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.

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.

By now I’m sure you have heard all about Twitter. Twitter is the social media phenomenon that has swept the world and allows an individual to have a voice that can be so powerful that the President of the United States will listen. This gives us all the opportunity to speak what we want, when we want, to whomever we want. And the fact is that people are listening. For a business, this can be a very powerful tool to connect with customers and potentially generate new business.

Many of our clients are starting to use Twitter and Facebook to Leverage the Persuasive Power of the Social Web. With that in mind we thought it would be good to give you ten Twitter tips to help you get the most out of every tweet.

1. When you’re initially setting up your account try to keep in mind all of the keywords that you are targeting on your website and include those into your bio. This gives your company the opportunity for more exposure and will help connect you with the right audience. Also try to theme your twitter page with the same graphics as your website.
2. Make sure you monitor your brand name and keywords that are related to your business. This gives you the opportunity to respond to people that are obviously interested in what your company is about.
3. While you are monitoring your brand name be sure to respond with in the day. Keep a watchful eye of everything that is being said positive or negative and respond accordingly.
4. When you use twitter to respond to tweets or comment on other tweets be sure to keep a casual tone.
5. Be sure to respond to everyone that addresses you. It shows that you are intone with your business and your in touch with your cliental.
6. When your posting tweets be sure that your not trying to sell something every time. Try to post articles related to your industry, blog posts, behind the scenes at your business, and things of interest to you.
7. If you see an post that you like retweet it. This shows that your not just on here to post, but that your actually reading other tweets. A retweet or RT is the ultimate Twitter compliment.
8. When you do offer deals or promos try to offer a couple of Twitter exclusive promos.
9. Tag your links with URL shortening services such as bit.ly to track the amount of traffic your site is receiving. Also consider tagging your links with web analytics tracking code such as Google Analytics.
10. One last thing: Have fun and be social – it’s all about interacting with others and sharing information openly – albeit 140 characters at a time!

Let us know your thoughts on how you’re using Twitter to connect with your customers and colleagues.

– Tim Hampton
SEM Account Manager

In the financially troubled year of 2009, there were some interesting things we saw happen in the email marketing world.  The importance of email authentication continued to grow, as did increasing the reach of your email campaigns through the ever-growing social networks such as Facebook, LinkedIn and Twitter. But one of our clients in the medical education field showed us that taking a simple, disciplined approach to their email program by staying consistent and relevant produced extraordinary ROI. The annual cost of their email marketing program was $4,200, and it produced a trackable $219,500 in revenue from direct online bookings (and that doesn’t include any enrollments made over the phone)!

Our client didn’t do anything extraordinary to achieve such an astounding ROI  – they simply gave their subscribers the opportunity to choose the type of course information they were interested in receiving and then delivered that information on a consistent schedule. They created a targeted opt-in process which they then used to segment by “medical fields” for each send. They also stayed on a strict schedule of the third Thursday of each month with October and November as exceptions by doing two sends during the pre-holiday busy period.

Their content and creative was trimmed down from a lengthy newsletter to a single focus postcard style keeping it super relevant to what their audience was asking for. Their call to action was a simple discount with an expiration date associated with it. They kept the copy simple and gave direct links to the courses that were being discounted for that month. The site offered a direct way to enroll from the site and they also provided a toll free number for inquires in the email. Next, we’ll be proposing to use a unique 800 number so that we can tie those phone orders back to the email program as well.

Tracking the campaign was important not only to show the value of the campaign but also to for the client to know what courses where of most interest. All the links were tagged with Google Analytics and had eComerrce incorporated which was the main tracking tool but we also used a tool called “action tracking”. Check out the GA stats from the entire year of 2009. One major stat to notice is that even though the year campaign was responsible for only 2.95% of all site visits, it was accountable for 11.95% of all revenue produced.

Overall the client taught us that staying simple and relevant plays a big part in every email campaign. Display a clear call to action and always track every interaction from the campaign – and the results will often take care of themselves.

– Ryan Austin
Director of Email Marketing

Incline Ski & Board Shop is locally owned and operated and has been serving the Aspen/Snowmass area for 25 years. With prime locations near the Gondola at Ajax, and at the mall in Snowmass, Incline strives to provide the best value and most convenient service around.

To that end, they stay open later than other ski shops so customers can avoid wasting time in the dreaded lines of a powder day morning rush instead of dropping lines in the newly fallen snow. Incline has been so strong for so long in this highly competitive business, because of their dogged commitment to value and service. These were the watchwords that drove the recent redesign of their site. The site is a powerful tool for customers to save both time and money. They save precious time by booking rentals online, and they earn a discounted rate by doing so ahead of time instead of showing up on the first morning of their vacation and hoping for the best. By making online reservations ahead of time, customers know that the specific equipment they want will be right there waiting for them. Offering value is a huge priority for Incline. That’s why they offer only premium equipment, including local brands like High Society Freeride Company.

Shout out to the great team who made the redesign happen. Congratulations to Lauren for doing a great job with PM and Design, we’ll miss you during your leave! Michael and Dan did a great job with development, and Moira ensured a deft deployment of the site. Tim killed it with a tight Google Analytics and SEO setup and our fearless leader Pete Scott made the project possible on the sales side.

Today, all it takes is an angry person with thumbs and a Twitter account to start trashing your business online. Recently, a lead came into us that clearly displayed this newfound phenomenon and the persuasive power of the social web:

Please Describe Your Needs: Please help with a few negative comments about our business consisting of 14,000 patients and over 30,000 implants placed to date. Less than 5 negative google comments are destroying 8 years of a business I have spent everyday building 16 hours a day.

Ouch! Less than 5 negative comments posted on Google are destroying 8 years put into building a successful business. The weight of that statement is astounding! This prospect (from the dental industry) is prepared to spend upwards of $10,000 per month to address these negative comments that were posted on the “social web” and are adversely affecting his business in a very severe way.

There are good and bad effects of this evolution of the web into the social sphere. On the good side, consumers have more control, more information, and more voice to affect purchasing decisions. On the bad side, the reputation of a great business, established over many years of hard work, can now be tarnished almost instantly by a few dissatisfied customers.

Which raises the question: How is your business leveraging the power of positive feedback online?

This is perhaps one of the most important questions for a business of any size to be mindful of when evaluating the importantance of social media to their business. The answer is obvious: It’s critically important. It simply doesn’t matter what type of business you’re running. Whether you’re in lodging and vacation rentals, dentistry, dermatology, the ski rental or restaurant business, the end result is the same – it matters what people say about your business online.

I recently returned from a trip to the Victoria House in Ambergris Caye, Belize (it was amazing, albeit a bit pricey, but don’t take my word, see what others have to say). As I was checking out I noticed a beautiful guest book (pictured at right), full of glowing reviews from past guests. The only problem was that these glowing guest comments weren’t reaching the right audience. That’s where we come in.

We create programs that reach out to your most satisfied customers, and turn them into your most enthusiastic online brand advocates – thus leveraging the power of the positive.

Anyone that’s ever read the letters to the editor in their local newspaper realizes that many of the letters are people complaining about something. The social web has made it even easier for people to make their complaints heard. The trick is combat and overwhelm those negative experiences with positive ones. However, expecting these positive reviews to appear on their own is a dubious approach indeed.

This is where the strategic approach to social media comes into play. You’ve got to find ways to first identify who your most satisfied clients are, and then make it easy for them to share their experiences online with the right audience – whether it be on Google, TripAdvisor, Yelp or elsewhere. Think of this type of expense as reputation maintenance. And we all know that it’s easier and less expensive to maintain your vehicle on a regular basis than it is to neglect it and be faced with expensive and inconvenient repairs when they inevitably occur.

Click here for more information about how we can help your company or organization leverage and maintain its positive reputation online.

– Josh Lewis
VP Marketing
@Blue_Tent

Aspen Orthopaedic Associates (AOA) delivers a personalized care experience catering to outdoor enthusiasts from Olympians to young athletes and local weekend warriors.  The practice was founded fifty years ago during Aspen’s quiet years.  Since then, Aspen has become a glitzy global sporting mecca, and the practice has added centers across western Colorado in Glenwood Springs, Basalt and Rifle.

Provided with a fresh design from the team at Cadence Marketing, we redeployed the site on the Site Management Console (SMC) content management system.  In furtherance of their mission to provide their patients with an unparalleled level of care, the site we created for them incorporates several advanced features that will provide their patients with an online experience that is commensurate with the high level of care they’ve come to expect.  For example, patients can quickly and easily request an appointment with their favorite physician, or have their prescription refilled online.

Providing quality educational resources for their patients was an aspect central to the site’s redesign.  AOA really stepped up and made the investment necessary to create a valuable educational resource.  AOA provides the information, interactive animations, and video needed to demystify the often intimidating prospect of having a surgical procedure.  These animations take patients through a detailed step-by-step explanation of the procedure they will undergo. Patients can even print out these interactive descriptions of the procedure, or they can send them around in an email.

The site also has a community blog where you can track the impressive exploits of some prominent patient athletes.  The Doc’s Desk is an informative forum providing an array of event announcements, educational opportunities, research findings, community-related information, and news about the practice.  They also use the site to promote the Aspen Sports Medicine Foundation. (ASMF) This is a publicly supported nonprofit organization, spearheaded by AOA dedicated to the promotion, support and sponsorship of education and research in the field of sports medicine.

Congratulations to the great team that made this great redesign possible. Preproduction came courtsey of Cadence Marketing with design work by Tom Kenyon, development by Five Technology, Lauren did a great job as PM, Moira and Intrcomm made for a smooth deployment and Andrew made the project possible from the sales side.

As I made the trek into Denver for the advanced Google AdWords Seminar for Success I began to think back on the world of search. It struck me that Google the King of Search at this moment in time is just over 10 years old. Lets put that into perspective. At Ten years old you were probably in the 5th grade, 10 years ago you were getting ready for Y2K while jamming out to Prince’s Party like its 1999. To say the least Google is young, and Google’s AdWords is even younger. To think about the many strides that have been made in Pay Per Click Advertising is quite astounding especially in the time that it has been around. In Less than 10 years AdWords has become the backbone of Google’s Business and has evolved into a tool that companies of all sizes use to advertise. Companies as big as Exxon and as small as your local dry cleaner use AdWords to target those who search for keyword specific terms that relate to their business.

While Google has been ever changing, the rest of the world has had to be as well and so has Blue Tent Marketing. Specifically staying ahead of the curve, especially with all the advances that have been made in Search Engine Marketing. Blue Tent has found value in the fact that education is key to the success of a company. The SEM Account Managers at Blue Tent have been fortunate enough to attend the Seminar for Success classes that Google offers. The great thing about attending these classes is that it keeps all our clients well ahead of the curve and their competition. We always strive to offer cutting edge services to our clients and in order to do so we have to live by the adage “never stop learning.”

This week I have been fortunate enough to attend the Advanced Adwords Training. The amount of knowledge I have obtained from one day of training is off the charts. Here’s a glimpse at some of the top takeaways and cool tools that I look forward to using on an everyday basis. I encourage you to dive in and see how the tips and tools listed below can help your internet marketing efforts.

• When you create Ad Copy be sure your ad answers the question that is being called to action.
• Landing Pages are a huge help to those who click on your add, they can help your quaility score by 30-40%.
• When you ad negative keywords know that Google never matches misspelled words.
• Rarely have an AdWords Ad URL land on the homepage. Find a Page on your site that relates to the ad.
• Use your “Thank You” pages to continue your business, NOT end a session with your customer. Give them an option to visit another page on your site.
• Download the Adwords Editor, Its free and is a great tool to help you learn more about your keywords.
• Site Overlay is a powerful tool. It allows one to see which pages are leading to conversions
• When testing an ad copy test if for a minimum of a week.
• Write several unique ads and see how they perform.
• My number one favorite quote from the AdWords Seminar is: “Advertising isn’t advertising when its information!”

And be sure to check out the following tools to enhance your paid search planning and execution:

• AdWords Editor – Use the adwords editor with out having to log into AdWords. An easy place to manage your Campaigns.
• Google Sets – Use Google Sets to find related keyword terms.
• Google Trends – Use Trends to see what the search volume of a particular keyword term is.
• Google Insights for Search – With Google Insights for Search, you can compare search volume patterns across specific regions, categories, time frames and properties.
• Microsoft AdLab – New tool to refine your ads and make them more specific for each individual.
• Google AdPlanner – Take a look at the demographics of a websites traffic.
• The Wonder Wheel – To Find the Wonder Wheel. Do a search, once you have the results click on the “+Show Options.” Once that has loaded you will see on the left side towards the bottom an option for the Wonder Wheel. Cool tool…. My fav! Gives you word options for a search.

A big shout out to Brian Geddes at bg Theory for putting on an excellent seminar. If you have any specific questions please feel free to contact me directly. We are here to help you better your company!

– Tim Hampton
SEM Account Manager
tim @ bluetent.com

To ensure some good 19-inch dumps, we do a snow dance to the Scandinavian snow god, Ullr. Apart from favorable conditions, you might be surprised at how few in the vacation rental and luxury lodging industry think about the importance of seasonality on their website. For would-be travelers there’s almost nothing more important. Here are a few simple tips for to prep your site for success this winter:

Theme your site for the season. Whether you’re located in Hawaii or Colorado, choose pictures that help your prospects picture themselves enjoying your resort. Change pictures of people rafting or mountain biking to nice shots of people taking face shots in untracked powder. Better yet, configure your site to have a summer theme and a winter theme that your site visitors can select, and that you can quickly update to display as the default theme as needed.

Integrate real-time weather feeds and reports. Snow reports, surf reports, and tidal forecasts will bring potential travelers back to your site again and again, especially during the lead up to their vacations. If you have activity packages such as snorkeling, flyfishing, yacht rentals, lift tickets, ski lessons, etc., be sure to advertise them on your weather page.

Get a web cam and point at the snow or surf. Video feeds are a great way to gain increased site traffic and offer live area information. Watching the sun drop over a sweet set coming in on your favorite break, or watching a storm roll in over you’re the resort you spent last New Year’s skiing with your family at, is a great way to keep people up to date and a unique way to take them from home to where you want them to spend their next vacation.

Put a news block on your homepage. Announce big snowfalls, perfect breaks, or other tantalizing events that make your users want to pull the trigger on that next vacation. Making your site a trusted resource by providing valuable information, if someone uses your site as a resource to check out the surf report or daydream about riding the snow that they are watching fall on the web cam, their propensity to book another vacation is dramatically increased.

Use humor. If you’re in Hawaii, show a picture of a poor soul in Buffalo, NY and then contrast it with a photo of one of your guests sipping a margarita on the beach with something as simple as a “before and after” tag line.

We’ve recently implemented a new support program to better accommodate our client’s needs for day-to-day questions, tech support issues, site updates, training, etc. We now offer three levels of customer support for our clients that host their website with us. As we have a broad range of clients, we’ve created a set of support plans to accommodate a wide range of needs. We have established the following three support plans: The Basic Plan, The Best Practices Plan, and the Managed Services Plan.

The Basic Support Plan: Our basic support plan is as simple as it gets: hourly support. All requests, questions and issues will be billed at our regular hourly rate. Support issues can be submitted in the following manner:

• Preferred: Complete the customer support form on our website that is submitted directly into the support hourly queue.
• Phone and email support (support (at) bluetent.com).

Advantages: You have access to our team of support professionals with no annual commitment or contracts. This package is ideal for organizations and companies that expect minimal support needs.

 The Best Practices Support Plan: This plan offers upgraded service and bundled support time at reduced hourly rates.

• 6 hours of support time for a fee of $550
• A 20% savings off our standard hourly rate
• Main point of contact – you will have direct access to an account representative to help with support or general questions.
• Preferred phone and email access support – You’ll have phone and email access to your main point of contact. 

Advantages: Faster access to our professionals and 20% off our regular hourly support rates.
Ideal for organizations and companies who expect average support requirements and want an opportunity to save money as well increase their quality of service.

The Managed Services Plan: Highly recommend for organizations looking for our highest level of service, support and agency quality marketing expertise.  A dedicated account manager will help you develop and execute all your online marketing initiatives – programs starting at $500/month. Programs are highly customized for your goals and resources. Hire a part-time internet marketing expert to help drive all of your marketing initiatives with a focus on increasing your ROI.

• A dedicated account manager familiar with your business goals allows you access to professionals with strategic understanding of your marketing programs.
• Proactive account management to add value and increase ROI.
• A customized plan allows you to outsource your online marketing department and reduce internal expenses without sacrificing quality.

Exceeding client expectations when it comes to customer service and support is our goal. To date, we’ve had a great response to this new support program. Your thoughts and feedback are invaluable to us and allow us to continue to improve our services – so please don’t hesitate to let us know what you think!

– Jay Scherrer
Director of Account Services