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Are you a Jim?

Posted on December 14, 2011 by James Rognon in blog 3 Comments

Everyone loves free stuff, especially free food. Last week I got not only one email but seven emails from unlikely sources. The email was originally from Red Robin promoting their new Jim Beam Burger. If your name is Jim, James, or Jimbo you could get the new burger for free on December 6th.

I don’t know about you, but most promotional emails immediately go into the trash. I almost never pass them on, and I don’t think I have ever shared any of them on Facebook or Twitter. However, this email broke the mold. Not only did I keep it, I passed it on and I used it. So why was this particular email marketing campaign intriguing enough to me and the seven other people who passed it on?

No trickery

Red Robin’s promotion was simple. It didn’t require me to go find some random item or cut coupons, and it wasn’t a 25% off or even 50% off, they just wanted me to show up and get a free burger. Now I am not saying “free” is the ultimate promotion, it still depends on what you are giving away. If the promotion doesn’t appear as a good deal, then no one will go for it. With Red Robin I knew that I had to buy fries and a drink and even more importantly tip my waiter, but it is still a FREE BURGER. The deal was so tempting that I took my family out, when otherwise we would have stayed home.

Pretty

The way your email and promotion looks also plays a huge role in its success. If you look back at the Red Robin promotion, if there was a nasty looking burger or bad design, would it be as compelling? The design of your promotion also needs to be thought through. Websites, emails, Facebook pages, and other promotional materials are handled and viewed differently by users. If the design isn’t expertly created then it is less likely to be passed on or even viewed.

Easy to pass along

What is offered and how it is presented will make the promotion more likely to be shared. But if you don’t make it as easy as possible for people to post it on Facebook, tweet about it, or even put it on their blog, it will all amount to nothing. The majority of Internet users now use at least one of these three methods of social media. If your customers are here why not take advantage of social media marketing and extend your reach. Ensuring you have quick links to Facebook and Twitter on everything is especially important. Nowadays all you need is the icon and it is universally known as the “share it” link. Embed codes are also handy if people want to post it on their blog.

I received seven emails and the majority of them were through Facebook. My wife, however, received over 20 and they were all through social media. When a promotion is created with the right ingredients it’s hard not to create the lead generation you are looking for. For even more email marketing tips, be sure to check out this post.


10 Ways to Not Mess up Your Holiday Email Marketing Campaign

Posted on December 7, 2011 by Brad Smith in blog, Email Marketing 2 Comments

December is the perfect time for businesses to make that last push to increase their bottom line for the year. For those businesses still scrounging to get holiday emails out, here are the top 10 tips that will help your email marketing campaign increase revenue. For those who may already have their campaigns ready, these tips will show you how to improve your next campaign.

1. Use your brand name as the “from” address. Be proud of your brand, it should represent you. When people see it they should be excited.

2. Make your subject line intriguing. A subject line is the second thing a client will see. To avoid spam filters, try and stay away from words like “free” or “we are announcing.” Do, however, have special offers or deals. A good subject may solve a problem for customers. As an example, “Perfect gifts under $20″ is a solid subject line.

3. Have your content load quickly. Try to get your message understood in four seconds. The shorter the time it takes to load, the more time they have to understand your message. If you have a high load time, then you may want to think about simplifying your message.

4. Have your call to action be one of the first things they see. A call to action needs to take them to where they can purchase the item you are advertising with one click of a button. Make it simple for them. They cannot purchase anything through your email so you must take them to where they can make a purchase.

5. Send them exactly where you want them to go. Your call to action should take them to a page where they can complete your call to action. It should not take them to a large product page where they have to make additional choices. Consider McDonald’s shakes–they give you three choices to choose from including chocolate, vanilla, or strawberry. This helps you make a much quicker decision than choosing between the 31 flavors at Baskin Robins. While options may be nice, you are trying to help people make a quick decision.

6. Be sure to have only one call to action within the top section of the email. Have this call to action be the main point of the email. It is great that you have six different deals going on, but there should only be one that directly applies to them. If you want to list other deals, include a section in the bottom half of the email titled “Other Great Promotions” or something that fits with the style of your company.

7. Segment your email messaging. This means that you’ll have to create more than one email. The good news is that your marketing department probably already has different deals for the different segments of your market. Have your copywriting team create a unique message for each segment.

8. Use templates. You’ll cost your company a lot more money than you’ll bring in if you create an email that can only be used once. Setting up your emails with templates allows you to have 20 unique emails for each segment within hours. When you create the body of the email the way you want it and create a template, all you will have to worry about is changing the call to action, the short message, and the main images.

9. Send yourself test emails. This is especially important if you are dealing with templates. You never know when the person who created the email forgot to change a link. You want to make sure that you are sending your customers to the proper promotion. There is no point spending your time on your email efforts only to send 150,000 sports fans a link to children’s games.

10. Think about what your email looks like on smart phones, but don’t focus on it. The only email account I tend to check on my smart phone is my personal account and my work account. I have never given a company my main email address, I always give them one of three other email addresses that I only check when I want special offers or when I make purchases. Chances are that your email recipients may be doing the same thing. If this is the case, they are not seeing your email on their smart phones, they are looking at them on a laptop or home computer.

As a break from my tradition of learning from peoples successes, what mistakes have you seen in emails that you thought should have been avoided?