We’re very excited to announce that we have released a beautiful, flexible new way to keep up with the people who are joining your subscriber lists.  We’ve given you complete control over what notifications you’d like to receive and when.

Instant Updates

If you’re interested in learning everything you can about each person that joins your list, you’re going to love our instant notifications. You can set them on a list-by-list basis, and every time someone signs up, we’ll send you something like this…

Each email will include all the data they might have supplied when subscribing. Plus, we’ll show you exactly where they subscribed from and if available, what they look like. It’s amazing how quickly this turns them into a real person instead of just another email address. These notifications can be set on a list-by-list basis, so you’re only updated instantly when you need to be.

Daily, Weekly or Monthly Summaries

As well as instant notifications, you can also choose a daily, weekly or monthly summary that gives an overview of all the new subscribers across every list for each client. We’ll show you where they’re from, which lists they’ve been added to and even pull out a few friendly faces.

Notifications

First things first, notifications will be turned off by default for you. But, if you would find these notifications useful, you can easily enable them from your account. These notifications are set on a per-person basis. As long as you have permission to manage your own subscribers, you can head into your notification preferences and choose the types of updates that suit you best.

How to turn notifications on
You’ll notice a new option in the sidebar of “Lists & Subscribers” like this…

From there you can select any lists you’d like instant updates for, and if you’d like to receive a daily, weekly or monthly summary across all the lists for that subscriber.

One final point worth mentioning, these notifications are all about organic subscribers joining your lists.  This means we won’t notify you about subscribers you manually import yourself, only those that join from your subscribe forms, an integration you might have set up or the API.

We’ve got another exciting subscriber related announcement coming up, so stay tuned for another heads up.

Introducing the new and improved eConnect Email, your go-to email marketing platform. Featuring enhanced usability, customization and security- the new eConnect Email will make building your email campaigns a breeze!

To begin, we restructured eConnect Email from the ground up with several new and exciting features. We now have a template builder where you can create custom rock-solid templates optimized for both desktop and mobile applications.

How about those clients of yours in different time zones? Yep, the new eConnect Email will automatically send your email campaign to your recipients in their specific time zone. In addition, we have beefed up security on both ends with back-end authentication and relationships with top ISPs and industry-leading mail servers.

Worldview

See who is opening and what they’re clicking on with real-time data, all beautifully displayed on Worldview (our gorgeous maps app). Don’t forget about the bread and butter, you know, ROI- the new eConnect Email boasts in-depth reports on your email campaign’s performance and deliverability.

Social Integration

Social. Yes I said it and yes we did it. You can now allow your Facebook friends and fans to subscribe to your newsletter directly from your fan page. We also report every “Like” and “Tweet” your campaign receives as part of our stunning reports. So now you can see not only which subscribers are sharing with their friends, but also what they’re saying about you.

So what are you waiting for? Dive in and set up a new eConnect Email account today for free!

Hyde Park Baptist Church, located deep in the heart of Austin, Texas, reached out to us with the need to create a stronger, more appealing way to communicate to its members.  With that in mind, we were able to assist HPBC by creating email templates that would allow them to send out customized weekly messages to a variety of groups.  The email templates provide a consistent and organized theme that allows for a variety of people to receive announcements and other information without the dread of reading, yet another, boring black and white email.

University Ministry Example

General Ministry Example

Do you want to improve your email strategy?  Just a simple change can bring great results.  Contact HMG Creative to get started.

Today’s consumers have moved beyond being impressed with social media marketing efforts. Nowadays, it’s not impressive; it’s expected. But that’s old news for most marketers. If you don’t have a solid social media strategy in place, you’re a step behind. For those of you that do, the next step is integrating the various aspects of your marketing approach so that they work together.

Far from being competitors in the marketplace, email marketing and social media should be viewed as allies in your broader marketing approach. To accomplish that goal, start by integrating some of these popular email apps:

Social Sharing

This is a broad category that includes sharing buttons for a variety of popular networks including Facebook, Twitter, LinkedIn, email, and more. Create a copy of your email to share with your social media contacts with the click of a button.

Facebook Share/Like

Even if you don’t include a variety of social sharing buttons, you’ll want to at least make it possible for your subscribers to share your email content on their Facebook pages. Include a share/like button and recruit your loyal followers to help spread your message among their friends.

Continue…

Make sure to check out the new image editor which was released today. The image editor Picnik (which has been integrated into the app since the release of version 3) was purchased by Google and is no longer being supported as of April 19th so we made the switch to Aviary. The two (Aviary and Picnik) will be running side by side for the next week or so to give all of our customers a transition period.

Next on the list (and underway) is the newsletter editor… that release date will be coming soon!

Loyalty-targeted emails can result in open rates as much as 40 percent higher than bulk mailings. That’s a statistic worth noting. If you don’t currently use segmentation to cater to subscriber preferences and build loyalty among existing customers, now is the time to start.

Thank You Notes

A simple “thank you” for subscribing, purchasing, or providing feedback goes a long way toward building rapport with your audience. Let subscribers know you appreciate their business and offer them a special discount or coupon code to be used toward a future purchase.

Shopping Cart Recovery

Use shopping cart recovery software to remind customers of unfinished purchases. A timely email letting them know the cart is about to expire or that the items are now on sale may be enough to bring them back to your website.

Redemption Reminders

If you use a loyalty program that incorporates points, coupon codes, or e-dollars, send subscribers an email when these incentives are about to expire. They’ll appreciate the reminder and the tactic could boost your sales.

Feedback

Solicit customer feedback in the form of interest and opinion surveys, product reviews, and social sharing buttons. Customers appreciate knowing that you care what they think.

Shopping Preferences

Use previous subscriber behavior to target emails toward their individual shopping preferences. By tracking what users click on, what they search for, and what they ultimately buy you can create emails that cater to their needs.

Demographics

Send offers that relate to the subscriber’s location, age, profession, or gender. You don’t want your senior citizen market to receive emails about college savings or your Los Angeles subscribers to receive information about discount flights from New York to Miami.

Purchasing Volume

Customers who spend significant money with your company should receive special offers such as free shipping, platinum status, or early notice of sales. On the other hand, one-time spenders may also be encouraged to shop again if you offer them a special deal.

Repeat Customers Vs. Prospective Customers

Both repeat and prospective customers deserve special attention, but in a different way. Offer special deals or discount codes to repeat customers, and make sure they aren’t turned away when they notice that your prospective customers get seemingly better offers than they did. You can entice both these markets by creating email messages tailored to their needs and purchasing habits.

eConnect Email offers stellar list segmentation options that allow you to send emails designed with a particular audience in mind. Use custom fields to manage subscriber data and then segment your lists based on the criteria and user behavior of your clients, customers and subscribers.

If you were given the opportunity to try two things at the same time to see which one would give you the most benefits for the least work, would you take the opportunity? Of course you’d do it!

Think about this. What if whenever you walked up to a girl, you could try a couple different pick-up lines at the same time (and without the girl knowing), to see which line would get her attention? You’d exploit your unfair advantage, I’m sure.

Split testing = An unfair corner on the market

Think about your email campaigns. Whenever you work to compose and send one, you’re pretty much taking a guess each time, hoping that all the hours and effort you put into shaping the most grabbing subject line, the perfect offer, the best body copy and the most motivational call-to-action will make them open it and react. And then, that amazing promotional graphic you creatively designed. You hope your subscribers will not be able to resist that!

Here’s an idea! Why not take the chance element out of it and be certain next time?

When you split test your email campaigns, all you do is copy the original email, change any part (one or multiple), schedule the split test delivery and then sit back and watch the magic happen! Split testing offers a fast way to optimize email marketing campaigns. If you use split testing, you’ll be able to try out a couple versions of your message on a few subscribers, see which one performs better, and then use the better message for the rest of the subscribers.

For your next campaign, you can use the superior message as a foundation. You can then keep testing more elements, improving your email campaigns with each test. What’s the best thing about this? It’s amazingly easy! In fact, it’s so easy I don’t know why you don’t split test EVERY campaign! And think about it: Could you even try to do split testing with a newspaper ad or print campaign?

An easy example

Let’s imagine I’m a restaurant sending out an offer to my clientele to come in and eat on slow Wednesday evenings. Usually your resources (ad agency, in-house, etc.) are pretty much guessing at what offer is going to motivate customers to come into the restaurant. And you pay them for the guessing. The offer seems great. There’s a big enough, bold enough call-to-action. Hey, let’s try it. You press the send button. While you obtain okay open rates, you don’t think you did quite as well as you could have.

Using split testing, you are able to experiment with some variations such as:

* Sender/Envelope Info
* Subject lines
* Calls-to-action
* Images
* Body Copy
* Testimonials
* Personalization
* Message layout/design
* And more…

And with those options guess what you can do? You can get these results:

* Increase Open rates
* Increase Requests for more information
* Increase Click-thrus
* Increase Visits
* Increase Calls
* Increase your knowledge of what works and what doesn’t

Could be that a two-for-one offer isn’t as effective as free apps. How could you have known?

Do you have enough to think about now? Are you willing to give it a try for the next email campaign you send? If you’re an eConnect Email customer, we’re always here to help you! Contact your account manager for a few ideas and help you get started with split testing.

Good luck!

In an effort to better serve our clients and solidify our place in the market, our creative team has been hard at work redeveloping our brand and website from the ground up. Our main goal was to simplify the user experience to make it easier for you to find what you’re looking for. This being said, we are pleased to announce the launch of the new eConnect Email website!

To all of our current, past and future client we’d like to extend a warm thank you for your support! We hope you like what we’ve done. If you have any questions, suggestions, or feedback we would love to hear from you.

Free 30-Day Trial
No Credit Card Required. No Contracts. eConnect Email is totally free for 30 days, so give it a spin. Activate your free account today and see why it’s is simply, email done better.

Affordable Pricing Plans
Starting at just $19.95, eConnect Email offers affordable pricing plans to fit all different types of businesses. No contracts. Upgrade or downgrade your plan when needed.

Expansive Help Center
The new eConnect Email website features an expansive help center, complete with video tutorials to guide your throught the application.

Interactive Features Overview
Explore all that eConnect Email has to offer through our new interactive features section.

We are happy to announce that we’ve rolled out a series of instructional video tutorials to help familiarize you with some of the basic functions offered within eConnect Email.  So if you’re a visual learner sit back, turn up your speakers and grab a cup of joe while we walk you through some of the basic functionality within your eConnect Email account.

Getting Started Video Tutorials

• Creating a contact/ mailing list overview
• Importing contacts into your account
• Building an email campaign overview
• Image Manager overview
• Sending email campaign overview
• Manually adding contacts

Over the coming months we will be adding to our video library as we walk you through some of the more advanced email marketing features offered by eConnect Email (ex. email auto responders, email triggers, customer segmentation and more).  Is there a specific feature you’d like us to cover?  If so, please respond to this post and let us know!   As always we welcome your feedback.

Is your email marketing program in need of a redesign? If you haven’t evaluated your marketing practices since last year, then it’s time to ask some pertinent questions about your marketing objectives and strategy. Consider these best practices and start your new year off on the right foot.

1.     Craft Your Welcome Letter as a Marketing Email

Don’t settle for a run-of-the-mill boring welcome letter. Instead, use it as an opportunity to start building a solid relationship with your subscribers.  Invite your subscribers to connect with you via social media and include links to additional content about your products/ services. Need help?  We’d be happy to give you some pointers or help you craft and design an effective welcome email.

2.     Use Emails to Follow Up on Cart Abandonment

Cart abandonment rates are astonishingly high, but you can draw some of that lost business back by using emails to follow-up with customers who bailed out before buying. Remind them of their selections and use the email to cross-sell or up-sell. You can also give them the opportunity to leave feedback or offer an incentive for them to come back and complete the purchase.

3.     Use Split Tests to Achieve Higher Open and Click Rates

If you don’t test various options, then you’re essentially guessing what will entice readers.  Split Testing allows you to choose the most effective subject line, call to action, images, and copy for every email campaign.

4.     Give your Subscribers Options

Give your readers the chance to unsubscribe, modify details, or change email preferences without jumping through hoops. Making this process easy leaves a sweet taste in their mouth even if they choose not to remain on your mailing list.  With eConnect Email’s list management options, you can stay on top of subscriber information and make sure your emails reach their intended destinations.

5.     Integrate Social Media with Your Email Campaign

With the rise of social media you’ll want to make sure you adapt your email campaign to the new landscape. You can increase your overall reach by giving your subscribers the opportunity to share your campaign on the various social networking websites (Facebook, Twitter, LinkedIn, etc.).

As you rethink your email marketing initiative, take advantage of the tools and solutions available with eConnect Email in order to further engage and interact with your subscribers.  If you have any questions or there is ever anything we can do to help you out let us know!