Our President, Keith Holloway, is honoured to be rubbing shoulders with the Canadian internet marketing elite as a new contributor to the leading Canadian Internet marketing community web destination, OneDegree.ca.

Read OneDegree to stay ahead of the curve on Canadian Internet marketing, and keep watch for posts from Keith. You’ll find his bio on the OneDegree site, as well as his first article, Top 10 Reasons why B2B Businesses Under Invest in Their Web Sites.

http://www.marketingtool.com/click/seo/b.508.r.75750.g.11571.u.590c6e.html

Read this issue to discover 10 actionable email marketing tips for beginners and seasoned professionals

If you haven’t already started an e-marketing campaign for your business, now is the time to start. If you are already using email marketing – here’s how can you improve it this year.

According to the Sandler Sales Institute, the number one reason for customer defection is “perceived indifference” on the part of the sales person or company. How can you possibly stay in touch with the hundreds or thousands of prospects and customers you have? Email provides a powerful and cost-effective method of communicating with any number of prospects and customers, reminding them of the benefits you provide them, keeping you front of mind, and calling them to action.

Don’t buy in to the pervasive myths that email marketing is either ineffective or damaging to your reputation. Professional email marketers send campaigns only to their permission-based list and provide relevant, anticipated, trusted content to their contacts. Don’t have a list? Start building it. Overwhelmed by the task of creating campaigns? Hire professionals to make it easy.

Experts know that email extends the footprint of your web site. You’ve already invested time and money into creating your web site – shouldn’t you remind people of it? Maria Veloso, in Web Copy That Sells , says that email is the tail that wags the Internet dog. The point she makes is that email is not merely a supporting element of Internet marketing – it can play the starring role as a primary sales tool:

Email can be used to direct what happens on your web site, not vice versa. In essence you can use email to “wag the web site” 1

Follow this link to read 10 specific email marketing tips to get started or improve on your email marketing success:

Special Offers:

Download our Internet marketing best practices whitepaper:

Read this 15 page e-book to discover more e-mail marketing tips and advice. Includes information on Privacy and Spam laws, deliverability, subject lines and more. Internet Marketing Best Practices.

Full Service Email Marketing Plans:

Learn about the costs and available options from Agito for email and landing page writing, design, and publishing, and for list building and strategy. Check out our new pilot program. Full Service Email Marketing Plans.

(Why most web sites don’t help the sales process)

Most web sites - at best - only focus on the average visitor. All of the content is created for what this ‘average’ visitor wants, and written in the way that the ‘average’ visitor wants to hear about it. At worst, the web site only focuses on the company. The web site talks about the company, tells the visitor what they think they should know. All this is done with little regard for how even the ‘average’ visitor wants to hear it, see it, and experience it.

The user centered approach is clearly better, but there is still a problem. None of your visitors are ‘average’. Think about your real-world sales process. Sales people naturally customize their message for each type of buyer.

When a web site does not address each individuals needs, sales suffer. When a visitor is not able to find the specific information about your product or service that interests them, they tend to leave and search out another web site that does.

For example, a 2001 paper by user Interface Engineering shows “you can increase sales on your site up to 225% by providing the sufficient product information to your customers at the right time”¹

What’s the solution? It’s called developing personas, and it’s brilliant. (I didn’t make it up.) It involves a completely new way of thinking about your web site and your customers. The idea of persona development was first introduced in 1999 by software developer and consultant Alan Cooper as a method of making software design more useful.

Read the rest of this article:
How to make your web site a selling machine

Learn how email marketing has become an effective, mainstream method of marketing

Thankfully, a recent Globe and Mail article* validates what Internet savvy businesses have known for years.

“Increasingly, the survey suggests, Canadians are becoming more receptive to legitimate forms of e-mail marketing, with about 79 percent having registered to receive e-mail from some sites. That figure was up from 77 per cent a year earlier.”

This survey goes to show that consumers (and business prospects) really want to receive relevant email from companies they are interested in staying in touch with.

Now it is true we all get a lot of spam. Yet, even with all of that unwanted mail cluttering the inbox, email is an extremely efficient and effective marketing tool for almost every business.

Why does email make so much sense?

• You can do more marketing than you are doing right now.
  One simple definition of marketing is “having something good to say and saying it often” Most companies do not communicate with their customers and prospects nearly enough.
• You decrease delivery costs.
  Never before in history has it been possible to communicate with so many, so often, for so little cost. Even small companies can afford to create frequent, professional communications that rival that of a Fortune 500 company.
• You can track and measure your marketing efforts with great precision.
  You can measure open rates and click rates to determine what offers are more compelling, and who is interested in them. You can use the information to define better offers, and target your selling activities.

Your e-mail list is a huge asset

Start thinking of it as such! Build it relentlessly. Use it to drive sales and customer interest. Use it to make special announcements. Use it to stay top of mind. Most importantly, use it in a regular schedule so it is anticipated, keep it relevant, and respect the privacy of your audience.

*Michael Ryval, “Making a statement on-line“, The Globe & Mail, April 4, 2005. (Now only available for purchase)

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Last month I wrote about how smart businesses are generating thousands of qualified leads through paid placement on search engines.

Now people ask me all of the time how to get more traffic to their site, how much does it cost, and how do I start? And even though the answers can be quite simple, I am loath to tell because in many cases it is a waste of time and money! For most sites, getting more traffic won’t help at all.

The fact is that there are many ways to generate qualified, targeted traffic to your site but there is a more important question you should be asking first:

What do you expect your visitors to do once you get them there?

• Do you expect them to be blown away by your beautiful design and call you up? (It doesn’t happen)
• Do you expect people to read all about your corporate history and be so charmed that they drive right over to meet you? (Very unlikely)
• Do you expect people to bookmark your site and come back when they have a more immediate need? (Research suggests that less than 1% of visitors ever click on their bookmarks)

These questions may sound silly, but that is the strategy for most web sites. Is it worth spending 50 cents – or several dollars to get a qualified visitor to your site and *hope* that one of the above scenarios comes true?

What your site should be doing:
The visitors to your site are coming there to get information to solve a problem. Your site should be offering a solution to that problem.

Now, imagine if you could find a way to give them that information so that it helps you achieve your goals!

What if your visitors engaged in a relationship with your site? They asked for more information, and your site gave it to them. Imagine that you followed up with each and every one of them to educate them and inform them of how you can help solve their problems. Imagine that when they called you, they were already pre-sold. Imagine if when people called you, they were ready to buy!

If your site did all this how would it make a difference to your life? Wouldn’t your job of selling new customers be easier? How much traffic would you want once you know how it translates into solid leads?

When a web site is crafted properly this is exactly what happens. The first step is to have very clear goals for your site.

Get people to give you permission to contact them again.
The web is a direct response medium. It’s interactive. Yet if your site is like most, it is just a bunch of static information. Here are a few ways to get people interacting on your site and moving in the right direction:

• Offer premium information, like “5 things you must know before buying ____”. In B2B applications, whitepapers or reports on an industry trend work well. You can download ours, entitled “Effective Business to Business Lead Generation”
• Create a contest where you do a regular draw for something of high perceived value to your target market (but low cost to you)
• A really good newsletter. Not just lip service to one. I mean a real newsletter with a catchy name, and X, Y and Z benefits that you can only get by subscribing now. Start thinking like a publisher.

Of course this is the tip of the iceberg. On some of our sites we employ 5 and often more methods of engaging our visitor and capturing permission to contact them again. We find that no one way appeals to everyone, but a variety of methods will generate the highest conversion numbers.

What to do with that permission will be the topic of the next newsletter

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