All posts in ‘Email Service Providers’
Tuesday, 5 April 2011
Consider these points:
- Map out what kinds of emails or newsletters you will be sending
- Meet your support or contact person
- Will they help you meet your goal and vision?
Choose the right email provider (PDF)
First point – Map the different types of emails you will be using, and make sure this email provider can help you with all of these different emails (confirmation, tip-a-friend-about-a-service, and product emails etc). The price could be severely affected by what they do or do not include.
Second point – Insist on meeting the person who will be taking care of you; and we don’t mean the sales person. Upon meeting this person, you can now answer the third point. It should be obvious by now if they understand where you want to go with email marketing. Are they going to help you meet your goals? Are they enthusiastic about your vision, or are they doing it just for the dough?
Fourth point – Integration: Don’t settle for just an open API. Don’t misunderstand me, an open API is all fine and dandy, but how much will they help you in using it? Does it cost extra? And if it does, how much will this limit you?
Last point – Take a peek at their policy. Everyone will tell you that they don’t work with bought addresses – bought shmought. But ask them if you can send messages to your bought addresses – ”You sure can!” Not a good policy, sorry… they’re spammers.
When you want to renegotiate – or when you are about to buy a tool for the first time – click on the link above and download our PDF outline. Sit down and prepare yourself before you interview your next provider. The PDF is in Swedish, however, English is on it’s way. But in the meantime, you can exercise your Google Translate skills. Copy and paste, here you come!
Sarah@@@@@
Sunday, 21 November 2010
I’m not sure if you know or not, but we have an “I Love Email” Facebook page now. And if you haven’t been there yet, you should go there right now, it will change your life. While you’re there (which I know you are), look to the right of the Facebook page, you’ll see “Email Gallery on Facebook” link. Since we use MailChimp for sending our newsletter, we can use their application on Facebook to get more people to subscribe to our newsletter via Facebook. How?
After some genius tinkering on Christopher’s part, we now have this great “Email Signup” tab on our Facebook page… Look!
When you click the tab to sign up for this life changing newsletter, this is what happens:
Pretty awesome? Yep. Did I get a confirmation email?
Immediately, my lovelies, this email checks into my inbox!
There’s one more project for us. Here goes… So if you have a Facebook page for your company, you should be able to add this “Email Signup” tab on your private Facebook account too. This means that all of your friends can sign up for the newsletter on your personal profile page too. Think about it, all of your employees with this on their page, and all of their friends looking at it. Imagine how many subscribers they could rally up. Unfortunately, Facebook, a little over a week ago, made a change so that you can add the function on our private pages, but….the tab doesn’t show up… Yet.
We’ll keep our eyes peeled and let you know when Facebook fixes this.
If you want to read more from MailChimp about this, there’s a blog post here. A simple solution that could make it much more useful. Any of you lovely readers seen anything similar to this from another email provider? Don’t be shy, let us know in the comments!
Sarah@@@@@
Thursday, 18 November 2010
I had an excellent meeting in Copenhagen last Friday in October. Responsys has had an office in the center of Copenhagen since August, and I had the privilege of visiting them.
Responsys was rated as one of the best email tools out there in this study by Forrester Wave.
I’m pretty excited to hear about this, because they really have a wide spectrum, they look at it from the big picture, it’s not just about email for them. Email marketing together with mobile, social media, and the web can do some pretty powerful things together. Responsys has a way of working, or a method, that has awesome results in just six months. Basically, Responsys wants their customers to see them as being practical, and they also want to reach a pretty advanced level of “customer-unique” communication. All of this in six months!
With their system, you get an excellent overview of all of your customers and potential target groups. This means that you can focus on…well, just about everyone individually.
Online retailers or marketers want to know when I click on something in their newsletters. They want to know when I’m surfing their website and when I tell friends and colleagues about their company online. They want my email address, mobile number, and they want to be part of my “social networking world”. This is pretty obvious. But, the tricky part for a company is knowing which avenue or channel I like to use and which is the most useful way to interact with me. Also, when does my behavior change and what does it change to? This is what Responsys focuses on, helping customers with much more than just email.
I haven’t seen the tool yet, but when you meet someone who works with this and in a matter of minutes they explain how to revive an abandoned shopping basket, how to wake up sleeping recipients, and how to connect Twitter with email…doing it basically automatically – you know it’s good.
Too good to be true? I hope they get to join us at our Bootcamp in Åre, Sweden, and I really hope to work with them at the eCommerce Summit in Stockholm in May, 2011. Check them out with us! Responsys? Yes please.
Thanks Martin for an inspiring meeting and a fantastic Danish lunch!
Responsy’s website.
Sarah@@@@@
