How are you going to spend your day? Tweeting, blogging or chatting on social network sites.  Social networking is addictive and it’s very easy to lose track of time. Remember that time is money. Are you getting a return for your money?

Leaving it to the IT Department

Because there can be an element of technical knowledge required for the integration of online marketing platforms, some companies leave the job of online marketing to the IT Department.  Successful online marketing should be a marriage between the marketing and IT experts with the marketing team researching and driving their online marketing strategies.

Confusing Marketing Metrics with Business Success

You can have 600 contacts on Linked In, 1000 Facebook fans and 3,000 followers on Twitter but if this isn’t converting into sales, then you are wasting your time. What is important, is the volume of sales enquiries and new business generated by the time spent on on-line marketing.

Failing to cross reference

To get maximum growth from all your on-line marketing platforms, ensure that they are all cross-referenced with each other along with other off-line marketing material and campaigns.

At a recent networking event, I met two people in a group of six who had forgotten to include their web address on their business card.

Not maximising the potential to gather customer data

Get your hands on a good CRM or even a spread sheet to record on-line visitor patterns including their preferences, buying habits and interests and use this for effective targetting.

One thing to keep in mind when gathering data from an on-line form is not too go overboard and ask for too much information as a lengthy form can turn visitors off.

Thinking that a high volume of web traffic means that you have a successful website.

No. This means that you have a successful SEO or on-line marketing campaign.  With the best will in the world, if you have cajoled, bribed, enticed visitors to your site, if they are not buying your product or service, then it’s time to review your website. Back to basics.

Benefits of email marketing

With a large choice of email marketing companies offering a variety of email marketing solutions, competition means that an email campaign can be set-up quickly and cost effectively.

Most providers allow you to test your email campaign in a variety of browsers, including mobile browsers, for a small fee.

Sophisticated tracking tools allow you to monitor your email campaign instantly and you can see:

• Who has opened your campaign
• How many times they have opened your campaign
• What links they have clicked
• Who has forwarded your email
• Who has unsubscribed
• Which emails have bounced and why
• Who has reported you as spam (hopefully, no-one).

By reviewing the above information, it enables you to follow-up any possible interest from individuals.  These can be further categorised for another email campaign, or why not pick up the telephone.

Effective email marketing

Permission, permission, permission.

Build up a list of recipients who have granted you permission to email them. Think about it. What’s the first thing you do when you receive an email, be it a sales pitch, circular, product information, etc., from someone you do not know – you delete it.  You might even open it and unsubscribe from that mailing list or go as far as to report it for spam.

Build up your email list from:

• Your website
• Networking
• Exhibitions
• Surveys and so on

Always check that you get the recipient’s permission to email them.  Just because you place a jam jar to collect business cards at an exhibition on the promise that someone giving you their card will win an iPad, does not mean they are giving you their permission to email you. They are giving you their card because they want to win an iPad. Make it clear, that you would like to add them to your mailing list.

You do not wish to be reported for spamming because you could run the risk of being black listed and will not be able to email anyone.

Be wary of buying in mailing lists. These can be pricey with poor results (because they don’t know who you are – and might report you as spam).

Email marketing best practice is to provide an unsubscribe button on campaigns.

How to succeed in email marketing

Now we have sorted out our list of happy recipients, here’s how to get the best from your email campaign:

• Let recipients clearly see who is sending the campaign.  A client who ran small email campaigns, discovered that when they used their own name in conjunction with the company name, they got a higher open rate.
• An attention grabbing subject line – keep it short. Attention grabbing to generate interest but keeping it short because it is easier to read but also worth bearing in mind that some email providers only display 38-47 characters of the email subject line and mobile devices show even less. According to Hubspot, 80% of users reported reading emails on their mobile phones.
• Take care with images. Remember to use small resolution images in your email marketing campaign as many email recipients may have images deliberately blocked on their PCs.  Larger images (you would be amazed at what size people will send in an email) may exceed recipient mail box limits and will be undeliverable. Interestingly, amongst Seasons Design’s own email clients, a few are now moving away from image and text emails to text only. They are mindful that the majority of their clients will be opening them on their phones.
• Exclusivity. “What’s in it for me?” Why should your customers sign up? As with other forms of marketing, hook them in with special offers, free downloads, latest industry news as it happens.
• Links.  The more links contained within your email campaign, the higher the success of click through. If there is one particular link you are keen for people to click, refer to it in different parts of your campaign, with different introductory wording each time to entice people in.
• New customers are your best customers. This is the honeymoon period for someone who has just signed up and as such they are more receptive to news, offers and updates.
• Frequency. This will depend on what you are promoting. Someone with a product may benefit from frequent campaigns (perhaps even daily) and those supplying factual information should be looking at 1-2 times a month.
• Analyse Statistics. Don’t forget to fully analyse your statistics for onward selling.

With over 500 million users worldwide (estimated to be 600 million + this year), approximately 26 million of those users are UK based, it’s the largest social networking platform. Interestingly its fastest growing demographic is women aged 55+.

To start marketing your business on Facebook create a fan page (don’t get confused with the personal pages). A fan page allows visitors to endorse your page by “liking” it.

It’s important to encourage people to like your page because once they have liked it, each time you update your wall, their wall will be updated with your posting. (There will be some of you rolling your eyes at this as it seems obvious, but you would be surprised at the number of people out there who do not appreciate the significance of having their page liked).

Entice people to “like” your page by giving them exclusive offers. This can be anything from a free download to a discount voucher. Make it worth their while – it’ll be worth yours too.

Once you have set up your Facebook page by completing your information and posting relevant points on your wall you can invite people to view and link up to your Facebook page and seek out other peer groups to join. Facebook discussion boards enable you to get your idea into the open and let you know exactly what your customers think and want.

Facebook allows you to interact with visitors and for some new business start-ups who do not yet have a website, it’s a fantastic way to promote your products or services on-line. I have seen it used very successfully by new businesses who have posted images of their products, artwork, portfolios, etc., on Facebook and started to take orders and respond to enquiries.

Now that you have set up Facebook, start to experiment with content. You can try out short hints and tips, links to relevant articles, upload photos and videos. See what works best for you and generates the best feedback.

Think about the frequency of updating your wall. Keep your visitors keen but don’t drive them away through overkill. Depending on what your business is – perhaps twice a week.

Don’t forget to cross reference Facebook with your other on and off-line marketing platforms and material.

Good luck.  And, if you want other quick snippets from Seasons Design, be sure to “like” us on Facebook.
© Alison Winn.