From Dave’s Desk –»
Hi everyone and welcome to Business Link International’s (BLI) October Connections newsletter. In line with Halloween, BLI is offering you a box of “treats” to help increase your communication with customers. The latest industry data indicates that telephone communication (followed by email) produces the highest response rates in terms of lead generation and is the top preferred communication method overall by marketers.1 We’ve put together a Voice Broadcasting Toolbox equipped with tools, tips and demos to help you get started with voice broadcasting campaigns. Sending a personalized voice message from your organization to your recipients’ telephones or voice mail creates an impact and significantly increases communication and response rates, which will ultimately result in more business for you. Is email content preventing your emails from being delivered to customer Inboxes? Industry statistics state that 19% of commercial emails don’t make it to recipients’ Inboxes because they get tagged as Spam by ISPs.2 There are a few factors that impact email deliverability, which is why we’ve written a multi-part article beginning with your email content. Part One of the article contains key steps you can take with your email content to increase your chances for delivery. Read our Tip of the Month with more voice broadcasting pointers. As always, we welcome feedback regarding our newsletter. It’s the best way we know to keep it informative, interesting and helpful for you.
1 Sources: Direct Marketing Association’s “2006 Response Rate Trends Report”, U.S. Direct Marketing Today, Economic Impact 2005
2 ReturnPath Whitepaper, “Delivery Rates Improve Slightly in First Half 2006”
Tip of the Month –»
Five Tips for a Successfully Recorded Voice Broadcasting Message
If you’re like a lot of our customers who record their own voice broadcasting messages (vs. hiring expensive voice talent), a well thought-out script is essential for a successfully recorded message. Save a lot of time and effort with these five tips.
1. Write it down – write down exactly what you want to say
2. Time it – Time your message and try to keep it between 30-45 seconds if possible; remember you’re charged based on message duration. Additionally, if you make it too long, your recipients may hang up or delete the message before it’s finished.
3. Read it out loud – Try reading it to someone else to be sure that it makes sense.
4. Speak loud and clear – Speak clearly and with enough volume to be understood. Pay particular attention to Call to Action items such as telephone numbers, email addresses or web site addresses and spell them if you feel they are not clear enough when you listen to the recorded message.
5. Get feedback from recipients – Tweak future messages based on this feedback if necessary.
What’s New –»
Dip Into the Voice Broadcasting Toolbox – Tools, Tips and Demos to Get You Started with Voice Campaigns Today
Why not take advantage of telephone communications with voice broadcasting. Voice broadcasting is less intrusive and more cost-effective than telemarketing, as well as one of the fastest ways to instantly reach mass audiences. Is voice broadcasting right for your organization? Of course it is! Many organizations in various industries, including yours, are already experiencing the benefits of voice broadcasting and achieving great results. Whether you’re already using email, telemarketing, direct mail or faxes to communicate with your customers, why not reinforce these programs with a more personal touch by recording voice messages that can either be sent for recipient pick-up or to voice mail or answering machines. A hot key transfer option enables call recipients to instantly connect with someone in your company at the touch of a button.
To get started, we’ve done all the work for you with a Voice Broadcasting Toolbox that is chock full of everything you need. Access the links to learn more about voice broadcasting and how you can take advantage of this powerful communication tool to significantly increase response rates among your audience.
BLI Voice Broadcasting Toolbox
All the Latest Tools of the Trade for Effective Voice Broadcasting
Voice by WebLaunch Demo – How to Set Up a Voice Campaign on our Web-based user-friendly interface watch (Flash demo)
Sample of a voice message – Quickly and easily record voice messages like this one listen (WAV file)
IVR Quick Start Guide – Takes you through the steps to record your voice messages using BLI’s voice broadcasting system download (PDF)
Voice by WebLaunch for Your Industry – Industry applications checklist with endless voice broadcasting possibilities for your industry download (PDF)
Voice by WebLaunch 101 read (Voice by WebLaunch Overview) download (PDF Literature)
Voice Laws – Links to latest voice legislation read
Call us today to set up an account or for more information
Phone: 800-929-1643 Email: support@blifax.com.
Featured Article–»
Email Deliverability Series – Part One – Email Content: Four Optimization Tips For Better Deliverability
Are your emails reaching your customers? BLI customers can track their emails using WebLaunch’s analytics to find out the answer. However, there’s always a possibility that the email content may still be preventing delivery. In Part One of this multi-part article, we focus on email content and key steps to help increase email delivery.
1. Create complete, consistent headers
Internet service providers (ISPs) scan for these headers and ultimately so do your recipients. It’s critical to use a clear and consistent From header and stick with it. Best practice is using your company name and valid email address for consistent branding and familiarity. Using a personal email address with company name, as we do with our marketing director, is alright as long as that name will be on your emails consistently and the person is the main newsletter contact. 2. Create an accurate, compelling subject line
Be sure your subject line is accurate and focuses on a benefit to your recipients. Don’t use exclamation points, all caps, and non-standard characters. If you must use punctuation, keep it to a comma or dash and avoid copy-pasting from Microsoft Word, which uses non-standard characters. Watch your words as there are filters that block certain words and phrases. Download a word list (PDF) of commonly used words and phrases that ISPs and mail clients commonly block.
3. Avoid trigger words in body of email
The same rules for the subject line also apply to the body of the email. Print out the word list (PDF) we’ve provided. Add your own words if they aren’t on the list.
4. Clean, properly-formatted HTML
Make sure your HTML is formatted correctly. Avoid extra or unnecessary tags, heavy use of images versus text, using non-standard web fonts, and using text the same color as the background. BLI’s Email by WebLaunch interface contains an HTML editor that catches and corrects misformatted HTML.
Follow the above steps when creating future emails and see if you notice better results. Contact us for additional support, information or to find out how our services can help improve your email campaigns. Call 800-929-1643 or email support@blifax.com.
Stay tuned for Part Two of our Email Deliverability Series – List Management and Delivery Testing in November’s Connections newsletter.
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