Si tienes tu propia pequeña empresa, ya sabes lo importante que es buscar nuevas oportunidades. Hoy nos complace anunciar la versión en español de VerticalResponse. Con esta mejora, los hablantes de español contarán con una plataforma líder para potenciar el programa de mercadeo por correo electrónico de sus empresas.

Lo que dicen los números

Según un estudio de empresarios realizado por la Oficina del Censo, las empresas con propietarios hispanos representan casi el 12 % de todas las empresas en EE. UU.

Esto representa ¡3,3 millones de empresas!

De 2007 a 2012, EE.UU. fue testigo de un impresionante incremento del 46,3 % en las empresas con propietarios hispanos, una proporción mayor que la de los demás segmentos.

Lo que es aún más impresionante es que entre el 2007 y el 2012, el número de empresas pertenecientes a mujeres hispanas ascendió de 800.000 a 1,5 millones de empresas. Con una tasa de crecimiento de 87 %, este supuso el incremento más importante en el número de empresarias de cualquier raza o grupo étnico. El National Women’s Business Council (Consejo de Comercio Nacional de Mujeres) ofrece un desglose por grupo étnico:

En VerticalResponse nos entusiasma ayudar a patrocinar este extraordinario crecimiento.

“Ante el creciente número de empresas con propietarios hispanos y operadas por hispanos en los Estados Unidos, me alegra ver que aplicaciones de mercadotecnia como VerticalResponse estén expandiendo sus servicios a los usuarios de habla hispana. La población hispana es la minoría étnica más grande en los EE. UU., y las plataformas que prestan servicio a nuestras comunidades, empresas y consumidores han cobrado cada vez más importancia”, dijo el Dr. Rubén Guerra, Ph.D., presidente y director ejecutivo de la Asociación de Empresas Latinas.

Los mismos excelentes beneficios

Con VerticalResponse, los empresarios están llegando a más personas en menos tiempo por medio de la automatización, por ejemplo, gracias a correos de seguimiento automáticos. Además, el éxito de las campañas se puede mejorar constantemente por medio de sugerencias y claves disponibles con suscripción gracias a nuestros Informes Avanzados. Y con nuestro editor de correos electrónicos, los empresarios pueden ahorrar tiempo en la creación de correos electrónicos y saber que, no importa dónde sus lectores los abran, se verán fenomenales en cualquier pantalla.

Cómo cambiar a español y comenzar

Ya sea que desees probar VerticalResponse o ya seas usuario, puedes cambiar el idioma preferido a español de forma muy sencilla. Solo tienes que seleccionar Español en la esquina inferior derecha de la página de Comienzo o inicio de sesión.

Cuando ya estés en la aplicación, será fácil crear campañas por correo electrónico en la sección de Mensajes con nuestro editor de correos increíblemente rápido. La sección de Contactos te permite cargar o introducir de forma manual una lista de contactos, y administrar los contactos que ya tienes.

En VerticalResponse nos entusiasma poder ayudar a más pequeñas empresas a interactuar con su clientela. La capacidad de crear y enviar correos electrónicos en español de forma rápida y fácil puede marcar la diferencia entre solo alcanzar tus metas o sobrepasarlas.

The post Presentamos VerticalResponse en español appeared first on VerticalResponse.

If you’re a small business owner, you know how important it is to look for new opportunities. Today, we’re excited to introduce the Spanish-language version of VerticalResponse. With this update, Spanish speakers now have a leading platform to power their business’s email marketing programs.

A look at the numbers

A survey of business owners conducted by the Census Bureau showed Hispanic-owned businesses accounted for almost 12 percent of all U.S. businesses.

That’s 3.3 million businesses!

From 2007 to 2012, the U.S. saw an impressive increase of 46.3 percent growth in Hispanic-owned businesses, which was larger than any other segment.

What’s even more impressive is that between 2007 and 2012, the number of Hispanic women-owned businesses expanded from 800,000 to 1.5 million businesses. With a growth rate of 87 percent, this was the largest increase in women business ownership of any race or ethnic group. The National Women’s Business Council provided a breakout by heritage:

VerticalResponse is excited to help support this extraordinary growth.

“With the increase in Hispanic-owned and operated businesses in the United States, it’s so encouraging to see marketing applications like VerticalResponse expanding their services to Spanish-language users,” said Dr. Ruben Guerra, Ph.D., Chairman and CEO of the Latin Business Association. “The Hispanic population is the largest ethnic minority in the U.S., and platforms that serve our communities, businesses, and consumers are increasingly vital.”

Same great benefits

With VerticalResponse, business owners are reaching more people in less time through automation like automated follow-up emails. Campaign performance can continually improve with subscriber insights provided by our powerful Advanced Reporting. And with our new email editor, business owners can save time creating emails and know, regardless of how their readers open them, that they’ll look great on any screen.

Selecting Spanish and getting started

Whether you want to give VerticalResponse a try or you’re already a user, you can easily make Spanish your language of choice. All you have to do is select Spanish in the bottom right corner of the Get Started or login page.

Once you’re in the application, it’s easy to create email campaigns in the Messages section with our lightning-fast email editor. The Contacts section lets you upload or manually enter a contact list, and manage the contacts you already have.

VerticalResponse is excited to help even more small businesses engage with their customers. The ability to quickly and easily create and send email campaigns in Spanish can be the difference between merely meeting your goals — and surpassing them.

The post Introducing VerticalResponse en español appeared first on VerticalResponse.

You know marketing is a critical component of your business success, and you need easy, fast tactics that will bring quick, impressive results. Instead of attending a seminar or reading a 500-page book, here are the top eight things you should know about marketing your small business:

1. Not marketing is not an option.

No matter how great your product or service is, it won’t sell itself. You’re going to need some advertising, promotions, publicity, email, or social media, and most likely a combination of all those things. Not sure where to start? A good rule of thumb is to look at what your competitors are doing and where they’re doing it. Is your chief competition advertising in the local newspaper? Are they all over Facebook? Have they totally missed opportunities on Twitter? Are they under-utilizing their website? Identify channels where you’ll need to go head-to-head, and look for opportunities your competition may be missing.

2. Online display advertising can have a big impact for little cost.

Your budget is probably as tight as your schedule, so it’s important to get the most impact for each dollar you spend. Online advertising is a great option for small businesses because it can achieve widespread distribution for less money than you might spend on traditional ad channels like radio, TV, and print. Check out our blog on choosing the right display advertising network to learn more about online advertising.

3. Play on people’s love of events.

Buzzwords like “experiential marketing” may make it seem like this is something new, but marketing with events like in-store promotions has been around for as long as there have been brick-and-mortar businesses. That’s because promotions and events reward the people who are already coming into your store, and draw in new customers who may be shopping with you for the first time. Events like ribbon-cuttings, fundraisers, and customer appreciation days help build awareness and brand visibility. Plus, events play on one of your core strengths as a small business — the face-to-face interactions that your customers just can’t get from a mega-business. Read our blog on ways to promote your small business event.

4. Make the most of your website.

It goes without saying (or it should) that you have a company website. But if it’s only a glorified business listing, you’re missing out on one of the most powerful, cost-effective tools for marketing your small business. An engaging website not only gives current and potential customers important information about your business — such as your location, hours of operations, products, and services — it can be a vibrant sales portal and a channel for gathering customer data. Your website is far too important to have an amateur look or feel, so have your website designed by a professional.

5. Email marketing is the new direct mail.

In the old days, a small business would either pay big bucks to purchase a mailing list and have a direct mail piece professionally designed, or spend countless hours to generate the list and piece themselves. Either route could prove fruitless if the piece was poorly designed and the list was inaccurate or irrelevant. Email is far more cost-effective than the old ways of doing things. Free email tools like VerticalResponse make it easy to design professional, effective, and mobile-responsive emails, compile and manipulate mailing lists, sign up new email subscribers through your website, and track results.

6. Social media is the new word of mouth.

Social media has made it easier than ever for customers to praise or criticize your small business. What’s more, social media has created communities of like-minded consumers where shareability amplifies the value of your marketing messages. Even better — you don’t have to pay to reach your customers via their favorite social media platforms. Yet it’s also important to strategize your social media campaigns so that you’re reaching your target audience with relevant information through their preferred channels. Check out our blog for useful tips on how to expand your social media presence.

7. Win with loyalty rewards.

Nearly every company seems to have a loyalty rewards program these days, so it’s easy to forget that the concept originated with small businesses. When the local baker slipped an extra cupcake in your mom’s order, or the florist threw in a pretty vase because your dad always bought flowers there — that was loyalty marketing! As a small business owner, you’re uniquely positioned to maximize the value of a loyalty program, because you’re already building loyalty in face-to-face interactions with your customers. Starting a rewards program can be as simple as offering a punch card that rewards shoppers with merchandise after they fill the card. The key is to give customers relevant rewards and make it easy for them to earn those rewards, so they’ll always have a reason to come back.

8. Build a network of relationships.

When you’re wearing your sales hat, you’re probably thinking “always be closing.” When you’re acting as chief financial officer, you’re thinking about minimizing costs and maximizing profits. Whatever hat you wear at any time of day, you should always be building a network of relationships with your customers, other businesses, and other business owners. Joining and participating in local networking organizations is a great way to build professional relationships with other businesses, such as by offering a discount to workers at nearby shops. Or send a stack of coupons to the HR department of the area’s biggest employers and suggest the coupons be used as performance rewards for their employees.

You could spend a lifetime educating yourself on how to market your small business — and maybe down the road you’ll even have time to take that Marketing 101 class! For now, however, these eight strategies will help you create a solid base for your small business marketing efforts.

The post Skip marketing 101 and read this instead appeared first on VerticalResponse.

In the world of small business, owners don’t have time to become experts on every business function and corresponding software. This is why VerticalResponse now offers full-service email marketing.

Your time is valuable so why not let the experts who have helped over 1,000,000 customers handle your email marketing? We know what works and what doesn’t from being an industry leader for 14 years.

Here’s what VerticalResponse’s new email marketing service, Pro+, can do for you:

Save You Time

Pro+ takes the place of having to find and hire an email marketing expert on your team. Copywriting, image selection, layout design, and setting up campaigns all take careful thought and time to execute. We do the email marketing part, so you have more time to focus on running your business.

Get You Results

Whether you want to set up a campaign that sends a welcome email to new subscribers or a promotional email to announce a sale, your dedicated email expert designs, sends, and manages your campaigns. In addition, we promote your message on social channels to increase awareness and engagement.

Save You Money

Pro+ costs a fraction of the price you’d pay to hire your own email marketing expert or work with an agency.

This email marketing service includes:

• Campaign launch and management
• Professionally designed emails
• 2 email campaigns per month
• 8 Facebook posts per month
• Reporting an analysis

Sound like a service your business could use? Learn more about package details, pricing, and answers to FAQs.

The post Introducing Pro+: What full-service email marketing can do for your business appeared first on VerticalResponse.

In their recent blog post, our friends at Kabbage answer the important questions about small business funding options, including:

• What is a revolving line of credit?
• How is a revolving line of credit different from a small business credit card?
• How does a revolving line of credit compare with a business installment loan?

Read more here>>

The post Working capital for your business appeared first on VerticalResponse.

Meet the Finalists

Sliverton, Oregon – Serving as the gateway to Oregon’s largest state park, Silverton is surrounded by natural beauty and is home to a large botanical garden. The historic district has twice been hit with damaging fires – but the downtown business district is gaining momentum, featuring an array of shops and restaurants that are working to reinvigorate the city’s core. The unique expertise and support of the Small Business Revolution could be exactly what is needed to take the community to the next level.

Wabash, Indiana – This inspiring small town, which was the first electrically lighted city in the world, has not lost its spark. But it has taken a hit from urban sprawl, which has drawn businesses and workers out of downtown, and a diminishing industrial base that has altered the local economy. Wabash’s tight-knit community and independent small-business owners have banded together in a concerted effort to revitalize their downtown core – and the Small Business Revolution could help re-illuminate Wabash as a shining destination for tourists and residents alike.

Vote

The public vote is open from May 3-10, and each person who votes will have a chance to win a trip for two to the winning town and a meet and greet with Herjavec. The process of the town’s revitalization will be documented in a web series debuting on SmallBusinessRevolution.org in the fall of 2016.

To cast your vote and learn more about Small Business Revolution on Main Street, go to SmallBusinessRevolution.org.

The post Wabash, Indiana, or Silverton, Oregon? Cast your vote and send $500,000 to the lucky town appeared first on VerticalResponse.

If you haven’t been giving email marketing the focus it deserves, not to worry, this post is for you. Here are 25 proven steps you can start taking today to begin reaping magical rewards in no time.

1. Build Your List

Start by gathering email addresses from current and potential customers. Building your list can seem difficult and time-consuming, but it’s worth your while to limit it to those who choose to engage. Buying lists is a bad idea, since emailing anonymous contacts can seem invasive and often results in complaints, bounced addresses and unsubscribes. Gain trust by not sharing subscribers’ info with other companies, and by creating emails with useful or exclusive information and valuable offers, not just sales pitches. The options for growing your list are only bounded by your imagination. Some of the best ideas can be found here and here.

2. Segment Your List

Segment your audience so you can create targeted messages for different groups, leading to better open rates, lower opt-out and unsubscribe rates and improved deliverability. Check out our Complete Guide to List Segmentation. Segmenting allows you to separate your list according to geographic region, customer behavior patterns (buyers vs non-buyers, openers vs non-openers), age, area code, and more, so you can create content and offers most likely to generate responses.

3. Plan Your Content

Decide what range of content you’ll offer. Possible subject matter includes:

• Tutorials
• Recommendations
• Reports on industry trends or research
• Explanations of company functions
• Comments on current events
• FAQs
• Profiles of your clients or employees
• Surveys
• Contests
• Previews of coming events
• Descriptions/photos of new products
• Inspiring quotes
• Blogs
• News articles or humor

The medium might include copy, photos, infographics or videos. If you don’t want to generate the content yourself, source it from social media, business partners, online sources or content agencies.

In general, experts advise using a likable voice; employing sharp design; being different from competitors; incorporating snappy subject lines and offering discounts. A common mistake? Looking to your own preferences to determine what your audience would like. Perhaps most importantly, strive for a mix of 80 percent informational and 20 percent promotional content. Messages that aren’t sales-oriented may seem counterintuitive, but they work to develop brand awareness and customer relationships, paving the way for future purchases. Do recipients a favor by helping them solve a problem, providing inspiration, giving them direction toward a goal or quickly expanding their knowledge.

4. Analyze Your Competition

Study what competitors are doing. Sign up for other email campaigns and newsletters to compare your efforts with those of competitors and industry leaders. It’s OK to put your own spin on their ideas and techniques but always strive for original content that’s hard for your readers to find elsewhere.

5. Plan Your Email Campaigns

Devise a year-long email marketing plan that projects multiple messages, tying your content into holidays, special events, pop-culture happenings and current events when applicable. Work backward from preferred launch dates to set writing or sourcing deadlines. Shoot for three to five emails monthly.

6. Design with Mobile in Mind

Ensure your emails are mobile-friendly in design and content, since two-thirds of such messages are now read on mobile devices. That means limiting copy to 750 words or less.

7. Develop a Welcome Email Program

Create a series of follow-up emails to new subscribers introducing them to your company, products and website. Avoid the hard sell; start with a warm welcome for subscribing and follow with a reminder of the benefits, a thank you offer, helpful information about your products or services and links to your website and social media sites.

8. Implement Autoresponders

Use autoresponders that automatically trigger welcome emails, resend messages that were never opened, and send newsletters at regular intervals. Such a practice can increase your open rates by 30 to 40 percent. Other uses might include thank yous for purchases; reminders; polls; contests; or requests for comments, reviews or content submissions. Autoresponders are fairly crucial if you’re too busy to regularly monitor your email account.

9. Personalize Your Emails

Implement as much personalization as possible, using analytics and customer surveys to your advantage by recognizing birthdays and anniversaries, referring to previous purchases and shopping patterns, and otherwise making readers feel valued. Experts predict we’ll eventually have capability for highly optimized 1:1 emails within a single broadcast.

10. Track Performance

Track open and click rates, revenue and conversion, unsubscribes and bounces, and use your website’s analytics tools to gauge post-click through behavior. Note that services are available to fix bad data — incorrect or problematic addresses that increase bounce-backs.

11. Test and Optimize Your Campaigns

Continually test your campaign, and use the results to tweak further strategy. Consider a schedule for the testing of one campaign variable each month, such as copy length and content, time and day of the week, frequency, call to action, design and other elements.

12. Gather Customer Feedback

Listen closely to customer feedback about content, format and frequency, and respond quickly. To avoid being perceived as a spammer, be gracious and quick with those who ask to unsubscribe.

13.  Monitor Industry Trends

Email marketing is evolving so swiftly that business owners must be proactive to keep on top of important features and best practices. VerticalResponse helps you stay at the top of your email marketing game with its free and easy-to-use email marketing tool.

Once you’re on a roll with your campaign, consider elements that can improve your responses even more. Here are some ideas:

14. Use Visual Content

Gifs and videos can be powerful additions, since visuals are processed by the human brain in about one-tenth of a second.

15. Maintain Brand Voice

Develop a consistent voice, experimenting to determine which writing style and topics most appeal to your readers. An example of a defined voice is the tone of the informal and somewhat irreverent blogs posted on Groove HQ. “(The writer) addresses the recipient like human beings,” writes Jimmy Dala on Marketingland.com. “It sounds simple, but so many people lose the human touch when they are blasting bulk emails about Presidents’ Day sales.”

16. Use Humor When Appropriate

Devise fun and entertaining polls related to your industry, then record some of the best responses online. Cottonelle once staged a fun email survey asking consumers whether they rolled toilet paper over or under, incorporating results into video demonstrations, a U.S. map, social media and a website.

17. Socialize

Make sure widgets are installed into your emails allowing readers to instantly share your content on their social media sites.

18. Test Timing of Campaigns

Fine-tune the timing of your email campaigns. Some report the highest open rates (leading to the highest conversions) are achieved in the evenings after the dinner hour. Others say those working are more likely to open an email sent just prior to the lunch hour. Experiment to find out what works best for you and your audience.

19. Use Email Sign Up Forms

In order to fuel continued and sustained list growth, it’s a no-brainer to have an email sign up form on your website, blog, and other digital properties like social media sites. Check out these three golden rules for sign up forms.

20. Give Incentives

Offer prizes as part of a contest on social media requiring entrants’ email addresses. Check out Social Sweepstakes to engage fans on Facebook and grow your email list.

21. Leverage Social Channels

Ask your social audience to stay connect via email. If Twitter is your primary channel, use a Twitter Ads account to glean more email addresses via Twitter lead-generation cards sent to Twitter users.

22. Incorporate Inspiration

Examine competitors’ emails more closely with the free tool Scope; it creates a web-based version, HTML source code and a view of how it appears on mobile, desktop and plain text.

23. Avoid the Spam Filter

Pre-empt being relegated to spam bins by running your emails through the Email Spam Test. A number of other tactics can also help you dodge the spam filter, which reportedly snags some 21 percent of all emails. Some have to do with coding, content and formatting, but you must also limit the repetition of seemingly benign words like “guaranteed” and “free.”

24. Test Your Subject Lines

Use SubjectLine.com to get viability scores on the subject lines of your email. The first query is free. Here are 50 all-time great retail subject lines for more inspiration.

25. Use Clear Calls to Action

One of the most important elements to your email campaign is the call to action (CTA). Subscribers typically read the first line, notice any images, and glance at your CTA. Eliminate any confusion by making your CTA obvious and compelling. Some are better than others, and here’s why.

The post 25 proven steps to achieve email marketing magic appeared first on VerticalResponse.

One tactic proving to be successful when done well is the use of push notifications. We define this term here along with all the other mobile marketing words to know. Like texts, push notifications are sent directly to a user’s mobile home screen once they’ve downloaded an app. Unlike texts, they have permission settings and a wide range of customization options that can increase user engagement.

What’s the big deal about push notifications? Push notifications have an average open rate of over 90%. A study done by Localytics shows that users launched an app an average of 14.7 times per month when they accepted push notifications versus those who declined and therefore only opened at an average rate of 5.4 times per month. The study goes on to say that 65% of the users who allowed the notifications also returned to the app after 30 days compared to just 19% of those who opted out. This is a huge incentive to encourage users to accept these messages.  Once you have permission, keep working to maintain it.

At their best, push notifications give users instant access to relevant and valuable information. For businesses, push notifications are a direct line of communication. They offer the ability to share deals and special promotions that encourage action.

Now for a word of caution: Given the direct and personal nature of this communication, push notifications must be used wisely as no one wants to be inundated with alerts. Poorly designed messages, or alerts sent too frequently, result in users turning off notifications or deleting the app altogether.

How do you get around being silenced, or even worse, deleted? When requesting this type of attention, make sure you have something of significant value to share. Here’s a good gut check:

7 Questions to Ask Before Sending

1. Is this customer expecting this type of communication from you? A good onboarding experience and setting expectations are everything.
2. When was the last time the user received a push notification from you? Determine how often is not often enough and too often.
3. Is this the right time and place for the customer to receive a notification from you? Take into account time zones and location.
4. Has this message been successful with customers in the past? Answering this question requires you to track and analyze the performance of your efforts — a sign of any good marketer.
5. Is this message part of a broader marketing strategy? Push notifications should be complementary to your website, email marketing, search marketing, social media, print, and other forms of advertising.
6. What’s in it for them? If you’re just thinking about promoting your business, you’ve already lost.
7. Are you following the Golden Rule? “Do unto others as you would have them do unto you.”

Mobile Apps Service

Ready to drive engagement and increase loyalty with with mobile messaging? We’ve launched a brand new service that makes building mobile apps scalable and affordable.

Learn More

The post 7 questions to ask before engaging customers with push notifications appeared first on VerticalResponse.

MOBILE

The mobile industry continues to scale at an impressive rate.

Currently, half of the world’s population has a mobile subscription, just up from 20 percent a decade ago. Product research, price comparisons, and purchases are within consumers’ hands and can be completed with a few finger taps. If your business hasn’t started thinking about its mobile strategy, it’s time to get moving.

MILLENNIALS

At 80 million strong, millennials are a force to be reckoned with in the market. This population segment (ages 17 to 34) is expected to spend more than $200 billion annually starting in 2017, and a lifetime of $10 trillion. Marked by being extremely tech savvy and price conscious, one can only conclude that retailers focused on creating a strong mobile and online presence will leave more traditional retailers behind.

BEACONS

This relatively new technology is a one way transmission that gets picked up by a compatible mobile app or operating system. The use of Bluetooth Low Energy (BLE) transmissions can be used in-store to determine the mobile devices’ physical location, track customers, and trigger an action like a check-in on social media, or a push notification. This allows retailers the ability to personalize a customer’s experience as well as gather insights.

While it’s still important to have a strong traditional presence (read: desktop site), it’s never been more necessary to have a powerful mobile web / mobile app experience. As customers and the modern marketplace continue to grow, so can your business.

Ready to explore your mobile marketing options a bit further? We’ve launched a brand new service that makes building mobile apps scalable and affordable. If you’d like to learn more or get early access to our new mobile apps program, click through below, and we’ll be in touch shortly.

Mobile Apps Program

Learn More

See Chaffey’s post for more online retail insights and the full infographic.

The post 3 important trends retailers must know appeared first on VerticalResponse.