In this blog I’ll be focussing on helping you to grow the number of subscribers you have in your Sign-Up.to account. This blog contains helpful advice, hints and tips on how to go about this using Facebook, Twitter and other forms of advertisement to grow your subscriber base.

Buy advertising space – not lists

Instead of buying lists of email addresses, buy advertising on either Google or Facebook to gain more traffic to your website. Advertising on Facebook offers powerful targeting tools, allowing you to ensure your advert is shown to those Facebook users who would find it most relevant and interesting. If you would like to know more about this, please see my earlier blog entitled “How to use Facebook adverts“.

Give it away

Give something away to entice more subscribers to opt-in to your newsletter. This could be a new single from your band, or writing a guide on something that is relevant to your business like a guide or an ebook. As an example I recently found a website that creates a free website template each month exclusively for their newsletter subscribers. This not only would increase their newsletter subscriptions but each month they send their newsletter out with a screen-shot of their new template and where you can download it from – meaning the subscribers would be more inclined to click the link, in turn increasing their open and click through rates – just what the doctor ordered!

Do you tweet?

Use Twitter to update your followers with either updates of your business or special offers that you are currently running. If you haven’t used Twitter yet fear not, we have an excellent blog on the question that is on your lips “What is Twitter for”.

The next step would be to make your page sparkle, we wrote another blog on “Creating a consistent brand image across Facebook, Twitter and Youtube”. This has some great tips when keeping the brand consistent when designing these pages.

Now you can use TweetDeck to make it simple to contact your followers as you can post to Twitter and Facebook at the same time, making this easier to manage these accounts. Another blog worth reading is “How to grow your social media presence“, with tips on how you can grow your Facebook and Twitter followers.

The running man

Catch your subscribers running by creating an auto-responder that they receive the moment they confirm their subscription for your newsletter. This can include a guide, hints and tips, or an offer a voucher for your site.

This way you don’t drop the ball when handling a new subscriber. If someone signs up at 1am they automatically will get the auto-responder immediately. This is also useful as some people could lose interest very quickly or even forget about your company if you don’t stay on the ball!

If you are unsure on how to set this up please see our video guide on how to set up an autoresponder.

Show them what they’re missing

On your website – next to your sign-up form – place a link to previous versions of your newsletter to show the user what they’re signing-up.to! You should place copies of your newsletters onto your webspace so you can refer to more than just one newsletter to re-assure them to opt-in for future newsletters. More companies are doing this now as potential subscribers could become wary of what they will receive and how often, so take this step to ensure they sign-up to your newsletter.

I hope this blog has been helpful for you, please use the comments box below if you have any questions.

In this guide I will talk you through how to add your Sign-Up.to form to your Facebook fan page. You can do this by creating a tab on your page.

This guide has been broken down into two sections:

1. Creating a data capture form & copying the Facebook code
2. Adding the tab to your Facebook page

Before we continue you will need to make sure you have the following accounts created:

• Facebook fan page – You can sign up for free: http://www.facebook.com/pages/
• A Sign-Up.to account – You can open a free demo account here: http://www.signup-onlinemarketing.co.uk/getstarted/

1. Creating the data capture form in Sign-Up.to

The first step of adding a form to Facebook is to create a data capture form within your Sign-Up.to account. A data capture form is a great way of collecting subscriber information and you can  learn more about this from our help documentation.

After the form has been created you simply need to copy the code from the ‘Get form links’ page.

1. Go to Collect
2. Click the arrow to the left of the list linked to your form to expand the options
3. Click ‘Edit’ and then ‘Get form links’ from the options that appear

2. Adding the tab or box to your Facebook fan page

Now you’ve edited the code you’ll need to add a tab to your Facebook page.

The following steps will explain how to add the tab to your page.

1. Search on Facebook for “Static FBML” then click “View the application”



2. On the application page click “Add to my page” and a pop up box will appear, so here select the page you wish to add this to.



3. Go to your Facebook fan page. Once you get to the page click on “Edit Page” then scroll down until you see “FBML – FBML”.





4. Next click on “Application Settings”. When the application settings box appears make sure the settings are shown as below and that you have added this as a tab but removed the option to make this a box.





5. Once you have confirmed this application is added as a tab, then click on edit under this application.



6. Here you can give the box a title and paste your form code that we copied earlier. Once you’ve pasted that in click ”Save Changes”.

Now you can return to your fan page and test the form. Once you submit the form it will open in a new window with the information passed to the form. If there are any errors such as an invalid email address – these will be displayed on this page for the user to amend.

Once you’ve got this working and mastered the steps you can branch out and modify the HTML form to give yourself a custom looking form like we’ve done on our Facebook page.

I hope this has been helpful. If you have any questions or feedback please leave a comment in the section below.

Facebook pages can now target posts by country, city or language.  This gives you far more control over who sees your updates and allowing you to maintain a worldwide presence from a single page.

To use this new feature enter your update and then click the drop down box next to the share button. Select customise to bring up the “choose your audience” screen.

On the “choose your audience” screen you can enter the audience you wish to target, be that a single city where you are running a special offer, or a specific language group you wish to send a translated message to.

We have already used this feature with one of our clients, an international recording artist but there may be other, more local uses, or even just for fun as in the example below.

One drawback is that you cannot exclude one particular location easily but you can include multiple locations, although this could become a lengthy process.

The advantage of being able to target in this way is that your messages remain relevant regardless of the size of your fan base. This is one of the key benefits of permission marketing and makes Facebook much more useful as a platform.

Let us know how you have used this new feature in the comments, or catch us on Facebook.

I love stats: my inner nerd lights up with anticipation at the mere mention of statistics, reports, and analysis. Even if you’re not a professional geek like myself, you should still pay attention to the figures: they can tell you everything (and, occasionally, nothing). Want some examples? Here you go:

• Europe Grew by 10 Million New Facebook Users Last Month – figures on the top 20 gainers in social media
• Email software popularity: 5 lessons for your list – useful analysis of email client usage from Mark Brownlow
• Surprising Email Study – an overview of a recent, interesting, report by smartFOCUS
• Cyber Monday/Black Friday Forecast for 2009 – predictions based on stats from previous years
• New Research Shows Email Marketing Still Delivers Impressive ROI – stats to back up what you should already know
• SocNets, Email at Top of 2010 Media-Buying List – a review of a commercial report available from MediaPost

Amusingly this week, news about the sale of SORBS for “a cool half mil” broke via jedsmith.org (with a later followup of the effect) after Michelle Sullivan foolishly revealed details over IRC (apparently in front of 25 other people, d’oh). SORBS is not known as being the most, ah, user-friendly blacklist around (the word “reviled” has been used), but it’s hard to doubt its reach – something which irate sysadmins have often complained about after finding it difficult to get a legitimate netblock removed from the list. GFI have now issued an oft-quoted official statement regarding the matter, but seem to have been caught slightly off-guard, as there’s still no mention of it on their main site.

Special mention this week to Chris Wheeler, whose brother passed away unexpectedly last week. Prompted by this awful event, he has decided to offer up his own time to try and give something back to the world by doing what he feels he does best: help improve people’s email deliverability. It might seem a little strange, but it’s a gesture that I’m sure is heartfelt, and from the content of the post seems as genuine as they come. You have our sincere condolences, Chris.

We’re pleased to announce the launch of our brand new Share section, which now appears between ‘Send’ and ‘Analyse’ in your account.

This new tool allows you to share your message through social media channels like Twitter, so that you can get people talking about you, and measure the results.

We will be adding new features and integrations with services like Facebook over the coming months, but to get you started, check out your Twitter tracking results which are available now. These allow you to measure and compare your tweeted campaign reach and see just how far your message has spread each and every time it was shared. Full results are available for campaigns sent after 7th October.

To learn more about Twitter please see our blog we published when we first launched our Twitter tools back in March this year. This blog will give you lots of useful information about Twitter and the benefits you’ll find from using it when sending your email campaigns.

We hope you enjoy the new feature and if you have any questions about social media please contact us.

A bumper roundup this week due to the last two Fridays having been taken up with development work for our shiny new Analyse section with all its lovely new charts and tables. Crunch time is finally over however, so please expect normal service to resume – for now.

So, what have people been talking about over the last couple of weeks? One particularly well covered topic has been social media, particularly with regards to how people use it for sharing content:

• Reportlet: FTAF vs. SWYN – some facts and figures from RetailEmailBlog.com
• Yahoo Points the Way to the ‘Social Inbox’ – Y!’s attempts at integration
• You know social media is pervasive when … – “Trapped girl calls for help on Facebook” (!)
• Inspire Interaction with Promo Emails – “4 Tactics to Boost Clicks, Encourage Social Sharing”
• Social Media Integration Survey – interesting results, but no real surprises
• Social Sharing: Who Cares?! – why should people want to share your content?
• Email Share-to-Social: Not Just About The Links – sensible advice from MediaPost’s Loren McDonald

Also of note is our very own Gareth Langston‘s ongoing series of posts on how to leverage social media:

• Join the Twitter Conversation
• The Facebook Platform Revisited
• Create a consistent brand image across Facebook, Twitter and YouTube
• Adding bespoke content to Facebook Pages
• Social Media Insights

The above links are only a few highlights from the series – and Gareth’s got plenty more to say, so stay tuned for more insights.

Another perennial talking point that’s been discussed recently has been the maintenance, management, and proper use of your email lists:

• 20 Ways to Build Your Email List – sensible, and practical, recommendations
• How to Build a Good Email Newsletter List – the basics (and most important!)
• Email Marketing Minute: Hand Written Email Optin – short video with advice for retailers
• Opt-In, Opt-Out: Confusion Reigns – clarification and edification
• How to Overcome Email List Fatigue – keeping your lists fresh
• The (Hopefully) Final Word on Purchased Lists – in a nutshell: don’t buy lists

Not news, but still worth covering: testing remains one of the most powerful and, sadly, underused methods of optimising the effectiveness of your email campaigns. Thankfully however, it’s not being ignored by the email marketing sites out there, with plenty continuing to provide sage advice on the subject (including one of my favourite sites, Anne Holland’s Which Test Won?).

For our now-regular mention of activities in America, a quick note to say that in fine litigious tradition RPost have sued Goodmail for patent infringment. Interestingly, I came across a great collective noun proposed the other day: a fleece of lawyers – perfect.

Lastly, this week’s special mention goes once again to Mark Brownlow for the third addition to his series: Famous inboxes #3: Sauron, offering some rare proof that humour can exist alongside useful and insightful information.

Hello! This is the first in a series of posts where we take a short look at what the email marketing industry has been talking about in the recent past.

Big news this week with Google’s announcement of two quite major changes to their Gmail service: auto-loaded images for certain senders, and the new one-click unsubscribe feature. This has huge impacts on the email marketing industry, so pretty much every blog out there has had something to say about it.

Elsewhere, social networking has remained in the email marketing spotlight:

• Twitter bring SMS back online for O2 customers
• Social Media Events – How things have changed!
• Facebook for All Ages
• Using LinkedIn for Lead Generation: 6 Lessons

That’s it for now, but check back soon for another roundup of what people have been posting about in the email marketing blogosphere.

In March I wrote my first blog for Sign-Up.to about some changes Facebook had made to business pages. Three months on and it seems these changes have been a great success.

The new pages have proved to be incredibly popular with users. Updates appearing in peoples feeds receive far more interactions than discussion boards on the old pages ever did. It is worth noting at this point that users can choose to hide updates from individual pages from appearing in their feed. This shouldn’t detract from the value of getting your message out to all of those who wish to see them, and even if someone hides your updates, their friends will still see that they have become a fan, and a link to your page will still appear on their profile.

The Facebook feed is now “live” in that it will alert users to new content without them refreshing the page. This is a minor change but one that has been widely requested by members and will help get your content seen. When your updates appear in a fan’s feed they can interact with it, either by leaving a comment or saying that they “like” the update and this will then show up on their profile page.

Facebook can actually reach more ‘Fans’ than personal brand websites in some cases. For example, Roger Federer has 1.1m fans on Facebook with an average of 20,000 interactions per update while his personal website only averages 80,000 visits per month. This is unsurprising given that over 100m users log onto facebook worldwide each day and it is so easy to stumble upon brand content through the friend feed or internal search.

To succeed on Facebook is all about interacting with fans. As with Twitter, using the service purely as a broadcast medium is likely to do more harm than good to your reputation but by engaging with fans you will increase your following and gain a good reputation. A recent example of this is Vin Diesel who started to replace his one line, broadcast messages with paragraphs of his personal thoughts and his staged, on set photos with personal photos of holidays and nights out. This has seen his fan base soar to 3.5m fans with thousands of interactions per update.

One of the barriers that Vin Diesel has overcome is the inability to respond to fans comments on their own walls. Due to the way pages are managed any response that you were to post would be from your personal profile unless it is posted into the page feed.

Vin Diesel quotes and responds to his fans from his feed, often going into depth with his response. By doing this he engages his fans in two ways: firstly he is seen to be spending time and effort on a response to an individual and secondly, he is writing down his true feelings on a subject and encouraging interactions by giving the fans something more to reply to than a simple status of what he is doing at that particular moment.

As a page administrator, you can now post comments onto anything posted to your page’s wall. If you feel something is of interest to the rest of your fans, it might be worth quoting them in your update.

If you would like to know more about engaging your ‘fans’ with Facebook Pages get in touch via the Sign-Up Technologies Facebook Page.

Another article from Mashable, but it is one which highlights the importance of having a brand presence on these social networks.

Facebook and Twitter have each seen a huge number of unique visitors to their services over the last month, showing a month by month increase which is a trend which seems set to continue. The people that use these services are talking to each other on a daily basis. There is a conversation going on and if you are not part of it you are missing out on a huge amount of exposure.

You can already alert people to your newsletters over Twitter using Sign-Up.to but what about Facebook?

An example of Email / Social networking crossover I noticed recently was this campaign by Neutrogena. They have sent out an email campaign which alerts users to the existence of the Neutrogena Facebook Fan Page, more importantly, it gives an incentive for the email recipient to become a fan by offering a 10% discount.

This seems to be working for Neutrogena who now have 1,151 fans receiving updates directly to their Facebook feed. Each time one of these fans interacts with the page, their friends will see this in their feed, giving further exposure to the brand.

Of course, there are other ways to entice your mailing list members into becoming fans on Facebook. You could offer Q-jump passes to all Facebook Fans, money off their food bill, a free bottle of wine with a meal or access to a VIP area.  Anything you can think of that can be redeemed with a voucher can be offered to your Facebook Fans.

If you want to get involved with Social Networks, contact us for a bespoke solution.

Hello!

Having recently joined Sign-Up.to as “Media Coordinator” one of the areas I will be looking at is how we can use social networks as a marketing tool and more importantly how we can synchronise content across the various platforms.

The need to promote across these platforms is instantly apparent: nearly 80% of UK web users are signed up to a social network and Facebook is one of the most widely used.

As Neil mentioned last week Facebook have made a change to the way fan pages are handled. This was part of a wider change to the Facebook platform and has many benefits, two of which Neil touched on in his post. Firstly the ability to create cohesion between Facebook and other platforms makes my job a lot easier, by linking the page status to Twitter it means that they can both be updated at the same time and thanks to the recent changes to Facebook this can now be done from a desktop application.

The second benefit is that these status updates and in fact, anything that happens on the page, is instantly added into the live feed on all of the fans’ home pages and they are free to comment on or “like” any update. This then adds the item to their profile which can be seen by their friends, therefore pushing the content to a wider audience.

Another way we can make the most of this technology is to link an RSS feed to the Notes section on the page. This will pull in external content, for example from a WordPress blog, and create a feed item for each update, bringing the blog to a wider audience and keeping the brand feed active.

As well as allowing external applications to access the API to post updates Facebook has thrown open the doors to Google and other search engines to allow indexing of status updates and other page content. This is at the users discretion and by default they are hidden but by opting in to this change the content of the page feed will be indexed by Google and will appear in search results.

This is a much needed change which will undoubtedly have a positive impact on page views but the best way to increase the Facebook fan base is to interact with the existing fans. There are several ways to do this, some examples would be tagging audience members in photos and videos after a gig or show, inviting fans to comment on status updates  through the use of open ended questions and using events as a call to action for product launches or asset blasts. These are all great ways of involving your fans and keeping your feed fresh, as well as pushing your content into the friends of friends feeds as I mentioned earlier.

There are other viral marketing opportunities available through Facebook. Any application that is created and added to the page can be used by the fans of this page on their own profiles. By creating an app that pulls in HTML content from an external source it is possible to create a viral advert which would sit on fan’s profiles and can be changed to reflect the latest promotions.

Next time I will talk more about Facebook and the options available for customising pages in order to turn page views into new fans. Speaking of which, did you know that Sign-Up.to are on Facebook? Check out our page!

Thanks,

> Gareth.