Blog: Interviews & Buzz

When throwing the spotlight on an awesome customer like Eugene Tan, it's hard to imagine that we're somehow brightening his already luminous position in Australia's photography and surf communities.

As a chronicler of all things Bondi Beach and beyond for Aquabumps, he's developed a following both locally and abroad - boosted by the Aquabumps gallery, site and in no small part, a near-daily email newsletter.

We shared a few moments with our favorite surf dude (sorry, Dave and Ben) to find out how he's used email to get his wickedly good photos into the wild, plus pass on some of the marketing lessons he's received along the way.

Hi Uge, many of our long-haul customers are creatives like yourself - what is it about email marketing that you and presumably others find so valuable?

"Everyone is on email. It just makes sense to use it as a delivery platform."

Using email is a great way to push out your photography. I like the fact that I push my photos, rather than put them up on website and pray for people to visit – I have the control. People love looking at images... Beach images even more so. Email is simply a great platform to pack a little 30 second beach escape into busy working inboxes, especially now that most email clients can display HTML emails.

Oh, via email you just have access to so many people – everyone is on email. It just makes sense to use it as a delivery platform.

Aquabumps' email newsletters are delivered pretty much every weekday, but your subscribers never seem to lose their interest in them. How do you keep your readers wanting more?

"Our open rates are very high as we are 95% content and go easy on the sell."

We send 5 newsletters per week – Monday to Friday. Our open rates are very high as we are 95% content and go easy on the sell. You need to build trust with your audience by just showing stuff they want to see or read about. Pick a niche too, preferably something you are very passionate about. Mine is the beach.  

We noticed that two of your recent campaigns linked back to surf videos via an image of a video player - how did this affect response?

"Click-through rates were huge on the campaigns where I linked back to my videos"

Video is new to me, even after many years of talking about it. So many photographers are switching over to the 'dark side' since the inception of the DSLR HD video capabilities. Personally, I’ve found video to be a compelling way to engage my audience - I broadcast escapism and as you can imagine, video is a great way of taking my viewers to another place... Outside the office cubicle, anyway.

Click-through rates were huge on the campaigns where I linked back to my videos - the best they’ve been in a long time. Shame we can’t play video in the inbox, though (Note: In some instances you can play video in the inbox - view our latest results).  

Finally, what is your advice to other folks who are considering, or have just started using email marketing to promote their work?

Use Campaign Monitor! Far out their tools are good, intuitive and basically just work – so you can spend more time creating content... They didn’t ask me to say that!

Many thanks to Uge for taking the time to answer our questions. To see his surf photography and sign up for the newsletter, visit the Aquabumps site.

If there's one topic that makes for great watercooler chatter in the web scene, it's how to convert customers from (often free) trial accounts, to the real paying thing. Many apps do this successfully on a daily basis, many don't. But what makes conversations like this interesting are the events that occur between a new customer signing up and finally laying down their credit card - let it be fooling around with a free account and becoming hooked, having a great customer service experience, or on a more subtle level, receiving reminders to use the app from time to time.

One fellow who knows about the inherit challenges in converting leads into paying customers is James Purves from Docshaker, a web app for fast-tracking the document signing process by hosting documents and collecting signatures online. He kindly spent a moment with us to discuss how Docshaker are using Campaign Monitor to drive new purchases, using the combined power of autoresponders and our API.

Hi James, lets start off with what you've observed when using email marketing to stay in touch with your customers. Do you think there's value in web apps like yours using email for this task?

"We've found that our email campaigns are not just an extension of the website but... are just as successful in converting trial users to subscribers."

Email marketing is an essential part in the purchasing process for subscription-based web applications like Docshaker. Our experience of purchasing behavior is that the lead time between site discovery and purchase can be one or two weeks. In this period, the customer is usually evaluating competing products, or too busy to complete the transaction and sign up. The key moments in purchasing behavior are thus not during the website visit, but in the hours, days or even weeks after. As a result, it's critical to keep communicating the site's features and benefits. Autoresponders do this job perfectly and the reports provided allow us to refine our message over time.

We've found that our email campaigns are not just an extension of the website but, due to the lead time between discovery and purchase, are just as successful in converting trial users to subscribers.

I see you've been using our API to trigger an autoresponder series, as soon as a customer signs up for a free trial. Tell us a bit more about how this works and its impact on trial customers.

Offering a free trial is the key first step in our purchasing process and thankfully, customers are generally at ease with providing an email address and opting-in for updates when they try us out. On signup, we use the Campaign Monitor API to add new users to a 'trial' subscriber list. From an experienced developer's point of view, the API is so easy to use that this took almost no time to set up. 

Once a new trial user has subscribed, we can reliably communicate with them using autoresponders throughout the period they are evaluating our product. Our initial emails reinforce the core features of the app, then later, we send campaigns that highlight some of the more in-depth functions that we feel add value to a user's experience. We've also enjoyed being able to adjust the autoresponder delivery times, as to optimize site conversions.

"We found that sending a follow-up email 7 days after signup prompts many users to come back... So far, we're receiving a click-through rate of 34%"

Often when a user first tries the app, they prepare a test document for signing and go away happy that it works, but don't always return. We found that sending a follow-up email 7 days after signup prompts many users to come back to their account and dig a bit deeper. So far, we're receiving a click-through rate of 34% on these follow-up messages, making it an effective way to keep users logging-in to their accounts and learning more about our service.

Interestingly, we find that people don't often unsubscribe from these reminder emails - however, we do taper them off over time.

Another upside to offering trial memberships is that it's really helped Docshaker build a large subscriber list that we can send marketing emails to every few months, generally when new features and functions are added to the app. We haven't found a more cost-effective way than email to stay in touch with our leads and customer base, while automating over 80% of the whole process.

Finally, when users convert to a paid account, we use the API to transfer the user from the 'trial' list, to a 'subscribed' list in our Campaign Monitor account. This halts the trial-focused marketing emails and allows us to apply a different email marketing strategy to our paying customers.

Thanks for filling us in, here. So finally, do you have any advice for fellow web developers, who may want to start using the API to automate their email campaigns?

If we've got any advice after having utilized the API in this way, it's to look out for ways to use web-based services like Campaign Monitor to automate tasks and provide reliable service to your customers, then devote your time to managing core business objectives instead. It's so much better than reinventing the wheel by doing everything in-house.

When choosing the best way to proceed, we felt that the main goal had to be giving our users the best possible experience. Campaign Monitor provided a solution we could trust to do just that - it 'just works' for us.

Many thanks to James Purves from Docshaker for sharing his experience with using autoresponders and the API with us. Find out how you can send follow-up emails for yourself and your clients, or get started with our API by checking out our detailed documentation.

Tickets to the mixer have sold out! Stay tuned to @campaignmonitor on Twitter and we'll let you know if spots become available. Plus, we'll keep you updated on where we'll be making other appearances during SXSW.

Tuesday, 15th March at 6pm
Iron Cactus (Mezzanine)
606 Trinity St (cnr. 6th St)
Austin, TX

Sold out!

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If you're heading over to SXSW Interactive next week, then get a hold of your diary - we're keen to meet you! This year, we're hosting a Design + Marketing Mixer at Iron Cactus on Tuesday, 15th March at 6pm. It costs nothing to register and in rowdy 6th St style, the food and drink will be in free-flow mode. It's our way of catching up and saying thank you for being an awesome customer of Campaign Monitor.

Even though we've extended the invitation to you first, tickets are already gone. disappearing fast, so register now to secure your spot at the bar.

Who will be there?

You, hopefully! Alongside a solid showing from the Campaign Monitor team, you'll be sure to meet fellow customers, designers, developers and email marketing folk. This is a great chance to meet people in your industry, pose questions to the team and kick off your SXSW closing night celebrations.

Where else will the team be during SXSW?

We're going to be up to all sorts of hi-jinks (as well as attending sessions) while we're at SXSW during 11-15 March, so stay tuned to @campaignmonitor on Twitter for details. See you at the show!

As final drinks are being called on the second-last day of Build, we'd like to shine a light on an app that should be considered staple at web design conferences worldwide. Conceptualized by Andy McMillan at Build, then designed and built by Nicholas Felton and Go Free Range, Caffeine Monitor calculates and displays the vital signs of attendees. That's right, we're talking the number of drinks consumed and the ever-important caffeine content therein:

Naturally, we're well pleased to have lent a hand in bringing this beautiful creation to Build and would love you to check it out.

Grinding the numbers (and beans)

Picture by @eoghanmccabe

Probably one of the last things you need is a counter showing how much caffeine you personally consume on a daily basis. But when it comes to plotting the litres (or gallons) of coffee and tea being consumed across an entire conference, then things get fascinating.

To collect the data required to power Caffeine Monitor, a simple web app was created and distributed to the folks serving coffee and tea over the duration of the conference (see right). Using data from the app and some constants like the number of attendees present and the amount of liquid and caffeine within each precious cup, Caffeine Monitor gets to work, updating live for display on the main stage and TV's around the venue.

Picture by @deadlysatsuma

Personally, I love how Caffeine Monitor displays 'Audience Caffeination' and the number of lethal caffeine doses consumed collectively. However, finding out that each attendee consumed a mere 1.91 drinks at the time of writing seems weaker than a watered-down chai latte. Being Ireland, I can only assume they're drinking something else between the caffè Americanos.

So if you're at Build, give @feltron and @freerange a pat on the back for being good sports. Either way, check out Caffeine Monitor. It really is a sight for sore (and sleepless) eyes.

Building a beautiful web

Getting involved with Build was a no-brainer for us, given that it's boutique design conference in Belfast with a higher concentration of talent than Guinness has barley. In its second year running, it's pulled in some of the big names like Tim Van Damme and Frank Chimero to present, alongside a range of sideshows including a typography exhibition, lectures and a good old-fashioned pub quiz. Be part of it by following @buildconf on Twitter.

Have a design or dev event that you would like us to sponsor? We'd love to get in touch.

With the holiday season soon approaching, we've teamed up with our friends at Shopify to bring you a series of tips, how-tos and case studies to help you promote your business using email marketing. First up, we would like to share the experiences of Matthew McNary at Hammerpress, in this quick Q&A on how they bring to market their unique range of vintage-inspired paper goods with Shopify and Campaign Monitor. There's even a solid tip or two for folks that are planning to introduce their humble storefront to the wider (online) world, so lets get started.

For a store that sells paper products like cards & posters, why do you use email marketing to promote your store (over say, flyers or mail)?

"...it's timely, it's focused, interactive and cost-effective..."

We've found that we're able to reach our audience much more effectively using email marketing. Let's face it, even though we're passionate about the printed word, we're like everyone else, we hate junk mail. With email campaigns, we're able to deliver our message more immediately and directly to people who actually want to hear what's going on. That means that we're not wasting a lot of resources on blanketing the entire western hemisphere with out-dated material that people may or may not actually be interested in. There's no dialogue going on with a mass-produced printed piece but with email campaigns customers are able to interact with the information that interests them most and if they're no longer interested at all, they have the ability to quickly tell us so by opting out with one click. So it's timely, it's focused, interactive and cost-effective, much more tailored to conveying information that is important but fleeting. We say save the printing for those special occasions when you need to leave a lasting impression.

Unlike a lot of online businesses, you actually have a physical store. Do your email campaigns drive both web and walk-in customers? If so, how do you encourage both?

Yeah, that's something we've continued to wrestle with when communicating to our customers. We're wary of bombarding our customers with all kinds of emails, and since there's a healthy overlap between our on-line and in-store patrons, we decided to use one monthly communication that addresses both. For example, we often plan new product releases that coincide both on-line and in our storefront, so its information that both audiences like to know. In fact, our email campaigns now serve as a way to remind us to keep the site up-to-date with our storefront. Knowing that customers without access to our physical store will be seeing the announcement of these new products and will be interested in viewing and purchasing them really motivates us to stay on top if it.

"...we often plan new product releases that coincide both on-line and in our storefront, so its information that both audiences like to know."

Another effective way we've tried to encourage both web and walk-in customers in our campaigns is to offer similar deals to both. Recently we had a close-out sale on discontinued product in the shop, so we marked down the same product on-line. So that section of our campaign called out that the sale was available both in-store and on-line with links to all the products on our site. That way even our in-store customers could get a closer look at what was on sale before heading down to the shop.

What's your tip for other real-world stores that plan to use email marketing to promote their products?

Offer your products on-line as well. It takes some investment upfront and a little maintenance along the way but adding an on-line presence really can increase customers' access to your products and subsequently increase your sales. Even local patrons will appreciate being able to click on a link in your email campaign and view a product in more detail before they come into shop. And you'll be able to more accurately track what content/products your customers are interested in through links to your site, giving you a better understanding of how to meet their needs.

An email newsletter from Hammerpress

The use of warm, Autumnal colors and detailed product photography make Hammerpress' one-column email newsletters a pleasure to receive. Here's a sample of their work:

Many thanks to Matt at Hammerpress for contributing. If you're feeling inspired, you can create your own store in just moments with Shopify, or get started with email marketing using Campaign Monitor.