Our TameBay eBay account hasn’t been used for buying for a couple of years but eBay haven’t given up on us – they’ve just sent us a 10% off voucher for anything between a £40 and £100 purchase on eBay.

Rather annoyingly I just purchased a USB 1 Terabyte Hard Drive for £64.99 from the weekly deals yesterday – if the voucher had been 12 hours earlier TameBay could have saved me £6.50 (grrr ).

It is good to know that eBay are tapping up dormant accounts to get them spending though. The UK is one of the most highly penetrated eBay markets in the world and there are only so many new buyers that they can bring to the site. Getting dormant buyers returning to the site and spending again is almost more important (and probably cheaper!) than recruiting a brand new buyer.

Did anyone else get a voucher? If so what did you spend yours on?

All you have to do to enter is “Like” the Linnworks Facebook page and add a comment telling them why you’d like to win the prize.

If you’re looking at expanding after Christmas and want multichannel management software to help grow your business then winning this prize would be a fantastic start to the New Year.

Full details of the Christmas contest are on the Linn Systems website.

Jonny’s winning entry in our email marketing competition was selected by iContact’s judges for its good use of a free and customizable email design template, uncluttered use of text and messaging that established the recipient as a valued customer and reconfirmed Home Discount Store’s value proposition – huge savings on home and garden products.

We’d like to congratulate Jonny on his winning entry. His use of a pre-designed template shows that even small businesses with limited design resources can produce professional looking email campaigns that yield fantastic results.
John Hayes, iContact UK

Jonny was also kind enough to share the initial results from his email marketing campaign with us. With an open rate of 16.5% and a click through rate of 2.0% his first campaign was not too far off industry averages for the retail sector and could easily be improved with a little tweaking to the subject line and additional focus on segmenting his list and targeting with appropriate offers.

Andrew Penchuck, iContact’s marketing guru told us “We picked Discount Home Store as the winner because the results from their first campaign were so encouraging. With a little development, Discount Home Store could easily be exceeding industry averages in the online retail sector whilst significantly boosting their brand awareness and driving additional revenues. This could be improved further with the addition of iContact’s new social media tools helping spread the message to potentially much wider audience.”

Ten Golden Rules for Email Marketing

Email marketing is a long-term, low cost investment and should constantly be assessed and developed to ensure greater penetration and return on investment.

Together with iContact competition judges we have compiled a 10 point checklist to help you maximise the return from your email marketing campaigns:

Sender Info
1. Is the “from” name the business name or a person the recipient would recognize?

Pre-header
2. Is there a call-to-action pre-header?

Subject Line
3. Is it compelling?
4. Is there a sense of urgency?

Message Body
5. Is there a call-to-action?
6. Is there a link to landing page?
7. Is there a clear offer?
8. Is there incentive?
9. Is there a sense of urgency in the call-to-action?

Testing
10. What is being tested? – Subject line, length of copy, use of images and how will you use these test results in future campaigns.

To snag a copy you’ll have to sign up to The Wholesale Forums, but it’s free and as a bonus you’ll get access to a whole load of insider knowledge on the best and most reliable wholesale suppliers around. Then just add a comment to the thread on The Wholesale Forums telling them why you’d like a copy and which part of your business you’d like to simply. Free membership and maybe if you’re lucky a free copy of TameBay’s guide – can’t be bad!

If you’ve already got a copy of the guide then it’s still worth signing up to The Wholesale Forums as a great source of supplier information, and look out in January for the updated and expanded 2012 edition of the guide.

Terapeak allows you to determine the value of your products before you even buy them. Giving access to completed listings you can research what price similar items have actually sold for to ensure when you purchase it’s at a price you know will sell at a profit. You can also research your competitors to find out what’s working for them and what’s not.

The promotional pricing is £159.60 giving access to Terapeak data for eBay UK, or Terapeak International for £259.60 giving access to International eBay data from the US, Canada, Australia, Germany, France, UK, Italy and eBay.com Motors Parts & Accessories.

Via eBay SellerSphere

John Hayes from iContact reminded us that many online sellers already use Twitter and Facebook to drive traffic to their websites, but there is often very little strategy behind this approach. It is also time consuming and can be disruptive as sellers get absorbed into their social life and distracted from their work life.

iContact now allows users to be more organised in the planning and execution of your social media campaigns, ensuring tweets and posts are lined up with promotions, events and other campaigns without the need to be glued to your laptop or mobile device.

Scheduling your tweets and Facebook posts will be particularly useful to sellers hoping to attract buyers in different time zones or simply people who choose to burn the midnight oil at more unsociable hours.
Of course you don’t want to automate all of your tweets – you’ll still want to proactively respond to your followers and post as hoc tweets as you probably already do. Marketing tweets need to be interspersed with more casual posts.

An equally important part of iContact’s new social media tools is the ability to track the value of your marketing efforts and, perhaps for the first time, truly understand the reach of your social campaigns.
iContact’s Social Tools are currently rolling out (over the next few days) to all existing clients and are available now to all new registrations.

Don’t forget TameBay are running a competition with iContact, and if you’ve not entered there are still a few days left to be in with a chance of winning an iPad. All you need do is sign up for a free 30 day iContact account and send your first email! Full details on TameBay.

Unless you work for Royal Mail Group Ltd (in which case sorry you can’t enter) then you’ve a chance of winning and all you need to do is fill out the entry form telling ParcelForce a little about your business and how many parcels you send a day. You don’t even need to currently use ParcelForce to be eligible to enter.

The draw will take place on 31st October 2011, just in time for the Arthur Christmas film premier on 6th November 2011. You’ll also need to take the Lapland holiday by the 14th December 2011 if you’re the winner.

There will also be a second prize draw running from 1st to 30th November 2011 with prizes of 5 x £100 Toysrus vouchers, 10 x £50 One4all gift cards and 1 x Private Screening of the film Arthur Christmas.

photo credit: Rego – d4u.hu

If you have not already entered our win an iPad competition time is getting short. The closing date for entries is November 5th – so before you think about letting any fireworks off, light marketing’s equivalent of the blue touch paper and open an account with iContact today.

Full details of the completion can be found here.

Email’s Vital Statistics

One of the things I love about email marketing (and online marketing in general) is the speed of reporting. Literally, within minutes of sending a campaign you are able to see if it has been a success or not.

iContact provides most of the reporting tools a small business will need. For larger senders the company recently rolled out an integration to Google Analytics.

On the reporting dashboard you will see, updated in real time, reports on the number of opens, the number of clicks, the number of bounces (i.e. the number of emails that were not delivered) and the number of spam complaints (with an opt-in list this should be VERY low).

The dashboard also displays how your campaign has fared via the social networks (iContact provides a number of tools to socialize you email content free of charge).

It is then possible to drill down into the stats and see exactly who has opened campaigns, how many times they have opened them and perhaps more importantly who has clicked on what links. This data is incredibly important if you want to segment your lists or perhaps want to arm a sales team with some actionable insight.

For a great example of how one iContact client used this data to get to know his clients a little better check out What Kind of Fisherman Are You?

So what makes for a successful email marketing campaign?

A 20% open rate is good. A 30% open rate is even better. But if your campaigns are properly targeted and carefully crafted an open rate in excess of 50% is very achievable. The real beauty of email is the cost. For small business (with lists of 500 or below) the cost of managing your campaigns can be free and therefore the only investment required is the time spent to build your campaigns. At this price the worst that can happen is that your business actually sells more.

Give it a try.

We’ll be announcing the winning entry TameBay on November 20th, 2011.

Good luck.

Amazon Webstore ecommerce sites are an all-in-one multichannel eCommerce platform, built on proven technology which powers over a billion secure transactions around the world each year. It gives you all the tools you need to successfully set up and run all aspects of your online business, including checkout processing and delivery. To get your business online with Webstore, all you really need is a computer and an internet connection. Start small, and grow fast.

If you take an Amazon Webstore in conjunction with Selling on Amazon and FBA (Fulfilment by Amazon) then you can simply have your stock shipped to Amazon, sell on all Amazon EU sites and Amazon will do all the work. All you need to do is notify Amazon of any orders sold on eBay or off-line and they’ll pick, pack and fulfil those orders for you too.

This is also an ideal solution for retailers in the US who want to get a foothold in the UK and European marketplace. Ship your stock to Amazon in the UK and they will handle all warehousing and logistics on your behalf. Even if you are based in Europe Amazon’s solutions can assist you exporting across the whole of the EU increasing your cross border trade.

Amazon have three offers running at the moment to get you up and started including a free Amazon Webstore for up to two years:

Amazon Webstore Offers

1) Free Amazon Webstore for 1 month
Sign up for Amazon Webstore and get a free 1 month trial worth £16.99. Service Referral Fees for items sold via your Webstore are 4.5%.

2) Free Amazon Webstore for 2 years with Selling on Amazon
Sign up for Amazon Webstore plus Selling on Amazon and get your Webstore free for 2 years (normally £9.99/month), plus your £25.00 Selling on Amazon fee free for three months plus reduced fees for items sold on your Webstore of just 3.5%.

3) Free Amazon Webstore for 2 years with Selling on Amazon and FBA
This is Amazon’s best value deal. Get your Webstore free for 2 years (normally £6.99/month), plus your £25.00 Selling on Amazon fee free for three months, plus reduced fees for items sold on your Webstore of just 3.2%.

These offers are valid until 21st December 2011.

If you have already followed steps one and two you should already have signed up to your free trail account and uploaded you list. Now it’s time to build your campaign and hit send.

Don’t worry if you have not registered to enter yet – there is still plenty of time. Full details of the competition have already been published on TameBay.

Building a winning email campaign

iContact provide a number of tools to help you build your first email marketing campaign including MessageBuilder which allows you to customise iContact’s library of email marketing templates with easy to use drag and drop tools. It is also possible to design your own creative using MessageCoder which allows you to use your own HTML in a fully featured WYSIWYG editor.

As well as HTML emails you should also give thought to how you want to display your campaign in plain text. This is particularly important for people accessing their emails through mobile devices and some online email browsers.

5 Tips to build a successful first campaign

Tip #1 – Be relevant
A monthly email to your entire list is not a strategy – it’s an afterthought. You need to build a strategy based on relevancy to your target market and the quality of your message. If you’ve got nothing to say, don’t say it.

Tip #2 – Less is more
Select just one offer per email and segment your list accordingly. If you have a range of complementary products, choose a hero product to focus on and add simple links to promote the additional items. Think of your email like a menu in a restaurant – too many dishes to choose from and nothing looks appetizing.

Tip #3 – Headline news (subject lines)
Your subject line should scream benefits. Think of it in the same way a newspaper editor writes a headline. It should tell the full story and entice the subscriber to read more. Give your subject line as much thought as your body text. Your subject line is your first line of defence between your subscribers and the delete button.

Tip #4 – Take time for text
Make good use of real text (not graphics) at the top of your email. A graphic-heavy email will appear blank until the subscriber has selected to download the graphics. Real text in the message will remain visible even in HTML emails and entice subscribers to open the complete email.

Tip #5 – Check twice, send once
Wherever possible get a colleague or friend to look over your text, check links, spelling etc. Simple mistakes can damage your reputation and encourage unsubscribes, spam complaints and may prevent people from opening future email campaigns.

For more great tips check out A Crash Course in Email Marketing on the iContact Blog.