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Add an Email Sign Up to Facebook

Posted by sheadbeck
Email, Social Marketing / No Comments

integrate-email-with-facebookAll of you have heard the mumble jumble about integrating email with social media. Well here is a quick way to get started > add an email sign-up page to your Facebook or MySpace (does that still exist?). While I was searching for a couple examples I only found that brands were linking to an off-facebook page to collect emails. This doesn’t make any sense to me considering how easy it was to do.

Because we use an ESP, it was even easier … ExactTarget offers a service called “web collect” where they enable you to place pre-written code anywhere on a site and begin collecting address. All you have to do is change you list id, error page and thank you page variables and you’re set.

The below guide is assuming you have basic HTML skills and knowledge of image hosting (as with your ESP)
To show how easy this is, here is a step-by-step how to:

  1. Log in to your ESP and create a unique list > I named mine Facebook > write the list ID down for future reference
  2. Open Dreamweaver and create a layout that is suitable to your brand and make sure it isn’t wider than 200px so you can move it to the left rail in a future step
  3. Use the ExactTarget web collect code to for the form
    • <form action=”http://cl.exct.net/subscribe.aspx?lid=ENTER LIST ID” name=”subscribeForm” method=”post”>
    • <input type=”hidden” name=”thx” value=”http://www.facebook.com/pages/SkyMall/67443103870″ />
    • <input type=”hidden” name=”err” value=”http://www.facebook.com/pages/SkyMall/67443103870″ />
    • <input type=”hidden” name=”MID” value=”ExactTarget Account #” />
  4. Since we don’t want the customer to leave the Facebook page as they were there for a reason > we set the confirmation page and the error page both to go back to our main page on Facebook
    • I’m sure there will be debate about that choice, but it’s the one I made
  5. After you have the code the way you want it > remove all the <head>, <title>, <meta> code just so you have your form and table code
  6. Now copy your code out of Dreamweaver
  7. Log in to your Facebook account > click on edit page > click on More Applications > then Browse More
    facebook-applications-fbml1
  8. Search for FBML > click on add to page
    add-fbml-to-facebook
  9. Go back to your “edit page” screen > and click on the pencil icon and click edit
  10. Now name the box and paste your code from Step  6 > Click Save
  11. You are almost done, now all you have to do is tell the sign-up page where to live.  Click on the Pencil again in you newly named “Name > FBML” box
    facbook-application-settings
  12. Because I recommend placing it in your left rail so people see it all the time. You need to click “add” next to “Box” and leave “Tab” off
  13. From here go back to the main page of your Facebook Brand Page and click on the Boxes tab > your newly created FBML sign up page will be there
  14. Click on the Pencil once again and click on “move to wall” > All Done!
    move-to-wall-facebook
  15. Take a look at our finished product.
    finished-facebook-sign-up

I know a few other ESP’s have the same type of “web collect” service so this can be used by anybody. Now do it to it.

Oh yeah, and don’t forget to be our friend on Facebook > we are just starting out and slowly developing our strategy. So no judging only friending.

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Your Welcome Email is Weak

Posted by sheadbeck
Email / No Comments

Today I’m going to give you a little lesson in Welcome Emails. I am even going to capitalize Welcome Emails because I can.

The Email industry knows that it is a best practice to have a Welcome Email. We know that at my current employer and we have had our Welcome Email in place for over a year now, it has been pretty successful delivering decent revenue and great response rates. We have recently made a change to the layout and that alone has made a significant impact to the bottom line, I will share this with you but first let me set the stage on how our program is working. It’s pretty simple, however, many people don’t send Welcome Emails or if they do, they send plain/boring emails.

When do we send the Welcome Email?

There is debate on how soon you should send out the Welcome Email, some say wait 24 hours, some say send immediately, some say something else. Currently we do two things:

  1. We send out immediately if you sign up on the Web if you sign up in the designated “email sign-up” box.
  2. We wait for you to complete your order if you sign up for email during the checkout process online or through the call center, you do send you call center sign-ups Welcome Emails don’t you? Anyhow, that’s not the topic of this blog post.

What do we include in our Welcome Emails?

  1. Personalize with their name if you get it during the process
  2. Tell ‘em what they are going to get
  3. Instructi0ns on how to get more
  4. A forward to a friend link – it gets used
  5. A DISCOUNT – capture as many sales as you can immediately

Alright, enough already. Let me get to the point of the post. This post is to show you the optimal design for our Welcome Emails as a retailer. Below you will see the before and after screen shots as well as the prized metrics.

- – - – -

skymall-welcome-email-before-BEFORE

Paragraph layout, no pre-header offer, boring

  • Avg Revenue: $XX,XXX.XX
  • Avg. Sale: $130-ish
  • Open Rates: 35%
  • Click Through: 11%
  • Conversion: 11% (purchase/clicks)

As with anything, this could all be improved, we just need to tweak a few things test it out then let it roll…

- – - – -

skymall-welcome-email-after-copyAFTER

List style, pre-header, graphics, simple

  • Avg Revenue: Increased 30%
  • Avg. Sale: Increased 10%
  • Open Rates: Stayed the same
  • Click Through: Stayed the same
  • Conversion: Increased 3%

This was a very simple change. We just made it more “fun,” easier to read, added a pre-header showing the offer as the very first item. After testing we are now running the email full-time.

So as you can see, it is well worth your time to tweak your “auto” emails such as the Welcome Email from time to time. Take this for what you will, but just know it worked for me.

Which email do you like the best?

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Peace out,

Shea

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Why Do You Use Social Media?

Posted by sheadbeck
Email, Social Marketing / 2 Comments

social-marketing-for-customer-serviceI was recently interviewed by Christopher Heine from BRANDWEEK (check it out here) about using social media as a component to our multichannel retail strategy.My reply was that we initially started using this as another method for customer service and for free brand reputation research but spiraled into a merchandising opportunity.

Let me touch on three reasons we use social media starting with customer service. This is a no brainer as it is the next step on the customer service evolution as Jason Baer writes about here for Marketing Profs. We monitor blogs, twitter, facebook and as much of the social hemisphere that we can. This is pretty simple, if there is a happy customer that is raving about the company – we reach out to them and say thanks. Now, if someone has a question or complaint about us, we just ignore it…just kidding, we hop right on it by moving the conversation to email because you can only converse show much over 140 characters. That’s easy enough right? Before you go out and start contacting customers on Twitter, please take my tested and proven advice when communicating with customers in the social world: Be yourself, don’t talk fluff, respond immediately and every so often share something worth while.

The next tactic for social media I mentioned is using this for free brand reputation research. We set up our own little monitoring lab using iGoogle to read how much the internet loved us…or hated us (read how to create your own free brand reputation monitoring tool here). Okay great, what do you do with that information? We listen is what we do. Then we take all the actionable data, such as “their catalog is always the same thing,” or “their products are out-dated” and adjust our merchandising strategy or our representation of products to keep them fresh and different.

That brings me to the third aspect of how social media helps our multichannel strategy, merchandising. As the article in BRANDWEEK states, listening to the social shakers has provided us with ways of choosing the hottest products to merchandise in our email communication and on our website – I guess you can say that is one way to monetize social media. It really brings our philosphy full-circle of listening, interacting, and giving the customer what they want when they want it.

Since this is an article on social media, it is only fitting to plug my own social network: catch me on Facebook, Twitter, and LinkedIn.

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