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LAUREN KASHUK: Welcome to the Google Small Business Community , I'm Lauren Shuck, and today, we are discussing the power of email marketing , Today, we have Mail Chimp, and we have Allyson Van Hoyden who is a Brand Manager at Mail Chimp , Welcome, Allyson , ALLYSON VAN HOUTEN: Thank you , Thanks for having me , LAUREN KASHUK: So why don't you tell us a little bit about what you do at Mail Chimp , ALLYSON VAN HOUTEN: Yeah, so I work in the marketing department , I work a lot with our retail and e-commerce users developing marketing tools, talking to them about how their businesses work, and seeing them at events , I also work with our partners like Google and Twitter and Facebook to develop great new products and content for our business users , LAUREN KASHUK: All right, so before we dive into the world of email marketing, we have an initiation question that we ask everyone who is in the Community , Are you ready? ALLYSON VAN HOUTEN: Yep , LAUREN KASHUK: The question is if you could have a Hangout with anyone living or dead, who would it be and why? ALLYSON VAN HOUTEN: It would probably be my favorite fantasy author , His name is Neil Gaiman , He has a wonderful speaking voice and tells really inventive stories , So I'd love just to have him just sit and talk to me for a while , LAUREN KASHUK: So if you were hanging out with Neil, what's the most embarrassing thing that you would ask him? ALLYSON VAN HOUTEN: Oh, what his guilty pleasure is , LAUREN KASHUK: Io, what his guilty-- Neil, what is your guilty pleasure? With that, let's shift gears and talk a little bit about email marketing , ALLYSON VAN HOUTEN: Great , LAUREN KASHUK: So to start out, we have [? Aver ?] from the Community and he wants to know what a good first step is to start , ALLYSON VAN HOUTEN: So the very first thing that you're going to want to do is to start collecting people, your subscribers , You can do that a lot of different ways, whether it's at a retail location, whether it's via your social media channels , But start building that list because email marketing is a permission-based marketing form, and so you have to have people to send the message to, and they have to want to receive it from you , And the second thing is just to think about the content that you're going to want to be sending to folks , What's new in your business? What new products do you have? Are you having events? Just think about general things that you're doing, and as people sign up, know that they want to hear that , LAUREN KASHUK: So once you're thinking about kind of maybe what you could talk about, why should you even explore email marketing if, let's say, you are already on social media? ALLYSON VAN HOUTEN: Yeah , So, email marketing is a really great way to have a direct connection with your customers and your subscribers , It's a marketing form that's not tied to a feed , You know that your email is going to get into somebody's inbox, and they're going to have time to sit and process it , You can send a message that's longer than W characters , You can send a lot of images , You have a lot more flexibility with what you can send to folks , LAUREN KASHUK: So speaking about the flexibility, especially as compared to social media, how can our businesses both be doing email marketing and also on social media make them kind of work harmoniously together? ALLYSON VAN HOUTEN: Hmm , So, social media is a fantastic way to build your audience , It's a really great way to kind of have quick interactions with folks, ask fast questions , Some folks use it as customer service , And when you have that fan base already transitioning them to your email marketing program is really super powerful , Yeah , Yeah , LAUREN KASHUK: So let's go in a little bit different of a direction , Maybe I'm thinking about email marketing, and I don't know where to start , But are there any situation really when I should be just flat out avoiding email marketing all together? ALLYSON VAN HOUTEN: Yeah , I mean there's a couple , One is when you have kind of a direct email that you need to send to a person , So maybe they have a specific question for you , Maybe they had some issues with a product for some reason, and they need to follow up , That's something that you need to either send them a call, send them a personal email and not, you know-- if you have five or six people, don't lump them all together and send them a campaign or newsletter about what's going on , The other time is when you are having an event and you need to send a really fast, immediate message , Say the location changes, or you need people to kind of knock on the door twice to get in, sending text messages is really useful , And we actually have a tool called Gather that allows people to sign up to receive text messages to events so they can get very fast, immediate updates , LAUREN KASHUK: Customer service and events are two areas you're saying not so great when it comes to email marketing , ALLYSON VAN HOUTEN: Yeah , Day of events when people need to-- it's really going to affect how they're going to get there or experience what you're doing, send them or call them with a message , LAUREN KASHUK: So let's speak a little bit about-- you mentioned this app , What other apps or tools are there for our businesses to use when they're thinking about exploring the world of email marketing? ALLYSON VAN HOUTEN: There's a lot , I think if you're just getting started, we have a great app called Impeded , And what that does is that it allows you to use your iPad or any mobile device to collect emails in a physical location , So if you have a retail store, or if you're doing a trade show or a craft fair, that's a really great one to get started with , We also work really well with Google Apps , So if you're collecting names in a spreadsheet in Google Drive, that's a really great tool , It's easy, and it's free , And there are a lot of other email marketing companies out there that have various tools, but those are my favorite , LAUREN KASHUK: We have Impeded, we have Google Apps, and-- ALLYSON VAN HOUTEN: Gather , LAUREN KASHUK: Gather , All right, so some awesome tools for all of our Community members to use when they're thinking about exploring email marketing , ALLYSON VAN HOUTEN: Yep , LAUREN KASHUK: So let's talk a little bit about what you'vie observed are some common mistakes that lots of businesses make when it comes to email marketing , ALLYSON VAN HOUTEN: Yeah , The first one would be waiting too long to send to your list , So, an email address is really only valid for about 6 to 8 months , After that long, people will unsubscribe-- well they'll forget that they signed up for your list, and they'll maybe unsubscribe or mark you as spam , They might leave that email address entirely , So I would say-- I mean 6 to 8 months is the latest that you should wait , I would say four months is a really good spot to kind of aim for , But as soon as you start collecting those names, you can start sending to them , The other common mistake is to not test your emails before you send them to your whole list , So test those emails, and send them to yourself , Send them to your colleagues , Make sure all the links are working , Make sure you'vie updated all the content in the right places, you'vie got the right images in there , And send that a few times if you're just getting started to make sure you're really comfortable with that content before you send it to your whole list , LAUREN KASHUK: Waiting four months or 6 to 8 months, but we say four months is really the prime time before you need to start sending out another email to your customer base , Awesome , Well we also are well aware that it's the holiday season , We're approaching the holidays pretty fast, and we'vie all seen your holiday tip guide , ALLYSON VAN HOUTEN: Thank you , LAUREN KASHUK: So maybe if you can kind of dive in for our Community and talk a little bit about some of those tips and how they can affect, positively, email marketing for a community , ALLYSON VAN HOUTEN: Yeah, so I would say the first one is to set up an editorial calendar , Those are really great for the holidays but also really good year round , That calendar helps you make sure you're getting all the messages that you want to make sure you get in front of your subscribers , And it's helping you plan ahead for how long it's going to take you to write that email and test it before it absolutely has to go out the door , Another one is if you have different store opening hours, or if you have order by dates to get there by a specific holiday, whatever that might be, let your subscribers now when that is , Give them a little time to prepare so that you don't have a lot of customer service complaints when it's like, where's my order? Why USN't it going to be here? Is it going to be here? You can save yourself a lot of time , Another tip in there is to automate where you can , So you can automate a handful of messages to go out, maybe letting people know where your locations are when they sign up and anything else that would be helpful that's going to stay the same for the next few weeks , LAUREN KASHUK: Automate and prepare-- it seems to be a key to success for all of our businesses over the holidays , ALLYSON VAN HOUTEN: Yeah , And don't over-automate , Don't try to make everything an automated message , Set up one or two , Don't-- again-- don't get like super complex in what you're sending, just what's a couple of things that would be really helpful that you don't have to send out all the time , LAUREN KASHUK: And what would you recommend should be the ratio between what you're sending that's automated versus what you're kind of creating for one time? ALLYSON VAN HOUTEN: So, automated messaging is really great when it's going to be the same message that you want everybody to see over and over and over , So say like I signed up for your list two weeks ago and you sign up tomorrow, what's the same thing both of us need to know? One really great automated message is the location of your store and what your store hours are , And so setting that message up to send as soon as I sign up, it's really powerful , LAUREN KASHUK: Fantastic , Well we have some live questions now here from the Community , The first is from [? Rain. ?] He wants to know if you can talk about how your product Mail Chimp addresses CASL compliance and what we need to know about this feature , ALLYSON VAN HOUTEN: Yeah, so for those of you that don't know, CASL is the Canadian anti-spam law , It's Canada's laws for subscriber protection , And what that law has been-- it's been adjusted and put in place about this past July-- is that you need to have permission to send to somebody, which for Mail Chimp-- what we have set in place is called the double opt-in , So, when a subscriber goes to sign up for your list, they enter their email and they say sign me up , And then they get an email to their inbox that says please confirm that you're actually signing up for this list , Any of our users that have that in place are CASL compliant, but you really should double check with your legal representative to make sure that-- double check and make sure , And if you're sending any email to any Canadian residents, you do need to be compliant , We have quite a few resources on our website that explain in a little more detail what CASL is and helps you have some tips on where to get started getting ready for it , LAUREN KASHUK: And can you let our Community know about where they can find those resources, what that website is , ALLYSON VAN HOUTEN: Yeah, it's actually if you visit mail chimp.com and search CASL, all those resources will pop right up for you , LAUREN KASHUK: And go ahead and spell it for us , ALLYSON VAN HOUTEN: C-A-S-L , LAUREN KASHUK: --S-L. Sounds like castle but it's-- ALLYSON VAN HOUTEN: It's four letters , LAUREN KASHUK: Just four letters , All about Canadian compliance , ALLYSON VAN HOUTEN: Yep , LAUREN KASHUK: Fantastic , So we have another question here from [? Mad ?] who wants to know what are the best ways to introduce a new product using email marketing , ALLYSON VAN HOUTEN: Oh, the best way to do that? I mean, product images are really great , There's a lot of ways that you can take really great images , There's a lot of resources online , But if you have a smartphone, you probably have a really good camera at your fingertips , People really want to see what they're about to buy, so show it to them , Show them a couple different views , If it's a product that somebody is going to wear, maybe show it on a person , And try a couple different emails showing different things and see how people react to it , LAUREN KASHUK: We have another question here from Neil , "How do you get readers to click on calls to action?" ALLYSON VAN HOUTEN: So we have a really cool email design guide that talks about design principles specifically for email marketing , But doing things like creating buttons, making your call to action look different from the rest of your body copy-- those are a couple ways just to visually make sure people are seeing it, and make sure the language is really clear , So if you want somebody to click here to buy a product, tell them click here , Don't kind of hide the link within your body text so that it's really hard to find , LAUREN KASHUK: And that guide, where can our Community find that guide if they're interested? ALLYSON VAN HOUTEN: So if you go to [? mail chimp.com/email design guide ?] I believe that's the link , You'll be able to find it , LAUREN KASHUK: And is that free? ALLYSON VAN HOUTEN: It's totally free , You can also-- if you're checking out our holiday tips guide, it's also linked to in there , LAUREN KASHUK: Fantastic , Another free resource brought to us from Mail Chimp , And we have another question here from [? Billy ?] Sue , "What does automate mean when it comes to email marketing?" Great question, Billy , ALLYSON VAN HOUTEN: That's a really good question , So automate means that you're setting up a series of conditions , So, I'm subscribing to this list-- that's your condition , And when I meet those conditions, an email is going to send to me that you'vie already written, you'vie already designed, and it's just going to go out every time somebody hits those conditions , So, you're setting it up once, and it's just going to keep sending until you change the content or you put it on pause , LAUREN KASHUK: And when you're automating an email, you can choose different settings, right? ALLYSON VAN HOUTEN: Hmm , Yeah, we have-- Mail Chimp specifically has a huge set of different settings that you can choose , We also have some pare-built recipes that if you don't really know what you're doing with automation yet and you're a little unsure of where to start, we'vie already figured that out for you and seen what are the most common uses of automated email marketing and set it up , So you just have to input your content and choose your list , LAUREN KASHUK: Recipes arena't commonly a word that you hear when you're speaking about email marketing, but you have kind of pare-decided different ways for businesses to look at ways that they can explore automating , ALLYSON VAN HOUTEN: Yeah, we found-- I mean automation can be really big and really scary, and there's a lot of ways that you can mess that up , So it's hard for people to get started with it , So what we did is we talked to a lot of customers , We saw what's most useful for them, and so we pare-built some of that stuff , You can still go totally custom if you want, if that's what's going to work best for you, but we set a few things up already , So we took some of the thinking and decision making and made it simpler , LAUREN KASHUK: We have another question here from Neil , Thank you for the questions, Neil , Best practices for keeping all of your email lists up to date? ALLYSON VAN HOUTEN: So, if you're using an email service provider like Mail Chimp, we'll be doing that for you , So keeping it up to date in my mind means making sure your unsubscribes are not on that list , They're not getting those messages again , New subscribers are automatically getting added , So that's one of the big benefits of using an email service provider as opposed to sending everything out through your personal inbox is that we'll handle all that list management for you , LAUREN KASHUK: Another question that kind of is a follow up from Neil , How do you keep a database integrated with Mail Chimp? ALLYSON VAN HOUTEN: There is a lot of ways to do that , It kind of depends on what your database is , So, we have an integration's directory, which is about W different platforms that we integrate with with steps on how to set that integration up , So what you want to do is go to-- it's at connect.mail chimp.com , Search for what your database is , If we have it, there will be instructions there on how to set it up , And so you can get that information going back and forth , LAUREN KASHUK: Fantastic , Well, that actually is all of the time that we have today with you, Allyson , ALLYSON VAN HOUTEN: Great , LAUREN KASHUK: Thank you so much for joining us and giving some very wise words to our Community members about-- ALLYSON VAN HOUTEN: Thanks for having me , This was really great , LAUREN KASHUK: --email marketing , And just as a follow up to our Community, Allyson will be around jumping back into the Community to answer any questions that you guys have that haven't already been addressed , Thank you so much in advance for doing that , ALLYSON VAN HOUTEN: Oh, my pleasure LAUREN KASHUK: And if you haven't joined the Community yet, please do , We are at g.co/HSBC , And again, I am Lauren Shuck , Thank you so much for tuning into the Google Small Business Community , We are here to help you get the help you need to succeed on the web.
