XDXY eMarketing Tips

Social Media is becoming one of the most important online marketing tactic. More and more companies jump into social network marketing field to promote their brand or product, and they brought huge amount of marketing dollar in as well.  Since all marketing investment need to be evaluated returns, the question comes up: how to measure the performance of social media marketing?

I would like to share some tips about social media marketing performance measuring:

1. Impression. It’s not as easy as banner Ad to figure how many times of your page have been impressed, but you can still consider below points as performance evaluating:

• How many Social Networking platform you registered accounts?
• How many connections/followers you have?
• How many groups you joined as member?
• How many discussions you participated?

2. Traffic. One major purpose of social media marketing is to drive traffic to website, it’s all free and can be tracked clearly. If you are selling advertise on your website as well, use CPM (Cost per Mil) to calculate the ROI of social media performance.

3. Shares. People on social network platform do love to share their ideas and links with friends. They submit website links & content to major platforms, when they think either interesting or informative. It’s been called ‘word of mouth online’. So consider below 2 points on social media marketing shares:

• How many of your website / pages have been submit to digg, StumbleUpon, etc..?
• How many of your company name or product name has been mentioned over twitter, facebook, Linkedin?

4. Contacts acquisition. Acquire new contacts is one of most important thing for online marketing. The normal way is like: ’subscription box’, ‘ask opt-in in online survey’ or ‘list buy’, and you can also leverage social media marketing to acquire new contacts. People come to social network platform is intend to make friends, so be friends with them, influence them in each update, convert them as your client. How many contacts you acquired from social platform is critical factor to measure social media marketing performance.

5. Revenue contribution. Check how much revenue the social media contribute is the most direct way to evaluate social media marketing performance.  Embed tracking code for all the social network post links (hide them by short URL service, like TinyURL if you want). If you sell products online, it’s not hard to track how much social media contribute.

How’s your Social Media Marketing performance so far?

Social Media Social Media ROI

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!

eMarketing

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

One of my friend recently shared with me a eMarketing Book - the essential guide to online marketing, 2nd edition, which published by Quirk eMarketing Services. I went through it roughly at the weekend, I got a lot from it, especially some case studies, inspired me in some way, and I thought it worth to read for online marketers, I’d like to share it with all of you here:

Introduction

There is no doubt about it – the Internet has changed the world we live in. Never before has it been so easy to access information, communicate with people all over the globe and share articles, videos, photos and all manner of media.

The Internet has led to an increasingly connected environment, and the growth of Internet usage has resulted in declining distribution of traditional media: television, radio, newspapers and magazines. Marketing in this connected environment and using that connectivity to market is eMarketing.

eMarketing embraces a wide range of strategies, but what underpins successful eMarketing is a user-centric and cohesive approach to these strategies.

The Topic this eBook covering

• 1. Introduction to eMarketing
• 2. Email marketing
• 3. Online advertising
• 4. Affiliate marketing
• 5. Search engine marketing
• 6. Search engine optimization
• 7. PPC advertising
• 8. Social media
• 9. Viral marketing
• 10. Online reputation management
• 11. WebPR
• 12. Web site development and design
• 13. Online copywriting
• 14. Web analytics and conversion optimization
• 15. Mobile marketing
• 16. Customer relationship management
• 17. Market research
• 18. eMarketing strategy
• 19. Last words
• 20. Glossary
• 21. Index
• 22. Contributors

Thanks for Quirk eMarketing Services provide this great book. Click here to Download (4.64MB).

for more Free eMarketing Whitepaper download, please check: http://xdxy.com/whitepaper/

eMarketing eMarketing

ROI (return on investment) is the most important metric for Email Marketing. Base on the DMA economic-impact study, e-mail’s ROI far outshines other online marketing channels.  Email marketing generated an ROI of $43.62 for every dollar spent on it in 2009.

Increasing the ROI of email marketing will definitely help to increase revenue. Here is a very basic equation for calculating the ROI:

ROI = [(Payback - Investment)/Investment)]*100

There are two basic ways to increase ROI: Increase Payback & Decrease Investment, Here are tips:

Increase Payback Tip 1: Call to action. The more actions customer take, the more possibility of purchase you will get from them. Use the Strong call to action buttons in your email body, will win more payback without cost extra $.

Increase Payback Tip 2: Incentive Program. We all like free stuffs, prizes, discounts, even luck draw… Design some incentive programs in email to encourage your subscribers to either register or purchase, give them a reason, they will do contribute to your revenue.

Increase Payback Tip 3: Offline campaign. According to Epsilon, 67% of subscribers say they’ve purchased products offline as a direct result of receiving an email from company. Align email marketing campaign to increase your offline sales numbers. But I have to say it’s hard to track.

Decrease Investment Tip 1: Keeps you customer list clean. You don’t want to pay for the email which can not be successfully delivered, right? Remove those emails which got soft-bounce and hard-bounce 5 times above from your list. It will save a lot.

Decrease Investment Tip 2: Get your email address white-listed. Contact ISP or through Email marketing company to get your email sending address or IP address white-listed, the more ISPs white-list your address, the more messages will be delivered to clients’ Inbox .

Decrease Investment Tip 3: Select cost-efficiency Email marketing platform. For some of Email Marketing tool, they charge base on the number of  email subscribers, you need only to pay small amount to start your business. Seems AWeber only cost $19 per month when your list smaller then 500 subscribers.

Increase Payback & Decrease Investment, You will get higher Email Marketing ROI. Good Luck!

Email Marketing email marketing ROI