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Rachel is an Account Manager with Delivra. She has been with Delivra since July 2009 and has five years of account and project management experience.

As an Account Manager, she is responsible for keeping her accounts up to speed on email marketing best practices and all the new things going at Delivra.  Her laser focus on product education and best practices makes her the perfect resource for the beginning up to the most experienced email marketers.   

In her spare time, Rachel enjoys baking and spending time with her husband and Bull Mastiff Roxie.
   

Creating segments can be tricky when you aren't directly selling online or don't have specific preferences for clients to choose from. If you have been using an email marketing agency like Delivra, then you already have exactly what you need to get started. Create activity based segments. Start out by splitting up your audience based on the following criteria:

No activity (No Engagement)- Never opened, never clicked a link to learn more, or never forwarded or shared with any friends. These people have done nothing with your emails, ever.

No recent activity (Past Engagement)- These members were interested at one time. The time frame you use is up to you, but my recommendation is to keep it under 90 days or three emails. If there has been no action in 90 days or three emails, your members should be in this segment.

Members who have opened an email (Moderate Engagement)- These members have opened an email in the same time frame you set above.

Members who have clicked through (High Engagement)- These members are your most engaged audience. They appreciate and somehow use the content you are sending them.

Start out by sending the same content to each segment. After you establish your baseline then start targeting these groups in unique ways. What ways do you segment your audience?

Still need help identifying your audience for more targeted email campaigns? Check out 3 Segmentation tips for B2B Email Marketers and 5 Segmentation Ideas for 2012. Need one-on-one help? Schedule a consultation with Delivra.

Web forms and filling out cards in order to obtain subscribers are effective methods under certain circumstances; however, text-to-subscribe allows clients to reach your audience more efficiently and have them respond quickly.

Events or Trade Shows: Last February we covered trade show rules of engagement, if you missed that post you may want to check that out. Trade shows are a great opportunity to grow your email subscriber list and we now have a couple of new tools to enhance your trade show email plan. Bonus: Set up a welcome message so as soon as they sign up via text they receive their first email explaining who you are and what information they have signed up for.

Retail Store: Having a sign up for text-to-subscribe gives your shoppers an opportunity to sign up for your special offers and at the same time can offer them a discount on their in-store purchase. It's a win-win for you and your shopper.

Print Ad, Direct Mail Piece, Banner: Adding sign up info to your print ad or direct mail piece using text to subscribe gives your new subscriber an opportunity to sign up right now rather than waiting until they get online later.

Announcements: Do you purchase advertising from your local sports team? Next time you change that copy include a brief snippet on how to sign up to receive information from you too.

Speaking Engagements: Do you give a lot of presentations? Including text to subscribe information at the end of your presentation will give your audience members an easy way to sign up for future newsletters.

Text-to-subscribe offers you and your future subscribers an easy, accurate and immediate way to sign up for your next email.

Interested in learning more about adding text-to-subscribe to your marketing strategy? Download the whitepaper or contact us today to learn more.

The last entry for prepping your Holiday email campaign focuses on content and evaluating results. Choosing your content focus should be easy if you completed the tasks from week one and week two.

Test your subject lines and content. Can't decide on a subject line or where to place that "Buy Now" button? Email AB split testing takes the guess work out of it and shows you the results instead. Do not lean on just open or clickthrough numbers, instead keep the focus on conversion.

Keep your content simple. Just because you have lots of widgets does not mean they all need to be in the email. If you need to, refer back to your goals and ask yourself, does this addition to the content help meet our goals? If not, then take it out. Lastly, don't forget to add your social media share buttons. Your members are friend with other peope like them give them an easy way to share the info.

Use your results to make changes to the next mailing. Email is dynamic. Not happy with your results from your last mailing? Change something. Test. Repeat. While your goals should be pretty set by now, your roadmap should be etched in pencil and fine tumed throughout your campaign.

Benchmark and document for next year. Get a head start by writing out clear and detailed notes for next year. Document what worked, what didn't and ideas for trying next year. The longer you wait the more you will probably forget.

Best of luck on your holiday campaigns. Need some ideas for you campaign? Here are some ideas to get the ball rolling.

Holiday Email Campaign Ideas

• Dynamic Sequence- Create a drip campaign for certain interests. Maybe your recipients just want to see gift ideas for mom or a certain interest like running or reading or travel. Use dynamic content to send them one email with all of their choices rather than multiple emails.
• Themed Emails- 12 days of savings (make sure your members optin for this daily email). Need a special opt in? We can help. Contact us to learn more about profile and subscribe forms.
• Come back- Don't forget to set up shopping cart abandonment emails with an incentive to come back to complete the shopping process.
• Early Bird Campaign- Early shopping deals for "Black Friday" and "Cyber Monday" can stand out in the inbox if done well. Email graphic design has different rules than Web graphic design. Need some help figuring that out? Check out our design gallery for some ideas, thencontact us to learn more.
• Smart Phone Focus- Creating a special campaign for your smart phone users can increase sales and provide valuable information about where your members are reading your emails. Do some testing to make sure your in store check out process can scan the barcode from a smartphone. Need to know where to start? Check out our mobile design whitepaper.

Just in case you missed the previous post, click here to read part one about preparing the plan. Part two focuses on prepping and segmenting your audience.

Get the audience opt in. Create a special category just for your Holiday campaign and start promoting it now on the website, social media and email. You could also use text to subscribe in-store to gain new subscribers. Having some of your larger audience opt in to special Holiday savings will show you how much interest there is and will make your campaign much more targeted.

Give the audience a way to opt out. Make sure your members know they can opt out of the Holiday mailings with out opting out of your future mailings.

Create segments based on past history. If you are struggling with how to segment your audience, consider using past history. Segment based on time since last purchase or last interation with your emails. 

Use this as an opportunity to grow your reach. Make sure your deals can be easily shared with all of your subscribers friends and family. Including a link in the body of your emails will make it easy for your subscribers' friends and family to sign up.

Next week we will focus on content and evaluating results.

What's the plan for your holiday email marketing this year? With a little strategy in advance (thirty minutes a day tops) for each of these tasks and you will have not only a clear plan, but a little extra time this Holiday season as well.

Singing “The Twelve Days of Christmas” while you prepare is totally up to you.

Prep your base line statistics- Deciding your key performance indicators will help define success for your campaign. You may also want to evaluate your campaign data from last year to help set goals for improvement.

Define product/service line up- Once your goals are in place, decide what is going to be promoted this year to meet those goals and how they will be promoted to increase sales. What's the offer?

Make a flow chart- A flow chart can help you decide the order of content execution. Don't forget about adding triggered emails to your campaign this year. Decide where in your flow chart triggered emails can increase overall email engagement. 

Create a calendar of events- Remember, email probably is not the only way you are communicating. In order to successfully tie in social media, in-store and website promotions it's a good idea to create a calendar with key events so you can cross promote with email.

Next week, four ideas to prep your audience. If you will be increasing your email marketing communication, then it may be worth taking these extra steps to not upset your subscribers to the point of unsubscribing. 

Email marketing is a great tool to help you reach your overall marketing and sales objectives. However, sometimes it's hard to know where to to start to make the leap from sending everything to everyone to really utilizing the targeted and dynamic power of email marketing. Here are some tips that should help you get started:

Define your Goals- This should not be confused with your email marketing statistics. Email open rates and clickthrough numbers are good indicators of how you are performing, but not necessarily end goals. Define what you want to accomplish. Is it to increase attendance at an event, raise more money or sell more of a widget? Define what the goal is and create an attainable (yet stretch) goal that is measurable and use email metrics as indicators of your success towards that goal.

Create your Baseline- Compare a series of mailings that have gone out to your audience over time to observe any trends.

Clean your List of Unengaged Members- If a member is not doing anything with your emails, then why continue to send to them? A re-engagement campaign pools all of your unengaged members into a segment so you can attempt to re-engage them. After you send your re-engagement emails and there is no activity, then change their member status so you are no longer sending to them.

Segment your Audience- If your audience is diverse and will likely respond differently to email content, time or day sent, then consider segmentation. For example, if this is a campaign to raise money, maybe define segments based on past donations. Another good option would be to segment based on age ranges or member engagement/previous activity.

Start Testing and Sending Email Campaigns- A/B Split testing is a way to test different pieces of content among your defined segments to see which piece of content gets the best results. The best way to utilize this is to test one or two variables at a time and evaluate which content gets the better results to send to the rest of your segment.

Evaluate and Make Changes-Review your baseline statistics to your new statistics coming in. The frequency of sending your emails to that audience will determine how long before you can really evaluate your results and start making changes to your content, sending frequency and subject lines.

Refining your email marketing tactics can take some time, but is well worth the effort. Need help? Contact us today with additional questions!

Rachel Rewerts | Account Management

Did you see Watson on Jeopardy!?  What is so awesome about Watson is (most of the time) he can pull out the most relevant data in a sea of information and come up with the right answer (minus the whole Toronto incident). I’ve been thinking, I want Watson as my life raft. He can find the relevant content and offers, and send them my way.

Usually my blog posts come from my account manager role. This time, I’m pulling from my experience as a consumer. I may be a perfect representation of your subscribers or I could represent the exact opposite. How do you know? You should test your subject line and content to find out for sure. We have  talked about relevant content before, but this is different. I don’t just want relevant content…I want content that is to the point. My not-so-scientific research determined that marketers sending email to me may get, at the most, about five seconds.

The first second is spent on the “from line” and “subject line”. I ask myself these questions: Do I know you? Am I interested in this offer?

If you have made it past the first second, then your content better be relevant. I will spend three to five seconds scanning through your text asking: Is this something I want or need?  Could I learn something new? If the answer is yes to either of these questions, then you probably have an engaged subscriber heading to the website to buy something or read more.

Sure, I am a few years away and a few dollars short for my own personal Watson. Not to mention how terribly narrow minded to think he would have to be  just to sort through all of the marketing I am exposed to on a daily basis. On the other hand, e-mail organization has already begun to evolve. Gmail’s Priority Inbox has been a huge help organizing the emails I get everyday. Marketing messages rarely get through unless I have marked them as a priority or if I have read them consistently in the past.

If you are not giving your subscribers relevant content they might unsubscribe or (even worse) mark your email as unimportant and ignore you. What can you do to improve your relevancy to your subscribers? Start with this blog post: Content Marketing...leave them asking for MORE!

Rachel Rewerts | Account Management

I have been working with a lot of clients who are looking for ways to improve their email efforts in 2011. They usually are wondering how much all the bells and whistles cost. They assume they need to invest more money in their email marketing program to see improvement. Frankly (and don't tell my sales manager I'm saying this), but  a lot of clients already have most of the bells and whistles they need. Occasionally additional financial investment is needed for things like integration, custom HTML design or advanced analytic options but most often it is quality time they need to invest. So now that you have carved out some time, where exactly should that time be spent? Good question. Here is where I would start:

Strategy- Create a flow chart outlining the process from beginning to end. I love those super huge post-its so I usually recommend starting there with some colorful markers to boot, but that’s completely a personal preference. Start with answering the basics about your members (“member” is referring to anyone on your email list).

How does a new member get on our list and where are all the places a member joins our email list?

What communication this member will receive?

How many emails does the member receive (or want) on a monthly basis?

How I will measure this member’s engagement?

How will I measure my ROI and what are my goals? Special event coming up? Need an increase in sales or sales leads? What am I really trying to accomplish? Surely it’s not just improving an open rate statistic.

Reports—Use reports and statistics as your benchmarks. Try not to compare yourself to others. This is about you and not industry standards. Really dig into your reports.

Where is the activity happening? If it’s all at the top then maybe your content is too long. Save yourself some time and cut a couple things out. If there is little or none at all, then maybe your content needs a makeover.

Conduct split tests on subject lines and from lines. Spend some time analyzing what is working and what isn’t working.

You probably won’t be able to figure everything out after sending one email , but that’s ok because you are ready to invest some time, remember?

Evaluating and updating your strategy—Schedule time to review and be prepared to make changes about once a quarter. If you aren’t meeting your goals, then maybe there are some pretty big changes to be made. If you are not that far off from your goals then, maybe a few tweaks every quarter or so will do the trick. Just keep on scheduling the time to review. Regular maintenance or tweaking time is important. Plus, being dynamic is one of email marketing’s greatest assets. You can change what you’re doing (or not doing) at any time.

Rachel Rewerts | Account Management

Hopefully your list of 2011 e-mail marketing goals includes setting up a welcome message to your new subscribers. A welcome message is simple to create and informative for your new list member (as well as a best practice we recommend). I have been receiving a lot of questions about what to include in welcome email so here are a few tips for setting up your own:

1. Let your subscriber know what they are signing up for and how often they should expect to hear from you. Monthly Newsletters? Daily coupons? Quarterly Updates?

2. Use this as an opportunity to learn more about your subscriber. Include a link to a profile form. Ask them how often they would like to be emailed or what a few of their interests are in your product or service. Then honor that preference.

3. Keep your text simple and thank them for signing up with an incentive. Free shipping or a percentage off would be nice or a white-paper or case study that would be valued information to your new subscriber.

Do you have a great welcome message already? Tell us about your success! Has it helped increase engagement or (even better) encouraged an extra sale or two?

Rachel Rewerts | Account Management

This past weekend Delivra had the privilege of being a sponsor for Music for All’s Bands of America Grand National Championships. What an exciting time for these talented and hard working students!! Everyone did such a fabulous job! We had a booth at the show which provided more than a few opportunities to explain what makes Delivra different. I quickly realized there was one very important differentiation. We define success by the quality of relationship we have with each customer.

A lot of the businesses I spoke with just didn’t know how to tell if their email marketing was effective. The question I asked back to them was, “What advice does your account manager give you?” More often than not the response was “What account manager?”

You know, the account manager that should help you understand your statistics and how to use segmentation to successfully re-market your product. That same account manager should keep you in the loop on trends and best practices in email marketing. They should provide you with the education and resources to help you succeed. Not to mention a great support team that is available to answer your questions. You know, that account manager.

Email marketing is a great investment into your business. Are you utilizing email to its fullest potential? Not sure? Contact us: info@delivra.com or 1-866-915-9465. We’d be happy to help you figure it out.

Rachel Rewerts | Account Management

Recently I have been working with organizations that have many administrators in different departments or branches sending out email. Implementing an email marketing plan with different departments/branches/locations that all have different opinions about email marketing and technical skill sets can be challenging. Here are five tips I have learned along the way that may help you if you are in the same boat.

1. Maintain consistent branding— Provide departments with templates that maintain your brand and messaging while allowing them to change and edit their own content.

2. Listen to your subscribers (and unsubscribers)— It’s important to give your subscribers a way to manage their preferences. Remember, to them you are one organization and not multiple departments. If it is possible for one subscriber to be a part of multiple lists, then they should be able to unsubscribe from multiple lists in one place.

3. Create an email calendar— Be careful not to inundate your email subscribers with email. If departments have overlapping subscribers try to not send out email simultaneously. Use an email calendar to manage when emails are going out. Better yet, create a marketing calendar that reviews all marketing efforts (changes to the website, direct mail, tradeshows, postings to social media…etc) so all of your marketing efforts are working together.

4. Help the administrators with best practices— Have a meeting to share best practices and tips. If you have a dedicated account manager with your email service provider see if they could also attend. Even if this meeting happened once a year it would be worth it to share the knowledge that everyone is gaining. This is also a good time for your account manager to review any new features or refresher training.

5. Have departments or administrators establish goals— Maybe it’s an improvement in clickthrough rate or an increase in subscribers or an attendance increase at an event due to email marketing. Setting these goals will help them and you understand what it is the organization is getting out of email marketing and creating a plan to get it done.

There is a lot to consider when implementing any change or new program across multiple departments. Have questions about adding email marketing to your mix of marketing efforts (whether you have 1 department/branch/location or 100), give us a call—1-866-915-9465 or contact us at info@delivra.com. That's what we're here for.

Rachel Rewerts | Account Management

New Reports Added

Delivra has just introduced an all-new reports function that delivers enhanced insight into campaigns and the ability to more easily share campaign results with management through PDF downloads of most reports.

For Standard, Professional and Enterprise users, two new reports are available: Mailing Compare and Click-through Heat Map. The Mailing Compare report allows users to easily compare various metrics of up to 10 mailings. You can use this report to help improve your next email marketing campaign.

The Click-through Heat Map is a great visual reference that displays an email with interactive overlays of tracking information for links.  You can see where people are clicking in your email - useful information in seeing what activity is happening in order to make adjustments to future emails.

Four additional new reports are available, including a Report Dashboard, Mailing Overview, Delivery Statistics and Tracking Statistics. These reports are available to all Delivra customers via the main Reports menu. Previous reports are still available via a URL.

Customers with a Professional or Enterprise license can export reports via a PDF document (except for the Click-through Heat Map) for easy sharing for those that may not have access to the Delivra application.

In addition to enhanced reports, Delivra introduced a Mailing Calendar feature, which displays a one-month calendar view of all mailings that have been sent are are scheduled for distribution.

Mailing Overview Updates

This report view has all the same data you are used to viewing, however, now it has two additional tabs to make navigation easier. In the Charts Tab, you can click on the area of the chart you are interested in to find out member specific data. You can also save the charts as images just by right clicking and choosing save image.

The Tables Tab is useful to those clients looking for one screen that shows most of the tracking data you are looking for. This links take you to member specific information and you will see your top clickthrough URL's down at the bottom.

Report Dashboard Updates

The changes made to the report dashboard have been done to include data overlay on the charts for easier readability and two new reports have been added. The two new reports are for delivery time and complaint rates.

The delivery time chart shows an average of how fast your mailings are going out. The complaint rate chart is color coded to show your average complaint rate for each month.

The dog days of summer usually signify really hot, lazy days where little progress is made.

Are you in the dog days of summer right now?

Feeling unmotivated and unmoved by anything?

Shake it off, get moving and give your email marketing plan a kick in the rear! Here are 5 things you can do with your email marketing efforts to beat the dog days of summer:

1. Welcome new subscribers- Set up a warm welcome message for new subscribers. Include what your emails are all about, allow them to select their preference of interest and frequency and maybe include a nice coupon code for them to use.

2. A/B split testing- Are you getting the open rates you want? How effective is that subject line you’ve been using for your newsletter? If things are slow right now and you have some extra time, pay a little extra attention to your analytics and test your content.

3. Segment- Think about your recipients. What are they really interested in? Don’t know? Do a survey and offer an incentive for filling it out. Find out frequency or interest or both. Then respect those preferences and plan your emails around what your recipients want. Watch your engagement soar.

4. Clean Up- Use the engagement segment to find out who is not doing anything with your emails.  Come up with a plan to either reach these people in a different way or remove them. Why send email to people who don’t read it anyway?

5. Start thinking about the holidays- This may be the last thing on your mind now…but if you sell or promote anything during the months of October-December and don’t have a plan yet…get one soon! Plan ahead and your life will be so much easier during the hustle and bustle of the holidays.  The plan can be simple: Define your goals. How many emails are you going to send? When are you going to send them? What are you promoting? Create the content and schedule the emails so you can breeze through the holidays.

That’s it folks, just a few ideas to spice up your email marketing this summer. Do something different today! Need more ideas? Give us a call at 317-915-9400. That’s what we’re here for.

Rachel Rewerts | Account Management

I'm an avid reader of the Brass Tack Thinking blog (thanks for the suggestion Carissa!).  A couple of days ago this blog post, Run Your Own Race, struck me on both a personal level and as it relates to email marketing industry averages.  While I am just as competitive as the next girl or guy, I am (working on) keeping in check that I am unique and my goals, success and failures are unique to me as well.

The same goes for your email marketing efforts.  While "industry trends" are nice to know when you are looking at your open rates and click through rates to see how your efforts are measuring up, remember that you are unique.  Your content is unique to you.  Your sending frequency is unique to you.  Most importantly, your audience is unique to you.  I'm not saying to ignore industry trends all together, but if I were you, then I'd set my own goals.  Not based on some pie in the sky industry average percentage, but focused on what you know to be stretch (yet still attainable) goals.

Want ways to meet your stretch goals?

• Add video - Why use video? Video in email is 2-3 times more likely to be clicked on then a text link.
• Do a survey - Find out more about your audience and what they want then target your sending based on preferences.
• Add more calls to action - Instead of putting the whole article in the email, put a little blurb and then use Delivra's landing pages for the full article.  Include a table of contents linking to articles in your email so readers can easily pick what they want to read.
• Automate - Whether you use triggered or sequential mailings or you use our data integration options to make things more efficient.  When you automate the sending of your emails or importing members you can focus on your creative and statistics to better your next campaign.

Need help setting goals for your email marketing efforts? Need to get started sending email?  Give us a call. That's what we're here for. 866.915.9465

Rachel Rewerts | Account Management

I have the exciting opportunity to partner with a client who is literally starting from scratch. No e-mail content to send and no e-mail addresses to e-mail the content to. What a fantastic situation to be in!! First, it answers the age old question “How many e-mail addresses do I need to have in my database to sign up for Delivra services?” Apparently you do not need any. Second, starting from scratch gives them the opportunity to start with best practices from day one, think through and determine their long term goals with e-mail marketing, establish what is going to be the most effective way to grow their list, design a branded HTML template to mirror the website, and set benchmarks for success.

I believe that anyone can theoretically start from scratch.  What would you do differently if you had a blank slate? What process would you change? Template would you redesign? Benchmarks you would set? The good news is that you can start over one change at a time. The new client and I are not making all these decisions all at once and you don’t have to either.  Just change one thing.

• Ask for a quote on a personalized custom template (or make some changes to one of our new templates).
• Set up an automated Welcome Message.
• Talk to your account manager about determining benchmarks for success.
• Brainstorm with your team about opportunities to capture new e-mail addresses and demographic information (ask us about a profile form if you do not have one).

Little changes can make a big impact. Need help figuring out what to change first? Call us. That’s what we are here for.

Rachel Rewerts | Account Management

We’ve talked about why you should use landing pages in your e-mails. But did you know that Delivra offers themed landing pages to match your newsletter template? If you click on Content, Templates and then click on the Announcements tab you will see a few additional options that look very similar to the new templates we rolled out in the past few weeks.  Click here to see the templates and matching landing pages side by side.

Quick Recap: Benefits of using landing pages with your newsletter include:

1. Concise newsletter- Instead of scrolling down through lots and lots of text the recipient will be able to choose which article interests them most.  Which will lead to…
2. Additional behavior tracking- Not only will you capture what is most relevant to your audience, but also any additional clicking that happens on the landing page.
3. A different social sharing option- Instead of sharing the whole newsletter you can offer the recipient the option of sharing just that article by linking to the landing page.

How To: Linking to a Landing Page (HTML Content) in the Delivra Application

1. Highlight the text or choose the image you would like to link from
2. Click on the insert/edit image button
3. Click on the Browse icon
4. Select the HTML content you would like to link to

Click here to see an example of an e-mail template using a landing page…

In addition to these pre-formatted landing pages, Delivra’s other templates are very dynamic and with a few minor changes you can have a matching landing page with any of the templates. Have questions? Call us 1-866-915-9465.

Rachel Rewerts | Account Management

There is a slight learning curve to switching from print to e-mail newsletters, but not to worry it isn’t too steep!  Think of the benefits, your results are immediate (real-time tracking on who’s opening, clicking or sharing), your cost is substantially lower (no more printing and postage costs) and you get to know your audience better (what are they clicking on and what information do they like to read about).  Here are three things to keep in mind when making the switch.

1. Length- With a print newsletter you may have 4 or more pages with lengthy articles.  With e-mail you may need to reduce the overall length, but you do not have to compromise your information.  Use Delivra hosted landing pages for full articles and just give a summary or teaser of the article so the reader will be compelled to read on.

2. Design- A lot of times when you are designing a newsletter for print you may be using Word, Publisher or InDesign.  For creating e-mail newsletters we recommend a couple of things:  You could use Adobe Dreamweaver if you are going to create from scratch or use one of our free templates to begin and the editor to make the e-mail look like your brand.  Creating your e-mail using Adobe Dreamweaver or using our free HTML editor and templates will be a lot less frustrating than attempting to copy and paste from Word and more effective than using InDesign to create one large image.  If you are new to HTML altogether we also have some fantastic designers that can create a custom template for you that can save you a lot of time.

3. Tracking- With print newsletters you do not know who received the mail, who opened it, what articles were read or if they shared it with a friend.  With e-mail you do, so take advantage of that! Create different calls to action. Those calls to action could be landing pages (so you can see what information they are interested in), a table of contents linked to anchors in the article, opportunities for your recipients to go to the website, e-mail you or share the e-mail on facebook, twitter or (insert social media of your choice).  After doing all of that work, don’t forget to check out your reports.  Use that information to craft your next e-mail newsletter.

Need help? Call us for more info! 1-866-915-9465.

Rachel Rewerts | Account Management

“How can I grow my e-mail subscriber list?” It’s a question I get all the time. There are a few different ways to grow your list.  We’ve talked about those ways before. A few examples include: Have a subscribe form on your website, Facebook, Twitter, blog, and a “Subscribe Now” link/button in any e-mail that goes out.  Another consideration is…snail mail.

Check out this direct mail piece that I received in my mailbox. That’s right. Snail-mail to grow your opt in e-mail list. Who would’ve guessed it?  It’s a mail in rebate for a maintenance medication for my dog Roxie. This direct mail piece is accomplishing two things. First it’s promoting an additional purchase from my local vet’s office (I blocked out their information) and second it’s collecting my e-mail address for the manufacturer.

There are a few things I want to point out here:

1. Mail-In Rebate vs Direct to Website- I would encourage people to go the website and sign up there instead of having them mail this back to you. That way as soon as they sign up they receive a welcome e-mail with a link to the coupon to print out. Driving people to your website to sign up will prevent a significant lag time from the time someone mails this in to the time they receive their first e-mail. In your sign up form on the website you can even ask a question or two to help segment and target future mailings. For example, do you have a dog or a cat?

2. Relevant Content- I love the offer. For me, saving a dollar per dose is a good deal. Make sure you are really rewarding your prospective list member. One caution…don’t make the deal too sweet. Great deals can become viral and make their way all over the internet, which may be a good problem to have, but make sure whatever your deal is that you can handle it. Remember the KFC Grilled Chicken coupon fiasco last year? Watch out for that.

3. Clearly Stating Your Intentions--”By providing your e-mail address…you are requesting receipt of  pet care tips and special offers from ABC Company” Don’t forget to tell people what they are signing up for long term. It’s not just for this one coupon.

Just so we are clear; I’m not an expert at direct mail pieces. I do know it can be pretty costly. Will it be worth it to grow your e-mail list? I don’t know. You have to determine what an e-mail address (of a customer who is engaged) is worth to your business. If it was my business, then I would treat this situation like e-mail. Don’t just send to a bunch of people you don’t know, send this offer to customers that have spent money with you before that are not currently on your e-mail list. I am assuming that is what was done here. I have purchased these products before through my veterinarian’s office but I am not on the drug manufacturer’s e-mail list. Now I receive friendly reminders when to administer the monthly medicine and when I need to purchase more.

Want more ideas? Give us a call (866) 915-9465 and ask for your free e-mail situation analysis. Or, do you have some ways that have helped you grow your e-mail list organically? Share your ideas here!

Rachel Rewerts | Account Management