XDXY eMarketing Tips

When e-marketing outside of a preset mailing list, you need online advertisements that are easy to find. Preferably advertisements that pop up at the head of the Google search results list.

The most basic—and perhaps most important—element of search engine optimization is keywords. They help customers find you by matching what you offer to what people want.

Think like a customer. Only researchers search for the phrase “industry award.” Press releases and honors are fine for convincing potential clients you know your business, but they won’t get you to the head of the line in a search for “data storage systems”—even if your innovative data storage system won you the industry award. Choose words that describe what your current customers buy, and make those words prominent.

Be as specific as possible—in lay language. No one will search for you by the words “super” or “fantastic,” even if your business is superhero memorabilia. On the other hand, it won’t help to list the scientific names for your pharmacy’s products when most people search for medications by their common names.

Beware of keywords that bring you to the front of search results but can’t be found among the visible text on the pages those results link to. Finding a “search result that isn’t” can be infuriating to the semi-proficient Web surfer; and furious consumers rarely make future customers.

Spell keywords correctly! While most search engines make allowances for spelling variations, getting the word wrong won’t put you at the front of the line. However, if your business name or product/service prominently features a commonly misspelled word, assist your search engine ranking by including the “variations” on your site—preferably somewhere invisible in the regular page images.

Do include your company name, and the names of prominent staff members, among the keywords. Especially if your business name is easily confused with some common phrase, include any slogans as well. While the Web surfer looking only by product or service won’t be searching for any of these, the people who have heard of you will. Whether or not your Web address is identical to your business name, people get annoyed (and begin to doubt your professionalism) when they search by exact name and the official Web site isn’t high on the first results page.

Think outside the box! Include keywords that describe your business’s unique attributes, those things that set you apart from thousands of others in the same industry. If you have no ideas, gather the staff for a brainstorming session. Have fun competing for the best keyword ideas!

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Smart entrepreneurs know that any sign of sloppiness can destroy a customer’s interest in buying. It doesn’t matter whether the problem area is directly related to the business’s primary focus; the public doesn’t trust unswept restaurants to serve healthy food, or unshaven pharmacists to mix prescriptions correctly. Likewise, an e-advertisement full of typos makes recipients suspect that the advertised product is put together equally carelessly.

The most frequent causes of sloppy writing are:

Putting blind faith in a word processor. Few spell checkers can tell the difference between “its” and “it’s,” or between “twenty-four suppliers” and “twenty for Suppliers.” Nor can a spell checker recognize every proper name (and nothing alienates a potential customer like seeing his or her own name misspelled). Moreover, automatic formatting can actually create a sloppy appearance: “correcting” something that wasn’t wrong; misaligning bulleted lists; turning e-mail graphics into jumbles of symbols.

Solution: Assign a human eye to re-read everything. Ideally, let every e-advertisement sit unviewed for at least twenty-four hours before the final edit. And with e-mails, include a link or attachment for the benefit of anyone whose inbox can read only plain text.

Assuming that “anyone” can easily write a decent e-advertisement. Never just assign the writing to whichever employee can squeeze out twenty minutes to throw something together. As every professional editor knows, passing high school English doesn’t qualify a person to write something others find worth reading. And actual mistakes are only part of the problem; even a grammatically flawless and typo-free advertisement won’t accomplish its purpose if recipients find it boring or irrelevant.

Solution: If no one on your staff has formal writing education or writing-for-publication experience, hire a qualified freelancer to prepare the text. Improved response will be more than adequate compensation for the investment.

Letting something get lost in translation. Inter-language advertising had perils long before the days of e-mail and Web sites. One misplaced letter or accent mark can turn an effective advertisement into something totally hilarious or seriously offensive. Even experienced translators make mistakes, particularly with slang and colloquialisms. At best, many translated pieces come out rather stiff, without the liveliness of the originals.

Solution: Either find a translator who is thoroughly fluent in both languages, or get a native speaker to critique the translated version. (Native speakers aren’t hard to find in the Internet age.)

It can’t be emphasized enough: if your software advertisement doesn’t get all its letters in the right places, people will wonder if the software’s programmer did any better. The best-written e-advertisements bring in the best responses!

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Today’s e-mail users have more messages than time to read them, and are extremely wary of spam and phishing. If a subject heading looks at all suspicious, many recipients delete the message unopened. How to title your e-marketing messages so they pass this initial test?

1. Get rid of asterisks and other symbols rarely used in standard written text. Not only do they trigger “spam” warnings, they look unprofessional anyway.

2. Put all words of the header in standard format—all-caps and extra spacing arouse as much suspicion as do symbols. Capital letters also provoke the reaction “Who do you think you’re shouting at?”

3. Don’t promise a “Great Bargain” or say anything that sounds risqué or sensationalist. Recipients will mentally categorize you with countless junk ads that use similar headers.

4. Don’t tell lies! Nobody wants to do business with someone who is dishonest, and it’s dishonest to use a header that sounds interesting but has no relevance to the message text, or to imply “you contacted us first” by starting a header with “Re:” if the message isn’t a genuine reply. (Don’t use “Re:” for “Regarding,” either. It may be traditional in office memos, but in e-mail headers it just confuses recipients and wastes space.)

5. Never leave a header blank. Very few people open a message solely for the purpose of learning what it’s about.

6. Limit your header to six words so it won’t run out of display space. Recipients may hesitate to open an e-mail if they can’t read the whole title, especially if what they do see is ambiguous. For the same reason:

7. Put the most important words first. Tell recipients exactly what your message is about before they run out of patience or their Subject displays run out of room.

8. Do include your company’s name if you expect most recipients will recognize it as trustworthy. Don’t do this for a really big-name company, though, especially if your mailing list includes people without current accounts. Phishing messages purportedly from major banks or Web sites have made the public suspicious of universally recognized names.

9. Don’t bother setting your server to include the recipient’s name or e-mail address in the header. It won’t improve the message’s chances of being read; it only wastes space that could be used to describe what you’re offering.

10. Research “spam indicators” (you can find a lot of information just by typing those words into a search engine) to learn what else not to do.

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E-marketing needn’t always be about “instant response.” Many consumers, with no perceived need for a product or service, give little immediate consideration to an e-advertisement. However, if the ad grabs attention, leaves a good impression, and makes the company easy to remember, some of these same people will look up the business when they eventually do feel they need it.

Of course, when offering a special with set dates or introducing something new, you do want people to respond promptly. But you don’t want to arouse resentment by demanding “spend your money on us NOW!” of people who have too many bills already.

Like all success-generating goals, effective e-marketing requires short-term and long-term thinking.

For the short term, to encourage prompt responses:

· Think “benefits” rather than “features”—the customer’s benefit, that is. People aren’t interested in technical talk, and they definitely aren’t interested in how important you are. They’re interested in improving their bottom lines, their prestige, their health. Show them how your product or service does that, and you’ll arouse a “can’t wait to try it” feeling.

· Make things easy; few customers are eager enough for the purchase to struggle twenty minutes with a balky or complicated procedure. Proofread your message carefully: is your contact (or sale date or price) information accurate? Have you tested the links? Does it take more than two steps to get past your spam filter? Are there twenty required data fields? Do you really need that lengthy policy statement?

· Especially if your recipients aren’t regular subscribers, make your subject line clear and specific. Include your business name if at all feasible. A header that says only “Don’t Miss This Deal!” will likely land your message right in the junk folder.

For the long term, to help potential customers remember you six months later:

· Include a “clippable” item—a humorous story, an interesting tip, a useful Web site. Recipients may print or file that item (with the rest of the message) for future reference.

· Make your company’s name or slogan prominent and obviously relevant. It won’t do much good to grab attention now if people can’t find you later because all they remember is a cute cartoon character flashing a “Top Software” sign.

· Be polite. Don’t go too heavy on the “Act Now” messages. And never imply that only a fool would ignore your offer—that insults every recipient who isn’t immediately interested. You want to be remembered for the right reasons!

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Does your business have a regular newsletter? Or are you spending your whole PR budget on advertising?

Good business newsletters are priceless in the long run. Tell people they have to use your software, and anyone who doesn’t immediately agree will delete your ad and forget about it. Provide a list of twenty ways to maximize computer efficiency, and people will remember you as knowledgeable and helpful. Give them helpful computer hints every week for two months, and they’ll appreciate you enough to think of you first when they—or others they know—actually need a software like yours. Consumers like to know that you care about their needs, not simply their money.

But as with any other tool, an e-newsletter is most effective when properly designed. Before your first issue:

* Set a distribution schedule—once a week is ideal—for at least the first six months. Always send newsletters on the same day of the week or month. Not only does this regularly remind consumers of your existence, but they form general opinions of your dependability based on the long-term consistency of your mailings.
* Assign (or hire) an experienced writer to create the text, and a professional designer to prepare the visual template. One reason many newsletters fail is that planners try to dash them off in whatever spare time is available, which invariably results in sloppy, dull writing. Conscientious hard work is as vital here as anywhere else in a business.
* Consider who your readers will be. Potential customers quickly become bored with inside details on company operations. Figure out what larger aspects of your professional field relate to the public’s everyday needs.
* Instead of e-mailing a whole newsletter, consider doing a blog and e-mailing brief descriptions of each new post. (Don’t forget the link!) Blogs are, after all, nothing more than one-article newsletters; and putting your newsletter online eliminates most problems with spam filters, scrambled graphics, and misplaced back issues.
* Keep advertisements to an inconspicuous minimum. Remember that newsletters are not for making sales but for building relationships. Newsletters encourage readers to think well of you, to keep coming back as customers, and to recommend you to their friends. Newsletters are saved for future reference. Newsletters have staying power.

And it’s staying power that determines a business’s ultimate success.

eMarketing eNewsletter