The winter holidays are rapidly approaching and what better way to celebrate than hiring two more web designers.

We are all excited to welcome Dan and Steph to the AWeber design team!!!

What’s that mean to you?

Double The Designers = Double the Power = Free Holiday HTML Email Templates.

That’s right… we’ve caught word from our Customer Solutions Team that a lot of you have been requesting holiday HTML email templates. So we made some.

A Free Holiday Template from each designer!

1. “Holiday – Seasons Greetings” – HTML Email Template (designed by Bob)

From the designer:

Normally I chose not to use a background color for my email templates, however, for this design I couldn’t resist.

Recently in a lot of my design work I’ve been tending to add a light source which I think helps bring the design to life giving it a more sophisticated feel.

I also carried the snowflakes slightly outside of the frame of the email to make the design feel that much more three dimensional.

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2. “Holiday – Snow Hills” – HTML Email Template (designed by Dan)

From the designer:

I chose to include a snow scene in the template to elicit the feeling of winter and a white Christmas.

Blue was the obvious color scheme choice for me to add to the feeling of winter. The candy cane-like red and white stripe was added to help separate the header and body content.

This also provided a bit of color variation and visual interest below the snow scene in the header of the template.

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3. “Holiday – Holly Jolly” – HTML Email Template (designed by Stephanie)

From the designer:

Add a little holiday whimsy to your email messages with this holly jolly email template that celebrates the season.

The green background has a glossy diamond pattern inspired by wrapping paper. Holly sprigs are stamped on a parchment paper background with bold red headlines to highlight your message content.

This template is both a festive and professional way to say “seasons greetings”!

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4. “Holiday – Happy Holidays” – HTML Email Template (designed by Eric)

From the designer:

Did someone forget to get holiday cards this season (I’m looking at you)?

Don’t fret, we’ve got you covered. This template is a perfect way to send holiday greetings to friends and family. Thematically it has all my personal holiday favorites, snow, decorations and of course gifts.

It’s a simple yet colorful way to tell someone you care.

Download This Template

AWeber Customers – Log Into Your Accounts

Happy Holidays From the AWeber Design Team!

As the holiday approaches, I’d encourage you to use these templates to bring a personal touch to communicating with your subscribers.

They can be used in a variety of ways:

• Offer an exclusive holiday deal
• Promote a holiday sale
• Advertise your seasonal store hours

Best wishes this holiday season!

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This is the 3rd of 3 posts discussing Christmas marketing.

In the last Christmas marketing tip, you read my thoughts on focusing your efforts on build your list, rather than pull in a few extra sales:

[H]owever 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?

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

I’m sure some of you raised your eyebrows at that one. After all, building your list is all well and good for the long term, but what about now? Don’t short term results matter?

Of course they do. So how can we can get more sales, both from existing customers and first-time buyers?

Here’s One Way: Segmentation!

Consider:

1. The more relevant an offer is, the more likely someone is to take you up on that offer.
2. No two subscribers share identical needs, wants, interests and objections to purchasing.
3. It’s highly unlikely that one offer, sent to all subscribers as if they were a homogeneous group, will convert at 100%.

(If you disagree with any of those, please let me know why.)

Now suppose that you could create two, three (or twenty, or two hundred) different offers that would appeal to different groups of your subscribers, depending on their needs, wants, interests and objections.

Do you think those messages, viewed as a whole, might convert better than a one-size-fits-all email marketing campaign?

Email segmentation makes it possible. Segmentation helps you get a more relevant offer to more of your subscribers.

So how can segmentation help us at Christmas?

Idea #1: Let Subscribers “Window Shop” Your Site – Then Send A Special Offer On What They Shopped For

A general discount or special on anything/everything you offer is one way to try to up sales. But it doesn’t make someone feel special. It feels impersonal (“you’re just discounting because you’re desperate!”).

But an email offering a discount or special on a specific product or type of product (or addressing specific concerns about that product) can tip the scales for someone who’s thinking about purchasing but isn’t quite sold.

So how do you make this work for you?

1. Identify groups of products/services you offer, or groups of benefits of a given product. Create an email to address people interested in each product or benefit.
2. Get subscribers to your site and let them shop around a bit.
3. Segment your subscribers based on what they looked at (you can segment subscribers based on which pages of your website they visit using our Email Web Analytics tools).
4. Deliver your targeted discount or offer to each group.

By creating unique emails for groups of subscribers based on what they visited, you can focus in on the products or benefits that are most likely to convert.

While this might seem novel, some email marketers have been using such behavioral targeting for some time now. (See what Google returns for it).

To make this work, get subscribers to your site and let them shop around for a while. Once they’ve told you what they want to hear more about, tell them more – and close the deal

Idea #2: Send Follow-Up Offers to Subscribers Who Didn’t Respond To a Previous Offer

If you don’t feel you have time to gather data on where your subscribers are going on your website, or if you can’t easily identify different groups of people you would want to target, this may be more up your alley.

As discussed in a previous series on email segmentation, one easy yet effective way to segment is to send different messages to people who did or did not show interest in a previous email.

If you’re offering multiple incentives to get subscribers to buy this holiday season, don’t simply throw them all out there in one email.

Instead, try this:

1. Identify each of the main incentives to purchase that you’re offering subscribers.
2. Decide on an order to present those incentives in.

   You might lead with your most broadly appealing incentive, and order your remaining incentives in descending order of appeal. Or, you could try going the other way. Your call.

3. Create a series of emails, each focusing on one of your incentives.
4. Send out your first email.
5. Send the 2nd email only to people who didn’t order from the first email (but did open or click through from the first email).
6. Repeat step #5 for emails 3-x.

Note that this is a simplified approach that may risk overmailing subscribers.

That’s why I recommend you not simply resend to people who didn’t open the previous emails – they already expressed their disinterest.

If you are going to send to people who didn’t open or click, I would probably not continue to repeat as in step #6 above.

Your Segmenting Ideas?

Are you using segmentation to increase your sales this Christmas?

If so, how are you targeting segments of subscribers?

Share your ideas and experiences below!

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!

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.

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

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

2. 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).

3. 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!

April 15th, the tax deadline is sneaking up on millions of Americans. Many of us are paying meticulous attention to detail to avoid the dreaded tax audit.

While we have our brains working these analytical gears, why not review our email campaigns for ways we can improve them in measurable ways? Here are 10 things to review once you’ve caught your breath:

1. Does your reply address properly brand your business and make your messages recognizable to email subscribers?
2. Which email newsletters and follow ups have performed better than others in the last year? Why do you think that is?
3. Have you been sending to your list too infrequently? Too frequently?
4. Are there any new pages you’ve published on your site that could use a sign up form?
5. What kind of feedback have you received from your subscribers? What can you learn from it?
6. Is your email campaign using both follow up messages and newsletters to build relationships?
7. Have you noticed a spike in subscribes or unsubscribes during a certain period? Why do you think that is?
8. What kind of plans do you have for the upcoming days, weeks, and months for your campaign?
9. Is the call to action for your sign up form as generic as the word “Submit”? Have you considered split testing another?
10. How much money have you invested into email marketing this past year? What kind of returns have you seen? Do you have an analytics package to track these results?
11. What else should we review periodically? Please share your thoughts and join the discussion.

One of the most important challenges facing restaurant and retail owners is in drawing back return customers to their locations.

Advertising for new customers can be very expensive, while relying on customers to take initiative to come back after a single visit can be risky and unprofitable business.

A popular, tried and true way to boost return business throughout the year is to send personalized birthday emails to customers.

Make Customers Feel Special on Their Birthdays

Personalization is one of those “X factors” in marketing, where singling someone out from a group in a way that reminds them of their individuality can pay great dividends.

What better time of year to single someone out and make them feel special than their birthday? This is when many of us are more than happy to take a break, relax our egos a bit, and celebrate ourselves.

What better time of year to single someone out and make them feel special than their birthday?

Some of us are also willing to spend (or have someone else spend) some extra money on things like gifts and special birthday dinners.

A taylored and targeted offer can be just the thing to make someone feel special and remember us when they’re making the spending decisions surrounding their special times.

Step 1: Collect the Necessary Information

Sending birthday emails is simple.

We just need to collect just two things from our customers at our locations and/or websites:

Their email addresses

Their birthdays

At your location, keep subscription cards at your counter and/or provide them with the bill to dining customers.

On your website, you can simply add a field to your signup form asking for birthday information.

Step 2: Schedule Monthly Birthday Emails

Once we’ve started to collect this information, all we need to do is schedule monthly messages to cover the birthdays of each month.

If you’re using AWeber, just segment your list creating what is called a “view” before and schedule them:

Learn How to Send Birthday Email with AWeber

Send Your Customers Birthday Email

By giving customers another reason to get your email newsletter, advertising birthday specials can help us grow our list of subscribers. Surprising them with special incentives to return to your location boosts business and helps to maintain a profitable subscription.

If you’ve been racking your brain thinking of ways to use your restaurant or store’s list and bring back customers, consider adding a birthday email to your campaign today.

Can sending a “Happy New Year” or “Merry Christmas” greeting hurt your email deliverability?

Earlier this week, I was talking with Tom (our founder) about the holiday marketing tips we posted recently, and we got to talking about the email habits of both publishers and subscribers around this time of year.

There’s something that thousands of businesses (and in my experience, especially small businesses) do on holidays that brings you little benefit while making it harder to get your email through. Plus it potentially hurts other areas of your email marketing and your business as a whole.

So what is it?

If you’ve spent a few days now away from your computer (and your inbox), you might now open email only to find a flood of messages from businesses you’ve purchased promoting specials, with many of them arriving just this morning.

If so, that might have struck you as a coincidence, but it may not have been.

Cyber Monday, a term coined in 2005 by Shop.org, a division of the National Retail Federation, is ostensibly the day when many consumers return to work after the Black Friday weekend, only to surf online for more holiday deals.

This year, more businesses are jumping on the bandwagon to take advantage of this potential rush. So, should we join them and send out messages to our own subscribers?

According to the National Retail Foundation, holiday shopping for this year is set to increase, but only by a modest 4%. Just about every other report or story I’ve read about this holiday season has suggested it won’t be a good one.

As other direct and indirect competitors vie for your subscribers’ pocketbooks, how are you going to make sure your business isn’t left holding a lump of coal?