Autoresponders Email Marketing – A Good Example

We recently visited GetSpokal.Com and were pleasantly surprised when we received 3 spaced apart automated emails after signing up to their newsletter.

This is a brilliant example to show you Autoresponder Email Marketing done right.

Not to mention their service description landing page is magnificent. Here are the autoresponders we received…

Autoresponder Email 1: intro and thank you

Hi Rebecca,

I was just browsing the web and came across Creative Agency Secrets’ site. I’m a bit of a marketing nerd, so love to look and compare the strategies of different inbound marketing agencies – I actually think it’s fun! What you and your team are doing with Creative Agency Secrets looks really interesting.

I wanted to reach out to you today, because my company, www.getspokal.com helps agencies like yours manage their inbound marketing strategies quickly and more efficiently.

It’s kind of like HubSpot but at a much more affordable price point, and integrates seamlessly with WordPress.

First off, I’d like to invite you and your team to a free 14 day trial of Spokal to get a feel for how it works and how it can help your inbound marketing strategies.

If you like Spokal, and want to start using it for your clients, we also have an agency program where you can earn a 30% commission on all client accounts you manage. So not only does your work with clients become easier, it becomes more profitable too.

To set up a trial account and get familiar with our platform, just head over to www.getspokal.com/free-trial. If you like what you see, I’ll personally help you get set up on agency program so you can start using Spokal with your clients.

If you have any questions at all about our platform or agency program, just reply back to this email and I’ll be in touch as soon as possible.

Thanks,
————–
Chris Mack
Co-Founder & CEO
Spokal
1 888 470 5990

Autoresponer Email 2: service description and offerings

Hi Rebecca,

I just wanted to follow up with you to see if you received my previous email. I think Spokal would make a great fit for your agency, both for your internal use and for your clients.

I’d love to invite you to a free trial of Spokal at www.getspokal.com/free-trial and if you like what you see, we can get you set up on an agency plan where you earn 30% back for all of your clients who you manage while using Spokal.

Just reply back here if you have any questions.

Thanks,
————–
Chris Mack
Co-Founder & CEO
Spokal
1 888 470 5990

Autorseponder Email 3: reminder and farewell

Hi Rebecca,

I just wanted to send one last email to make sure my emails weren’t missing your inbox.

Your agency looks like a great fit for what Spokal offers – a full-fledged marketing automation solution for WordPress.

Would you like to give Spokal a spin for a free 14 day trial? If so, just head over to www.getspokal.com/free-trial and sign up for our free trial. I’m sure you’ll like what you see, and if you want to get your clients set up on Spokal, you can earn 30% back in commission as an agency. Just like that, your client work becomes more efficient and more profitable.

Just hit reply if you have any questions and I’ll get back to you as soon as possible.

Thanks,
————–
Chris Mack
Co-Founder & CEO
Spokal
1 888 470 5990


cas ebook front templateTeach yourself how to use Autoresponders. 

They can be an effective weapon in  your marketing arsenal

Buy a training programme!

Includes E-book, Workshop video and Workshop powerpoint slides.

 

Prince Harry with braces - mBraceables

This season’s teen Xmas gift?

What is it about the ‘stocking filler’ category that brings out the zany product ideas?  I know we’re all fed up with cartoons about dead cats, Princess Diana photos and printed diaries or calendars.

So how about pictures on your teeth?

Introducing mBraceables

Clip on images that go on your front four teeth over the dental brace mount.

There are 8 mBraceable designs which you can clip on and off.  Made from food-safe plastic and classed as ‘jewellery’ these could be your best fun on Christmas Day.

Imagine what Prince Harry would have looked like with some cute pictures on his teeth?

Prince Harry with braces - mBraceables

Prince Harry with braces – mBraceables

[Disclosure: mBraceables are a client of Creative Agency Secrets]

Trying Out Twitter’s Promoted Tweets

We had a go at using Twitter’s “Promoted Tweets” service to advertise our upcoming marketing event on Facebook Ads Vs. Google Adwords, and found some pretty interesting results.

How It Works

Promoted Tweets on Twitter appear at the top of timelines for users matching a profile description you define…

promoted tweets

What We Did

With a $50 budget set, we drafted up a single Promoted Tweet with a link going straight to our event registration page. The Tweet read:

cas twitter ad

Then we targeted the campaign to 4 specific locations within New Zealand and Australia along with setting particular marketing and business interests. You can also add ‘sample twitter accounts’ which the campaign models targeting from (pretty neat!).

How It Went

First, the campaign statistics:

  • $48 spent.
  • 10k impressions made.
  • 84 interactions reported (82 clicks on the ad, 1 reply to the ad, 1 follow from the ad).
  • 13 clicks recorded on the goo.gl link used.

So how did we feel about it? Overall, it wasn’t a wildly successful campaign, but then again neither was our budget. We got 13 clicks recorded on the link we used and since we launched the campaign we gained an additional 10 attendees (granted this was during our mailing campaign as well). It appears that the campaign made a ripple of interaction and engagement but in the end you may want a bigger budget to really hit your mark.

If indeed we did get 10 attendees from this campaign, and we then get a single client out of this free event, we will have made our money back and then some.

 

 

The blue icon opposite are part of our 8-Step New Business Development Methodology.  

Click each icon to find more blog articles on the topic – educate yourself in modern marketing.

4 Profile raising icon

FREE eBook: Cold Emails – Doing it right and netting yourself leads

Cold Emails Book CoverEmail is a vital tool to growing your business. It’s non-invasive, interactive, and most of all – integral to business communications, so often get noticed.

One way to use email is through cold emailing, which is emailing to people you don’t know. It can come across as underhanded, but when done correctly it’s a marketing practice that shouldn’t be overlooked.

Find out about cold emails and how to write them in our free eBook…

Cold Emails – Doing it right and netting yourself leads

In this eBook, we’ll go through how to:

  • Write cold emails that encourage a response.
  • Tailor your cold emails to the right clients.
  • Personalise cold emails.

Looking for more insight on how to build great email campaigns, and sell directly to your audience? Contact Us!

Christmas Campaigns That Shine

Christmas campaigns may seem like a gimmick, but they work. That’s because it’s a time of year where people are looking to buy and as a result, customers are far more communicative.

Hellmann’s Christmas Advert

Look reactionary by planning early

Planning early has many benefits. For example, you don’t want to get a campaign stopped behind bureaucratic doors and miss your chance to launch it at the best of times. If your campaigns are pre-approved you won’t miss those good opportunities to launch them when they come by.

Nothing says “viral campaign” like a relevant one that comes out as soon as a meme starts. Start planning your campaigns early, and plan multiple variations for different situations. Then all you need to do is keep your finger on the pulse throughout the run-up to Christmas period and unleash your chosen campaign when the best opportunity arises.

Here’re a few campaign ideas:

  • Relevant product promos – promo your 2015 calendar when advent calendars start getting popular.
  • “Still time to buy” reminders – customers often rush for purchases just 1 week before Christmas, so a little timely reminder can go a long way.
  • Discount codes & free delivery – while most common of Christmas campaigns, a time-liimited discount campaign is often short and sweet enough to catch more attention.
  • Extended returns period  – take the “giving mood” approach and develop a relationship with your customers.

One things for sure, each campaign must decide on a clear goal. Review previous campaigns, check their strengths and weaknesses, then carefully plan out how you’ll support your campaign goals through action.

Focus on increasing dialogue with customers (not necessarily hard sales)

Christmas is a great time to develop customer relationships as well as just push sales. Use the increase of inbox opens and social media interactions to build your email lists and get more in touch with your customers. Outside of capturing emails you could also push feedback forms and surveys to capture behavioural data which can improve all your 2015 campaigns as well.

You could:

  • Simply wish Merry Christmas via email or pop-up box.
  • Run social media competitions that require email opt-ins, but instantly give a discount when a customer enters.
  • Re-engage with past buyers by offering them something special for doing business with you again.
  • Have fun and test out marketing platforms you wouldn’t normally use, potentially opening your exposure up to a whole new crowd.

Offer something DIFFERENT

Make an impact and stand out from the crowd by doing something different. Implementing a wishlist on your website (EXTRA: can use data for targeted mailing!), personalising your promotions and running some exciting social media competitions are a few ways to have your company look both professional, and interested in its customers.

The question you need to ask yourself now is – “what’s the best Christmas campaign for my business”?

7 steps for creating your Christmas marketing campaigns

STEP 1: Collect and assess behavioural data from past campaigns.

This should be as straight forward as going into a database and looking through campaign statistics. If you’re not doing this already, a simple excel spreadsheet and recording past campaign data should be your next course of action!

STEP 2: Think of 5 opportunities/ circumstances for sending campaigns.

These opportunities should be periods around Christmas (start of advent calendars, last week before Christmas, etc). Try to find opportunities that can easily be related to what you offer as a company.

STEP 3: Write up these campaigns.

Carefully plan out each campaign with action lists and then make sure you’ve got the content ready to go for each action.

STEP 4: Schedule campaigns that can be scheduled.

If your campaign is time dependent, schedule it and make an alert to remind you when it goes out. Once it is live, you should still have to take action (such as sharing your campaign via social media), so have that ready.

STEP 5: Create daily Google Alerts for topics that the remaining campaigns can react to.

If you’ve created some reactionary campaigns for the holidays, make sure you’ve got ways of identifying when they can best be activated. We use Google Alerts to track conversations so that we can react to them, and it’s a great way for looking for that perfect campaign launch opportunity.

STEP 7: Recap on all campaigns (analytics and assessment).

Once is all said and done, sit down and have a good look at the results of each campaign and how they went. This is very important as it will help you create more successful campaigns for the future!

 

Looking for fresh ideas and assistance on your Christmas marketing?

Drop us an email and we’ll be happy to brainstorm ideas for you!

3 Cheers to the Design agency who fired Lord Sugar

A delightful story from Design Week about the agency hired to help with the Apprentice reality TV show and how they ended up quitting.

Does anyone remember Richard Seymour on the Product Design show “Better by Design”?

The agency had EXACTLY the same reaction – the show took top talent out of the business and it became evident it wasn’t financially worthwhile.

Much as I like the idea of bringing creative industries in front of the public, with shows like Mad Men (fantasies in advertising) and the Apprentice, it’s all about the un-reality of TV not about the realities of our working businesses.

P.S. the only exception is Dragons Den.

Marketing a tree care surgery business

I am looking to launch a tree care (trimming, removal) business and was looking for ideas on creative

English: Tree Surgery, Omagh All the smaller b...

Tree Surgery, Omagh All the smaller bits get mulched. (Photo credit: Wikipedia)

advertising etc that can be done cheap.

You’ve come to the right place!  You don’t say which town you are in but here are our best suggestions:
  1. Join a BNI group.  Business Networking International meetings are weekly and members refer new business to each other.
  2. Get a business card and fridge magnet printed (use something like vistaprint.com)  Hand these out to people you meet, clients. Give them 2 each and ask them to pass one to a friend.
  3. Approach the local schools and ask them if they’d like to do a fund raiser.  They promote your services to parents and you give back 10% of all  revenues to the school for their own use.  You will have to give them a poster or flier with all the details designed on it (the person who designs your business cards can do this at the same time).
  4. Use Yellow pages to find all the property rental agencies in the town.  Make an appointment to visit each one and ask to talk to the Property Managers.  Tell them about your service and ask how you can get onto their approved suppliers list.  These people regularly use services like yours for managed rental houses and apartments.
How do these sound?  I picked them because you can do them all yourself as the business owner without specialist marketing skill –  you just need to be able to explain your service and your prices.
If we can help you with other marketing things e.g. writing a website, running a newsletter, creating a customer database, online advertising, blogging, using social media – please ask.
Writing and reading long emails

Long copy email as a sales tool – example

Writing long emails

Writing and reading long emails

Writing and reading long emails [Image credit ContactMonkey.com]

There are people who do not favour writing long messages, yet there are others who buck the trend to compress and shorten messages. Because they have a beautiful writing style they “get away” with long messages.

I often read these.

David Baker runs ReCourses – a service advising owners how to run their marketing agency as a better business.
Read this example.
Hi Rebecca,
I came across this interesting statement recently:

“Incorporating interactive can move your firm upstream strategically, especially if you understand that interactive work is really database marketing reborn. Providing [prospects] with interactive opportunities is tantamount to allowing them to emerge incognito from the protected castle to sample the promises before they lower the drawbridge again. In this [case] the consumer has initiated and then defined the sales context. And as a potential buyer he is far more likely to buy because he has reestablished control, first by learning more in an environment where he controls the shape and pacing of the information, and then by giving [you the] permission to sell to him.”

The concepts are important, of course, but what’s most interesting is that it was written in April, 2000, nearly fourteen years ago. I wrote it in an article for Persuading, trying to help agencies like yours understand how digital work should fit within the marketing mix.

There was some real enthusiasm in writing that, largely from the promise that the internet would provide a new era in marketing. It didn’t fulfill that promise, really, as privacy concerns, inept agencies, and lousy UI dominated the lack of innovation.
Enter marketing automation technology (MAT), though, and the internet is finally delivering on its promises. This is especially true in the marketing of professional services, where decisions are more considered and where authenticity and truth can be established via thought leadership content.
While the wait has been lengthy, the pace of recent developments has far exceeded what we have come to expect. MAT is a milestone that will honestly change every single thing about selling your services:
You can establish a funnel to define the most likely path to hiring you.
You can develop the tools to bump leads to the next stage in the funnel.
Prospects will be fully aware of your abilities, your remuneration, and what you won’t do. In the process of discovering that, prospects will self-select themselves out of the running so that you avoid the biggest danger in business development: dating prospects that are not marriagable.
Best of all, it changes the equation from pushing to pulling.
The amazing thing is that—no matter how good you are at selling—if you are in front of a prospect that has already taken the safety chain off the door and invited you in, you can sell. Yes, you can sell. What you hate about selling is trying to convince a prospect that they need you. No more. MAT has changed that for you.
There is so much to learn about this and I hope you will join us in Chicago on March 6 for a packed day of learning MAT, both for yourself as an agency and in your work as an agency for clients.
David C. Baker
ReCourses®, Inc.

Why is this long email effective?

Deconstructing this email the method David uses is this:

  • Open with a statement (the quote)
  • then challenge my understanding by explaining it’s over 14 years old!
  • explain its relevance today
  • Bullet point list of benefits [not features] of the technology
  • Give reassurance of the ‘amazing’ outcomes available to users
  • End with an invitation to buy from him

So that’s a series of subjects that you can use for your next email (whether to a cold introduction or a luke-warm prospect).

A note on subject lines for cold email

I am subscribed to get emails from Nick Johnson from Incite.  His copywriting is exemplary and I regularly find myself wanting to take the actions he requests.

Look at this picture taken from my in box of recent messages I’ve received from Incite.

Cold email subject lines

Cold email subject lines

Did you notice that few of the subject lines actually say what’s in the message.   So if I want to know what it’s about I HAVE to open the email.

some of the message subjects aren’t written with capital letters – makes it look like Nick wrote it quickly and forgot – but it’s more a feature of personal email not mass email and so I think this is clever, if used occasionally.

They clearly experiment with subject lines – one of them is a ‘Newsletter’ and is titled as such, but the content of many of them could be classified as news.

I have highlighted two parts because they show best practice.

The Red box surrounds subject lines in which they’ve included my name.  It feels like it was written just for me – but I know it’s just a personalisation insert from their database – but nonetheless it’s effective.

The Orange box encloses a subject “a quick heads up” which they used twice.  The first one follows the pattern of not saying what’s in the body of the email.  The second is sent with the same subject but as a forwarded (FW) message from Nick’s colleague, Kate.  It is the same message inside, but it makes me think I’ve overlooked the earlier message and so I feel more inclined to open this one.

Very clever people – I recommend you subscribe to their newsletter – Insight and Debate on Marketing Innovation.