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New Ideas for Bridal Show Email Follow-up

February 3, 2012 By Leave a Comment

OK, you’ve invested your time and treasure in a bridal show, or several and you have a fat, juicy lead list. Now what?

I have already given you tons of ideas to use both short-term and long-term like cherry picking your lead list and outrageous marketing. The question people still are asking is what  to put in that first email?

An interesting answer popped into my inbox just this morning that I think you should give a try.

How about instead of telling them something you ask them something?

Check this quote from today’s Research Brief from The Center for Media Research.

A new survey from Cint shows that 62% of those surveyed said they were more likely to purchase a brand’s product if their opinion has been sought by brand in a study. The survey highlights the importance of customer insight, says the report, as over half of the 1,200 consumers polled felt more loyal to a brand if it takes the time to find out their opinion.

Personally I can’t think of a better way to get them engaged from the very beginning. You know me, here is an example. If it were me sending the email for Indulgence Custom Bakeshop I would have said something along the lines of:

“Hey there {add first name}, it was great to meet you at the XYZ Bridal Show.  I was wondering if I could get your input on something. It’s a new year and I really want to add some new and exciting flavors to the menu.  If you could have any flavor or combination of flavors for your wedding cake or dessert what would it be?”

Better yet, put in a very brief survey or poll.

Don’t be crass and ask what their budget is. Ask them something that they may just have an interesting opinion on and ask it like you mean it. Give them some reason to believe that their input matters. Tweet the answers like a horse race. Build some excitement. Keep a tally going on Facebook. Foster engagement.

Here is one more tip that you probably already know but needs to be reinforced.

That email needs to be finished and uploaded to your bulk mailer BEFORE  you set up your booth. As soon as the show is over you need to load the emails you collected in your booth and hit the send button. That night. I know you are tired; shows can be brutal. Not taking care of the follow through is the biggest mistake that bridal vendors make when using bridal shows to market.

 

Bonus.

Here is another great article I just found on Asking as Marketing.

Filed Under: Back to Basics, bridal shows, email marketing, Marketing Tagged With: , , , , , ,

Email Marketing: Your Welcome Letter

March 25, 2011 By Leave a Comment

It seems that my fair readers are finally convinced and jumping on the email marketing bandwagon. Groovey! I have set up more email lead generators lately than I can count,  so how about a little in depth on some of the finer points.

From today’s email bag-o-tips…

Your Welcome Letter

So many times we are just in a rush to get things going when we set up our email marketing systems that we just use the default welcome letter or don’t use one at all. I know this was true of me. My welcome letter is old, tired and boring, but I plan to change that. It have been in place since 2005, high time for an overhaul.

If you don’t think the welcome letter is important, check this statistic:

According to a recent Epsilon survey of 200 retailers, fewer than 2/3 of retailers do not send a welcome message at all, even though the welcome messages tracked had an average open rate of 50-60%.

That is a lot of juice to ignore! Not sending a welcome letter is a lot like ignoring a customer when they walk in your store.

What should a good welcome letter say? Well, think of the interaction that you have when you first walk into one of your favorite shops. You are greeted warmly and offered assistance. If you are new to the store, they offer to show you around a bit and give you the need to know. Then a great sales person will back off and let you experience the shop with out hovering.

Well your welcome letter should do the same thing.

  • Thank your new subscriber for joining your list.
  • Give them a quick rundown of what they can expect.
  • Tell them a bit about any hidden treasures on your website or store.
  • Lead them with links to the good stuff and then back off and let them browse.

That’s it. Oh, make sure that you welcome message carries your branding and that sort of thing. Your welcome email should only begin the process by engaginging them with your brand. Save you sales push and coupons for later broadcast emails.

 

Filed Under: Back to Basics, email marketing Tagged With: , , ,

E-mail Marketing Refresher

January 20, 2011 By Leave a Comment

Now that the bridal shows are upon us and you have gathered a nice little lead list, I think it is time for an email refresher course.

Um, you did gather your own leads at the bridal shows, right? I thought so.

  1. For all those new visitors to your website, let’s capture those leads too. Make signing up to your email lead list easy, have a lead generator on every page of your website and only ask for 2 things, name and email address. People are more like like to sign up the less information you require. (Your lead generator is different from your contact form. You can require more info on the contact form.)


  2. Use a good emails service, don’t try to do email marketing through your own email program. You will end up blacklisted. Instead use a qualified third party emailer. I am a big fan of A Weber and have been using it for years. The price is right and the service is easy to use. Yes, I’m an affiliate but only because I am also a fan.


  3. Use good, non-spammy subject lines. Your subject line may be the only thing people read to determine if they want to open your email. You should split test to see what kinds of headlines get the best response from your subscribers.


  4. Make your emails informative. Don’t just send out notices of sales and coupons. Give your readers a reason to open your email even if they don’t have a dime to spend today. The goal is to get your business top of mind when they do have money to spend. A good rule of thumb is 80% information and 20%pitch. If you look at my emails blasts, they are almost entirely information about what is new on the websites, but I include a link to my ebook and other services over in a sidebar.


  5. Resend your email blast to the people that didn’t open it the first time around. Wait 24-48 hours ansend to ONLY the people that didn’t open it the first time. You will be suprised at how many more opens your get.


  6. Track everything. I shouldn’t have to say it, but what is the point of putting in the effort if you aren’t going to keep track of what is working. It is even a good idea to divide your lists up. Have one that comes from a bridal show, one that is generated by your website and one that comes from any leads your get off websites you advertise on. They you will even know which places are working for you.

Email does still work, if you use it right. With so much marketing today being pull marketing, it help to add a little bit of push to the mix.

Filed Under: Back to Basics, Blog, Marketing, wedding marketing Tagged With: , , , , , ,

Why Your Mail Lands in My Spam Folder

October 11, 2010 By 1 Comment

Every few days I do the right thing and check my spam folder. It never ceases to amaze me how many people that are signing up for my newsletter end up there.

You see, when you sign up I get a notification from my bulk email service that a new lead has been added to my list. Well it comes in with your email address as the sender and about half of those get flagged as spam. The fact that it happens isn’t important, you still get added to the list. What is important is WHY you ended up there in the first place and what it may mean to your business.

Here is why it happens. Somewhere along the line your ip address has been blacklisted as a spammer. Yep, that’s right, you, the humble bridal vendor. If you are blacklisted there is a heck of a lot of your emails besides just this one that isn’t getting through.The don’t always bounce back, they just don’t get through.

I’ll bet, that you have been using your regular email account to send out mass mailings. Yep, just cut and pasted 25 or so at a time from some bridal lead list into the address bar and let it fly. Well that’s not how you do it. You have to use a qualified opt-in email service. All it takes is just one or two of those recipients to mark you as spam and you are one your way to being blacklisted.

Think you may have this happening with your email?

To see if your email is blocked go to MxToolbox and type in the domain name that your email comes from. In my case it is thinklikeabride.com.

If you find out your email is blocked you can contact the black lists directly to request removal. Some will, some will charge you a fee and some won’t even respond to you.

Another reason that you might be hitting peoples spam folder is becaue your email address is info@yourdomain.com.

Using info@ instead of your name is a big red flag to spam filters. Take the time to set up a second email address with a name in it.

If you are going to be sending out email marketing, get a qualified opt-in account. Come on, Mail Chimp is free for limited mailings. If you are really going to use email marketing to grow your wedding business, I recommend using a better service. I am an affiliate of AWeber (there is a link to the right in the sidebar) but that is because I really like the service and their tech support is top notch. Nope, its not free but it is reasonable. I’ve been with them for over 5 years.

One of the other reasons that you should be using a good email marketing system is because the good ones aren’t going to let their clients spam. Huh?

First off, they will require a doudle opt-in on all leads.

Second, the good ones will have a tool to run your email through that will tell you if it is setting off any spam red flags. This is important to you because you can adjust your email while still in the preview stage to avoid those red flags.

Third, they are going to protect their reputation. If a client is consistantly sending emails that rank high on the spam meter, are getting a lot of complaints or are caught using questionable lead lists they will throw them out. Boom! No refund, no “We are sorry” no second chance. That makes your email coming from that service look safer to the blacklists than one that comes from a service that plays fast and loose. Better reputation=more deliverability.

Feel free to look up my domain. I do email marketing every month to over 1000 addresses and have been for years. As you will see, my record is pretty spotless.

The moral is, do it the right way from the start and you don’t have to worry about  it.

Filed Under: Marketing, wedding marketing Tagged With: ,

How to Get Your Emails Read

October 4, 2010 By Leave a Comment

If you do it well email marketing is is a cost effective and highly trackable marketing tool. I’ve been doing it for myself and my clients for years now. I average about a 60% open rate. My last one had an open rate of 88%. No not all of them are paid subscribers, in fact most of them are not. Your open rates can be that high if you put a little effort into it.

Here are some basic on how to get you emails opened and read.

The first thing is to make sure you are gathering and managing your leads in a way that is compliant with best practices. Use only leads you have collected yourself either in person or through your website.

Define the goal of your emails. It should be to forge a relationship with potential customers, not beat them over the head with a sales pitch in every email. Remember, email marketing is long term.

Subject line:

Avoid spammy words like Free or Your Won. A good email program will give you tools to check this before you send. Test it on your Gmail account. Gmail has a very pretty good spam filter. If your email doesn’t get through, something is wrong.

Personalize. Again, a good email platform gives you the tools to do this. I recommend that you have your lead generator set up to gather first and last names seperately so you can automate them to be personalized by first name only.

Body:

Talk directly to an individual. Rather than talking to a group make it feel as if you are talking directly to the reader. Again, personalization can help here.

Keep you emails short and succinct. Keep them simple in language using a conversational tone.

Keep them beautiful. Avoid a solid block of text. Use sub heads and breaks to increase readability. Avoid over use of exclamation points and ALL CAPS.

Add images if the make sense to the email.

State your desired call to action and make the follow thru easy by using links and buttons.

Send it at the right time.

Avoid late Friday and the weekend. It will get lost in the Monday morning avalanche of email.

Tuesdays and Wednesdays are great days to choose. Send morning through mid afternoon.

Frequency

Don’t overdo it. Unless you are writing something that needs daily attention like top news headlines or horoscopes no more than once a week is best. Most businesses can do once every 2 to 4 weeks, but bridal vendors have a much shorter window of opportunity.

Keep your readers.

If you have been reading Think lately than you are working on the reinvention and you may well have hit upon a plan to keep your customers for life. If so, shift them off of the bridal list to a more permanent one after their wedding date. Ask permission in an unsubscribe follow up email.You can alos put a note in your footer that will remind them that they can unsubscribe from your bridal list once their wedding is planned but keep receiving email about your other services.

If you have done a good job of engaginging you leads while brides, they will glady keep subscribing. this gives you more opportunities to convert from leads to customers.

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Full disclosure. I highly recommend A Weber, not just because I am an affilate but because I have been using it for the last 5 years. Their system is great, secure, reasonalbly priced and their tech support is top notch. Yep, there is a link in the sidebar if you want to know more.

Filed Under: Back to Basics, wedding marketing Tagged With: , , ,

Email and Lead Lists

August 27, 2010 By Leave a Comment

Since the topic of the day seems to be lead lists and email I thought I would gather together some of my best posts on the subject.

Happy reading. Oh and don’t forget, the people that are telling you how many names are on their lead list are trying to sell you something.  Just sayin’

The Truth About Lead Lists

Bridal Spam. Get Out of My Inbox!!

Filed Under: Marketing, wedding marketing Tagged With: ,

Why You Should Cherry Pick Your Lead List

July 7, 2010 By 3 Comments

We all know about lead lists. I’ll bet most of you do one of 3 things: Ignore it, Email blast it or send out a single post card. Suppose you did something outrageous instead?

It’s tough/expensive to do much more than the three things I just mentioned with a lead list of 500 to 2000. With direct mail, you have to put together a piece that will get noticed. How many postcards do you think brides get right after a bridal show?  What is going to make yours stand out enough to even get noticed? Add to this, it is proven that you need multiple mailings of standard direct mail before you have any chance of the lead acting on it. So now it isn’t just about sending out 500 to 2000 post cards; it is about multiplying that by at least 5 to get the response you need.  Now that is starting to get expensive.

Blast email can work with a couple of caveats. For one, you have to have permission to send them. Any reputable bulk mailer will require that you have gathered the leads yourself. That means that the list that you get from the shows or from bridal mags you advertise in are usually prohibited. What’s more, even if you found a way around the system, about half of those email addresses are bogus or are just junk mail dumping accounts. The second caveat is to get around the spam filters you really have to know what you are doing when you craft your email. That is particularly true in crafting your headline.  If you start getting caught by the spam filters you may well find your email address or isp blocked altogether.

Of course at least these two options have a bit more of a chance than doing nothing. Unfortunately, that is what most people do with the lead lists.

Now suppose you really analyzed those lists ,compared a few different lists, pared them down to only the really juicy prospects, and separated them by wedding date? You may end up with maybe 3 leads some months, maybe 7 to 10 for others. Now that is a doable number. You could pull out all the stops to get their attention then, couldn’t you?

So now what? That is where your unique creativity comes in to the equation. How outrageous do you want to get and how much are you willing to spend to get a great client?  I read something recently about a house cleaning service that would cherry pick their leads and send the ripe ones a DVD player with a DVD full of testimonials of happy clients shot in their clean homes. Now that is pretty dang outrageous, but if you get one out of 3 and stand to make a good bit of money on their weekly service, it was worth it. They did this once a month and grew their business by at least one or two new clients a month.

Now I am not saying you need to send brides DVD players but there are other outrageous things you could do. I spoke with a florist recently about sending out a small floral arrangement to 3 leads a week. She would just order a bit of extra flowers and deliver them herself. I can guarantee that she will be on that bride’s radar so much more that an email or postcard would have done. If you are a baker, how tough would it be to send out a few boxes of cupcakes a week?  Hey DJ’s, how about a CD of the 15 Best First Dance Songs?  Caterers, could you invite 4 couples to a tasting a month? Remember, you are only hitting the very best prospects, those prospects that your close ratio should be high on if you can get their attention.

I know a bridal salon that does appointment only champagne shopping on Sundays. There are signs posted and she tells the brides that come about it. How much more effective would it be if rather than waiting for brides that already had been in her shop to book an appointment she started sending out selective invitations to good prospects off of her lead lists. Maybe do a private fashion show once a week for a select number of girls.

Yes, all of this costs money; all marketing does. This kind of marketing is done on a small scale and is highly trackable. It is also so outside the box that you are bound to get noticed. Or you can keep doing what you have been doing and hope it works.

Filed Under: bridal shows, Outrageous Marketing, wedding marketing Tagged With: , , ,

Outrageous Marketing:More Ideas

June 30, 2010 By Leave a Comment

I have had several people contact me after buying Bridal Show Success or reading my posts on outrageous marketing that wanted more specific direction.

The whole point of outrageous marketing is to stand out from the crowd. Perhaps the best way to get your creative juices flowing is to catalog what the ‘crowd’ is doing.  Let’s start with bridal shows. In the book I suggest that you have one statement piece in your booth. Go to the next show you can find and see what everyone else is doing; then do something else. OK, that sounds pretty lame, but think about it. If you look at the photographer’s booth every one of them has beautiful wedding images hanging in their booth and after a while they all look alike. Hang something different.  I am not saying don’t put wedding images up, I’m just saying as your statement piece do something completely different.  If you do fine art photography, use one of those, blown up to an outrageous size.  If you have some award winners put them on one wall with the awards. In a sea of wedding photographs you booth will be the one they remember.

If all the sugar artists in your area fill their booth with 3 or 4 full size cakes make one larger than life dummy and than a wall of centerpiece size cakes that are all different. Get some vertical shelving (I used to pull the chrome shelves out of my shop) and fill the shelves with different thing that you do: cookies, small cakes, examples of sugar flowers and put something amazing on that top shelf that will be seen above the crowd.

Are all the florists doing a major statement piece arrangement in the center of their booth? Do a variety of smaller, more realistic ones. A client of mine gets a corner booth and takes down the outside wall. On that point she puts a 7 foot tall wrought iron tree hung with bouquets and boutonnières. Smaller arrangements and tabletop décor line the back wall, again going vertical with stands. They are grouped to go with the various bouquet styles. Trust me, that tree draws a lot of attention. Brides first see it as a whole and then start discovering all the parts that make it up. If a bride zeros in a particular bouquet, she can show her ideas for centerpieces that go with it.

If you are looking for follow up ideas, send in an accomplice to sign up. Seriously.  The only way to know what kind of follow up your competition is doing is to get on their list. Find an employee or friend or daughter of a friend and have them sign up for services in your category. Use an email address that can be forwarded to you. Once you know what they are doing, again, do something different. You should read the article on Cherry Picking Your Lead List for more ideas on outrageous follow up.

This is for the July issue of Think, so in a perfect world, you can go scan the late summer shows and start planning your booth for January. If not, you may have to see if you can dig up some images from last season.  If there are multiple shows in your area, go to the ones you aren’t doing. Sign up to their mailing list off their website, that may give you some indication of what they are thinking.

Some of you may think this all sound a little shady. If I were telling you to go steal their ideas I would agree with you; but I’m not. I’m telling you to do this kind of research so you can zig when they zag. Marketing is about making you stand out from the herd. If you are doing the exact same thing as everyone else you are just going to blend in. Be outrageous, be flamboyant, be uniquely, marvelously YOU!

Filed Under: bridal shows, wedding marketing Tagged With: , , ,

More on Email

May 7, 2010 By Leave a Comment

Yesterday I ranted a bit about an email blast I had received. As a result of some conversations that followed on Twitter, I thought it may be a good idea to give you some pointers on how to do it right.

It’s about permission.

  • Build your own lead list. Use a lead generator on your website.
  • Collect your own leads in your booth if you do a bridal show.
  • Don’t use the mass lists that come from bridal shows or media that you advertise with like magazines and websites.*
  • Use a qualified opt-in email service like A Weber.

It’s About Branding.

  • Your emails should match your other branding.
  • Include headers and graphics that look like your website.
  • Include links to your other products/profiles.
  • Unless you are HARO, graphics are good.**

It’s About Frequency and Content.

  • Sending 1 or 2 emails and expecting a response is outdated.
  • You have a brief window to influence a bride. Sending a weekly email blast isn’t far fetched.
  • Give your recipients a reason to read you email. Content is king; you can’t just send a sales pitch.

Track and Test.

  • Follow your stats. Check open rates and click thrus on every email.
  • Split test your list. Send half you list one subject line and the other half a different one to see which gets a better open rate. Likewise, send a different email to each half and see which one gets a better click thru rate.
  • Take the time to preview/test your emails before you hit send. Glaring typos, omissions and broken links make you look bad


Email marketing is but one of the tools in your social media marketing toolkit. The better you are at using it the better your overall marketing results will be.

*When a bride signs up at a bridal show, magazine or website she is giving permission to that entity, not to their vendors. I have argued this point till I am blue in the face with both the major email services and the bridal show producers. Not one of the top notch email services will let you use those lists, regardless of what the list providers tell you.

**HARO, Help A Reporter Out, is a thrice daily listing of writers and editors looking for sources for articles. It can be a great way to get you name in print. If you aren’t a subscriber to this list you should be. Fair warning though, you have to jump on those lead ASAP.

Filed Under: Blog, Marketing Tagged With: , , , ,

Are Your Emails Losing You Customers?

May 6, 2010 By Leave a Comment

I got another one in my inbox yesterday: a completely lame email blast that instead of making me want to buy,  made me lose respect for the sender. How sad is that?

What, you ask did they do that was so horrible? Dang near everything.

First, the greeting: Dear Valued Important Prospect

How funny is that? I felt neither important nor valued. I felt like they couldn’t even be bothered to use the personalization option on the email platform. OH WAIT! that is because they didn’t use a qualified opt-in bulk email program. They sent it from their regular email.

I wonder how valued and important the other 34 people they sent it to felt? How do I know they sent it to 34 other people? Because they didn’t even bother to use the BCC feature that would have hid all the other email addresses. Gee, now I know who is on their lead list. Come on, that is just standard email etiquette.

The email said that there were pictures attached. Whoops, they forgot to attach then, they came later in another email.

There is really no excuse for this. Good opt-in email programs like Emma and AWeber are not that expensive, cheaper than direct mail. Some, like Mail Chimp are even free for small accounts. They aren’t hard to use and they can be formatted to look lovely and carry your branding. What is the problem folks?

Everyone is working hard to build a strong lead list of “Valued Prospects” but calling them that to their face is not the best way to ingratiate yourself with them.

Email is really not that hard. Far harder is generating a nice fat lead list to send it to; but that’s another rant for another day.

Here is a some more reading on the topic of crafting your email blasts from the gurus at MediaPost  Publications.

Filed Under: Blog, Marketing, Rants & Raves, wedding marketing Tagged With: , ,
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