Is email marketing dead?
With all the buzz about social media, it's easy to ignore email in your online marketing mix. Is it worth spending your time writing an e-newsletter? Or should we just spend our time updating Twitter and Facebook?
The answer is a resounding yes, and like so many things in online marketing it works even better when combined with social media. A recent survey of 500 million emails found a threefold improvement in click throughs when social media sharing links were included in email newsletters.
So we thought we would share a few tips for successful email marketing.
Be focused
It's very tempting, as it's so cheap and easy, to send to everyone on your mailing list. But don't! Segregate your mailing list to those for whom it's most relevant, and write in a way that will appeal to them rather than generically. Not only will this improve response but it will also decrease the risk of "overload" by recipients receiving way too many emails from you, many of which they find completely irrelevant, causing them to add you to their spam list.
Have clear calls to action
What are you wanting to achieve from your email campaign? Make sure that the email you're sending makes the response you're looking for easy to achieve.
Work alongside your social media
Writing an article in your newsletter, make sure that your recipients can comment on your blog or Facebook discussions. Can they share the article from your newsletter with friends on their social network, do you always feature buttons to allow recipients to become fans or followers? Considering all of these things when putting together your email will improve the success of both your email and your social media campaign.
Build relationships and prove expertise, don't just sell
Don't just use your email to hard sell your latest product, email is great for building relationship and especially for proving expertise. Providing great content not only proves your expertise in your industry, but also increases the chance of your email being forwarded on and kept for future reference.
Test, test, test
If checking your website across different browsers causes you headaches, it's nothing to checking the appearance of your email newsletter, especially since Office 2007. Check out the email standards project website for more information. So make sure you check your email's appearance in as many viewing platforms as possible including web based email. Also, as with any marketing, test different subject lines and content, both to reduce the risk of being spam blocked and improve open rates.
I hope these tips have reignited your enthusiasm for email marketing. If you need help getting an email marketing campaign off the ground, or to improve the performance of what you're doing now, give us a call.
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August 18, 2010 at 10:11 pm | Design, Social Media | No comment
Challenge yourself
Do you like challenges? I love them, I enjoy the chance to stretch myself, pushing myself a bit harder. It could be creatively - making a client stand out from the crowd. It could be technically - developing a website that pushes the boundaries of what's possible.
However, next week it's not a client who's setting me a big challenge, but myself and it's my legs being challenged not my brain. I've always enjoyed cycling, but the last few years I haven't kept up the training, so to get myself back into shape I set myself the big challenge of cycling round the North coast of Scotland. My Dad's joining me (who hasn't let himself get out of shape) and we'll be cycling around 400 miles over some pretty hilly terrain. If you want to give us a bit of extra encouragement you can sponsor us via JustGiving.
So how does Real Point's skill set fit into this? We've set up a blog for the ride which makes use of several social media services. We're also using an iPhone app, Cyclemeter, which allows us to live update our Twitter feed with our progress. We plan to use the iPhone to update all aspects of the blog while we're on the ride - from taking photos and uploading straight to our Flickr feed, updating the blog using the WordPress app, keeping followers up to date with Tweetdeck, which allows us to quickly up date Twitter, Facebook and Linkedin.
So if you've got a big challenge, why not see if the creativity at the Real Point office can help you? And if you want to know more about effective use of social media on the move, just give us a call.
But most importantly - what big challenge are you going to set yourself?
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May 31, 2010 at 9:51 pm | Design, General, Social Media | No comment
4amProject 2010
I once again set my alarm for a time way to early to be up on a Sunday morning and took part in the 4amProject, taking photos around Coventry at 4am in the morning on the 4/4. This time I visited the Canal Basin and Coventry Transport Museum, hope you like the outcome.
This is the second time I've taken part, last year's photos are still on Flickr, and the 4am Project's growing Flickr stream provides a fascinating glimpse of a time most of us never see, all around the world. So why not get your camera out and see what happen's where you live and work at 4am in the morning? Or if getting up then is just a bit too early, get some creative inspiration from the images of others.
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April 4, 2010 at 5:35 am | Design, General | No comment
New website for Birmingham Business Breakfast Club
I regularly attend a networking breakfast in Birmingham which is the perfect fit for me, it's informal, entertaining and has some great speakers. I've been responsible for the website and e-newsletter for a little while now and decided it was time for a refresh, so yesterday we finished all the coding work and here you have it - http://www.bbbc.biz
Would love your feedback, and if you're in the Birmingham area, why not pop along one month?
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October 28, 2009 at 1:09 pm | Design, General | 1 comment
Making sure people read your website and take action
Gerry McGovern’s book "Killer Web Content" is a great guide to putting together and managing the written content for your website. I’ve just finished reading it and will be recommending it to all my clients. Two key themes run through it, writing the words your customer is looking for and getting rid of dead, filler and dated content.
Writing the words your customer is looking for.
Customers are looking for the words that they care about and are familiar with, a concept that Gerry McGovern calls “Care Words”. For example, if looking to fly, visitors to your website will be looking for the words “Cheap Flights” not “Low Fares” as many marketers would have used in the past. The book recommends some excellent techniques for discovering, testing and using care words. Writing titles, summaries and body copy making good use of these will help search engines and ensure that your visitors remains on your site as they have found what they are looking for (to misquote a U2 song!).
Get rid of the dead, filler and dated content
In one example given, of a large website, 99% of the people visiting the website visited 1% of the content, and 35% of content had never been read! The content that is rarely or never read is the dead and filler content, when a visitor comes across this it will more than likely drive them away to another site.
Writing the right content
The book suggests that you follow the six Cs whenever you sit down to write content:
- Who Cares?
- Is it Compelling?
- Is it Clear?
- Is it Complete?
- Is it Concise?
- Is it Correct?
Most importantly:
- Never be a “putter upper”, just adding content to your website because you can and it’s at hand.
- Thoroughly edit any content you do add, preferably using a third party as a fresh pair of eyes.
- Test all content, monitor your webstats to see if it’s working.
- Regularly read through your website, removing or editing content that is out of date or incorrect.
Improve your website content now
The book includes many other useful hints and tips for writing for your website as well as thoughts on blogs and search engines. Why not buy a copy of “Killer Web Content” now on Amazon and get your website working more effectively for you?
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July 6, 2009 at 5:21 pm | Design, good books | No comment