Marketing Commentary from interlinkONE
Marketing. Web-to-Print. Warehouse Management.
Tips for Getting a Monthly Newsletter Out the Door
Posted by 
on Thursday, March 17, 2011 
at 1:21 PM 
in On Wednesday, March 16th, we hosted a webinar on the subject of “Using a Newsletter to Bolster Your Marketing Efforts”.
We were fortunate to have a very special guest presenter on the webinar with us. Heidi Rains is the Marketing Manager at PrintingCenterUSA. Heidi shared with us her story — the challenges she faced in getting a monthly newsletter program rolling, and then how she found solutions to make this a consistent and successful part of their marketing program.
In case you missed the webinar, here are a few tips that were shared by Heidi and myself:
Finding and Creating Content
- Looking to finding success stories from inside your organization? Try an internal social media network such as Yammer
- When creating your own content, write down a list of high-level topics that you want to hit on. What would be important to your customers and prospects?
- Use Google Alerts to find stories and news on topics that you want to learn more about. You can share those posts in your newsletter, or write your own spin on them.
- Printers should check out Great Reach Communications for help in finding relevant content (and more!)
Building Your List of Subscribers
- Put a Subscription Form on your website!
- Add a custom Facebook tab that lets people subscribe
- Put a banner ad in the email signature of your employees that points to the subscription page
- Allow CSR’s to easily subscribe people while they are on the phone
What To Measure
- Opens are good, but you need to go beyond that
- Track click-throughs to see what topics are popular, as well as whether the position of a link in the layout affects clicks
- Try simply A/B tests on the Subject Line
These were just a few of the tips that were shared. We’d like to thank all of the attendees and our incredible guest presenter Heidi Rains for making this one a success.
If you are an interlinkONE customer, you can access the recording of the webinar in our Marketing Resource Center.
Tags Four Ideas to Test Your EMails To Greater Success
With one statistic showing that 94% of online adults use email, it certainly may be wise for your company to continue using that channel in your marketing mix.
However, one of the biggest challenges that marketers face is how to get their target audience to pay attention to their emails.
One of the best ways to improve the success of your efforts (whether you’re measuring by open rates, click-throughs, or a further conversion) is to test and try variations of your content and design.
Here are 4 things that you could try testing in your email program today:
- Subject Line: If you are sending out a newsletter, then you have a prime candidate to try a test with. Measure the effectiveness of an email that simply says “[Company Name Here]‘s Newsletter” versus a Subject Line that describes what is in the article (i.e. “News For You: Direct Marketing Case Study, SEO Tips, and More”).
- FROM Name: The Display Name that people see in the FROM can play an important role in their decision-making process as to whether to open and take action on an email. Are they familiar with the name? Do they associate that name with an unsolicited sales pitch or with someone that’s helped them in the past? Try running a test where you send the email out from the name of someone on your staff (perhaps the CEO, VP of Sales, a Product Manager, etc) and then measure that against what happens when the FROM displays the name of your company.
- Image Buttons vs. Text Links: Getting someone to open the email might be the first step. But from there, you need them to take action. Try testing an email that primarily includes text links versus one that incorporates graphical buttons in the call-to-action.
- The Wording of Your Offer: What would better on your audience: “Try our brand-new product today!” or “Improve Your Business: Get Started with [Product Name Here]“? Run a variation of the key words in your offer and then measure to see what drives the highest number of clicks and conversions.
The Right Message at the Right Time
I promise, I will not use this post to remind you of how much snow we received in Wilmington, Massachusetts yesterday (okay, 24 inches!). I will not talk about how sore I am from shoveling, or how long the line was at the gas station today of people buying windshield washer fluid.
But rather, this post is all about delivering the right message at the right time.
In the middle of the snowstorm yesterday, I received the following email from Barnes & Noble:
It absolutely captured my attention. While I did not buy a book yesterday, the email did compel me to click the link and browse for items to purchases in the near future.
If you are looking for ways to create buzz for your company, or to drive more leads to your sales team, this Barnes & Noble email may provide inspiration in three areas:
- Data Segmentation: They certainly did not deliver this message to everyone in their database. I’m taking a guess that they only sent it to customers that reside in the Northeastern part of the U.S.
- Timing: I did not receive this email early in the morning before the snow really started. I did not receive it at night (which by that point, I absolutely hated snow simply due to all of the shoveling involved). I received it mid-afternoon, which for me was the perfect time to notice and take action on their offer.
- Preparation: Perhaps there’s a chance that one of the marketers at Barnes & Noble woke up yesterday morning and said, “let’s send an email related to the snowstorm!” But I’m willing to bet that they thought of this idea in advance.
Devising the proper marketing strategy for our business, and then executing and measuring it absolutely takes time and effort. We may need to research new trends, analyze & segment our data, and work long hours.
But in the end, those are the things that may lead to successful marketing efforts.
Three Ideas for A/B Testing
Which one would you choose? 
When it comes to selling and providing marketing solutions to clients, one of the biggest things that a service provider can do is help their customer analyze data from a campaign. The goal in doing that, of course, is to find ways to make the next marketing effort even better (and hopefully the service provider earns that business too!).
One way to help your client execute the “best campaign possible” is to perform A/B Testing on their marketing efforts.
A/B Testing typically involves putting in an extra effort to execute a campaign. Thus, some companies may shy away from it. Or, they may think that telling the client that they want to “test” implies that they are not experts. This is far from the truth. In the worlds of marketing and communications, things are always changing. There’s always a way to get better.
If you are looking to improve marketing efforts for yourself or for a client, here are 3 ideas for A/B Tests that you could run:
Subject Lines
This one can be fairly simple to execute, but it’s not done very often. You might have valuable content in the Body of your eNewsletter. But if people don’t open the email after reading the Subject Line, everyone is missing out.
Here’s an idea: Divide your list into two groups.
Send the first half the newsletter with a Subject Line such as “[CompanyName's] Newsletter”.
Then, send the 2nd half the newsletter with a Subject Line that includes topics from the Body of the email. For example, if the articles in your newsletter discuss QR Codes, customer service, and best practices for putting on a webinar, the subject line might be “QR Codes, Customer Service, Best Practices for a Webinar and More”.
After sending out the email, you should then check your reports to see if one Subject Line earned more Opens and Click-throughs than the other.
To Personalize or Not
There are very few people that would discount the effectiveness of one-to-one marketing, but not all attempts at personalization are created equal.
You could try splitting your list into multiple groups, and then delivering a heavily personalized introduction to one group, and then a very general introduction to another.
Another thing to try might be putting a personalized URL on a direct mail piece to one group, and a general URL to another. At the end of the campaign, your reports should tell you if more people responded to one setup vs. the other.
The Giveaway
Every company wants leads. However, what’s really important is receiving qualified leads. People that truly care about our products or services.
On the other hand, we cannot succeed with an empty marketing database! So, from time-to-time, giving away something in exchange for a response may be an effective technique.
You could run an A/B Test to see what works on your target audience. I know of a paving company that pushed out a direct mail piece. They split their list into 3 groups.
- One group received a direct mailer that contained an offer for a gift card to an ice-cream shop.
- The 2nd group receive a direct mailer that contained an offer for a DVD and informational kit on the paving company’s products
- The 3rd group received a direct mailer that contained no special offer whatsoever.
Guess who won? Well, in their case, more people replied from the the DVD and info kit group.
Are you curious as to how your target audience will respond? There’s only one way to find out…. Start testing!
P.S. Smashing Magazine has an excellent post on the subject of A/B Testing as well. If you are looking for some more ideas, please feel free to check it out >>
V8 Enhancement: Selecting which Email Template to Send
One of the most popular features in our ilinkONE Version 8.5 software involves our Email marketing capabilities. Customers use our email engine to send out newsletters, customer alerts, webinar invitations, surveys, emails with personalized URLs, and more.
One aspect of our email marketing tool that you may not know about is the ability to associate a thubmnail image to an email template.
This feature may make it easier for the folks that send out the emails to people in your contact database. How so? Well, when they go to select which email they’d like to send out, they currently choose based on the name of the template. By associating a thumbnail to each template, you are providing a visual cue that can help reassure them that they are selecting the correct email template to send out.
Here’s how you can do this in our ilinkONE Version 8.5 software:
- Under the “Marketing Center”, go to the “Email Templates” page
- Select the Email Template that you wish to add a thumbnail to
- On the Edit Email Template page, simply upload the thumbnail image (screenshot below)
Now that you have associated a thumbnail to the template, users will see the image when they go to send out an email to their list.
Below is a screenshot of the carousel where you can select an Email Template, with thumbnails associated to each one:
How big should the thumbnails be?
The carousel displays each thumbnail with a width of 188 pixels and a height of 150 pixels. If you upload an image that is bigger or smaller than those dimensions, it will be re-sized accordingly.
