Are you getting the most you can out of your data?

Posted on November 12, 2012 by Stephanie Fischbach

 

Do you use Google Analytics?

Now a days, if you do enough research and searching, almost anything can be found online, especially business resources. It’s come to my attention, recently, that not everyone is familiar with Google Analytics and the valuable information it can provide you and your business with.

 

 

Want to know how people are getting to your website?

or

How long they’re staying on your website?

or

Where they are located within the World?

These are just a few of items that can be found when you add Google Analytics to your reporting tactics. With that said, you must be throwing figures around as to how much an invaluable service like this could cost? Ready to be blown away?

It’s free!

All you need is some time to set up an account, access to your content management system to input tracking codes and some dedicated tutorials/walk through time to master the system and you’re done!

Interested in some of the other features? Did you know that you are able to customize your dashboard to only display items that are valuable to you and your business? Aren’t you interested in seeing which pages/features are favored on your website? What about mobile statistics?

I recommend opening a Google Analytics account to all of our customers. When you utilize our software’s reporting system alongside Google Analytics, you’re truly able to get the most out of your data! Plus, our system allows you to tag each individual campaign with Google Analytics specific fields so that it coincides with all of your reporting tools flawlessly!

Do you use Google Analytics? What is your experience with it? I’d love to hear from you!

Oh, and Happy Emailing!

 

Stephanie Fischbach

Pay Per Visit Email

Posted in B2B Marketing, B2C Marketing, Metrics & Analytics, Multichannel Marketing, Uncategorized | Tagged , , , , , , , , , , , | Leave a comment

Is there a wrong way to do Social Media?

Posted on October 11, 2012 by Stephanie Fischbach

Are you making the most out of your opportunities?

Are you in or are you out?

I recently read an article regarding social media, response times and missed opportunities for organizations. It seems as if these days, almost every organization has or should have some type of social media strategy. For some, this means simply creating a Facebook business page or Twitter account that they may check weekly or post a remark on their sign outside that says “Like us on Facebook!” For others, their social media strategy yields more attention, posting hourly tweets, posts or articles on several social media platforms, regularly checking hashtags associated with their field or business and keeping an eye open for customer service/social media opportunities.

Is there a wrong way to do social media? No, not per se. But there are a lot of missed opportunities out there for people to make the most out of their social media structure.

Perfect Example

Here’s a good example from something I saw this morning. Every day, I pass the same businesses on my commute to work. This morning, I noticed a Veterinary Clinic’s street sign that said “Like us on Facebook.” I thought to myself, where’s the incentive there? It doesn’t seem as if they had a clear plan as to why or how to utilize their social media platform or were able to provide a “passerby” reason to go to their Facebook page and like anything. Because I work in the field of social media and email marketing, I began to think about what I would do if I were the business owner in this situation. Instead of suggesting the audience to simply ‘like their Facebook page,’ what if they phrased it in a way that would encourage people to look more closely.

  • “ Check out what specials we have to offer for you and your pet, Like us on Facebook to learn more.”
  • “ Want to know how to keep your pet from scratching or getting fleas this season, check out our FB page.”

With the help of a few extra plastic letters on their sign, they could have driven a significant amount more purpose and traffic to their Facebook page and engagement.

Have you seen any missed opportunities for social media awareness or engagement? I’d love to hear what you think and your suggestions to optimize engagers.

As always, Happy Emailing!

 

Stephanie Fischbach

Pay Per Visit Email

Posted in B2C Marketing, Multichannel Marketing, Social Media, Uncategorized | Tagged , , , , , , | Leave a comment

Facebook Marketing Moves Beyond the Side Panel

Posted on October 4, 2012 by Stephanie Fischbach

Over the past couple months, there has been a significant increase in Facebook highlighting their advertising options for those who have a Business Page or are interested in this feature. Personally, when I think of advertisements on Facebook, I envision brands emblems and or posts being highlighted on the right side bar with some information to “learn more.” Although the advertisements are seen ( and I must admit, sometimes clicked ) they never really affected my personal space, or news feed, or were obtrusive in any way. As most of you, I use my personal Facebook for personal reasons, like to communicate with friends and family, watch some hilarious videos and maybe have some fun with Words with Friends.

Don’t get me wrong, however. We, too, have a business page for our company, and update it daily with helpful information for our followers and customers. But that is because our followers have requested to learn more and stay in the Emarketing loop by “liking us.” But what about if we were to solicit our information to those who didn’t necessarily “like us” or want to know more?

But I digress from my original point.

Last night, while I was chatting with a friend on Facebook catching up, I noticed a very interesting message in my Newsfeed. What was it you might add? Well if you check your Facebook half as much as I do, then you probably noticed it too. A post from Mitt Romney. Here it is, just in case you missed it.

Mitt Romney Facebook Sponosored Newsfeed Post

Am I friends with Mitt Romney? No. How about Obama? Nope, not him either.

So, at first I was baffled as to why updates from a presidential candidate was appearing on my newsfeed. Until I noticed the “Sponsored” located in the top right hand corner.

For those on Twitter, remind you of anything? Sponsored tweets maybe?

According to Business Insider, Mitt Romney has been using this new Facebook Advertising strategy since June of this year. Maybe this is the first time I am noticing, but it’s interesting none the less.

What do you think? Politics aside, do you like this type of advertising? Have you seen other forms of advertising that are similar?Do you consider it unsolicited or spam like since you never opted in to receiving that information? How is it similar? How does it differ?

I’d love to hear from you.

As always, Happy Emailing!

 

Stephanie Fischbach

Pay Per Visit Email

Posted in B2B Marketing, B2C Marketing, Multichannel Marketing, Privacy and Permission, Social Media, Trending, Uncategorized | Tagged , , , , , , , | Leave a comment

What does it take to ensure an “always” for display images? And what happens if they don’t?

Posted on September 27, 2012 by Stephanie Fischbach

Valuable content. That would probably be the obvious choice. Think about what makes you hit that “Always Display Images” link. What differentiates that message from the regular “Display images” one time link? Sure, if you find yourself continuously opening and browsing messages from certain senders, this may be a no-brainer.

On he opposite side of the spectrum, what if your images are never displayed? I previously wrote an article about Plain text emails versus HTML and one of the major arguments there was the presence of images and the lack of rendering and the effect it had on the campaign. I read an astonishing fact the other day, thanks to @clickz, that only 55% of readers turn their display images on. As my friend, @WhatsGregDoing mentioned, what about the other 45%?

This is especially concerning when your campaign looks like this with images turned off.

when emails render poorly..

The most important tip to remember?

Break up heavy images with text so that your call to action is still viewable by those who don’t ‘display images.’ Click to tweet

I can’t tell you how many emails I have received ( from large, well known brands with huge marketing departments ) with a single image containing all of the text. Do marketers assume that readers will ‘turn their images on’ for just about anybody?

What do you think? Do you turn images on out of curiosity or only to those trusted organizations?

I’d love to hear from you!

As always, Happy Emailing!

 

Stephanie Fischbach

Pay Per Visit Email

Posted in B2B Marketing, B2C Marketing, Email Content, Email Creative, Uncategorized | Tagged , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , | Leave a comment

Top THREE ‘Must Haves’ for your first email campaign

Posted on September 20, 2012 by Stephanie Fischbach

Are all of your ducks in a row?Interesting in adding email marketing to the mix? Not sure where to begin? It seems as if there are a few different ways to attack email marketing. The one extreme is to plan and plot the foreseeable goals and plans for the campaign weeks in advance, outlining exactly what results you would like to receive and tying the content and copy to trigger those behaviors. The latter, and unfortunately the most popular way, is to take whatever materials you already have provided to you, throw together some text and images with links, click send and hope for the best. Which technique do you think renders the best results? If you chose the first one, you would be absolutely correct. But all too often, email marketing seems to be more of an afterthought or simply an addition to your current marketing plan simply because “you know you should.”

Whether or not you choose to believe it, Email is one of the most widely used and most popular forms of communication.

Pingdom compiled a great report of statistics for 2011, in regards to Emarketing. Below are some of the most fascinating stats for the year of 2011.

  • The number of email accounts rose to 3.146 billion accounts. Click to tweet.
  • The average corporate user receives an average of 112 emails per day. Click to tweet.
  • The estimated return on investment for $1  on email marketing is $44.25. Click to tweet.

Still interested in putting some more thought in to your email marketing plan and campaign? Good idea!

Below I have compiled THREE of the major ‘must haves’ needed in order to successfully execute a top notch email marketing campaign.

  1. Have a clear and concise message that you want to relay to your reader. Don’t throw five million points at them and expect them to pick one and run with it. Plan out what the optimum behavior would be and plan your campaign around getting that desired reaction.
  2. If you don’t have them already, create yourself an unsubscribe and assign a “To” and “Reply to” email addresses. Even though the thought of unsubscribes to your brilliant campaign appears unforeseeable, reality is, people will unsubscribe. Make sure you assign appropriate email addresses for these actions and more importantly, monitor these inboxes closely.
  3. Plan your segmentation and testing. During the development stages of your marketing, plan on how you plan on segmenting your lists and providing the reader with detailed information to trigger those responses from them. If you’re just starting out with testing, pull the open or click through reports for first campaign, and send a specific email to those users educating or more detail specific.

 

What do you think about these three points? I know there are much more, but do you think that I outlined some of the most missed? I would love to hear from you!

 

As always, Happy Emailing and Thanks for reading!

 

Stephanie Fischbach

Pay Per Visit Email

 

 

Posted in B2B Marketing, B2C Marketing, Email Content, Email Creative, Metrics & Analytics, Uncategorized | Tagged , , , , , , , , , , , , | Leave a comment

What do you know about the “read rate” for emails? Want to know more?

Posted on September 13, 2012 by Stephanie Fischbach

Email ReadingThanks to Ken Magill, I have. He recently posted an article titled, ISPs judge you on a metric you can’t measure, which is about this “read rate” and how  ISP’s apparently use it to critique your email campaign’s reputation for being in their inboxes. It seems not much is known about this metric, nor is there a desire to know, according to some experts.

According to Laura Atkins, the principal at email deliverability organization, Word to the Wise, the read rate is meant to distinguish itself from what marketer’s know as the “open rate.” And how it differs, according to Listrak, is that the read rate tracks those messages that were opened and remain opened for over five seconds. Never heard of this metric before? Neither have some of your partners. Click here to tweet to your followers and keep them up to date!

Don’t think five seconds is enough time? Remember our post on the F-pattern? You, as the sender, only have mere seconds to help persuade your reader to take interest in the information you want to share. This, obviously, has a lot to do with how the information is laid out and how valuable the content is to the reader.

According to some, the rate is significant and shouldn’t be ignored, while others believe that it is not a true representation of the success of your campaign. Most suggest that it may be a more accurate representation of your results than the open rate. According to Return Path’s Julia Peavy, read rate does not depend on the rendering or downloading of images in order to trigger the open result. Read rates are triggered by ISP’s such as Google or Hotmail as being “read” or not, most likely due to the time associated with the email.

If you’ve been following the 2012 elections, you may want to check out Mrs.Peavy’s article on Using Read Rates to Gauge the Presidential Email Campaign Performance.

Do you use the read rate to assess your campaign’s performance? What kind of results have you seen?

I’d love to hear from you!

And Happy Emailing!

 

Stephanie Fischbach

Pay Per Visit Email

Posted in B2B Marketing, B2C Marketing, Metrics & Analytics, Trending, Uncategorized | Tagged , , , , , , , , , , , | Leave a comment

Don’t you want your followers to engage with your brand?

Posted on September 6, 2012 by Stephanie Fischbach

TwitterWith an abundance of literature, tips, blogs and other resources available online, it’s easy for your blog or message to get lost. So what do the pros say to do? Keep things short, simple and concise, in fear of losing your reader somewhere in your third or fourth paragraph about you or your company.

Recently, I have been adding “Click to tweet” messages in my blogs, thanks to Derek Halpern, of Social Triggers.

“Click to tweet” offers another great way to easily share valuable information to your readers.  <- Try it by clicking here!

Also known as a “Sound bite,” this type of delivery of valuable content is meant as a short message, no longer than ten words, that describes the main meaning of your message.

Are these types of marketing tactics helpful to your cause? They certainly can be. “Sound bites” offer a creative way in which followers, likers, customers and fans can engage with your brand, and learn something new too.  Using “sound bites,” videos or images can have a huge impact on your marketing campaign. According to Dream Grow (@dreamgrow) People are most likely to engage with branded content on social media that contains pictures (44%), status updates (40%) and videos (37%).

What do you think? How do you think engagement on Twitter versus Facebook affects your engagement or branding?

 

I’d love to hear from you!

Happy Emailing!

 

Stephanie Fischbach

Pay Per Visit Email

Posted in B2B Marketing, B2C Marketing, Email Content, Email Creative, Multichannel Marketing, Social Media, Uncategorized | Tagged , , , , , , , , , , , | Leave a comment

3 Common Mistakes You’re Probably Making With Your Email Newsletter

Posted on August 30, 2012 by Stephanie Fischbach
Oopsies!

Photo compliments of the languagelab.ca

Do you send out an email newsletter to your subscribers? Have you mapped out a sending plan or goal in the purpose behind your campaigns and what it is you would like to receive from it? If your answer is not, more loyal customers, than you’ve got it all wrong. Loyalty = Customers for life, and the sooner your realize this and begin offering your customers advocacy and information of value to create that loyalty, the sooner your business will prosper.

Simply having an email newsletter is not enough. If you’re doing it all wrong, it may not hurt you more than if you didn’t have a newsletter. But when done correctly, it has the possibility to create and flourish meaningful, value filled networking opportunities for effective and significant communication.

Below are three of the most common mistakes that I have seen ( and received ) in regards to email newsletters.

1.       Not considering how the email will render in the eyes of your subscriber – Plain text vs HTML – as long as the email’s deliverability in on point and the rendering of the campaign when “display images is off” is legible, than it doesn’t matter. I urge you to think about the emails that you enjoy receiving, from both B2B and B2C, and use that to your advantage.

2.       Hiding the purpose of your email within paragraphs of text – Too many times, I see senders send long, novel worthy emails to their subscribers, expecting them not to get bored or fall asleep mid-read ( or worse yet, delete and unsubscribe ). If there’s one thing you should take away from this blog article, keep it short & sweet.

3.       Being consistent with your template type and sending of campaign – If you’ve successfully mapped and planned out your email marketing campaign, than you don’t need to worry about this one. Trying out a new format, style or template every week will not win you subscribers. Be consistent in your sendings, and maybe ask your subscribers what they would like to see!

Follow these three tips, and you’lll be on your way to success! Did I miss one vital tip or mistake that you often see? I’d love to hear from you!

As always, Happy Emailing!

 

Stephanie Fischbach

Pay Per Visit Email

 

 

Posted in Uncategorized | Leave a comment

Games + Email Marketing?

Posted on August 23, 2012 by Stephanie Fischbach

Image compliments of TechnoratiIn the world of Emarketing, there’s a recent buzz about Gamification and how it has already and is expected to impact the Email Marketing industry. Gamification, for those who are not aware, is the integration of game dynamics into either a website, email campaign or another form of digital marketing. The point is to not only increase engagement from customers, but to also educate and display information or sales in a less offensive and hopefully, more appealing manner.

It seems as if the name of the game in today’s digital marketing industry, is to keep things exciting, fresh and new. Gamification offers this to its readers, and with growing increase in Gamification on social media platforms such as Facebook for brands, it seems like a number of brands are looking more into this approach in their marketing tactics.

Although there are several pros to integrating Gamification with email marketing, there also come several criticisms from those who find it inappropriate or unworthy of marketing dollars and time.

I came across a recent article by Direct Marketing News, thanks to a friend of mine, Jim Morton (@jimatgoolara). This article, titled The Blunder of Gamification, outlines the above mentioned reasons as to why Gamification is a “gimmick” and “doesn’t improve communication.” The article also goes into detail stating “Gamification without solid core ideas to communicate, and a clear, concise method of doing so, is doomed to fail.” But don’t you believe that any marketing project or challenge you embark on needs a plan or method prior to execution?

Sure, Gamification isn’t appropriate for all avenues or areas of business, but for some, especially retail, it offers a new right brained approach to keep  your audience’s attention and present data in a new exciting and interactive  way. *Click to Tweet*But Gamification or not, if your content is poor, invaluable and poorly constructed, this is not the route for you ( nor is any other! )

What do you think? Do you think that integrating gaming with email marketing will be around for long or is this just a fad? I’d love to hear from you!

As always, Happy Emailing!

Stephanie Fischbach

Pay Per Visit Email

Posted in B2B Marketing, Email Content, Email Creative, Multichannel Marketing, Social Media, Trending, Uncategorized | Tagged , , , , , , , , , , , , | Leave a comment