Blue Tent Marketing

Roundup of recent Drupal news:

Drupal + Services Module + Beer = BeerCloud on Android and iPhone. Read the case study.

Drush 2.x, the Drupal Shell, can update core now. It could already update modules and themes.

Drush 3.x makes managing multiple sites easier. See the article on DevelopmentSeed.org.

5 Reasons why Drupal is being chosen by government agencies. Drupal: The New Gov 2.0 Site Builder?

Drupal 7 Alpha 3 is now available. See the notes to find out more and get involved.

And Drupalcon San Francisco is next week.  Shaun Laws and I will be representing Blue Tent Marketing. Rumor has it 3000 people will be attending.

– David Lanier
Director of Web Development
Blue Tent Marketing

Good Morning Vacation Rental Managers!

Listen to a very informative interview with Blue Tent President Peter Scott on Scott Colson’s VacationRentalTraffic.org Podcast.

VacationRentalTraffic.org is dedicated to bringing Vacation Rental Managers today’s best online strategies, tools and techniques to drive floods of traffic to their websites and maximize their bookings.

In this wide ranging interview Pete discusses some SEO challenges often faced by Vacation Rental Managers, some emerging threats, the importance of having solid content and clean code, various SEO strategies, and backing up your efforts with a Google Analytics set up.

Leverage the power of Custom Reports in Google Analytics and improve your paid search campaigns.  It’s safe to say that it’s always a good idea to concentrate your actionable intelligence in as few places as possible.  While making it easier for users to wrap their heads around the data, it also makes for shorter mental leaps in the measure, modify, test and repeat decision cycle. Streamline this process by concentrating important metrics normally spread across 3 tabs onto 1 custom report tab.

Here is an example of traditional AdWords data as seen in Google Analytics.  You’ll notice that the information you need to make decisions on individual keywords exists on four tabs – Site Usage, Goal Set 1, Ecommerce and Clicks.

Here’s a good example of a traditional Adwords setup:

Contrast that with the more lucid custom report which consolidates those metrics that matter to you most in one place:

Clearly, the custom report has a higher concentration of important actionable metrics, which include bounce rate, visits, cost per conversion and revenue.  With a custom report you can cut right to the chase and see exactly how your paid search campaign is contributing to your bottom line.  Moreover, by concentrating these important metrics in one place it is easier to make tweaks to your paid search campaigns.  Read more about creating custom reports, download this custom report, and contact us today about customizing Google Analytics to produce actionable reports that are custom to your business and its needs.

We’re excited to announce the launch of a completely redesigned and redeveloped website for Red River Ski Area. This little slice of heaven is nestled in the Carson National Forest, high in the southern-most tip of the Sangre de Cristo Mountains. Red River Ski Area has been in operation since 1959. Red River approached us with a need to create a web presence with wide spectrum needs and considerations – from creating a clean design to allow the natural beauty of Red River to speak for itself, to integrating an e-commerce component for equipment rentals. Needless to say, we were excited to jump into such an intriguing project – not to mention the prospect of making a trip down Red River to sample the goods!

To fulfill the wide-ranging scope of the project, we decided to build the site upon the Drupal platform. Some of the more notable aspects of the site include the following:

• Custom weather and snow and grooming report integration.
• E-commerce component (ubercart) to handle lift ticket purchases, rental equipment, lesson packages, and group packages.
• Automated email notifications to notify lodging partners of reservation requests via the Red River Ski Area site.
• Events calendar and live web cams to keep users up-to-date on the latest happenings and conditions at the resort.
• Social media sharing capability through popular social networks such as Facebook and Twitter.
• A clean and user-friendly design, evocative of the area’s unique beauty that welcomes users into the site with large lifestyle images.

Congratulations to the great team who made this Drupal web design project a reality. Rowan kept everything tight while leading the team as project manager, Lauren did an awesome job, as always, in her design work, Shaun was the developer and Moira ensured a smooth deployment.  Andrew made the project possible for the sales side. We’ve received quite a bit of positive feedback on this project so far – let us know what you think!

Email marketing is consistently reported as one of the best-performing channels available in your digital marketing arsenal. It’s critical to know how important email marketing is to your business, and most importantly, to understand the R.O.I. of your current email marketing program. We regularly engage our email marketing clients in a Comprehensive Account Review in order to optimize the overall effectiveness of their email marketing campaigns. By investing in four to six hours of time, you’ll better understand annual trends, analyze key findings from campaign reports, gain better understanding of current best practices, and identify action items to address areas that need improvement.

We follow a detailed five-step process to evaluate and ultimately improve your email marketing program:

Phase One: Identify Annual Trends

• Analyze your opt-in and unsubscribe numbers and processes.
• Identify conversion tracking methods and measurement.
• Analyze Google Analytics trends and visitor behavior.
• Identify your most active and inactive subscribers.

Phase Two: Review Campaign Reports

• Review the performance of email campaign reports over the past 12 months.
• Identify best and worst performing campaigns, subject lines, creative and calls to action.
• Review and enable monthly subscriber and unsubscriber reports.

Phase Three: Email Best Practices

• Review deliverability stats and email authentication process.
• Analyze sharing functionality and effectiveness. Share with your network (SWYN) and Forward to a Friend integration.
• Review online and mobile versions.
• Review the opt-in and unsubscribe process, and email preference administration center.
• Review templates and creative.
• Review advanced email marketing techniques (segmentation & trigger messages).

Phase Four: Getting the most out of your Email Project Manager

• Identify how you would benefit the most from working with your email project manager.
• Consider strategic consulting time, and set a campaign schedule with notifications and reminder messages.
• Establish a regular schedule for reviewing reports and campaign performance.
• Consider taking on more testing to achieve better results.

Phase Five: The Action Plan

• Create an action plan to tackle the most important aspects of your email marketing program that need attention and improvement.

Each and every email marketing program is highly-valued and important to us. Taking the time for a comprehensive account review is just one way we’re making sure that your email marketing program is a success. Contact us today to get started and the results will speak for themselves.

– Ryan Austin
Director of Email Marketing

In July 2009, search headlines revealed a deal between Microsoft and Yahoo whereby Microsoft would power Yahoo search.  Yesterday the two search engines announced that they have received clearance from the U.S. Department of Justice and the European Commission for their search agreement.  A few important details to consider:

• Both Yahoo and Microsoft search will continue to have differentiated search experiences with Microsoft (Bing) managing the technology behind the search algorithm for both.
• The Microsoft adCenter will be the platform for search campaigns on both Bing and Yahoo.
• The agreement is meant to help you reach more customers, save time and effort in managing your campaigns, and more readily experience new features through greater innovation.

These changes will not immediately affect your accounts with Bing and Yahoo as the two companies are committed to a smooth transition.  The transition is expected to occur before the holiday season of 2010.  Several things to start to think about:

• Start (or continue) monitoring your Bing and Yahoo organic search results, paying more attention to Bing as this algorithm will ultimately command more market share by the end of 2010.
• If you aren’t running a Yahoo or Microsoft paid search campaign, consider starting one as you’ll be able to reach customers on both Yahoo and Bing.
• Stay up to date about the transition – Yahoo Transition Center.

- Lindsay Reither
Director of SEM & Web Analytics

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.

Ever wonder how the search volume for one of your top keywords varies over time?  Curious as to why your site saw a decrease in organic search traffic despite a month of improved search engine rankings?  Trying to determine when you should ramp up your paid search campaign?  Look no further.  Google Insights for Search is a powerful tool that allows you to compare search volume patterns across search terms, location and time ranges.  The tool is helpful for many aspects of your search engine marketing efforts including:

Seasonality: Budget and plan your internet marketing efforts (and your business) according to the seasonality of your top keywords.  For example, if you run a snow plowing business, determine when people are searching for relevant keywords in your geographic area and ramp up your paid search campaign accordingly.  Consider increasing your budget proportionally to the search volume.

Geographic Distribution: Where do you customers live?  Compare search volume across countries, regions and cities.  For example, if you are responsible for marketing for a vacation rental company in Colorado, you may need to know when people in different geographic regions start planning their ski vacations.  From the data below, you can compare different geographies and target these markets accordingly.  With paid search, you can create unique campaigns for individual cities and states and can increase and decrease their budgets according to the search trends.

Predicting the Future: Will the search volume for your top keywords increase, decrease or remain steady over time?  Do you need to ramp up your search marketing efforts to capture a larger share of search traffic in 2010 compared to 2009?  Using extrapolation of data, Google helps to predict the future of search for specific keywords.  Use their forecast tool, to help plan your search strategy for 2010.

Lindsay Reither
Director of Search Engine Marketing & Web Analytics