We’re looking for the very best examples of UK email marketing and to celebrate, we’re giving away a brand new Apple iPad to one lucky winner, as well as 10 Sign-Up.to goody bags! The competition is open to everyone, not just our customers, and we would love to see your creative work!

To be in with a chance of winning, post an image or link to the best, most creative email marketing campaign you’ve run in the last 12 months on our Facebook page. Don’t forget to tell us your name/company name and when the email was sent!

We’ll then select a shortlist of our 10 favourite campaigns and open up the competition to a public vote on Facebook. The winning entry will receive an Apple iPad and shortlisted campaigns will receive an amazing Sign-Up.to goody bag.

The competition dates are:

• 1st – 29th September: All entries welcome.
• 4th October: We’ll announce the 10 shortlisted entries.
• 11th October: The competition closes at midnight.
• 12th October: The winning email campaign is announced.

Don’t forget to check out our Facebook page for competition updates and we look forward to seeing your campaign!

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Google have today announced the launch of priority inbox, a new Gmail feature which automatically prioritises important emails using algorithms. Mashable have reported that inboxes will never be the same again.

During the many months of testing the feature internally, the search giant found that users spent 16% less time reading insignificant e-mail. If you do the math, that’s about a full week’s worth of time saved.

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What is Goal Tracking?

Goal Tracking is a powerful tool that provides much greater insight into your email marketing campaigns than the standard open and click-through rates.  By recording the true effectiveness of your campaigns in terms of completed goals you can gain insight that before was not possible.

A ‘Goal’ is simply a recordable action, for example the downloading of a White Paper, submission of a request for more information, a booking or a purchase from an ecommerce store or website.  Goal Tracking is the monitoring how many of these goals were met and, where applicable, the value of the completed goals.  Importantly, you can also identify easily which of your subscribers met your goals, which opens up all kinds of possibilities.

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We’re very pleased to announce that Sign-Up.to will be sponsoring a new a networking event in the Woking/Guildford area. The new event begins on the 1st September at 6pm, and then the first Wednesday of every month.

Web Wednesdays will be an informal networking drinks for people who earn their living online. It’s a place to discuss new technologies, online trends and the business of the web with like-minded people in a relaxed environment. With alcohol. That’s optional of course, but there are free drinks provided by us (until the tab runs out!).

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About our videos

As a web technology provider we face a constant battle to make it easy for our customers to use complex e-marketing techniques. Our interaction and development teams are always beavering away to keep our applications simple, intuitive and effective, and we have always taken pride in our total support. As an Account Manager I’m always looking for ways to ensure our customers can get the most from our service, so soon after joining the Sign-Up.to team last year I set to work on producing a set of video tutorials. The aim is to provide online visual direction to both explain common marketing practises, and to highlight some more advanced features.

Initially I tried a few different techniques and styles, gathering both colleague and customer feedback to ensure that the videos are both easy to watch and informative. Having gathered some momentum, earlier this year I successfully campaigned for a custom built recording studio in our recent office expansion. Our initial videos were recorded directly on a MacBook using the built in microphone; now things are rather different!

Technology & production

The studio was constructed with sound insulation to isolate me from the busy (and sometimes rather lively!) office environment. The videos themselves are recorded using Screenflow on a Mac Mini, and I use a 1080p monitor to allow me to record high quality video at a good resolution (1600×844). I use a filtered, unidirectional microphone to minimise background noise; my voice now sounds so much more natural than it used to when recorded using the MacBook’s built in microphone!

Before recording I produce a script and a hand-sketched story board for each video. I use Adobe Fireworks to prepare additional visuals and effects, and then it’s all about putting it together in Screenflow, starting with audio recordings and then adding the video. As I’m a bit of a perfectionist some stages, particularly the audio, require a few ‘takes’!

Results!

To have a look at our selection of videos please see our Youtube channel. Over the last year I’ve realised how much I enjoy making videos, and love hearing feedback from our customers as a result. I hope you enjoy our videos, and if you have feedback or would like to see a new Sign-Up.to video please let us know in the comments box below – we’d love to hear from you!

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Last week Facebook announced that they will be making some important changes to the layout of Facebook pages as well as removing some older features including boxes. These changes will begin on the week of August 23rd.

What does this mean? Well, the boxes functionality will be taken away (these normally sit to the left of any Facebook page) so any applications developed for the left of your page will no longer be tehre. As well as this the width of tabs will reduce down to 520 pixels.

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Over the past week we’ve seen some great Twitter stories which we thought we’d share.

On Friday Twitter launched a “suggestions” page which suggests people you may be interested in following. We’re told that the suggestions are based on several factors, including people you follow and people they follow. We’ve tried this ourselves and were quite impressed by the new feature. The suggestions page is slowly being rolled out and you’ll see it in the find people section of your account.

Last week we heard about the death of Ivy Bean, the oldest tweeter. At 104 Ivy Bean had become a Twitter favourite, with over 62,000 followers including Stephen Fry and Gordon Brown. Ivy even met the former Prime Minister and tweeted that he was “really very nice”. Although it’s sad that she has now passed away, it really promotes how Twitter can be for people of all ages. Ivy Bean was born in 1905, seven years before the national telephone launched, yet she was able to use and enjoy social media.

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Hello. Today I’m going to cover the most common email marketing mistakes and how you can avoid them.

Not having permission
We start with the most important point, not having permission. Sign-Up.to is built on the foundation of Permission Marketing. This means a subscriber must have opted-in to receive information from you, because they are interested in the products or services you offer.

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We’ve just released the new 2010 version of our Email Marketing Benchmark Report

Based on an analysis of more than 200 million emails (yep, that’s a lot of number crunching we had to do!) sent through Sign-Up.to during the first 6 months of 2010 (where the sender declared their industry sector), the report compares open, click, unsubscribe and engagement rates for more than 23 industries.

Did you know we have a Facebook page? We like to use Facebook to talk to our customers in a casual and friendly way. It’s also the place to see photos of our lovely Sign-Up.to team!

We all really love our Facebook page and often add photos of the latest goings on, for example any birthdays (we have lots in January!), exhibitions and our recent office expansion. In May 2010 we expanded and doubled the size of our office, updating our Facebook fans on a regular basis.

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