Inbox Ideas

Thanksgiving Support Hours

Justin Premick — Wed, 26 Nov 2008 15:07:01 +0000

Our support offices will be closed for Thanksgiving on Thursday, November 27, 2008.

We'll return at 8:00AM EST on Friday, November 28 to answer your questions by phone, email and livechat.

If you have any questions on Thursday, email us and we'll get you an answer when we get back on Friday.

You can also use the Knowledge Base to get answers to many common (and not-so-common) questions. In many cases, you'll even find screenshots and step-by-step walkthroughs. You may find the answer you're looking for there!

As always, we will be monitoring the system and the support inbox to address any critical issues.

Thanks, and Happy Thanksgiving!

Email Marketing - AWeber

Christmas List-Building Tips

Justin Premick — Tue, 25 Nov 2008 21:37:10 +0000

In a previous Christmas marketing tip, you learned about 3 potential goals that you might set for your email marketing campaigns this season.

One of those goals - getting more subscribers - doesn't focus primarily on immediate profits. In fact, it's possible for you to pursue this goal and not see a single extra sale during the holiday season.

But that doesn't mean this is a bad goal to have for your Christmas marketing. You're simply focusing on the growth and long-term profitability of your business, rather than on relatively short-term gains.

Why Focus on Building Your List?

Now, don't get me wrong. I'm not saying that increasing sales is a poor goal to have. It's a great goal - especially at Christmas. After all, your family, boss, employees and/or coworkers will probably be much more jolly if sales are up.

But let's face it: however hectic the holiday season is, and however much people talk about spending around this time of year, it's only how long - two months? Maybe? Out of a whole year?

Email Overload Drops Response Rates, Raises Unsubscribes and Complaints

On top of the Christmas season being (in the grand scheme of things) a short time - it's the 2 months when email marketers worldwide get "trigger happy" and ramp up their frequency (see The Retail Email Blog for proof). As frequency rises, it gets harder and harder to get noticed in the inbox.

Plus, as recipients get fed up with the volume, they're more likely to engage in mass unsubscribe/complaint sprees and less likely to respond to email campaigns from anyone.

Rather than just squeezing another buck out of your current list, focus on getting more subscribers that you can build relationships with and market to all year long.

Christmas List-Building Tips

Post-Purchase Product Registration

Sure, you don't make household appliances or flatscreen TVs. But that doesn't mean you can't encourage customers to register products with you.

This enables you to offer customers highly relevant information and offers after their purchase.

Sure, some people can easily collect this information right off their order form, but not everyone. Plus you can use a product registration to collect interest/preference related information (helping you increase the relevance of your email campaigns) that wouldn't be part of any reasonable order form.

Discount Gift Cards

For most companies, gift cards are Santa's greatest gift. Their fulfillment costs are low, you increase cash flow before having to provide products/services and customers often spend beyond the gift card value (or they lose the gift card completely!).

With margins so high on gift cards, and with so many people giving them in place of specific gifts, you can afford to offer shoppers a discount on one this holiday season.

Example: assume you offer a $100 gift card to a customer for $95 plus his/her (confirmed!) opt-in.

If a confirmed subscriber is worth (on average) more than $5 to you, you've just made a great deal.

(Of course, there are possible abuses here, and you'll want to place appropriate terms on this to protect yourself. Even so, I think this one has a lot of potential.)

Some payment processor/shopping cart software offer gift certificate/card sales - if you've never offered them before, check with your provider to see how to set them up.

Promote The Vote: Subscriber-Choice Sales

I've been impressed with Amazon's Customers Vote promotion.

Basically, you vote for your favorites out of several (much better than usual) deals. After voting, there's a chance you'll get selected to purchase the product you voted for at the deal price.

The brilliance of this promotion, to me, lies partly in the fact that you have to be a member/subscriber to participate. If you try to participate and aren't a member, Amazon prompts you to sign up.

I think this is a great twist on the subscriber bonus or freebie: let subscribers vote for one of your products they'd like to get a sale on. Tell them to share the contest with friends to get more people to sign up and vote, and promote the vote on your site.

After all, people love to "win" a vote, and you love getting more subscribers, right?

More Christmas Marketing Tips On The Way

As promised in the last of our Christmas marketing tips, we'll be talking about other goals you can aim for this holiday season, too. Stay tuned...

Know someone who would benefit from this? Share it with them!

Email Marketing - AWeber

New Affiliate Control Panel Makes Promoting AWeber Even Easier

Ron Givens — Thu, 20 Nov 2008 20:34:32 +0000

Your feedback regarding AWeber’s new features has been very positive over the past several months. Thank you for your enthusiasm!

In addition to the new features we’ve released for customers, we’re very happy to announce that we’ve revamped the affiliate control panel! The brand-new interface allows you to manage your affiliate campaigns even more effectively.

With these exciting new features within the control panel, you will be able to:

Enhance the look of your affiliate web site with new AWeber banners and ads.

Better track your campaigns with easily readable, downloadable affiliate statistics and reports.

Navigate more easily through your affiliate account with a user-friendly layout.

Let’s look at a few highlights of the new affiliate control panel:

Stylish New Banner Ads

Well, you’ve been asking for them, and they are finally here!

Choose from 21 different banner ads that will add color and excitement to your affiliate website.

To see all of the new banners, go to the “Banners” page of your affiliate control panel.

You will then see HTML code for the banner. This contains the clickable banner image with your affiliate URL embedded. Simply copy that code and paste it into your website.

User Friendly Control Panel

In the new streamlined control panel, you can now move around within your affiliate account much more efficiently.

After logging in to your account, your affiliate ID and URL are both easily found at the top of your control panel. This allows quick access to your affiliate information.

Plus, navigating through your control panel is now a snap! The easy to find tabs help you quickly find your resources and account information.

Also, the new color scheme and layout will certainly help you locate the many tools and resources AWeber has to offer affiliates.

New Look for Affiliate Stats and Reports

As an AWeber affiliate, it’s important for you to have good records about the visitors to your affiliate URL as well as your sales and sub affiliates.

This information will be a lot easier for you to understand and track using the new chart styles we have provided for you. To see them, go to the “Tracking” page.

This simple new design will display your AWeber affiliate stats at a glance.

More to Come?

Even though this is our initial roll out for the updated affiliate control panel, there will certainly be more additions to come.

If you have any suggestions, please feel free to contact us and we will certainly respond to any feedback or questions.

If you are not an AWeber affiliate, what better time to get a new campaign underway! Sign up today!

Ron Givens is the new affiliate manager for AWeber Communications. Look for more affiliate marketing material from Ron and the rest of the AWeber team in the upcoming months. You can also follow Ron on Twitter.

Email Marketing - AWeber

Christmas Marketing Tips: What’s Your Goal?

Justin Premick — Thu, 13 Nov 2008 21:29:33 +0000

I'm not sure whether it was the plastic trees in the supermarket, the snow we got here last week or the first "what do you want this year?" question I fielded last night, but at some point it became obvious: Christmas is just around the corner. Is your business ready?

Even with a sagging global economy, sales during this coming season are expected to rise slightly over last year.

Of course, to get your share of the Christmas action, you'll want to pull out all the stops in your marketing.

So, where do you start?

Define Your Christmas Marketing Goals

Now, we could just publish a bunch of disjointed tips here, but that's not going to get us on Santa's "nice" list. And you'll likely find some organization to be helpful.

So today, let's start by defining 3 possible goals for your Christmas marketing efforts.

Sell products to more of your prospects (increase conversion rates)

Sample tactics that might help you here include coupons, discounts and bonuses.

Sell more products to the same customers (increase order size)

One way to do this is to set up a progressive incentive system (where discounts, freebies and other incentives multiply as customers' shopping carts pile up).

Get more subscribers you can market to (build your list)

This can be done through referral programs, limited-time subscribe incentives, or good ol' engaging content.

We'll discuss each of these goals in a few follow-up Christmas marketing tips.

Which Goal Is Most Important To A Successful Christmas Marketing Campaign?

Depending on the current state of your business, this will vary.

For example, if your business has a lot of customers, but slow revenue growth, you might put more value on increasing order sizes.

If on the other hand you're concerned that even with good conversion rates you just won't have a good Christmas sales season, then getting more subscribers might be more important to you.

Have a lot of subscribers who just seem to "hang out" on your list? Maybe turning more of them into customers is your focus this season.

Either way, over the next week you'll find a series of Christmas marketing tips here designed to help you achieve your goals and deliver a strong finish to the year. Stay tuned...

Know someone whose business could use some Christmas marketing tips like these?

Tell them about this article – they can subscribe to the blog by RSS or email to get the next tips sent to them automatically!

Email Marketing - AWeber

RSS to Email: 3 Tips To Get You Started

Justin Premick — Tue, 11 Nov 2008 14:43:38 +0000

More bloggers than ever are converting RSS to email to connect with a wider audience. (Are you one of them, too?)

Now that the idea that RSS and email can and should coexist has taken hold, what can bloggers learn from the email marketing world and use to make RSS to email (even more) worth their while?

RSS to Email Tips

While this is by no means an exhaustive list of things you can do to make the most of RSS to email, hopefully these tips will form a list of best practices we can all build on to better engage our blogs' email readers.

OK, here goes...

Start With a Plan.

A number of articles I've read on "emailing for bloggers" (like this one) set this as the first thing you should do.

And no wonder. This is step #1 for any successful email campaign.

After all, if you don't know why you're converting RSS to email, you're going to have a hard time convincing anyone to sign up, let alone deliver the kind of value that will effectively engage your readers.

Ask yourself: What is the goal of my email campaign? How will I know if I am meeting that goal?

The answers to these questions will help shape decisions about what content to include in your emails, how often you will send emails, and other tactical questions.

Decide How Often To Email (and How Much To Send In Each Email)

Frequency and scheduling aren't typically the first things you should think about for your email newsletter.

However, with a blog I recommend thinking a bit more about them at first – especially if you have an established blog, or if you post frequently (if you haven't gotten to that point yet, you might be better off focusing on creating content and getting potential subscribers to your blog).

And it's important to think about how much content to send in each email – you don't want to overload subscribers, but you want to make sure there's enough to make opening and reading your emails worth their time.

Ask yourself: Will I send an email every time I have a new post? Once every few posts? Once a week? How much content is appropriate for one email? How many emails per week/month will my subscribers want to get?

The answers to these questions will help you decide how often to schedule your emails.

Define Why People Should Subscribe

One of my favorite lines (as anyone who has come to a webinar knows) is "Nobody wakes up and says, 'Gee, I'd sure like to sign up for some email today.'"

If you don't give people a good reason (better yet, several good reasons) to subscribe, well... they won't subscribe. Even if they love your blog.

Sometimes the selling point is the simple convenience of being notified about new articles on your blog. Or only getting notified once a week instead of every time you post.

Other times it's getting something of value that non-subscribers don't – this tip was offered by a couple people when I asked for RSS to email tips on Twitter:

Whatever your "hook" is, clearly define it and then come up with a few (2-4) simple phrases or sentences that sell visitors on subscribing.

These will serve not only as headlines for your signup form, but also as calls to action to help you get more subscribers faster.

What's Your #1 RSS to Email Tip?

If you blog, and convert your RSS feed to email, I (and the readers of this blog) would love to hear your best-loved tip on using email with blogs effectively.

You can either share your tip here or reply to me on Twitter – your tip just might make it into a future RSS to email post here...

Email Marketing - AWeber

Short Maintenance Period Saturday Night

Justin Premick — Thu, 06 Nov 2008 22:06:50 +0000

Our Development team will be performing database maintenance for 2 hours this Saturday night.

As a result, you will be unable to login to your AWeber account from 11PM EST on Saturday, November 8th until 1AM EST on Sunday, November 9th.

No messages will be sent during this time. Any messages scheduled to be sent during this time will be sent once the maintenance is completed.

Your web forms will continue to collect subscribers, and we will continue to track opens and clicks.

On behalf of our entire team here, thanks for understanding as we keep AWeber running smoothly!

Email Marketing - AWeber

AWeber-Twitter Integration Now Works With Blog Newsletters

Justin Premick — Thu, 06 Nov 2008 14:45:31 +0000

Just a quick note to say that the Twitter your email newsletters tool now works for Blog Broadcasts, too.

So you can now use AWeber to convert from RSS to email to Twitter – and get your message out to your audience even more easily than before! :)

Also, we fixed an oversight where personalization tags were being included in some tweets – so now, if you personalize your email subject lines with say, {!firstname_fix}, that field won't appear in your tweet.

Enjoy – and don't forget to follow AWeber, Tom, Sean and Justin (me) on Twitter!

Email Marketing - AWeber

Email Segmentation Lifts Sales Over $31,000

Justin Premick — Tue, 04 Nov 2008 14:29:56 +0000

Over the past week or so, we've talked about email segmentation a few times.

While the three posts did show you how to segment your subscribers, they didn't talk much about why you should do so, or what to say to different groups. Some of you asked about this.

Well, just the other day, AWeber user Yaro Starak talked about those very things on his blog.

Thoughts On His Experience And Results:

(If you haven't done so already, go read Yaro's post before continuing - it'll put my comments below in much better context!)

He started by communicating with all subscribers evenly – in other words, not segmenting.

While it might seem counterintuitive, often sending a few emails without segmenting is the start of a good segmentation campaign.

If you're going to segment based on what different people are responding to... you have to give them a chance to respond first!

Rather than just re-email the same message to non-openers, he tried different message content.

In reading/listening to some marketers, I get the impression some people think the only or "best" segmenting tactic is to resend the same message to people who didn't open it the first time.

I'm all for exposing potential customers to a product multiple times, but this isn't the only way to use segmentation (it's one possible way, but you need to test it against different original content too!).

Good on ya for testing, Yaro.

He merged previously segmented groups back together, based on later actions.

Segmentation doesn't have to be complicated (though you can make it that way if you like... ;) ).

Yaro sent the third message to people who clicked through on either of the first 2 messages.

While this won't always apply to your campaigns, if 2 different groups that you previously segmented start to show similarities, it may make sense to again treat them as one more uniform group.

Your Thoughts On Email Segmentation?

My notes certainly aren't the only ideas you might take away from Yaro's experience.

What approaches to email segmentation do you think you can take for your business?

Are there other ways you might have segmented in his example?

Share your thoughts!

Know someone who could benefit from segmenting subscribers?

Share this article with them on StumbleUpon, Delicious or Twitter – or just send them this link!

Email Marketing - AWeber

Interview: Talking Email Marketing on the Internet Marketing Radio Show

Justin Premick — Fri, 31 Oct 2008 13:20:06 +0000

Recently, Jeff Dyson of the Internet Marketing Radio Show asked me to join him on an episode to talk email marketing.

A few things we talked about:

Why every page of your site may be a list-building opportunity

What happens when you ask for too much information in a signup form

An example of how email segmentation can help raise sales
Things you can split test on your signup forms and in your emails

Factors that affect average open rates

To listen to the full (40-minute) interview, head over to Jeff's site.

Email Marketing - AWeber

Free HTML Email Template: “Download”

Bob Ricca — Wed, 29 Oct 2008 15:52:50 +0000

After the positive response to our last free HTML email template, "Welcome", I set out to create more HTML email templates to suit specific common types of emails you send.

Today, I'm happy to share the newest addition to our family of functionally themed email templates...

The "Download" HTML Email Template

Use this template to share files with your subscribers:

It comes in 3 different editions:

PDF (perfect for ebooks, whitepapers, free reports)
Download The Zip File (all 6 colors)


	Audio (podcasts, interviews and other audio files) Download The Zip File (all 6 colors)
	"Other" Files (anything other than a PDF or audio file) Download The Zip File (all 6 colors)

Each one is available in 6 different color schemes – the same ones from the "Welcome" template.

AWeber Customers:

Log into your account to try out 18 different variations of this template when you create a new message:

Have a Theme Idea for a Future HTML Email Template?

I'd love to hear some feedback on the templates I've created and what kinds of HTML email templates you'd like me to pursue in the future.

Share your thoughts on the "Download" template, and ideas for future ones, below!

Email Marketing - AWeber