Internet Marketing Tips, Tools and Strategies

You might be asking me, why? Why should I create an email newsletter? Maybe you already do a little bit of promotional email marketing, or maybe you do no email marketing at all. In any case, if you are not currently sending out a newsletter to your customers or potential customers, you should consider it.

Now, I am not saying you need to develop a newsletter every month or in some cases – multiple times a month, but you should think about sending something (even once a year, or quarterly perhaps?) that lets your users know what is going on with your company. It reminds users you are there and in some cases makes them realize they meant to schedule an appointment, buy a new product from you, or even pick up the phone and ask you a question. Have I convinced you? I hope so!

Here are a few tips to get you started with your own newsletter:

• Have a standard format so you can just plug content in when it is time to send out your newsletter.
  
  
• Don’t be too wordy. I mean, you need to get information out there, but be sure to include images and other creative components to break up all that text. Another feature you could use, only put a portion of an article on a newsletter and have a link to your website for the user to read the rest (ex. click here for entire article). This makes your newsletter less wordy and brings traffic to your website!
  
  
• Don’t just sell yourself/product/company, be sure to give the newsletter recipient useful information they can use. Provide value!
  
  
• Talk to everyone who is a part of your company, find out what has been happening in different departments and compile content for your newsletter. If you decide to send a quarterly or yearly newsletter (opposed to a monthly) be sure to highlight important things that have happened over the course of 3 or 12 months. Also, if you are going to go with an extended time-frame don’t put everything in your newsletter, just the “big news”.
  
  
• If you are a company that relies on local business, consider adding news from your community (if it is relevant).
  
  
• Consider recruiting an employee to write a reoccurring column for the newsletter. This adds information from another voice that could be interesting to users.
  
  
• Create a compelling subject line for your email. This is really important if you want people to open your email. Make sure you get their attention without being spammy, pushy, or too controversial.

Well there you go - just a few tips to get you started thinking about your own newsletter. Be creative and have fun, your readers will appreciate it. To find out more information on email marketing and how it can work you for you, read our white paper - Email Marketing: Still the Powerful Engagement Tool That Turns Marketing Dollars into Highest ROI.

I am sure most of you have already started gearing up for the holiday season, right? Well if not then now is your chance. Holiday promotions are a great way to boost traffic and sales before the end of the year. Holiday promotions are a pretty popular tactic in the B2C market, so why not take advantage?

What are some simple things you can do to promote your company online during the holidays?

Holiday E-cards. Send an e-card (email based card) to your current customer base wishing them a happy holiday. This not only reminds customers of who you are and that you care about them, but it also lets them know that you are a great resource when it comes time for their gift shopping.

Discounts. Have a product that would make a great holiday gift? Do you sell gift certificates for your services? These are things you can always offer an exclusive holiday discount on (think of the Black Friday rush). If you already offer promotions on your site, just change some of your messaging to make it more holiday specific.  

Giveaways. Invite users to signup for your newsletter, email promotions and any other call to action you are currently promoting with the draw of being entered to win an item. This simple promotion can boost your traffic and signups, plus offers users the chance at a gift before the holiday gift giving commences.

Gift Idea Landing Pages. Can’t decide which of your products would do best during the holidays? Promote them all! Create a landing page that shows users all the products they could purchase for their holiday gift list. Don’t forget to use your key SEO messaging and keywords on the landing page. Also, promote, promote, promote - landing pages are great to use in email blasts and social media (don‘t use social media? You should! Get started with our free Social Media Strategy Kit).

There you go, just a few ideas to get you started with Holiday Promotions. Don’t forget, it is never too early to start thinking about the holidays. 

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.

Email marketing is a great way to reach your target audience. However it can be easy to get lazy with your email marketing and just continue to send the same messages and offers to your list. Here are a few tips to shake things up a bit and get some better results.

1. Organize and Target
Sure, you're making sure all bounced email addresses and opt-outs are removed from your list but that isn't going to cut it for list maintenance. Periodically you want to go through your list and evaluate the results. Is there a group of names on your list who haven't taken any action from one of your emails in months? Try a new message to get them involved again. If this doesn't work consider removing them. At the same time look for other ways you can group your list to make your message more effective. This is called segmentation.

2. Increase Segmentation
It is very easy to send one email out to your whole list. But your email message can be so much more desirable to  our reader if you make it specific to them. Consider breaking your list up by geography, demographics (i.e. men and women or under 50 and over 50), shopping frequency, job title or spending amount. These are examples of valuable information you may have about your audience. Use it to your advantage.

3. Revise Your Opt-In Methods
People receive more emails than ever before. Why would they want to sign up for another one? You need to offer an opt-in incentive such as money savings or valuable information that is going to catch attention. Consider paring down the information you require during sign-up so you don't scare anyone away. Give ample opportunity to sign up for emails from you on your website.

4. Format For Minimal Visibility
Emails today are being viewed quickly in a small reading pane or on a mobile device or with no imagery at all. You want to make sure you design your emails to get the message across under all of these circumstances. One image should not carry your entire message or it will be lost on some viewers.

5. Use Social Media to Further Involve Email Recipients
Social media is continuing to grow. Include links to all your social media pages within your emails. Provide incentive for email recipients to start interacting with you through social media. Social media marketing is a powerful tool that goes hand in hand with email marketing.

Incorporating all of these tactics into your email marketing can increase the success of your campaign as well as the quality of your audience.

Any email marketer wants to grow their email opt-in list. It's necessary as 10% - 30% annual churn can be expected for every list. Growth is required to keep reaching your audience effectively.

When economic times challenge marketing budgets many businesses have turned to email marketing because it is inexpensive and easy to measure ROI. This increase in email marketing has led to cluttered in-boxes and makes it harder to obtain quality opt-ins.

There are three groups to target when trying to grow your opt-in list.
    
1. Current Opt-in List
An important rule to growing your list is to work to keep the names you already have. You can strengthen your list by requesting double opt-in from the beginning. This will ensure that opt-in's are serious about receiving your emails. Then stay consistent with what you've promised your subscriber. If you guaranteed emails containing coupons you need to hold to that promise.  And finally test the messages you send out and experiment with the way you present your content. Does one style garner a higher open rate? How can you get those that haven't opened your emails in several months to begin opening again? Keeping your current list engaged and interested will grow your list by reducing churn.

2. Easily Added Targets
These potential opt-in's are already familiar with you and your product and they should be given the opportunity to opt-in to your list whenever they cross paths with your brand. On your website your most visited pages should include a link to opt-in to your e newsletter. Make the opt-in prominent on these pages and consistent. To reach this audience offline consider an in-store handout or discount incentive for signing up for the email list. Use materials you are already distributing such as sales receipts and packaging to share your message. Lastly, include opt-in options within your social media pages. These are effective and inexpensive methods to grow your list.

3. Bought & Bartered
The third and final group that you can target involves an audience that is a good potential fit for the service you offer but they have yet to have any direct contact with your brand. The downside of this method is that it can be costly. You can reach them by renting a list and creating a message that the owner of the list will send on your behalf. Another option would be to use a pay-per-click campaign with the goal to grow your list. Your PPC ad should click through to an opt-in page. If money is an issue consider bartering with a logical partner. If you build houses, partner with a plumber or window manufacturer. Once you've found a partner send out promotional emails on each others behalf.

Initiating these three tools or a combination of them can help ensure that you keep the contacts you have and grow your list over time.

These days website traffic can be increased through numerous methods. Whether you're initiating a PPC campaign, sending targeted emails or adding valuable content to your site you need to keep one constant in place. Your goals!

The ultimate (macro) goal may be to sell a product or gain a customer. Other macro goals may be:
    •    Downloading a whitepaper
    •    Signing up for an e-newsletter
    •    Requesting a quote
    •    Submitting information in return for something of value
    •    Viewing a product, service page or consuming some form of content (article, video, blog, etc.)

These macro goals can take time to achieve. Equally important to success are smaller (micro) goals that help build to your ultimate goals. Micro goals are the steps it takes to complete the macro goal. These may include:
    •    Opening an email
    •    Clicking on a PPC ad
    •    Browsing your website and viewing multiple pages
    •    Putting products into a cart and providing billing information
    
Initiating an analytics package can easily help you track the actions of consumers during a visit to your website. Where did they spend the most time, what actions did they take and what was the bounce rate upon the initial arrival? Understanding the steps taken prior to completing a macro goal can help you better understand your consumer and how to direct them where you want them to end up.

Sending out an email message to your opt-in list? Just because they asked to receive information from your business does not mean they'll automatically open every email you send. Emails are initially judged by the subject line. It's important to make that subject line compelling enough to entice the recipient to open your email.

The first step in creating an email marketing campaign that gets opened is to create a successful headline and keep it to 50 characters or less. And those 50 characters need to catch the readers' attention. Consider highlighting a discount, offer or news item in your subject line. These items can drive open rates. Personalization is another tool that can drive consumers to open your email.

The formula for a subject line should include exactly what your readers can expect, what's in it for them and what exactly do you want them to do. Take it a step further and personalize the subject line with the reader's first name. This will secure their interest and action. Another tip to drive action is to instill a sense of urgency such as: "Sale Ends Today."

Subject lines can also flag spam filters. To help ensure your email stays out of spam folders avoid putting words like 'Free' in full capitalization and avoid using extra punctuation such as FREE!!!! It's perfectly acceptable to use the word 'free' in your subject line but keep it simple and understated.

Make sure you continuously test how these tips work for you and how your audience responds to them. Consider spitting up your email list and try a personalized message on the first group and an email with no personalization on the other group. Try this method with mentioning price savings vs. no mention. Analyze what your audience responds to and alter your subject lines accordingly. Always testing the success of your messages and evolving with your results will keep your subject lines fresh and your open rates high.

Email marketing can be an extremely valuable method of marketing to your target audience. Every dollar spent on email marketing generates as average of $57.25 in revenue. That is a fantastic statistic however there are some methods to making your email as successful as possible. Consider the design of your email. Below are some key areas to evaluate your design practices.

1. Design for the most popular email clients

Different email platforms will all display your email in a slightly different way. Design your email in HTML, plain text and perhaps a rich text version. Make sure you review how your email will appear in the top email clients such as, Outlook, Gmail, Windows Live Hotmail, Yahoo Mail and AOL Mail.

2. Follow the best HTML practices

~ Use HTML coding
~ Validate HTML content
~ Avoid using scripts
~ Avoid using forms
~ Use universally supported fonts such as Arial, Times New Roman & Tahoma in 10 pt or size 2 copy.

3. Use color & graphics/buttons effectively

Color should pull the eye to your content, not make it harder to read. Evaluate the readability of your design and adjust as necessary. Use buttons and graphics to draw attention to your email content and make it clear to the viewer what their next step should be, clicking through.

4. Consider the size of your email design and graphics

Keeping an email to 500-650 pixels means that your email will reach the viewer without the need for them to scroll through the email. 54% of consumers will be viewing your email in a reading pane. Cater to them and avoid large image headers, and put key content and links at the top. It is also a good practice to keep your email to 40-50 kb.

5. Use alt tags to make your emails disabled image-friendly

Some email clients do not automatically download images and mobile devices will often show emails without their images. Make sure your email works without its images by using alt tags through out.

6. Make it easy to click through

Place text, image and navigation links throughout your email. Including 25+ links will get you a 12% higher open rate and 29 % higher click-through rate. Links should be relevant and call-to-action links should appear several times. Never use a full URL as a link, hyperlink keywords instead.

7. Promote yourself

Consider including a link in your email to forward the message to a friend. Use emails as an opportunity to promote your social networking pages such as Facebook, Twitter & your blog.

Email marketing is a simple and inexpensive way to speak to your client base. However simply having a list of interested contacts does not guarantee you a successful email marketing campaign. Here are 10 tips to make your email campaign more successful.

1. Grow your list
Your list will fluctuate by 25-30% each year. Most of this is attributed to unsubscribes and new email accounts. You want to make sure your list grows at least as much as it decreases. Find out what pages on your website are most visited and put a field on them to newsletter sign-ups. Engage through social media outlets and offer sign up opportunities frequently. Asking people to double opt-in may grow your list more slowly but it will ensure that you are getting addresses who are extremely interested in what you are offering.

2. Clean up your list
Sending to addresses that will bounce is a waste of money. Do an overhaul of your list every 6 months to ensure you are sending to good addresses. Look at who on your list is opening your emails. If they haven't been opened re-evaluate how you can better connect with those people. Give them content they will want to open.

3. Minimize Opt-outs
By managing expectations and giving options you can keep contacts happy. When someone opts into your email list give them an idea of how often they'll hear from you and what you'll be sharing with them. Consider offering a preference section where they can set their own guidelines. Such as only receiving one email a month rather than weekly.

4. Divide your list to increase relevance 
If a large group of your list is Chicago based while the rest are in the Boston area consider sending two different emails to these groups. Give each group information tailored to their area. You can do the same with retail locations vs. home improvement companies. Speaking directly to these specific groups will make your emails more successful.

5. Design for the inbox
Put your company name in the 'From' field rather than your email address. This will help you be quickly recognized by the recipient and free up space in your subject line which needs to be under 50 characters.

6. Test your message
Make sure you know how your email will look in every major email browser. Using fewer images will ensure that your message is received even in emails that don't automatically load images such as gmail. Lyris HQ includes a tool that does all of this for you.

7. Don't forget mobile devices
1 in 10 consumers only read email on their mobile device. Design emails for a small screen or consider including a link to click on if you are viewing on a mobile device. You can also offer contacts the option of communicating with you via text message.

8. Manage your sender reputation
Make sure that everything you're sending works. Links, photos etc. This will help keep you out of spam folders.

9. Follow laws and email etiquette
Follow federal spam laws (www.ftc.gov) and check for state and country laws where you are sending emails and make sure your emails include your privacy policy. Double opt-ins are a good practice although not a law. Your list may grow slower with double opt-in but you'll ensure that the names you get really want your information and are likely to stick around longer.

10. Test deliverability
Test your message against spam filters. Make sure you do not have "spammy content" such as unnecessary punctuation ***FREE*** You can use the word free but do not capitalize it. Keep it understated.

These simple steps can make a big difference in the success of your email marketing and help grow and maintain a quality list.

Earlier this week, eMarketer published an article that reaffirmed what WSI is always telling our clients - even in a poor economy, you have to invest in your online marketing spending to make money. In fact, for a lot of businesses, increasing your business spending or reallocating marketing dollars into cheaper and more effective (read: online) media during a downturn can help you come out on top as the economy picks up.

The eMarketer article goes on to discuss the correlation between businesses that are continuing to succeed and greater marketing spending. The bottom line: "Almost two-thirds of small businesses that expected increased revenues had raised or planned to raise marketing spending, compared with just 32% to 36% of businesses with flat or declining revenues." Additionally, "the survey showed small businesses shifting marketing initiatives toward cheaper digital media and away from traditional channels. The top three marketing tools used were social media, e-mail newsletters and search."

Contact us today to find out how WSI can help your business leverage these three (and other) marketing tools to maximize the effectiveness of your business spending. You may think you can't afford to increase business spending or increasing online marketing spending right now, but the truth is you can't afford not to if you want to survive and thrive in the current economy.

We encourage you to read the eMarketer article in its entirety here.