Most business owners use email every day. Despite the rise in use of Twitter and Facebook, which is a way to potentially communicate with millions of people instantaneously and all at once, email is still the “default” tool for communication by most of us.

In our industry, we encounter many people–both customers of ours and not–who are not sure how their email works. Many people have one primary account, such as yourname@comcast.net, and many other accounts related to their business, such as “sales@”, “info@” “news@” and others. Yet it is confusing how these accounts work together, and also equally difficult know what you should do if you ever get an “over quota” message or people tell you that emails to you can’t be delivered because your inbox is full.

If these are the kinds of questions you have ever asked yourself, head over to the HEROweb site and read the article we just posted, called Email Basics: Accounts versus Aliases.

Are you happy with your email experiences? Let us know!

Welcome to the Learning the Language of Tech Support sessions, where we discuss how to understand what tech support is trying find out from us and how we can communicate effectively in order to get our tech support needs addressed in a timely manner. Lets face it, most of us are very busy and the quicker we can have an issue resolved the better. This series of blog posts will hopefully assist in giving you some background on speeding up the process of getting your technical issue resolved by knowing what to communicate to tech support.

In today’s session of Learning the Language of Tech Support we will be focusing on a common area in which we have all had to contact tech support about, our email. Email has been around since the 70′s and it does not look to be going away anytime soon. So what happens when a tool we have become so dependent on stops working or gives us an error? We will be going over a few common issues that come up with using a tool in which most of us have become quite dependent on.

An issue that is quite common among email users is “I can receive emails, but I cannot send them.” Sound familiar? This issue is one in which there could be several potential causes and solutions. To provide a bit of background on this issue in particular, if you can receive email but not send, it means that something is likely wrong with how your email client is configured or there has been a change on the server that has caused it to work only halfway. This problem is one that is not limited to only desktop or laptop computers, but also encompasses mobile devices such as smart phones or tablets. When getting ready to contact tech support about the issue here is some essential information you will need that they will undoubtedly ask for:

1.    What email client you are using
2.    Incoming and Outgoing server settings
3.    What the server port number for the outgoing mail server is

These three items are pretty easy to find and are the most common questions tech support will ask when you contact them. The first one, Email Client, has a Tech translation of: Program you use to check your email. The most common email clients are: MS Outlook, Mac Mail, Thunderbird and Windows Live Mail. This should be an easy one.

The second can be a little trickier, Incoming and Outgoing servers have a Tech translation of: The addresses in which data is either sent or received through. In other words, the location in which the email client will be connecting to in order to send and or receive the emails. This information is mostly found within the Accounts area of the email client, this is where we go to create a new account and or modify an existing one. Here is the location within the four major email clients:

Outlook 2010:
1.    Go to File > Info > Email > click on the email in question > Internet E-mail Settings

Mac Mail for OS X (10.5 and up)
1.    Go to Mail > Preferences > Accounts > Account Information.

Thunderbird
1.    Go to Tools > Account Settings > Server Settings (for Incoming Mail Server)
2.    Go to Tools > Accounts Settings > Outgoing Server (SMTP) (for Outgoing Mail Server)

Windows Live Mail
1.    In the side menu, right-click on the account in question and select Properties > Servers

Once you have found the Incoming and Outgoing server settings you can even provide those to tech support right off, as it will save a question and thus speed up the process.

The third is a little more tricky to find, the Port Number for the outgoing server has a Tech translation of: network connections, including those that go over the internet, have specific port numbers in which they use to send information. If a port becomes unavailable or is having a problem, then it can stop accepting new data through it, much like a highway; if there is a wreck, then traffic begins to slow down and eventually will come to a crawl. Once this happens the highway is no longer a good way for fast travel from one location to another. As with highways, ports can become bogged down and unusable, which is why there are alternate ports that can be used. Having the current port number handy will allow tech support to know which one is currently being used and allow them to suggest an alternate port, if the issue is stemming from the port.

Outlook 2010:
1.    Go to File > Info > Email > click on the email in question > Internet E-mail Settings
2.    Click on the “More Settings” button and click on the Advanced tab, the ports will be listed

Mac Mail for OS X (10.5 and up)
1.    Go to Mail > Preferences > Accounts > Account Information > click on the current Outgoing server in the drop-down menu and choose “Edit SMTP Server List”
2.    Click “Advanced” and the ports currently available will be listed

Thunderbird
1.    Go to Tools > Account Settings > Server Settings (for Incoming Mail Server) (Ports will be listed on the same screen)
2.    Go to Tools > Accounts Settings > Outgoing Server (SMTP) (for Outgoing Mail Server) (Ports will be listed on the same screen)

Windows Live Mail
1.    In the side menu, right-click on the account in question and select Properties > Servers (Ports will be listed on the same screen)

Knowing this information and providing it right away you are able to give tech support the information they need to diagnose the issue quickly so they can get to the root of the issue.

We recently posted an article on the HEROWeb site entitled “Utilize Coupons in Your Online and Email Marketing.” The article goes into some depth about strategies to utilize coupons in your marketing, including how to craft the wording of the coupon so that your customer gets an advantage and you don’t get taken advantage of. The article also includes ideas for ways to distribute your coupons, from ways that you might automatically think of such as emailing them in your newsletters, to offering coupons to shoppers while they’re browsing your site.

Check out our article on implementing coupons and let us know if you have a coupon success story let us know. (Also let us know if you’ve tried coupons and they didn’t work–we might be able to help you figure out why and improve the process for the next time.)

It can be tough to find that “sweet spot” between not too many and not too little—sending emails often enough that your customers receive useful information, yet not waiting too long in between that the customers forget who you are or lose interest. There’s no right or wrong answer to this question, unfortunately. Determining what’s right for your business and your email audience will require a bit of examination.

First of all, if you aren’t already doing email marketing, this article on MightyMerchant’s resource page, “How To Begin An Email Marketing Campaign,” explains in depth how to do just that, from gathering addresses if you don’t have any, to effectively beginning to use the addresses you may already have and track who opens your messages.

Another article we posted in the past, called “Successful Email Marketing,” is complementary to the first article, and discusses things like composing effective subject lines and managing your list of subscribers.

The biggest challenge to determining the best frequency of email marketing is scheduling the time and coming up with good information on a consistent basis. Your email newsletter should have some value in it, besides just offering up products. While it may be difficult to determine an effective maximum number of emails, there is a suggested minimum number. No matter how many contacts you have on your list, you should keep in contact with your list at least quarterly. If more time than three months goes by, you risk your subscribers forgetting why they became interested in your mailing list in the first place. Infrequent messages could lead to a greater number of unsubscribes as people no longer feel your messages are relevant.

Things to think about when determining the frequency of your email marketing are:

1. How often do you add new products? If your inventory changes regularly, perhaps a weekly digest of updates would work well. You would need a very devoted following to send emails weekly or more often, as getting marketing emails on a daily or almost daily basis is often annoying to the consumer and counterproductive.

2. Do you sell products that need continual re-orders? This situation can often be effective with bi-weekly emails reminding people that it’s time to re-order and linking them right to their order pages.

3. For many businesses a monthly emails is a great frequency. This is a prime opportunity to remind people of seasonal or holiday sales, offer discounts or special offers, or highlight one or two products that are new or exciting.

4. Days of the week do matter. People are catching up from the weekend on Mondays and may not be responsive to an email blast. On Thursdays and Fridays, people are wrapping up important work to leave for the weekend or they are often out of the office, so they won’t see your message for days. Tuesdays and Wednesdays typically have greater success rates for opening and responding to email marketing. Statistically mid-week is the best time to send the emails, but many ecommerce sites see high order volume at the start of the week. So, mid-week makes sense but you might want to experiment with other days and examine your open rates.

5. It doesn’t hurt to ask the customer how often they would like to hear from you. Offer a poll question on your website or ask customers at the time of opt-in what frequency they would prefer. Within an email, link people to a preference center where they can set their frequency schedule or topics they want to be kept abreast of. This can make your job of segmenting your email lists by customer base much easier.

6. Follow up is the key. When you have a new contact sign up for your email newsletter, or a new customer who opted in to email, follow up with a thank you or welcome email within 48 hours.

While maintaining a schedule is important—people expect to hear from you at a certain time and notice when they don’t—the really important thing is to send each email message because you have something new, urgent, timely or relevant to tell your recipients, not because you have to meet a publishing schedule you have set for yourself.

Also realize that just because you typically email once a month, or whatever the case may be, if you have big news, it’s perfectly okay to go ahead and send a “special notification” outside of your typical schedule. One of the most appealing aspects of email marketing is its low cost and flexibility, so it can be done on your schedule whenever you have something to say. Just don’t do this doubling up of email every week, or you risk annoying your contacts.

If you have any real life examples of what worked with your email marketing, or what didn’t, let us know.

Once a customer has made a purchase from your site, you don’t want the customer to think that the relationship is over and done and they will never hear from you again. Keep in touch with them, and find out of they are happy with what they ordered. The idea should be: “Thank you for your purchase. What else can we do for you?” Building a follow-up relationship will take time and effort, but the strong customer relationship is worth it.

Once customers purchase something, send them an email order confirmation. Then follow up with order status update including, shipping notice and shipping confirmation emails. Once they receive the item, give them a couple of days to get to know it, then send them a satisfaction survey or review request, and offer a discount code for a future purchase. This kind of value in an email can not only generate revenue but adds value for the customer to continue shopping on your site.

It’s OK to use a little bit of humor in these follow ups. One popular clothing company sends out a review request email shortly after the package arrives. The email is eye-catching and colorful. At the top, it says “It’s Judgement Day.” The email says, in part, “I’m nervously awaiting your verdict. How’s the fit? How about the colour? Does it fit like a glove or itch like a flea? Review your purchase and help your fellow shoppers with their shopping decisions, whilst giving us the thumbs up or down for our part in the whole affair.” The language isn’t stodgy or typically of a corporation. This gives your company personality and helps the customer to feel engaged with wanting to let their feelings known.

In the email are images of the items that were ordered, along with a “write a review” button underneath each one. That not only serves to jog the memory of the person without having to actually go and retrieve the item, but it makes it one-click easy to review it.

Also in this email are links to the website, links to size charts, links to a contact page, and a recommend to a friend link. All of these features add value in the eyes of the customer and lets them know that you’re available and have important information to share. Of course, if you don’t sell clothing, your follow-up email will look different, but the key is to provide real information and make it easy to get the information you want. You want a review of the item and to keep your company in the mind of the consumer so they think of you the next time they want to order something. They want to let someone know they loved or hated the item, and they want the process to be easy. If your email reads and looks just like every other corporate follow up email, they’ll be less likely to differentiate you from the pack.

Right now, I’ve got two things on my mind: turkey and the holiday ecommerce season. For me, they go hand-in-hand, because I know that at the point I start talking turkey, it is time to get holiday marketing in gear.

If you are an ecommerce merchant, there is no better way to kick off the holiday season than with an email blast to existing customers. Before people get too far along with their shopping plans, you want to plant the seed in their minds to return to your site to do some of their holiday shopping at their favorite ecommerce website.

A few points to consider:

1. Dress up your email with the holiday spirit.
2. Identify some products on your site that are ideally suited for gifts and stocking stuffers and link directly to those products from your email.
3. Make sure you clearly state your holiday shipping cut-offs in the email.
4. Give a special incentive for doing holiday shopping early – perhaps by offering a discount coupon.
5. Encourage recipients (since they are previous customers) to pass the email onto a friend as a great place to come up with gift ideas for them.
6. Plan to follow up the email with another one in two weeks when we are in the prime time of holiday shopping.
7. If you have not done email marketing before make sure that you follow acceptable rules and practices and send to actual customers and those who have expressed an interest in receiving emails from you.

If there is ever a time of the year to go for it with your marketing, this is it! Have fun with your email communication and do your best to spread some holiday ecommerce cheer.

Most email campaign managers – Constant Contact and the like, offer very nice campaign tracking tools. But I like to centralize my tracking and get everything flowing through Google Analytics, so I can closely analyze my conversions.

Here is an excellent overview of how to build your links in your email campaign software so your data gets tracked in Google Analytics.

http://www.epikone.com/blog/2008/11/04/email-tracking-with-google-analytics/

Warning: if you get queasy looking at urls with more than 46 characters, this exercise might not be for you!

If you’re planning on sending a Valentine’s Day promotional email to your customer base, you’re not the only one. According to a recent survey conducted by Constant Contact, 68 percent of small businesses plan an online Valentine’s Day promotion. Since it’s quite likely that your email won’t be the only one landing in your customer’s email inbox over the next few days, it’s important to make it stand out.

Constant Contact’s Valentine’s Day email templates can help. With choices from simple e-cards to newsletters, these templates can get your message across with eye-catching pink and white, hearts and flowers.

Template Examples: 

With just ten days left until the holiday, it’s not too late to prepare an email and send it using these or 8 other easy-to-use templates. Email promotions can definitely help drive traffic to your site on this important gift-giving holiday. 

What do people search for around Valentine’s Day? I checked the search phrase “Valentine’s” on the Digital Point keyword tool and found the following list of holiday-related phrases: 

Phrase                            Hits Per Day

Gift Valentine                2,676

Valentine’s Day               1,277

Craft Valentine               1,217 

Valentine Hearts            725

Valentine Poems            560

Gift Idea Valentine        436 

Valentine Graphics        426

Gift Man Valentine        556 (see, it’s not only men who have a hard time deciding on gifts!)

Candy Valentine            187

Chocolate Valentine     152

Gift Romantic Valentine  134

Unique Valentine          126 (now there’s a good term to optimize one of your gift pages for!)

For the greatest impact, work any of these terms into your page titles, product descriptions and other on-the-page content. But, I would think twice before optimizing that power tool set or vacuum cleaner for Valentine’s Day. My local newspaper insists on running an ad each February for a store advertising specials on vacuum cleaners with the headline, “Give her what she really wants!” Guys, I’m here to tell ya, don’t fall for it!  Let me know, do you intend to send a Valentine’s Day promotional email?

Special Note-The MightyMerchant eCommerce Blog now has a subscribe by email option–the easiest way to keep up with these blog posts. Simply enter your address, and choose if you want to subscribe only to certain categories of content or to all categories. Click on the ‘profile’ link below, set your preference, and these blog posts will then be delivered right to your inbox. Thanks for reading!

When I  requested that our clients share their favorite business resources with me, I really didn’t have a sense of what I would discover. The first response I received was from a client who shared his tools for combating order fraud, which I reported on in the Best Business Resources #1 post.

Stephanie at BlackberryQuilts.com shared that her favorite business resource is Constant Contact. I’ve written about Constant Contact a few times (MightyMerchant’s Constant Contact partnership, seasonal email templates), but this was an opportunity to get a personal perspective on the power of email marketing.

BlackberryQuilts.com sells kits for beginner and experienced quilters. Kits come with step by step instructions and pre-cut and  pre-measured fabric, so you’re ready to sew when the kit arrives. Stephanie’s been using Constant Contact for almost three years to keep in touch with her customers. She says that her favorite thing about Constant Contact is that it’s “so easy to use, and I can design a custom product without being a computer geek.” That is one of the nice features of the service, that their templates are easily customizable for the color and layout you want, and they can be modified to match your website, including your own logo so your customers instantly recognize that the email came from you.

Stephanie keeps BlackberryQuilts.com’s monthly newsletters interesting by including announcements of new products, a coupon, or other special offers that tempt her customers to keep opening her emails. “I try to include a quilting tip or an idea for a handmade gift in each newsletter-a bonus for my customers,” she says.

Stephanie doesn’t spend too much time looking at the analytics that are included with Constant Contact, but she says, “If you want to analyze your data, the results are very easy to follow.”

Using Constant Contact to send out a survey is still on Stephanie’s to do list, but she does take advantage of the service’s promotional and seasonal templates. There’s no doubt that email marketing is a proven successful method of growing a loyal customer base. For just a fraction of a cent per email you can reach customers who voluntarily give you thei email address and are already interested in what you are offering. Just give them something of value, and they’ll keep tuning in, month after month, and return to your website when they’re ready to buy.

Thanks Stephanie! What’s your best business resource? Let me know,  and I’ll write it up in a future post.

When a new visitor arrives on your site, you want to get them to, first of all, remember your name, and secondly, return to your site another time. A great way to achieve both goals is by enticing them to sign up for your newsletter. Here are 8 tips on increasing your email opt-ins.

1. You could buy or rent lead lists from brokers, but you really don’t have to. Just put a little effort into targeting your audience. Let’s say you sell essential oils for perfume, candle and soap making and your target market is members of craft guilds in the Pacific Northwest. If your target craft guild has its own newsletter or print publication, you could advertise in the newsletter, making sure to include not only your website address but also info about your newsletter in the ad. You could sponsor the organization’s website, or sponsor an event organized by the craft guild. Arrange ahead of time to have your marketing materials on display.

The craft guild may rent you their email addresses, and if so, you could forge your email relationships by sending an email like:

“As a member of the Pacific Northwest Candle-making Craft Guild, you indicated your interest in receiving information from related organizations.” Then, offer something of value to get them interested in your mailings.

2. Include the sign-up button on all of your pages, not just the homepage. Bonus Tip: Place the sign-up link above the fold, and ideally in the top right or left corner.

3. Explain the benefits of joining your mailing list. Write a few sentences stating why they should give you their email address. Do you offer subscriber-exclusive discounts? Tell ‘em. Seasonal info? Other exclusive content? Do you add new products regularly? Make sure they know what you’re offering.

4. Allow your newsletters to be forwarded and include a subscribe button in the newsletter, so that friends who receive the forward can get their own copy.

5. Keep the sign up form short and sweet, asking for only the first name and email address. You can always get more information later; The goal is to get them signed up quickly and easily.

6. Always include a privacy disclaimer on your sign up form. Make it clear that you don’t sell, rent, or otherwise share email addresses. Unless-ahem-you do, of course. Assuage their fears that you’re a spammer.

7. Make the call-to-action clear. Use the words Subscribe, Sign Up Now, Send Me Info, or Sign Me Up.

8. Finally, perhaps the most important tip. Provide content they can’t resist. If you make your newsletter appealing, people will want to sign up for it, and most importantly, continue receiving it.