Blue Tent Marketing

With the emergence of social applications there has been much debate as to which marketing channel is more efficient, Email or Social Media. Although new technologies such as Twitter and Facebook can be very effective when used correctly, they are more of a way to spread news in 140 characters or less than a marketing channel. These social applications don’t replace the need for relevant, well-executed Email Marketing.

The truth is that people still use email to communicate more than any social application, but that doesn’t mean we can’t combine the two to create an even deadlier email program! 15% of your email list will read your emails and research on Facebook or Twitter to see if others are chatting about the message before taking action. Solid evidence there is room for both Email and Social Media.

About 6 months ago Blue Tent started using a Share With Your Network (SWYN) application called AddThis (which is free) that allows recipients of an email message to post the online version of the email to any social application. Through AddThis you can track which message was sent and to what social media applications it was sent to. AddThis allows you to post to any social application but from our experience Facebook has hands down been the most popular with 172 posts in the last 6 months (pictured).

Using this application allows the audience of those who view your latest email a lot larger and increases the chances of your email marketing campaigns to "go viral". With 300 million Facebook users and the average person having 120 friends, you can see how tying in social media to your email program can create fast, efficient results. By adding in an email subscribe option to the posted online version allows the postee’s friends or followers to sign up for future emails. By allowing these folks to sign up through the posted eNewsletter is key since it also further adds to your premission based list!

The facts speak for themselves. There is still a demand for properly executed email marketing while the advantages of combining your email marketing efforts with your social campaigns are simply too good to pass up. Use the benefits of social media to create more exposure, increase ROI, and increase the list size of your email campaign.

Eric Taylor
Email Project Manager

Last week, members of the Blue Tent email team traveled to Miami, Florida to attend MarketingSherpa’s 4th Annual Email Summit. For the second year in a row, Blue Tent won Gold for Best Postcard-Style Campaign (B-to-B) featuring A Blue Tent Christmas Carol. The goal of this campaign was to wish our clients and subscribers a happy holiday season while simultaneously incentivizing them to complete our Ghost of Internet Marketing’s Past, Present and Yet to Come Journey. We had great feedback and an outstanding response that generated about 75 leads across 11 service categories. Below is a photo of our acceptance of the award. Pictured between the MarketingSherpa presenters, from left to right: Josh Lewis, VP of Marketing, Eric Taylor, Email Project Manager, and Mehri Movassaghpour, Email Project Manger. Ryan Austin, Director of Marketing, is not pictured as he attended the email summit last year and accepted the award on behalf of Blue Tent. Following are our “Top 5 Takeaways” from the conference:

1) Why segmentation is so important
The objective of segmenting your email list members is to increase the relevancy of your messages so that they add more value to your members. To improve responses and results, target messages to different groups with varying subscriber behavior and/or specific demographics.

2) Using trigger-based email campaigns
Trigger-based email can create a truly relevant email campaign that can help your messages connect with subscribers and increase your ROI. This type of email can be based on important dates, subscriber behavior, and recent purchases.

3) Optimizing your email campaign
Optimize your email and landing pages to increase the effectiveness of your email campaign. This can help you identify a favorable marketing strategy and add flexibility to future campaigns.

Dr. Flint McGlaughlin, Director of MarketingExperiments, pointed out that a consumer should immediately be able to answer 3 questions: 1. Where am I at? 2. What can I do here? 3. Why should I do it? If they can’t answer those questions right off the bat then you have problems.

4) Don’t sink in the in-box sea
Nowadays, everyones in-boxes are overwhelmed with mail, whether it’s junk or not. This is a time when marketers will need to re-evalutate their email strategies and analyze how well their existing methods are working to connect with the subscribers.

Stefan Tornquist, MarketingSherpa’s Research Director, mentioned that people aren’t bogged down with the amount of email they receive, they are bogged down with the amount of irrelevant information in most emails.

5) Test different approaches that have measurable results
Create tests that provide immediate results to plan an effective email marketing strategy. Whether it’s a redesigned layout or a new email incentive, you can use the results to determine which approach works best.

Mehri Movassaghpour
Email Project Manager

You smell that? That my friends is the smell of change and whether you cringe or embracing it with open arms, it is upon us. Traditional forms of advertising such as direct mail, print and magazine continue to decrease in value while marketing channels such as email and search are ranking one and two respectively as top performers. Email marketing will be the primary marketing medium of 2009 and I have compiled a list of four key components to a successful, healthy campaign.

Trust is a Must
Viewing email as a relationship and building trust is a big factor in a campaign. You have no doubt been hearing a lot about social networking, web 2.0 and the season premier of American Idol as of late and the big reason to their success is the relationship buidling. Facebook, Twitter and some Idol wannabe’s are so successful because friends and fans are able to get the inside scoop to the personal lives of an individual or company. The same can be said for the email campaign you are running. Don’t simply use email as way to sell sell sell (although yes this ultimately is the goal). Through your emails, let your customers get to know the personality of your company. In addition to those great specials and packages you’re promoting, tell them about the office chair relay race that went on last week. Giving a personality and face to your emails can do wonders!

Source: Marketing Charts

Consistency is Key
Being consistent is a major factor but there is a fine line. Upon opt-in to your email, let your customer decide how often they would like to receive information or at least tell them how often to expect communication from you. Maintaining that consistent sending frequency builds trust which you now know is crucial! It’s no secret that email produces the best ROI (define) out of any other marketing channel (see chart). It may seem logical that the more emails you send, the more money you rake in but you…must…resist. Sending too often or more than the customer would like can lead a sever case of email fatigue. While the customer may not unsubscribe from your list you have worn them out with a barrage of emails and are no longer interested in what you have to say. This in fact is even worse than if they had unsubscribed in the first place. Now they are receiving your emails but not paying any attention therefore lowering your open and click-through rates which in turn can ultimately tarnish your sender reputation. Like the cheesy saying goes “Email is inexpensive, bad email is very costly”.

Design
While many say “It’s what’s inside that matters most”, we all know this statement is a bit flawed. Your emails may have the best of intentions with great, useful information but if it reminds people of the ugly sweater your crazy aunt made for you last year, it is going to turn people away. Keeping the design of your email templates updated and inviting can go a long way in terms of keeping your customers interested.

Know the Value of your Emails
I can’t express how important it is to be able track the ROI of your emails. You may be running a great campaign that follows all of the best practices but in the end, what is the point if you don’t know the value of these emails. Track your emails through analytics, unique 800 numbers, etc. so you not only see the traffic patterns of your customers but can tell your boss “Our $350 email generated a 2,170% ROI“.

For those of you still cringing at the sweet but potent aroma of change, cheer up! Email marketing generated an ROI of $45.06 for every dollar spent in 2008. How can you afford not to have a healthy email campaign?

If you aren’t currently running an email campaign with Blue Tent, please contact us so we can further explain email’s benefits. If you do have an existing email program with Blue Tent Marketing, then contact us regardless as we would love to schedule an account review to see how we can improve for 2009!

Eric Taylor
Email Project Manager

As we say goodbye to 2008 and look ahead to the promise of the New Year, we are well aware of the challenges that lie ahead. It’s no secret that the current economic conditions have created a very tough business environment. Just about everyone has been affected by the financial crisis and the melt-down in the real estate market. And when people lose confidence, they tend to stop taking risks and adopt a “back to the basics” mentality. It’s a time to separate wants from needs and boil our lifestyles, our operating budgets and marketing expenses down to the most basic essentials.

This is not such a bad thing. Because surviving through these challenging times is often what makes businesses better and stronger. It makes us take an honest look at ourselves – to identify what’s working and what’s not – and to make those difficult decisions that might otherwise get overlooked. Frugality is in, excess is out.

This reality certainly also applies to our client’s internet marketing programs. For many, now is not the time to take on big, new projects that require significant expenditures of time and money. Rather, now is the time refocus, refine and revitalize your existing internet marketing strategy. Identify what’s working and find ways to do it even better. Determine which programs are faltering and overhaul them or cut them altogether. Following are some simple suggestions of how you can get “back to the basics” with your internet marketing strategy in order to go from good to great in 2009.

The Year-End Review
You’ve got to know where you are before you can possibly know which direction you need to go. Schedule a comprehensive review of all of your internet marketing initiatives from 2008. Are you able to clearly measure your ROI for each online marketing channel? If not, why not? How will you measure your ROI for 2009? Which programs were the most effective and which ones bombed? Where will you spend your coveted marketing dollars?

Affordable Website Enhancements
Take a critical look at your website. Have you worked to improve it over the past year? What enhancements can be made at minimal cost for maximum impact? Analyze your web analytics data to determine where your site needs fixing. Do certain pages have a higher bounce rate than others? Are your visitors abandoning your site at a certain stage of the conversion process? Look for simple design and content enhancements that will improve the user experience.

Evolve Your Email Marketing Programs
Many of our clients have very good email marketing programs. However, there’s always room for improvement. Make sure your email programs is “authenticated” to increase the delivery rate into the inbox. Measure list subscriber growth and attrition. Redesign old templates that may not render nicely on newer email clients such as Outlook 2007. Segment, test and get creative with more advanced email marketing techniques. Encourage participation and feedback. Remember that it’s about building relationships and good communication. 

Refine Your Search Engine Marketing Strategy
Search engine optimization is one of the more convoluted aspects of internet marketing. Schedule a year-end review with your search account manager to get a clear understanding of how your SEO program is performing. How have your rankings, traffic and conversions improved? How does your paid search (PPC) strategy fit into the picture? Can your campaigns be optimized to be more effective? Can you cut spending on unproductive keywords? Should your paid search campaigns focus on one, two or three search engines? What are your most productive keywords? Are there other long tail keyword phrases you could be targeting?

Assess Your Analytics Program
The core function of your web analytics program is to show you what’s working and what’s not. Are you spending the amount of time necessary to decipher this critical information? Is your Google Analytics configuration as comprehensive and customized as it should be? Are you consistently measuring key performance indicators (KPIs) or do you spend most of your time report surfing pretty pie charts? Make a commitment to understand and leverage your web analytics data to improve your overall internet marketing strategy. Hire a part-time account manager to help you identify and measure key metrics. Discover the actionable data and act on it. 

Thanks to everyone for a great year, and may 2009 bring you peace and prosperity!

Happy New Year!

Josh Lewis
VP Marketing

Everyone has a story. What’s your story about your business to prospective and existing clients? Do they believe you and does your story spread? Should they believe you? From a marketing perspective how can you make sure your story resonates with the people that you want to connect with? Do you tell them what we think they want to hear? Is that guessing? Do you expose every nook and cranny of your business operations, both good and bad? Are you really who you say you are, and how do you prove it? Lots of questions, and probably no simple answers, but I’ll submit the following:

From an internet marketing perspective, being genuine, authentic and real is the most effective way to build trust. Your story must be real and gain the trust of your audience. Gaining the trust of clients and prospects demands that you are who you say you are and do what you say you’ll do. Always. A great website that establishes you as the authority in your arena is important. Sending relevant, poignant email marketing messages on the schedule you and your subscribers agreed to is important. Winning at the SEO game through best practices and not trying to short circuit the system is important.

Whatever your marketing initiatives are, make sure that your story is real and trust will follow.

– Andrew Vick
Director of Sales

“The only purpose of advertising is to make sales. It is profitable or unprofitable according to its actual sales.” – Claude Hopkins, “Scientific Advertising”

Would you invest $350 in an email marketing campaign for a $7,595 return on that investment? The answer is obvious! The graph below references a Google Analytics snapshot from one of our client’s recent email campaigns. And this figure only represents online orders, it doesn’t account for any additional orders that were completed by phone!

It’s widely touted that email marketing produces some of the highest R.O.I. of any online marketing channel. One statistic that is frequently referenced is, “Email R.O.I. per $1 spent equals $51.45″ 
(Source: Direct Marketing Association Power of Direct report October 2006). While, that sure sounds nice, it doesn’t mean much when it comes to measuring the effectiveness and value of your email marketing program.

Do you know exactly how many visits, leads, conversions, and sales are generated from your email campaigns? Can you accurately measure your return-on-investment? If your answer to these questions is no, then it’s time to integrate Google Analytics into your email marketing program.

A basic Google Analytics installation into your website and your email campaigns is easy to do. Not only will you have a more complete picture of how your site visitors are interacting with your site, but you’ll also have a clearer understanding of how your email programs compare to your other online marketing initiatives such as your Search Engine Marketing efforts. Establishing revenue goals for leads gained from form completions is easy to do. If your site includes an eCommerce component, then enabling eCommerce tracking within your GA account is a must.

Use the Google Analytics URL Builder to add a custom tag to every link with your email campaign that goes back to your site. Keep the “source” and “medium” consistent, but update the “campaign” variable with each send. In this way, you’ll easily be able to see which campaigns worked and which ones failed.

With every email campaign you should always be testing new ideas to find out what really works with your audience. Taking a scientific approach to your email marketing will not only help you improve each campaign’s effectiveness, but also help you create a road map of what works for future campaigns, and will help you make the case for allocating more of your marketing budget to your most productive marketing channels.

Remember, the ultimate goal is to measure the true R.O.I. for each email campaign, as well as for your email program as a whole. You’ll be able to measure revenue generated, average value per visitor, goals completed, conversion rate, and eCommerce transactions.

So whether you’re new to email marketing or have a current email marketing program in place – contact us today to take it to the next level, and remove the guess-work from your email marketing program!

- Josh Lewis & Ryan Austin

“They know the price of everything and the value of nothing.” – Oscar Wilde

When you consider the price versus the value of your internet marketing initiatives – which is more important? The price is the most obvious thing to analyze first. Can I afford this? Does it fit into my marketing budget? How does the price of this initiative compare to my other marketing efforts?

However, over time, even more important than the price of a program – is its value. Do you have a clear understanding of the value of your internet marketing efforts? If you spend $400 on an email marketing campaign, that may seem like a lot of money if you’re only sending the message to 1,000 people. But what if that same campaign generates ten times that amount of revenue – would that be a good value? Are you measuring meaningful data to determine the value of your internet marketing programs? If not, then a “rate hike” for services can certainly be a little hard to swallow.

From both the business and the consumer perspective, rate hikes have become an inevitable part of doing business. The questions that every customer inevitably asks is “what do I get for that” and “why is the price increasing”?

Services that have incurred recent rate hikes include Search Engine Optimization, Pay-Per-Click Campaign management and Email Marketing services. Over the past five years, the fees for these services haven’t changed much, if at all. Over the past 6 months, we’ve been evaluating our costs and revenue structure to determine whether our services are priced accurately and competitively. And along the way, we’ve realized that we have some things that need to change, and it’s important that our clients understand “what they get for that.”

Our growth has been predicated on providing outstanding, personalized service, and that will certainly continue. Because our client list has grown exponentially, our costs and overhead have increased as well. In a sense, we’re faced with a dilemma: Do we keep fees the same and reduce the level of service? Or do we raise fees to cover the costs associated with highly personalized service that has brought so much success?

The answer is clear: Keep doing what has made you successful, and that which has delivered exceptional R.O.I. to the client. If it costs a bit more, but R.O.I. continues to exceed expectations, then there is value in that. Becoming the lowest cost, commodity-based service provider will not provide our clients with valuable internet marketing programs.

As you hear from our account managers and department heads about potential rate increases, keep this in mind: Blue Tent Marketing cares about the price of your internet marketing programs – but we care even more about their value.

– Andrew Vick
Director of Sales

Email marketing is all about building and maintaining strong relationships. The email relationship starts when someone opts-in to receive information from your company or organization. Start simple and build the relationship from there. In the beginning, most people don’t want to give out much personal information. Asking for to much right away decreases your chance of getting that initial sign-up. Even just asking for the email address is a great start.

What happens after you get their email address is where the relationship starts to build, and first impressions are everything to building a good and trusting relationship. It is important that these next steps are done right and not overlooked. There are three key parts to this process that help create a great opt-in experience. First is the opt-in form itself. Second is the subscription confirmation page and the third is the subscription confirmation and welcome messages.

Start by creating a “quick subscribe” opt-in form. A true “quick subscribe” opt-in includes only a text box for email address. This allows you to capture only the most valuable piece of information and allows the subscriber to sign-up in seconds. Make sure to place the opt-in form on your homepage and also include a “subscribe” link on every page of your site. This can link to a slightly more detailed opt-in from that includes other non-mandatory fields such as name, city, state, zip, etc. This main “subscribe” page is also a good place to expand upon your email program – identify what information will be delivered and how often. This is also a good place to include an archive of past mailings so the potential subscriber can see an example of your campaigns. Once the prospect hits the “submit” button, they’re headed toward your subscription confirmation page.

The subscription confirmation page can and should do many things. First, this will give your new subscriber the confirmation that they successfully opted-in to your program. It’s a good idea to include the “reply-to email address” that you use in your campaigns and ask them to add it their address book or safe senders list to ensure deliverability to their inbox. Also, if you’re using a double opt-in process (considered to be best practice), be sure to emphasize that a confirmation email has been sent requiring that they click on the enclosed link to confirm their subscription. Lastly, this page is also a good place to include a link to your privacy policy.

Now that you have the essential piece of starting your email relationship, you can now start to ask for more information. This can be done on the subscription confirmation page or within the welcome message. Either way, the information you ask for here is the starting point to segmenting your campaigns. Whether it’s by state, gender, products or interests, make sure you ask for what pertains to your campaigns and make nothing required. Make sure your subscribers can easily update their profile, as their interests may change over time.

Like the confirmation page, the welcome message can and should do many things. This is where you start to give your subscribers what they asked to receive. If you are promising “special offers,” why not include one in the very first message that you send? This is a sure way to start the relationship off on the right foot. Also, it’s a good idea to again ask your new subscriber to add the “reply-to email” to their address book to ensure delivery to their inbox.

These are very important aspect of an effective opt-in experience. Once these steps are setup in the beginning, it’s all automated from there. Be sure to moderate your opt-ins on a monthly basis to gauge its effectiveness and to look for ways to constantly improve, add value and enhance the user experience.

It’s widely known that the basis of any relationship is trust. This certainly applies to your relationship with your coveted email subscribers. The ever-growing numbers of spammers and phishing attacks has caused so much frustration and distrust that it has created a major obstacle for legitimate email marketers. The Email Service Providers (ESPs) have a responsibility to protect their customers from unwanted email. Email marketers have the responsibility to make sure that the messages their subscribers signed up to receive are getting through. Thus came the conundrum of email authentication.

The email industry has teamed up to create AOTA (Authentication & Online Trust Alliance) giving us three ways of to approach email authentication. None of these approaches are required yet but we have accepted that including at least one is standard best-practice email marketing for 2008.

SPF / Sender ID Record Wizard SPF / Sender ID Record Wizard – Use this tool to create SPF records by entering your domain name and including the IP addresses of third parties authorized to send mail on your behalf.

DomainKeys Identified Mail (DKIM) – A signature-based mail authentication standard for for validating an identity that is associated with a message. The base DKIM specification has been approved by IETF as a proposed standard. DKIM is a synthesis of earlier specifications from Yahoo! (DomainKeys) and Cisco (Identified Internet Mail).

Sender ID Framework – Overview of the SenderID Framework (SIDF), including presentations, white papers and technical specifications. SIDF reflects the combined specifications of SPF and Microsoft’s Caller ID for email proposal. (Hosted by Microsoft Corporation)

The main advantages of email authentication is increasing deliverability by making a more secure marketplace and improving or regaining the trust of the ESPs when using a third-party email marketing service. A main goal of authentication is to reduce spam and phishing attacks which will boast the integrity of email marketing.

If you have any question about email authentication or would like to have Blue Tent take the necessary steps to get your email program authenticated please contact us today.

Ryan Austin
Director of Email Marketing

Ryan Austin, director of email marketing at Blue Tent, recently made the trip to Miami, Florida at the end of February to attend MarketingSherpa’s 3rd Annual Email Summit. Following are his “Top 5 Takeaways” from the conference:

The biggest takeaway was winning Gold for Best Postcard-Style Campaign (B-to-B). With over 300 entries from companies around the world and only 40 winners broken down into 10 categories we were psyched. Here are the other top 5 that really stood out for me.

1) Pay close attention to landing pages.

Don’t forget to “message match” the main thrust of your email campaign with your landing page. This helps to reinforce the message with the end user. Also, having a direct call to action on the lading page created some of the highest conversion rates. Such as buy now, book now or to request more information.

2) One of the most important landing pages is the welcome page.

This is page the user is redirected to after subscribing. This welcome message gives you the chance to make a great first impression and is used as the first marketing draw in the campaign.

3) Increase use of personalization and interest profiles.

The ability to update profiles and give information to trusted companies has grown. Which also allows you to give your subscribers better targeted and relevant information, which in turn leads to highter conversions.

4) Segment your list for better results.

Using the advantage of interest profiles to segment your list has proven some of the highest results. Even the simplest segmentations created higher open and click thru rates.

5) Test, test and test again.

Always be testing to find out what works and what doesn’t. Test your subject lines, creative and landing pages. But don’t over do it and always remember your goal.

6) The Cuban Sandwiches and the Cuban Coffee at Casa Del Marinero on 114 Ne 3rd Ave Miami FL are incredible.

I found myself there everyday.

– Ryan