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Mix a little social into your email!

Small businesses often cannot afford big spends on marketing. So it comes down to choices. 

Will we get a better return on an email campaign, or should we create a social media campaign? Where do you spend your time and money?

Keys to this discussion are target audience and actual tracking data. If you know your audience spends time on social media, that seems the perfect choice. But statistics show you that email marketing has the best return on investment. 

So the best option? Do both. Integrate social media with your email campaign. This is a simple and solid solution to extend the reach of your campaign and reinforce your message.

Three simple steps to integrate include:

1. Use social links within the body of your email.
2. Add social buttons to the landing page of your email campaign.
3. Post your email campaign to your social media sites. 

Once an efficient and reasonable process is developed for your business, the marketing campaign is more likely to be accomplished. For more on a good process for small business internet marketing read:

Creative Strategies - Web and Social Media >

Read more about integrating social media and email marketing here:

• Integrate Email and Social Media Marketing to Combine the Benefits of Both
• 7 Creative Ways to Integrate Social Media and Email Marketing

 An hour of marketing advice can go a long way. Get in touch soon with the Email Marketing Pro at WinCommunications.com.

Can a flash sale work for your business?

 

Looking for that spike or seasonal boost for your business?

Let's break down what that might mean.

A boost is any increase or improvement.  It's that sudden bright spot during an otherwise dull time frame. Beyond increasing this month's profit, your email marketing strategy can focus on increasing either the number of customers in your database or the number of leads in your pipeline. Maybe the boost you're looking for is more focused on developing brand advocates or improving the quality of your leads.

In retail, an email flash sale is a technique where a discount or promotion is offered for a short period of time. This technique can also be effective for service-based businesses.

A well planned email flash campaign can do three things.

1. Reconnect. Contact your brand advocates with a value-added offer for instant revenue boost.
2. Reinforce. Reestablish your reputation among connections with expert tips offering extreme value to encourage forwarding and sharing for viral impact.
3. Refine. By carefully crafting an email campaign that progressively targets only those who show interest, your list of prospects will become more refined as the quality of the list improves.

Create your 4-step email flash campaign with a link to rock solid landing page

Email #1: Communicate your enthusiasm for your business with a high energy, personalized email, and representative of your brand or image. Include a link to a landing page offering a discount or deal on your product or service. Friends and fans will click because they know and love you.

Email #2: Establish your reputation as the expert in your field. Refer to a statistic, case study or publication that supports your expertise. Include a link to a landing page with sign-up form to receive an exclusive informative document (white paper). Readers will click because they are interested in this topic.

Email #3: Describe a problem you will solve and how it will benefit your targeted recipient. Include a link to that landing page offering a discount or deal on your product or service. Readers will click because they are curious about your offer to solve their problem.

Email #4: From within your email marketing system, extract all email addresses of contacts who opened any of the first 3 emails. Send one more email to that subgroup. Include your most compelling argument for reader to purchase your product or sign up for your service, and include your best offer yet. IMPORTANT: Make sure there is a deadline to create that sense of urgency.

Remember this is a flash campaign. These four emails should be scheduled all within days or within one week to have the most impact.

Looking for ways to grow your email subscriber list?
Read this >>

Looking for help with your email marketing strategy?
Read this >>

 

 

Creative Strategies - Making Use of Email Marketing Statistics

3 Stunning Statistics to Shape Your Email Marketing Strategy

The boss likes statistics. Here are a few stats to support your email marketing program. It's no secret that email marketing is the most effective marketing solution per dollar spent. Small and big businesses alike can take advantage of the affordable one-to-one targeted marketing tools and add revenue as a result.

1. For every $1 spent on email marketing, the average return on investment is  $44.25. (ExactTarget) [OutboundEngine.com]
   
   In other words, spend $5000, expect $220,000 ROI. Consider increasing email marketing budget.
   
   
2. 45% of email opens occured on mobile, 36% on desktop and 19% in a webmail client. – Adestra “Top 10 email clients” (March 2015) [EmailMonday.com]
   
   Know the audience. Redesign email templates so they are display across platforms.
   
   
3. Removing subscribers who have not engaged in over a year instantly increases your deliverability rate by 3 to 5%. - WhoIsHostingThis "Email Deliverablilty 101" (2014) [EmailStatCenter.com]
   
   Bounce rates should stay below 10%, ideally below 3% to avoid possible blacklisting. Make sure lists are not cluttered with outdated or unengaged email accounts.

Visit WinCommunications.com and click "Email Marketing" to get help with your Email Marketing Strategy.

Photo Credit: https://www.flickr.com/photos/aidanmorgan/

Creative Strategies - Preparing Your New Email Marketing Campaign

More and more small businesses seem to be signing up to use various email marketing software applications. There are two questions to ask yourself if you are in the process of building your own email marketing campaign:

1. Do I have the skills and knowledge that I need to succeed?
2. What tools do I need to help me successfully reach my target audience and my intended results?

Other questions to ask as you begin designing your email marketing program:

1. Who is(are) my target audience(s)?
2. Do I have permission to email them, how do I get permission?
3. What are the goals of this marketing strategy?
4. How often should I email in order to achieve my goal?
5. When should I email in order to achieve my goal?
6. What action is my email asking the subscriber to take?
7. Is my message written as concisely and effectively as possible?
8. Is the design of my email going to work in their inboxes? 

Successful email marketing requires hard work. This takes preparation, creativity, talent, research, and a well developed strategy.

Creative Strategies - Avoiding the Where's Waldo factor

As part of the proof reading process, put to test your email marketing campaign's call to action.

Open your email. After 3 seconds, decide if you know what to do next based on what you saw. 

For example, often an email will include product information, image, and contact info in the top few inches of the email. Once the reader scrolls to the bottom, only then does the reader see the call to action, something like, "click here for more info."

Revision strategy: Move the call to action to the top portion of the email. Change the language to be more specific, "Click to view sizes and colors of our entire collection."

Remember, people do not want to open an email and have to hunt for the message. Your call to action is not an entry in a Where's Waldo contest. Write clearly, place promently.

A good article on this subject appears on the Email Critic's blog at http://emailcritic.com/2011/03/email-marketing-calls-to-action-cta/

 

Best Practices - Replace Text Links with Buttons

I received a follow-up email from Backcounty.com after purchasing a few Christmas gifts. The email was clean, well organized, and full of image buttons that were almost irresistible! 

There were three buttons per item purchased, all asking for feedback of some sort. They are like candy! 

         

Ah ha! Did you try to click one of these?! 

It's true that image buttons draw more action than text links. The reality is, for the staff in charge of building the email campaign at many smaller businesses, there just is no time for these types of design modifications. But tweek your email design just a bit and you might see more success. 

For example, download an image to link to any social media site using ButtonsHut.com. And be sure to put some space (padding) around the button. An article at Clickz.com recently reminded us to design for mobile phones 100% of the time as smart phone usage continues to grow. 

"The padding around links and buttons needs to increase so larger fingers can click accurately."

Read the Clickz article here:
http://www.clickz.com/clickz/column/2128674/b2b-email-trends-watch-2012

Bottom line, try using buttons instead of text links. 

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Creative Strategies - Web and Social Media

Apply the "BEEPD" Strategy...

Struggling to figure out how to manage your various social media efforts?

Avoid spreading too thin, shouting in all different directions, and quit wasting time in the wrong lane of internet traffic.

Here's a simple process that will work. The world of social media can be very enticing. With a good plan and an organized process, the circle of web marketing will fall more easily in line:

"Get BEEPD!"

1. Brainstorm at your Blog.
2. Elaborate at your Web site.
3. Entice via Email.
4. Point from Twitter.
5. Discuss on LinkedIn.

Stick to the plan, stay in the right lane!

© Kathryn Towner, WinCommunications

Creative Strategies - Include Loyal Customers in Your Email Newsletter

Add this to the email strategy toolbox:

Introduce good customers to other good customers by including fans in the your actual email copy. Often a good customer is willing to comment or give testimony, and creating this kind of exchange via your email newsletter can reinforce loyalty and repeat business. Add facebook and Twitter icons to further encourage customer inteaction.  (READ PREVIOUS POST!)

Creative Strategies - Building a facebook Page for Your Brand

Did you know that Google results can improve if your brand has an active facebook page?  Add this idea to your list of ways to improve your web site's search engine results!  Create a brand page, and post your brand "badge" on your blog and in your next email marketing campaign.  Here's a new WinM@il badge:

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Promote Your Page Too

Creative Strategies - Ask for Referrals

One of the simplest and most effective ways to grow your email list and likewise your target list is to ask your biggest fans for their help!  If they appreciate your email newsletter or email campaign, for whatever reasons, then these are the best people to ask for a referral.

And email marketing tools make this process simple.  Highlight your forward-to-a-friend button in your next email campaign.  Encourage sharing and be willing to share.  Using an integrated sign-up request once the email is forwarded, someone you never would have reached otherwise is now able to sign up for your newsletter!

Those who do participate (and you know who they are through your email marketing tool) should be rewarded.  A week later send a thank you note, better yet send a special offer or a valuable "How-To" document that has not yet been posted anywhere.

Email works well for new customer acquisition, it just needs to be executed properly and tactfully.