Online marketing solutions

2010 is upon us.  The years fly and most of us feel we have not had enough time to reflect and reassess our marketing campaign strategies, goals, and hindrances to that elusive successful ROI.  Reflection is a good thing.  As online marketers we know that strategic planning is an endless process, filled with changes and adjustments along life’s way.  It is a continuous path of learning, changing, and taking chances.

In many homes, a new year means that dreaded spring-cleaning.  We attack those rooms in which we have hidden away so much junk and clutter, too afraid to face it head on.  It has been building up for some time.  Now, it is time to open those areas that have just collected dust, and sweep them clean.  Throw out the junk.  What do we do then?  We make room for change, for newer and better things that will now take their place, improving our quality of life.

So in parallel, we need to clean out our old ways, the ideas that have not worked; and the marketing strategies that are no longer relevant with the age we are living in.  We need to get a transfusion, improving the lifeblood of our business.  Let’s determine to make a new plan which incorporates innovative strategies the blessed internet has provided.  Our goal has not changed, but the path always does.  Our message continually needs to get out in fresher and newer ways.  We are always in search for greener pastures of growth potential.

The world is our oyster, but we must learn to crack its shell.

Vision: Every brand, product, and service, must start with a vision. What is yours?  Having a core goal and voice must be shared by your entire team.  It is your company’s foundation.  Before your next internet marketing campaign, get your team together and make sure you are all on the same page.

Conversation not Dictation: Do you have conversations with your clients or are they constantly listening to you?  Give them a voice. Engage their thoughts and thinking.  As email campaign managers, or internet marketing consultants, you may know your tactics, and know them well, but your clients are the ones using your services and products. Seeing the world view from their end can enlarge and start increasing your market niche simply based on their advice and comments.

Dare to be Different. Think about it.  If you could personally meet with a product manager, or even the owner of a business, isn’t that a good thing?  It gives a personality and voice to the product and brand.  Don’t just be an innovative thinker, live out of the box and take some new and uncomfortable steps that you may have never considered before:

1.   Visit your clients.  Let them know how valuable they are.
2.   Create events and invite them – they can be webinars, physical conferences and seminars
3.   Create a New Year’s survey asking how you can improve.
4.   Gather some testimonials for your next newsletter.

Let your clients know they are dealing with a person, not an impersonal business.

Demonstrate your Values. In this day and age of schemes and gimmicks, it is refreshing to see a company that stands by the values that it preaches.  What gives you the cutting edge in your competition?  Do you deliver what you claim?  What message do you send out in your mass email campaigns and enewsletters?  Your business should represent all you say you stand for.

Be Visible and Reachable – Say Hello to Social Media Marketing. Social Media is and remains the most cost-effective promotional method out there. You now have the ability to attract large numbers of visitors, some of whom may come back to your website repeatedly. If you are selling products or services, social media marketing gives you the potential you need to make your site profitable in a fairly short period time.

Statistics show over 17% of internet users spend their time on Social Media sites.  This has tripled in only one year!  According to a recent article from Business.com’s 2009 Business Social Media Benchmarking Study, 83% of U.S. Companies use Facebook and 45% use Twitter. This includes hotels, airlines and travel suppliers. Who would have thought this would be happening just a few years ago?

Establish your Social Media Presence. Become an active listener and follow other bloggers, twitters, and tweet.  See what your competition is up to; create a buzz about your company, product, and service.  Facebook and Twitter are free, but blogger beware!  It is a commitment to start and maintain Facebook and Twitter.  If you cannot do this, you can always find great freelance bloggers at a reasonable rate to do it for you.

Internal Tweets. Twitter can be used for internal purposes, as well, remember intranets?  Twitter some tweets about meetings, employee updates, or you can provide a link for company news and updated documentation.  Appoint an employee to do this for you; they will love it.  Bring the age of technology into your company by being a live example of a business that embraces and uses the latest and greatest.  You will be seen by all as a smart and savvy innovator.

Email Campaign Software. Email marketing campaigns succeed neither by chance nor prayer.  They are planned, strategically targeted, against the tracking results of statistics and demographics.  Only a campaign software can create targeted demographics, analyzing all the results, in detail, for each campaign,   Receiving information such as click-thru-rates, mail opened, discarded, bounced and unopened, along with comparative stats from previous campaigns, can only be achieved with this software.  Why repeat a poorly received campaign in the past.  Email campaign software gives you that cutting edge difference.  Get the facts and stats to help plan your next move.

Website Makeover. How long has it been since you have taken another look at your website?  If it has been over two years, it will definitely not be reflecting your new voice, goals, changes or business directions that you have recently taken.

ZAHave you created a landing page that represents your campaigns?  That page needs your utmost attention.  A properly and thoughtfully customized, well designed landing page increases your conversion rates. Your landing page should convert a prospect to a client, a possibility to a sale. Think of that page as a strategy within itself. Write the content with care, and focus on your goal which is that clickable call to action.

Everything is moving so fast as the internet becomes almost the sole source for international marketing, news, and communication.  To build your ROI, you need to be where the action is.

That is just your first step.  Know your goals, live your message, and shout your brand and product to the world – Be an effective, strategic internet marketer who, like a chameleon, can change colors, spots, and direction when and where it is necessary.  Your survival depends on it.



Whether you use direct mail, newsletters, or mass mailing email campaigns, do not neglect the power of transactional emails as a powerful and neglected marketing channel.  Statistics show that transactional emails are read almost twice as much as promotional email, making this well worth the learning.  They are the perfect tool for another avenue in providing your customers with product promotions and sales.  Every transaction becomes another opportunity to up sell.

For example, a transactional email could be an invoice, e-bill, or shipping confirmation.  What a perfect place to insert and include offers, sales, and promotional messages.  By using your autoreminders, triggered with a customized email, you guarantee sending out targeted, timely communications, as well as valuable information to an expectant audience.

Spice up your Messages. The content of most transactional emails are simple text.  However, adding eye-catching graphics and HTML into your promotional alerts, can increase readability.  Thinking out of the box will help you rise above your competition.

Outsmart the Spam Filters. Spam filters are and will always be a-marketer’s worst nightmare.  Legitimate mail can be spammed without a user’s knowledge.  Transactional email messages have a better proven percentage rate of reaching the inbox.  Why?  Because transactional emails contain valuable consumer information that is desired, recognized, and expected.

Make it a Priority. Transactional emails can become an extension of your company’s marketing vision and brand building.  You can generate incremental revenue while reinforcing your brand and a more frequent personal communication to your customers.

Factors Worth Considering:

Integration. Having the right infrastructure is essential when creating effective customized content and behavioral triggers.  Have you explored your options using email campaign software?  Without the right integration and power behind your campaigns, you won’t be able to leverage the marketing opportunity that transactional e-mail affords you.

Relevant Content. Sending your customers a generic marketing message is not the way to go.  Don’t waste any golden opportunities to up-sell.  Plan your content wisely.  No one wants to end up in the spam or trash.

Timely Responses. Transactional e-mails are a critical business communication tool.  They need a specific expedited delivery date.  Make sure that your marketing messages can be automatically and accurately inserted into your transactional e-mails, and sent quickly and securely to your customers.

Monitor Stat Results .  Whether yours is an email marketing campaign or e-newsletter survey, you need accurate real-time reports.  All present and future email campaigns depend on the hardcore results of every past campaign effort.  Don’t shoot in the dark.  Keep improving with every email campaign.

Be Flexible and Test-Test-Test.  Do not be afraid to test different creative approaches.  If you are adding HTML and graphics to your transactional emails, test its receptivity by sending them to different email clients.  See what is blocked and how others view your message.  Avoid costly mistakes.  Remember, the goal is not a campaign built on just numbers, but one that is built on thoughtful, well- planned strategy.

Know the Regulatory Guidelines. There is no law forbidding transactional messages from containing some promotional type content; however, there are certain guidelines you must adhere to, especially in the United States.  Get the facts and SPAM Rules around mixed messages.

http://www.ftc.gov/bcp/edu/pubs/business/ecommerce/bus61.shtm

At present, many businesses still do not understand how to use transactional email marketing as a new and powerful marketing tool.  The result is an overwhelming number of missed business marketing opportunities and new sales.  Knowing the difference between marketing and transactional email messages can make the difference for your bottom line.  Isn’t that every e-marketer’s goal?

Remember,  transactional emails are a great way to boost your sales.  Every transaction becomes an opportunity to further dialogue with you clients, offering them new products, services, or savings, while sending them relevant information.  It is still an underutilized pearl of knowledge.

Let’s face it. We are in a tough economy and the light still is not shinning at the end of the tunnel. Our survival mode needs to kick in and our wallets must tighten.  Take this time and be resourceful. It should be our way of life. Concentrating on what works is one of the survival keys of life.

As email marketing software continues to be a successful path for all business email marketing, obtaining a large-scale, well-developed email list is worth its weight in gold.

So, why wait to build your own email address list? Any business knows that it takes a great amount of time to build up a formidable database of clients. Why spend all that time and energy when you can buy or rent a massive email address list ready-made? That is a good question. The answer is not black and white. Whether you are using lists for bulk email, direct mail, or e-newsletter campaigns, you will need to know the positives and negatives between the two, making your own conclusions.

Renting an Email Address List

Renting an email address list can be very cost-effective. For a fee, you are taking advantage of someone else’s hard earned email list building. Normally, these lists are credible and the people on the lists have given their permission to receive third-party mail. These emails are carefully monitored and the providers are normally not considered or guilty of spamming. Whether obtained from email campaigns, direct bulk email marketing, or an email newsletter subscriptions, these email address lists are a valuable source of sales and leads.

The negative to renting is that this precious email list never is yours. You never see or have access to it. You rely on the seller’s word that he is not a spammer and that his list is genuine. You create the email marketing campaign, and the owner sends out the email. You simply trust his word. At the end of the day are you sure that your direct mass mailings are going to a targeted receptive list? OR – are junked and spammed?

Buying an Email Address List. Once bought, you have full control over your list sending out your own promotions, whenever you want. If the owner of the list respects and preserves it, it is not just sold to the highest bidder – but are you sure? There is no guarantee. Before you shell out the big bucks, read on.

1. You may not be the sole owner of the list. How many other people have bought this list?

2. A list that is not built by your market niche may not be targeting the correct consumers.

3. If a list is being used and misused by others, you are in danger of being spammed or worse, you could end up on black lists.

4. You may receive little or no responses from annoyed recipients.

If people are not careful with these lists, recipients are bombarded with bulk mail that they don’t want coming at them from many different sources. Bottom Line – recipient responses collapse, making this purchased address list of little or no value for your business. OR, their happy little spam and delete fingers go right into action.

In conclusion: Whether you are a new business, or reviving the old, having a well developed and monitored email address list is crucial. Reaching out to the right audience with the right message and product is invaluable as the path to growing your revenues and increasing quality sales leads.

We all stress out over writing good content for our e-newsletter, SEO article, or website content. If you are like me, you read your content over and over, finding mistakes, changing sentences and at the end, wanting to just throw it in the trash and start again. Or maybe you suffer from writer’s block and find yourself simply staring at the wall, hoping to lose yourself in a distraction, saving you from this horrible fate.

When can we do? Let’s not forget that our email marketing campaigns and mass mailing campaigns are going to ordinary people. What we have to say does not have to make the Guinness Book of Records, or win a place on the best-seller’s list of The New York Times. All we need to do is remain focused on our first thought, keep it clear and simple, and begin from there. No one wants to read something complicated and challenging. In fact, if that is what you are writing, then you might as well trash it. Statistics tell us that no one continues to read something in which they have to struggle understanding the words and their meaning.

Collect Interesting Information for the Future. Be prepared. Don’t wait until the last minute to get creative. Create a folder in your computer and copy anything of interest you find on the internet about your industry or just something people might like to read. Interesting articles are very inspiring. Always be prepared.

Make the Experience Enjoyable. The tone and reflections in your newsletter or email campaigns will be obvious to the reader. Don’t see this experience as a burden or something to fear. The whole idea is to reach out to your audience in a personal way with a personal voice. This is your opportunity as you let people get to know a little bit about you.

Develop a Sense of Humor. We need to laugh a bit more these days and help one another become a little more lighthearted. Your correspondence should be enjoyable and your prospects should look forward to every issue.

Have you Considered Hiring a Freelance Writer? There are many great professional writers out there who will produce good quality articles with great content and information for your readers. They can follow your outlines or come up with their own ideas, with your approval, of course. With the right person, you can begin a mutually beneficial working relationship. If you feel this is too much for you, it’s time you did some networking and research to find someone who can. Seek solutions, stop grumbling.

Success email marketing campaigns do not just happen overnight. Planning ahead ensures that you will have enough time to think about what you want to say and who you are saying it to. Capture your audience with creative, thoughtfully planned content. Plan ahead and make it happen.

From phones to computers, from snail mail to email, from Windows 95 to Windows 7, the technical world is moving too fast. Our kids eat, sleep, and now dream in sms messaging. Our words are filled with email blocking, certification, regulation, customization, and personalization. Our minds become a vault of technical terms as we stress over the need to constantly just keep up with the latest technology.

We are dependent on our alarms, timers, autoreminders, pop up calendars and dare we forget to charge the I-phone? We tweet and twitter, manage our portfolios, go to our weather maps, eyes half closed from lack of sleep, just clicking away, as if our hand was disconnected from our brain.

Further, if you use email campaign software, or direct mail campaigns, words like targeted audience, demographics, databases, click through links, opt-in and opt-out, have all but wiped out one important factor. What factor is that, you ask? That we forget we are marketing and communicating with real people.

No matter what communication tool you are using, there is a real live person at the end of that conversation. Remember, when sending any mass mailings to the inbox, there is a human being on the receiving end. We may need to retrain our brains, review our focus, and see our correspondence as conversations, not robotic autoresponders containing sales messages and announcements.

It’s time to make a decision. What’s more important to you? The question to ask yourself is: are you interested in developing and building long-term relationships with your prospects, or are you obsessed with keeping up with the latest gimmick and ploy to include in your next email campaign? We will never have it all, for today’s updates and ideas, once released, are already outdated. So let’s get back to the basics of communication.

Do not forget when sending out any direct mail or mass mailing email campaigns, we are speaking and reaching out to our readers. They are individuals and want to be acknowledged as such. There is nothing more of a turn off then receiving emails that are generic and irrelevant to your needs and interests.

No one wants to hear from a department, service, or store. No one wants a relationship with a brand name. When you write to an individual, as an individual, you are:

• confirming and recognizing their individual existence
• listening to their comments, feedback, and suggestions, and have taken them seriously
• responding to a need or want they have expressed with a thoughtful reply

As Emarketers, we have the tendecy to forget that the prospects we have, and are reaching out to, need to be approached as human beings who have lives, interests, families and jobs. Get it right from the begining. It’s all about building relationships and meeting their needs – pure and simple.

Designing a professional email campaign is important.  But,  we must also keep our products and services alive in our client’s mind.  This is no easy task. We juggle our time between potential sales and loyal clients. With the economy the way it is, most of us are now wearing more hats that we can handle, with less help.

The stress thermometer is constantly rising.

Whether your direct mail campaigns consist of newsletters or a professionally designed email newsletter template, we could all use some free and valuable advice on raising our bottom lines of profit.  Time is at the door.  We cannot afford to waste it.  Let’s spend our energies and focus on what actually works!

We have a great deal of experience in this area because our clients are our bottom line. We are always on the move, searching for creative and beneficial ways, that help them save money and time with their e-marketing campaigns. We’re on their side – we want them to win the game!

Many businesses today use email newsletters to keep their clients updated on company news, specials on products, while making sure they are sharing some interesting and value added information, enhances lives along the way.   Honestly speaking, it isn’t easy always having fresh and relevant content on a continual basis.  So instead of pulling out your hair or having a stress attack at work, we have found that planning ahead is the key.  Nothing hurried will ever reflect professionalism and continuity.

How does one prepare?  What can you do months before your deadline? Some suggestions:

• Create a content folder for your email newsletters.  Whether on your computer or in your desk, start compiling interesting articles and topics that you come across on the internet, in the paper, or on the news.

• See what your competitors are doing.  Join some of your competitor’s e-newsletters and forums.  What they are topics are they talking about?

• Join some business blogs and forums.  Google some relevant topics and join the forums and blogs for those topics.  Keeping up with what people are actually talking and writing about, will keep your business email campaign content fresh and up-to-date.

• Get the facts – communicate with your public.  Do you have sales representatives or customer service employees that deal directly with the public?  Get their opinions and feedback on what people are saying about your product or service.  Find out what people really want.  What are their priorities?

Cutting back on mailings and content.  It is more important to send out a well-designed email newsletter or direct mail campaign on a quarterly basis, than a monthly e-campaign, or bulk mail campaign that is hurried and unplanned. Are you trying to squeeze too much into your e-newsletter?

Quality is better than quantity.  Let your voice be heard in clear and simple terms.

Email marketers always look for more ways to collect email addresses and to enlarge their mailing list, in order to make their email campaigns more effective. VertcialResponse came up with 29 ways to collect email addresses. Few of the ways include:

• Put an offer on the back of your business cards
• Include a newsletter sign-up link in your signature of all of your emails.
• Make visitors sign up to your opt-in form before you give them something for free.
• Trade newsletter space with a neighboring business
• Offer “Email only” discounts

The welcome message you send to customers who just joined your mailing list is your opportunity to greet them and engage them with further activity with your brand. Here are a few tips from email transmit to make welcome email messages a great way to increase revenue from email campaigns:

• Thank them for joining by giving them some kind of a reward
• Add a link to your contact us form
• Remind them the value they are going to get from your email campaigns

The holidays’ season sure looks far away, but planning an effective email campaign can take a long time, and you better start right now, so you’ll have time to review the plan and take it into action. Bronto gives us a full checklist for holidays email campaigns:

• Review last year’s holiday season – So you’ll know what worked and what went wrong
• Develop your strategy and goals for the season – Decide what you want to communicate to your customers and how
• Build out your communication strategy – segment your list to types of customers and build a special message designed especially for their needs
• Establish a calendar for your communications – decide when will you want to send out your email campaigns
• Plan your pre-holiday messaging & preference push – don’t give it all in one time. Prepare your customers to your special offers
• Stand out from the crowd – don’t forget to differentiate yourself from the crowd
• TEST!!! – as simple as that
• Don’t forget to optimize your landing pages – your email campaigns are just the first step. The next step is to convert those clicks to purchases
• Think post-holiday - your branding doesn’t end with the upcoming holiday season. plan ahead

Video is the new buzz word at the email marketing world, and everyone who uses email campaigns as part of his marketing campaign is expected to upgrade himself to video email marketing. But how would you do it? Email marketing reports lists eight best practices for using video in email marketing campaigns:

1. Use video as a means, not an end
2. Find the right video/copy balance
3. Don’t forget video analytics
4. Keep it short and sweet
5. Don’t disguise the video link
6. Design for failure
7. Test your options
8. Be aware of production and bandwidth costs