Improved communication turns one time buyers into lifelong customers.

As marketers and sales professionals there is no doubt that we are focused on obtaining new customers and increasing awareness within targeted market segments.  However, we must also consider the lifetime value of our existing customers and how marketing communications can contribute to that relationship.  Taking the time to examine what kind of communications can keep your brand top of mind with customers and inspire continued awareness for repeat sales and referrals is of enormous value.

Do you know how much your current customers are worth to your company?  In recent years research has found that a 5% increase in customer retention can increase profits by 25% to 95%.  Armed with the knowledge that satisfied customers has a direct impact on your bottom line, there is no time like the present to begin targeting your current customers.  Here are 5 tips on better customer communications you can start using right now:

Tip #1 – Personalized Email Communication

96% of organizations believe that email personalization can improve email marketing performance.

Creating a steady flow of email communication for customers is not a new concept.  However, how many email campaigns do you send out that are segmented based on purchasing habits or preferences?  Say that you have studied the data relating to your current customers and have identified approximately 5 profiles or personas.  Based on customer information find the persona that best fits each customer.  Then create an email drip campaign for each customer segment with different content based on need.  Keep in mind that the subject line, internal content, and calls to action within the email should be personalized based on customer segment.

Tip #2 – Create A Stellar FAQ Page

53% of customers who shop online more than once a month find customer service extremely or very important.

Creating readily available and easy to find information is Customer Service 101.  It does not matter if you are B2B, B2C, technology, retail, or any other type of company; your customers will have questions.  A Frequently Asked Questions page on your website, social profiles, or other web destinations should be updated on a regular basis to include new questions or comments.  FAQ’s are also an additional opportunity to optimize content for improved visibility online.  It is important to remain consistent with your answers, provide a clean and easy to read page, and update or remove items that may no longer apply.  If you sell multiple products you may want to consider creating additional pages for each product.  Also, if you sell a product or service that requires assembly or setup you may want to provide instructional videos for your customers.

Tip #3 – Social Networking Channels = Customer Service Opportunity

40% of corporate Twitter accounts engage stakeholders on customer service issues.

Last week we shared the example of JetBlue’s customer focused approach on Twitter.  While Twitter may not be a customer solution for all marketers there is an opportunity to utilize your existing social media channels as a way of providing additional customer service for your customers.  Customer service does not only include answering questions or dealing with problems it could also include: sharing useful articles or information, notifying customers of upcoming promotions, or reaching out to customers that are inactive.  Consideration must also be paid to the time of day that your customers are most likely to spend their time online.  There are tools available like Timely, Buffer or Hootsuite which enable you to schedule your Twitter communications during a particular time of day for the highest impact.

Tip #4 – Create Content Based on Customer Need

36% of B2B marketers listed producing engaging content as their biggest content marketing challenge.

If planned for and organized appropriately, content creation can be executed efficiently and successfully.  A successful content strategy will focus on the needs, pain points, and triggers of your customers.  There are many ways to identify what those needs are including: customer surveys, research, and creation of customer personas based on buying habits.  Implementing a well thought out and concise customer survey can give you additional insight into what makes your customers tick.  A survey is also a great opportunity to crowdsource content from your customers for your customers.  Who better qualified to tell you what they want to read about than those who are purchasing your products or services?

Tip #5 – Turn Customers Into Brand Advocates

500 billion peer impressions are created each year.

It is extremely important that you tap into your existing customer base to find individuals or organizations who are willing to advocate on your behalf.  You could ask customers for: written or video testimonials, permission to use them as references, or employ them as a brand advocate to share information with their networks.  As user generated content becomes increasingly popular and credible, keeping your customers happy will continue to become even more essential.

Action Items:

Committing to providing customer support online is something that I recommend every company do no matter what industry you work in.  If you don’t keep your customers happy, someone else will.  I would like to leave you with the following questions that I hope will help you determine what tactics your company should implement to improve your customer service and communication online.

• How would you rate your current level of online customer service?
• Do you currently have a plan in place to improve your communication?
• What tactics have you implemented that have worked?
• What companies do you personally buy from that provide excellent online communication?
• What impact has that communication had on your purchasing decisions?

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© Online Marketing Blog, 2012. | 5 Marketing Tips for Improving Customer Relationships & ROI With Better Communications | http://www.toprankblog.com

Is your message blending in or standing out in an inbox filled with emails?

Email marketing has become an essential part of engaging and targeting prospects and clients online. In fact, eMarketer reports that 97% of small businesses use email marketing to connect with customers.   There are many aspects that make up an effective email marketing program, but today I’ll focus on how marketers can increase their campaign open rates.

Email content is essential, but getting people to actually open your email is a hurdle many marketers find hard to overcome.  A deep understanding of your customer base as well as their needs and habits for proper segmentation can be key in creating an effective email marketing strategy that produces high open rates.

As marketers we must ask ourselves: If I received this email from another company, would I open it?

#1 – Make a Good First Impression

What are the two things that email recipients see before actually opening an email?  Who the email is from, and what the subject line is.  These two items are your prime real estate for enticing your audience to view your email as opposed to simply trashing it and moving on.

The Sender: Recent studies have shown that adding a personalized feel to the email can be key in increasing open rates.  Instead of sending the email from sales@companyxyz.com instead utilize the first and last name of a company employee.  Setting up an email to send out messages on behalf of a company CEO or President can have a large impact on open rates.  I would also like to note that many spammers are sending out emails with female first names (without a last name) so be aware of this spamming trend and try to avoid it.

The Subject Line:  If ever there were an opportunity to convince your audience to read this is it.  Email marketing service MailChip has provided some best practice approaches to creating subject lines which include:

• 4 Words or Phrases to Avoid: free, help, percent off, reminder
• Localization Helps: providing a city name can increase open rates
• Newsletter Half Life: using the exact same subject line for each newsletter can decrease open rates
• Subject Line Strength: keep your subject to 50 characters or less with the exception of highly targeted audiences

To see some additional tips as well as some subject line examples that have been tested as well as the open rate see the study here.

#2 – Timing Isn’t Everything, But It is Important

This is a tactic that requires some common sense as well as some experimentation.  If your emails are sent too early in the morning they can get lost in the shuffle of other emails either sent late at night or early in the morning.  If your emails are sent too late in the afternoon your customer may see it as one more thing to review before quitting time and put off reading it until the morning (which will pile it under even more emails).  It is also important to keep in mind your audience.

If you are running a B2C campaign your audience may have time to check their emails either during lunch or after work.  Try experimenting with time frames that match up with that notion.  If your campaign has a B2B focus I would recommend sending emails in the afternoon or around 7 or 8 in the morning when you know they’ll be reading.  If your email marketing system allows you can always try doing some A and B testing utilizing different time frames to test open rates.

#3 – Avoid Spam Filter Traps

Spam filters analyze a large list of criteria when determining an email’s “spam score”.  If your email campaigns total spam score is over a certain threshold then it is sent to the dreaded Spam inbox.  There are some common mistakes that are easily avoidable if you know what to look for.

• Spammy phrases such as “Once in a lifetime opportunity!”
• Too many !!!!!!!!!
• ALL CAPITAL LETTERS
• Sloppy HTML

For additional tips to avoid being sent to the spam filter be sure to visit SpamAssassin.

#4 – Get Rid of Dead Weight

Depending on which email service you use there should be a report that allows you to determine which emails are either bouncing or which subscribers are not opening your emails on a consistent basis.  Your open rate can be dramatically increased by pulling people from your list who never open your emails.  I wouldn’t recommend deleting their emails completely.  Instead, do some digging to find where the email subscriber originally came from so that you can create a more targeted campaign to get them re-engaged.

#5 – Refine the Sign Up Process & Email Targeting

Make it easy for people to sign up to receive email correspondence from your company.  Having potential customers jump through hoops to receive your marketed material is a poor strategy.  In order to make this process effective and engaging perhaps you could provide a fulfillment piece or whitepaper during the initial sign up as a take away and then continue to market based upon their needs.

The more refined your targets within your campaigns are the more likely you are to achieve success with your email marketing campaign.  Creating separate nurture campaigns for prospects and influencers within different industries and job roles is a great way to begin tracking and improving success rates.

What is a Good Open Rate?

Now that we’ve covered 5 important tips for improving the open rate of your email marketing campaigns, I thought that providing some sort of standardization for open rates by industry might also be useful. Open rate is one of the most commonly ased questions with email marketing clients. While you make the decision to implement each of the tips above, it’s important to understand that the open rate of your email marketing campaigns can differ based upon your industry and target market.

Image Credit: Constant Contact

What are some of the tips you’ve followed to increase your email marketing open rates? What are some of the top resources you rely on for email marketing advice?

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© Online Marketing Blog, 2011. | 5 Email Marketing Tips for Increased Open Rates | http://www.toprankblog.com

Believe it or not, competitive pursuit after a Thanksgiving turkey’s wishbone is a perfect metaphor for understanding better customer centric content marketing.  Prepare yourself for a Thanksgiving themed post without the tryptophan side effects.

5 Steps of A Wishbone Strategy Applied to Content Marketing
Here’s how the wishbone strategy works and how you can apply it to your content marketing strategy.

Step 1: Lobby Mom to ensure turkey is on the Thanksgiving menu. Every year, there are Moms across the country who set their sights on trying some new tradition without any input from the people who will be eating the meal. To avoid a holiday dining catastrophe, kids start begging said Moms to get a Thanksgiving turkey as soon as Halloween is over. Content marketers need to listen to and understand prospect and customer interests to ensure they provide the information that matters most. To this end, consider the content your target audience needs at every point in the purchase cycle from awareness through post purchase support.

Depending on your product or services, this can translate to a variety of different types of content. Here’s an extensive list to choose from, and don’t forget to serve seasonally appropriate content which resonates with your audience. To carry on with our Thanksgiving theme, an example could be links to cool Turkey carving apps, Thanksgiving recipes or instructions for how to make paper decorations look like turkeys.

Photo Credit: carbonated via Flickr

Step 2: Beg Dad to carve the turkey. While this seems like pandering, in our house, Dad was a surgeon when it came to carving the bird and, unlike Mom, he carefully preserved the wishbone for a fair battle. As a marketer, it’s important to go beyond just defining your target audience to understanding what various segments want and need to attract and maintain their attention. Just as many of us play up to Dad’s carving skills, our content must also tightly synch with the needs of prospective readers.

Photo Credit: lapstrake via Flickr

Step 3: Be chosen a wishbone contender. Again, this requires advance planning. It helps to go that extra step with regard to chores and homework as well as positioning yourself nearest to the turkey when it appears fresh from the kitchen. Depending on your family, getting the wishbone can be a situation where, if you snooze, you loose. Similarly, content marketing must be available where prospects are searching for it. We all know there is a dizzying array of apps, ads, channels, widgets (and so on…) vying for our prospects’ attention.

Think strategically in terms of your communication channels such as campaign-oriented website landing pages and emails, seasonally appropriate blog posts from your CEO and instructional videos from product development. Of course don’t just duplicate, rather integrate the appropriate versions of your content on social media networks such as Facebook, Twitter, LinkedIn and Google+. Depending on your audience, consider third party media placement such as providing articles for other media or sponsored content. Make it easy and compelling for your prospects to choose you through relevant content.

Photo Credit: Roger Smith via Flickr

Step 4: Assess your wishbone stance. When you’re ready to wrestle for wishbone bragging rights, it’s essential to realize that an effective strategy is all about positioning. You must get your thumb as close as possible to the tip of the wishbone. Further, it helps to let your competitor take a first try since this weakens the bone on his side. In terms of content marketing, asses your messaging stance and ensure your tailored content is integrated with the rest of your marketing. This includes linking to the appropriate products in your blog posts, providing commerce on channels like Facebook where your prospects are engaging with you, or sending a post-purchase emails with helpful product usage tips. To help inspire you, check out this Clutter Control Freak post that links to the specific product, a holiday card keeper.

Step 5: Make a good wish. Of course, all of this work is for naught if you don’t have a really good wish. In marketing terms, (I know this is a reach, but bear with me) this means having a contextually relevant call-to-action for your prospect to take the next step in the purchase process. A problem for many marketers is that once you’ve primed your prospect and they leave without buying, they still have an unmet need. Therefore they’ll probably purchase from another firm and, as long as they’re somewhat satisfied, they may not return to your firm – ever.

The one content marketing element missing from this wishbone list is ensuring you’ve got great information that, like the smell of your mother’s fresh cooked turkey, will lure people in. Without quality content, it’s difficult to get your prospects, customers and the public to return for seconds and thirds. You may get them once, but after that you’ll find yourself searching for new customers. Therefore, pack your content with real protein and nutrition to engage your readers over and over again.

What else would you add to this wishbone strategy? How are you ensuring your content marketing remains focused on your target audience’s needs while working to get them to close the deal?

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© Online Marketing Blog, 2011. | Thanksgiving Wishbone Competitiveness & Content Marketing Tips – Who Knew? | http://www.toprankblog.com

Does Your Inbox Look Like This?

We’ve all received them and we’ve all sent them. They can be given but they can’t be taken back. It’s a single action that can cause people to unfriend, unfollow, or unsubscribe.  What are they?  Emails!  Emails can inspire, engage, or excite your prospects or customers but can have the opposite effect of what you were aiming for if you don’t follow some simple rules.

Creating an effective email marketing campaign is not always an easy task.  However, there are a few things to keep in mind that may help take some of the fear out of launching your own campaign.  Not every campaign will be successful but if you’re good about analyzing results, admitting shortcomings and making changes, who says you can’t learn from your mistakes?

#1 – Please, Please, Please Don’t Spam!
It’s 8am on Monday and you’re frantically trying to catch up on emails from the weekend.  A subject line catches your eye “Thank You For Meeting Me.”  This must be from someone you know, right? WRONG.  Once you open the email you receive a message on ways you can generate millions of dollars without lifting a finger. All it requires is a “small” investment on your part.  Although this is an extreme example of spamming, it is important that you keep this example in mind when creating your own campaigns.  Be honest about who you are and try to offer something of value.

#2 – Have A Plan (Or Else)
Nothing hurts an email campaign more than inconsistent messaging and lack of direction.  Your sales and marketing message should be aligned and you MUST have a plan for distributing your content.  Email campaigns should always be written for your target audience.  If you are targeting different decision makers in different industries, guess what?  You will have to adapt your approach to meet the needs of your customer segment.your prospect base customer segment.  Email is not always a “one size fits all” solution, but it should still follow a consistent process with end goals in mind.

#3 – Easy On the Eyes –  Fuel For the Brain
Your email is likely 1 of 1,000 sitting unread in your prospect’s email inbox.  If you have written a subject line that is compelling enough to get them to open, it’s important that you keep their attention, or they’ll just delete or move on to the next message.  Make sure that your emails are scanable.  Include bullet points with USEFUL and INTERESTING information.  For example, an email  that is 5 paragraphs long will not only lose the attention of your audience, but will cause readers to hesitate opening the next message from you that comes to their inbox.

#4 –  Don’t Trip Up: Set Next Steps
So, you’ve managed to get in front of your target audience and they’ve read your email.  Now what?  NEVER leave it up to your audience to decide what the next steps are.  Offer some sort of call to action such as a specific and relevant offer, recommending a date and time you can speak further, or a link to some useful information.

#5 – Make Content Sharable
If possible, embed sharable icons to your email communication.  Why?  If your audience does have interest in the message  you’ve shared and would like to distribute that message to their own network it is  important to make it as easy as possible for readers to extend the reach of your email message to social networks at large.  Just think: If even just a fraction of your target audience are sharing your information, how many more users and prospective clients that will put you in front of?

#6 – Whatever You Do, Make Sure to Analyze Your Data
You can learn a lot about your audience from your email analytics.  Whether you are using a CRM tool to send out emails (like Salesforce) or an email marketing platform (like Constant Contact) be sure to watch email campaign performance metrics as closely as you can.  Of the emails sent, how many were actually opened?  Which links were clicked on the most?  How many times was your content shared with the users’ social network? Which offers resulted in the most conversions?

What Should We Always Keep In Mind With Email Marketing?
Email marketing campaigns are comprised of many moving pieces.  By following a few simple best practice rules including plan development, setting next steps, and knowing your analytics you have the recipe for a successful and measurable email marketing campaign.

I’m curious to know what email marketing strategies have worked for your company in the past?  I am also very interested in hearing about some of the challenges that you’ve faced and what you’ve taken away from those experiences.   The only way we get better is if we keep learning, tweaking, and adapting the way that we are executing our email marketing strategy.

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© Online Marketing Blog, 2011. | 6 Tips For More Effective Email Marketing Campaigns | http://www.toprankblog.com

Kristin is a firecracker of smarts and energy towards online marketing. Her company StrongMail is the leader in an array of email marketing and social media marketing services. Read on to learn more about the future of Email Marketing and its intersection with Social Media:

Please share a bit about your marketing background and StrongMail. What types of companies do you serve?

I have held a variety of B2B Corporate Marketing positions spanning from program management to event marketing, PR and marketing communications. The industries I’ve worked in include internet advertising, online marketing, desktop software, enterprise software and magazine publishing, which have all contributed in one form or another to my position here at StrongMail. I joined StrongMail in 2004 and have loved every minute of our explosive growth since then.

StrongMail provides email marketing and social media solutions to some of the world’s biggest brands including InterContinental Hotels Group, Travelocity, Viacom, T. Rowe Price and Zappos. Our solutions offer the highest ROI of any enterprise email service provider, which means that we make a lot of sense for B2C companies sending over 1 million messages per month and offer exceptional ROI for companies who send over 5 million messages per month.

How did StrongMail get into the social media business?

StrongMail became a social media marketing provider in 2009 through a series of strategic acquisitions. First we acquired PopularMedia, a Sequoia Capital backed company with a suite of social media products that we integrated into our platform. We currently offer Social Studio, a suite of social media marketing tools that is comprised of a referral marketing platform (StrongMail Influencer), a content sharing tool (Social Notes) and a social media management tool (Social Direct.)

Last year, we also announced the acquisition of two NY-based web firms that we combined to form StrongMail’s new boutique email and social CRM agency. This compliments our suite of technology tools with the strategy and creative expertise that brands need to effectively leverage the channel. All of our social offerings are available either in conjunction with or separately from our email platform, and our social media clients include Castrol, Mint.com and Discover Card.

A big challenge for many email marketers is deliverability. What are some of the common issues companies are facing?

Controlling spam has become a major problem for ISPs worldwide. On average, 90% of all email sent is categorized as “unsolicited commercial email” or spam.

When you narrow that down to look at the burden on one ISP, of the 8 billion email messages that Hotmail receives globally each month, 5.5 billion are blocked at the gateway and 1 billion are marked as junk. That’s a lot of unwanted email… and unfortunately not all of that is sent from the Nigerian fraudsters and prescription drug pushers that we traditionally think of when we think of spam. A fair percentage of what ISPs classify as “unwanted email” comes from legitimate senders, including many of the brands that we know and trust.

In an effort to improve the Inbox user experience for their customers in 2011, the four major ISPs (Hotmail, Yahoo, Gmail and AOL) have all announced plans to change the way that they block and filter email this year. Among other things – including adding social functionality to the Inbox – they have announced that they are going to start factoring engagement into their filtering algorithms.

What this means is that it’s now going to be critically important that your subscribers not only open and click on your emails, but that they do so on a regular basis. If they don’t, it could potentially affect your overall email deliverability and negatively impact revenue driven from the email channel.

To manage through this shift, StrongMail recommends employing a combination of two things:

1)     Carefully scrubbing your list to either remove or attempt to re-engage non-responders after 6 months of inactivity.

2)     Implementing marketing tactics to increase subscriber engagement as soon as possible.

If you’re interested in learning more about how the Inbox experience is changing in 2011, I encourage you to download our December whitepaper on the subject, “The New Rules of Deliverability: 2011 and Beyond”.

Except the intersection with social media, (I’ll ask about that shortly) what’s the most important change in email marketing over the past year? Any surprises?

In addition to what I mention above, there appears to be a migration from batch email marketing towards triggered email marketing automation. Marketers have been talking about it for years, but we’re finally seeing a shift towards more wide-spread adoption. This is a result of technology advances that put easy-to-use workflow-building functionality into the hands of marketers and a drive for enterprises to generate a single view of their customer across all channels.

We recently published a great case study on this with InterContinental Hotels Group that I recommend reading if you’re looking at a similar program.

Many companies are implementing Email and Social Media Marketing solutions independently but you’re a strong advocate of a synergy between them. What are your recommendations for companies looking for best practices and an approach to making their email marketing more social?

When social media first started gaining momentum, many industry pundits were saying that it signaled the death of email. Neilsen set out to prove that hypothesis, and fielded a study that broke internet users in to four groups – three focused on varying levels of social media usage and a fourth group did not use social media at all.

Then they overlayed email usage on top of those segments and discovered that their hypothesis was wrong. In fact, the more engaged a person was with social media, the more heavily they consumed email.

This intersection of highly engaged email and social media users tend to be more active online – generating reviews, recommendations and comments in forums. In many cases, this segment also contains your most influential brand advocates.

The good news for email marketers is that, these influencers are already in your email database. The most successful socialized email marketing programs target these influencers with something of value that incentivizes them to spread the word about your product or service. We’ve seen brands drive as much as six figures in additional revenue off of one socialized email program that was targeted in this fashion. Another was able to generate 8,500 new subscribers off of one email campaign using a similar strategy.

The key is to be thoughtful with your email and social media strategy. Provide your influencers with genuine, true value in your campaigns, and if you can make them look like a hero by providing them with something of value to share with their networks, even better.

Simply integrating passive social sharing is good, but it will yield a much lower lift in click-throughs.

Companies that have been involved with social media publishing, sharing and networking for a while often find themselves overwhelmed and looking for efficiencies through tools. What types of social media tools do you recommend? Is there a process for evaluation that you’d recommend?

Every smart social media strategy starts with listening, so your first investment should be in a listening platform like Radian 6, Attenisty or Alterian’s SM2. In addition, you need a social media management console to schedule, track and respond to your mentions across social channels. StrongMail has one called Social Direct, but other popular ones include HootSuite or even Tweetdeck, which is free. If you’re a large enterprise that has a team of people tweeting on behalf of your brand in a customer service capacity, you should look at Co-Tweet.

Additional technology investments could include a community platform like Jive or Lithium (if you determine that’s right for your business), or a referral marketing platform like StrongMail Influencer.

But to be honest, most enterprise level social media marketers are still investing in internal education and training. I heard a great quote last week… “Social media is too young to be a science. It’s still an art.”  This means that the right strategy and set of tools is going to be different for every brand. The good news is – like email marketing – there is a wealth of free information out there for you to help devise your social media strategy if you’re budget strapped. However if you don’t have time, there are also plenty of agencies to help you quickly build a strategy that makes sense for your business.

“Social Media” is the darling topic for many business publications, blogs (including this one) and even mainstream media. Do you think at some point there will be a social media bubble? If so, when do you think it will pop?

That’s a great question… Gartner’s hype-cycle shows that every new, promising technology will enter the trough of disillusionment before it enters the plateau of productivity. By that theory, we are absolutely headed for a bubble-burst, but it’s not certain when that will happen. I suspect that it will have something to do with a consumer privacy backlash. Social media is free for a reason… Mark Zuckerberg might not think consumers will ever care about how their information is shared, but I think they eventually will. Companies should make sure that their data management practices and privacy policies are above board and clearly articulated in their privacy policies in preparation for this.

In the recent StrongMail webinar, 2011 Social Marketing Business Forecast, Jeremiah Owyang talked about social media budget allocation for the coming year. What are some of the shifts in priority that you’re seeing with companies that are maturing in their social media programs?

Mature social media marketers are starting to shift their limited budget dollars from traditional agencies (that maybe handled their PR or advertising campaigns) to boutique agencies that specialize in social media marketing. This enables them to generate significantly higher returns from their social media marketing programs. Our agency is doing some groundbreaking, data-based Social CRM Marketing work in this area that is producing incredible results for our clients.

ROI is a big topic when it comes to social media marketing. How does email marketing help facilitate or achieve greater business value from social participation?

I just spoke at OpenDialogue’s Social Media Marketing Conference in Toronto and 2/3 of the audience came from a marketing background, whereas less than 5 people in the audience came from a PR background. That is a significant shift from who owned social media a few years ago. Marketers are taking over… which signals a shift towards needing to prove ROI. In PR, that’s a fuzzy metric.

Email marketing is a direct marketing discipline, which by nature means that everything needs to be tracked and measured. Social media metrics are more engagement focused, however smart marketers need to start analyzing those metrics in conjunction with their email marketing metrics, purchase metrics, customer lifetime value metrics to build a holistic picture of each consumer’s value to your company. This is the holy grail of social media marketing ROI, however I don’t think it’s that far off for companies with the right organizational structure and integrated technology infrastructure.

What are some of the biggest myths, misconceptions or outright misinformation you’ve been seeing about email, social or a convergence of the two?

Probably that social media is going to kill email, which I alluded to earlier. Social media is just another channel to add to the marketing mix. Did television kill the phone? No. Did Email kill the phone? No. Did Email kill direct mail? A little bit… but I don’t think social media can be compared in the same way. Email is literally an electronic version of mail… so of course it’s going to affect the usage of print. But it’s never going to kill it completely. And social media is most certainly *not* going to kill email.

What are you most optimistic about for online marketing in 2011?

The move towards engagement filtering by the top ISPs is driving increased pressure for email marketers to up their game. As any marketer who has ever been blocked by a major ISP know will tell you… once you’re blocked, it can be quite a challenge to get unblocked.

The four major ISPs aren’t making the specifics of their algorithms public, nor have they announced exactly when they will start junking emails based on lack of subscriber engagement. However by taking steps to increase subscriber engagement now, you will not only protect yourself from being negatively impacted by this change – you will have the added bonus of improving the performance of your email marketing programs.

Email marketers are paying attention. According to a recent StrongMail survey of just under 1000 global email marketing executives, 52% cited increasing subscriber engagement as one of their top priorities in 2011. This makes it the #1 initiative for email marketers in 2011 – followed by improving segmentation and targeting and integrating social media with their email marketing programs.

In my opinion, this is awesome news for everyone. Its forcing email marketers to evolve and start paying attention to engagement metrics on an ongoing basis – not to mention keep their lists clean – if they want to continue to have their email delivered. This is going to hurt lazy email marketers and spammers, but that’s the point. But if you’re on top of this change, it will only create a win-win situation for consumers, ISPs and brands alike.

For in-depth examples of how brands are successfully increasing subscriber engagement, I recommend downloading our whitepaper on the topic, “The Ultimate Email Marketing Guidebook: Increasing Subscriber Engagement.”

Thank you Kristin!  For more insights and to connect with Kristin on the social web, visit her on Twitter or her blog on the StrongMail website.

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© Online Marketing Blog, 2011. | Email Marketing & Social Media Interview: Kristin Hersant of StrongMail | http://www.toprankblog.com

If you’re like a lot of people, you run to Facebook and share it with your friends, colleagues, and anyone that will listen. Is that a bad strategy? Not necessarily, as Facebook and Twitter can be great places to reach large audiences. In fact, Facebook continued to grow even stronger in its use as a sharing site in 2010.

However, you can’t safely assume that Facebook is the only or best method of content distribution. Social media is a hot market right now and use of these channels are not a bad thing. Though a strategy of a few tweets and a fan page update will not get you to your goals. Ultimately there is no singular model that is always the ideal for any company but a few points to consider include:

Audience - I lead with this one as it should always be the first step in creating any marketing or communications plan. Who are you trying to reach and where are they? If you want customers that are highly engaged on mobile devices then Facebook could be a good fit with over 200 million people accessing the social media giant via their mobiles. If you’re seeking long-term content placement that might be reviewed in-depth, consider SlideShare where the demographics indicate  81 percent medium to heavy internet users and eight minutes spent on the site looking at content.

Influencers - After establishing your target audience you should move to identifying who has the ear of the audience you want to reach.  Spend some time researching terms and keywords that connect to your topic. Take advantage of the many tools out there like Google blog search, Alltop, PostRank and see who shapes the views of your audience.

Blogs – The benefits of a blog as a central hub of content are quite well established in terms of SEO for companies. Yet another benefit of a blog for many organizations is the simplicity of updates which can be made easily. Use your blog as a point of entry for beginning a dialogue. Engage here and you’ll begin to identify the content that your audience is actually seeking. Use it as a research tool to understand your audience further: check out the sites of those that leave comments on your blog, review your analytics to identify changes in referral sources, and offer opportunities for readers to share their questions with you.

Email – Don’t forget about a core (if not as sexy) tool that works well and is still a top source of content sharing. Develop an email newsletter to communicate with prospects and others interested in your content. The content you create for your email newsletter can be a jumping off point to create interesting blog posts, which can then include surveys or interactive content to transform a single piece of content into a discussion between you and your audience. In concert with other tools, it facilitates a continual cycle of engagement with your audience.

Syndication – Services that offer the potential of extended reach and content syndication are excellent resources that are often being too easily dismissed in my opinion due to the alleged “death of the press release.” Aside from the use of services like PRWeb (a TopRank client) for trying to reach journalists, syndication will improve your reach to end-users and potentially appear in a number of locations and offers a number of share options for well written content that is relevant to your target audience. With the syndication you also have the opportunity to get your site in front of potential customers with anchor text links back to your own pages.

Consumers, across industries, expect greater personalization than ever before. Any singular content distribution channel will ultimately miss an important part of your target market. Take advantage of the communication tools available to create an experience that each user feels was made for them by taking the time to understand them and offer a variety of channels that fit their needs.

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© Online Marketing Blog, 2011. | 5 Tips: Content Sharing Beyond Facebook | http://www.toprankblog.com

For example, events.   In the digital marketing world, the number of online and real world events has exploded. Despite many options to choose from, it can get costly to send staff to multiple events per year and even more if you sponsor or exhibit.

But this post is more about what one might do holistically to leverage multiple communication channels to promote an event and how an event can serve multiple marketing and business objectives.

For the purpose of this example, I’ll use parts of a promotional program following a standard model of:
Audience > Objectives > Tactics > Tools > Measurement

Audience:

• Influential Persona
• Media Persona
• Customer Persona 1
• Customer Persona 2

Objectives:

• Establish credibility in the industry and associated community
• Build buzz about the event & inspire viral sharing
• Leverage the event for media coverage regionally, on blogs and industry pulications
• Attract signups/attendees for the event
• Generate content at the first event to use with subsequent event marketing & PR

• Create content that will demonstrate insights (keyword specific) and promote the event on sites the company controls, contributed articles to industry web sites and pitching
• Create awareness of event through pitching other bloggers and marketing contacts to announce the event
• Build enough interest within the target audience to motivate signups by promoting the event using social media tactics

27 Online Marketing and PR Tactics:

• Create a landing page for the event on the company website or blog with embedded overview video (series of videos like 10 tips on … could work too)
• Publish a series of interviews on the company blog with key individuals that have influence on the target topic. Promote the event at the end of the interviews
• Pitch and contribute articles about key topics related to the event with important industry publications (online and offline)
• Promote the event to online event sites Zvents, Upcoming and event calendars (online, email or print)
• Write & distribute news releases (1, 2, 3) each taking a different angle
• Pitch stories to general marketing publications
• Pitch story to regional publications where the event will be held
• Publish a series of videos, 1 for each key topic or problem solved. Post to YouTube and distribute via TubeMogul to other video sharing sites. Alternate titles and tags.
• Offer guest blog post to small business bloggers, especially those in the region where the event will be held
• Populate the social media profiles that have been registered with keyword optimized content, linking to an event landing page
• Create a series of promotional emails and landing pages for the event directed towards an in-house list (like an email newsletter)
• Pre write a promo/guest post that other bloggers can easily use – customize it.
• Send follow up emails with themed creative
• Create a cool badge that other blogs can add to their site in exchange for a link from the Social Media Smarts “friends” page.
• Get testimonials for staff that will be speaking – text, audio and/or video formats
• Generate link bait ideas such as: Custom Google search engine just for target industry blogs, List of relevant tools, List of the best target industry topical resources (based on a poll of readers), Post a question on LinkedIn and publish results
• Ask friends to promote – give them a write up, image/logo and a place to point to
• Offer people options other than signing up for the event: RSS, Twitter, White paper, webinar – for those that are not yet ready to do the workshop, to keep in contact with them
• Create content that justifies the cost of the workshop – under promise and over deliver
• As a fulfillment piece, offer a white paper on social media marketing and a guide for winning budget or to justify cost for attending the seminar. Brand it, make it cool
• Create a social media smarts score for blogs. Rank blogs based on their use of social media and then score them. Give a dynamic badge they could put on their blog.
• Crowdsource from social networks content for the presentation and recognize contributors online and at the event
• Contest for marketing partners to help promote event, recognition and/or material rewards
• Promote attendance goals and show progress
• Promote limited seating/limited offer (exclusive, fear of loss) to motivate sign-ups
• Promote speaking slot via twitter and geolocation tools like FourSquare during event
• Sponsor or create a Twitter chat leading up the event to discuss topics of relevance and that address pain points of target audience. Make sure chats are archived and that promotions for the event exist on the archive.

Tools:

• Company Blog
• Column on industry site
• Column on partner blog
• Guest post on friendly industry web site
• Press releases – prweb.com (TopRank client)
• Guest blog posts:
• Contributed articles: industry publications
• Event listing sites: Upcoming, Zvents, etc
• Viral/link bait content, contests
• Video sharing sites: YouTube, Vimeo, Metacafe, Facebook and Tubemogul distribution
• Image sharing sites: Flickr, Zoomr.
• Social Networking: LinkedIn, Facebook
• Twitter accounts and network
• Social news and bookmarking sites
• Social event listing sites, plancast, Facebook, LinkedIn, etc
• Event calendars for publications and/or pitch pubs on SMS as a noteworthy event
• Geolocation sites Foursquare, Gowalla

Measurement:

• Social monitoring of keywords and topics related to company brand and event
• Traffic to landing pages
• Page views of landing pages
• Signups
• Pre-conversions: white paper, RSS, Twitter and social network connections, reports, webinars, newsletter
• Views of social media promoted off site (Tweets, Facebook likes, Comments, etc)

Content Capture and Marketing From the Event/Attendees:

• Give attendees tools to promote the event
• Recognize attendees for attending
• Offer post-event communications/networking
• Capture video interviews with satisfied attendees
• Give attendees a USB storage drive with presentation and useful tools pre-loaded.
• Give attendees an incentive to get others to sign up at subsequent events

Could I list more than this? Could you do more? Of course. Is it efficient? No. This is a list of ideas. I can’t imagine doing them all for a single or short series of events.   There’s nothing wrong with those tactics for promoting events, but the focus here is mostly on editorial or content based promotion.

What creative tactics have you used to be more efficient with event and speaking gig promotions?  Have you ever found yourself at the end of an event wishing you’d done more or done things differently to promote?

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© Online Marketing Blog, 2011. | Tasty Ideas to Maximize Online Marketing for Events | http://www.toprankblog.com

Joel Book from Exact Target introduced the case study:  Creating brand advocates is as important as creating brand awareness. [I would say more important. An advocate proactively shares the brand experience]. Funny, Google “brand tattoos” to see some serious brand advocate activity.

How are marketers using digital media to engage?

• email + crm
• email + social

Email and CRM help to automate interaction. Automation is the key because marketing staff and budgets are not increasing. In order to continue deliver personal and timely messages to customers, you need to automate.

Social participation brings customers together and provides an opportunity to include a call to action to join a newsletter.

Brands are aligning themselves with a specific cause, to add to their brand image.

Genworth Financial case study:

Genworth sells their insurance products through brokers, not directly to consumers.

Reduced marketing resources along with the expectation to have successful marketing campaigns let them to realize that more is not always better. It’s more important to send the right message to the right customer at the right time. Genworth understood the need to personalize communications and to offer in multiple mediums.

They started their email efforts with a business unit and have now expanded to 20 businesses. In 2006 100k emails were being sent and now 3.79 million emails are delivered as part of their program.

Personalized messages are critical to their email marketing. Email newsletters are personalized for the customer and according to the Genworth sales person. Open rates are 7-10% higher when the email comes from the sales person.

Email has realized cost savings as an alternative to print direct mail. Most new product introductions are launched only via email.  Emails were highly personalized and customized, which is very expensive to do in print. $3 million in print and direct mail cost savings were realized in 2009 for one of their marketing efforts.

Increased productivity is attributed to email and Genworth is able to use dynamic content and salesforce.com integration to create 700 highly customized emails every Friday.

Email – high ROI. Example: A co-branded campaign delivered highly personalized emails with Genworth customer logo, contact info and was distributed on behalf of Genworth customers (insurance brokers) resulting in a 12% increase in sales ($ millions) with only a $420 spend.

Efficiency of data integration and dynamic content. Customers used to receive 1-5 emails for each product. Now they only receive 1 with all info consolidated. Genworth used to have 4 FT employees and now only need one to manage email. This is as result of integration with salesforce.com and using exacttarget.com.

Timeframe to get completely setup including installation and testing: 1-2 months.

Creating self serve email templates for sales teams helps them become more efficient.

Enhanced reporting and metrics are available with data integration based on salesforce.com custom objects. Ex: what type of customers open and click the most. What’s working and what’s not.

Email Integration with Social Media has been tentative because of working in a regulated industry. However, the need to better engage with customers motivated them to move forward, albeit, tentatively.

One example is an email newsletter and blog. The blog is hosted on Active Rain (a real estate community). The newsletter gives a snippet of information and then links to a longer form of content on the writer’s blog. On the blog, readers can make comments and ask questions.  A loop is created by including a call to action on the blog to subscribe to the e-newsletter for people that get to the blog via other means.

A Facebook fan page was used as a destination for a national brand advertising campaign designed to recognize caregivers.  Genworth used online advertising, PPC, SEO, social advertising and Genworth producer and consumer web sites to promote. They now have over 7,000 fans. Most successful was Facebook advertising.

Email was used to drive traffic to Facbook and inspire participation and engagement. More awareness and education for products are expected to increase sales.

It’s essential to deliver content in the formats and mediums that your customers want. Integrating data with dynamic content in a combined Email, CRM and Social Media effort can help marketers become more efficient, effective and profitable.

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© Online Marketing Blog, 2010. | MarketingProfs B2B: Case Study on Email, CRM & Social Media | http://www.toprankblog.com

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.

1. SEO:

I resolve to focus more on maximizing visits and conversions from organic searches.
With SEO efforts, it’s easy to get caught up in one goal: getting found via the search engines. But ranking in the search results is only half the story. If potential customers aren’t clicking through to your web page – or other piece of digital content – the ranking doesn’t mean much. Plus, due to variances in what each of us sees in the search results for the same query, rankings as metric are no longer as useful. Personalized search results according to location and web history means your site might rank high for one person, but not another.

Maximize the success of your online marketing efforts by analyzing your metrics report to determine which pieces of digital content are highly visible but producing less than ideal traffic results. Then take some time to ask yourself these questions:

• What competitive search results are your potential customers seeing? Assess the title tags and meta descriptions of competitive search results. Are competitors offering customers a free case study or a complimentary product sample? Then consider ways to make your own title tags and meta descriptions out-entice the competition.
• Does your content live up to the promise put forth in your title tags and meta descriptions? Put yourself in your customers’ shoes: When you first visit your web page or other digital content from an organic search, is the content you find relevant? Potential customers don’t want surprises; they want a solution to the problem that caused them to search in the first place. And they want it as promised.

Not only will searchers respond more favorably to customer optimized titles and meta descriptions, but the increase in clickthroughs will, no doubt, be noticed by search engines and may influence subsequent rankings.

2. Social Media:

I resolve to set goals and track the results of my social media efforts.
There’s no denying that social media is more difficult to justify in terms of ROI compared to other online marketing strategies.  But that’s not to say it’s impossible – or that tracking results should be placed on the back burner. And without goals, it’s pretty difficult to measure success. In 2010, put forth even more effort to set goals for social media participation and tie results back to specific tactics.

There are a host of free or near-free tools available to gauge brand mentions and traffic from social media channels. In December, we highlighted 5 of these social media monitoring tools.

Tracking results via social media monitoring tools is just a start. Those results must be tied back to business goals. Potential goals might be:

• Develop better customer relationships
• Reputation management
• Identify and energize brand evangelists
• Increase brand awareness
• Increase relevant visitor traffic
• Improve standard and social search engine visibility
• Build up a list for email marketing
• Increase leads or sales

Without setting specific goals upfront, social media efforts can’t be definitively quantified so be sure to implement a Social Media Roadmap and all or social bases will be covered.

3. Email Marketing:

I resolve to integrate my email marketing with other online marketing channels.
Regardless of what the naysayers may say, email marketing isn’t going to disappear as a result of social media in 2010. In fact, email will continue to play a significant role in most online marketing mixes this year. A study from Silverpop found nearly half of marketers surveyed plan to increase email marketing budgets in 2010.

That’s not to say email marketing efforts shouldn’t evolve with the times. Integrating email with social media is on par to be a popular resolution for 2010: A recent eMarketer report found 40% of executives surveyed will make integrating the two tactics their top marketing initiative this year. Another 25% of respondents have already implemented an integrated strategy.

Pledge to take email marketing to the next level by encouraging email subscribers to not only forward content via email, but also to get social with email and share it via Facebook, Twitter, Digg and other sites. Conversely, conduct a poll on Twitter or your blog, and encourage followers and readers to subscribe to your e-newsletter for the results.

4. PPC:

I resolve to maximize conversion rates by testing different versions of my ads and landing pages.
Most companies using self-serve pay per click programs fall victim to “set it and forget it” habits. They’re busy with numerous other marketing activities or don’t have the time to really get to know the native bid management platforms and test/refine campaigns. Even if PPC efforts are reaching set goals in terms of conversion rates, there’s always room for improvement. You’ll never know until you try.

Consider these three ideas for testing different elements of your PPC campaigns:

• Test multiple ad versions that highlight different benefits of your product, service or company. For example, one could tout cost-savings benefits, while another emphasizes a convenience aspect.
• Use A/B testing to try out two different headlines on your landing page. Again, each could speak to a different benefit (i.e., cost savings vs. convenience). Google Optimizer is a great tool for this.
• If you’re targeting a competitive search term with many competing ads, consider launching two different campaigns simultaneously. Each could offer a distinct piece of fulfillment – a free case study and a product coupon, for example.

A few tools for testing include:

• A/B Testing resources: (Google Website Optimizer, 7 Free Resources)
• Multivariate Testing service: (Omniture)
• Heatmap & User Testing tools: (CrazyEgg, Clickdensity, Clicktale, userfly andEyetools)

5. Mobile:

I resolve to rethink my website design for mobile users.
If your site isn’t already optimized for handheld devices such as cell phones, now is the perfect time to re-assess your site design and how users find your site through mobile search – particularly for B2C companies.

In October, ABI Research forecast that mobile sales of physical goods in North America would reach $750 million by the end of 2009, a 117% annual growth rate. Consumers are doing a lot more than purchasing downloadable cell phone ringtones and games from their mobile devices. These days, clothing, electronics, books and a host of other items are being purchased through mobile commerce. Additionally, social network participation through services like foursquare, Facebook and Twitter are growing dramatically, creating additional opportunities for promotion and traffic to the mobile version of your company web site.

When optimizing web pages for the mobile web, consider a few tips:

• Keep fonts in their most basic format
• Eliminate advertising to conserve screen space
• Take out images unless they are absolutely necessary
• Remove Flash, Java or any plug-in content unless absolutely necessary

Online Marketing Efforts in 2010
As you make your own personal New Year’s resolutions to drop a few pounds, start a savings account or join a gym, don’t forget your online marketing efforts. Each year provides a fresh start and endless possibilities, so take advantage.

What resolutions do you plan to make in 2010 to improve your online marketing efforts?

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© Online Marketing Blog, 2010. | 5 Online Marketing Resolutions for 2010 | http://www.toprankblog.com

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.

Both BtoB and Consumer Marketers are moving beyond simply including links to social profiles, such as Twitter, Facebook and LinkedIn, in email messages.  Some additional tactical ideas for integrating the two strategies include:

• Using a blog to highlight content from an e-newsletter once or twice a month, and inviting readers to download the full content via a landing page
• Conducting a timely poll on Twitter, and creating a visual representation of the results, in an e-newsletter
• Leveraging social media channels to offer email subscribers customized options (i.e., receiving a combination of a monthly newsletter, a Twitter feed with promotions and an RSS feed with daily news instead of receiving a generic bi-weekly e-newsletter)

2. Focusing on Engaging Subscribers.
In a December article from Direct magazine, writer Ken Magill reports that ISPs are now looking into using engagement as a factor to determine if emails get to inboxes. That would mean if subscribers aren’t interacting with email messages, the ISP may stop delivering the messages.

Of course, it’s not yet determined what exactly will constitute an “engaged” email subscriber. But potential measures of engagement we would recommend focusing on improving include:

Open Rates: Try increasing open rates by personalizing subject lines and including clear information in the “from” line indicating who is sending the email.

Click Rates: To improve CTR, analyze if the design of the email is guiding subscribers to the CTA. Web heat maps, for example, can be used to distinguish areas of a Web page most frequently scanned by visitors. Also, give subscribers a reason to click, whether for additional content, a product coupon or a complimentary gift.

Number of Forwards: To increase the number of subscribers forwarding an email, make it as easy as possible to do so. Include the ability to forward the message via email, as well as the option to share on social networks.

3. Re-engaging Inactive Subscribers.
Building an email subscriber is one thing; building an active email subscriber base is another. Virtually every email marketing list contains a group of inactive subscribers, those who aren’t opening emails but haven’t yet unsubscribed.

To re-engage these sleepy subscribers, consider these email marketing tactics:

• Offer the inactive group a complimentary white paper or free trial of a product
• Create a sense of urgency with notifications that their subscription will end soon
• Segment the inactive subscribers and cut back on the frequency of email communications
• Send a series of opt-in engagement messages to the inactive group reminding them of the value of the emails

4. Creating Viral Campaigns.
Viral marketing isn’t a new concept. But today, with sites like Twitter, Digg, Flickr and Facebook, email messages have the potential to be shared like never before. Try out these email marketing tactics in 2010 to help extend your message to a maximum number of customers:

Tailor forward links to specific campaigns: In lieu of the typical “forward to a friend” link, customize the link for the individual campaign, content and audience. For instance, if an email message provides tips to help small business owners build credit, create a forward link with the text: “Forward these tips for building credit to a colleague.”

Don’t restrict access to content: In order for a message to spread to a maximum number of prospective customers, make content free and accessible to anyone. Plus, make all login processes as quick and painless as possible.

Experiment with placement of forward links: Avoid subscribers developing a “blindness” to forward links because the links are placed in the same location for every campaign. Instead, try varying placement, size and color of links.

5. A/B Testing and Optimizing Landing Pages.
Thanks to quickly advancing marketing automation technology, email marketers can more easily perfect landing pages to create a relevant experience and maximize conversions. Many email marketing tools now offer built-in A/B page-testing capabilities, enabling marketers to test multiple page variations and measure the performance of each.

In a recent post on Email Marketing Strategy Blog from Silverpop, CEO Bill Nussey suggests that advanced A/B testing and optimization can easily yield a 5% to 10% lift in conversion rates. Plus, because email solutions are automating what used to be a manual process, marketers can spend more time interpreting numbers and focusing on the creative.

There’s no better time than the New Year to set resolutions and make improvements. As we head into 2010, take some time to assess your email marketing tactics. Could any of these 5 ideas be incorporated into your marketing mix to improve results?

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© Online Marketing Blog, 2010. | 5 Top Email Marketing Tactics for 2010 | http://www.toprankblog.com

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.
• Include the most important information first. It’s essential that subject lines don’t exceed the character limits of email servers. But prioritizing the vital information first will ensure that, in case the subject line does run over, the primary message will be conveyed.
• Look to others for inspiration. Read newspaper and magazine headlines for ideas. Consider the email campaigns that you receive. Which ones were you intrigued enough to open and what can you deduce from those subject lines?
• Go with what works. Look to your own past successful email campaigns and replicate the subject lines that produced the highest open rates. Also, test out different subject lines within the same campaign to discover what generates the best response.

2. Include a mix of promotional copy with informational copy. Even if the goal of a campaign is to promote a new product, announce company news or introduce a special offer, complement that information with non-corporate information. For example:

• Supplement a new product announcement with a thought leader interview from a supporting industry.
• If a seasonal offer is being promoted, include tips or a checklist pertaining to that particular season.

3. Involve your readers. Consider the success of blogs, forums and social networks. Those interactive channels are effective because users feel involved and engaged. Build off that premise with email copywriting by keeping subscribers engaged and making them a part of the content. Consider including:

• Reader polls
• Reader case studies
• Q&As with customers
• User-generated content

4. Make the call to action crystal clear. With too many calls to action, email marketers run the risk of confusing or overwhelming subscribers. When customers are presented too many options, they may be less likely to purchase. Instead, focus your calls to action and limit the effort it takes to act. Consider these quick tips:

• Rely on size and placement position to emphasize the call to action.
• Write call to action copy that tells subscribers exactly what they can expect.
• Use copy that reinforces to subscribers that taking action will be quick and easy.

5. Put yourself in your subscribers’ shoes. When it all boils down, an email campaign will only be successful if it addresses subscribers’ needs. Email marketers should look at their campaigns from subscribers’ perspectives. What’s important to them? In a ClickZ blog post on email copywriting, Pat Friesen talks about the importance of understanding an audience:

• Visualize subscribers, whether they are mothers of young children or a corporate executive.
• Picture where subscribers are reading the email copy, whether it’s on a computer at work, on a laptop at home or on-the-go from a mobile device.
• Imagine the distractions subscribers face when reading email copy.

Beyond simply visualizing subscribers, study their open and click-through patterns, and consider their demographic information. If you’re still unsure of what subscribers want, use a reader survey to ask them.

What other tips do you have for effective email copywriting?

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© Online Marketing Blog, 2009. | 5 Tips for Effective Email Copywriting | http://www.toprankblog.com

[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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© Online Marketing Blog, 2009. | 5 Internet Marketing Haikus from TopRank | http://www.toprankblog.com

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?

A few key answers and issues that were stressed in the session that and I would like to focus on in order to answer this question were:

• Deliverability
• Test & Measure

There are far more distractions as well as competition than in past years with social, mobile, and other technologies. Additionally, there is the deliverability challenge caused by the ever changing list.  With roughly 20% of people changing email addresses each year to avoid spam and/or to start “fresh” and escape the email account that has gotten out of control, it is difficult to keep in touch with your opt-in audience.

Another deliverability challenge is the growing number of savvy email recipients that believe that a good way to unsubscribe to an email is to simply click the “spam button” and in essence eliminating your reach to that person going forward. (Of course it is key to deliver content that is important to recipient to avoid your audience from opting-out.)

Deliverability of email messages to the mobile device users is also going to be a growing challenge since messages displayed on mobile devices will look,  feel and likely interact with the recipient differently than when viewed within a traditional email account.

As can be expected, with the deliverability issues noted above, reaching the target audience is and will become more difficult in the future. However, through careful monitoring and adjusting to the audience that is responding, as well as those that are not responding, it will be possible to achieve successful results to email marketing programs.

Test & Measure:

To understand the success or failure of an email campaign it is imperative to look at the results of email campaigns to learn from for future campaigns.

From standard statistics such as opens, click throughs, opt-outs, etc. to more of a “total reach” analysis of who is opening, who is clicking and how will the campaigns move the products/services marketed.

Measuring the frequency of campaigns, and whether or not there are more opt-outs when campaigns are sent weekly versus monthly or daily, is an area to focus analysis on. Adjusting the frequency of the campaign accordingly and continuing to test and monitor the results will hone the right frequency mix for your company.

Analysis of email campaigns stats in conjunction with web statistics (whether it be with free analytics packages such as Google Analytics, or with paid packages such as Omniture) is also very important to the success of your email marketing program.

As Jamie Schissler concluded, he showed a slide of many different kinds/styles/sizes of shoes and to remind the audience that everyone can’t walk in everyone else’s shoes and that everyone’s email marketing experience will be different. Embrace the change we are experiencing in email marketing and make that change work for you!

P.S. If you are interested in reading more on my thoughts about email marketing and useful email marketing tips – check out my previous TopRankBlog post entitled Email Marketing Tips & ClickZ Specifics.

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© Online Marketing Blog, 2008. | The Changing Face of Email Marketing – MIMA Summit | http://www.toprankblog.com

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.

If you’re hungry for email marketing goodness sooner than later, here’s a tasty snack: Marketing Sherpa’s 2008 Email Marketing Benchmark Guide. There’s also an upcoming teleseminar to review the guide’s findings:

December 19, 2007 – 2:00 p.m. EST (11:00 a.m. PST),
Led by Stefan Tornquist and Tim McAtee Senior Analyst at MarketingSherpa and lead author of the 2008 Guide
More info and registration

Here’s a previous post from TopRank’s resident email marketing guru, Julie Brue with a few of her practical email marketing tips.

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© Online Marketing Blog, 2007. | Marketing Sherpa Email Summit | http://www.toprankblog.com

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.

The key to breaking through this communication traffic jam is focus; and in this instance, the focus is on email marketing. While email is reasonably considered a “traditional” digital marketing medium, a focused email marketing effort can break through to an audience and see impressive results.

First, this post will explore 5 reasons why email marketing works and then share several tips and best practices on how to create an email promotion that commands the attention of its audience.

Fast Deployment/Quick to Market – Relatively speaking, email marketing can be deployed from concept to completion within a matter of days, and on occasion (and with a highly productive team) in just hours.

Personalized & Interactive – The ability to personalize your message and interact via clickable keyword rich text links, graphics, etc. your audience has an instantaneous and low resistance you can instantly interact with your audience.

Easy to Digest – When copy has been written with the busy/multi-tasking business person in mind (see tips below) an email can be both read and digested by the recipient very quickly.

Deliverability & Cost Effectiveness -Distribution of a marketing message can be distributed to 100’s to 1000’s of contacts in a matter of minutes. Additionally, when compared to other marketing initiatives, the cost per contact drastically decreases.

Measure of Success – Both reception of, and the results of email marketing campaigns can be tracked; especially when the email is tied closely to a clear call to action which leads to a dedicated landing page supporting the creative and with an inquiry form for prospects to instantly request receipt of the offer.

Now that the “why” email marketing works has been covered – let us look now at “how” email marketing works with the following “how-to” tips to create an effective email that commands the attention of its audience and generate results:

• First and foremost, know your audience and adjust your messaging to be relevant to their needs
• Include a clear “Call to Action” and position it close to the top left of the message and “above the fold” of the email.
• Keep the amount of copy to a minimum and break up long paragraphs to make the message digestible.
• Balance the white space so as to not make the message look like work to get through.
• Use bold text to call out important messages/phrases to accommodate the “skimmers”. Be sure to test the campaign by reading the bold text on it’s own to assure that the message makes sense
• Include a human element to the message via personalization, images of people (ideally the person the email is sent from when applicable), sent “from” the person that has signed the email, etc
• Use image alt text in the email copy to describe an image for clarification
• Avoid scrolling by keeping HTML formatted emails to 500 to 650 pixels wide
• With HTML formatted emails, be sure to tie in elements of corporate identity and the corresponding website
• Include a link to a web version of the email message. This is especially important for the recipients whose email clients will not render email properly, no matter how carefully the message has been formatted
• Provide a text-based version of your email available to those who do not want to, or cannot view HTML
• Manage the bell-curve – Be sure to exhaust the creative concept prior to moving to the next
• Set clear objectives for the email marketing program and measure results & ROI accordingly

Armed with the above how-to tips, the knowledge of why it works, it is entirely possible to cut through the noise of typical communication traffic jams with email marketing.

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© Online Marketing Blog, 2007. | Email Marketing Tips | http://www.toprankblog.com

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.

Assuming that the dealerships close their lots due to a company policy, I pose this question: “What are you to do when there are obstacles in the way of marketing to prospects?”

My immediate thought was for the dealership to put up a customer mail box near the entrance with a weekly flyer advertising their new and used cars along with prices. This would have helped us tremendously by knowing whether or not it was worth coming back. Not having an idea of what used cars they had on the lot, we weren’t willing to drive the 20 or 30 miles again to see the 1 dealership that was barricaded for the night.

The same problem/solution scenario has applied for the tactics we deploy for our marketing and public relations clients. The solution to making sure you’re navigating the marketing dead end is to think outside the box and be prepared to use a mix of tactics.

For example, while email marketing is cost-effective and results flow in quickly, not all business professionals live and die by the Internet as people in the online marketing industry do.

One of the client accounts I manage had this exact challenge. Their prospects don’t spend much time in front of their computers during the day. As a result, inquiries from email campaigns generated less than desirable results. Realizing the target market’s behavior differences, we recommended a series of direct mail pieces that leveraged a client success story as a way to engage prospects in a format consistent with how they consume information. The direct mail campaign was initiated in conjunction with an email campaign. That offline marketing effort for our online marketing client resulted in double the number of inquiries – all from the direct mail program.

The cost to execute the direct mail campaign compared to email alone was more, but the potential return on investment increased substantially with a great number of leads.

Situations like this do not in any way mean we’ve abandoned email marketing. It simply means that in some cases it makes sense to leverage alternative channels, in this case direct mail, in conjunction with email marketing to create more awareness – and an increased likelihood of a conversion.

It’s very important when working with clients to have a work around in hand when presenting a problem like our situation with the closed car dealerships. The circumstances may seem improbable, but there if there’s one thing I’ve learned in the internet marketing business and marketing in general, there are many ways roads to the same destination. The trick is to not let a dead end keep you from finding those other routes.

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© Online Marketing Blog, 2007. | Navigating a Marketing Dead End | http://www.toprankblog.com

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
6. Cross promotion and integration – online to offline or vice vesa promotions
7. Email promotions – Opt in for specials, announcements, closeouts as well as upsell with current clients. Augmented with RSS feed.
8. Affiliate programs – Allow partner sites to promote products for a comission or bounty

What additional tactics would you add for BtoC online marketing?

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© Online Marketing Blog, 2006. | BtoC Search Marketing Tactics | http://www.toprankblog.com

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)

Tags: email marketing, marketing sherpa, email marketing conference

Gain a competitive advantage by subscribing to the
TopRank® Online Marketing Newsletter.

© Online Marketing Blog, 2006. | 2006 Email Marketing Summit | http://www.toprankblog.com