It struck me while I was climbing Castle Peak (14,279 ft) that there is a great deal of commonality between hiking 14ers and solid internet marketing:

1. Go With A Trusted Team

When you’re in the backcountry and in some pretty precarious positions, you want to make sure that you’ve surrounded yourself with the right people in case something goes wrong.  Likewise, you want to make sure that the internet marketing team you go with possesses the right expertise and the appropriate level of professionalism.  It’s always wiser to jump into the fray with a company that has a proven record of success and the right professional certifications, such as being a Google Analytics Certified Partner and Google Adwords Qualified Company, than go with a bargain basement company that probably won’t answer your calls or even exist in a year.

2. Slow And Steady Wins The Race

The trail up Castle Peak is fairly well traveled and we encountered quite a few other people along the way.  One group flew by us about halfway up the mountain but ran out of steam before the final push along the final stretch of ridgeline leading to the summit.  After we had reached the summit, taken some pictures and snacked on some beef jerky, we looked down and saw that the group who left us in the dust still hadn’t moved an inch from their spot on the ridge.  A solid SEO strategy works exactly the same way; you can’t just invest 20 hours one month and hope to remain on the first page of Google forever.  You have to take a methodical, sustainable approach with your long-term goals serving as the foundation of your strategy.

3. Plan Your Strategy Carefully & Measure Your Progress

We saw another group venture off route and have to retreat, needlessly wasting time and energy. To avoid wasting time, energy and your precious marketing dollars, you need to carefully plan your internet marketing strategy, and closely monitor your progress along the way.  Leverage Google Analytics like you would use the cairns on a trail to ensure you aren’t veering off course.

4. Glissading (& Social Media) Requires A Healthy Dose Of Caution

After conquering Castle Peak, we enjoyed some spirited glissading down the remaining summer snowfields.  While this is surely a fun way to descend, glissading certainly calls for a healthy dose of caution.  There’s no way to tell what’s lurking under the snow, and the rocks that fill the scree fields are sharp and nasty.  If you hit them going too fast they’ll certainly cause you some pain and could even result in getting your name in the local newspaper. Similarly, social media is a fun and effective marketing tool, but just like the snow – you don’t know what’s lurking under the surface.  Keep it to what you’d want everyone to know; inside jokes, questionable photos or a poorly worded tweet can cost you.  Just ask any politician, celebrity or journalist who’s had a run-in with Twitter.

5. Follow SOPs

Our group got started bright and early.  As a result, we were warm and dry in the car by the time the typical afternoon thunderstorm rolled in.  The same holds for web marketing; be smart, abide by the best practices, but also don’t be afraid to take some calculated risks.

I’m staring down the barrel of my last week here at Blue Tent and my first year of law school.  Working here has been a great learning experience.  Much love and a huge thank you goes out to the entire Blue Tent crew! I’ll miss you guys.

- Chapin Lewis
Assistant Marketing Assistant

What better way to combine email marketing and social media than to add an email opt-in form to your company’s Facebook page? It’s an easy and effective way to grow your email list by allowing your fans to join your email list directly through Facebook. This allows you to capture the email addresses of key prospects that have already shown interest in your company or brand.

We’ve recently added it to our own Facebook page, so check it out. If you don’t already receive the Blue Tent eBulletin, please take a moment to subscribe, and while you’re there, be sure to “like” us!

Before you get started I recommend creating a separate mailing list to store only Facebook opt-ins. This allows you to track any conversions obtained through your Facebook page, and will also allow you to communicate with your Facebook subscribers apart from your main list. You’ll also need your HTML form code, so create your opt-in form beforehand.

1. The first step is to install the Static FBML application to your Facebook Account. On the left side of the Static FBML page, click “Add to my Page”.

From the popup window, choose the page you would like to add the form to and click “Add to Page”.

2. Now go back to your Facebook page and click on the “Edit Page” link. Then scroll down to find the FBML application. Click the “Edit” link.

You should see a box pop up that lets you set a title and enter FBML. Enter your title – Email Updates, Newsletter Sign Up or something similar. The FBML box is actually where you paste your HTML form code. Try not to use the <html> <body> and <head> tags, so you can format tables, paragraphs, etc – but avoid those few tags. Once this is done hit “Save Changes”.

3. Almost done! Now go back into the edit menu and select the option “Application Settings”. Here you can set up your widget either as a box or a tab on your Facebook page. To add it as a tab, just click “Add”.

And that’s all there is to it. Check your Facebook homepage to view the active tab. Now any visitor can become a subscriber to your email campaign.

Don’t forget to create a custom thank you page so the user is redirected after they sign up. You should also include an auto-triggered welcome message thanking your new subscriber for joining and providing any additional details about your email program. To read more about why having a welcome program is so important, check out our previous blog post Email Marketing: First Impressions Matter.

If this is something you may be interested in please contact your Email Project Manager directly or contact us.

- Mehri Movassaghpour
Email Project Manager

La Mirage Resort Condominiums is ideally located only 5 minutes from Port Aransas, Texas and 25 minutes from downtown Corpus Christi.  With such a great location on the Texas Gulf Coast, this condo resort is an attractive place to spend a vacation. La Mirage approached us a few months ago, and we built them a new Drupal vacation rental site. As always, we recommend doing a comprehensive SEO setup along with their web project, in order to ensure that we’ve done the basic minimal items, along the lines of 301 redirects, xml site maps, and the like, that facilitate a new web project’s ongoing success with the search engines.

This is where things get interesting; La Mirage was having some issues with a rogue owner of 3 units in the complex who chose to manage and market their 3 properties on their own. Showing the initiative that sets Blue Tent apart from your average web company, Tim (the SEM Account Manager assigned to La Mirage) decided to tackle this problem as part of La Mirage’s SEO setup. The rogue owner maintained their own site that was ranking higher than La Mirage on the search engine results page for our client’s own name. After La Mirage became our client, these erroneous search results couldn’t continue. As you can tell, this situation was causing conflicts with customers mistaking the rogue owner for La Mirage.

We’ve talked about the power of claiming your local business listing, and this case was no exception.  When searching local or “Places” listings, the rogue owner was coming up with their contact information even though it was La Mirage’s (the actual condo management company’s) guest reviews, and location page.  After some persistence, we were able to get things straightened out and take proper ownership of the “Places” page.  This one small step, among other things, has already made a difference in the battle for top search engine rankings, moving La Mirage up and correcting the previous misinformation.  Let us implore you one more time; claim your local business listings, if not the competition might swipe your traffic!

We’re always stoked when the accolades roll in.  Whether it’s from one of our award winning email campaigns, or from the 27th Annual Healthcare Advertising Awards, who just gave us a Gold Award for the innovative internal patient’s blog we created for University Health System, we’re honored to be mentioned among the leading new media marketing agencies.

Due to patient confidentiality we can’t link to the internal blog, but check out the other winners at Healthcare Marketing Report’s site.

Hilton Head Rentals & Golf, an established vacation rental company with the widest and best selection of lodging throughout Hilton Head Island, had a well-established web presence. But their website was sorely in need of an updated design and improved functionality. To that end, we undertook a complete redesign of the aesthetics, navigation and functionality of their website. We created a warm, airy design with a rotating slide show as a focal point of the homepage–making visitors feel as if they’re already standing on the beach. We also completely revamped the navigation to make it more user-friendly with the addition of flyouts that quickly guide visitors straight to specific pages of the site. And we built it on the Drupal content management system, an intuitive, secure and scalable platform that will serve our client well for years to come.

Search features include a search by area map, and search widgets on the homepage and interior pages make it easy to find the perfect vacation rental on Hilton Head. The search results and property information displayed is powered by Rental Network Software’s (RNS) property management system. This approach provides site visitors with the most up-to-date property and availability information possible, as well as a seamless transition from the main site, to the booking engine.

We also cleaned up their Google Analytics configuration to include cross-domain and e-commerce tracking and have been busy refining their search engine marketing strategy  and email marketing programs as well.

One of the primary reasons why this vacation rental redesign was so successful was due to the proactive participation from the client. A successful web project depends as much on the client’s performance, leadership, and engagement, as it does on us; the vendor you’ve hired to build it. In short, it’s a two way street. Congratulations to the HHRG team for their enthusiasm and engagement in the project – we look forward to seeing more of your site visitors turn into new customers!

There’s no question the Internet has allowed forced businesses to take a hard look at their return on investment for every marketing dollar spent. Unlike print or television ads that are sometimes difficult to track as far as direct ROI, if a business spends money on an Internet campaign, the ROI is fairly transparent. Hypothetically:

We spent $1,000 on our pay-per-click campaign last month, which generated 700 site visits, five of whom booked a room online, 15 others filled out a contact form and two of those people eventually booked after followup calls. Seven bookings for total revenue of $4,900.

Spend $1,000, get $4,900 back. The math is pretty easy.

But is that campaign getting sold short? Probably.

What about everyone who called? If 1% of the visitors from that ad campaign thought the product was good enough to book, at least a few others probably disconnected from their keyboard and picked up the phone, right?

And there’s the the Internet marketing ROI gap.

While it’s not brand new technology, many businesses continue to overlook the Web-to-phone-to-lead conversions, and in doing so may inadvertently put the brakes on campaigns that, although not successful as far as online conversions, knock it out of the park if the call conversions are taken into account.

Most businesses have unique phone numbers for their Web sites. This is the same tracking process used for decades to see if that print or television ad worked.

But this is the Internet — we’re literally connected — so let’s take it a step further with “dynamic” numbers. Here’s how it works: A little code here and there and that user who comes to the site from the PPC campaign will see a different phone number throughout his session than say someone who reached the site through an email campaign.

Suddenly, rather than 20 leads and seven conversions, we’re looking at another 15 phone calls and 4 more conversions. Suddenly our ROI jumped from $4,900 to $7,700 dollars.

Granted, the revenue was always there, but now we know how we got it. If you’d like to know more about how to implement phone tracking into your internet marketing initiatives, don’t hesitate to contact us today.

– Sean Kelly
Director of Managed Services

30 – 60% of your email list is inactive. This group hasn’t opened or clicked on any of your emails in 6 months to a year. Sounds crazy, weird and just plain wrong right!?

This number sounds staggeringly high however it’s a common place in all email lists. Many factors are at play here: email address changes, people are disinterested in what’s being presented or perhaps they aren’t even being delivered to their inbox.

While it sounds down right stilly to remove emails from an email marketing list, cutting ties with these emails is best for all parties considered. These email addresses are obviously not interested in what your sending them so why spend the money continually flooding their inbox’s with emails.

Internet Service Provider (ISP) relationships is another huge reason we need to say goodbye to these inactive emails. Say an email address changes and is no longer active. The former recipient knows this email is no good, even the ISP’s know this email address is no longer valid…but you don’t. While you are constantly sending them emails hoping they will sooner or later open one, the ISP’s pick up on this. Since you aren’t following best practices by removing them, they just assume you’re a spammer. This in turn hurts your sender score which can make it hard to get emails to the inbox’s to those who are interested in your company. Going through your list once a year and removing the deadwood is key!

After clearing the deadwood, cost per emails is down, results are up

One of our clients, the Breckenridge Resort Chamber, is a great example of how "clearing the deadwood" can be effective. Upon inspection we realized that they had 22K inactive emails. These folks had neither opened or clicked on an email is close to a year. We sent all the 22K an email trying to re-engage them in the campaign. This email was a simple ePostcard with 3 easy options. They could either click the "stay on the list" link, click the "please remove me from the list" link or take no action and be removed. Making this a pain-free process that required no additional information is the best way to try to reel in those unengaged people. From that email we were able to re-engage 3.5% of that list (that may seem like a small number but when your dealing with that many inactive emails it comes out to be almost 1,000 people). In the end we removed around 20K worth of uninterested email addresses. Its only been a short time since the deadwood was cleared but we are already seeing a large improvement in their stats. Breckenridge’s previously mediocre stats have already seen a 10% increase in terms of open rates. They’re paying less to send out each email campaign and their results have improved.

While list attrition is something that can’t be avoided, there are some easy steps we can take to keep those inactive’s at a minimum.

1. Have a simple opt-in form. Let the subscriber know exactly what to expect through your emails and how often to expect it. Allowing them to chose how often they will receive emails is a great way to cut down on over-sending.
   After the opt-in form, send them to a landing page confirming their subscription.
2. Send an immediate welcome message to their inbox. Sending a branded email welcoming them to the program right away is a great way to start the relationship on a good note.
3. Send relevant content. Sending relevant, segmented emails that contain value is a great way to retain your customer’s focus. A good portion of your list at one point was interested in what you had to offer. If you’re not sending them relevant information they’re going to check out. If they don’t unsubscribe they will "emotionally unsubscribe" where they’ll still receive you emails but will immediately hit the delete button without thinking twice of
   opening.
4. Preference center. Have an preference center where the user can update their email address and allow them to change their sending frequency and type of content received.
5. Email Authentication. Authenticating emails isn’t a 100% guarantee your email with make it to the inbox but its the best step to ensure it won’t be blocked by the ISP’s.
6. Only send to those who opt-in to your program. While it is enticing to send emails to every address you can get your hand on, a healthy program only sends to confirmed opt-ins.

While these steps are easy to put in the place, they are critical in keeping your email subscribers engaged.

contact your email account manager to dig into your "Most Active User Report" and start clearing the deadwood today.

Eric Taylor
Email Project Manager

We’re happy to announce that we’ve recently become an authorized reseller of Google’s powerful cloud-based suite of email, calendar, IM, and collaboration tools. This means that we’ve been recognized by Google as a trusted advisor  and partner that is able to assist businesses in the successful implementation this powerful solution.

The Google Apps Reseller program includes solution providers that sell, service and customize Google Apps Premier Edition for their customers, so they can free themselves from the old ways of creating, sharing and communicating. Google Apps increases organizational awareness and efficiency, while being scalable and easy to customize. Simply put, Google Apps will make your business more agile, efficient and responsive–and we make the migration as easy as possible. Check out this cool tool to help make the case for your company or organization to Go Google.

Added to our certification as a Google Analytics Authorized Consultant, our participation as a Google Apps Authorized Reseller is yet another way that we help our clients maximize their investments in marketing and technology.

In the world of email marketing, first impressions matter. Each and every day our inboxes are overflowing with email and we’re quickly sizing up which messages to scan, read, and interact with and which ones to delete, mark as spam, or unsubscribe from. You’ve got to make sure your email marketing program consistently delivers value and treats your subscribers as VIPs–right from the outset.

When was the last time you evaluated the effectiveness of your email opt-in process? Analyzing the effectiveness of your email opt-in process is one of the best ways to improve the ROI of your email marketing program. As every site visitor is a potential new subscriber showing interest and engagement in your organization, it’s imperative that you create a great first impression before you even send a single email.

Anatomy of the Opt-in Process

Step 1: Ask for permission. Make it easy to subscribe to your email list. Be sure that a “quick subscribe” form or opt-in link is easy to find and accessible from every page of your website.

Step 2: Keep it simple. On your opt-in form, only ask for information that you must have. You can always ask for more information later. Don’t lose out on new subscribers because you’re asking for too much information. Remember, it’s early in the relationship.

Step 3: Reassure your newfound friend. Create a unique subscription confirmation landing page. Say thank-you. Ask your new subscriber to add the reply-to email address to be used in your email campaigns to their address book or safe senders list. This can be the difference between landing directly in the inbox with all images loaded versus landing in the junk folder. You may also want to use this page to ask for additional optional demographic/interest/segmentation/frequency preferences information. It’s also a good time to remind your new subscriber of your privacy policy.

Step 4: Make a good first impression with your welcome message.

The Welcome Message

An auto-triggered welcome message is the most important email to send a new subscriber. It’s a great way to instantly greet them when they are most engaged. It’s about building trust, improving email delivery rates, and establishing your email reputation. Studies show that recipients engaged through a welcome program have a 40% higher open rate than those who haven’t received a welcome email. In addition, a welcome email can significantly increase customer satisfaction, decrease unsubscribes, and increase ROI.

A personalized welcome message thanks your new subscriber for joining and provides any additional relevant information about your email program. The best welome messages offer a clear call-to-action with an incentive that’s relevant to the subscriber’s reason for joining the mailing list. For example, if you’re a vacation rental company, offer a limited-time new subscriber special for 10% off of any new reservation.

Don’t Foget About Analytics

As the saying goes, “if you’re not measuring, you’re not marketing.” A key component to any professional opt-in process and welcome message is analytics. Be sure to tag all links within your welcome message with the proper Google Analytics campaign tracking code. And keep an eye on the conversion rate on your opt-in page as well as the number of new subscribers versus unsubscribes each month. Since “list churn” is an inevitable part of any email marketing program, it’s important to keep your list of subscribers active, engaged and growing.

Gift basket material?  I’d say so.

Ever wonder what it looks like when a plan comes together with an aggressive Search Engine Optimization campaign and a killer Email Marketing Campaign?  Well, if you have Google Analytics tied in properly, it looks just like this.

Skills to pay your web marketing bills…

•    We implemented an aggressive setup and began a recurring custom SEO program December 11-ish.  See above.
•    Note* this is non-paid search traffic from Google only.
•    That increase, in that amount of time, is absolutely ridiculous.
•    If your site has been in the dark (SEO wise) for a long time, these are the immediate results you can see with the proper help.

Killing it with Email Marketing…

•    In 9 months we made 7 sends.
•    That equated to $77,370.49 in online bookings alone – That obviously DOES NOT include people that got it, went to the site, then called and booked.  We have those stats in another report, but let’s stay focused on online bookings for now.
•    Cost for that particular Email Marketing Campaign is $15k-ish over 12 months, including utilizing our ACE program.  Again, we have only sent 7 times and these booking numbers do not reflect the ROI for 12 full months.  Looking back, those 2 missed sends hurt, ouch.  Consistency is key, and would have made these ROI numbers look even better.
•    Let’s do the math – that is over 500% return on investment………so far.

Congrats to the SEM and Email teams for a solid performance.