Pom Perspective: Getting Your Inactive Email Audience Members Back in the Game
Wednesday, February 2nd, 2011When was the last time you reviewed your email audience list for inactive subscribers? If you have idle audience members and haven’t made an effort to reach out to them with a re-engagement campaign, you may be missing out on an opportunity to get them back in the game.
So how do you launch a re-engagement campaign?
Define what ‘Inactive’ means: Depending on the frequency of your emails, inactive can mean difference things to different folks. You’ll need to review your audience list and identify members who have not taken action (open/click/convert) in a specified period of time. A typical inactive time-period is the past three to six months.
Create an opportunity for action: When attempting to re-engage an inactive audience member, your primary objective should not be to sell them something. Instead, consider alternative ways for them to take action. Ask them to participate in a survey to find out what is top of mind – what do they think or want to hear. While you have their attention, be sure to ask them how often they’d like to hear from you and if they’re still interested in receiving emails from you at all.
Remind them why they wanted to hear from you in the first place: Cite the values and benefits they receive just by being an active member of your audience. What will they learn? What will they get? There has to be something in it for them to keep your audience members coming back for more.
Remember to say Thank You: Once an audience member decides that they want to hear from you (or not) remember thank them for their time. Consider sending a re-engaged audience member some form of compensation for sticking with you: whitepapers, articles, discounts. If your inactive audience member decides to opt-out completely, say thank you and let them know that you’ll remove them from your list (and be sure to do it)!
Go get ‘em!
Pom Perspective: Think Globally, Act Locally
Tuesday, January 25th, 2011Free links, Listings and Reviews
Tech companies that primarily market to global or national audiences may be able to tap in to new traffic sources right in their own digital backyard. Local search was one of the top online marketing trends in 2010 and this year it’s even hotter. Here are a few reasons why it pays to get into the local search scene:
Free links. Most local business listings are free, easy to customize (hello, keywords!), and include a link from a popular domain with search authority. Links to your website from reputable sources also help your site rank higher for non-local searches. Google Places, Bing local business listings, Yelp, and City Search are good places to start developing online local listings.
More SERP real estate. In Google, most search queries now return global results mixed with local results. Focusing on building local business listings increases the likelihood that your company’s website will show up in the search results for both local and non-local searches. After investing in local SEO, one Google search could potentially display results for multiple pages on your website, your company’s Google Places page, and several of your local business listings. Throw in a targeted PPC campaign and there is a good chance that your company will dominate the results for your most important keywords.
Reviews and Deals, they’re not just for brick and mortars. Several local directory sites, such as Google Places and Yelp, allow companies to promote deals and special offers at no charge. Deals and coupons can easily be added to a business profile to promote free trials and demos, product and service discounts, training and webinars, and more. In addition, most local business listings also allow customers to leave reviews about your business. Online reviews are now just as important to global and product-centric companies as they are to local storefronts. With the launch of Google Hotpot, Google is placing an even heavier emphasis on online reviews, yet again blurring the lines between local search and social media. Think of reviews as a way to boost your company’s online reputation and showcase its stellar customer service.
In this mobile world, you never know where your customers will be when they search for you online. So don’t just think global or local. Go glocal!
Pom Perspective: Targeting C-Level Executives?
Tuesday, January 18th, 2011Spend More, Personalize and Optimize
IT Insider polled 47 C-Level executives in technology companies throughout the Mid-Atlantic region to find out how to capture their attention in today’s information overload world. Here’s a recap of the findings and tips on how to get in front of these tough-to-reach prospects:
Get past the assistants: All of the C-level execs surveyed said that they rely heavily on their assistants to parse through the deluge of communication that comes their way. Consider sending two pieces of collateral — one targeted to the assistant and the other to the executive.
Do your homework: To standout with C-suite executives, you have to fully understand their roles, responsibilities and concerns. The C-level execs surveyed said this is where most people miss the mark. To get their attention, make sure you do your homework and understand their business enough to truly know if your product will fulfill their needs.
Be hyper personal: Generic mailings like postcards and letters result in a one-way ticket to the recycle bin when it comes to the C-suite. Use dimensional mailers — something that isn’t flat, like a box or tube — that are more eye-catching and hard to ignore. Incorporate personalized URLs that drive them to a personal landing page.
Be a thought leader: CEOs surveyed say that they rely heavily on word-of-mouth (WOM) recommendations via their network of other CEOs. Leveraging personalized and peer-to-peer marketing opportunities in combination is the most effective path to influencing the influential. Often, WOM is spurred by thought leadership — truly outstanding and provocative content packaged and distributed through direct channels, webinars, conference events, speaking engagements and so on.
Don’t Underestimate the Power of Social Media
Thursday, December 23rd, 2010A recent poll asked 123 IT consumers if social mediums influence their purchase decisions. The response: An overwhelming, “Yes.” Read on to learn why social media is something that consumers consider worthwhile
Emergence of new evangelists. Consumers value peer reviews, and social media provides a platform for this sort of communication. New experts are able to voice their opinions about products and services and let their prophecies be heard.
Newspapers are so yesterday. People no longer cut out deals and product news from the Sunday morning paper, they create “favorites” tabs on their internet browser. The internet is the new newspaper clipping. Consumers use these virtual clippings as ways to collect interesting and important information.
Hit the blogosphere. Blogs have become an important part of the average consumer’s everyday life. These portals of information feature the opinions of real people, and consumers feel like these peer-broadcasted opinions are genuine. With blogs, there is no hidden agenda, and this facilitates trusting relationships.
John Smith likes this. The notorious “Like” button on Facebook has certainly made its mark in the social media sphere and has enabled consumers to show their interest in certain products, services and ideas. This provides an outlet for peer-to-peer interaction and helps track trends.
Google Analytics: The Must Have For All Marketing Campaigns
Wednesday, December 30th, 2009For decades, business owners and marketing professionals have had to rely on some pretty unreliable sources to determine the success of a marketing campaign. Guestimates, gut instincts, and the always reliable answers to “how did you hear about us?” were usually the best we could do. Today, with the accessibility and affordability of website analytics tools, those days are long gone.
At Pomerantz, we strongly believe that a website is the hub of all marketing strategy; it’s the being that supports your sales and marketing efforts. So if you have a website, it doesn’t matter what type of marketing campaign you are initiating– email, direct mail, social media, print, pay-per-click, banner advertising– everything and anything can and should be measured. Tracking campaigns using an analytics tool, such as Google Analytics, will give you insight into each marketing campaign’s impact on leads, revenue and ROI, as well as the ability to compare the results of different marketing activities to determine where you are getting the most bang for your buck. You will be able to determine which campaigns send the most qualified visitors to your website, assess campaign performance by product or region, discover if new visitors or returning visitors convert more often, and predict future outcomes.
Unless all you care about is website traffic, which hopefully is not the case, the catch is that you can’t track the effectiveness of your marketing strategies if you don’t use analytics goals. A goal, or conversion, is any action that you desire a visitor to your website to take, such as filling out a contact form or completing a transaction. You could have one goal or many goals, it’s up to you. Once you establish your goal(s) and set them up to be tracked in your analytics application, you can start tracking the conversions generated by your marketing efforts.
Here’s an example of how to integrate analytics and goal tracking with a marketing campaign:
Company A launches a marketing campaign consisting of direct mail and email marketing. All pieces drive recipients to a microsite specifically dedicated to the campaign which has the conversion point front and center on the home page of the microsite and on all interior pages on the site. Google Analytics works behind the scenes on this campaign to track visitor behavior and the data obtained allows Company A (or their marketing agency) to quickly determine the success of the campaign and gain insights to help finesse the strategy for future purposes.
The bottom line is– you should not run a marketing campaign without being able to understand and evaluate its success and learn from the results. Take the guesswork out of marketing and let data drive your strategies. Google Analytics is free so there is absolutely no reason not to!
For decades, business owners and marketing professionals have had to rely on some pretty unreliable sources to determine the success of a marketing campaign. Guestimates, gut instincts, and the always reliable answers to “How did you hear about us?” were usually the best we could do. Today, with the accessibility and affordability of website analytics tools, those days are long gone.
At Pomerantz, we strongly believe that a website is the hub of all marketing strategy; it’s the being that supports your sales and marketing efforts. So if you have a website, it doesn’t matter what type of marketing campaign you are initiating– email, direct mail, social media, print, pay-per-click, banner advertising– everything and anything can and should be measured. Tracking campaigns using an analytics tool, such as Google Analytics, will give you insight into each marketing campaign’s impact on leads, revenue and ROI, as well as the ability to compare the results of different marketing activities to determine where you are getting the most bang for your buck. You will be able to determine which campaigns send the most qualified visitors to your website, assess campaign performance by product or region, discover if new visitors or returning visitors convert more often, and predict future outcomes.
Unless all you care about is website traffic, which hopefully is not the case, the catch is that you can’t track the effectiveness of your marketing strategies if you don’t use analytics goals. A goal, or conversion, is any action that you desire a visitor to your website to take, such as filling out a contact form or completing a transaction. You could have one goal or many goals, it’s up to you. Once you establish your goal(s) and set them up to be tracked in your analytics application, you can start tracking the conversions generated by your marketing efforts.
Here’s an example of how to integrate analytics and goal tracking with a marketing campaign:
Company A launches a marketing campaign consisting of direct mail and email marketing. All pieces drive recipients to a microsite specifically dedicated to the campaign which has the conversion point front and center on the home page of the microsite and on all interior pages on the site. Google Analytics works behind the scenes on this campaign to track visitor behavior and the data obtained allows Company A (or their marketing agency) to quickly determine the success of the campaign and gain insights to help finesse the strategy for future purposes.
The bottom line is– you should not run a marketing campaign without being able to understand and evaluate its success and learn from the results. Take the guesswork out of marketing and let data drive your strategies. Google Analytics is free so there is absolutely no reason not to!
Ask The Marketing Coach: My Website Needs Help, What’s My First Move?
Monday, November 16th, 2009Dear Marketing Coach,
I know my company’s website needs some help, but I’m not sure what to do first. Our budget is tight right now so can you tell me a couple of things I can do to get started and what will give me the most bang for my buck?
When revamping a website, there are two areas of improvement that I like to focus on— traffic and conversions. A conversion is the desired action you want your website visitors to complete, such as filling out a contact form or an online purchase transaction. Typically, increasing volume while improving the quality of traffic and conversions will get you the most bang for your buck. But there are many tactics to achieve this goal so it’s no surprise that you’re left wondering where to start. To determine which tactics you should focus on first, take a step back and look at your website through the eyes of a potential customer. Now what do you see? Overall, is the site visually appealing? Can you tell right away what the purpose is of the website and what action to take if you are interested in the product or service offered? Is the site easy to navigate? Are there multiple conversion points that make it easy for you to contact the company or complete a transaction?
If you answered “No” to any of these questions then you’ve got yourself a lazy website! Whip it into shape with a fresh new conversion-focused design and save room in your budget for search engine optimization (SEO), which will improve the quality of the traffic you receive and boost your search engine rankings— you’ll start getting more website visitors and those visitors will convert to sales.
However, if you answered “Yes” to most of these questions then you are ready to focus on search engine marketing via a SEO, Pay Per Click (PPC), or Social Marketing campaign. SEO, PPC, and Social Marketing are all proven strategies for increasing website traffic and conversions. Which tactic you choose depends on your budget, goals, and target audience.
If you had a hard time answering the above questions, then contact Pomerantz for a free Website Evaluation and let us tell you what we think!
Do you have a question for the Marketing Coach? Go ahead, just ask! Email thecoach@pomagency.com or leave a comment to have all of your marketing questions answered.
Journey to a New Website — Where to Begin?
Thursday, October 22nd, 2009At Pomerantz, we recently took some of our own advice and decided to give our website a complete overhaul— total redesign, new content management system, and fully optimized for search engines. During this journey, as we walked a mile in our clients’ shoes, we discovered that there were some things that even our agency struggled with along the way (and we’re the professionals!). That got me thinking about how challenging it can be to figure out where to start with all of this web stuff, how to determine what’s going to work for your business, and how to select a service provider that will turn your goals into reality. Here are a few tips to help you sort through the muck and focus in on what’s really important:
1. Research the basics
You could spend countless hours reading articles about web design, web development, content management systems, internet marketing, search engine optimization, web analytics, and more, but the goal of your research should not be to become an expert in these disciplines. The idea is to form a basic understanding of the tools available to enhance your company’s web presence so you don’t feel overwhelmed when shopping around for service providers. A few quick searches can help you make sense of the difference between pay per click advertising and search engine optimization or weigh the pros and cons of using a content management system versus not using a CMS. But when it comes to understanding the techniques that are used to implement these tactics— it’s probably best to leave that to the professionals.
2. Research your competitors
Although any good web service provider includes competitive analysis when formulating an internet marketing strategy, it doesn’t hurt to go into the process already knowing what your competitors are up to. Start with your competitors’ websites and make note of what you like and what you don’t like. Look for certain design styles that catch your eye (in a good or bad way), try to find specific functions that appeal to you such as the navigation or portfolio gallery, notice the calls to action on the websites and how prospects are encouraged to contact the company or take a desired action, check to see if your competitors are utilizing a blog or promoting social media profiles (Facebook, Twitter, LinkedIn, etc) on their websites.
3. Shop around
If your company doesn’t have an agency of record that can help with a website redesign or internet marketing, do some comparison shopping before you pick your service provider. Not all web design firms, search engine companies, and internet marketing agencies are created equal. Many have a checklist of standard services that they will sell you, even if your company doesn’t need it, so beware of firms that don’t talk to you about your business and goals before offering prices and solutions. Don’t be afraid to ask for references, descriptions of the web work the agency has performed, and the results their clients have seen. Also, if an agency can’t explain their services or results in a way that you can understand… then keep looking!
Don’t worry, if you need help along the way just Ask The Marketing Coach! Or if you want to start shopping around now, contact Pomerantz for a free Website Evalution.