Software Solutions Digital Marketing Business Services. Marketing. What you need to know

Transcription

1 Software Solutions Digital Marketing Business Services Marketing What you need to know

2 Contents Building Your List 1 Managing Your List. 2 Designing Your s 3 Branding Your s Relevancy 5 Reputation and Deliverability 6 Metrics and Reporting 7 About CAN-SPAM Compliance and Managing Opt-Out process 8 About Us.. 9

3 Every business needs you to have a web strategy, which further requires you to incorporate list building and marketing. marketing is one of the most cost-effective ways of promotion in today s time. It can help you reach beyond your website creating new sales opportunities for you. Building your list Building an list is about building business profits. When you have just one website your opportunity to attract your customers is little as it comes with building an list. Building an List is about building your business. It is about building a client base which is needed for the success of your business. It helps in creating a trust ground with your clients which is not as easy as it appears to be. It requires considerable and repeated efforts in order to build it. Some points you must consider when building an list: Keep the opt-in process quick and simple by collecting the attributes that are important to your business. You can add the option for visitors to OPT-IN to your mailing list or to download your free report in case you provide one. You should post your privacy policy online so that subscribers know how their information will be used. Prefer the Double Opt-in over Single Opt-in. Double Opt-in might appear a little harder for the customers but will somewhere ensure that you choose those customer who would actually want to get a mail from you. Note: Decision to choose an Opt-in process must be adopted in accordance with your business needs as the requirements for businesse s varies. Double Opt-ins have shown results with more unique opens, greater number of clicks, lesser bounces and more subscriptions in comparison to Single Opt-in. It also helps to avoid bad addresses being added to your list. Try to use coupon or some special offer in your welcome message as these messages have the highest open and click-through rates. Encourage more people Sign-Up which leads to more conversations and which in turn can help you make more money. Decision for purchasing the lists should be taken carefully as different consequences come into play; it might lead to undesirable messages that have the highest complaint rate. Before you purchase the list keep in mind some of the factors like source of the list, whether the list had been updated regularly or not etc. You must track the source of your new subscribers in order to know where they are coming from and how they are hearing about your business. Nablasol Page 1

4 Pay attention to the quality of your subscribers, not the quantity. People must like what you have written and must want to read more from you. You can also add a link or button on your website and newsletter taking them to a Tell-A- Friend form, to encourage the subscribers to send your s to their friends. Alternatively, Forward-to-a-friend link can be added. According to various surveys, it has been found that an marketing database degrades every year, this happens because of reasons like addresses corresponding to the contacts change, they opt-out of your list, or they quit their old AOL address which they used to fill out forms on the websites. Therefore, you must ensure that constantly fresh contacts are added to your marketing campaigns. Managing your List list management is done in order to optimize delivery and response rates of the s. When you properly manage the s on your list throughout your campaign you get a much prudent statistics of the marketing. Some of the factors which you should remember are: You should remove any kind of distribution addresses and addresses with the word spam from your lists. In order to maintain your reputation, monitor subscribers who generate a soft bounce to see if messages are delivered within few attempts, remove them from your lists if they are not delivered. When a hard bounce is found try to remove the contact immediately. Monitor feedback loops and remove those subscribers who reported your message as spam. Use an marketing solution that is integrated with web analytics to capture the data that occurs after the click and also keep monitoring your lists. Use an marketing solution that is integrated with web analytics to capture the data that occurs after the click and also keep monitoring your lists. You can give special offers to reach your inactive subscribers so that you can engage them again. Give your subscribers an easy way to opt-out of your list to notice any trends, such as subscription source, domain, time was sent etc. by keeping a track of their lists. Nablasol Page 2

5 Mobile apps have started to evolve as an effective opt-in tool in the market. This has come with a significant growth in the market with the smartphones. Various companies have started to put optin forms in the mobile apps which provide them with better and increased targeting options. A phone call can also be used as an option to increase the list. The factor behind is that one might lose contact of a person because of various reasons, like; one has left the existing position due to promotion etc. New person can be contacted in such a case and is enquired about the details of the phone no. and address so that relevant information can be gathered and appended to the list. Managing an list requires care, intelligence, and focus in order to keep up with the current market trends. Designing Your s Designing an list is an important issue for web marketing. Even minute negligence and small mistakes can have immense effects on your company s promotion and repute. When designing an list you should keep in mind the limitations of each client. Some of the points you can take into account when designing a list are listed below: When you use Cascading Style Sheets make sure that you use inline styles only, as the support varies among clients. Do not link to an external style sheet because many clients do not support it. Use tables. Also nested tables should be used instead of margins and padding because clients are quite inconsistent when it comes to interpreting the later. Several clients have limitation to their width so try to keep a check on your width as well. Meta tags, Form elements, Java, JavaScript, Frames, PHP, Dynamic HTML, Flash, other rich media files etc. should not be used in the message. Try to use the <p> tag instead of <div> for aligning the text. Encourage the use of <alt> tag which provides an alternative text when non textual elements such as Graphics cannot be displayed. Note: This cannot be done in Hotmail as it does not display alt tag. If you want to add a background image keep in mind some clients support them and some do not. You must know that in order to ensure consistency across all clients as different measures are adopted for both the cases. Focus on using both text and images in the message. Include important information, such as your offer in the s pre-header. Do not attach documents to the message. Recipients know that attachment leads to longer messages and requires more effort and time of the customer who might not be interested in reading it and hence will ignore it. Rather, you should link documents to the message. Linking the documents serves the purpose better. Nablasol Page 3

6 You must keep message design simple and easy to read and also must include a text only version of the message. Focus on writing clear calls-to-action. A clear call-to-action will be easily noticed and processed. Ensure to have a consistent look between your HTML s, website and landing pages. Branding your s Marketing is incomplete without branding. It is more than just identifying your company or product. Efforts for branding give you a sense of higher quality. For this reason, experts emphasize on branding to small business owners. An impressive branding strategy gives a strong value to the company. Points to be kept in mind when you promote your brand: You should include your company name in the From address of your messages so that the recipients should be aware of Who the sender is? Thank you page, where the new subscriber lands, after he signs up to your list before landing to his inbox is a good candidate for branding. Branding when used in unsubscribed pages yields better customer service experience and good reputation to the brand. Try to use small names or abbreviation of your company s name in the header, so that space can be saved and remaining space can be used to convey your message. Use your own domain alias, media domain, and bounce domain so that the company s name and branding aspects which the recipients see belongs to your only. Try to keep your brand identity in front of your audience with daily or weekly s that are relevant to their needs. Emphasis should be there on providing the default domain alias as it generally ties your reputation to every other company using it. Branding improves your chances of getting better investment returns and also improves your sales. It helps the companies to be identified as established and thus, attracts more customers and influences the purchasing decision. It helps you be distinguishable from your competitors in a unique way that is relevant to your customers. Nablasol Page 4

7 Relevancy Relevance is about customers, their needs and the way you observe and offer in respect to their needs. Relevant data plays a dominant role in marketing as customers are the prime focus of all businesses. You should try to understand how the cultural shifts influence your subscribers and target your content accordingly. Behavioral tracking tools should be encouraged to capture the appropriate customer data and Behavioraltracking tool should be encouraged to capture the appropriate customer data and also also make sure that you capture as much subscriber data as possible. This should be done with a make sure that you capture as much subscriber data as possible. This should be done with a view, view, that even if it is not used soon, it can be used later. Automate your behavioral s which that even if it is not used soon, it can be used later. Automate your behavioral swhich will help will help you to get personalized activity time. Also, it is cheap, therefore, helps to improve ROI. you to get personalized activity time. Also, it is cheap, therefore, helps to improve ROI. Segment your lists by many different attributes; as when it comes to targeting smaller groups it has to be more specific. Database should be partitioned between those who have recently engaged with the website or and the existing ones. For the recent ones engagement should be done based on the recent behavioral data and for the rest build segmentation strategy to increase their engagement. You You should emphasis on integrating your marketing solution with CRM and web analytics to to increase the amount of data you have access to. In order to make your data more relevant you can also use the core demographics like age, gender and physical location. Also you can monitor their frequency i.e. do they buy regularly or have purchased only once. Create a single HTML template and use dynamic content to send to various users. Generic s should be used to send to subscribers who are not into a specific segment Nablasol Page 5

8 Reputation and Deliverability Growth in reputation yields an expansion in business and growth in sales. Reputation of a company is built through factors like effective communication, participation, quality of products and services. Your reputation should be monitored closely using tools available online. Use a dedicated IP address and unique domain alias and if sending more than thousands of messages, a pool of dedicated IP addresses should be used. The longer the time you send the messages from a single source the better the reputation you have as it builds trust of the client in you and all increases future prospects. Any unwanted message is considered spam, even if the recipients opted-in to the list, sending s will still protect your reputation in such a case. Double Opt-in method can lead to a better reputation because using this method there is lesser number of unsubscribes and bounces. But which method to opt-in should be dependent on your business needs. It should be kept in mind that an individual message does not decide your reputation, the ISPs look at the entire sending history. You can visit for additional details. Nablasol Page 6

9 Metrics and Reporting In a study it has been found that there is still lack of standardization in metrics. Inconsistency in this area makes it complicated for marketers to manage and improve their campaigns. Practices you can follow to prevent your list from upcoming issues: Understand that the delivery rate provided by most ESPs does not include s that were delivered to the junk mail folder. Therefore, you need to use a delivery monitoring service to figure out your actual deliverability rate. This can be achieved by keeping track of the clicks to the message, to the link provided etc. Unsubscribing an list is a common part of marketing; you must monitor unsubscribes closely to determine which ones are in your control and which ones are unavoidable. Monitor your abuse rate and remove complainers immediately. An feedback loop is a service which many ISP s provide to those companies which send bulk mails. There are many service providers which offer this service. Track your messages by domain so you quickly notice any deliverability issues. Capture and save each link your subscribers click on in your messages. Nablasol Page 7

10 About CAN-SPAM Compliance and Managing Opt-out Process CAN-SPAM is an acronym for Controlling the Assault of Non-Solicited Pornography And Marketing. It is a public law named , which was signed into Law by President George W. Bush on December 16, It is a law written to regulate sending of s and controlling unsolicited and unwanted s in the United States. It is applicable to wide commercial base. In order to be a CAN-SPAM Compliant you must follow these: You should not use false or misleading headers. Your header field of the message as well as the domain name or addresses must accurately match with the business and person involved. The subject line should accurately reflect, what is there in your . Your must reveal that the message is an advertisement. You must provide a physical location i.e. Provide a way for users to reach you by a registered postal mail. You should include an easy opt-out mechanism. This can be achieved by, a single web page by replying to the message, and through an unsubscribe button. All opt-out requests should be passed within few days of opting out. If you run an affiliate marketing program as one of your marketing channels, monitor what others do on your behalf as both the parties are involved. You should include your valid postal address and return address on all messages. You can include the unsubscribe link at the top of the because it might happen that if the recipients cannot opt out quickly and easily they will report the message as spam. You can also include a way for subscribers to opt-in to your lists again, so that, in case they unsubscribe by mistake or change their minds, they are able to subscribe again. marketing is a widely used solution to promote your affiliate products. In an online age it is an effective way to hunt, communicate and reach out to the customers. Maintaining an list to reach numerous people in fractions of time was never possible before. It needs to be build, managed, designed and delivered very carefully keeping up with the laws and regulations. Nablasol Page 8

11 About Us We are a New Delhi; India based company offering a range of services in Software Solutions, Digital Marketing and Business Services. We specialize in working with businesses and devise solutions to enable them reach their business objectives. We work with businesses of all sizes, from Fortune 500 companies to small and medium size businesses across the world. A majority of our clients are medium size businesses who wish to be ahead in their industry before the competition overtakes them. We are boastful about providing high-quality solutions for our clients, which make an impactful difference for them. The success of our clients is our primary focus in whatever we do. This clientcentric approach has helped us earn huge accolades, which gives us further motivation to exceed their expectations. Website: info@nablasol.com Phone: (USA) (India) Nablasol Page 9