'Net Features : internet marketing

Emails Get a Social Life

Michael Garrity — Fri, 22 Jun 2012 16:30:00 GMT

We hear all the time about the impact that social media has had on the world of online marketing, but even as Facebook takes over the world, email remains one of the two most popular activities on the Web, and thus, still a necessary and beneficial channel for Internet marketers.

However, as of late, brands and marketers have been clamoring for a way to tie these two avenues together to help make email campaigns more social and increase their virality. Email marketing service Campaigner listened to these concerns and included new social sharing capabilities into its email marketing programs, in addition to other major enhancements.

“The synergies between email marketing and social media are evident, particularly as email marketers explore the value of enabling their messages to be easily shared on social networks like Facebook and Twitter,” says Campaigner’s Product Manager, Paul Turnbull.

By adding a social sharing feature to its email platform, Campaigner is helping marketers take a holistic approach to sharing their message and helping develop their brand with new share-with-your-network (SWYN) functionality that allows subscribers to share the emails they receive with their friends and followers on Facebook, Twitter, LinkedIn and Google+ using sharable permalinks. It will come with easy-to-read analytics that let marketers see the reciprocal traffic that they get from social network shares that is independent of their regular email campaign activity, which helps determine which social channels generate the most traffic.

Marketing emails will now come adorned with a ‘sharebar’ across the top of the message that allows users to “Like” the email on Facebook (where it will be posted to the user’s personal page), share it on Twitter, Google+ or LinkedIn or send it in an email to one of their contacts. So, the next time a special promotion or insightful newsletter particularly affects a recipient, they can share it on the social Web to potentially hundreds of prospective subscribers, improving the discoverability and extending the reach of the email marketers, while also providing another way to build their subscriber lists.

And in order to better appease these subscribers, Campaigner has also included functionality for customized subscription management forms and messaging. This allows companies to customize how the subscribers access and manage their email preferences, edit contact information and opt-in or out of the mailing lists, or just the kind of campaigns they receive.

This ability is a “total change” from what was previously available, as Campaigner only offered marketers generic, mostly inflexible subscription forms. At the request of its customers, the company made it possible for marketers to easily brand their businesses at every step of the process by editing the subscription pages that let recipients choose to opt-in to other lists, change their email addresses or unsubscribe. They also have the option to make any mailing list either visible or hidden, a useful feature for separating males lists used entirely for internal contact groups from those that subscribers can opt into (or out of)

In addition to these two major enhancements, Campaigner also extended support to include the latest versions of the Mozilla Firefox and Google Chrome Web browsers and included multi-user support that allows administrators to add and manage other users within the primary account. Plus, the company improved its Smart Email Builder tool for creating new emails. It now offers greater text formatting and alignment controls, and has capabilities for inserting merged fields.

Finally, Marketers can now include Quicklinks into the body of their email messages, which are customized, frequently used hyperlinks (such as subscription management and social media links) stored to be more easily inserted into an email. Users can store up to 25 different self-defined links, including some offered by Campaigner (e.g. links to “Like” the brand on Facebook), or more unique ones, so long as the users know the necessary syntax to include them.

Improve Engagement and Conversions By Playing Games

Michael Garrity — Tue, 27 Mar 2012 22:05:00 GMT

Have you heard of Fanplayr? If not, keep reading, because this new marketing solution could really help improve your social media strategy, particularly in increasing user engagement and conversions. Or, at the very least, it'll pique your interest in the rapidly growing field of gamification.

Fanplayr is a social game marketing tool for converting targeted consumers to sales by combining social coupons and gamification marketing. It works by helping users create a special coupon based on its "type," value and amount and then promote them among their various Web properties. However, Fanplayr provides more than just easy coupon creation; it also gives the user an easy way to add gamification options to their offers, which can increase user engagement with the coupons and drive conversions.

Marketers can include the social game coupons and offers to their emails, Web pages, e-commerce sites, mobile properties and, of course, social pages to improve their reach, influence social consumers and turn them into sales. Best of all, the solution is self-service, meaning it requires no IT to implement and making it perfect for everyone from agency and direct marketers to Internet retailers to small and medium-sized businesses.

This is a hot time to start implementing such a service, as eMarketer has reported that nearly 92.5 million Internet users are likely to use online coupons throughout the next year.

Now, Fanplayr has entered into a “strategic integration partnership” with e-commerce solution provider Shopify to help online marketers jump on the gamification bandwagon.

Fanplayr will now be available to Shopify’s 20,000 e-commerce merchants via the company’s App Store. When retailers download the application, they’ll be able to create social coupons and/or marketing games, and then promote their creations across Facebook and Twitter pages, e-commerce pages, emails and even Facebook Ads.

Hot Reads for Web Marketers

Michael Garrity — Wed, 31 Aug 2011 13:30:00 GMT

Labor Day is right around the corner, which means that we're about to enter the busiest time of year for Internet marketers. Summer break will be over and people will begin to flock to the Web for a variety of reasons, making this the perfect time for marketers to brush up on their mad marketing skills.

The best way to do that is to spend the upcoming long weekend curled up with a nice book, preferably outside by the grill. That is why our crack investigative team has scoured the Web to find some of the most recent books on Internet marketing. These books cover a variety of techniques, from social media to SEO to analytics and much, much more.

Regardless of your experience as an online marketer, there is always new innovation and information to be gleaned, and these books will help you improve upon what you already know. Please keep in mind that there are only two weeks left to secure a free copy of WM's own book, Web 360: The Fundamentals of Web Success, which can be obtained by ordering a professional-level subscription to Website Magazine.

Until then, here are some of the hottest reads about Internet marketing:

Likeable Social Media by Dave Kerpen
This book is by Dave Kerpen, who is the founder and CEO of the award-winning social media marketing firm Likeable Media. So, needless to say, he has some experience in the field. This book covers an array of topics concerning social media marketing, such as the importance of responding to comments, defining your target audience and creating a presence for your company on the social network. This is one of the most highly rated books on the subject on all of Amazon, and it was just released earlier this year. This is a great start, then, for anyone looking to quickly improve their brand's social media profile(s).

The Internet Marketing Bible by Zeke Camusio
This was a book specifically written for business owners and marketers, meaning it doesn't contain much (if any) technical jargon that could confuse unfamiliar readers. Camusio designed the book to be to-the-point, removing all of the unnecessary elements that will often clutter other books on Internet marketing and getting right into the action, providing a step-by-step tutorial on how to become successful online. It covers a range of topics, everything from SEO to Pay-Per-Click to website design, and provides the necessary tools and strategies that will help you get a better grasp on the basics of the Internet marketing world. This is a great book for marketers who are just starting out, but also an excellent resource for seasoned marketers as well.

SEO Made Simple (Second Edition): Strategies for Dominating the World's Largest Search Engine by Michael H. Fleischner
The second edition of the highly praised and very popular SEO Made Simple is an excellent revision of an already great book. The focus of this book, as the subtitle tells us, is not just how to improve your SEO, but how to conquer Google. Fleischner has been working in online marketing for over fourteen years and is considered an expert in the fields of SEO and Internet marketing. Included in this title are tips and tricks for social media SEO, using Google Places, meta tags and even a step-by-step link building guide. This new edition adds over 20 new pages of various techniques to optimize your brand or website's search results. This may be the most comprehensive book on the subject of SEO, and with the additions included in the second edition, the best keeps getting better.

Content is Cash: Leveraging Great Content and the Web for Increased Traffic, Sales, Leads and Buzz by Wendy Montes de Oca
Content may be the most overlooked aspect of Internet marketing, and this book aims to fix that. This books shows you how you can integrate and syncronize some of the best Web marketing techniques available today to, as the title states, drive traffic, sales, leads and buzz for your brand based on your preexisting content. Among the subjects covered in the book are how to use undiscovered content that is both helpful and actionable, make your content easier to find and use content to create more visibility and awareness for your brand or site. Montes de Oca has over twenty years of professional experience and is currently a marketing blogger and writer, as well as owner of the Precision Marketing and Media consulting firm.

Affiliate Program Management: An Hour a Day by Evgenii Prussakov
This is the affiliate marketing release by the hugely popular An Hour a Day series of Internet marketing books. This guide is meant to provide a detailed, real-world, task-based approach to developing and managing an affiliate marketing program. It covers various aspects of the affiliate business, such as market research, payment models, recruiting and more. This book is full of helpful hints, tips and techniques that can help any aspiring affiliate really get off the ground and should be considered essential reading for anyone looking to launch their own network. Plus, it's co-authored by Evgenii Prussakov, aka Geno, the founder of AM Navigator and one of the most successful and famous affiliate marketers in the world. If you're going to trust anybody, he's not a bad choice.

Brand Media Strategy: Integrated Communications Planning in the Digital Era by Antony Young
Unlike Likeable Social Media, this book, by Optimedia International U.S. CEO Antony Young, is about promoting your brand all over the Web, instead of just on social media sites. Of course, social media is heavily featured in Brand Media Strategy, but so are YouTube, the iPhone and other areas of the Web where your brand needs to make itself known. Young covers the future of advertising in traditional media and how it will interact and compete with digital media, as well as how to get maximum impact out of digital media portals like search, social and mobile. This book offers a look at the Internet from a media-based perspective and will help you stretch the Web to raise awareness for your brand as far as you can.

Social Media Analytics & Internet Marketing

Administrator — Fri, 04 Feb 2011 20:30:00 GMT

As social media keeps providing new marketing opportunities, in addition to a way for online users to simply pass the time, the need for social analytics is becoming more pressing.

Utilizing reporting tools that are available online today can help Internet marketers continue to shape their social media strategy and overall online interaction methods.

Some of the most important metrics to track when it comes to social media include the ROI — how time spent marketing on sites like Facebook and Twitter translates into revenue for the company — and the growth and interaction factors surrounding a company’s online profiles and communities.

Any metric can be broken down into granular parts for a closer look or to add quantitative micro-metrics to an overarching qualitative metric. For example, the number of links acquired on shared or viral content pages via social media is a key factor for the SEO-minded.

But instead of looking only at how many links the viral content page received you can break it down by:

1. Volume of links for a number of pieces of content
2. Amount of links based on number of visits
3. Shift in site-wide link count over time
4. Competitive link growth
5. Links by category / topic
6. Links by social channel

The important thing to remember when it comes to social media analytics is to take into consideration what “success” means relative to the page and brand that is being measured. Comparing a small business’ page to a nationwide, well-known business is an impossible feat — the numbers will always be a disappointment.

New Developments in Facebook Insights

Facebook makes it easy to track page metrics by sending administrators a list of statistics every Monday, including the growth in fans when compared to the previous week and the traffic that has actually come to the page during that week. These statistics can then be calculated into averages per month, as a way to report growth in traffic and overall interaction.

Facebook also reports Insights on every post made by an administrator on a page, along with new graphs that display users’ gender and age range. These demographics may be helpful for companies that have a strict target audience — say a product targeted towards a specific gender (such as Axe body spray or Cover Girl makeup) or an age range target, like Seventeen Magazine or Budweiser. When users outside of the target demographic area visit the page regularly, this may reflect how online and traditional marketing campaigns affect and draw in their audiences.

Post insights include the number of impressions or how many times a user has seen that page’s post on either their Facebook wall or on the page’s wall, and the percentage of interaction with the post. This percentage takes any action a user might do with the post — whether that be “liking” it or commenting — then divides it by the number of impressions. For the most part, impression percentages are quite low, depending on the number of fans of a page and their average interaction rate. For example, if a Facebook page is created for a study group, it may only have 30 “likes” but the interaction percentage may be very high, especially if the users are going to the page daily and commenting on every post.

Audience size, average interaction and post quality are all important factors when evaluating an interaction percentage. Most pages with 1,000 fans or less will consider one percent or more to be a resounding success, whereas a page of a famous name brand or celebrity with thousands of fans (5,000 or more) and an active community might see an average of two to five percent.

The New Twitter Analytics Platform

Twitter announced a new analytics platform that allows users to track follows, unfollows, clicks and overall traffic. Expected to be released in 2011, the Twitter Analytics service is different than Facebook Insights because it tracks clicks in addition to some of the other, similar metrics.

Because Twitter is primarily used as a link-sharing service, tracking links is one of the most valuable analytics that can be reported on the platform. While this can already be completed using outside services, having the ability to access the data directly on Twitter could make it more accurate and reliable, and definitely more convenient

Current Independent Reporting Tools

There are several other, free or third-party independent reporting tools that can track links and mentions of a company’s name or products on social media. Bit.ly, TwitterFeed, Tweet- Deck, and Social Mention are a few great tools that can be utilized to offer customized social media analytics reporting. Plugging the bit.ly API key into TwitterFeed, along with UTM tags, allows you to track clicks from an RSS feed published on Twitter in bit.ly, and the UTM tags can track your posted links in Google Analytics. Tracking the source and medium UTM tags (displayed as http://www.blog.com/contactus? utm_source=twitter&utm_ medium=twitterfeed) can help calculate ROI — especially if a link posted on Twitter or Facebook with a UTM tag is taking users to a landing page with a shopping cart or contact form that counts as a conversion. Using a link shortener to condense URLs with UTM tags makes it easier than ever to write link URLs without having to worry about character restraints.

Another impressive metric of social media reporting is calculating the percentage increase in average traffic and “likes” on Facebook, or followers on Twitter. Even small numbers, such as going from 44 to 75 “likes” in 10 days, translates into impressive percentage increases. And because of the difficulty in assigning concrete numbers to social media, these types of increases can help to prove that a social media campaign is successful.

While Facebook and Twitter are the most well-known social media platforms in the United States, other websites that should be reported on are YouTube and social bookmarking sites like StumbleUpon and Reddit. YouTube, for example, is offering more customization to advertisers and account owners when it comes to their channels, to help attract and maintain audiences. Measuring average views, comments or another metric applicable to the particular social site are good ways to tell if a marketing strategy on these websites is effective. However, these websites are in a niche of their own and should never be compared to Facebook and Twitter — one of the most important things to remember when reporting social media analytics to determine success.

The Folly of Comparing Social Media Platforms

Before proclaiming that Twitter is more effective than Facebook or any other social platform, their respective statistics need to be put into the perspective of how each of the websites is used differently. Twitter is more of a link and information- sharing platform rather than Facebook, for example, which is used to forge relationships and build repeat interactions over time. The same can be said for comparing LinkedIn with YouTube or StumbleUpon with Reddit.

The basis of social media strategy is the fact that social media as a whole should be treated as an entire set of tools instead of focusing on a single website to bring traffic and business to a company.

Engaging social media to attract and retain an active, participating audience should be the end goal, no matter what social media analytics metrics are being measured. When it comes to social media, both the individual analytics and how different platforms can be combined to form a total online marketing strategy can produce endless opportunities.

About the Author: Jordan Kasteler has been involved in Internet marketing and SEO since 2001. He currently is SVP of Content Development and Managing Partner at BlueGlass Interactive, Inc., an industry leading agency in social media marketing and search engine optimization.

Holistic Marketing Encourages Conversions

MaureenA — Mon, 03 Aug 2009 20:15:00 GMT

Engine Ready released its 2009 industry study on the role traffic sources play in visitor purchasing behavior on e-commerce websites. It confirms what most marketers already know - not relying exclusively on one marketing channel.

The highest traffic source is those visitors coming from direct access - those who type a URL into a browser or have the site already bookmarked in their browser. However, visitors going to websites from paid searches are up tremendously - and they spend more. And other information coming out of this report proves that it's more important now than ever to engage your visitors on-site.

A follow-up study consisting of 20.8 million total visits and 108 million page views, the original study was released in January 2008. In the original study, direct access/bookmarking sites were the visitors who converted the most. Though this group of visitors is still valuable, the newly released data shows that visitors who end up on websites because of paid ads had a higher average order value on e-commerce sites.

Brian Lewis, vice president, Engine Ready discussed the many take-aways from the data. "Visitors who reach a site by typing in the URL or from a bookmark are more valuable than those who come from organic searches. And, the disparity in value between paid and organic is much higher than the original study showed," he says. "This means that marketers should continue to do more A/B testing and improvement to landing pages."

And it appears by the numbers that marketers are doing a better job with landing page design and encouraging conversions on site, Lewis adds. Conversion rates for organic search were at 1.2 percent in the original study and only increased to 1.3 percent in the follow-up study. However, visitors from paid ads which had 1.4 percent conversion rate in the original study increased to 2.0 percent conversion rate in the follow-up - an increase of 42.9 percent.

One interesting number was the bounce rate by source of traffic. Bounce rates were the highest for organic searches with 48.5 percent. This proves that while you need to maintain good SEO practices, you can't optimize for everything. And it might be said that those who reach your site from organic searches might be at the beginning of the purchasing cycle rather than those who are hitting your site from those who get there from paid searches.

Bounce Rate by Source of Traffic

Though conversion rates are up from January 2008, the average order value is down. This is most likely due to the economy which started its decline after the first report was released. It is here that direct access/bookmark visitors declined in value compared to paid visitors. Direct access visitors spent an average of $170.32 in the original study. This declined to $95.29 in the new data. However, paid visitors averaged $138.04 per order. This declined much less to $117.06 per order.

Average Order Value By Source

Page views and time on site increased from the previous report proving that engagement is important for visitors. Other referring sites - websites that link to e-commerce sites - had an overwhelming average value per visit with direct access closely second. Other referral sites increased from $5.01 to $7.19 - and organic had no change at all. Overall average time on site increased 5.8 percent from the previous study with direct access leading the way and paid and other referring sites battling second place. But other referring sites tied for first for the average page views per visit - other referring sites increased almost 50 percent from the previous report.

Average Time on Site By Source (in seconds)

So what does all this information mean to you? A comprehensive approach to marketing is important. "Additionally, since results may vary among companies, [e-commerce merchants] should make sure they are accurately measuring their visitor behavior and adjusting their budget allocations appropriately," Lewis says.

Are you fulfilling the needs of your customers? Are you encouraging them to convert, to come back, to bookmark your site? Is your landing page aesthetically pleasing? Is your navigation easy and encouraging for action? These are all big factors in conversions. Get an outside perspective of your site to guarantee you're hitting the mark.

One way to make sure your site is up to par with current trends and user behavior is to check out Website Magazine's Findability Makeover. Website Magazine columnist Heather Lutze has been helping companies improve their findability for more than 10 years. She offers insight to Web owners to guarantee they are getting in front of their targeted markets. In each issue of WM, Lutze reviews a website's findability and how it can be improved. Submit your website for review at findability@websitemagazine.com. Lutze is also the author of "The Findability Formula: The Easy, Non-Technical Approach to Search Engine Marketing."

Webinar Watch : WebDex Internet Marketing Workshops

Pete Prestipino — Mon, 31 Mar 2008 15:25:00 GMT

WebDex Media Group, an Internet marketing company, is offering a free workshop at their offices in Carrollton, TX on Wednesday April 9 and April 23, 2008 from 1:00 to 3:30 p.m. Paul Slack, President and CEO of WebDex Media Group, will be presenting the 2-hour session that will bring attendees up-to-date on the latest in Internet marketing.

"This workshop is intended for senior management executives, sales and marketing professionals, and anyone wanting to leverage the Internet to help improve the quality and quantity of sales and leads from their website," said Slack.