You can get vastly different results from your email newsletter depending on what day and time you send it.
Guesswork, testing different times/days and carefully monitoring your email stats is normally the best way to find out but i have a great shortcut for you…Twitter!

This is how you do it.

• First, go to http://search.twitter.com and type in a few keywords related to your industry. In this example the marketing manager of a hotel wants to target people looking for ‘hotels in Dublin’. This search shows all the people on Twitter talking about and looking for Hotels in Dublin.

• Twitter very nicely gives you an RSS feed of these results in the top right hand corner. Copy the URL of this link.

• If you have not already, sign up for a Google reader account.
• Click the ADD A SUBSCRIPTION button in Google reader. Then paste in the URL of the Twitter RSS feed.

• Click SHOW DETAILS in the top right corner and you will see a blank graph. After a few days this will show some fantastic data on what day of the week, month and time that people where talking about “Hotels in Dublin”.
• This is a great time to send out an email offer about Hotels in Dublin.

Happy emailing.
Tell us how you normally find the best time to send your email?

Thanks to Chris S Penn for this great tip.

Bizcamp Dublin was an amazing day. Over 300 people came to the Guinness Store House to meet, share and inspire each other and it worked.
There was a wide cross section of people, from someone who sold their business for €135m to others who lost their job and are thinking about starting out.
I gave a talk on the day on what numbers to expect when doing sales via email marketing. Of course all business are different and achieve different results but this is something to be used as a guide against your own business and marketing efforts. If you are much lower then these numbers then you need to seriously look at what you need to change.
Keep reading the blog as I will discuss how you can improve and test conversion at each stage with a few tweaks.

The presentation was lo-fi on the day with just a flip chart and a marker. I prettied up the flipchart diagram for you here :)

Thanks to all who attended Bizcamp. You can find the other presentations on the bizcamp.ie site.

Blue Sky Factory is an industry-leading email service provider and provides both full service and self service email marketing solutions to a global client base. Their leading web based platform, Publicaster offers enhanced deliverability solutions, detailed and customized reporting and analytics, and an easy to use intuitive user interface. Learn how to send your Toddle Newsletter through Blue Sky Factory’s Publicaster below.

• Go to www.blueskyfactory.com and sign-up. Log-in if you have an existing account.



• Once you have logged-in, click on Campaign Manager located on the Dashboard.



• You shall now enter the required information in the form. Click New Email when done.



• For the template, upload the content of your Toddle Newsletter by entering its HTML version URL. This can be found inside the Advanced sending options box at toddle.com.




• You shall now see the HTML version of your Toddle Newsletter.



• For the Text version, click View Plain Text. Open the Plain Text version URL that is also found in the Advanced sending options and copy the entire text into the editor.



• Click on Save.



• There you go, your Toddle Newsletter has been successfully imported and sent using Blue Sky Factory!

I am giving three email marketing workshops over the next few weeks.

First we are doing a talk on Saturday 21st at Bizcamp Limerick.

Email Marketing 101

An absolute beginners guide to Email Marketing.
Register for free here.

Next is a morning seminar in Donegal organised by the IIA and Donegal County Enterprise Board.

Taking eBusiness to a Higher Level

Date : 24 Mar 2009
Time : 8.30 – 11.00 am
Location : An Grianán Hotel, Speenogue, Burt, Co Donegal
Normal price per person : €0.00

I will be speaking alongside Michael Tunney of the Enterprise Board, Ewa Adach of Bluecube Interactive and Campbell Scott of IGOPeople.

More information and booking can be found on the IIA site.

And last but not least we have organised a special email workshop here in Drogheda in April.

Simple, effective marketing in a tough economy

Date : 02 April 2009
Time : 6.30 – 8.30 pm
Location : Chamber of Commerce, Dublin Rd, Drogheda, Co. Louth.
Price per person : €95.00 – Limited space.

This is an in-depth workshop that is split into two parts.
First part covers all aspects of email marketing from the basics up to how to be an email pro.
The second part is where things get really interesting and why we need to keep the group small. The group will be split into two groups and we are going to select one business from each group and collectively workshop an email campaign for them. Everyone will be able to apply their newfound knowledge in a very practical way to a real business and real campaign.

You can book the Drogheda workshop by emailing me at alan@spoiltchild.com or phoning 041 9830152.

The two companies to be selected will be chosen from the first five people to book so book early.

Hope to see you at one of them and please come up and say hi.

Spinnaker Pro is a web-based email marketing solution which enables you to deploy your email marketing campaigns to your subscribers and track the results. Today they announced support for Toddle allowing you to easily import your email newsletters. Here’s how:

• Log in to Spinnaker Pro and open your Content Editor
• Click on the Get external content button and you will see the screen below looking for the web address of your Toddle newsletter.

• You need to copy the URL of the HTML version of your email newsletter from Toddle. This is the all singing dancing version with images and colours. You will find this link in the “ADVANCED SENDING OPTIONS” box on Toddle after you click send.

• That’s it, your campaign is ready to be sent.

Group-Mail.com is a great desktop application for windows that allows you to manage your subscribers and send bulk mail to a lot of people at once. Below is a simple guide on how to send your Toddle email newsletter with Group-Mail.

• Browse on over to www.Group-Mail.com and download and install the application on your computer.

• Start Group-Mail and click on file, New Message

• Select File, Import, Web Page (URL)

• You need to copy the URL of the HTML version of your email newsletter from Toddle. This is the all singing dancing version with images and colours. You will find this link in the “ADVANCED SENDING OPTIONS” box on Toddle after you click send.

• Paste the URL of your newsletter and click OK
  You should now see a preview of your Toddle newsletter in Group-Mail.

• Add an appropriate subject to the newsletter and click send

• You should now get a confirmation that your newsletter has been sent.

• Thats it! Congratulations your Toddle newsletter has been sent.

Campaign Monitor is a great simple to use email newsletter tool built to send your email campaign, track the results and manage your subscribers. Below is a simple guide on how to send your Toddle email newsletter with Campaign Monitor and track who opened it and what they clicked on.

• Browse on over to www.campaignmonitor.com and sign up for an account or log in if you already have.

• Once you are logged in click on “CREATE/SEND CAMPAIGN”.

• From here you are guided through a simple 4 step process.

• Select “HTML and plain text” when asked.

• First you will be asked for the HTML version of your email newsletter from Toddle. This is the all singing dancing version with images and colours. You will find this link in the “ADVANCED SENDING OPTIONS” box on toddle.us

• Some of your subscribers reading the email newsletter will not be able to view the all singing all dancing version. Some might use email programs that cannot display it or they might have chosen to turn that option off. For these cases we provide an alternative version of the newsletter in nicely formatted plain text. Click the Plain text link in Toddle and copy and paste the text into Campaign Monitor.

• Then its a simple matter of allowing Campaign Monitor guide you to sending the newsletter. If you are anything like us you will waste a few hours clicking the refresh button after sending your email campaign tracking who opened your newsletter and what articles they were interested in. It can be very addictive!!

• Thats it. Simple wasn’t it. Enjoy.

Read why it might be a good idea to send your email newsletter through a third party like Campaign Monitor instead of sending it yourself.

Its hard to hide it. Here at Toddle we love our food. Bartek loves to cook and we love to eat it. Even if you are not a foodie it is hard to be attracted to the designer curves of some of the tools over at Quirky Kitchen. While I know personally I will never use them it doesn’t stop the urge to want to use them. Especially on their lovely sounding recipes. We will let you know if we persuade Bartek to try them.Michelle asked today on a forum how to improve responses she gets from the Quirky Kitchen email newsletter. Starting out she is doing all the right things.

Quote:

I’ve sent out four so far and used good graphics and competitions for pull – I’m tracking the click throughs using www.verticalresponse.com – which is good but I’m interested to know what’s the consensus – is short and sweet really less annoying – I think I convert about 10% into sales – how could I improve on that?

This seems like a good way to start the Toddle blog! Starting an email newsletter is simple. Keeping momentum however is where it gets hard. Why not set yourself small goals on improving your newsletter, who reads, who clicks and most importantly how many readers turn into paying customers. Challenge yourself in small ways and watch your newsletter turn into one of the most successful marketing tools you have.The most important thing Michelle has done is tracking. Without this you have no way to know how you are doing or how to make it better. There are a few tools for this. Vertical Response as Michelle suggests, Campaign Monitor have a fantastic one built in to their system. Most of the major email newsletter managers have tracking of some degree. Check out a few and go with the one that feels suits you best.Once you are happy create your first newsletter campaign and watch the statistics come back. Look at how many people read the newsletter compared to how many you sent it to. Who clicked the links for more information and who opened and read the newsletter a few times. Next post we will look at how to improve those numbers and help you point your audience where you would like them to go.