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Email Marketing

Using Campaigns to Send Mass Email

February 14, 2012 in Email Marketing, Lasso Blog by Angela McKay  |  No Comments

A couple of weeks ago, I was creating an email for a mass mail.  After testing the template and doing some final tweaking it was ready to go; but I wasn’t ready to send it.   I wanted it to be sent as two mailings over the following two days.  I could have set a reminder for myself to send it manually but instead I used the campaign feature in Lasso.  I created a campaign, added the template, selected the recipient group and clicked save.  I was done; I was able to move onto the next task at hand and didn’t have to think about the email again.  Two days later, when the mailings were complete, I was able to review the mass mail report to see the stats of that campaign.  This was simple to do and saved some time.

When planning an event or a special promotion, often multiple emails are created – announcing the event to prospects, maybe a separate one to agents and brokers and then subsequent reminder emails leading up to the event.  Utilizing the Campaign feature in Lasso, you can associate your list of recipients to the mailing, schedule the time to send and then move onto the next item on your list.  If you need to make changes to the template or campaign prior to sending it out, this can be done easily.

A campaign can be created in Lasso by clicking on Campaigns under the Marketing drop-down in Lasso.

Using Campaigns in Lasso

  1. Create a new campaign (create a name and add a date range)
  2. Add a mailing: choose a send time, select a template, choose a group or custom list, and determine who the sender should be.

Questions about this feature?  Contact our support center at support@mylasso.com.

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Have You Cleaned Up Your Failures Lately?

January 6, 2012 in Email Marketing by Kelly  |  No Comments

Mass Mail Failures

Nobody likes a failure but it’s amazing how many don’t get cleaned up!

I’m referring to email failures. When a mass mail is sent Lasso attempts to send to all the email addresses in the list or group. Some of these email addresses fail . . . it’s inevitable. But the key is to minimize these failures. After you send out a mass email through Lasso, the Mass Mail Details report will show all the email failures. I encourage you to review this list and take action! Not only will cleaning up your database help with deliver-ability, it could help you re-engage with prospects. By reducing some of these failures, your mass mail reporting statistics will be more meaningful as you go forward.

Below is a list of example failure notifications and their explanations.

Failure Reason Explanation
Hard Bounce Email attempted. Registrant email address does not exist.
Suggested Client Action: Contact Registrant to obtain new email address.
Hard Bounce (Suppressed) Email address has hard bounced in the past and therefore is suppressed from future mass mails.
Suggested Client Action: Contact Registrant to obtain new email address.
Soft Bounce Email could not send due to an issue with the Registrant’s email mailbox (e.g. mailbox is full).
Suggested Client Action: If the email consistently soft bounces, contact Registrant and ask for an alternate email address. If the email has bounced more than 3 times, a good rule of thumb is to opt them out.
Invalid Email Address Email address has syntax errors (e.g. angelam@@mylasso.com)
Suggested Client Action: Correct error in Registrant email address.
Email address has been opted-out Registrant has Opted-Out or unsubscribed from Mass Mail for this project. Registrants will not receive any mass emails for this project.
Suggested Client Action: Contact Registrant to determine project interest level. Registrant should be removed from Custom list and/or Group.
Registrant had no email address No email address in Lasso.
Suggested Client Action: Contact Registrant to obtain email address. Adjust Custom List criteria for Mass Mails to exclude Registrants without an email address.
Registrant has chosen not to receive email Contact preference in Lasso is No Contact or No Email across all Client Projects
Suggested Client Action: Registrant should be removed from Mass Mail Custom List and/or Group.
Technical Email cannot be delivered to the email address because of technical difficulties (e.g. Network error, or a Data format error). Note: in some cases, the email addresses have incorrect domain names (misspelled) or typos.
Suggested Client Action: Update Registrant email address. Contact Registrant to confirm email.
Block Mass Mail is being blocked because your domain name or IP address is on an ISP/Inbox Provider internal blacklist.
Suggested Client Action: If email is a corporate address, follow-up with Registrant to request unblock, or ask for alternate email address. If email address is a large ISP (e.g. Hotmail, gmail, Yahoo, etc.), try resending in smaller volume. A typical rule of thumb, the larger the list, the higher the chances of blocks. If issue persists, contact Lasso Support.
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Creating Emails that Get Opened

December 16, 2011 in Email Marketing by Kelly  |  No Comments

Emails That Get Opened
It’s been said that an email recipient will first look at the sender to determine whether an email gets deleted and then look at the subject line to determine whether it gets opened.

Using a familiar from name when sending an email is your first step to success and your carefully crafted subject line is next in line for importance. The following are a few tips:

  1. Keep your subject line to about 50 characters. Some email clients allow more characters to appear in the subject line but make sure the most important part of the message is in the first 50.
  2. If the “from email” includes your company name than you don’t need to repeat in the subject line but make sure it’s clear in either the from name or the subject who the email is coming from.
  3. Check your spelling – often the subject line is not part of spell check so don’t forget to pay particular attention that your subject line doesn’t include any typos!
  4. Create some urgency. Creating a deadline often elicits more action.
  5. We’ve said this before and we’ll say it again – avoid the use of all UPPER CASE letters and the use of exclamation marks. Not only does it look kind of tacky, it will trigger spam filters.
  6. Ensure that the subject line matches the content in the email and that it’s not misleading.
  7. Subscribe to other projects and communities and learn from your competition! Read headlines from online articles and newspaper. What catches your eye? Appeal to your readers’ need for information.
  8. Ask for response in your subject line. One of the best ways to generate interest is to ask for feedback and opinions.

The subject line may have the greatest impact on your email marketing success so it pays to take some time to get it right. It takes some time but it pays to get it right.

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Designing Emails for Mobility

December 5, 2011 in Email Marketing by Kelly  |  No Comments

Designing emails that look great regardless of the viewing mechanism is a challenge these days – many people are reading email on mobile devices as well as their desktop. How do you design for different devices and screen sizes?

Here are a few tips to improve the readability of your email:

Mobile Friendly Emails

  • Stick to the “Keep it Simple” rule – the design of your email as well as the message should be kept simple. Try to avoid too much clutter and stick to a single column design as it’s easier to read.
  • Use a Preheader – often you see text at the very top of the email allowing you to view the email as a webpage. That text is called a preheader. While having a link to a web version is important, this is also a great spot to include the main point of your email and will give your recipients a better idea of the contents of the email before they open it.
  • Consider the readability and navigation of your email – make it easy for someone to click on a link in your email. Don’t put too many links together. When viewing on a small screen, it’s sometimes difficult to click on the correct link when there are multiple links close together.
  • Label Your Images – while some mobile devices automatically display images, others don’t. Always include an alt-tag so if your image doesn’t display, the reader can at least still get the gist of your message.
  • Choose colors wisely – small gray text may look great on your large monitor, it may not be easy to read on a small screen. Test out the email and see for yourself how it renders! Can you easily read it?

Consider these simple tips when creating your next email template and you will improve readability!

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Email Marketing Mistakes

September 8, 2011 in Email Marketing, Lasso Tips by Kelly  |  No Comments

We see a lot of email that goes out from builders and developers and the following are a few common mistakes we see that can easily be corrected.

Sending One Big Image

Many times a design team has put together a great looking piece promoting a community or project. It gets converted to an image, the image gets uploaded to an email template and it gets sent out. It takes all of about 5 minutes to do this. Simple, easy and effective, right? Wrong. The image may look great if the majority of your recipients could see the image, but the challenge is that the majority of people block their images so all they will see is a red x. Plus it often gets tagged as spam as this is a method that spammers use to send out email. The solution? Use a balance of text and images in an email. It takes a little longer and often you will need to enlist the help of someone with HTML coding skills, but it will be far more effective in the long-run. And don’t forget to add title tags to your images!

Email Marketing MistakesNo Call to Action

Every email should have a call to action; an action that you want the recipient to take. Whether it’s registering their interest in a new project or community, clicking on a link to get additional information, or responding to an event invitation, your call to action should be close to the top of your email.

A Complicated Design

Every email provider – Hotmail, Yahoo, Gmail, Outlook, etc. render email differently. Because of this you MUST keep your email design simple by avoiding embedded CSS and background images, as well as being cautious of using white text with a dark background as some ISPs strip away background colors causing your white text to become invisible. Many web developers code email templates like they are coding a web page; this method doesn’t work. Code like it’s 1999!

No Testing

Looking at your email template in “Preview” mode is not testing your email! To effectively test your template you actually need to send it out to your test email accounts and review how it renders in different browsers, checking to make sure all the images are displaying properly, the links all work, and you’ve checked for spelling and grammatical errors. Send it to someone in your office who hasn’t been involved in the creation and ask them to have a thorough look at the email content!

Ignoring Reporting Detail

Creating and sending the email is important but it’s important to read your reports and the information you get from the reports. Which recipients are fully engaged and opening and clicking on links in the email? If someone hasn’t opened an email in six months, maybe it’s time to stop sending them emails and call them to determine their interest level. Are you cleaning up your emails and reviewing those that have bounced? Your mass mail reports can also provide insight to those prospects who are really interested – those who have opened all the emails, clicked on links – prompting sales to call the prospects and provide more information!

For more Email Marketing Tips click here.

You-Have-Mail-WebinarAlso be sure to check out our upcoming Webinar on Email Marketing with Meredith Oliver on September 22nd!


Click here to view details on this exciting webinar or register here.

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Seth Godin’s Email Checklist

June 10, 2011 in Email Marketing by Angela McKay  |  No Comments

Email ChecklistSeth Godin has written countless articles about the importance of permission-based email marketing. He recently reposted his email checklist from three years ago and it’s worth sharing.  The points are all still valid.  I’m sure we’ve all sent email that we’ve regretted or wished we’d just taken another look before sending.  It’s easy to do.

But before you hit send on that next email to your leads, prospects or purchasers, perhaps you should run through this list just to be sure.  View Seth’s Email Checklist here.

 

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Do We Hide Behind Email?

April 8, 2011 in CRM Software, Email Marketing, Lead Management by Dave Clements  |  No Comments

Originally published on Homebuilders.com

We talk often about the importance of follow up and ‘the process’ of effective lead nurturing in real estate sales and marketing. Advances in email technology allow us to distribute and share information to a targeted segment or the entire prospect database in a matter of minutes. The cost of sending mass email to a list of registrants equates to pennies per mail versus a cost of thousands of dollars for a direct mail piece.

The cost, tracking capability, and the fact that you can send an email from practically anywhere makes email marketing a no-brainer to communicate with both prospects and homebuyers. But is there a downside? How often do we choose email because it’s the easiest option for us?

Do we really consider what kind of communication our prospective homebuyers may prefer or do we tend to hide behind email? And It’s a lot easier to send a follow-up email to a new homebuyer prospect who registers online than to pick up the phone. That’s not to say an email shouldn’t be sent but how many of us include a follow-up phone call within a few hours of sign-up as part of the basic sales follow-up process? Results from a 2010 survey by Builder Target of 452 new home communities indicated 86% of new online leads did not receive a phone call! Yow! The phone call does so much more than an email can do – it helps create a personal relationship and build rapport. The phone call is also going to help you when you do send out email . . . the likelihood of a prospect opening an email from someone they’ve spoken to is much higher than if their only previous communication has been email!

Email has many benefits – it leaves a digital trail, perfect for communicating specific details about a project, a home type, etc. But please don’t dismiss the power of the phone call and reaching out and speaking to your prospects personally! No question, it’s more work to pick up the phone . . . but the first call can be as simple as to offer assistance, information and inquire how you can help. Challenge your entire sales team to make calls. This is where your CRM also comes into play. Set some realistic goals for calls, even have some fun with a contest, but do track the results and make follow-up calling a part of the sales culture. The information that reps will start to record in your CRM prospect database will be remarkable… and the interactions and the information learned will accelerate relationship building and improve sales velocity.

Give phone follow-up a try. Happy calling!

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Clever Ways to Use Mass Email Report Results for Real Estate Marketing

August 9, 2010 in Email Marketing, Lasso Tips by Dave Betcher  |  No Comments

Sales Measurement - CRM SoftwareWhat do you do after you send a mass mail to your prospective home buyers or Realtors and brokers?

Chances are you put a lot of effort into the design of the email, then you spend time testing the email and then you send it.  Right after you send the mass mail, you likely have a look at the quick stats to see how many people opened it, but what do you do next?

Often we see the regular blasting of a registrant list all with similar results over and over (in fact, sometimes with declining open rates).  A 20% open rate is not bad, but we think you can probably do better with a few suggestions on what you can do after you send out the mass mail (or before you send out your next email!)

  • Read and review the mass mail detail report in Lasso. You’ll see who opened the email, who clicked on a link, who unsubscribed, as well as who didn’t receive the email because of a failure.


  • Learn what the delivery failures mean and update your registrants accordingly. If you see that an email address has bounced, pick up the phone and ask the prospect if they are still interested in receiving information.  If they are, ask for a new email address.  A great opportunity to touch base with potential home buyers!


  • Make sure that the “From” email address in your mass mail is a valid address. Often when you send out email, you receive “out-of-office” responses and many times a registrant will reply with a query.  It’s important that this email is monitored and someone is responsible for responding.


  • Update invalid email addresses. These are the email addresses with a typo, such as “hotmial” instead of “hotmail”.


  • Try resending your email. Yes, you heard me correctly.  I’m suggesting that you send it out again.  But this time, don’t send it to everyone,  just send it to those who didn’t open it the first time.  You may want to change the subject line to include “Update” or “Reminder” or “Last chance . . .”.  We’ve had a number of clients use this approach (albeit, carefully – you don’t want to be sending email so often that you annoy people).  They have seen a surprisingly good open rate the second time around.


  • Have a follow-up email ready to go out. If you have a link in your first email about one-bedroom units and 75 people click on this link, have a follow-up email ready to go that provides further information and pricing incentives on one-bedroom units!


  • Plan some human interaction. We get so caught up in email today; however, it’s important for a human touch.  Use the mass mail reporting to follow-up with those registrants who haven’t opened an email in awhile, or maybe even those registrants who have unsubscribed.  Some people just aren’t into email.  It doesn’t mean they aren’t interested.  Don’t ignore them!


Follow these ideas and you will find that your email subscribers are more engaged and your open rates are going in the right direction . . . up!!  More appointments, offers and sales will follow.

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Creating Mass Mail for Real Estate Project Marketing

May 28, 2010 in Email Marketing by Angela McKay  |  No Comments

Real estate project marketers need to have a wide variety of skills – whether it’s the planning of the next big launch or event, designing and producing brochures and direct mail pieces, defining and developing the lead nurturing process, or the many, many other responsibilities that come with the job. Email marketing can play an important role in the marketing of a project, but often the resources to call upon to help create the email are scarce!

Have you ever been frustrated when creating an HTML email? One of the challenges I have, I’ll admit, is that I’m not an HTML coder. I do a lot of the creation of email right in design mode or in an HTML editor, like Dreamweaver. Many will tell you that you really need to know HTML in order to create an effective email. No question, it does help and it may eliminate some grief, but take it from me it can be done – especially when there are templates available so you’re not starting from scratch!

There are always many things to consider when creating an email. One of the most important things to keep in mind is that an HTML email cannot be created exactly like you would a web page. It’s coded the same way, but you need to keep it REALLY simple. All the cool things you can do in HTML web pages today won’t necessarily render properly in certain email providers. So you must test your email and test it again, and again! Focus on your message, not the creativity bursting within!

Here are a few things to consider:

  • Use tables. Because email providers use different HTML rendering systems – it could be Internet Explorer, Firefox, Chrome or in many cases Microsoft Outlook, which uses Word to read the HTML code and can cause a lot of problems! Using tables allows you to control where the text and images are placed.
  • Keep your emails to a maximum of 600 pixels wide.Design your emails for the preview pane. Most preview panes are no wider than this and much of the message will be missing if you don’t confine your email to a 600 pixel table. What a recipient sees in their preview pane could determine whether they want to learn more, or not!
  • Don’t assume people are going to see the images. By default the majority of recipients will have images turned off. Look at the email you’re creating in this mode – can a recipient still get the gist of the message?
  • Browser-based email providers like gmail and hotmail will strip away certain code and CSS (cascading style sheets). And Microsoft is no different – there are even differences between Outlook 2003 and 2007 – for example, background images won’t work in Outlook 2007. And sometimes background colours don’t work so be cautious of using text colour that may not show up on a white background. Keep it simple!
  • If you are contracting a web developer or designer to create your email, ask them to code it like it was for a website from 15 years ago – don’t use fancy features that won’t work and will only cause your recipients to be frustrated. Ensure there’s a good balance of text and images.

For more email suggestions for improved design, development and delivery, view this email marketing white paper. Before you know it, you’ll be creating HTML emails like someone who codes them!

Interested in getting trained in real estate email marketing?  Contact Lasso Support - support@mylasso.com

 

 

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Email Templates for Real Estate Project Marketing

March 12, 2010 in Email Marketing by Angela McKay  |  No Comments

Creating templates for email marketing can not only be time-consuming and require some design knowledge but it’s also recommended to have an understanding of email marketing best practices to maximize deliverability and open rates.

At Lasso, we’re pretty passionate about email marketing and helping our clients achieve success (we’ve written many posts in the past on email marketing best practices for real estate project marketing).

We recently announced a new enhancement to our integrated email marketing which will help real estate project marketing professionals. Now included with Lasso is an email template library.

This is a library of pre-built templates that gives you a starting point for your email marketing campaigns. Well-built email templates are an important start to creating great email marketing campaigns. A good balance of images and text is important, along with testing to ensure that the emails render properly in Outlook and the major ISPs such as Hotmail, Yahoo! and Gmail. Lasso has done this for you (although it’s still important to test after you’ve put your own content and images in the template!)

Our goal at Lasso is to make using our Real Estate CRM easy for our clients. To start, the template library contains 10 different emails and we’ll be adding more each month so keep checking back and let us know what you’d like to see . . . or maybe you have an email template that you’d like to share with other Lasso users – let us know!

The library includes templates for newsletters, events, announcements and letterhead. We’ve given you a great starting point to make it your own – add your images and your content and you’ll be ready to go in no time.

Email marketing should be an important component to your marketing plan. Whether it’s a community or construction update, it needs to be professional looking and follow good email best practices to maximize open rates.

If you have any questions about email marketing, contact Lasso Client Support, we’re here to help.

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