Buying an email list: A case study
In the last 13+ years of doing this, the conversation about whether to buy an email list, or how to use one that’s already been bought, comes up fairly often.
Here are some things to think about, and two little case studies that illustrate how it works in practice.
Read More
Mailchimp: 8 tips to improving your return on investment
Unless you’re on a free Mailchimp account, every single contact in your Mailchimp account has an associated cost. So that means it needs to earn its keep for you. What is YOUR Mailchimp account costing per contact? Is it generating more revenue than that? Are you monitoring it? Are you tapping into its potential? And could that ROI be improved? Almost certainly.
Here are my 8 top tips to upping yours.
Read More
Mailchimp authentication help / Google / Yahoo / Dmarc / DKIM and all that jazz
A plain English guide to what Mailchimp authentication and dmarc means when it comes to the new rules from Gmail and Yahoo, if it affects you, and if so, what you need to do.
Read More
Futureproof your Mailchimp
If I could have a pound for every time I’ve started working with an organisation’s Mailchimp and they’ve said:
“I wish we’d started collecting that data sooner”…; OR
“Someone else used to look after our Mailchimp but they’ve left and we don’t understand what’s going on.”
Here’s how to future proof your Mailchimp. Trust me, you’ll be really glad you did this.
Read More
How to back up Mailchimp
What would happen if your Mailchimp account got hacked tomorrow? Or you inadvertently breached a rule and your account was suspended (hopefully temporarily)? Or someone working on your account did something they shouldn't have? Or you deleted a box in your sign-up form and lost all the individual data sitting behind it?
Probably a disaster? Here’s how to protect your data just in case…
Read More
Tip 1 to help your Mailchimp emails stay out of spam folders
Spam folders an be a pain in the bum if you send "bulk emails” or a newsletter using a tool like Mailchimp. It’s almost inevitable that some of your emails will end up in junk folders, but there are lots of things you can do to minimise the risk. Here’s tip 1
Read More
Mailchimp open rates - what's normal and how to make it even better
It doesn’t matter how fabulous your email marketing and newsletters are if no one ever opens them. So what’s normal? Where do you stand in that range? How do you improve it? And why it’s about more than open rates.
Read More
Mailchimp Tip: Have you done this lately?
I had an enquiry recently for help with Mailchimp. Early on in our conversation, the man (let's call him Bob) said that their website sign-up was all working fine but they needed help with templates and automations.
However, I like to try things out for myself and make sure anyway so I subscribed to their mailing list via their website.
When I signed up I very quickly discovered something that he had completely missed because he hadn't recently gone through the front end sign-up process "wearing the eyes" of a website visitor. And that error was a big one.
Once your website is up and running and you're busy working in your business, it's very easy to move on and assume those processes are still doing their job. However sometimes they break, the app/plugin integration gets glitchy or things simply get outdated. When was the last time you checked yours? It’s crucial you do this from time to time. Here’s how…
Read More
7 things every email newsletter should include
In the course of helping businesses with Mailchimp and email marketing and what pops into my inbox, I see a LOT of scope for improvement when it comes to e-newsletters.
Here’s my guide to 7 things that every email newsletter should contain regardless of your business type or customer base.
Read More
Should you collect email addresses of customers and prospects?
I speak to a lot of business owners who don’t collect email addresses because they don’t plan to do email marketing.
However, that it NOT a reason not to collect email addresses. Even if you don’t plan on doing anything with them for the foreesable future, here’s why every single business out there should be collecting them…
Read More