Archive for the ‘Marketing Strategy’ Category

I’ve recently been exploring the opportunities for professional services firms within the sphere of social media and I found a great piece by Suzanne Lowe & David Kipp of Ross & Baruzzini (consultancy) that supports my findings.

It is startlingly clear that due to cultural and structural barriers many firms are not allowing themselves to leverage their internal resources for marketing and selling activities and are thus side stepping the potential returns that shifting towards engaging with social networking environments could return.

To be effective social media marketing relies directly on experts imparting knowledge to those asking the questions. For example if I’m interested in a conveyancing service from a law firm for example then a quick tip from an actual conveyancing solicitor via a LinkedIn discussion would be more welcome than a nod towards the firm from a marketing practitioner.

The case for allowing staff to market on behalf of the firm is doesn’t need to be made any clearer to some firms and there are many that are already taking the initiative (especially in the States) as this quote from the article suggests “This “new normal” professional firm more effectively harnesses people for marketing and selling, no matter what their function or station”.

So the question is not whether you move towards a culture and internal structure where “every person gains competency in marketing and business development”, it’s when.

Another reason why your people are your greatest asset.

Check out the article  http://www.management-issues.com/2009/11/27/opinion/82442-7607.asp#

Posted via web from Brooks Digital Marketing

Setting Up a Killer Campaign

Now you’ve got your first data set ready as discussed in part 1 of the email marketing series it is time to set up a new campaign. Most good email marketing software will allow you to segment your data into lists.

Before you send we need to decide who we are targeting. Segmentation is the path to high conversion rates so personalisation and relevancy focused offer targeting are the keys to success.

Segmentation can start right at the point of data capture. For example in our data capture preparation we could have set up two sign up forms on our website, one for software related offers and another for hardware.

So, for your first communication you could either send a separate email to both of these lists targeted at their preference or you could just send a generic email to both of the lists however, the former is more bound to get better results due to the targeted nature of the approach.

Next we will talk about the types of campaigns and how to set them up to get stellar results.

How to Design an Email that Converts

Here are our top 6 tips for creating highly successful campaigns.

• 1. An effective subject line should be concise preferably under 70 characters and include a strong call to action. You must avoid spammy subject lines and content as being blacklisted by ISP’s will seriously hamper your future efforts.
• 2. Include a friendly ‘from’ name -this could be the brand name or a well know representative of the company.
• 3. Design should be consistent with your content and your brand should be clearly visible.
• 4. Images can increase the click through rates but beware that email clients render emails differently so it is important to choose software that allows for this technicality.
• 5. Content should be punchy and to the point and offer real value to the recipient – this is vital as most people are tuned into their own desires 95% of the time.
• 6. have multiple calls to action encourage those valuable click throughs to your site.
• 7. Try to have a well proportioned number of highly visible links to avoid looking spammy.
• 8. You should also put as much as possible at the top since most recipients preview emails in preview panes.
• 9. Viral capability is important so try to choose software that allows you to include a forward to a friend link. Friendship by its nature encourages trust and emails sent from friends have high open rates.
• 10. Your Landing page should tally up with your offer in terms of design and message. Your landing page is where you want the conversion to happen. It is critical that the offer you made in the email is ready and waiting for your new potential customer.
• BONUS TIP. Have a distinct landing page separate from your main website content, this will lessen distractions and encourage conversions.

This concludes part 2 of the Email marketing series.

Thank you for joining us, see you in part 3.