Email marketing campaigns are a huge part of online marketing for many businesses, especially those in a retail style environment. But is it still useful for small businesses offering services too? Yes, of course.
E-newsletters are a cost effective way of drawing in new leads and conversions to your business.
You might be thinking to yourself “where do I start?” The answer is simple, a nice clean list. There are a number of ways to gain subscribers but only a few that are right way. NEVER buy lists or simply send a newsletter to email contacts that you have collected for your business. Unless you have specified when you collected those emails in the first place, sending newsletters to these people is considered spam.
Instead ask people to subscribe via form on your website, or a simple name/email form in your business. Sometimes asking alone may not be enough to get information which people would consider private. So give people a reason to sign up, offer a discount for signing up, offer a free quote or consultation in exchange for their information.
Really have a think of your audience. Do your customers genuinely want or need to hear from your business on a regular basis? Sending excessively is a good way to annoy your customers especially if they don’t need to be contacted that often. If the content isn’t meaningful either, it just adds fuel to the fire. Which brings us to our next topic…
What belongs in an email? Updates? News? Promotions? News about your trip to Chamonix? Probably not. People signed up to your newsletter because they believed it could provide them with some sort of benefit. So give the people what they want!
Keep your content brief and to the point. Let your customers know about a current special you might be running or a new and exciting product/service coming to your business. When thinking of what to put in your email, think of what will actually seen as beneficial information to your customers.
Almost every mail campaign program available gives you the option to split test your campaigns. Split testing can be done in a number of ways, from content, sender email, right through to the subject line.
Split testing is a very powerful tool and it should be used whenever it is available. Split testing will allow you to learn which forms of content and marketing have a better effect at engaging customers and encouraging clicks, it would be foolish not to make use of such useful metrics.
We actually covered Split Testing in a previous blog post. To dive deeper into this topic check out our article about Split Testing Campaigns.
Do you need help with your email marketing? Arkhi offers a number of Digital Strategy options and can help you plan, create and execute your email campaign. Contact us today to get your campaign moving.
With social media taking over the marketing space, gaining awareness, retaining attention, and converting people is a competitive space. So how does your business stand out and meet your goals through social media marketing?The key is having an effective digital marketing mix. Each platform is unique in its offering and its audience, requiring different marketing methods and tactics.
With changes in attribution models and numbers not adding up across platforms, how do we know what’s really working?
Don’t lose your powerful message in confusing, jargon-filled copy. One of the best tips for writing is to simply write clearly.Copywriting is about inciting action. If your message is entertaining, great! But if the call to action isn’t clear, you simply won’t see results.
When you talk to people about what they have heard about Search Engine Optimisation, they tend to throw out words like “keywords”, “backlinking” and “content”. Local listings and citations for your website can often take a back seat and whilst may not hold the strongest influence in getting you found, they shouldn’t be ignored.
Before we get to the heart of the topic, let’s explain what a citation actually is. A citation is reference to your business online. Most commonly for smaller businesses these citations will come from websites like Yellowpages, LocalSearch and LocalDirectories, who will list your website and all of your associated contact details.
Google’s approach to this is similar to a process that humans use to distinguish an appropriate and credible vendor. Let’s say for a second you are in the market to buy brand new TV. When you are thinking of making a purchase are you more likely to trust a person selling products out of their home or a business with a store location?
So the answer is quite simple, credibility. Citations will help prove to Google and other search engines that you are a legitimate business, with an established location and that you have been around long enough to be listed in a number directories online.
Having said that, multiple listings with inconsistent or outdated information all over the web won’t do you any favours either. You will want to ensure that the information being listed across these citations are correct and up to date.
Checking your citations and references to your business online should always be considered as a part of a comprehensive, overall SEO strategy.
Keywords, links, title tags, meta descriptions—these are all important but the ultimate thing affecting how your content ranks, is whether or not people want to read it.
The convenience and efficiency of Voice Assistants have seen more people shifting towards using voice search. But how will this change SEO?
There has been confusion in recent years between the effect on SEO for subdomains, subdirectories and exact match domains. We're here to clear things up for you.
We have come a long way from the days of dial-up. We no longer have to wait for the modem to make odd scrambling noises while it connects to the internet, nor do we have to lose the connection when a phone call comes in.
With the increase in internet speeds for home connections and even mobile devices it is easier to connect to information when we need it very quickly.
Now that we have come accustomed to faster internet speeds, we are no longer happy waiting for content to be served up. We want the information quickly, and why not? It has been nearly 2 decades since internet has been widely available in Australia.
A user browsing for your industry, products or services can easily be turned off from your website if it takes too long to load the information they want.
You can probably remember the days when images on a website were low resolution and streamed videos were somewhat blurry with audio sounding like your speakers were tin cans.
With a sharp increase in internet speeds, web technologies and applications, websites demand much more data than what they used to. You can now stream Full HD video online with more clarity than a DVD. Images are higher resolution and while Flash may be dormant, you can still experience interactive and intuitive websites using new and powerful web applications.
All of these technologies combined provide an immersive and fun web experience for users but at a cost, data.
One of the easiest ways you can use to gauge your website’s speed, is by using Google’s free Page-Speed Insights tool.
The tool will measure both the loading and usability of your desktop and mobile website variants (if applicable) using a scale of 0 – 100. The higher your score, the better the results.
This tool will also provide you with suggestions with how to improve your website’s load times from image compression and caching, right through to server side suggestions.
While Google’s Page-Speed Insights isn’t the be-all and end-all of speed measuring tools, it is a certainly helpful indicator of how you can improve the load times on your website. Listed below are some other helpful speed optimisation tools.
Other Useful Tools
Have you ever been involved in a website project where the final deliverable or outcome just didn’t hit the brief of what you wanted or had envisaged? If not, that’s awesome! But if your answer is a resounding ‘yes’, you’re not alone. This, unfortunately, happens a lot with website projects. However, it can easily be avoided if a proper discovery process is followed to truly understand the expectations and objectives for the project.
Our favourite CMS platform SilverStripe has recently released its newer version 4.0. We thought it’d be best to share the reasons why you should update your CMS, and the new features and improvements you can expect in this new version.
The most important aspect of user experience is putting yourself in the user’s position. Understanding your audience is the first step in most marketing strategies and designing your website is no exception
Split testing can be used in a number of instances when it comes to online marketing and is a useful tool when helping to determine the effectiveness of campaign ideas. It can also be used on a number of online marketing channels such as newsletter campaigns, website landing pages and banner ads.
You might just think that it is just another fluff marketing tool, but in reality split testing helps with putting assumptions to bed about “what works” with your marketing and lets the results prove it.
Say you had a newsletter you were sending out, but you and your team were torn between 2 different subject lines for the campaign. By split testing your newsletter you can study the effectiveness of both of those subjects and see which subject performed best.
Firstly your target audience is split into 2 groups, A and B. A time limit or monitoring period should also be set allowing you enough time to see some comparative results. One version of your campaign is served to group A and the other version to group B for the duration of the set period.
After your campaign has run with enough data to make a decision, you can choose which one you wish to serve up to the remainder of your audience.
Whatever you do, don’t be hasty! It can be tempting at times to pick the best performing campaign shortly after starting a test, however there is a good possibility that a particular campaign can start off strong and then drop off quickly.
At the end of your test you will need to compare the data you have gathered from the campaign. Try to keep all of the metrics in mind when trying to compare which campaign worked. In some cases it will be clear which campaign really shines however in close call situations, you will need to take a deeper look into the results to see which performed better overall.
With social media taking over the marketing space, gaining awareness, retaining attention, and converting people is a competitive space. So how does your business stand out and meet your goals through social media marketing?The key is having an effective digital marketing mix. Each platform is unique in its offering and its audience, requiring different marketing methods and tactics.
With changes in attribution models and numbers not adding up across platforms, how do we know what’s really working?
Don’t lose your powerful message in confusing, jargon-filled copy. One of the best tips for writing is to simply write clearly.Copywriting is about inciting action. If your message is entertaining, great! But if the call to action isn’t clear, you simply won’t see results.
So, what is content marketing?
Content marketing is about creating benefit for your customers by making them laugh, educating them, inspiring them or solving their problem. Great content marketing increases your brand awareness and make your customers love you.
It’s important to have a solid content marketing strategy to add significant value to your business offering. Great content helps with trust building, educating, community involvement and increasing conversions.
Show your clients you are an industry leader with knowledgeable and helpful content. Commentary on current industry issues and case studies of current clients is a great place to start. The more knowledge you share with them, the more confident they will be in your abilities and experience.
Educate your customers on your industry practices so they better understand the service you are delivering. The days of ‘leave it to me, I know what I’m doing’ are over. Give them some insight to your business and how you operate. A great way to do this is holding seminars, e-newsletters and links to great articles.
Don’t be afraid to get your customers involved in contributing content to build a great community around your brand. Testimonials, guest blog posts and case studies are a great way to involve your customers with each other (for their benefit). Involving yourself in a charity or donating your products and services is also another great way to generate content and attract attention to your brand.
Make sure you don’t forget to have a call to action presence in and around your content. You need to be able to provide further explanation and assistance to your customers and draw them to your products and services.
With social media taking over the marketing space, gaining awareness, retaining attention, and converting people is a competitive space. So how does your business stand out and meet your goals through social media marketing?The key is having an effective digital marketing mix. Each platform is unique in its offering and its audience, requiring different marketing methods and tactics.
With changes in attribution models and numbers not adding up across platforms, how do we know what’s really working?
Don’t lose your powerful message in confusing, jargon-filled copy. One of the best tips for writing is to simply write clearly.Copywriting is about inciting action. If your message is entertaining, great! But if the call to action isn’t clear, you simply won’t see results.
