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Archive for Email Marketing

How EmailMerge for Outlook handles Unsubscribes

Posted by: standss | Comments (1)

Tuesday, March 13th, 2012

We had a user ask us a question regarding EmailMerge for Outlook yesterday:

“How does your Email Merge Software work with unsubscribing from the mailshot?”

We replied to the user mentioning about one of the new features we added to the latest version of EmailMerge called the “Do Not Send List”.

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

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.

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.

Select Do not Send To List

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

Do Not Send to List Screen

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

Click Add, the application will display the following screen:

Add Email to Do Not Send List

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 below.

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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Ingredients for Effective Email Marketing Campaigns

Posted by: standss | Comments (1)

Friday, March 9th, 2012

Don’t be fooled by people who say email marketing is dead! Email Marketing has been around for years and whatever the speculations by online markets that social media is the new path to take, email marketing still achieves superior results when compared to most other forms of marketing (including social media)

But you cannot expect your Email Marketing Campaigns to just work, you cannot just sit down one fine morning and decide to send a blast email out to your list and expecting it to achieve your goal (sales, more opt-in).

Unless you do it properly, you might just frustrate your readers and burn your list.

Here are some key ingredients that separate a successful campaign from an unsuccessful one:

Ingredient #1: Plan your Email Marketing Campaign

A successful campaign needs to be planned well in advance, you need to decide on a few key things:

Why are you sending this email?
What actions (if any) you want your readers to take?
Who you will be targeting the email to?

Answering some of this key questions will help you plan the content of your email and provide relevant information to the right people.

Ingredient #2: 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)

Ingredient #3: 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!

Ingredient #4: Write your Emails in a way that gets into their Inbox (and not Junk Emails) folder.

As much as possible, try to avoid the use of words such as “Free” in your Subject line. Try to keep your email subject simple yet informative.

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.

Are there tools available for Email Marketing?

Yes, 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).

Do you have your own special ingredients for a effective email marketing campaign? Share it with us and our readers by leaving a comment below.

Categories : EmailMerge for Outlook, 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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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)

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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Creating marketing and sales emails that get superior responses (all from Outlook)

Posted by: standss | Comments (0)

Thursday, July 28th, 2011

Do you use Outlook to create and send out marketing or sales emails? Like you, your customers probably have too many emails in their Inbox. You only have a few seconds to grab their attention so…

Here are some simple but essential tips on formatting your emails so that they actually get opened and read.

Put your company name in the From line so that they know where the email is coming from

Unless the recipients know your name specifically, make sure that your company name is in the From line. (You can control the From by changing account details in Outlook)

Have a Subject line that grabs their attention… within 50 characters

Your target audience is going to decide whether to read your email now (or later or never) based on what is in the Subject line. Why 50 characters… long Subject lines may not get fully displayed if the user has too much on his screen.

Put text rather than images at the top of your email

If your user is previewing your email, only the first lines get displayed. Put something there which causes him to want to know more. You can highlight your text using colors but don’t use images at the very top.

Put the most important content at the top of the email

Most people now have email clients that lets them view the top part of the email as soon as they click on it (like the Reading Pane in Outlook). Make sure that you have the MOST IMPORTANT information displayed there… or at least have the type of information there that will make him scroll down to read more.

Make sure that your email does not look like bulk email

Use a tool like Email Merge for Outlook to send personalized individually addressed emails to your customers. Studies have shown that your response rates can increase by up to 3 times.

Find out more and download a fully functional version of EmailMerge for Outlook from our website.

Use these simple tips and you should find your sales and marketing emails get better responses

Categories : Outlook Email Tips, 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’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

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Respect your customers… how to avoid sending them Outlook (marketing) emails when they have asked to not be contacted

Posted by: standss | Comments (1)

Wednesday, August 18th, 2010

Email marketing using Outlook can be tricky if you don’t manage it properly. You will probably be using Outlook to send your customers and prospects marketing emails and normal non-marketing emails.

If your customer has asked you politely (the first email is usually polite) to not send them marketing emails then STOP.

You will need to contact them via email again for non-marketing related things… use their email address against their wishes and you may find that you get blocked off.

This is one of the NEW SAFETY features that we have built into Email Merge PRO Version 3! We have added a Do Not Send list.

What is the Do Not Send List? It is a special list maintained by you inside Email Merge. It contains a list of people who have asked to NOT be sent marketing emails (but probably still are happy to receive your normal emails).

Now when you send out a marketing email from Outlook using EmailMerge PRO, no emails will be sent to anyone who is on your Do-Not-Send-To list… even if you try to add them to your list of recipients manually.

Click here to download a trial version of EmailMerge PRO for Outlook.

This post is a small excerpt from our new FREE report titled:
The Accidental Salesperson’s Guide to Email Sales & Marketing with Outlook
7 Tips used EVERY DAY by Real (Intentional) Salespeople to RETAIN and GAIN NEW CUSTOMERS

Most of the ideas in the report were very generously shared by our THOUSANDS of readers who are already using Outlook very successfully to GROW their businesses.

Click here Download a FREE COPY of this Outlook Report. (The report is 100% FREE… you may want to download it TODAY as it contains some TIME-SENSITIVE information on using Outlook as a Sales Power-Tool)

Categories : EmailMerge for Outlook

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