Marketing, Social Media & Technology

March 16, 2010 | Link This | Email this | Comments (0)

Recently I received an email from a small business I hadn't heard of before.  I figured they must have partnered with a company I've agreed to receive emails from, and overall it was no big deal to receive yet another unsolicited email from a stranger in my inbox.  Usually I hit delete and that's it.

But the difference between them and everybody else's email is they lost me as a potential customer the moment I opened their email.  For a small company, think about how devastating that is if just a fraction of other people feel the same way I do.  This company, whom I'll call Hand & Soap, made a couple of crucial mistakes:

1.  I use Gmail in the Safari browser.  This sounds like no big deal, but this small company didn't take this into consideration and their creative exploded like a Picasso painting.   I have no i...Read More
Industries: Sales and Marketing

March 12, 2010 | Link This | Email this | Comments (0)

When it comes to sending out email campaigns, the difference between success and failure can be tied to being on your consumers' whitelist or on the dreaded blacklist.  But what does this mean?

In it's most simplistic definition, an email whitelist is the list of contacts that your consumer deems acceptable to receive emails from, and your email appears in their inbox instead of their trash or the spam filter.  What this means to you is your email campaign or e-newsletter has a higher chance of being seen and read.  How can you ensure you're being whitelisted?  Here are a couple quick options :

Check your IP score on Return Path's SenderScore.org.  You can check your web address by entering it on their site. [note:  IP address is y...Read More

March 5, 2010 | Link This | Email this | Comments (1)

While researching Lijit, a free search tool for bloggers, I ran across this podcast by Lijit's marketing manager Tara Anderson.  In today's online world, every business knows they need to engage with their customers, but getting started is overwhelming.  Tara discusses why small businesses need to blog, as well as how to get started, and takes the guesswork out of the process that most people face.  It's a quick how-to podcast that I recommend listening to:

...Read More
Industries: Sales and Marketing, Technology

February 27, 2010 | Link This | Email this | Comments (1)

According to an article in AdWeek, four of the top five corporations -- Walmart, Chevron, ConocoPhillips and General Electric -- "consistently post on their Twitter accounts," according to the study, titled "The Fortune 500 and Social Media: A Longitudinal Study of Blogging and Twitter Usage by America's Largest Companies." (ExxonMobil was the exception.)

Also, this study states that thirty-five percent of Fortune 500 corporations had an active Twitter account as of last year (i.e., one with a post within the past 30 days) and among the top 100 companies on the roster, 47 percent had a Twitter account. 

Best Buy launched TwelpForce on Twitter to aid customer support and currently have 24,191 followers.  They cover everything from warranty...Read More

February 24, 2010 | Link This | Email this | Comments (2)

ROI is pretty basic:  ROI = (X – Y) / Y, where X is your final value and Y is your starting value. Usually ROI is measured through dollars and cents; however, the principles can really apply to any type of investment monetary or not.

Possible ROI to measure with your online activity can be:

Web analytics:
# of unique visitors
# of page impressions / page views
# of return visitors
Number of outside links to your web site (relevancy)
click-through rates from a Twitter post or a Facbook post
click-through rates from other social media or ad / campaign performance
Amount of chatter about your company

With Twitter you can measure:
Direct replies
@ replies
# of Tweets sent
# of followers...Read More