Monthly Archives: June 2010
So, your business is booming, but you’re having trouble converting first-time customers into repeat clients. You need to devise a marketing strategy that’s persuasive but not pushy; an outreach method that keeps you connected but not a constant pest. What your company needs is a successful email marketing plan. Email marketing is a great way to help your business grow, but even the slightest misstep can cause you to alienate clients and lose important revenue. Here’s what your business needs to know about the dos and don’ts of email marketing:
Email Marketing Dos
Do: Take your time crafting a catchy subject line. The average online consumer receives 7.7 email newsletters in their inbox every week – you need to stand out in order to ensure your newsletter is opened. Consumers are more likely to open newsletters that have a simple, direct header (try to avoid pitchy speak).
Do: Craft unique landing pages that correspond with your newsletter. If your newsletter promises a 10% discount to subscribers, make sure that you include a link to a page that prominently displays how a customer can receive these savings. The path your client takes from your newsletter to your shopping cart makes a world of difference – a simple, functional landing page can help improve your conversion rate 10 fold.
Do: Pay attention to when you send your email marketing offers. If you’re product targets business owners and office workers, try to send your email out first thing in the morning on either Tuesday, Wednesday, or Thursday. If you’re targeting general consumers, try sending your email out on Thursday or Friday. (Note: These two tips are just suggestions. For a more specific mailing time estimate use reporting tools from vendors to study benchmarks. MailChimp and Constant Contact have great analytics and tools that breakdown the success/fail rate of every mailing).
Do: Follow the PIPEDA (Canada’s Personal Information Protection and Electronic Documents Acts). This requires that all businesses must seek the consent of individuals prior to collecting, using, or disclosing their personal information. You must also provide your subscribers with a quick and hassle-free way to unsubscribe from your mailing list.
Email Marketing Don’ts
Don’t: Assume that your clients will see all of the images you’ve included. Many email management systems will block images from being displayed until the recipient marks the sender as an approved contact. If you’re going to include images in your email marketing campaigns, remember to tag them with detailed descriptions. It’s also important that you make your message clear without the images.
Don’t: Get blacklisted. A great way to check the “spam-factor” of your email is to run it through a spam checker. Chatham-Kent small businesses can check out free spam scanner tools at Sitesell, and Mailwasher.
Don’t: Send unsolicited email. Never swap or sell or rent your email list to any other company. If your ISP discovers that you are spamming people with unsolicited email they have the right to seek legal action against your company.
Don’t: Forget to spell check. Nothing will turn people away faster than an email full of grammar and spelling mistakes. Remember to take the time to double and triple check your content. Scrutinize your copy until you’re 100% happy with the end result.
Do you have an email marketing strategy? What are you Dos and Don’ts? Share them below!
A successful search engine optimization plan must involve a few key components. First, you must have unique and relevant content. Second, you need to post this content on a regular basis (check out my recent post on the new Google Caffeine indexing update for a detailed explanation). And thirdly, you need to have other websites link back to your domain. Not only does backlink building help show search engines that your website is an expert resource, but it also helps increase the flow of high-quality visitors to your site.
What is a Backlink?
Backlinks or “link backs” are incoming links to a website or web page. This type of linking program was originaly deemed necessary during the early days of the Internet as a way to help navigate between different domains. Today, major search engines use backlinks to help establish the value of any given site. The number of backlinks to a website is an indication of how popular, and more importantly, how useful your content is to visitors. The more people that link to your resources, the more important your site must be in relation to other websites in your industry.
Not all Links are Created Equal
There are several factors out there that determine the value of a backlink. A general rule of thumb – if it’s easy to get the backlink, it’s probably not going to benefit your site a whole lot in the long run. An example of an “easy” backlink is a directory submission. There are literally millions of link directories on the Internet. Websites of all shapes and sizes can submit their homepage link to these sites in order to create a pathway back to their website. As you can imagine, these aren’t overly useful. You won’t see a lot of quality traffic surfing a directory, and search engines don’t give link-heavy directory sites much credit when indexing. I’m not saying you shouldn’t submit to directories, you certainly should – just don’t base your entire SEO strategy on it. Instead, focus on creating content that will naturally attract links. This is called linkbaiting. When you write a great breaking news article on your website, people are immediately drawn to it. What’s more, they’ll want to share this resource with others – i.e. they’ll link to your post on other websites. Linkbaiting takes far more time and energy than directory submissions, but it’s well worth the quality traffic flow and increased search engine visibility.
Get a Free Backlink – Guest Blog for CIK!
Want to start building backlinks to your blog, but aren’t sure where to start? Well, why not write a guest blog for the CIK Marketing website? If you’re an online marketer with knowledge to spare, I’d love to post your thoughts here. Or perhaps you own a Chatham-Kent business that’s found the perfect marketing niche online. Either way, I want to hear your story! Send your blog idea to CIK Marketing using our contact page – if I think your topic will be beneficial to the readers of the CIK Marketing blog, you’re in! Every guest blogger will be entitled to a free link back to their homepage. It’s that easy, I promise!
How do you build quality links back to your website? Discuss ideas below!
