Author: Aaron Howard

Keeping Your Email Marketing List Happy

Making Sure Your Email List Doesn’t Get Stale

Email marketing has been found to have such a significant ROI that most businesses, regardless of their size, are either currently capturing emails on their website or landing page, or plan to do so soon. According to the Direct Marketing Association (DMA), the expected ROI on email marketing in 2009 is $43.65. Email marketing’s ROI in 2008 (also per the DMA), was over $45 for every dollar spent.

So there’s little question that email marketing can be an extremely effective strategy. But once you’ve implement an email capture system on your website or landing page, how do you ensure that your list subscribers stay on the list, and open your emails?

Create Value in Every Email

Every email that you send to a subscriber should have some kind of value to them. That value can be found in an informative article that your subscribers would find interesting, links to new articles on your blog or website, a coupon, or news of upcoming sales and specials.

Another way is to increase the value of your mailing list is to include, if appropriate, occasional free gifts. These don’t have to be tangible products. Even something as simple as a 5-10 page report on a topic of interest to your subscribers. For example, an online store that sells wedding favors might compile a 5 page report entitled “10 Things You Should Know Before Choosing Your Wedding Favors”.

Send the Right Number of Emails

You want to find the right balance between staying regularly connected with your customers, and overwhelming them with too many emails. For many businesses, sending a monthly newsletter-style email with information about upcoming events, and including a subscriber-only coupon, is enough to keep their business in the mind of their subscribers. For other businesses, such as those that are seasonal in nature, an appropriate schedule may be once a quarter in the off-season, but then every week leading up to and during their busy time.

The analytic information provided by your email marketing provider can help you to determine the best schedule for your subscribers.

Improve The Rate of Business Success With Content Management Systems

One of the most important aspects of using your website to market online is providing updated content on a regular basis. This important part of the business website will not only generate more traffic by creating more opportunities for the search engines to rank your site, but it can also help to increase sales.

In order to regularly provide new content and keep the search engines happy, many business owners have found content management systems (or CMS’s) to be extremely helpful. Not only can the software help in the maintenance of the website, but with no programming knowledge needed, it can help reduce costs and improve efficiency as well.

For those who are looking to improve their business success, but don’t know how to go about doing that, a content management system may be the answer. Many business owners who find it time consuming to create the content and then wait for a technician to upload the new information to the website will find that CMS software works in their favor. With a quick push of a few buttons, the newest content can be easily added to the website.

Because many potential customers are often scouring the search engines to locate a particular product, it is vital that the content on any website be updated frequently to maintain at the top of the search engine list. This factor alone will help to improve the overall success of a business.

Website Traffic Can be Increased Through Video Marketing

Marketing is one of the most important things a business can do in order to increase sales of products and services. There are, however, a number of different options when it comes to promoting a business, especially online. The Internet has given many business owners the opportunity to reach potential customers through many different ways.

Each method has its own benefits, but video marketing is quickly becoming one of the best ways to effectively promote an online business. Because a video can do much more than provide text about a product, many people feel as though this type of marketing is a bit more personal, allowing the ability to draw more traffic to the advertised website.

Video marketing can also be a way to get more mileage out of commercials created for local or national television campaigns. You can also use condensed, or “sound-bite”, versions of webinars or web-training to help drive traffic to your site.

There are a few things that can be done in order to increase the amount of traffic generated from video marketing. Updating the video often is a good idea as this will help to provide new information, which will keep visitors coming back to the website. The video can also be uploaded to a number of different sites, such as Facebook, YouTube, and other social media sites in order to reach more potential customers.

By making the video short, personal, and full of information about the product or service you are selling, more sales can easily be generated, allowing for higher profits.

Effective Corporate Branding Starts With Value Recognition

When it comes to starting or growing a business, there are many factors that need to be considered in order to have great success. One of the first tasks that really should be accomplished is creating a consistent brand for the company that is easy recognizable and memorable.

There are a few steps that any business can take for effective corporate branding. By following these steps, creating a brand identity can be much easier than you may have thought.

Creating a brand will often include several things, from a business name, slogan, logo, and other business graphic design that can be used within marketing materials. In order to successful work on branding a business, it is important to take a look at the core values of the business, including the mission and the vision for the future.

The benefits that the customers will find by using the products and services being offered should be clearly shown through the information provided within the website, as well as within the slogan and corporate logo.

Using the appropriate eye-catching colors, the right slogan, and an effective logo design will capture the attention of the audience.

Make sure that the branding you create (or reinvent for your existing business) is a professional-looking design. While an amateur brand identity may save you costs up front, using a graphic design firm that is well-versed in the coporate identity needs of businesses, you ensure that your company won’t be overlooked by potential customers because of a poor brand image.

Although there are many strategies that a business can take for creating an effective brand, it is especially important to make sure everything matches the values of the business.

There Are Many Benefits to Using Content Management Systems For Your Online Business

There once was a time when running an online presence for your business either took a lot of knowlege on the technical aspects of the Internet, or required IT support for all content additions and changes. However, times have changed, allowing for a more user friendly approach to updating content within a business website.

Whether your website is simply an information providing blog or a full e-commerce website that offers products and services, there is a great benefit to using content management systems to run your business efficiently.

By utilizing a content management system (CMS), business owners, or their staff, can update most of the information and content on the website without engaging their website developer. This frees up some of the online budget for tasks like seach engine optimization and search marketing.

When using content management systems, there are many benefits to be found for the business owner. The CMS software (such as WordPress, Joomla, Drupal, Expression Engine and DotNetNuke) makes it quick and easy to provide up to date content within the website. Different areas of the website can be assigned to different people so that all of the updates do not have to be done by the same person.

Since the information is being updated continually, the placement within the search engines will be much better and a larger number of potential customers can find your business information more easily.

With everything that the CMS software can do, there will also be a reduction in costs and an improvement in efficiency as the work can all be done without hiring a technician to do the job.