Category: Email Marketing

How To Create Your Business Website and Beat Google

How To Create Your Business Website and Beat Google by Anna Knorik.  Available from <https://indianceo.in/news/create-business-website-beat-google/> [Posted on ]

Setting up a website for your business may seem like an impossible task for many. However, with some guidance, it is doable without much frustration. Web development for startups may require some research and knowledge but there is nothing you cannot master. I remember being overwhelmed when the idea of creating a website for my business came up. Here are my tips to help you set up a successful and informative business website. Read more.

Creating a website

So you have come to the realization that your business needs to join the online world. These days there are many tools to help you create a website. The simplified version of creating a website goes like this:

  • Choose a domain name
  • Find hosting
  • Create a theme for your website
  • Content

This is the outline but there is more to creating a website than simply getting to the blank page. After you setup the actual page, there are a few important things you have to do in order for your website to be visited by potential clients.

Get your website listed

Creating a website is one thing. Having your website land in a Google search does not simply happen by one click of a button. You have to list your website on the Google directory by submitting your web address to Google. The submission form is free of charge but it is important to note that this is a requirement to get your business reached via Google.

Link your website

There are some websites that Google already crawls. Link your new website to one of the crawled sites. The next time Google crawl these sites your website is automatically added to the index. It is an easy way to get your website indexed.

Keywords

Every website needs informative content. Even if you are selling a product, it is still important to provide your visitors with good content. You can use this as an opportunity to be found in the searches. Carefully select the keywords for your site and pay attention to your SEO settings. You can use Google’s keyword planner to help you find ideas for keywords relevant to your website.

Meta descriptions

A Meta description is used to give your visitors a quick overview of what to expect on your website. This is the hook you use to have clients click on your website on the Google search engine. Your meta tag will appear just under your article headline in Google. It can also be described as a short summary of what the article has to offer. Based on your headline and Meta description, the potential visitor will decide if your article is worth clicking on.

These are a few tips you can use which will make the world’s difference in your site gaining more visitors. You want to use it as a foundation to build relationships with your clients. Make sure you provide your visitors with good content. You also want to make the experience worthwhile and be remembered by all who came across it. Read about cool tools for building a website.

How To Create Your Business Website and Beat Google by Anna Knorik.  Available from <https://indianceo.in/news/create-business-website-beat-google/> [Posted on ]

9 Technologies E-Commerce Marketers Must Use in 2017 and Beyond

9 Technologies E-Commerce Marketers Must Use in 2017 and Beyond by Kunjal Panchal.  Available from <https://www.searchenginejournal.com/9-technologies-e-commerce-marketers-must-use-2017-beyond/181942/> [January 04, 2017]

Mastering SEO is not easy; it’s slow and competition for the top organic rank is very high. And, it won’t get any easier in 2017. As an e-commerce player, all this is hardly news for you. However, now is the perfect time to analyze the past year’s progress and start things fresh. Below are some marketing tips that can rejuvenate your e-commerce marketing in 2017:

1. Engagement with Content

You can Google “how to create engaging content for e-commerce” and spend an entire year taking notes. Yet most of that is probably common sense. The main challenge for e-commerce players is to find enough resources to support their expanding product portfolio.

Writing product descriptions is a monotonous and laborious activity. Firms cannot afford to engage their marketing or creative teams in product descriptions. They also cannot ignore product descriptions as these are crucial for their customers. Perhaps technology has come up with the answer: Automated Insights’ Smart AI engine turns data into product descriptions.

“The standard way of creating content is, ‘I hope a million people read this.’ Our model is the inverse of that. We want to create a million pieces of content with one individual reading each copy.” – Robbie Allen, Automated Insights, CEO

Automated Insights is not alone. You can also check out Quill and Lingustat. While machines can create product descriptions, there’s nothing better than getting users involved in content generation.

Users love writing reviews and take star ratings seriously. Although every e-commerce website has comments and product review sections, few of these are able to leverage user-generated content for marketing. User-generated content needs proper moderation and promotion strategy.

Honest product reviews create trust while you should moderate spamming. You can take some inspiration from Starbucks – which is known for misspelling its customers’ names on coffee cups.

2. Engagement with Bots

Today, the world of online marketing relies on clicks and taps to gauge consumer journey and effectiveness of marketing campaigns. Needless to say, these metrics provide a hazy picture.

Often, the actual conversions are much lower than what these metrics reflect. Nonetheless, marketers devote their entire budgets in increasing CTRs and website visits. Chatbots take an entirely new approach to customer engagement.

Leading brands today are focusing on building brand engagement with newer technologies, and Artificial Intelligence (AI) based chatbots perfectly suit the bill. With chatbots, conversations are more natural and significantly more effective than a traditional ad or video. These interactions leave users wanting more. Moreover, spreading the word is easier with chatbots as most of them are present on messengers, which are increasingly becoming a default media for communication.

Wondering where to start? Explore Operator, which is aimed at e-commerce businesses looking to transform the shopping experience for their customers. Operator allows online customers to browse virtual stores and get goods delivered from the closest, cheapest possible source. Further, users can chat with a bot for shopping assistance which eventually connects them with a human expert (operating on a commission basis).

It must not have skipped your notice that messengers are now bigger than social media. It makes sense to deploy bots on major messaging platforms. However, managing bots on multiple messengers can be tricky as there is little convergence between chat messengers.

To achieve some sanity, Message.io is offering bot developers private beta access to its bot management platform. This makes it possible to develop once and deploy across multiple messaging services.

3. Advertise with Programmatic

Businesses are increasing their spends on Programmatic Advertising. According to a report published by marketing and advertising agency Zenith, “Programmatic will become the principal method of trading digital display this year, accounting for 51% of expenditure, and will rise to 58% of expenditure in 2017.”

Programmatic Advertising offers increased cost efficiency and speed over traditional methods which involve human buyers, salespeople, and a lot of guesswork. With latest advancements, Programmatic now makes use of data analytics to decide apt audience and the right ad format to be displayed to that audience.

With all this automation, you can spend more time on your strategic tasks and other crucial marketing initiatives in 2017.

4. Engagement with AR (Augmented Reality) and VR (Virtual Reality)

Pokemon Go must have caught your attention. Gartner predicts that “by 2020, 100 million consumers will shop in augmented reality.” A large number of omnichannel retailers now accept AR and VR as a crucial part of their customer engagement strategy.

With AR and VR, retailers are building immersive experiences and hoping to increase footfall to their brick-and-mortar store. At the same time, these technologies can also transform shopping experience for their online customers.

With Google Tango finally arriving on the developers’ table, advanced AR apps can transform the way consumers make product selections online. For example, Wayfair is working on an app which will enable customers to place virtual 3D renderings of furniture from its online store into their home. This will allow customers to visualize products in their home environments and not just on their smartphones.

Such AR apps hold tremendous potential for increasing online engagement. Further, according to a Business Insider report, a significant number of online customers rate AR and VR as a favorable addition to their shopping experience. E-commerce players would have to act in time to meet their evolving expectations.

5. Customization

This isn’t exactly a new strategy, but it will align with your efforts towards improving customer experience and brand engagement. Online product customization has tremendous revenue potential and has its unique space in the online world.

With customization, you can charge more for the same products as customers are willing to pay more for self-designed products, compared to non-customized ones. It is also likely that customers would be willing to talk about these products; these are their own creations! You should promote such interactions by allowing customers to easily share their designs in the social space.

6. Think Beyond Apps

The world has been advocating “mobile first” and “mobile only” since the launch of the first smartphone by Apple.

Application development companies have overhauled their processes and offerings to cater to the demands of the expanding app economy. However, an increasing number of successful mobile-driven businesses are now building web apps for larger screens. Moreover, mobile disruptors (Uber, Instagram, Flipboard, etc.) now feel the need to serve their customers across all screen sizes and not just mobile.

This is crucial for e-commerce players, as apps are not going to be the only channel for engaging customers in the future.

Several surveys show that people tend to use mobile for casual browsing, while they make most of their online purchases via desktop. Instead of trying to change this behavior, you should gauge customer journey across all screen sizes and make it seamless for them to switch devices. There is no point categorizing users in different groups; ‘mobile users’ and ‘desktop users’ are essentially the same.

7. Voice First Browsing

Thinking beyond apps, voice first browsing is the first thing that should get your attention. Voice search is a rising trend; according to a report, “mobile voice searches have tripled in the past two years (2014-15).” Moreover, there is a lot of innovation and the hardware around this technology is also evolving rapidly.

Millennials love voice search via Amazon Echo, Apple AirPods, and Google Home. The technology eliminates screens completely which might worry advertisers. However, such vocal interactions have the potential to transform web experience as it allows connectivity without hindering activities like driving, cooking, walking, exercising, etc.

8. Swift and Seamless Payments

Amazon made headlines with Amazon Go; checking out from its new stores now takes less time than checking out from an e-commerce store. Even though the average experience for buying online has evolved over the years, payments can still be painful for customers.

This explains high shopping cart abandonment rates. The experience from shopping cart to the checkout involves a lot of form filling.

Further, some of the customers simply drop out if they encounter a glitch in applying a coupon. It would be a good idea to automate coupons and other loyalty-based deductions for customers.

You should also prompt customers to use online wallets. Alternatively, you can explore social selling. Facebook messenger already allows payments in its 30,000 chat bots. By allowing users to seamlessly complete a purchase via FB messenger, you can capitalize on customers’ impulse buying behavior.

9. Delivery and Returns

Essentially a part of operations, the marketing department cannot ignore this customer touch point.

Deliveries and Returns play a crucial part in customer satisfaction and brand loyalty. Customers generally expect hassle-free return policy and don’t want to bear any associated costs. The only way to justify the costs associated with reverse logistics is to link it with your marketing spends.

This is perhaps easier said than done.

However, you can balance these additional costs by attaching higher delivery charges to same-day delivery options. While it’s too early to comment on the viability of Amazon’s drone-based deliveries, you must try replicating Amazon Prime’s subscription-based delivery model.

Conclusion

Modern day e-commerce marketing is not only about wooing customers through promotional strategies. It is about making each and every arm of your business more customer-centric.

Let’s draw an analogy with a website. Remember those good old days when building a website was enough and you didn’t really have to worry about the various design and functional elements as long as it looked good? Well, resource-driven sites like Colorlib have made it even simpler to come up with a really good-looking online presence that balances functionality with visual appeal. But you need to tie in this presence with cutting edge marketing technology.

A cut to today, when a website’s target audience expects a far more immersive and exceptionally functional experience from websites. Each and every website element must be used to engage potential and existing customers. That’s the case with modern-day marketing as well. It’s imperative to use the various business processes to engage customers and tell them they matter. That’s how you win them over for the long-term.

9 Technologies E-Commerce Marketers Must Use in 2017 and Beyond by Kunjal Panchal.  Available from <https://www.searchenginejournal.com/9-technologies-e-commerce-marketers-must-use-2017-beyond/181942/> [January 04, 2017]

Your Beginner’s Guide To Essential Email

Your Beginner’s Guide To Essential Email by MELLE STAELENBERG.  Available from <http://www.bandt.com.au/marketing/beginners-guide-essential-email-salmat-lifecycle-marketing-manager> [December 22, 2016]

Essential email is the fast-growing category of non-marketing communications which we have seen increasing in Australia. In this guest piece, Melle Staelenberg, Business Manager – Lifecycle Marketing at Salmat, dives deep into essential email.

Much is written about email marketing and how email is the best digital communications channel in terms of return on investment. Less is published around essential email.

Also referred to as ‘e-invoicing’ or ‘e-billing’, essential email is the fast-growing category of non-marketing communications such as statements, invoices and policy updates that have made it to the inbox.

According to a 2016 study by Billentis, essential email adoption in Australia and New Zealand is on par with the US and UK (but behind the Nordics and some South American markets) with an estimated annual volume increase of 10-20 per cent[1].

‘Essential’ refers to the regulation and compliance requirements of the sender to provide the information to their customers. Although few customers would complain about missing out on a newsletter, not receiving your electronic bill on time can cause serious issues.

Here, we provide some background on what essential email is and tips on how you can execute it effectively.

WHY ESSENTIAL EMAIL?
  • Customer preference

It’s no secret that more and more customers switch to receiving their bills and statements via email. Essential email has clear advantages for customers: besides doing the right thing for the environment, it means no more stolen or misplaced statements.

With most bills being paid online these days, having your bill available on your smartphone, laptop or work computer is simply convenient.

  • Deliverability

With 17 per cent of Australians changing address each year[2] and a large share of mail returned to sender, it’s becoming more difficult for companies to make sure customers receive their direct mail on time. When the right verification is put in place for online sign-up, it’s much easier to generate and keep a valid database of customer email addresses and mobile phone numbers.

In fact, Salmat’s essential email solution is proven to reach as many as 99.5 per cent of customers for a typical statement run or bill cycle.

  • Improve speed, reduce costs

Businesses save more than trees and energy by switching to electronic statements. In November 2015, the Digital Business Council (DCB) was established to drive the implementation of e-invoicing across the Australian business community.

According to DBC, e- invoicing is estimated to be 60-80 per cent more efficient than traditional paper based invoice processing[3]. The cost of printing and mailing a bill easily adds up to a dollar or two, whereas an email costs only a fraction of that.

Especially in large countries like Australia and the US, being able to provide all your customers with their bill overnight means you can optimise your payment due dates and receive funds sooner.

TIPS TO UNLOCK THE POWER OF ESSENTIAL EMAIL
  • Run an opt-in campaign

When your company starts offering electronic statements, run an opt-in campaign so your customers can make the switch from print to email. Don’t hesitate to incentivise the switch: running a promotion where one lucky person wins an iPad can do wonders in terms of awareness and uptake.

Continuously remind those who still receive paper bills by including a clear call to action on their printed bills with easy steps on how to switch to electronic statements.

  • Use dynamic content

Dynamic content allows you to vary the content of your email based on user preferences, insights or behaviour. If your customer has direct debit set up, don’t bother them with a generic ‘payments are due by …’ line as that will only cause confusion and unnecessary calls to your call centre.

Instead, make it clear that you have their direct debit set up and their account will be debited on the due date.

Most email platforms will allow you to use dynamic content through rules or content blocks, resulting in more tailored messaging compared to printed statements. It is even possible to count down to the due date, showing that payments are due in ‘three days’ when opened on Monday and ‘today’ when that same email is opened (again) on Thursday.

  • SMS as fall-back

Email is a much more efficient channel than regular mail but the real power lies in reporting. With direct mail, you often don’t know or find out late when your communication has not reached your customer.

Using email, you know within 24 hours which messages failed and why (it’s always good to let your platform retry deliveries for at least 12 hours). Was their inbox full? An SMS can be triggered automatically, asking your customer to clear their inbox.

Email account closed? Use SMS to ask clients to update their email address. The ability to use both email and SMS in an integrated way means there is always a way for you to reach your customer.

The essential email space is a rapidly growing delivery channel. With clear advantages for both consumers and businesses, essential email is the logical next step in the evolution of customer communications.

[1] Koch, B. (2016), E-Invoicing / E-Billing, Digitisation & Automation (page 22), Billentis.
[2] Experian, Does your mail move with your customers?, http://www.qas-experian.com.au/products/change-of-address.htm
[3] Digital Business Council, Wide-spread digital transformation will revolutionise the whole Australian economy
Your Beginner’s Guide To Essential Email by MELLE STAELENBERG.  Available from <http://www.bandt.com.au/marketing/beginners-guide-essential-email-salmat-lifecycle-marketing-manager> [December 22, 2016]

3 Ways To Make Your Email Marketing Work For You

3 Ways To Make Your Email Marketing Work For You by Lisa Manthei.  Available from <http://multichannelmerchant.com/marketing/3-ways-to-make-email-marketing-work-for-you-01112016/#_>. [Nov 01, 2016 1:23 PM ]

Email marketing is king; it’s used in more than 90% of organizations. Well-executed email marketing strategies can net 3,800% ROI, with 20% of companies reporting returns north over 7,000%. Even with the explosion of new marketing technologies, marketers will forever turn to email as a mainstay. But even though the current email marketing strategies have worked in the past, doesn’t mean they will continue to work the same in the future. The days of the stock-standard email blasts are nearing an end. It’s out with the old, in with the new.

So, let’s take a look at some of these new approaches you can use to revitalize your email marketing to drive success well into the future.

Blast the Blast

Many brands pour their time and resources into creating homogenous content and email marketing campaigns that appeal to the masses. For some organizations, these strategies really work. But organizations must continue to adapt and change with their customers, no matter how effectively traditional advertising has been proven to perform in the past. According to DMA, over 75% of email revenue is generated by triggered campaigns, rather than one-size-fits-all campaigns.

Consumers are turning to brands that provide meaningful and personalized experiences. Marketers who have adopted this personalized principle have noted a 760% increase in revenue. Personalized marketing matters, and proper execution requires three key actions:

1) Segment your customer base.
2) Provide dynamic content.
3) Utilize your email automation solution to create workflows that help ensure your sends are timely, relevant, and hyper-personalized.

Don’t Forget Mobile

We live in a fast-paced, constantly connected world. Gone are the days where leaving the office meant truly unplugging. Mobile has allowed us (read: forced us) to be constantly connected with the digital realm. The average person will check their phone 46 times per day. Second only to sending and receiving text messages, consumers most often check their phones to read and respond to emails.

Email marketing with a focus on mobile optimization is no longer a nice-to-have, but a need-to-have. Over 53% of emails will be opened on a mobile device. Take a moment to click into your mobile inbox. Note that you can only view the sender information, the subject line, and about the first 10 words of your email. These items absolutely the most crucial elements to email performance.

Marketers must craft an engaging or personalized subject line with an impactful first line in order to move mobile-readers to open their email. Make sure your email marketing campaign passes the mobile test. Send a test email to your own mobile device. Odds are that you have received a multitude of marketing emails in the last hour alone. Compare the subject line and first line to others in your inbox. Would you open it?

Video & Animated Content

Consumers have become accustomed to marketing emails littered with text and static content. It’s time to shake it up. Incorporate dynamic content into email marketing campaigns through the inclusion of video and animation. 2016 has been the year of the GIF. Many retailers have managed to effectively use these graphics via social media and email marketing campaigns. Video is another important component to add to your emails. Videos provide the opportunity to show consumers about the brand or promotion, rather than to simply tell.

According to Wistia, marketing emails that contain videos receive a 300% higher click-through rate than those without. Through the use of services like Vidyard’s Personalized Video feature, companies can now take video one step farther, and connect with email subscribers by weaving unique details into marketing videos.

The platform allows you to personalize a single video to deliver a unique, individualized experience to thousands of viewers. You can see some examples of their work here. This tactic takes care of both the personalization and the need to inject dynamic content into email marketing campaigns.

While the market is constantly evolving, email marketing is here to stay. As with every facet of marketing, marketers must constantly be changing and adapting to the new and now in email marketing in order to stay relevant and top-of-mind for consumers. These new approaches can help your email marketing campaigns work for you.

3 Ways To Make Your Email Marketing Work For You by Lisa Manthei.  Available from <http://multichannelmerchant.com/marketing/3-ways-to-make-email-marketing-work-for-you-01112016/#_>. [Nov 01, 2016 1:23 PM ]

The key to deliverability and the importance of a successful email marketing campaign

The key to deliverability and the importance of a successful email marketing campaign by Tom Corbett.  Available from <http://www.fourthsource.com/email-marketing/key-deliverability-importance-successful-email-marketing-campaign-21495>. [October 19, 2016]

In the marketing industry today, it is not enough to simply have great email content. Marketers need to ensure it reaches the right inboxes at the right time. Tom Corbett, Experian, offers a guide to getting the most out of email deliverability.

The most powerful tool of a marketer is email marketing. Both highly measurable and capable of producing impressive ROI, it is not uncommon to hear people boast about high deliverability as one of these metrics that truly matter.

But what does ‘deliverability’ actually mean? Statistics suggest that 1 in every 5 emails fail to land in the inbox which means 20% of opportunities to connect with customers are regularly being missed.

Deliverability

Marketers are often (incorrectly) under the assumption that a measurement of their deliverability is simply the proportion of emails that were ‘accepted’. An email is considered to be delivered if it does not bounce or doesn’t get returned to the mail server. Delivery rate is a calculation of mail sent minus the volume that bounced. But to really be able to consider campaigns to be successful, marketers need to ensure that what they’re sending is not becoming stuck in spam – or ignored. Overall, deliverability is making sure you are doing what you can to put yourself in the best position to be actually seen by your subscribers. Taking this into account, it is important to understand exactly what happens after you click send and to understand what has happened when it doesn’t go to plan.

All Internet Service Providers (ISPs) have developed different filtering methods as a way of offering unique customer inbox experiences. They all offer a form of global level blocking which makes a big difference in the world of email spam.

Spam is often a word that is synonymous with annoying people. It is universally hated, and marketers shouldn’t be sending it because, quite simply, no-one likes receiving irrelevant mail.

However, not only is it annoying and damaging to the customer experience on an individual level, it is also potentially quite dangerous, because not all spam is the result of ‘innocent’ unsophisticated marketing.

Spam and blocking

70 per cent of mail sent globally is considered spam and these filters drastically reduce the volume coming to an inbox. However, the interpretation of spam differs from person to person, hence the saying ‘one person’s spam is another man’s ham’. As a result, local level blocking has given the recipient the power to take control of their inbox.

Make the grade: Be wanted

What is becoming increasingly important is humanisation in email communication; making your email wanted is the key to a successful mail programme.

With the recent update of Google’s Gmail Android app, customers were given greater control of their mailbox on their personal devices. Blocking a sender means all future mailings are instantly moved to the spam folder.

It is essential to ensure that your participants actually want to receive your messages. Personalisation and relevance are crucial. There is nothing to lose. By putting your consumer at the centre of your marketing strategy, you’re providing a more relevant and positive customer experience, which will reap the rewards in receiving both their time and attention.

The key to deliverability and the importance of a successful email marketing campaign by Tom Corbett.  Available from <http://www.fourthsource.com/email-marketing/key-deliverability-importance-successful-email-marketing-campaign-21495>. [October 19, 2016]