According to recent studies, e-mail campaigns and e-mail list segmentation may raise word-of-mouth effectiveness when you communicate with customers. E-mails are not only compelling and potent, but also an effective personal communication channel with customers.

The main advantage of e-mail marketing is the ability to share information with a large group of specific customers and potential prospects at a very low cost. In addition, as e-mail has 90 percent of penetration rate among Internet users, e-mail users constitute a vital audience for you. They are one of the most important targets for delivering word-of-mouth and creating some buzz. For instance, we suggest adding a forward bottom or link to friends in your messages. In addition, you shouldn’t close the eyes to viral basics either.

E-mail marketing helps you enhance customers’ relations and get new prospects. How? Some examples of what you use for e-mail communications are:

• Direct response sales messages.
• A customer service, suggestions, consults, etc.
• E-newsletters.
• Couponing and discounts.
• Messages about shipping services.
• Etc.

On the other hand, to be successful in this task, make sure that you use targeted e-mail marketing. For that, the internet offers great internet e-mail marketing solutions, going from web services to specialized programs to help you manage your e-mail marketing campaigns.

Additionally, make sure your recipients know what you need from them and what they can expect from you. Ensure that your Brand appears in the Subject line, and your name in the From line, that way it will feel personal. Take no more than one day to reply to requests and make it easy for recipients to unsubscribe if they want to… and never SPAM.

Sources:

E-Mail and Word-of-Mouth: Connect with Your Best Customers

Current economy put emphasis on it. Interestingly, it is a fact that search marketing is a useful and simple tool for acquiring customers. How does it work? Ads and organic listings come into view to prospects when they are interested in a particular product, service or other things.

But, that’s not all! Once your prospects are in your Web site, you have to keep them! It may be difficult; the first step is to make sure that your home page shows them in just a look what you offer. Build credibility having a Web site that is clear and professional. After that, only if you get their interest, they’ll read more about your products or services. By the way, keep in mind that your e-newsletter is an excellent tool to build relationship with customers. However, necessary first, your visitors have to sign up for it.

At Weboart, we are ready to help you. We can help you get new customers implementing an online marketing strategy on search engines and building credibility with your Website. If you require any additional assistance, please contact our Los Angeles Web Design team. Just call as today at 1-800-932-2580.

Sources:

• Get focus on getting new customers
• Getting and keeping customers

According to the recent study launched by the Lenskold Group and MarketSphere, only 20% of the respondents said that they have both the money and the intention of reporting marketing effectiveness. In addition, more than 55% of the marketers state that although ROI (Return on Investment) was becoming increasingly indispensable, they didn’t have enough budgets or resources for that effort. Just 2% of respondents allocated more than 30% of their budgets to measurement and analysis purposes.

It could be hard to assign an important amount of your budget for such a challenging study. Still, there are several ways by which you can make your ROI strategy succeed. Lenskold Group and MarketSphere’s study provides several recommendations on how to improve this practice:

On the one hand, you should estimate ROI’s potential on the planning stage and invest on reports and statistics which have an immediate payback. You should also increase experimentation and testing. Moreover, businesses must prepare for aggressive competition during the recovery.

It definitely takes time and money, but it’s essential if you are thinking strategically and you want your business to keep growing. Thus, it’s crucial to find out what you want to measure and how you are going to do it. Which kind of research is the one for you? Qualitative or quantitative?

On the whole, it’s recommendable to combine both methods. But, if you are interested in analyzing customer relationships, corporate reputations or conversations you should probably choose a qualitative form of analysis.

On the other hand, if you need to measure your web traffic, sales or SEO ranking you should use a quantitative research. Some statistical tools that can help you with this task. For instance, AideRSS, Google Analytics and Xinu.

To summarize, the key is to identify how you are going to measure your ROI. If you carefully build a measuring strategy, then you will be reducing risk! Be smart at the beginning of the process and analyze what’s working for the better for you.

Sources:

Return on Investment – ROI

ROI Measurement a Must

How to Measure Social Media ROI for Business

There are several ways by which you can improve your Email Marketing campaign.  And interestingly, there are important precautions you must take in order to avoid legal problems. How you can do it? Let’s see!

Firstly, be aware of the Spam Laws in order to avoid legal issues or penalties.

The CAN-SPAM Act of 2003 refers to email that are sent with the purpose of advertising a product or service, including content on a Web site. It provides penalties to spammers and companies whose products that are advertised violate the Law.

Hey! This is serious! The first thing you must do before launching an email marketing campaign is to get involved with these Laws at a Federal and State level. The Federal Trade Commission (FTC) is authorized to enforce the CAN-SPAM Act. And, the Department of Justice (DOJ) has the authority to put into effect criminal sanctions. In addition, other federal and state agencies can enforce the law against companies under their jurisdiction.

Now, let’s see some important aspects to keep in mind:

• First of all, your email must reveal the person who sends it and include the correct originating domain name and email address.
• The subject line of your email must be clear and reflect the content of the message.
• You must also have a return email address or another Internet-based response method to provide the option to unsubscribe for future email messages.
• Email marketing campaigns must be clearly identified as ads and also include a valid physical postal address.

If you violate one of these rules, you will be penalized! Fines are up to $16,000. But, some additional fines are available for other violation’s rules such as generating email addresses with a “dictionary attack”, using scripts to register multiple emails, among others. Then; if things got worse, you could go to trial.

For getting information about the Spam Laws in your State, check out this Website. For instance, the California State Law considers that is illegal to send unsolicited commercial email from California or to a California e-mail addresses. Furthermore, certain emails must include contact information and opt-out instructions. At the beginning of the subject line, they must also have the label “ADV:” or “ADV:ADLT”.

Tips to improve your Email Marketing campaign

Subject length and personalize information. Having an attractive and concise subject is essential because this is crucial at the moment of deciding to open the email or not. Clients will only open it if they are seduced by the subject. So, you must think and summarize the main idea. Keep in short!

In addition, personalizing email campaigns is also very important. Only if the message is customized, there are more opens and clicks. It’s highly recommendable that you use a custom template to raise brand recognition as well. According to a study by Mailer Mailer, the best day to send emails for marketing purposes is Monday with both the highest open rate and click rate.

Interactive and attractive content. Once you reach the audience with an interesting subject, you should motivate them to read it until the end. So, say the most important at the beginning! Remember that a picture is worth a thousand words, so include some images. If you just add text, your audience will be likely to get bored. And subsequently, you won’t get many results.

Make the unsubscribe process easy and clear. You will not only avoid legal issues, but also maintain a good reputation with your customers. Including this simple option, you let your clients that your intention isn’t to disturb, but respect their choices and decisions.

Analyze your results. Email marketing campaigns are measurable, so analyze your results and check which strategy is working better for you.

In conclusion, Email Marketing is an effective way of sending your message and increasing sales. But, it’s crucial to get familiar with the Spam Laws. Furthermore, think of ways by which you can improve your strategy. Be responsible and increase your sales respecting for Spam Laws!

Recommended sources:

Email Marketing Q&A’s

The Enormity of Email – Ogilvy

8 Steps To Email Marketing Success

Tips for Tracking Email Marketing Campaigns – Google Analytics

http://analytics.blogspot.com/2009/03/tips-for-tracking-email-marketing.html

Create Your Own Custom HTML Template and Better Your Brand Recognition

Email Marketing Metrics Report – Mailer Mailer – June 2009

CAN-SPAM Laws

Can Spam and email Marketing

DoJ scores largest ever CAN-SPAM prosecution

New spam tactic: Spam profiles on social networks

Federal Laws: The CAN-SPAM Act: Requirements for Commercial Emailers

State Laws: Email Spam – State Laws

The client is always right, there’s nothing new about it and listening to him is a long time accepted practice. The lack of an effective way to get feedback online is a phantom problem for a lot of Web sites keeping them far from real progress.

Just like the mother learns from the son, you can learn a lot of things about your business listening to your customer; but to do so, you must give them room to express their thoughts and feelings about your product, Web site, advertising or any aspect related to you.

One of the cheapest and easiest ways to get valuable feedback is to have an online survey form for your clients to fill out. There’re simple specialized Websites to help you with the data collection task such as the smart FormSpring, a web that offers you the possibility to organize your data forms and create multi part questionnaires for the users to communicate with you. Like this tool, there’re many others you can implement without being necessarily a programming whiz.

No matter what about or what size your business is; here are some tips you could use to get some priceless information from your client.

• Get advantage of form filling tools online, ask them to send them back and if possible, give some greeting gift in return! The client will feel you appreciated the gesture, and he or she’ll be right ‘cause surely you did!

• For the Web visitors, you can also offer products or services at no cost like e-books, random tips, search engine submission, e-mail consulting or anything crossing your mind in exchange for their opinion about your Web site. Doesn’t matter if they’re not officially your clients yet!

• Run a customer focus group to discuss about your products and your communication practices, choose target profiles in order to get specifically to the point, you could pay them to participate or give them gifts or free products.

• Create a database with your clients and keep in touch with them, invite them to participate and communicate with you by e-mail or through your Web site.

• But most important, make it easy for your customer to contact you. Have a complete Contact Section with all the possible ways to contact someone; address, phones, fax, direct e-mail, everything; and always answer them saying thanks for the response and interest.

Think of this as part of your communication strategy, it could give you more important results than an expensive advertising campaign; sometimes to listen is better than to talk!

Sources:

• Engage your customers and get their feedback
• Feedback: the secret weapon for Startups
• How To Get Valuable Feedback From Your Customers

From April to June 2009, many businesses have increased their online ad investment. 5.4 billion was spent on online ads, which means that more than 5% of Internet advertising spending in the U.S. was cut in the second quarter of the year, according to according to the Interactive Advertising Bureau and PricewaterhouseCoopers quarterly report. Despite these numbers, online ads are one of the least affected advertising sectors.

In contrast, it is said that online advertising is growing and will globally expand by about 10% this year, according to a report from the international agency ZenithOptimedia. Moreover, Online Advertising Set to Grow During Recession stipulates that online ad spending for this year will be around 30 billion dollars. On 2008, 23.4 billion were invested in online ad in the US. It is predicted that online marketing spending will have risen up to 51.1 billion by 2012. In summary, the current crisis is turning to be a window of growth opportunities for online businesses. Let’ see why!

Nowadays, businesses may focus their marketing strategies towards the online scenario. It is said that crisis can be an opportunity too! You know… every cloud has a silver lining! And fortunately “online ads work”, states a research by ComScore. It was found that search generates a raise in offline sales per consumer exposure than display.

Search advertising dominated the Internet advertising market share, with a 45 percent last year. Interestingly, online video advertising had a 123 percent annual growth, which means that it was from $324 million in 2007 to $724 million in 2008, reported the Interactive Advertising Bureau.

For that reason, we recommend that you should try focusing on online advertising as one of your mains part of your marketing strategy. You don’t have anything to lose; online advertising is cost-effective and can be targeted to your audience. So, small businesses can compete with the big ones as they all have the same opportunities. By the way, do you know where do you find your customers?  If your customers are in the Net, you should spend some of your budget trying to reach them and calling to action! You can attract current customers and prospects with an innovative and creative online advertising campaign.

Moreover, online advertising allows having more efficient results and measuring your success. Even a small advertisement can have a strong impact as it can reach audiences all across the world. No matter how small is your business, you can build a global image, become tremendously popular and generate word-of-mouth.

Did you know that 22% of word-of-mouth conversations are sparked directly by advertising? This was revealed by a study co-authored by Ed Keller of the Keller Fay group who is one of the biggest proponents of word-of-mouth marketing.

In a nutshell, we can say that online advertising is the best way to undergo and escape from the shadows of recession. If you are creative, it will help you increase your popularity and achieve effective and measurable control spending. Don’t forget that creativity, innovation and uniqueness are key factors in order to generate some buzz!

Sources:

Search drives global online spending despite recession

Online advertisement set to grow during recession

Online advertisement spending will keep growing

IAB Reports Internet Advertising Grew 10 Percent Last Year; Outpacing TV

Internet ad spending continues slide

A Forrester Consulting study commissioned by ExactTarget found that only 37% of marketers said that they actually do.

But, do you?

There are a few things that you should know before sending marketing messages.

• Adapt the message to your customers. Ensure that you are sending the right message to them!
• Use the right channel. How to choose it? Customers’ opinions about permission marketing are constantly changing. Nowadays they prefer either e-mails or text messages. But, not direct mail.
• Ask your customers how they would rather be contacted! Everybody doesn’t think the same way.
• Provide an explicit opt-ins. Do not include customers to your mailing list unless an explicit step is taken.
• Unsolicited messages are unacceptable for the majority of customers.
• The majority of Facebook users who are fans of a brand don’t allow companies to send them information through this channel.
• Even though Internet users’ are using social networking sites for written communication, they aren’t very open to receive marketing messages through them.

You’ll be more successful if you are aware of your consumer preferences and behaviors. Remember that their permission is crucial!

Now, it’s real! Since August 2009, Digg, the social bookmarking site review that receives around 40 million unique visitors each month, has been using an experimental advertising platform that includes the same social voting system of the Web site.

Digg explained that its new voting concept appears to be a more effective effort than the ad approaches done in Facebook. Why? Maybe because it gives more control over which ads are displayed on the Web site.

How it works

• Users vote “digging” for the ads they like, and vote “bury” against the ones they don’t.
• Ads that get more votes also get a lower cost-per-click rate for the ads, and it’s likely that the ads stay visible on the Web site much longer.
• Ads that get more “burying” have a higher cost-per-click rate, so advertisers are more likely to eliminate their ad from the Web site or change it.

Interestingly, now with this new tool, advertisers and marketers have some benefits:

• They can receive instant feedback and they can figure out what ad is working and what isn’t
• It helps them generate social buzz around campaigns
• They can gain more exposure

Digg said that the company has surpassed expectations and it plans to syndicate this voting method on other Web sites.

Digg has also begun testing Digg Content Ads widgets that contains previous home page stories relevant to advertisers.

Finally, if you want to find an interesting ad, start with Digg!

Sources:

Digg’s Disarmingly Direct Approach to Internet Advertising

Digg’s Vote-for-Ads Experiment Is Raising Revenue

Digg’s Ads Make Me Want to Click On Them. I’m not the only one.

But, is it attracting visitors enough? Are people buying your products or services? The bigger point, which is blindingly obvious when you think about it, is that your true objective must be increasing your sales. Popularity and traffic is meaningless if you are not able to convert random visitors into customers.

Potential customers are out there, visiting a vast number of Web sites and sniffing around. Maybe they are curious, bored or they have trouble deciding where and what to buy. Your goal is to turn that curiosity into a sale. How to do it? Well, let’s see some useful tips!

• Getting Visitors Email addresses

In order to gain the engagement of new visitors, the first step is to get their email addresses and increase your contact list. Yes, we all know that is hard to do it. But, you can entice them with something valuable that you can give them for free in exchange for their email address. For example: a discount coupon, a souvenir or a special offer, among other options.

• Offering Live Chat assistance

As a business owner your Web site needs to be alive. It needs to have available salespeople that can provide valuable information and achieve the sale effectively. If your store is empty, then who will buy something?

• Be active!

Use multimedia tools, video and music in order to make your Web site more attractive. Active voice will make the visitor feel that someone is actually there to help them.

Okay, so these are some valuable tips for you to attract real customers. Having huge amounts of visitors is important. But, finding the way to keep them loyal is crucial for your business!

Sources:

Convert Your Website Visitors into Customers

Stop Screwing Around – How to Convert Every Web Visitor Into a Loyal Customer

Until last year, advertisers’ online budget wasn’t more than 15%, but this situation is about to change due to the significant growing of social networking sites and online video. Nowadays, Internet is the only support with accelerated growth, at the expense of traditional media such as TV spots, radio and magazines.

The pitiable situation of today’s economy is also causing the search for lowest prices and production costs with clearest and easy to understand outcome metrics. According to Merrill Lynch, the total growth of Internet advertising will overtake radio and magazines’ ads investments before 2010.

On the other hand, media agencies are changing their structure, creating new spaces for online advertising, changing the way they understand and conceive creative briefs and copywriting, molding their campaigns and messages in order to get the highest impact at the lowest price.

The most important thing when we’re about to advertise online is to think we have no more than half a second to get the user’s attention. When online, they have a whole world of information in their hands waiting to be chosen by a click. So grab attention, create curiosity and call for action is the three steps formula to create effective web advertising.

How to get there? You must combine three ingredients:

• The first one is to know everything about your product. Why is it different, why makes it the best option for the client.

• Second, to think about your consumers, who they are, what Web sites they like, and even what they do/read/watch/play/want/dream/think!

• And third, to understand how the Web works as the biggest world’s marquee. What about users’ behavior? Learn how the message is caught, where to say what you need to say and how to do so.

Online advertising is a big deal and it gets bigger and bigger. We’re experts. We know about it, it’s our thing; so let us help you to cross the line and get into the world of web ads successfully! Just call us now at 1-800-932-2580.

Sources:

• Lynch, quoted by Dans (2008). Transformed by Internet. The Wall Street Journal Media & Marketing.
• Web Source. (2009). Online Advertising.