Archive for September, 2011

The difference between lists and segments

Thursday, September 29th, 2011

Relevance is one of the most important things that you have to keep in mind to optimize the results of your email marketing campaigns. To raise the relevance of your sent emails you have to do an efficient segmentation of your list.
In email marketing you need segmentation because your list of subscribers is not an homogeneous group, and sending one kind of message will not meet the expectations of the majority. Still you don’t have to confuse lists with segments.

Lists and segments

The list is a group of contacts that changes only when you add or remove some of them or when someone subscribes or unsubscribes for your newsletter. Lists are useful to organize the subscribers.
And also, a list can be made with confirmation from the subscriber or not. This means that when someone subscribes to a newsletter will not receive it until he will confirm his subscription by clicking on a link in the email received right after he subscribed.

With Womsend you can create and edit lists by going to the section Subscribers->Lists.
When you create a subscribe form, you have to associate where the people that subscribe to your newsletter to be registered.

The segment is a group of contacts based on a specific criteria. For example, you can make a segment with all the male subscribers, age segments (between 25 and 35 years) or subscribers from a specific city, according to want you want to communicate. A segment can be static or dynamic, you can set the segments to update automatically. For example, if you segment by age, when a subscriber no longer meets the criteria he will be eliminated from the segment.
To create segments using Womsend go to the section Subscribers->All subscribers. First you create a filter (the criteria by which you wish to sort subscribers), the you will be able to see all the subscribers that meet that criteria. Then you need to save all of them as a segment.
To edit the name, description or “Update automatically” option go to the section Subscribers->Segments.

The lists are group of contacts in which users are registered when they fill in the subscribe form and the segment is a group that you can set as an administrator of the lists, according to some filters. The subscribers does not have the chance to see or choose in which segment he is.

Preference page

Through the preference page your subscribers will tell you alone which information they want to receive from you. On this page you will put the lists and they can choose which is the list they want to be included in. Be careful: on the preference page they will not see the segments of your list, they will only see the lists and a short description. Subscribers aren’t able to see the segment they are included and neither have the possibility to choose between segments. To find out more about adding the preference page to your emails read this article.

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Using a preferences page in emails

Friday, September 16th, 2011

According to the domain that you are in, you may want to communicate various information in your email newsletter and you can’t know for sure what specific information want your subscribers. If you have a sports site and you don’t know which of the subscribers want information about football and which about tennis, it’s time to come up with a solution to this.

Womsend has a new feature through which the subscribers can choose themselves what information to receive. You have to set up a preference page addressed to your different lists, based on the different information you to communicate  to the users in those lists and put the link to this page in your emails.

The preference page is very useful when you have a large range of products and services and a subscriber isn’t interested in all of them. And receiving emails with irrelevant information may determine them to unsubscribe. This page will allow you to personalize your communication and give information about their specific needs.

Set up a preferences page with Womsend

In your Womsend account, you enter the menu Configurations  - My account and you choose the tab Preferences page. There you add the your lists. Users will see it as a list where they can choose the one list they want to be a part of.

There you can also set the banner that will appear on the page’s header, with your identity elements, a title that will appear at mouse over and a link to a landing page from that banner. If you will not put a banner and link that area will remain blank.

How to add the preferences page in an email

After you set up the page in your account, you have to add a link to it in your emails. It’s very simple. You ca do it adding directly the tag {PREFERENCES_LINK} in the email body, either you select in the message editor  “Womsend utilities> Add preferences link”.
When a user will click on the link the system will generate a unique URL for each subscriber to be able to track each user that subscribes or unsubcribes to a list on the page and what is the message he came from.

Encourage subscribers to set their preferences

Using the preference page you will have lists very well targeted and you will be able to send relevant information in your campaigns. But just to make sure of the efficiency of the preference page you need to encourage your subscribers to set their preferences.
An idea is to send an email to present the new feature and say that they can enter the preference page to choose a segment relevant for their specific interest.

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Email marketing and social media

Monday, September 12th, 2011

Social media plays an important role concerning gaining and maintaining clients. In the same time, email stays one of most important communication tools in marketing. Integrating the two means having more chances to get where your clients and potential clients are.

The real potential of integrating social media and email comes from their capacity to engage the target in a conversation, it’s the opportunity to determine people to talk about your business in social networks. Still, the two tools are different, emailing means individual communication, while social media targets more people at once.

How to integrate the email and social media

1. Links in newsletters
First step in integrating the two tools is offering links to your profiles in social media. This way you can use your email list to build up your presence in social media. Invite the subscribers to follow you on twitter and like you on Facebook or any other social networks you are on. You will have a starting point to share your content in social media. Sometimes it’s not enough to just put the link in your newsletter and expect people to click on them. You need to attract them with a reason to enter your profiles. For example, you can invite them to click to participate to a contest you are organizing on Facebook.

2. Invite fans to subscribe to your newsletter
In the same way that you use your email list to attract fans in social media, you can do it the other way around – use your presence in social media to determine users to subscribe to your newsletter. For example, on Facebook you can develop a tab that contains the subscription form to your newsletter.

3. Links on the unsubscribe page
This is a feature of Womsend and it can help you in the situations when your subscribers don’t want to receive your emails anymore. If you use Womsend you can put links to your social profiles on the unsubscribe page for the ones who want to stay connected to your news in another way. More about this feature you can read here.

In conclusion, email and social media don’t eclude each other, on the contrary they can be integrated very well to serve the same goal: promoting your content and enlarge your reached audience.

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How to send efficient birthday emails

Wednesday, September 7th, 2011

Sending birthday emails to your list is pretty usual practice in email marketing because it helps building a relationship with the subscriber. Birthday emails are one of the best ways to show your interest for each and everyone of your subscribers.

You can send birthday emails if you have a space in your subscribe form that requires this information from the users. If you don’t have it is best not to add unless you plan to use it. otherwise you are just making it harder for the user to hit the subscribe button.

Why should you send birthday emails

1. They are personal: this is better way to start a relationship with a subscriber, it an opportunity to speak directly to him and send personalized messages.
2. They have good results: chances to obtain higher conversion rates are bigger when you are sending personalized emails.

The efficiency of birthday emails

With the birthday emails is also neccesary to follow the golden rules of email marketing: value, relevance and interest for the subscriber.
1. Value. Birthday email has to bring a benefit for the receiver. make an offer that you don’t give away with other occasions.
2. Relevance. Use the information you have about the subscriber, like data about the links the clicked on in your last newsletters and make an offer that you really think he would be interested.
3. Interest for the subscriber. Show him that that message is for him and about him. Don’t make too much of a deal of you offer and don’t force him to buy. After all it’s his birthday.

Do you think birthday emails are a good idea? Did you send such emails to your subscribers?

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