If you thought autoresponder messages were just for sending those ‘Out of Office’ replies to emails, we’d like to introduce you to some much more interesting uses!

Autoresponders are a great way to automate some of your marketing online.  They are a series of email messages you write in advance and then schedule to be sent out at intervals you determine.

In order to set up autoresponder messages you will need to sign up to an email service such as AWeber or MailChimp.

4 Uses for Autoreponders in your Business

Communicate with prospects after they’ve signed up to your list and downloaded the freebie you tempted them with.  If you offer a monthly newsletter, it can be a long time between when people join your list and the date of your next issue.  A series of carefully written short emails will keep their interest and hopefully result in more serious enquiries.

Send out an E-course. Sending out a series of lessons by email is a popular way to deliver the sign-up freebie.  In many ways it can be better than one huge and overwhelming free report type of download.

As a replacement for an Ezine. If the thought of writing a regular email newsletter fills you with dread, then writing a series of ‘evergreen’ articles may be the answer.  Most autoresponder providers enable you to set up messages at least one year ahead of time.

Keep in touch with clients after a purchase. All too often communication grinds to a halt when customers have made a purchase.  Setting up a few special follow up messages will make sure they continue to feel appreciated, enable you to suggest other products/services they may want to consider, and can also reduce the number of refund requests you receive.

As with all low-cost online marketing tools, it can be easy to get carried away!  Spare a thought for the people receiving your autoresponder messages and make sure you’re not bombarding their inboxes too frequently.  You’ll soon know if the number of ‘unsubscribes’ goes up!

We hope you’ve enjoyed this brief introduction to autoresponder messages and will be revisiting the subject again soon.  If you have any questions, please let us know in the comments below

Since so many small businesses are now sending out newsletters, it’s worth a reminder of the legislation that is in place relating to electronic communications. It’s good practice to check every now and then that your email communications are legal!

According to the Information Commissioners Office,

‘Unsolicited marketing material by electronic mail (this includes texts, picture messages and emails) should only be sent if the person has chosen to receive them, unless the email address was obtained as a result of a commercial relationship. The individual should always be given the opportunity to stop receiving the emails.’

When it comes to sending unsolicited email to business email addresses, this is a bit of a grey area, and no doubt many of us have handed over our cards at a networking event and ended up on many mailing lists! But it’s consumer addresses you have to be much more careful with, i.e anyone with a hotmail, gmail, aol email addresses etc.

Businesses cannot send unsolicited email to any kind of consumer email address, these must have opted in, e.g when purchasing a product on a website. The ICO has powers to enforce the Privacy and Electronic Communications (EC Directive) Regulations 2003. You can find out more about this on the ICO website. Organisations which have fallen foul of these laws ironically include the Labour Party and The Liberal Democrats!

Email Service Providers also have to strictly adhere to legislation regarding Spam, in fact the CAN-SPAM Act in the USA is even stricter than the EU legislation. Receiving complaints to your list could trigger an investigation or cause you to be blacklisted, so it really isn’t worth spamming just to get your name out there. Many UK businesses host their lists & send them using US providers (such as us – we use Mailchimp to send our newsletters), so you need to comply with US regulations. You can find out more about the CAN-SPAM Act on the Federal Trade Commission website.

Mailchimp has a useful article on how to avoid spam complaints, which is well worth reading: How Legitimate Marketers can Prevent Spam Complaints.

Louise and I will be discussing best practice email marketing in our next free teleseminar, ‘Email Marketing – The Next Steps’ on Thursday 8 July, so please register for the call if you’d like to learn more!

I’ve been sending out a newsletter (at varying intervals) since 2003, which is amazing because it means I’ve been using Email Marketing for 7 years!  There have been many changes during that time, and also regular false announcements of Email Marketing’s demise.

But in reality it’s still very much alive and kicking & definitely deserving of a place in every small business’s marketing arsenal.  Here’s why:

• It’s a very easy way to keep in touch with clients past and present (as well as with new contacts).
• You know that people who subscribe to receive your messages want to hear from you, so they’re warm leads already (less cold calling required).
• It’s a quick and inexpensive route to broadcast your message to a vast number of prospective clients.
• Using a reputable, dedicated service will give you reports and numbers so you can accurately measure the effectiveness of your campaigns
• If done well, Email Marketing will increase visitors to your website who are already interested in your projects and services.

Over the years Sam and I have seen examples of good, bad (and some downright ugly) Email Marketing and we decided it’s high time to share our experiences of this great marketing tool with other small business owners!  Join us on 20th May for a free Teleseminar packed with best practice tips – and get your Email Marketing campaign off the ground.  Full details and registration here.

Each time you send out an Email Marketing message, as opposed to a regular informative Email Newsletter, you run the risk of increasing the number of unsubscribes from your list.  Here are some thoughts and tips to avoid annoying too many people!

• If your subscribers have been used to receiving a chatty newsletter once a month and you suddenly start bombarding them with ‘salesy’ messages every couple of days, be prepared to lose those who don’t like the sudden change.
• Don’t try to make a sale from your Email. The objective should be to get interested readers to click through to a specially prepared web page that will take over the job of selling.
• Some people will take exception to you selling anything at all – they believe you should give them everything for free.  You’re better off without them on your list.
• Rather than keep sending the same marketing Emails to everyone on your list, find out who could be genuinely interested by inviting them to join a separate list.  Then mail this smaller, targetted list.
• When your promotion has a genuine deadline, like a date for an event, you’ll need to send out reminder emails right up to the day itself.  It’s surprising how many people ignore anything that isn’t urgent or immediate and therefore don’t book until the last moment.  Interestingly reminders like this don’t seem to annoy too much.

What tips would you add?

I was checking through my spam filter the other day, noting with satisfaction how it had trapped many messages from bogus contacts and then, to my surprise and dismay, saw there were also some from people with whom I had exchanged emails in the past.

As I approved those messages I wanted to forward to my Inbox, it occurred to me how easily we can lose touch with valuable contacts because of the otherwise useful spam filter, if we’re not vigilant.

Here are a few suggestions to ensure you receive emails you want if you have a spam filter in place:

1.    If possible, let new contacts know what to expect the first time they email you.  Perhaps include a short note in your first email to them.
2.    Make the authorisation / approval process very easy for people to follow, especially if they’re a bit technophobic.
3.    Personalise your verification message, the default is so bland and I’ve found people often ignore it if they don’t know it’s from you and they’re reluctant to click on links.
4.    In your verification message, give them an alternative way to contact you if they get into difficulties.

And make sure your messages get to their destinations without falling foul of other people’s filters:

5.    It’s a good idea to send out a message to each of your contacts ahead of the change (if possible), informing them of what your new email address will be.  Include a short note in your email signature block.
6.    Whenever you change your email address (or use a different one!), remember that the spam filters won’t know it’s you, so you’ll need to go through the verification process again for everyone who has a filter in place.
7.    Make sure any emails you send from within any of the social networks are expected, verified or ‘whitelisted’, especially if you know which of your contacts has an efficient filter in place.
8.    If you change the email address from which you send out regular newsletters and promotions, do check the ‘bounce’ report your service provides, to see if your message was trapped by spam filters.  You don’t want to lose any potential customers from your list in that way!

What experience do you have of using spam filters?  We’d love to hear & share any tips!

It’s taken a while but more businesses are discovering the delights of using email to communicate with their contacts every day, or so it seems.   And once they start, there’s just no stopping them!  Sam and I have both received mailings recently that really do break all the rules of good practice; hence this post.

1.    Don’t email everyone you’ve ever met
I’m sure some people just go through the piles of business cards they’ve collected over the months or years and add them all to their email contact list.  And/or they go through the member directory of the business groups they belong to and add those names too.  Not everyone is going to remember who you are.   Not everyone is going to be interested in what you have to say.
Best Practice Tip: Ask for permission to add people to your list when you meet them.

2.    Don’t email jokes, cute photos or ‘chain mail’ to your business contacts
I know they can be cute, hilarious or tug at the heart strings – but I’m going to be a killjoy and say they don’t have a place in business and they don’t do much for your professional image.  Speaking with a friend at the weekend she just deletes the emails without reading them now because the pictures take so long to download.
Best Practice Tip: If someone has entrusted you with their business email address, then business is what it should be used for.

3.    Don’t mass email from your computer Email programme
Once your list grows to over 50 people, it’s wise not to take the risk of sending emails to everyone from your Outlook or Outlook Express programme (or Mac Equivalent).  Your email provider will pick up the activity and may take the view that you’re spamming your contacts.  At best you’ll receive a warning, at worst your email account will be suspended – not good for business or your online reputation.
Best Practice Tip: Use a professional email service for your larger business mailings (see our March 2009 newsletter for suggestions)

4.    Don’t make your contacts’ email addresses public
If you must send small mailings from your computer email programme, for heaven’s sake don’t lump everyone into the ‘To’ or ‘CC’ fields where they can be seen by everyone else.  This practice makes it easy for your less scrupulous contacts to spam all your contacts with their messages too, which won’t make you very popular.  Read this cautionary tale.
Best Practice Tip: Send the Email to yourself and use the ‘BCC’ field for everyone else. (click on ‘CC’ to reveal it).

You might also be interested in listening to this short interview with Robin Houghton of Egg Box Marketing on the subject of permission email marketing.  Click here to listen

If you know anyone who could benefit from reading this post, please do us all a favour and show it to them

Marketing Sherpa’s Sergio Balegno believes that social media does not endanger email marketing.  I wonder if he’s right.

There was a time when the only way to read informative articles was to subscribe to the publisher’s newsletter.  That’s how they grew their list of interested prospects to market to.

Recently we’ve noticed that  things seem to be changing.

In addition to the ‘traditional’ Email Newsletter (or Ezine), there are so many different routes to get your article out there – you can blog it (to your blog and as a guest post on other people’s blogs), submit it to article directories, post on forums, tweet it and even Squidoo it.

In theory this is great because using social media helps to quickly increase the visibility of your articles, but it also puts pressure on you as a writer to keep producing more and more new content.  And as it’s a way of show-casing your expertise, it has to be high quality content too!

Now, Sam and I take pride in providing original fresh content, both in our individual newsletters (Marketing Karma and Competitive Advantage) and in our excellent jointly authored Savvy Marketing Tips (hint, hint!).  We truly value our subscribers and want them to keep reading, even though it’s sometimes hard for us to fit in all the writing.

As suggested in a previous post, it’s acceptable practice to use articles more than once, after a decent time interval.  However, this is what some people are doing:

They are writing an article, posting it on their blog, submitting it to directories, tweeting it and sending it out in their newsletter – all in the space of a few days!

Here’s the point.  I can get the same article on my blog reader sometimes before the email newsletter even  reaches my inbox.  If the main difference is that the newsletter also contains promotions ….. you can guess which one I prefer to subscribe to.

Email Newsletter publishers are going to have to re-think their article distribution strategy if they want to keep their subscribers reading.

Last week I (Louise) received an email from someone whose name I recognised, but couldn’t remember meeting in person.  On opening the email my heart sank.  There, in the ‘To’ field, were about 100 names and email addresses – possibly their entire address book – for every other recipient to see! 

Although we covered this last year in How NOT to send out Email promotions, it’s still going on and people don’t seem to realise how annoying it is to have your email address displayed in this way.  We all complain about the increasing amount of unsolicited junk mail arriving in our Inboxes and yet part of the solution is in our own hands.

Now I love Email Marketing and unashamedly ask for people’s email addresses so I can add them to my list.  However, just as I wouldn’t dream of giving out someone’s phone number without checking with them first, I treat their email address with equal respect and confidentiality.

And the story doesn’t end there …..
As I scrolled down the screen, I was horrified to see that the message included all of this person’s previous employment history, their contact details and their National Insurance number. 

I immediately sent a message to the sender asking if they realised the implications of what they had done.  Such personal details are like gold dust to the identity fraudsters that lurk online, waiting for such opportune carelessness.  It’s so important to be security conscious in all your communications and transactions, and the internet is definitely not the place to let your guard down.  Even if you’re typing a private message on a screen in front of you, the moment you hit ‘Send’, that message is no longer private.

Ironically it turned out that this person had no idea they had sent their private CV to their entire email address book and were absolutely mortified when I told them what had happened.

Mistakes are a part of life but please, do take care to keep your details – and those of your contacts – secure and confidential.

It isn’t going to go away
I know some business owners who wish it would, but if they don’t change the way they do business to include the web as part of their marketing strategy, they will be missing out, big time!  Not only does the internet provide additional, low cost ways of marketing to prospects and clients, it also enhances how your business is perceived.  Even for more traditional professions, such as accountants and solicitors the internet provides great opportunities to attract new business. 

Your competitors are using it
Even if you’re still reluctant, your competitors are embracing the internet and their marketing is gathering a (virtual) head of steam!  The longer you wait, the further behind you’ll fall.  And if you have a website for your business, but haven’t made any changes to it in the last 6 months (or longer), you could be sending potential clients along the internet highway to your competitor’s door!

Your customers are using it
These days, people are much more likely to look for products and services by hopping on the internet and searching with Google than picking up the antiquated Yellow Pages.  Having a website is a must, having a well-written (as opposed to just pretty) website will increase the time they spend on your site.  Having a site that is easy for them to use will make them more likely to buy from you.

You can find out which bits of your marketing are working
When you use traditional flyers and postcards, you have very little idea how effective they are in bringing in new business.  When you market on the internet, there are many ways of tracking who visits your website, which pages they visit, or who clicks through from your email messages.  You can calculate very accurately the conversion rate of a particular campaign as well as how much each sale is costing you.

It’s very fast and low cost
Vital for today when budgets are shrinking but you still need to be in touch with your clients & prospects.  Email newsletters are ideal for this, and we predict that the latest social media will soon be playing a bigger role too.  Rather than waiting for the good old postal system to deliver your message, with the internet, it’s immediate, so ideal for urgent promotions!  And the internet is cheaper than traditional mail.

Talk about a sledge hammer to crack a nut!

We really can’t see how this is going to work, if it ever comes to be.  This article on the BBC website highlights just how ridiculous the new Interception Modernisation Programme (IMP) which says that, from March this year, all Internet Service Providers (ISPs) will by law have to keep information about every e-mail sent or received in the UK for a year.

We’ll keep you posted as the argument is bound to hot up the nearer we get to March!

What do you think about copies of all your emails being stored by your ISP?  Please let us know by leaving your comments here.