The From Line
Sending, Managing & Monetizing Email
This post is based on an initial article written by Andy Thorpe "The Anatomy of Email: Subject Lines" and a response that I wrote to his post.
I originally read about using promo codes in the subject line in an article from Jordan Lane over at Email Moxie towards the end of last year.
A few weeks before I read Jordans article, I was speaking with Mike Cayelli, the CEO at Cuff-Daddy about ramping up for the upcoming holiday season. Cuff-Daddy is one of the leading retail websites specializing in cufflinks to fit everyone's budgets. They have a home grown opt-in list that get's an incredible deliverability rate. They have relied on Email marketing to help grow their bottom line and they notice a significant jump in sales during email campaigns. We were discussing different ideas on how to increase opens and clickthroughs to drive more holiday sales. We came up with a bunch of ideas that we began executing immediately which seemed to be moving things along in the right direction. Some of the ideas were content related, time related, adding personalization, and a snazzy new template. It's important to note that the above mentioned ideas were implemented before testing the promo code in the subject line. They had already begun seeing an increase in opens and clicks prior to testing.
I sent Jordan’s article to read and told him that we should give it a try in their next campaign. He agreed, and the results were very positive. They saw a 4% increase in open rates, an 8% increase in link clicks and a 12% increase in sales. These were exciting stats as we weren't expecting a big bump from something so simple as highlighting the promo code in the subject line. Because of these results, Cuff-Daddy has taken this simple task and added it to their marketing efforts for 2011. The best part about this tactic is that it's easy to implement, takes no integration whatsoever and is very, very low risk. I think that this test was successful not only because the promo code had extra visibility in the subject line but it was this idea coupled with other ideas outlined in Andy's initial article that made it work. Since the subject line is the "first impression", it's important to find a good balance that works for your organization. My best advice is to test, test, test and then test some more. A good way to test this theory would be to use an A/B split to see if adding the promo code works for you. Since Cuff-Daddy's success, we have been talking to our other retail clients about implementing this and they have all been receptive to giving it a try. If you implement this, please let me know your results for a follow-up post in the near future.
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About a week ago, we posted a query in our GLJive Client Community for our clients to come up with 10 uses for our RSS to Email feature. If you aren't familiar with this feature, here are a few of the sticky points:
* Automate your Email Campaigns based on your RSS feed(s)
* Customize messages and templates easily to include RSS feed(s)
* Control which feed(s) are included in which campaign including multiple feeds per campaign
* Control the times that the campaigns go out (daily, weekly, or monthly)
* The ability to choose the launch of the campaign only when RSS feed(s) are updated (validation)
There are so many uses for this feature in pretty much every industry. If you don't believe that this saves time and creates a huge efficiency, ask Gary Smith of Fox's Bull's and Bears and owner of The Chart Man Website. With the help of Gold Lasso, he saved countless hours for him and his staff by automating his daily email campaigns using the RSS to Email feature. Our group came up with some great uses, so here they are in no particular order.
Usage #1 - Deal of the Day
Post exclusive deals for those who follow your RSS feed. Let the RSS to Email feature do the rest for you.
Usage #2 - Internal Communications
Aggregate RSS feeds of competitor information: tweets, news releases, Facebook updates, etc. Automate a campaign that’s internal to your company and sales team. Not many subscribers, but it could be quite useful!
Usage #3 – Automatic Photo Updates via Email
For a website constantly uploaded with photos, pull an RSS feed of new photos into scheduled campaigns. Several applications: Dating Site, Real Estate, News, etc.
Usage #4 - Deal Roundup
Similar to Usage #1, a website that posts MULTIPLE sales/deals can send a weekly or daily email that pulls all deals into an email.
Usage #5 – Candidate Recruitment
Insert feed of resumes titles, even by category, into an email to HR and recruiting managers. Use campaign categories for highly targeted approach.
Usage #6 - Job Listings
Insert feed of job listings, either by zip code or by category, into email for job-seekers. Schedule weekly or daily campaigns.
Usage #7 – Automate message assembly
Instead of designing new messages and campaigns, create a message template with space for your private feed. Update the feed and your campaign is sent automatically.
Usage #8 - Live Event Coverage
A lot of bloggers and tweeters constantly update from live events. You could sum up all of the posts from the event in an easy to read re-cap.
Usage #9 - Writers/Authors
Authors could send teaser chapters from an upcoming book to get readers excited.
Usage #10 - Public Postings
Public postings could be used by colleges and other higher education, regulatory, state run groups, government, etc.
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Last night I received a message from Facebook regarding our Fan Page. The stats were rather vague but still helpful. Here are the stats that were reported:
+xxx Fans this week (xxx total Fans) x Wall Posts, Comments, and Likes this week (x last week) xxxx Visits to your page this week (xxx Visits last week)
The message looked a bit spammy at first until I checked out the headers. Plus the email address that it was sent to is only used for Facebook so that helped with the legitimacy in my mind.
According to an article from Mashable the feature has not been officially announced yet but jives with January’s rollout of Post Insights which tells you the reach and feedback level of each item you post to a Fan Page.
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| Brief Description Examples Using an Existing/Setting Up a New Opt-In Page Facebook Fan Page Information How to Setup Your Facebook Form Adding the Form to Your Fan Page Wall |
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| Brief Description This document will help you setup or use an existing Opt-In form and add it to your Facebook Fan Page. |
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| Examples Here is a link to The Gold Lasso Fan Page to see an example. |
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| Here is an example of the Form on our Fan Page. | |
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| Using an Existing/Setting Up a New Opt-In Page This help document assumes that you already have an Opt-in or Landing Page in your eLoop account. If you don’t, please click here for instructions on how to set one up. |
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NOTE: If you already have created an Opt-In page and modified it outside of eLoop then you can simply copy the HTML from there to be used in Step 9 of the setup process below. |
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| 1. | Log in to your eLoop account. |
| 2. | Choose “Data Collection” and then choose the “Opt-In pages” option from the top navigation bar. |
| 3. | Choose the Opt-In Page that you would like to work with and click the edit button. |
| 4. | Choose the “Page Edit” option in the bottom navigational bread crumbs. |
| 5. | Select all and copy the HTML code from the box located at the top of the page. |
| NOTE: The copied HTML will be used in Step 9 of the setup process in the next section. | |
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| Facebook Fan Page Information A Facebook Page is a public profile that enables you to share your business and products with Facebook users. When your fans interact with your Facebook Page, stories linking to your Page can go to their friends via News Feed. As these friends interact with your Page, News Feed keeps driving word-of-mouth to a wider circle of friends. (Information from Facebook) |
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| If you don’t already have a Facebook Fan Page, click here for a very easy to use tutorial provided by Facebook. Back To Top |
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| How to Setup Your Facebook Form |
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| NOTE: You must be an Administrator of your Fan Page to be able to setup a form. | |
| 1. | Log in to Facebook and navigate to your Facebook Fan Page as an Administrator and click the “Edit Page” link. |
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| 2. | Scroll down to "More Applications" and choose the "Static FBML" (which stands for Facebook Markup Language) option. |
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| 3. | Click the "Add to My Page" button which will bring up a light box where you can choose your page, click the "Add to Page" button, and then choose the "Close" button at the bottom of the light box. |
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| 4. | Click the "Wall" tab at the top to return to your Fan Page. |
| 5. | Click the Edit Page link under your Fan Page picture. |
| 6. | Scroll down to the "FBML" box and Click "Edit". |
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| 7. | Type in a Box Title which will be the title of your Tab and Paste the eLoop code in the FBML Box. This information can be modified later by editing the FBML as in Step 6. |
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| 8. | Click the "Save Changes" button at the bottom and return back to your wall by clicking the name of your Fan Page at the top of the page. |
| 9. | To add the form to your navigation, click the Plus Icon next to "Boxes" on the navigation bar located at the top of the page. |
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| 10. | Choose the FBML that you just created which will add it to your Navigation Bar. Once added you can simply drag the tab to the desired location. |
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| Adding the Form to Your Fan Page Wall If you make your form small enough, you can add it to the left side of your wall. Please see our example below. |
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| 1. | Go to "Boxes" (top navigation bar) and choose the box that you created above. |
| 2 | Click the pencil icon click “Move to Wall Tab”. |
| 3. | Navigate back to your wall to see your form on the left side. |
| Back To Top | |
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Just received the following from the Yahoo! Postmaster team.
"We're seeing intermittent connectivity issues across our yahoo.com MXes starting early this morning.
If you are suddenly seeing queues to Yahoo! Mail, please stay tuned for updates and please refrain (at least for now) from contacting our Postmaster team about any deferral issues you started experiencing today. We're doing our best to get this resolved ASAP."
I will update again once I receive an update.
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