Email Marketing News and Tips

Reuse Your Email Marketing Templates

Sandra Watters — Thu, 05 Nov 2009 19:07:34 +0000

Are you spending more time on your email template than you do writing the copy? Creating an email template can be frustrating and time consuming. What if you only had to create it once? With Boomerang’s BlastWizard you can create a template once and reuse as needed. When edits are made just save-as and rename. You will always have access to your original template and all of your emails.

Or better yet, what if someone created a professional looking template for you? Boomerang’s Creative Services team can create easy to edit, professional looking templates for you. You send us your graphics, logos and copy and we’ll put everything together for you. Standard reusable templates run around $199. How valuable is your time and sanity?

To take advantage of Boomerang’s free trial and learn more about custom templates click here or call (800) 779-7792 x2.

How to pick an Email Service Provider

Brian Wright — Thu, 05 Nov 2009 11:39:32 +0000

With many choices in email marketing services, how do you choose one that will provide what you need? Clearly, every ESP is proficient in sending email or they wouldn’t be in business. So, what differentiates one ESP from another? Let’s explore.

Prices

Let’s get this one out of the way first. We all know that frugality is a way of life. So, you want to find a service that fits your budget. Whether you are a small office home office or you are a corporation, Boomerang has pricing that will fit your budget. We offer a wide array of services from a self-service interface to our full service professional services. We can offer you the service you need tailored to the way you do business. So, if you like doing everything yourself, we have that. If you prefer that Boomerang does it all for you, we can accommodate that as well. And better, Boomerang can do it all tailored to fit your budget.

Features

Clearly, sending email is the main feature when looking to send email. In addition to this most basic functionality, you also want to look into deliverability, design goals, consulting and analysis reports to tell you how your campaigns are doing. Boomerang offers everything you need to manage your email campaigns fully.

A small list of our features include:

Dedicated IP address (allows for full whitelisting and dedicated usage)
Customized From: address (we allow you to specify)
Self-service and full-service HTML design
Link tracking
Campaign analysis reports
many more…

For a full list of our features, please visit our main web site.

Consulting

Boomerang also offers consulting services to help you get the most out of your campaigns. As a result, we will examine your content, your list and any other information you provide. After we review your data, we will give you a list of suggestions to alter your message or list to get the maximum benefit and results.

List Hygiene

Boomerang also offers a list hygiene mechanism to help you clean up your list after the very first send. With each subsequent send, Boomerang will continue to help clean up your list by marking bad addresses and let you spot your most active readers.

Salesforce

Boomerang also offers full Salesforce integration to help you leverage your Salesforce contact database. With our integration, you can use your Salesforce contacts as recipients. Boomerang will also update your contact database once the campaign has completed.

Value

What you get out of your email campaigns is based on what you put in. If you deliver high quality content that your users want to see, you will continue to get results. Boomerang’s value as an ESP is to help you succeed by providing you the highest quality email services and features.

For more information about Boomerang, please visit boomerang.com or contact us by phone at 1-800-779-7792 option 2.

Organize Who You Follow With Twitter Lists

Lindsay Karlin — Thu, 05 Nov 2009 01:17:03 +0000

If you have a Twitter account and find it almost impossible to follow the constant stream of Tweets because of the number of people you are following, then you will like Twitter Lists.

Finally, a way to organize the people you follow. Organize by anything you’d like; travel, friends, workers, family, sports teams, celebrities, etc…

Check out this article about the new feature: Twitter Lists: Frequently Asked Questions and Strategies

Here’s another great reference: 10 Ways You Can Use Twitter Lists

If you have a Twitter account, most likely you are a blogger as well. Did you know you can automatically create a blog entry for all of your Tweets by using TwitterBlog? It’s FREE…check it out.

Using the Right Merge Code to Customize your Email

Rami Saker — Thu, 22 Oct 2009 07:43:33 +0000

As you probably know, you can use data from any of the fields in a recipient record and merge it into the body of your HTML or text email to render a highly personalized message. Instead of saying ‘Dear customer’, you can say ‘Dear John’ or ‘Dear Mary’. Selecting the right syntax for your merge code depends on the source of your recipient list. The recipient list source will also vary depending on the version of BlatWizard you have - standard BlastWizard application or BlastWizard for AppExchange.

BlastWizard (Standard)

When uploading your list to BlastWizard, you will go through a process of mapping existing list columns/fields to pre-defined field names like ‘first name’, ‘last name’, ‘title’, etc. For mapped field names, use the following merge code syntax:

`merge:_receiver_first_name
`merge:_receiver_last_name
`merge:_receiver_title

If the data you want to merge reside in a column that you did not map to a pre-defined field name, just insert the field name (without the brackets) in the following format:

`merge:[field name]

BlastWizard for AppExchange (Salesforce)
Although you can still send to an external list with BlastWizard for AppExchange, users will most likely construct their recipient lists from the Salesforce contacts and leads objects. This affects how the merge code is written for each of those fields whose data you want to merge in the email message. Here are the 5 different scenarios you might come across when merging data using BlastWizard for AppExchange. I will show the code for merging the recipient’s first name as an example.

Scenario 1: Sending to leads only

`merge:lead_firstname

Scenario 2: Sending to contacts only

`merge:contact_firstname

Scenario 3: Sending to an external list only

`merge:_receiver_first_name

Scenario 4: Sending to both leads and contacts
(Application will pick merge code that matches the record type)

`merge:lead_firstname`merge:contact_firstname

Scenario 5: Sending to leads, contacts, and external list/s
(Application will pick merge code that matches the record type)

`merge:lead_firstname`merge:contact_firstname`merge:_receiver_first_name

Very soon, BlastWizard for AppExchange users will be able to merge custom field data from both the contact and lead objects. This feature is currently being tested and is expected to be released at the end of October.

A “Low-Tech” Approach to Expanding Your Email List

John Viray — Thu, 22 Oct 2009 00:27:52 +0000

Drop Your Business Card in the Bowl for a Chance to Win a FREE Lunch!

We’ve all seen these bowls at various food establishments, some of us have even dropped our card in there, hoping to win a free meal.

Now, I’m sure you’re all wise enough to realize that they’re not giving out free meal after free meal out of the kindness of their heart, what they want is your contact information. Information they can use for future marketing efforts.

But why stop at business cards? Let’s take this idea and apply it to email addresses.

While we can’t give out free lunches, we can raffle off free prizes in return for the viewers’ email addresses. There’s nothing like the chance of winning free stuff to coax people into willingly providing their contact info.

Purchased in bulk, these giveaway items can cost as little as a few cents. Or perhaps you’ve already got items from a past tradeshow that you can raffle off. In return, you give yourself the opportunity to gather new contacts and leads.

If your giveaway items are unique enough, you may even be able to push for more data. Ask for the viewers phone number, request that they sign up for your newsletter, find out what industry they work it. Keep in mind, you will also have their mailing address. Afterall, they will need to provide an address for you to mail the item to.

Done properly, you can easily expand your email list with valid, opted-in addresses.

Small Business Marketing: Lead Nurturing through E-newsletters

Hap Leonard — Wed, 21 Oct 2009 19:55:24 +0000

At the time when a business first meets a potential customer only a very small percentage of those leads are ready to buy services immediately. However most all qualified leads will need your goods or services in the next few months or years. To be the one they come to when they are ready to buy you need a strategy to maintain contact and nurture the relationship over time. An ongoing E-newsletter campaign can be very effective because you are providing relevant information to the potential client while maintaining a brand presence. Eventually when that prospect is ready to buy the goods or services that you provide your diligence will place you ahead of your competitors.

Boasting a 90% success rate MarketingSherpa reported that Only “10% of email marketers said their newsletters were not being justified by revenue.” - MarketingSherpa “Email Marketing Benchmark Guide 2008″ (2008)
Boomerang.com has taken the pain out of writing a weekly newsletter with the SlingShot Automated Newsletter service. We automatically collect articles from your company Blog or Content Management System and organize them into a professional newsletter template. Contact sales@boomerang.com to learn more or call (800)-779-7792 to speak with a representative.

A Few Hidden HTML Tricks

Lindsay Karlin — Thu, 15 Oct 2009 20:24:32 +0000

Not everyone is an HTML expert. Some don’t have the programs to help nor do they have the knowledge of how to write directly in code. Here are a few of the most requested tricks I get from clients…

1. How do I superscript a text in HTML?

For this one, you have to go into the actual code and find the text you want to superscript.

Add the following code before the text:
Add the following code directly after the text:

For example, if I want to superscript a register symbol ®, find the text in the code for that symbol (®) and add the superscript code:
^®

Before: ®
After:^®

2. How do I justify my paragaphs like newspaper columns?

Most HTML editors allow you to easily justify your paragraphs to the left, right or center. But what if you want to make it look like a newspaper column (straight alignment on both sides)?

Again, go straight to the HTML code.
Find the
tag at the beginning of your paragraph.
Change
or
or
to

Examples:

Left Justified Paragraph

Justified Paragaph - like newspaper columns

3. How do I wrap text around an image?

After inserting an image into your HTML, it might look like this:

To make it look like this, follow the instructions below:

If you have an HTML editor like Dreamweaver:

Select the image
In the properties box, look for the “Align” dropdown box
Choose Left or Right, depending on which side you want the text
If you would like more space between the image and the text
- In the same properties box, look for V Space and H Space
- Enter the desired amount of pixel space you’d like between the image and text
- Usually around 5 or 10

If you don’t have an HTML editor, go straight to the code:

Find the image in the HTML code
For left alignment of image:
- Add the following to the end of the line - before the close bracket “>”
- align=”left”
- End result looks like this:
For left alignment of image with horizontal and vertical padding around image:
- Add the following to the end of the line - before the close bracket “>”
- align=”left” vspace=”5″ hspace=”5″
- End result looks like this:
For right alignment, change “left” to “right”

Using Google to Help with Your Email Marketing

John Viray — Thu, 15 Oct 2009 19:40:44 +0000

We all know Google as one of the top search engine websites, but there’s more to them than just that.

Aside from returning your search results, do you ever wonder what is is done with the search entries they receive? Well, each and every search processed by their website is logged and collated and presented to you in Google Zeitgeist.

http://www.google.com/press/zeitgeist/

“Zeitgeist” means “the spirit of the times”, and Google reveals this spirit through the aggregation of millions of search queries we receive every day. We have several tools that give insight into global, regional, past and present search trends. These tools are available for you to play with, explore, and learn from. Use them for everything from business research to trivia answers.

While being a wonderful place to waste some time, it is also a great place to do some research on the top search terms and trends in the market today.

This is particularly useful if you need ideas for topics to write about or even help with creating your subject lines. Take a look at the top searches for the day, perhaps you have a relevant topic you can write about. Under “Insights for Search”, enter in the keywords of your subject line and see how popular they are. You can then adjust your topic or subject line accordingly. These are just some very basic examples, but as you can already see, the information they provide to you can help tremendously with your email marketing.

It’s been invaluable in our marketing efforts and may prove useful to you as well.

Use blogging to help your small business grow

Brian Wright — Thu, 15 Oct 2009 08:40:05 +0000

Blogs are now the new newsletter. They offer a single place to showcase articles by you. Additionally, your readers can interact directly with you through comments. With our blog newsletter service, you can increase your small business marketing presence (and microblogging) to help your search engine optimization (SEO) and, ultimately, drive more business to your site.

Blog Newsletter

Boomerang now offers a way for you to effortlessly convert your blog into an weekly email newsletter that you can send directly to your customer base. No more custom HTML setup, just publish articles and go. So, you don’t have to worry about writing specific content in your newsletters. Now, you just write articles in your blog and that automatically populates your next weekly newsletter. Articles that appear in the newsletter will then lead back to articles published on your blog site. So, your blog will feed your newsletter’s content and your readers will feed traffic back to your blog. Additionally, blogs offers archives, searching and other interactive widgets. So, your blog provides your readers easy ways to find previous articles written by you about the topics you choose.

Additionally, you can add ad banners, Google Adsense and other similar advertising methods to additionally monetize your blog’s popularity.

Blog Content

In your blog, you can focus on content about your products and services, commentary about your industry, linked technologies that improve your business or any other information you choose. With Boomerang’s interactive newsletter, you can specifically tag articles that you wish to appear in the newsletter. This allows you to focus on specific topics and leave other topics for later newsletters or not published in the newsletter at all.

Blogs allow for controlled content so other authors can contribute to your blog and you can approve the articles before they are published. You can also let people publish articles immediately without approvals. So, there are plenty of controls over the blog that allow you to control what gets placed into the newsletter.

Search Engine Placement

Through deep linking, you can improve your SEO presence by writing articles that focus on topics that lead to products on your main web site. Search spiders will crawl the site and look for these links and help to increase your placement in the search engine results.

Automatic Microblog updates

Boomerang will not only convert your blog into weekly newsletters, we will also publish microblog articles to Twitter to publicize your newest blog articles directly into your Twitter account. Twitter will gain additional exposure to your blog and, through a signup widget, increase your blog and newsletter readership (as well as exposing new people to your small business products or services).

Reporting and Analysis / Salesforce

Once we have converted a set of blog articles into a newsletter for your email subscribers, Boomerang uses our award winning services to help you analyze and improve the email marketing results through link tracking and extensive reporting.

If you are a Salesforce user, you can feed that data back into your Salesforce account and use Salesforce reporting tools to get the information you need. Boomerang can also use contact records from Salesforce as the target for the automated blog newsletter.

To get more information about our automated blog newsletter service, please contact 1-800-779-7792 option 2 (sales) or email sales@boomerang.com.

Absolute vs. Relative Links

Rami Saker — Wed, 14 Oct 2009 08:19:08 +0000

When composing your HTML email, you want to make sure that all your embedded images and documents have “absolute” links. Using relative links in an HTML email scenario will break how those file will render in your recipient’s inbox. Here is why.

Relative linking is more common in website design scenarios where it allows you to use less code to traverse your website directory or file structure, and will let you change domains without having to redefine paths for the different content components. You simply copy your website directory structure to the new domain, and it works. This works because website HTML pages and code are stored in one place, that is your webserver, and therefore establishing a point of reference or relevance. Here is how a relative link looks like:

../images/banner.gif

In the HTML email world things work a little differently due to the fact that when you send out your HTML email, the code is rendered in remote email clients and the relationship to local directories and file structure is lost. Absolute links come very handy in this scenario where you don’t have to worry about the position of your documents or images relative to other documents. An absolute link takes the form of a URL that specifies the exact location of a file on the Internet. Each absolute URL is unique, which means that if you have 2 identical URLs, both will point to the same file.

Creating an absolute link is accomplished by hosting the file you want to link to on the Internet, i.e. a public webserver. BlastWizard allows up to 25 MB of hosting space under each account to enable users to generate those absolute links for their images and other files they wish to embed in the HTML email. Here is an example of an absolute link:

http://imagestore.boomerang.com/banner.gif

Defining absolute links for your HTML images and documents guarantees that recipients in different parts of the world would be able to pull in your HTML message structure and render it the same way it rendered in your HTMl editor or email client.