Blue Tent Marketing

We’re excited to announce that we’ve officially been designated as the only Google Analytics Authorized Consultant (GAAC) based in Colorado! While we’ve been working with GA since the spring of 2007, this marks an important milestone not only in the development of our web analytics department, but also in the ongoing development of a “culture of optimization” within our clients and within Blue Tent. Since the beginning, our mission has been to help our clients “Win on the Web” and this designation is just another step in that direction.

As you probably already know by now, Google Analytics is a powerful, free, web-based analytics program that enables its users to measure the effectiveness of their online marketing programs. A successful Google Analytics configuration allows the user to see how their site visitors interact with their website, identify where their traffic is coming from, and track the number of those visitors that convert into new leads or sales. Google Analytics allows companies to connect the dots between their website, organic and paid search marketing, online advertising, and email marketing programs to identify which efforts contribute most to their bottom line. It’s all about ROI.

So what’s the big deal about becoming a GAAC? Essentially, we’ve received the “stamp of approval” from the web analytics gurus at Google. The GAAC logo demonstrates that Blue Tent Marketing has gone through the extra steps to prove itself as an expert in Google Analytics configuration, consulting, analysis and training. With a large percentage of GA setups installed incorrectly, it’s important that you choose an agency that can get the job done right. We’re uniquely positioned to help our clients in the real estate, fractional, vacation rental and resort industries maximize the effectiveness of their online marketing efforts.

It’s clear that in today’s economy you simply can’t afford to be guessing about where to direct your precious marketing dollars. So whether you’re looking for greater insight into how your current internet marketing initiatives are performing, or whether you’re ready to take the next step to begin optimizing your web presence with Google Website Optimizer – we’re here to help. 

Contact us today and get ready to take your internet marketing initiatives to new heights!

Until next time,
Josh Lewis
VP Marketing

True story: Client calls BTM World Headquarters first thing Monday morning and states that over the weekend his company’s email and website suddenly went down! He called the company who hosted his website, email and domain name and the company is out of business. What to do?

First, I checked out the domain name for the client, and noticed that the registration was private so all it displayed in the WHOIS was the Go Daddy Private Registration information. Next, I called Go Daddy and for security purposes, they required that I had the Pin number or the last 4 digits of the credit card on file. Needless to say, I didn’t, so I asked him what to do next.

He directed me to the Go Daddy page to fill out a form Request for Change of Account / Email Update Form to begin the process to change ownership back to the true owner. Once the form is filled out Go Daddy requests a 72-hour turn-around because they get so many requests. Go Daddy will notify you through the e-mail address you provided on the form.

The next nightmare is trying to convince the Registrar that you really do own the domain name. Each Registrar is a little different, each have their own set of privacy rules, forms to fill out, proof of ownership, etc. During this time, your website is down, your email has stopped, and your business internet marketing has come to a complete halt!

This of course is a worst case scenario but nonetheless true. Registrars are usually very helpful as they want to retain your business. Here are a few steps you can take to prevent losing or letting your domain name expire.

1. Registrant Information - If you purchased your domain name through a registrar make sure the Registrant information is in your company name, your address and your valid email address.
   Billing Contact – your name, address and a valid email address.
   Technical Contact – should be the company where your domain is hosted or your name, address with a valid email address.
2. Registrar Account – Where did you buy your domain name? Make sure you have your account login ID and password in a safe place. If you do not have your login id call your registrar and retrieve it. By keeping the email address at your registrar valid you can easily retrieve your login ID/username and password through the email address you have listed in the account.
3. Domain name expiration date – If you plan on keeping your domain name active for years to come invest in it and renew it for several years. Registrars usually will give you a better deal if you renew the domain for multi years. Or have auto renew enabled for your domain name with a valid credit card on file.
4. Domain Name Managers – Many hosting companies are also domain name registrars. Managers will make sure your domain does not expire and will probably renew from year to year. With the slowing economy if you feel uncomfortable at all with your current hosting company I would suggest to follow steps 1-3 to ensure you are in control of your domain name.

WHOIS will give you all the information you need to know about your domain name. The Registrant, Contact information, the Registrar Company name where the domain was purchased and the domain name expiration date. Click on the link and see who is in control of your domain name: http://www.networksolutions.com/whois/index.jsp

Blue Tent Marketing is a Registered Domain Name Reseller. We have purchased hundreds of domains for our clients. We can help you transfer, purchase a new domain name, manage and renew your existing domains for you. Blue Tent Marketing has helped many clients who unexpectedly let their domain’s expire or who have experienced a bad registrar to help them retrieve lost login information or renew your domain name. Let us help you in securing you’re existing domain names or next domain name purchase.

Moira
Director of Technology

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

Many of our top clients in the real estate and vacation rental industries are analyzing and adjusting their internet marketing plans and budgets. In tough economic times, it’s no secret that cuts are expected across the board – and online marketing is no exception.

As we focus on aligning marketing budgets with online marketing strategies for 2009, we are tasked to find efficiencies in our marketing plans in order to cut costs and identify the most productive online marketing channels. It’s our job to advise our clients to spend their marketing dollars where they will generate the greatest ROI.

While we may be biased, we believe that investing in your digital marketing media should be your highest priority today. Not only is online media more affordable and efficient, it is also very trackable and true ROI for each online marketing campaign can be assessed with just a few clicks with the aid of a comprehensive Google Analytics setup.

Here are few new tools we have seen come across our desks that are not only affordable, but also enhance the user experience which in turn develops confidence in your customers and drives new business.

Integrated Online Booking – Booking trips online sometimes takes people outside of their comfort zone. Let them gain confidence in your services by providing seamless online booking. Rather than leaving your site or filling out a property request form, real-time availability and online booking will be key not only for you to promote your units accurately, but also to allow the user to search by dates or unit criteria and then book it online once they’ve found what they’re looking for. Check out the Gulf Shores Plantation booking engine to see it action!

Property Reviews – Positive property reviews are an important piece of the vacation rental industry and online reputation management. People have come to expect them for hotels on sites like Trip Advisor, Orbitz and Expedia but they have not been as readily available for vacation homes and condos. Positive customer reviews for vacation rentals on sites like FlipKey are a critical piece of information to give your prospects that will also give your company the edge over your competition. We’ve devised a number of ways to leverage and grow positive reviews for our vacation rental and lodging clients.

Online Brochures – Save money and trees by passing on the next printing of your real estate or vacation rental brochure and post it online in a rich media format instead. These dynamic brochures can be set to music and can be completely customized so they look even better than your print brochures and are a fraction of the price. Check out the Seven Lakes Ranch Brochure.

For more information on how you can stretch your marketing budget by investing in digital marketing, call Blue Tent today at 970.704.3240 and take advantage of a free one-hour internet marketing consultation.

Google Apps brings simple, powerful communication and collaboration tools to organizations.

With Google Apps, users can use applications such as Gmail™ webmail service, Google Calendar™ calendaring service, Google Docs™ program, Google Sites™ web application, Google Talk™ instant messaging service, and Google Video™ for business on their own domain to work collaboratively more effectively. Hosted by Google, there’s no hardware or software to download, install or maintain. According to Google, more than two million business run Google Apps–and thousands more sign up everyday. As a Google Apps Authorized Reseller, we sell, service and customize the Google Apps Premier Edition for our customers!

To get started, review the screenshot of the Google Apps Standard vs. Premium comparison chart below:

Standard and Premium Google Apps Services

Start Page: Begin by creating a personalized home page for all the office to use. Set up a customized domain start.yourdomainname.com . Add Google Gadgets to your home page. Google and 3rd parties have written a wide variety of Gadgets that do everything from tracking news feeds to playing games. You can pick and choose which Gadgets to display and move them just by dragging and dropping.

Gmail: Fast, searchable email with less spam. Set up email lists. Spam Filtering and Virus Protection are enabled and can’t be shut off so it prevents you from sending an executable file as an attachment.

Google Calendar: Share Calendars with staff and Gmail users. Using Google Calendar, you can add events and invitations effortlessly, share with staff, friends and family (or keep things to yourself), it’s organizing made easy. Gmail Integration Gmail now recognizes when messages mention events, and you can add those events to your calendar with just a couple clicks.

Google Docs & Spreadsheets: Free web-based word processor and spreadsheet, which allow you share and collaborate online. You can easily do all the basics, including making bulleted lists, sorting by columns, adding tables, images, comments, formulas, changing fonts and more. And it’s free. Upload your existing files. Google Docs accepts most popular file formats, including DOC, XLS, ODT, ODS, RTF, CSV, PPT, etc. So go ahead and upload your existing files.

Premium Services
The free (Standard) version of Google Apps is nice by itself, but for $50 per user, per year, you can upgrade to the Premier Edition.
The Premier Edition of Google Apps offers the same services as the Standard Edition with the addition of:

• Up to 25 gigs of Gmail storage space per account
• 99.9% guarantee of email uptime
• Ability to turn off AdSense ads in Gmail
• Conference room and resource scheduling
• APIs that can be integrated with your existing infrastructure
• Email migration tools
• Phone support
• Third party applications and services
• Postini mail management and recovery

These services can be blended into your existing domain and even branded with a custom company logo. For a demo please contact us.

Next: What’s involved to set up Google Apps for your domain and set up requirements?

Moira Meyers
Director of Technology

Over the past 18 months I have witnessed a sharp change to the forefront of blogging. A true breakthrough for the Web 2.0 world, blogging was initially used as a medium for people to express opinions and share information with one another. It helped spark the ability for people to build relationships – ultimately engaging readers enough to create some type of community on the web.  What at one point was a purely static version of blogging, has evolved into a dynamic, engaging and quickly changing environment. Vertical blogs, such as localism.com, have allowed users to block out the blogosphere’s noise, and choose the specific industry or genre of the blog(s) that they want to follow.

What continues to challenge marketing departments is the ability to engage their consumers in the company blog. How do you engage a reader once they have already arrived at your blog?

It is important that the author keep in mind two main aspects of successful blogging; organization and frequency. The first is simple, choose a blogging software that will allow you to arrange your content in an organized and easy to navigate way.  Currently, WordPress allows the author to tag each post with the most relevant categories, then offering a RSS feed directly to that category – allowing the reader to only read what they choose.

A second option is Compendium Blogware. Compendium blogs are arranged in a keyword fashion, rather than categories, each blog is given a keyword. The software then crawls your latest post and compends that post to the most relevant keyword blog – a very unique way to organize content driven by keywords.

Aside from providing an easy to navigate blog – it is important to consider the frequency of your posts. Twice a day, week, month? Too many posts can drown the reader in content and can also be missed – as most blogging software arrange blog posts by date. Welcome micro-blogging! Social media websites such as Twitter & Twello allow the author to update their audience with short snips of content. This tool is great for referring readers back to more involved blog posts, or even a great way to promote specials, packages and new inventory on the main website.

Providing your readers with an easy to follow, organized and steady flow of content will not only be favorable to the search engines, but also help build a strong reputation for your website.

Best,

Jonathan Georger
Director of Search Marketing

“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

This past week our COO and I headed down to Denver (again) to meet the new Netsuite office team. As part of our goal to help our clients better run and understand their business, I thought this would be a relevant topic for our blog. Netsuite is a SaaS provider and has proven to be a major help for our business and customer relations. We started using just the sales force automation (SFA) components of the software about 4 years ago. Since then we have dumped Quick Books and are running our entire business on this platform. Very cool! The Netsuite team has just opened an office in the Denver Tech center, quite an impressive group. We got to meet a few of the sales engineers and mingle with their team. Netsuite then threw a nice party for customers and prospects at the downtown Ritz with an appearance from their CEO and some customer break out session to rap with the geeks that really know how the software works. It’s always nice to get “free” training, although I must admit the free food and drinks were worth the trip. At any rate, we are pretty excited to have them open an office in Denver. If anyone has any questions about Netsuite, feel free to comment here or drop me and email through our contact form.

- Peter Scott
President