Most businesses have customers who love them and who love to talk about them. You’ve  probably spent a lot of time and energy building up your business, so now it’s time to locate those people who love to shout from the mountain tops how great they think you are. Why? Well eventually you’ll want to reach out to these very special people, thank them and treat them extra special.

The easiest thing to do, is create a list of them from different channels so that when you’re ready to really activate them even more than they already are, you can do it easily. So where do you start?

Your Employees – Your employees can be the very best advocates for your business. You know who your best employees are and those who love what they do. Ask them to talk about your business on Twitter and Facebook if they’d like, and to post that they work for you on LinkedIn.

Best Customers – Look to see who your best customers have been, these are probably people that have purchased from you a number of times. Then based on your criteria, create your “best customer” list.

Survey Responders – If you’re sending our customer satisfaction surveys, why not monitor who responds positively to your surveys? Then create your “Survey advocates” list.

Google Alerts – Sign up for FREE Google Alerts with your business name, your name, even you competitors name. See if there is anyone who keeps talking about your business more than a few times. Call this your “Google Advocates” list.

4Square – If you’ve got a local business, monitor who becomes the Mayor of your business. When they check in, make sure you know and you find them and give them a special discount or deal. They’ll be sure to visit often and tell their friends. Call this list your “Mayor” list.

Twitter – Search your twitter handle on twitter.com. You will see who is talking positively about you. We use TweetDeck and set up a variety of keywords to track. Then from that easy interface we can manage our conversations with them. Make sure you RT them asking them to send you an email, include your email address. “Thanks for the RT! Email me at [email address] for a special deal!” You only have 140 characters so make sure you can fit it all and you will get their email address so you can start to build your email list of “Twitter advocates.”

Facebook – Create a Facebook Fan Page and monitor who is speaking up with comments and likes. Set up a “Reviews” Tab and ask your followers what they think about you. Then message them back thanking them. Ask for their email address so you can send them something (free product, discount.) For anyone who “Likes” what you write, add them as a friend on Facebook. Then message them and ask for their email address as well. Start to build your list of “Facebook advocates”.

Blog – Check out those who’ve commented on your blog. Most blog platforms enable you to see their email address. These will be your “blog advocates.”

Are you finding your best advocates? If so, how?? Please comment!

Takeaway: Your fans love you! Recognize those fans and support their efforts to show that love to others!

Other great posts from Janine Popick!

5 quick email list building ideas

5 tips for winning back customers

Email marketing best practices

How salesy should your email newsletter be?

About the Author
Janine Popick is the CEO and founder of VerticalResponse (www.verticalresponse.com), a leading provider of self-service email marketing, online surveys, and direct mail services empowering small businesses to create, manage, and analyze their own direct marketing campaigns. Janine is a columnist for Inc.’s Women in Business blog. In her spare time, Janine is VerticalResponse’s Chief Executive Blogger for the VerticalResponse Marketing Blog for Small Businesses. Follow her on Twitter @janinepopick.

Website: http://blog.verticalresponse.com/verticalresponse_blog/
Twitter: http://www.twitter.com/janinepopick

Not long ago we featured a post about offering 15 innovative ways to build your email marketing list. Here’s five more quick ideas from Janine Popick of VerticalResponse!

It can be hard to come up with fresh ideas on new ways to build your email marketing list each month, so here are 5 innovative ideas you can put to work for your business.

If you’ve got a regular email marketing newsletter that you email to your customers, chances are you might be trying to sell something. That’s OK, but placing content around your offering could be the best thing to help you sell your products or services in your newsletter.

People like to read “news” in newsletters. A newsletter implies that you’ve got something to say, more than just selling. This is where content can come into play to back up your sales promotions.

Some companies that sell to businesses give free white papers and guides in a newsletter, and it’s all content to support their message.

The Girl and The Fig Restaurant in Sonoma does a great job including content in their “Figbits” newsletter” (click to see the full version). Let’s take a look through each section of their newsletter and outline why it’s good.

SALES – They highlight their Mother’s Day Brunch. Judging from the placement at the top of their email newsletter this is what is the most important thing for them.

CONTENT – They included a story in their newsletter of two of their employees who represented them and demonstrated their cooking at an event in Tennessee. They’ve got some great photos and a menu of the event.

SALES – They’re selling passes for an upcoming event where they’ll be the featured restaurant.

SALES + CONTENT - They feature a retailer that sells their food about 3 hours away. They tell a nice story about how the retailer started and what food they sell at their retail location from the Girl and the Fig, followed by links on how to purchase direct or where to find retailers.

SALES – They introduce 2 new mustards that will be coming soon and ask their readers to suggest to their favorite stores to carry their products.

CONTENT – They wish two employees a happy anniversary at Girl and the Fig.

SALES – They highlight some of their press and link to events they’ll be participating in.

Takeaway: The next time you send out a newsletter insert some content that relates to what you sell, and see what link gets clicked on and then track your sales. Content might just be the thing your newsletter needs to boost your own sales.

Other great posts from Janine:
5 tips for winning back customers
Email marketing best practices
VerticalResponse: subject lines for B2B email marketing that work

About the Author
Janine Popick is the CEO and founder of VerticalResponse, a leading provider of self-service email marketing, online surveys, and direct mail services empowering small businesses to create, manage, and analyze their own direct marketing campaigns. Janine is a columnist for Inc.’s Women in Business blog. In her spare time, Janine is VerticalResponse’s Chief Executive Blogger for the VerticalResponse Marketing Blog for Small Businesses. Follow her on Twitter @janinepopick.

Website: http://blog.verticalresponse.com/verticalresponse_blog/
Twitter: http://www.twitter.com/janinepopick

If you’ve got customers that have never left you for another competitor, good for you! But I don’t believe you. It happens to the very best of businesses. Business should always be focused on getting new customers, but winning back customers from days gone by could be very beneficial (and cheap!) for your business.

The first thing you need to do is assess your customer’s behavior. Off to the data you go! If you’ve got your customer purchases in Quickbooks, Salesforce or your ecommerce platform, see if you can run a report on all of your customers to find out the last date they’ve purchased. If it’s more than a year, you may want to get on it!

Here are a few ideas we’ve come up with at VerticalResponse that you can use to win those customers back now.

1. Call Back Campaign – Get a list of phone numbers and get to the phones! Develop a script because 8 out of 10 calls you’ll probably get their voicemail. Make sure you address any issues you may have corrected or products newly launched and tell them you want them back! Give them a coupon code, or something free with an expiration date. Carve out 30 minutes a day for you, or an intern to start calling.

2. Surveys – You might want to find out first why your customers have not come back to you. Send them a link to an online survey with a few questions you may want ask about their satisfaction with your company. Make sure you leave a box where they can include “other” information in a free-form fashion so that you can read through the comments. You might find that you now offer something they were looking for and you can follow up with them and let them know via phone or an email marketing campaign. Check out How to Create a Great Survey.

3. Email Marketing – Create a version of your regular newsletter and include an introduction telling your forgone customers that you want them back! Give them a special offer, and if you know the particular reason they may have left and you’ve corrected an action or now offer different products or services, tell them you heard their request. You can even personalize it by the last product they purchased and give them a special offer on a complementary product or service.

4. Direct Mail Postcard – Go old school and send a “We Miss You” postcard campaign. Then get them back in your store, restaurant or site with an offer they can’t refuse. A postcard campaign is also great as a lead in to a phone call as well.

5. Send a Gift – If you have samples of a product you sell, that’s a great way to get your customer’s attention. But if you don’t, or you sell services you can also go a bit zany and throw a bunch of fun things in a box to get their attention too. Include a postcard with an offer that’s sure to get your customers back.

Takeaway: Getting a customer to come back is a lot cheaper for you than getting new customers, so give this a try and make it an ongoing campaign!

Any ideas of your own for getting a customer back?

About the Author

Janine Popick is the CEO and founder of VerticalResponse, a leading provider of self-service email marketing, online surveys, and direct mail services empowering small businesses to create, manage, and analyze their own direct marketing campaigns. Janine is a columnist for Inc.’s Women in Business blog. In her spare time, Janine is VerticalResponse’s Chief Executive Blogger for the VerticalResponse Marketing Blog for Small Businesses. Follow her on Twitter @janinepopick.

Website: http://blog.verticalresponse.com/verticalresponse_blog/
Twitter: http://www.twitter.com/janinepopick

We’ve been having some really good luck in our marketing campaigns at VerticalResponse when we feature a customer. It’s always great to have customer testimonials, since the best way to sell your product or service is to have your customers do it for you.

Here are 5 ways you can use customer testimonials to grow your business.

1. Facebook page – If you market to consumers, every week post a customer’s testimonial or if they own a business try posting a link to their website with their testimonial. If they comment or “like” you for doing this, you’ll be in front of all of their friends too.

2. Blog – Every month or so, why not feature one of your customers on your blog. Feature them saying something nice about your business. If they run a business, make sure you feature their URL as well.

3. Email marketing – We’re having some fun featuring our customers in our newsletter. We like to do that to help them grow, and in return they forward the emails to their friends. This way, we get in front of more potential customers.

4. Online community – Feature one of your community members who are actively participating in conversations in your online forums and posts. They may tell all of their friends to check out their feature and you’ll get your business in front of more people.

5. Your website – Publish a different testimonial in each page of your site. It’s a great way to show the depth of your customer base, not to mention, if you’ve got a lot of different types of customers chances are that a prospect will identify with one.

And a lot of your customers won’t mind being featured either. Are you using customer testimonials?

Takeaway: Reach out to enthusiasts! They are the real “influencers”.

About Janine Popick

Janine Popick is the CEO and founder of VerticalResponse (www.verticalresponse.com), a leading provider of self-service email marketing, online surveys, and direct mail services empowering small businesses to create, manage, and analyze their own direct marketing campaigns. Janine is a columnist for Inc.’s Women in Business blog. In her spare time, Janine is VerticalResponse’s Chief Executive Blogger for the VerticalResponse Marketing Blog for Small Businesses. Follow her on Twitter @janinepopick.

Website: http://blog.verticalresponse.com/verticalresponse_blog/
Twitter: http://www.twitter.com/janinepopick

Whether you are new to email marketing or a savvy veteran, working for a company that sends 500 emails a week or 500,000, there are certain policies you should follow to optimize your campaigns. You could call them the commandments of email marketing, or call them email marketing best practices; they are the things you should strive for. We came up with this list based on our 9 years of using email marketing at VerticalResponse!

Below are 12 ideas to improve your delivery, open, and response rates. Next up I’ll be blogging about 6 things you should avoid in your email marketing!

Things You Should Do

• Opt-in: Start by being granted permission to email your recipients through an online opt-in process or being provided explicit permission offline. Developing a positive relationship with your recipients is the most important step you can take to help your marketing mailings reach their inboxes, so donʼt jeopardize it – and your companyʼs reputation – with overly aggressive tactics. In addition the more dedication you have to building a quality list the stronger results you will see in the long run.
• From Label: Ensure the mailing is clearly labeled as coming from the person or company that has a relationship with the recipient. If you use a from label that a recipient doesnʼt recognize, it may prompt them to unsubscribe or worse complain to their ISP about you, even if they are actually interested in your services. Once you decide on a from label donʼt change it for every send, you want to continue to build a relationship with your customer and you canʼt do that if you keep changing their contact.
• Unsubscribe: Give your email marketing recipients an easy and obvious way to opt-out or unsubscribe from your mailings and remove them quickly from your mailings if they have already done so. Itʼs the law and it reflects favorably upon your company when you act in a responsible manner. You donʼt need the negative publicity that accompanies the “spammer” tag.
• Subject Line: Make sure your subject line reflects the content of your message. When recipients think theyʼre being tricked into opening the email they often become resentful – and unsubscribe in mass numbers. Donʼt forget subject lines should be 40-50 characters in length with the most important information at the beginning. Anything longer will get cut off by your customers email reader.
• Your Address: Provide a valid postal address in each email marketing message, as well as an easy way for recipients to contact you or the company responsible for sending your email. Itʼs the law, and it provides another avenue ofcommunication with the customer, which is another opportunity to prove your worth.
• Content: Only email your recipients content that is relevant to what theyʼve requested. If you start emailing irrelevant offers, theyʼre more likely to unsubscribe. Be creative, this is what keeps your audience coming back for more.
• Reminders of Sign Up: Remind your recipients where you obtained their contact information and why they are receiving your marketing message. Sometimes people forget that they signed up to receive your email, especially if itʼs been a while since youʼve last communicated. This will help decrease your complaints and increase your reputation as an email sender.
• Frequency: Create an ongoing relationship with your list members. Building a mutually beneficial email relationship – like all relationships – takes time and care. Mail to your list on a regular basis. Every list works responds differently. Some enjoy daily messages, weekly messages, biweekely or even monthly messages, find out what works for you.
• Address Books: Ask your recipients to add you to their address books so they recognize your messages when they arrive. In many cases, once youʼre entered in an address book, your images will display properly and your emails will be directed straight to the inbox, not into the bulk folder.
• Testing: Test, Test, Test: Segment your marketing list, try presenting different offers, using different subject lines, and mailing on different days of the week to determine when you receive the best response.
• Images: Combine both images and text in your emails. Then, if graphics are stripped from your emails due to the recipientsʼ preferences, at least they are left with text they can read. If you must use an image as the dominant form of communication (we know, some graphic designers wonʼt have it any other way!), then insert a link at the top of the email that lets people read the message without interference. Also provide a link that directs your recipients to a “hosted” version of your email as well. And donʼt forget Alt Text, the text that shows even if the images are turned off. For example if you have an offer in an image like 10% Off, then make sure to included 10% off in the alt text so people can still get that information.
• Spam Filter: Run your message through a spam filter before you launch your campaign. If words get caught in the filter, replace them with alternatives that will pass the test before proceeding with your mailing. This easy-to-perform trial may dramatically reduce the risk of your email being mislabeled as spam.

Takeaway: Follow these 12 best practices as a guide to keep your campaigns on track and your list growing.

Are there any other “email marketing commandments” you would add? Post them!

About the author:
Janine Popick is the CEO and founder of VerticalResponse, a leading provider of self-service email marketing, online surveys, and direct mail services empowering small businesses to create, manage, and analyze their own direct marketing campaigns. Janine is a columnist for Inc.’s Women in Business blog. In her spare time, Janine is VerticalResponse’s Chief Executive Blogger for the VerticalResponse Marketing Blog for Small Businesses. Follow her on Twitter @janinepopick.

Website: http://blog.verticalresponse.com/verticalresponse_blog/
Twitter: http://www.twitter.com/janinepopick

Email marketing in B2B is tricky. Vertical Respsonse CEO, Janine Popick, takes a look at ways you can make that connection without using a hard sell.

If your business sells to other businesses you might have it rough; you could be selling something pretty expensive that has a long sales cycle, you could have a specific time of year when businesses have the approved budgets to buy,  you could be dealing with C-level people who are never around, or you could be dealing with Purchasing Agents whose livelihood depends on getting the best deal for their companies.

So what do you do? What is the best way to approach this sales process?

Some say you should make the best offer you can and bang your poor prospect over the head to buy. What you might end up with is someone who never wants to hear from you again or worse, someone you condition to “always expect a sale”.

Others say take the soft-sell approach and “help” your prospect with their day. How? With quality information that help them be better informed.

All of us need help with something in our business right? Let me think of a few ways I get help from people trying to sell me things:

1. I get a nice mailer from commercial real estate agent in my area giving me tips on future leasing plans and what rates are for which building (they might even not represent.)

2. I get an invitation to a Social Media webinar with a free white paper called 7 Ways to Increase the ROI of your Lead Generation Efforts (who doesn’t need that?) from a company that tracks social media. The webinar is full of ideas for increasing Social Media, not a webinar on how to use their product.

3. I am invited to a webinar called “Get to the top of Google: 10 Free SEO Tools”.

4. I got a white paper.

I wrestle with all of these issues, so digging in to get more information is always a good thing for me, you and your prospects.

So offer your prospects things that will help them, like advice on overcoming obstacles they encounter on a day to day basis. It especially works if you’re product is just what solves their problem. You don’t need to be “selling” until they’re ready. And the more content you have to offer, the more your prospects will come to respect you as a trusted leader in your field. Then they’ll come to you when they’re ready.

Blog – If you’re an authority in your field you should be regularly blogging about topics in your industry. When people have questions, your blog will likely show up in the natural search results when your prospects are asking Google.

White Papers – They are not meant to be salesy, they’re meant to educate customers and help them make decisions.  Here is a nice outline of how to write a white paper.

Guides – How-to Guides are a great tool to offer to your customers.

Webinars – Re-work your How-to Guides into webinars. Some people are more visual and just like to listen to you speak and get a feel for what you know.

Email Marketing – All of these things get delivered because of your e-relationship with your prospect, so it’s important to get out there and build that prospecting email marketing list. Then use it as a vehicle to announce your monthly white paper, your weekly webinar and your blog updates.

Takeaway: Moving prospects along the sales cycle with free information is a great way to cultivate your sales relationships. People will respect you as an authority and not a pesky salesperson.

Do you have any ideas on soft selling? Share your suggestions below!

About Author:
Janine Popick is the CEO and founder of VerticalResponse, a leading provider of self-service email marketing, online surveys, and direct mail services empowering small businesses to create, manage, and analyze their own direct marketing campaigns. Janine is a columnist for Inc.’s Women in Business blog. In her spare time, Janine is VerticalResponse’s Chief Executive Blogger for the VerticalResponse Marketing Blog for Small Businesses. Follow her on Twitter @janinepopick.

When I wrote a blog post about the top 50 retail subject lines you can use for email marketing recently, one of the readers of The eMail Guide asked if I had any examples of B2B subject lines that work. With a business-to-business offering, you might be trying with your copy writing to get your customers to sign up for a free trial, get them to an event, a webinar or give them information on how to be better at something or use your products or services better.

Below, and at my VerticalResponse blog, I have blogged about 29 great B2B subject lines for email marketing, which you can test out for your business today.

Sample Subject Lines:

1. How to Leverage [your product] in Your Business
2. Save Money and Look Like a Star to Your Boss
3. How to Impress Your Cranky CFO – Save $1000
4. Increase Your ROI by [xx]%, Guaranteed
5. How to make it onto your buyer’s short list
6. Complimentary Webinar: [insert webinar name]
7. Now you can do even more with your [xxxx]
8. Should your company outsource [insert thing to outsource here]?
9. Breakfast & Secrets for How to [insert problem you solve or product you sell]
10. Success Tip: 5 Ways to a Better [xxxx]
11. Register Today: [inert name of event] Nov. 5 2009
12. Entry deadline fast approaching
13. New White Paper: Best Practices for [Insert problem and solution here]
14. Success Tip #1: [Insert Tip Headline Here]
15. A gift employees and clients will love: [Insert gift name here]
16. Extended for a Day: Get Free Shipping Through Friday
17. Your Weekly Alert: [insert topic here]
18. Hear Exclusive Research Presented on [insert what your event is about] – Register Now!
19. Inside: [hot topic in your newsletter you think will get the most opens]
20. 5 Ways to Maximize Holiday Sales
21. Save $200: [insert event here] Early Bird Registration Ends [insert date here]

Here’s some specific subject lines I like, and why I think they’re great:

22. Marketing on a Tight Budget – Part 1 –
This subject line hits a pain point and makes it seem like there is even more information to help me, on its way.

23. Countdown to the Awards Gala: Reason #5 to Attend -
This company did a series of 7 email campaigns in a row, to get people excited.

24. The Venture Capitalist Industry Isn’t Broken: VatorNewsletter –
Here they started with the hot topic in the front of the subject line and it was somewhat controversial.

25. Secure Your SaaS Application (White paper Included) –
I like that they tell you there is something tangible in it for you right in the subject line.

26. Cognos Training: 50% Discount – Year-End Budget –
I LOVE the way they use Year End Budget because in many companies if you don’t spend the budget you have this year, you won’t get it again next year. This also works well with “Quarter-End Budget”

27. Thank You From Dice –
This was just a nice thank you for your business with a huge discount to get customers coming back.

28. Get a $30 Gift Card for 30 Minutes of Your Time –
It was to take a demo of a new product.

29. Frustrated with Graphics in Microsoft Office? –
This company sells a product to make it all better and they got to a real pain point for people.

Takeaway: Subject lines are so important since it’s the reason your recipients are going to look to that to decide if they want to open your email. If you’ve got some B2B subject lines that have worked for you in the past, comment on the post, we’d love to hear about them!

About the author

Janine Popick is the CEO and founder of VerticalResponse, a leading provider of self-service email marketing, online surveys, and direct mail services empowering small businesses to create, manage, and analyze their own direct marketing campaigns. Janine is a columnist for Inc.’s Women in Business blog. In her spare time, Janine is VerticalResponse’s Chief Executive Blogger for the VerticalResponse Marketing Blog for Small Businesses. Follow her on Twitter @janinepopick.

Case Study: ValuePetSupplies increases revenue ten-fold with eMail marketing to customers

At VerticalResponse we asked our customers what type of information they wanted from us. The answer? More case studies! You all want to know how other VerticalResponse customers are using email marketing and what they’re getting out of it. So we’ve started to talk to our customers to find out and we start our case study series with a retailer out of Tennessee, ValuePetSupplies.com.

Background
As part of their family pet business, the Piech family started ValuePetSupplies.com. Their goal is to offer pet-related products for the pet owner’s everyday needs at the most competitive prices possible. ValuePetSupplies.com is 100 percent online–and ships from a family-owned warehouse in Livingston, TN.

Problem
ValuePetSupplies.com uses search engine marketing and social media to generate leads. Even though they were advanced in these areas, as of January 2009 ValuePetSupplies.com wasn’t running any customer retention programs. Zachary Piech, owner of ValuePetSupplies.com, could see this was a problem based on the company’s customer retention rates.

Discovery
Piech shared his problem with a friend of his, and was lucky enough to have chosen a VerticalResponse advocate! His friend sat him down at a computer and supervised while Piech signed up for VerticalResponse and sent his first campaign. After Piech launched the first email marketing campaign, he was convinced this was something he needed to do.
After sending out a few successful campaigns in January and February, Piech was so impressed with his return on investment that he hired a marketing and sales manager to manage his marketing and retention programs.

Solution
ValuePetSupplies.com now sends out an average of 30 email campaigns a month with VerticalResponse to a customer base of over 100,000. “We start our campaigns the first of every month and probably have five or six campaigns going at a time, each targeted to specific types of buyers,” said Nick Carter, Marketing and Sales Manager for ValuePetSupplies.com.
These email marketing campaigns have provided insight to ValuePetSupplies.com on which products work well in emails, and which type of customer will respond to the different offers. They use this information to segment lists and send very targeted messages.

Results
Before ValuePetSupplies.com was sending emails campaigns on a regular basis, current customers created 20% of the monthly revenue. With the help of VerticalResponse, the company has increased this to 30%. “The return on investment numbers are mind-boggling. On our monthly campaign it is not unusual to see 7595% return on investment,” said Carter.

Have you got any great case studies you would like to share? Contact: Jim@TheeMailguide.com

Takeaway: This case study shows that customer retention is just as important as marketing to new customer prospects. Email marketing is a low cost way to stay in contact with your customers on a regular basis, which can improve your retention rates. It’s also important to select an Email Service Provider that provides analytics and tracking on email marketing campaigns, so you can take a similar approach to ValuePetSupplies.com and determine which products are performing well and send out more targeted emails.

About the author:
Janine Popick is the CEO and founder of VerticalResponse http://www.verticalresponse.com, a leading provider of self-service email marketing, online surveys, and direct mail services empowering small businesses to create, manage, and analyze their own direct marketing campaigns. Janine is a columnist for Inc.’s Women in Business blog. In her spare time, Janine is VerticalResponse’s Chief Executive Blogger for the VerticalResponse Marketing Blog for Small Businesses http://verticalresponse.blogs.com. Follow her on Twitter @janinepopick http://www.twitter.com/janinepopick.

Even the best of us take for granted the simple things you need to include in your email marketing campaigns we send out on a regular basis. So here is a list of things you must have that will help you grow your list, get more opens and clicks for your emails, and have a super successful campaign.

1. Write A Compelling Subject Line

Make sure you take the time to think about what’s going to get your email opened. Look at your past campaigns, see which ones got the highest open rates and try to emulate the type of subject line you used. Try one of our 50 All Time Great Subject Lines and see if one works for your business.

2. Ask to Get Listed in Your Recipient’s Address Book

If the email address that you send your email campaigns from is listed in your recipient’s email address book, your email goes directly into the inbox and your images are automatically displayed. You’ll want to get as many of these as possible. For instance at VerticalResponse you can automatically insert it into your email campaigns and it looks like this:

If you can’t see images add “YourVRFromLabel@mail.vresp.com” to your address book.

3. Include a Forward-to-a-Friend Link

You don’t know what it’s going to take to entice your recipient to forward the email to a friend of theirs so your message gets out to a wider audience. So even if they don’t click on a “forward to a friend” link you include, it may make them remember to simply forward it using their email client.

4. Use Images to Illustrate Your Point

If you’ve got images of your product, go ahead and include them. Like they say, an image is worth a thousand words. Just remember, some email readers strip out images so make sure your copy that you write also tells the story. (editor’s note: here’s one way to avoid blocking using HTMLized images)

5. Prominently Display Your Logo

Nothing works on your recipients like a familiar logo of a company they do business with. Remember to include image “alt tags” that will show the name of your company or product in the event your images don’t display properly.

6. Include Your Postal Address

This is simply the U.S. Federal Law, so be sure to include your postal address in each of your email campaigns. Even if you’re emailing from outside the U.S. many times you don’t know where your recipients are.

7. Display an Unsubscribe Link

Even the best email marketing campaigns get unsubscribes, but bottom line is you don’t want to continue to send emails to recipients that don’t want them. Not only is this included in the federal CAN-SPAM legislation, but it will end up tarnishing your company reputation with negative word-of-mouth.

8. Use Customer Testimonials

Make sure you constantly solicit testimonials from your customers and recipients. Then feature them in your email campaigns. You’ll get two things from them; 1) They’ll likely forward it to all of their friends and 2) Nothing sells better than a customer selling your products or services for you.

9. Insert Lots of Links

If you think you’ve got too many links…add more! You never know what link your readers will be compelled to click, so make sure you’re linking words and images and you’re linking often.

10. Use Your Social Media Links

If you’ve got people following you on Twitter, or people who are Facebook fans, make sure you include these links in your email marketing campaigns. You’ll spread the word to a wider audience from within these campaigns. Check out our free download: Social Media Checklist.

Above and beyond these ten “must-haves” you’ll obviously want the articles in your newsletter or your sales copy to be compelling as well. Use this as a checklist for your next email marketing campaigns!

Takeaway: Don’t forget the basics – sometimes the simplest tricks are the most magical.

About the author:
Janine Popick is the CEO and founder of VerticalResponse http://www.verticalresponse.com, a leading provider of self-service email marketing, online surveys, and direct mail services empowering small businesses to create, manage, and analyze their own direct marketing campaigns. Janine is a columnist for Inc.’s Women in Business blog. In her spare time, Janine is VerticalResponse’s Chief Executive Blogger for the VerticalResponse Marketing Blog for Small Businesses http://verticalresponse.blogs.com. Follow her on Twitter @janinepopick http://www.twitter.com/janinepopick.

Testing something new or changing something seemingly small in your email campaigns can definitely tell you something about how your recipients will respond. You’ll either get more open & clicks or you won’t. But you won’t know until you try.

Testing something new can SEEM like a lot of work but it’s really not. If you’re going to create an email marketing campaign anyway, it’s just three more tiny steps.

One: Make a copy of the campaign you’re creating
Two: Change a little part of the campaign (see below)
Three: Test with a small portion of your list or split your list in two

These three simple steps could get you a better response to your next email campaign and it takes just minutes for you to do. Unleash the mad scientist in you with these 5 easy things to test within your next email marketing campaign.

1. Subject Line – If no one opens your email, it doesn’t matter how pretty it is on the inside, so why not test two different subject lines? Here’s an idea; look at your past campaigns and see what your recipients are clicking on, then include that offer or article in your new subject line. After you send it out compare your open and click rates to see if you got a better response than normal.

2. Offer - Test a % discount vs. a pricing discount like 20% off vs. a $10 savings. Run a test with free shipping vs. no free shipping or with an expiration date vs. no expiration date. Then roll out to the rest of your list the winning offer.

3. Format – Instead of including a sidebar in your emails, try removing it so that perhaps more of your content is “above the fold” or the part of an email or web page that is visible without scrolling. Make sure you’ve got some links above the fold so you can tell if it’s working. If you get more clicks you may want to consider changing your format for good.

4. Links – If your email has 5 links to your offer, try including 5 more and see if your response increases.

5. Images – Try removing images and see if a text version of your email works better. How 90′s of you!

You can either split your list in half and do the test or you can break off a small piece of your list and do the test a day in advance of your real email campaign date. Then roll out to your bigger list with the winner. Here is how you can do it using VerticalResponse.

One last thing, if you are going to test any of these make sure you test them one at a time so you know which change actually made the difference.

Got any other testing tips you would like to share? Post them!

About the author:
Janine Popick is the CEO and founder of VerticalResponse http://www.verticalresponse.com, a leading provider of self-service email marketing, online surveys, and direct mail services empowering small businesses to create, manage, and analyze their own direct marketing campaigns. Janine is a columnist for Inc.’s Women in Business blog. In her spare time, Janine is VerticalResponse’s Chief Executive Blogger for the VerticalResponse Marketing Blog for Small Businesses http://verticalresponse.blogs.com. Follow her on Twitter @janinepopick http://www.twitter.com/janinepopick.

VerticalResponse is always being asked for examples of great email marketing subject lines, so I thought I’d offer some really great and proven-to-work subject lines that you can test out for your email marketing campaigns.

First of all, I’m assuming at this point that your recipients will recognize you from your “From Label”. I’ve written why your From Label is very important in your email marketing campaigns. If they are familiar with who the email is coming from, you’ll have better luck getting your email opened with a catchy subject line.

As a retailer your email marketing campaigns are probably all about selling. If you sell your own products or products from other manufacturers, you’ll be trying to announce new products, new seasons or discounts and sales. You’ll want your recipients to act fast, so you may want to try expiration dates in your subject line. At VerticalResponse, we even see businesses using hours in the day in their expiration time periods.

You’ll see that some of these subject lines are a bit vague like “An Exclusive Offer for You”, however sometimes that might get more opens than if you talk about a specific product. That’s something that you need to test for yourself in your own campaigns.

Offer, Offer, Offer

Enjoy this Special Offer at Our New Location

25-40% off – Email-Only Offer – Today Only

Invitation-Only 2 Hour Event Starts 11:30 AM CT

Ends Today! 20% Off Friends & Family

Top 10 under $10

Free shipping – offer ends in 3 days

Free product with purchase of [product name]

[New Product] has arrived. Order now before we run out.

Earn double points for [insert product or action].

Last Chance: Get up to $25 now

Save 10% on your next order

Enjoy [season] with rates from $65

Service Notice: Exciting new changes at [your company]

An Exclusive Offer for You

[Your company] October Specials

Last minute deals, special offers, and new [product name]

Act Now to renew your [subscription name]

Online only: 25% off friends and family

Introducing our latest…[product/feature here]

[Product name] Promotion week. Save 25%

Extended for a day! Get Free shipping through Friday

Stock up and save 15%

Limited Supply: Limit 2 [product name] per customer

Ho-ho-ho: The [your company] holiday catalog is here!

Email subscriber exclusive: [Product name] sale is here

Ends Today: Take 20% off your entire order

Private Sale Ends Today

Your choice of amazing items $50 + under

Great gifts for [Dad, Mom, etc]

Best Sellers every [girl, boy, man, woman, dog, etc.]

Everything you need when the temperatures [rise, fall]

Free Shipping–Limited Time Offer

Catchy & Creative

Sometimes all you need is a little vase lift  (retailer selling vase’s)

We’ve got you covered from head to toe (retailer selling hats, shirts, pants and boots)

How La Perla got its name (retailer selling lingerie, telling a story inside the email)

Temperatures Fall, Style Rises (retailer selling coats)

Celebrity Favorites (selling accessories that Hollywood is wearing)

Did you remember to get a gift? It’s ok, we did. (retailer wanting to get people to register for gift reminders)

10 Gift Ideas for your little ones (retailer listing top 10 suggestions for kids)

Manhattan View for a Song in the Shower (retailer selling shower curtain with Manhattan skyline on it)

Take your pick: Our 9 Favorite Dresses (retailer suggesting by popularity)

Coolest modern desk on the job…for $149 (retailer including price in the subject line)

Score Great Savings on Game-Time Gear: HDTVs, Furniture & More (retailer selling TV’s with a sports slant)

Party Like it’s 1999 Aged Cabernet Special (wine retailer)

In our store: Last minute Mother’s Day combo ready to go (retailer getting the last minute shoppers with a catch “combo to go”.)

Adorn Your Home Now & Through the Holidays (Home decor retailer)

Mind-Blowing Grenache (wine retailer)

Bring this email to a Gap store and win! (retailer trying to get store traffic)

I hope this gets your creative juices flowing. You can also find some great holiday-specific subject lines here.

About the author:
Janine Popick is the CEO and founder of VerticalResponse http://www.verticalresponse.com, a leading provider of self-service email marketing, online surveys, and direct mail services empowering small businesses to create, manage, and analyze their own direct marketing campaigns. Janine is a columnist for Inc.’s Women in Business blog. In her spare time, Janine is VerticalResponse’s Chief Executive Blogger for the VerticalResponse Marketing Blog for Small Businesses http://verticalresponse.blogs.com. Follow her on Twitter @janinepopick http://www.twitter.com/janinepopick.