DID YOU KNOW: Small to midsized companies make up 98% of the 22 million businesses in the US, and 75% of their sales are received from customers within a 50-mile radius of their location. – Kinsey Group

 A recent MarketingSherpa study found 75% of social media users feel email is the best way for brands to communicate with them.

Email marketing and social media are the two top areas marketers plan to increase spending during 2012. Both channels have extremely valuable roles in marketing and the best results can come when you effectively combine them to work together.

Social media offers a great way to build awareness and get your message out there. Its massive viral reach creates unlimited opportunities for sharing content and building new relationships. On the other hand, email’s value lies in sending personalized, targeted messages that strengthens relationships, builds loyalty and drives people towards making a purchase.

By leveraging the individual strengths of both channels combined into an integrated marketing campaign, you can improve your marketing effectiveness, response and ROI.

Here are 7 ways to begin integrating your social media and email marketing:

1. Expand the reach of your email message – add ‘share to social’ links. Encourage social sharing by providing valuable content in your email messages.  Content should offer information that recipients will find worthy of sharing with “like-minded” friends on their social network.  Increase your chances of going viral by providing content that makes them look like a hero.

2. Grow your email list – include newsletter signup forms on social accounts. Your Facebook and Twitter fans are most likely interested in receiving your emails. Email sign up forms can be added to Facebook pages, Linked in and Twitter feeds.

3. Build your social media networks – add ‘follow us on social’ links on all touch points.
Expand your customer communications and encourage customers and prospects to follow your brand on your social network.  Add links to web pages, emails, direct mail, displays, print ads, and more.

4. Locate and learn about your social customers – match social intelligence to your data. Appending social media data to your email can provide a snapshot of where your customer base is on the social web.  You can also learn what social networks they are on, learn which customers are not currently connected to you. This can help to segment your list so you can offer more socially relevant messages and offers.

5. Listen to the chatter and learn about your audience – use social media monitoring.
Your customers and prospects are talking on the social web and a wealth of customer knowledge is at your disposal. Increase the relevancy and timeliness of marketing campaigns and content by monitoring customer complaints, product suggestions, service inquiries and more.

6. Re-use social praise and testimonials – monitoring your brand to find online comments.
Incorporate customer praise, testimonials and recommendations into your marketing website, emails, brochure, etc. An endorsement from a customer can be extremely powerful.

7. Provide followers with engaging content and exclusive offers – share your own content.
Have auto tweets and Facebook posts go out when you send an email marketing message.  This will extend the reach of your offer to social followers who may not be on your list, and give them the ability to share with their networks.

Anchor can help bring your marketing to the next level!
Our Social Marketing Solutions allow you to easily and intelligently leverage the latest social media tools into your email marketing program. Services include social media data, social profile/data modeling, and email marketing integration.

Offset Postage Increase with Address Hygiene

It’s official – the USPS® postage increase has officially gone into effect on January 22, 2012. This is the second postage increase approved by the Postal Regulatory Commission in less than a year. Most direct mailers will see an average increase of about 2.1% or between $0.004 and $0.001 per mail piece.

Despite the increased cost of mailing, marketers see value in keeping direct mail as part of their 2012 marketing program. In fact, a study performed in 2011 reported that 50% of consumers still prefer receiving direct mail to any other channel. Finding a solution to decrease mailing costs versus reallocating marketing budgets has been a challenge.

Request a FREE DATABASE EVALUATION REPORT to see how Anchor’s SuperCleansing Platinum Bundle can help offset the postage increase and SAVE YOUR DIRECT MAIL BUDGET.

Optimize the delivery of your mailing list using a combination of Anchor’s postal processing services, all bundled together into one “budget saving” solution.  

Anchor’s SuperCleansing Platinum Bundle includes:

NCOALink^® – Process your mailing lists against the 48-month NCOA^Link® dataset of approximately 160 million change-of-address records filed with the USPS^®. Update mailing lists including individuals, families and businesses that have moved.

DPV^® (Delivery Point Validation, confirms an address exists and is a USPS^® delivery point) – DPV^® allows you to eliminate costs by not mailing to non-existent addresses.

LACS^Link®  (Locatable Address Conversion System, 911 Address Conversion Tool) - Converts rural style addresses to city style addresses, improving deliverability.

CASS^TM (Coding Accuracy Support System) – Improves the Address Standardization, ZIP^® Correction, ZIP+4^® Appending, Carrier-Route Coding, Delivery Point Coding, Error Message Code, CASS^TM Report and NDI Report.

DSF^2®  (Identifies Deliverable Addresses and Specific Address Attributes) – Allows you to identify business versus residential delivery points, as well as, vacant and seasonal addresses.

AAE (Anchor Address Enhancements) – Improve addresses that cannot be ZIP + 4^® coded, resulting in improved deliverability. By using an individual name and special matching logic on the address to locate a similar address in large reference file databases, we can determine which address elements need to be changed to make the record ZIP+4^® codable. Verify an actual address exists down to an apartment or suite number. AAE also adds missing secondary address information.

Deceased/Prison Suppress  – Eliminate deceased individuals and individuals with prison addresses from mailings, prior to a promotion.

Merge Purge – Identify duplicate records in your database, based upon your marketing criteria.  Our program goes beyond name and address comparison and incorporates additional data matching elements for increased accuracy, across several different files. Any data on your file such as: Social Security Number, Gender or Telephone Number may be used for your duplicate identification process. Matches can be based on unique individual or household levels.

 Pricing of these products and services is neither established, controlled, nor approved by the United States Postal Service®.  The following trademarks are owned by the United States Postal Service®:  USPS, United States Postal Service, ZIP, ZIP Code, ZIP + 4, LACS^Link, NCOA^Link, DPV, DSF² and CASS.

QR (Quick Response) codes are popping up everywhere, from print advertisements, product labels, purchase receipts, and even business cards.  In fact, QR code scanning has increased by over 4500% in 2011, according to a report from Mobio Identity Systems, Inc.  The number is expected to increase as smart phone purchases rise in 2012 and more consumers are equipped to easily scan them and respond.

These positive numbers are encouraging for marketers who currently use QR codes in their marketing strategies, and many are planning to do so in the near future.

Linking offline touch points to various content such as hyperlinks, maps, phone numbers, email, video and social media presents unlimited opportunities for customers to interact with companies.

Here are 10 effective ways to add QR codes to your marketing…

1. Build your social media accounts. A new like or follow can create a long-term marketing opportunity. Add QR codes to on-site display locations and promotional posters.  By simply scanning, users can follow your social media account or “like” your page.   Add value for the user and entice them to take action. For example, “Like our Facebook page for latest news alerts and exclusive coupons”.

2. Encourage product purchases. Offering on-site product information can help encourage a sale by offering access to product information, reviews and comparisons, a value-added product video and even a mobile “buy now” option.

3. Increase contest, memberships and event signups. Print QR codes on promotional materials to gain additional sign-ups and make offline touch points interactive for immediate response.  Offer users a quick and easy vehicle to scan and sign-up for contests, surveys, memberships, event registrations and more. You can also improve offline campaign tracking by using ‘tiny urls’ with your QR codes.

4. Improve direct mail response rates and tracking. Encourage recipients to take action by making your mail piece interactive. Increase direct mail response tracking. Plus, you can add a personal touch for every recipient and increase relevancy by combining purls with your QR code.

5. Capture customers who visit your store while you are closed. Most stores are not open 24/7.  Adding QR codes to your store display, linking to your website, can turn a potentially lost sale into an online customer.

6. Engage more show attendees and capture more leads at your next event. Add QR codes to your trade show displays and signage. You can allow contacts to scan your business contact details and allow them to engage with your company, capture your information and convert them online.

7. Motivate survey response. Encourage users to scan and rate their experience.  Add value and boost survey responses by offering participants a discount off their next purchase or a chance to win a prize.

8. Bring your business card to life. Use the backside of your business card and include a QR code that leads to a landing page of detail about you or your business.

9. Make your offline promotional material, brochures, and print ads interactive.  Leverage QR codes to boost offline promotions and conversions.  Add QR codes next to each product description, promotion or call to action. This helps to engage your reader and allows them to easily interact and respond to what they are reading about.

10. Let your presentation stand out from the crowd and leave a lasting impression. Add QR codes to the end of your presentation to sign up for more information, receive a copy of the presentation or view a list of the items mentioned.

]]> http://blog.anchorcomputer.com/index.php/10-engaging-ways-to-use-qr-codes/feed/ 0 http://blog.anchorcomputer.com/index.php/multi-channel-marketing-services/ http://blog.anchorcomputer.com/index.php/multi-channel-marketing-services/#comments Mon, 16 Jan 2012 22:19:41 +0000 Tina Cush http://blog.anchorcomputer.com/?p=1480 Tweet

2011 was an exciting year for marketers. Digital channels such as Social Media, SMS, Web 2.0 and 2-D barcodes have created many new opportunities for businesses and consumers to communicate and build relationships. Integrating these new mediums with more traditional channels such as email and direct mail has increased response rates and customer engagement.

As multi-channel marketing continues to evolve in 2012, consumers are receiving more marketing messages than ever before. In order to cut through the clutter, marketers need reach customers where and how they want to receive offers. Sending targeted marketing campaigns across multiple channels will ensure you are engaging customers where and how they are most likely to respond.

Anchor offers all the solutions needed to effectively reach your customers and make your multi-channel marketing a success. We can help you prepare your customer database with appended and/or verified email, phone and mailing addresses, provide you with new highly targeting prospect lists – and expand the reach of your campaign by adding social media data, SMS text messaging, 2-D barcodes and web 2.0 tools.

Jump start your marketing for 2012 using one-stop multi-channel solutions:

Request an no-obligation Marketing Report to see how you can improve your multi-channel strategy, cut costs and maximize response!

A dominating 38.5% of time spent on the mobile web is used for email activity, according to a study by The Nielsen Company. This number is expected to grow quickly throughout 2012.

With the sharp rise in people reading email on a mobile device, Forrester suggests that marketers plan on including mobile in their marketing mix and employing email marketing messages that are more mobile friendly. While is it not necessary to revamp your entire email marketing program, you will want to prepare emails with more simplicity in mind.

Here are some quick tips for designing emails that are more mobile friendly:

Keep your subject lines short and powerful
Your email subject line must grab your reader’s attention quickly and entice them to click and read your message. Best practices suggest keeping mobile email subject lines within 5 or 6 words or under 35 characters.  Anything longer may be truncated and not seen.

Use a familiar “from” line
Make sure your reader recognizes whom the message is coming from. Choose wisely, whether it’s someone’s name or a company name that will capture their attention.

Get to the point – keep content short
You will be fighting for the attention of everyone reading emails on a mobile device. Focus on one topic and one offer. Content should be easily read and simple to understand.

Design emails using a single column layout
Reformat HTML email design to a single column layout. This will make it easier for email creatives to appear correctly across desktop, webmail and mobile readers. Best practices show fewer than 40 characters per line will be the most effective.

Include call-to-actions that are easy to find and respond to
Use call to action links with larger fonts to ensure readers can easily locate them and respond when using small mobile touch screens.  If your link leads to a webpage, make sure the page is mobile friendly and forms are easy to work with.

Include a pre-header
Most mobile devices will include a preview of email text under the subject line.  Use a pre-header wisely to mention your offer or complement the subject line to get readers to open your email.

Don’t forget “click to read on mobile device” link
All mobile devices, and email viewing apps are different.  Some will render your email and display messages with no problem and others simply will not.  Add a “click to read on mobile device” link at the top of all your emails and newsletters to ensure every reader has an easy option to view your message from anywhere.

Including a plain text copy of every HTML message
Some mobile devices will only display a plain-text version of your email.  Spend the time to optimize plain text emails with mobile readers in mind to increase response.

Use the right alt tags for your images
Many mobile email devices and apps do not display HTML images. Be sure and include alt tags to describe what the images in your creative are conveying, so readers get the fully intended message.

Test, Test, Test
Take the guesswork out of mobile email marketing.  Use a mobile email simulator to see how your email will appear on various mobile devices and screen sizes.

Let Anchor help bring your email marketing to the next level! We provide Full Service Email Marketing Solutions for companies of all sizes!  Our in-house email marketing team becomes part of yours.

Get started with a FREE consultation. Choose from a variety of email campaign services including: creative services, deliverability monitoring, list management and data acquisition, target marketing and more.

Approximately 40 million Americans move each year and will be looking to establish new business relationships with local service providers like you.

New Movers

Be the first to reach New Movers in your target area with Anchor’s New Movers/New Connects file – one of the industry’s most current and comprehensive data sources of “true new movers”. The database is compiled from 99% of Telcos and other multi-sourced feeds. All records are updated and scrubbed through a hygiene process every 24 hours. We provide you with deliverable New Movers’ names, addresses and phone numbers on your file.  View Anchor’s New Movers Information Sheet.

Whether you are sending direct mail, calling or both, Anchor can help you market more effectively and increase response. Enhance your New Mover file with additional demographic data. Choose from business or consumer, home owner/renter, age, gender, income, mail responsiveness, presence of children, ethnicity, Spanish speaking households, home value, number of vehicles, mile radius distance and more. Anchor’s “New Movers/New Connects Net-Hit Agreement Program” can save you money!

New Movers are highly motivated buyers, ready to purchase and 5x more likely to become lifetime customers…

Contact us today on Reaching New Movers in Your Target Area – AT A GREAT PRICE!

]]> http://blog.anchorcomputer.com/index.php/new-movers-new-movers-lists/feed/ 0 http://blog.anchorcomputer.com/index.php/scrub-emails-to-increase-holiday-email-reponse/ http://blog.anchorcomputer.com/index.php/scrub-emails-to-increase-holiday-email-reponse/#comments Mon, 21 Nov 2011 17:58:36 +0000 Tina Cush http://blog.anchorcomputer.com/?p=1356 Tweet

Holiday Email Marketing

It’s not too late to boost your holiday email marketing performance!

Catching undeliverable email addresses before your holiday campaign deploys is one of the most effective ways to increase deliverability rates, maintain good relationships with ISPs and boost holiday response.

Delivering emails to your customer inboxes this holiday season involves many components, some of which may block your email messages before they even reach your recipient. These issues can include email addresses with typos, changes of address, hard bounces, invalid, dead and reportedly bad email addresses.  Any of these problems can cause you to lose the opportunity of reaching your customers, damage your reputation with ISPs, and even worse, get you blacklisted from sending future emails.  Our Email List Hygiene service is your solution to combating these issues and getting your messages delivered to your customers.

Our process is made up of a series of algorithms that check domain, syntax, deliverability, and mailbox validity.  After the process is complete we will separate “bad addresses” and help find an updated email address in return – where there is a replacement available.

Anchor’s Email List Hygiene will increase deliverability rates by:

• Verifying email addresses are active
• Correcting general format, typos and syntax errors
• Validating SMTP servers “domain knocking”
• Flagging known “screamers” and hard bounces
• Suppressing opt-outs and DMA’s “Do Not Email”

REQUEST A FREE TEST ON YOUR FILE,  BEFORE YOU PROCEED…

We offer an OBLIGATION-FREE test report and consultation to show you how many undeliverable emails can be identified and/or corrected on your customer and prospect file, before you use our service!

CLICK HERE TO REQUEST MORE INFORMATION

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Email Marketing "Open Rates"

The average email campaign “open rate”  declined by 9% in 2010,  while click rates have increased or remained the same. 

Did you know that “open rates” are not a perfect measure and some opens may not even be recorded!  If you are using “open rates” to measure the success of your email campaigns, it is important you have a good understanding on how “open rates” are determined and may be affecting your campaign reporting.

Many marketers believe that “open rates” are simply based on the number of emails opened.  This is not the case.  In fact, the definition of email “opens” is the number one misunderstood and misused metric in the email marketing industry.

What do images have to do with opens?  Image blocking is one of the main factors that affect the accuracy of your “open rate” reporting.  Most email marketing software tracks open rates by adding a tiny gif (image) to every HTML message sent.  When the email is opened, this image is downloaded from the web server and reports back that an open has occurred for that reader.  However, recording an “open” can only happen if the reader’s email software is able to display/download images.

In order to cut back on spam, email mailbox programs and free web mail providers such as AOL and Gmail, block images by default and prompt readers to choose whether or not they want to download the images for each email they receive.  This means readers can still read your email messages without viewing images and therefore opens are not accurately reported.  Image blocking has had a major affect on how legitimate marketers measure campaign open rates.

Email preview panes, another factor to consider that is affecting your open rate accuracy.

Many of your readers may use an email client that has a preview pane, such as Outlook and Gmail.  A preview pane allows your emails to be displayed and will download images automatically.  This will register as an opened email, without the reader to ever have to read or click on it.

What’s the bottom line? Although “open rates” are not 100% accurate, the metric can still be a good measurement for tracking campaign responsiveness when used in combination with other metrics – especially click-thrus.

Using the “open rate” as a general metric will help determine changes in regular campaign activity when a rise or fall occurs. For example, when AOL decided to disable images for all customers who receive emails on AOL.com,  marketers saw a significant drop in their open rates which alerted them a change had occurred and allowed them to differentiate a change in the campaign’s render rates – not an overall drop in campaign success!

Be proactive in getting images viewed! Increase open rate accuracy and deliverability by asking your readers to add your from address to their address book.  If your from address is in the address book, your images will automatically display!  This may also help keep spam complaints low and increase your chances of being Whitelisted!

A MUST READ FOR EVERY EMAIL MARKETER:

In 2011, it was reported that only 4 out of 5 or 81% of permission-based emails reached the inbox. That means 20% of legitimate marketing emails never reached the intended recipient.

Is your email program performing as well as it should be? 

Email deliverability is VITAL to your email marketing success.  After all, an undelivered email cannot be viewed or clicked on. Keeping your list up-to-date by running regular list hygiene practices will help maintain good sender reputation scores, increase inbox deliverability and boost the performance of your marketing campaigns.

Maintaining deliverable addresses in your database and ensuring more of your organization’s emails reach the inbox is not an impossible task. Let’s get started by identifying 5 email data issues that may cause your emails to bounce and how to fix them – before they happen.

1. General formatting, typos or syntax errors  

These invalid emails are mostly due to addresses being entered incorrectly.  They are often from people who are legitimately trying to receive your messages – and never actually receive them due to an error. (Ex: bob@@yahooo.cmo or bob2hotmale.com)

Running your file through Anchor’s list hygiene will help check for these errors types, flag them on your file and give you the option to recover the otherwise invalid emails with an updated email address replacement.

2. Dead, invalid or bogus domains

There are large quantities of free email sites that often stop offering email services to customers, leaving many emails dead or no longer working. (Ex: anglefire.com, athome.com, altavista.com)  If you send to an email using any of these domains, they are likely to deliver to a catchall mailbox, and will not notify you of a bounce back.

Our Email Validation service uses a “domain-knocking” process that determines both if a domain exists and if a mailbox on that domain is able to receive emails.  This validation process is performed with out having to send an actual test email.

3.   Email Address Changes

About 30% of email addresses are changed annually due to relocations, job changes, adding extra email addresses, or switching Internet Services Providers.

An email change of address doesn’t mean contacts do not want to hear from you.    

Running your file through our permission-based ECOA (Email Change of Address Update) service detects undeliverable emails and updates them with a new deliverable address for each contact.

4.  Email Bounce Management

A soft bounce is when an email address is temporarily unavailable.  For example, a recipient may have an “out of office” or “away on vacation” auto responder on, or their mailbox may be temporarily full. Most commonly, 3-5 soft bounce retries will be had, before an address is determined a hard bounce and removed for good. 

A hard bounce is when an email addresses is permanently non-deliverable.  Once an email is hard-bounced, it is important to not try and resend to that address.  Trying to do so can trigger email clients and or ISPs to define you as a spam sender, damage your sender reputation score, close your email account and/or blacklist your domain IP address from sending emails all together.

Sending emails and receiving a high number of bounces will tarnish your ISP reputation, almost immediately. Save time, money and avoid being blacklisted by scrubbing your file through our email validation process, first!   We’ll detect undeliverables and bounces – before you deploy your campaign. Plus, we can also process Email Change of Address updates and supply you with a new deliverable email in its place. 

5.  Spam Traps, Do No Email List, Cellular Domains and Maintenance Addresses

Mailing to any of these types of addresses can lead to being permanently blacklisted, breaking privacy laws or losing your ability to  send emails altogether.

Although removing and identifying “spam traps” from lists is very difficult, Anchor can help minimize the risks in mailing to these records by suppressing “known” spamtraps. Other risky email addresses such as fake emails (asdf@asdf), maintenance addresses (info@domain.com), known bounces, DMA do not email and cellular domain email suppression are more easily identified and very effective in keeping your email marketing compliant.

Catching undeliverable email addresses before your campaign deploys is one of the easiest and most effective ways to increase deliverability rates, maintain good relationships with ISPs and stay connected with customers.

Every company can benefit from running their email file through email list hygiene regularly.  Receive a FREE Email Validation Test Today!

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