Answer customer questions

​Think about what questions are you constantly fielding from customers? Why not take the time to address some of the most commonly asked questions in your next newsletter?

Feature success stories

​What successes have your customers recently enjoyed and how have you been helping them achieve that? Talk about how they became succesful and look to not only keep the reader interested – aspire to inspire them!

Interview your employees

​Show your subscribers the people that make the company tick! Write about  their quirks, habits & what they do. It’s all about connecting with your customers, and the more they know about your organisation, the more they feel they know you and are willing to do business with you.

Instead of pestering our prospects we should be looking to add more value by sending them an interesting article or giving them some meaningful information relevant to their business. Not only will this take the focus off the follow up, it will help to take the pressure of the sale and strengthen the relationship.

After all, they will buy if/when they want to buy and not before!

We suggest listing your newsletter highlights in the subject line rather than having a generic subject line. For example ”Winner announced, new widgets & holiday orders” is likely to have a better email open rate than something uninspiring like “August Newsletter” or “Winter Promotion”.

The great news is that you can easily test which subject line has the best open rate using SimpleMail’s A/B testing feature.

Measuring your subject line using A/B testing

A/B testing is a way of working out which of two different subject lines will be the most effective for your campaign. A/B testing can help you decide which subject line will be the best one to send to your subscriber list from two different options which are labeled A and B.

The basic idea is that you send Version A to a small number of your subscribers, and Version B to another small group. The results (opens) are measured, and a winning subject line is chosen. Then that winning version is automatically sent out to all the remaining subscribers in your list.

Since A/B testing is built right into your account, it’s really easy to do and it’s ready to go! Contact us if you’d like to know more or login and search ‘subject line’ under help to read the full article.

This certainly is a sweeping statement however the basic premise is sound – it takes time to build trust and it takes trust to make a sale.

So how many times do you touch base with your potential customers?

Here’s an example of how it could work:

1. Call the prospect and ask their permission to send them some information via email
2. Email the information to the prospect straight away
3. Call the prospect 3 days later (if no word from them) and ask their permission to meet in person
4. Email the prospect straight away to confirm the meeting time/date
5. Meet with the prospect
6. Email the prospect straight away to thank them and summarise the meeting
7. Email the proposal/quote to the prospect (within the agreed time frame)
8. Call the prospect 3 days later (if no word from them) to follow up the quote

As you can see, it’s not that hard to make contact with a prospect 6 times. Feel free to adapt the model to suit your business and your product/service.

Feedback, suggestions and comments welcome!

If you’ve logged in recently, the first thing you probably noticed is the new vertical split window when you go to create your email newsletter. Now you can see most or all of your email as you add content to it.

The experience of formatting content was another area we wanted to nail with this upgrade. We’ve combined all the different ways to add special items to your email into a single “Insert” button. You can add a link, personalisation, social sharing buttons plus lots of other goodies all from a clean menu system.

We’ve also given our clients the ability to tweak the font size of the text they have added to their newsletter. We’ve even cleaned up and streamlined the way text is pasted (goodbye annoying popup), especially from places like Microsoft Word.

The update was a success and the new editor is ready to roll in your SimpleMail account. For an awesome video detailing some of the changes click here.

1. You’ve won an award or been in the press recently (well done!)
2. You have a new product or service available to your customers
3. You’ve have a new employee or supplier
4. You’ve hit a major milestone in your business (eg, number of years open, customer’s served etc)
5. You’ve been involved in the community in some way

Still stuck? We now work with an experienced copy writer who can ensure your campaigns are slick and on-time! Contact us to find out more about this.

Before we get too carried away, how about a quick introduction. Auto-responders are essentially an automated email, or sequence of emails sent when a subscriber meets a condition you set. For example, when someone joins your list, your subscriber’s birthday, or a month since someone purchased from your store.

Basically, you set the rules around when an auto-responder should be triggered and tell us what emails to send automatically.

Here are some examples of how an auto-responder might be valuable.

• Sending an information pack/email when someone registers their interest in your product/service
• Sending a reminder for something time bound, for example, vehicle WOF, gym membership expiry etc
• Sending a birthday or anniversary email to your customers with a special offer
• Sending a sequence of emails (eg, 1 email per week across 4 weeks)

What’s it cost?

Great news, auto-responders are free and included as part of our pay monthly plan. At this stage auto-reponders are not available on our pay as you go plan.

Getting started

Everything you see here is live and ready to roll in your SimpleMail account. Autoresponders are list-specific, so simply head into a subscriber list you’d like to set one up for, and you’ll notice a new “Auto-responders” link on the right.

We’ve put together loads of help documentation on getting started with auto-responders, sending a series of emails to new subscribers, creating anniversary style autoresponders (like a happy birthday email) and answers to common questions you might have about this new feature. All of these help items are available via the help menu at the top right when you are logged in to SimpleMail.

Enjoy!

1. Keep your email short - have 2 or 3 key messages and avoid long paragraphs of text.
2. Link to your website - make is easy for your recipients to click through and find out more about your business.
3. Make the subject line interesting – ie, “show special, competition winner & more” is more likely to be opened by your recipients than “show followup”.
4. Add a photo – attendee’s may have visited over 100 stands during their day at the show. Add a picture of your stand and make your business and your brand memorable.
5. Have a call to action – be clear about the objectives of your follow up email and what you would like recipients to do once they have read it (eg, call you, remember your brand, refer a friend, enter a competition etc).
6. Follow up from your email – have a strategy for contacting these recipients going forward. Perhaps you will send them regular emails or maybe you will give them a call before the week is out. Whatever it is, have a plan and make the most of this relationship that you are building with these potential customers.

Lastly (and this is the plug!), use an email marking system like SimpleMail that can track exactly who has opened or clicked on your follow up email. Then you can invest your energy picking up the phone and calling the recipients who have shown the most interest in your product/service.

• View our Email Newsletter Examples
• Check out why you should use SimpleMail rather than outlook
• Sign up for a free trial with no questions asked

Every time you send a campaign, we already show you who is opening it, clicking links, forwarding it to their friends, liking it on Facebook or mentioning it on Twitter. Here’s the cool part—now with Worldview we’ll show you this on a map, in real-time.

Worldview reminds you these are real people you’re sending to, not email addresses.

Go full-screen

Full-screen is the best way to experience Worldview. With a single-click we remove all distractions so you can watch the pins drop as your subscribers interact with your email. It’s amazing how long you can sit there and stare at this thing.

Free for every campaign you send

Worldview is live and available now for every campaign you send. In fact, if you’ve sent a campaign in the two week’s or so you’ll find a new Worldview link in the sidebar ready to roll. I’m not going to lie, We’re really excited about this feature, and can’t wait to hear what you think about this new way to meet your subscribers.

1. Give and take

Give visitors to your stand/exhibit something of value in exchange for their email address. This might be an entry into a competition, the promise of an information pack via email or even a chocolate fish! Long story short, there needs to be an incentive for people to give you there details so you are able to contact them after the event.

2. Make it personal

Think about collecting names, birthdays or other pieces of information that will help you market to your prospect in the future. Names will allow you to personalise any emails they receive and birthday information can easily be used to send birthday wishes or a discount voucher on their birthday (this is easy using SimpleMail – ask us how)

3. Follow up

Commit to sending a follow up email within 2 days of the event. This is where many exhibitors let themselves down and this is usually because they are too busy packing up and getting back to businesses as usual. With SimpleMail you can even write your follow up email before the event so that all you’ll have to do is push send after the big day!

Why should I use SimpleMail for my follow up’s rather than my normal email program? check out our recent blog post to find out why.