Need More Subscribers?

The sign-up process for your potential customers is the first step in creating a relationship with them. You can, and should, do more than just have a sign-up form on your website. From our experiences at KobeMail, here are a few suggestions on how to successfully increase your sign ups:

1. Just because people land on your site does not ensure that they will sign up for your email newsletter. Even if they begin to fill out the form, often times the potential subscriber will not finish the form. If you want them to eventually buy from you, having them sign up for your email newsletter is the first step. Your sign up form needs to be clear, easy, and visible.

2. Give your potential subscribers something to look forward to. Make sure that the future value is presented clearly. Will you be sending coupons? Will your subscribers get inside information that non-subscribers won’t? The more enticing the reason to sign up is, the more likely you are to gain new subscribers.

3. Be sure to ask for enough information without asking for too much. Each additional field you add on your sign up form is one step closer to losing the subscriber. Decide ahead of time exactly what information you need, and be sure not to ask for more. Ask yourself this question: would you want to fill out all of the allotted information? If the answer is no, it will surely be a no to everyone else be smart here.

4. A great way to increase your sign ups is to gain the trust of your consumers. You can do this by justifying ahead of time why you’re asking for their personal information. For example, if you need their home phone number, tell them WHY you need it, and if you don’t need it, don’t ask them for it. Being up front with your customers will allow them to trust you and increase your chances of making the sale.

In addition to these steps, you want to make sure that your sign up form is visually appealing. Here is a site that offers unique and easy sign-up form ideas.

Author: Peter Schirripa

Editor: Courtney Dillsworth

"Win Back" - Improve ROI

Do you want to see more from your email marketing campaign? At KobeMail, we have helped clients in many different ways to improve ROI based on testing and tweaking their campaign strategies. As you may know, the new engagement metrics, (i.e. in-box placement and deliver-ability), are being practiced by three major ISP’s – Hotmail, Gmail and Yahoo. Opens and CTRs from users are monitored and engagement has now become an indicator of reputation of a sender.

Want to see an increased ROI? Begin improving your online reputation and start segmenting out your user base, especially if this is something you haven’t done before. By segmenting your lists I mean breaking out engagers vs. the non-engagers. Question now becomes who do I consider non-engagers? Are these the users that have been in the system for a long time but has not purchased? Or users that have purchased but have not purchased anything since a certain period? Are they users that haven’t opened or responded to your emails in a number of days as defined by you – 60 days? 90 days? 365 days?.

Once you define the buckets that you have placed your user base, you have to now think of your email strategy – to up-sell the existing and convert the non-engaging.
You might want to try a few of the strategies we have implemented with our clients that have resulted in positive for your next campaign.

• Target subscribers who have not opened-offer them a creative with a compelling call to action. 50% discounts, free membership for a year, $20 coupon for a purchase of over $100, etc.

• Reach out to users who have clicked in past but did not buy anything and send them a follow up email encouraging them to make a purchase with the same compelling action in mind
• Send out a message to users who have made a purchase only once with a call to action or incentive for them to purchase again
• Respect your subscribers and encourage them to interact
• Be honest and straight forward about the offer in the subject line (use a call to action)
• Be informative – keep the message and tone in line with your brand
• Test a few alternative subject lines or messages – this is very important- it gives you a big picture of what works best

You leave a lot of revenue left on the table when you do not attempt to win back former subscribers of your email messages. Winning back even a small percentage of users can help you generate additional revenue in future so be sure to clean up your lists and reach out to your users In hopes of increasing your ROI.

Author: Roopal Rawani
Editor: Peter Schirripa & Yasifur Rahman

A/B Split Testing

We spoke a little bit about A/B split testing on our “Learn to Love Testing” post last January, but it’s such an important and useful testing tool, we thought we’d give you a little more information. To refresh your memories, an A/B split test is when you take two or more versions of a campaign and send them to one database of users. The list is split evenly according to the number of campaigns you are sending and each equal portion of the list gets a different creative. Now, you can also choose to keep the creatives the same and only change the subject lines or from names. There is a lot of insight that the A/B split test offers.

You can move your “Refer a Friend” link from the bottom of the creative to the top, or place an important link in a new location. You can play around with images, subject lines, content, etc-there are an infinite number of possibilities this testing type allows.

Generally, the 1st split will be your control split – a creative or subject line you’ve been using for a while, for example. The number of other splits you choose to use are your tests splits. Using this type of testing allows you to directly compare the performance of one campaign against another. Sending parallel tests rather than sequential tests allows you to control the outside factors, such as what time the campaigns go out. Sending time will not pose an issue because the campaigns will all be sent at the exact same time, so the test results will be more accurate and easier to compare.

At KobeMail, we suggest keeping the number of changes per split to a minimum in order to get the maximum amount of information from your campaign performance data. Changing too many aspects on one creative will make it difficult to truly understand which change triggered the best performance rates. A/B split testing is a process we have implemented as part of our application at KobeMail, with an allowance of 8 splits per campaign. At no additional charge, we can set up A/B spilt testing campaigns for you to help optimize and analyze your performance.

The versatility A/B split testing allows is a great way to determine what your user base responds best to. Sending more targeted and better optimized campaigns can increase your conversions and ROI, so why not give it a shot? You’ve got nothing to lose.

You can contact us at (888) 723-8090 and we’ll be happy to help you set up an A/B split testing.

Author: Courtney Dillsworth

Editor: Peter Schirripa, Yasifur Rahman