Tag Archive for 'email marketing'

Web Service Highlight: Emma

Published on January 19, 2010 in Uncategorized. 0 Comments Tags: , , , , , , .

One of the main questions we get asked by our members is what sort of technology or service they should be working with. It wasn’t that long ago that you’d need an in-house development team to power your internet marketing. Now, there are so many good and reliable web services out there, that it’s entirely possible for a small business to get big business results without their own tech staff. We use a number of different online services here at VisibleU, and we can’t give you a much stronger endorsement than to let you know what we trust our own business with. So this will be the first in a series of posts where we highlight a web service or piece of software we use regularly.

Continue reading ‘Web Service Highlight: Emma’

Incoming search terms for the article:

The Online Marketing Cash Funnel

Published on July 8, 2009 in Visible Shops Updates. 0 Comments Tags: , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , .

What is the online marketing cash funnel you ask?  Simple: low-cost online marketing solutions that help your company meet and exceed its business objectives.

Though the Internet has been around for a long time, many companies are still struggling with how to take advantage of online marketing to improve their business.  For this reason, we decided to expose the elephant in the room and put together a survey to see how you could use online marketing to begin funneling success to your business.

When we recently surveyed 97 small businesses in and around New York, the overall question was simple: Is your website meeting your business objectives?  To answer, we asked these 97 businesses 9 important questions to discover whether the elephant was being ignored or whether it was being leveraged for success.

The results laid it out in plain English: Companies with Internet Marketing Strategies in place more often report that their website is meeting their business objectives.

meeting_business_needs1

A Little Strategy Goes a Long Way

Of companies that reported that their website was meeting business objectives, 53% update their website weekly, and 72% update their site at least monthly.  Whether or not SEO is part of their marketing strategy, frequent updates help keep search engines hungry and coming back for more.  Even more importantly, updates keep the site fresh and relevant, showing a visitor that behind this site is a company that is constantly innovating and improving.

Continue reading ‘The Online Marketing Cash Funnel’

The Number One Email Inhibitor

Published on July 7, 2009 in Statistics, email and emarketing. 0 Comments Tags: , , , , , , , , , , , , , , .

How many unread emails do you have in your in-box and what was your reason for ignoring them? Has your mother been emailing about how you don’t call enough? Are you ignoring online bills? Are you being solicited by men who need you to wire them $100,000 because they have been unjustly exiled from their home country?

Many recipients either unsubscribe or simply stop reading emails from online marketers. Year-after-year, in-box clutter has been the number one reason people resist emails, but this year, things have been turned on their head. A 2008 study from Marketingsherpa’s email summit in Miami has determined that in-box clutter is not the biggest problem – the problem is relevance.

Email Inhibitor

Continue reading ‘The Number One Email Inhibitor’

Incoming search terms for the article:

Surprise! Oprah = Higher Open Rate

Published on November 24, 2008 in PR, Viral Marketing, e-commerce, email and emarketing. 1 Comment Tags: , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , .

oprahemail1The results of a last-minute e-mail campaign earlier this month for client Sarabeth’s Kitchen just goes to show that send days and times are all relative. Especially when Oprah is involved.

When we learned that Sarabeth’s Legendary Spreadable Fruit was featured in the current issue of O, The Oprah Magazine as one of Oprah’s Top 10 All-Time Favorite Gifts, we knew we had an opportunity on our hands. Thus, we wasted no time putting together an e-mail deal to celebrate this special recognition. Along with the requisite quote from Oprah herself heralding the brand as “the only jams I have in my house,” the e-mail offered 10% off a Sarabeth’s order of $50 or more with coupon code “OPRAH08” at checkout. The e-mail was sent on a Tuesday – which also happened to be a federal holiday – at 6 p.m. The subject line read, “An Oprah All-Time Favorite Gift: Sarabeth’s.” Additionally, we created a sense of urgency by limiting the campaign to three days, ending at midnight that Friday.

The open rate was better than expected at just shy of 30%. Of those who opened the e-mail, almost 20% clicked through links that led to Sarabeth’s home and products pages. To put these percentages in perspective, the open and click-through rates are among the best results we’ve seen from a Sarabeth’s e-mail, and the number of total people who opened the e-mail is the highest from any of their campaigns.

All in all, we couldn’t have expected a better outcome from a spur-of-the-moment campaign – the success of which was undoubtedly driven by analyzing the results of Sarabeth’s past campaigns and, of course, the power of Oprah.