Creating a successful e-campaign is very different from other forms of online marketing, and requires specific knowledge in order to create emails that will be delivered, opened, and acted-upon by recipients. With our inboxes overflowing everyday with junk email and unwanted “spam,” you need to know how to make your email stand out in the long list of messages waiting to be read, and also how to create an email that will motivate recipients to take the action you want them to take. Of course, you must always use a professional listserv service when sending out an e-campaign to ensure can-spam compliance, deliverability, and results tracking and monitoring. Here are five tips that can help you create effective, successful e-campaigns that will get opened and get results for your business:

1. Use a Recognizable “From” Label
   The “From” label is typically the first line of information that displays in your recipients’ inbox list (followed by the subject line). It’s important that your recipients are able to immediately recognize who the email is from – so use your company’s name. Otherwise, they may simply hit the “delete” button or worse – report it as spam!

2. Create an Attention-Getting Subject Line
   The subject line is typically displayed directly beneath the “From” label, and should give the recipient some idea of what the email is about. The trick, however, is to write a subject line that is eye-catching and interesting, yet short enough to be viewed without being cut off in the recipients’ email window. Try to keep the subject line to about 30 to 40 characters, and most email programs will be able to display it accurately. Never use all-caps in your email subject line – it looks like you’re “shouting”, which is annoying and also more likely to be flagged by a spam filter.

3. Design for the Preview Pane
   Design your email with the Preview Pane in mind, since many recipients will read your message right from there (rather than clicking to open the entire email). Make sure that your most important information is near the top of the email and not buried at the bottom, since you readers may not take the time to scroll down to the end. Make sure the information is interesting enough for readers to take action or scroll down to continue reading the rest of your message. Use sub-headers and short paragraphs to break up your text, and make use of bulleted lists that contain important points without taking up a lot of space.

4. Use Web-Ready Images
   Images should be web-ready; meaning the file size should be as small as possible so it downloads quickly, and it should be a commonly recognized file type like .jpg, .gif, .png, etc. File sizes for e-campaign images should be 25K or smaller, and you should always provide a text description (alt-text) for images for recipients who have images turned off. Always test your emails before actually sending campaigns, since the image paths (where the images are stored on the web) must be correct in order for the images to display.

5. Include a Call to Action
   Often, the reason you send an e-campaign in the first place is to get recipients to do something; call your toll-free number, make a purchase, click to a landing page for more information, redeem a coupon or special offer, etc. So it’s important to include a crystal clear call to action in your message that tells recipients exactly what to do. Provide links in several places throughout the email message, and consider using both buttons and text links to encourage clicks. You should also include links to any other high-value content on your website that is related to the campaign, since that can help drive additional traffic to your website as well.

By using these five e-campaign tips, you can improve the chances that your emails will be successfully delivered, opened by recipients, and produce the intended results of your campaigns. E-campaigns are still one of the most effective ways to communicate with your customers and prospects, and also one of the most affordable. In fact, for 2010 the Direct Marketing Association says that on average, every dollar that you spend on e-campaigns will produce $42 for your business – what other marketing initiative can give you that kind of ROI?

Today, there are new websites, social networking sites, online directories, and mobile device applications popping up all the time on the internet, giving small businesses many choices and opportunities to build a solid online presence. The flip side, however, is that if you have been neglecting your website, ignoring your current search engine rankings, or procrastinating about social networking, it’s likely that your small business will be left behind all the other companies (including competitors) that are taking advantage of these technologies and reaching their customers using these effective online channels.

So what can you do to create a strong online presence, become visible to customers looking for your products and services, and stand out at the top of the search engine rankings?

The key is an integrated online marketing strategy that combines your website, social platforms, search engine optimization (SEO), and ongoing online marketing initiatives. For small businesses that are willing to commit to this integrated approach, the results can boost revenue, increase leads, retain customers, strengthen sales, and create the kind of overall online visibility that continues to build on itself over time. Here are the four key areas to include in a successful integrated online strategy:

1. Your Website. Studies have shown many times over that a professional, well-organized, up-to-date website has a direct, positive effect on customer loyalty, lead conversions, business credibility, and sales/revenue. Conversely, a sub-standard website can reflect poorly on your business and have a negative effect on consumers. Your website is the face of your business to the rest of the world; make sure it is an accurate reflection of your quality and capability as a company.
2. Social Platforms. Not only does a social networking strategy make your business more visible online, recent research reveals that consumers are more likely to buy from the businesses they “follow” socially, and sharing information on sites like Facebook, Twitter, and LinkedIn can create a significant number of referrals being spread through the social networks, resulting in recommendations and publicity for your business. Another valuable aspect of a social strategy is that the content you regularly post (that also gets shared among your followers and their networks) is also indexed by the search engines, providing you with an ongoing source of inbound links that help boost your search engine rankings.
3. Search Engine Optimization. More than 80% of internet users turn to the search engines first to look for products and services, with Google being the most popular search engine today. So if you want to be found by customers and capture traffic from the billions of searches performed each day, your website must be accurately optimized and coded to show up in the search results for the keywords that matter most to your business. Optimizing a website is a multi-faceted process that involves both behind-the-scenes and on-the-page techniques, as well as other criteria ranging from valid W3C web code to inbound link counts to geo-targeted GPS coordinates and more. If you’re not comfortable doing your own search engine optimization work, hire a firm to help you – it’s that important.
4. Ongoing Initiatives. Of course, these marketing initiatives are not like a one-time print ad or a direct mail piece. They are ongoing marketing efforts that require continued attention to make sure that your business continues to make progress and improve upon (or at least maintain) the gains made in web conversions, search engine rankings, inbound link creation, online visibility, and so forth. If you do not maintain your efforts going forward, you give your competitors a perfect opportunity to overtake you while you sit on the sidelines and watch your online visibility (and hard-earned results) slip away.

An integrated online marketing strategy is also highly measurable; you can monitor your results and make adjustments along the way to improve your outcomes every single month. For instance, if your web conversions start to fall, a quick e-campaign with an optimized landing page can help turn things around. Or a slip in search engine rankings can be reversed by adjusting your web page content or tweaking the behind-the-scenes data. If you are paying attention and tracking results, it can help your business stay visible online and a step ahead of your competitors.

Being invisible online is bad news for your business. But the good news is that with an integrated online marketing strategy and a commitment to follow it, your business can be more visible online and enjoy the benefits of more leads, more loyalty, and a boost to your bottom line.

There may be lots of things you don’t know about your website, but there are three really important points that all small businesses should be aware of if they want to get great results from their websites.

1. Quality, relevant content on your website can make or break a sale.

It’s true – a report from IDG Research recently discovered that if a customer perceives the content on your website as being poor, it reduces your chance of closing the sale by 45%.

The importance of good, informative, well-organized content cannot be overstated; your customers and potential customers visit your website to learn about your products and services, and to be reassured that you are qualified to help them solve their problems. If your content is poor, or if there is not enough relevant content on your site to meet their needs, chances are that they will simply click over to the next site; probably to your competitor’s site.

Another bonus to having good, quality web content is that it gives the search engines plenty of relevant content to index, which is a key component to good search engine rankings.

2. A call-to-action on each page of your website helps boost conversions.

Each individual page on your website should be written to get your visitors to do something or take action; whether it’s to sign up for your email list, fill out an information request, buy a product, call for a quote, etc. A call-to-action is the way to let your visitors know what you want them to do – so don’t make them guess!

The more specific you can be with your call-to-action, the better. Using a simple “contact us” seems straightforward, but may not be enough to get a response. Take the guess work out of it as much as possible.

For instance, “contact us” could be changed to “click this link to request more information”, which takes visitors to an online form. “Call us” could be “Call us at 800-555-9846 and ask for John”. Let visitors know what to do, what they can expect, and when to take action, and your web conversions can improve almost instantly.

3. Your website is never really “finished”.

Your website is not a one-time project that can be completed and then forgotten about. Your website is a dynamic marketing asset for your business that must be updated, improved, and monitored over time to make sure it is working for your business and for your customers.

Often, small businesses will scramble to get a website put together, only to breathe a sigh of relief once it’s “completed” and goes live on the web. But that is only the beginning! Your web site is one of the most important, effective marketing tools your business has, but only if it changes and grows along with your business. Adding new content, adjusting search engine keywords, and showcasing new products or company news are just some of the things that any good business website must do in order to be successful and keep visitors engaged and coming back.

If your website is outdated, it will not be useful to your visitors, nor will it be useful to the search engines (and they won’t bother displaying your site in their search results). Visitors and search engines both require relevant, up-to-date, useful information, and there is certainly plenty of that on the web today already competing with your website. Make sure your site is regularly updated with fresh content, and that you keep up with current technology and user expectations (like web video, links to your social platforms, RSS feeds and web apps, etc.).

The More You Know

Your website can (and should!) be the central focus of your online marketing strategy. It is the place your existing customers return to when they need information, but it’s the first place new customers will look to “check you out” before doing business with you. Both will make many decisions based largely on what they find there.

So if you create a website that is 1) a quality resource for visitors, 2) provides the information and incentive needed to do business with you, and 3) is regularly updated with useful content, you will have created a true asset for your small business.

Want your website to be listed higher in the search engine ranking results? Unless your site is already sitting in the number one spot, I’m sure the answer is yes – who wouldn’t want that? But Search Engine Optimization (SEO) is a complicated process, and there is so much mis-information and bad advice floating around, it can be difficult to know which tactics work, and which ones are nonsense.

Here is a list of five SEO myths that not only don’t work, they can get your website banned by the search engines if you use them!

1. “The more times I use a keyword on a web page, the better.”

   This myth can definitely get you in trouble with the search engines! Of course you should use a keyword in the content of your web page, but using it to many times on the same page can get you flagged for keyword spamming. Although there is no definitive rule on how much is too much, it’s generally thought that a keyword should have a density between 2% and 6%.

2. “Using the meta keyword tag will boost my rankings.”

   Wrong – the meta keyword tag is actually useless, and will not help your rankings one bit. There are other meta tags, however, like Title and Description, that are definitely used by the search engines in evaluating your web pages, but the keyword meta tag is not used at all for ranking web pages.

3. “Trading links or reciprocal links is a great way to build inbound links to my site.”

   The search engines look for naturally occurring links coming from quality sites, and their algorithms are quite good at telling the difference between natural links and reciprocal and 3-way linking schemes. Build your inbound links naturally using standard techniques, because reciprocal links are discounted by the search engines, and link “buying” can get you banned altogether.

4. “Submitting my site to hundreds of search engines is a good way to improve my rankings.”

   Not only is it unnecessary to submit your site to the search engines (the search engine spiders will discover your site on their own), submitting a site does not mean it will be listed in the search results. There are hundreds of factors that search engines consider when determining how to rank a site, but submission is not one of them.

5. “As the business owner, I’m the best person to choose the keywords I want to be listed for.”

   Although it may be appropriate for an owner to help select the list of “seed words” to use in SEO (seed words are the terms used to start the keyword research), you definitely want real-time data to tell you which keywords will perform the best for your business! For instance, you may think customers search for “ABC widgets”, but the data may show you that searchers actually typed in “blue widgets” or “big blue widgets” and never once typed in “ABC widgets”. Why would you waste time and effort optimizing for a term that nobody ever searches on?

We all want our business websites to show up in the top of the search results, but be careful – what you think you know might actually end up hurting you!

If you’re like most small businesses, you already know you should have a presence on social sites like Facebook, Twitter, LinkedIn, etc. You probably have lots of excuses, too, for why you just haven’t gotten around to setting up a social strategy; maybe you think it’s too much work, or maybe you think it’s just a fad, or maybe you think that social networking doesn’t really make a difference to your bottom line.

Well, if you’ve been waiting to see some evidence that social networking can work for your business, I’ve got good news for you (and bad news for your excuses). According to recent research reports (from Chadwick Martin Bailey and iModerate Research), social marketing is not only good for promoting and marketing your business, but it can also directly impact sales, attract new customers, and strengthen customer loyalty.

What the Research Says

In the study, 67% of consumers who follow businesses on Twitter said they are more likely to purchase from those businesses after becoming a “follower”. Similarly, 51% of people who “Like” a business on Facebook said they would become customers of the businesses they “Like”. Considering the hundreds of millions of users that these social platforms have, that’s a lot of potential customers and new sales!

Since social networking is all about sharing information, it’s no surprise that the research also found 79% of Twitter followers and 60% of Facebook fans are more likely to recommend the businesses they follow to their own networks of friends and associates. That can result in significant referrals being spread through the social networks, with the potential for further sharing and referrals as information is then shared among additional personal networks.

The Message You’re Sending to Customers

So how important is it for a small business to invest in a social networking strategy? Josh Mendelsohn, a vice president at Chadwick Martin Bailey, says “companies not actively engaging [in social networking] are missing a huge opportunity and are saying something to consumers, intentionally or unintentionally,” which further underscores the importance of creating an effective social marketing strategy for your business.

If your small business isn’t already using social networking to connect with customers, the sooner you get a strategy in place, the better. Your customers want you to be there, and frankly, they expect it. The reasons customers follow or “like” your business are varied; for instance, the study revealed that for women, receiving discounts and promotions was a top motivator (60% for Twitter users and 43% for Facebook). Men, on the other hand became followers on Twitter to be part of a like-minded community (32%), but “liked” businesses on Facebook to show others that they liked and/or supported the business (52%).

Additional reasons cited in the study included gaining access to exclusive content, being the first to know new information about a business, or resolving customer service issues. Whatever the reasons, it’s clear that having a presence on the social networks is becoming an expectation of your customers.

What’s Holding You Back?

Social networking provides your business with a huge opportunity to reach new customers and promote your business, and the data now shows that companies with a social marketing strategy are seeing increases is actual sales and new customers as a result of their social activity. So if your business still does not have a solid social marketing strategy in place, what’s holding you back?