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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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Is your Email killing your Productivity?

Posted by: standss | Comments (2)

Monday, October 10th, 2011

Emails are a very dominant means of communication nowadays and it can take up hours of our time just checking, reading or answering emails. So let me ask you again, is your Email killing your Productivity?

If your answer to the above is YES, then below are just some simple email tips that can help you stay focused and more productive.

1. Turn-off any forms of Distractions (Email Alerts)

I have always preferred to turn off e-mail notifications in Outlook, particularly the blue notification rectangle that shows up everytime you receive a new email in Outlook versions 2003 and later.

Imagine this pop-ups appearing every 5 or 10 minutes, or even more often and the end result – your productivity is getting affected (even if you do not open and read the email immediately).

You can refer to an earlier post on how to Turn-off the Email alert in Outlook.

2. Automatically highlight important emails

You might receive hundreds of emails a day but this does not necessarily mean that all have to be dealt with immediately.

You can setup Outlook to automatically highlight or color-code important emails that require your immediate attention. This ensures that you are focusing your attention on the right emails.

3. Try to automate as many processes as possible (rather then doing it manually)

If you are using an email program such as Outlook, you can setup rules to perform some of the obvious tasks such as moving SPAM/JUNK emails out of the Inbox automatically. This saves you time which can be used for other important matters rather deleting individual SPAM emails.

4. Process your emails in batches

It’s not necessary to check emails throughout the day or work on them all day long. As noted above, more often you will find that not all emails require an immediate response. So try to process your emails in batches, you can answer the first lot of emails first thing in the morning and the others sometime in the afternoon.

This reduces frustration (that more often happens due to email overload) with emails and at the same time allows you to focus on other productive tasks through the day.

These are if you like some simple tips to help you stay focus and productive.

Do you have other methods of your own to stay productive?

Please share it with us and our readers by leaving a comment below.

Categories : Outlook Email Filing & Management Tip, Outlook Email Tips, Outlook as a Business Tool

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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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Start your day with Outlook the way YOU want

Posted by: standss | Comments (0)

Thursday, September 22nd, 2011

Everytime you open Outlook in the morning, the first thing you see is a inbox full of emails that you will be working on. This is how the day starts for alot of us, but this can be changed.

We are all different and we always like things which can be personalized and configured to our likings.

Do you wish to view your Calender, Contacts, Task or anything other then your Inbox (emails) in the morning?

I personally have Outlook setup to open my Calendar so I know what I had actually planned for my day. (I don’t like starting with the Inbox because it is too easy to jump into emails and start working on things that are not real priorities)

You can follow the simple steps below to change to the folder of your choice:

In Outlook 2010:

Click the File menu > Options > click Advanced on the left column
Under Outlook Start and Exit, click Browse and then choose what folder you want Outlook to show you first: Calendar, Contacts, Tasks or any of your other folders

In Outlook 2007 & 2003:

Click the Tools menu > Options
Click the Other tab, and then click Advanced Options.
Under General Settings, next to the Startup in this folder box, click Browse and then choose what folder you want Outlook to show you first: Calendar, Contacts, Tasks or any of your other folders.

Now when you start Outlook, it will display the folder that you have selected above.

Categories : Outlook Installation/Setup, Outlook as a Business Tool

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Productivity Tools Pack Special Offer (Limited Time Only)

Posted by: standss | Comments (1)

Tuesday, September 13th, 2011

For a limited time only, exclusively for our blog readers, we are offering 2 of our best selling Productivity Tools, QuickFile Pro for Outlook and EmailNotes for Outlook as a bundle for only $79.95.

Normally they would cost US $99.90 (QuickFile Pro = $69.95, EmailNotes = $29.95) if bought separately; however as a special offer to all our Blog readers, we are giving away QuickFile Pro and EmailNotes together as a Productivity Tools Pack for only $79.95.

This offer is only valid till the 19^th of September so if you are interested, ACT NOW and SAVE UP TO 20% on this special offer.

This Special Offer End on the 19th of September

About QuickFile and EmailNotes

QuickFile is an Outlook addon that allows you to quickly and easily organize your mail into folders with a single click. With QuickFile you can:

Organize mail quicker
Send & File in one quick step
File 90% of emails at the click of one button
Find emails again fast and easy
Quick and easy to install and use

Click here to see what existing users of QuickFile are saying

EmailNotes is an Outlook addin that allows you to quickly and easily add notes like ‘post-it notes’ to emails: With EmailNotes you can:

Immediately jot down ideas while reading emails
Add missing information to emails (usually gathered by follow-up phone calls)
Improve follow-up on emails (and INCREASE SALES CLOSING RATES)
Remember why certain emails were put in certain folders

Click here to see what existing users of EmailNotes are saying

We believe in our outlook add ins so much that we offer a unconditional 30 days 100% Money Back Guarantee. No Questions Asked! This removes all risks from your decision so ACT NOW!

This Special Offer End on the 19th of September

Feel free to share the link to this special offer with anyone you feel might be interested in becoming more productive.

Categories : Email Notes for Outlook, QuickFile for Outlook, Special Discount Offers

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Reminders Showing Twice in Outlook + Solutions

Posted by: standss | Comments (3)

Tuesday, September 6th, 2011

Yesterday a friend of mine called for assistance regarding an unusual problem he had with Outlook Reminders. For some reason Outlook (he was using Outlook 2010) showed each of outlook calendar reminders twice. He had put up with this for sometime until it got really frustrating. Here’s how I fixed the issue.

Research on the web showed two solutions. I tried both and the second one worked.

Option 1: Use the cleanreminders switch when starting Outlook

This one did not work for him but it may be the solution that works for you.

Quit Outlook
Click Start > Run
Type Outlook.exe /cleanreminders (don’t forget the space after the exe) and press Enter

Option 2: Check your Outlook data files to see if any file is listed twice

Here’s what did work for him (I recommend you do the cleanreminders first anyway)

I checked his Outlook data files and found that his main Outlook PST was listed twice. I removed one and everything was back to the way it should be.

To check your Outlook data files:

Quit Outlook
Go to your Control Panel and double click Mail.
Select the Data File tab
IF AND ONLY IF you see the same data file listed twice, select the second one and click Remove.
Restart Outlook.

Did any of these two methods work for you. Do you have a different solution.
Please leave a comment on the blog.

Categories : Outlook Calendar Tip, Outlook Performance

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Keep good emails out of the Outlook Junk Mail Folder

Posted by: standss | Comments (0)

Tuesday, August 23rd, 2011

Here’s a quick tip on how to stop good emails from getting into Outlook’s Junk Mail folder (normally you’re trying to get bad emails in there).

We all get spam emails. Luckily for us Outlook’s Junk Mail folder does a good job of catching most of them. But there are occasional false-positives… when a good email ends up in there.

Here’s how you can tell Outlook to always trust emails from certain people.

Outlook has a Safe Sender’s list. Anyone on your Safe Sender’s list is authorised to send you email i.e. Outlook will not treat emails from them as junk email.

Everyone I send emails to is SAFE!

It makes sense (most of the time) that anyone you actually write to should automatically be put on your safe sender’s list.

The ability to do this is built into Outlook but is turned off by default. To turn it on:

Go to your Inbox.
If you are using Outlook 2010, (on the ribbon) click File > Junk > Junk E-mail Options
For other versions of Outlook, (on the menu) click Actions – Junk Email – Junk Email Options
Click the Safe Senders tab.
Tick the checkbox “Automatically add people I e-mail to the Safe Senders List”.
Click OK.

This little tip should hopefully help your get more of your real emails in your Inbox.

If you have your own tips for using the Junk Mail Folder, please share it with others by leaving a comment below.

Categories : Outlook Email Tips, SPAM Filtering in Outlook

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How to organize Appointments and Tasks in Outlook by Project

Posted by: standss | Comments (2)

Tuesday, July 26th, 2011

Many of us use Outlook’s appointments and tasks to manage our daily lives and projects… and yet Outlook does not give us an easy way to manage projects inside Outlook. Outlook users frequently ask us how they can see all appointments and tasks that make up a project in one place.

Why is this important? As we finish a step, it is important to know what the next steps are to get the project completed. Things also don’t always go according to plan… and we need to see what else gets affected when things change.

Our research showed that there is no simple way to organize and view tasks and appointments under projects… so we added this functionality to our Outlook Project Management addin Smart Schedules for Outlook.

With Smart Schedules for Outlook you can:

Assign existing (or new) tasks and appointments to projects
Quickly see all tasks and appointments for a project at the click of a button.

Here are step by step instructions showing you just how easy this can be:

Assign existing (or new) tasks and appointments to projects

Open Outlook and go to the Calendar/Task folder that the existing appointment/task is located in
Select the appointment/task
Click on Assign Project button on the Smart Schedules toolbar/ribbon. This will display the following screen:

Select an existing project from the Project list.
Note: You can also type in a new project name if you would like to create a new project and add this selected appointment/task to that project.
Click OK.

Quickly see all tasks and appointments for a project at the click of a button.

Smart Schedules Project Centre makes it easy to see all appointments and tasks that you have associated with a project.

On the Smart Schedules toolbar, click Project Centre
From the Project drop-down, select the Project to which you assigned the appointment or task
You will now be able to view the appointment or task assigned to the project and all other related appointments and tasks for the project as shown below:

Next Steps…

Smart Schedules for Outlook was designed with the help of almost 20,000 Outlook users. Try it for yourself today and tell us what you think.

Download a fully functional version of Smart Schedules for Outlook.

Watch a short video of our Outlook based Project Manager (Smart Schedules)

Categories : Smart Schedules for Outlook

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Why (and How) you should split your Outlook data file into 2

Posted by: standss | Comments (0)

Friday, July 15th, 2011

Outlook by default saves all its e-mails into one file. Prior to Outlook 2003, there was a limitation of 2 GB to your Outlook data file. Although 2 GB seems like a lot, this space can be filled quickly particularly if you receive a lot of attachments.

Once you reach that limit, there is no real warning. Outlook just slows down, e-mails start getting lost and in some cases Outlook just stops opening altogether. Retrieving your e-mails from this corrupt PST is a nightmare.

In Outlook 2003, you have the option of using the new Unicode format of Outlook data file which can hold much more data. However if you upgraded Outlook from an earlier version then chances are that you are still using the older format with the 2 GB limitation.

Irrespective of whether you are using the new or old format data file, you should split your Outlook data into at least 2 files. Your main PST file should not be used like a filing cabinet for old e-mails. Create a separate PST file to save e-mails that you want to keep for future reference. This leaves your main Outlook data file lean and mean so that Outlook is able to open up quickly. To create a new Outlook data file:

For Outlook 2010:

Click on Home tab
Select New Items > More Items > Outlook Data File…
Outlook suggests a default location for the file. I recommend that you change this to a folder that you backup regularly, possible a sub-folder in your My Documents.
Enter a filename and click OK to create the file.

For Outlook 2003/2007:

Click File > New > Outlook Data File
Outlook 2003 Only: Outlook 2003 uses two types of Outlook data files. If you will be using the data only in Outlook 2003 or later, choose MS Outlook Personal Folders File. Otherwise choose the Outlook 97-2002 option.
Outlook suggests a default location for the file. I recommend that you change this to a folder that you backup regularly, possible a sub-folder in your My Documents.
Enter a filename and click OK to create the file.

You can create as many Personal Folder files as you need. Most users only need to create one in addition to the one that Outlook creates by default.

PST 1: Default Folder created by Outlook
PST 2: Use to store Project E-mails

If you have a very high volume of e-mails (particularly with large attachments) you may want to have 2 PST files for your Project E-mails, one for Active projects and one for Completed projects.

How to Move Emails from One PST to another (Using Drag and Drop)

One simple way of moving your emails from one PST to another is to Drag and Down the email to the appropriate folder. This method is simple and it works but:

It can be time-consuming to find the right folder if you have a lot of folders
It is easy to accidentally drop the email into the wrong folder

Using QuickFile to move your emails

Our Outlook addin QuickFile has the ability to remember where you commonly file emails related to a project/case/person and it will provide you with a list of recently used folders. You can simply:

Select the email that you wish to move
On the QuickFile toolbar/Ribbon, click the QuickFile button. This will display the QuickFile screen.
You can select the appropriate folder from the recommended list(based on your previous filing)
Click Move

The email will now be moved to the appropriate folder.

QuickFile is the Fastest, Easiest and Error-Free way to file emails in Outlook. Users tell us that they can file as much as 90% of their emails at the click of one button.

Click here to learn more about QuickFile for Outlook.

Categories : Outlook Email Filing & Management Tip, Outlook Email Tips, QuickFile for 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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