Building an opt-in database and growing quality website traffic are two tasks nearly every marketer is faced with, regardless of specific position or industry.  After all, these components are the building blocks for most marketing campaigns and the foundation for a platform such as marketing automation.  If your website is so quiet that tumbleweeds blow through it and your database is nothing more than 32 business cards you “borrowed” from the fishbowl at Applebee’s, fear not…and read on.

We compiled a few tips and tricks that we’ve learned along the way that can help you increase website traffic and grow your database without breaking the bank.

•    Think social media.  Whether you’re B2B or B2C, social media is proving to be a valuable, yet cost-effective medium.  While the vastness of the social media-sphere can feel intimidating, you can begin slowly by listening to peers or participating in relevant online conversations.  Over time, you can work toward developing followers and sharing news, educational tips, special offers and more.

•    Develop a loyalty or referral program.  Build your database and retain current customers by giving them access to special offers. Have a sign-up link on every web page, social media profile and email.  If your model is business-to-business focused and a special offer doesn’t make sense, consider a referral program that incentivizes current customers to refer new ones.

•    Sweeten the signature.  How many emails do you send using your personal email client in any given day?  25, 35 or more?  Now, do the math and multiply by 5 days – that’s a lot of emails, right?  Utilize your email signature by adding a link to a recent news item, special offer, social media page, etc.

•    Partner for success.  Do you have relationships with companies who offer complementary services?  If you’re a florist, think chocolate shop – an online marketing solution, consider web consultancies.  Think strategically about how you could promote each other’s products or services socially, via websites or newsletters.

•    Check out directory listings.  Once you have come up with a special offer, let your fingers do the walking, and search online for free, legit directory sites.  Many online directories offer free basic listings but charge an additional fee for photos, links, etc.  In this case, the basic listing is a good starting point to see if the directory really pushes qualified traffic to your site.

•    Don’t just talk about it.  If you have the time and resources, consider using your expertise to author a blog.  Blogs are a fantastic way to showcase industry knowledge, build brand awareness, develop a readership, etc.  A cautionary note though – maintaining an informative blog takes time, energy and discipline.  If you’re not quite ready to launch your own blog, reach out to your social network and see if they accept guest blog posts.  This strategy can be a great way to lend expertise and gain credibility without the commitment that comes with your own blog.

As you implement these strategies, it is very important to track which traffic sources lend themselves to lengthier site visits, repeat visits, low bounce rates – and, of course, conversions.  Free tools such as Google Analytics provide great aggregate views and tracking, while marketing automation platforms can track individual visitors on a granular level.

We hope these tips and suggestions have you given you new, helpful and affordable ways to think about generating high-quality inbound traffic.

As a marketing automation software company, we focus on the importance of sending trigger-based marketing campaigns and engaging leads through targeted communications.  Email marketing is an important component of these campaigns, so we wanted to share a few tips, best practices and reminders about how to make sure your emails are getting noticed…for the right reasons.

1.    Email subject lines.

Keep them snappy. Subject lines should ideally be 50 characters or less, although one of our own email gurus says 70 characters is an acceptable length, so long as the subject line conveys a very timely and relevant message.

Tell the truth. Keep your recipients engaged by using your subject line to convey the subject matter and value contained within the email.  No one likes “tricky” emails that promise something in the subject line, but don’t deliver relevant content.

2.    From line.

Make it parallel.  Check to be sure your company name makes sense in the context of your subject line.  Nothing screams, “bogus” like a subject line touting “10 Smart Marketing Tips” with a sender name of FreeLove4Less.

Be personal. Using a real person as the sender’s email address is much more credible than the generic info@ or sales@.  Also, if you are adding a personalized signature, make sure it matches the name in the “from” line.

3.    Content.

Triple check spelling and grammar. Yes, we should all know this one by now, but we still see plenty of misspellings in email copy and even subject lines.

Say something interesting. It’s hard to keep recipient’s engaged, and even good offers only go so far in terms of cutting through the inbox noise.  In addition to offers, make sure your content is compelling or gives recipients a reason to open your email, interact with it and come back for more.

4.    Images.

Think balance. While images can reinforce the message and add visual bling to your email, it is important to find a healthy balance of text and imagery.  Too many large images tend to send emails into Spam Heaven, and because many email clients suppress images upon delivery, your message needs to be clear with or without the graphics.  One other important phrase here: ALT text.  Don’t forget it!

Check it out. An important function of email quality assurance is testing your email in different operating systems, browsers, email clients, etc.  For example, a couple of months ago Gmail made a change that caused images and templates to break.  A search on Google revealed several companies including Alchemy Worx suggested adding the following to every image tag: style=”display:block” to correct the problem.  The important takeaway – until this past May, the images had always displayed correctly in Gmail so a consistent testing process is key.

5.    Links.

Kick those tires. Double, triple or quadruple check all of the links in your email.  From personal experience, especially if you recycle newsletter templates, check the footer and image links.  It is very easy to roll out new website pages or navigation, and forget those template links aren’t current when it comes time to launch the next email.

Let them opt-out. Not only is an unsubscribe link your legal responsibility, but also it is important that your unsubscribe link be prominent enough to be easily seen.  Most email service providers and marketing automation platforms add them automatically to the bottom of the email so there isn’t an issue.

We hope this list provides some helpful reminders about ways to keep your email marketing looking good and generating great delivery and response rates!

Have you ever been quietly sipping a pint or four at your local watering hole and found yourself engaged in a spirited (pun intended) debate about, “Who’s better?  Beatles or Stones?”  While I have my opinions and theories (and our COO has his), a few songs from both bands lend themselves perfectly to 4 steps you need to take prior to diving headlong into marketing automation.

1.    Start Me Up – yes, clichéd and possibly overplayed, but legitimate advice.  Before jumping into marketing automation, it makes sense to start your initiative with a clear direction and focus.  First, define your pain points and how marketing automation software would ideally help solve them.  From there, outline the features of the marketing automation solution and how each component can work together to reduce, if not remove, these pain points.

2.    Come Together – track one on Abbey Road gives you a crucial piece of advice about shaping your marketing automation efforts – come together and get buy-in from the areas of your organization that will be working to implement the solution such as sales, IT, operations, etc. If there is any dissention about the technology, methodology or value, it is best to resolve it BEFORE you get into the nitty-gritty of implementation.

3.    Paperback Writer – this catchy tune is about a novelist submitting his book to a publisher, but you get the gist of it. Great content is the foundation for a successful inbound marketing campaign.  Keeping readers engaged requires educational, interesting or just plain cheeky content that is more than a chest-thumping sales pitch.  Audit your current materials, identify gaps and work to produce articles, posts, videos, etc. that educate prospects in new and informative ways.

4.    Time is on My Side – this song is all about patience and that’s something you’ll probably need as you fine-tune and hone your first marketing automation campaigns.  As with any new platform or tool, there is always a learning curve associated with understanding how to use it, best practices, etc.  Set realistic expectations with your leadership team about the different stages and objectives so everyone is on the same page.

With these four tunes in mind, you’ll be well on your way to get started with marketing automation so you aren’t singing, “The Last Time” or “Yesterday.”  Who is your favorite musical muse – Beatles or Stones?

Earlier this week, Net-Results was a participant and sponsor at the BMA Colorado PARTEE on the Green.  Pun-errific name notwithstanding, the golf was a blast at the picturesque Arrowhead Golf Club, nestled in the foothills of the Rockies.  With a wide variety of golfing abilities and experience, everyone witnessed plenty of memorable shots, although a few might make the memory-bank for the wrong reason.  As one member of our foursome looked on at an exceptionally graceless shot, she mused that online marketing is a lot like golf – while practice might make perfect, it helps to have the right foundation from the beginning.

Think about it – her statement makes a lot of sense.  Even though many people hit the links regularly, with the intention of hitting ball after ball until they “get their swing right,” they may be reinforcing bad habits, inefficient techniques or worse!  Ultimately, after months or years of trying to improve their skills based on the do-it-yourself-golf model, many people will become frustrated with their lack of progress and quit.  Translate this scenario to online marketing – not pretty, is it?

At Net-Results, we want you to unleash both your inner rock star marketer and fantastic golfer. To that end, we’ve outlined a few components of a typical online marketing campaign and suggestions for when it’s time to visit the neighborhood pro…

1.    Website Redesign. While most of us are smart enough to know we need a pro to design our website, many people insist that their website isn’t ‘working’ due to poor design.  Before embarking on that 3rd redesign in 12 months, ask yourself, “What do you want your website to do?” and, “How are you quantifying success?”  Based on those answers, you might find the look and feel of your website isn’t the problem, but rather, your messaging or calls-to-action are vague or unclear.

2.    Search Engine Optimization.  We all want to rank number one on Google for that ultra-juicy, ego-stroking, best ever search phrase, right?  While it makes complete sense to focus on those high priority search terms, remember the more competitive the phrases, the more difficult it is to rank for them.  If you place all of your effort on 3-4 phrases, you might be missing some tremendous value in long tail keywords.  Be sure to do your homework and pick a mix of both high-value keywords along with some lower hanging, less competitive ones.

3.   Email Marketing.  In the good old days of 1998, you could pretty much send an email out to a list of marginal quality and anticipate double-digit open, click-thru rates and perhaps conversions.  Back then, email was relatively new and inboxes were gloriously uncluttered.  Sadly enough, those days are long gone and your email marketing strategy needs to reflect such changes.  Marketing automation software will allow you to send smarter, trigger-based email campaigns that demonstrate improved response rates, but just like any other marketing initiative, it must be part of a well-rounded strategy.

4.    Pay Per Click. Much like bullet point #2, in paid advertising, we all want that top spot on Google, Yahoo Search, etc.  Let’s be realistic though, because that top spot can cost a boatload of dough.  Moreover, PPC requires serious attention – it’s not like a “set it and forget it” Ron Popeil rotisserie oven.  What worked well one day may be a bust in two months.  With diligent campaign monitoring, you may find that the third position converts just as well as the first.  Or if you concatenate high-value search terms with geographical areas, your bids might be much less expensive but still provide plenty of conversions.

5.    Statistics and Metrics. Ever heard the question, “Why doesn’t my online marketing work?”  I like to respond, “Because it’s lazy.”  (No, not really!)  That question is first rooted in defining the word, “work.”  Understanding both the objectives of your marketing strategy and how you’ll measure success are critical.  While social media outreach could be measured by the number of followers, mentions or retweets, PPC might only be measured by total conversions.  Let me repeat, defining the objectives and then utilizing analytics/statistics to measure and track campaigns is a critical step.  After all, how can you share your successes if you don’t really know what a success is?

Online marketing encompasses so much more than monitoring and optimizing these 5 parts, but much like learning how to golf, you need to pick a starting point and decide how much you want to tackle on your own and what parts need the guidance and specialized services of a pro.

How’s your golf swing and online marketing looking this summer – crisp, long drives or shanking off the fairway?  Please comment below or send us a tweet.

About six months ago, I subscribed to a Caribbean vacation site that provides alerts for deeply discounted Caribbean vacations for last minute travel. I began to receive emails about once a week, and actually ended up purchasing a vacation through one of the alerts. All was well…until I began to receive daily, meaningless travel alerts.  Some were even the same vacation offer sent six consecutive days!  Even more frustrating, I received a bunch of special offer emails for the resort I just stayed at!

Sick of the volume of worthless emails, I ended up unsubscribing to a service that could have been very useful if the timing was more closely monitored and the targeting was more strategic.  In thinking about this scenario, I wanted to highlight a few tips that would have been helpful for the vacation provider to utilize, as well as ways to think about your email marketing strategy.

Provide frequency expectations

If you plan to send your prospects a large volume of email communications, or a string of various emails throughout a drip campaign, giving them advance notice of the number of communications and the timeframe will help recipients set expectations…and help keep them interested (and potentially from visiting unsubscribe-ville) because they know what to anticipate from you.

Provide options

By asking a consumer how often they would like to receive emails and what type of services or product they are interested in, they are now empowered to decide the frequency and content they’ll receive.  This level of control makes recipients more apt to open your emails, and to potentially purchase from you in the future.

Pay attention to the numbers

• Although it’s obvious that you should be monitoring your aggregate open and click rates, you should also be monitoring your list activity and the percentage of your list that open, click and buy within a period, such as quarterly or annually.
• Monitor your recency of response, the average for the last open, click or purchase. It’s a good idea to store recency in your email database as a custom field to score list members by their activity.
• Break down your list frequency by dividing your lists into segments (Ex: if you segment by demographic, a younger demo may be more receptive to more frequent emails than an older demographic).
• Segment your list by the length of time they have been in your contact database, as a rule, the longer a contact has been a member of your database, the less responsive they will be over time.

Test to find your optimal frequency

• You don’t want to reduce email frequency for all members on your list, because this change could reduce overall sales.  You should, however, aim to reduce frequency to those list members who have tuned-out of communications with the objective of engaging them more through less frequent or higher impact emails. For example, if the numbers tell you that your database isn’t very engaged or interested, you may want to only provide “breaking news” type items and limit all other communications.
• Increase other communication (social media, direct mail, newspaper inserts, etc.) for less-responsive customers to see if they prefer a different medium of communication.

In addition to these tips, it is critical to remember that frequency is a two-way street.  Communicating isn’t solely a function of how often you want or need to send your messages – it must incorporate how often your recipients want to hear from you.

Calibrating your ideal frequency is also due in part to how well you are able to segment and slice your database.  Read more about Net-Results segmentation features.

“The amount of time people spend online has not increased since last year,” according to a CNET News article sourcing a report released by Forrester.  Perhaps more interesting, however, is the reason for the trend – online behavior is changing. “Engagement with the online channel has deepened,” writes Forrester analyst Jackie Anderson. “Web users are becoming savvier and are better multi-taskers.  Many know exactly where they want to go when they log in.”

While people aren’t necessarily spending more time online, the internet remains an absolutely essential part of everyday business and personal life, so what could explain this static usage?

Online users are becoming smarter, more knowledgeable and putting up with less…well…bologna to get to what they want.  Their need for immediate results has created the demand for quick, easy and (oftentimes) free services and tools that help execute and measure social engagement, marketing campaigns, business processes, news distribution, etc.

That said, we’ve come up with a list of free tools we love that make your life easier, whether you’re creating your company’s next email marketing initiative, researching the competition, or just trying to find out who’s going to your high school reunion (so you can make your “non-biased” decision based on anticipated attendance).

1.    Tiny URL.com (or bit.ly.com)
TinyUrl.com is a free website that enables you to take a paragraph long URL and shorten it into well… a tiny URL.  It is especially useful for tweeting when every character matters.  You can create a login so you can easily see how many clicks your adorable, truncated URLs are receiving.

2.    Google Alerts
Google Alerts is a valuable yet often overlooked tool.  Once you’ve established a Google account, you only need to toggle Alerts and add the keywords you want to track, and the frequency in which you’d like to receive information containing your words or phrases via email.  The Alerts tool is helpful for research, brand monitoring, competitive analysis, or just keeping up with any news item that contains the word, “Britney” (we’re not judging).

3.    Picnik
Picnik is an online application for those of us who don’t have our Adobe Photoshop PhD (or a couple hundred bucks for the software). You can crop, edit, resize or adjust your images and photos including converting them into JPEGs, with a few quick and easy clicks.

4.    Hootsuite
Too many social accounts and too little time?  Use Hootsuite to manage it all for you.  See who is following you, manage lists, schedule tweets for the future, track statistics, customize URLs, and much more.  Plus, let’s be honest, the owl logo is incredibly cute.

5.   Lightscreen
Lightscreen is the open source alternative to its not-so open source counterpart SnagIt.  Lightscreen enables you grab screen captures of your entire screen, specific areas, a scrolling screen shot and more.  And it saves all of your images as editable JPEGs on your desktop.

6.   dBusinessNews
dBusinessNews.com is a daily news site that makes it easy to get free press release or news distribution.  The site is updated on a daily basis, and it has great local and national reach to get your message out…without draining your bank account.

7.   Klout
Ever wondered whether your social media efforts are a bunch of hooey and virtual glad-handing?  Well, Klout has developed a scoring index that measures your reach, amplification and network influence to generate a score or number.  Spark a friendly office rivalry to see who has more clout…according to Klout.

8.    StumbleUpon
StumbleUpon is a great social media internet community that promotes sharing and recommending useful web pages, articles, photos and videos.  Users can also post original articles and press releases to distribute company or personal information cost-effectively.

With the speed of communications moving more rapidly every day, and prices increasing faster than you can say, “inflation,” having free and easy tools at your fingertips is just one way we’d like to make your online marketing life easier (and enhance your multimedia search for Britney Spears).

Have a favorite free tool or app that you can’t live without?  Leave a comment or tweet it @NetResults.com.

While it’s a no-brainer that your hottest leads are the highest priority and warrant attention, what about the rest of your contacts whose interaction with your email campaigns is just so-so? With email interaction becoming an increasingly important consideration in keeping your status as a white-listed email marketer, should you continue to send emails, even though their lack of engagement can chip away at your reputation as an above board email marketer?

This question is a tricky one, because removing them from your list could eliminate these leads from becoming a potential customer, but keeping them on your list could damage your email marketing integrity. While you rarely want to completely remove a contact from your database (unless of course, they’ve opted out), you can use your marketing automation software to create segments of “cooler” contacts that you communicate with on a less frequent basis.

Right now, stop what you’re doing and take a moment to define what constitutes a more (or less) qualified prospect in your organization. This discussion can be quite ‘animated’ to say the least because sales may be rejecting leads from marketing as unqualified, while marketing thinks sales should be…well…selling. Once you’ve navigated this slippery slope, bridged this communication gap and defined the characteristics of qualified leads (ta da!), it makes sense to segment these leads from the cooler ones. With differing levels of interest, these segments within your database should receive customized streams of communications. Leads that are cooler could receive more educationally focused information such as newsletters and product updates, while more qualified prospects could go into a nurturing campaign to receive more frequent communications that are relevant to their areas of interest.

By thinking of more than just your hottest prospects, you’ll be able to further segment your database into lists associated with different levels of interest and readiness. Once these lists are in place, you can send communications at a pace that feels more comfortable and tailored to each segment of leads. Your lead database will remain in good shape, you’ll keep your integrity intact as an email marketer – and the most interested prospects will rise to the top – making your lead nurturing efforts shine.

Why is segmentation so hot right now?  Simply put, it helps you send the right message to the right people.  While you have been diligently growing your opt-in database, pipeline and customer base, you’ve been adding names to your internal database.  Sending those members identical communications is certainly easy and convenient – but, by virtue of creating a generic message that is applicable to your entire list, it probably lacks the razor-sharp focus to make it very relevant.

Database segmentation can help!  Many marketing automation platforms provide list segmentation tools that vary from simple sorting to complex conditional statements.  But, thinking about segmentation can be a little overwhelming so we’ve provided a few ideas to get you started…

New Clients
While you still want to keep the lines of communication open with your new clients, once a contact has become a client, it’s time to move them to a different list, where they receive emails that are designed for clients – and not prospects.  As you can imagine, it’s pretty disconcerting for an existing client to receive an email communicating a special deal for new customers.  It smacks of the Triple Play cable deal where that awesome rate is only available to new customers, right?

Product Purchase Patterns
If you provide a multitude of distinct products or solutions, it makes sense to communicate with prospects or customers about their demonstrated areas of interest. You can then provide this segment specific offers or content relevant to the product line they are interested in or purchased in the past.

Industry or Title
Different vertical markets have different pain points that can be addressed through email campaigns and special offers.  Similarly, personnel holding different titles within the organization may have different needs or objectives.  For example, messages to a VP of Sales may differ from a VP of Marketing.

Interest Based Preferences
If you’ve conducted surveys over the past year, then you know that certain contacts have different interests that will help you classify their interest levels in various offerings related to your core product or service.

Open Rate/Click Through Rate
It’s a fairly simple concept- email list members who open your newsletter or click on a link on a frequent basis are clearly more engaged than members who do not open or click.  Therefore, you can try sending a higher frequency of communications to your most engaged members to increase conversion or response.

Channels of Acquisition
Where your email members came from is known as an ‘acquisition channel’ and different acquisition channels have different characteristics. For example: Co-registration email list members will likely respond or convert differently than organically acquired email members. Communicating with your prospects with regards to how they became prospects will increase your chances of starting a conversation with them.

Geography
This is also a simple concept of segmentation that is often overlooked or used improperly. Segmenting your contacts out by their geographic location gives you the opportunity to offer local specials, events and promotions. You can also integrate local news and current events  into your communications to increase their relevancy to each individual on your email marketing list.

Generic mass communication by design, is practically built to be overlooked, and by not segmenting out your audience, you are approaching all of your prospects and leads in the same manner and not addressing individual issues. Unfortunately there is no singular effort that can appeal to all types of leads and all stages of readiness, but by intelligently segmenting out your audience into specific and targeted groups, you are able to respond with appropriate marketing strategies that satisfy the many preferences of each identified segment, to eventually improve overall revenue.

Doesn’t it seem like it is easier to get into Buckingham Palace then to get into your prospect’s inboxes?

Unfortunately, many people still do not have a clear understanding that your subject line is your meal ticket when recipients are deciding whether to interact with your email.  Because so many dishonest e-mailers have filled inboxes with free Viagra solicitations, trips to Paris, and requests for funds sent to Pakistan, they have discredited the rest of us who have legitimate messages we’d like to share. Read more

As specialists in the field of marketing automation, it is easy to assume everyone is using email to communicate with prospects, customers and technology partners.  When you stop and think about it, however, is that assumption really accurate?  Are most businesses really using email – and using it effectively? Read more