We are thrilled to have been recently recognized by GetApp as one of the 10 Best Email Marketing Software solutions, and we owe it all to you! Your fantastic reviews helped boost us to a 4.8/5 rating and we could not be more grateful. Direct Mail was also recently rated atop the Top 10 Affordable Email Marketing Software solutions list.
If you have a minute and would like to leave a review, we’d love to hear what you have to say!
As we roll into fall, it’s important to stay engaged with your subscribers. Not only is the fall season filled with a multitude of holidays to offer promotions, it’s also a good time to raise brand awareness, highlight causes important to you, or even just let your customers know how much you appreciate them.
Here’s a list of upcoming holidays that you may want to keep on your radar. Each of them can be a great reason to reach out to your subscribers. We’ve also included some suggested subject lines to help get your creative juices flowing. If you need fall-themed images for your emails, Unsplash is a great resource.
Don’t forget that Direct Mail makes it easy to schedule email campaigns in advance. Set it and forget it!
Labor Day. Signaling the end of summer and time for one last BBQ, day at the beach or fun in the sun before the colder weather sets in. A good time to reach out with a special promotion or Labor Day sale.
Subject Ideas: Last Chance For Labor Day! Labor Day Sales Event Is Here 🤑
Halloween. A day not just for the kids, many times it can be a celebration for all marked with parties, candies and more. The perfect time to reach out with your spookiest deals.
Subject Ideas: Our Spooky Sales Event! Wicked Sales Are Flying By 🧙♀️
Veterans Day. Though promotions are common on Veterans Day, it’s also a great time to recognize all those who have served.
Subject Idea: Honoring Veterans. Thank You For Your Service 🇺🇸
Thanksgiving. Whether it be October 10 for Canadian Thanksgiving or November 24 for Thanksgiving in the United States, Thanksgiving is the perfect time for reflections on what we have and what you can offer to your recipients.
Subject Ideas: A Cornucopia Of Sales! It’s Turkey Time 🦃
Black Friday. Usually a strong time to promote deals, Black Friday can be also be a good time to follow-up on your Thanksgiving messages.
Subject Ideas: Black Friday Ending Soon! Don’t Miss Black Friday Deals 💵
Whenever you send an email campaign, Direct Mail automatically creates a version of your message that can be read in a web browser and shared online. This is a really handy way to share your campaign via social media, add it to your website, or share internally with colleagues. Here’s how:
Direct Mail’s email automation features save you time and energy, letting you focus on the core of what makes your business unique. There are a number of automations available in Direct Mail, but this blog post focuses on one in particular: autoresponders. Autoresponders make it easy to send email automatically to people on your list based on certain events and criteria that you specify. One common example that you may be familiar with is a birthday or anniversary email. We want to introduce you to another use case: sending automated follow-up emails to people who engage with your newsletters.
Sending follow-up emails can be a great way to provide relevant information or support to a lead or customer in a timely manner. For people who express an interest in your newsletter (by clicking a link, responding to a poll, etc.), you may wish to send them additional information, schedule a call or meeting, or just thank them for their response or interest. We explain how to set up this kind of automation below.
Let’s cover what you need to get this automation up and running:
Let’s skip over #1, under the assumption that you already have your mailing list set up in Direct Mail.
Let’s talk about #2. Make sure that your email newsletter includes links (or a feedback poll) that people can click on or interact with. It could be a link to a page on your website, social media post, video, or other content that your subscribers may find interesting and click on. The click will be what triggers the automated follow-up email to go out.
Lastly, create the follow-up email that will be used in step #3. Just like any other email in Direct Mail, you can include any kind of content you like (text, images, videos, links, etc.) and use mail-merge tags to personalize your message for the recipient.
Now that you have all the pieces in place, let’s create the automation. By the time we’re finished, you will have sent your newsletter and configured an automation that sends out follow-up emails to the people who click your newsletter links.
The first thing to do is schedule delivery of the newsletter that you created in step #2 above. You don’t want to send it out at this step, but you do need to schedule it to send at a future date (to give you enough time to set up the automated follow-up emails).
This is done by clicking “Send” in the toolbar, then clicking the “Schedule” pop-up menu and choosing “Schedule for Later” (if you know when you want to send it) or “Save as Draft” (if you’re not sure when you want to send yet).
Choose “Window > Autoresponders” from the menu bar, or click the Autoresponders button in the toolbar.
Give the autoresponder a name— this is just for your reference, your recipients won’t see it.
Next, click on the pop-up menu and select the follow-up email that you created in step #3 above. This is the email that will be sent out automatically.
Next, choose the event that will trigger the follow-up email. In this case, choose the option titled “Clicking a link in an email campaign”
Next, choose which email campaign you want want to watch for clicks. This should be the newsletter campaign that you just scheduled to send. You can pick and choose which links in the newsletter will trigger the follow-up email. You may choose all of them, or just the links that are relevant for your follow-up email.
If you want to delay when the follow-up email is sent, or adjust other advanced options, you can do so by scrolling down to reveal those settings, but the defaults should cover most cases.
The final step is to click the Start button in the toolbar (look for the “play” icon ▶️). Congratulations 🎉, your autoresponder is up and running!
When your newsletter campaign is sent out, the autoresponder will watch to see who clicks the links that you specified. As soon as the link is clicked, your follow-up email will be sent automatically—even if Direct Mail is not running on your Mac at the time.
Just like regular email campaigns, you can review the performance of your autoresponder campaign in the “Reports” tab in Direct Mail. You will notice some additional date-based filtering options to help you evaluate recent performance versus overall performance. The “Recipients” section of the campaign report will show you who has received the autoresponder thus far.
Don’t worry, your autoresponder won’t send duplicate follow-up emails. They’ll receive the follow-up email after the first click, and subsequent clicks will not trigger an email.
Your follow-up email cannot be edited while the autoresponder is running. If you need to make changes, pause the autoresponder (in the Autoresponders window), make your edits, and then resume the autoresponder.
Autoresponders run indefinitely until you pause them (in the Autoresponders window). Note that autoresponders will be automatically paused if you remove your project from the cloud, or transfer ownership of your project to someone else.
When you schedule your email campaign to go out, there is an option to instead “Save as a Draft”. A draft campaign is simply an email campaign that is scheduled to go out, but that doesn’t have a send date specified yet. You can send a draft campaign at any time by selecting it in the Reports tab and clicking “Deliver Now” or “Schedule Delivery”.
No. Only “URL” links can trigger autoresponders. The other kinds of links (email, telephone, and anchor) are not tracked by Direct Mail and do not show up in the campaign report.
Spend your time focusing on the core of your business, and let Direct Mail’s email automation features take care of the rest. Our Autoresponder feature is a great way to automatically follow-up with subscribers in a timely manner as they engage with your newsletter content. Nurture leads, grow sales, build customer relationships, and more, all without lifting a finger.
We are pleased to announce that Direct Mail’s parent company, e3 Software, has recently successfully completed a Service Organization Control (SOC) 2 Type II audit. Completed by The Moore Group, the audit is designed to examine and document the information security practices, policies, and procedures that we have adopted here at e3 Software, and to ensure that they meet or exceed a high standard for security, availability, integrity, and confidentiality. In successfully completing this audit, we demonstrate to our customers our commitment to protecting their data and operating with integrity.
This achievement is a continuation of our efforts to build and operate a service that you can trust. In addition to this recent SOC 2 Type II certification, we are also compliant with data privacy regulations like GDPR and CCPA, and certified as meeting PCI-DSS payment security standards. More information can be found on our compliance page.
We are happy to make our SOC 2 Type II report available to current or potential customers upon execution of a non-disclosure agreement. Please contact our customer support team for details.
