, ask you questions and soak up clues that could possibly aid them in closing the sale. They aren’t pushy, overbearing or deceitful, but instead they’re informative, helpful and driven to find a good fit for you – no matter if you’re buying a car, a pair of shoes, a puppy or a television.

Segmentation can help your email marketing campaign function in the same way. Read on to find out how to use this tool to maximize profit and keep existing customers happy.

Give Subscribers What They Want

When you segment your list, your email campaign assists your prospective customers and clients by providing them with emails that match their specific interests, just the same way a salesman would.

Here’s a compilation of our most informative segmentation posts to help you turn your campaign into a selling machine.


Start Segmenting: 3 Easy Steps
If you have more than one web form on your website and you’d like to track which form pulls in the most subscribers, learn how to segment using our ad tracking feature.

Email Web Analytics: 2 New Segmenting and Targeting Options
Ever wonder which subscribers aren’t opening your emails? Want to know who is clicking on certain links to your website? Segmentation makes both of those things possible.

Email Segmentation: 5 Groups You Can Easily Target
Learn how to focus on your non-responsive subscribers and those people who actually open your messages to make your campaign more relevant.

Email Segmentation: More Groups to Target
New subscribers and people who click on links throughout your messages are also important groups to target. Figure out how and why you should follow those subscriber trends in this post.

Segment Customers to Build Loyalty
When you have an existing customer base, it’s important to focus your energy on retention. Keeping those buyers happy and encouraging repeat business can be tricky. Take a softer approach to win their loyalty using segmentation.

Email Segmentation: Easily Target Customers
Your existing customers are just as important to your business as new ones. Reward repeat customers for their loyalty and drive repeat purchases by separating them from the masses and sending them specialized messages.

Email Segmentation Lifts Sales over $31,000
Ever run into a predicament and send a message to the wrong group of people? Here’s how to correct the mess up.

Segmentation Screwups: How to Recover
When you have an existing customer base, it’s important to focus your energy on retention. Keeping those buyers happy and encouraging repeat business can be tricky. Take a softer approach to win their loyalty using segmentation.

See for Yourself

If you haven’t tried segmenting your campaign before, there’s no time like the present to try it out.

Hopefully your subscribers will thank you for providing timely, relevant and targeted information by spending their hard-earned money with your company.

Let us know how it goes!

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Market Like a Mind Reader

Market Like a Mind ReaderYou don’t need to visit a psychic to find out which subscribers will be pleased to receive your next email.

You can find out yourself by segmenting your list. Sorting subscribers into segments based on various criteria means you can send them the emails you know they want – all without reading their minds.

Your subscribers will be impressed not only by your apparent ESP, but by the customized quality of your emails.

You can segment your list in all kinds of ways, including how recently subscribers signed up, where they live and what preferences they’ve indicated on web forms or surveys.

Let’s practice your mind-reading skills now: below are six ways to segment your list. Which ones will let you send custom emails that your subscribers will appreciate?

Segment to Find Out What Readers Want

Online sign-up location.

You can guess a lot about a person based on the page of your site they sign up from. Should you email promos for women’s clothing or kids shoes? Healthy recipes or cafe coupons?

By applying ad tracking to your web forms, you’ll have more than a premonition to go on – you’ll be able to segment by subscribers’ “add” method.

Bonus: You get a glimpse of the nature of your audience this way, so you can create content you know will be well-received.

Personal interests.

You can also segment by subscribers’ interests. For example, your car dealership might want to see which subscribers drive which brands. You may also want to send broadcasts about those brands to those specific customers.

To find out what cars subscribers drive, create a custom field to add to your web form. This will cause it to appear in your subscriber search options. Simply search for the answer you’re looking for to create the segment you need.

Car Make

Survey results.

Subscribers may communicate their interests and preferences in surveys instead of on your web form. Don’t worry; you can still segment according to their answers.

For example, your real estate agency may want to email listings to your clients. Each client only wants listings for the neighborhoods they’re house-hunting in.

To make this happen, send out a survey asking clients to click on their neighborhoods of interest. Link each option back to a hidden page on your site. Then create segments according to which links were clicked.

real estate example

Prospects vs. customers.

Segmenting helps you market differently to those who have bought from you and those who haven’t.

For example, you could send e-book customers suggestions for practically applying ideas from the book or recommend similar products. Prospects still have to be sold on the merits of making the purchase.

You can create these segments in AWeber by applying sales tracking and searching for any subscribers whose sale amount is greater than $0. And when you’re ready to email your customer segment, check out these content ideas.

sales tracking

Online vs. offline customers.

While customers who visit your store might be interested in on-site event announcements, online customers are more likely to prefer coupon codes.

As described above, online customers can be found with sales tracking. It’s just as easy to segment customers who signed up in your store. When you import them to your list, apply an ad tracking category (such as “in-store”). Then you can segment by the add method “import” and your chosen ad category.

offline import

Location.

With just a little effort, you can keep your messages appropriate across the globe. Segment based on driving distance to your location, seasonal and climate differences and the times your emails will arrive in each time zone.

Create a custom field that asks for location, then add it to your web form. Search subscribers by location to send each group the appropriate messages. If your readers marvel at your accuracy, just tell them you have a sixth sense for these things.

Time Zone

How Much is Too Much?

How deeply you segment depends on how much time you can dedicate to customizing your emails. You may opt to segment only one way, or your list might benefit from a serious break-down. Some companies hyper-segment: for example, Cetaphil creates 400-3,000 versions per send.

So put down your crystal ball and pick up a pencil. Start brainstorming ways you can sort through your list to give each subscriber the experience you already know they’re looking for.

Because after all, you don’t have to be a mind reader to know there’s no such thing as too-relevant email.

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