 9
Extremely Useful SendStudio Tips
Written by Mitchell Harper, Interspire
Co-founder
Published on
30th August 2007
Introduction
I use quite a few different software applications on a weekly basis,
including EditPlus to create PHP code, FileZilla as my FTP client and
SendStudio
to send our newsletter. Even though SendStudio is one of our products, I
decided
to spend a few hours to really "dig in" and come up with 9 tips to get
the most
out of it, which
I'll share with you in this newsletter.
If you're not familiar with
SendStudio, it's an email marketing solution that we developed to
create and
send professional-looking newsletters, reminders and autoresponders.
It's one of
our most popular products with well over 5,000 customers
worldwide.
If you use SendStudio as much as I do then these tips should save you
some time.
If you use SendStudio for your clients then feel free to take these
tips, add
your logo to the top and print them out. Send the tips to your customers
"just
because". It's always good to give your customers something for nothing
as often
as you can.
Tip #1: Making Autoresponders "Feel"
Real
As you might know, you can use SendStudio to send a series of emails
to your
mailing list at specific intervals (such as 1 day from now, 2 days
from now,
etc). These are called automatic responders, or autoresponders for
short.
When it comes time to create a series of autoresponders, make sure
the times
when they're sent out aren't too robotic. For example, if you want
to send
out a series of 5 emails as an autoresponder, don't
schedule
them like this:
- Message #1 after 24 hours
- Message #2 after 48 hours
- Message #3 after 72 hours
Instead, vary the time between messages slightly, so
they feel
like they're being sent from a real person instead of being sent
automatically,
such as:
- Message #1 after 19 hours
- Message #2 after 43 hours
- Message #3 after 80 hours
We very rarely send emails to people at the exact same time every
day, so
your autoresponder series should reflect and adopt this too so it feels
like the
emails were sent from humans instead of a computer.
Tip #2: Creating Your Own Email Template
SendStudio includes over a dozen email template designs that you can use
for
your newsletters, but what about if you have no design skills and want
your own
template?
It's quite easy to create your own template based on one of the included
templates. Just follow these steps:
- Click the Templates -> Create Template menu
link
- Fill out the form and choose an email template
to get
started with
- You'll see the template appear in the editor.
From here
you can upload and add-in your own logo, change colors and text,
etc
- When you click save the template will be stored and you can
use it
every time you want to create a newsletter or email campaign
Tip #3: Keeping an Eye On Subscription
Trends
Did you know that different days of the week influence how many people
will
subscribe/*** from your mailing list? We get the most
subscribers on
Tuesday and send our newsletter on Wednesday, as studies have shown that
you get
better open and response rates on a Wednesday.
Using SendStudio statistics you can see a graph that shows how many
subscribes
and unsbuscribes you receive over the period of a few weeks/months. From
this,
you can determine that on Thursday, for example, you get the most new
subscribers to your mailing list.
You might then decide that on Fridays you'll make a new blog post (you
do
have a blog on your site, don't you?) on your site encouraging people to
subscribe to your newsletter to see if that has any affect on increasing
subscription rates.
Tip #4: Using Popular Newsletter Content on Your Site
SendStudio allows you to see how many times an email is forwarded onto
friends.
If you see an email that's forwarded quite a few times then it could be
a good
idea to take the content from that email (if it's an article for
example) and
add it into your web site or blog. If it's popular in email format, it's
going
to be popular online.
Tip #5: The "Show Help" Link is Your Friend
SendStudio includes over a dozen built-in tutorials to help you if you
ever get
stuck. The "Show Help" link at the top of the SendStudio control panel
explains
how to complete tasks such as sending your first email campaign, how to
create a
profitable autoresponders and how to add subscribers to your mailing
list.
Tip #6: The "Trailing Autoresponder" Trick
If you have a series of autoresponder courses that you send out to
subscribers
then you can use this neat trick to boost your subscription numbers. In
the last
message of an autoresponder series, invite the subscriber to join
another autoresponder series you have setup.
That way, when they get to the end of the first autoresponder series
they can
subscribe to your other autoresponder and keep hearing from you, and we
all know
that it takes multiple encounters with a prospect before they turn into
a
customer,
and autoresponders are a great way to do that.
Tip #7: Using Autoresponders in "Every Day" Situations
Autoresponders can be used to increase customer interaction and sales
for
practically any business, even those that don't have a web site. Here's
a few
ideas:
- How about automatically following up with customers when they
place an
order on your web site? Why not send them a discount code to use
on their
next order?
- Why not take information from your web site and build a free
eBook for
your web site visitors to download? When they download the eBook,
ask for
their email address and send them a few follow up emails about
your
products and services.
- Create a series of emails and build an "online course" to
teach your
subscribers about your industry, products and services. For
example, if
you sell sunglasses, teach your subscribers about the benefits of
outdoor
eye protection and review a few different pairs of sunglasses
(with links
to purchase them, of course)!
Tip #8: Don't Overuse Custom Fields
Custom fields allow you to collect specific details about each of your
mailing
list subscribers including their first name, location - practically
anything you
want, however you never want to overuse custom fields in your emails,
especially
in the subject line.
Imagine if you receive an email like this:
Subject: Hi Mitchell, how are you?
Body: Hi Mitchell. I just wanted to email you to say hi.
Mitchell, if you
need anything just let me know and I'll be happy to help. Thanks
Mitchell!
Hardly appealing, and you can tell it wasn't written
by a real
person. If you use custom fields such as the subscriber's first name in
your
email messages, don't over do it. Use their name once in the entire
email, and
that includes the subject line.
Tip #9: Sending to Multiple Mailing Lists
If you have a few mailing lists and want to send the same email message
to all
of them then SendStudio will take care of removing the duplicate emails
for you.
When it comes time to send the email SendStudio will make sure it goes
out to
each subscriber only once, regardless of how many mailing lists they've
subscribed to.
This can come in handy when you want to send a general message to all of
your
lists, or if you keep separate interest lists, for example customers who
ordered
blue widgets, customers who ordered red widgets, etc.
Conclusion
I hope you liked my 9 tips to get more out of SendStudio. If you use
SendStudio
a few times a week like I do then I'm sure at least one of the tips can
save you
time. If you have any comments please
post them here and I'll reply if you have any questions.
If you want to learn more about email marketing with autoresponders then
you can
subscribe
to our
email course. The emails are sent out every few days over the period
of a
few weeks and you can *** at any time. Of course, the emails
only
contain
100% useful content. We'll never try to sell you anything.
... and of course you can read more articles
online
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