Software Promotion + SEO

Program Design

If you’ve been following me on twitter you’ll know I’ve been researching newsletters. Obviously a lot of the information out there is very generalised and its taken me a little time to reflect and digest.

For a number of years I’ve been collecting uninstall information, basic data which hasn’t really helped me at all. When I first started collecting, I guess I must have heard mention of others collecting. But I’ve never joined the dot, yeah I’ve seen some patterns but not looked at the data from an individual perspective.

Anyways, during my research I’ve found that sending newsletters needs to fine tuned so that you maximize the relevance and get to know your customers or potential customers.

So if I link the newsletter subscription with the uninstall data I could contact the potential customer and turn it into a sale. I’ll have some information, maybe they couldn’t install the program, maybe they couldn’t print etc.

During my research I began to think that the setup of my setup was flawed as it was developed to send interval emails, not news. But I can do both depending on the circumstance.

I dont think it will be possible to produce glossy html emails with nice photos at this stage, but I should be able to produce relevant content which seems to be key. Also several different type of emails depending on data.

by JM

Well there hasn’t been much effort put into this third part of the development. I’ve added my smtp class and I’ve found my previous html email source files, which contains smtp header information.

I’ve sent some test emails and have proven that I can send html emails.

Also I’ve created a new folder for email template files which will correspond to the names of the files in the database.

Only really taken me an hour over the course of the day, the most time consuming part was finding the code (used previously) and the html email source file.

So I’ve kind of done all the development, I think. Oh with the exception of logging emails sent.

Later in the development, I’ll be discussing how not to get your emails tagged as spam.

So I’ve done all the fun stuff, I now need to decide what emails I’ll send to people and at what interval. I guess this is going to a learning process and the content, interval and how many emails I send will change with my experience.

At the moment theres going to be two types of emails I’ll send, A) to newsletter subscribers and B) customers who’ve just bought the program.

I suppose it would be a good idea to try and establish my aims for sending the emails and the basic points I want to get across.

A) Newsletter

- I want to encourage people to buy my software.
- I’ll need to portray quality and confidence in the product and in my company.
- Sell them the benefits of the program.
- Tell them that they get a free pack
- I guess I want to have purpose in why I’ve sent them another email.

I’m not sure how I would split this up into a number of emails and if I’d change the message I’m trying to get across in each ?

B) New customers

- I don’t get a lot of emails, but this is the most common response I have to make, that they can get a free jungle pack, that they have to send me their serial number and where to find the serial number etc.
- I guess I want to welcome them as a customer and thank them for their purchase, from what I’ve read in the past this is much appreciated by customers.
- I want to put a personal touch into the email.
- I also want to sell them more mask packs, maybe an email for each ?
- Tell them about features they haven’t already seen.
- Let them know how they can get help and what they should do if they have a problem. I guess that should be part of the first email. I want to encourage them to contact me and get help, rather than charge back to their credit card.
- So I guess getting past a period where they could get a refund is important.
- After this period, maybe sooner, I guess I can ask for feedback and comments.

I’ve no idea how I would split those up?

Any suggestions about further content ?

by JM

I’ve spent a few hours today, with kids TV blaring in the background, designing a database and writing the data access functions.

The key to a simple database, which uses two tables, is a date field which I call “Do Not Email Before” which signifies the earliest date when an email can be sent, I added this to my customers table. This allows for now sending email everyday.

And in my email templates table, I have a field which holds a value for the interval in days before sending the next email.

Quite a simple design and only a few fields to acheive this, which I’m quite proud of.

Next, to minimise the need for a log of emails sent, I’m going to see if its possible to create html email content from vb.net and have the email created within outlook and added to the sent items folder. I’m hoping this can be done with mapi and in the background.

by JM

For the first time in a few months I’ve had a few software sales, I mean I’m not surprised that sales have been so poor, as I not done anything to warrant new releases and their marketing.

However, I’ve had the opportunity to email a couple of customers to tell them about the free offer and to send their serial number. At the same time I asked some questions about why they purchased.

I began to think of blue saying about engaging the customer and how I’d never moved forward on this.

Obviously I don’t want to launch myself into a new project to enable me to put an automatic system in place to email customers. I mean I don’t have the sales to warrant the effort and  it wouldn’t be a simple system as people may send their serial numbers or not follow the natural progression of the emails I might normally send.

Having said this I could certainly put some plans in place if I found myself in a position where I were to get a lot of emails. In fact I do get a lot of  newsletter subscription emails, which I don’t do anything about.

I guess what ever system I could put in place, I would still need to create several standard emails. I guess I could knock up a small program which would read in standard email files from a folder and get the clipboard contents aka the email address and create the email so this would take the effort out of sending emails.

However, this doesn’t cater for sequence emails (emails sent out after n days in the trial for example). I guess this would be more suited for a web application, so that submitted emails would automatically be added to a que. But this is a lot more effort and I wouldn’t have a history of emails send, like my sent mail folder.

Thoughts please?

by JM