We’ve done it again! WSI Chester has been named an All Star by Constant Contact!

This is based upon our email marketing activities and support for our clients in 2011.

To quote the citation “Your efforts last year to reach your clients and engage with them and their audience were exemplary.”

So a  BIG thank you to all our many [...]]]>

We’ve done it again! WSI Chester has been named an All Star by Constant Contact!

This is based upon our email marketing activities and support for our clients in 2011.

To quote the citation “Your efforts last year to reach your clients and engage with them and their audience were exemplary.”

So a  BIG thank you to all our many clients who are actively using email marketing with Constant Contact to engage with their network of customers and potential customers!

Constant Contact is not just an excellent email marketing tool for SME businesses. It is also a great platform for marketing your events, and for customer surveys. Most recently they have had some exciting new functionality to enable you to run campaigns through your Facebook page.

If you would like to learn more, give your local constant Contact All Stars at WSI Chester a call today!

So here’s three simple suggestions :

1. Segment your list

While its easy to send everyone everything and hope something sticks, it is not necessarily the best approach.

People respond best to messages [...]]]> It is vital to keep your email database fit and healthy if you want your email marketing to work hard for your business and deliver solid results.

So here’s three simple suggestions :

1. Segment your list

While its easy to send everyone everything and hope something sticks, it is not necessarily the best approach.

People respond best to messages that at relevant to them. So segment your list into smaller targeted lists and create emails specifically for those groups.

How you segment the list will be dependent upon your businesses. It could be location, demographics, clients vs suppliers, etc

2. Stop the bounces

Every time you email a message, there are going to be a few that bounce because the email address is no longer valid, has a typo in it, the recipient’s inbox could be full, or the person has an out-of-office responder turned on

Look at the bounce report to see why the message is being returned. Some you can ignore the report. But for hard bounces such as a non-existent addresses, you should take action:

- Verify the address is correct. If it is and you think the report is a false positive, you can always follow-up  individually to see if they are actually receiving your message.
- For those that are non-existent, move them to your Do Not Mail list. Doing so will eliminate the subscriber from future mailings, help lower your bounce rate, and improve your open rate.

3. Trim those that don’t engage?

But not right away. Identify those on the mailing list that never interact with mailings e.g. never open or click thru. Then perhaps run a carefully structured campaign specifically to those people to encourage re-engagement. Then you can choose to trim or nurture.

Remember a lack of perceived activity does not necessarily mean a lack of interest.

The objective of these three actions is to keep your list clean and structured so that it can be used to deliver relevant content to the most appropriate people. And so deliver the results you desire.

WSI has helped many companies to launch successful email marketing campaigns. Why not give us a call today to discuss how we can help your business.

Each year, more and more Christmas purchases are being made over the web and those online retailers are using the power [...]]]> We all know Christmas, or the ‘Holiday Season’ as our American friends prefer to call it, is the busiest and should be the most profitable part of the year for retailers in Europe and the US

Each year, more and more Christmas purchases are being made over the web and those online retailers are using the power of email marketing to draw people to their sites.

A US-based consultancy – Responsys tracked over 5000 emails sent by 100 top US online retailers in the 2009 Holiday Season and analysed those campaigns in terms of their timing and messages. They have used this information to produce a roadmap to help retailers to formulate their email marketing campaigns for this year. Their report – “Retail Email Guide to Holiday Season 2010″ can be freely downloaded from the Responsys article page, and there is also a supporting webcast.

WSI helps many companies to create and deliver email campaigns that produce great results. To learn more, why not call us on 01928 787026.

Too often they worry about the process and neglect the content, resulting in low open rates with most of their target audience failing to read a single word!

But the basics can be easy – [...]]]> Email marketing is so easy to do that many businesses do it almost on auto-pilot, and then wonder why they get poor results.

Too often they worry about the process and neglect the content, resulting in low open rates with most of their target audience failing to read a single word!

But the basics can be easy – just think about which emails you decide to open and then decide to read, and which ones do you automatically filter out to ignore. And work out how you make those decisions. Usually it will involve the following:

1. Email headline or title must catch the attention or trigger curiosity, without being ‘spammy’. A poor headline is the fast route to the waste bin! It needs to convey enough information for the reader to want to learn more.

2. Who is the email from? Is it someone whose reputation you value and trust, or a company you’ve never heard of? Building the trust of your mailing list over time by providing content of interest and value is a good long term investment. An email from a known individual is more likely to be read than one from a corporate role address such as sales@ or info@

3. The content of the email itself should inform and assist the reader, even when the primary message is a sales proposal. It should be written in a style which you’d like to read.

Always think, would I open and read this email? And if  you are unsure, work out why and change it!

WSI helps a number of clients to run successful email marketing campaigns across a variety of industries. If you would like to learn more, call us on 01928 787026.

With the growing adoption by businesses of social media such as Twitter, Facebook and LinkedIn, many companies have shifted focus away from email marketing.

But the two channels can and should be working together.

Email marketing [...]]]> Email marketing has traditionally been one of the cost-effective and powerful ways to communicate with a network of contacts and nurture the relationship.

With the growing adoption by businesses of social media such as Twitter, Facebook and LinkedIn, many companies have shifted focus away from email marketing.

But the two channels can and should be working together.

Email marketing can encourage social media membership, while the social media can be used to promote email sign-ups.

It is important to establish and promote different roles for the two channels. Typically email marketing can be more targeted and exclusive, as you can gather demographic data as part of the sign-up process. So valuable content can be shared with a selected audience e.g. seasonal sales vouchers.

Social media membership is typically a lot broader and probably less well qualified. Involvement and shared content can encourage interaction with the company website, email sign-ups etc.

If you would like to understand more about how email marketing and social media can benefit your business, call WSI on 01928 787026