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The importance of FROM in your Outlook email newsletters and flyers

Posted by: standss | Comments (0)

Tuesday, January 31st, 2012

Do you email out a sales or marketing newsletter using Outlook? When they receive your emails, what do recipients see? Who are the emails from?

Your FROM line is your branding in the recipients inbox.

It is what the reader recognizes first and what sets you apart from all the other emails in the readers Inbox. It is what gets your email opened!

From Field

Here are some tips on choosing a good From line.

Choose a FROM line that your readers/recipients will know

If you are using the email account to send emails to people who know your name personally (i.e. you are the brand) then it makes sense to use your personal name.

If they downloaded something from your website or bought something from your business, then they are probably more familiar with your company name.

Think twice (or maybe 10 times) before you change your FROM line

If you have an active newsletter with many subscribers already then have a serious think before changing your FROM line. Why?

Readers are already familiar with your emails. They may not recognize them (and therefore not open and read them) if you make a change.

For example: We use the Addins4Outlook name for our newsletters which many of our readers are familiar with. Our company name Standss now has a lot of brand recognition but I am still scared of changing the FROM line because almost 30,000 readers of our newsletter are already familiar with Addins4Outlook.

If you decide to change your FROM line, then announce it to your list first.

Send an email out from your OLD From line letting them know beforehand. That way many (but still not all), readers will at least be prepared.

You can find out more about how to change your FROM line in our related post How to Change Your Outlook From Line.

If you are sending out marketing or sales emails using Outlook, you may also want to check out Email Merge PRO for Outlook which lets you use multiple email accounts for sending out emails (i.e. it lets you send out emails from different FROM lines)

Categories : EmailMerge for Outlook, Outlook Email Tips, Outlook as a Business Tool, Sales and Marketing with Outlook, Sending emails

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Marketing with Outlook: How to Send your Catalogue

Posted by: standss | Comments (2)

Tuesday, November 8th, 2011

It’s that time of the year when Outlook users will start sending out holiday emails. One of the things that you may choose to do is to email out your catalogue to your customers. You have two options: Giving users a link from which they can download the catalogue or attaching the catalogue to your email.

Should you be attaching the catalogue to your email or giving users a link to download it from your website?

And the answer is that it depends… on the size of your catalogue and the number of people that you will be sending it out to.

The advantages of attaching the Catalogue to your Email

Customer is more likely to read the catalogue: The customer does not have to do anything extra to read your catalogue. It’s already there with the email and they can simply open it up and start reading.

(We recommend that you send the catalogue in PDF format. Everyone has a PDF reader so your customer won’t need to download any special software and more importantly, your file will stay formatted properly and display to the user the way you intended.)

The disadvantages of attaching the Catalogue to your email

Time to send emails: If you are sending out a lot of emails and/or your attachment is a big file, then the emails may take a long time to send out of Outlook.

Time to download emails (annoyed customers): If your file is too big, it may take a while to download, which could end you annoying the customer.

Customers may not get emails: Files with attachments also have less deliverability. It is likely that your catalogue consists of “sales talk” that could be regarded as spam causing your email to end up in the Outlook’s Junk Emails folder instead of the Inbox.

So what should you do…

If you are sending a small file to a few or many people, you may choose to send it as an attachment via email.
If you are sending a large file to a few people (who know you personally and work closely with you), you may choose to send it as an attachment via email.
If you are sending a large file to many people, we recommend that you upload the file to the web and send customers a link via email.

And finally…

We recommend that all marketing emails (with or without attachments) should be individually addressed to the recipients (i.e. send a separate email to each person). Studies have shown that emails sent this way are up to 3X more likely to be opened and read.

Our customers know how easily you can do this from inside Outlook using an addon such as Email Merge PRO for Outlook. If you’re not a user yet, you can view a demo video of Email Merge for Outlook or download a free Outlook addon trial from our website today.

Categories : EmailMerge for Outlook, Outlook Email Tips, Outlook as a Business Tool, Sales and Marketing with Outlook

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Use Outlook Contacts for Holiday Season Emails/Fax/Post to Customers and Friends

Posted by: standss | Comments (1)

Tuesday, October 18th, 2011

The holiday season is about to start. If you’re running a business, it is an important time to contact your customers with news and special offers. Over the next two months, some of our blogs will focus on the best ways of doing this using your Outlook contacts list.

Let’s start by looking at the different ways you can contact your customers or friends.

Depending on your contact list, the best way to contact your friends this year maybe using email, fax or post/hand delivery.

Most of these mailing can be considered “mass mailing” i.e. we want to send copies of the same mail to everyone… possibly customized with their name and address at most.

Microsoft Outlook and Word have some built-in features that automate this process for you. In addition we have built our own tools to further speed up and simplify the process for you.

In this post I’ll discuss both the built in free ways as well as our own addins.

How to Email out Invites, Greetings and Newsletters.

I am going to start with what I consider to be the easiest, fastest and most powerful way of doing this… our own EmailMerge PRO for Outlook.

View EmailMerge PRO Video on our website

You can view a short video on our website to see just how easy this is.

How to Fax out Invites, Greetings and Newsletters.

Despite what many people will have you believe, Faxing is not dead.

In fact in terms of deliverability, it can beat email – there is almost no chance that your fax won’t get delivered because of an over-zealous spam filter.

You can use Microsoft Word and the free fax printer that comes with Windows 2000/XP/Vista/7 to send out personalized faxes to your customers this year.

The Bad News: Windows Fax and MS Word don’t talk easily to each other out of the box.
The Good News: Fax4Word allows you to fax merge straight from Word to the Windows Fax printer.

View more information on Fax for Word

How to Print Letters and Envelopes for Posting and Hand Delivery

Even if you will be sending paper based mail this year, technology can help you.

Here are step-by-step instructions to:

Use mail-merge in Word with Outlook data to create and print personalized letters

Use mail-merge in Word with Outlook data to print mailing labels and envelopes

I hope you find the above information helpful in staying in touch with friends, family and customers this year.

Categories : EmailMerge for Outlook, Outlook Email Tips, Outlook as a Business Tool, Sales and Marketing with Outlook

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Email Marketing Tips for Accidental Salespeople

Posted by: standss | Comments (1)

Thursday, September 29th, 2011

Right now a lot of you might be wondering… who are ACCIDENTAL SALESPEOPLE?

Well to keep it simple, these are people (like me) who have found themselves becoming salespeople because of the needs of their business and I’m sure there are others like me.

For the sake of this people, here are some of the Email Marketing Tips that are used and recommended by Real Salespeople:

TIP #1: Send a SEPARATE EMAIL TO EACH PERSON, personalized with personal data if appropriate.

Make sure that each person gets a separate email with only their own name in the To field. You can further personalize the content of the email with the person’s name and any other data you want if it adds to the value of your message.

Do NOT send just one email with everyone’s name stuffed in the To or CC field. It lets everyone know everyone else who is getting the email.
Don’t send the email to yourself (or undisclosed recipients) and BCC everyone else. It looks unprofessional and makes your email look like SPAM… both to the readers and to most spam filtering software.

TIP #2: Email your list with RELEVANT (and hopefully INTERESTING) information

The information you send to customers must be relevant to them… otherwise you will quickly find yourself banished from their Inbox to their Junk Emails folder.

Don’t spam your customers. Write content that they are interested in. That way they will WHITE LIST you so that your emails will stay out of their Junk Emails and get into their inbox.

TIP #3: Email your list at the appropriate interval.

What is the appropriate interval between emails? Not so long that they have a hard time remembering who you are… and not so frequently that they lose interest in what you’re writing.

Don’t train your customers to ignore your emails… if you send them too much information, they won’t make time to look at it.

TIP #4: Segment Your Customers and Prospects (or you could end up losing sales)

Not everyone in your list of customers and prospects are interested in everything you sell. Try and group them into different segments… and then send different emails based on the needs of each group.

Outlook has a very powerful feature called Categories that you can use to segment your contacts. Unfortunately it is not as easy as it could be to do email merges with this!

TIP #5: KNOW why you are writing the email… What is in it for the reader? What is in it for you… what do you want the reader to do?

Why are you writing a particular email… Is it to inform the customer of a new product… is to inform them of a promotion you are running?

Is there something you want the customer to do… maybe click on a link… or call you… or download a file?

If you want your customers or prospects to do something then ask them to do it… they can’t read your mind! (You’d be surprised what a difference in conversion rates this simple tip will make)

TIP #6: Write your Emails in a way that gets into their Inbox (and not Junk Emails) folder.

We often get asked by prospective customers if our Email Merge for Outlook can guarantee that their emails end up in Inboxes instead of Junk Mail folders.

Email Merge does many things to improve your chances of staying out of SPAM folders but guess what… if your email is basically spam then chances are it will be blocked.

TIP #7: Respect your customers wishes… don’t send them marketing emails if they’ve asked you to stop

If your customer has asked you politely (the first email is usually polite) to not send them marketing emails then STOP. You will probably need to contact them via email again… use their email address against their wishes and you may find that you get blocked off.

These are if you like the 7 tips that can help you with your Email Marketing efforts.

If you have any other tips, please share it with us and our many readers by leaving a comment below.

Categories : EmailMerge for Outlook, Outlook as a Business Tool, Sales and Marketing with Outlook

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Is Email Marketing a thing of the Dead?

Posted by: standss | Comments (1)

Wednesday, September 28th, 2011

Everyone is talking about Social Media these days… so is email marketing a thing of the dead. NO!

But you need to use it properly… inform and educate and (sometimes) market/sell to your list… don’t spam them.

A few simple guidelines…

Make sure that you are only emailing people who have given you their email addresses.
If possible, segment your list into logical groups
Send out emails to each group based on its interests.
Personalize each users email with their own email addresses and possibly names. (Don’t stuff a lot of names in the CC and BCC fields)

There are online email marketing services that you can use but these generally incur monthly fees and are more applicable if you have larger lists.

If you have a small list and you would like to do your email marketing directly from Outlook, then you may want to look at Email Merge PRO for Outlook.

EmailMerge Pro lets you send out your emails directly from Outlook, it can personalize each email and it can even maintain different marketing lists for you (making it easy to segment your list).

But remember… whatever tool you use… only email people who have given you permission to email them!

Other Related Posts:

Do NOT CC customers from Outlook

NEVER Email Merge All Your Bulk Emails From Outlook in One Big Lot!

Categories : EmailMerge for Outlook, Sales and Marketing with Outlook

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Do NOT CC customers from Outlook

Posted by: standss | Comments (3)

Friday, July 8th, 2011

Do you have an important message that you need to communicate to all your customers now? Your customers are already saved as contacts in Outlook… so maybe you could just create an email and CC it to all of them. NO!

Using the CC field to send out your sales and marketing emails is not recommended. It can result in annoyed customers and lost sales because:

You are violating your customers’ privacy: When you use CC to send out emails, every person who receives the email will be able to see everyone else’s email address. The problems this can cause are:

Your customers may not want other people to know that they are working with you.
Your customers may not want other people on your list to have their email address.
One of the recipients may decide to use your list for their own marketing efforts.

A good example of this recently happened at our golf club which circulates its weekly newsletter using the CC field. A few of the members have simply copied the list and started advertising all kinds of things… from cars… to computers… to garage sales. I’m not quitting the golf club because it is the only one close to my home but your customers may quit on you.

Your email may never reach your customer: One of the rules that junk email filters use to work out if an email is spam is based on the number of recipients. Stuff too many people in the CC field and suddenly your email ends up in the Junk Email folder where it is never read.

Your email never gets read because it is obvious to the customer that this is a bulk mail out: Even if the email gets to your customer, it looks like a marketing email. He thinks you’re just trying to sell him something so he either deletes it… or leaves it in his Inbox to read later (how many of those emails do we ever read later?).

… can you use the BCC field instead!
The BCC field is no better at customer communications. Because the email is not addressed to the customer, the junk filters either move it to the junk folder… or the user recognizes it as marketing and deletes or ignores it till too late.

So what can you do?
If you’re one of the tens of thousands of users of the Email Merge for Outlook addin, you already know. Email Merge takes your chosen list of people (from Outlook or Excel or wherever) and:

Creates a separate email for each person… with only their email address in the To field.
Personalises the Subject and/or body of the email with their personal details (name, company name etc) if you want.
Sends the email out immediately or schedules it out at a time suitable to you.
It does all this and more inside Outlook using a Wizard that steps you through the process in a few minutes.

If you haven’t tried Email Merge yet, click here to learn more and download a fully functional version of the Email Merge for Outlook addon.

You’ll be sending out your first set of sales and marketing emails within 5 minutes.

Categories : EmailMerge for Outlook, Outlook Email Tips, Outlook as a Business Tool, Sales and Marketing with Outlook

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Handling Unsubscribes Using EmailMerge for Outlook

Posted by: standss | Comments (0)

Wednesday, February 23rd, 2011

Several Email Merge PRO for Outlook users have recently asked about how to handle people who wish to Unsubscribe from their emails(Newsletters). The short answer is “Stop sending them emails!”. The problem however is remembering who NOT to send emails to when you have a long list or if you have several lists. That’s why we built the Do Not Send To list in Email Merge for Outlook.

Before we get into using the Do Not Send To list, here’s a small quote from a happy user of this feature.

“I just found the function to update the do not send list from email responses in the current folder with Unsubscribed in the subject line and the ability to change the Subject word being searched for. Awesome! I lost my unsubscribe list, but keep all my responses in one folder.”
Marge

I’d like to say a Special Thanks to Marge for the positive feedback.

For all existing users of EmailMerge for Outlook and also who are currently trialing it, this post highlights what the “Do not Send To” list feature is and how you can use it to handle Unsubscribes.

What is the “Do not Send To” list?

The Do Not Send list allows you to maintain a list of email addresses to which EmailMerge will NEVER send emails (even if they are in your mailing list).

Why? Certain contacts may request to not be part of your mailings. Accidentally emailing them could result in annoyed prospects or customers… or complaints against you to spam authorities.

Adding these contacts to the Do Not Send list ensures that EmailMerge will not send emails to them.

How to Use it?

To Open the Do not Send List:

In Outlook go to your Inbox, click on the little arrow beside(below) the EmailMerge button on the Toolbar/Ribbon.

Dont Not Send List Button

Click Do not Send List. The application will open the following screen:

Do not send to screen

1. Add an email-address to Do not Send List:

Click Add, the application will display the following screen:

Add Email Address

You can add email address(s) to the Do not Sent list using 1 of the 3 options below:
- Manually add the new items to the list
  Select this option if you would like to type-in the email addresses manually. (Enter 1 email address per line)
- Email address (sender) of currently selected email(s)
  Select this option if you want Email Merge to automatically add email addresses for the emails you have already selected in the current folder. The email address of the sender will be added to the Do not Sent List.
- Emails in current folder with unsubscribe/bounce back words in subject
  People can unsubscribe from receiving emails from you by having certain words in the subject of the email they sent to you. (Normally they would reply to your email and add the word Unsubscribe)

You may also find that certain emails addresses on your list are no longer valid as emails you send are bounced back. EmailMerge can automatically add addresses of the above to the Do not Send List by comparing words in the Subject fields.

You can edit the list of words by clicking on Maintain Word List to add, delete or reset the Word list to default.

2. Edit Do not Send List:

Select the email-address and click Edit
Make the necessary changes to the email-address
Click OK to save your changes

3. Remove an email-address from Do not Send List:

Select the email-address you want to remove
Click Delete and the application will display a prompt to confirm the removal of the indicated email address from the list.
Select Yes to remove the email-address from the Do not Send List.

So… are you using the Do Not Send To feature of Email Merge PRO for Outlook. Let us know your thoughts by leaving a comment on the blog.

Not a user of Email Merge PRO for Outlook yet? Find out how you can keep customers informed using EmailMerge PRO for Outlook.

Categories : EmailMerge for Outlook, Sales and Marketing with Outlook

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Sending out Invites, Greetings & Newsletters via Email, Fax or Post

Posted by: standss | Comments (1)

Wednesday, November 24th, 2010

It is almost Christmas… its the time of the year when we need to send out invitations, greetings and newsletters to friends and clients.

Depending on your contact list, the best way to contact your friends this year maybe using email, fax or post/hand delivery.

Most of these mailing can be considered “mass mailing” i.e. we want to send copies of the same mail to everyone… possibly customized with their name and address at most.

Microsoft Outlook and Word have some built-in features that automate this process for you. In addition we have built our own tools to further speed up and simplify the process for you.

In this post I’ll discuss both the built in free ways as well as our own addins.

How to Email out Invites, Greetings and Newsletters.

I am going to start with what I consider to be the easiest, fastest and most powerful way of doing this… our own EmailMerge PRO for Outlook.

View EmailMerge PRO Video on our website

You can view a short video on our website to see just how easy this is.

How to Fax out Invites, Greetings and Newsletters.

Despite what many people will have you believe, Faxing is not dead.

In fact in terms of deliverability, it can beat email – there is almost no chance that your fax won’t get delivered because of an over-zealous spam filter.

You can use Microsoft Word and the free fax printer that comes with Windows 2000/XP/Vista/7 to send out personalized faxes to your customers this year.

The Bad News: Windows Fax and MS Word don’t talk easily to each other out of the box.
The Good News: Fax4Word allows you to fax merge straight from Word to the Windows Fax printer.

View more information on Fax for Word

How to Print Letters and Envelopes for Posting and Hand Delivery

Even if you will be sending paper based mail this year, technology can help you.

Here are step-by-step instructions to:

Use mail-merge in Word with Outlook data to create and print personalized letters

Use mail-merge in Word with Outlook data to print mailing labels and envelopes

I hope you find the above information helpful in staying in touch with friends and family this year.

Categories : EmailMerge for Outlook, Outlook Email Tips, Outlook as a Business Tool, Sales and Marketing with Outlook

Comments (1)

NEW Email Merge for Outlook Released: Short Video & Trial (Special offer for next few days only)

Posted by: standss | Comments (0)

Tuesday, August 24th, 2010

Email Merge for Outlook Version 3 is online. See the short 5
minute VIDEO (or download a trial version) and find out why
THOUSANDS of users are using Email Merge to TRIPLE the response
rates to their sales emails.
http://www.standss.com/t/1008/emm/emailmergev3.asp

We have great DISCOUNTS for the NEXT FEW DAYS… and there are some
bonuses during the week as well.

EmailMerge is the FASTEST, EASIEST and SAFEST way to send out
PROFESSIONAL LOOKING emails to your customers… directly from
Outlook… using contact data from Outlook, Excel and more.

* Works inside Outlook so you can create emails the way you already
know (you don’t need to be a HTML or graphics expert)
* Easy to Use Wizard which steps you through the sending process
* Start immediately by using your existing customer data from
Outlook, Excel, Access, CSV files and more
* Create Professional Looking Emails using the included
professionally designed templates
* Your Emails are less likely to be mistaken for SPAM
* No monthly fees
* No volume or contact limit
… plus much more
http://www.standss.com/t/1008/emm/emailmergev3.asp

Regards,
Sanjay Singh

PS: Our 5 minute video will immediately show you if this is what
you need. The Discounts and Bonuses are only available for a few
days so take a look NOW!
http://www.standss.com/t/1008/emm/emailmergev3.asp

Categories : EmailMerge for Outlook

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Why you may have resisted starting Email Marketing?

Posted by: standss | Comments (2)

Monday, August 23rd, 2010

We recently released a report called The Accidental Salesperson’s Guide to Email Marketing. We’ve had some interesting (NEGATIVE) FEEDBACK from users, particularly with regards to why they have resisted making a start with email marketing in their own businesses.

In this post we look at the reasons given to us… and if/how the newest version of Email Merge for Outlook can overcome them.

Reason #1: I don’t have an existing list of people to start email marketing to

Yes you do… how about all the people you already do business with. How many contacts do you already have in Outlook.

How about the business card you collected during seminars, trade events meetings etc? It won’t take long to enter them into Outlook.

What about the contacts on your sales processing or accounting systems. Virtually all sales and accounting systems allow you to export contact details in Excel format… and all the better email marketing systems can use information from Excel.

(Email Merge for Outlook software can work with Outlook, Excel, Access, CSV files and more)

Reason #2: Am I not supposed to seek permission from customers before emailing them

If you had preciously emailed them from Outlook or from your accounting systems (or they have given you their business card) then you already have permission to a certain degree. But… this doesn’t necessarily mean that you have permission to start spamming them.

My personal opinion on this (and this is not a legal opinion) is that you can send them additional information related to what you have communicated about in the past.

But… if they ask not to receive marketing information then, don’t send it to them. This way you still keep open your normal business emails.

(This is why we added the Do-Not-Send-To list in Email Merge. Add someone to that list and Email Merge will NEVER send a marketing email to them… even if you forget and accidentally select them)

Reason #3: It is too difficult to use email addresses from Excel… I am unable to simply import and start using email addresses into most of the email marketing systems that I have seen. (Although I can import the email addresses, they cannot be used until my contact has opted in)

Email Merge for Outlook lets you start sending out emails to contacts from Outlook, Excel, Access etc immediately… without requiring them to opt-in. But…

This is not a license to spam! If you don’t treat customers’ email addresses with respect, they will blacklist you and your emails will end up unread in their junk mail folders.

(The previously mentioned Do-Not-Send-To list in Email Merge adds a layer of protection to stop this from happening unintentionally.)

Reason #4: I don’t want to learn yet another software to create and send out my emails

Most systems that work outside of Outlook will require a little bit of learning before you start.

Email Merge for Outlook works inside of Outlook by adding a few buttons to the Outlook toolbars /ribbons.

You create and format your email using Outlook so there is nothing new to learn. (We’ve even put in professionally designed templates so that you don’t have to be a formatting guru to send out great looking emails)
You click ONE button and the Email Merge Wizard takes you step-by-step through selecting the recipients and then sending out the emails.

Reason #5: I can’t use Outlook… my ISP has placed restrictions on the number of emails I can send out in a certain time?

Email Merge can break your email outs into smaller batches and then schedule them so that you meet your ISP’s requirements.

Reason #6: I am on a budget. Many email marketing systems seem to have monthly subscriptions and then there are limits on the number of emails that I can send out.

Most online systems do have monthly prices. However Email Merge for Outlook is a ONE TIME PURCHASE…. and there are NO LIMITS to how many emails you can send out.

I hope that I have convinced you that
Email Marketing can be easily done from inside Outlook.

We’ve already launched the BRAND NEW VERSION of Email Merge to existing users. Feedback has been awesome… this is the FASTEST, EASIEST, SAFEST way to create and send out PROFESSIONAL LOOKING PERSONALIZED EMAILS from INSIDE OUTLOOK using your EXISTING DATA.

We are going to launch Email Merge to everyone who is not already an existing user within the next 24 hours.

We know that seeing is believing… we are completing a short video showing you how easy Email Merge makes it to use your existing data for email marketing.

There will be some great discounts and bonuses for early movers so keep your eyes on your Inbox.

Till tomorrow.

Regards,
Sanjay

PS: The last time our early mover bonuses ran out within 24 hours of release so please keep an eye on your Inbox. The video we will release tomorrow will show you immediately if you will benefit from Email Merge for Outlook or not.

Categories : EmailMerge for Outlook

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