Dinkum Interactive » Email marketing

Stepping Outside the Box for Email Marketing

Kelly — Fri, 18 Feb 2011 10:30:18 +0000

When Rick first asked me to use my marketing skills and write a newsletter to our clients and future clients, I was up for the challenge. What I wasn’t ready for was using MailChimp as the medium for the newsletter. When I asked about what I needed to do to create a newsletter in Mail Chimp, he looked at me with a smile and said – figure it out! So, after I laughed to cover up my anxiety, I logged into MailChimp and tried to familiarize myself with what exactly Mail Chimp was. I have used another email marketing tool and I thought it was very user friendly and I figured, “How hard could Mail Chimp be?” Well, let me tell you – it was a lot more challenging that I had anticipated.

Needless to say, I was apprehensive when I first looked at MailChimp. I am not a programmer nor would I consider myself a techie, but I knew I needed to step outside of my comfort zone if I wanted to do a good job and to present Dinkum Interactive in a positive light. I took my time, checked out all of the tabs and examples and used the help feature and lo and behold – the newsletter started to take shape. Of course there was constructive criticism and words of encouragement from the Dinkum peanut gallery which I turned into a drive to succeed. I have tweaked the newsletter and am really proud of myself for taking the time to learn this new tool and to enter a world of the unknown. I held my head high when I was done and patted myself on the back for stepping outside of my comfort zone to create a newsletter that Dinkum can be proud of.

If you have any fears about doing something outside of your comfort zone, remember to hold your head high and challenge yourself to step outside of the box and take on a new challenge. It will stimulate your mind as well as your ego. What have you tackled recently that broadened your horizons?

Photo credit: http://www.sxc.hu/photo/1208792

Kelly Dunning is a Sales Consultant for Dinkum Interactive. With 10 years experience in sales and marketing, she keeps Dinkum’s new accounts, and Rick, in tip-top shape.

Your Customer List: Low Hanging Fruit

Bill — Tue, 05 Jan 2010 16:36:17 +0000

What do Search Engine Optimization, Search Engine Advertising, Email and Social Media have in common? Beyond the obvious, most companies use one of these marketing methods to find customers and make sales. While these methods are arguably among the most efficient marketing methods to find new customers, many businesses overlook a resource that can be much more effective: their own customer base.

In speaking with businesses of all types and sizes, we regularly find that they fail to effectively capture existing customer information and then use it to stay in touch. Maximizing the use of its customer list is low hanging fruit to any business’ marketing effort. Customer retention offers many benefits; they include:

Greater Sales: Repeat Customers Spend 33% More
More Referrals: Repeat Customer Offer More Referrals Than Non Repeat Customers
Lower Cost: It Costs 80% More to Sell to a New Customers

Whether a business is online or offline, the benefits of customer retention, or CRM (customer relationship management), are clear. Therefore I thought I’d offer some ideas on how to grow a customer list and make it more useful:

Capture Email Addresses in Offline Forms, Like Service Invoices or Work Orders
Place an Email Signup Box on Every Page of a Website
Send a Personal Note to Follow Up a Sale; Request the Customer Join the Email List
Create a Loyalty Program Requiring Registration
Find & Connect With Customers Via Social Media
Engage Existing Customers To Ask for Feedback
Clean the Customer List Regularly
Determine Customers’ Area(s) of Interest by Segmenting the List

These are only ideas to get your juices flowing, but the concept applies to all offline and online businesses. With that said, be careful to follow some basic rules of thumb:

Ask for Permission
Don’t Ask for Information That Will Not Be Used

What is your opinion? Do you used any of these methods? Are they working for you?
Please share your experiences in the comments.

In a future post, I’ll touch on some specific ways to use these ideas to reach out and engage existing customers.

Bill Rowland

Rick’s New Glasses Social Media Project: What We Learned

Bill — Fri, 11 Dec 2009 11:00:12 +0000

In November, we used a seemingly routine occurrence as the keystone to a social media project. Rick Simmons, one of our illustrious leaders, needed new glasses and we felt compelled to help Rick out. After all, he needs it ;) So we concocted a quick experiment to see what would happen, figuring that it would be fun and we could share the results with our readers.

Our goal in our experiment was to engage our community and measure the response. We used HootSuite / Twitter, Facebook (both Dinkum Interactive & Rick’s personal page), LinkedIn groups, and LinkedIn profile, along with an Email blast and online survey provider Survey Gizmo ; the survey was intended to last for one week.

The Background of the Social Media Project

The experiment started on Wednesday November 4th with the creation of a basic online survey using Survey Gizmo. Using a simple single-selection survey we uploaded photos of the three eyeglass frames and asked users to vote for their favorite.

Option # 1	Option # 2
Option # 3

On November 6th, a post announcing the experiment was published on Dinkum’s blog which was accompanied by an email to those subscribers. Furthermore, a series of tweets was scheduled to be made via Twitter (200+ followers) throughout the weekend using HooteSuite’s “Send Later” utility. Finally, while Dinkum tweets were fed to the MyDinkum Facebook page, an event inviting friends to take part in the poll was created on Saturday. In addition Rick posted the survey to his LinkedIn profile and a few of the many groups he belongs to on LinkedIn.

The Results of Our Social Media Project Were:

170 Completed Surveys
279 Abandoned Surveys
449 Total Visits to the Survey Page
61% Survey Completion Rate
114 Click-Throughs Via MyDinkum Hootsuite/Twitter Accounts
31 Click-Throughs Via Personal Hootsuite/Twitter Accounts
51% Email Open Rate
18% Email Click Through Rate
Geography: Concentration in the Northeastern US

And the Winner Is…

The Handsome & Newly Bespectacled Rick Simmons

What We Learned

After quickly assembling the experiment and reviewing the results, here are a few observations:

Our community has a great sense of humor, as evidenced by the four suggestions that Rick try contacts (if he could, he would) and one suggestion for a new face (once again, he would if he could). Interestingly, a few people thought that we should have shown more of Rick’s face – obviously, gluttons for punishment.

Having a Fun Subject with a Small Time Investment is Helpful- Our overall aim was to explore this new avenue of communications in an attempt to actively engage users and find Rick some snappy new glasses; we accomplished both goals – Thanks!

Advance Testing Would Have Helped – We rolled the experiment out fairly quickly and didn’t have a chance to review the survey software in advance. SurveyGizmo.com did fairly well, but it was a bit light on stats. There were also a few broken links that were distributed; again not allowing enough time to test was to blame. Finally a high abandonment rate makes us think that usability may have been poor, so testing would have helped here too.

Finally, Several Other Observations Include:

The Rollout Should Be Carefully Timed to Achieve Maximum Impact
A Focused Call to Action is Helpful
A Unique, Trackable URL Should be Used to Evaluate Each Platform
Take advantage of as many available channels as possible. Some may surprise you

In conclusion, we were excited about the response our experiment received. It was fun, Rick found a new set of glasses and the everywhere Rick has gone in the past several weeks, the “Help Rick Pick His Next Set of Glasses” has been the main topic of conversation.

Thanks to all who participated

What are your thoughts? What could we have done better?

Bill Rowland

Email Marketing is Not Dead

Bill — Fri, 04 Dec 2009 19:19:59 +0000

Regardless of the popularity of social media, email continues to be a productive tool for business. While it may not be as sexy as Twitter, Facebook, Foursquare and other engagement platforms, email continues to be the glue of the social web. Easily understood and measurable, many businesses don’t maximize the potential of email. In fact, many don’t use it at all.

Developing a long term, profitable relationships with customers and prospects is often a primary goal of marketing and email can be used to easily cultivate those relationships. Reading a recent article on Building Loyalty with Clients Via Email got me thinking about it. Here are a few thoughts:

Businesses that don’t currently use email should consider it. It is still among the most productive online marketing methods.
Email marketing is relatively inexpensive. Small business providers like AWeber, Constant Contact and others offer excellent service with reasonable pricing.
Email marketing can be used for a variety of purposes, including generating sales, improving service and cultivating customer loyalty among others.
Obtaining a name and email address information gives businesses the opportunity to connect in other ways, like social media.
An email list can be promoted and grown in multiple ways: at the point of purchase, through social media (i.e. blog) or partnering with another business that offers complimentary services.

With all of this in mind, I have to laugh when I hear “Email Marketing is Dead.”

Do you use email marketing in your business? If so, how? What suggestions would you make to others?

Bill Rowland

Keywords: online marketing, email marketing, email, Aweber, Constant Contact

End Of Summer Search Marketing Survival Guide

Paul — Fri, 11 Sep 2009 11:00:05 +0000

While summer is winding down, hit the ground running by setting up your Internet Marketing Campaign for the rest of the year. Take some time this September to plan your strategy for the coming months while everyone else is finishing up their tanning or getting the kiddies into their school routine.

WEBSITE: Tweak, hone and fine-tune your website. Get your friends and loved-ones to have a look though it and get their feedback (trust us, not all suggestions will be useful but you may come across some real gems). Stop underestimating the value of your website.

EMAIL MARKETING: Have a plan for email marketing (we assume you are doing it, no?) for the rest of the year aiming at a minimum of 1 per month. Continue to figure out ways to build your list.

SEARCH: Paid or Organic (or both) should be high on your list of priorities. Many of you will have to become more and more aggresive towards the holiday season so starting now will give you an opportunity to really refine your campaign by the busy season.

SOCIAL MEDIA: This is a big one for jumping on the bandwagon without a plan. Most folks are finding out exactly how time-consuming it is. On the other hand, others are experiencing exactly how powerful it can be. Have a plan or better yet, let us plan it.

Start with a Website Evaluation and then move on from there

Cheers,
Paul

PaulFleming is co-founder and VP of Interactive Services for Dinkum Interactive. A trained teacher, Paul has worked in a variety of forms of Internet Marketing but with a focus on SEO. Originally from Australia, he now resides in Philadelphia with his wife and 2 ankle-biters.