Article by David Leach of Swiftpage

The most brilliant parts of email and email marketing are the testing and analytics. With email and the Internet, you can literally test the success of everything you send out, or put on the web. With this said, the ability to form a strict and effective testing process is crucial to whether or not you succeed.

You will need to start this process by laying out some guidelines and groundwork to continuously refer to. Creating a plan will help you stay on course and also allow you to pass off the procedures to the necessary players or new employees down the road. Diving into email testing you will want to decide exactly what you want to keep your eye on, so you can put the proper content in place for tracking. Some of the most common and true indicators of success are found in the testing of subject lines, testing of whether or not to use more images or a Plain Text format, and then also the placement and wordsmithing of links and surveys.

Once it has been decided that you will be testing your content religiously, you will want to set up a schedule. What you don’t want, is to send your emails out, move forward with your campaign and then come back to the results several weeks or months later when it is time for the next email blast. Instead, give the blast, two or three days for links to be clicked on and the email to be properly interacted with, and then jump into your testing when your mind is fresh on the topic. Report analytics are all too easy to look at and say “Oh, yes, hmmm…sure, that explains it” a few weeks after the fact. Try running a fine comb through those results when the focus and drive is fresh and bring your analytic skills to a much higher level.

Learning from your results over time and uncontrollable change are also key and curiously intriguing. From numerous tests you will be able to tell if your target group is more visually stimulated by flashy images, if they are no-nonsense, get-to-the-point and give me links/product types, if they are easily lured in for a good read with specific subject lines, are more responsive with a call to action, or if they are simply more into a good read stocked full of informative and intriguing content.

If they turn out to like reading more than actually purchasing your stuff, then figure out how to make that work for you. You could link to other intriguing and relative sites, and then those sites you link to, will send people back your way in return, etc. etc. and eventually you have created an information network that you can feed from. The whole point is being able to put a finger on who it is you are communicating with and how you can make their experience more enjoyable. The minute you start to force content on your recipients is the same day your numbers will start to tank. Consumers today are getting much better at only surrounding themselves with exactly what they want and nothing more.

The ability to continuously test email content has made email one of the best utility tools for companies today. With this new testing frontier it is very important that you do not stop testing, just because you hit the nail on the head and became an overnight expert realizing for example the words “Splendid” or “Scrumptious” in the subject line bring astronomical open rates. Opinions and tastes may change within the hour and always being tapped into those changes will bring you
the most success and stimulating feedback.

P.S.This is a continuation of my Sunday Affiliate posting.

Technorati : Swiftpage, drip-marketing, e-mail, email marketing, testing

As an ACT! by Sage customer, you already understand the importance of knowing as much as you can about your customers. To take this knowledge to another level, join the thousands of people who use Swiftpage to perform comprehensive management of email campaigns, and enhance their marketing and sales efforts.

Create graphical email templates with Swiftpage using its simple online editor, or import your own HTML.

Then send these emails directly to your ACT! Contacts, Look Ups, Groups and Companies – from yourself or on behalf of your sales team members.

Easily track who opened, clicked, bounced and more. Swiftpage also provides intelligence about your customers. A customer who has opened previous emails from you five times and has clicked on three links, is likely more interested than someone who opened an email once and didn’t click any link.

Snapshot by Swiftpage places important information about your customer, both from data in ACT! by Sage and from internet sources like LinkedIn into a display that’s intuitive to read and use.

It’s a long established marketing practice to continue to contact prospects at the appropriate time.

Swiftpage Drip Marketing blends simple functionality, like the ability to automatically send a sequence of marketing messages to a contact that fills out a form on your website, with intelligent technology that will send different messages to contacts based on their previous actions. For example, send a postcard to those that did not open the previous email – automatically!

From events or corporate announcements to a new customer welcome or product launch – Swiftpage provides the ability to automatically deliver marketing content and drive your ACT! by Sage sales processes.

Swiftpage and ACT! by Sage – bringing innovative technology to critical tasks, so that you can bring your talent, to everything else.

Disclaimer: I act as an affiliate resource for Swiftpage.

Technorati : Act, Autoresponder, Drip-Marketing-Program, Sage, Swiftpage

· What can you Combine?

· What can you Adapt?

· What can you Modify or Magnify?

· Can you Put to other uses?

· What can you Eliminate or reduce?

· What can you Reverse/Rearrange?

So what would you reverse? This is only a subtle difference to most, but it really is a different mindset. How about sending information based on the customers actions? Let’s say that they attend a certain trade show, win a particular bid, follow a certain group of people or buy a certain product. There are so many ways, especially if we are monitoring their actions on the web that would enable us to get leading indicators about our own product.

What are those triggering points that would cause you to react? Go back to the SAMPER formula for a few ideas? What is combined with your product? What is eliminated by your product? I encourage you to take a close look at your DMP and figure out how you SCAMPER your DMP and get that drip going a different direction!

Technorati : Drip Marketing, Marketing Funnel, SCAMPER, Swiftpage

What do you do when you get a new lead for your business? Do you have an automated system that kicks in that will give you the best opportunity to nurture and develop that lead into a solid prospect? Or, increase your conversion rate? However you obtain new leads, it is important to follow-through with them and in a consistent way. This is Drip Marketing technology. With a Drip system you can send series of correspondence walking them through the marketing funnel, addressing questions and promoting the benefits of your offering. You can also use this technology to tell you who has interacted most with your emails so that you can follow-up and close business with your most interested prospects.

Let me start with a basic example of a program to solicit someone to an event that can be completely automated.

Day 1: Receive introduction to a perspective client through some type of venue: Ex: Trade Show

Day 3: Introduction Email – This initial email introduces you and sends him an invitation to download a white-paper of some type that has particular value to this client.

Day 4: The person downloads the white-paper triggering a campaign for the particular download. If he does not, he is activated into a call list for follow-up.

Day 8: Another e-mail introducing him to the event and offer a registration.

Day 10: Call to discuss the white-paper and the upcoming event but you have a script ready based on whether he has registered or not for workshop.

Day 14: Postcard sent discussing the needs being addressed at the event and other ways that you may interact with the client.

Day 21: Survey sent if registered for event to find the most important issues facing them regarding your topic. If non-registered, e-mail will include a breakdown of event with testimonials from past participants.

Day 27: A follow-up call to insure participation and give last call warning if non-registered.

Day 28: Follow-up e-mail if non-registered.

Day 30: Event

The best part of Drip Marketing is that you can create any type of series ahead of time that is segmented specifically for each type of prospect. You just need to set the system up once and then gain trust by inserting new leads into a campaign suited exactly to their current needs. Let Drip Marketing handle the manual tasks. If you find better ways that work or acquire new tools and tips, you can simply insert them. The key is that a a system is followed allowing you to measure your success and improve upon them.

A Category with similar subject matter: Marketing Funnel.

Technorati : act, drip, drip-marketing, swiftpage, system
Zooomr : act, drip, drip-marketing, swiftpage, system
Del.icio.us : act, drip, drip-marketing, swiftpage, system

It is quite frequent that in a recession, you become under-staffed. Especially when people start doing jobs they are not accustomed too. The important thing you must remember, busy or not don’t forget your customer. In a down economy having a well thought out DMP can be very cost effective. Example: If you have extra staff and you can remove some of the higher cost sections of the program, direct mail for example, and replace it with a telemarketing campaign. Of course, if you have less staff, you may choose an additional step in your e-mail campaign.

From the SwiftPage folks: “Communicating with your customers in a relevant and timely manner is critical in keeping and creating business. Some marketing approaches allow for a “one size fits all” response to each customer regardless of their interaction with your company. For instance, your customer gets the same response whether they requested more information, filled out a survey or purchased a product or service. This generic communication fails to provide useful information and make key connections with clients as they move through the customer cycle.

Often times you may have a specific series of communications laid out for each type of client, like prospect vs. customer. Profiling your audience and sending specific messages to people based on where they are in the purchase cycle will yield greater results than generic messaging. However, it can be tricky to manage these communications as your clients move from one stage to the next. Manually determining who should be receiving which set of messages and when, often times makes this type of relevant and focused communication impossible.”

In most Drip Marketing, you send information based on the customers response to a particular action. It is highly efficient way of marketing especially if the program is based on an exact reaction of the customer. A quality Drip program is not a basic auto-responder series. It should be set-up so that if someone shows interest such as a click-thru to a whitepaper, that there is the desired response to that action. On the other hand, if an e-mail is send out and there was not a click, they would receive a totally different response. That is where a Drip Marketing Program can be so beneficial.

From events or corporate announcements to a new customer welcome or product launch – Swiftpage provides the ability to automatically deliver marketing content and drive your ACT! sales processes. Create graphical email templates with Swiftpage using its simple online editor, or import your own HTML. Then send these emails directly to your ACT! Contacts, Look Ups, Groups and Companies – from yourself or on behalf of your sales team members. Easily track who opened, clicked, bounced and more.

Swiftpage also provides intelligence about your customers. A customer who has opened previous emails from you five times and has clicked on three links, is likely more interested than someone who opened an email once and didn’t click any link. Snapshot by Swiftpage places important information about your customer, both from data in ACT! by Sage and from internet sources like LinkedIn into a display that’s intuitive to read and use. It’s a long established marketing practice to continue to contact prospects at the appropriate time.

As I go thru the process we are going to explore the uses of Swiftpage and maybe even test my knowledge on best practices in this area. Swiftpage seems pretty interesting at this point but lets try it out! If you have, why odn’t you download a free copy of Swiftpage this week and work along with me!

Technorati : act, contact manager, drip-marketing, e-mail, relationship manager, swiftpage