Ideally, you’d like all your customers to talk about the products/services they’ve purchased from you with their friends; realistically, this probably probably won’t happen. In order to drive people to share more, you may have to ask them and you may have to incentivize them.

Our Shout It Out technology (example above) makes it easy for you to encourage people to share news of their purchases with friends and get rewarded for it.  Here’s how it works:

• Someone purchases a product from your website
• On the purchase confirmation page, Shout It Out comes into play, asking people to share news of their purchase with friends, explaining why they should do this (ex: share with 5 friends and get 20% off your next order), and showing them what will be sent out
• An email is sent out to the purchaser’s friend/s. This email contains a call to action or special offer that will encourage the purchaser’s friends to check out your company.
• Our technology enables the email to be “sent” from the purchaser. People are more likely to open/view emails that come from people they know and trust.
• Our team works with you at each step of the way to determine what the offer should be and do the creative that will drive people to share.
• Tracking is included, so you can see how many new purchases, revenue and/or email subscribers you receive from this

The best source of new revenue and subscribers are often the friends and family of your current customers. Contact us today to learn how Shout It Out can help drive sharing, acquisition and revenue for your company. Also, check out our precision email marketing platform, Calibr, if you’re looking to be more successful with your email programs.

I wanted more chances to play Super Mario World after school, more time to shoot basketball before going to bed, and more sweet cereals like Count Chocula and Lucky Charms (and more marshmallows in them). To achieve this, I put a lot of effort into understanding my parents, so I could learn how to get more of these things without having to beg for them. Unfortunately, I never figured out how to increase the number of marshmallows in Lucky Charms, but I’m still open to suggestions…

Flash forward to now. I work for a great company that helps other companies get more of what they want – prospects, customers and revenue. One question we’ve always helped people with is “How can we get more email subscribers and generate more revenue from them?” That’s still a very valid question as email marketing is one of the most important things a company can do to grow its database and generate more revenue online.

With the rise of social media and Facebook, more people are also asking “How can we get more Facebook likes/fans?”

Important caveat: More Facebook fans should never be your end goal…but it can be a good indicator if what you’re doing is moving you towards your goals.

In answering these questions, it’s important to understand the motivations behind why people subscribe to company emails and why they might follow a company on Facebook.

Motivations For Email

The following statistics come from EmailStatCenter.com via ExactTarget’s Email X-Factor Study in 2010.

• 67% of US internet users say the motivation behind giving their email address to a company is to receive discounts and promotions.
• 55% of US internet users say the motivation behind giving their email address to a company is to get a “freebie” in exchange for my email address.
• 50% of US internet users say the motivation behind giving their email address to a company is to get updates on upcoming sales.

Motivations For Facebook

All Facebook recently released an infographic from Column Five Media and Get Satisfaction about what makes people want to follow a brand. Here are the top three reasons why people follow brands on Facebook/MySpace (not sure why these were lumped together, but they were):

• 36.9% of people who follow brands do this to get access to special offers
• 32.9% of people who follow brands do this because they’re current customers
• 18.2% of people who follow brands do this to get interesting or entertaining content

Takeaways

People’s primary motivations for subscribing to company emails and following companies on Facebook are roughly the same. People want access to discounts, deals and offers. Yes, some people may like you on Facebook or subscribe to your emails because they want to share their opinions or feel like they’re part of your community, but these aren’t the main reasons for most people. Keeping this in mind, you definitely want to think about what specific motivations your own customers may have.

Based on the research above, people are looking for tangible value from companies via email and Facebook. If you want to get more email subscribers and Facebook likes, you should probably give people what they’re looking for. You likely shouldn’t just offer both groups the same thing; ideally you want people to follow/subscribe to you on both channels to bring them even closer to your brand. I tend to believe that the best stuff should be reserved for email subscribers. Email marketing is something you have more ownership of and control over, and it takes more of an investment on the part of a user to subscribe via email than to like a page on Facebook. However, this is probably best looked at on a case-by-case basis.

How do you look at people’s motivations in determining how to get more people to like you on Facebook, subscribe to your emails and buy more stuff/buy more often/spend more money?

Image credit: http://www.flickr.com/photos/briherbst/426995523/sizes/s/in/photostream/

If so, be sure to join us on Monday, June 27 at 2:30pm-3:30pm EST for a great webinar that Peter Malamas (Director of Business Development and Strategic Partnerships here at eWayDirect) is hosting with Dydacomp, one of our valued partners.

In this webinar, you’ll learn how to:

1. ACQUIRE NEW PROSPECTS: powerfully build your pipeline and add new prospects through online viral emarketing techniques and online acquisition strategies

2. GET HIGHER CONVERSIONS of PROSPECTS to CUSTOMERS: go beyond simple “blast emailing”… use sophisticated behaviorally-triggered email campaign cascades to increase the chances of getting your first sale and developing an ongoing customer relationship

3. MORE EFFECTIVELY ENGAGE & INTERACT WITH YOUR CUSTOMERS: generate more revenue per customer through highly targeted messaging, and automated real-time website visitor remarketing tools

4. LEVERAGE SOCIAL NETWORKS AND ONLINE COMMUNITIES: to build your business and provide your current customers with the tools to become your best word of mouth marketers and salespeople

Space is limited, so you’re going to want to reserve your spot now. This should be a great webinar with some actionable takeaways that you can use to grow your business. We look forward to seeing you there!

RSVP For This Webinar

You choose to pick it or skip it. You can also share feedback on why you picked or skipped an item. But what really makes this program different is that ModCloth reads and listens to your comments. For example I got this email below:

“That’s right – the dress on the right is two inches longer! We read your comments about this Be the Buyer dress and saw that many of you skipped it because you found it a bit too short. Well, guess what? We listened, and the product of your astute advice has finally arrived!” Then the rest of the email gave links to website where you can buy it. This is the greatest example of listening to your customers!

Here are some other cool features from the “Be the Buyer” program:

• They have all of the current items that were picked in a section on their website. Plus, these items are also listed in the regular section but with a badge that says “Be the Buyer Pick”
• You can go back and review the items you picked or skipped. You can change votes or add comments if needed.
• They have a “Coming Soon” area, where you can be notified by email when an item from Buyers Picks is available for purchase.

Other great features from ModCloth:

• All items that are available for purchase can be easily shared on social media networks or by email.
• If you are signed into the site, you can easily bookmark items for later, add items to wish-lists and write reviews for products.
• If an item is out of stock, you can choose to be notified by email when the item is back in stock.

What other companies have you seen that really listen to their customers with programs like this one?

Using Website Re-Engagement to Put the R Back in CRM

Many people follow up with subscribers who have added items to an online shopping cart but leave the site without transacting.  This is a good thing, but this is just one way that website re-engagement can be utilized. You’re probably missing out on a significant amount of potential sales if you’re not tracking which pages of a website subscribers are visiting and sending them content and offers that are relevant to what they’ve been viewing.

3 Questions With Neil Rosen of eWayDirect

In this article, Neil discusses how email “will continue to evolve and marketers will find powerful ways to install email as an important part of their overall marketing strategies.” Neil also shares his belief that “customer service has always been and continues to be the most powerful way to build trust and earn trust.” This article is is chock full of great quotes like the ones above.

Resends: Putting the R Back in CRM

Brand loyalty is under attack. Besides your competitors, now there are countless daily deal sites, auction sites and review sites to worry about. One way to ensure that you can keep as many of your customers around as possible is to utilize highly targeted resends as part of your email marketing strategy. This not only will help improve your CRM efforts, but it’s good for your bottom line as well. Read the link above to find out why resends should not be overlooked.

Converting Website Visits To Sales A Challenge

In this article from the Hartford Business Journal, Neil answers some questions about website abandonment and tools that online retailers can utilize to turn subscriber visits into sales. “The best website abandonment/reengagement emails combine relevant content with offer reminders.”

How They Are the Same: Listening to Customers and Acting on Insights

CRM email is the best bet for email marketing. Companies can no longer afford to send out boring newsletters. Instead, companies should be creating interesting content that is relevant to their customers: content that people want to open, take action on and share. Companies should be analyzing data like open rates, click-through rates, conversions and what subscribers are viewing on the company website. When emails are sent based on customer preferences, people are much more likely to open them and take action. This will help companies cultivate stronger relationships with their customers to increase customer lifetime value.

As for social media marketing, just because you have a Facebook Page and you send your blog RSS to it for updates don’t mean you are doing it right. For Social CRM, companies must produce great content that is relevant to their customers and engage them in creative ways. Companies should listen to conversations that people have having about their brands, products and competitors, analyze and then act on those customer conversations. As with email, companies need to analyze the data to see what is working and what isn’t so strategies can be tweaked accordingly.

How They Differ: The Audience/ROI

In social media you are addressing most users/followers/likers as a whole group. In other words, the content you produce is seen by everyone and there is limited ability to easily send out targeted content to specific people. In email you have the opportunity to segment your customers and then fine-tune many different messages that are relevant to different groups of customers. Personalization can be somewhat automated with email, but personalization is almost impossible to automate in social media.

The next difference is that email ROI is often very clear. There is data to support what works for campaigns and what doesn’t. As for social ROI, there are still some areas that need to be mastered. It’s possible to understand ROI, but it’s not always black and white. Plus, many companies look to social media as more of a customer service platform than as a sales platform.

Key Takeaway

The happier the customers, the more willing they are to buy your product and recommend you to their friends and family. For that to happen companies need to build strong relationships with as many customers as they can. Email and social media are two great channels that companies can use for CRM purposes.

What are some other areas where you see CRM email and Social CRM intersecting? What are some other key differences?

Our first interview in this series is with Patricia Wilson, our VP of customer support. Patricia oversees a diverse customer support department including creative services, learning & development, deliverability, and customer care. With over 15 years of sales, operations, and client management experience and a degree in business management, Patricia helps our clients achieve big ideas and make powerful customer connections.

When people think of CRM, email is not normally the first thing that comes to mind. How and why is email an important piece of the puzzle?

CRM email is an easy and cost-effective way to understand what your subscribers are thinking, what they are interested in and when they want to be spoken to.

Without properly utilizing email, there’s almost no way to:

• stay in close touch with your customers
• understand what content they want from you and what day/s you should be sending people messages
• understand how to grow your customer base

How can marketers use email data to truly understand what their customers are looking for?

One of the most important metrics to review regularly is the unique open to unique click rate. This metric tells you if you are being successful at motivating your customers to take action on things you are sending and promoting. It can help you understand when things need to be adjusted so you can improve your relationship-building efforts.

What is your overall philosophy on helping our clients with email marketing CRM programs?

Being a partner with our clients is first and foremost. We are here to guide them towards success with all their marketing initiatives.

Understanding our clients business and needs is also key. This allows us to advise effectively on best practices and strategy as a partner and is a home run for our clients. It’s that simple.

Thanks to Patricia for taking the time to answer these questions. What do you think about the intersection of CRM and email?

ROI and Metrics

So much of every aspect of internet marketing, whether it’s social media, email marketing, or just blogging, involves a significant aspect of measurement. Marketers need to measure what’s working (and what’s not working) to deliver messages that are relevant, timely and most importantly, targeted. These three simple parts of email marketing unfortunately get overlooked way too often. Many people send very general, untargeted messages and adopt a simple strategy with few options.

Taking a deep look at your metrics will enable you to create these targeted, relevant messages. Reading into the necessary data (opens, clicks, conversions, purchase amount, purchase history, etc) to determine timing, focus, and relevancy should become a crucial part of your strategy.

Follow Best Practices

There are some essential best practices with email marketing. However, many marketers don’t even bother to look over their strategies to make sure that they’re following best practices and trying to take things to the next level. Here are four simple things to keep in mind when considering best practices and ways you can improve your email marketing efforts:

1. Stay Interesting – People subscribe to your newsletter/s because they like what you are giving them. But the moment you become irrelevant, you will be dropped, or marked as spam (remember, there are people who will subscribe to your emails and then mark you as spam!). By reaching out and looking for the content that is important to your customers, you can customize your messages and drive deeper engagement.
2. Make it Scannable – People today are busy and don’t have a lot of time to read long, text-heavy emails. Your email should be able to be easily read from header to footer. Use header tags and boldface for important aspects, or even better, use images that can show instead of tell. But don’t forget to design your emails so that people can read them even when they have images turned off.
3. Extend Beyond the Inbox – Your customers know people! Give them an easy way to share your email message with others, either with a convenient forwarding option, a Twitter option that allows a pre-written message to be forwarded to Twitter followers, an option for people to share the content with friends on Facebook, or wherever your customers hang out online. The best emails go further than just the initial recipients, so give your subscribers a way to keep the message going. You can even reward or incentivize them to share your emails.
4. Create a Sense of Urgency – Competition and desire for action is always strongest when there’s a belief that a resource is scarce. Create coupons or actionable items that have a short life-span, and tell people that there is not much time for them to take advantage of xyz deal or offer. Sometimes people will buy things they wouldn’t otherwise purchase if they think they won’t be able to get it at a future point in time.

Hopefully these email marketing takeaways from Internet Summit 2010 will help you improve and refine your email marketing efforts heading towards the end of the year and into 2011.

How are you getting the most out of your email campaigns? Leave a comment below and tell us about it!

4 Experts On How To Turn Social Media Into Sales

Take chances, connect directly, involve customers.  These are all things that Marketing Directors and company CEO’s are saying about using social media to grow sales.  Businesses would be wise to take heed.

Being Social In The Social Media World

Before deciding to jump on the ‘social media bandwagon’ decide WHY you or your business want to jump on.  Decide your objective, your target audience, how you are going to attract and engage fans and followers, what you are going to post, how you are going to monitor it, and what you should and shouldn’t focus on.

The Most Influential Things People Can Do To Increase Customer Advocacy

“Have a strong customer service culture.”  Disgruntled customers voice their opinion while companies with good customer service see new customers based on that reputation.

Are You Really Marketing – Or Just Advertising?

“Marketing is about segmentation, sensing, sizing, understand pain points, and creating an attractive value proposition.”  Many companies juts push out brochures and call it marketing when they are not really targeting a specific audience.  You have to spend time to understand your market and then will be able to do marketing effectively.

Should You Use An Email Service Provider For Your Mobile Strategy?

Most businesses do not have a clear mobile strategy.  It is not easy or cheap to design and implement a mobile plan but starting simple and experimenting with different situations as well as integrating email will allow your business to take small steps with less at stake as you learn.

The Power Of A Customized Email Promotion

Listed in this article are some very helpful tips and tricks for customizing an email campaign to a targeted individual or group.  People notice when specifics are used in communication that directly relates to their interests.

For Marketing, Twitter Crushes Facebook

“Facebook makes up 78 percent of traffic among all social network sites and micro-blogging site Twitter accounts for 5 percent, but on average “tweets” with embedded links get 19 clicks while Facebook’s shared links only get three clicks, according to a study by SocialTwist.”  This post offers the pros and cons for a business and what they can expect on the marketing front when using Twitter, Facebook and other social media sites.

5 Ways to Kill A Great Marketing Plan

1. Filling your plan with fluff 2. Not doing the number 3. Relying too heavily on creativity 4. Thinking marketing is only advertising 5. Forgetting to market to existing customers and prospects

Mobile Marketing and What It Mean For Your Businesses

Mobile marketing is red-hot right now and the only challenge is to learn what to do about it.   There are 5 billion mobile phone users with 51 million owning smart phones.  The number point to mobile marketing as being a worth while investment.

Sales and Marketing Articles – Right Time, Right Message

“When it comes to making the most of your online sales and marketing articles it’s really a matter of getting the right message in front of the right people.”  Don’t expect immediate perfection but instead strive to continually do better with your company’s marketing strategy.  Be willing to invest the necessary time and energy to make it take off.

Internet Marketing Tip For Search Engine Optimization

If you are new, you will need some internet marketing tools to get you started.  Plan your internet marketing strategy and set up your marketing system.  Make sure you know what you want and what you are looking for and plan to accomplish.

Using Social Media To Drive Email List Growth

A great and helpful story about how to use social media to grow email lists using an example from a pet food distributor in Cincinnati who went from 330 Facebook ‘Likes’ to over 5,000 in 3 days.  The store owner also makes a point of engaging with customers via social networks, which is always key.