Online Marketing Blog

We may already be a week into 2010, but that doesn’t mean it’s too late to starting making resolutions.

Resolve to give your online marketing efforts a boost this year by recognizing areas for improvement and putting in place a plan to make positive changes.

To help you get started, TopRank Online Marketing has come up with New Year’s resolutions for 5 different online marketing channels: Search Engine Optimization (SEO), Social Media, Email Marketing, Pay-Per-Click and Mobile Marketing.

Ready or not, 2010 is here. And according to eMarketer, 2010 is going to be a good year for email marketing. A December survey revealed that 69% of respondents plan to increase spending on email marketing efforts – more than any other marketing strategy.

To ring in the New Year, we’ve compiled 5 email marketing tactics that are likely to gain even more ground this year.

1. Integrating Email With Social Media.
This email marketing tactic – which picked up steam throughout 2009 as a way to boost customer reach – is likely to spread like wildfire throughout 2010. Consider the results of an early 2009 study by Exact Target, Ball State University and the Email Marketer’s club: 46% of marketers planned to incorporate the two marketing strategies in ‘09, compared to 13% in ‘08—a whopping 253% increase.

The quality of email content is one of the core factors in determining whether an email marketing campaign succeeds or fails. But successful email copywriting is an art — rather than a science — making it different from most other forms of business writing. To start out on the right path, consider these 5 tips for effective email copywriting:

1. Focus on the subject line. The subject line may be the shortest piece of content to write, but it’s one your campaign’s most critical elements. The challenge is to create excitement for a special offer, provide enough information to be clear about purpose and convey a brand’s essence – all in 50 characters or less.

When writing your subject lines:

• Create a sense of urgency. Include timely information to encourage subscribers to open the email.

In an online world that increasingly values the 140 character message, keeping campaigns, strategies and tactics short and sweet is the best approach for engaging audiences. To celebrate the succinct, we’ve created the following search marketing Haikus for your weekend reading pleasure. Enjoy!

[Note from Lee: I edited some of these so any of these that are bad would be my fault. The good Haikus are all Dana and Ashley.]

Search Engine Optimization

Social Media

Blog Marketing

Online PR

Email Marketing

Feel free to share your own Haiku or any other search-inspired poetry, and keep the creative juices flowing!

[Photo credits go to: shapeshift, TahoeSunsets, Juliana S. ]

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I must say, of all breakout sessions at the MIMA event today, “The Changing Face of Email” session was the one I was most excited to attend as it ties into what I love to do – email marketing. Thankfully I didn’t have to wait long to dive right in as it was part of the Summit Kick-Off Breakout session: Deep Dive Discussion Series.

Jamie Schissler, Strategy Director at Avenue A – Razorfish, the presenter for “The Changing Face of Email” session shared with the MIMA audience that as the role of email evolves, so too will its impact.

So why will the email marketing strategies of yesterday not work for email marketing success today?

This announcement might be a bit early, but I think the last Marketing Sherpa Email Summit sold out pretty quickly. This is an event (in Miami February 24th-26th) that’s near and dear to TopRank’s marketing consulting services which are made up of: search, PR and email marketing. Out of those three “legs”, email marketing is by far the most productive in terms of ROI and conversion rates.

What’s great about this conference is that it’s all about email and nothing else. Sliced and diced into 3 tracks (BtoB, Advanced BtoC and Operations) as well as 5 general and 36 breakout sessions, there’s “something for everyone”, as they say. There’s also an opportunity to get “certified” as an email marketing expert through a package that includes both the Summit and an online course.

One of the most effective online marketing services M&O/TopRank implements for clients in addition to SEO and public relations is email marketing. Within our direct and email marketing practice there are several, very talented people responsible for this success, one of which is M&O co-founder, Julie Brue.

Whether it be list development, landing page QA or email analytics, Julie is an excellent campaign manager and client advocate. Below is an article Julie has been so kind to contribute covering some of the “whys” and high level “how to’s” of implementing a successful email marketing program.

In today’s ever changing and evolving world of blogs, IM, social networks and consumer disdain towards traditional advertising, it is a wonder how any marketing message reaches its intended audience. After all, each marketing message distributed is competing for the attention of its recipient with a multitude of other communication vehicles every second of the day.

A few months ago my husband and I were spending our free time cruising dealership lots after the dealerships had closed researching cars. However, we kept running into dead ends with dealerships who close their lots in the evening hours. Some of you might be thinking, “Why not shop for cars after hours online?”. We did that but still wanted to see for ourselves.

This got me thinking about how much business a dealership might be losing by not letting people cruise the lots in the off hours. We certainly didn’t take the time to go back to the dealerships during business hours, we just assumed they didn’t have what we wanted and kept on searching.

Many small and medium sized consumer products marketers strive for the biggest bang for the buck when allocating budgets. While our SEO firm specializes more in BtoB SEO, PR and blogs, there are some fundamental consumer product site promotion tactics we’ve found to be appropriate in many cases. Each is measurable to ROI and can be scaled to some degree.

1. Pay per click – Advertising on Google, Yahoo, MSN
2. Site optimization – Improving “natural” rankings on search engines
3. Optimized press releases – Announce sales, contests or special offers via press release
4. Blog marketing – Add a blog to web site to encourage search rankings, incoming links, interaction with consumers
5. Paid inclusion and shopping feeds – Submit a feed of your products to Google’s Froogle.com, Yahoo Search Submit and possibly comparison shopping sites such as shopping.com, bizrate.com or amazon.com

Marketing Sherpa’s Email Marketing Summit is coming up in Chicago April 20th and 21st.

Scheduled tracks include: B-to-B, Ecommerce, Int’l, Newsletters, Delivery and List Growth.

There will be 21 Case Studies from real-world email marketers (big and small) including American Airlines, IBM, Doubleday Entertainment. Plus, practical, expert advice on:

• email delivery (panel includes AOL)
• Creative & newsletter design
• growing your opt-in list (with quality names

It’s not all work though, some networking and play is in store with a Gala party at the House of Blues celebrating the winners of the Email Awards.

More information at Marketing Sherpa Email Marketing Summit

Speaking of email marketing, who is your favorite email marketing vendor? (lists, creative, distribution)