Internet Marketing Tips, Tools and Strategies

So you have developed opt-in email lists for your business, are sending out a monthly newsletters and the occasional promotional email. What else can you be doing to utilize email marketing to increase revenue and build lasting customer relationships? Triggered emails, also known as Event Marketing, is an excellent way to nurture relationships already established with email contacts.

What is trigger emailing and how can it take your email marketing strategy to the next level? 

Trigger emails are emails that are automatically sent when a user preforms a certain action or event on your website that results in an action or auto-response. Example, a user decides they want to join your newsletter and fills out the form on your website to do so, this automatically triggers an email that thanks that customer and then offers them a video.

Broadcast emails (a uniform message everyone on your list receives) are a great start, but to truly engage your audience you need to speak to them as an individual. So how do you start doing triggered email marketing? You need to define what actions can currently be done on your website that can be used as a trigger. 

A few to start with:

Newsletter subscription - a follow-up email that explains what content will be in your newsletter or maybe a calendar of when they can expect each newsletter.

Online purchases - an email confirming their order or letting the customer know when the order has shipped.

Personal account information - coupons being sent on birthday's or when a new item is in stock that is like to something they have purchased.

Whitepaper Downloads - creating premium content and promoting it on a simple landing page. Giving this away in return for the prospects name and email is a great way to build your list and send out trigger responses. 

I suggest starting simple and working your way up as you get more comfortable with your email software's capabilities of trigger responses. Before you know it you will be able to use advanced action tracking tags on your website that trigger promotional emails based on what pages a user is viewing.

Display advertisements can be found on most web pages, especially free email providers. These ads pull double duty as pay-per-click ads, but they also raise consumer awareness of the brand being advertised. You get the benefit of the consumer seeing your brand message even if they don't click through.

In internet marketing a lot of emphasis is put on pay-per-click campaigns. These campaigns allow you to target keywords relating to your product or service and bid on those keywords and be found on the search results pages. The higher the bid the better your placement will be on the search engine results page and the more likely your ad will be clicked on by a potential consumer.
 
This type of campaign can be a great source of targeted traffic, but it doesn't do a lot for your long term brand recognition, nor does it tend to drive inexpensive traffic. PPC costs are rising each month and a good way to get more traffic is through the Content Networks. All those banner ads and text ads you see on major sites like ESPN, Facebook, HGTV, Blogs, and most of your major sites online now allow display advertising Brand marketing and brand awareness come from repeated exposure to your brand that doesn't necessarily result in a sale. You're continually reminding your audience what you have to offer so that when they are ready to buy they think of you.

The major difference between traditional pay per click advertising and display advertising is how you target your audience. PPC allows you to really narrow down who sees your ad and you can feel fairly confident that a visitor who clicks on your ad is looking to make a purchase. Display advertising is an ad that appears in a paid space on someone else’s site. Impression costs vary depending on the site, size of the ad, quality of the landing page, and a few other factors.

These ads have traditionally been less targeted than search engine ads but that has recently begun to change. Through the use of “cookies” in your browser display ads are now starting to appear with direct correlation to searches you've been conducting. Also, sites are using “Re-Marketing” cookies to display targeted ads to prospects after they have been to a specific site. Re-Marketing allows business to brand their company really effectively and keep in front of the target.

This new technology has totally changed the value of display ads as well as their success. You can now improve brand recognition and improve your reach to targeted leads all with display advertising.