Email Marketing Virgins: Making an Email List

Posted on November 22, 2011 by admin
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So before you even start crafting your very first email masterpiece...you need people to send it to. (Shocking - right?)

Later on we'll get into strategies on how to grow your list, how to manage your list, etc. but for now, let's start with the basics.....how do you build a list.

How to Build a Successful Email List

STEP ONE | WHO ARE YOU TALKING TO?

Going back to my first article First Steps to Successful Email Marketing, use my nifty chart and figure out who it is you're talking to, and how many "segments" you've got in total.

The number of segments you identify will let you know how many lists you should have. Yes - it's fine to have a few campaigns running from the same list through sub-segmenting BUT what I'm talking about here is separating unique segments from each other.

The other thing you want to identify, is if you're running an auto-responder campaign or a regular campaign. Any auto-responder campaign you run, should always have a unique list.

STEP TWO | WHAT'S IMPORTANT TO THEM & YOU

Look at your segments and list what's important to them, so that you send them the most relevant information.

WHAT'S IMPORTANT TO THEM

- First Name, Last Name: Would they like to be called by their first name, or last name?
- Address: Does your company offer regional offers?
- Purchase History: which could include their size, when they placed their last order, what colored they ordered, etc.
- Special Days: their birthday, their child's birthday, their partner's birthday, etc.
- Industry Specific: how many cars they own, if they have a mortgage....basically anything that is specific to your business/brand that could give value to your customers.

STEP THREE | WHAT VALUE ARE THOSE VARIABLES?

Once you do that for all of your lists, determine the value given to each variable. Meaning that, are each of the values above:
- Dates
- Numbers
- Text
- Exclusive Options (i.e. A, or, B, or, C)
- Inclusive Options (i.e. A, and B, and C)

Now that you know who you're going to send it, and mapped out what information you need to collect...what's the next step? Let's look at some basic strategies for collecting email addresses so that we can build a starter list.

Posted in blog, Email Marketing, marketing | 1 Comment

Email Marketing Virgins: First Step to Email Marketing

Posted on November 16, 2011 by admin
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I LOVE email marketing. Yes - I am a nerd. I've been wanting to put together a series for a while on how to create and execute an email strategy, as well as how to integrate it into your larger online marketing strategy and all that mumbo-jumbo.

So....thus is BORN.....Email Marketing Virgins Series. This is series is for YOU if:

  1. You've never created an email campaign before, and want to
  2. You do email marketing but your emails suck and want to make them better
  3. You have beautiful, amazing, emails that you diligently send out each week...BUT they don't convert for shit.

The First Step to Successful Email Marketing

Let's start at the beginning. What's the first step you should take even before you consider starting to write or craft an email? It's time to take a hard think at

  • What you're sending these emails in the first place (EMAIL CAMPAIGN).
  • Why would your recipients want to receive these emails (INTENTION)
  • Which of your customers want to receive this? (SEGMENT)
  • How often they want to get this? (FREQUENCY)
  • Why do you want to send these emails? (GOAL)

Here's a chart to show you what I mean....

Email Campaign Intention Segment Frequency Goal
Company Updates Customer wants to be "in the know" with the latest and greatest. Has some existing interest in the brand already. Loyal Customers --> opt into this list, or specially selected Info is not urgent - once a month Share company information to customers who love us most as brand ambassadors, make them feel special and "in the know"
Sale(Seasonal, Coupon Code) Customer wants to save money. Either has bought something from your site before, or is considering purchasing and is maybe looking for more of an incentive. Two segments here - customers who purchased, customers who are thinking about purchasing Seasonal+First Segment (Existing Customer): A Month After their first purchaseSecond Segment (New Customer): A few week after they have signed up and still haven't purchased, a well placed coupon could tip the boat. Grow Sales($$$$$!!!)
Push out content on my site Customers want the convenience of the content in their inbox. Customers wants to learn from your content. Customers who are engaged in your content.Customers who are interested in learning about the topic of your content. Depending on the urgency of your content...could be daily, or weekly. Increase Traffic

So try it for yourself. Answer the five questions above. Maybe you have multiple campaigns, or maybe you have just one.

Either way, this is the first step to email marketing success. What's the next step? Let's figure out how to make our very first list.

Posted in blog, copywriting, Email Marketing, marketing | 2 Comments

4 Ways Marketers SUCK at Writing Online Copy

Posted on November 15, 2011 by admin
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Do you bore your customers? Even the word copywriting is boring as hell. Seriously. So how the heck do you write something that someone actually finds interesting? How do you write something that people actually want to read?

Bigger question...How do I write online copy that actually converts?

Sometimes it's less of what you do - and more about what you don't do. Here are five things you should avoid like the plague when you're writing your online copy...

1. Don't write anything that you would feel weird saying to the person

When you're writing your copy, imagine that the customer was sitting right in front of you and think of this...what would I say? This is what you should write. Nothing overly flowery, or overly formal (unless your audience is of course some kind of royalty).

Use words that you would use in a normal conversation. Why? Well first of all it's a heck of a lot more interesting, and easy to read. Secondly, it helps you create an instant connection to the person you're trying to convert.

2. Don't go on, and on, and on, about YOU

...which in THIS case is your BRAND. You know when you meet someone for the first time and all they talk about is themselves? Isn't that the worst? Ok - so every time that you email a customer a loooooong newsletter all about the latest brand developments, news, etc.....you're THAT person. And nobody likes THAT person.

Create a conversational tone with your customer. Talk with them. Take what you're trying to say and pull out what matters to them.

3. Don't Just Say It. Show It.

When you do talk about yourself - don't tell your customers....show them.

Customers don't care if you describe your product as being "100% high quality" - anyone can do that. (Seriously. Anyone can.) This gives you zero street cred. Instead, show your customers why they would find your product "100% quality" through customer reviews, product ratings, or videos about your product.

4. Don't be Afraid of Small Words

Don't think that just because you're writing in "simple" language that everyone will think you've got bad english. Don't be afraid of small words! It's the big words you should be avoiding.

You might be impressed with your use of the thesaurus function - but your customers aren't. And if you're worried about your intelligence being questioned....I'll tell you writing effective copy in "simple" language is MUCH more difficult than writing overly flowery marketing mumbo-jumbo.

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Improving Your Site’s Usability

Posted on September 14, 2011 by admin
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This morning I was reading Mashable's post about the 7 Best Practices for Improving your Site's Usability - don't you ever help but stop and think you're reading the same "tips" over and over again?

For all of the articles, tips, tools, online guides, and books there are about usability it always seems like the same tips are just reordered and there is never anything truly groundbreaking.

At the end of the day, there is no golden egg when it comes to UI - every website is different, as every user differs. The best you can do is understand your user, your experience, and optimize your site for your users.

Article Highlight: Readability Test Tool

Mentioned in the article, Read-Able is a tool that allows you to punch in a URL and it will output how readable the page is. Huzzah!

The Gist of the Article

  • Be clear when you're righting articles - don't use overly flowery language
  • Use headings because people have short attention spans and generally skim through things
  • Give your text room to breathe
  • Use lists and text formatting
  • Use clearly labelled hyperlinks

Read the entire article: 7 Best Practices for Improving your Site's Usability

 

Posted in blog, click tale, marketing, ui | 1 Comment

5 Myths of SEO

Posted on August 28, 2011 by admin
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Myth #1: “SEO Optimization” is a Strategy
I cannot tell you how many times I’ve heard – “Optimizing our SEO” as a general strategy businesses are looking to take.  I hate to break it to you but it doesn’t really work that way. Having an “SEO Optimized” site means different things for different businesses just like running a television ad campaign means different things for different businesses.

For example: Let’s say I sell corn (kind of weird online I know but bear with me here). If I wanted to optimize my site – how would I go about doing so? Would I want to take an approach and position myself as “the” supplier for corn? Would I want to increase my awareness to end consumers by sharing corn recipes on my website? These two approaches demand two very different overall strategies.

Create a strong strategic position for yourself as a brand first – then look at how you will utilize SEO to acheive that position.

Myth #2: SEO is simply adding META Keywords
Optimizing your site is not adding META Keywords to all your pages.

Way back when, Search Engines were dumb – well not really dumb but not as smart as they are today. So to help them be “smarter” they would read META Tags and Keywords to help them know what the heck you were writing about. META Keywords were introduced to add values to a page so that for example if I added the keyword value “smarter” to my content, when a user searched “smarter” in a Search Engine this would contribute to my ranking.

Guess what happened next? Let’s just say that the system got a little bit abused; people would stuff their pages with keywords with no relevant content to support it. Today, as a result, META Keywords are no longer used in Search Engine Rankings.

Creating relevent content is what will drive your traffic rankings – keyword stuffing is a thing of the past.

Myth #3: SEO is a Stand-Alone Tactic
I’ve already outlined why SEO is not a strategy on it’s own, however, I also often hear people refer to it as a stand alone tactic. All elements of your business that touch your site effect SEO – your content strategy, the language you use to talk about new products, how you are linked to by other sites, how often you update your website, if your business has a blog, etc.

In order to truly optimize your site, you need to incorporate SEO into all site elements and think of it as being part of the bigger picture – not a stand alone project.

Myth #4: SEO is for “Web Masters”
SEO is not a technical application but part of your online brand strategy. Your overall online brand positioning is what will drive how you will implement SEO. SEO is for Marketers – not Web Masters.

Myth #5: SEO is about top KeyWords
The most common mistake people make is determine the top keyword for their category, include it throughout their site and then sit back and wait for the “SEO Magic” to happen.  Let’s say for example I own a bakery. Trying to be the top search result for the word “bread” would be an impossibility given the number and size of competitors. However, taking the approach of “Toronto Bakery” or “Organic Bakery Toronto” or “Annex Bakery Toronto” would be a much better way to try and drive traffic through search.

Again – go back to your online brand strategy: How are you positioning yourself? What do you offer? Use these as starting points to determine which keywords would have the most impact on your site.

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