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Move Over, Cyber Monday: Here Comes Thanksgiving

October 24th, 2012 :: Rieva Lesonsky

By Rieva Lesonsky

When it comes to holiday shopping, Black Friday and Cyber Monday typically grab all the headlines—but the real powerhouse this year just might be Thanksgiving Day, according to data reported by Internet Retailer.

A study by email services provider Responsys found that some 80 percent of major retailers plan to send email marketing messages on Thanksgiving Day this year, up from 76 percent last year, 60 percent in 2010 and 45 percent in 2009. That will make Thanksgiving Day the third busiest day for email, after Black Friday and Cyber Monday.

Last year, online shoppers spent $479 million on Thanksgiving Day, an increase of 18 percent over 2010, according to comScore stats reported in the article.

With Thanksgiving “[replacing] Black Friday as the unofficial kick-off the holiday shopping season,” as Responsys puts it, what kind of marketing messages should you send on the holiday?

Reponsys says there are two different tacks retailers typically take with Thanksgiving Day emails: one, promoting special Thanksgiving Day sales, the other, teasing Black Friday promotions or offering them a bit earlier than normal.

With some brick-and-mortar retailers opening stores on Thanksgiving last year, you don’t even have to be an ecommerce retailer to take advantage of the Thanksgiving Day trend.

Of course, there are some consumers who dislike the idea of shopping on a national holiday—but there’s even an appropriate marketing email for them: You can tell them that your store will be closed on Thanksgiving Day to honor tradition and family.

What’s behind the growth in Thanksgiving Day marketing and shopping? As you might expect, the rise of smartphones and tablets is a big factor. After the turkey is eaten and the family togetherness starts to chafe, consumers looking for digital distraction are likely to whip out their phones.

If you don’t like the idea of shopping or marketing on Thanksgiving Day, you’re really not going to like what Responsys says is the next up-and-coming trend: sending marketing emails on Christmas Day—another time when people are on the go, out of their homes and likely to get bored.

Image by Flickr user carolynwakefield (Creative Commons)

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Tags: Email marketing, holiday retail, sales process, small business
Posted in Email Marketing, Marketing, sales process, Small Business, small business | No Comments »

There’s Still Time to Register! Online Marketing Small Business Forum From Web.com

October 23rd, 2012 :: Rieva Lesonsky

By Rieva Lesonsky

Do you want to learn more about marketing your small business online? If you’re in or near the Dallas area, it’s not too late to sign up for this Thursday’s Web.com Small Business Forum on online marketing. Register now!

Held from 8 a.m. to 10:30 a.m. on Thursday, October 25, in Dallas, this interactive forum will be hosted by Web.com’s Jason Teichman. At the event, small businesses will learn everything they need to know about successfully marketing their companies online. Topics that will be covered include:

What are the elements of a great website?
How do I increase traffic to my website and to my business?
Is my website “working” for my business?
How do I market my business on Google, Facebook and Twitter?

Along with the informative presentation, the event also includes a Q&A session so you can ask the experts your questions. And, of course, you’ll have plenty of time to network with and learn from other small business owners.

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Tags: Email marketing, online marketing, small business events, social media
Posted in Email Marketing, Events, Marketing, Search Marketing, Small Business, small business, Social Media, social media, Web Design | No Comments »

There’s Still Time to Register! Online Marketing Small Business Forum from Web.com

October 17th, 2012 :: Rieva Lesonsky

By Rieva Lesonsky

Do you want to learn more about marketing your small business online? If you’re in or near the Jacksonville, Florida, area, it’s not too late to sign up for this Friday’s Web.com Small Business Forum on online marketing. Register now!

Online Ticketing for Web.com Small Business Forum – Jacksonville, FL powered by Eventbrite

Held from 8 a.m. to 10:30 a.m. on Friday, October 19, in Jacksonville, this interactive forum will be Web.com’s Jason Teichman. At the event, small businesses will learn everything they need to know about successfully marketing their companies online. Topics that will be covered include:

What are the elements of a great website?
How do I increase traffic to my website and to my business?
Is my website “working” for my business?
How do I market my business on Google, Facebook and Twitter?

Need more reason to go? As a bonus, each attendee will also receive two free tickets to the Winn-Dixie Jacksonville Open presented by Planters.

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Tags: Email marketing, Events, Marketing, online marketing, Search Marketing, small business, social media
Posted in Business Development, Email Marketing, Events, Marketing, sales process, Search Marketing, Small Business, small business, Social Media, social media, Technology, Web Design | No Comments »

Learn the Secrets of Online Marketing at the Web.com Small Business Forum

October 12th, 2012 :: Rieva Lesonsky

By Rieva Lesonsky

Are you a small business owner in the Dallas area looking for help successfully marketing your business online? Register now to sign up for the free Web.com Small Business Forum and learn how.

The interactive forum, to be held in Dallas from 8 a.m. to 10:30 a.m. on Thursday, October 25, will focus on helping local small businesses learn how to market their companies online. Web.com’s Jason Teichman will lead a presentation and Q&A session. Here’s some of what you’ll learn:

What are the elements of a great website?
How do I increase traffic to my website and to my business?
Is my website “working” for my business?
How do I market my business on Google, Facebook and Twitter?

There will also be plenty of time for networking, of course!

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Tags: Email marketing, Marketing, online marketing, small business events, social media
Posted in Branding, Email Marketing, Events, Marketing, Search Marketing, Small Business, small business, Social Media, Web Design | No Comments »

Web.com Small Business Toolkit: Alicanto (Marketing Tool)

October 11th, 2012 :: Maria Valdez Haubrich

Alicanto

Never tackle your small business marketing alone again. Alicanto is your virtual marketing assistant, ready to help you spend less time marketing, while increasing your customer base. The cloud-based platform provides highly tailored marketing and sales plans, and then lets you execute the plans across email, social media, SEO optimization, printed materials, advertising, direct mail, sales promotions and more—all within minutes of signing up. Alicanto reads your personalized news feed for ideas that will help your business grow, reminds you about promoting upcoming holidays, and sets up new customer and birthday campaigns–to name just a few ways your business will benefit.

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Tags: Email marketing, Marketing, Resources, sales process, small business, social media
Posted in Business Development, Email Marketing, Marketing, Resources, Sales Process, sales process, Search Marketing, Small Business, small business, Social Media | No Comments »

5 Easy Ways to Optimize Your Emails for Mobile

October 1st, 2012 :: Monika Jansen

I constantly check email on my iPhone when I am out and about – and I bet you do too. Your prospective and current clients do as well, so if email marketing is part of your marketing strategy, it is vitally important that your emails are quick to download and read while remaining engaging.

Marketo published a blog post with 5 valuable tips that perfectly summarized how to create effective mobile-friendly emails. They are all easy to implement, always a bonus!

1. Keep subject lines short

Take a quick look through your email on your phone. After 4 or 5 words, the rest of the subject line disappears due to space constraints. Grab your reader’s attention with a short but punchy subject line that captures the meat of what you are trying to say.

There is an email currently sitting in my inbox that does this perfectly. Backblaze, a terrific company I use for online backup, sent an email reminding me that my trial is over and I need to buy the service. The subject line is “Backblaze backs up automatically,” which is a great reminder of how awesome Backblaze is and one of their major value propositions.

2. Check the text version of your email

Smartphones and tablets can be temperamental sometimes, rendering your HTML email unreadable – I used to see this a lot. Always doublecheck the text version of your email to make sure it looks OK and that any images or graphics are replaced with text.

3. Keep your message short

I skim marketing emails – pretty much everyone does. If you want to get your message across, stay as concise as possible. In Backblaze’s email to me, there is a header and 7 other, really short sentences. I can view the entire email on my screen without scrolling down.

4. Don’t go crazy with graphics

I still see companies doing this – and I am looking at one such example right now from a company whose identity shall remain private. Because the email is so graphic-heavy, I cannot download the entire email. Guess what? I am not going to read it; instead, I’ll delete it. Don’t let that happen to you! Keep your graphics small and simple.

5. Keep your call to action simple

Just as your subject line, message, and graphics need to stay simple and clear, so too does your call-to-action. My favorites are buttons with clear instructions. Backblaze’s button is at the top of the email with “Buy your subscription now” on it.

No matter what your call-to-action is, make sure the landing page that call-to-action links to on your website is mobile-friendly, just like your email. Marketo suggests removing JavaScript, Flash, and pop-ups from both the email and landing page to make sure they appear correctly on mobile devices.

What companies do you think do the best job of creating mobile-friendly emails? What have you learned from them and applied to your own marketing emails? Share your tips below!

Image courtesy of bgr.com

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Tags: Email marketing, Marketing, mobile
Posted in Email Marketing, Marketing | 2 Comments »

What Are Different Demographics Doing on Their Tablets?

August 27th, 2012 :: Rieva Lesonsky

By Rieva Lesonsky

Tablet use is surging—no doubt about that. In fact, by the end of the year, eMarketer projects the number of tablet users will grow to nearly 70 million in the U.S.—more than double the number of users in 2011—and that strong growth will continue each year through 2015.

Right now, eMarketer says, about 20 percent of U.S. consumers use a tablet at least monthly. So far, according to eMarketer, about one-third of U.S. tablet users are aged 18 to 34, about 20 percent are aged 35 to 44 and one-third are aged 45 and up. Overall, the split is fairly even, but future growth is expected to occur fastest among the youngest and oldest users.

What consumers use their tablets for varies depending on their age, and knowing how different age groups use their tablets can help you target them appropriately with your marketing messages and website. Here’s what a study conducted for Adobe and cited by eMarketer found:

Playing games is the number-one tablet activity for all tablet owners under age 50. For tablet owners aged 18 to 29, game-playing was followed by shopping, reading books and checking email.

For those aged 30 to 49, email came in second, reading books third and shopping a distant fourth.

For those over 50, reading email was by far the most common activity, cited by 28.6 percent. In fact, email’s importance increases with age. The 30- to 49-year-olds were nearly twice as likely to use tablets for email than were younger demographics.

Although much has been made of tablet shopping, even among the heaviest tablet shoppers (18 to 29), only 16.1 percent reported shopping on tablets. In the older age groups, the percentage was under 10 percent for both groups. Also surprising: Users 50 and up were far more likely to view videos on their tablets (14.3 percent, compared to 6.4 percent of the 30- to 49-year-olds and just 5.4 percent of the 18- to 29-year-olds).

Another finding of interest to small business owners: More than 30 percent of users in all age groups have clicked on a mobile ad at some point (whether on a smartphone or tablet). Younger users were more likely to do so, with 40.2 percent of those aged 18 to 29 reporting they had clicked on an ad, but even among the 50-plus crowd, 30 percent had done so.

What conclusions can you draw from this study? Two come to mind:

First, I think it’s still too early to tell what uses tablets will be most popular for. So far, it’s a mix of the fun (games), the serious (email) and the in-between (shopping). Tasks that can be completed just as easily or more easily on smartphones (such as checking weather or sports scores) were less likely to be done on a tablet. So think about how you could offer greater functionality to tablet users than you do in your business’s smartphone apps.

Second, the good news is consumers of all ages are comfortable with mobile advertising to a greater degree than we might expect. If you haven’t already gotten your feet wet in mobile advertising, maybe the time is now.

Image by Flickr user IntelFreePress (Creative Commons)

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Tags: Email marketing, Marketing, small business, Technology, Web Design
Posted in Email Marketing, Marketing, Search Marketing, Small Business, small business, Social Media, Technology, Web Design | No Comments »

What Tactics Are BtoB Marketers Using Most?

August 10th, 2012 :: Rieva Lesonsky

By Rieva Lesonsky

If your small business markets products or services business-to-business, you’ll be interested to know what marketing tactics other BtoB companies are relying on most often. The Sagefrog Marketing Group B2B Marketing Mix Survey polled more than 150 marketers from a range of industries, and here’s what they found.

As might be expected, digital and social channels are playing a bigger role in BtoB marketing this year; companies also report that their ROI in these areas is rising. Four of the top five marketing tactics that BtoB companies are using are online—specifically, website development, email marketing, social media and search engine optimization (SEO).

Online marketing isn’t the only game in town. More traditional marketing methods, including trade shows, press releases, direct marketing and seminars, are still popular with BtoB companies. However, marketers are putting most of their money into digital marketing, including website development, email marketing and online marketing.

They’re also getting results, with email and online marketing now surpassing trade shows and events as the biggest sources of sales leads. The methods with the best ROI (in declining order) are:

Online Marketing
Email Marketing
Trade Shows and Events
Public Relations
Advertising
Direct Mail
Telemarketing

BtoB companies are also moving aggressively into social media, with 70 percent of respondents spending at least one hour a week on this marketing channel and two-thirds reporting social media is important to their marketing mix.

The most popular social venues are LinkedIn (used by 79 percent) and Facebook (used by 65 percent). Twitter (54 percent), YouTube (40 percent) and Google+ (30 percent) followed, with social media upstart Pinterest used by 9 percent. Blogs are also popular, used by 48 percent of respondents (up from 34 percent last year). Finally, online videos are on the rise, used by 35 percent of marketers (up from 29 percent last year).

How does your BtoB company’s marketing strategy compare?

Image by Flickr user Social Biz Solutions (Creative Commons)

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Tags: Email marketing, Marketing, sales process, small business, social media
Posted in Business Development, Email Marketing, Marketing, Sales Process, sales process, Small Business, small business, Social Media | 1 Comment »

How to Improve Your Small Business’s Email Marketing

July 27th, 2012 :: Rieva Lesonsky

By Rieva Lesonsky

All the attention social media gets in the marketing world might be convincing you that email is dead. Far from it. Email marketing volume hit record-setting levels during June 2012, and total email volume growth for this year is expected to surpass that of 2011, according to a study by email marketing company Responsys Inc. reported by BtoB Online.

Responsys projects email volume will grow by some 20 percent this year, compared to 16 percent growth last year. The company attributes it to several factors, including businesses shifting from direct mail and print to email; the greater ROI of email compared to other marketing channels; and the fact that many people prefer to get marketing messages by email.

Keep your lists clean. List hygiene is crucial to good ROI. Regularly update your lists and use opt-in email to ensure you aren’t accused of spamming.

Provide something of value. Depending on your industry, “value” may be useful content, important information or limited-time discounts and deals. Make sure your emails don’t come across as solely self-promotional and that there’s something in it for the recipient.

Target. Segment your email lists by factors that matter to you such as gender, age, business size or shopping habits. Then you can send targeted emails to users tailored for their interests and needs.

Use triggered emails. Emails triggered by customer behaviors or time frames are a great way to motivate actions. Consider sending triggered emails if customers leave items in a shopping cart on your ecommerce site, if they haven’t purchased from you in a while or to follow up on a recent purchase.

Use analytics. Your email service probably offers tools to help you monitor what recipients do with your emails, including open rates, forwards and what links they click on. By drilling down and tailoring future emails to recipients based on past actions, you can reap big rewards.

Test. If your emails aren’t getting opened enough, use regular testing to improve your success rate. You can test many elements, including time of day, day of week, subject lines and email length and content to see what gets results. By regularly testing, you’ll be able to learn what works and fine-tune your email marketing efforts accordingly.

Image by Flickr user Sean MacEntee (Creative Commons)

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Tags: Email marketing, small business
Posted in Email Marketing, Marketing, Small Business, small business | 9 Comments »

Yesmail Study Uncovers How to Drive Engagement on Facebook, Twitter, and YouTube

July 17th, 2012 :: Monika Jansen

Want to know exactly how to drive engagement on Facebook, Twitter, and YouTube?

Well, you’re in luck, because Yesmail Interactive conducted a study of 20 leading retail brands (Gap, American Apparel, H&M, Urban Outfitters, etc.) from January 1 through March 31 of this year, and they made some interesting discoveries on what you can do to drive consumer engagement and build brand loyalty.

Jason Warnock, VP of Marketing Intelligence & Measurement at Yesmail, walked me through the study’s results:

Facebook

Day of week: The majority of marketers were posting on Facebook on Fridays, but engagement was pretty low that day. Surprisingly, Tuesday campaigns generate the highest level of engagement, yet that day was fourth in terms of when campaigns were deployed.

Time of day: Another surprise: the time between 10pm and midnight had the highest level of engagement but was the least utilized by marketers. Apparently, that is when the target demographic of 18-35 year-olds are on Facebook.

Frequency: The 5 most engaging brands posted once/day, and the 5 least engaging brands posted twice/day.

Most engaging content: Photos generated the highest level of user engagement, proving that a picture says a thousand words. Photo content, however, makes up only 43% of all campaigns deployed. “This explains why Facebook was so eager to acquire Instagram,” Warnock noted.

Video, meanwhile, was only utilized by 6.5% of all campaigns, even though engagement was almost higher than for photos.

Effect of email on Facebook campaign engagement: When an email campaign was deployed right before a social media campaign, brands saw a 50% improvement in Facebook engagement, while 2 emails led to 100% improvement.

Twitter

Day of week: Though 20% of all Twitter campaigns were deployed on Friday, they garnered the lowest engagement. Turns out Tuesday, Wednesday, and Thursday are the best days to tweet.

Time of day: Think super early in the day. The times between 5 – 6am and 7 – 8am garnered the most engagement. “Just like the emails at the top of your inbox get read first, the tweets at the top of your Twitter stream get read first,” pointed out Warnock.

Frequency: The best engagement came from 2 tweets per day, while the lowest engagement came from 3 or more tweets per day.

Most engaging content: Asking Twitter follows to retweet something in exchange for a giveaway; mentioning or quoting a celebrity; or tweeting a famous quote all garner the highest level of engagement.

Effect of email on Twitter campaign engagement: Twitter enagement is 20% higher if an email campaign goes out that same day. If you send out 2 email campaigns, Twitter engagement increases 40%.

YouTube

Day of week: Mondays generate the most engagement, though that day lagged in the bottom 3 days of when campaigns were deployed.

Video length: Shorter is definitely better: Videos that are 16-31 seconds long generate the highest level of engagement. Any longer, and people stop watching.

***

Warnock said this study had inspired Yesmail to produce more information like this on a monthly basis – and I look forward to sharing upcoming findings with you!

Image courtesy of Yesmail.

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Tags: email campaigns, Email marketing, Facebook, Jason Warnock, Marketing, social media, Twitter, Yesmail Interactive, YouTube
Posted in Email Marketing, Marketing, Social Media | No Comments »