The From Line
Say goodbye to the days of needing a routing number or credit card to pay a store or vendor electronically. Say hello to a real game changer in electronic payments that combines mobile email, SMS and QR codes. Big banks are partnering to allow phone-to-phone, bank-to-bank payments.
Read more to learn what this means for merchants, e-tailers and marketers...
Marketing Trend
Our trendwatchers are seeing a growing need for even the savviest of marketers to educate themselves on workflow improvements. The concept of how to mass-produce automated marketing campaigns (without reliance on excessive human interaction) is not difficult to implement, yet many businesses aren’t aware of the right strategies. Furthermore, while the cost of marketing mediums has decreased due to the rapid growth of online advertising opportunities, production costs have skyrocketed. This leaves marketing budgets vulnerable to what our experts call The 21st Century Marketing Paradox – a cost shift from channel to production.
Watch Gold Lasso's video Email Marketing's Biggest Secret and learn a guaranteed yet least used tactic to lift your conversion rates. More videos to come.
The forward-to-a-Friend gimmick is a failed attempt by e-mail service providers to incorporate viral marketing tools into their applications. Because 100% of the most commonly used e-mail clients have a forward e-mail feature, people use that instead. The only thing we e-mail service providers can do to save face is to hope that the feature reminds people to use their forward button.
A recent survey to online marketers by the Email Experience Council asked, “What is your most successful list-building tactic?” Only 6% chose “Viral: empowering subscribers to share my e-mails via forward-to-a-friend,” 9% chose “Acquisition: growing by renting lists,” and 84% chose “Organic: capitalizing on sign-up opportunities across all of my channels.”
These statistics prove that the forward-to-a-friend process is inadequate, and a more formalized referral program is needed for success. A good program is automated, timely and usually starts where the original opt-in process ends. Once a Web site user has gone through the motions of opting in, it is a perfect opportunity to ask for a referral. Ask the referrer not only for an e-mail address, but also a full name. When soliciting the referee to opt-in, always personalize the message and, most importantly, reference the referrer — this gives you instant credibility and will produce a much higher conversion rate.
Gold Lasso has launched a new eLoop feature to help you manage reader replies to your campaigns. The multiple reply profile feature allows you to add several reply addresses to your account and select which one you want to use with each unique campaign. Right now, the only reply address available is
To add a new reply address:
- Mouse over Account Settings
- Select Reply Profile Settings
- Click on the Add New link
- Complete the boxes and click Save
When using the forward feature, please be aware that depending on the number of replies that you receive from a campaign, the mail server associated with your forwarding address has the potential of being overloaded. In other words, caution is key.
eLoop users can always check replies via the HORDE Webmail system or an IMAP connection using Outlook, Outlook Express, or other email clients. If you would like instructions for connecting via IMAP, please contact support at