Web Vision » Email Marketing

Let People Know Where You Are

Amanda — Sat, 03 Dec 2011 19:53:27 +0000

This is an entry in our daily Internet Marketing Advent Calendar series. Each day your favorite marketing elves will focus on a new topic to get your internet marketing in order before the start of the new year.

When you were little, did you ever have to travel for Christmas? Remember how scared you were that Santa wouldn’t know you weren’t home? I remember writing letters and nagging my parents to make SURE he knew we weren’t going to be home for Christmas.

If you could just capture a thread of that nervous energy and use it to start a fire to get your social media icons on your website and other promotional items – that would be swell. I see so many companies that have a decent presence on social media sites, a great newsletter or a great blog but there is little to no mention of it on their site. Your additional internet marketing efforts should be integrated into the other forms of marketing you are doing… not be separated.

Someone may be in the research phase of their buying process and come across your company. Perhaps they aren’t ready to buy but if they started following your Twitter account, Like you on Facebook, sign up for your email newsletter, subscribe to your blog etc., when they are ready to buy you stand a better chance of being on the top of their mind.

Letting people know where else they can find your content is as easy as adding icons to your website or promotional items. You could also add widgets for social media sites and email newsletter signup boxes right on other pages of your site.

Integrate all of your marketing efforts that you can! Just like you didn’t want Santa dropping your loot off at the wrong house, you don’t want your next customers subscribing to your competitors content over yours!

Photo credit: kdonovan_gaddy

Marketing 102: Tell Me Why

Amanda — Wed, 10 Aug 2011 13:42:38 +0000

Photo credit: Danielle Page

As business owners and marketers we spend a lot of time talking about what we want from our current and future customers:

Buy Now!
Download Now!
Like us on Facebook!
Follow me on Twitter!
Scan the QR code!
Sign up for our email newsletter!

Perhaps if we spent a little more time explaining why we want them to complete these action we will see a better conversion rate on ‘the ask’.

We all have enough email coming into our various inboxes every day, so why would I sign up for your email newsletter? Sell them on the subscription by explaining what they will get by joining your list. Tell them if they will get special deals or promotions, inside news about the company and staff, tips and tricks you won’t share anywhere else, premiere seating and prices for events etc. Without knowing the benefit of signing up, they may just think you will be sending them the same press releases they can get from you anywhere or worse – that you will just send them poorly executed email messages with no value.

Want people to like your Facebook page? What are you going to offer them that they can’t get from checking back when they feel like it? Think about having a fan view and a non fan view so that fans see different messaging than those who haven’t liked your page yet. Create a landing tab asking for the ‘like’ and explaining what unique information they will get here that they won’t get any place else. Explain how you will use the unique aspects of Facebook to give them something more of value.

Now that more businesses are on board with this social media and internet marketing thing, there are more and more Follow Us on Twitter, Like Us on Facebook etc. commands out there. We as consumers are tuning them out like advertisements so add some light to your ask and tell us why we should. I bet you will see a better response from your ‘ask’.

Making Old Cookie Content New Again

Amanda — Tue, 14 Jun 2011 13:27:35 +0000

seriousbri

Last week I had the pleasure of attending the ABSTRACT: The Future of Design in Media Conference, right here in Portland, Maine. I have pages and pages of notes to go through but there was one point that reminded me of something Jenika and I talk to clients about all the time – making old content new again.

Gael Towey, from Martha Stewart Magazine, shared with us all kinds of magic behind Martha Stewart’s magazine and office life. She told us about how a traditional magazine re-thinks how they work to keep up with new technology. We got to see some behind the scenes action from making the Martha Stewart iPad version of the magazine to some of their mobile applications.

Making Cookies in cyberspace with old recipes

One of Martha Stewart’s apps is the Martha Stewart Makes Cookies app for iPhones and iPads. The app itself looks beautiful. It has photos of the cookies, recipes, instructional videos, articles and more. So how long did it take to make this cookie app? Not as long as you think. Why not? Because it is all content and information the Martha Stewart team already had. They found a new way to take their ‘old’ content and give it a sharp new look.

Restyling your content

We hear from businesses often that are overwhelmed with this pressure to create content for the web. Blogs, status updates on social media sites, whitepapers, ebooks… where is all of this supposed to come from? One idea is to take older ideas and older content and just rework them for these new advances like blogs and social media. Think about updates you can make, new data you can include, old internal studies and documents that you can publish. That is where a lot of businesses find some of their best online content – offline or in the archives.

21 Ideas for reworking older content

Take a presentation you have done in the past and turn the major points into a blog post.
Use your company’s frequently asked questions, post them to your blog and tease on your social media profiles.
Still have photos from company parties, reopenings or events? Post them to social media profiles with info about the events.
Revisit old blog posts from before you had as much traffic as you do now. Update them with new data and republish.
Go through your analytics data and publish a “best of” list with your most popular content.
Combine a series of blog posts around a certain theme to make a whitepaper or ebook.
Take something you have written about and make a screen cap video or an audio file.
Reverse of the last one. Take a video demo and highlight the key points in a blog post. Embed the video in your new post.
Take a point you made in a previous post and highlight a case study or example of that point.
Go through old files or handouts you have and write about how things have changed since they were published.
Write about a conversation or exchange you had with a valued client.
Take your data and display it differently. Try a chart or infographic to tell the story instead of words.
If you come across an article that builds on a point you have made or contradicts – share it, link to your post and add your opinion.
Take a comment left by a reader on a previous blog post, add your reaction and write it as a blog post.
Recently received an award or recognition? Write about it and what it means to your business.
Revisit content from email newsletters or direct mail pieces. Add some fresh ideas or examples and reuse.
Give content a fresh voice by asking a different staff member to write about it.
Have a new employee or intern tell you what business principles they have learned. Share that in a newsletter or blog post.
Turn your favorite or most popular blog entries into an article in your next email newsletter.
Use a scheduling tool to automatically tweet out some of your favorite posts every week
Have to read a new report, industry publication or a business book? Give a short recap or react to one thing you read in there.

That is hopefully enough to get you started! Not all content has to be brand spanking new. Take advantage of content you already have and spruce it up. If Martha Stewart can do it… so can you!

What are landing pages and do I need to use them?

Jenika — Thu, 03 Feb 2011 15:06:43 +0000

Photo credit: Frank Kehren

What exactly is a landing page?
A landing page is essentially any page a user lands on when they are surfing the internet (sometimes called an entrance page). However, in most cases, a single page on website that is tied to a specific campaign is usually referred to as a landing page. Website users will be directed to a landing page after clicking on an advertisement. Sometimes print ads or direct mail offers will promote special landing pages for different campaigns.

Why can’t I just send them to my homepage?
Your homepage has multiple options and calls to action for a user to take. If you’re using pay-per-click ads that have a specific offer then sending users to your homepage; having too many options may distract them from the offer they originally came to the site for. Landing pages are created to promote the advertisement in more detail. They are custom designed for a target audience so that the user feels compelled to engage in the intended action.

Why are landing pages important?
When using landing pages in accordance with pay-per-click campaigns and other similar internet marketing efforts, they produce better conversions than a regular web page. They are custom designed for a targeted audience with the intention of driving qualified leads to a particular offer.

How do they work?
Online marketing ads use copy (and sometimes design elements) to motivate the user to click the ad. Once a user has clicked the ad, they are directed to a landing page. When a user arrives to the landing page there is a general framework to assist user conversion.

This framework consists of:

The goal or the offer – Whatever you want the user to do from this page. For example; buying a product or signing up for a free trial.
Relevance to the campaign – The landing page must reflect back on the source it came from. For example; if you are using Facebook ads to promote an offer, the page should use the same offer as the original ad.
Keywords – If you’re using Google Adwords or Microsoft adCenter, your landing page should target 2 to 3 keywords that are used in the original ad copy.
Captivating title or header – Website users consume content very quickly by scanning. An attention grabbing header will help keep the user from navigating away from the landing page.
Supporting copy – Use additional copy (but not too much) to explain the offer in more detail. Explain why the user should take the action.
Image – Graphic elements can be extremely persuasive and have the ability to make a statement. When used effectively, they can evoke emotion and compel the user to stay on the page longer to explore the offer.
Conversion piece – Make the user do something. Whether it’s filling out a form, watching a video or sharing the content with their friends, get them to take action.

Do I need to use landing pages?
Take this “super official quiz” that will determine if you should be using landing pages.

Do you use paid advertisements (Google Adwords, Facebook Ads, banner ads, etc.) to drive traffic to your website?
Do you use email marketing to offer specials to your customers or drive traffic back to your site?
Does your business have multiple locations?
Do you have different kinds of users or customers?
Do you promote your website using direct mail?
Do you have customers coming to your website from social networking sites like Facebook, Twitter, LinkedIn, etc.?

If you answered “yes” to any of the questions above, then you should think about using landing pages. Any time you can offer a specific product or service, or if you are directing users to your site for a specific offer, using landing page will come in handy.

To learn more about landing pages watch this archived webinar or leave your questions in the comments section below.

Christmas is over… time to get organized!

santa — Sun, 26 Dec 2010 15:50:13 +0000

Wow yesterday was quite a day! Made it around the world, visited billions of people with NORAD tracking me the whole time!

As everyone plays with their gifts, dons their new sweaters and start to travel home – I wanted to say ‘Thank You’. Thanks for sharing the spirit. I also want to say… now it is time to get down to business! Year end is here and we all have lots of planning to do!

This is time to get organized and make our goals for 2011. While reading along with the Internet Marketing Advent Calendar, some of my favorite internet marketing elves taught me a thing or two that I wanted to share:

Alayna gave us all so much information on how to come up with content, important information about how to keep our CMS website’s up to snuff and she threw in some serious holiday planning tips too!
Alex knows a lot about PPC marketing! A lot of people use PPC to target people that are looking for their products, services or answers but I think if more people took Alex’s advice we could save some money and target people better.
Amanda had a lot of good ideas about coming up with new content this year. It is hard to know how much content to put out and how to get it to the people that need it. I loved her ideas about email marketing. That could be a good idea for me… think how many children I could write to!
Chris, I have never seen him blog before but he sure does know a lot about ecommerce sites. I know a lot of people that could use his advice!
Jenika is funny. I also think she likes the movie A Christmas Story. She had a lot of references to the Parker family. I loved her tips on using Foursquare. Think of how many badges I could have gotten if I checked in at all the places I visited last night!
Kyle made me laugh. I got more tips from him on how to keep my tree alive than I have on the dozens of other sites I have visited. He also knows a lot about design and getting new useful content on our websites.
Mike is the smart, silent type but I really appreciated his tips on shopping online. I really hope people are more controlled when using their credit cards online.

All of these internet marketing elves were on the ‘Nice’ list and I think we can all learn a lot from them to meet our website goals in 2011!

Read the rest of the Internet Marketing Advent Calendar

Segmenting your email – I mean – holiday card lists

Amanda — Sun, 12 Dec 2010 15:35:41 +0000

Image source: David Blackwell

Holiday cards! One of the few excuses we have for sending and receiving mail from our friends and family. I look forward to pulling out my address book and making out cards to those that are closest to me.

I usually buy multiple boxes – some funny, some expressing thanks, some cute and some standard. As I go through my list, I decide who gets which types of card.

This year that got me thinking about email marketing. I take such care in my personal cards I send out. That isn’t even considering those that I send out for people in my business network and those really personalized ones for gifts and family that I attach to presents. Each type of card has an intended recipient.

So why with all this care, and I don’t think I am alone here, don’t we give even a hint of this type of consideration for our email marketing campaigns? Most business I receive emails from are still sending out blanket mass-produced messages to one list. I am getting the same email as someone’s grandmother, someone who has already bought this company’s products and any other demographic that may be on the email list.

In an article in BtoB Magazine by Karen J. Bannan, she says businesses should target potential customers by possible places they are in the sales cycle

“By targeting your e-mail messages based on where the recipient in the sales cycle, you should see bigger lifts, more satisfied customers and more retention and repurchase over the long haul.”

As we build our email list, lets try to segment the list according to different factors; like current customers, sales leads, small businesses, medium to large size businesses, conference attendees etc. Once you have even just a few list segmentations in place you can slightly tailor your message to make it more relevant to the person who will be receiving your email.

Read the rest of the Internet Marketing Advent Calendar

Why Campaign Tagging is Important for Google Analytics

Andre McKay — Mon, 04 Jan 2010 14:37:48 +0000

In my last post on Campaign Tagging, I walked you through the basics of setting up tagged links that work in conjunction with Google Analytics and Email Marketing. While campaign tagging is not a new feature within Google Analytics, it’s still a powerful tool to keep in your Inbound Marketing tool belt.

So let’s jump right into it! You’ve created a newsletter; used the URL Builder to generate your tagged links and have successfully delivered your newsletter. In order to see the results of your newsletters performance, you’ll need to log into Google Analytics: view Reports → Traffic Sources and then Campaigns. Once you’re in the Campaign dashboard, look for the specific campaign that you referenced when you were generating the links, i.e. Dec-2009-Week-Two

Once you click on your campaign name, you’ll have the ability to review different reports like landing pages, regions, new vs. returning visitors and more. We’ll be focusing on Ad Content today.

Ad Content or Campaign Content is one of the optional values that you can set when generating your tagged links (fig. 1).You will use this option to differentiate between ads within your newsletter. In other words, if you have three separate links that have the same landing page, this is where you would distinguish which link sent the most visitors to your site.

fig. 1

I used the example “Button” above to show that this link will be associated with a graphical button that will be used in a newsletter. If there was a text link as well, you would then change Campaign Content to “Link” and regenerate the URL. See example below.

fig. 2

The benefit of using Ad / Campaign Content is that when reviewing analytics, you’ll be able to view this report and see whether or not your graphical button had more impact than the textual link. With this data, you can gauge what kind of user conversion works best with your target audience. As you can see in the example above, the graphical button had far more success than the textual link for this particular campaign.

Although reporting and link performance is available in most Email Service Provider platforms, connecting your campaigns with Google Analytics gives you far more power. You can track and analyze your visitors behaviors AFTER arriving to your site via your email campaign and not just what link they click on within their Inbox.

Dec. 5 – Email is the frosting to your gingerbread house

Amanda — Sat, 05 Dec 2009 16:11:50 +0000

Photo Credit: Wendy Copley

This is an entry in our daily Internet Marketing Advent Calendar series. Each day your favorite marketing elves Kasi and Amanda will focus on a new topic to get your internet marketing in order before the start of the new year.

Email Marketing is still so important

2009 has been the year Social Media just seemed to take over. We all love new toys and seeing how they work. Please don’t think that makes your old favorite toys any less useful (Velveteen Rabbit anyone?).

Every social networking site is tied to an email address. For many of those sites, a new update or subscriber on a site generates an email alert reminding you to go back and see the most recent activity. Our businesses are run with emails. Sales leads are usually forms filled out on your site, which generate an email. Everything we do online is held together with email.

Our friend Greg Cangialosi, CEO of Blue Sky Factory calls email the “Digital Glue.” Email is the driver of all things we tend to do in business. It is the staple of all online marketing. When you are building a gingerbread house you essentially have some cookie planks and cool colored candy. The frosting is what holds the whole thing together! Don’t overlook how important email is because it is the one piece that hold all of your online marketing together.

Want some more from Greg?
Check out this video too on merging your email marketing with social media:

Read the rest of the Internet Marketing Advent Calendar

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