Common Mistakes In Online Advertising

Today we are going to discuss the common mistakes that marketers make when advertising online. By understanding these mistakes and avoiding them, I hope you can improve your success rate in any form of online advertising.

Without further ado, here is the first mistake

Bark Up The Wrong Tree

I once heard a story that goes like this Someone once asked a notorious bank robber why he only robbed banks. The robber looked a little surprised and simply answered, ‘That’s where the money is.’

This story becomes popular in the teaching of success philosophy because that’s the essence of success in doing anything. The same principle applies to online advertising. Before you start to advertise, the first question you need to ask is, ‘which online sites does my prospects frequent?’. Whatever the answer is, your challenge is to find ways to reach out to those sites and channel the traffic to your own site.

One common thing I hear from advertisers is they think their product is for everybody. If you think that your product is for everybody and you simply advertise everywhere to get traffic, chances are most of your advertising effort may be wasted

 Not Having A Bait

Most advertisers simply use a hook to catch fish instead of using a bait. They have a salespage that tries to sell something and they expect people to buy. This will work if the traffic has been ‘presold’. But if the traffic arrive at the salespage without learning about your product from somewhere else, the chance of making a sale is slim. If you have a mechanism to convert them into your list, you may have a second chance. Else, you will miss them forever.

A bait system is different in the sense that the objective is not in the sales. The aim is to reach out to people who can be your potential buyer by giving them part of your product free (not just giving away a freebie to build list, but to give away part of your product to let them have an experience with what you are selling). Say if you are selling a software, you can give away a ‘lite’ version of the software.

The concept of a bait system is very simple. Basically there are only 2 groups of people, let’s call them group A and group B. Group A are those who are not interested in what you are offering. Group B are those who are interested. In Group B, there are 2 more sub-groups, Group B1 and B2. Group B1 are those who are ready to pay and Group B2 are those who are not ready to pay. Most advertisers only target Group B1. In a bait system, your target is Group B. Once you have people in Group B in your net, sales is almost guaranteed, provided you deliver true value

 Too technical

Everyone knows it is important to prepare a good ad, but most people are too obsessed with the technical details. One typical example is they focus too much on the ‘features’ rather than the ‘benefits’.

You may ask, what’s the difference ?

Features are the language for techies whereas benefits are the language for layman. For example, if you are selling a download manager, one of the features of your product may be ‘to be able to split files into parts and download them at the same time’. If you just leave it as it is, it may not make much impact. But if you translate that feature into its benefit, that may mean that your software can ‘download files 4 times faster’. ‘Downloading files 4 times faster’ is a benefit that will appeal to normal users, as compared to telling them about the technical aspect of it.

Another example is if you are selling a course on how to create a Wordpress blog, instead of advertising it as ‘how to create a Wordpress blog in 1 week’, you should say ‘how to create a money-making blog in 1 week’, or if you have a testimonial to back you up, you can even say ‘how to create a blog that makes $1,337 in its first week, starting from scratch!’.

Just remember, it’s the benefits that will appeal to people, not the technical details or the process of how to do it.

  Lack Of Following Up

Last but not least, many marketers focus on generating traffic but fail to follow up with the traffic generated. When I say ‘follow up’, I don’t just mean converting the traffic into sales. That part of following up is important, but it’s not the only follow up you need to do. Another follow up that is equally important is encouragng the traffic to promote you.

As I always said, advertising is like a fire starter. You need it to start a fire, but if you want the fire to sustain and grow big, you’ll need to tactfully position lots of charcoal around it. That ‘charcoal’ is your follow-up system that encourages your existing traffic to bring in referrals.

almasiagroup

5:13 م

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The Most Interesting Email Marketing Statistics of 2012

A look at email marketing statistics you must know

Email is the cornerstone of your audience development and product selling goals. An online editor’s primary responsibility is to reuse, recycle and repurpose premium information product content as free email newsletters and website posts. If you’re a Mequoda System editor, your main goal is to build the largest opt-in list of subscribers possible. These subscribers will ideally buy lots of premium information products from your organization.

At the end of every year, most email companies and research firms put together a list of the changes in email marketing. With the above goals in mind, here’s a curated list of some of the most interesting email marketing stats we could find
:

Email Isn’t Dead, Stats Are Up

Here are valuable insights on popular email metrics from the Epsilson Q3 2012 North America Email Trend Results, published December 2012. This reports consists of tests focused on hundreds of billions emails sent.

• Average open rates are up more than 14%  from last year to 27.2%.

• Click rates average 4.5%, which is up almost 3% overall.

• Triggered messages are yielding 75.1% higher open rates and 114.8% higher click rates compared to normal mailings. Triggered messages result from smart automation such as emails about related products, thank you emails and other loyalty-inspired messages.

• Approximately 28% of subscribers in an average email file had opened or clicked in the most recent three months.

• 66% of new subscribers in an average list had no opens or clicks.

Mailers Still Struggle With Delivery

The Email Intelligence Report Q3 2012 from ReturnPath concludes, “Email continues to deliver. Email marketing continues to provide the highest ROI, and people continue to sign up for email marketing offers. Email intelligence gives you the tools you need to get the greatest impact from your email marketing program.” These were their key findings:

• ISPs and mailbox providers struggle with spam and abuse from their own networks, as well as from other ISPs, with internal spam complaints comprising 5% of all complaints, and 22% coming from other ISPs and mailbox providers.

• Marketing emails account for most “this is spam” complaints, 70% in fact, which explains the scrutiny some marketers see applied to their emails.

• Marketing emails account for only .03% of all unique domains seen by ISPs, but 18% of total email volume.

• Consumers give marketers permission to send them a lot of email. In fact, 29% of the email that reaches a user’s inbox is newsletters – nearly the same amount seen from direct messages and replies (“conversational” email).

• Less spam in the inbox is both a blessing and a curse for marketers. For emails that are delivered to the inbox, marketers overwhelmingly receive the most complaints– more so than dynamic IP addresses and compromised email accounts.

• North America saw inbox placement rates decline 3% to 82% in third quarter compared to the same time period last year. Europe experienced a 5% decline with inbox placement rates dropping to 84%. Latin America saw rates drop 11% to 69%, the largest decline in any region.

Advanced Features of Email Service Providers Are Being Underutilized

The Email Marketing Industry Census 2012 was based on a survey of 800 digital marketers in early 2012 to determine how the usage of email for marketing has changed over the last five years. These were the highlights from the report:

• Only 40% of responding companies use their email service provider (ESP) for anything more than the basic broadcast of email. Given the wealth of tools to measure, optimize and improve this channel, it seems that few are taking full advantage of these services.

• Only 31% of companies surveyed regularly test their email marketing campaigns. But 81% of companies who do regular testing for email marketing say their ROI from email is excellent or good, compared to 72% for those who do “occasional” testing, 65% for those who do “infrequent” testing and only 37% for those who “don’t test.”

• Only 3% of company respondents and 5% of supply-side respondents state they (or their clients) have adapted their campaigns on account of priority inbox features.

• Only 31% of companies operate welcome programs and only 28% send out emails triggered by a site visit or sign up. More than a third (37%) said they use none of the triggers listed to send out automated email.

Mobile Gets an Impressive Number of Opens, Not Actions

In Knotice’s Mobile Email Opens Report, we learn a little more about mobile email marketing and they give us some really convincing evidence of why we must design for mobile:

• 36.01% of all emails were opened on a mobile device (phones and/or tablets), which is an increase of 32% from late 2011 numbers of 27.39%.

• iPhone and iPad represented 29.34% of all email opens, compared with less than 5% of all opens occurring on Android phones or tablets.

• iOS and Android, the two dominant mobile operating systems in the US, account for 99.19% of all mobile email opens.

• B2B businesses saw approximately 14% of email opens through phones, 2.5% on tablets and 83.5% on desktop.

• Compared to other industries, they saw a dismal number of clicks through smartphones, only 4.5%, and 1% on tablets – the rest were clicked on their desktops.

• Consumer products and financial services were the two industries that fared the best on CTO (click to open) rates on both phones and tablets.

People Still Like Email, They Read it Too!

The 2012 Blue Kangaroo Survey on Marketing Emails was a smaller survey that asked people about their email habits. The results offer insight on how and why people sign up for emails, and proves that people don’t hate email as some marketers say they do.

• 78% of respondents sign up for marketing emails with their personal email address.

• 40% said they enjoy getting emails sent to them by their favorite brands.

• 37% said that more than 20% of their inbox comes from marketers, and 53% said they’re happy with the number of marketing emails they get.

• 42% said they open and read most of their marketing emails, but 48% said that it can be a chore sometimes.

• 35% said they acted on a promotion in an email within the last week, and 33% said they did in the last month.

Are there any interesting stats that you’ve discovered from your own analytics you’d like to share? Any you care to disagree with? Let us know in the comments!

almasiagroup

11:50 ص

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Email Marketing Tips for 2012

Now that we are in 2012, people will now be expecting new and innovated ways to present email marketing in a new and unique way. This may refer to designs or any other visible objects seen on your new email marketing campaign.

 

State the Facts

One thing is for sure as far as email users are concerned: they don’t want to read spam messages. Most of email marketing campaigns that pop out of nowhere end up, if not in the trash, in a spam folder where they will never reach the user. So, here are a few tips on how to manage your emails as a marketing strategy, get them read, and how to make your email marketing strategy work.

 

Tip no. 1: Be Legal

The more you want to send emails to a random set of people the more likely it is that they will end up in the trash and could be marked as a spam. Getting permission from the user will make your efforts worthwhile. Make sure you send only to those people who asked for it, such as people who signed up for a newsletter on your site or specific people who have already read your emails in the past but who have NOT requested to be removed from receiving anymore.

 

 

Tip no. 2: Know Your Audience

You have to know and focus your attention to that certain group of people for whom your product or service is geared towards. In this way, you will have a centralized point that will help you to improvise according to what matters most.

 

Tip no. 3: What’s Next?

What happens next? This question should be answered with the five steps ahead. What do you want to achieve in your email marketing? Remember, set your eyes on the goal and do not take detours. If what you are doing is not taking you a step closer to your goal then it would be better to just put an end to it.

 

Tip no. 4: Say Something That Matters

Emails that end up in spam folders are usually those that have an endless resume of the company which does not interest the audience. Having interesting content will make the audience invest more time in reading it thus increasing the chances of them making the next move on your list.

 

 

Tip no. 5: A Smashing Look

One thing is for sure; the overall design of the email will attract the users and they’ll then be more likely to have a look at your email, but remember that content will make them stay. At this point, focus on an eye catching design that they can’t miss. You also have to make sure that this matches the overall theme of the email and of course the trademark of the company where you will be taking them next.

 

 

Tip no. 6: Know When To Stop

Sending an email does not mean that they have to just read it and it all ends there. You should encourage your recipients to make some kind of response: ask for a call to action in your emails and offer the chance for the recipient to respond so they don’t feel as though they’re a part of a one-sided conversation. They should also make responses. If they’re not, it means your strategy is not working or in the worst possible scenario, maybe they already changed email addresses to escape your email lists. Or your emails are already in the spam folder, which is a waste of time and might annoy the users. Know when to stop. If you are not receiving responses, look for another audience and re-evaluate your current one and also your email campaign in general.

 

Email marketing is one of best marketing strategies because of the number of people who use it, both on the sending and receiving end. However, building a reputation as an email marketer matters a lot. As you send interesting and beneficial content, people start trusting you and getting excited about your emails and eventually follow your next steps, leading you to your goal. Aside from the point that they should be getting somewhere they should also take their friends with them which can be achieved only if they are satisfied with what you are doing. One false move might end your reputation. So keep your head up, get ready to do the work, and once you’ve figured out how to do so, go for the best email marketing campaign ever.

 

http://www.impactbnd.com/email-marketing-tips-2012/

almasiagroup

9:55 م

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Top 10 Email Marketing Tips & Advice of 2012

There are plenty of things to know about email marketing, and you’ll probably just scratch the surface even if you spend the rest of your career trying to keep up. Hence this Top 10 of 2012 list. We feel these are the 10 things you must commit to if  you’re going to succeed.

The top 10 list was chosen by Google rankings, and are composed of our own tips with some advice from other top bloggers as well. If you’re only going to read one email marketing post all year, this is definitely the one. Email marketing is a major part of many businesses, so make sure you take a look to see if any of these articles catches your eye.

How does your email marketing data compare?

A look at recent email marketing data shares statistics on open rates and click-through rates.

Today we have more data to share on email marketing campaigns throughout 2011 and the first quarter of 2012. The findings come from more than 1,100 brands, sharing benchmark data related to their email marketing efforts. These numbers will help you compare your own email marketing statistics with those of other brands.

All the statistics shared below come from 2012 Silverpop Email Marketing Metrics Benchmark Study.

Open rates

The unique open rates for the US, Canada, and EMEA (Europe, Middle East, and Africa) had a mean of 20.1%; a median of 15.0%; a top quartile of 43.7%; and a bottom quartile of 8.0%.

Email marketing stats: How does your company rate?

Email marketing continues to be a valuable resource online and updated statistics helps email marketers prepare accordingly.

Every time I come across stats related to email marketing activity, I get excited to share them with the community. Recently I read a benchmark report from Emarsys, which looks at tens of thousands of email campaigns from over 1,000 companies. They’ve been updating this report over the past five years, so there’s comparison data included. Take a look at some of the findings below.

Bounce rate decreases

Over the course of the last few years, email marketers have been clearly paying more attention to improving bounce rates. As of 2009, the reported average bounce rate was 3.08%. In 2011, that number dropped to 1.84%. B2C companies have consistently reported lower bounce rates compared to B2B companies over this time (1.73% and 2.49%, respectively).

Do you want more website traffic and a larger email marketing list? and learn the strategies successful publishers and Internet marketers are using.

Simple email marketing tips & advice from top bloggers

Email marketing isn’t always easy. These days there’s so much junk email that it can be very hard to get your readers to open emails, let alone create a connection with them. Below are a few articles that should help improve your overall email marketing techniques to hopefully avoid people thinking your emails are a waste of time.

An insider’s guide to write powerful & simple emails

Many small businesses struggle with email marketing. Specifically, they often freak out at the idea of writing an email marketing campaign, let alone one email to their customers. I want to share how to get laser-focused on your target audience of your emails and offer several techniques to write simple and powerful emails that motivate your audience to act on your email marketing campaign.

The first thing I want to dispel is a myth that you’ve probably been told over and over again — the myth is that you need a giant list in order to be successful. This simply isn’t true.

Email marketing focuses on engagement

Email marketing advice helps put actions in perspective.

I’ve been scouring the Internet for email marketing advice that focuses on the holistic approach. It’s nice to find a variety of opinions on an all-encompassing strategy for creating a database of email subscribers because it’s this information that will help publishers succeed in the digital age.

One recent article compared email marketers to Olympic decathletes. As a fitting topic for this summer’s Olympic games, the author says, “Top email marketers need to understand consumer behavior with social media, and how interplay between social and email can be used to create stronger email programs and enhanced social experiences.”

Email marketing tips for relationship-building

Are you having trouble gaining customers through email? Here are a few tips and advice from top bloggers on ways to communicate better through email.

To me, the hottest and sexiest social network right now is your inbox. Sure, I love Pinterest as much as the next guy (who likes Ryan Gosling’s abs), and I think it’s great that Zuck took the company public, made people angry for wearing a hoodie to Wall Street, and then got married. You already know I’m down with Google+. But if you want to know the hottest opportunity in the world? It’s the inbox. Your inbox.

I’ve talked about this in speeches often, but I realize that I’ve not covered it on my site, so here you go.

Making waves with email marketing

Many people look at “making waves” as a bad thing. It’s used to describe the creation of a disturbance or controversy. Today however, the only disturbance we’re discussing is the way to make favorable changes to your email marketing program.

Since the majority of email relationships begin at your website, there’s a need to not only have your landing pages designed with the intent of converting, it’s also important to have pages designed to facilitate the email relationship.

In this article I will discuss five areas of email marketing that represent a better user experience. These elements of email marketing are often website based, and will help email marketers develop better relationships with their audience members.

Using good journalism to build your email marketing list

With balanced content, audience members will be more apt to sign up for updates through email newsletters.

Google’s Penguin update, which rolled out in late April, brings a major question to mind: How balanced should my content creation be?

As we’ve seen, Google is hitting some websites hard, making them lose significant amounts of search traffic in the process. And in some of these instances, it doesn’t appear that black hat SEO is present. It does seem however, that Google is forcing content creators and digital publishers to go out and do a better job as a journalist.

For instance, one of the activities being penalized by Google is unnatural linking. This may include an excessive amount of affiliate links, exact match anchor text links, and cross-linking from your other sites.

These linking endeavors don’t really scream black hat SEO, but at the same time, they aren’t journalistically sound. Good journalists find multiple sources in their marketplace and they provide strong commentary on the breaking news that others share.

In the webinar, he said bluntly, “I would rather have an email subscriber than a Twitter follower.” We’d like to think it’s because email subscribers respond better to promotions, but according to Dan’s presentation, email and Twitter are almost equal in terms of lead generation. Still, our Twitter followers are often fair weather friends, aren’t they?

Dan reminded businesses that since 88% of people use their work email as their main email address, so email subject lines can’t be boring. ”You’re competing with baby pictures and invitations to dinner,” he said.

Boring, jargon-y words like “evaluation,” “soon,” “administration,” “liked,” “please,” “minutes” and “enjoyed” were the most common in top unopened emails.

15 email marketing tips from 3 top email gurus

Looking for some help with email marketing? Here are a few tips that may help you not only get your emails opened, but might also help capture your readers attention after opening.

The four words that will get your email opened:

“You are not alone” In

two and a half years of sending all kinds of emails to all kinds of lists, the simple phrase “You are not alone” is the most-opened subject line I’ve ever seen — by far.

Because Aweber counts each email that’s been opened, even if they’re from the same user, that single subject line has had an average open rate of 90%, and has surpassed the 100% mark several times.

Using video in conjunction with email marketing

Email marketing is used by 78% of marketers. Similarly, email newsletters are used by 59% of marketers. These stats were reported by eMarketer, and they came from a survey from Chief Marketer, which was released in late April. Out of all the marketing efforts listed, email marketing and email newsletters were used the most.

The popularity of email marketing is clear. Marketers and consumers both use the medium. And as opportunities develop, email marketing takes on new potential.

One such opportunity is using email to share video content. Since videos are rarely, if ever, placed directly in emails, email marketers need to use another way to utilize the growing popularity behind video. As it currently stands, video is hovering on mass-market status. eMarketer predicts spending on online video advertising alone will reach $3.12 billion in 2012. This is an increase of 54.7% since 2011.

 

http://www.mequoda.com/articles/email-marketing/top-10-email-marketing-tips-advice-of-2012/

almasiagroup

9:52 م

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Marketing Ideas for Retailers

Do you have a marketing idea? At the end of this article, you can Share Your Ideas with others.

Small business owners can easily get too involved in the day-to-day operations of their retail stores to spend any time brainstorming marketing ideas or promotional events. Some retailers worry that marketing is too expensive, others may find it too time consuming. Without announcing who you are and what you sell, how will anyone know? Here are 50 marketing ideas for retailers.

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1. Create a calendar for customers with your shop's name and address on it.

2. Print the products you sell or services offered on the back of your business cards.

3. Always carry business cards with you. Give them freely and ask permission to leave them in places your target market may visit.

4. Join a trade association or organization related to your industry.

5. Have a drawing for a product or a gift certificate. Use the entry forms to collect customers' mailing addresses.

6. Develop a brochure of services your shop offers.

7. Conduct monthly clinics about a product or service you offer or schedule semi-annual seminars on related "how-to" information for your industry.

8. Print a tagline for your business on letterhead, fax cover sheets, e-mails and invoices.

9. Develop a website to showcase your products, services and location. Use a memorable URL and include it on all marketing materials.

10. Include customer testimonials in your printed literature.

11. Promote yourself as an expert by writing articles or tips on topics related to your industry.

12. Submit to the local newspaper, trade journal or other publications.

13. Host an after-hours gathering for your employees and their friends/relatives.

14. Provide free t-shirts with your logo to your staff to wear.

15. Send newsworthy press releases as often as needed.

16. Create an annual award and publicize it.

17. Develop your own TV show on your specialty and present it to your local cable station or public broadcasting station.

18. Create a press kit and keep its contents current.

19. Use an answering machine or voice mail system to catch after-hours phone calls. Include basic information in your outgoing messages such as business hours, location, website, etc.

20. Join a Chamber of Commerce where you can network with area business owners.

21. Hold an open house. Invite prominent city officials and the press.

22. Get a memorable local or toll-free phone number.

23. Place ads in publications your market reads. Be sure to reach the non-English speaking market as well.

24. Distribute specialty products such as pens, mouse pads, or mugs with your store's logo.

25. Advertise in creative locations such as park benches, buses, and popular Web sites

26. Improve your building signage.

27. Get a booth at a trade show or expo attended by your target market.

28. Give a speech or volunteer for a career day at a high school.

29. Sponsor an Adopt-a-Highway area in your community to keep roads litter-free.

30. Donate your product or service to a charity event or auction.

31. Have a Yellow Pages ad listed under your main industry and in related categories.

32. Volunteer your time to a charity or non-profit organization.

33. Create a loyalty program to reward existing customers.

34. Create an opt-in email or print newsletter for your customers. Fill each edition with specials, tips and other timely information.

35. Send hand-written thank you notes to important customers every chance you get.

36. Use brightly colored envelopes and unique stationary when sending direct mail pieces.

37. Show product demos or related videos on a television on the sales floors during store hours.

38. Book a celebrity guest for an event at your store. Use people in your industry or television news anchors or local authors.

39. Create window displays in locations away from your shop. Airports, hospitals, and large office buildings occasionally have display areas they rent to local businesses.

40. Team up with a non-competing business in your area to offer a package promotion.

41. Pick the slowest day of the week to hold a one-day sale.

42. Create a warm, welcoming waiting area for your customers.

43. Provide extra customer service training for your staff.

44. Sign up for a newsletter or join online discussion groups in your industry.

45. If possible, loan your facilities to other groups for a meeting place.

46. Create a unique lapel pin based on the products you sell to wear at meetings.

47. Choose a regular customer to spotlight as a Customer of the Month. Create a brief write up to submit to the local newspaper about the customer and be sure to give he or she a copy of the article as well as have one framed to hang in the store.

48. Pair up slow moving items with related products and repackage as a special buy.

49. Start a blog. Write about your industry or detail in-store happenings.

50. Offer your customers discounts for each referral they provide.

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Marketing is most effective if done in coordination with other exposure. Enhance the above efforts with additional signage, newspaper ads, displays and radio ads. Remember to tailor each event for your target audience. If your message isn't being delivered to the right person, it may be a wasted effort

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almasiagroup

9:56 م

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