We love our web design and marketing articles! This week is yet another great group of articles which remind us why we love being a digital marketing agency: learning!
This week, a quick overview of visitor preferences for a mobile app versus a mobile website, a bunch of great information about email marketing, a high-level overview of current SEO information (subject to debate), a couple of nice management articles, and we finish it off with some thoughts on typography. » Read more: Learn about Digital Marketing from others: email marketing, mobile apps
This week we have a doozy of a collection of web resources being shared at the Synotac offices! These are primarily resources around digital marketing, and are relevant to folks doing in-house marketing, as well as interactive agencies and web design firms. Of course, we tossed a few curve balls in a well on the history of computers and other fun stuff.
Next week we’ll start adding names to each resource so you can see which Synotacker is suggesting each article.
When putting together a marketing plan, ask yourself 1) How well do you really know your target client group? d) Do you have a clear and compelling message that sets you apart from competitors? 3) Are you putting your best foot forward online? Three Questions for Marketing Plan Success, Hinge Marketing, 1.16.2012
An assortment of articles that we have found useful at Synotac this week for web design, video, time management, and more.
Video
YouTube is revamping to be based around shows and channels (more like a competitor to Hulu or Netflix) to keep visitors on YouTube for longer than a few minutes: Streaming Dreams, The New Yorker, 1.16.2012
Video streaming (Ustream specifically, which we’re using for Lunch + Learns!) can promote democracy but also can identify protesters and people behind the camera (some organizations are working on technology to make the footage / faces anonymous): Visibility before all, The Economist, 1.14.2012
Email marketing is one of the most powerful tools in the modern marketer’s toolkit today because of how trackable it is and the low cost of delivery. Your approach is primarily driven by your content strategy (similar to social media), and you will struggle if you do not have a detailed content plan to generate relevant content.
There are four key components to every email campaign, and they are outlined below. We like to call them the Email Purchase Chain, because each of these steps should be part of an unbroken chain of expectations that you lead your prospect through. We often find that small businesses only think about the middle two steps (email capture and clickthrough) when they think about email marketing, because they think of the website as outside of the scope of email marketing.
It is also important to think about the goal of each step being to get your prospects to the next step in the chain, not necessarily to make a purchase. It is easy to try and do to much, but you may find it useful to remember the adage about dating: you may think he or she is the one, but you are just trying to get a first date, not get them to marry you.
These components are very valuable in helping you to understand what to track and optimize for your email efforts, and how to make sure that you are guiding your prospects to the next step in your campaign with the appropriate messaging and tactics. We will be going into each step in more detail in future posts.
1. Email Capture
Email capture is the process of gathering emails in the first place. While we often use old lists from a CRM or other source, the best email campaigns are from lists that people have intentionally opted in on your website and that deliver emails that match the expectations set when they opted in.
At a high level, your success at capturing emails will depend on the value that you offer your visitors in exchange for their email address versus the friction or anxiety that your signup process creates. Focus on having a signup that is both relevant to your target customers and offers exclusive content.
The expectations that you set here should be continued throughout the rest of your email purchase chain, and are key to the success of your efforts.
We love our web design and marketing articles! This week is yet another great group of articles which remind us why we love being a digital marketing agency: learning!