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.

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?

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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.

Two examples of promotions that were oh so close to hitting the mark crossed my path recently. One was a one-page insert in my local newspaper for a grand opening of a store in our area. It was really more of a grand re-opening as they had closed for a while to make some improvements to the building and add new products, but that’s not the point. The ad declared that they were offering $1 espressos, door prizes, popcorn, and other such niceties to celebrate the occasion. The one thing they neglected to include in the ad was any store information. There was no address, no phone number, and no store hours!

Now, this store is targeting people who live in our area and they are no doubt assuming that everyone already knows where the store is. I say, however, that you should never assume potential customers know anything about your business. I want that $1 espresso, and I’d be happy to visit the place and check out their new stuff, but because I don’t regularly shop there I don’t know if they open at 8 am, 9 am or 9:30 am, and there’s no phone number for me to call and find out. I’m not going to drive over there if there’s a chance it might be closed, so guess what? I’m not going. My ever-practical husband says that I can simply look up the market in the phone book. But that’s an extra step that your customers shouldn’t have to take when your ad is in their hands.

The other example came in the form of an email promotion offering me a free sample of a dog chew:

Where do I click to get the free sample? Clicking on the link to Greenies.com does take you to the form to get the sample, but this email is missing a key ingredient-the “call to action.” It should say something like, “Click here for your free Greenies Lite sample,” or “Request your free sample here.” It won’t be clear to everyone receiving this email that to get the sample you have to click where it says, “You are receiving this email because you opted in for future communications at Greenies.com.” The purpose of this email is to get people on the site so they can see the products and try one for free, right? So, make it easy and not a guessing game by providing a clear link to whatever action you want to be taken.

It doesn’t take an advanced marketing degree to compose an effective ad or promotion. Just make sure to include the basics and you’ll be off to a great start!

Tags: email, marketing

Looking for a quick and easy way to get some holiday traffic to your website? Email cards have measurable results, they don’t take as much time to read as a newsletter, and get your name on your customers’ radar as they prepare their holiday shopping lists.

Email promotions are easy anytime, but are especially welcome this time of year as people are faced with holiday gift buying. People are looking for deals, unique items they can’t get in their local stores, and ways to save time. You can offer them all three things! Customizing a seasonal themed email card or promotion is easy to do with Constant Contact’s themes, and they can be customized to suit your needs and desires.

Here are some sample themes:

Using one of these templates, you can offer a discount code for customers buying Thanksgiving themed-items, or free shipping up to a certain date in December, for instance. These email promotions shouldn’t be too “hard sell,” just customize a short, tasteful e-card and watch your traffic increase as customers return to your website to see what you have to offer.

Hopefully, you’ve read MightyMerchant’s article on optimizing your site for the holidays. The article suggests restructuring your site with gift shopping in mind, such as moving popular gift items to the front page to make them easy to find, or tweaking your product descriptions so they reflect gift-giving. When a recipient of your holiday offer clicks your e-promotion to visit your website, greet them with a website that looks like it’s ready for the holidays. Combining site optimization tactics like this with a targeted holiday email card is a great way to boost your sales this time of year.

Here are some more of Constant Contact’s holiday themed email templates:

Now is the time to get started on holiday marketing. Even if customers don’t return to your website right away, the email from you will be in their inbox, and they’ll turn to it when they’re ready.

An email claiming to be from the “Fraud Department” at the Federal Trade Commission (FTC) appears to originate from the email address “frauddep@ftc.gov” and “spoofs the return-path and reply-to fields to hide the email’s true origin” says an FTC-issued warning about the email.

The October 29 warning says that opening the email seems to cause no problems, but warns that opening the attachment or clicking on links in the email may download a “key logger” virus, which could grab passwords stored on your computer.

As with many fake emails, this bogus email contains grammatical errors and misspellings, but does use the FTC’s seal in an attempt to appear legitimate.

Rather than just deleting bogus emails, you can do something about them. If you receive a spam email that you think is fraud, forward it to spam@uce.gov. The FTC stores the spam they receive and uses the messages to pursue legal action against people who send deceptive email.

The FTC, which oversees all advertising and works to prohibit unfair or deceptive ads including online and in email, offers more information about how to avoid email phishing scams.

As the fires in Southern California burn down, the storm begun by Fasano and Associates over their ill-thought email is still building. In days past, a marketing or public relations mistake could be forgiven and forgotten about in time, but today’s climate is totally different. With blogs recording events for posterity, and with the growing popularity of email marketing, that email you send today could still be available in cyberspace not just tomorrow but for months, years and maybe even decades later.

Too bad Fasano and Associates didn’t think their latest email through a little bit more before they hit that ’send’ button.

Coming from the well-respected consumer list management firm, this email was a shock: Against a back image of flames, in all yellow capital letters was the line, “What else is burning in Southern California? Check these hot lists out!”

Whoops. Guys, don’t make light of a natural disaster. Don’t ever joke about a disaster, but especially not to promote yourself. At the time this email was sent out, San Diego’s Qualcomm Stadium was filled with thousands of evacuees, people were losing their homes by the hour, there was a lengthy and growing list of dead and injured. Unsurprisingly, the email was immediately met with major protest and is circulating all over the Internet as an example of the type of email you should never send.

To her credit, Fasano and Associates founder Patricia Fasano sent an apology email to the same mailing list after she discovered that what she describes as an “overzealous employee” sent the improper email. This is the type of marketing mistake that can kill even a respected and well-established business, and Fasano and Associates executives say they are implementing safeguards to ensure that nothing like this ever happens again.

So, being that Fasano and Associates is located right in the heart of the California area that burned, this could have been a golden moment for them. They made a donation to the California State Firefighters Association three days before the inappropriate email was sent out, but instead of heart-warming stories about their charitable acts, their tarnished reputation is front and center.

The thing that really stumps me about this is that Fasano and Associates are marketing professionals. They’ve been in the email and list management business for 25 years. They should have known better, and this could have been avoided had Fasano implemented some sort of check-and-balances system to screen any potential emails for insensitive content. Self-promotion is one thing–indeed, all of marketing is built on it–but if there is even any semblance of that promotion coming at the expense of someone else’s misfortune, it should be considered taboo.

It’s a whole lot easier to do damage control before you hit the send button.

My local newspaper runs a column called “Figuratively Speaking.” It appears on the daily puzzle page and features factoids about society along with some related percentages. A recent example: In 2005, only 12 percent of retail e-marketers provided email opt-out links that allowed recipients to make changes to their subscription preferences. Today, 32 percent do so.*

To what can we attribute the increase in including email opt-outs? Hopefully, more people are looking to the CAN-SPAM Act of 2003 (Controlling the Assault of Non-Solicited Pornography and Marketing Act), which establishes requirements for sending commercial email and spells out penalties for violations.

The law, under the jurisdiction of The Federal Trade Commission, became effective January 1, 2004, and we have it to thank for clarifying many email communication best practices. Among other things, the law states that senders have 10 business days to remove an email address from their send-to list once an opt-out request has been received from that address. It’s also illegal for commercial email senders to sell or transfer the email addresses of people who have opted-out.

These best practices exist to allow the consumer experience to be as positive as possible. There is a philosophy that email marketers can retain subscribers by making the opt-out process difficult. It is possible to be CAN-SPAM compliant and erect barriers to the opt-out process, such as making people who wish to unsubscribe opt-out twice, or requiring an exit survey or requesting some type of personal information. Sure, you may keep people on your list this way, but you’re certainly not engendering any lovely feelings for your brand by doing so.

An easy opt-out process is just one of the facets to managing a successful email marketing campaign. As increasing numbers of online marketers turn to email as a cost-effective and efficient way of reaching out to consumers, it is ever more important that your email 1) not end up in the spam folder, and 2) not aggravate the good humors of your recipients. MightyMerchant’s article, “Successful Email Marketing,” is loaded with tips on getting started using addresses you might already have from your existing customers, email composition, and managing your list.

*Source: Silverpop Email Marketing Services