Triggered Email Five Ideas

Triggered email is a great way to continue the dialog with your subscribers

Have you just begun to think about adding triggered email to your email marketing mix? Or, are you a long time marketer looking for some creative ways to revitalize an email communication program?
Whether you fit one of those scenarios or, just heard about triggered email I‘ve got a few ideas to help get your creative juices flowing. If you don’t know what a triggered email is hang on, I’ll cover that next. If you already know about triggered email just skip to the next paragraph.

What’s Triggered Email?

If you’re new to email marketing triggered emails are a great tool to add to your marketing toolbox. Think of triggered email as a sort of auto pilot (that should be reviewed annually). They can serve a variety of purposes and extend the conversation with your subscribers.

Triggered Email Marketing Ideas

1. The tried and true – new subscriber welcome series. For this triggered email campaign put together 3 -4 messages. The first one is your welcome message. Follow this up a few days later with a new subscriber offer, then an email about where else you can be found (for example: Facebook, Twitter, Google+) and wrap up this series with a message outlining customer service contacts.
2. The new product or service launch. For this series prepare a few messages that bring the subscriber up to launch of a new product or service. 
3. Special offer with purchase. For a given product trigger an email series when it’s purchased. This could involve many steps where the subscriber’s reactions/inactions to the message could trigger alternate messages.
4. Last chance/ customer reactivation campaign. This is another “classic” in email marketing. For this campaign you are targeting inactive customers to take a series of actions. This would be a short series of two messages but, would repeat on a given date picking up newer inactives on your list. Likely messages for this campaign are a one-time discount followed up with a “hate to see you go” message where you segment the truly inactive subscribers (almost) for good.
5. Subscriber “birthday” emails. For this triggered type you would send a special message on the anniversary date of subscribers sign-up date.

I hope these examples have given you some inspiration to create your own triggered email marketing campaigns. Feel free to use them, improve on them or just mix them up.

Now, it’s your turn. What are some of your ideas for triggered email campaigns? Leave them in the comments below.

Google Places Bulk Upload 3 Tips

So, what is Google Places Bulk Upload?
Glad you asked! For business with more than 10 physical locations (stores, offices, etc) Google gives you the option to upload your locations, hours and  other information in a spreadsheet format. This saves you some time in place of manually entering each location via Google's web form.

The manual Google Places upload form.

Having recently completed a fairly large Google Places bulk upload project I wanted to share a few tips that you might find helpful.

Google Places Bulk Upload Tip#1: Time & Patience
From picking the categories to formatting the address, business type, phone number in to the correct spreadsheet format. It all takes a lot of time. For business with more than 20 locations you will need even more patience (and time). Fortunately, once your masterpiece of a spreadsheet has been uploaded (and corrected) you can download it (and I recommened it).

Google Places Bulk Upload 

Google Places Bulk Upload Tip #2: If you are closed for lunch or, have varied hours do the (hours) split.
Are you closed the same time everyday for lunch? Does your location open/close on different times of the week? Then, you will want to split your hours in the upload file. To do this you input the day and the first time period you're open/closed and then, the same day and time of opening/closing for the second time period of that day. For example, you are open Monday but, close for lunch from 12:00 - 1:20. So, you would make an entry for Monday in spreadsheet as:

2:8:00:AM:12:00:PM,2:1:20:PM:5:00:PM 

Additional information on hours formatting is available on the Google Places support site.

Google Places Bulk Upload Tip #3: Use the Custom Attributes. 
Not all the information you might want to display to a potential customer is available in the standard fields. To include additional information we turn to the use of custom attributes.
Custom attributes could be information such as: cuisine type, pet policy, check in time or other important information about your business. Just be aware of what Google states in the help about the appearance of these custom attributes:
"While this data may not appear on the Place Page, this information continues to help our system understand more about your business and ensure your organic listings appears and ranks appropriately on Google and Google Maps when potential customers perform searches related to your business."

Do you have any experiences or frustrations in bulk uploading to Google Places? Let us know in the comments below.

The Color of 2012

Revitalizing energy and color are upcoming for the 2012 new year. Pantone's color of the year is Pantone 17-1463 Tangerine Tango.

This year it was PANTONE 18-2120 Honeysuckle, but next year will be a more vibrant and electric reddish-orange color.

Look for this color is all aspects of design…when you're out shopping, in fashion, and online.

Learn More About the Color of 2012 Here

Email Marketing: Making It Right

This time I'll review an email from Mike Holmes a general contractor, all around nice guy and Home Improvement TV personality who appears in HGTV's "The Holmes Inspection", "Holmes on Homes" and is the author of several books. If you aren't familiar with the program, Mike does lots of work making people's homes "right" after less than honest/knowledgeable contractors or previous home owners have performed shoddy or unsafe improvements. In each episode Mike first assess the condition of the home and then, "makes it right". I really like the show and the work Mike does for each client. In a similar vein to Mike's shows I'll review one of Mike's recent email marketing messages and then, make some suggestions to "make it right".

The Email Marketing Message

Email Message Design  This message was a lot like the messages I'd received before as a subscriber. The overall visual look and feel is carried through from the website. The primarily white on black design in the header and the gray and black Holmes logo are consistent across all of Mike's media properties. Here's a look.

An email marketing message from Mike Holmes on the changes in magazine publisher.

If you'd like to see the full email message click here 

Email Marketing Fix - "Making It Right"
A closer look at the email message body reveals a single graphic instead of a combination of graphics and text. Using a single graphic is akin to Mike finding a loose wire in an attic where it could start a fire! In this case, "making it right" is simple: turn the graphic into text. The benefits of this fix include: (a) the email message being seen by more subscribers (as most email service providers block graphics by default) and (b) the email message less likely to be marked as spam (as messages with more graphics than text run a risk of being .


Email Landing Page

From the email message we can click a link to the magazine website. It's a good tactic in an email message to drive traffic to your web site (and better still to a specific landing page). What I found a little awkward about Mike's message was the use of a "Contact Us" button at the bottom of the email message to prompt a reader to visit the web site. When we arrive at the landing page (actually the home page for the magazine site) we find the same copy as what we found in the email message.

If you'd like to see the home page of the website click here.

This was disappointing. Compounding the issues we find the same exact copy as what was found in the email message including a link to the web site.

The Email Landing Page: Making It Right
What I'd really like to see are information on any updates or changes about the publishing. Maybe include a video with a statement from Mike. I would also remove the link to the Website since this copy of the information is already on the website. We could also add a call to action to the main message body "Find us on Facebook to get the latest updates".

What do you think of this email campaign? What would you do to make it right? Leave your feedback in the comments below.

Design and the Web - From 2011 into 2012

One of the most obvious ways to get across your message is through imagery and colors on the web. Just like a billboard, you only have a few seconds to demonstrate your message and make your user either want to stay or at least catch their eye.

In a previous post, we mentioned Kuler color as a great resource for gathering a color palette. Even though it's sometimes hard for us to admit, our attention span is short, and no matter how much good content is on your homepage, the first impression is going to be based on the design.

As we look into the future, large background websites are still making an impact as well as simple color schemes. There are many cool "gadgets" out there that can make your website seem "on the edge." These are okay to use, but sparingly. No one wants to be overwhelmed by things or find the website harder to use because of them.

Clean and sleek design is always on trend.


Here are some top notch creative ideas for impressive web designs:

1. Avoid Flash, use jQuery instead. Flash is still not user-friendly on iOS devices. Plus, jQuery allows SEO to be implemented and can speed up loading time as well.

2. Limit your color palette to 2 or 3 main colors. Think about it…do you wake up and try to wear an outfit with 5 or 6 colors and hope it works? Hopefully not. :) Unless it's a nice pattern or background image, try to limit your main colors to 2 or 3 max. Remember, varying opacities of one color can produce a nice monochrome design as well.

3. One page layouts are still popular, but consider your audience and what they're looking for.

4. Keep the user engaged with relevant content, call-to-actions, and friendly navigation.


We will cover much more next time from the design team, but for now, enjoy the upcoming holidays and don't forget to give your audience some special features or offers to entice them to visit your website more often or purchase from you this holiday season.