Email Marketing Archives | My Social Media Network

Posted by Patrick

3 New Year’s Marketing Resolutions for 2017

May 19, 2017Advertising, Content Marketing, Email Marketing, Facebook, Google+, Instagram, LinkedIn, Marketing Campaigns, Mobile, Pinterest, ROI in Social Media, SEO, Social Good, Social Media 0

We’re nearly two weeks into 2017, and that means it’s still time to start making and working on some new year’s resolutions that are really going to stick and turn your life around for the better this year. The same can be said for your small business. There are so many new technologies and programs available today when it comes to marketing and promoting yourself, that it may seem overwhelming to know where to start. But nevertheless, if you aren’t marketing your small business in 2017 in new and exciting ways, how do you expect your business to grow? That’s why we’ve come up with a handy dandy list of new year’s marketing resolutions for your small business in 2017.

Revamp Your Website

January is the perfect time to take a look at your website and decide which pages and graphics, messages, etc. need to be updated, and which things can completely go. Giving your website a fresh new look in 2017 is a great way to attract more leads and potential customers. Be sure to hire the right San Diego website design firm who will take the time and attention it takes to ensure that every detail of your website is psychologically designed in a way that will attract more viewers, and bring them into your storefront or office.

Search Engine Optimization

The Internet is changing all of the time, and if you’re not keeping up with SEO, you may not even be visible in the vast digital jungle that is the web. Be sure to hire a professional search engine optimization firm that will not only help you reach the top of Google search pages, but also optimize your SEO in San Diego so you’re targeting customers nearby. Local search optimization is just as, if not more, important than overall SEO–depending upon your business and industry.

Boost Your Social Media Efforts

It’s always a good idea to make sure your social media content is current and up-to-date. If you want to grow a social following, be sure you’re posting relevant content your followers want to see on a consistent basis. Third party articles from companies you’d like to strategically align with are helpful. You may also want to refresh your profile and background images. Be sure to post content that is behind the scenes, without being too personal, and to mix in a bit of fun with your business-related information. Custom graphics, infographics, links to your website, videos and blogs are essential for social media, and not just on Facebook. LinkedIn is great for B2B marketing, while Instagram, Twitter, Snapchat and YouTube are growing fast. If you’re feeling a bit overwhelmed with navigating the ever-changing social media world, we are here to help. We offer social media management services that are sure to save you time, while increasing your following and overall profits. We can even create ads for your own personal Facebook and Instagram campaigns.

In this new digital age, it’s essential for small and large businesses alike to jump on the social media bandwagon. Whether you enjoy social media or not, there are billions of people around the globe who do, and it’s taking over the way that marketing and advertising is conducted moving forward. Therefore, we are here for you, and would love a chance to help make 2017 the best year yet for your San Diego business. For more information, or a detailed quote, call (619) 291-8181 or fill out our contact form. We look forward to hearing from you.

Posted by Patrick

Effective Email Subject Lines and How Not To Look Like Spam

May 19, 2017Email Marketing, Uncategorized 0

A few years ago, email marketing seemed to be the newest and best marketing opportunity available to anyone with a computer and an email account. However, thanks to SPAM, it has ruined email marketing for a lot of busiensses. That doesn’t mean that there isn’t a way to use email marketing to your business’ benefit. The business just needs to make sure that it has a strategy and that it follows the strategy.

The first thing that every company needs to do is to follow the wishes of the person at the other end of the email. It should be easy to get off the list. The link should be visibly marked “unsubscribe.” When that link is selected, the person should stop receiving emails from the company. There really should not be any argument or questioning why, it should just be done as a form of common courtesy. Maybe the company can send a confirmation email, but that should be the end of it. Of course, the company can save itself a lot of this trouble if it only sends emails to people who have said they wanted them. Creating a group who gets emails is a great deal for everyone involved.

The email sent out should be more than an advertisement. Even when a person has signed up for advertisements, he or she is more likely to delete an email that only has advertisements in it without ever actually opening the email. Instead of just an advertisement, the email can have an interesting tidbit in it or a good quote from someone famous. These are not things that will take up a lot of room, but when done well, they will create interest in opening the email – and email is only good when it has been opened and read.

The subject line should be clear about what is in the email. Subject lines like “Hi,” “It’s been a long time and “What are you wearing?” scream “spam” with the last one possibly screaming “stalker” or “pervert.” Instead the line should read something like “Quote from famous guy and offer from store.” Anything that is not misleading and allows the person to delete the email unread if the person is not interested in the content within the email.

The email should also include a positive identifier that the email is from where it says that it is from, and those who subscribe to the email list should know what that identifier is. Large companies say that they will never ask for a person’s password in an email. Other companies say that all emails will be addressed by name to the person at the email account. Having a clear process for contacting people on the email list makes it less likely that they will click on a link that takes them to a page that looks like the business’ page but is actually someone trying to gather personal and credit card information in a fraudulent manner.

Email marketing can still be effective even with all of the scams in the virtual marketplace. As long as the business is smart about its strategy, it can keep its customers safe, happy and in a buying mood by following the rules outlined above. Common decency, even if it seems out of style, should be the first rule. By following the wishes of the people at the other end of the email account, a company can avoid the hassles that come with being known as spam.

Posted by Patrick

The Importance of Utilizing a Call to Action

May 19, 2017Business Tips, Email Marketing, Social Media, Uncategorized

Having a Call to Action is important because…wait a minute – let’s assume you’ve not been in the digital marketing world. Let’s first talk about what a call to action (or CTA) stands for!

A CTA prompts someone to take action through one of your digital assets, like your website, email newsletter or Facebook page. A CTA is an image or line of text that says things like:

“Sign up now”
“Download our eBook”
“Attend our event”
“Get a free sample”
“Get 15% off your order”
“Get a product demo”

If you ever see a CTA like: “Become a millionaire in two days” -we recommend staying away from CTAs like those…unless of course you’re a real risk taker.

Now back to those CTAs….Why are they important?

If you start to work with a website designer, keep in mind all the time and money spent on designing and tweaking. Now think about all the people coming to your website over the next couple months, years. Do you want to lose the opportunity to get their name and email or other information that could help you to develop a relationship or influence brand loyalty? Of course you wouldn’t. Think about the storefront windows for top fashion brands in New York City – the window designers get paid well for a reason; their job is to attract the right clientele and entice them to come inside and make a purchase. And in the case of websites your rate of client retention is better. By using CTAs wisely, you can receive far more information and new clients from a virtual ‘window shopper’ than the average window shopper cruising by a storefront.

Which brings me on the next point…

Pizzazz!

When you work along with your website designer, she or he might not have creative design skills (unless of course you work with the technically and creatively savvy staffers at MySMN). When you start to think about what you want your CTAs to be, you’ll need a catchy phrase, an easy to read font and a vibrant color. The font should be modern and easy to read and the color should contrast with the background color of your website.

Be Honest

A big no-no in digital marketing is when a person or a brand puts something out in cyberspace, and asks users to click but the web page they land on is irrelevant or it’s just plain difficult to find the item promised. If your goal is to offer your visitor to “Get a free sample,” I recommend using a landing page made specifically for your CTA. When the person arrives on that page, repeat the language from your CTA again, make the page as neat as possible with short and concise directions on how they can obtain your free sample. Don’t ask for too much – just the essentials like first and last name, email address, shipping address and maybe one more like their birth date or phone number if you absolutely need it.

Posted by Patrick

Why You Need A Well Executed Mobile Marketing Strategy

May 19, 2017Advertising, Email Marketing, Mobile, Strategic Planning, Strategy, Uncategorized

According to Nielsen’s U.S. Consumer Usage Report back in 2012, smartphone owners officially made up “the majority of mobile subscribers, as 56 percent owned a smartphone as of Q3 2012.” And according to new research from the Pew Research Center’s Internet & American Life Project (2013), 61 percent of Americans own a smartphone. Pew’s research also states that twenty-eight percent of all cell owners are Android users, while iPhone owners represent 25 percent of the cell-owner population. As well-known digital marketing blogger Jay Baer puts it “the majority of adult Americans will have, in their pants, access to most of the world’s knowledge, at all times.” Thanks Jay, so that means if your business is online, you can get into your customers pants? Wow, I never knew marketing would come to this!

On a more dignified note, let’s get back to creating a mobile marketing strategy. What does your business need in its tool bucket?

First, a mobile friendly website. If you are thinking about re-designing your website or you are starting from scratch, think about designing for mobile first. Why? Because more and more people are accessing your website for the first time from their mobile phone. You’ll want to make it convenient for them to purchase or take other actions.

Second, analytics. Are you keeping an eye on your website’s mobile traffic? It’s an important metric for your overall analytics efforts. You will want to see how much traffic is coming from mobile users and which devices make up most of that traffic. Knowing what types of devices most of your customers use will help ensure your mobile design is easy for them to access and appropriate for the way they are viewing content. You can then also create mobile ad campaigns targeting users with those specific devices.

You will also want to get clearer insight into consumer behavior. Which videos are they watching from their mobile phone? Which pages are they spending the most time viewing? What is the average time spent overall on your website? By understanding those metrics you can change up or tailor new content to smartphone and tablet users.

Third, videos. If you do your research you will see various reports, like this one from Business Insider that “about 50 million people in the U.S. now watch video on their mobile phones. Fifteen percent of all online video hours globally are viewed on tablets and smartphones” and “40% of YouTube’s traffic now comes from mobile.” Set your business up with a YouTube channel and start creating videos to highlight your customer testimonials, products, services, staff, mission and culture and the benefits and solutions you provide.

Fourth, advertising. As mentioned above, by understanding mobile devise use, you can create better advertising campaigns. You can also use targeting parameters in Facebook, Twitter, LinkedIn and other social networks to drive specific target demographics to your mobile friendly website or to a landing page. Just make sure you do not lose any leads with a cluttered website that has small links, difficult navigation or tiny “purchase now” buttons. It’s such a let down when a brand has advertised some shiny new device or some life-altering service, and has made the rest of the purchasing process difficult. If you spent all that time creating an eye-catching Facebook ad, make sure you convert that lead into a new sale and a new loyal customer.

Fifth, Social Traffic. Are most of your likes coming from mobile users? Make sure photos posts are 620 pixels wide by 412 pixels high. Good new for retail: According to ComScore, “Nearly half (48 percent) of time spent in the Retail category occurred on mobile devices, with smartphones (34 percent) outpacing tablets (14 percent).” If you are in the business of retail create photos posts that also offer web-based coupons and promotion codes within your photo posts. If your customers are using Twitter and Instagram, they are very visual-mobile beings as well – another great opportunity to share coupons and promos.

Sixth, Email Marketing. Are all of your email newsletters or promotions optimized for mobile users? They should be! Here are some quick stats:

45% of decision makers reading their email from their mobile phones
Daily we spend 9 minutes on email via a mobile device, that is 7,6% of the total 119 minutes we use our phone per day. O2 – “Mobile life report” UK (2013)
More email is read Mobile than on a desktop email client. Stats say 49% of email is now opened on a mobile device Litmus –”Email Analytics” (Jan 2014)
52% of cell phone users use their phones to send or receive email (Pew)

Good luck on your mobile strategy and check back for future posts where we will cover this topic again.

Posted by Patrick

Social Media vs. Traditional – Find the Right Style of Marketing For Your Business

May 19, 2017Business Tips, Email Marketing, Marketing Campaigns, Social Media, Strategic Planning, Strategy, Uncategorized

Since the rise of the Internet, debate as started over the benefits of traditional marketing vs marketing online using social media when it comes to producing leads, expanding reach and improving business. As the online world continues to grow, people are left wondering “Will traditional marketing fade away?” Before the era of social media, traditional marketing such as print advertising, billboards, magazines, newspapers, email campaigns, and radio and TV interviews and commercials were primarily used for marketing. These days, online advertising is taking control with search engine advertising and social media marketing vastly extending the reach of the company’s voice.

Traditional Marketing Benefits

Face to Face Selling
Face to Face Communicating
Salesman Advantage
People can Physically Hear, Watch or Touch
Commercials During Major Televised Events

Traditional Marketing Disadvantages

Forced Marketing on Viewer
Have to Search for Clients
Lower Response Rate
No Community (less reach)
Not Cost Effective
No Open Communication with Customer
Not Easy to Track
Cannot Prove That People Like You

Social Media Marketing Benefits

Higher Conversion Rates
Higher ROI
Data can be Easily Tracked and Analyzed
Controlled Cost
Very Large Reach
Proof that People Like You
Community Building
Brand Building
Potential Clients Search for YOU!

Social Media Marketing Negatives

Potential Clients must be Internet Savvy
Loss of Non Internet Using Clients
Loss of Non Social Media Using Clients

The best way to manage your marketing strategy and campaigns is to have a balance between both if you can afford to do so. Some forms of traditional advertising like radio and TV commercials can be very costly and should be avoided if it is not leaving any room for online marketing in your strategy. Both forms can be effective, but online marketing is much more efficient and can not only be cost effective, but allows you to track data and analyze it to make proper adjustments. This can make an exponential difference and boost your ROI (return on investment) up 100%. A proper marketing strategy will include knowing the market to capitalize on and which methods are best used for your business.

For more information regarding marketing, strategy or social media contact us today for a free consultation with one of the experts at MySMN.

Posted by Patrick

5 Benefits of Email Marketing Vs. Social Media

May 19, 2017Email Marketing, Mobile, Social Media, Strategy

54% of small businesses surveyed rated e-mail as the top online promotion to drive site visitors and customers to their web sites and storefronts. (Source: DMA Interactive). Where does your business fit into this picture? If you have a website and sell products or services, you have customers and those customers have email addresses. An email address paired with a name, a profile, past browsing and buying behavior is an incredibly powerful thing for any business owner to have.

Most businesses can benefit from a mixture of social media marketing and email marketing, but between the two, the benefits of email marketing are one of the top tactics for lead generation, sales and maintaining customer relationships.

It’s Targeted – Email Marketing is more personal and it can be tailored (segmented) to very specific audiences –

If a customer is not ready to buy yet, you can share content that will help them during various stages of the buying cycle
Email customers that live in specific cities, states, regions
Had a successful year or event? Call out your top customers and thank them for their business
Email customers before their birthdays and offer them discounts
Email by gender, generation or cross different cultures
Based on what you know about your customers’ behavior while they have been on your site, you can retarget by reminding them about the items they clicked on or left in their carts.

It’s Business-Minded – When it comes to running a business, making lasting connections is more “grown-up” via email marketing rather than with most social networks. Think of it as a one-to-one conversation that’s landed in your customer’s very private email box – your message is not so private on social networks. Instead of speaking to thousands of people, your message is directed at each person by first name, and can again be tailored to that specific relationship.

It’s Mobile – More and more people have smartphones and they are checking email messages constantly along with their social networks and apps. Hubspot reports that forty percent of all emails are now viewed on smartphones, which means your emails, need to look exceptional on mobile devices.

It’s Permission Based – Your customers have given you the go ahead to communicate with them. It’s not like Twitter where it’s more of a mating dance – listening and promoting others comes first before engagement (sharing, promoting, selling) and new followers (people who sign up for email have a higher likelihood to become real customers if they haven’t already).

It’s Selling – Customers are expecting deals or discounts when they sign up for email newsletters and you can take advantage of this by telling your customers what to expect and give them exclusive deals only if they sign up. It’s an intimate level of exclusivity not similar to social networks. Social networks are better for engagement, brand loyalty, brand awareness and contests.

And speaking of deals and discounts, according to eMarketer, 92.5 million people in the U.S. redeemed digital coupons in 2012. By 2014, U.S. digital coupon users will exceed 100 million. There are many people who access coupons via desktop computers, but coupon users with smartphones are aiding in overall growth. Think of valuable discounts you can give your customers with digital coupons in your next email blast.

Good luck on your email marketing campaign and while you’re at it, subscribe to our email newsletter to receive tips on digital marketing!

Posted by Patrick

Native Advertising 101

May 19, 2017Advertising, Email Marketing, Strategy, Twitter, Uncategorized

“A classic race car, Vanity Fair and Hennessy Cognac. None of those three things seem out of place with each other, and that’s the point of the native ads that the classic magazine has rolled out on its website.” Jason Abbruzzese, Mashable.com.

If you don’t know what Native Advertising is, chances are you’ve already seen these types of ads online, like the one described by Mr. Abbruzzese. And you may have seen them years ago as sponsored spreads in print magazines. “Native” advertising is a buzzword right now, but the concept has been around for a while.

So in the “digital” here and now, native ads are paid online media placements in which the actual ad experience follows the natural form and function of the user experience – basically advertising complements the website it’s running on, or the content it’s displayed beside. That is why it can be very easy to confuse a well-written story with an actual ad. I happen to not mind coming across these ads as long as I am entertained, or don’t feel like my time has been wasted.

Twitter offers multiple native units, including Promoted Accounts, Promoted Tweets and Promoted Trends directly into the Twitter Stream.

Where can you see Native Ads?

Across social networks, as in-feed ads and recommended content widgets
In search and promoted listings (have you searched for something on Yelp, Amazon or Yahoo lately?)
Custom-made ads – Ex. Custom ads are placed on Pandora’s branded stations where advertisers attach their brand to songs that fit a particular theme)
Publisher and brand produced ads (you’ve seen stories and videos on your favorite news sites like WSJ, Forbes and the New York Times that were actually made to work as advertisements).

The smart brands know just how to pull you in and engage you.

Nivea’s “Just Face It” is a great example of an engaging native ads campaign. Six webisodes were featured on MadeMan.com starring actor Damon Wayans Jr. Wayans encounters six irritating life situations and he is “soothed” at the end of each one. Those webisodes were featured on a microsite where consumers found Nivea-branded editorial content like “Groom to Get the Job Done.” The webisodes and microsites were heavily promoted through banner ads and home page placement on MadeMan.com from May 7 – June 7, 2013. The webisodes focused more on daily irritants and less on products. There were more than 3 million total video views, 25,000+ Facebook likes, 5,200 Twitter mentions, 740,000 total user interactions (shares, “likes”, comments) with the videos across YouTube, Twitter and Facebook and more than 270,000 visitors to the Nivea branded MadeMan.com hub. Users spent an average of three minutes on the site.

So as a small business owner, how can you take part?

Consider creating a Native Mobile Ad if you have a significant amount of traffic coming to your site from mobile devices. How can you do this? If you sell women’s clothing, feature your ads on a popular fashion blogger’s site. You might have a better chance of interaction, warm leads and better click-through rates. Native advertising is great for mobile conversions because of the format’s ability to fit with any type of website.

Inbound Marketing – Partner up with a native ad publisher and create a feature that speaks to your specific audience. Maybe you have a local nursery? Publish “10 Tricks to Gardening This Spring” with a call to action to sign up for an email newsletter or a 15% discount off items from your store.

Social Ads – Is your content on Facebook, Twitter or YouTube? Facebook ads in the News Feed achieve 49-times higher click-through rates and a 54% lower cost-per-click than traditional placements in the right-rail sidebar, according to an AdRoll analysis of ad impressions traded through FBX, Facebook’s ad exchange. In-stream native social ads are a great strategy to target anyone that uses multiple devices. They function seamlessly across mobile and PCs and have a more natural look and feel. If you are targeting Generation Z, keep in mind this generation not only uses multiple devices, they also use them simultaneously. A study commissioned by Time, Inc. reported that eighty-four percent of Gen Z multitasks while watching TV with an average of 1.5 other Internet-connected devices like laptops and cell phones.
Have any additional questions about native ads? Please shoot us an email at: info@mysmn.com

Posted by Patrick

King Content and Check Mate Social Media

May 19, 2017Advertising, Blogging, Business Tips, Email Marketing, SEO

Why Content is King

In the information age, information is everything – even if it is useless. Because the Internet constantly bombards us with various facts, opinions, jokes, and abbreviations, it can be rather difficult to sift out the relevant from the nonsensical. To a certain extent, we suffer from a daily information overload, especially when it comes to online advertising. However, when Internet users start to care about the content of the information, then the overwhelming cloud of ones, zeros, and emoticons becomes manageable and informative. As a result, if you have the substance to back up your online branding and advertising strategies, your business will quickly improve its viability, because potential customers will care more about you and your product.

content

We may all have shorter attention spans than we did before the Internet, but that doesn’t mean that we have lost the ability to recognize and connect with important information.

In a recent study conducted by research firm Edelman Berland during the fall of 2012, a survey of 1,250 adults revealed that 68% of consumers find online ads “annoying,” 51% “distracting,” and 46% “all over the place.”

Additionally, consumers much prefer print magazine ads to any other medium. This is not to say that the Internet is useless and that there is no hope for online marketing, but that many businesses mistakenly believe they can sacrifice content for brevity and flashiness. Readers prefer print magazine ads because they allow for a closer engagement with the information being presented, which is typically more thoughtful as a result.

What does this mean for your business’ approach to online marketing? To put it in familiar terms: quality is more effective than quantity. The more informative content you can generate through your online marketing campaigns, the better – whether that’s through blogs, tweets, posts, or your website. When you give the consumer something to care about, whether it’s the family back-story of your business, the care that goes into making your product, or the reason you started your business in the first place, you generate more interest, engagement, and loyalty.

At My SMN, we know that content is crucial when it comes to making your business’ social media presence worthwhile and memorable. We know that customers much prefer to see the human side of your business, and we would like to help you share it.

Posted by Patrick

Email Marketing Guide

May 19, 2017Email Marketing, Strategic Planning, Strategy, Uncategorized

Strategies for Effective Email Marketing

In this day and age, one of the most effective and inexpensive ways to promote and advertise your business is through email marketing. As opposed to traditional mail, electronic mail can reach a substantial amount of potential clients with very little effort expended, monetarily or otherwise. However, developing effective strategies to take advantage of the benefits of email marketing requires having a general idea about how to best utilize electronic advertising. Here are some tips to guide you through the process.

Just like with traditional mail, you have to know someone’s address if you want to be able to reach that person. Unfortunately, one of the drawbacks of email marketing is that unsolicited emails are not very desirable for anyone to receive. To add to this, spam filters and anti-spam laws prevent many of these types of emails from getting through in the first place. It’s important, therefore, to establish a degree of trust and transparency with potential clients while maintaining a list of client’s email addresses. This will make it easy to send the same promotional email out to a large pool of email addresses in one fell swoop while ensuring its proper delivery and effectiveness.

Many companies, for example, use opt-in email advertising or permission marketing, because this electronic marketing model allows customers to solicit your emails and essentially create your address book for you. The best way to do this is through your company’s website. “Subscribe” links are one avenue to explore, but it’s difficult to ensure that visitors to your website will click on any of these links or be proactive enough to actually subscribe to your email list without any impetus. Often, the best way to build an electronic client list is through an account system that encourages customers to become a part of your company’s community by submitting their email address and creating a username or online identity within your company. Providing the simple one-click option to “opt-in” or “subscribe” during the sign-up process increases the likelihood that customers will solicit your email advertisements.

When it comes to actually crafting the email for the clients on your email list, it’s important to remember that the content of the email should be as friendly and unobtrusive as possible. Bombarding clients with flashy advertisements is probably not a very good idea. A personalized, weekly to monthly newsletter is your best friend when it comes to email marketing. At My Social Marketing Network, we specialize in all forms of online marketing, so we know what works and what doesn’t. And the less your email advertisements resemble spam, the more effective they will be at promoting your business.

Email Marketing

Why Content is King

Strategies for Effective Email Marketing

Email Newsletters!